Authentic Dasein and the Anxious Uncanny

Chapter Two: Heidegger and Munch: Anxious Dasein

“Munch is a painter of ghastly masks, shattered by life’s horrors, of heads which seem gnawed off and wasted away from within.  He is a painter of skulls which have been burnt and shrunk in the fires of modern hells.” (Salda, 149)

Throughout his life, Edvard Munch suffered from a deep, powerful anxiety, which he believed was pivotal to his existence. In his private journals he wrote: “Still I often feel that I must/ have this life - angst - it is essential/ to me - and that I would not exist/ without it - ” (18). The exact reasons behind his constant feeling of angst cannot be truly defined, and according to most scholars, the blame is to be placed on his troubled childhood. The latter explanation, however, is contradicted when one considers with Heidegger that “the face of which one has anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens isnowhere . Anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious.” Although anxiety does not have an object, we cannot infer on this basis that is it a mere vapor. InBeing and Time , Heidegger goes on to say that anxiety innot being there “is so close that it is oppressive and stifles one’s breath, and yet it is nowhere” (231).

One cannot claim to have found the reason behind the artist’s anxiety when such a claim would go against the definition of the feeling itself. Heidegger believes that “anxiety [. . ] is the basic state-of-mind of the finite Dasein” (Cassirer, 162). Anxiety defines authentic Dasein’s being-in-the-world as well as its segregation from inauthenticDas Man , who fall under “the kind of Being of everydayness” (Heidegger, 164).

Several elements contribute to expressing the artist’s anxiety. The titles of Munch’s paintings, such asAnxiety (1894) andThe Scream (1893), speak for themselves.  Furthermore, the dominant colors in his works - indigo, blues, and reds - also aid him in terms of projecting his powerful angst. His choice of subject matter, especially in his earlier paintings that were finished prior to his psychotic episode ending in 1909 (Steinberg and Weiss, 409), along with his highly developedhestekur technique, further serve as an important tool of expression. Munch himself , as well as certain figures in his works, is the epitome of the anxious Dasein. Through his own words as well as his works and techniques, his overbearing anxiety shines forth, pulling him away from fallenness and “putting him into direct contact with nothingness” (Harman, 107).

Anxiety (1894), often referred to as “Angst,” evidently shares the red-and-yellow threatening sky ofThe Scream (1893). The blood-red sky vibrates with the soul of the uncanny, filling us with an air of anxiety even before we look at the figures in the foreground. Munch painted “mask-like numbed faces and eyes wide open with terror, as if driven by an invisible power and without a will of their own” (Xani, 48); the cropped, “groundless” figures appear to be at “the mercy of external forces,” being driven to follow a certain, unknown, and possibly discarded, path (Crockett, 63), highlighted by the demonic sky. The figures are staring at the viewers in a rather provoking manner as they walk towards the “unknown,” possibly

the pace of their death, and this movement emphasizes the temporality of Dasein, according to Heidegger (Sheehan, 10). They are moving towards both - the “all-knowing” and the “un-knowing” - faces of death (Kroug, 400), filling them with all-powerful anxiety.

Other than the strong coloring used by Munch for his sky, the yellow tones used for the faces of his figures is also salient and clearly symbolizes a loss of vitality and sense of corruption (Harris, 4). As the eye travels from the foreground to the background, the faces gradually start losing their features as they flow backwards into the horizon.  Staying partly hidden, however, the figures stand out, being concealed, in other words, in not “showing it all.” The now-anxious spectator is forced to think, knowing that only a part of the whole is being presented, and this once again raises the level of anxiety. One could also wonder: Who are these figures? Are they each an authentic Dasein, or - since they seem to be following each other rather blindly - are they in fact Das Man? Is the artist trying to punish the masses, which possibly rejected him by casting a “spell of anxiety” upon them? The latter interpretation appears to be true, mainly due to the gradual deletion of facial features from many of his street figures, making them anonymous - a simple “crowd” -  thus Das Man.

In 1893 Munch painted his most iconic work to date,The Scream , sometimes referred to asThe Cry . “Obsessed by the tragedy of existence” (Karpinski, 126), the artist viewed life itself as fearful, haunted by painful memories and ailments rooted in his past.  Most of his works are a clear depiction of his inner, anxious Being, allowing us to label him as “authentic,” according to Heidegger’s definition of the term. In his private journals he clearly described this overbearing and anxiety-filled experience. He “felt a great scream,” and “the lines of nature - the lines and colors vibrated with motion” (Munch, 64), explain the vibrating and undulating lines used in his work.

The epitome of existential agitation, the artist strived to depict the anxious and lonely human being, or Dasein, confronted with suppressed existential dread (Xani, 48) in nature, a nature that does not console, but rather screams (Bischoff, 53). Munch was known for painting what he remembered and not what he directly perceived.  For this reason,The Scream is a perfect example of the artist’s recollection and heightening of specific memories. Facing the spectator, the somewhat nebulous figure once again provokingly draws attention to itself as it seems to move towards death. Better yet, it could be moving towards the death and anxiety of all mankind (Schneede, 50). Is this authentic Dasein, carrying the burden of anxiety due to the insensitivity of its inauthentic companions? In view of the latter possibility, “Munch shared the belief that illusions are shattered and all faith destroyed through contact with reality” (Lund, 64).

Munch’s pessimism in this regard resonates with Heidegger’s belief that authentic Dasein, once in contact with anxiety, suffers at least to some degree. Munch painted the head in a skull-like manner, suggesting that he was trying to free it from its case but also to produce the impression that he sought to keep it intact. The central figure was given a prominent spatial position to convey a powerful message, that of a break with reality (Eggum,

4). His “explosive statement of psychological excitement” (Longman, 13) is rooted in his ontological anxiety as well as in his fear of non-being (Lacoque and Loeb, 99). In addition, the central figure seems to have made his acquaintance with the uncanny, which in itselfis bound up with anxiety (Bernstein, 111). The absence of nose and ears further supports the idea that the scream is not heard, at least by no one else, because anxiety is too taut for it to find an outlet in vocalization (Zizek, 46-48). Its “fetal features” (Zizek, 52) could suggest that the figure is once more being reborn, after having left an inauthentic life behind. According to Heidegger, “to undergo an experience . means that this something befalls us, strikes us, overwhelms us, and transforms us . the experience is not of our own making . we endure it, suffer it, receive it as it strikes us, and submit to it” (Kenny, 100).

It is no secret that Edvard Munch took an interest in the esoteric world and possibly saw auras, which are “fine, ethereal radiation or emanations surrounding each and every human being” (Panchadasi, 4). InThe Scream , a mild aura seems to combine both a sickly lemon yellow, indicating intellectual power, and a slate, murky green, indicating deceit and malice (Panchadasi, 14). The artist’s free and large brushstrokes, which clearly resonate strength and movement, have a strong underlying emotional tone. The artist in this way captures a moment in which he cracks under the psychic forces that are pressing down on him - or the figure (McCarthy, 11). Munch represents a century’s anguish, as well as his own, but was well aware that his contemporaries would link his blood-red sky to the explosion of Karakatoa, the Indonesian volcanic island, which turned the skies, especially at sunset, into a bloodshot hue (Olsen et al, 133). Nevertheless, Munch managed to let his work “speak,” to use Heidegger’s terminology, thus transporting the spectator and “revealing the distant and deeper origin of being” (Long, 100). InThe Origin of the Work of Art , Heidegger explains that “in the work is truth, not only something true, that is at work” (54). In other words, a work of artis the authentic site for the happening of the truth (Long, 100).

InEvening on Karol Johan , painted in 1892, Munch chose to depict Oslo’s main road, with the parliament building as well as the Grande Hotel café (Schneede, 40). The spectator is faced with a moving mob, dominated by pale and ambiguous faces, coming closer and closer; “the crowded pavement is full of movement, yet the figures are dressed as if in mourning, and the features of the nearest walkers are almost skull-like - not much sign of spring here” (Ingles, 15). The staring faces are filled with apprehension and hostility, repeatedly viewed as a representation of the “clamp-down” by the Norwegian government - and that of the bourgeois - on the freethinking bohemians, a group to which Munch belonged (Ingles, 15). Another interpretation is linked to the artist’s breakup with Milly, his obsessional love; after she left him and returned to her stable marital life, he started frantically looking for her on Karl Johan (Seidel, 53), feeling “so alone . people who passed by looked strange and awkward . all these faces stared at him, pale in the evening light” (Smith, 56).

The looming force of the crowd is laced together with tremendous anxiety, due to Munch’s cropping technique, which in itself creates an air of unease. The dark blue sky acts as a velvet shield, disguising the terror felt down below, keeping it intact; the sky forms a bubble around the inhabitants, or das Man. The sun has set far away, reminding us of human mortality. A terrified crowd moves away from this ominous scene, while a single figure gazes into the darkness ahead of him. The viewer catches sight of someone in the background who seems to be aware of his separateness - and also that death is inevitable. The viewer of the painting is also driven into the distance, just as the people themselves move steadily away from us and vanish into the remote background. The man looks on as the light fades and death seems to define this melancholy world as a whole.

Nevertheless, the latter analysis is not the sole one. The following should be considered as well: the single black figure, with its back towards the spectators, is moving against the stream, which “evokes Munch’s own situation as a radical artist” (Smith, 56). Heidegger suggests, however, that the figure’s movement could be interpreted more universally; the lone figure, presumably the artist himself, would then be interpreted as an authentic Dasein, moving against the stream of inauthentic beings in his midst. This one figure understands that he is a distinctive entity and thus has a sense of his own authenticity in contrast to what he must confront in his immediate surroundings (Warnock, cited in Hornsby, 3).

Puberty of 1895 is the third version of this work, while the first was destroyed in a fire. The artist in this painting depicts a naked young girl, an anxious protagonist, filled with the realization of her imminent physical and psychological transformation into a woman. Seated upon a bed, she is menaced by a large “amorphous” (Ehrenpreis, 499) shadow to her left that evokes the anxiety she feels. There is a feeling of tension in the painting that comes from the anxiety felt by the young girl threatened by the terror of the unknown (MoMA, 2), revealing her “determination and fragility.” She confronts the viewer with a haunted stare (Ehrenpreis, 481). The young girl is without protection and is thus subject toExistenzfurcht , fear or existence, as well asTodesängste , or the fear of death (Schneede, 46). Sexuality is seen as an overwhelming force (Slatkin, 13), pressing down on its ‘victim’. One may translate the latter awareness into an acknowledgement that death is near: with the girl’s maturity comes her growing awareness of aging. Thus Heidegger’s notion of being-towards-death seems appropriate as a phenomenological description in this case. She is completely alone, and the haunting shadow only serves to individuate her further as she “changes rapidly from virgin to femme fatal” (Ehrenpreis, 499).

The relaxed yet self-controlled (Smith, 70) protagonist inSummer Night’s Dream (The Voice) of 1893 carries a calm and projecting expression. The lone figure is once again an adolescent girl “at the brink of sexual awareness” (Jayne, 28). In addition to her static pose, the lack of detail suggests the feminine as a symbol (Jayne, 28), as opposed to the depiction of a specific woman in relation to the artist. The young girl is depicted in the psychological state of “becoming aware” (Zogaris, 20). Filled with anxiety, she is evidently stiff, in other words, she feels her inner

sexual will rising for the first time; she is not yet accustomed to it, and is thus unsure of how to react. Dressed in white, carrying an innocent expression, the protagonist is eager, yet vulnerable (Jayne, 28). Her wide and staring “vampire-like eyes” (Zogaris, 20) could be linked to the protagonist’s slow, but gradual, transformation into the seductress, which later appears in another version ofThe Voice (1894-95).

Nevertheless, the chosen title still raises a few questions. Through looking at Munch’s works in relation to his titles, we observe that he favors ambiguous titles or multifaceted ones. In this case, according to Zogaris, the woman’s sexual desire is associated with an inner voice that is trying to push its way out of her (21). It is also vital to note the positioning of her arms, namely, behind her back. The latter appears in numerous works by the artist and symbolizes the figure’s readiness to present herself to the man, while also holding herself back (Frossman, 528). Nevertheless, her hair, which is tied up in a neat bun, shows the spectator that she has not yet reached the femme fatal stage, in contrast to some of the women depicted in other works, such asVampire (1893),Ashes (1894), orThe Voice (1894-95). The reflection of the moon, another symbol that appears in numerous works, clearly represents the male personage in this painting (Zogaris, 21).