Page 44 - WTP Vol. IX #9

Battle Scene from the Comic Fantastic Opera,
The Seafarer
In Tunisia, Herr Klee discovered the light of the ori- ent. Is it this light that illuminates “Battle Scene from the Comic Fantastic Opera, The Seafarer”?
Be that as it may, I put it to you that, with his paint- ing, Herr Klee is presenting us with a powerful and moving allegory. The figure, the hero of the paint- ing, is every hero that has ever gone to sea and met with perilous adventure and overcome adversity and lived to tell the tale. He is Odysseus, he is Sinbad, he is Gulliver; he is Crusoe and Ishmael and Jonah. But doesn’t Herr Klee seem to be saying that he is also you, and me, and even Herr Klee himself?
For are we not, all of us, seafarers in a sense, seafar- ers sailing on the comic fantastic sea of life with only a thin plank of wood separating us from the watery grave forever beneath our feet?
You see the boat upon which our hero stands that at any moment might topple? Does such a sight not fill you with dread? Can such a vessel, flimsy as a teacup, be anything but a symbolic representation of our pre- carious hold on life, our fragile link to a future?
And what meaning hold these three, menacing sea- monsters with which our hero is embroiled in battle? Do they not represent the relentless cruelty of the sea, of life itself, and the ever-present threat of mortal danger that is just below the surface? Had Herr Klee given them names, what might he have named them?
Impending Doom? Implacable Foe? Cruel Fate?
And even should our hero succeed in fighting off these three, respite would be brief, for just below
the surface are three even more grotesque monsters with more terrifying names waiting to take their place in the battle and, below them, three more, and three more below them all the way to the ocean floor where the sunlight cannot go.
Are these real demons or merely the representations of our hero’s inner demons, you may well ask, but with such questions, dear reader, are we not truly ar- rived beyond our depth?
I am overwhelmed by its cruel beauty and I can hardly dare to look at this painting.
And yet, one cannot help but marvel at how a boat can float upon the surface of the sea. The miracle of buoyancy—something, enough perhaps, to keep up our hopes.
Der Held mit dem Flügel
Herr Klee has titled his etching “Der Held mit dem Flügel” but I should like to rechristen it “A Study in Pathos” for that is what it is.
All pictures are puzzles, to be sure, but this image raises so many disconcerting and unanswerable questions, one cannot help scratching one’s head. Just what is the artist’s intention here, you ask. To ridicule the gods? But, surely, this misshapen crea- ture, this dysmorphic offspring of some bizarre coupling, is no god. And, if not a god, then what? Half man, half Pegasus?
In titling his etching “Der Held mit dem Flügel”, Herr Klee has given us a clue. A man, yes, he is telling us but not just a man—a hero! But what exactly is Herr Klee trying to say with his invention of a hero of such ignoble mien? Is he trying to be funny? Is his etch- ing meant to be a caricature, a mockery of the heroic ideal? Might “Icarus After the Fall” be a better title?
Thankfully, the artist himself provides the answer. In a magnanimous gesture, clearly intended to keep his admirers from going too far astray, he has appended crib notes to his work. Herr Klee tells
us how his hero, tragically endowed with his one wing, forms the idea that he is destined to fly, and this idea, says Herr Klee, is his undoing. He lives and suffers under the banner of this idea, his only
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