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Max Ernst: "The Hundred Headless Woman" and the Eternal Return

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Max Ernst: Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kunsgeskiedenis 4(2&3): 46-57 MAX ERNST: "THE HUNDRED HEADLESS WOMAN" AND THE ETERNAL RETURN H.J. JANSE VAN RENSBURG Department of Fine Arts and History of Art University of Pretoria In sy kuns van die 1920's reageer Max Ernst voortdurend op die denke van die filosoof Friedrich Nietzsche. Hierdle studie benader die collage-roman. The Hundred Headless Woman, vanaf die vertrekpunt van Nietzsche se konsep van die 'ewige wederkeer', gesuggereer deur beelde in die roman. Die studie plaas die konsep van die 'ewige wederkeer' kortliks binne 'n ikonografiese konteks, en ondersoek sentrale beelde in Ernst se reaksie op die konsep. Ernst se dissonante ooreenlegging van betekenislae en sy weerlegging van rasionaliteit, word oorweeg in terme van die disorientering van tyd, lineere denke en die beginsel van identiteit wat geimpliseer word deur die perspektivisme van Nietzsche se konsep van die 'ewige wederkeer'. Die studie argumenteer dat Ernst se gebruik van Nietzsche se idees en konsepte besonder gesofistikeerd is, en suggereer dat hy sommige van die belange in die herinterpretasie van Nietzsche in die onlangse Franse filosofie vooruitloop. Max Ernst often responded to the thought of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his art in the 1920's. This study approaches the collage-novel, The Hundred Headless Woman, from the perspective of Nietzsche's concept of the 'eternal return', suggested by imagery in the novel. The study offers a brief iconographical context for the concept of 'eternal return', and examines key images in Ernst's response to this concept. The discordant superimposing of layers of meaning and the refutation of rationality in the novel are considered in terms of the disorientation of time, seriality and the principle of identity implied by the perspectivism of Nietzsche's concept of the 'eternal return'. The study argues that Ernst's assimilation of Nietzsche's ideas and concepts is exceptionally sophisticated, and suggests that it significantly anticipates some of the concerns in the reinterpretations of Nietzsche by recent French philosophers. Max Ernst (1891-1976) created the 147 col­ Woman. Major contributions were made b~ lages of La femme 100 tetes in 1927, combin­ Ernst's friend and biographer Werner Spies , ing images from nineteenth century wood and by Charlotte Stokes in her doctoral dis­ engravings in popular novels, books on sertation. In various publications6 Werner natural science and engraved reproductions Spies approaches the novel from the point of of art works. The collages were photographi­ view of the enigmatic identity of Ernst's cally reproduced and printed as 'cliches hundred headless woman, and Charlotte traites', and were published as a visual novel Stokes has indicated that the novel contains with short captions under every plate, with an a cohesive story line, based loosely on tradi­ introduction by Andre Breton (1896-1966) in tional stories of the life of a hero. 1929. The collage-novel was later published 1 Events in Ernst's co"age-novel are not ar­ in English as The Hundred Headless Woman. ranged chronologically. The novel is divided into nine chapters, each comprising a basic On one level the novel The Hundred Head­ thematic unity. As a central theme, the life less Woman is integrally related to the Sur­ cycle of the hero begins with birth and youth­ realist interest in Sigmund Freud and the un­ 2 ful experiences, and ends with death and conscious in the 1920's. Lucy Lippard, how­ rebirth. The central chapters are based on the ever, stresses the variegated nature of Ernst's journey, or the theme of the wanderer as an interests: "Yet for his identification with and essential orientation of the life cycle. The jour­ understanding of the unconscious, the naive, ney proceeds from scenes of physical the 'primitive', Max Ernst remains the product of a highly refined intellectual tradition".3 violence, and continues through scenes of riot, crime, war, destruction and recreation by Thematica"y the novel contains a highly cultivated array of references to sources as a mythical race of Titans and the violence of diverse as Freud's Jokes and their Relation to nature. The hero emerges on his life journey the Unconscious (1905), Dante's Divina Com­ in search of the wisdom of the hundred head­ media (1315), Keats' "La Belle Dame sans less woman, the secret that she never yields. Merci" (1819), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Although there are direct, and at times ironic T.S. Eliot's "Sweeney Among the Nightin­ references to Dante's journey through Infer­ gales" (1920), Le Comte de Lautreamont's no, Purgatory and Paradise and his search for Les Chants de Maldoror (1870), Friedrich Beatrice in the Divina Commedia, the journey Nietzsche's Die frohliche Wissenschaft in The Hundred Headless Woman does not (1882), and subjects such as alchemy, lead to the divine spheres of Paradise. In­ mythology, and the natural sciences. 4 stead, this journey leads to a repeated Several authors have examined the mean­ Dionysian process of death and rebirth, a ing and imagery of The Hundred Headless Nietzschean 'eternal return of the same'. 46 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services met at the Cafe Savoyard in the Rue Blomet in Montmartre for formal readings from the works of, amongst others, Lautreamont, Sade, Dostojevski and Nietzsche.13 In the Rue Blomet-group Ernst may have met specialists of Nietzsche's work, such as Andre Masson (1896-1987), Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and, later, Pierre Klossowski (born 1906), Ernst remained enthusiastic about Nietzsche's work and he later described his Die frohliche Wissenschaft as essential read­ ing matter: "There, if ever, is a book which speaks to the future. The whole of Surrealism is in it, if you know how to read" .14 Die frohliche Wissenschaft (translated into English as The Gay Science, or in some edi­ tions, The Joyful Wisdom), is also the book in which Nietzsche introduces his concept of the 'eternal return'. Charlotte Stokes points out iconographical elements in Nietzsche's works that served as sources for individual collages and images in Ernst's The Hundred Headless Woman. Her identification of the bird in Ernst's work, as a Illustration 1 : Max Ernst, The Hundred Headless Woman derivation from Nietzsche's Thus spoke (1927), plate 1, "Crime or miracle: A complete man" and ' Zarathustra is particularly valuable. She ob­ also plate 147, "End and continuation", Collage-novel, Paris: Editions de Carrefour (1929), serves: "The bird is also a fit alter ego be­ cause of the company it keeps. In the form of Werner Spies identifies the theme of repeti­ an eagle it is the companion of the god Zeus tion as a central theme of the collage-novel?, and the wanderer Zarathustra. The wanderer, while Charlotte ·Stokes considers the theme like the wild bird, is free of the regimentation of repetition to be a device to unify the col­ which society imposes on its members and, lages and to control the radically diverse sub­ by his very example, a threat to that regimen­ jects in the novel. Ernst, according to Stokes, tation. That the great artist or thinker - like the verbally establishes the unity of the novel by criminal - is outside and opposed to civiliza­ using the word 'suite' (continuation) re­ tion is an idea which Nietzsche uses to the full peatedly throughout the novel, and she con­ in Thus spoke Zarathustra" .15 siders every instance thereof as "a directional The relevance of this association becomes indicator of some sorts", 8 Werner Spies, fur­ apparent through an examination of the bird thermore' also points to an analogy with figure in Die frohliche Wissenschaft. Nietzsche's concept of the 'eternal return', Nietzsche dedicates the last section of this suggested by the repetition of print one (Il­ work, consisting of a collection of poems, to lustration 1) as the final print with the caption his metaphorical character 'Prinz Vogelfrei' "End and continuation",9 Spies, however, (Prince Free-as-a-bird). Nietzsche's Prinz does not explore this association. Vogelfrei is a nomadic freethinker and Max Ernst enrolled for a course in phi­ wanderer, and, as an outlaw, is also a criminal losophy at the University of Bonn in 1909, figure, These are essential characteristics of where he discovered and became enthusias­ Ernst's heroic figure in The Hundred Head­ 1 tic about the work of Nietzsche. 0 During the less Woman. Nietzsche describes Prinz first decade of the century, Nietzsche's con­ Vogelfrei as: " ... that unity of singer, knight and cept of the 'eternal return' was fervently dis­ free spirit... an exuberant dancing song in cussed in German academic circles, and dis­ which, if I may say so, one dances right over agreements about the interpretation of the morality" ,16 concept gave rise to a heated debate be­ The image of the bird appears in The tween Rudolf Steiner, Ernst Horneffer and Hundred Headless Woman for the first time in others in 1900. 11 Ernst participated in the Ernst's work, as Loplop. The name of Ernst's Nietzsche cult in Germany before the First persona, Loplop Bird-Superior, CDer World War, and discussed the philosopher's Ubervogel' or 'Vogelobers~ .e') is pOSSibl¥ ideas in Dada publications in Cologne after derived from Nietzsche's 'Ubermensch,.1 the war. 12 In Paris, where Ernst settled in Loplop Bird Superior, the nomadic Prinz 1922, he had contact with a literary circle that Vogelfrei and the wanderer through the jour- 47 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Illustration 2: Max Ernst, The Hundred Headless Woman (1927), plate 76, n .•• at every stop" . Collage-novel, Paris: Editions de Carrefour (1929). ney of the novel are equivalent images for the Timaeus,21 and to aspects of Christian hero in Ernst's novel.
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