Authentic Dasein and the Anxious Uncanny

Chapter 3: Munch  -  Combining Heidegger and Kant

“Let the body die but save the soul.”

(Munch, 183)

What began as a warm image of a nurturing woman, gently planting a kiss on her lover’s neck, gradually transformed into an evil, life-destroying, and blood-sucking ‘femme fatal’, giving birth to Munch’sVampire , painted in 1893 (Ingles, 29).   Possessing “a deceptive quality of floating gentleness” (Smith, 66), the work, originally titledLove and Pain , is far from soothing. The spectator is faced with a woman sucking the strength out of the man - enveloping and strangling him with her long fiery-red hair - while he passively submits to his fate (Smith, 66). The woman’s hair - which can both “envelop and strangle” (Harris, 7)  -  acts like a net, catching its prey to devour it, while at the same time uniting the figures as one; it also represents the desire for unity as well as the fear or being dominated and destroyed (Schneede, 60).  Arne Eggum adds that “the woman dominates . [and] her red hair binds him to her like a Medusa” (qtd. in Nierhoff, 40).

Stanislaw Przybyszwski gives a sharp and descriptive analysis of the painting:

There is something terribly peaceful, passionless about this painting, an inexpressible fatality of resignation.  The man rolls deeper and deeper into the abyss, powerless.  He is happy that he can roll like a stone with no will of its own.  He will never be able to get away from the vampire, nor from the pain, and the woman will always sit there and will bite him for all eternity with a thousand tongues of vipers, with a thousand poisoned teeth. (qtd. in Nierhoff, 39)

The embrace of the woman carries an air of the masculine - the dominant one. The male figure, on the other hand, is giving in out of weakness, not trust (Nierhoff, 41).  The forceful dark shadow surrounding them ‘outshines’ the tender embrace, setting an anxious mood. The man is presented as a pitiful object, while the woman in her maturity becomes terrifying (Karpinski, 128).

Munch was suspicious of women throughout his life, “describing them as vampires” (Steinberg and Weiss, 413), and thus choosing never to marry.Vampire is an allegory “of the battle between sexes” (Heller, 82 qtd. in Nierhoff, 40), and whether the woman is kissing or biting him remains uncertain to some (Nierhoff, 41). Nevertheless, one is indirectly forced to wonder about the man’s stance; why is he not trying to protect himself? Is it possible that he is trying to erase his sins? Is he trying to eradicate a sense of guilt? Driven by sexual desire, he is driven to the woman for relief; nevertheless, he falls victim to the consequences of his desires (Zogaris, 24).  In terms of Heidegger, another analysis could be developed. It is possible to view the woman as an authentic being, while the man, perhaps in this case, “Das Man,” is ‘being punished’ for his lack of authenticity. One could also think in terms of being-towards-death. The man senses “the painful brevity of (his) time and the arbitrariness of life that is not really in [his] control” (Lacoque and Loeb, 95), which is why he is passively ‘giving in’ to the woman. Dasein throws itself into being-towards-death in theact of love as

well asthrough love and/or care, which encompasses both death and guilt (Kroug, 404).

InAshes (1894), the spectator is primarily faced with a troubled woman, grasping her head, dressed in a white half-open dress with long, flowing red hair. The man in the painting seems to be intentionally hiding his face. The setting is rather clear; a dark forest. The protagonist, the woman, stares straight-ahead  - meeting the spectator with terror in her eyes, as opposed to looking at her lover. Her red hair extends to the man, trying to envelop or devour him (Schneede, 61). She is dressed in white, symbolizing the innocent virgin in accord with the majority of Munch’s paintings. Nevertheless, it is clear that her dress is half-open; in addition to her flowing hair, she is gradually losing her virginal qualities - because presumably an erotic act has taken place (Zogaris, 24)  - and turning into the artist’s femme fatal. The enveloping hair is present to remind the couple of what was, or remains, a sign of pain (Schneede, 61). One could also look at this depiction in terms of original sin; the work presents a paradise lost, a break with an illusionary world. In more metaphorical terms, the figures in this painting have torn the veil of maya and are entering into their authentic existence. EchoingVampire (1893), here, too, the sexual act has a negative impact on the man; it has driven him away in despair (Zogaris, 24). It is vital to note that in the 1980s “sexuality was seen as an overwhelming force embodied in the woman as seductress to which man must submit” (Slatkin, 13). The cut log on the bottom of the painting symbolizes thoughts of death and remorse (Loshak, 278); nevertheless, it appears to be transforming into smoke; according to Schneede, the latter symbolizes the dead flame of love, leaving only ashes behind (61).

In order to analyze the woman’s mental state and to understand her clear gestures, one could look at this work through Kantian, as well as Heideggerian, eyes.  The woman is currently standing in a dark forest, accompanied only by her lover, who seems to have abandoned her, and numerous trees. She feels alone and is overwhelmed by the forest. As she looks around, she only sees more trees and darkness. The woman suddenly feels the true might of the forest; in other words, she experiences Kant’s dynamic sublime.  She starts off filled with anxiety, due to her now-failing love affair, and then notices the surroundings, which she ignored before due to being consumed by lust. The protagonist is currently in a “crisis,” which is supposed to be followed by “recovery” (Liu, 189), if the subject is to truly experience the sublime. Furthermore, she experiences “a certain loss and non-presence of self” (Bernstein, 1126); in other words, she experiences the sublime just as she looks up and notices her true surroundings.

According to Heidegger, “truth is set to work” in a work of art, and “to be a work, means to set up a world” (Heidegger, 43). Ashes as a work does indeed reveal a truth to the observer; it reveals the truth of the lovers - the earth - as well as the break with inauthenticity, or the plunge into authenticity - the world. “The world,” Heidegger contends, “is the self-disclosing openness of the broad paths in the simple and essential decisions in the destiny of a historical people. The earth is the spontaneous forthcoming of that which is continually self-secluding and to that extent

sheltering and concealing. World and earth are essentially different from one another and yet are never separated” (Heidegger, 47). Earth shows us the obvious, which is the clear setting to be observed. World, however, goes beyond that, un-concealing the earth and exposing what lies beyond it. This work truly “makes manifest what beings as a whole are” (Bruin, 454) and is thus labeled “great art” in Heidegger’s discussion.  From a simple love affair that is about to end, filled with remorse and regret, Munch allows the spectator to see that, in addition to opening up a ‘world’, art allows truth to happen.

In 1895, Munch paintedDeath in the Sickroom , one of the very few group portraits representing his entire family. Through his choice of color and space manipulation, he managed to clearly represent the anguish, despair, and grief experienced by his family as a result of tuberculosis. In the background, the spectator sees a bed, presumably where his oldest sister Sophie lies dying (Ingles, 34). Munch’s praying father next to the bed is a clear “protestant sentiment” (Smith, 62), on behalf of the artist. The figure leaning against the wall on the left is presumably the artist himself, while sister Inger stares at the spectators with their brother Andreas standing behind her (Smith, 62). Painting from memory, Munch commonly depicted “things he was afraid of loosing” (Steinber and Weiss, 420), and through reading his private journals, we can learn that he lived under a constant shadow of fear and anxiety, especially when it came to losing family members and loved ones to an illness. “Cut off from one another in their mute suffering” (Hume, 2), each of the family members “stands isolated and numb in their emotion” (Kivelitz and Selter, 22); each stands in a preemptive state of mourning, laced with anxiety. “Frozen in passivity” (Kivelitz and selter, 22), the figures are depicted as they were at the time this work was completed, not as they were when Sophie died sixteen years earlier (Ingles, 34), an arrangement that once again highlights Munch’s active imagination.

Furthermore, we know that the Munch family lived in a small house, and yet the artist painted a large room, proving that “his presentation of his memory is . .  larger than life” (Lathe, 206).Death in the Sickroom focuses on the family rather than Sophie; hence, “death is depicted from the point of view of the survivors” (Kivelitz and Selter, 22), making this work more universal and granting “a definition to human reality” (Singh, 217), by presenting death, and thus opening up a ‘world’. The sickly green wall, orange shade of the floor and the black-framed picture in the background are all symbols of the family’s exhaustion, which appear in other works on the same theme that concern the passage from life to death (Smith, 62). Through the vanishing lines on the floor, the artist structures his perspective; furthermore, “figure and space are in a state of tension that metaphorically makes the moment of passage from life to death tangible” (Kivelitz and Selter, 22).

Dominated by “the surrounding menace of death” (Heidegger, qtd in Stulberg, 259), the figures around the child are unable to run away from their own death, or even form their own idea of death.  The protagonists - or at least the artist’s sister, Inger - are experiencing “pre-abs-ence” (Sheehan,

314). Inger’s immediate presence anticipates her future state, in other words, death. The only figure painted with clear, tired, and anxious eyes, Inger has accomplished her transformation from inauthentic to authentic, through her “incomplete presence that shades off into absence” (Sheehan, 314), and “here it can become manifest to Dasein [or Inger] that in this distinctive possibility of its own self, it has been wrenched away from the ‘they’” (Heidegger, 307).

Upon first glace,Woman in Three Stages (Sphinx) (1894), is a depiction of three female figures along with one male. The three women remind spectators of the traditional representation of age, and yet they could also be the splitting of one woman into three (Schneede, 66). “The virgin, the whore, and the crone” (Ingles, 41) represent one woman who is a saint, a seductress and, at the same time, an unhappy lost soul (Schneede, 66). The young woman dressed in white symbolizes the beginning; in her youth, she is “self-absorbed, inhibited and unapproachable” (Karpinsky, 127). As she gradually transforms into a femme fatal, she becomes “a seductive menace, a danger to hopelessly attract man”; the woman becomes “withdrawn . disillusioned and emotionally withered . no longer agitated by passion, she has not emerged to peace of harmony”; nevertheless, in any of her facets, she is “a being who eludes man” (Karpinsky, 127). Hence, the woman once again confirms Munch’s fear of intimacy as well as his belief that “woman with her different nature is a mystery to man - woman who is at the same time saint, whore and an unfortunate devotee” (Harris, 7).

Apart from the three women, a man stands to the right; his eyes are shut and his left hand is lifted towards his head. Could the three women be products of his imagination? One could arguably state that this is true; his body language, starting with his hand, implies the taking place of a mental process, followed by his standing position (with his back turned towards the women) could be interpreted in a symbolic manner: he does not see the women; he does not belong to their world.  It is possible that the man is the protagonist, who, through his pain and grief, gives birth to the three different women (Schneede, 66)? What further separates him from the women is the red “blood flower” he carries in his right hand (Schneede, 66). Sometimes referred to as the “flower of pain” or “blood lily” (Xani, 49), it stands for pain and loss of luck, appearing in other works by Munch.

Painted in hues of black and brown, the man and the crone melt into the background of the dark woods. The artist chose to paint the third of the women in a dark color, signifying her withdrawn femininity, which allows her grief to prevail. In fact, she has become a “silhouette staring sightlessly towards the viewers out of deep-lying, dark eye sockets” (Xani, 49), She refrains from making contact, which becomes evident through her passive, yet rigid, pose. With her arms behind her back, she is ready to meet death (Xani, 49). It is vital to note the positioning of the arms with respect to the different women. As a virgin, her arms are in front of her, protective and innocent, unaware and unknowing. Looking at the central nude woman, we notice that her arms are gradually moving backwards; she is open for sexuality, completely exposed, and yet not passive; she refuses to let go. Looking at the woman, we see that she has moved her arms behind her

back, while staring ahead; she has abandoned “Das Man” and is now anticipating her own death. Her passivity is laced with anxiety, and “in this state of mind, [she] finds [herself]face to face with the ‘nothing’ of the possible impossibility of [her] existence” (Heidegger, 310).

The role of the male protagonist, whether an authentic Dasein or not, can be disputed. On one hand, he seems to be abandoning the women, by turning his back on them and walking away. If one were to say that the female figures represent “Das Man,” as those who “provide aconstant tranquilization ” (Heidegger, 298), would it be true to say that the male protagonist is in fact an authentic Dasein? On the other hand, if the women are figments of his imagination, he is the figure in whom “nothingness and anxiety meet [and] dwell together” (Meinertz, 51). At the same time, he is the one who is turning his back on authenticity; he is, in fact, running away, abandoning his anxiety and his awareness that death will surely catch up with him.

Heidegger’s concept of being-towards-death comes to life in Munch’sSelf Portrait: Between the Clock and Bed (1940-42).  This painting depicts the artist in his bedroom, literally standing between a faceless-and-armless clock, with his bed on the right and his paintings behind him.  Judging from his tired facial expression, he is “an old man encountering death, where he is in his merciless self-analysis” (Eggum, 6).  Almost an ‘object’, just like the bed and the clock, “it is as though Munch forces himself to stand to attention against Time (the clock) and Fate (the bed)” (Smith, 36).  Facing the front “passively but stoically” (Loshak, 282), his arms hang down his sides - he is unable to paint - and mock the armless clock, while his stiffness is mocked by the nude female figure, possibly alluding to past lovers (Loshak, 282), While not presenting any self-pity in this work, he “seems to be accepting the inevitable final conflict between life and death.” (Harris, 24).

The clock with a blank face and hands suggests that “time has run out.” (Harris, 24). The latter also hints the erasure of time, “just as the lifetime experience contained in his own lifeless head will shortly be erased, but survive in the pictures around him” (Harris, 24). Blankly facing the front just like the protagonist, the clock only refers to thepassage of time, since the exact time of death can never be clearly stated (Loshak, 282). The clock without hands is also a reference to a scene from Goethe’sFaust in which Mephistopheles announces the death of protagonist, while adding, “the clock has stopped.” (MoMA, 3). Furthermore, the choice of the clock’s location, namely, behind the artist, tells the spectators that most of his time has passed (Loshak, 282).

With his paintings hanging on every wall, representing his work and concerns, Munch has left his past and stepped forward into the bedroom that symbolizes “the passive phase of life adjacent to death” (Loshak, 282). Now in the foreground, the bed “in which we are born and die” is placed next to the artist (Harris, 24). The bed is now bed and waits to claim him (MoMA, 3). The red and black lines of the bedcover, which is “reminiscent of a flag draped over a catafalque” (Smith 36), show Munch’s awareness of the ongoing and never-ending struggle between life and death (Harris, 24). The

truncated bed also symbolizes a death-to-be-met-soon, andbecause the state of death is in itself timeless, the artist chose to paint a two-dimensional, flattened pattern (Loshak, 282).

During the two-year period needed to complete this painting, the artist was in constant anticipation of his own death, which “turns out to be the possibility of understanding one’sownmost and uttermost potentiality for-Being - that is to say, the possibility ofauthentic existence ” (Heidegger, 307). Smith contends that “the activity of self-presentation, matched by the swirling brushstrokes and dripping paint, particularly around the bed, suggests that Munch was worried that time might run out before he finished this painting” (36). Other than the strong symbols in this painting that are used to depict this state of apprehension, more subtle details also support it.  Looking at the light distribution, we notice a warm yellow hue in the background that perhaps suggests the artist’s past, while the surroundings becomes harder as the figure moves forward into the present and approaches death. Furthermore, judging from the look on his face, the artist is not sad or anxious. As a matter of fact, he seems to have experienced strong anxiety from 1940-1942 and is now aware of having “lived through” something. In the process of creating this work, Munch has become an authenticDasein , anticipating and accepting his own death, and he now walks willingly towards it.

White Night (1901) depicts Munch’s view of nature as eerie, moving and overwhelming. He chose a cool color palette to express the latter emotions, dominated by hues of grey, blue and green. The “frozen, glittering clarity, modulated by the forms of the trees in a panoramic view,” are a true evocation of the Norwegian landscape (Smith, 35). Depicting the sublime in nature, Munch chose to refrain from painting any figures in order to allow “an expansiveness to emerge” (Smith, 35), turning the spectator into the protagonist. An uncanny stillness in the trees in front of the pine-fence allows the viewer to feel safe haven. But in looking beyond the dense pines in the middle ground of the painting, one is overcome by an uneasy feeling, perhaps due to the “Idea of its infinity” (Kant, 116). The snow on the ground is, or was, in movement; either way, not much time has passed sincesome sort of presence was there. We surmise that the sun has just set from the timid rays that enter the painting from the top right. Furthermore, the chosen texture for the sky denotes chaos.

Munch chose to eliminate a human protagonist in order to force a “movement of the mind” (Kant, 105) with respect to his spectators, opening up a world for them to dive into and experience to the fullest. Presumably, Munch also believes that “the sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the [subject] judging, not in the natural object” (Kant, 117); in this case, the natural object is the artist’s depiction of nature. The further one looks into the painting, the smaller one feels, truly dwarfed by nature, frozen under its spell and powerfulness. Heidegger would relate this feeling of anxiety to a force that compels Dasein to face being-towards-death, and thus become authentic. The painting is also a strong depiction of Kant’s dynamical sublime, which is “a pleasure that arises only indirectly” (Kant, 102). By allowing us to experience the sublime through the painting, “we (the

spectators) can regard an object asfearful without being afraid of it; . if we judge of it in such a way that we merelythink a case in which we would wish to resist it, and yet in which all resistance would be altogether vain” (Kant, 124).

Behind the young dancing couple in the foreground ofThe Dance of Life (1899-1900), lost in a moment of “tranquility and absorption” (Gerner, 28), “a wild crowd of people are whirling - fat men biting women in the neck - caricatures of strong men embracing the women” (Munch, qtd. in Smith, 94). The painting depicts the “allegorical division of the women into three stages of love that Munch discerned,” namely, a young virgin with open arms, a dancer dressed in red, obscurely associated with power and knowledge, and a figure in black who merely gazes at the dancing couple with “her hands clenched tightly in front of her” (Smith, 94). Unlike the crone inWoman in Three Stages (Sphinx) , the woman in black refuses to let go and meet death: the positioning of her hands in front contracts with the hands of the virgin that are kept behind her back. While this painting evokes the biological clock (Smith, 94), due to the identical facial features of the virgin and the crone, implying that they are the same person (Gerner, 29), one needs to note the mask-like face of the man embracing the white-dressed woman behind the crone.

According to Smith, this mask-like figure “has affinities with 16th century German images of death dancing with a young maiden” (94). The qualities of that face could suggest Munch’s knowledge of being-towards-death; in this case, ‘death’ is only dancing with the ‘virgins’. Whether they are aware of it or not, the artist is also making a simple point: death can come any time and at any age. If, however, the girlsare aware of what they are doing, then they are literally embracing death, and are thus becoming authentic.  In contrast, the crone stares at the dancing lovers, ignorant of what is going on behind her; a member of Das Man, she tranquilizes herself, turning her back on the presence of death, which is symbolized by her firmly clenched hands and her position on the canvas.

Munch’s works epitomize anxiety, fear, despair and - using Heidegger’s term - being-towards-death. The artist establishes truth, which is “the bringing forth of a being such as never was before and will never come to be again.” (Heidegger, 60). He opens up a new world in which one cansee authenticity happen and also one in which the spectator can experience an inner transformation, as brought about through anxiety and in relation to the latter. Even when his painting is a harmoniously deceptive landscape, Munch’s rough brushwork, orhestekur , and his choice of darker hues overshadow his work, increasing its power, presence and effect, overwhelming the spectator, pulling the viewer in while also reversing that action. The internal transformation, due to the artist’s now open world, creates a struggle and yet stimulates the senses in a remarkable manner.

Munch entered the frame of art with pain, grief, and anxiety, and yet those same three elements, which first allowed his passage into art, grounded him, allowing him to daringly expose a different world with the hope of being understood. Through Munch’s creations, which are filled with pain yet intertwined with a certain beauty that forces the spectator to marvel

at them, Heidegger and Kant - two varyingly different philosophers - often meet, through the sense of pain in relation to a sublime threshold and in being-towards-death as a mark of Dasein’s finite existence.