Julia Kardon
H-Band BOME
Meyers 05-15-04
The Last Day of Schiele’s
Life
I had a little birdie her name was Enza
Opened up the window and In-flew-Enza,
-Child’s
rhyme about Influenza in 1918
Mother
still has not arrived and I doubt she will, she hardly mourned any for father
and it’s unlikely she’ll mourn for me. She never appreciated father– a man of honor and
wisdom, nor did she understand that she had bore one of the few artists who would
revolutionize art. I told her that
she must feel so lucky to have borne me, but she did not understand. I forgive her though, I need to be at
peace now. If only it
weren’t so unbearably hot... I feel my eyes glazing over as if in death,
as if I have already died... if
only I had the strength to look in a mirror and see how ravaged my body
is... I sense it as a sort of
beauty, or isn’t that what art has become? Beauty of what is ugliness and bare. Beauty in what is the truth. Art is the way I feel my brain right
now, as if it were seized by some light, painful burns emanating from the
center of my skull. I can hardly
move but to turn my face to the side and cough, and I cough blood. I feel the sheets smattered with it. The smell of Edith is still in my
sheets. The smell of Edith,
and of death.
I’m
afraid to reach out for the water on the table in case I find myself too weak,
in case I discover my hands mangled and blue instead of strong. Creating hands. Wicked hands. I drew the world with these nearly lifeless hands. There are studies done of artists hands
to see if they hold in them some power that other hands do not possess. I am sure it is true, my fingers had
genius inside them. I could feel
the marrow of my bones filled with that power from my shoulders to my
fingertips. I loved to paint my
own hands, a reflection, an art form in itself: the way the artist sees his
hands. Clenched. Or covering the breast of a woman. Or painting. Hands that could grab and draw and give life to paper with
just a twist of the wrist. Could
these hands have become so impotent?
Have I myself become so weak that I take a glass of water? The doctors say it is water in my lungs
that has been my death, and my Edith’s and the little babe she carried
inside her. But the doctors do not
know why. No one can truly tell me
for what it is that I am now dying.
Perhaps I sped poor Edith’s death along by granting her water when
she cried out. Or perhaps I speed
my own death now by fearing it.
How many days has it been?
How long have I lay here, waiting for a shrouded man to beckon me into
agony with an icy kiss?
And
to think that this is where it ends; I had my life in love, in suffering and in
art. Only fitting that after these
years working with my mind and bringing the erotic to this confined city,
injecting a cure for the austere Austria... I gave you life, this is the
youth... and Klimt has almost gone, the public no longer cares for him so much
and I have just been born, my ironies and my sex. To think how much “Squatting Couple” hit the
world, and that was merely going to be the start.[1]
That
was one of my last paintings. I
spent day after day thinking of that little family. Edith had just become pregnant when I began, and women were
flitting in and out of the house constantly. I would busy myself in my studio so that I would not be
bothered by them, but in the end I realized that man has to let himself be
bothered by it. Let himself see
the stupid expression on his face, the fact that humankind has not changed in thousands
of years, we are still in the dark, we are still naked, stupid, we operate on
instinct and we are isolated from women.
Edith had a glow about her when she discovered she was with child. Women have a knowing glow and raise
their babies with foresight and intelligence. Adoring infants who cannot help but love them
unconditionally. The condition of
creating a painting or creating a human is a difficult thing to impress on the
highly uncreative world. Edith was
not happy with this painting at all, she felt targeted! She loved the painting too, but she
felt that the mother was unlovable.
Too scheming. That the
man’s simplicity is what the viewer identifies with. Enjoys the aping expression in his
face. I laughed at her then but
she could not be dissuaded, and I understood it suddenly. That my comment was not just on social
isolation of the father from a family, but of the isolation we encounter from
the creating forces, the roots of ourselves. The Father is instinct, emotion, desire, the Father is a
character like myself, who has never compromised his ideals for the restraints
and chains of humans as a whole.
Why are we so disgusted with ourselves? Why is the world so focused on pushing out the essential of
our beings? Is it possible that
only the dying feel these thoughts?
Will any human after my death be able to spot them in my work?
With
Edith and my child I could have redefined not only man and woman but child and
elderly. This past few years I
have matured. I do not need pubic
hairs and stark genitalia to grab the attention of the world. The pornographers cannot define a naked
woman as a woman at all, only a naked object, but the point is too
obvious. Men know the importance
of sexual definition, they understand how a woman is. It is a job that I do not have to do any longer, it was a
job that only a young man can do with strength. But I had the attention of the world. The galleries and collectors and common
patrons all know me now. They
loved me, and my Expressionism! It
is my movement, after all. What
will the art historians say? When
they see my paintings and contrast it to the crude elementary murals on
Ringstrasse walls, will they understand?
Will they see me and know that I have not sucked in France and I have
not sucked in Italy and I have not sucked in Spain? I am Vienna!
Austria runs through my blood from my forefathers as far as we can
date. I am the new century! And I am dying, I am nearly dead.
Edith
and her pale sweet face, her healthy body and dark eyes, she had a musky scent
that spoke to me of arousal and love.
Oh her face! What innocence
I wanted to paint her with. Edith
Schiele, the woman who calmed my troubled mind. The woman who wore such pretty striped dresses, who combed
my hair, who kissed me with eyes shut tightly. Who straightened my frenetic cries into statements. It makes me laugh to see what untamed
earnestness and moodiness I painted before her. Painting waves of desperosity, violently colored, the intensity of sex. She gave me the metaphor, the subtlety
of facial expressions, the animation of nature, torpid landscapes... Edith came to me and I grew far beyond
the adolescence that believed nudity was the only way to show the essence of a
human. I used to think that beyond
the half lidded eyes of a lustful slut, bare naked, exposing herself to the
world with her fingers, beyond all that there was nothing to paint, nothing
that had not been done. And now to
know that as soon as I grew past all that there were the portraits to paint of my
friends, or my wife. Or
trees. That was my art– the
essence of a human emotion, human fate as discovered by my brushes. That is what I could not see with out
Edith, my Edith.
She
was there when I made the posters for my exhibitions, she helped me choose the
ones to use. She was the one who suggested
the portrait of Albert Paris von Gütersloh. It appealed to her, and it appeals to me. Even his name twinges a certain buzz of
excitement in me. That painting
allowed me to be eccentric, to draw in my audience to my personality as well as
his. I don’t even know how
long he has been my best friend, perhaps ten years? The background melts.
It was painted with such care for the beauty of red. Kandinsky would like it, I have
followed his writing closely. The
truth in a form cannot be defined by any convention. That is how he put it, “Necessity defines
form.” All over the world
there is like-minded ideals. While
I painted the solidity of Albert’s house melted into a fire, he was
sitting in front of a fire. His
personality is explosive and burning, completely consuming. Painting it gave me excitement, filled
me with pleasure. His face so
bold, he always looks as if he holds a secret that he wishes you could
understand with out him saying a word.
Perhaps he does! Perhaps
that’s what life, love is: trying to squeeze out that one secret with out
saying a word. And his hands! They are fantastic! Painting Albert was a joy of
expressionism. Painting the
position of his hands, grasping at something and at nothing, knowing there is a
world just slightly out of reach!
Both disturbing and dreadfully important. Not a human can walk by with out staring at it. Albert enjoyed his fame, he said people
recognized him on the street all the time. The likeness is striking. It is not just because the features are accurate, any fool
can do that. It is because
everything in his body speaks of the life that is inseparable from him. His beauty, yes complete beauty! One of my few completed portraits. One of my last finished paintings in
general. I’m glad that it
was finished, at least something I have done has been completely
worthwhile. I have made over three
thousand works of art. And so much
left to be done! I feel a flicker
of excitement, as if I still had the power to do something other than moan. I wonder if Albert has come today to
visit me. My eyes and ears are
blinded and seared with the pain of this cruel death. I do not think I could miss Edith more.
The
last large and definitely complete painting I made of her was good, too. My style is so strong that it cannot be
mistaken for any other painter, I am completely distinctive with my
canvas. I love this portrait of
Edith, seated in a chair, her whole body a little sideways. She sticks out of the darkness because
that is where I found her, when life had become dull for me she became a
beautiful focus. She did not
understand her own importance, her expression is slightly unaware, as if she is
only aware of the fact she is being painted and not at all of the reason. She is a woman whose body is unkempt
despite the clean and pressed dresses she wears. I have painted her hair neatly, and yet there is enough
motion in just her hair that the world can understand how it musses when a
slight draft blows by. Edith, my
Edith, she wants to be so grown up.
She wants to be the face of reason for me, be strong for me and my
outbursts. She is so smart, her
eyes so lively! She smiles and
frowns at the same time. This
painting is perfect, she is fully represented. Like a cat, her rest still allows each muscle to be tensed,
she is about to jump out of her seat in exasperation. I loved to paint the shadows in her skirt and her beautiful
little shoes. The combination of
sweeping brush strokes and infantile small ones is such a joy to me. I did not make fun of Edith with any
malice. I think she is
beautiful. The most beautiful
creature, to have such turbulence in her young face. Such wisdom in her body. She emerges from chaos, from melting colors, from sadness,
from a void in which I was not present, and she is beautiful, and completely
there for me. She loves me. She is mine.
And
now I can hardly remember her as she was then, before this damned curse... I remember that first her eyes
moistened and the brown pools spilled over into her face, glassy, seeming not to see... and her cheeks
with more color but sickly, so sickly.
Those dry lips with their cracked sobs and sticky saliva... I promised to care for her and what if
I did not? What if I did not do
one thing, the one thing to cure her?
All her illness... I hated the visitors. They all came to tell me things that I could not bear to
hear. They wanted to know what I
would do after she passed away, they wanted to know if the baby could be saved
(but how could it have been, only six months old and even then with out a
mother?) they kept asking if I was doing all I could. They did not understand that I was doing all I could. That making art was the most I could
give her then. They shirked away
when they saw me drawing her as she lay dying. How did they turn their eyes, why did they not see that
staying with her for hours on end was all I could do. Meant more than any of the sympathetic words they brought
her. Holding handkerchiefs over
their mouths delicately. What did
I do for her? I died for her! I am dying for her! Oh, her friends and their
predictions, those doctors with
their false prescriptions, my work and the predilection of all men, falling in
love with beauty however fleeting for a chance to taste it and create it and
rule over it. I was the creator of
beauty too, more vibrant and life filled than any trees or Russian
prisoners. I had a baby inside of
Edith and I know it was a boy. I
know it was to be chubby and willful, and a lucky baby. Her belly grew and I grew too, with
it! I became an adult. I understood love...
I
heard that my poor old Wally died of fever. We were like minded, Wally and me. Perhaps that’s why I left her... I couldn’t take
her boyish habits and her hunt for sex, her wild temper that would flare and
wane at random times. Once she
upset a table while a guest was over, leaving the room in a huff. That was her. I am surprised she did not hit me harder when I gave her my
letter. Perhaps it was cruel for
me to tell her of my marriage in the form of a letter. I remember taking her to our cafe, we
played a game of pool. We were
always welcomed there, the bartender knew us well. She was in a poor mood though, and criticized me
heavily. I can almost remember the
exact muscles that bulged in her temples when she was in a fury. Edith did not know too much about her,
and she knew next to nothing of Edith.
But she did not want to.
She wanted me to herself.
She would not sleep with me if there was another. For weeks I expected to be suddenly
stabbed as I walked through the streets alone. Poor Wally. We
were too emotional for one another.
No, too rash. Too
young. Wally had a real adventure
to her, she sought out her own happiness, didn’t rely on me. Did she? I always thought that her way of appreciating art and beauty
and Vienna was to sleep with me, the creator. Perhaps she just loved me, then? I loved her love.
And her body, what a girl she was, every muscle in her taut. I can’t even think of sex now,
everything I liked to think of brings me worse pain. Disgust. Death
is filled with disgust. I feel as
if my chest were just an open wound, my viscera dangling from it. I cannot take this death.
How
time changes life! Now, left as a
dying invalid I have lost my very personhood. But twenty days ago? I was so happy because of my Edith, who was always
frank but almost never angry.
Maybe Wally and Edith died for one another. Maybe I am dying for them. Does this make sense?
A whole triangle of our deaths and penitence and unknown sins and the
compensation for not living well enough.
Perhaps this death is only to even back the suffering that a year of
success had but impeded, never stopped... no, suffering is never stopped. How strange that you can grow up as I
have amidst so much pain, see so much death, and still live for some time in
bliss. I was to be the most famous
portrait artist in Austria, or I would have been. Just this year I’d made more money than I have my
whole life. Artists are not
supposed to die so young, when their work is just the foundation for what
they’ll later paint. Later
when they have gotten something more from life. Perhaps I have not filled my duty that God gave me. Can’t I be forgiven? I’m sorry that I slept with such
young women! I am sorry I let the
children see my work! No...
I’m not so sorry. Should I
shield the world from the truth?
Should I have tried and kept the worlds in my paintings from every
one? For what would the point
be. You cannot hide what needs to
be heard from any one. It does not
matter their age. With the death
of myself and wife and child, my whole family... with that death I’m
paying for the unreadiness of Vienna to admire a red vagina and swollen nipples
in a museum. Oh, what fantastic sensationalist garbage
it all was. Would the world see
what I could become! What pathetic
thoughts for me! I am controlled
by a flu, coughing more and more blood.
I
am twenty eight years old and it seems to me that perhaps my death will be an
end of all life, or perhaps just one more unnoticed in the throngs of death
around. I have only had ten years
to develop my painting, and not even that because of my duties during the
war. Here and there I had chance
to work on my own paintings, but mostly my days were spent in unhappy and plain
buildings. I had wanted to stay in
Vienna all through the war because I wanted to experience how the heart of
Austria dealt with its death. The
city is changing, undoubtedly. I
wish I had known more about it, so that I could have painted something that the
would take the Viennese by their coats and shake them until they saw. I wish I had been more known, more
hailed, so that perhaps my work would be continued directly, with out any gap,
and there is a chance my message would still escape from this gasping throat. I wish the streets had reverberated
with my cries, instead of my cries reverberating with the streets, attacking
the people with vehemence. As a
public we do not understand the concept of mass death. We feel that the deaths of soldiers are
not the same as the death of a young boy, or Uncle, my wife. We are selfish people who cannot
understand that the deaths of our countrymen, however they die, are as much a
part of us as their lives.
All these deaths should be mourned. They do not mourn the deaths of the Russian or British here,
and I can be assured they do not mourn our deaths. So many dead men, filled with bravery and ideas, there was a
hundred years of culture lost in just the deaths of our generation. I have not seen Edith’s
funeral. I do not think she has
had a funeral. We haven’t
had a proper chance. Perhaps they
are just waiting so they may bury us together. Her body rotting in another room, mine in this one. Our friends are not mourning with
me. How grim to think they’re
mourning at me. To be mourned
at! Taking pictures of my
death. I can hear the pop and feel
the light of their cameras. They
still do not understand, really understand who I am and was and am
becoming. Or would be becoming, I
suppose. The death of an artist,
it turns out, is no more romantic than a peasant’s death. The life, perhaps. Death as a capitalist conception is a
ridiculous notion. Some do not
realize that no matter what it is they have bought, we are equally dead on the
next page. Death such as this
can be described as nothing but agony.
There there are great deaths in flocks and herds and gaggles and the
same death through out, whether in war or in a new bed. I am still lying in a new bed. A stained bed. I am married to this bed, with it I now
live and die. This contract
consecrated not so long ago and whether its consecration was the sweat of
sickness or of love I cannot say.
Have I lost my mind? I have
a stench in me and black specks cover the room, but when I blink I see they are
only flies.
I
believe in what I did create, there is an art in all life and a strength in it,
too. I did not make a portraits of
downy cheeked women under an inch thick veneer. No fancy cloths and convex mirrors. None of that fictionalized
representational trash. I painted
real life, humans, humans as I saw them to be. I believe in what health means as I drew it, I believe in
the robust flesh and the red of women's cheeks and the dirt and vulgarity of
her sex, I believe in all of
that. I believe in her arched back
waiting to be held, her collar bones waiting to be kissed and I believe in the
innocence in my Edith’s eyes.
She was my perfect doll, my little Edith. I believe her curving lines and the way even her elusiveness
showed me how a human form could never lack definition if you were willing to
grab it. How can the world expect
painters to be photographers? The
personality of my upturned navels and full lips could conquer any classical
Italian’s work. My self
portraits revolutionized the idea of seeing oneself. People cannot bear to look at my own portrayals of my naked
body. They shy away from the
brazenness, bluntness, forthrightness they can see in my eyes, my torso, my
arms, my thighs. Women cannot look
at my genitalia with out blushing, but I have discovered something more true
and basic than even Freud can describe.
There is such analysis of my roots, the primordial emotions with in my
body that my self portraits will cause people to gasp as long as the paintings
survive.
I can’t help feel so naive in my
paintings of death. Angry, almost,
at how we have all decided what death is. Society has delegated ideas of death to a certain
regimen of feelings, but we are far from the truth. Being dead is the feeling of my hands, where breasts heaved
under once, the same strong hands
that my brush was wielded by, and knowing now that they are gone from use. Death is the view of Edith’s
breasts lacking their former inviting warmth and heaving instead with rasps and
rattles that lack even a hint of their rapture and rhapsody. Her gaunt thighs as she lost pound
after pound every day. What is
this death, and what has this whole year been? A joke, God?
1918, the year the world ended.
For what do you wish to defy me?
Who are you that wishes to defy me so? Will some one answer me? I feel as though I have died so many times over: my father
taken from me in the prime of his life, being unjustly sent to jail, having my
wife and unborn child ripped from my hands! I have to beg with all the others: why has this happened to
me? Is God afraid to let Vienna
bloom under my brush? Afraid of
what unforetold dangers my happiness would have on the world?
I
can see Vienna from my window, and it is a Vienna that will soon die. I wish that my loins had created more
than ardor and that children had gestated in the wombs of my loves. I wonder if there were any children
from me, yet I cannot help but feel there were none. When my mind reaches out from its depths and struggles to
find life among the closed doors and windows, it finds none. If there were only more children... I
wish that none of my successors should have to die here, like this, alone in
spirit and in mind. But I cannot
help but wish too that Vienna herself isn’t left to die alone. Vienna, crumbling and stumbling about,
confused from every brick in her body to every window pane and floorboard. She is dazed, while her people are
grim. Terrible faces. All I can think of is the clenched jaws
of so many faces. The only men
left in the streets are the wounded or ill. The women are all weeping and grieving. To think the changes that this city has
undergone! I remember the first
day that the sun singled out her rays to illuminate six or seven beautiful
children with their sturdy bodies just blooming, thriving, vigor in their arms
and cheeks, all for me. The first
view I had from my studio window of children's’ bright eyes cautiously
examining my house. That first
time I looked into the square from the Academy and I saw those girls, all those
rich and bored girls enthralled with their own bodies and the power in their
minds. I can remember that first
day of truly conscious sexual excitement, the first time I saw a girl loose her
blouse and my eyes were freshly met with the power of life. If all of the world could have seen
that girl!
My
thoughts are pained. To think
itself is pain, any blood to my brain feels clogged with ranting thought, each
thought trying desperately to dispel the cloudy disease that has choked its
sensibility. No one will ever know
Vienna like it is now. After the
war, when all is changed, when all is forgotten. No one will remember what it was like to be here, feel the
city dying. I will not live to see
it reborn. Perhaps I have helped
create what it will become, but I am not sure if it will be me they
recognize. Klimt they will hail,
and me they will dismiss as a pervert.
Klimt, who told me that I had too much talent! Well, not then.
Not too much talent at all then.
I started the at the Academy when I was just fourteen years old and I
was given just twice that age to change the world. If I had but a year more! If I only had the thought of Edith’s health to comfort
me now. A child, some
successor! Why has everything
died? I painted “Dead
City” before the war, and now it looks as if it were a prophecy. Perhaps that is what all my paintings
are- prophecies of death. I
painted “Death and the Pregnant Woman.” It sounds so ominous now. How could I have not seen? Wh did I not stop myself? I should have taken the death out of life while I
painted. I should have ignored
that anguish. My last works were
of Edith as she contorted her tortured face and moaned with death. And now... all those self portraits
where I was death. Before this
illness I had never even thought my thinness to be frailty, never even saw how
many bones death would come and count on my chest, claiming me rib by rib. Now I cannot move I am so weak in
the limbs. The stain glass lines
of my stomach and the bony look of my body... all is gone and has become just
another face of death. My body
aches, this bed feels like iron.
This
is the third day. Of the
illness. It has been said that all
of life occurs in threes. This
holds for misfortune, too. Edith
died, our child died, and now I will die.
Nine days for her, just three mere days for me. And twelve all in all, because I
shall die today with out Edith here to prolong me any more, like I did
her. And still, it seems there is
no point. Her illness was numbing
and I pretended I did not hear her cries late into the night nor smell the
stench of her urine in the morning.
I wrote a letter to her mother that was quite cold, I meant it to
be. Bitter, factual. I was not going to write her mother
warmly, a woman who refused to come to our wedding. Who refused to give her blessing to her first daughter! Her mother was an icy woman who
didn’t understand either of us.
But now I feel through the letter that I was cold towards Edith,
even! I didn’t express the
remorse I felt! I couldn’t...
I couldn’t find the words for her.
I couldn’t let my mind think of what those words could be. If only I could write Edith a love
letter, for I did not even write her one during our courtship. This room reeks of remorse. This house is disease itself. At least she died before her beauty was
lost in my memory among faded dreams that cannot escape wrinkles and the color
gray. My skin is gray itself, and
my hair will never be. I am the
color of filth and I feel grimy and putrid. My brain burns and I cannot move. I fear to open my eyes. It seems that there is nothing worse than to open my
eyes. I feel flecks of blood on my
cheek from where I have coughed on the pillow. It cannot be worse than this.
I
am aware of people floating in and out of my room, watching me on my
deathbed. So this is it, they say
to one another, the death of the mighty Egon. More photos are taken, but I do not respond nor open my
eyes. Animals, they are, watching
me as this! With pain, I
wonder? Are women weeping? In what
newspapers will they give me a full page?
Will the international presses be alerted? Or am I just one more name following a long list of dead
soldiers. Somewhere I feel Klimt
calling me, telling me to paint.
Art has not ended! I wish I
could show the world for the last time how I feel, I wish I could force Vienna
to acknowledge all the people who live within her walls. I have not finished my work! I have not shown people what brush
strokes lie beneath the surface of man.
If I had strength enough!
There is nothing I would not have painted. Oh, Vienna, there is nothing in you I would not have
painted! I was meant to have a
baby and to paint him as he grew, and to be close to him as my father was close
to me before his death. My poor
baby boy, my poor Edith. I was
finally able to show her riches, after all this time being conspired against by
fate. There is no one who was not
jealous of my genius. God spites
me. I was meant to paint my middle
age and old age and the wait for death that is not this. No, this is not what I want from death
at all.
And
yet, this is death is it not? Long
or bedraggled or short or festering, that’s death. Expected, or surprising, rotting or
quickly buried, burning or bleeding... it never shirks its duty of being a horrific
sight. These months, as it has
gotten cold, as this Influenza has spread... there are dead piled on the
street! And children who play on
the stacks of coffins! Is the
pestilence to continue? I am
afraid of all the bony men and women in who walk through the rainy streets with
out expression on their faces except the pain in their eyes. I am afraid of all these people who
look at one another with hatred, as if every breath one takes is another breath
the other cannot. Between two
friends such jealousies arise that every day one frail man is beaten to death
by an almost equally frail comrade.
If I could paint Death it would not be like the depictions that I
painted before. I would paint the
frantic grasping and the shadows, the near visibility but deniable
presence. Depravity is in death,
but mostly fear. How long, Vienna,
will it take you to die? Before
you are a historic sight and nothing more? Before your majestic architecture is meaningless and the
buildings lie in shambles? How
long will it be, Vienna, until you are just a gallery for foreigners?
I
am sure my fame will surge after my death. With no use of course, for this is no one left to give my
money to. At my exhibitions will
people of future generations fall in love with my work? What will all this be regarded as? Who will they say influenced me? They will look at my art and provide
conjectures, perhaps they will look at my landscapes and say Van Gogh. But really, any resemblance to other
artists are mostly coincidence, I have rejected foreign art. My painting of the Mill, or “Four
Trees”– they are works of Austria and not of some other foreign
land. “Four Trees”
contains death and rebirth and growth, harmony, fear, beauty, anxiety... I
painted a red sun and most of the land in shadow. Like stained glass.
A true artist has as much intentions and emotions pouring from his
streams and branching off of his trees as he does in any portrait. I wanted people to feel the rigor and
power of the land, this land that we live in. Out door painting was invented in Austria. The East first came to Europe through
Austria. Her landscapes are so
powerful! They contain so much
subtle strength. I could not say
it too many times. Humans come
from the land, we return to the land.
Our land is Austria, and it must be worshipped for as long as we
populate it.
It
is not because there are no other countries that I could enjoy. But I was born here, these are my
lands, my interest. The life
in Austria has always been my fascination. I am overwhelmed by her progression. And by her lack of
progression! In how she has grown
and shrank and let her people die, and yet what people live in Vienna! Vienna is a city that one can spend his
life describing. All the Viennese
who are at all self aware become fascinated by the destiny of the other
citizens. We stare out the
windows, give searching and inquiring looks to the other patrons of the
ballet. We catch one another
admiring the facades of the buildings.
We are so different, each one of us with a different history, different
heritage, different interests... this is what makes us Viennese. We have a commonality in our love of
the different. In our love of the
art that expresses us all.
I
love our citizens. Our poor who
creep out from the edges of the city and beg for attention, who try to break
down the social and architectural barriers keeping them from the center of the
city. The workers who are so
strong despite the obstacles and rigid place they have been set into. The bourgeoisie who imagine that they
can hide themselves in the opera, in the galleries, pastimes of the
aristocracy. Gazing at the
Ringstrasse and clapping their hands maniacally at coffee house culture. All of the bourgeoisie are left
searching for something to call their own, searching for some way to triumph
their individual repression. The
aristocracy, with so much power... we never should have let them take so much
power. They pretend they are
not here, at times. The
aristocracy would like to be put on a pedestal untouchable to the rest of the
population, and we let them have it.
Allowing our fears to be quenched by the knowledge that we are not in
control, that the power is responsibly divided elsewhere, that no decisions are
ours to make... we have been so afraid
of facing the death of Vienna that we have quenched any ability for natural
change. Austria will never be as
she was before the war. The
presence of the ruling class is so removed to us... I even heard a child ask
his father if Franz Joseph existed!
And now here we are, like a new animal in the zoo, just starting to
understand our own entrapment.
This is what I was telling you, Vienna, if you could listen! I was so well liked because of these
reasons. I was the salvation, a
lone voice screaming out, raw and fresh, and my patrons thought that if they
liked my art enough it could replace the need for paying attention what I
screamed. Perhaps they liked the
idea of truth in my art more than they liked the art itself. Unable to understand it, it becomes
fashionable and popular. But when
the war ends, Austria will be built anew from my ashes. People grow from those who could not
grow. I was cut short, I grew so
much in so few years. Austria has
allowed Vienna to wander about for centuries, faltering on every cobblestone of
the road. It is time Vienna
rebuilt herself, became rejuvenated.
Vienna has a duty now to become everything she was not before. To never let her eclectic life die in
stereotypes, to never mistake what is fashionable to the mainstream as what is
true and meaningful. Will the
artists take up my cause? Perhaps
after death I will know these new citizens of Vienna. And if I don’t?
Then I wish at least that they will all know me.
I
feel a wet cloth on my forehead and I try to speak, but all I hear of my own
words are garbled moans. And
I’m being spoken to, but I cannot understand it myself, as if it was just
moans right back at me. So far
away. I am certain that I am
coming into my last breaths. Soon
I will see my wife with her fat belly, and I will see my father, and we will
talk in happiness. I will paint
them in the sky, for the whole world to see. Or perhaps I am condemned to hell with my pious family in
heaven above me? I have not seen
my sister, Gerta, in ages. I loved
her so as a child. Where is
she? My thoughts are so confused,
now I cannot remember if we are close or if she has died. Suddenly it seems as if she is in the
room. I cannot understand what is
happening to me. Why haven’t
I seen her in so long? Did we
fight? Mother did not like how
close we were as children. She was
scandalized by the night we spent in a sleeping car on the train alone. I am too passionate for her, she can
not understand what passions flare up within me, she assumes I am filled with
pornography. But Mother tries to
be good to me. She does not
understand entirely, but I know she tries, has wanted to make up to me the
emptiness Father’s death caused me.
There is a joy in drawing one’s own mother that cannot be
expressed in words. There is some
great pleasure in recreating the woman who created you. All of art is about one’s own
creation. About the act of
imagination. All of my work is
about discovering the feelings that we have trained ourselves so hard to
ignore. Drawing Mother, Edith,
painting friends... suddenly emotions arise in you that you had completely
forgotten since childhood. You
think clearly once more.
Everything suddenly draws itself out in a line, waiting for you to
merely connect pieces with brush strokes.
That
is what life is though, it is not just painting. All life is trying to justify the imbalances in what we need
from ourselves, from other people, what society needs from us. We are lost on a mission trying to
rectify one human out of conditions that cannot be placed near each other with
out exploding. My mind wants to
have nothing to do with society at times.
Wanted, would be the proper word.
I could not help but think lustily, I could not but reach out and try to
hold on to all fruits that I found.
I had such raw talent in me, so much intensity and vivacity that my work
frightened my teachers. They could
not look me squarely in the eye at times.
That is how all art should be, so filled with life it pains us to look
at it fully, blinds us, but we cannot turn away from it. I hope that no one turns their eyes
from my work, that their soul forces them to devour it and that all those
colors and forms and shapes bite something deep with in them that they will
remember for all time. Perhaps
when the world starts again, after the war, after every one is finished
dying.... maybe at this point humanity will live for the sake of the
individual. Will not cut itself
into uniformity. Perhaps society
will not cover itself in such tight. stiff-lipped and completely rigorous
death. Can people ever enjoy art
and let it live, let the canvas have and be filled with contemplation? Going to museums is such joy,
finding galleries that hold undiscovered masterpieces. So many artists who are routinely
ignored whose entire lives are readable in their canvases, canvases that have
contained so much thought that has been avoided. No one wants to spend the time and find our thoughts. My followers will have photos of my
greatest work and spend a minute looking at each painting before turning to the
next one. I spend my life on work
after work, trying to enlighten the masses, proving to them what they cannot
see... and they turn away.
And
now I’m to be going through
hell. Why, for living how I
chose? For some scandals that the
newspapers report? All these
imaginary scandals firing up whenever I turn my head! I was forced to jail for having my artwork viewable to all
people, indiscriminately. Where is
equality in a world that would do such a thing? I was letting those children be my muses, I was painting for
them, so that the lessons of life could be seen easily, so that the truth would
not be hidden from them in shadowed corners. All I find is repression, wherever I look! All this pain for painting what I
wished... is this what God has decided for me? To make this my lot because of how deeply I feel
emotions? Yes, perhaps it will be
hell that I’ll end up in.
But it is foolish to mull to deeply over hell. My last thoughts cannot be consumed with it. Besides, it is as if I have already
died, long ago. My body has gone
and it is just these thoughts that keep me in this world. My incinerating body screaming out to
me with aches, this is hell! Hell? I have died and this is hell.
More
people attend to me, I have cried out too loudly. My body feels like bones, a collection of angles, a
definition of the lack of vivacity.
My skin with out luster. a
deformed countenance must stare at my visitors. Visitors who walk in and out, contemplating the time of my
death today. Perhaps they have a
gamble, to see who guesses most accurately. Perhaps I should die now. It seems like it would be so easy to let go. Stop up my breath. Let my heartbeat slow. The easiest thing in the world is to
just fade away...