Francesco Mazzaferro
The ‘myth’ of Emil Nolde in the novel ‘The German Lesson’ by Siegfried Lenz.
Part Two
[Original Version: January 2017 - New version: April 2019]
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| Fig.2) The front cover of the 1968 edition of The German Lesson |
Lenz as a literary portraitist
In
a letter of 4 July 1916, Emil Nolde wrote: “Personally,
I find it difficult to write anything on my own art, to provide it with a new
dress done of words.” [19]. In 1934 Nolde repeated the concept, in the
second volume of his Memoirs, entitled “The years of the struggles” (Jahre der Kämpfe): “I am not able to describe these pictures. In what I have painted is all
said, what I wanted to say. Only in a general form I can perhaps add a bit to
it” [20]. The 1934 wording was maintained in all subsequent versions of the
Memoirs, marking its crucial importance. And indeed, the total 800 pages of
Nolde’s Memoirs contained only few
fully-fledged descriptions of his own art pieces.
In
an essay on “Correspondences between Literature and Fine Arts in XX Century”,
the scholar Swantije Petersen wrote: “In
the literature description of Nansen’s pictures, Lenz tries to implement what
seemed impossible to Nolde himself” [21]. Petersen added immediately
afterwards that, in Lenz’s intention, “the
picture descriptions do no try to represent objective art criticism”, but
to establish a broad link to Nolde’s art.
As
Wilhelm Grothmann and the just
mentioned Swentje Petersen explained in great detail, Siegfried Lenz included
more than thirty references to pictures of Emil Nolde in the novel, however
almost always changing the title of paintings and drawings. In most cases, these
were simply quotations or references of a few words only. In nine occasions,
however, Lenz did not limit himself to quote titles or themes, but – so to
speak – portrayed through words some really existing paintings by Nolde, sometimes
combining a few of them, and used those literary portraits as a climax to
enhance certain feelings in occasion of special events in the novel.
The
fictional paintings which Lenz described correspond to the following really
existing art works by Nolde, most of which are often shown in exhibitions: (i)
“Devil and Scholar” (1919); (ii) “The Big Gardener” (1940) and “The Mill”
(1924), combined; (iii) “Light Sea” (1944 and 1946); (iv) “Foreign people”
(1946); (v) “Trio” (1929); (vi) “High Waves” (1940) and “Flowers and Clouds”
(1933), combined; (vii) “Candle dancers” (1912); (viii) Nolde (1947); and (ix) "Masks
and Dahlias" (1919).
It
is clear that Lenz prepared himself very meticulously. Five out of nine literary portraits
referred to works produced by Nolde exactly in the 1940s (the time in which the
novel was placed). Nobody has ever mentioned, moreover, that all paintings
mentioned above were included among the 46 art-pieces commented, each with an ad-hoc
one-page fiche, in the annex to Werner Haftmann’s seminal monograph on Nolde,
published in 1958. It was the first essay on his painting after the war. The essay was so successfull, that it was translated in English the following year. The fact that alla paintings used as a pattern by the novelist were included in Hartmann's work let me think that Lenz may have perhaps conceived the novel
with Haftmann’s monograph at hands.
The modalities of the ekphrasis in The German Lesson
The modalities of the ekphrasis in The German Lesson
I
have no experience of literary criticism and I am well aware that there is a
growing literature on the theory of ekphrasis as a cross-media tool between
writing and painting. This expanding theory had gained ground in particular in
the last two decades, being based on both aesthetics and semiology. And yet,
with all caveats imposed by humbleness, I would find it useful to put into
evidence some features of what I took note of during the reading of the novel.
First, Lenz depicted the literary portraits of the paintings as an integral part
of his prose. In other word, the art works were not described as static objects, like
objects exhibited in a museum or a private residence. All references to their
subjects, forms, colours, techniques always fit perfectly with the overarching dynamic
fiction. This is the reason why I have decided to quote below not only the
simple description of the fictional pieces, but the main scene around them, to
explain the role of the nine portraits in the novel.
Second,
I am not looking at all for a ‘one to one’ uniformity in the use of language
between Lenz’s novel and Nolde’s Memoirs.
To the contrary, the main thesis in this note is that Lenz intentionally aimed
at shifting the public perception of Nolde (as a person and as an artist). On
the one hand, the described fictional paintings were similar, but also remained obviously
different from Nolde’s original. On the other hand, Lenz often intentionally
used different accents.
Third,
while portraying the paintings, Lenz often used a type of language, and
aesthetic concepts, which were close to those used by art critics on Nolde in
the 1960s. He did it to take account, in his novel, of the prevailing cultural and
aesthetic climate at the time of publication, enhancing the likelihood that readers would really feel to
be confronted with Nolde’s art. This is the reason why, for each of the nine
portraits, I am also offering a comparison with some key excerpts from the
above mentioned Haftmann’s seminal essay, which really launched the fame of the
painter in the German world and beyond it.
Fourth,
the narrator of the entire novel is Siggi, the adolescent son of the policeman,
writing his piece on ‘The Joys of Duty’ during his penalty in the reformatory
at 19 years. The portraits of the paintings are therefore always narrated by
him. However, it is not even imaginable that a youngster of that age would produce such articulated description of paintings. I think therefore that,
rather than being the description of artworks by an adolescent, the literary
portraits of Max Nansen’s paintings look like a third-party text, like in the
choirs of Ancient Greek literature, similar to a situation in which a third
impersonal figure entered suddenly in the stage, to make the story richer and
deeper of narrative sense.
Let
us now consider the nine portraits, in the order in which they appear in the
novel, explaining what role they have in the plot and comparing in all cases
the text by Lenz and the one by Haftmann.
1. Balthasar (Lenz) – Devil and Scholar (Nolde)
The
first portrait refers to the painter’s imaginary dog, Balthasar. When painting,
Max Ludwig Nansen very often holds a fictitious dialogue with his phantasm dog,
like if the two discussed the merits of the pictures being depicted. And in
fact, the dog Balthasar is the alter ego of Nansen.
These
are the first pages in the novel in which reference is made of the painter. As
always, Siggi Jepsen is the narrator.
“The painter was at work. What he was
concerned with was the ruined mill, motionless there, stripped of its sails in
the April light. There it stood on its post, looking like a squat plant with a
very short stem, some sinister growth just about to wither. Max Ludwig Nansen
was doing something to that mill by transporting it into a different day, by
relating it to different things in a different twilight on his paper. And, as
always when he was at work, he was talking. He didn’t talk to himself, he
talked to someone by the name of Balthasar, who stood beside him, his
Balthasar, whom only he could see and hear, with whom he chatted and argued and
whom he sometimes jabbed with his elbow, so hard that even we, who couldn’t see
any Balthasar, would suddenly hear the invisible bystander groan or, if not
groan, at least swear. The longer we stood there behind him, the more we began
to believe in the existence of that Balthasar who made himself perceptible by a
sharp intake of breath or a hiss of disappointment. And still went on confiding
in him, only to regret it a moment later. Even now, while my father watched
him, he was quarrelling with Balthasar, who wore - in those pictures in which
he was imprisoned – a bristling purple coat and who had slanting eyes and a
crazy beard of boiling, bubbling orange from red-hot droplets fell.“
(pp.26-27)
This
is how Werner Haftmann comments the picture “Devil and Scholar” (Teufel und Gelehrter), which is
identified by Ms Petersen as the corresponding painting by Nolde.
”The burlesque image 'Devil and Scholar' owes
its origin to a particular personal situation. In the summer of 1919, Nolde had
moved alone to the lonely Hallig Hooge, on the North See. During this time, he was
alone with himself, and this reinforced - in a way which surprised even him -
his hallucinatory abilities, that were breaking again and again in separate
bouts. A witty, droll set of small night creatures and nature demons haunted in
his imagination and took on such a presence that he really supposed to see, all
around him, these flitting intermediate beings and their burlesque scenes in
his room and in his wanderings. (...) The colour evoked subject and scene, and
the latter one assumed a fully believed presence. Nolde always had a strong
sense of the real presence of his painted figures. (...) Now [Nolde] lets
himself guide by the alluring call of the colours and willingly follows the
colour whispering to him. There a red-underfired violet becomes a droll devil,
waiting with a smile to be acknowledged by the scholar (…)” (p. 90).
What
is common to the two texts are both the reference to the same combination of
colours and the statement that both Emil Nolde in real life and Max Ludwig
Nansen in the fiction indeed believed to the physical existence of these elves,
originating from the Nordic world of sagas and tales. There are indeed several
references to this in Nolde’s Memoirs.
2. The Big Friend of the Mill (Lenz) - The Mill and The Big Gardener (Nolde)
The
artist is painting; the policeman knows about the content of the order, while
the painter doesn’t know yet; the policeman needs to make sure the painter
would read and countersign it.
This
is Lenz’s text: “There he [my father]
stood, the open letter in his hand, still hesitating. He looked at the mill, at
the picture, again at the mill and again at the picture. Involuntarily, he
stepped closer, looked again at both the painting and the mill, and asked:
‘What’s it going to be, Max?’ Nansen took a step to one side and, pointing at
the Big Friend of the Mill, he said: ‘The Big Friend of the Mill’. And he went
on putting clumps of shadow on to the green mound. Now my father too must have
noticed the Big Friend of the Mill, who rose, silent and brown, over the
horizon, a gentle old man, bearded, a creature of amiable mindlessness and
perhaps a worker of miracles, growing to gigantic stature. His brown,
red-tipped fingers were tensed as though he were about to flick at one the
sails, which he had obviously just fixed to the mill. He was about to set the
sails of the mill, which now lay far below him in dying grey, going again. He
would make the move faster and faster until they sliced through the darkness,
and until the mill ground out a clear day and a better light than could be seen
from where I stood. The sails could do it, so much was certain, for even now
the old man’s face had a look of simple satisfaction, from which one might
gather tat in his sleepy old man’s way he was accustomed to succeed in whatever
he undertook. True, the pond near the mill expressed its purple doubts, but it
would turn out to be wrong; the Big Friend’s determined affection would prove
the stronger. ‘That’s all done with,’ my father said. ‘She won’t shift again.’
But Nansen said: ‘She’ll be turning tomorrow, Jens. Just you wait and see.
Tomorrow we’ll be grinding poppy-seeds, we’ll grind till the smoke rises.’ He
stopped working, lit his pipe and looked at the picture, shaking his head.
Without a glance at my father, he handed him his tobacco pouch, and without
noticing whether my father had lit his pipe or not, he took it back and put it
in his inexhaustible coat-pocket. He said: ‘Just a little rage lacking – don’t
you think, Jens? A little green rage, then the mill can start turning.’ My
father held the letter in his hand, close to his body, instinctively hiding it,
waiting for the right moment to hand it over. He did not trust himself to
determine that moment. He said: ‘No wind’s going to move it, and no rage
either, Max.’ But the painter said ‘It’ll be turning long after we’ve gone.
Just wait and see, tomorrow the sails ’ll start whirling round’.
Perhaps my father might have hesitated even
longer but for that last assertion. Anyway, now he suddenly stretched out his
arm and, holding the letter out for Nansen to take, he said: ‘Here, Max, here’s
something from Berlin. You’d better read it at once.’” [22]
Below
are some passages describing the two pictures in the monograph by Werner
Haftmann.
On
the Mill: "Like gigantic creatures, the
many mills stood in Nolde's flat, wind-blown homeland. Before the wide
horizons, they acquired a peculiar personality. Their rotating wings waved
strength and direction of the wind over the land, signalling a cosmic threat
that rose up from the nearby sea and walked up over the lowlands. (...) In
[his] work on the nature, Nolde succeeds, by looking and feeling, to extract
the legend laying in it and to make it visible as an image. The unreality of
the large picture and the sinking tone combination of black, dark green, purple
and blue, in which only the orange and white flashes, brings the legendary of
the landscape to an evocative expression. The image is like an old epic report
- from a mill on the water at an hour where the light dies – like in a
restrained rage - in a high, blue and dark purple sky; once again, that light intends
to flash in the Bengal fire of orange cloud. A primeval landscape detached from
every detail in silent stillness, through which the large, coloured legend of
coming and dying light goes into an eternal recurrence" [23].
On the Big
Gardener: "It is the representation
of a benevolent force, pervading all nature, which is personified in the figure
of a Big Gardener occupying himself of earth creatures. Everything is very
unreal: the evening light, shining from inside, and radiating from the orange
and red of the flower-cups in front of a falling-back earth green; the peculiar
shape of these plants like from another world, which – as primitive plants from
the first days of creation - renounce to all nameable botanical detail; the
strange proportions of these flowers and tree creatures, that seem to grow to a
gigantic dimension; the old gardener who, as a good Earth Spirit, produces his
creatures" [24].
Permit
me to signal a few common points between Lenz’s prose and Haftmann’s criticism:
(i) the same reference to some elements of controlled rage in the landscape;
(ii) the combination of the mill and the horizon; (iii) the idea of gigantic
proportions; (iv) the description of the big old bearded man as gentle and
benevolent; (v) the reference to the same prevailing colours (orange, red; green;
purple); (vi) the same feeling of a fantastic tale; (vii) the reference to the
concept of day and night as part of a recurrent mythology.
3. Sails dissolving into light (Lenz) - Light sea (Nolde)
Let
us see how Werner Haftmann describes the oil canvas version of Light Sea in his 1958 monograph, ten
years after the painting has been produced: “The sea had always been for Nolde a portrait of the primary force of
nature. He had experienced it through all its states. The sea personified for
him an elemental essence of a dramatic type, and Nolde painted always in this
personified way. The sea pictures of the latest time show however a small
conversion of perception. (...) It is
now the light that becomes the actual carrier of contents. But not the light
alone: For the look at our picture shows yet another experience that linked
Nolde in his dreaming memory with the sea: the light and the infinite.
(...) Nolde selects the hour, in which
sky and water seem to reflect the one in the other and create a moving light
that cancels the horizon and gives an idea of borderless. This moving temperament materialises in the colour. It is
based on the contrast of yellow and blue. But this contrast is the interaction
of the soft modulated lemon yellow and light blue, where the white of the sails
is the brightest and the purple of the smoke trail the darkest accent; the
contrast is therefore so toned down that it is no longer palpable and of itself
creates a gorgeous uniform light that puts the subject in the unreal of a
poetic vision” [26].
Also
here, it is striking to see a few similarities in the use of the language
between Lenz and Haftmann: (i) the unity between sky and sea; (ii) the
combination between soft lemon-yellow and light blue; (iii) the concept of
infinite distance; and (iv) the homogeneous and unifying bright light.
4. Landscape with unknown people (Lenz) – Foreign
people (Nolde)
Nansen’s
fictional painting “Landscape with
unknown people” (Landschaft mit
unbekannten Leuten), appears in a particularly dramatic phase of the novel,
when Siggi Jepsen is looking for a shelter for his elder brother, who had
deserted from the Wehrmacht and had just clandestinely come back to his
birthplace. Siggi looks for the painter’s help, enters therefore in secret into
the painter’s studio and finds him at work, while he quarrels with Balthasar, his
above-mentioned imaginative dog. The choice of colours and the features of the
figures raise the tension, inspiring a sense of anxiety and drama.
“’Don’t talk rubbish, Balthasar, there’s only
one action in every painting, and that’s the light.’ Barefoot, I crept closer
on the firm floorboards – I can see myself even now, creeping up to him on
tiptoe – I got up on one of those day-beds, pulled aside a blanket that served
as a curtain, and there he was, in front of me, in his old blue overcoat, his
hat on his head. He was working. And he was quarrelling with his Balthasar, all
the while working at his painting, ‘Landscape with Unknown People’. The canvas was fixed to the inside door of
the wardrobe, and to the left of it on open shelves there were his tools, as he
called his paints. A push left and right was all that was needed to shut the
wardrobe doors, causing the painting and the paints to disappear. But who can
know whether he would have shut the wardrobe door at that moment, if a voice
had sounded of it there had been a noise to wan him? He seemed too deeply
involved in his argument with Balthasar, that partner of his in the purple
fox-fur, too intent on proving to him that the landscape, in which the gigantic
strangers were standing in a carefully calculated group, must show the
imminence of violent acts, and a doom not in a dying light and in shading
colours, but in a frightening glare – of glowing orange, for instance – and by
means of white dots put in apparently in body-colours. In the greyish-black a
sharp scream: yellow, brown, and white – at once the dunness, the restraint and
the resignation are gone, and the drama starts. And earthy green: at the bottom
he put a broad layer of earthy green, that green always needed out of which,
for him, everything grew. His Balthasar couldn’t or wouldn’t understand that. I
looked at him, at the strange people and again at him: there he stood.
Listening, imitating the expressions of his people, who evidently felt
threatened, strange and exposed in a landscape such as one enters into, not by
accident when out on a walk in the country. A landscape into which one is borne
by the wind, into which one is jolted: if such things happen, terror is
justified. What disturbed me then – and, I must admit, disturbs me even today –
is the headgear of those strangers, something half way between a fez and a
turban, which seemed to belong to a period of one or the other Turkish war. But
the disconcerted look, the fear and forlornness of those people were confirmed
once and for all by the landscape’s mood. But now I wanted to drop the blanket
that served as a curtain by the day-bed, drop it gently and creep back to the
door and enter once again, as it were noisily and officially, I tipotoed to the
door, knocked, opened and shut the door and called out: ‘Uncle Nansen! Are you
there, Uncle Nansen?’ “ [27].
Ms
Petersen identifies this fictional painting with Nolde’s painting “Foreign people” (Fremde Menschen) of 1946.
Also this artwork is commented by Werner Haftmann in his 1958 monograph. Below
is an excerpt of what he wrote.
“Nolde is now approaching the age of 80. His
partner Ada is very sick and dies in November 1946. The picture ‘Foreign People’
certainly expresses much of the grief and desolation of old age. The
physiognomic contrast of the old timeless faces vis-à-vis the exactly modern
drawn physiognomies of the young could also display the contrast of
generations, the heavy resignation of age and the sceptical curiosity of youth.
(...) The archaic timeless clothing of the elderly, (...), the primitive
bearded physiognomies and the gigantism of their figures point out (...) to
distant, mythical ranges; the two strange hikers blew from those mythical areas
and - anachronistically and timeless – entered into the present. (...) From the
anecdotal description of the image of mythical conceptions has now become a
fatal painting on destiny, a painting which converts the life mood of the old
painter into a mythical image which can be viewed immediately” [28].
Here
the terminology of Lenz and Haftmann seems to differ, with Lenz commenting more
on the combination of colours and their emotional impact (fear), and Haftmann
stressing more the symbolic aspects (old age,
sense of strangeness and distance from existing world); nevertheless, it
prevails the same general and fatal sense of destiny (Schicksalsbild) expressing the sense of an archaic and mythical
fear.
End of Part Two
Go to Part Three
End of Part Two
Go to Part Three
NOTES
[19] Nolde, Emil – Briefe aus den Jahren 1894-1926
(Letters from the years 1894-1926), Berlin, Furche Verlag, 183 pages. Quotation at page 120.
[20] Nolde, Emil – Jahre der Kämpfe, Berlin,
Rembrandt Verlag, 1934, 262 pages. Quotation at page 181.
[21] Petersen, Swantje - Korrespondenzen
zwischen Literatur und bildender Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert. Studien am Beispiel
von S. Lenz - E. Nolde - A. Andersch - E. Barlach - P. Klee, H. Janssen - E.
Jünger und G. Bekker (Corrispondence between literature and fine arts. Studies
on the cases of S. Lenz, E. Nolde, A. Andersch, E. Barlach, P. Klee, H.
Janssen, E. Jünger e G. Bekker), Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 1995, 314 pages.
Quotation at page 39.
[22] Lenz, Siegfried - Deutschstunde Roman,
Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe, 2008, 462 pages. Quotation
at pages 28-29.
[23] Haftmann, Werner - Emil Nolde, Cologne,
DuMont, 1958, 140 pages. Quotation at
page 110.
[24] Haftmann, Werner - Emil Nolde, (quoted), p. 128.
[25] Lenz, Siegfried –
The German Lesson, (quoted), pp. 67-68.
[26] Haftmann, Werner - Emil Nolde, (quoted),
p. 136.
[27] Lenz, Siegfried –
The German Lesson, (quoted), pp. 111-112.
[28] Haftmann, Werner - Emil Nolde, (quoted),
p. 132.
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