Three Marcels & The Gay Science: Beyond Nietzsche’s Good & Evil
Thursday April 7th, 2005, by
"There is a photograph, taken around 1946 in Islington, of Orwell with his adopted son, Richard Horatio Blair. The little boy, who would have been around two at the time, is beaming....It is not difficult to guess that Orwell, in 1984, was imagining a future for his son’s generation, a world he was not so much wishing upon them as warning against. He was impatient with predictions of the inevitable, he remained confident in the ability of ordinary people to change anything, if they would. It is the boy’s smile...that we return to...proceeding out of an unhesitating faith...that human decency, like parental love, can always be taken for granted...imagine Orwell, and perhaps even ourselves, for a moment.../swearing to do whatever must be done/ to keep it from ever being betrayed." — A butchered up excerpt of Thomas Pynchon’s lovely Foreward to Harcourt Brace’s 1984. Italics are mine.
- Marceau, Duchamp, Mihalovici, and Marcel
Mon petit Marcel was named after three Marcels: Marceau, Duchamp and Mihalovici. In their professional lives, as a rule, they didn’t speak. Activists have much to learn from them.
Monsieur Marceau was inspired to pursue the art of silence, of course, by Chaplin, Keaton, and Langdon, among others. In 1947, he created "Bip", the clown who in his striped pullover and battered, deflowered opera hat, became his alter-ego, even as Chaplin’s "Little Tramp" became that star’s personality. Bip’s misadventures with everything from butterflies to lions were limitless, offering up gorgeous epiphanies for this thing called...life.
Duchamp? After producing several canvases in the early twentieth-century popular mode of Fauvism, he turned toward experimentation and the avant-garde, producing his most famous work, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) in 1912; portraying continuous movement through a chain of overlapping cubistic figures, the painting caused a furor at New York City’s famous Armory Show in 1913. He painted very little after 1915, but his sculpture brought him additional fame. It pioneered two of the main innovations of the 20th century: kinetic art and ready-made art. His pervasive influence was crucial to the development of surrealism, Dada, and pop art. All done virtually without a word.
- Marcel Duchamp, Bonds for Monte-Carlo roulette, 1924
French composer of Romanian origin, Marcel Mihalovici, worked with Samuel Beckett. The public rarely heard a word from him. Beckett’s theatrical productions, if you’ll remember, used less and less talk as he moved toward the end of his dramatic career.
Words. What do they have to do with activists?
99% of the activists I know —and I know MANY— are in dire need of expanding their horizons. Nonverbal horizons. That covers a lot of territory, of course. But...for those who can’t stop asking exactly what I would have them do outside of the ballot box, the marching in circles, etc., I humbly submit that much could be derived from immersion in The Wordless Realm.
It is not a satisfying answer for people obsessed with making a difference following the usual paradigms. Especially when it’s coming from a fellow who uses words to communicate the better part of each day. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile, solicited/unsolicited advice.
At the opening of my Walter Kaufman (Vintage Books) translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, there’s a section titled "’Joke, Cunning, and Revenge’: Prelude in German Rhymes," which begins with Invitation:
"Wagt’s mit meiner Kost, ihr Esser!
Morgen schmeckt sie euch schon besser
Und schon ubermorgen gut!
Wollt ihr dann noch mehr,—so machen
Meine alten sieben Sachen
Mir zu sieben neuen Mut." [1]
As Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins point out,
"The Gay Science introduces some of Nietzsche’s most well-known ideas. One of these is the shocking announcement that ’God is dead.’ The God-centered worldview that once grounded the Western way of life, Nietzsche tells us, is no longer real for most Westerners. Instead, most modern Europeans base their lifestyle on scientific materialism, which is not well suited to establish values. The consequence is modern nihilism, the sense that life has no purpose." [2]
Well, life does have a purpose. [3]
And it’s to be found in the wordless world that I began this article with; that can beckon you to make babies, or beckon you to, say,...Baltimore. [4] The birthplace of George Herman "Babe" Ruth holds just one of many (unfamiliar) lures. Particularly, the unprotected ports.
Baltimore Sun buddy, staff reporter Jim Haner, assures me that,
"Nationwide, they say, tons of jet fuel, gasoline, liquefied natural gas, munitions and caustic chemicals in tank farms and seaport facilities lie virtually unprotected — accessible to petty thieves, organized criminals and terrorists alike.Bridge, tunnel and rail security systems have become so outmoded they are vulnerable to even amateur acts of sabotage. Amtrak officials have told Congress that three antiquated East Coast tunnel systems alone need more than $1 billion in fire safety and ventilation improvements." [5]
What’re we talkin’ ’bout here? Try vulnerability, for starters. Daunting options.
Another of Nietzsche’s rhymes, Unverzagt (Undaunted), is appropriate in coming to a close:
"Wo du stehst grab tief hinein!
Drunten ist die Quelle!
Lass die dunklen Manner schrein:
,,Stets ist drunten—Holle!" [6]
Some readers accuse me of writing crossword puzzles. I don’t write crossword puzzles, I write cross puzzles. I’m angry. And as per Nietzsche, I recommend that we not bottle up our white hot, choleric anger.
Take it on a trip, if you like, your colere. To Baltimore, perhaps. I can’t go this weekend, however.
I promised Marcel that I’d play Pantomime with him. And he’s my little morceau. [7]
- mon petit morceau, Marcel
Richard Oxman, at dueleft at yahoo.com, is horrible with languages and crossword puzzles, and always makes sure he gets lots of help in those areas. His challenges respecting the focus of this article are no exception; he can use some assistance. Readers are urged to read his early April entries in the Cultural Politics section of www.selvesandothers.org as complements to this piece.
Footnotes
[1] In English, the Einladung reads
Take a chance and try my fare:
It will grow on you, I swear;
Soon it will taste good to you.
If by then you should want more,
All the things I’ve done before
Will inspire things quite new.
[2] See their What Nietzsche Really Said (New York: Random House, 2000), pp. 74-75. If you like their work, they’ve got similar works on Freud, Jung and Darwin. Though I trust you’ll be too busy on the street to read quite so much.
[3] And, like Mitch Hedberg says about the letter "X," if you’re not being used enough, we’ve got work for you; you can serve a definite purpose. He suggests that kind of thing in relation to the word Xylophone...where he says we use the "X" (inappropriately) ’cause that letter doesn’t get enough work. It’s as appropriate, he says, as writing Z-Ray instead of X-Ray. Well, if you can’t find a place within the unsatisfying activist community as it stands, please take heart in the fact that Nietzsche predicted that that sort of thing would come down (well over a hundred years ago). We can help on that count. All aboard on the Baltimore Special! You don’ need no luggage, as they say.
[4] "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—/Success in Circuit lies," said Emily Dickinson. See my "Heroin Heister/Activist Shyster" article —scheduled to be posted the same day (April 7) as this companion piece in the Cultural Arts section of www.selvesandothers.org. It will provide more "hints" about...what I’m about here. And why in this form.
[5] Pretty much the same as what you would have gotten from him back on October 29, 2001. Stuff still not addressed adequately.
[6] "Where you stand, dig deep and pry!
Down there is the well.
Let the obscurantists cry:
’Down there’s only—hell!’"
[7] The phrase mon petit morceau means my little morsel (of food). Marcel enriches the taste buds. He’s the one who makes me so gay and happy, the antithesis of Nietzsche in 1900. Babies or bombs?
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