Looking Beyond . . .Engl 354 / Day 13: Concentrating on Space

“22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the

blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him,

Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” 24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his

eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t

even go into[a] the village.” a quote here.”

Mark 8:22-26

DISCUSS

The Paranoiac-Critical MethodDalí’s The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)

“The birth of the new Surrealist images should be considered, above all, as the birth of images of demoralization. One should insist on the remarkable

acuteness of attention recognized by all psychologists to paranoia, which is a form of mental illness in which reality is organized in such a manner so as to be

served through the control of an imaginative construction. The paranoiac who thinks he is being poisoned discovers in all the things that surround him, down to their most imperceptible and subtle details, preparations for his death. Recently I have obtained, by a distinctly paranoiac process, an image of a woman, whose

position, shadow, and morphology, without altering or deforming in the slightest its real appearance, help form at the same time the image of a horse. It should not be forgotten that attaining the appearance of a third image is merely a question of a more violent paranoiac intensity, and thus a fourth one, or thirty

images. In that case, I would be curious to find out what it is that the image under consideration really represents, what is the truth; and, right away,

doubts are raised in our minds regarding the question of whether the images of reality itself are not merely products of our own paranoiac capacity.”

“The Moral Position of Surrealism” (Mar. 22, 1930) lecture by Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion (1930)

Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion (1930)

Salvador Dalí

“Our concern is with the systematic-interpretative organization of sensational Surrealist experimental material which is scattered and narcissistic. In fact, the Surrealist events during the course of a day:

nocturnal pollution, false memory, dreams, daydreaming, the concrete transformation of the nocturnal phosphine [a ring or spot of light produced

by direct pressure on the eyeball, or by other means not involving illumination] into a hypnagogic [visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory

events/hallucinations, usually brief but occasionally prolonged, that occur at the transition from wakefulness to sleep] image, or of the waking phosphine into an objective image, the nutritive whim, intrauterine claims, anamorphic hysteria, deliberate retention of urine, involuntary retention of insomnia, the fortuitous image of exclusivist exhibitionism, parapraxis [slip of the tongue], the delirious address, the regional sneeze, the anal wheelbarrow, the minor

error, the Lilliputian malaise, the supernormal physiological state, the picture one stops painting, that which one does paint, the territorial ringing of the

telephone, the ‘upsetting image,’ etc., etc., all these things . . .”

“The Conquest of the Irrational” (1935) Salvador Dalí

“all these things, I say, and a thousand other instantaneous or successive solicitations, revealing a minimum of irrational

intentionality, or, on the contrary, a minimum of suspect phenomenal nullity, are associated, by the mechanisms of the precise apparatus of

Paranoiac-Critical Activity, [267] in an indestructible delirious-interpretative system of political problems, paralytic images, questions that are more or less mammalian, playing the role of the obsessive idea. Paranoiac-Critical Activity organizes and objectifies in an exclusivist

manner the unlimited and unknown possibilities of systematic associations of subjective and objective phenomenon appearing to us

as irrational solicitations, solely by means of the obsessive idea. Paranoiac-Critical Activity reveals by this method new and objective ‘meanings’ of the irrational, and it makes the very world of delirium

pass tangibly to the level of reality . . .”

“The Conquest of the Irrational” (1935) Salvador Dalí

Paranoia (1935-36)Salvador Dalí

Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940)

The Endless Enigma (1938)

Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)Salvador Dalí

DISCUSSSalvador Dalí’s The Endless Enigma (1938)

“The Tragic Myth of Millet’s L’Angélus: Paranoic-Critical Interpretation (1930s; 1963)

The emergence of the image of Millet’s L’Angélus thus appeared to me to be that of a paranoiac image; that is to say, one comprising an associative

system that would coexist with the delirious ideas themselves.”

Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus (1933-35)Salvador Dalí

The Architectonic Angelus of Millet (1933)Salvador Dalí

Flannery O’Connor

the grotesque & enigmatic

“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to

seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience.

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to

make your vision [805] apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling

figures” (Collected 805).

The Fiction Writer and HIs Country (1957)

“I don’t think about it until I get the letter from the old lady in California. I think when you write a story, you don’t say, “This is going to be positive, and this is going to be negative.” But I think it is easier to come out with something that is negative because it

is just nearer fallen nature. You have to strain yourself for the other, strenuously, too” (Conversations 26).

Conversations with Flannery O’Connor (1959; 1987)

“We live now in an age which doubts both fact and value, which is swept this way and that by momentary convictions. Instead of reflecting a balance from the world around him, the novelist now

has to achieve one from a felt balance inside himself. There are ages when it is possible to woo the reader; there are others

when something more drastic is necessary” (Grotesque 820).

“The Grotesque in Southern Fiction (1960; 1965)

Beyond Surfaces & Into Enigmas

✤ the sky: Hazel’s 2nd night in Taulkinham: 19

✤ Sabbath’s 1st parable: the ugly child: 28

✤ Sabbath’s 2nd parable: the uncared for child: 69

✤ Enoch’s“wise blood”: 73 mid, 74 mid, 74-75, 76 mid mid-bot, 79 bot, 80 top - 81 top

✤ Enoch & the gorilla: 108-112

✤ Onnie Jay Holy’s brand of preaching: 85-87, 89 bot

Beyond Surfaces & Into Enigmas

✤ Haze’s dream in the car: 91 bot

✤ Haze’s preaching: 93, etc.

✤ Haze’s killing of Solace Layfield (113-15)

✤ Haze’s car & self-blinding: 117-19

✤ Haze’s shoes (rocks, gravel, glass) & barbed wire

✤ Haze’s cryptic, post-blinding comments : 125 top, 125 mid, 125 bot, 126 top, 127 top