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Authors: Max Blecher
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responsibility for even
his most conscious acts was perfectly obvious to me. What did it matter that I or
somebody else performed them given that the diversity of the world engulfed them in
the same, uniform monotony.
In a waxworks—and only in a waxworks—there was no contradiction between
what I did and what happened. Wax figures were the only authentic thing on earth:
they alone flaunted the way they falsified life, and their strange, artificial
immobility made them part of the true spirit of the world. The bullet-riddled,
blood-stained uniform of a sad, sallow Austrian archduke was infinitely more tragic
that any real death. A woman with a pale, yet luminescent face, lying in a glass box
and sheathed in black lace, a striking red rose between her breasts, her blond wig
coming undone at the forehead, the rouge in her nostrils aquiver, her glassy blue
eyes staring motionlessly up at me—how could she fail to hide a deep and
troubling, unfathomable message. The more I contemplated it the clearer its sense
seemed to be, though it remained lodged inside me, still vague, like a word I wished
to recall. All I could catch was a distant rhythm.
I have always had a weakness for female frills and
cheap, artificial ornaments. A friend of mine used to collect all sorts of such
trumpery and hide it away. He kept a strip of black silk fringed with fine lace and
spangled with sequins. It had been obviously been torn off an old ball gown and had
begun to mold in places. I would give him stamps and even money for a look at it,
and he would take me into a small, old-fashioned sitting room when his parents were
asleep and show it to me. There I stood, holding the piece of silk, speechless with
wonder and bliss, my friend keeping watch at the door to make sure nobody saw me.
After a few moments he would come in, take the silk, put it back in its box, and say
to me, “That’s it. Enough. Over and done with,” the way Clara did when I dawdled in
the back room.
Another object that disturbed me inordinately the first time I saw it was a gypsy
ring. I thought it the most fantastic object a man could come up with to adorn the
finger of his lady. The extraordinary embellishments used by birds, animals, or
flowers for purposes of sexual attraction—the stylized and ultramodern tail of
the bird of paradise, the ocellated feathers of the peacock, the hysterical lace of
petunia petals, the unlikely blue of the simian pouch—are but pale attempts at
sexual ornamentation compared with the stunning gypsy ring. It was made of marvelous
tin—fine, grotesque, and hideous. Yes, hideous more than anything. It got at
love in its deepest, darkest regions; it was a veritable scream of sex.
There can be no doubt that the artist who fashioned it was inspired by a waxworks
vision. The stone, a piece of plain molten glass the size of a lentil, bore a close
resemblance to the magnifying glasses used at fairs to enlarge miniature scenes of
sunken ships, battles with the Turks, or assassinations of kings and queens. There
was a bouquet of flowers carved in the tin setting and colored with all the garish
hues of waxworks paintings—the violet of strangled cadavers alongside the
pornographic red of women’s garters, the leaden pallor of wild waves in a macabre
glow like the semi-darkness of a frost-covered cave—surrounded by small copper
leaves and mysterious signs. It was a hallucination.
All imitations make an analogous impression on me. Artificial flowers, for instance,
and funeral wreaths, particularly funeral wreaths, dusty and forgotten in cemetery
chapels, enveloping anonymous old names with outdated delicacy in their oval glass
cases, enmeshed in an eternity with no resonance. Or the pictures children cut out
and play with or the cheap statuettes sold at fairs. In time the latter lose a head
or hand and their owner repairs them by surrounding the neck with scrofulous blobs
of plaster. The bronze of the statue thus acquires the significance of a
his most conscious acts was perfectly obvious to me. What did it matter that I or
somebody else performed them given that the diversity of the world engulfed them in
the same, uniform monotony.
In a waxworks—and only in a waxworks—there was no contradiction between
what I did and what happened. Wax figures were the only authentic thing on earth:
they alone flaunted the way they falsified life, and their strange, artificial
immobility made them part of the true spirit of the world. The bullet-riddled,
blood-stained uniform of a sad, sallow Austrian archduke was infinitely more tragic
that any real death. A woman with a pale, yet luminescent face, lying in a glass box
and sheathed in black lace, a striking red rose between her breasts, her blond wig
coming undone at the forehead, the rouge in her nostrils aquiver, her glassy blue
eyes staring motionlessly up at me—how could she fail to hide a deep and
troubling, unfathomable message. The more I contemplated it the clearer its sense
seemed to be, though it remained lodged inside me, still vague, like a word I wished
to recall. All I could catch was a distant rhythm.
I have always had a weakness for female frills and
cheap, artificial ornaments. A friend of mine used to collect all sorts of such
trumpery and hide it away. He kept a strip of black silk fringed with fine lace and
spangled with sequins. It had been obviously been torn off an old ball gown and had
begun to mold in places. I would give him stamps and even money for a look at it,
and he would take me into a small, old-fashioned sitting room when his parents were
asleep and show it to me. There I stood, holding the piece of silk, speechless with
wonder and bliss, my friend keeping watch at the door to make sure nobody saw me.
After a few moments he would come in, take the silk, put it back in its box, and say
to me, “That’s it. Enough. Over and done with,” the way Clara did when I dawdled in
the back room.
Another object that disturbed me inordinately the first time I saw it was a gypsy
ring. I thought it the most fantastic object a man could come up with to adorn the
finger of his lady. The extraordinary embellishments used by birds, animals, or
flowers for purposes of sexual attraction—the stylized and ultramodern tail of
the bird of paradise, the ocellated feathers of the peacock, the hysterical lace of
petunia petals, the unlikely blue of the simian pouch—are but pale attempts at
sexual ornamentation compared with the stunning gypsy ring. It was made of marvelous
tin—fine, grotesque, and hideous. Yes, hideous more than anything. It got at
love in its deepest, darkest regions; it was a veritable scream of sex.
There can be no doubt that the artist who fashioned it was inspired by a waxworks
vision. The stone, a piece of plain molten glass the size of a lentil, bore a close
resemblance to the magnifying glasses used at fairs to enlarge miniature scenes of
sunken ships, battles with the Turks, or assassinations of kings and queens. There
was a bouquet of flowers carved in the tin setting and colored with all the garish
hues of waxworks paintings—the violet of strangled cadavers alongside the
pornographic red of women’s garters, the leaden pallor of wild waves in a macabre
glow like the semi-darkness of a frost-covered cave—surrounded by small copper
leaves and mysterious signs. It was a hallucination.
All imitations make an analogous impression on me. Artificial flowers, for instance,
and funeral wreaths, particularly funeral wreaths, dusty and forgotten in cemetery
chapels, enveloping anonymous old names with outdated delicacy in their oval glass
cases, enmeshed in an eternity with no resonance. Or the pictures children cut out
and play with or the cheap statuettes sold at fairs. In time the latter lose a head
or hand and their owner repairs them by surrounding the neck with scrofulous blobs
of plaster. The bronze of the statue thus acquires the significance of a
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