Internal Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Reading the Jungian Shadow 1793607125, 9781793607126

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Internal Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Internal Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Literature Reading the Jungian Shadow

Ştefan Bolea

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-7936-0712-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-7936-0713-3 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my parents

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 The Shadow in Analytical Psychology

7

2 The Double and the Demonic

27

3 The Second I: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs (1816)

41

4 The North Pole of Being: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)

53

5 The Supershadow: E. A. Poe’s William Wilson (1839)

65

6 I against I: Dostoyevsky’s Double (1846)

73

7 The Shadow of Degeneration: Stevenson’s Strange Case (1886)

89

8 The Empty Mirror: Maupassant’s “The Horla” (1887)

101

9 Genesis of the Shadow: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

109

10 The Shadow in Philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)

123

Coda

143

Appendix 1: Year Zero: The Avant-garde of the Avant-garde

149

Appendix 2: The 19th Century from Romanticism to Post-Romanticism (Chronology)

159

vii

viii

Contents

Appendix 3: The Individuation from the Persona to the Self

165

Appendix 4: The Moments of the Shadow

169

Appendix 5: A Note on Archetypology

173

Appendix 6: The Shadow in Music

179

Bibliography 183 Index 201 About the Author

211

Acknowledgments

A previous version of this book was published in Romanian in 2019 under the title Jung and the Philosophy of Shadow. The book is a significantly extended and revised version of my second PhD thesis in Comparative Literature defended in September 2017 at the Babeș-Bolyai University from ClujNapoca. Corin Braga, Marta Petreu, Mădălina Diaconu, Ion Vartic, and Ilinca Ilian have improved my manuscript with their suggestions. A notable part of the documentation work for this book was conducted during my research stay at the University of Vienna as a visiting PhD student thanks to an Ernst Mach grant awarded by the OeAD, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. In am indebted to Liana Don, who suggested the theme of my research, and to Paul Chetreanu-Don, with whom I’ve discussed incessantly the topics developed in this book. My friends, Sorin-Mihai Grad, Petrișor Militaru, and Oliviu Crâznic, deserve my gratitude for their help, advice, and support. I would also like to thank Octavian More for helping me translate fragments of this book from Romanian to English. Thanks are due to an anonymous reviewer, whose valuable hints contributed to improving the manuscript. I would like to thank my editor from Lexington Books, Holly Buchanan, for her advice and patience. Without the support of my family, I wouldn’t have been able to finish this seven-year nékyia in the realm of the Shadow. I would especially like to thank my nephew, Cristian Andrei Verdeș, who inspired me and convinced me that children are naturally born philosophers. The theory of antihumanism presented in this book was initiated in articles such as “The Nihilist as a Not-Man. An Analysis of Psychological Inhumanity” (Philobiblon. Transylvanian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Humanities, XX, 1, 2015) and “Alien Covenant” (Philosophy Now, 124, 2018). Parts of this book have seen published previously. Fragments from chapter 1 have been published in Philobiblon. Transylvanian Journal ix

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Acknowledgments

of Multidisciplinary Research in Humanities (XXI, 1, 2016) under the title “The Persona and the Shadow in Analytic Psychology and Existential Philosophy.” Chapter 4 extends the previous article “Of Hatred and Solitude in the Works of Mary Shelley and E. M. Cioran” from Philobiblon. Transylvanian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Humanities (XXII, 2, 2017). Chapter 6 is an extension and revision of the article “The Paranoid Feeling of Being. A Jungian Reading of Dostoevsky’s Double” from Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy (VIII, 1, 2016). Chapter 8 and 9 exploit and revise materials published in Hermeneia: Journals of Hermenutics, Theory and Critcism (XVIII, 2017) and Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Philosophia (LXI, 2, 2016). Permission to reprint is gratefully acknowledged. All the texts from Romanian, German, French, Italian, and Latin for which no English versions were available were translated by the author.

Abbreviations

JUNG Quotations are cited with reference to the following abbreviations. CW

FJL

JWL LJ 1-2 MDR QPT

Collected Works, eds. Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler and William McGuire. Trans. R. F. C. Hull, 20 volumes, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953–1983. Cited in the text with volume and paragraph number. The Freud-Jung Letters. The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire. Trans. Ralph Manheim and R. F. C. Hull, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. The Jung-White Letters, eds. Ann Conrad Lammers, Andrian Cunningham, and Murray Stein. London, New York: Routledge, 2008. Letters of C. G. Jung. Vol. I. 1906–1950, Vol. II. 1951– 1961, eds. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffé. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge, 2015. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniella Jaffé. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage, 1989. The Question of Psychological Types. The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans SchmidGuisan, eds. John Beebe and Ernst Falzeder. Trans. Ernst Falzeder and Tony Woolfson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. xi

xii

RB

SNZ

Abbreviations

The Red Book. Liber Novus, eds. Sonu Shamdasani and Ulrich Hoerni. Trans. Mark Kyburz, John Peck and Sonu Shamdasani. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, ed. James Jarett, two volumes. London: Routledge, 1989. NIETZSCHE

Quotations are cited with reference to the following abbreviations. AC

BGE

BT EH GM GS

HAH KSA

The Anti-Christ (1888/2006). In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Trans. Judith Norman, eds. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, 1-67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1888/2002). Trans. Judith Norman, eds. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Birth of Tragedy And Other Writings (1872/2007), eds. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Trans. Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ecce Homo. How to Become What You Are (1888/2006). Trans. Duncan Large. Oxford: Oxford University Press. On the Genealogy of Morals (1887/1989). In On the Genealogy of Morals. Ecce Homo. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. The Gay Science. With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (1882/2001). Trans. Josefine Nauckhoff, ed. Bernard Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Human, All Too Human (1878/1995). Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden (1999). Band 4. Also sprach Zarathustra. Band 9. Nachgelassene Fragmente 1880–1882. Band 11. Nachgelassene Fragmente 1884–1885, hs. Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Abbreviations

P TSZ TI

WP

The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche (1986), ed. and trans. Philip Grundlehner. New York: Oxford University Press. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885/1982). In The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, 103–439. New York: Viking. Twilight of Idols (1888/2006). In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Trans. Judith Norman, eds. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, 153–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Will to Power (1967). Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. This edition follows the 1911 German edition. MAIN LITERARY WORKS

Quotations are cited with reference to the following abbreviations. D DE DG F H JH

WW

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double (1846/2014). Trans. Ronald Wilks. London: Penguin. E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs (1816/2017). Trans. Ronald Taylor. Richmond: Alma Classics. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891/2000), ed. Robert Mighall. London: Penguin Books. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818/1994). London: Penguin Books. Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla” (1887/1998). In A Day in the Country and Other Stories. Trans. David Coward, 275–302. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886/2002). In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror, ed. Robert Mighall, 2–70. London: Penguin Books. Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson” (1839/1978). In The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, 422–50. Cambridge, MA, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

xiii

Introduction

We are not whole beings, at peace with ourselves. There is an internal war raging inside us, and this book seeks to explore this war by referring to several key works of the 19th century. The seven works I intend to analyze are The Devil’s Elixirs (1816) by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley, “William Wilson” (1839) by E. A. Poe, The Double (1846) by F. M. Dostoyevsky, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by R. L. Stevenson, “The Horla” (1887) by Guy de Maupassant, and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde. First, I would like to demonstrate how the attack against the principle of identity, which is present, for constitutive reasons, in all the literary works studied, anticipates the way in which we conceive post-identity in our age (i.e., as a succession of functional masks we don as a means of conforming to present society). Stevenson explicitly shows that multiplication of personality can be a consequence of duality. Duality is accompanied by more than the classical conflict of dissociation (I versus not-I), signaling the breaking of ego in more “copies of the copy,” an infinite series of mirrors: “(not-)I1,” “(not-)I2,” “(not-)I3,” and so on. Just as Baudrillard claimed that we have to renounce the myth of the unconscious, around the 1880s we learned that we must abandon ego (critically understood by Ernst Mach as a bundle of sensations, or by William James as a stream of consciousness). Second, I would like to argue that there is an unmediated connection between analytical psychology and romanticism and post-romanticism. In my view, 19th-century literature anticipates the theoretical findings of the analytical psychology of the 1920s and 1930s. These texts from the 19th century prefigure Freudian and Jungian innovations (just like William Blake’s intuitions prefigure Kierkegaardian hypotheses, or just as Marcel Proust is a forerunner of the Husserlian phenomenology). For instance, Dostoyevsky’s 1

2

Introduction

novella The Double (1846) precedes the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber, published in 1903 and used by Freud for his research regarding paranoia. Third, I intend to argue, by way of reference to the luminaries of the philosophy of literature, that both disciplines intersect with and influence one another, just as springs from the same stream. For instance, a novel like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which starts from the presupposition of romantic isolation, a thesis common to both Goethe and Byron, exhibits also the decadent doctrine from Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, anticipating both the pathological journal from Nietzsche’s Ecce homo (1888) and Cioran’s ode to solitude from On the Heights of Despair (1934), which “starts with the end.” Moreover, Nietzsche’s and Cioran’s auctorial masks signify the ordeal of certain existential subjects, who seem to have abandoned the Heideggerian being-in-the-world; they write instead as if they exist alone in a postapocalyptic world. Fourth, we contemplate the 19th century to understand more about the present moment. A process was initiated, around the 1880s, of tracing the origin of our mutable and already outdated postmodern self. For instance, Rimbaud and Nietzsche discovered our hidden alterity, just as recent post-structuralists discovered recently that we are lived and thought by the social and linguistic structures. In much the same way as Lautréamont prefigures Cioranian antihumanism and as Nietzsche anticipates Foucault’s version,1 or in the same way as death of transcendence leads to the death of man and the dissolution of the previous conception of the ego, we also live today “the zero hour” of nihilism (using Beckett’s expression in a different context): we count the time using the clock without hands from Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957). Using another cinematographic analogy, Lars von Treir’s Planet Melancholia has been gradually encroaching since the 1880s: Can it be stopped, or are we merely trying to delay the inevitable? The 19th century is our collective shadow, and we will either integrate it or permanently experience it, in our projective network, as a “continuous end.” Although I am reading 19th-century literature, I am only interested in our extreme contemporary perception of romanticism and post-romanticism. This is why I will attempt to reconstruct the 19th century through contemporary philosophy and pop culture. A TV series such as John Logan’s Penny Dreadful (2014–2016), which includes several “shadowy” classical protagonists featured in my book (Victor Frankenstein, Henry Jekyll, Dorian Gray, Dracula, etc.), reconstructs the 19th century from a postmodern perspective. One of its main characters, Caliban, parodies William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807), expressing the conflict between early romanticism and the modernism of an industrial society on the brink of expansion: “I am not a creation of the antique pastoral world. I am modernity personified. . . . We are men of iron and mechanization now. We are steam

Introduction

3

engines and turbines. Were you really so naive to imagine that we’d see eternity in a daffodil?” Therefore, my book cannot be seen as an “ode” to an obsolete century. It tries, instead, to analyze the problems of our society by way of a detour to the century that discovered industrialization, nationalism, modernity, and the unconscious. For instance, we shall see how Maupassant’s “The Horla” can be read, not only in a Nietzschean vein but also through the hermeneutic lens of Cioran’s antihumanism. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs can be read as a reaction to Fichte’s oscillation between I and not-I, or as a romantic criticism of the enlightenment notion of the autonomy of the subject. Furthermore, referring to the philosophy of literature, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is comparable to Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (1843) and The Concept of Anxiety (1844) for two reasons: first, because it introduces an analogy between aestheticism and demonism, and second, because Dorian Gray can be read as a meditation of the Fall. In the same vein, Wilde’s Mephistophelian Henry Wotton can be compared not only to Walter Pater but also to Nietzsche and Cioran. I will detail, in the appendix, a research hypothesis addressing the relationship between the Jungian shadow and the fin de siècle literature: How was our modernity born in the 1880s from the attack on subjectivity, the discovery of the unconscious, the rise of Darwinism and degenerationism, the rediscovery of sexuality, the religious crisis, and the “avant-garde of the avant-garde”? Verlaine’s stanza from “Languor” (1883) says it all: “I am the Empire in the last of its decline” [Je suis l'Empire à la fin de la decadence]. I will focus on the 19th-century literary shadow, because Jungian analysis fits perfectly with the postulates of romanticism and post-romanticism. There are many “shadowy” literary works in the 20th century as well, such as Golem (1914) by Gustav Meyrink, Steppenwolf (1927) by Hermann Hesse, Despair (1934) by Vladimir Nabokov, Mephisto (1936) by Klaus Mann, The Dwarf (1944) by Pär Lagerkvist, or Doctor Faustus (1947) by Thomas Mann, which can be analyzed in another book. Postmodern writings (and the movies based on them) concerning the duality of the shadow such as Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk and The Double (2002) by José Saramago should be analyzed through the anarchetypical perspective popularized in Romania by Corin Braga: the anarchetype results from the destruction of the meaning of the work and has a decentered and anarchic manifestation. An anarchetype of this kind would be the shadow of the shadow, which, like the “copy of copy” (a term used by Palahniuk and by the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails), develops on the ruins of the Jungian shadow. According to analytical psychology, the shadow is an archetype and the personification of evil. Moreover, it symbolizes the inferior personality: the other in ourselves. From a literary perspective, the two versions of the shadow are the double and the demonic. From a philosophical point of view,

4

Introduction

the double introduces the themes of alienation and estrangement, making us aware of the danger of dissociation and the destruction of the unitary, selfcentered identity. Moreover, the relationship between the demonic and the identity modeled on divine personality reminds us of the conflict between transgression and transcendence: transgression can be understood as a negative transcendence—the downward plummet to dissociation and un-identification (summarized in the formula “I am not who I am”). The term “shadow” is first used, in its philosophical meaning, by Friedrich Nietzsche in his work The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880). Carl Gustav Jung employs the Nietzschean sense of the word in his study Psychology of the Unconscious (1911–1912), the first version of Symbols of Transformation— his attempt to desexualize the Freudian libido and to transcend the boundaries of psychoanalysis. In the early Jungian sense, the shadow is a version of the Freudian id: “Much of it belongs to the conscious sphere, but at least as much goes on in the half-shadow, or entirely in the unconscious” (CW 5, §39). In the article “New Paths in Psychology” (1912), the first version of his Psychology of the Unconscious, Jung invests the Nietzschean term with a similar meaning: the “shadow-side of the psyche [is] withdrawn from conscious scrutiny” (CW 7, §438). Considering that Jung operates with the metaphor of the shadow in his earlier papers (1900–1910), its absence from the definitions from Psychological Types (1921) is peculiar. We have to wait for the second chapter of Aion (CW 9/II, §§13–19), published in 1951, for a systematical approach to the shadow. One notices from this brief prehistory of the Jungian shadow that it is a notion which belongs to several different fields. According to its psychological meaning, the shadow is a more precise term than the “double” [Doppelgänger] from literary theory, a word that Jean Paul first uses it in his novel, Siebenkäs (1796). The double can be understood as a not-I, anti-I, or alternative I, according to Slavoj Žižek’s definition from The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006): “[T]he double embodies myself, but without the castrated dimension of myself.” In analytical psychology, the shadow is both an archetype and a complex, which, according to evolutionary biology, was created to warn of the evil stranger: the fear of the stranger is a survival mechanism, in much the same way that confidence in our mothers (faith in the maternal archetype) operates to keep us safe during childhood. Despite its contested meaning as an archetype, the metaphor of the shadow symbolizes, in psychiatry, an inferior sub-personality which takes over the “fortress of identity” (Stevenson) in neurosis and—even more so—in psychosis. Jung challenges Freud’s conviction that we are all potential neurotics, illustrating, by his confrontation with psychological discomfort during his experience in the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, that we all are potentially psychotics. From this perspective, the shadow is an autonomous personality, usually

Introduction

5

repressed through projection, the archetypal essence of which is manifested in mental illness. Regarding the psychological shadow, I will refer, mostly, to the similarities and contrasts between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. For instance, the Jungian notion of the shadow is both a version of the Freudian id and an adaptation of the Schopenhauerian will. Moreover, the Jungian theory of projection derives from Freud and—according to some interpreters—should be replaced with the enhanced concept of synchronicity. In his studies concerning narcissism, Freud anticipates later reflections on duality and dissociation. Furthermore, the Freudian investigation of paranoia will assist our attempt to philosophically redefine this malady (see chapter 6). The philosophical shadow arises during the interactions between Jung and his direct forerunners in the discovery of the unconscious: Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. We will also discuss Schopenhauerian disciples such as Eduard von Hartmann, who influenced Maupassant (chapter 8) and Philipp Mainländer. The similarity between the psychology of the unconscious, anticipating the Freudian revolution, and the extreme pessimism, even nihilism of post-Schopenhauerian philosophy, is intriguing. A possible explanation would be the new perspective, shared by thinkers who discovered the character of the ego to be submissive rather than modeled on divine identity (I = I). I was always interested, moreover, in the parallels between Jungian psychology and existentialist philosophy. Existentialism might be conceived as the remaking of nihilism, transforming the meaninglessness of nihilism (“death removes all the meaning from our lives”) into a doctrine of freedom and authenticity “on the edge of the abyss” (“the impending death gives life a sense of urgency and possibilities of fulfilment”). This is why the philosophical positions of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, or E. M. Cioran can be seen as a counterpart to Jungian psychology, keeping also in mind that existentialism and analytical psychology became influential during roughly the same age (1930–1960). This book contains ten chapters followed by six appendices. In chapter 1, I will discuss the ego-self axis and look closely on the persona and the shadow. Chapter 2 makes a few theoretical considerations regarding the subthemes of the shadow, that is, the double and the demonic. The double will be considered in its relationship with the ego; the demonic will be contrasted with the daimonic. The main body of the work (from chapter 3 to chapter 9) is dedicated to the reading of romantic and post-romantic literature. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs opens the problem of the duality between the ego and the shadow. M. Shelley’s Frankenstein concerns not only romantic isolation but also existentialist “inhuman” dissociation. For my reading of “William Wilson” I have

6

Introduction

created the term “shadow of the shadow” or “super-shadow.” Dostoyevsky’s novella The Double can be read not only as a dissociative conflict between I and not-I but also as an interesting case of existential paranoia. Stevenson’s Strange Case brings another step in the history of the destruction of egology. Maupassant’s “The Horla” will be read as a cautionary tale of Nietzsche’s para-Darwinism and as a prefiguration of Cioran’s description of the “notman.” The Eden complex or the allegory of Fall can offer a Kierkegaardian interpretation of Wilde’s Dorian Gray. In chapter 10, I will investigate the constellation of the philosophical shadow in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and will closely look on Zarathustra’s shadow: the jester, the dwarf, the ape, the soothsayer, the last pope, the ugliest man, and, finally, the “shadow” itself. In my last part I will make some notes regarding the “avant-garde of the avant-garde” (appendix 1), the chronology of the shadow from the 19th century (appendix 2), the individuation from the persona to the self (appendix 3), the moments of the shadow (appendix 4), the problems of archetypology (appendix 5), and the shadow in music (appendix 6). NOTE 1. See Bolea (2018, 53): I use the concept of antihumanism in a different sense than Michel Foucault’s. “The French philosopher spoke of the death of a certain concept of humanity following the demise of God: ‘Man would be erased like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.’ However, poets such as Baudelaire and Lautréamont and philosophers such as Stirner, Nietzsche and Cioran add misanthropy—dislike of mankind—to their antihumanistic project. While Foucault alluded to the downfall of man understood in a certain type of way, and to the arrival of a non-humanistic system of reference, some post-romantic poets and philosophers see themselves as agents of destruction—of what Nietzsche called ‘active nihilism’—and would like to finish with the saga of humanism altogether through a Schopenhauerian process of universal death.”

Chapter 1

The Shadow in Analytical Psychology

THE EGO-SELF AXIS “Becoming a Being” is always done on the ego [Ich]—self [Selbst] axis. We are born into a state of inflation, and the ego develops as the unconscious ocean of the self withdraws (CW 11, §935). In the first half of our life,1 according to Jung, we need to develop a strong, socially responsible ego. When the “Great Noon” arrives, at the “crossroads of life,”2 the self takes the reins of development, turning the ego in a direction that it sometimes refuses anxiously. We could say that every step toward the self is a step beyond the ego and somehow against him. Countless times, Jung equates the “ego” with “consciousness,” the two terms being interchangeable in the Swiss psychologist’s view (CW 6, §711; CW 8, §611; CW 9/II, §1). Several Jungian psychologists believe this equivalence (between “ego” and “consciousness”) is somewhat erroneous because the ego also contains unconscious functions, such as “repression, denial, projection, rationalization, or reaction formation,” which are described by Anna Freud in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (Stevens 2001, 62). In the same way as the Jungian shadow [Schatten] can be brought, with some observational effort, to the proximity of consciousness, so the ego may also have an unconscious component that Jung seems to ignore or minimize. The ego, as the center of consciousness, is a psychic component subordinated to the self, which is simultaneously the center of consciousness and unconsciousness. “I have suggested calling the total personality which, though present, cannot be fully known, the self. The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole” (CW 9/II, §9). The relationship between the ego and the self is similar to that of the part and the whole or of the patiens (the present active participle of the verb 7

8

Chapter 1

patior = “to suffer,” “to endure”) and agens (the present active participle of the verb agere = “to lead,” “to do,” “to act”) (CW 11, §391). The relationship will be, therefore, like that of passive and active or similar to the one between the Earth and the Sun. Their conceptual spheres may not overlap exactly, but this relationship recalls the Freudian rapport between ego and id: “The rider [is] obliged to guide the horse along the path by which it itself wants to go” (Freud 1990, 96). In other words, “the ego is in the habit of transforming the id’s will into action as if it were its own” (Freud 1989, 19). The relationship between the ego and the self can be internalized, such as that which presumably existed between Goethe and Faust, between Nietzsche and Zarathustra, or, in Jung’s case, between Personality No. 1 and Personality No. 23 (the spiritual duality that brought him the diagnosis of infantile schizophrenia from Donald Winnicott (1964, 450) in a famous review). “I . . . distinguish between the ego and the self . . . , since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious. . . . [T]he self often appears as supraordinate or ideal personality, having somewhat the relationship of Faust to Goethe or Zarathustra to Nietzsche” (CW 6, §706). The self can be approximated by the term “God within” and closely associated with the Kantian concept of “noumenon” or Meister Eckhart’s notion of divine “spark.” Jung states that the purpose of individuation, the becoming for the self, is not a “deification of man,” so as to avoid the accusation of “theosis” (divinization), which has been repeatedly brought against him by the church.4 “Sensing the self as something irrational, as an indefinable existent, to which the ego is neither opposed nor subjected, but merely attached, and about which it revolves very much as the earth revolves round the sun—thus we come to the goal of individuation” (CW 7, §405). To accept the direction and the teleology of individuation is equivalent to being elevated to the intimacy of our own inner divinity (“God within”) or the mysterious understanding of the fact that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Lk. 17, 21) (Stevens 2001, 61–62). According to David Tacey (2015, 47), the self “has no equivalent in the Freudian system, and its closest counterpart is the Atman or ‘God within,’ of Hindu philosophy.” According to Edward Edinger (1992, 210), the numinous force of the archetype of the self can be grasped through its description from Bhagavad Gita: “This (Self) is never born, nor does It die, nor after once having been, does It go into non-being. This (Self) is unborn, eternal, changeless, ancient.” Based on the excerpt from the Indian scripture, the self has on its side that unformed quality of the archetypal ideas, which characterized also the divinity from the poem “A Dacian’s Prayer” (1879)5 written by Mihai Eminescu (1964, 120): “Ere yet the Gods existed already He was God.” Just

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as Nietzsche considered himself a follower of the sage Zarathustra, militating for “a creation beyond the self,” the ego must break itself to make room for the “superordinate size”: “the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego” (CW 14, §778). In other words, “It is not I who create myself, rather I happen to myself” (CW 11, §391). We also remember Nietzsche’s lines dedicated to “The Unknown God” (1864): “I want to know you, Unknown One,/ you who have reached deep into my soul,/ into my life like the gust of a storm” (P 26). We must go beyond the lesser “divinity” of the ego to track inside us the hidden numinous force of the self. We can ask ourselves if the self does not contain a certain cosmogonic trait, acting as an individual Big Bang, keeping in mind that our personalities are born as the ocean of the self withdraws (CW 11, §935) or as “the original inflation dissolves” (Edinger 1992, 12). The self is an inner God, a sort of hidden divine center. In fact, that is his strength and weakness. In a universe modeled on the death of God, the self can also be seen as a kind of Big Crunch: both the goal of individuation and another mask of extinction. If God has died, does not the inner God die as well? Is the self God or the God of the death of God? Perhaps when we peel the onion of our self, we are no longer able to find the core.6 Not unlike Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, we could declare: “I am a sheet of paper on which nothing is written” (Ibsen 2006, 81). Therefore, one can argue that both God and Nothing (Sein and Nichtsein) are aspects of the personality nucleus. Perhaps the contact between being and nothingness sparks our sense of selfhood. THE PERSONA In Jung’s view, the persona is “the mask of the actor” (CW 9/I, §43). Persona refers to “both the actor’s mask and the actor,” meaning “the role someone plays because of his features, looks and abilities” (Müller and Anette Müller 2003, 315). According to Jolande Jacobi (1971, 44–45), the persona derives from Persu, the Etruscan masked god of the inferno. In the ontological constitution of the persona we observe a contrast between objective and subjective, between general and particular, between the archetypal mask and the distinct voice. As many Jungian definitions show, the persona is “individual” + “the world” or “individual” + “the other.” “The persona . . . is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be” (CW 7, §246) or “the individual’s system of adaptation to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world” (CW 9/I, §221). Moreover, “the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.” According to Jung, “the persona is . . . a functional complex that comes into existence for reasons of adaptation or personal convenience. . . .

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The persona is exclusively concerned with the relation to objects” (CW 6, §835). The persona mediates between the inner world and the outside world, between the impressions of the unconscious and the stimuli of the external world (Singer 1994, 159–164). The imprint of “the world” (Heidegger would have used the existentialist being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-Sein] to indicate an original connection between the individual and the world) and the mark of the “being-with” [Mitsein], of the fellow human being—who develops co-participatory or competitive relationships with me—in other words, the external imprint is significantly more pronounced than the internal one, which originates in my selfhood. This is proof that we do not need the persona when we are alone (Jacobi 1971, 41) or that we lose our persona if we are isolated from the world (Hannah 2000, 75). The difference between ego and persona7 can be perceived intuitively when talking on the phone with someone from outside the family circle, with a friend, or an acquaintance: when we hang up, the mask dissipates instantly. Family and intimate friends know us not only by the ego but also by the shadow. A close person who notices how we relate to a “stranger” through the persona may have the impression of us being false. A world without the persona8 would be relevant and destructive at the same time, for its brutality and lack of politeness. We would learn a lot about ourselves, we would lose many of our illusions, but we would also acquire a poisoned knowledge that would curtail some essential potentialities. The persona has been called a social archetype precisely to explain the prevalence of the world (and the “other”) in its construction. With ourselves we are—at least on the conscious level—most of the time honest, but we do not hesitate to lie to others: “There is always some element of pretence about the persona, for it is a kind of shop window in which we like to display our best wares” (Stevens 2001, 63). Moreover, it is a “barricade” (CW 7, §269), “designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual” (CW 7, §305). The persona has a dual teleology: (a) positive—our mask must move the others, or awaken admiration or envy in them; without the persona, we would be completely inadequate (Stevens 2001, 74); (b) negative—the mask can hide a hollow ego or an aggressive shadow. An effective persona must take into account three factors: “ a) the physical and the psychic constitution; b) the ego-ideal: what / how I want to be; c) the ideal of the environment, how people would want me to be” (Jacobi 1971, 54).

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If we only have factors (a) and (b), “the individual is a dreamer, a rebel, or an eccentric.” If we have factors (a) and (c), the individual will be boring, flat, and mediocre (he will be predictable and somewhat cowardly). If we only have factors (b) and (c), we have a contrast between “ideal and real,” between what I am and what I cannot be because of facticity: “the fat wants to be slim, the little one wants to be big, the weak wants to be strong.” If we only have factor (b), the individual will be a total nonconformist; if we only have factor (c) man dissolves in the collective without any personal touch. “Only when all three factors are interdependent, the persona is effective” (Ibid., 54–5). Long before Jung and Sartre, Arthur Schopenhauer had intuited that the persona “is always paid in cash” (CW 9/1, §221) or, in other words, that we often pretend in order to protect our interests. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, we can say that life is a will to power or a pure desire to win, disguised9 under the masks of nobility, friendship, philanthropy, or altruism. “After all, our entire civilized world is only a great masquerade. Here one encounters knights, preachers, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and who knows what else! But they are not what they represent; they are mere masks under which, as a rule, money speculators (money-makers) are hiding” (Schopenhauer 2017, 192). Furthermore, the Jungian view of the persona is anticipated10 by Schopenhauer’s most significant disciple, Friedrich Nietzsche. First, in GS (356), the German thinker warns of the danger of identifying with the professional persona (a recurring theme in Sartre and Jung), which is mostly arbitrary and contingent, and not the result of a genuine existential option: “Almost all Europeans, at an advanced age, confuse themselves with their role; they become victims of their ‘good performance’. . . . Upon deeper consideration, the role has actually become character.” The excerpt remains pertinent: we become the victims of our own game because assuming the role is rewarded, just as, in a complementary fashion, leaving the role (or displaying the shadow) is quickly penalized. It is interesting that Nietzsche does not insist (like Sartre) on the socioanthropological ramifications of the falsity of the persona, but rather deals with the psychological dimension of the one who is false to himself. “Are you for real? Or only an actor? A representative? Or the represented?—In the end, you are really only an imitation of an actor” (TI, “Arrows and Epigrams,” 38). Nietzsche seems to draw attention to the fact that the one who puts the mask reaches a disjunction to himself. In other words, once the persona is imprinted on the face, the ego will suffer. We’re talking about an authentic “labyrinth of masks behind masks” (Dixon 1999, 211), which obstructs the person behind them. Thus, in his posthumous fragments, Nietzsche refers to those who vehemently lie to themselves, becoming actors to themselves: “But your faith must be so blind, so immense and fantastic, to overcome the suffering

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of the guilty conscience . . . Oh, actors to yourself!” (KSA 9, 182). Moreover, in the fragment The Actor of the autumn of 1884, the pre-existential philosopher shows that there is a similarity between acting and alienation, between the “good” role and the fragmentation of the “identity’s citadel”: “There is a kind of art of the actor, to temporarily assume a foreign soul. . . . At the same time a sign that denotes weakness and a lack of unity” (KSA 11, 254). This is how Jung synthesizes these Nietzschean insights in his perspective upon the identification with persona: “Identification with one’s office or one’s title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature” (CW 7, §230). The mask of the soul “can grow into our flesh” (Hannah 2000, 77) and in this circumstance it is almost impossible to discern between persona and ego: “Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas—the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done. . . . The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin” (CW 9/I, §221). We should not confuse the face with the mask, or the “skin with the clothing” (Whitmont 1978, 158): even if I lie to the other, I have to be honest with myself. Moreover, even if I lie to myself (at the level of the ego), there is—at the bottom—a profound personal truth, wherein I coincide with myself and where there is no lie (between the level of shadow and that of the self). The voice of the daimon (in the Heideggerian sense Ruf des Gewissens, the voice of conscience) comes from the depth and reverberates beyond the mask, jamming the verbiage of the persona. Identification with the persona resembles the psychosis of the actor who is “totally” identified with his role: “A time will soon come when the tragic actors will think that their masks and boots and costumes are themselves” (Epictetus 1956, 197). When we identify with the persona, it reprograms the ego according to the collective requirements of the “world” and “the other.” We take refuge in the bad faith of the persona when we want to disobey the ego, just like Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who created the Holocaust and who defended himself by claiming he had merely followed orders. As Edward C. Whitmont shows, the ego’s dissolution by identifying with the persona (which the Jungian analyst calls the creation of a pseudo-ego) may be the alibi of a monstrous activity that totally transgresses the ethical register: Society expects . . . every individual to play the part assigned to him as perfectly as possible, so that a man who is a parson must not only carry out his official functions objectively, but must at all times and in all circumstances play the role of parson in a flawless manner. Society demands this as a kind of surety; each must stand at his post, here a cobbler, there a poet. No man is expected to be

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both. Nor is it advisable to be both, for that would be “odd.” Such a man would be “different” from other people, not quite reliable. . . . Society is persuaded that only the cobbler who is not a poet can supply workmanlike shoes. (CW 7, §305)

On the intersubjective level, the persona expresses a fear of the other, more precisely, a repugnance to the ego and the shadow of the other. Under the skin there is hell, a Vesuvius that can erupt at any time, an amoral chaos, anomalous and devoid of space-time determinations, similar to the Freudian id. The persona’s dictatorship is a re-signification of the self through functionality: the individual with a deficient persona will be considered a sub-human, a “stranger,” an outcast, and will be the target of general projections (Hannah 2000, 76). Sartre sketches in Being and Nothingness an argument similar to the Jungian one: There is the dance of the grocer, of the tailor, of the auctioneer, by which they endeavour to persuade their clientele that they are nothing but a grocer, an auctioneer, a tailor. A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer. Society demands that he limit himself to his function as a grocer, just as the soldier at attention makes himself into a soldierthing with a direct regard which does not see at all, which is no longer meant to see. . . . There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition. (Sartre 1978, 59)

Society commands us to abandon our specific personality and to identify in a vigilant manner with the function we embody; consequently, falsity becomes an efficient and universal currency. We feel offended if the grocer takes off his mask and confesses to us; a soldier who does not radiate determination and discipline appears to us as degraded; a cobbler who recites poetry will be looked at with mistrust, and so on. Beyond the persona there is a world that our society prefers to bracket. According to Vasile Dem. Zamfirescu (2009, 445), the Jungian persona can be assimilated to the they [das Man], translated “creatively” by Constantin Noica as “anonymous being.” Three of the features of this Heideggerian concept also fit the persona: mediocrity or averageness [Durchschnittlichkeit], leveling down [Einebnung] and disburdening of being [Seinsentlastung]. Here is how Heidegger describes the “mediocrity” of Dasein suffering from the despotism of the “anonymous being”: “Thus, the they maintains itself factically in the averageness of what belongs to it, what it does and does not consider valid, and what it grants or denies success. This averageness, which prescribes what can and may be ventured, watches over every exception which thrusts itself to the fore” (Heidegger 1996, 119).

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Like the persona, das Man is a compromise between the individual and the world (here, “compromise” is rather a euphemism for the connection between a submissive subject and a society with authoritarian claims). Recalling the three criteria for an efficient persona, criteria evoked by Jolande Jacobi, we could say that the individual acting under the auspices of averageness is subjugated by the ideal of the environment, having no eye for the ideal of the ego, which can bring it out of anonymity. The Heideggerian leveling down [Einebnung] recalls the Nietzschean syntagma of Ausgleichung, which in its turn has been translated by “leveling,” but which also means “equivalence” and “equalization”: “Every priority is noiselessly squashed. Overnight, everything that is original is flattened down as something long since known. Everything won through struggle becomes something manageable. Every mystery loses its power. The care of averageness reveals, in turn, an essential tendency of Dasein, which we call the leveling down of all possibilities of being [die Einebnung aller Seinsmöglichkeiten]” (Heidegger 1996, 119). Averageness, the characteristic feature of the they, seems to be concerned with obliterating exception, with the annihilation of the tendencies that could transgress the Procrustean bed of the norm. It is eloquent that the Nietzschean term for “leveling” is related to “mediocritization” [Vermittelmässigung] (BGE 242) and “diminution” [Verkleinerung] (GM I, 12). The persona is a diminutive11 variant of that which exists: through it we all participate in the reduction of the world. The third Heideggerian feature refers to disburdening: “It can most easily be responsible for everything because no one has to vouch for anything. The they always ‘did it,’ and yet it can be said that ‘no one’ did it . . . In this way, the they disburdens Dasein in its everydayness. . . . Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Dasein, is the nobody [das Man . . . ist das Niemand]” (Heidegger 1996, 119–120). The disburdening of one’s being goes hand in hand with a sort of depersonalization: from a Jungian perspective, this abdication of personality (understood as the renunciation of the self) can be signaled in the identification with the professional persona society imposes upon us. In Heidegger’s view, we ourselves are das Man (in Jungian terms, our persona takes over the attributes of the ego-self axis in our professional life), and, as functional and anonymous robots, we are nobody. This identification of the persona with non-personality may be exaggerated from the Jungian point of view, but it corresponds to a “mask of the soul” which is excessively tributary to the factor (c) mentioned by Jacobi, namely, the ideal of the environment. Schopenhauer’s reflections in Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life (1851) could be included in the prehistory of the concept of persona. He speaks about three layers of human existence:

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“ (1) What one is: that is, personality in the widest sense. (2) What one has: that is, property and possessions in every sense. (3) What one represents: By this expression we usually mean what someone is in the eyes of others, thus how he is represented by them. Hence it consists in their opinion of him and is divided into honour, rank, and fame.” (Schopenhauer 2016, 275; Jacobi 1971, 61) Schopenhauer (2016, 309) argues that “our existence in the opinion of others, is consistently much overrated as a result of a particular weakness of our nature, although the slightest reflection could teach us that in itself, for our happiness, it is not essential. Accordingly, it is hard to explain how inwardly glad all human beings are as soon as they detect signs of others’ favorable opinion and their vanity is somehow flattered.” The German philosopher shows that we often invest more energy in building the persona than in orchestrating our own inner evolution. We want to impress others, but we should, first of all, grow up in our eyes. However, the persona is “an essential component” of our personality (Jacobi 1971, 61) and, in contrast to Schopenhauer, the individual must be open to the stimuli of the environment; otherwise, if he dedicates himself exclusively to the first point (as the German philosopher seems to suggest), he becomes a solipsist who separates himself from the pattern of “likeness,” a misanthrope who refutes his humanity, from which he breaks only in appearance, because on the unconscious level he is constitutively connected with others. We have spoken depreciatively about the persona, following the direction initiated by Schopenhauer and Jung. There are, however, Jungian analysts who have defended the persona, such as Thayer Greene, who argued that the so-called mask is a perfectly legitimate organ of the soul through which the ego projects its inner reality (the self) in the world (Sanford 1987, 134). Analyzing the role of the mask in Greek theatre, the psychologist notices that it “was specifically designed to amplify the actor’s character. . . . The mask was a practical invention, in part at least; its purpose was to reveal, not to conceal” (Greene 1975, 26). If in front of the persona we find the outer reality (the world)—and this is its preeminent component—behind it stands not only the ego but also the self. However, the persona mediates predominantly between the ego and the world, and the shadow is the “veil” between the ego and the self.12 We have seen that the external world puts an indelible impression on the persona; on the contrary, the shadow wants to hide from the world, to dwell undisturbed in the underground, becoming denser and more threatening. The ego lies between the persona and the shadow, between the world and hell, between the social archetype and the demonic archetype. “Persona and shadow are usually more or less exact opposites of one another, and yet they are as close as twins” (Stein 1998, 109).

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As we have seen, the persona is “the mask of an actor” (CW 9/I, §43). Just as acting is an art, the management and control of the persona is also an art. Some are amateurs and their shadow leaks through the mask (the silhouettes of fear and disgust painting their fake smiles); some are skillful masters in handling the persona and are able to control themselves, despite the tremendous energy the ego spends to take cover. The price is high: shadows are hunted and sometimes executed, masks are rewarded and consecrated. However, this binary opposition (shadow/persona, truth/lie, authenticity/das Man) is too simplistic. The persona can be self-expressive, as Greene argues, and the authenticity of the shadow might be a despicable truth “born in Hell.” Moreover, half-truths further distort the general picture. The “clash” between persona and shadow makes aware of the fact that becoming is higher than being. Being is lazy and self-complacent; becoming, industrious and risk taking. The shadow indicates our inner repressed conflicts. The persona is a Machiavellian prince that firmly keeps his eyes on the prize. Both can be understood either as hindrances and squanderers of energy or as weapons of self-overcoming. THE SHADOW According to the Jungian scholar Mario Trevi, the first indirect references to the term “shadow” are found in the study published between 1911 and 1912 under the title Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (the first edition of CW5) in Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, III–IV. An express reference appears in the study “New Paths in Psychology” (CW 7, §§407–441), published in 1912 in Raschers Jahrbuch für Schweizer Art und Kunst, an article that represents the first version of the work “The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes.” Paradoxically, the concept of shadow does not appear among the famous definitions in Psychological Types (CW 6), a work published in 1921, which suggests that Jung was, at a rather early stage, already in possession of the notion of shadow, but he refined in the 1920s–1930s (Trevi 2009, 4; Agnel et al. 2008, 120). According to John Beebe and Ernst Falzeder,13 the Swiss author had used the term “shadow metaphor” before its distinct occurrences in CW 5 and CW 7. Already in his dissertation On the Psychology and Pathology of the So-called Occult Phenomena (1902) and in his article “On Simulated Insanity” (1903) he writes about the “psychic shadow side” (CW 1, §74, §340). In the nine lectures published as “An Attempt at Presenting a Psychoanalytic Theory” (1912–1913), the psychologist speaks of the “shadowy . . . existence” (CW 4, §305) of the complexes. Moreover, in the lecture “On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology” (1914), when

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referring to the philosophical genealogy of the notion of unconscious, Jung mentions the Kantian “shadowy representations” (CW 3, §440). From this metaphor we arrive at the concept of a “shadow-side of the psyche” (CW 7, §438) in the already mentioned article “New Paths in Psychology” (1912). Or, from this view to the mature notion of shadow presented in the influential work On the Psychology of the Unconscious (published in 1917 and revised in 1926 and 1943), there is only a small step: “The personal unconscious contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed . . . , subliminal perceptions, by which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness. It corresponds to the figure of the shadow so frequently met with in dreams” (CW 7, §103; QPT 83–4 n.). On numerous occasions throughout his vast oeuvre (CW 7, §78; CW 9/I, §513; CW 9/II, §15; CW 10, §714 (28); CW 16, §134, etc.), Jung defines the shadow as the inferior personality. The shadow should be understood as personal inferiority in contrast with the projected superiority of the persona. We display the persona and hide the shadow. Jung uses the Freudian notions of repression [Verdrängung] and resistance [Widerstand] in order to signal the evasive mechanism of the shadow—the substance of the shadow is unacceptable for the ego: “Seen from the one-sided point of view of the conscious attitude, the shadow is an inferior component of the personality and is consequently repressed through intensive resistance” (CW 9/I, §513). I do not recognize myself in the shadow; I am not myself in it—the shadow is my hidden and repressed brother, the shadow represents for the individual “the thing he has no wish to be” (CW 16, §470). The shadow, understood as a “heart of darkness within the ego” (Stein 1998, 107), is the inner devil we have committed in the basement of our being, afraid of his aggressiveness and force. We are afraid of our own interiority; this is why we flee from ourselves in persona, the “they” or bad faith. But the persona is a sort of fake mirroring, while “the shadow . . . is a sort of counter-persona” (Stein 1998, 110). The shadow, “the dark, unlived, and repressed side of the ego complex” (von Franz 1995, 3) is the “part of the personality which has been repressed for the sake of the ego ideal” (Whitmont 1978, 160). Moreover, the shadow can be defined as the dark side consisting “not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism” (CW 7, §35). If the persona is the interface between the ego and the world, the shadow will be—in the Jungian sense—the interface between the ego and the self. Beyond the persona lies the outer world, between us and the shadow—our own sincerity. Who are we in truth? We could reply through the lyrics of Lux Occulta, the Symphonic Black Metal band, who have intuitively registered this oscillation between the ego and the shadow: “We are not who we think

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we are/ We are who we’re afraid to be” (Lux Occulta 1999). “It is a rare and shattering experience for us to gaze into the face of absolute evil” (CW 9/ II, §19), so let us say Tat Twam Asi (“thou art that” in Sanskrit) to the evil character hiding in the unconscious. In each of us there is an antihero: that is why it is common sense to try to integrate it. The shadow can be defined metaphorically as a stain on the soul that we try hard to conceal. In the glossary from MDR (398–9), Jung states that the shadow is the “sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life and therefore coalesce into a relatively autonomous ‘splinter personality’ with contrary tendencies in the unconscious.” Furthermore, in the same line of argumentation, the shadow “is the sum of those personal characteristics that the individual wishes to hide from the others and from himself. But the more the individual tries to hide it from himself, the more the shadow may become active and evil-doing” (Ellenberger 1970, 707). On the one hand, we hide our inferiority through the so-called superiority of the persona; on the other, we hide from ourselves the primitive impulsive and undifferentiated material, projecting it onto our fellow human beings. Jung repeatedly warns us (CW 5, §267; CW 9/I, §474) that the shadow corresponds to the Freudian personal unconscious.14 We may say, using a more technical term (from the second Freudian theory of the psyche), that the shadow is similar to the Freudian id. The id is conceived as “the dark, inaccessible part of our personality. . . . We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations,” observes Freud (1965, 73), in a manner reminiscent of the Schopenhauerian definition of the will.15 “The will . . . is just as wild and impetuous an urge as the force that appears in a downward plunging waterfall—in fact, as we know, these are at the most basic level identical” (Schopenhauer 2018, 224). The shadow can be compared to “a cauldron full of seething excitations,” a metaphor for the immense reservoir of energy that lies in the unconscious. However, the Freudian id contains much more than the shadow—it is the repository of instinctive desires and forces, such as the death instinct (Thanatos), and the life force (Eros), and the desire to propagate the species. Freud claims that the “aggressive instinct is the derivative and the main representative of the death instinct,” referring to the “natural aggressive instinct” and to “the hostility of each against all and all against each” (Freud 1961b, 122). He quotes from Goethe’s Faust, reminding us of Mephistopheles’s declaration, that combines the destructivity of the death instinct with the dense shadow of the demonic: “Destruction,—aught with Evil blent,—/ That is my proper element” (Ibid., 121). To capture the portrait of the “destroyer,” Freud could easily refer to Seneca’s Medea: “I can be quiet only if I see everything

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overwhelmed along with my ruin. As you go down it is a satisfaction to drag others with you” (Seneca 1956, 23). Freud conceives the death instinct in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) as the tendency to return to an inorganic state in order to diminish the inner tensions: “If we are to take it as a truth that knows no exception that everything living dies for internal reasons—becomes inorganic once again—then we shall be compelled to say that ‘the aim of all life is death’ and, looking backwards, that ‘inanimate things existed before living ones’” (Freud 1961a, 32). Just like how the founder of psychoanalysis is deeply influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in his conception of the id16 and the repression,17 one may say that he borrows a lot from Philipp Mainländer’s worldview: his will to death [Wille zum Tode] from The Philosophy of Redemption (1876) is the first version of the death instinct (in a similar manner, Schopenhauer’s will is the precursor of the Freudian unconscious). For Mainländer, the Schopenhauerian will to life is only the disguise of the will to death: “We die incessantly, our life is a slow struggle with death, everyday death defeats us” (Mainländer 1989, 140). In fact, the will uses life as bait for death. According to Mainländer, the will to death is not only individual; it is a form of expression of divinity and of the cosmic forces which “conspire” for the victory of nonbeing (Ibid., 59). If we pay attention, we can hear a calling from the divine spheres: “Redemption! Redemption! The death of our life!” [Erlösung! Erlösung! Tod unserem Leben!]. We also can perceive a consoling answer: “You will find annihilation and you will be saved” [Ihr werdet alle die Vernichtung finden und erlöst werden] (Ibid., 68). For Mainländer, not only us, the human beings, but also the plants and the animals ardently aspire to death; the entire cosmos yearns for obliteration. Furthermore, God killed himself in order to give life to the universe (a passage from overbeing [Übersein] to nonbeing [Nichtsein]): “God has died—writes the German philosopher, anticipating Nietzsche’s famous declaration from GS—and his death was the life of the world” (Ibid., 38). Mainländer’s extreme nihilism is only a consequence of the Schopenhauerian negation of the will from the end of the first volume of The World as Will and Representation: “[F]or everyone who is still filled with the will, what remains after it is completely abolished is certainly nothing. But conversely, for those in whom the will has turned and negated itself, this world of ours which is so very real with all its suns and galaxies is—nothing” (Schopenhauer 2014, 439). Behind the personal shadow looms the transpersonal or archetypal shadow. If the former “can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality” (CW 9/II, §16) and “can be seen through and recognized fairly easy” (CW 9/II, §19), the latter is an initiation into the demonic principle of existence, into an archetypal darkness which discloses the infernal nature of

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our world. “It is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature” [personal shadow], but “it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil” [archetypal shadow] (Ibid.). If the personal shadow can be seen as the first obstacle we encounter on the road to individuation,18 the transpersonal shadow has a more deconstructive or degenerative feature, leading to madness, psychosis, death, or suicide. Its archetypal feature can be compared to a nuclear bomb: “Nobody has ever seen an archetype, and nobody has ever seen an atom either. But the former is known to produce numinous effects and the latter explosions” (LJ 2, 53). The battle between the ego and the archetypal shadow is unequal: “Whenever an archetypal event takes place, there is some danger that the human ego will be overcome by the numinosity of the image and experience an inflation” (Frey-Rohn 1989, 82) The individual who, in the manner of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, confronts with the archetypal self and the archetypal shadow (in other words, with God and the dark side of God) risks his life and his mind: “A hazardous situation developed, in which the dark, instinctual side, until now largely of theoretical import alone, was activated and threatened to rip the soul apart by opposing the ‘divine’ with the ‘satanic’” (Ibid., 110). One of the crucial aspects of the shadow is the identification with it, which Jung thinks he diagnosed it in Nietzsche’s personality19: it is “a phenomenon that occurs with great regularity in such moments of confrontation with the unconscious” and transforms the affected individual “into a hero or into a godlike being, and superhuman entities” (CW 7, §41f.). If the virtual integration of the shadow is related to the awareness of the unconscious (a snatch of primitive and infantile contents from unconscious abodes, the building of a Lichtung20 in the heart of shadows), identification with the shadow will be, conversely, the making unconscious of consciousness. Thus, it involves the resignation of consciousness, the death of the inner “sun,”21 the absolute darkness,22 reminding us of the nihilist feeling of Byron’s masterpiece, “Darkness” (1816): “The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars/ Did wander darkling in the eternal space,/ Rayless, and pathless” (Byron 2008, 272). In pop culture too (for instance, in the suggestively titled song “Fade to Black” (1984) by Metallica), there appears the theme of the darkening of consciousness, of inflation, consequent upon the identification with the shadow. We remember the line: “I was me but now, he’s gone.” The passage from the first to the third person reveals estrangement, alienation, the disjunction in the structure of identity (ego ≠ ego), which reminds us of the description of depersonalization from the romantic poem “Melancholy” (1876)23 by Mihai Eminescu (1964, 76): “When I look back on living, the past seems to unfold

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/ As though it were a story by foreign lips retold. / As though I had not lived it, nor made of life a part.” We will translate the crisis if identity expressed in the lines of the Metallica song thus: “I was ego, but now I’m shadow.” We may redefine the identification with the shadow as the death of the ego, which is clouded and annihilated by the dark content of the unconscious. We should keep in mind that “the ‘other’ in ourselves” (Hauke 2000, 133), “das Andere in uns” (Wolff 1959, 152), “the dark brother of mankind” [der dunkle Bruder der Menschheit] (Neumann 1993, 92), is an oneiric aggressor, which reminds us of the repression of inferiority. The shadow, consisting of all the personal aspects we avoid recognizing, will often be projected on our closest ones. “As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment” (CW 9/II, §17). Projection severs the subject from the world, propelling outward what is found in the unconscious. Projection leads to autism, turning the world into a dream, in which the inner fantasies are externalized. Not accidentally, the projection mechanism is borrowed by Jung from the Freudian research on paranoia.24 “The mechanism of symptom-formation in paranoia requires that internal perceptions—feelings—shall be replaced by external perceptions. Consequently, the proposition ‘I hate him’ becomes transformed by projection into another one: ‘He hates (persecutes) me, which will justify me in hating him’” (Freud 1958, 63). Thus, we find outside what is often hidden inside, replacing the inner perception with an external one: the feelings of hostility we find in the environment could be a projection of our own hostility. If our sight is dark, we will find only darkness. “We are still so sure we know what other people think or what their true character is. We are convinced that certain people have all the bad qualities we do not know in ourselves or that they practise all those vices which could, of course, never be our own” (CW 11, §140). The evil we find in the others (“l’enfer c’est les autres”) is a reflection of our inner negativity (“l’enfer c’est moi”). “First and foremost, one sees the mote in one’s brother’s eye. No doubt the mote is there, but the beam sits in one’s own eye” (CW 6, §9), remarks the founder of analytical psychology, paraphrasing the Gospel (Mt. 7, 3–5). However, the projection is so seductive because it keeps the feeling of the “monarchy of the ego,” keeping us in a comfortable and irresponsible bad faith: “Projection causes the least amount of distress to the ego, which can observe its twin but at a safe enough distance to allow for an illusory sense of separation” (Moores 2010, 26). Despite these aspects, we have an effective means of combating the tendency of the unconscious to project, to find in the other that which belongs to us by right. When we feel an irrational antipathy toward a certain person, we

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can assume that it actually disturbs an intimate defect that we find embodied in the detested individual. Moreover, “if you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious” (von Franz 1964, 68). Also, if we want to know what one’s shadow looks like, we only have to ask him what he hates with intensity and passion: “Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics” (Whitmont 1978, 162). Therefore, we have to practice “the path of attention” (Bly 1988, 47), by which we withdraw part of our projections and intuit an aspect of our shadow. We find Hyde in our colleague, instead of guessing it in the mirror. We despise ourselves by proxy25: the projection is a detour by which we hide our dissatisfaction with ourselves. Therefore, “every situation in life which carries for an individual a charge of strong affect, which makes him excessively angry or anxious or even delighted, must be considered in terms of possibility that the extra investment of energy may be coming from the unconscious in the form of a shadow projection” (Singer 1994, 174f.). “The path of attention” (Robert Bly) implies the necessity of “discipline”26 (Edward C. Whitmont), an operation defined as the opposite of repression. The Jungian analyst draws attention to the “deliberate ignorance” inherent to repression, which simply “looks elsewhere.” “Even though we are not responsible for the way we are and feel, we have to take responsibility for the way we act. Therefore, we have to learn to discipline ourselves” (Whitmont 1978, 167). Repression (and incognizance) of the shadow would not be so unproductive for the individual if the shadow were pure inferiority or there weren’t a bright side to the shadow and an energy reservoir that would help us in our personal development. “The unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses” (CW 9/II, §423). The discovery and integration of the shadow is a process simultaneous to individual self-creation. The shadow “even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence” (CW 11, §134). The Chthonian shadow may possess a huge potential of creative libido. Thus, we will conceive of the shadow as a false inferiority, which contains a certain teleological feature. Consequently, if we reverse an alchemical aphorism quoted by Jung (CW 14, §118), we reach at a genuine observation: “Son, extract from the shadow its ray!”

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NOTES 1. See CW 8, §§772–773. See David Tacey’s objections: “Jung’s theory is slightly dated and reflects a time in which society was more stable than it is today. The ego nowadays is not given the luxury of developing itself for thirty-five years, unimpeded by disruptions. . . . The theory of the stages of life needs some postmodern modifications, in my view. . . . We often find that even very young people have to go in search of meaning and purpose, since these elements are no longer evident in or provided by society, and have to be sought by individual effort” (Tacey 2015, 49). 2. The Jungian theory is also amendable from another perspective. How does a schizophrenic who prepares for symbolic suicide, like Hölderlin, see the “half of life,” or a bipolar like Sylvia Plath, who, this time, will not fail to commit suicide? See, for example, Hölderlin’s poem, entitled “At the Middle of Life” (1804), a true hymn to alienation and the impossibility of experiencing youth. “But when winter comes/ where will I find/ the flowers, the sunshine . . . ? /” (Hölderlin 2004, 26). See also Plath (2005, 185): “Wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” 3. In his autobiography, Jung compares the relationship between Personality No. 1 and Personality No. 2 with the relationship between ego and the shadow: “Now I know that No. 1 was the bearer of the light, and that No. 2 followed him like a shadow” (MDR 88). 4. “Forming a relationship with the divine through the psyche is not to be confused with becoming divine, which for Jung is equivalent to psychosis” (Tacey 2013, 86–87). 5. Trans. Corneliu M. Popescu. 6. I thank Paul Chetreanu-Don for suggesting this line of argument to me. 7. Thomas Mann describes, before Jung, how much energy the persona takes away from the ego. Note that the German novelist literally uses the term “mask”: “But the little boy saw more than he should have seen; the shy, gold-brown, blue-shadowy eyes observed too well. He saw not only the unerring charm which his father exercised upon everybody: he saw as well, with strange and anguished penetration, how cruelly hard it was upon him. He saw how his father, paler and more silent after each visit, would lean back in his corner of the carriage with closed eyes and reddened eyelids; he realized with a sort of horror that on the threshold of the next house a mask would glide over his face, a galvanized activity take hold of the weary frame” (Mann 1994, 505). 8. Such a world without a persona is imagined by Yorgos Lanthimos in his films, for example, in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). 9. See also Blaise Pascal (1995, 326): “Man is therefore nothing but disguise [déguisement], falsehood and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others.” 10. In fact, Nietzsche is also a precursor of the existentialist concept of authenticity. 11. “[People] have become smaller, and they are becoming smaller and smaller” (TSZ, III, “On Virtue that Makes Small,” 2).

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12. The shadow is the mask of the self, just as the demonic is the negative (“shadowy”) aspect of the divine. 13. The editors of QPT: the correspondence between Carl Gustav Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan. 14. The essential difference between the Jungian concept of the shadow and the Freudian concept of the unconscious (whose main mechanism is repression) is that the first contains the “germs of further development,” being oriented mainly teleologically, not only regressively (Frey-Rohn 1969, 93). 15. The correspondence between shadow, id, and will is hinted at in the TV series The OA (Batmanglij and Marling 2019): “He’s your shadow. Who has no shadow has no will to live.” 16. Schopenhauer argues that the will is unconscious and that it is the master, while the intellect is the servant. The relationship between the intellect and the will anticipates Freud’s dynamics between the ego and the id. See especially the chapter “On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciousness” (Schopenhauer 2018, 212–257). See also Nietzsche’s anticipations of the id from GS: “For the longest time, conscious thought was considered thought itself; only now does the truth dawn on us that by far the greatest part of our mind’s activity proceeds unconscious and unfelt” (GS 333); “[M]an, like every living creature, is constantly thinking but does not know it; the thinking which becomes conscious is only the smallest part of it, let’s say the shallowest, worst part” (GS 354). 17. Schopenhauer’s theory of madness (2018, 417–418) prefigures repression: “[I]f the will’s resistance and refusal to assimilate some cognition reaches the point where the operation simply cannot be carried out; if, therefore, certain events or circumstances are fully repressed [unterschlagen] from the intellect because the will cannot bear the sight of them . . . then there is madness.” Nietzsche’s conception of “forgetting” and of the “positive faculty of repression” comes very close to Freud’s definition of “repression” [Verdrängung]: “Forgetting [Vergeßlichkeit] is no mere vis inertiae as the superficial image; it is rather an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression [Hemmungsvermögen], that is responsible for the fact that what we experience and absorb enters our consciousness as little while we are digesting it. . . . To close the doors and windows of consciousness for a time; to remain undisturbed by the noise and struggle of our underworld of utility organs working with and against another; a little quietness, a little tabula rasa of the consciousness, to make room for new things . . . that is the purpose of active forgetfulness, which is like a doorkeeper, a preserver of psychic order, repose, and etiquette” (GM, II, 1). 18. See appendix 3. 19. See also Wolff 1959, 63: “When the collective unconscious is activated, the ego without sufficient self-knowledge identifies itself with archetypal figures, as happened, for example, with Nietzsche when he identified himself with the figure of Zarathustra.” 20. “I knew . . . that this little light was my consciousness, the only light I have. . . . Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light” (MDR 88).

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21. See Thomas Campbell’s “The Last Man” (1823): “We are twins in death, proud Sun!/ Thy face is cold, thy race is run” (Campbell 2015, 522). 22. See John Clare’s Superstition’s Dream (1822): “Leaves crumbled ashes to the air’s hot breath,/ And all awaited universal death” (Clare 2015, 519). 23. Trans. Corneliu M. Popescu. 24. See CW 6, §784: “Projection . . . does not lead to ingestion and assimilation but to differentiation and separation of subject from object. Hence it plays a prominent role in paranoia, which usually ends in the total isolation of the subject.” 25. “When we hate someone, what we hate is something in him, or in our image of him, that is part of ourselves. Nothing that isn’t in us ever bothers us” (Hesse 2013, 91). 26. Another Jungian analyst argues that humility is an existential possibility needed to handle the projective capacity of the shadow: “Humility is simply the ability to acknowledge the truth about ourselves. . . . Humility can disarm the fiercest of deceptive demons lodged in the dark shadow realm, because it is Truth itself. . . . Humility gives us the calmness and patience to find out what [the] soft side is, and to catch hold of it” (Pascal 1992, 128).

Chapter 2

The Double and the Demonic

THE DOUBLE The double is the first subtheme of the shadow. The German word Doppelgänger1 was coined by Jean Paul (1994, 67 n.) in 1796 in a note of his novel Siebenkäs: “This is the name for people that see themselves” [So heissen Leute, die sich selbst sehen]. According to Rogers (1970, 4), the German word is much more dynamic than the simple translation double: it translates as double-goer. The definition lacks precision: “The word double is embarrassingly vague, as used in literary criticism” (Guerard 1967, 3). According to Hallam (1981, 5), the double implies not only duality but also multiplicity. The double is “a figure of visual compulsion.” The trait of double vision, present in Jean Paul’s definition, refers to an autoscopic subject who “beholds its other self as another, as a visual object, or alternatively is beheld as object by its other self” (Webber 1996, 3). In Hoffman’s The Devil’s Elixirs, both double vision and double-talk, another trait of the Doppelgänger, are present. I was no longer going to flee from them; I would advance upon them, proclaiming in tones of thunder God’s vengeance on all transgressors. But—O horrid sight!—before me stood the bloody figure of Victor. It was he, not I, who had spoken. My hair stood on end with terror. (DE 71) The door had opened and a dark figure entered whom I recognized to my own horror as my own self in Capuchin robes, with beard and tonsure. The figure came nearer and nearer my bed; I lay motionless, and every sound I tried to utter was stifled in the trance that gripped me. (DE 97)

In Hoffmann’s novel, Medardus fulfills his sexual and criminal desires through his stepbrother Victor. While Medardus plays an exterminating angel 27

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in the first fragment, Victor makes his entrance as a specter of murder. In the second fragment, anticipating Poe, the shadow provokes the paralysis of the ego: when the shadow speaks, the ego must keep silent. Poe’s “William Wilson” provides us another autoscopic version: “I looked;—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these,—these the lineaments of William Wilson?” (WW 437). In this case, the visual experience is terrifying because the structures of subjectivity are under attack from the inside: “Is this me? If that is so, then who I really am?” The recognition of the other implies my unrecognition as ego. The law of ontological identity is sacred: “We go from individuum to individuum.” The possibility of the double leads to “doubts concerning the indestructibility, unity and unicity of my own identity” (Reber 1964, 57). The crisis of identity makes room for the discovery of the inner alterity as an enemy, just like in the famous scene of the mirror from Maupassant’s “The Horla.” “It was as bright as day, but I could not see myself in my mirror! . . . It was empty, very bright, bursting with light! But my reflection was not there . . . and I was standing directly in front of it! I could see the tall, clear glass from top to bottom” (H 299). The shadow blocks the ego’s capacity of reflection, the access to the main formula of self-consciousness: I=I. The double acts as a detour from structural identity, as deconstruction which leads to derealization. If I am not able to see my reflection, then there is nobody in the mirror. In Heideggerian terms, the Dasein is revealed as Niemand. The visual component of the double is also present in Dorian Gray: “On his return he would sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own” (DG 135). If William Wilson and “The Horla”’s diarist felt the horror of the physical confrontation with the double, Dorian Gray is full of self-hatred, which might be a displacement of narcissism. His first reaction is the regret of wasted innocence, nostalgia for the paradise he had lost when he became an individual. But with a modern gesture, the “rotting ideal” also fills Dorian with pride and fascination. Wilde’s character experiences the pleasure of being an individual who abolishes conventional morality, for whom, like Nietzsche’s writing persona, there is neither guilt nor sin. Besides, he also has a reaction of infantile satisfaction regarding the “shadow,” which takes over all the burden of dense darkness, allowing himself to shine like a black sun. The conflict between the double and the ego makes us rethink the problem of identity, because “[s]elfhood as a metaphysical given is abandoned here to a process of enactments of identity always mediated by the other

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self” (Webber 1996, 3). One of the main themes of Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs is the acknowledgment of an inner “destructive conflict” (DE 120). The inner split is sometimes linked to estrangement (DE 120), and sometimes to the possibility of the multiplication of personality (DE 195), prefiguring the Dostoyevskyan dissociation from The Double: “I am what I seem to be, yet do not seem to be what I am; even to myself I am an insoluble riddle, for my personality has been torn apart” (DE 54). Dostoyevsky’s character, Golyadkin, begins to doubt his own existence (D 54), a symptom of psychosis. Mentally ill persons who, for instance, fail to recognize themselves in the mirror, can experience a feeling of “ontological insecurity” (Laing 1990, 39–43). The discovery of the unconscious at the end of the 19th century is anticipated by this fall of the “fortress of identity” (JH 57): the enemy is no longer outside the walls, he secretly slipped in. As Jekyll noted in a dissociative fashion: “He, I say—I cannot say, I” (JH 67). A peculiar trait of the double in 19th-century fiction is its gendering as male (Webber 1996, 4). In spite of the description of the complexity and the uneasiness of the woman’s soul from Madame Bovary (1856) or Anna Karenina (1877), we find no clear instances of feminine dissociation. In other words, the female subject is unjustly excluded from the conversation regarding inner duality, probably because she was considered unable to access her identity structures, and unable to possess the feeling of the wholeness of personality. Without identity, there is no crisis of identity; one cannot experience dissociation without the perception of a strong and stable ego. One cannot say “I am not who I am” without first declaring “I am.” The ones who never possess the feeling of identity and still experience duality or multiplicity have no reference point of their preliminary organic unity. They struggle in a pre-linguistical and prerational obscurity, in the night of id which never imagined the morning of self-awareness. Yet another important trait of the double is noticeable: if masculinity is deeply connected with the double and the feminine ego is conceived as unable to become a double, it means that the double is dependent on a powerful subject, on the “I=I”2 formula from Fichte’s and Schelling’s works. That is to say that only the one who first says “I” can later pronounce “non-I” or “double.” It is possible that a sort of hypertrophied romantic subject, similar to Byron’s Manfred or Cain, casts a shadow over its double, creates it from overabundance, like Plotinus’s demiurge. Double cannot exist without the previous expansion of the ego. If we consider the relationship between the ego and the non-ego, we can state a law of the genesis of the double: “Where there is I, there will always be double”; with the corollary: “Where there is no I, there is nothing.” The ones who have the feeling of their own subjectivity will probably encounter scission or personal multiplicity, like Whitman3 or Hesse,4 but also have the chance of experiencing the wholeness of personality. The ones who linger

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in the innocence prior to the discovery of self-awareness are unable of duality, because they haven’t discovered identity yet. Their ignorance (what Buddhism calls avidyā) maintains them in a territory where there is neither conflict nor life. Like in Max Stirner’s philosophy,5 the first discovery of each existential subject is his or her ego. Without this preliminary egoism, we cannot advance toward the more subtle acquisition of the concept of alterity. In the constitution of the double, the oscillation between subject and object provides interest. According to Freud (1990, 73), the “ego can take itself as an object, can observe itself, criticize itself. . . . In this, one part of the ego is setting itself over against the rest. So the ego can be split; it splits itself during a number of its functions—temporarily at least.” The objectivity of subjectivity reminds of Narcissus’s dilemma and his inability to distinguish between lover and beloved (Ovid 1958, 78; Rogers 1970, 19). How does the non-ego emerge, disrupting the intimate connection between me and myself? There is a territory in the depth of our being, which defies the diurnal tyranny of the ego. This territory is unexplored and removed from consciousness but makes its presence felt in flashes which intuitively discloses us (intuition belongs to an unmediated knowledge that makes us feel the truth, although it cannot be reasonably explained) the essence of our existence. From this perspective, the relationship between the ego and non-ego (or the shadow) becomes relevant. The double is related to the mystery of “simultaneous distinction and identity” (Keppler 1972, 1) or, more straightforward, to the destruction of the principle of identity (Camet 1995, 8). What is the relationship between identity and alterity from the perspective of the double? A self-centered subject is able, like Medusa’s head, to convert any type of alterity into the mirror of his or her subjectivity. To put it differently, always experiencing alterity as identity, a narcissistic subject, who loves with an ardent passion only his reflection, has every chance to recreate the world after his own likeness, residing in a prison of his own projections. A certain egology is a closed system, which deals with the outside only if it is able to reprogram the external stimuli according to its inner structural coherence. For Narcissus, the nymph Echo is the symbol of perdition, a threat to decoding alterity as identity. “The toxic self-love of narcissism prevents one from experiencing self-transcendence through intimacy with another human being” (Moores 2010, 112). The authentic discovery of alterity saves ego from its solipsistic circularity, but, at the same time, it represents an attack against its identitary sovereignty. In his prison-like palace, Narcissus is a king. The chains connecting him to himself are on his royal badge. However, although he is the one who loves, he is not also the beloved. The love the subject projects onto the object comes back as a simulacrum, as the opposite of love. Not unlike Dorian Gray, Narcissus bows in front himself, loathing himself at the same time. He hates his humiliating dependence on the

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ego and his exceptional incarceration. If Narcissus loved himself, he would solemnly kneel before the altar of self-transcendence. It is worth mentioning that the near absence of the anima from almost all the literary works we shall read shows the downward trajectory of the shadow: one may say that the shadow is here “an affair of the ego.” Similar to the nihilists, for whom the opening toward alterity is nonexistent (Diaconu 1996, 222), the shadowy characters vacillate between suicide and madness: an illusory “either/or,” because madness is a form of suicide. Medardus from The Devil’s Elixirs and Golyadkin from The Double are committed to mental hospitals. The creature from Frankenstein seeks the North Pole to die in absolute isolation. William Wilson, Henry Jekyll, and Dorian Gray kill themselves, attempting to assassinate their doubles. The diarist from “The Horla” hesitates between suicide and mental collapse. For all the seven characters, the shadow is not a tool for individuation, but a deathly struggle with the ego. In Jungian psychology, the personal shadow is considered both the last station of personal unconscious and the path for the experience of the anima, which belongs to the presupposed collective unconscious. This vision is incomplete, according to the authors from the 19th century. The shadow signifies both the dissolution of the ego, its incapacity to recuperate itself, and the invasion of the id in the hostile ground of self-awareness. The emergence of the shadow suggests that the principle of identity is breaking down. Hence the question: Who am I when I am not myself anymore? As we shall see in the analyzed works, the shadowy characters cannot linger in this territory of psychotic un-identification: if the climax of the meeting with the double is mental illness, its denouement can only be suicide. Psychosis is a reverse initiation into the “satanic principle of suffering” (Cioran 1996, 109). It is not only the dark revelation of world as hell, but also the vision of an inferno without the possibility of paradise. The immanent inferno of “the sickness unto death” (psychosis which leads to suicide) refers to the pure aspect of damnation. If in Origen’s apocatastasis even the devil can be eventually saved, from the perspective of the shadowy character who has to choose between madness and death (I use here “choice” ironically), everybody, even God, is condemned to the permanence of hell. THE DEMONIC The demonic is the second subtheme of the shadow, strongly linked with the double. If the ego was modeled after the pattern of “image and likeness” (Gen. 1, 27), the non-ego or the double parodies this ontological programming, revealing the pattern of the “enemy” in the constitution of the personality. The devil is both God’s double (Rogers 1970, 6) and the double of the

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human being, when one conceives him or her as a divine creature, destined to aspire to the perfection of the formula “I am what I am” (Exod. 3, 14). According to Jung, the demonic is one of the essential traits of the shadow: “And indeed it is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow-side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism” (CW 7, §35). In all the literary works we will discuss, the demonic plays an important part. In The Devil’s Elixirs, the dual antagonists of the main character are thought to possess a demonic influence, verifying the Jungian hypothesis which claims that the shadow is sort of an inner devil. “You yourself are Satan!” (DE 90), Medardus tells the painter. “You are not me, you are the Devil!” (DE 97), he answers to Victor. According to Sarah Kofman (1991, 120), the double is the devil.6 In Frankenstein, the unnamed “monster” refers to Lucifer, recommending himself as an enemy of both divinity and mankind. “But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone” (F 213). The self-characterization is arrogant, Mary Shelley’s character claiming an angelic origin for an ordeal that transcends the boundaries of mankind. The romantic theme of isolation, of the one excluded from the human community because of his radical exceptionalism, concerns a superiority complex distinguishable in Byron’s and Wilde’s works. In “William Wilson,” the most important intervention of the double (or the shadow), who exposes the main character as cheating at cards, is accompanied by a “dying of light,” signifying the darkening of consciousness. “The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered.” (WW 442–3). The somber atmosphere suggests we are dealing with an uncanny [unheimlich] apparition, reminding of the mysterium horrendum identified by Rudolf Otto in the constitution of the demonic (Otto 1958, 106–107 n.). Poe’s story is more complicated because the double of the main character prevents Wilson from doing evil, personifying the superego or the moral consciousness [Gewissen]. Nevertheless, from a Freudian perspective, a repressive superego, who spoils id’s agreeable party, or from a Nietzschean perspective, a dry and ascetic, maybe even spiteful, advocate of moral purity, will be perceived as a demonic intrusion, despite the justness of his cause. It all depends on the perspective: because of the reciprocal projections of the two characters, we can no longer distinguish who the “angel” (the superego is an “angel” who generates neurosis, repression and shame) and who the “demon” is. Both are rather demons for each other: shadow and shadow of the shadow.

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From the first meeting with his Doppelgänger, Dostoyevsky’s Golyadkin has a sense of his demonic and adversarial nature. After psychiatry replaced theology, the modern name of demonic possession became neurosis. According to Freud, “demons are bad and reprehensible wishes, derivatives of instinctual impulses that have been repudiated and repressed” (Freud 1964, 72). From a Freudian perspective, Dostoyevsky’s novella can be understood either as a rebellion against paternalism (the father is the “individual prototype of both God and the Devil” (Freud 1964, 86)), or as a Schreberian case, in which the projective factor from paranoia reconfigures the Weltanschauung of the individual. From a Jungian perspective, Golyadkin’s meeting with his demon is a version of the confrontation with the shadow. In Stevenson’s Strange Case. . . , Hyde’s inhumanity (“[T]he man seems hardly human!” (JH 16)) is directly related to the demonic (“I read Satan’s signature upon [his] face (JH 16)). Not unlike Frankenstein’s “creature,” Hyde is both an enemy of divinity and the human being, traditionally conceived as God’s analogon. Hyde’s proclivity to absolute evil transforms him, according to a Jungian psychologist, into a personification of archetypal shadow, transcending the mere personal shadow (Hannah 2000, 83): “I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine” (JH 57). From a Jungian perspective, The Strange Case . . . reveals two essential stages of the confrontation with the shadow: the split and the identification. Several descriptions from Maupassant’s “The Horla” remind us of Henry Fuseli’s famous painting Nightmare (1781), in which an incubus crouches on the chest of a sleeping woman, seemingly influencing her oneiric activity: “I get into bed and wait for sleep as some await their executioner. . . . I fall into sleep as a man falls into a pit of stagnant water to drown. . . . I’m also aware of the approach of someone who looks at me, touches me, gets onto the bed, kneels on my chest, takes my neck in both hands, and squeezes and squeezes with all his strength” (H 277). If the diurnal ego was mostly able to censor the unconscious interferences, during sleep we deal with the dark aspect of existence. Fuseli’s demon is a personification of our anxieties and a symbol of all the things we repress or refuse to confront. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the demonic emerges most strikingly in the episode when Dorian shows the painter Basil Hallward the horrible picture destroyed by the immoral behavior of the main character: “The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.” Dorian’s picture has “the face of a satyr” and “the eyes of a devil” (DG 150). Similar to Nietzsche and Baudelaire, Wilde observes the degeneration of the Platonic ideal, which meets putrefaction and horror: translated into a philosophical language, this is the death of God (in theological terms, the Harrowing of Hell). While

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the picture of Dorian’s soul indicates his descension toward the final circle, Dorian keeps his unspotted beauty, which does not spare him for anxiety, guilt, melancholy, and nostalgia. Dorian’s decline is in agreement with the shipwreck of aestheticism, which, at a certain point, crushes with the reef of the ethical. It is probable that a pure demonism, without reference to divinity, is inconsistent. It is important to distinguish between personal shadow, as a station on a road to individuation (the confrontation with our repressed fears sometimes indicates the direction of inner development7), and transpersonal or archetypal shadow,8 personified by Satan or the dark side of God. The vision of the demonic of the 19th-century writers is much closer to the latter aspect of the shadow. Their Dionysian characters, who oscillate between suicide and psychosis, are ripped apart by satanic complexes, which have little to do with the “little weaknesses and foibles” (CW 7, §35) which can be accepted and integrated. The demonic in romantic and post-romantic literature refers to the dark numinosity of the archetypal shadow (Rudolf Otto’s mysterium horrendum), which can detonate the tiny kingdom of the ego, and to the destructive, dissociative and even “diabolic” violence of the Freudian instinct, which dislocates (dia-bállein = “to tear apart”9) and undoes connections (even the liaison between the ego and his or her self). One of the first modern interpreters of the demonic is Stefan Zweig, who analyzes in his book The Struggle with the Daemon (1925) this theme in the works of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Nietzsche. Zweig’s definition of the concept is important for my research: I term “daemonic” the unrest that is in us all [eingeborene Unruhe], driving each of us out of himself into the elemental. It seems as if nature had implanted into every mind an inalienable part of the primordial chaos, and as if this part were interminably striving—with tense passion [mit Spannung und Leidenschaft]—to rejoin the superhuman, suprasensual medium whence it derives. The daemon is the incorporation of that tormenting leaven which impels our being (otherwise quiet and almost inert) towards danger, immoderation [Übermaß], ecstasy, renunciation and even self-destruction [Selbstvernichtung]. (Zweig 2017, 243)

If, from Freud’s or Rank’s perspective, the artist has an intrinsic proclivity to infantilism and neurosis, one can say that he or she possesses, through his or her nature, an inclination toward demonism. “There is no art worthy of the name without daimonism [Dämonie]” (Ibid., 246). Analyzing the biography of the aforementioned writers, Zweig discovers a propensity toward immoderation, which brings them on the brink of madness, self-sacrifice, and even self-destruction. These authors are inherently predisposed toward transgression, imitating the Nietzschean shadow: “With you I strove to penetrate

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everything that is forbidden, worst, remotest; and if there is anything in me that is virtue, it is that I had no fear of any forbiddance” (TSZ, IV, “The Shadow”). The demon which endows its host with brilliant inspiration leads him to collapse, to a sort of “carbonisation in his own flames” (Zweig 2017, 523): “For the daemon cannot make his way back to the infinite which is his home except by ruthlessly destroying the finite and the earthly which restrains him, by destroying the body wherein, for a season, he is housed” (Ibid., 244). According to Lucian Blaga (1980, 296), who comments on Goethe’s conception of the term, “the ones touched upon by the demonic behave as being possessed by an overwhelming power.” Furthermore, the demonic “partly labors in darkness, in the unconscious, fiercely removing all obstacles.” The proclivity toward demonism, identified by Zweig, is fit for some of the characters of the works I shall analyze. For instance, both Frankenstein’s scientific ambitions (“I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (F 42)) and Jekyll’s assault on the “very fortress of identity” (JH 57) come to my mind. Likewise, Dorian Gray advances toward demonism, following the percepts of pure aestheticism. Following Rimbaud’s imperative, he transforms from an artist into a work of art: “Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets” (DG 207). There is an intimate connection between duality and demonism. The nature of the double is to be demonic: for instance, the number 2 signifies dissociation,10 as the number 1 suggests the perfect identity of God.11 Indeed, the postmodern conception of the multiplicity of the ego (one ego for job, another ego for games, another for my partner, another for me, etc. (Forderer 1999, 14–15)) begins with the destruction of the principle of identity from the 19th century: “Others will follow . . . and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens” (JH 55–6), notes Jekyll. The duality (afterward plurality) of the ego is suggested by the snake from Genesis, who declines the noun “God” at plural: “Ye shall be as gods” [eritis sicut dii] (Gen. 3, 5; Barrett 1962, 99). If classical identity is modeled on the divine subjectivity, the death of God is in agreement with the disappearance of a unitary, self-centered subject. From a nihilistic perspective, following Nietzsche and Rimbaud, one can say that when we renounced to believe in God, we stopped believing in ourselves. When “I is an other,” the Augustinian God is no longer traceable on the map of being. From a sociological perspective, we accept that the ego is a kind of Proteus, which we adjust and adapt according to our momentary requirements. If in fact there is no ego, only egos, it is worth noting that we pay the absence of identity with our souls. I can lie to the others with my persona, but when I lie to myself or when I am unable to know how I am, a split occurs. And if the connection between lost identity and dispossession

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of God can be resolved in a Jungian fashion through the progression on the ego-self axis, the relationship between ego and non-ego is analogous with the oscillation between ego and shadow. I am not who my ego and my persona think I am, but I can be, like Hyde or Dorian, the shadow. If we get stuck at the moment of the identification with the shadow, which can be seductive through the exuberance of the overflowing of unconscious material in the tiny vase of the consciousness, we cannot hope to become authentic and to possess an ego strengthened through the “self-realization of the unconscious” (MDR 3) or the partial integration of the shadow. The shadow is the secret of the ego, just like the self is the secret of the shadow: the underground of the underground is an attic. If, from an esoteric perspective, the subconscious is, in fact, superconscious (with no connections to the Freudian superego), the way to the depths is an ascension disguised in descension: from a theological perspective, a revolt against ego and identity prepares an insurrection against the self or the inner God. The more generous concept of the daimonic, which attempts to bind the dichotomy of demonic and divine, is helpful here. “In contrast to the demonic, the daimonic includes the diabolic as well as divine human endowments, without making them mutually exclusive” (Diamond 2003, 79). The daimonic is a synthesis of the “diabolic” (dia-bállein = “to tear apart”) and symbolic (sym- bállein = “to unite”) traits (May 2007, 138; Schwarcz 1999, 6), a “marriage of heaven and hell,” or of Elysium with Hades. The existential psychologist Rollo May, defines the daimonic in his book, Love and Will (1969), in opposition with the Freudian death drive (which has the demonic tendency to dissolve connections): “For the polar opposite to the daimonic is not rational security and calm happiness, but the ‘return to the inanimate’ . . . the death instinct. The antidaimon is apathy” (May 2007, 122). Just like depression is sometimes seen as the “death of the soul,” daimonism can be an exploitation of the vital energies of the spirit, both creative and manic, a “flame” we should not extinguish. May quotes a fragment from one of Rilke’s letters, in which the poet motivates his retreat from a psychoanalytic cure, when he found out its purpose: “If we throw out our devils . . . we had better be prepared to bid goodbye to our angels as well” (quoted in May 2007, 122). For a poet nothing is more unbearable than the absence of inspiration; this is why he or she prefers to struggle with the demon, he or she chooses Zweig’s “tension” and “passion” (or Plato’s theía manía [divine madness] from Phaedrus 265 b) over the anodyne apathy of normality. In a film inspired by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), we find out that the avoidance of the demonic feature of existence is pure cowardice: “Remember! There is no more . . . detestable creature in nature than the man who runs away from his demon” (Roeg 1993).

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According to May, the genealogy of the daimonic becomes manifest especially in the activity of the poets, because these arrive more easily at the confrontation with the Dionysian aspect of existence. “Every poet is of the Devil’s party,” notes William Blake, referring to Milton’s Luciferianism (quoted in May 2007, 127). Furthermore, William Butler Yeats observed: “And in my heart the daemons and the gods/ Wage an eternal battle” (Ibid.). Therefore, poetry can be described as a battleground between the divine and the demonic. We have to “go to heaven for form and to hell for energy” and “marry . . . our inner heaven and our inner hell” (Johnson 1993, 38). The daimonic describes the “crucifixion”12 between divine and demonic. Hermann Hesse,13 in his novel Demian (1919), defines the daimonic as the union of “the divine with the satanic.” The gnostic deity Abraxas is considered able to reunite God with his shadow, presenting a whole conception of divinity, which includes his dark side as well. “[T]he god we worshipped represented only an arbitrary second-off half of the world. . . . But we should worship the whole world, so either we needed a god who was also the devil, or we needed to establish devil’s services along with the church services that honored God. And so here was the god who was devil and god in one: Abraxas” (Hesse 2013, 75). Hesse’s vision of Abraxas is consistent with many Jungian ideas. Quoting the gnostic theologian Valentinus, Jung thought that Jesus was born “not without a kind of shadow” (CW 9/II, §171) and that “although the attributes of Christ . . . undoubtedly mark him out as an embodiment of the self, looked at from the psychological angle he corresponds to only one half of the archetype. The other half appears in the Antichrist. The latter is just as much a manifestation of the self, except that he consists of its dark aspect” (CW 9/II, §79). Moreover, “in early Jewish-Christian circles Satan . . . was regarded as Christ’s elder brother” (CW 9/II, §113). But Hesse’s conception is also deeply influenced by the Jungian short writing Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, published anonymously in 1916: “This is a god whom ye knew not, for mankind forgot it. We name it by its name ABRAXAS. It is more indefinite still than god and devil. That god may be distinguished from it, we name god HELIOS or Sun . . . Abraxas standeth above the sun and above the devil” (MDR 383). The daimonic Abraxas is a synthesis between “light” and “darkness,” between the “divine” and the “demonic.” One can argue that the Jungian shadow is both demonic and daimonic. As long as it is modeled on the archetype of the stranger and of the enemy, it is appropriate to call it demonic. However, when we think of the “bright side of the shadow,” of the creative resources hidden in the darkness of the shadow, or of the repressed potentialities, and if we consider Nietzsche’s influence on the Jungian conception of the shadow,14 the synthesis of “diabolic” and “symbolic” seems to aptly

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describe the complexity of the Jungian shadow. The post-Nietzschean vision from The Last Temptation of Christ (1955),15 which presents the daimonic conjunction between Sol niger and Stella matutina, deserves mention in this context: “Someone came last night in my sleep. . . . Surely it was God, God . . . or was it the devil? Who can tell them apart? They exchange faces; God sometimes becomes all darkness, and the devil all light” (Kazantzakis 1998, 15). NOTES 1. Jean Paul’s original version was Doppeltgänger. 2. Schelling (1980, 75) sets the tone for the romantic egology in his Of the I as Principle of Philosophy (1795): “I am! [Ich bin!] My I contains a being which precedes all thinking and imagining. It is by being thought, and it is being thought because it is; and all for only one reason—that is is being thought only inasmuch as its thinking is its own.” He is deeply influenced by Fichte, (1982, 97), who argued that the “self’s own positing of itself is . . . its own pure activity. The self posits itself, and by virtue of this mere self-assertion it exists; and conversely, the self exists and posits its own existence by virtue of merely existing.” 3. “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ I am large, I contain multitudes” (Whitman 2004, 123). 4. “In reality, however, every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities” (Hesse 1969, 67). 5. “The divine is God's concern; the human, ‘man’s.’ My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is—unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!” (Stirner 1995, 7). “Not ‘man’ is the measure of all things, I am this measure” (Reschika 2001, 85). 6. The double and the demonic are also intertwined in Thomas Bernhard’s vision from Frost (2008, 83): “Then he briefly described how he had once met himself as someone else. ‘Have you had an experience like that, ever?’ he asked. ‘When I went up to myself, I naturally wanted to shake my hand, but then I suddenly pulled it back. And I knew why.’” 7. “There is no development unless the shadow is accepted” (CW 9/I, §600). 8. The personal shadow refers to a conflict on the individual level (me against myself). The archetypal shadow concerns a “war” on a transpersonal level (my divine “substance” against its demonic counterpart, my inner Christ versus my inner Satan). Matters are complicated when the ego is “overcome by the numinosity” of an “archetypal event” and tends to be “absorbed by the unconscious” (Frey-Rohn 1989, 82). The inflated ego metaphorically tends to become his or her inner devil/God. See also Baudelaire (1975a, 682–683): “There are in all men, at all times, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan. The invocation to God, or spirituality, is a desire to raise oneself higher; that towards Satan, or animality, is the

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joy of descent.” Identification with God or the devil is a common symptom of psychosis, when the barriers of the ego are dissolved. See also Lucka (1916, 132): “Just like the individual double is the personified cleavage of a human being, the devil is the double of the inwardly torn mankind, the double of Christ, as the perfect representative of mankind. This inner conflict comprises of the splitting of an individual man into two egos and the splitting of mankind into two egos—in Christ and the devil.// The devil is the perceptible hatred against the Good, against God—and the anxiety of this hatred.// ‘Man, should you see the vermin inside you,/ It would horrify you as the devil/,’ Angelus Silesius said. And just like the ape was perceived as the double of mankind, the devil was named the ape of God.” 9. The diabolic (in etymological sense) power of the death drive is obvious in Freud’s description: the aim of the death instinct is “to undo connections and so to destroy things” (Freud 1981, 148). Cioran characterizes in his first book the “satanic” tendency as “a principle of dislocation and duality” (Cioran 1996, 109). 10. “The number 2 is polyvalent, although at first instance it bears a negative signification, because it splits and cleaves the Unity and the Whole” (Betz 1989, 37). 11. “One, as the first numeral, is unity. But it is also ‘the unity,’ the One, AllOneness, individuality and non-duality—not a numeral but a philosophical concept, an archetype and attribute of God, the monad” (MDR 310). 12. “To accept the shadow . . . is to be crucified between one’s virtues and one’s vices, never sure which has to be lived, for only after one has suffered the utmost conflict between the two can a ‘third’ be born which is neither the one nor the other, but something which comes closer to the totality of human nature” (Hannah 2000, 87). 13. The Swiss author was analyzed by the Jungian psychotherapist J. B. Lang. 14. “The Shadow: And I hate the same thing you hate: night. I love mankind because they are disciples of light” (HAH II, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”). 15. See also Scorsese’s movie based on the novel.

Chapter 3

The Second I E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs (1816)

ASCETIC LIBIDO The Devil’s Elixirs is a combination of Bildungsroman and Schauerroman in the gothic tradition, where terror precedes the formative element (Webber 1996, 184). Prefiguring Dostoyevsky’s Double, Hoffmann’s work is a hymn to duality: Medardus, the main character, can be seen both as Christ’s double, as a Capuchin monk (Troubetzkoy 1996, 60) and an “erotic nihilist,” like Satan (Hoffmeister quoted in Bär 2005, 263), who may be characterized by the “joy of descent” Baudelaire (1975a, 682–683). The Devil’s Elixirs is a collage of many texts: “Editor’s Preface,” “The Posthumous Papers of Brother Medardus,” “Editor’s Note,” “The Parchment of the Old Painter,” “Appendix by Father Spiridon.” This plurality of auctorial voices leads to a kind of narrative anarchy, because the variations are somewhat incoherent and inexact (Webber 1996, 190; Troubetzkoy 1996, 62). One might think that the dissociation of the main character reflects in the narrative structure of the novel, which can be compared to the infinite multiplication of the reflections of two broken mirrors.1 Positioned from the very beginning under the hereditary sign of sin2 and marked, in a way that anticipates the cinematography of vampirism and possession, by a symbolic unhappy contact with the cross,3 the young Franz (the future Brother Medardus) wants to dedicate himself to his monastic vocation. According to Troubetzkoy (1996, 80), Hoffman’s novel is a circular crossing of hell from and to paradise. The prelapsarian incubator is, for the main character, the Capuchin monastery close to the unmentioned town of Bamberg, which inspired Hoffmann: “It would certainly not be easy to find a more attractive district than that in which the Capuchin monastery lies, just outside the town. The lovely garden, with its views up into the mountains, 41

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seemed to shine in fresh splendor each time I walked down the long avenues” (DE 14). Franz’s propensity toward vita contemplativa, the “growing inclination to take the cowl” (DE 16) is deepened, but also short-circuited by the repression of sexuality: “I felt an unpleasant embarrassment in the company of other people, particularly when women were present” (DE 17). The repression of the “seething” energies (Freud 1965, 73) from the shadow harasses young Franz’s consciousness. His first contact with the manic essence of Eros takes place at a musical soiree when he is observed kissing the glove of a girl he admires. Feeling humiliated and “unmasked” as a disciple of Venus insinuated in the temple of God, the future monk meets with dissociation in way that anticipates the Zarathustra’s difficult relationship4 with the alterity: One of the ladies . . . whispered something in her ear. Then they looked at me and giggled. I was utterly crushed. An icy tremor pierced my heart . . . I rushed over to the monastery and into my cell. I threw myself on the ground in a fit of frantic despair, and burning tears poured from my eyes. I uttered curses on myself and on the girl, now praying to heaven, now laughing like a madman. Derisive voices sounded all around me. (DE 18–9)

Franz simultaneously understands two distinct things: the repressed force of the libido—a secret only to himself—and the danger of the gaze of the other, which breaks through a deficient persona. The flame of the Eros freezes, moving from equatorial to polar temperatures, to paraphrase Shestov (1982, 280), when the authentic passion is pierced by the needle of derision: the examination of the other is, like Medusa’s look, the bringer of death. There are two conflicts here: one between the passion of the young man and the contempt of the alterity and another deeper clash between Eros and the contemplative ideal. The explosive presence of the affect from this scene shows us that we are dealing with a manifestation of the shadow, one that the ego refuses to acknowledge it. Franz’s natural sexual appetite (the shadow) contrasts with the rigorous asceticism required by monastic life (persona) and with the proclivity of the character for a life dedicated to the contemplation of divinity (both ego and self). Hoffmann shows that the shadow is a mystery only for us, because we cannot evaluate it from a safe distance. Theoretically, the girls that mock Franz, who burns in the temple of Eros with juvenile passion, give him the chance to recognize an aspect of his shadow that should be brought in the proximity of the light of consciousness. Perhaps Franz should not sacrifice nature on the altar of divinity. We keep in mind that the irony of the girls was doubled by the derision of the superego (“Derisive voices sounded all around me” (DE 19)): “Your libido does not make you fit for the monastery!” could whisper him a draconic and dictatorial superego. Instead of accepting

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his shadowy material, Franz enhances its density, further repressing sexuality: “I was firmly resolved never to see her again and to renounce the world altogether” (DE 19). One could say that for the future monk, just like for the Freud according to the Jungian interpretation,5 sexuality is a numinosum, the secret of his personality, the nucleus of his personality. Franz takes the monastic name of Saint Medardus, a bishop of Vermandois, renowned for his devotion and erudition and who is considered, among others, the patron of prisoners and mentally ill persons. After some time spent in the monastery, Brother Medardus is put in charge with the supervision of the chamber of relics, including a so-called devil’s elixir, used by the “enemy” to tempt Saint Anthony. Despite Medardus’s rationalist skepticism, who perceives the relics as vulgar ways to gain profit and popularity for various clerical institutions, he is impressed by the mystique of the devil’s elixir. Soon enough, Medardus becomes a successful preacher and his ever-growing fame feeds his grandiose delusion: “The idea then began to grow in me that I was one of the Lord’s elect . . . I was not of this world or of mankind, but walked the earth in order to bring men comfort and salvation. . . . [T]hey should recognize in me the saint exalted above them” (DE 26). Medardus’s megalomania, who even begins to identify with Saint Anthony (DE 28), is seen as demonic inspiration by the prior Leonardus6 and by his benefactress, the Abbess.7 This situation of a character, who practices the dark work while considering himself guided by divinity, prefigures an episode from Gogol’s story, “The Portrait” (1835), in which a painter, despite wanting to create sacred art, involuntarily imprints demonic traits to his icons. Medardus’s grandiose delusion and his double-play can be explained, in a Jungian fashion,8 through two ideas. First, in the case of the Capuchin monk, we record the elevation of the ego at the level of the self, which, according to Liliane Frey-Rohn, is also a characteristic for Nietzsche in his last writings. The identification with Saint Anthony can be the consequence of an archetypal event, which leads to inflation. In the struggle between the human being and the archetype, between man and the image of God, man is destined to be crushed. “Instead of establishing a relationship with the [archetype] and thus objectifying it, [Nietzsche] actually counted himself and his ego as constituent parts of the archetype” (Frey-Rohn 1989, 138–139). How can we find a practical solution to the Medardus’s error of elevating the ego at the height of the self? Acknowledging that the “inner God” is not me9 (this determined biological being, a psychophysical configuration modeled on contingency and finitude), but something else from me (an unalienable spiritual nucleus), called self by mystics and analytic psychologists. A second Jungian idea can be applied here in Medardus’s case. The grandiosity of the one who does the work of the devil while thinking he has access to divinity (indeed, a case of theosis) occurs when we identify ourselves with

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the shadow: when we take over the shadowy parts in our own identity and “the destructive actions are no longer considered foreign for the ego” (Vogel 2015, 43). We see once more the inherent contradiction of Medardus’s being: if before he was split between unrecognized sexuality and monastic vocation, now there is a gap between vita contemplativa and the will to power (the desire of being worshipped or even canonized). One can say that when we try to elevate the ego at the level of the self, we become the shadow: the dark content of the id possesses us, and we cannot longer identify it as separate from ego. To summarize, when we wish to become divine, there are great chances that we become devils. Nietzsche’s insight may be helpful here: “In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part” (HAH 137). Medardus’s attempt of theosis brings him closer to dissociation: the Brother self-medicates tasting the forbidden elixir. The declaration of independence of the monk from the religious constraints and interdictions is described by Hoffmann in a way that prefigures Stevenson’s birth of Hyde10: “My veins glowed and I was filled with a feeling of indescribable satisfaction. I drank again, and there arose in me the desire for a new and glorious life” (DE 32). Medardus’s second meeting with dissociation derives from the wish of being worshipped and acknowledged as saint (and as inaccessible sublimated erotic object). However, it is still reminiscent of the previous conflict between asceticism and repressed sexuality: this is proven by the violent desire for the stranger (who will be later identified as Aurelia) who confesses her love to him. Furthermore, religion and sexuality seem to form a relationship (and this is a distinctive modern trait of the work) and consume each other. Like in Cioran’s controversial Tears and Saints (1937), Medardus does not hesitate to identify Aurelia with Saint Rosalia (the “profane” prototype of the saint in the painting from the monastery was Venus herself). The identification with the shadow and the elevation of the ego at the dimension of the self, the two analytical psychological ideas, are combined in this projection of sexuality (traditionally deemed as demonic) to a sacred background: this is at the origin of the libidinal investment of the monk in the painting which depicts the martyrdom of Saint Rosalia. However, this is a profanation that greatly exceeds the limits of the juvenile flirtation. Therefore, with the agreement of the Prior Leonardus, Medardus decides to leave the convent. I AND NOT-I Medardus’s substitution with his “shadow brother” Victor, whom he believed he accidentally murdered (and the adventures that come out from

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this substitution), makes up the plot of the novel. The conflict between sexuality and devotion, which has intensely divided Medardus, is solved through the identification with his double: through Victor, Medardus truly experiences his sexuality.11 “Victor . . . represents everything [Medardus] represses . . . For Medardus . . . Victor is the desirable ego: this is who he wants to be!” (Hildenbrock 1986, 141; Bär 2005, 263). The monk is erotically initiated by Euphemia and tries to seduce Aurelia, his desirable object. According to the intricate chronology from “The Parchment of the Old Painter,” Medardus, Victor, Euphemia, and Aurelia (and also Hermogenes) are step-siblings. All of them are marked by the “original” sin of the painter Francesco, “the boldest sailor on the sea of vice” (DE 215), who saw, like his great-grandson, Medardus, sexuality imprinted on the face of Saint Rosalia. Euphemia touches upon an essential problem of the novel, that is, identity in the context of the will to power: You must admit that I have always had an exceptional intellectual control over my environment. This, I believe, is easier for a woman than a man, for it is brought about by the union of that irresistible physical charm which nature can confer on a woman and a higher spiritual principle which rules with complete freedom. One of its aspects is the power to step outside oneself and view oneself from without, and this then assumes the role of a servant of the superior will in the task of achieving the highest goals in life. Is there anything greater than to control life from within life itself, to dispose over all its manifestations, all its rich delights with the recklessness permitted to a ruler? (DE 59)

This fragment contains at least three ideas. First, Euphemia adapts her persona (a multitude of masks) at the required situation to fulfill her purposes in a Machiavellian manner. Second, Hoffmann anticipates here the breaking of the psychic unity from Freudian psychoanalysis between ego, id, and superego (or the Jungian version between persona, ego, shadow, etc.). Similar to his contemporaries, Fichte and Schelling, the German novelist prefigures the destruction of the ego and its conflict with the non-ego. What Euphemia calls “the power to . . . view oneself from without” or the adaptation of the ego to persona is a falsification of a deeper ego with the purpose of gaining strategic advantages. Third, Euphemia and Medardus present contrasting typologies, according to the fundamental opposition will to power—libido (CW 7, §78). Euphemia would agree with Nietzsche, who argued that power is more important than pleasure,12 or with Jung, who believed that the will to power is “as mighty a daemon as Eros” (CW 7, §42). Euphemia is capable of any sacrifice to exercise her authority: for her, the power is numinosum, the “deeper element reverberating” (MDR 152) in her.

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It is more interesting that Euphemia, as a follower of absolute cynicism, who initiates Medardus in the “charms of domination and psychological domination” (Troubetzkoy 1996, 68), developing “power phantasms regarding . . . the free domain of the sovereign spirit . . . is, ironically, a plain sexual object for Medardus” (Forderer 1999, 63), whom she mistakes with Victor. Therefore, according to Forderer, the caricature of the ideal of the absolute sovereign leads to a skepticism regarding power, an aporia of domination: the master might be the involuntary servant of one he takes for his servant, “a marionette’s marionette.” The duplicity between Medardus and Victor increases the ontological confusion of the former. The conflict between the shadow and the ego is based on the antithesis between eroticism and devotion: I had become the sport of a cruel, mischievous fate and was now drifting helplessly in the sea of events which were breaking over me like raging waves, so that I no longer knew where I was. It was evident that Victor had fallen into the gorge by an accident brought about by my had, but not through my intention; I have taken his place, I meditated, but Reinhold knows Father Medardus . . . , so to him I really am what I am. But the affair that Victor is carrying on with the Baroness is also my charge, for I am Victor as well. I am what I seem to be, yet do not seem to be what I am; even to myself I am an insoluble riddle, for my personality has been torn apart. (DE 54)

In the beginning of the fragment, the sea is understood as a psychological analogy of the human being, or as a “mirror” of the soul, which hides the “richness of [its] depths” (Baudelaire 2008, 33–35). The end of the quote prefigures Golyadkin’s ambivalence between I and not-I: while Medardus becomes megalomaniac, Dostoyevsky’s character can be diagnoses with a kind of existential paranoia, which makes him doubt his own existence.13 That “I no longer knew where I was” indicates a state of confusion and disorientation felt by Medardus because of his substitution with Victor. It is not random that the barber Belcampo, one of the secondary characters of the novel, later warns Medardus: “What is direction, reverend Capuchin? . . . Direction presupposes a goal from which we take our bearings. Are you certain of your goal, dear Brother?” (DE 204) As we shall see, the ending of the novel suggests that only a desexualized libido (or a unio mystica of sublimated sexuality) constitutes an authentic “goal.” The mysterious painter is also Medardus’s double. If Victor personifies the shadow, the painter symbolizes the self; in Freudian terms, Victor is the id liberated from the constraints of the moral consciousness, while the painter, who makes his presence felt in the decisive moments of Medardus’s life (when he is near to hubris or inflation), signifies the superego or the

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“voice of consciousness” (Hildenbrock 1986, 151). The arrival of the painter when Medardus archetypically identifies with Saint Anthony has a touch of that “sacred horror” encountered in the proximity of mysterium tremendum: “His face was deathly pale, but as his great black eyes stared at me, a dagger seemed to pierce my heart. . . . The whole figure had a horrible, frightening air about it” (DE 28). The gaze of the painter pierces through the phenomenal cover of persona and that is the reason why he does not have to utter a word, his mere presence indicating a great mistake or the unacknowledgment of an inconvenient truth. “The painter rose, fixing with his half-dead, half-living eyes. . . . He said nothing; he stood there still and lifeless, but his ghostly stare made me shudder” (DE 90). The painter acts as “transgression detector,” who feels that the overabundance of the demonic hides in itself the possibility of salvation, because the dark flower of the sin grows near the rose of liberation. Coming back to Medardus’s relation to his projected shadow Victor, the “destructive conflict” [Zwiespalt] (DE 120) of the first is understood as an alienating death of the soul. Medardus feels “like a departed spirit walking an earth in which all the affection he had once enjoyed had long since perished” (DE 84): the gap between ego and self gives him a ghostly impression, perceiving life like a version of death. Not unlike Dorian Gray, Medardus could reflect: “It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him” (DG 210). Because of his existential confusion and of his dissociative state, the former monk cannot admit his facts and becomes responsible. The melancholy of estrangement is not foreign to him: “But that preacher was the monk Medardus, who now lies buried in a mountain-gorge, so he cannot be I, for I am alive. . . . Such were my thoughts whenever my dreams brought back to me the events in the palace, as though they had befallen some other person; and this other person was the Capuchin again, not I” (DE 84). Medardus’s encounter with the shadow is reminiscent of Otto’s concept of mysterium horrendum, the horror of facing the demonic: The door opened and a dark figure entered whom I recognized to my horror as my own self in Capuchin robes, with beard and tonsure. The figure came nearer and nearer my bed; I lay motionless, and every sound I tried to utter was stifled in the trance that gripped me. The figure sat down on my bed and leered mockingly at me. “You must come with me,” it said. “Let us climb on to the roof beneath the weathercock. . . . Up there we will fight each other, and the one who pushes the other over will become king and be able to drink blood.” I felt the figure take hold of me and lift me up. With the strength of desperation I screamed. “You are not me, you are the Devil!” (DE 97)

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First, we might note the physical and clothing similarity between Medardus and Victor. The shadow really is the “other self”: a self we prefer to repress or project, instead of accepting it. Second, we observe that Medardus is at first unable to utter a single word: the paralysis of anxiety meets with the muteness of the drives from Freudian psychoanalysis (Fiennes 2006). Victor captures both Medardus’s image and sound. Third, Victor tells his “shadow brother” that the one who wins the struggle of egos “will become king and will be able to drink blood.” Like Stevenson’s Hyde, Victor wants to become an absolute sovereign: to break free from the shackles of consciousness and rule in the pure night of the id. Medardus replies: “You are not me, you are the Devil!” (or “you are who you are,” similar to the demonic Iago). According to Emil Lucka, the devil14 is mankind’s double: “Just like the moral consciousness of the individual has created the terrible ghost of the double, the moral consciousness of mankind has created the devil” (Lucka quoted in Hildenbrock 1986, 162). If ontology depends on the concept of a being identical with itself (“I am what I am” (Exod. 3, 14)), meontology should investigate the “antistructure” and the “anti-being,” not only the minus of being. The destruction of identity from Hoffmann’s novel might be understood as criticism of the optimistic Enlightenment project regarding the autonomous subject (Forderer 1999, 60). Moreover, one might argue that it prefigures the disintegration of subjectivity from the end of the 19th century captured in the works of authors such as Nietzsche, Wilde, or Rimbaud. It can also be said that it anticipates the multiplicity of postmodern subjectivity. Preparing the way for both Ernst Mach (1918, 19–20), for whom the subject is only “a bundle of sensations,” and Stevenson, for whom the ego is a “mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens” (JH 56), Hoffmann remarks: “A gentle warmth spread through my body and I felt a strange tingling in my veins. Feeling turned to thought, but my character seemed split into a thousand parts; each part was independent and had its own consciousness ” (DE 195). An important character, a personification of the ironic spirit, who mediates on the subjective destruction and on the liquid borders between reason and madness, is the barber Schönfeld/ Belcampo. Not unlike the narrator from Bonaventura’s Nightwatches (1804), Belcampo mocks Fichte’s solipsistic philosophy of the absolute ego: “[T]he atmosphere here in the madhouse, harmful to sane people, has had a beneficial effect on me. . . . If I only exist by virtue of my own consciousness, then it is simply a matter of letting the consciousness remove the harlequin’s dress from what is conscious, and I shall be able to present myself as a respectable gentleman” (DE 201). Folly becomes wisdom, like in Bonaventura’s work, the metaphor of the impossible adaptation to a society for which normality means mediocrity,

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deceitfulness, and inner void. “Folly . . . appears on earth as the true Queen of the Spirits” (DE 199), shows Belcampo, mining the boundaries between normalcy and phantasy, between the useful lie and the hidden truth.15 Or, according to Bonaventura: “And who finally decides whether we fools here in the asylum are erring more masterfully, or faculty members in their lecture halls? Whether perhaps error might even be truth, folly wisdom, death life—exactly the opposite of how one at present takes it!” (Bonaventura 2014, 74) THE POEM OF THE FIRE The motif of the fire permeates Hoffmann’s novel so intensely that one could say that his work is a long, repetitive, ambiguous, obsessive, and esoteric poem of the fire. First, the fire is a metaphor for the repressed libido of the main character. the brand that the unknown woman had cast into my heart aroused sinful desires (DE 36). the flame of perdition consumed me more and more (DE 36). a firebrand fell into my heart, kindling all the secret emotions (DE 56). the burning power of my words should pierce Aurelia’s heart like shafts of lightning (DE 64). the ardour of reverence (DE 65). a warm breeze was wafted towards me . . . fanning the flame of love and setting my mind in a whirl (DE 70). you embraced her with burning desire, and thought to rise above the pettiness of earth in the flame of your fervent longing (DE 143). my burning passion raged as never before. (DE 263) For Medardus, similar to Schopenhauer or Coleridge, Eros is “the essence of existence.” “All thoughts, all passions, all delights,/ . . . All are but ministers of Love,/ And feed his sacred flame,” writes Coleridge (1997, 375) in his poem “Love” (1799). Moreover, fire contains a dual symbolism: biologic and metaphysical. At Hoffmann, the former is included in the latter. For him, the fire of libido receives an ontological meaning, reminiscent of Heraclitus’s cosmological definition: “That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made neither by god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away” (Heraclitus 2003, 37). For Medardus, this world is the “everliving fire” of libido. Second, the satanic fire is another strong metaphor of sexuality:

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My veins glowed (DE 32). Often there was a strange glow in her eyes from which sudden flashes of light darted out when she thought she was unobserved—a destructive fire slowly growing until it forced its way out (DE 49–50). Then Satan appeared to me in a cloud, promising that if I would turn from heaven and serve only him, he would release me. Sobbing, I felt on my knees and cried: “I serve no God. You alone are my master, and from your burning coals of fire shine the joys of life!” (DE 105). As the choir sang the words “confutatis maledictis flammis acribus addictis” [the damned and accused are convicted to the flames of hell] in the solemn requiem, I felt myself tremble (DE 269). My weakness has fled, but there was a burning pain against my breast, coarse bristles plucked at my eyes, and Satan screeched with delight: “Now you are mine alone!” (DE 209) the flames of hell had already begun to consume his soul (DE 220). The association between fire and the demonic is well documented in the biblical tradition: the “unquenchable fire” (Mk. 9, 43); “the furnace of fire” (Mt. 13, 50); “I am in agony in this flame” (Lk. 16, 24); and so on. We are also reminded here of Blake’s description: “Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire . . . I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments” (Blake 2002, 175). Hoffmann, anticipating Flaubert, Huysmans, and Hesse, links sexuality to its traditional protector, the devil.16 Moreover, the German author seems to prefigure the dark atmosphere of certain gothic metal or black metal songs, such as Forever Burning Flame or The Serpent’s Chalice: “Souls are flames that are forever burning” (Tiamat 1992); “Black flames from the deeps aspire,/ As in the chambers of my hearts desire,/ I limn thy brilliant potency in fire” (Watain 2007). The presentation of the demonic as fire indicates an aspect about its uncontrollable and unquenchable essence: just like the id, the black fire can be repressed to the background of the consciousness but cannot be put out. Its extinction leads to an exorcism that would deplete all the vital resources and a mediocre demonism—a demonism that avoids excess—is self-contradictory. “It is better to burn out than to fade away,” Kurt Cobain wrote in his suicide note (quoted in Edelstein 2013, 119), referencing Neil Young. Or: “I would rather die of fire than of void” (Cioran 1996, 89). From the devilish aspect of fire, we move on to its sacred hypostasis, which shows that fire is truly a daimonic notion: In prayer the fire of devotion burns with greater intensity (DE 64). Again and again I read Aurelia’s letter. The spirit of heaven seemed to shine forth from it, lighting up the sinful darkness in my soul (DE 190).

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She had kindled the eternal love that now glowed in me (DE 269). “It is not the fire that has conquered, for there is no conflict between light and fire. Fire is the Word, which transfigures the sinful.” These words seemed to come from the rose itself (DE 245). “The fire of devotion” contrasts with the dark flame of the sin. The libido is desexualized in a mystic manner. The last quote, containing Rosicrucian resonances, refers to a no longer punishing, but liberating fire. The rose reminds us of Saint Rosalia and Aurelia’s martyrdom, which break “the mysterious bonds” of sin (DE 265). Keeping in mind Baudelaire’s diagnosis of the dual human condition, one can say that we are shaped by the struggle between the black and rosy flame.17 One cannot say which will prevail: either the flame of the heart will extinguish the libidinal investments or the circularity of our desires will imprison us in chambers of our own echoes. Nevertheless, our world is, however we look at it, an “everliving fire.” The ending of the Elixirs is peculiar with its decisive “no” said to instinct and immanence: the lovers and step-siblings Medardus and Aurelia choose devotion over Eros. Aurelia wanted to take the vows before being murdered, Medardus returns to the monastery. From Hoffmann’s perspective, love cannot be fulfilled in the world: the will to death is stronger even than Eros. Medardus and Aurelia are “united in that love which rules above the stars and has nothing in common with earthly love” (DE 266). The desexualized libido is analogous with mortification, and Hoffmann is aware, like Schopenhauer and Wagner, that the absolute of love can only be equaled by the absolute of death18: on this side of love—platitude and bourgeois debilitation; on the other side of love—death’s wing. Death is “the hollowed feast of love” (DE 143), notes Hoffmann, anticipating Isolde’s Liebestod. NOTES 1. See Jean Paul’s letter to Jacobi from 22.12.1799: “Take a mirror of infinite proportions and another—but given infinite separability two finite ones will do—each repeats the gallery of the other, this one repeats itself and the repeating mechanism of the rep., this one of the r. of the r. of the r.—in short an infinity of infinities” (quoted in Webber 1996, 31–32). 2. “My father had been led by Satan to commit a heinous crime” (DE 7). 3. “The diamond crucifix she wore on her breast had so hurt my neck when she clasped me to her, that the place was red and bruised” (DE 10). 4. “But they think that I am cold and I jeer and make dreadful jests. And now they look at me and laugh: and as they laugh they even hate me. There is ice in their laughter” (TSZ, prologue, 5). Franz is seen as an imposter (a disciple of the real under

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the guise of the ideal), Zarathustra—as a jester. For the crowd the Nietzschean hero addresses, the Übermensch is nothing but a “chimera” (Cioran 1976, 85). 5. “There was no mistaking the fact that Freud was emotionally involved in his sexual theory to an extraordinary degree. When he spoke of it, his tone became urgent, almost anxious, and all signs of his normally critical and skeptical manner vanished. A strange, deeply moved expression came over his face, the cause of which I was at a loss to understand. I had a strong intuition that for him sexuality was a sort of numinosum” (MDR 150). 6. “There is a sinister spirit behind your sermons” (DE 26–7). 7. “The demon of deceit has entered you” (DE 34). 8. The grandiose delusion may be explained in also a Freudian manner: “According to our analytic view the megalomania is the direct result of a magnification of the ego due to the drawing in of the libidinal object-cathexes—a secondary narcissism which is a return of the original early infantile one” (Freud 1963, 424). 9. See Nicoll (1950, 22): “A man will then be tempted to say: ‘I am God,’ and not ‘God is I.’ If he says: ‘I am God,’ he identifies himself with God from a lower level. This annihilates him. If he says: ‘God is I,’ he surrenders his self—will and makes the will of God ‘I’ in him and so is under, and must obey, God—that is, a higher level.” 10. See JH 57: “There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.” 11. Through Victor, Medardus experiences his own criminality, as well. 12. “Not for pleasure does man strive: but for power” (quoted in Kaufmann 1964, 262). 13. See chapter 6. 14. See Kofman (1991, 119). See also Lucka (1916, 131): “The double essentially is the devil. Judas is the traitor of the divine, the devilish in man, that rebels against Christ.” 15. See Euphemia’s characterization of Hermogenes: “It is a peculiar thing about madmen that, as if in closer contact with a mysterious force, they often pierce our hidden thoughts and express them in strange ways, so that the dreadful voice of a second self sends an unearthly shudder through us” (DE 61). 16. “Mephistopheles: If I had not reserved myself the fire,/ I should have nothing on my own” (Goethe 1962, 163). 17. “And the fire and the rose are one” (Eliot 1963, 209). 18. Novalis writes in one of his Last Fragments (1799–1800): “Death is the Romanticizing principle of our life. Death is minus, life is plus. Life is strengthened through death” (Novalis 1997, 154).

Chapter 4

The North Pole of Being Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)

ROMANTIC DISCONNECTEDNESS The theme of solitude, of “isolism” (Sade), of the exceptional romantic subject (separated from the Heideggerian existential In-der-Welt-Sein) is cardinal in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Among others, Coleridge, Byron, and Poe develop this topic in their poems. The following quote from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) is one of Mary Shelley’s favorite fragments and she had it copied in her journal. “Alone, alone, all, all alone,/ Alone on the wide wide Sea!/” (Coleridge 1970, 32). These stanzas give the feeling of a fundamental ontic isolation, a subject familiar to the author of The Last Man. The sea is seen as a vast prison or an existential desert where the subject is separated from the inherent structures of intersubjectivity, becoming a split personality. “It was the will of Providence that I should pursue my pilgrimage alone,” Coleridge wrote. This issue is further mirrored in Mary Shelley’s journal: “Loneliness1 has been the curse of my life” (quoted in Lau 2009, 81). Byron gives an interesting account of isolism in Manfred (1817): “From my youth upwards/ My spirit walk’d not with the souls of men,/ Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes” (Byron 2008, 290). If Coleridge’s text is an expression of the romantic melancholy,2 akin to what is nowadays diagnosed as clinical depression (Radden 2000, vii–xi), Byron’s tone is rather manic, suggesting the state of mind of a hero, who is not only different from the human species but also superior to it. If we agree with the Adlerian thesis which states that a certain feeling of inferiority derives from a just evaluation of reality and our incapacity to control it (Adler 2009, 43–44), Manfred’s inflation (not unlike Zarathustra’s) takes us into a sort of psychopathological territory. The pattern of likeness (Gen. 1, 27) does not work for Manfred, who considers himself to be radically different. 53

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“The thirst of their ambition was not mine,/ The aim of their existence was not mine” (Byron 2008, 290). Manfred veers into the transcendent category of the not-man,3 toward the North Pole of being, a zone also cherished by Frankenstein’s monster: “I shall quit your vessel on the ice-raft which brought me thither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe” (F 214). Moreover, Manfred claims that “my joys—my griefs—my passions—my powers,/ Made me a stranger” (Byron 2008, 290–291). The Byronian hero understands himself as a romantic version of the Gnostic “stranger,” a term that anticipates the existential nihilism of Camus’s character, Meursault. Therefore, the concept of nihilism seems useful for the description of not only Manfred and Cain but also Frankenstein’s monster. A nihilist will direct abhorrence against human beings (which, from a psychological perspective, leads to self-destruction) and against God (which sets nihilism “on fire” and distinguishes it from the neutrality of atheism4). In Frankenstein, the unnamed creature synthesizes these principles in an almost Lautréamontian fashion: “[F]rom that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery” (F 131). From Manfred to Edgar Allan Poe’s lyrical subject from the poem “Alone” (1829), there is only a slight step: “From childhood’s hour . . . I could not bring/ My passions from a common spring/” (Edgar Allan Poe 1984, 60). Furthermore, Lermontov’s character from A Hero of Our Time (1840), Pechorin, possesses the same Byronic nihilistic substance: “I have a restless fancy, an insatiable heart; whatever I get is not enough; I become used as easily to sorrow as to delight, and my life becomes more empty day by day” (Lermontov 1988, 41). The romantic feeling of distinction presupposes a spiritual transgression of mankind. Both Poe’s and Byron’s heroes (and also the ones imagined by Ugo Foscolo and Théophile Gautier5) consider themselves to be human only from a biological perspective. The metaphor of the “systemic anomaly” from The Matrix Reloaded6 sets them apart in a category of their own from a sociological vantage point. Nihilists such as Manfred or Poe’s daimonic hero will either kill themselves or descend into madness (Diaconu 1996, 159), because the world pushes them toward a spiritual North Pole. Romantic heroes refuse both the “likeness” of mankind and the face of God. Their rebellion alternates between demonism (“many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition” (F 125)) and nihilism, a deeper conception than demonism,7 because it rejects both the “prime mover” and the “adversary,” taking us beyond God and devil, that is, a new territory of human subjectivity: “Lucifer: He who bows not to him has bowed to me.// Cain: But I will bend to neither” (Byron 2008, 893). In Frankenstein, there is an analogy between Victor’s “deep, dark, deathlike solitude” (F 86), combining melancholy and mourning in an almost

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Freudian fashion and the monster’s feeling of radical isolation8: “I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. . . . I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me” (F 117, 139). This touch of isolism makes it clear that, without alterity and the “world” (without Mit-Sein and In-der-Welt-Sein in Heideggerian terms), there can be no sense of selfhood. The subject will experience dissociation, because a human being cannot survive without inner alterity (we are originally open toward the other). But when this human being is rejected and sentenced to the desert of the Orwellian “minority of one,” he will turn to psychopathology: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? . . . When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone. (F 96, 213)

This sense of deep loneliness can be viewed as a metaphor of psychosis, as Vardoulakis (2010, 16–18) argues, analyzing the works of Jean Paul and Goethe. If the subject can no longer relate to his or her neighbor, a feeling of ontic disconnectedness arises. “I see nothing before me, and nothing behind me . . . nothing but the endless night of loneliness in which I find myself,” writes a character from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister (1795–1796). “I, totally alone, nowhere a pulse-beat, no life; nothing around me and without me nothing other than nothing,” (quoted in Vardoulakis 2010, 13–18) Jean Paul observes. The analogy between insanity and loneliness can be inferred from the double meaning of the word “alienation”: both estrangement and mental illness. The theme of solitude is protuberant in Cioran’s work, especially in his early Romanian writings, On the Heights of Despair (1934) and The Twilight of Thoughts (1940). There are at least three levels of E. M. Cioran’s discussion of “solitude.” First, there is the sense of “isolism” already experienced in our treatment of the theme in Coleridge and M. Shelley. “Solitude doesn’t teach you that you are alone, it shows that you are the only one” (Cioran 1991a, 7). In other words, the ontic separateness of loneliness singularizes the subjects and cuts him or her off from humankind. “I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone” (Cioran 1996, 43), notes the then 23-year-old philosopher. A sense of Byronian pride makes its presence felt here. Like Manfred, Cioran’s auctorial subject has a distinct cyclothymic feature. He also writes of “disjunction from the world” (Cioran 1996, 109) and of individuation as a result of an “orgy of solitude” (Cioran 1991a, 109).

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Up to a point, solitude is necessary for our individual growth, but, taken to the extreme, this singularization removes us from the world and becomes symptomatic of neurosis and/or psychosis. This leads to the second theme mentioned by Goethe and Jean Paul: solitude understood as “the proper milieu of madness” (Cioran 1996, 36). The solipsistic feeling of being “alone in the world,” of being “disjointed” from the In-der-Welt-Sein, transforms one into a sort of monster, a being without contemporaries, removed from society. If such a being indeed exists, the expression “Myself am Hell” (Milton 2005, 107) would be a fitting portrayal. Although separation from the world is problematic (painful, but achievable, as many ascetics have proven), more dilemmatic is separation from one’s self, from one’s inner alterity and one’s inner structures of subjectivity. This kind of disconnectedness is also experienced by Maupassant’s diarist from the short horror story “The Horla,” who fails to see himself in the mirror, suggesting that self-reflection disappears when self-consciousness breaks down9 (H 299). However, Cioran’s solitude, reaching the boiling point of insane “disjunction,” only finds comfort in the solitude of a God in whom he does not believe. “Separated from neighbors through the insular faith of the heart, you cling to God, hoping that the seas of madness wouldn’t flow over your solitude” (Cioran 1991a, 188). Third, Cioran associates loneliness with a sort of “living death,” which is the logical result of the abandonment of the world and mankind. This feeling of not being alive is certainly discouraging for a post-Nietzschean anti-Platonist who no longer believes in the possibility of a second life. Cioran’s libido is removed from the world, suggesting that he lived through a Schreberian “personal apocalypse,”10 where life “as we know it” has ended. If life is death, and death is nothingness, the prospects of existential nihilism are grim: “We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence” (Cioran 1996, 6). “THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE SHREW” AND THE SORROWS OF HATE There are three versions of the theme of hatred in Shelley and Cioran. Hating the Other Frankenstein’s creature’s hatred of alterity derives from his inability to adjust to human society because of his hideous shape. Here, we can make two observations. First, as we know, hate is the result of a repressed love: love and hate are twin concepts.11 “I was benevolent; my soul glowed with

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love and humanity” (F 96), writes Frankenstein’s creature. Moreover, the other “greets” my hate with his hate: hate is more contagious than kindness, because the latter can be faked, while the shadow of hate is unequivocal. The meeting between hate and hate can be satisfying for a species which cannot communicate otherwise. “A raving hyena, I anticipated making myself hateful to every creature, forcing them to league together against me, crushing them or being crushed by them” (Cioran 2013, 124), writes the Romanian philosopher. Cioran echoes here Lautréamont’s fearless dictum from Maldoror (1869) “I alone against mankind” (Lautréamont 1978, 148). Moreover, it is certain that nihilists can also experience a sort of rebellious jouissance in declaring war against the whole world. However, hating the other can also have a strategic value. Just like a predator, “the enemy” lures the victim into a trap, hoping to destroy him completely. Like Lady Macbeth, she develops a deceptive persona, disguising herself while she prepares the critical strike. Hatred feeds from hatred (a phenomenon described by Jungian therapists as the reciprocal projection of shadows) at all levels (either inter- or transpersonal). Hating Myself Insight makes us accept the fact that hating the other is a form of self-hatred. Instead of dehumanizing the other and projecting our shadow onto him, we should admit to our own inferiority. Moving on from the psychoanalytical interpretation of hatred, we must understand that there is a pure and infernal version of self-hatred, consubstantial with nihilism: “You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself” (F 214), the monster from Frankenstein claims in a pre-Cioranian fashion. From a logical perspective, if hatred is the prelude to murder, self-hatred can only “create” suicide or madness (Diaconu 1996, 159). Moreover, if hatred of others is a transformation of self-hatred, then any murder is in fact a suicide—through which the murderer excludes himself from humanity. In its essence, hate is dissociative, even more than solitude: the incapacity to acknowledge the others joins with the incapacity to take responsibility for myself. The passion of hate can only be ambivalent, a term identified by E. Bleuler in the constitution of schizophrenia. Baudelaire (2008, 157) speaks of an inner split, of the un-identification with one’s self (“I am . . . the prisoner, the torturer”) in his poem “L’Héautontimorouménos” (1857). Referring to a “false accord” in the “holy symphony,” the French poet writes about the ones who exclude themselves from humanity, who are unable to countersign the declaration of human rights. Such a declaration should be conceived for nihilist not-men. The problem of posthumanity is very timely, but it is mostly ill-conceived in

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technological and biological terms (we will all be cyborgs with certain digital improvements), or ideological and political ones (we no longer accept the humanist tradition which must be amended after Auschwitz and Dachau12). However, I would like to touch on the psychological nuance of misanthropic antihumanism. What do we become when, just like Baudelaire’s lyrical subject, we see ourselves as “false accord,” “a looking-glass of the shrew” or “cheek and slap”? How does one categorize a schizophrenic beyond schizophrenia, a symbolic dissociative subject who refuses the harmony and security of humanity? Mostly the un-identification with the “looking-glass of the shrew” signals the self-awareness of the demonic, reminiscent of Iago’s parody of Genesis’s demiurge: “I am not what I am” (Shakespeare 1992, 5). It speaks of a shattered glass, a portal to (inner) hell and a metaphor of the splitting of the identity. Baudelaire’s subject can no longer identify with himself: for him, not only the world but also an essential aspect of himself is dead. If we move the problem of antihumanism from psychology to philosophy, we reach the shores of nihilism, an indefensible philosophical movement, avoided by most authors because of its hopelessness and morbid agenda (with the notable exceptions of Stirner, Nietzsche, Cioran, and Baudrillard). What Cioran says of Nietzsche (“His diagnosis of nihilism is irrefutable: because he himself is a nihilist” (Cioran 1999, 37)) can certainly be applied to him, as well. The nihilistic not-man, the type of post-Nietzschean-Cioranian subject, makes his presence felt in pop culture. Detective Rust Cohle (brilliantly portrayed by Matthew McConaughey) from Nic Pizzolatto’s television series True Detective is certainly a not-man. I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight—brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. (Pizzolatto 2014)

From “consciousness as destiny” [Bewusstsein als Verhängnis], Cioran’s thesis derived from Alfred Seidel, which shows the toxic and potentially hazardous trait of self-awareness, to the Freudian distinction between nature and culture, from the Buddhist idea of the inexistence of the self to the Heideggerian treatment of das Man als Niemand, we are led to the Schopenhauerian tableau of the voluntary self-destruction of species. Swinburne, in “The Garden of Proserpine” (1866), Byron, in “Darkness” (1816), and other poets, such as Lautréamont and Eminescu, have explored

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this collective explosion of the death instinct.13 The description of the personal apocalypse, the illustration of the feeling that the world extinguishes itself in the lyrical subject, is provided by Leopardi in his poem “The Setting of the Moon” (1837). The last stanzas of the poem are said to be composed on his death bed14: “She remains a widow all the way./ And the Gods determined that the night/ which hides our other times ends in the grave.” In his “Song of the Great Wild Rooster” (1824) from Operette Morali, the Italian poet imagines “the death of all things” as well. The time will come when this universe and nature herself will be no more. And just as of very great human kingdoms and empires and of their marvelous exploits, which were so very famous in other ages, there remains no sign of fame whatsoever; so too of the entire world, and of the infinite vicissitudes and calamities of all created things, no single trace will remain; but a naked silence and a most profound quiet will fill the immensity of space. Thus, this stupendous and frightening mystery of universal existence, before it can be declared or understood, will vanish and be lost. (Leopardi 1982, 379)

Combing back to purely nihilistic self-hatred, this contradictory and acute feeling can be found in the declarations of M. Shelley’s self-destructive monster and also in many Cioranian fragments: I am inebriated by hate and by myself (Cioran 1991a, 207). I love my own self-hatred . . . (Cioran 1991b, 108). I hate myself: I am absolutely a man (Cioran 2013, 192).

Hating God In a similar manner to the Frankensteinian monster, who is a descendant of Milton’s Lucifer, Cioran proves himself to be an heir of Manfred, Cain, and Maldoror,15 a group of characters who all constellate a father complex. How do we move from self-hatred to hatred against the divine? First, we can blame divinity for a “traumatic birth,” to use Otto Rank’s expression in a different context. Because we have not created ourselves, we cannot be held responsible for our projection into existence. Nihilists have always appreciated the wisdom of Silenus,16 for whom nonexistence is preferable to existence (BT 23). Therefore, the shock of moving from nothingness to being (in more straightforward terms, from non-being to the sufferance of existence) cannot be left unpunished. If the well-known Sartrian formulations emphasize either the responsible freedom or the preeminence of choice, those who have been transported into this world, to experience illness, pain, lack, estrangement, and final extinction, did not choose to be

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born, therefore transferring the responsibility for their “adventure” onto their maker(s). It’s that the world is basically a forced labor camp from which the workers— perfectly innocent—are led forth by lottery, a few each day, to be executed. I don’t think that this is just the way I see it. I think it’s the way it is. Are there alternate views? Of course. Will any of them withstand scrutiny? No. (Jones 2011) Nothing attracts our lively attention so irresistibly as someone in mortal danger: nothing is more terrible than an execution. The boundless attachment to life that appears here cannot have come from cognition and deliberation: to these, it rather seems foolish; since the objective value of life is very certain, and it remains doubtful whether life is to be preferred to non-being; in fact if experience and deliberation had their say, non-being would certainly be the victor. If we were to knock on gravestones and ask the dead whether they would like to rise again they would shake their heads. (Schopenhauer 2018, 482)

From a logical point of view, the passing from nonexistence to being is akin to the move from “zero” to “minus.” If the world were a forced labor camp, then, according to Nietzsche, Cioran, or Camus, it would be our duty to rebel against our guardian. This familiar theory of spiritual disobedience derives from the father complex, transforming nihilism into a preliminary step of anarchism.17 However, the new aspect of this struggle between nihilist and God is that the traditional transcendent divinity “greets” the nihilist with his own hate, “communicating” with the human subject. This totally interpersonal war is described by Cioran: “Solitude of hatred . . . sensation of a god turned toward destruction, treading the spheres Underfoot, slobbering on the blue of heaven and its constellations . . . of a frenzied, filthy, unhealthy god; the demiurge ejecting, through space, paradise, and latrines; cosmogony of delirium tremens; convulsive apotheosis in which gall consummates the elements” (Cioran 2012, 128–129). The nihilist not-man is a version of the human being who could benefit from the transcendent capital of the Nietzschean Übermensch. However, the not-man is a sort of a shadow of the Übermensch. When one contemplates through the lenses of Nietzscheanism, he could almost be perceived as a subman. The not-man is no child of the demiurge from Genesis and he fails to recognize himself in the pattern of likeness. Consequently, the not-man may identify himself with the statement of the knight d’Albert from Théophile Gautier’s novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835): “[T]he world in which I live is not my own, and I understand nothing of the society around me. Christ did not come for me. . . . I have never been to gather the passionflowers on Golgotha” (Gautier 1981, 186). If the declaration of freedom for

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the Übermensch is “God is dead,” the not-man arduously declares: “Man is dead.” If the not-man is somewhat akin to the Übermensch and to Camus’s “rebel” [l’homme revolté], this is only a recoil of two millennia of Christianity: the shadow of God (GS 109) cannot fade away quietly. Moreover, the Big Crunch of the death of God is only a recent event. A Dasein with Cioran’s soul and Nietzsche’s mind, with Baudelaire’s expressivity and Lautréamont’s “innocent perversion,” at the same time an aristocrat and an “underground” man, a poet in epileptic tremor, a gnostic priest like Philip K. Dick, an active member of Project Mayhem, a cannibal aesthete like Hannibal, a schizo teenager like Donnie Darko, a decadent poet who can no longer see “eternity in a daffodil” like Caliban from Penny Dreadful, a hacker of the psyche like Mr. Robot—these are some versions of the nihilist not-man. NOTES 1. See Cioran (1991b, 108): “Being categorically alone.” See also Fitzgerald (1995, 262): “Being alone in body and spirit begets loneliness, and loneliness begets more loneliness.” 2. The distinction between melancholy and depression can be compared to the one between and anxiety and fear: melancholy looms behind depression (just as anxiety is a super-fear, a fear of fear). Furthermore, depression is caused by a concrete loss, melancholy refers to an ontological loss: I have lost myself; I have lost the feeling of my being. See Kristeva (1992, 5): “My depression points to my not knowing how to lose—I have perhaps been unable to find a valid compensation for the loss? It follows that any loss entails the loss of my being—and of Being itself. The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.” Julia Kristeva (1992, 4) also describes depression as the death of the soul: “A life that is unlivable, heavy with daily sorrows, tears held back or shed, a total despair, scorching at times, then wan and empty. In short, a devitalized existence that, although occasionally fired by the effort I make to prolong it, is ready at any moment for a plunge into death. An avenging death or a liberating death, it is henceforth the inner threshold of my despondency, the impossible meaning of a life whose burden constantly seems unbearable, save for those moments when I pull myself together and face up the disaster. I live a living death, my flesh is wounded, bleeding, cadaverized, my rhythm slowed down or interrupted, time has been erased or bloated, absorbed into sorrow.”

Cioran argues that depression isolates and differentiates us from the “flux of being”: “Only in the depressive states is the man able to consciously differentiate himself from the world, because in those states the growing distance between the man and world . . . leads to the acuteness of the phenomenon of awareness” (Cioran 1991c, 124–125).

3. For the first contemporary discussion of this term, see Bolea (2015b, 33–44). For the origin of this notion, see Cioran (1996, 68–69).

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4. For the essential difference between nihilism and atheism, see Diaconu (1996, 40): “[Nihilism] can be defined through the category of despair, and [atheism] through that of doubt. . . . The atheist is not necessarily a nihilist, because for him, although there is no God, the world doesn’t lose its value, while nihilism is an atheism which extends from the stage of the intellect into the entire subjectivity.” 5. See Foscolo’s Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis (1802): “I haven’t been able to know myself or to recognize myself as others see me. I don’t think anyone will ever be able to recognize himself as I see him” (Foscolo 1970, 90). See also Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835): “I have never been able to persuade myself that men were really my fellow creatures. When someone calls me sir, or they talk about me and say ‘that man,’ it seems very singular to me” (1981, 100). 6. “The otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself” (Wachowski et. Wachowski 2003). 7. The connections between demonism and nihilism have not been yet thoroughly researched. From a philosophical point of view, both doctrines have a common feature: their inherent misotheism, a tradition emphasized in modern times by Goethe’s “Prometheus” (1774), Byron’s Cain (1821) or Mihai Eminescu’s “Memento mori” (1872). From a theological perspective, nihilism has a strong demonic feature deriving from its substantial attack of the notion of God. From a logical point view, nihilism is demonism + “x,” where “x” rejects the devil as well, not only God. The affirmation of nihilism is post-Nietzschean: “God is dead, I am God,” a perspective shared by many nihilists such as Lautréamont, Mihai Eminescu, and the young Emil Cioran. 8. Frankenstein’s isolation can be seen as a consequence of his monstrosity. See also Caliban’s reflections from Penny Dreadful (Logan 2014): “For the monster is not in my face, but in my soul. I once thought that if I was like other men I would be happy, and loved. The malignance has grown you see, from the outside in, and this shattered visage merely reflects the abomination that is my heart. Oh, my creator, why did you not make me of steel and stone? Why did you allow me to feel? I would rather be the corpse I was than the man I am.” 9. See chapter 8. 10. See Freud (1958, 70): “The patient has withdrawn from the people in his environment and from the external world generally the libidinal cathexis which he has hitherto directed on to them. Thus everything has become indifferent and irrelevant to him. . . . The end of the world is the projection of this internal catastrophe; his subjective world has come to an end since his withdrawal of his love from it.” 11. See Baudelaire (1975b, 16): “Indeed, hatred is a precious liquor, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias,—for it is made with our blood, our health, our sleep and two thirds of our love!” See also Gautier (1981, 176): “Every great hatred serves as a counterweight to a great love; and whom could I hate, since I love nothing?” 12. A certain type of human subject has been destroyed at Auschwitz and Dachau. Humanism must be redefined after the murderous exclusion of its alterity. There can be no “we” after the dissociation between “I” and “other” and the destruction of the “other.” See Drucker (2009, 34), 61: “If the totalitarian ‘we’ is intact in the wake of Auschwitz, the ‘we’ of community and solidarity is forever ruptured. . . . ‘[A]fter

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Auschwitz,’ there is no basis to assert that humanity is one or that ‘the human condition’ is a truly universal experience. . . . Auschwitz calls this faith in Man into question. To be sure, Levi uses reason as a tool of resistance against Nazism’s attempt to reduce him to an unthinking ‘non-man.’” See also Adorno 1973, 362–363: “Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems. But it is not wrong to raise the less cultural question whether after Auschwitz you can go on living.” 13. See appendix 1. 14. Leopardi’s last stanzas may be compared to Lenau’s last but one poem written before his mental breakdown. See his “It’s All in Vain!” [Eitel nichts!] (1844): “It’s all in vain, wherever my eyes turn!/ Life is an unspeakable wandering,/ An empty chase from here to nothing,/ And in the end our powers won’t return//” (Lenau 1970, 510–511). The same morbid feeling is identifiable in one of Eminescu’s poems, “Linden Flower” (1882), written one year before his mental collapse: “Flowers of tomb/ In secret evenings/ Wuthering wings/ I give to my doom” (Eminescu 2015, 417). 15. Cain and Malodror are the proponents of an “absolute misotheism”: “Their expression of God-hatred can be dark and tormented. . . . [A]bsolute misotheists are not to be confused with atheists, since they still maintain a degree of religiosity and channel feelings of a religious nature into their attacks of God. . . . Absolute misotheists only want to trample God and eliminate him altogether from the world. The best way to achieve this is by bringing him down to the human level and then by destroying God with the arsenals of literature” (Schweizer 2011, 18–19). For other examples of misotheism, see Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night (1874): “The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou/ From whom it had its being, God and Lord!” See also Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon (1865): “The supreme evil, God./ Yea, with thine hate, O God, thou hast covered us.” Also Swinburne’s often quoted line from the “Hymn to Proserpine”: “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath” (quoted in Schweizer 2011, 85–90). 16. See TI, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 36: “We cannot help having been born: but we can make up for this mistake (because sometimes it is mistake). When you do away with yourself you are doing the most admirable thing there is: it almost makes you deserve to live.” See also the negation of life from Villiers de L’IsleAdam’s drama Axël (1890): “Living? No.—Our existence is full,—and the cup overflows.—What kind of hourglass will count the hours of this night? The future? . . . Already exhausted . . . Living? Our servants will do that for us” (Villiers de L’Isle Adam 1959, 671). 17. For the distinction between nihilism and anarchism, see Bolea (2015a, 66): “[T]he principle of anarchism asserted the call to arms against a superior opponent (or the creation of a war machine that must harass the hegemonic power). . . . We could probably say that through anarchism nihilism becomes pre-anti-nihilism, nihilism becoming a propaedeutics for its own destruction.”

Chapter 5

The Supershadow E. A. Poe’s William Wilson (1839)

I AM (NOT) WILLIAM WILSON In Poe’s “William Wilson” the struggle takes place between the id and the superego (in Freudian terms) or between the shadow and the ego (in Jungian terms). As many commentators have observed (Coskren 1975, 155; Hubbs 1983, 75; Moores 2006, 36), this short story stages a conflict between wills, symbolized through the clash between William Wilson 1 and William Wilson 2. Starting from William Chamberlayne’s epigraph from the poem “Pharonnida” (1659), Poe opens a path for the draconic attack of the superego, which is, along with the shadow, the real hero of the story: “What say of it? what say of conscience grim,/ That spectre in my path?” (WW 426). From childhood, the voice of Poe’s character “was a household law” (WW 427). William managed to manipulate his parents, making his own rules, which means one of two things: either Wilson becomes an anarchic id, transgressing parental authority (or, from a Jungian perspective, his shadow “becomes part of consciousness, as he [William] is given license to express traits that for most people are kept locked in the dark recesses of the psyche” (Moores 2006, 36)) or, more plausibly, the hero introjects his superego, creating his own “repressive system.” Commenting on his early “school-life” spent in “a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England” (WW 427–8), the narrator notes that “the house . . . was old and irregular” and that “there was really no end to its windings—to its incomprehensible subdivisions.” Moreover, “our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity” (WW 428–30). According to many authors, the house is a symbol of the human psyche,1 while its labyrinthine nature can be understood as an analogy2 for 65

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William Wilson’s ambiguous and conflicted personality. Another analogon of the hero is the school principal, the Reverend Bransby, whose heteroclite nature anticipates the conflict between William Wilson and his double. It seems that the narrator cannot “comprehend how two contrary personalities can function harmoniously within one human being” (Hubbs 1983, 73). William Wilson 1 encounters a schoolmate with the exact same name, who is exactly his age and dresses exactly like him: in short, he has the same physical and psychological traits. This William Wilson 2 is not at all impressed by the “ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness” of William Wilson 1’s disposition (WW 431), or by his “ascendancy” over most of the schoolboys. William Wilson 1 fears that the potential equality between him and his double can be read as the hidden superiority of William Wilson 2. The second William Wilson resists and defies the narrator, imitating him perfectly: the only thing that differentiates him is “a weakness in the faucial or guttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a very low whisper”3 (WW 433). The episode where William Wilson 1 enters the room of the sleeping William Wilson 2 can be considered the first climax of the story: I looked;—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these,—these the lineaments of William Wilson? . . . The same name! the same contour of person! the same day of arrival at the academy! And then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! Was it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility, that what I now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation? Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again. (WW 437)

William Wilson sees himself through the other. The meeting between them fails because the main character is unable to recognize the other, unable to accept him. Just like Rimbaud, William Wilson 1 repeats a mantra: “I am not William Wilson 2,” “I am the radical alterity which cannot be reconstructed through the language of identity.” Individuation programs us to distinguish ourselves from the other, even when the other embodies an aspect that belongs to us. The feelings of numbness and iciness which prefigure the horror of recognition (“if this is me, then who am I?”), along with the violation of the principles of identity and noncontradiction, anticipate the behavioral strangeness of Dostoyevsky’s character, Golyadkin.4 William Wilson 1 refuses to be William Wilson 2: the cleavage is ontological before being psychological.

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Imagine that you see your double in your place, one of the “favorite” hallucinations of “The Horla”’s author,5 as well as its narrator. One suspects that one of your first feelings may be one of inferiority: doubting your own existence can make you feel ontologically insecure (Laing 1990, 39–43). “Is this really my double or am I the double, the copy of my copy, the shadow of my shadow?” In Borges’s words: “Not to be a man, to be the projection of another man's dream, what a feeling of humiliation, of vertigo!” (quoted in Bate 1998, 30). William Wilson 1 experiences derealization6 (in both the literal and the figurative meanings of this word: loss of reason and loss of the sense of phenomenal reality) and feels that his conception of identity is fragile and shaky, that he may be swallowed by the ground like Cowper’s Abiram from his poem “Lines Written During A Period of Insanity” (1773). Poe’s narrator’s reaction is one of denial and flight, abandoning the infinite boarding school, which now can be seen as a threatening place both for his identity and for his being. However, just like a demon, William Wilson 2 remains attached to William Wilson 1, because in our desperation we change our surroundings instead of acting upon our attitudes (Seneca 2000, 48). There are two other significant episodes where the repressive Wilson 2 intervenes in ways similar to those in the Heideggerian Ruf des Gewissens: In this low and small room there hung no lamp; and now no light at all was admitted, save that of the exceedingly feeble dawn. . . . As I put my foot over the threshold, I became aware of the figure of a youth about my own height. . . . Upon my entering, he strode hurriedly up to me, and, seizing me by the arm with a gesture of petulant impatience, whispered the words “William Wilson!” in my ear. (WW 439) The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered. . . . “Gentlemen,” he said, in a low, distinct, and never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrilled to the very marrow of my bones. (WW 442–3)

It is highly relevant that in the first three confrontations with the double, while the superego harasses the id (or the ego collides with the shadow), struggling to shed some rationalistic light upon the hero, light progressively diminishes, anticipating the eventual darkness resulting from merging with an exceptionally dense shadow. From the “bright rays” which fell “vividly upon the sleeper” (WW 437) and the light “of the exceedingly feeble dawn” (WW 439), we move on to “a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished . . . every candle in the room” (WW 442), so that we can barely

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perceive William Wilson 2’s figure (Gargano 1963, 179). This dying of the light signifies one of two things: (1) the supergo is, like the Hegelian rationalization of the reality, a black light, a fake source of enlightenment, and consequently the attempts at control and supervision of the superego rather “darken” the existential subject, blocking their capacity for transformation, or (2) the superego collapses into the dark night of the id, and the light of consciousness is swallowed by the obscurity of the unconscious. One commentator claims that the latter version is more plausible. Wilson 1 becomes more irrational, witnessing the disintegration of his personality, while the analytical tone of the narrative gives way to emotional climaxes (Stauffer 1965, 328–329). The end of the short story, when William Wilson 1 eventually kills his antagonist at the masquerade ball at the palace of the Duke Di Broglio, signals the hero’s last crisis of consciousness or rather the final triumph of irrationalism. The murder/suicide “destroys any hope” of Wilson 1’s ability “to attain psychic harmony” (Hubbs 1983, 78): he is devastated “by a neurosis in which he will never again experience the joy of syzygies, the pleasurable tension of opposites and polarities that fuels the psyche” (Moores 2006, 38). William Wilson is cut off from his existential nucleus, living the existence of a dead soul (Girgus 1976, 303–304). The death of William Wilson 2 is the mirrored suicide of William Wilson 1: we have the double destruction of the phenomenal and noumenal being (“dead to the world,” and dead “to Heaven” (WW 448)). First, Wilson dies as a sentient being, losing the charm of this world. In other circumstances, he could be saved as a spiritual being, through askesis and meditation. However, second, he is also dead to heaven: he is denied both the inebriation of the senses and the rectitude of the spirit. Furthermore, he is also dead “to Hope.” One remembers here Wilde’s stanzas from The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1897): “Something was dead in each of us,/ And what was dead was Hope” (Wilde 1994, 146). Some might argue, rather optimistically, that “losing all hope was freedom” (Palahniuk 2006, 22). However, an existence without hope cannot be mistaken for the kind of lucid despair needed in order to accept “the tragic sense of life.” In this context, the death of hope signifies a “war with myself,” a sort of personal inferno where the subject cannot longer accept his inner alterity. Wholeness, the Jungian version of existential authenticity, is no longer possible for Poe’s hero. The Jungian definition of neurosis is a fitting emblem for Wilson’s condition: “Neurosis is an inner cleavage—the state of being at war with oneself. . . . What drives people to war with themselves is the suspicion or the knowledge that they consist of two persons in opposition to one another. . . . A neurosis is a splitting of personality” (CW 11, §522).

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THE SHADOW OF THE SHADOW According to Ruth Sullivan, the moralistic William Wilson 2 is the narrator of the story (not the hedonistic William Wilson 1), a fact which can be proved by the harsh tone of the narrative, through the pious incrimination, which can be the symptom of a reverse narcissism (Moore 1994, 71–72). “By the device of misleading the reader into believing that the sinful” William Wilson 1 “is the narrator, Poe . . . permits a tyrannical superego to run rampant” (Sullivan 1976, 255–256). Using the same line of reasoning and recalling the meaning of Poe’s title “A Dream Within a Dream”7 (1849), Nancy Berkowitz Bate suggests a fascinating hypothesis, allowing us to imagine that “the universe itself is a dream or a fiction.” The researcher argues that William Wilson 1, the main character of the story, is only a hallucination, a nightmare imagined by William Wilson 2. The phantasmatic behavior of William Wilson 1 violates the Cartesian cogito ergo sum: William Wilson 1 thinks but is not. Moreover, “disturbed by the actions of his dream persona,” William Wilson 2 “attempts to censor or shape” William Wilson 1’s “behavior—to have only good dreams, not nightmares” (Bate 1998, 27–31). According to Moores, both William Wilson 1 and William Wilson 2 are mere shadows (rather than only Wilson 2, the “whisperer,” as earlier commentators argued). William Wilson 2 “has not been killed off but exists in a repressed, subterranean psychic world. . . . Yet, a close reading reveals that” William Wilson 1, “despite his first-person status in the narrative, may also be the repressed other of a sleeping” William Wilson 2 (Moores 2006, 32–34). Starting from the hints of these three researchers (Sullivan, Bate, and Moores), who propose a paranoid interpretation of the story (meaning that the main character, the so-called William Wilson 1, is moved into the background, as an id dominated by the superego or as a hallucination in William Wilson 2’s dream), and also following D. J. Moores’s analysis (which argues that both Wilson 1 and Wilson 2 are reciprocal shadows), I advance another hermeneutical hypothesis. In my opinion, Wilson 2 is the Jungian shadow of the main character, his enigmatic double, who makes Wilson 1 feel anxious and submissive. The progressively diminishing light from the aforementioned first meetings with the double (from the “bright rays,” and the “feeble dawn,” to the darkened room where all the candles where extinguished), marks the collapse of the consciousness into the dark ocean of the id. It also indicates both the death of the inner sun and the Nervalian resurrection of the black sun of nihilism from his posthumous novella Aurélia (1855), which may be seen as a cataclysmic counterpart to Novalis’s “nocturnal sun” from the Hymns to the Night (1800):

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I thought I saw a black sun in the deserted sky and a globe of red blood above the Tuileries. I said to myself: “The eternal night is beginning, and it is going to be terrible. What will happen when men realize there is no more sun?” (Nerval 1996, 49) Praise the world queen, the higher messenger of a holy word, a nurse of blessed love—she sends you—tender, beloved—Night’s lovely sun [liebliche Sonne der Nacht],—now, I wake—for I’m yours and mine—you called the Night to life for me. (Novalis 1988, 13) There is also a Sol niger, a black sun, which coincides with the nigredo and putrefactio, the state of death. (CW 14, §113)

Because William Wilson 1 refuses to accept his shadow, and fails to acknowledge his inner devil, “the little light”8 of consciousness (MDR 88) risks being annihilated by the darkness of the id. Thus far, my interpretation coincides with the standard Jungian reading. However, from my perspective, William Wilson 1 can be designated as a supershadow or the shadow of the shadow.9 My reading goes further than that of Moores, who explained the story through the reciprocity of shadows, but follows the same paranoid line of reasoning: William Wilson 1, the main character, is the copy of the original shadow, a derivative shadow of the repressed whisperer. According to Jung, the shadow is closely related to the body (CW 16, §134; CW 16, §145; etc.). Therefore, the body of the shadow of the shadow is the original shadow, that is, William Wilson 2. The inversion of William Wilson 2—the shadow/ William Wilson 1—or the shadow of the shadow is supported by the presence of the mirror from the final scene, which disrupts the relation between the copy and the original (see also Bate 1998, 31). What is the novelty of my hermeneutical hypothesis, compared to Moores’s similar reading? The Jungian shadow also has a luminous aspect: “But the shadow is . . . not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence” (CW 11, §134). The postmodern shadow of the shadow presupposes a duplication and hijacking of demonism. A reflection can shed some light on this question: the servant of the devil (the shadow of the shadow) is sometimes more satanic than his master (the shadow). If only Hitler (the shadow) (CW 10, §455) is guilty, might his “banal” assistants, such as Eichmann (the shadow of the shadow), be excused? The liaison between the shadow and the shadow of the shadow can be observed in Dostoyevsky’s novels. Stavrogin and Ivan Karamazov are Luciferic characters (shadows), hiding many inner suns. Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, Stavrogin’s admirer, and Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov, Ivan’s “ape,” are shadows of the shadows, deprived of the romantic stature of the first two. The shadow might support salvation; the shadow of the shadow

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has no place for itself, not even in hell. Lucifer, the devil (diábolos comes from diabállein = to divide) (Fabre 1992, 241–242), the prototype of absolute evil, the classical archetype of the shadow represses his brilliant and angelic nature: he is split and schizoid, like Wilson 1. Not evil but duality is the fundamental trait of the devil. Just as God has a negative aspect (his left hand), Lucifer has a propensity toward freedom, autonomy, and refusal to accept dictatorial authority (his right hand). If the shadow possesses this Luciferic depth and height, the shadow of the shadow is completely deprived of nobility, and rectitude, having a somewhat animalic quality, reminding us of Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde10 or of the not-man described by Osamu Dazai.11 This secondary shadow also encompasses a diabolic trait; one that is combined with contingency, infamy, and abjection. The shadow of the shadow is the slime left after the filtering out of brilliant Luciferianism. If Othello is the shadow, the shadow of the shadow is Iago; Macbeth is the shadow and Lady Macbeth the shadow of the shadow. K.’s murderers at the end of Kafka’s The Trial correspond to the combination of demonism and abomination which symbolizes the presence of the shadow of the shadow. The painful endings of works such as 1984 or Animal Farm contain the same satanic horizontality. In Orwell’s dystopias (and also in Dostoyevsky’s The Double), the individual is completely crushed by the system. Resistance seems a form of blindness, an illusion created by the system to further humiliate the potential rebel. Kafka and Orwell warn us of the existence of a hell-in-itself, which can no longer refer to the idea of heaven; an inferno where the death of hope presupposes the permanent acceptance of terror. Far from being only a pun, the shadow of the shadow is a fitting concept for the romantic and post-romantic literature, especially for the situation where an evil character (who is also grand, and could, under different circumstances, be a positive character) is served and doubled by a mean negative character, who feeds from the demonic rectitude of the original shadow, hijacking his greatness toward an obscure horizontality. William Wilson 1 has repressed the “golden” aspect of the shadowy nature of William Wilson 2, combining demonism with platitude. If the shadow finds a proper hell for itself, one must invent a tenth circle for the shadow of the shadow.

NOTES 1. See Chevalier, Gheerbrant (1990, 604), Halliburton (1973, 300), Cooper (1974, 131). 2. See Braga (1999, 148–149): “The labyrinthine structure of the school is a reflection of William Wilson’s malady: he has lost his way through the alleys of his unconscious.”

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3. Wilson 2’s vocal defect might suggest that the superego is some kind of dark ventriloquist who takes pleasure in shaming the id. 4. See chapter 6. 5. See chapter 8. 6. “When we discern the unreality of everything, we ourselves become unreal” (Cioran 1976, 95). 7. See Poe’s conclusion of “A Dream Within a Dream”: “Is all that we see or seem/ But a dream within a dream?” (Poe 1984, 97). See also Poe’s dedication of Eureka (1848): “To the few who love me and whom I love—to those who feel rather than to those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities” (Ibid., 1259). 8. See also JWL 219: “To keep the light alive in the darkness, that’s the point, and only there your candle makes sense.” 9. From a logical point of view, through its double negation the shadow of the shadow would cancel itself, becoming a lack of shadow, the minimal shadow of the saints and the enlightened ones. But just as the logical principles of identity and noncontradiction are suspended when one discovers a psychological contradiction inside the human being (“I am not myself,” “I am not what I am,” “I am and am not me”), one cannot make the case for the logical positivity of the double negation. On the contrary, the darkness grows denser: if the shadow contains a lucent potentiality, the shadow of the shadow is an anarchetype of negativity in itself, deprived of any connection with positivity. 10. See chapter 7. 11. “That effigy suggests nothing so much as a human body to which a horse’s head has been attached” (Dazai 1973, 16–17).

Chapter 6

I against I Dostoyevsky’s Double (1846)

EXISTENTIAL PARANOIA Paranoia can be described as an altered form of solipsism. There are at least two versions of paranoia: either one discovers that he or she is the only real Dasein in a world where everybody else is a simulation or one becomes aware of the fact that he or she is a simulation in a real world. The first version was explored by Philip K. Dick in his brilliant novel Time Out of Joint (1959). Movies like James Mangold’s Identity (2003) and M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense (1999) present the second situation. We choose to reflect on the first version because both views share a perverse symmetry in depriving the Dasein of his world. Paranoia, etymologically defined as “alternate awareness” [para-nous], is capable of transforming the Weltanschauung through the remodeling of perception. If the experience of taking drugs can be seen as oriented through the unconditional “pursuit of pleasure” to revealing the world as heaven, paranoia can only be understood as an absolute intensification of pure pain, revealing the world as hell. If anxiety cuts one off from das Man’s perimeter, paranoia, seen as a lesson in “underground reality,” is a Harrowing of Hell. Through its extreme isolation, paranoia separates the Dasein from its In-derWelt-Sein, removing the self from world. Not only that he is being excluded from this world; moreover, the Dasein becomes, in R. D. Laing’s terms, a “divided Self,” one suffering from an internal split. Losing the In-der-WeltSein and the Mit-Sein, not unlike the monks from the desert, who are still linked to their abandoned world through the wires of resentment and nostalgia, Dasein loses himself. “The world doesn’t exist anymore; it is only the I that still exists. The world revolves around this divine I. Neither this I doesn’t exist anymore.” 73

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This inner division between ego and the self was well documented by Mihai Eminescu (1964, 76) in his aforementioned poem “Melancholy” (1876)1: “When I look back on living, the past seems to unfold/ As though it were a story by foreign lips retold.” Paranoia brings along the separation between individual and world (“I am the anti-representation of the world”) and the inner dissociation (“I am not myself; I am the Other to myself”). The territory discovered in the heart of the world, in the womb of Sein, is the mental experimentation of hell. The etymology clearly shows that paranoia is a form of being aware of reality. I believe that it is a form of comprehending the dark essence of existence, the subliminal revelation of the immanence of hell. If the anxiety of death helps us overcome the everyday inauthenticity, paranoia allows us to exit the world and ourselves. After breaking his internal unity, paranoia transforms the Dasein into a shadowy figure who has lost both his world and his sense of self. It can be argued that the two principles constituting paranoia are Iago’s declaration “I am not what I am” (Shakespeare 1992, 5) and Lucifer’s statement “Myself am Hell” (Milton 2005, 106). Technically speaking, paranoia is based on the perception of the falseness of the world: the paranoid subject feels that everything is fake, “directed” or “arranged,” and that there is not a single trace of authenticity or of spontaneity in his psychotic universe. A movie like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), where a bogus world is built around the main character played by Jim Carrey, shows the ultimate ambiguity of falseness: “Is my perception false or is the world itself a fake?” That is the (paranoid) question.2 And how can I know the difference? The feeling that the world isn’t real, that everything else is a simulation, the sickening bitter taste of falseness can only be disproved—and treated—with the notion of contingency, which reveals the unnecessary character of our existence. The ratio between paranoia and contingency is equivalent to that between meaning (“everything has meaning and it’s all about me”) and meaninglessness (“accidental coincidences can only emphasize the worldly feeling of alienation and indifference”). More exactly, the neutrality of contingency relativizes the notions of meaning and non-meaning, while inversely, paranoia’s method renders the category of meaning absolute. If “Myself am Hell” (Milton 2005, 106), then my selfhood is hell, which means that its properties are the conflict between essence and appearance and the contrast between “me” and “myself.” Therefore, “I am not myself” means that I cannot find myself in me, I run away from myself, I don’t know who I am. Furthermore, I am afraid of myself and I probably hate myself. My nonego is my shadow, which grows as I diminish. Let us take a closer a look at the opening scene from The Double, which is a reply to Gogol’s “The Nose” (1836)3:

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It was a little before eight o’ clock in the morning when Titular Counsellor Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin awoke after a long sleep, yawned, stretched and finally opened his eyes wide. However, for about two minutes he lay motionless on his bed like a man not yet entirely certain if he has woken up or is still asleep. . . . Once out of bed he immediately ran over to a small round mirror that stood on the chest of drawers. Although the sleepy, weak-sighted countenance and somewhat balding head reflected there were so insignificant as to command no attention at first glance, its owner was obviously perfectly satisfied with all he saw in the mirror. “A fine thing it would be,” said Mr Golyadkin under his breath, “a fine thing it would be if there were something not quite right with me today—if, for example, some kind of unwanted pimple had popped out up, or something else just as unpleasant.” (D 3–4)

For an educated public, Iakov Petrovich’s gesture of looking in the mirror to find new pimples is a reference to the psychoanalytical loss of the nose, or, more exactly, to the anxiety of a possible loss. What is the significance of this opening mirror scene? A touch of anxiety, the premonition of duality, or an expression of ambivalence? In my opinion, all these three themes are related to the (super)theme of identity. The mirror signifies self-awareness in an unmediated and unmetaphysical form. To paraphrase Alexandru Dragomir (2005, 15–17), the mirror assures me that “I am eye to eye with myself.” This is why, in psychotic states, when “I am no longer me,” when I am dissociated or split, the mirror4 becomes magic, a portal to past reality, when I was me: In Turin, at the beginning of his madness, Nietzsche would rush to his mirror,5 look at himself, turn away, look again. In the train that was taking him to Basel, the one thing he always asked for was a mirror. He no longer knew who he was, kept looking for himself, and this man, so eager to protect his identity, so thirsty for himself, had no instrument at hand but the clumsiest, the most lamentable of expedients. (Cioran 1976, 210)

FROM “IT’S NOT ME” TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PERSONA One of the first sequences of the Dostoyevskyan novella The Double (1846) treats the crucial theme of identity. Meeting the head of the office during a carriage ride, Golyadkin hesitates to assume his identity and salute his superior (his failure to identify himself will later prove to be an ontological failure to recognize himself): “Should I bow or not? Should I respond or not? Should I acknowledge it’s me or not? . . . Or should I pretend it’s not me, but someone else remarkably like me,

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and look as if nothing were the matter? Really, it’s not me, it’s not me at all— and that’s the end of it!” exclaimed Mr Golyadkin, doffing his hat to Andrey Filippovich and without taking his eyes of him. “I’m . . . I’m all right,” he barely managed to whisper, “I’m all right, quite all right, it’s not me at all, not me at all, Andrey Filippovich—oh no! And that’s all there is to it.” (D 8)

“It’s not me” reminds us of Iago’s aforementioned self-characterization of his imposed split between appearance and essence or between persona and shadow. The demonic Iago parodies the supreme creator who revealed Himself in Exodus (3, 14): “I am that I am.” The ones that are what they are solve the problem of the contrast between essence and appearance, integrating their essence into the appearance, simultaneously being their own manifestation and their own revealed obscurity. This is the ideal case of the divinity, the case of an I who won’t ever be not-I. But “if I am not what I am,” I cannot keep at bay “the inferno of the existence,” which will always manifest itself through ambivalence and duplicity. I cannot claim that “hell is other people” (Sartre 1989, 45) (if that were the case my own selfhood would be a soteriological reservoir), my founding myth will be “Myself am Hell.” My selfhood is the inferno: the split between “me” and “me.” Therefore “it’s not me” means that I don’t find myself inside myself, that I run from myself, that, simply put, I don’t know who I am. Moreover, I am afraid of myself and I probably hate myself. My not-I will be the shadow who grows as I’m diminishing. Moving on, Dostoyevsky’s novel contains an intriguing description of the future Jungian concept of the persona6. After Jung, “the persona . . . is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be” (CW 7, §246) or “the individual’s system of adaptation to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world” (CW 9/I, §221). Yakov Petrovich Goliadkin, the main character, attacks the category of the persona (defined as the “mask of the soul” (Jacobi 1971, 1–10)), claiming that his sincerity is absolute: “I don’t like double-talk, I abhor slander and gossip, I’ve no time for wretched duplicity. Only when I go to masquerades do I wear a mask, but I don’t parade one in front of people every day” (D 14). Goliadkin’s selfconfessed persona is a total lack of persona. His incapacity to distinguish between ego and persona shows us his unconscious indifferentiation, a symptom of the future psychosis. According to Nietzsche, a sense of allegiance to the mask is necessary: “Everyone profound loves masks” [Alles, was tief ist, liebt die Maske] (BGE 40). Without mask there is no guardian at the gates of our empire. Without mask the shadow transgresses both ego and persona, gaining more control. If we are the owners of a treasure—and we all are, even if we do not know it—, we should guard it and keep it safe. Moreover, the energy from the depths must be filtered and processed; otherwise, in its pure

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state, it is infernal and can harm us. From a later conversation with Anton Antonovich Setochkin, we find out more about Goliadkin’s attack against the principle of the mask: All I meant, Anton Antonovich, was that I keep to the straight and narrow, that I despise deviousness, that I’m not for intrigues. . . . I’m talking of myself, Anton Antonovich, I’m talking of myself, for example: when I say that I wear a mask, it’s only when I need to; that is, only for carnivals or festive gatherings, speaking literally. But I don’t wear one every day in front of people, speaking in a different and more cryptic sense. That’s all I wanted to say. (D 74–5)

Golyadkin expresses himself in a disguised manner, building an authentic philosophy of the mask, a true personology. The fact that the Dostoyevskian hero puts on his mask only for “masked balls” is not a virtue, as he wished, it is a symptom of this aforementioned indifferentiation between consciousness and unconsciousness. He wants to project honesty while he displays division: I am not who I am (I am not ego or persona, I will be the shadow). One could infer that life is either a “carnival” (where persona, the interface between individual and society, is the sole ruler: my persona touches the persona of the other, to simplify the intersubjective dialogue), or an “inferno” (where the shadow, the not-I and the inner split are the only masters). From the beginning, Goliadkin’s existence stays under the sign of the shadow. Dostoyevsky’s hero conceives himself sincere in an insincere world, suffering from the romantic Hyperion complex,7 which manifests itself through separation, differentiation, and isolation. In the overestimation of his sincerity (the absence of a mask), Golyadkin paves the way of his future psychosis. Unfortunately, “people with a deficient persona . . . have no shield against the projections of others and are in constant danger of falling back into the original state of participation mystique with their environment” (Hannah 2000, 76). THE CONSTITUTION OF THE DOUBLE After being kicked out from Klara Olsufyevna’s birthday party, the Dostoyevskian hero continues his descensus ad inferos: Every clock tower in St. Petersburg that showed and told the hour was striking exactly midnight when Mr Golyadkin, beside himself, ran on to the Fontanka Embankment . . . seeking refuge from his enemies, from persecution, from the insults that had rained down on him, from the shrieks of frightened old ladies, from the sobbing and sighing of women—and from Andrey Filippovich’s

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murderous glances. Mr Golyadkin was crushed, absolutely crushed, in the full sense of the word (e.m.) . . . . Mr Golyadkin now looked like a man wanting to hide, wanting to run away from himself (e.m.). . . . Let us say more: now Mr Golyadkin not only wanted to escape from himself, but even hide from himself, to be utterly annihilated, to exist no more and to turn to dust. . . . He was so perplexed that several times, despite all that was surrounding him, he would suddenly stop short and stand stock-still in the middle of the pavement. . . . At those moments he would die, he would vanish (e.m.). . . . Mr Golyadkin plumbed such depths of despair, was so tormented, harassed, exhausted, so bereft of any spark of fortitude, so disheartened, that he had forgotten everything. . . . But what did it matter? Really he couldn't have cared less. (D 41–3)

Golyadkin was “crushed” like a Kafkian bug, for which society has nothing but contempt and loathing. He experiences a sort of spiritual death that can be understood in two ways. First, the character experiences with existential a confusing crisis of identity: the hero wants to hide and run from himself. Nevertheless, we can temporarily hide but we can never permanently escape from ourselves. “You sought the heaviest burden:/ there you found yourself ” [Du suchtest die schwerste Last:/ da fandest du dich], wrote Nietzsche (P 204) in his “dithyramb” “Between Birds of Prey” (1888). These stanzas remind us of Goethe’s poem “Daemon” from Primal Words. Orphic (1817–1818): “You must be/ None but yourself, from self you cannot flee8” [So mußt du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen] (Goethe 1994, 230–231). The selfhood is, I have argued, either heaven or hell, but it also possesses an unalienable quality: it cannot be transgressed. The ego can hide from its own self—through denial, repression, resistance, projection, through “alterization”—but it cannot detach/break from itself. Second, without death, understood as an alias for “transformation,” there would be no mobility and dynamism. The myth of the Phoenix9 shows us that life starts after the “first death.” This esoteric metaphor has valid psychological connotations, despite being biologically counterintuitive. The death of Golyadkin 1 is a requirement for his resurrection as Golyadkin 2: the persona and the ego must give way to the shadow. From death we move on to indifference [adiaphoría] (“he couldn't have cared less”), a concept constitutive for the Nietzschean definition of nihilism. The suffering, disappointment, and despair have consumed him so hard that Dostoyevsky’s hero is emptied, annihilated, brought closely to its nothingness. Nihilism, not unlike depression, can be defined as death of the soul, as metaphorical death in life or as death before death. Nihilism can be understood as mortification and agony, as Kierkegaard (1980b, 18) does, when he defines the “sickness unto death” as “this tormenting contradiction, this sickness of the self, perpetually to be dying, to die and yet not die, to die death. For to die signifies that it is all

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over, but to die death means to experience dying, and if this is experienced for one single moment, one thereby experiences it forever.” Physical death abolishes pain, moving us from one distance to another, being transcendent to existence. However, the death of the soul, the nihilistic affective emptying, is the “death of death” and corresponds to the Kierkegaardian experience of the “dying of death.” It brings us close to an inferno of immanence, of damnation “here and now.” One could argue that Golyadkin lives a similar crisis situation, a Japserian limit-situation, in which a certain personality is annihilated to make room for another, in which the ego becomes non-ego. Mr Golyadkin . . . saw a passer-by walking towards him, most likely someone delayed for some reason himself. It was all of little consequence, it would seem, a chance encounter. But for some mysterious reason Mr Golyadkin became alarmed, afraid even, and he felt somewhat at a loss. . . . Now Mr Golyadkin could clearly make out his new, belated companion—made him out completely and he shrieked with horror and bewilderment; his legs gave way. . . . And in fact he had very good reason to feel so distressed. The fact was, this stranger now seemed somehow familiar. That in itself wouldn’t have mattered. But he recognized him—he almost completely recognized that man now. (D 44–6)

In his crisis of affective emptying and self-annihilation, Iakov Petrovich notices a passer-by coming from the opposite direction. His reaction should not be dramatic, because every meeting is somewhat arbitrary: nevertheless, he becomes anxious. Existential anxiety is an indication of nothingness (or more exactly, a signal of the presence of non-being inside being—this is precisely why anxiety is a meontological affect); moreover, anxiety is mostly anticipative, concerning the future. Golyadkin is anxious because he intuits the essence of his situation: he meets during bad weather (the blizzard is an expression of his sentimental storm that has consumed him until there was almost nothing left) on the Fontanka Embankment with his double. Not only that, he meets him twice. The anxiety intensifies and his intuition transforms into (re)cognition. His casual look hides his inner terror resulting from the troubling and paralyzing experience of autoscopy. Dostoyevsky’s hero is “on the brink of the abyss,” a philosophical situation analyzed by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre among others. “His situation at that moment was that like that of a man on the brink of a terrifying precipice, when the ground is giving way beneath him. . . . The abyss is drawing him on and finally he himself leaps into it, thus hastening his own demise” (D 47). The abyss is the metaphor of the negative infinity, the metaphor of nonbeing, which is always close to us, but we avoid acknowledging it, because a life permanently aware of the impending death would be a nightmare. The abyss is always at hand, and when we really see it we are tempted to join it.

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According to Nietzsche, “and when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you” (BGE 146). The German philosopher refers to a personality transfer between the existential subject and nonexistence: the human being and the abyss “communicate” because nothingness exists in both being and non-being. “He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down” (Kierkegaard 1980a, 61). Furthermore, according to Sartre (1978, 29), the “vertigo is anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over.” I am not afraid of falling, I am afraid that something inside me shall decide my annihilation. The difference between the fall and the jump is colossal: if I threw myself over, I would no longer be innocent. The precipice is alluring for the eye, because the abyss and the spirit have a similar (meontic) nature. When Golyadkin meets his double, one could say that there is confrontation between identity and alterity, a collision between the I and the not-I. This mysterious meeting violates Pauli’s exclusion principle which states that two identical objects cannot simultaneously occupy the same spatial position. In this case fiction overpowers the laws of physics; moreover, the novella moves toward a paranoid metaphysics, where the positional simultaneity of the I and the Double radically expresses the breaking down of the identity principle. Golyadkin is and is not himself at the same time, destroying the logical laws of noncontradiction and identity. The following formula applies to his case: a = [a(a = a) ^ (a = Øa)]. In a Sartrian manner one can define this type of subject as alternating between facticity and transcendence or between freedom and contingency. One can redefine this situation in a Jungian way: the center of my ego coincides with the center of my self, but my ego hesitates between shadow and persona. After meeting with his Doppelgänger, Golyadkin even begins to doubt his own existence (D 54). The primacy of the enmity and falseness in the confrontation with his not-I brings us to the paranoid feeling of being and to our definition of paranoia conceived as a radical alteration of solipsism. If the classical solipsism can be understood as the impossibility of proving the existence of others, the paranoid solipsism seems to even doubt the existence of the thinking subject. In other words: Am I a hallucination in a god’s mind? (“If you are the dreamer, then I am the dream” [Wenn du der Träumer bist, bin ich dein Traum], wrote Rilke (2001, 23) in The First Book of the Monkish Life (1899)) or a software programmed by an almighty conscience. “Does the world exist? Or is it only in my vision?” asks himself Mihai Eminescu (2002, 17) in his poem “Dream” (1876). One can argue that the paranoid often sees himself as a ghost, who will be sent back to nothingness once the dreamer wakes up and pushes the start button of self-awareness. It is a

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troubling feeling to ponder one’s own inexistence and something far apart of everyday normalcy [das Man], when one possesses a common sense of the reality, which spontaneously discriminates between “real” and “imaginary.” This feeling could be the start of an alternate consciousness, of a systemic anomaly [para-nous]. One can notice that describing Goliadkin’s nightmare, the Russian novelist anticipates a scene from The Matrix Reloaded, when, attempting to finish off Neo (Keanu Reeves), the agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) clones himself and multiplies ad infinitum. But with every stride, with every thud of his foot on the granite pavement, there would spring up, as if from under ground, a completely identical Mr Golyadkin, utterly similar in depravity. And the moment they appeared, all these perfect replicas would start running one after the other and, stretching out in a long chain like a gaggle of geese, would hobble behind Mr Golyadkin so that there was no escaping these replicas, so that the eminently pitiable Mr Golyadkin couldn’t catch his breath for horror, so that in the end such a terrifying multitude of exact replicas was spawned that the whole city was finally jammed with these perfect replicas and a police officer, observing such a breach of the peace, was obliged to grab all these perfect replicas by the scruff of the neck and fling them into a lock-up that happened to be close at hand. (D 107)

From the perspective of the shadow (or of the copy) we have an anarchistic and criminal multiplication. The confusion and chaos created by the multiplying of the clones build the premises of a crime; therefore, the (dream) police will sanction this revolutionary act. The terror increases once we analyze the scene from the perspective of the ego (or of the model): Sankt Petersburg is invaded by the copies of Golyadkin 1, the original ego. If only the clones (only Golyadkin 2, the Doppelgänger) multiplied, the identity structures of subjectivity (“ego sum qui sum”) would face immediate obliteration. Golyadkin 1 sees in his dream a crowd of his copies, growing as cancer cells, which are entirely different from him, from their source. An absolute split replaces the hegemonic structure of the identity. Furthermore, the multitude of replicas (which mimic the original, the only authority who knows the difference between model and clone) will act at the limit of legality, incriminating thus Golyadkin 1. One can read this nightmare in a political fashion, as Dmitri Chizhevsky does. If from a psychoanalytical and phenomenological perspective, the “attack of clones” brings with it the destruction of identity, from a sociopolitical point of view, this situation shows that Dostoyevsky’s main character is pushed at the limit of the condition of citizenship, becoming, like Camus’s character, Meursault, an absolute “stranger.” The “ontological problems of the fixity, reality, and security of the individual existence” (Chizhevsky 1962,

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116) are presented by the Russian writer, when he refers to a citizen—not only humiliated and discriminated but also—excluded from the polis by his clones. Dostoyevsky anticipates in this strange dream Kafka, drawing on the problem of political meaninglessness. When one removes the right of a sociopolitical existence, one prepares the way for an ontological annihilation: not unlike Josef K., Golyadkin will be banished beyond the walls of the citadel at the end of the novella. Making use of tragic irony, in the manner of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter, the director and co-screenwriter of a film based on Dostoyevsky’s Double, Richard Ayoade shows that Simon/Golyadkin’s removal from the system anticipates his physical annihilation: Workers’ Services Executive: You don’t exist anymore. Simon: Excuse me? W S E: You’re no longer in the system. S: Well, just put me back in the system. W S E: I can’t put you back in the system. S: Why? W S E: Because you don’t exist. I can’t put somebody who doesn’t exist in the system. S: So how do I get back in the system? W S E: You need a card. S: Right. So can I please get a new card? W S E: No. S: Why? W S E: Because you’re not in the system. S: So . . . what . . . so that’s it? W S E: That’s it. I’ll leave you to make your own arrangements. (Ayoade 2013)

It is interesting to see how the ego perceives the shadow, how Golyadkin looks upon his double: “There suddenly appeared Mr Golyadkin Junior, cheerful as ever, smiling and frivolous as ever: in short, mischievous, capering, toadying, guffawing, nimble of tongue and food as ever” (D 117). The shadow is presented as lecherous (“‘She’s a scrumptious dish,’ said Mr Golyadkin Junior, roguishly winking at Mr Golyadkin Senior” (D 127)) and greedy (“putting his empty cup that he had drained with unseemly greed down on the table” (D 128)). Starting from these descriptions, we can classify Golyadkin 2 as the extraverted sensation type according to the Jungian typology10 presented in CW 6 (§§606–608): “Wulfen’s The Sybarite . . . is the unvarnished confession type of this sort. . . . To feel the object, to have sensations and if possible enjoy them—that is his constant aim. . . . The more sensation predominates, however, so that the subject disappears behind the

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sensation, the less agreeable does this type become. He develops into a crude pleasure-seeker.” While Golyadkin 1 is captivated by his inner world, Golyadkin 2 is a “worldly,” sociable personality, strongly attached to everyday “reality.” From his perspective, the problem of solipsism is irrelevant. To give another the cinematographic example, a famous extraverted sensation type from The Matrix is the villain Cypher (played by Joe Pantoliano), who considers that (sensitive) pleasure is more important than (intellectual) truth. “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? . . . Ignorance is blissˮ (Wachowski et. Wachowski 1999), declares Cypher, in a premeditated parody of the discouraging reflections of the Ecclesiast: “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Eccles. 1, 18). If Golyadkin 2 corresponds to the extraverted sensation type, Golyadkin 1 coincides with the introverted intuition type. According to one Jungian therapist, “when people of this type break down they tend to become paranoid” (Stevens 2001, 92). If until now we have mentioned only the philosophical definition of paranoia, understood as an alteration of solipsism, we should also mention its psychiatric definition. A paranoid delusion is a “false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly held despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary” (American Psychiatric Association 2013, 819). Paranoia is based on a false perception (a “wrong” vision of reality), which sees the whole world as falsified or phony. The impression of falsity is so strong that the paranoid can no longer discern between the inner and the outer world (his unconsciousness is projected in front his eyes). When the paranoid feels threatened, trembling with fear of the outside world, he feels the projection of his own aggressiveness (Stevens 2001, 66). When he says “they want to kill me,” he is projecting his own homicidal intention. One of the best literary descriptions of the paranoid nightmare belongs to Philip K. Dick11: A paranoiac psychosis. Imagining that I'm the center of a vast effort by millions of men and women, involving billions of dollars and infinite work . . . a universe revolving around me. Every molecule acting with me in mind. An outward radiation of importance . . . to the stars. Ragle Gumm the object of the whole cosmic process, from the inception to final entropy. All matter and spirit, in order to wheel about me. (Dick 1987, 119)

The paranoid will say “I am God,” but not in a cheerful mood. The god from the unconsciousness is a demon in disguise [le mauvais demiurge] who

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will force his will upon the afflicted subject. Therefore, Golyadkin will obey the will of his dissociated shadow: we anticipated that the inner division in the structures of his identity will lead to psychosis. This demonism of paranoia, found in the Philip K. Dick’s novels or in Roman Polanski’s movies12 make a strong case for considering paranoia as an initiation into the Cioranian “satanic principle of suffering”: “The divine principle distinguishes itself by an effort toward cosmic synthesis and participation in the essence of everything. The satanic principle, on the other hand, is a principle of dislocation and duality which characterizes all suffering” (Cioran 1996, 109). The dislocating pains of insanity cut Golyadkin off his In-der-Welt-Sein. The separation is absolute, the isolation impeccable. His ultimate temporal disorientation13 could be another reference to Gogol: “‘But is it today?’ flashed through his mind. ‘Was there a mistake about the date? Well, it’s possible, anything is possible. . . . It’s possible it was yesterday that the letter was written but it didn’t reach me—it didn’t reach me because Petrushka got involved in it—the scoundrel! Or perhaps “tomorrow” was written there, that is . . . I . . . that everything had to be done tomorrow’” (D 150). We are reminded here of the hallucinatory insertions from Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”: “The Year 2000, 43rd of April,” “The 86th of Martober. Between day and night,” “The of 34 February th, yrea 349” and even the more bizarre “Don’t remember the date. There was no month, either” or “Date none. The day had no date” (Gogol 1999, 294–299). The last image Golyadkin will see in his trip to the mental hospital (a descensus ad inferos, which was only a one-way trip in Dostoyevsky’s time) belongs to his Doppelgänger, a true devilish twin, who has lead and pushed him into the abyss: “With hands in the trouser pockets of his green uniform he ran along with a contented look, leaping up first on one side on the carriage and then the other; at times he grabbed the window frame and hung from it, poking his head in and blowing farewell kisses at Mr Golyadkin” (D 163). NOTES 1. Trans. Corneliu M. Popescu. 2. See also Bolea (2020, 46) for the “‘liquid’ divide between perception and reality”: “Most of us possess a sense of reality, but what if our senses deceive us? Would I still know what was real if, for instance, I had a microscopic brain tumor that made me hallucinate that the people around me were devils, or that a beautiful sunny day was a dark nightmare? What if I then felt the urge to start shooting people?” 3. See Gogol (1999, 304–305): “The collegiate assessor Kovalev woke up quite early and went ‘brr . . .’ with his lips—something he always did on waking up, though he himself was unable to explain the reason for it. Kovalev stretched and asked for the little mirror that stood on the table. He wished to look at a pimple that had popped out

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on his nose the previous evening; but, to his greatest amazement, he saw that instead of a nose he had a perfectly smooth place! Frightened, Kovalev asked for water and wiped his eyes with a towel: right, no nose! He began feeling with his hand to find out if he might be asleep, but it seemed he was not. The collegiate assessor Kovalev jumped out of bed, shook himself: no nose! . . . He ordered his man to dress him and flew straight to the chief of police.” 4. See Troubetzkoy 1996, 46: “To not see me as myself, to see me how the others see me, to see me as an other, introduces . . . inside my ego a distance, a scission, a cleavage, an irremediable alterity. This is the great error of narcissism, the error of the mirror, the wandering in front of the mirror. There is nothing more dangerous than the mirror.” 5. See also Zarathustra’s alarming dream from TSZ, II, “The Child with the Mirror”: “‘Why was I so startled in my dream that I awoke? Did not a child step up to me, carrying a mirror? ‘O Zarathustra,’ the child said to me, ‘look at yourself in the mirror.’ But when I looked into the mirror I cried out, and my heart was shaken: for it was not myself I saw, but a devil’s grimace and scornful laughter.” See SNZ II, p. 868: “The dream of the devil’s face when Zarathustra showed his other side becomes more understandable—he is the devil himself.” See also Frey-Rohn (1989, 110–111): “What was this ghastly self-reflection? To all appearances, the dark opponent of the hitherto unchallenged concept of a God embracing both light and darkness—the devil—had come to life and was stepping forward. A hazardous situation developed, in which the dark, instinctual side, until now largely of theoretical import alone, was activated and threatened to rip the soul apart by opposing the ‘divine’ with the ‘satanic.’ In repressing the emotional situation, his ego ran the risk of being overrun by the powerful, super-personal satanic complex, which revealed itself immediately afterwards as an exaggerated feeling of mission.” 6. See chapter 1. 7. Eminescu’s Hyperion reflects at the end of the poem Lucifer (1882, 178): “Still earth shall only earth remain,/ . . . And I in my own kingdom reign/ Immutable and cold.//” (Eminescu 1964, 178—Trans. Corneliu M. Popescu). 8. See TSZ, III, “The Wanderer”: “I am a wanderer and a mountain climber. . . . And whatever may yet come to me as destiny and experience will include some wandering and mountain climbing: in the end, one experiences only oneself [man erlebt endlich nur noch sich selber].” See also TSZ, I, “On the Way of the Creator”: “But the worst enemy you can encounter will always be you, yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caves and woods.” 9. “You must wish to consume yourself in your own flame: how could you wish to become new unless you had first become ashes!” (TSZ, I, ‘On the Way of the Creator’) 10. According to Jungian typology, there are two attitudes (introversion, oriented toward inside, and extraversion, oriented toward outside) and four cognitive functions: thinking (for the exercise of the intellect), intuition (for the perception of the essence of a situation, often through irrational means), sensation (the function which tests reality), and feeling (the function of the expression of the affects). If my superior function is thinking, my auxiliary function can be intuition, the third (partly conscious,

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partly unconscious) will be sensation and my inferior function (completely situated in the unconscious, surprising me when it takes over) will be feeling. The excessive use of the thinking function can give the impression of a robot, of an intellectual computer and the repression of the feeling function is similar to an autistic “death of the soul,” a certain objectifying coolness. The therapy of a thinking type should make him or her aware of the high temperature of the feelings of the fact that human beings are very sensitive about their feelings, which are considered more important than some logical-rational operations. The excessive use of the intuitive function is similar to an “eagle eye’s view,” of a general perspective from the above, which does not care for the concrete, for the particular and the huge distances between the various elements. “From the heights of Notre-Dame, I cannot, when I like, feel myself to be on equal footing with those who, enclosed within those walls, there minutely pursue incomprehensible tasks. High places attract those who wish to look over the world with an eagle-eye view” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 77–78). The repression of the sensitive function is a symptom of devitalization; the feeling of an “unlived life” persists. The therapy of the intuitive function should make him or her train to effectively perceive things, to feel their texture and particularity. The superior function determines the individual type. For instance, Immanuel Kant appears to have been a pure thinking type. Schopenhauer may be considered a thinking type with intuition as auxiliary function. Nietzsche is an intuitive type, with thinking as auxiliary function. We might guess that Cioran was a feeling type with intuition as auxiliary function. Heidegger and Freud may have been sensation types, with thinking as auxiliary function. 11. See also Gray (2015, 53–54): “Dick’s propensity to paranoia was exacerbated by his style of life—not least his excessive use of amphetamines. But his was paranoia of a peculiar kind, one that articulated an entire world-view—a highly distinctive version of Gnosticism. With its vision of the world as being ruled by an evil demiurge Gnosticism is, in effect, the metaphysical version of paranoia. Paranoid delusion is often a reaction against insignificance—the sense, often well founded, of counting for nothing in the world. Dick’s paranoia was of this kind. By seeking a sense of significance, he became familiar with the dark side of a world where nothing is without meaning.” 12. See for instance The Tenant (1976), which can be read in a Freudian manner, associating paranoia with feminization. Polanski’s movie is based on Roland Topor’s novel, Le locataire chimérique (1964): the main character, the architect Trelkovski, played by Polanski, rents an apartment from a suicidal Egyptologist, Simone Choule. Slowly, Trelkovski comes to believe that the neighbors have forced Simone to commit suicide and that he is the next to be sacrificed. Here is a glimpse of his paranoid “argument”: “Trelkovski: They’re trying to kill me. They’ll drive me to suicide. Stella: What are you talking about? Who’s trying to kill you? Trelkovski: Stella, I’ve been lying to you. I’m living in her apartment. Stella: Whose apartment? Trelkovski: Simone’s. I've rented Simone Choule's apartment. Stella: How did you rent it? Trelkovski: She’s dead because of the neighbours. It was a plot.

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Stella: Plot against Simone? You’re insane. Trelkovski: I’m not insane. Listen. They forced her to commit suicide. I can prove it. And they’re trying to do the same thing to me. Everything’s ready. They worked it all out, every detail. Do you know what they’ve been doing to me? It’s so appalling, so incredible that I can hardly tell you. It’s true, I swear it. Stella: Tell me. Tell me, I’m listening. Trelkovski: They’ve been trying to turn me into Simone Choule” (Polanski 1976). 13. See Heissenbüttel (1980, 70) for a sample of postmodern confusion of temporal planes: “It was yesterday. Was it yesterday? Or will it really be just tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Or today?” [Es war gestern. War es gestern? Oder wird es doch erst morgen sein? Übermorgen? Oder heute?]

Chapter 7

The Shadow of Degeneration Stevenson’s Strange Case (1886)

THE CITY OF THE NIGHT The first meeting with Hyde—which can be found in the first part of the novella, “Story of the Door”—is announced by the sepulchral description of London. “Street after street, and all the folks asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church” (JH 7). The hypnotic depiction of the great city, which seems to deepen in the darkness of the id, prepares the screening of a nightmarish scene: All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. (JH 7)

Who is this mysterious man, intrinsically linked to the honorable Doctor Jekyll, who tramples over a child, as he would squash a bug? Hyde is a special combination of (a) not-man: “It wasn’t like a man” (JH 7); “[T]he man seems hardly human!” (JH 16); (b) devil: “sneering . . . like Satan” (JH 8); “I read Satan’s signature upon [his] face” (JH 16); (c) degenerate: “Something troglodytic” (JH 16); “ape-like fury” (JH 22).

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But let us not anticipate. A year after he mistreats the little girl, a servant observes how the shadowy character beats to death the patriarchal Sir Danvers Carew—an episode that also contains a trait of oedipal revolt (Luckhurst 2006, xvi–xvii). “Mr Hyde . . . clubbed him to the earth. And next moment . . . he was trampling his victim under foot, and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered” (JH 21–2). Hyde’s distinctive feature seems to be the beastly: he regresses into pre-humanity, liberating the violence, the naturalness, and the absolute freedom of the ape. Many interpreters of the novella (Heath 1986, 103; Halberstam 1995, 78–80; Arata 1996, 33–34; Reid 2006, 95) observe that Hyde is described according to Lombroso’s theory of anthropological criminology, popularized in Great Britain by Havelock Ellis. The Italian physician Cesare Lombroso discovered the atavistic criminal contemplating the skull of the famous bandit Vilella: “This was not merely an idea . . . , but a revelation. At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal—an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals” (quoted in Arata 1996, 34). The late Victorian emphasis on degeneration—not only in the Strange Case, but also in the Great God Pan (1890) or Dracula (1897)—hides the “post-Darwinian fear that evolution may be reversible” (Halberstam 1995, 78). If man was “more ape than any ape” (TSZ, prologue, 3), as the para-Darwinian Nietzsche stated, it would only be suitable that Hyde (exceptionally portrayed by Frederic March) in Rouben Mamoulian’s cinematic version of Stevenson’s novella from 1931 is depicted as a chimpanzee-like individual. Just like the shadow stands for the psychological inferiority of the human being, the ape symbolizes its biological inferiority. The ape alludes both to the slumber of human spirit and to the dawn of a certain biological immediacy or the absolute triumph of the instinct (repressed and defamed by our civilization). In the night of id, the animal soul is free (the original, unlawful freedom which does not coincide with responsibility) to experience in all its plenitude the principle of lust. Hyde is a personification of the extraverted sensation function, born from the Faustian “dryness of a life of study” (JH 59), repressed by an introverted intuitive type. Not unlike in “William Wilson,” where we have, from a Freudian perspective, a conflict between ego and superego, in Jekyll and Hyde we find an antithesis between ego and id. The two names—Jekyll and Hyde—are mirrored: “e y/ ye: Jekyll, the I, the je, that kills, represses Hyde, the hidden, the inner he . . . that destroys the unity and the identity of the I, of me; Freud’s Es” (Heath 1986, 96–97). Before further commenting on Hyde, we should note that London is one of the main characters of Stevenson’s book. Jack the Ripper,1 Dorian Gray,2 Dracula,3 or Villiers4 from the Great God Pan all share the hunting ground

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or the inferno of the fin de siècle capital of the world. The “mighty” city is at the same time axis mundi and the road to hell. Jung paraphrases Nietzsche,5 claiming that “[w]hen a tree grows up to heaven its roots reach down to hell” (CW 11, §791). London is not only the essential metropolis of modernity but also “a place of fear and darkness, a labyrinthine hell” (Dryden 2003, 86), “a great flower that opens but at night” (Gallienne 1982, 127) “a city of nightmares” (Machen 2006, 50), “[a] city of perpetual suffering” (Logan 2015) or “a hallucinatory place, never clearly navigable” (Luckhurst 2006, xxviii). London’s Plutonic feature can be captured from the description of Utterson’s trip to Soho, searching for the location of Hyde’s house: It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. (JH 23)

We encounter the trance-like “street to street” again, reminding of Enfield’s hypnotic description from the beginning of the novella. The light cannot wash away the nuances of darkness; on the contrary, the feeble sun rays are devoured by the dark morning, suggesting a day more frightening than the night. Night’s immanence in day, like death’s immanence in life (Cioran 1996, 23), is more threatening than the astronomical presence of night, which will eventually give way to a liberating day. But when the night takes over the reign of the day (similar to the nothing that sprouts in the heart of the being), the light is stained beyond reclaim, the sun is irrevocably dark and the morning will personify the alchemic state of nigredo. The image of the ghostly city reminds us of James Thomson’s The City of Dreadful Night (1874): “The City is of Night; perchance of Death/ But certainly of Night; for never there/ Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath” (Thomson 2005, 4). “The city of the night” symbolizes the geographical realization of the personal night, the spatial fulfillment of the individual inferno. London is the capital of death’s immanence to life, the spectral necropolis where we are all demons in each other’s nightmares. The light is black6 in the metropolis, because “the sun has never visited that city” (Thomson 2005, 4). Moreover,

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London’s light is not “darkness of night, in which objects are seen dimly,” it is a light “turned to blackness,” a “negation of light” (Machen 2006, 62). Under these circumstances, mornings7 duplicate a terrifying night and light becomes stranger than darkness. London is uncanny [unheimlich], the manifestation of an appalling secret. ONTOLOGICAL DUALITY I will go on to explain the genesis of the “inferior personality,” following Jekyll’s report about his experiences in “transcendental medicine” (JH 53). The doctor has discovered in his youth his fundamental duality, the conflict of identity between his “grave” and his exigent side or “[his] imperious desire to carry [his] head high” and his “impatient gaiety of disposition,” which lead him to commit certain—euphemistically speaking—“irregularities” (JH 55). The Victorian self-censorship does not shed light on those “irregularities”: however, one can infer that Jekyll alludes to an excessive libido, repressed by the “dry” respectability of the grave physician. In my opinion, there is nothing deviant about Jekyll’s “irregularities”; but we might think of a certain heterosexual priapism, pushed off by the professional persona in instinctual indifferentiation. Jekyll’s self-conceited superego heads him toward verticality, while his shadow or id practices a subterranean cult of life, longing to feed with sensation. The doctor can be, therefore, accused of an inability to accept his own nature. Moreover, one can say that “the result of Jekyll’s falseness was the accumulation of evil on the inside, in the manner pointed out by the Lord when he spoke of the Pharisees being like whitewashed tombs that look fine on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones” (Sanford 1987, 67; Mt. 23, 27). John A. Sanford argues that Jekyll’s inauthenticity creates Hyde. Not the shadow is responsible for its own darkness: we can find the source of corruption in the body which projects it (CW 7, §35; CW 9/II, §422f.). In Stevenson’s view, ontological duality8 is a constant of human existence: It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations . . . severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature (JH 55). [M]an is not truly one, but truly two (JH 55). It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man. (JH 56) This duality corresponds to the analytical psychological distinction between the persona and the shadow or, according to Jungian typology, to

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the conflict between the superior and inferior function—the fourth function being completely hidden in the individual shadow. While Jekyll uses his intellect and intuition in his professional activity as physician and scientist (“I laboured . . . at the furtherance of knowledge” (JH 55), he represses feeling and sensation in the indifferentiation of his unconscious. Identifying with his Victorian persona, the “transcendental” doctor would like to be absolutely good, following his “upward path” (JH 56) toward virtue. Consequently, he provokes an inflation of the superego, which prepares an autonomization of the shadow. When, in a Luciferian manner, he destroys “the very fortress of identity” (JH 57), he creates a potion that turns him into his evil subpersonality, Edward Hyde. “Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil” (JH 58). The oscillation between good and evil characterizes the human being: a certain ethical “averageness,” which spontaneously stays away from extremes, is mankind’s general trait. Hyde is an antihero, who belongs to the almost impossible sphere of pure negativity, similar to a demon (“pure evil”) and a not-man (“alone in the ranks of mankind”). Similar to Dorian Gray, Hyde enjoys the spectacle of his corruption: “I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine” (JH 57). Moreover, he totally accepts his inferiority, in the manner of the Indian saying Tat Twam Asi: “And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself” (JH 58). Hyde, an “inherently malign and villainous” being, was “drinking pleasure with bestial avidity,” seeking “undignified” (another Victorian euphemism) gratifications (JH 60). Jekyll’s bad faith paralyzes him: while being “aghast” before Hyde’s actions, he considers the other in himself responsible for them. “It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty” (JH 60). Which means that, because of the proclivity for evil (Jekyll is average, Hyde is evil), Hyde begins to take control. The “balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown” (JH 62). An autonomous, livelier subpersonality attacks the ego: “I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse” (JH 62). Facing the danger of completely regressing toward Hyde’s demonism, Jekyll stops taking the potion that turns him into his subpersonality, choosing Jekyll’s inauthentic but more reliable self: “I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor” (JH 63). However, in a modernist fashion, reason is surpassed by passion: “[I]n my case, to be tempted . . . was to fall” (JH 64), notes Jekyll, prefigurating Oscar Wilde: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it” (DG 21). The shadow surges impatiently, compensating for the repressive persona: “My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even

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when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill” (JH 64). Hyde, a being created after the face and likeness of the demon, radicalizes his proclivities toward inhumanity, becoming a murderer: “With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow” (JH 64). Because of the irrevocable propensity toward negativity, resulting from the unequal struggle between absolute evil and an average character, Jekyll begins to spontaneously turn into Hyde, unaided by the potion. In a fragment, where we see the passage from the first person to the third person, where I turns into the “other” (Rimbaud), the mechanism of estrangement and the impossible identification with the shadow become visible: At my appearance . . . the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face—happily for him—yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble. . . . Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. (JH 67)

Jekyll goes on, synthetizing the divorce between ego and shadow: “He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred” (JH 67). This brief diagnosis brings us the aforementioned conjunction between not-man, devil, and degenerate. One might also note that Jekyll does not acknowledge himself as Hyde. “This, too, was myself” (JH 58), observed the doctor when his evil subpersonality was brought to light. Now, the shadow is negated (“He, I say—I cannot say, I”), and I ≠ I. There is a major caesura between the identification with the shadow (that Tat Twam Asi whispered to the devil in the mirror) and the rejection of the shadow as irreducible to ego, belonging to an autonomous and dissociated sphere. We cannot recognize ourselves when we “gaze into the face of absolute evil” (CW 9/II, §19). If Frederic March’s Hyde was degenerate, Spencer Tracy would be a demonic Hyde, in Victor Flemming’s film version from 1941. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF IDENTITY Starting from this “He, I say—I cannot say, I,”9 I will go on to investigate the constitution of the subjectivity at the end of the 19th century in European

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philosophy and literature. Hyde’s novella can be seen as an example of the contestation of the “fortress of identity” (JH 57) in the fashion of Eduard von Hartmann and Friedrich Nietzsche (Heath 1986, 97). According to Hartmann,10 the author of a best-selling Philosophy of Unconscious (1869), there are at least four divisions of the unconscious: (a) the absolute unconscious, which organizes the substance of the universe; (b) the physiological unconscious, which assists the evolution of living beings; (c) the psychological unconscious which predetermines the conscious mental life; (d) the metaphysical unconscious, “the essence of all operations in the universe (Darnoi 1967, 61–74; Ellenberger 1970, 209–210). These traits are divided by Hartmann in many other categories. For instance, a part of the psychic unconscious, that which is not definitely conscious has five other subcategories, such as the inferiorly conscious, the obscurely and indistinctly conscious, the unobserved in the content of consciousness, and so on (Hartmann 1900, 273–290; Darnoi 1967, 65–67). Hartmann combines the Schopenhauerian voluntarism with the Hegelian idealism, claiming that “a highly intelligent although blind dynamism” underlies the visible universe (Ellenberger 1970, 210). The phenomenology of the unconscious presented by the Schopenhauerian disciple, with its enormous compartmentalization, brings us closer to Stevenson’s insight: the subject is double, if not multiple. Another assault on the “fortress of identity” is found in Nietzsche’s posthumous fragments: The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? A kind of aristocracy of “cells” in which dominion resides? To be sure, an aristocracy of equals, used to ruling jointly and understanding how to command? My hypothes[is]: The subject as multiplicity (WP 490).

This “aristocracy of equals” breaks down both logical principles of identity and noncontradiction and the Cartesian cogito, the founding postulates of classical individualism. The philosopher and physician Ernst Mach also attacks in his work Beiträgen zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886) the principle of the unitary subject, claiming that the ego is just a “bundle of sensations” (Mach 1918, 19–20). To establish his anti-metaphysical stance, Mach quotes one of Lichtenberg’s aphorisms: “It thinks, we should say, just as one says, it lightnings. To say cogito is already too much if we translate it as I think. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical necessity” (Lichtenberg 2012, 152). According to Mark Currie (1996, 119), a multiple subject (Jekyll 1 + Jekyll 2 + Hyde) is in fact the main character from the Strange Case. The British author identifies a “double schizophrenia,” a true “quadrophrenia” in

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Stevenson’s book. Speaking of Jekyll’s inner division, Currie refers to “the less obvious doubleness of the narrator and the narrated, representing the kind of schizophrenia which will occur when narrated time catches up with the time of narration and temporal distance collapses into the present.” The double duality consists of two separate points: not only Jekyll refers to himself in the third person, but also there is a greater fissure between Jekyll as a narrative subject and Jekyll as a narrative object. Stevenson writes: Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered. (JH 60)

We can approach Currie’s ingenious idea referring to temporality: Jekyll 2 is different from Jekyll 1 just like Hyde is different from Jekyll. Jekyll 1 evolves toward Jekyll 2. The complexity of this situation can be augmented with the observation that there also are two Hydes. Using Stephen Arata’s idea, who concerns himself with Hyde’s evolution, one might say that the degenerated Hyde 1 begins to turn into a civilized gentleman, so that Hyde 2 is “no longer Jekyll’s opposite but his mirror image” (Arata 1996, 39–40). Therefore, in this case, we have a triple duality, a “sexophrenia” (Jekyll vs. Hyde, Jekyll 1 vs. Jekyll 2, Hyde 1 vs. Hyde 2). The Nietzschean idea of subjective multiplicity is also explored by Oscar Wilde: Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray’s opinion. He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. (DG 137)

The author of Dorian Gray undermines not only the “fortress of identity” but also the notion of authenticity understood as personal truth; in fact, one of his interpreters reads Wilde as a proponent of “authentic insincerity” (Arata 1996, 59). The praise of the disjunction modeled on the principle “I am not what I am,” the apology of a lie creating personal complexity reminds us of Frederic W. H. Myers’s idea from an essay published in the same year

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as Stevenson’s work (1886): “The multiplex and mutable character of that which we know as the Personality of man” (Myers 1886, 648). One might say that Jekyll and Hyde are “polar twins” (JH 56) or coheirs “to death” (JH 69), who hate and despise each other. Jekyll sees Hyde as a demonic double or as a devilish figment of the id, commissioned to fulfill the doctor’s damnation. Hyde hates Jekyll because he resents “the dislike with which he was himself regarded” (JH 69), writing blasphemies on the pages of the Bible and destroying the portrait of Jekyll’s father. Taking into account that “the primal father was the original image of God” (Freud 1961b, 42), that attack of the paternal authority can be seen as a satanic aggression of the divine principle. It is also a call to arms against the superego, which “retains the character of the father” (Freud 1989, 30). Just like Jekyll’s persona, the superego with “my imperious desire to carry my head high” (JH 55) failed disastrously: their untruthfulness repressed a deeper and more undifferentiated shadow. But Hyde’s “love of life” is “wonderful”: “When I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him” (JH 69). Despite his evil character, Hyde possesses a Dionysian lust for life: he “is a beast with a beast’s soul, an organism that gives unquestioning obedience to instinct” (CW 7, §35). Hyde has fulfilled his animalic nature, saying “yes” to both life and instinct. Despite his inferiority, he is more alive and, from an extramoral perspective, more authentic than Jekyll. “It would appear that, evil though Hyde was, God preferred him to Jekyll,” writes the Episcopalian pastor John A. Sanford. “Why would this be so? Because Hyde, however evil, was genuine, whereas Jekyll was a sham. God . . . used Hyde to destroy Jekyll because Jekyll’s false life was an affront to his Creator” (Sanford 1987, 48). There is a stark contrast between the Jekyll’s monstrous falsity and Hyde’s energetic authenticity. Hyde’s vitality is also appreciated by Andrew Lang, one of the first critics of the novella: “Not for nothing did Nature leave us all savages under our white skins” (quoted in Luckhurst 2006, xxxi). According to Frank McLynn, Jekyll and Hyde deals with “the kind of darkness in the heart of human beings that would produce the death camps of the twentieth century” (quoted in Dryden 2003, 74). How can we understand this affirmation? Hyde’s case invites us to acknowledge in ourselves the inclination toward absolute demonism: the anthropological potentiality to hide inside a shadow as dense as Adolf Hitler’s. We are co-responsible for Auschwitz and Dachau, co-responsible for the murder of our fellow creatures in gas chambers, because of the continuity of identity between us and the worst from us: “In Hitler, every German should have seen his own shadow, his own worst danger” (CW 10, §455). We would like to compare ourselves to saints or heroes, but we are much closer to the people who have crucified

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Jesus or have lynched Hypatia. Hyde’s adventure discloses the truth that there are inside us territories as dark as the ninth circle of hell. Both Judas and the Lord of Lies appreciate and feed from our inferiority. Like Milton’s Lucifer, we can say: “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell” (Milton 2005, 107). The acknowledgment of the inner demonism alludes to the withdrawal of projections or to the Jungian concept of the integration of the shadow,11 a term which “refers to the psychological act of ownership: that is myself!” (Stein 1995, 19) NOTES 1. An article from Pall Mall Gazette (September 8, 1888) compares Jack the Ripper’s brutal murders with Hyde’s ferocity: “There certainly seems to be a tolerably realistic impersonification of Mr. Hyde at large in Whitechapel. The Savage of Civilization whom we are raising by the hundred thousand in our slums is quite as capable of bathing his hands in blood as any Sioux who ever scalped a foe” (quoted in Curtis 2001, 126). 2. “Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimlylit streets, past gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses” (DG 86). 3. “I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is” (Stoker 1995, 31). 4. “It’s a curious thing, Austin, to be alone in London at night, the gas-lamps stretching away in perspective, and the dead silence, and then perhaps the rush and clatter of a hansom on the stones, and the fire starting up under the horse's hoofs” (Machen 2006, 51). 5. “But it is with man as it is with the tree. The more he aspires to the height and light, the more strongly do his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep—into evil” (TSZ, I, “On the Tree on the Mountainside”). 6. “Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;/ A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness” (Jb. 10, 21–2). 7. See Novalis, Hymns to the Night: “Now I know when the final morning will be—when Light will no longer frighten away the Night and love—when sleeping will be forever just one unsuspendable dream” (Novalis 1988, 19). 8. Ontological duality is prefigured by Nerval: “Every man has a double. . . . In everyone is a spectator and an actor, one who speaks and one who answers” [L’homme est double . . . Il y a en tout homme un spectateur et un acteur, celui qui parle et celui qui répond] (Nerval 1996, 30). See also Dr. Jekyll’s statement from Penny Dreadful: “We are all two things in a way, are we not? Deep in the marrow. Angel and Devil. Light and dark. The pull between the two is the active verb which energizes our lives” (Logan 2016). See also Blake (2002, 163): “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call

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Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.” 9. The inability to refer to oneself in the first person is a symptom of schizophrenia (Currie 1998, 119). 10. Hartmann’s book was translated into French in 1877 and his Schopenhauerian vision of the unconscious influenced Maupassant in his description of the “The Horla” (Kessler 1995, xlii–xliii). 11. See appendix 4.

Chapter 8

The Empty Mirror Maupassant’s “The Horla” (1887)

PHENOMENOLOGY OF ANXIETY Anxiety is present in one of the earliest entries of Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla”’s diarist. On May 16, he writes: “I am constantly aware of a feeling of imminent danger, and I sense some impending disaster or the approach of death, and it all amounts to a presentiment which is quite likely the first sign of some illness which has yet to declare itself, but is already germinating in my blood and in my flesh” (H 277). That sense of impending disaster [un malheur qui vient] reminds us of one of Kierkegaard’s statements,1 which marks the birth of the phenomenology of anxiety (“a more precise and correct linguistic use links anxiety with the future” (Kierkegaard 1980a, 197)) or of the paradoxical Cioranian insight (“anxiety . . . a sort of remembrance of the future?” (Cioran 1997, 72)). Moreover, the anticipatory characteristic of the affect described by Maupassant can be analyzed in the context of Heidegger’s treatment of the concept in Being and Time: “As something threatening, what is harmful . . . is coming near” [Das Abträgliche . . . als Drohendes . . . naht] (Heidegger 1996, 132). One can claim that the distance which must be covered by the Drohendes (the displacement of the future trauma) in its way to the Dasein (the fact that “I” am here and the “enemy” is not (yet) here) only feeds anxiety, which in turn becomes denser and darker. This coming close [es naht] (the feeling that you are followed, surrounded or under siege) is more terrifying than the unavoidable meeting with disaster [es ist schon da]. One could clarify this idea through the well-known Cioranian2 association between anxiety and death: “The only fear is, in fact, the fear of death” (Cioran 1996, 26). The Romanian philosopher seems to suggest that the source of every anxiety is the fear of death: had death never existed, we would be immune to fear. Only 101

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when we meet death, when Epicurus’s death is really “here,” we are done with anxiety, because the Abträgliche has already harassed us and the Birnam Wood “marches on the castle of Dunsinane” (Levinas 1987, 72), besieging Macbeth. But when death vibrates from the distance, when the Birnam Wood3 only begins to murmur, when the threat begins its gloomy ritual, the black sun of anxiety hypnotically rises at the horizon. The anxiety of the narrator takes shape (on May 25) with the “dying of the light,” when the Apollonian lights of awareness are conquered by the Plutonic Unheimlichkeit of the id: “As evening approaches, an incomprehensible feeling of anxiety comes over me, as though the night ahead held some terrible threat” (H 277). The character seems to understand that night brings along with it a Harrowing of Hell or even a soteriological attack: Will I emerge safe after the dominion of darkness, after the infernal trap that seeks to shatter my soul? We are reminded here of the terrible description of the “infinite” night from the story “The Little Roque Girl”: “But night, opaque night denser than walls, night, empty and infinite and so black and fathomless that terrifying things reach out and touch us, night when we feel horror stirring, mysteriously prowling—night seemed to him to hide some unknown, imminent, threatening danger” (Maupassant 1998, 229). Beyond the abstract intimations of anxiety, which we all experience as existential subjects, the immersion into sleep as in “a pit of stagnant water” [un gouffre d’eau stagnante] (another symbol of the id, after the terrifying night), brings us, not unlike in the painting Nightmare by Henri Fuseli, the concrete feeling of anxiety: “I get into bed and wait for sleep as some await their executioner. . . . I fall into sleep as a man falls into a pit of stagnant water to drown. . . . I’m also aware of the approach of someone who looks at me, touches me, gets onto the bed, kneels on my chest, takes my neck in both hands, and squeezes and squeezes with all his strength” (May 25, H 277). Comparable to Fuseli’s incubus, the “presence” described by the narrator on July 4 steps over his chest, “sucking the life out of me through my mouth, yes, drawing my life out of me like a leech” (H 281). This expression shows that between the main character and the demonic apparition, between ego and shadow (or servant and master, in Hegelian terms), a life-and-death battle is about to take place. There can be no armistice between two parties that share as battleground a unique body. In a fragment reminiscent of Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll (“Man is not truly one, but truly two” (H 55)), Maupassant’s narrator infers the fundamental duality of the human being [il y a deux êtres en nous], who is at the same time A and non-A, violating the principle of noncontradiction: “If so, I have been walking in my sleep and, without knowing it, living a mysterious double life which makes a man suspect that two separate beings exist inside us, or that there are times, when our soul is lulled and torpid, when an unknown, invisible alien takes over

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our captive body which it obeys as it obeys us, only even more readily” (H 282). The nightmare of possession, made famous by the horror movie tradition, fuels this fear of the shadow, understood as radical alterity. Maupassant personifies the shadowy figure, which literally “sucks the life” out of us. However, bracketing the phenomenology of anxiety from “The Horla,” isn’t it obvious that in the night of Dasein, in the depths of our id, resides someone else? Perhaps we all hide a shadowy subpersonality, an inner alter ego, a deeper das Andere, whom we anticipate in all our fierceness, in our repressed fanaticism. . . . And maybe like Rimbaud or Nietzsche, we have all been concealing an inner Dr. Jekyll, a subliminal Tyler Durden, an autonomous Doppelgänger, whom we are destined to meet only at the end of our psychoses. When the pale light of awareness fades away, we tend to switch to our inner alterity. The narrator even provides us more concrete actuality on August 6, using the Jungian function of sensation, one that offers immediate access to reality: “This time, I know I’m not mad. I’ve seen him! I saw him with my own eyes!4 There’s no doubt in my mind now: I saw him! My blood still runs cold. I can still feel the fear in my bones. I saw him!” (H 290). From the nightmarish intuition of Fuseli’s succubus, who crushes the narrator’s chest and feeds with his prāṇa, we are led to the permanent sensation of possession, of sharing the same body: “I feel him near me, spying on me, watching, probing, dominating me” (August 8, H 292). Where ego once ruled, there is only shadow, the proverbial light of the consciousness dimming in the presence of darkness. It seems that we are listening to a sonata of possession and dominance in four movements: 1. allegro furioso: “I have lost the ability to will anything: but someone else is doing my willing for me; and I do what he says” (August 13, H 292). 2. largo: “I am nothing inside, merely a spectator enslaved and terrified by everything I do” (August 14, H 293). 3. scherzo: “What sort of creature is it who has taken control of me? He is invisible, unknowable: is he a roving member of some supernatural race?” (August 15, H 293). 4. presto agitato: “It is as if men, from the moment they began to think, have always sensed the presence of a new kind of being whom they have feared, stronger than they are, who will one day be their successor in this world” (August 17, H 294). From (1) and (2) one might derive the “blackening” of the ego, the death of the inner sun, which becomes the puppet of an evil director. Will the frightening master (“a roving member of some supernatural race,” “an occult

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being,” “a hazy phantom . . . born of fear,” August 15–17, H 93–4) be man’s successor? (A question left for the end of this chapter.) A key scene from Horla takes place on August 19 (a date repeated in the diary: proof of the narrator’s confusion descending into madness), when the main character stalks the monster, desiring to “to gaze into the face of absolute evil” (CW 9/II, §19) or to “stare . . . into an abyss” (BGE 69). So I was sitting there, pretending to write to allay his suspicions, for he too was watching me. Then all at once I sensed that he was there, reading over my shoulder, almost touching my ear. I leaped up with my arms out and turned round so quickly that I almost fell over. And then . . .? It was as bright as day, but I could not see myself in my mirror! . . . It was empty, very bright, bursting with light! But my reflection was not there . . . and I was standing directly in front of it! I could see the tall, clear glass from top to bottom. (H 299)

In empirical terms, the Horla blocks the narrator’s reflection; the shadow stands between the mirror and the ego. In symbolical terms, analogous to Tolkien’s Sauron or to the demon from the horror production The Blair Witch Project (1999), the absolute evil is invisible (and vice versa). We can observe two details. First, when someone fails to see himself in a mirror, we might say that this is a classic symptom of derealization, of the breaking down of consciousness. His identity (that famous A=A of Schelling and Fichte) is shattered: he is no longer himself. Second, losing his “spatial root,” he flies beyond the territory of beings, beyond the Dasein GPS, being transported in a Neverland of the id where “la vida es un mal sueño.” Transgressing reality, he enters the realm of dreams. A quote from Maupassant’s letters, proved to be apocryphal, but very useful in this context, emphasizes the deep connection between the losing of one’s reflection and the dissolution of identity: “Do you know that when I stare for a while at my own image reflected in a mirror, I have sometimes felt myself losing the notion of the ego?” (quoted in Kessler 1995, xlv). Discussing the narrator’s alleged psychosis, many critics observed that insanity is not present in the text from a syntactical point of view. First, “the narrator’s logical coherence shows no sign of deteriorating and there is no trace of pathological semantic or syntactic distortion” (Traill 1996, 132). Second, in contrast with, for instance, Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” (1835), Maupassant doesn’t record “the slow disintegration of the logical thought. Madness is contained in the text, but it is not visible in the form of the text” (Camet 1995, 160). From this refusal of the portrayal of the psychotic disorganization, the French writer adds to the ambiguity of the story: if the character is not mad, the threat is even more real. However, the clinging to reason of the diarist could be the final defense of a superego harassed by id’s “dying of the light.”

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THE MIRROR OF THE NOT-MAN The Cioranian concept of the not-man (Bolea 2015b, 33–34) may be used to define an anthropological mutation which might supervene in the destiny of the Dasein. The monster called the Horla could be well characterized—not only logically but also psychologically—as inhuman. Let us take a look at the Cioranian texts before judging if the Horla can be redefined as a not-man. There are among men some who are not far above plants or animals, and therefore aspire to humanity. But those who know what it means to be Man long to be anything but . . . If the difference between Man and animal lies in the fact that the animal can only be an animal whereas man can also be not-man—that is, something other than himself—then I am not-man. (Cioran 1996, 68–69) Cynics are no longer supermen or submen, they are post-men. One begins to understand and even love them, when a confession addressed to one or maybe to no one escapes from the pains of our absence: I was man and I no longer am now. (Cioran 1991a, 127)

The not-man is man’s radical alterity. Moreover, just like the Nietzschean Übermensch, the not-man can be a symbol for a future development of the human being, for a genetic project of self-transcendence. The man becomes not-man, Cioran shows, only when he is different from himself. Furthermore, there comes a moment when humanity becomes our past, when we can no longer be human. This touch of inhumanity is visible in Jean Lorrain’s short story “The Possessed” (1895). If Maupassant’s not-man is a devilish invisible being, who terrorizes its host and drives him to suicide, Lorrain’s not-man adds to this extraterrestrial component (shared with Horla and even Cthulhu) a disgusting animal feature. Because of his propensity to a shattering anxiety, J. Lorrain’s narrator cannot distinguish between reality and hallucination, dehumanizing his peers and transforming the concept of not-man through a reverse Nietzscheanism into a subman: I’d taken the tram from the Louvre to Sèvres, and the distressing effect of the suburban landscape . . . brought me to such a pitch of anguish while I watched all those ugly faces, that I had to get off near the Pont-du-Jour. I couldn’t bear it any longer; I was possessed, so sharply that I could have cried out for merciful relief, by the conviction that all the people facing and sitting to either side of me were beings of some alien race, half-beast and half-man: the disgusting products of I don’t know what monstrous copulations, anthropoid creatures far closer to the animal than to the human, with every foul instinct and all the viciousness of wolves, snakes and rats incarnate in their filthy flesh . . . [R]ight in front of

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me, there was a cigarette-smoking hag with a long, mottled neck like a stork’s, and hard, widely-spaced little teeth set in a mouth that gaped like the mouth of a fish. . . . That foolish woman seemed to me to be the archetype of an entire species, and as I looked at her, an unreasoning dread took hold of me that if she should open her mouth to speak, no human language would emerge, but only the clucking and cackling of a hen. (Lorrain 2001, 128–129)

The not-man can also be observed in Barry Pain’s lesser known story “Diary of a God” (1901). Pain is clearly influenced by Maupassant and Gogol, describing the descent into madness of his diarist. The combination between psychosis (i.e., paranoid God complex), antihumanism (in Lautréamont’s fashion), and ontological solitude (based on extreme isolation) is present in Pain’s text. Furthermore, there is a certain ambiguity between life and (existential) death which results from the antihumanism of the narrator: the diarist feels that he is the last man in the world, and that his contemporaries do not exist for him. However, he sometimes feels that he is dead and that there is a clear separation between his solipsistic world and the “real” external world, between his inner inferno/paradise and the hell of “other people”: When I am out there [in the moors] in a place where I cannot see any trees, or houses, or living things, I am the last person left alive in the world. I am a kind of god. . . . I never knew what real independence was before. . . . It seems to me now such a common and despicable thing to live among people, and to have one’s character and one’s ways altered by what they are going to think. . . . The people are all right, but they are people, and therefore insufferable. I can no longer live or breathe in a place where I see people, or trees which people have planted, or houses which people have built. It is an ugly world—people. . . . I think I must be dead, because there seems to be a line ruled straight through my life, and the things which happened on the further side of the line are not real. (Pain 1901, 15–20)

Echoing Maupassant, Lorrain, and Pain, we could say that the Dasein veers toward psychosis when he encounters the not-man, in his self or the outer world. The transgression of humanity brings us closer to the feeling of the numinous. After all, this world can be compared to an ontological prison, where humanity was jailed for thousands of years. Therefore, inhumanity is, in Maupassant’s writing as well, an evolutionary experience. From a theological point of view, the Horla can be seen as a not-man. The devilish aspect of the monster has already been exposed, being obvious that it departs from the pattern of “likeness” (Gen. 1, 27). From a psychological perspective, Horla is the bringer of madness and of the dissolution of

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identity, splitting and destroying the ego. Both Maupassant and Cioran show that the not-man is an extreme alterity, who can succeed once the human race is enslaved: “After man, the Horla” (the final entry from September 10, H 302). Now I know, I understand: man’s reign on earth is over. The thing is here, the One so feared by early peoples in their primitive terrors! The One whom anxious priests fought with exorcisms! The One whom sorcerers summoned at dead of night but never did see. . . . From the beginning, the vulture has eaten the dove; the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has slain the lion with arrow, sword and gun. But the Horla will use man as we have used the horse and the ox: he will make us his chattel, his slave, and his food by using nothing more than the power of his will. Woe betide us! Yet sometimes an animal will turn and kill its master!” (August 19, H 296-7)

Echoing Nietzsche’s para-Darwinism, Maupassant sketches an evolutionary narrative, which does not end with the crowning of man, as medieval theologians would have conceived it. The breaking down of the anthropological structures of humanity (along with the death of God) brings us closer to an almost Lautréamontian dominion of the not-man. The mentioning of the human being as a mere predator is ironic and disdainful. We have mastered the animals with “arrow, sword and gun”: nothing is said of reason, intellect, or soul. The Horla will be the successor of the man also because humanity distinguished itself through the disregard of other species, which were either imprisoned or exterminated. The only comfort of the human race is to leave the masters’ side [Herren] and join the Nietzschean herd [Herden] and hopefully start a “revolt of the slaves.” Following the principle of anarchism (“I shall be the enemy of every higher power” (Stirner 1995, 165)), man should aspire to the revenge of the “insulted and humiliated,” as Dostoyevsky would have put it. “After all, dogs sometimes bite their masters; don’t they go for the throat?” (August 17, H, 295). NOTES 1. See also Freud (1961a, 6): “‘Anxiety’ describes a particular state of expecting danger or preparing for it, even though it may be an unknown one.” 2. Cioran is strongly influenced by Schopenhauer (2018, 412): “The greatest of evils, the worst thing that could ever be threatened, is death, the greatest anxiety the anxiety of death.”

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3. See Cioran (1976, 111): “I have always lived with the vision of a host of moments marching against me. Time will have been my Birnam Wood.” 4. Barry Pain (1901, 21) echoes Maupassant: “I can without doubt believe the evidence of my own senses. I have seen, and I have heard. I know now that I am a god.”

Chapter 9

Genesis of the Shadow Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

“YOUR EYES SHALL BE OPENED” There are three Jungian shadows in The Picture of Dorian Gray: Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray 2, Lord Henry’s Luciferian creation and—of course— the physical portrait, the mirror of Dorian’s decadence. The “unspotted” Dorian (DG 19), the hero before his Fall, can be called Dorian Gray 1, in contrast with his demonic and nihilist version, Dorian Gray 2. In my reading, the second chapter of Wilde’s novel is the philosophical key of the whole novel: the original shadow (Lord Henry) recreates here Dorian from the innocent prototype of a charming but unaware young man. This section is as important as the third chapter from Genesis, where the snake seduces Adam and Eve, staining their primary innocence. One cannot say too many things about Dorian Gray 1: “There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity” (DG 19). Before being “awaken” by Lord Wotton from the abyss of “self-unawareness” (an awakening just as brutal as Neo’s from The Matrix when he chooses the red pill1), Dorian Gray was not yet a character. His fabulous beauty makes him a desirable erotic object. The ones around him project in his being their passion or friendship, charging and symbolizing Dorian affectively. “Before meeting Henry, and his own likeness, Dorian is indeed a brainless beautiful creature. He is somewhat spoiled but spoiled in a childlike way; he is good-natured, spontaneous, and generous, an absolute innocent” (Oates 1980, 423). Dorian Gray 1 is truly a non-person, a “pre-individual,” a child who is still sleeping in the night of unconsciousness. Fortunately, Dorian is an ambiguous non-person: if he were pure void or absolute nothingness, he would never be able to change. The first Dorian has 109

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a huge well of potentiality: a quality which fascinates us in children in the same measure as the “dead end” actuality scares us in elderly people. This potentiality contains an almost perverse feature resulting from the contradiction between purity and the thirst for infinity: innocence sings its swan song before awakening. One can almost say that a seducer like Henry Wotton smells the perfume of anxiety (the Kierkegaardian dream of the soul about the spirit) just as the snake from Genesis has a nose for the incompleteness and the desire for transgression of the original couple. In a self-referential quote, Lord Wotton, the one who will eventually turn Dorian into his own shadow, speaks of the nature of influence: “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. . . . He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him” (DG 20). To influence someone is to provoke a personality transfer, impressing oneself in the texture of someone else’s being, reduplicating the other in one’s own image. From this perspective, the snake from Genesis wanted to impress his own face on Adam and Eve, desiring to become their spiritual creator. If God physically created them, the snake would spiritually decreate2 them. The snake brings our ancestors at the brink of the abyss with a most tempting offer: “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3, 3–5). “Ye shall be as gods” [eritis sicut Deus], “your eyes shall be opened” [aperientur oculi vestri]: the snake promised Adam and Eve everything, selfawareness and the access to the absolute Being, where essence and existence do coincide. “To be man means to reach toward being God. Or if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God” (Sartre 1978, 566). The origin of this incommensurate desire derives from the promise of the “enemy.” Seen from the causal perspective of lost innocence, the Fall is a tragedy; seen from the teleological perspective of the birth of self-consciousness, the decreation from Eden is a Hegelian revolution. We should not cry for the wasted paradise, we should be grateful for the gifts of awareness and autonomy. For Hegel, the Garden of Eden was “a prison appropriate for animals who are bound by natural necessity. . . . By partaking of the tree of knowledge, humanity transcends its animal nature and becomes like God” (Stewart 2003, 412–413). Just like the tempter, Lord Wotton offers “the Adam-like Dorian” (Oates 1980, 423) what the young man so lacks, that is, being: “The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self” (DG 20). The

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aim of life consists in self-transformation and self-consciousness; the fundamental duty of the Dasein is toward himself: we register here Henry Wotton’s unique temptation for the main character of the novel. The “pre-individual” Dorian is fascinated by the virtuality of this personal America, that is, his own personality. When the Lord promises selfhood to the young man, the painter Basil Hallward (liaison between tempter and tempted) becomes “conscious only that a look had come into the lad’s face that he had never seen there before” (DG 21). Dorian is attracted with the ideal of intense and full existence, which strongly contrasts with the unlived life of Dorian 1, spent in the incubator of unawareness: “I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediævalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal” (DG 21). “We” must overcome repression and denial, “the mutilation of the savage” (DG 21), the ascetic mortifying and the draconic superego of the Christian morals. “Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us” (DG 21), notes Wotton echoing an aphorism from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793): “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence” (Blake 2002, 165). The paradigmatic conflict of the Victorian age, the one between duty and passion is abolished by the unconditional and almost nihilist cult of temptation. “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it” (DG 21). As we have seen, Wotton has a nose for the perfume of anxiety, understood as a Kierkegaardian dream of the soul about the spirit, for the innocent’s desire of transformation and “sin” (“if there are such things as sins”) (DG 20): “You, Mr Gray, . . . you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame” (DG 21). The impact of the Lord’s speech on Dorian is devastating: the words “had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.// Music had stirred him like that” (DG 21–22). The repressive reign of ignorance (to echo Hegel) comes to an end: “There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened” (DG 23). The “Adam-like” Dorian awakens in the garden while the Luciferian Lord Henry explains the ontological principle of hedonism: “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul” (DG 23). (Only sensation can heal the imbalance provoked by intellectual pursuits.) The episode from the garden reminds us the atmosphere of The Doors’ track Newborn Awakening and Louis’s state of mind from Interview with the Vampire before his transformation: “That morning I was not yet a vampire,

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and I saw my last sunrise . . . I watched its whole magnificence for the last time as if it were the first. And then I said farewell to sun light, and set out to become what I became” (Neil Jordan 1994). Jekyll’s rebirth as Hyde derives from the same spiritual territory “I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them” (JH 58). Dorian’s second birth (his conversion from Dorian Gray 1 to Dorian Gray 2) is the essential one: Dorian turns from an object, a beautiful, “unspotted” thing into a fascinating and powerful subject, into an exceptional individual, who will both live and act “beyond good and evil.” We easily forget that recreation is endorsed by decreation, which means that before his rebirth, Dorian suffered in the garden a spiritual death, an ontic break-up with his primary and anxious innocence. Dorian Gray 2 will become, as Lord Wotton, a shadowy personality, attracted to the dark realm of existence. “NEW HEDONISM” Lord Henry adds to the hedonistic ideal of a total existence the promise of a consistent being (“Ye shall be as gods”) and the praise of beauty3 and youth, two qualities that are for the first time perceived by Dorian in their fundamental ephemerality. “You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr Gray . . . And Beauty is a form of Genius—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation” (DG 24), argues the descendant of the snake in a shocking way, speaking for the absolute superiority of the beauty, seemingly transgressing not only the moral register but also the realm of the creative excellence. This extreme eulogy seems to open the way for the surrealist vision, which presupposes a beauty both visceral and numinous, a “convulsive” one (Breton 1994, 160). Beauty is an astral and cosmological event, being one “of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon” (DG 24). The cult of the visible (“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible” (DG 24)) is influenced by Théophile Gautier’s defiant statement: “I am a man for whom the visible world exists” [Je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe]” (quoted in Satzinger 1994, 119). Wotton reveals Dorian to himself, inspiring in him the faithfulness to the present moment, when “the world belongs” to him “for one season” (DG 25), faithfulness which coincides with an enormous horror of the destructive character of time.4 Seemingly, Dorian has met beauty and youth only for one second as poisoned gifts that would mean nothing “tomorrow,” when Wilde’s character will be banished in the mediocre abyss of old age:

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You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it. . . . Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly. . . . Ah! realize your youth while you have it. . . . Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations.5 Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. (DG 24–5)

From the perspective of the “new Hedonism,” the difference between youth and seniority coincides with the distinction between life and death. The old man becomes “unclean because of his vicinity with death” and is considered “a subhuman, a creature who has lost the right to belong to the human race or an imbecile who has forgotten to claim the right to euthanasia” (Vălcan 2011, 44–45). The fear of old age is a subspecies of the fear of death. It would be fairer to say that the fear of old age is a mask of the fear of death because it stains the seemingly limitless potentiality of youth, jamming it with the reality of its ephemerality, whispering to this youth that in the essence it is truly moribund and “sick unto death.” Every instant hides its own memento mori: For there is such a little time that your youth will last—such a little time. . . . But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth! (DG 25)

Dorian Gray 1 was young, beautiful, and unaware—Dorian Gray 2 became aware of his two main qualities (“The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation” (DG 27)) and would do anything to preserve them. Because of his fear of old age6—a version of the fear of death as I have shown above— the hero of the novel breaks away completely from the first version of his personality (what I have called decreation), becoming Dorian Gray 2 and recreating himself through the Faustian ontic transfer7 between him and the picture: “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” (DG 28). The episode from the novel is a reference to the myth of Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “Enchanted by the charms which were his own./ Himself the worshipped and the worshipper,/ He sought himself and was pursued” (Ovid 1958, 77).

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THE ECHOES OF NARCISSISM The revealing narcissism (“The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation” (DG 27)) is the incentive of Dorian’s conversion. The condemnation of narcissism originates in Ovid’s text, when he mentions Narcissus’s “odd love” (Ovid 1958, 75). According to Vera B. Profit (2014, 111), “each and every narcissistic person suffers from a fractured relationship between himself and his surrounding. He/she consistently fails to see reality for what it is: an entity unto itself, with its inherent attributes and exigencies. Due to their overweening self-absorption, these individuals consistently regard reality as an extension of themselves.” Furthermore, according to the Jungian therapist Thomas Moore (1994, 58, 71), “obsessive, but not genuine, self-love leaves no room for intimacy with another. . . . The echoing aspect of narcissism—the feeling that everything in the world is only a reflection of oneself—doesn’t want to give away power. . . . The narcissist is clearly sadistic in his rejection of others and in his feelings of superiority.” According to Vera B. Profit, the solipsism of the narcissist leads him or her to a certain inflation: I = world. A typical case of inflation is found in Nietzsche’s TSZ in the ego’s transgression of the self: “If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! . . . Away with such a god! Rather no god, rather make destiny on one’s own, rather be a fool, rather be a god oneself!” (TSZ, II, “Upon the Blessed Isles,” TSZ, IV, “Retired”). Indeed, there is a resemblance between the ego’s inflation which thinks it can overpower the self and the solipsistic narcissist who stamps his or her face onto the world, transforming the creation into an echo. To declare that “I am the world,” like Narcissus, is another way of saying, like Zarathustra, that “I am God.” “Other than himself, Dorian sees no one. That means that he doesn’t see himself for who he is either” (Profit 2014, 125). One can declare that “I am God” only if one ignores two obviously related aspects: alterity and contingency. The rejection of alterity is already present in Schelling’s and Fichte’s “I=I.”8 Much later, the individualism of existential phenomenology was criticized by Levinas, who dismisses the Heideggerian conception of death because of its indifference of the death of the other (Levinas 2000, 17). The author of Totality and Infinity argues that alterity is a revelation on its own. Moreover, the contingency indubitably proves that we are far from being God or necessary beings. Therefore, only the experience of the contingency can “cure” us from the paranoia of the ego which dethrones the territory of the self. However, a modest version of the “I am God” of the narcissist may be defended: the feeling that “I am (arguably) the most important person from my life” is constitutive for self-confidence and pride. If one expects everything from exteriority (from alterity or destiny), one is deceived in one’s expectations. Of course, not everything is up to you (the manic illusion of

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control), but you should not think it is impossible to minimally influence reality (the depressive powerlessness of the victim). Each success is a conjunction between ego and fate (not a separate victory of either ego, or chance), and each failure is a quadrature of the two terms involved (it often is a manifestation of the contingent of fate). If we renounce solipsism and paranoia, let us keep individualism, with all its liberating might. Furthermore, up to a point, narcissism is sustainable as a gift of selfawareness and of the realization of identity. When one praises innocence, one must ask, like Hegel, if Eden was not a prison of “natural necessity” (Stewart 2003, 412–413). Self-love presupposes an obvious perverse impossibility, on account of the coincidence of the subject and object: “Am I the lover/ Or beloved?” (Ovid 1958, 78) But, at the same time, it is becoming, transformation, fruit of the individuation. If Dorian remained “unspotted,” if Adam lingered in the ontic incubator, we would be deprived of two fundamental narratives, knowing less about ourselves. To choose innocence over narcissism is, according to Michel Onfray (2007, 38), a “ban on intelligence”: “You can do any-thing in this magnificent Garden, except become intelligent—the Tree of Knowledge—or immortal—the Tree of Life. What a fate God has in store for men: stupidity and mortality! . . . Let us then praise Eve who opted for intelligence at risk of death.” Narcissism can be also defended in another way. In both Ovid’s poem and Wilde’s novel, self-love is compared with an inner burning, an excruciating pain: “I’ve loved within the shadow/ Of what I am, and I that love I burn,/ I light the flames and feel their fires within/” (Ovid 1958, 78). The unparalleled sufferance, which proceeds from unattainable love, anticipates the transition from the demonism of the character (who burns in his own hell) to his final transfiguration, when he puts an end to evil with his suicide. We may say that, in this case, suicide signifies—not damnation, but—an end to damnation. Because Dorian, like Narcissus, is visiting hell—understood as “a state of final separateness from God” (Vann 1954, 54). The inferno of pure aestheticism, which minimizes and despises conventional morality, treats alterity and the world as mere echoes of the ego. The ones who consider narcissism a form of sadism choose to ignore the pain of differentiation and the isolation9 of superiority. Narcissus has created from beauty a religion with a single disciple and a unique object of worship. “ETHICS BECOME AESTHETICS” Dorian Gray 2, the dark, shadowy, Luciferian personality, who would even break the sixth commandment, is the impeccable creation of Lord Henry, this follower of the “Dark Force,” who “had begun by vivisecting himself, as

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he had ended by vivisecting others” (DG 56). For Dorian’s master,10 as for Protagoras, “man is measure of all things.” “Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value” (DG 56). Wotton uses the method of natural science to fortify his psychology: he deconstructs his own psyche and one of their acquaintances to increase his self-knowledge. Another 19th-century “biologist,” Turgenev’s nihilistic hero from Fathers and Sons (1862), Bazarov, arrives at a sort of brutal materialism, applying the principles of natural science: “Each one of us has a brain, a spleen and lungs made in the same way and the socalled moral qualities are the same in all of us. The minor variations don’t mean anything” (Turgenev 1998, 84). For Bazarov, man is no more than a “thing.” The Kierkegaardian distinction between individual and species that becomes essential for the difference between man and beast is irrelevant for Turgenev’s character: “One human example is sufficient to judge all the rest” (Ibid.). The Russian nihilist is, therefore, an anti-psychologist. Au contraire, Lord Henry is a connoisseur of the human soul and a disciple of individualism: he increases his insight practicing spiritual deconstruction. Moreover, like Baudelaire, Gautier, and Huysmans, Wotton (and his partisan Dorian with him) flirts with the negative, plucking “flowers of evil”11: “There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them.12 There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature” (DG 56). Lord Henry is a pure aesthete and as we have seen in Nietzsche’s case, aestheticism brings along the destruction of ethics13 or, in other words, is morally indifferent. “No artist has ethical sympathies” (DG 3), we read in Wilde’s bold Preface. Dorian’s transformation, his deviation toward his second personality, is a conscious creation of Wotton, which has nothing to do with the realm of the contingent. The Shadow-Wotton projects himself in the innocent young man to de/restructure him as Dorian Gray 2: “Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow” (DG 37). The exercise of influence is compared once again with the identity transfer, with the “cloning” of the other, who becomes one’s “replica”: “There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one’s own intellectual views echoed back” (DG 37). I must make three observations at this point: first, when I influence the other, when I impress my personality in his spiritual code, the other does not become an alter ego, “another me.” He would evolve in his own terms, “becoming who he is” (not who I am), using what I gave him to find his unique and personal direction. He honors me becoming himself.14 Second, the one I transform would not be able to rise above himself, would not be able

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to receive my influence if he hadn’t possessed in himself a certain capital to welcome this influence (an imbalance, an undeniable disproportion, an inner unrest). Even before receiving my influence, the other is—in a way—already like me: from a certain point of view, the other is “spotted,” turned toward ontic mischief before knowing me. Thus, we should not overestimate the influence of the master: a version of the shadow is encrypted in the spiritual code before the archetypal shadow (Sauron’s eye) exerts its influence. In fact, this pre-shadow prayed from the depths for the archetypal descending of the shadow. We see here that the disciple influenced the master to influence him. Third, when I change the other, I am—in a certain measure—changing myself. The relation between Wotton and Dorian (or the one between Mephistopheles and Faust) is always dynamic. Any transformation presupposes an inner metamorphosis. The picture is the third shadow from Dorian Gray. Wilde doesn’t give too many details concerning the strange correspondence between Dorian’s spirit and the fabric of the painting, which assumes the moral decomposition of the perpetual young man: “Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms, that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas, and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what that soul thought, they realized?” (DG 93) The “new Hedonism” and the ideal of a total existence are experienced by Dorian through the identification with the Jungian function of sensation15 and through the endless pursuit of pleasure. “Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—he was to have all these things” (DG 102). “The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them” (DG 124). Through the picture, “the most magical of mirrors” (DG 103), Dorian will keep track of his decadence sometimes with horror, other times with a sick, perverted pleasure: “On his return he would sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own” (DG 135). According to Wolfgang Maier (1984, 308), the relationship between Dorian and the picture can be compared to that of Jekyll and Hyde from Stevenson’s novella. Just as Jekyll projects his shadow in Hyde to satisfy his bloody impulses, Dorian protects his pristine persona, transferring corruption and negativity into the picture. It is a classic example of dissociation,16 of separation between good and evil, also mentioning that the good which pretends not to acknowledge the evil it produces, which pretends to be innocent despite obvious transgression, comes close to absolute evil. “Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the

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lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay” (JH 58), notes Jekyll. Stevenson’s fragment is mirrored in Basil Hallward’s reflections from Dorian Gray: “But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth—I can’t believe anything against you” (DG 143). Just like it is a sign of intelligence to recognize our “silly” mistakes, an acknowledged inferiority is—not necessarily cured but— curable. Conversely, the unrecognized shadow becomes denser and more Plutonic. Dorian and Jekyll are classical examples of dissociation: on one hand, they enjoy the havoc unleashed by the maenads of the id, who break the barriers of reason and invade the territory of a weaker ego, on the other they see themselves as the heralds of beauty and good, despite their inherent faults. In fact, the portrait is the true Dorian Gray 2 while our character seeks disguise under the mask of Dorian Gray 1. From another perspective, the picture is Dorian’s living corpse,17 a zombie which feeds with negativity, with “sins”: “What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas” (DG 113). While Dorian grows as a sensation type, satisfying his thirst for life, the shadow of the picture grows, becoming “blacker and denser.” “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is” (CW 11, §131). The portrait symbolizes a certain anthropological truth: to become he or she is, any person must become his or her own demon before becoming a god. The shadow reveals our inner devil. The painter Basil, observing the horrifying degradation of the portrait, the collapse of the absolute ideal in the inferno of moral decay, exclaims: “You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr” (DG 150). He reminds us of the famous verses from Baudelaire’s Carrion which also commemorate the hellish decomposition of a sacred ideal: “Yes, you will come to this, my queen,/. . . when you rot underground among/ the bones already there” (Baudelaire 2006b, 36). Maybe this is the fate which modernity has reserved for the intelligible: to be dumped at the junkyard, like a “carrion.” Perhaps all ideals are entwined with their putrefaction in a world constructed on the Nietzschean affirmation “God is dead.” Toward the end of the novel, Lord Henry praises Dorian’s aesthetic-existential fulfillment, who abstained from creating poetic, sculptural, or musical oeuvres, transferring his creating libido into his own life, turning himself into a genuine work of art. “Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets” (DG 207), observes Wotton, emphasizing his previous reflections: “But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting” (DG 57). The argument of the Irish writer reminds us both of Nietzsche18 and Rimbaud.19 Dorian achieves the absolute fulfillment of

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the aesthetical, becoming one of “Life’s masterpieces.” Despite this realisatio, his melancholy (the discrepancy between Dorian Gray 2 and the ghostly Dorian Gray 1, the nostalgia for the lost paradise) leads him to suicide. “He loathed his own beauty” (DG 210), writes Oscar Wilde, almost in Rimbaud’s fashion: “One night, I sat Beauty on my knee.—And I found her bitter.—And I hurt her” (Rimbaud 2003, 195). “It was his beauty—reflects Dorian—that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain” (DG 210). In the manner of Søren Kierkegaard, who discovers the ethical at the end of the aesthetical stage, Wilde contradicts his whole aesthetical nihilism, also depreciating his “beyond good and evil” eulogy of Beauty. Dorian becomes ethical at the end, a splinter of Dorian Gray 1 “finding bitter” the beauty that “destroyed” his life. The identity between Dorian Gray 2 and the picture, on one hand, and the split between the uncreated Dorian Gray 1 and the de/ recreated Dorian Gray 2, on the other, lead the main character to demise. The young man senses the identity with the horrible portrait, living in the existential dimension of the “dead soul”: “It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him” (DG 210). If Dorian Gray had been equivalent with Dorian Gray 2 and the portrait, things would have been much easier: the character would have advanced to a sort of absolute demonism, transgressing any anthropological register. But in the end Wilde revolts against the necessity of the Genesis, against self-affirmation through original sin, against self-awareness and theosis, contra Hegel, Bakunin or Onfray, rediscovering like Cioran and Kierkegaard, the fetal nostalgia of paradise. Dorian Gray 1, the one sacrificed by the Lord Wotton’s decreation, returns from the unconscious, possessing the autonomy of a shadow’s shadow and kills himself, destroying the picture. Why does not Wilde end his novel in a Nietzschean fashion, like Maupassant’s Bel Ami (1885) or like Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s “The Lovely Ardiane’s Secret” (1883)? Why does he punish his character who has fulfilled an aesthetic ideal and has achieved excellency, despite his immoralism? “But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself” (DG 21). The Irish poet succumbed to his fear: his demonism hardly foretells an anti-theology, his philosophy of the “Dark Side” is only a symptom of the repressed Christianity. Like Baudelaire, whose Litanies of Satan (1857) mark a progression to Catholicism, Wilde destroys his ship in the ethical reef. The nihilism of his characters is only a mask of an Eden complex: their sophisticated freedom hides an infantile nostalgia for nonage. Their duality reproduces the quartering of their author, torn between the cult of beauty and the worship of “Adamlike” purity.

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NOTES 1. “You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes” (Wachowski et. Wachowski 1999). 2. I use decreation in a different way than Simone Weil (2002, 32), who defined it as making “something created pass into the uncreated” as opposed to destruction as making “something created pass into nothingness.” My definition is closer to the theories of Bakunin and Nietzsche: decreation must be understood as a sort of creative destruction. See also Cioran (1976, 6): “Unmaking, decreating, is the only task man may take upon himself, if he aspires, as everything suggests, to distinguish himself from the Creator.” 3. See Gautier (1981, 137): beauty is “visible Divinity, palpable happiness descended on earth.” See also Lionel Johnson’s poem, “The Dark Angel” (1894): “And all the things of beauty burn/ With flames of evil ecstasy” (Johnson 1982, 119). See also Refn 2016: “Beauty isn’t everything. Beauty is the only thing.” 4. See Eliade (1963, 51): “Whatever endures wastes away, degenerates, and finally perishes.” See also Fitzgerald (2009, 69): “Life is a process of breaking down.” 5. Jules Destrée’s observation regarding Huysmans’s À rebours (1884) may also be applied to Oscar Wilde’s novel: “This excessive book is nothing but . . . the excessive poem of sensation” (quoted in Urmann 2016, 288). 6. “Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. . . . The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth” (DG 27). 7. He gives away his soul to gain his spirit. 8. “[I]t is the I alone that bestows unity and stability on everything that is. . . . [I]t is the absolute I that furnishes the basis for all form of identity (A=A)” (Schelling 1980, 83). “The proposition A is A (or A = A, since that is the meaning of the logical copula) . . . is admitted to be perfectly certain and established” (Fichte 1982, 94). 9. See Lingua (1995, 129): “Wilde’s narcissists . . . are condemned to the solitude of a tormented consciousness, which reduces to nothing all possibilities of evasion beyond itself.” See also Moores (2010, 112): “The toxic self-love of narcissism prevents one from experiencing self-transcendence.” 10. Lord Wotton’s model is Walter Pater, who wrote in his controversial “Conclusion” of The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873): “To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. . . . While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening” (Pater 1980, 189).

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11. “There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful” (DG 140). 12. See Rimbaud’s similar idea from the letter to Paul Demeny (15.05.1871): “A Poet . . . exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences” (Rimbaud 2008, 116). 13. “Bedelia: You no longer have ethical concerns, Hannibal. You have aesthetical ones. Hannibal: Ethics become aesthetics” (Fuller 2015). 14. See Nietzsche, GS 255: “A: ‘What? You want imitators?’ B: ‘I don’t want people to imitate me; I want everyone to set his own example, which is what I do.’” 15. See also the awakening of the sensitive function in Gide’s The Immoralist (1902): “Up till that day, so it seemed to me, I had felt so little and thought so much that now I was astonished to find my sensations had become as strong as my thoughts.// I say, ‘it seemed to me,’ for from the depths of my past childhood, there now awoke in me the glim­merings of a thousand lost sensations. The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now remembered a whole ancient history of their own—recomposed for themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious years they had been living their own latent, cunning life” (Gide 1958, 32).

16. See appendix 4. 17. See Dorian’s identification with the picture from Penny Dreadful: “Do you not yet comprehend the wicked secret of the immortal? All age and die, save you. All rot and fall to dust, save you. Any child you bear becomes a crone and perishes before your eyes. Any lover withers and shrinks into incontinence and bent, toothless senility. While you, only you, never age. Never tire. Never fade. Alone . . . You have become a perfect, unchanging portrait of yourself” (Logan 2016). 18. “Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art” (BT 18). 19. “I became a fabulous opera” (Rimbaud 2003, 349).

Chapter 10

The Shadow in Philosophy Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)

JUNG AND NIETZSCHE ABOUT ZARATHUSTRA The seminar concerning Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was held in English by Jung between 1934 and 1939 at the Psychology Club in Zurich. It was not the first such seminar, having been anticipated by the Dream Analysis Seminar (1928–1930) and the Visions Seminar (1930–1934), dedicated to archetypal visions painted by Christiana Morgan. During the six years, around eighty people participated in the seminar dedicated to the Nietzsche’s masterpiece. Until 1989, the manuscript of the seminar notes had not been known to the general public, acquiring a legendary and mysterious status, as it had been thought that they would reveal a new facet of analytical psychology. The various persons associated with analytical psychology, who had access to the text of the seminar, were forbidden to copy or quote it without Jung’s permission (Jarett 1989, ix). An example of Jungian analysis applied to Nietzsche, influenced by Jung’s perspective from the seminar, is the book Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond the Values of His Time (1984), belonging to Jungian analyst Liliane Frey-Rohn, one of the participants. After the almost 1,600 pages of the seminar saw publication in 1989, several comparative approaches between the two explorers of the unconscious began to be published.1 Since his student years, Jung had been fascinated by Nietzsche’s ambiguous figure: on the one hand, a brilliant professor of classical philology at the University of Basel at only twenty-four and author of an autobiography at the age of fifteen, and on the other, eccentric, isolated, misunderstood, nonconformist, unintegrated, despised, and ignored to and beyond the border of psychopathology. Here’s how Jung receives Nietzsche in his undergraduate years: 123

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Nietzsche had been on my program for some time, but I hesitated to begin reading him because I felt I was insufficiently prepared. At that time he was much discussed, mostly in adverse terms, by the allegedly competent philosophy students, from which I was able to deduce the hostility he aroused in the higher echelons . . . I was held back by a secret fear that I might perhaps be like him, at least in regard to the “secret” which had isolated him from his environment . . . Thus Spake Zarathustra . . . like Goethe's Faust, was a tremendous experience for me. Zarathustra was Nietzsche's Faust, his No. 2, and my No. 2 now corresponded to Zarathustra. (MDR 101–2)

The Jungian “secret” is his inner duality, discovered in childhood, between the personality no. 1 (what we could call his ego engaged in the daily reality of existence) and personality no. 2 (the other of his own personality, the transtemporal self “who knew God as a hidden, personal, and at the same time suprapersonal secret” (MDR 45)). In Jung’s view, Zarathustra was Nietzsche’s secondary personality, the inner man, the unconscious numinous center, which showed him, secretly, the path to his shadow and his inferior function. Nietzsche conceived the first part2 of Zarathustra in Rapallo around February 1, 1883, trying to recover from the amorous disappointment caused by the break-up with Lou Salomé in the winter of 1882: “My health was not of the best; the winter cold and exceptionally rainy; a little albergo, right by the sea, with the high sea at night making it impossible to sleep, offered in more or less all respects the opposite of what was desirable. Nevertheless . . . it was in this winter and these unfavourable circumstances that my Zarathustra was produced” (EH, “TSZ,” 1). The second part was conceived at Sils Maria in July 1883, and the third part was written at the beginning of January 1884 in Nice. Nietzsche cyclically fluctuates between depression and euphoria, between marasmus and daimonic inspiration, accessing archetypal content during this gestation period: “A rapture whose immense tension is released from time to time in a flood of tears, when you cannot help your step running on one moment and slowing down the next; a perfect being-outside-yourself with the most distinct consciousness of myriad subtle shudders and shivers . . . a depth of happiness where the most painful and sinister things act not as opposites” (EH, “TSZ,” 3). Each of the first three parts was written in less than ten days. The fourth book was written later and much more slowly, in Zurich, Mentone, and Nice in the winter of 1884–1885, and has an ambiguous and demystifying status in relation to the entire first three parts, as is the case with the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Despite this, the Zoroastrian ensemble finally receives the quadripartite structure of a post-romantic symphony, comparable to Brahms’s

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Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (1877) (Burnham and Jesinghausen 2010, 114). The opening of Zarathustra fits with the tragic, sublime, and grandiose [übermenschlich] atmosphere of Un poco sostenuto, and the Brahmsian movement could be a counterpart to the Sonnenaufgang from Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem dedicated to Nietzsche’s work (1896). There are three most important themes of the book. First, the main Nietzschean character is acclaimed as a prophet of the superman (the death of God3 accompanies this theme). Second, the philosophy of will to power (a recurring theme in the posthumous fragments, not intended for publication) shows the development and the potential overcoming of the Schopenhauerian voluntarism. The third important concept concerns the eternal recurrence of the same, a doctrine introduced by the German philosopher at the beginning of the third part. All these themes are imbued with the issue of nihilism4 and Nietzsche himself oscillates between a Schopenhauerian foundation of passive nihilism, a disposition for destruction specific to active nihilism, and a narrower anti-nihilist register, consistent with the assertion of the eternal return. The Jungian seminar dedicated to Nietzsche’s work has some hermeneutic peculiarities, which I will refer to below. First, it is based on the method of amplification, which involves the use of mythical parallels in order to elucidate the symbolic material presented by Nietzsche. Moreover, the Swiss psychologist considers that the subliminal dynamics of the book is enantiodromy (a “law” that comes from Heraclitus,5 whereby each thing is considered to be its antipode) and that Zarathustra, by its very structure, can be likened to a great enantiodromic moment6 (Bishop 2003, 216). In addition, Jung’s interpreters have highlighted some shortcomings of the seminar. One of them notes that Jungian analysis is purely psychological (Clarke 1992, 71). Another problem is the ignorance of the connection between Nietzsche and the history of philosophy (Parkes 1999, 214), the German philosopher being emplaced in a mythological, occult, or esoteric context, a tradition he knew little about (Bishop 2003, 216). The common thread of the Jungian criticism of the seminar consists in the observation that Nietzsche would not have been able to differentiate between ego and self (Parkes 1999, 217)—a questionable observation. Moreover, for Jung, Nietzsche, Zarathustra, and superman are equal. According to Gadamer (1986, 5), this is a major hermeneutic error. Syllogistic reasoning is used abusively, Zarathustra being identified with characters that represent opposite tendencies (the ego, the shadow, the soul, and the self) (Parkes 1999, 218; Liebscher 2000, 191–199). Consequently, we can see that, by applying the postulates of analytical psychology mechanically, the text appears to say more about Jung than about Nietzsche (Bishop 2003, 216), and that the similarities between Jung and Nietzsche are concealed by the Swiss author because he does not want to recognize in Nietzsche his own malady.

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In my opinion, the most troubling shortcoming of the seminar is the exclusion of Nietzsche from the general philosophical context (his relationship with Schopenhauer, with Platonism, with German idealism, with ontology7). Moreover, conceptual analysis is avoided (the superman or the eternal return are treated non-philosophically, through mythological references). Often, the impression is that the discussion is being pushed toward a non-essential area. Furthermore, one can argue that the understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy as refractory to the construction of an enduring symbol8 (Frey-Rohn 1971, 319; Bishop 1995, 290) is inadequate9 (Huskinson 2004, 96). As one commentator notes, in a somewhat trivial but edifying language, Nietzsche was a madman, and Jung was not (Lindner 2010, 112). The notion that there is an implicit connection between the Nietzschean work and psychosis is not necessarily viable (Huskinson 2004, 131). In the works published in 1888 the Verfallen toward mental illness is evident, while in Zarathustra it is less so. Can we talk about a sane person’s disdain of the one who proves his “inferiority”? Things are more complex, and proof of this also comes from Jung’s propensity for the split between Personality No. 1 and Personality No. 2, for childhood schizophrenia, in harsher terms (Winnicott 1964, 450). If we also consider the depressive, even psychotic episode that followed his separation from Freud, his disdain may be only a shadow of self-contempt. Together with Strindberg, Jung is one of the few cases of authors who recovered from their mental illness (Lachman 2005, 239). Moreover, the Swiss psychologist built his work on the basis of his psychosis from 1913 to 1919. Anyway, Zarathustra is not the work of a mere sickly character. Even if it were, its hyperbolic scale (Nehamas 1999, 22), like that of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, represents the foundation of modernity. After Nietzsche, we all went insane—in other words, normality was redefined. The monstrosity of the thinker from Sils Maria redefined the category of the anthropological, just as its transgressive character10 redefined psychology, practically creating psychoanalysis (Nietzsche is among the first to speak of repression, resistance, unconscious, shadow, anima, self). Like Baudelaire’s character in “L’Héautontimorouménos” (1857), Nietzsche is a schizophrenic beyond schizophrenia: he confronts Schopenhauer and his passive nihilism, and he confronts himself and his own active nihilism. Although the affirmative phase of his doctrine is less obvious,11 Nietzsche aims at anti-nihilism. His doctrine of the superman was associated with the search for the self, with Jungian individuation. Dionysos is not only Wotan or a god of death like Hades (Frey-Rohn 1971, 308–309), and his superman cannot be identified with the “devil.”12 Although it starts from the death of God, nihilism should not be understood as demonism. Nihilism always refers to God, but not only through an anti- but also through a jenseits, a trans-. Its

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negative theology is especially post-Christian. What is beyond the concepts of transcendence and transgression, beyond the Creator and the “adversary”? This is the new question of the “zero hour” represented by Nietzsche, which establishes the foundation of modernity. Moreover, it makes no sense to excuse Nietzsche or to assign to him improper coherence. His deviance through mental illness, even when assumed to be a consequence of his work, makes him so much more interesting, so much more alive—a true fellow being. Nietzscheanism has always been a cliff’s edge to jump from or a ladder to climb.

ZARATHUSTRA’S SHADOWS The Jester, the Dwarf, and the Ape The jester is the first shadowy personality to appear in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The jester [der Possenreisser] is prominent in Zarathustra’s prologue, after the Nietzschean prophet makes his first speech about the superman and the last man. Zarathustra’s exposition on the superman is ridiculed by the crowd, who consider it an attempt to promote the tightrope walker. As the tightrope walker advances on the rope stretched between the two towers above the market square, halfway through, behind him appears the gloomy figure of the jester, who intones with an “awe-inspiring” [fürchterlich] voice these mysterious imprecations: “‘Forward, lamefoot! . . . Forward, lazybones, smuggler, or I shall tickle you with my heel! What are you doing here between towers? The tower is where you belong. You ought to be locked up; you block the way for one better than yourself’” (TSZ, prologue, 6). If we understand the activity of the tightrope walker in an analogy with Zarathustra’s mission (SNZ I, 49) (both have “made danger their vocation”—the tightrope walker through his risky profession, the prophet through his revolutionary action to destabilize “Platonism for the ‘people’” (BGE, preface) by all means), we can also understand the meaning of the jester’s violent reprimands. “The tower is where you belong” can be understood as a warning for Zarathustra: “The cave is where you belong! Nobody cares about your teaching.” Next, the jester jumps over the tightrope walker (this is the meaning of “tickling with the heel”), making him suffer a fatal accident. The jester is a perennial reminder of the peril of Zarathustra’s burden, who wants to transform the world through his tripartite doctrine of the superman, will power and eternal return. In other words, the jester symbolizes the “intrinsic vulnerability” of those who attempt the dangerous transition to superman (Burnham and Jesinghausen 2010, 25).

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The later mention of the jester from TSZ III emphasizes precisely this opposition to the doctrine of the superman, manifested especially by parodying the Nietzschean concept of self-overcoming [Selbst-Überwindung], which always accompanies transcendence to superhumanity: “Man is something that must be overcome [Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden muss]. . . . But only a jester thinks: ‘Man can also be skipped over.’ [Der Mensch kann auch übersprungen werden]” (TSZ, III, “On Old and New Tablets,” 4). The jester is symptomatic for the anxiety and the compensatory contempt for the superman. Refusing the difficult askesis of self-transcendence, the shadowy character prefers the shortcut of the “jump” and the contemptuous “tickling with the heel.” It is interesting that the jester considers himself superior to the tightrope walker (and implicitly, to Zarathustra), in the way that inferior people protect themselves by willful ignorance (what Sartre called “bad faith”) from the revelation of their own self. We move on to the warning of the jester from prologue addressed in a whispered tone to Zarathustra, which sheds new light on the relations between the emissary of the superman and his shadow: Go away from this town, Zarathustra . . . there are too many here who hate you. You are hated by the good and the just, and they call you their enemy and despiser; you are hated by the believers in the true faith, and they call you the danger of the multitude. It was your fortune that you were laughed at; and verily, you talked like a jester. It was your good fortune that you stooped to the dead dog; when you lowered yourself so far, you saved your own life for today. But go away from this town! or tomorrow I shall leap over you, one living over one dead. (TSZ, prologue, 8)

Several ideas emerge from this fragment. First of all, the hatred and contempt of the crowd addressed to Zarathustra and his new unconventional doctrine are obvious, feelings that the prophet had discovered intuitively when he observed the reaction of the crowd in the market square (“And now they look at me and laugh: and as they laugh they even hate me. There is ice in their laughter” (TSZ, prologue, 5)). Second, who are those who consider the Nietzschean main character a public danger? “The good,” “the just,” “the believers in the true faith”: representatives of traditional morality, named in GM, Herdenmoral—the morality of slaves. Those who hate Zarathustra to death are hard-pressed to create new values, to set up new slates, based on the authority of the dragon [der Drache], who endorses the almighty power of duty, tradition, and resentful morality (“Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? ‘Thou shalt’ be the name of the great dragon” (TSZ, I, “On the Three Metamorphoses”)).

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Moreover, they are the ones who will later intone hypocritically: “I serve, you serve, we serve” (TSZ, III, “On Virtue that Makes Small”). Thirdly, the jester postulates a similarity between his technique and that of Zarathustra (“verily, you talked like a jester”). This means that the jester can only understand Zarathustra’s speech as a parody of his own parody. By exposing Zarathustra to the “secret motives” of the people gathered in the market square, the jester can be compared to the cynical “buffoon” from BGE 26, that “provides the ‘shortcut’ in the philosopher’s indispensable study of the average man” (Lampert 1986, 27). Moreover, the jester symbolizes the reactionary rage of the crowd (Burnham and Jesinghausen 2010, 25), who refrained from stoning the prophet, because the latter had unintentionally humiliated himself when he decided to bury the corpse of tightrope walker (Rosen 1995, 67). A figure related to the jester is the dwarf, who makes his most prominent appearance in the section “On the Vision and the Riddle,” where Nietzsche presents in an allegorical form the doctrine of eternal return, which in his philosophy represents the transition from an active nihilism (the corrosive themes of the superman and the death of God) to anti-nihilism. Here is how the dwarf [der Zwerg] addresses the Nietzschean character: O Zarathustra . . . you philosopher’s stone! You threw yourself up high, but every stone that is thrown must fall. O Zarathustra, you philosopher’s stone, you slingstone, you star-crusher! You threw yourself up so high; but every stone that is thrown must fall. Sentenced to yourself and to your own stoning—O Zarathustra, far indeed have you thrown the stone, but it will fall back on yourself. (TSZ, III, “On the Vision and the Riddle,” 1)

We notice from the very beginning the same technique of parody that we have become accustomed to in the jester’s case: in fact, parody has often been considered diabolical13 and the dwarf has been called earlier “the devil” [der Teufel]. The stone is regarded as a symbol of divinity14 (Grün 2013, 75–76) and has a significant role in alchemy, in Gerard Dorn’s view: “Transform yourselves from dead stones into living philosophical stones!”15 The dwarf is the embodiment of the spirit of gravity [der Geist der Schwere] and warns Zarathustra that any transcendence to superhumanity is subject to the universal gravitational law and will fall toward the last man, the diminished man,16 toward the Schopenhauerian background of passive nihilism, which Nietzsche constantly tries to leave behind: “And the eternal recurrence even of the smallest—that was my disgust with all existence” (TSZ, III, “The Convalescent,” 2, Loeb 2012, 166). In other words, the dwarf operates a pre-Cioranian critique17 of Nietzschean nihilism: “To believe it his responsibility to transcend his condition and tend

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toward the superman is to forget that he has trouble enough sustaining himself as man” (Cioran 1970, 183). The Nietzschean “stone” (the Nietzschean ideal of transcendence to superhumanity)18 will fall and crush the parent with a tremendous weight. We could read here, in Jung’s style, one of the many warnings about madness, a sign from the unconscious, announcing the biological impossibility of the transition to the superman without a considerable risk of inflation. The dwarf is, in Jungian interpretation, the saturnine “man of lead,” which “destroys the mind” (SNZ II, 1260): the dwarf “sat on me . . . making lame, dripping lead into my ear, leaden thoughts into my brain” (TSZ, III, “On the Vision and the Riddle,” 1). The dwarf is a personification of gravity, but also of the fall [Verfallen], another allusion to the diabolical provenance of the shadowy figures: “Through him all things fall” [durch ihn fallen alle Dinge] (TSZ, I, “On Reading and Writing”). Another shadowy personality of Zarathustra is the madman nicknamed by the townspeople “Zarathustra’s Ape,”19 because he borrows from the prophet the ideas and the vehemence of discourse. Zarathustra’s ape criticizes the Big City from the perspective of one who participates in social life (Burnham and Jesinghausen 2010, 142), without being an outsider, a “stranger,” like the superman’s follower. Moreover, his contempt is a compensation for his hurt pride: his tirade is bitter with the regret that “nobody flattered [him] sufficiently” (TSZ, III, “On Passing By”). The relationship between Zarathustra and his “ape” can be likened to the biological relationship between superman and ape/human: “Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. . . . What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment” (TSZ, prologue, 3). The Soothsayer The Plutonian figure of the soothsayer conceals Schopenhauer, “the never overcome master” (Colli 1999, 415). If, according to Lucy Huskinson, Nietzsche is Jung’s shadow,20 Schopenhauer can be understood as Nietzsche’s shadowy personality. Although the Nietzschean shadow is only the predecessor of the Jungian one, the German philosopher describes his inherent duality, understood as a duel of shadows: “But as he was sitting there, a stick in his hand, tracing his shadow on the ground, thinking—and verily, not about himself and his shadow—he was suddenly frightened, and he started: for beside his own shadow he saw another shadow. And as he looked down around quickly and got up, the soothsayer stood beside him . . . the proclaimer of the great weariness” (TSZ, IV, “The Cry of Distress”). We could infer that Schopenhauer is the shadow of the shadow that is Nietzsche: or, in simpler terms, that Schopenhauer is the Nietzschean double, against whom he sometimes rebels and with which he sometimes identifies,

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allying himself against his ego. Or, Schopenhauer is—together with composer Richard Wagner21—Nietzsche’s great complex: the master worshipped in his youth, then abandoned and blamed for his alleged belonging to the Christian-Platonic heritage. Schopenhauer is a Nietzschean sub-personality, who, along TSZ, has a significant degree of autonomy: we could divide Nietzsche into Nietzsche 1/Schopenhauer and Nietzsche 2/Zarathustra— Dionysus (a split similar to that between William Wilson 1 and 2 or between Jekyll and Hyde). Schopenhauerianism is especially prominent in the episode The Soothsayer. And I saw a great sadness upon mankind. . . . A doctrine appeared, accompanied by a faith: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!” . . . In vain was all our work; our wine has turned to poison; an evil eye has seared our field and hearts. We have all become dry; and if fire should descend on us, we should turn to ashes; indeed, we have wearied the fire itself. All our wells have dried up; even the sea has withdrawn. All the soil would crack, but the depth refuses to devour. “Alas, where is there a still a sea in which one might drown?” . . . Verily, we have become too weary even to die. We are still waking and living on—in tombs. (TSZ, II, “The Soothsayer”)

Summing up, Schopenhauerianism is interpreted as a nihilistic manifestation of the will to die. Nihilism destroys the notion of meaning, starting from the consideration that as long as death is the great negator, the great annihilator, and as long as there is death, life is questioned, life is seen as meaningless (“all is empty”). Logically, nihilism is justified, because each of our efforts, noble intentions, and aspirations is faced with the grinder of death, which abolishes Dasein, turning it into nothing. But, from the standpoint of Nietzsche 2, which is also pre-existential, the “truth” of nihilism, no matter how logically consistent it is, must be overcome from the perspective of doctrines such as the superman or the eternal return of the same. For example, the superman, who can be considered a symbol for the cult of excellence (Solomon 2003, 131), tries to lead an exemplary life, trampling over death with a hero’s pride, even if death cannot be annihilated by his attitude. A personality like Beethoven must still die like a “human mold” (TSZ, III, “The Convalescent,” 2), but his essentially daimonic genius ridicules the triviality of death: there is no immortality; however, excellence is the closest version of it from the perspective of human existence. Moreover, the eternal return transgresses the collective “cry of distress,” which was such a strong obsession for the Buddha22 or Cioran. If you want the pleasure to return, you also have to accept the “waves of great distress and melancholy” (TSZ, IV, “The Cry of Distress”) brought by life. From a Nietzschean perspective, immanence has an almost sacred character, which cannot be denied by the

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absurd and compensatory doctrine of eternal life, or by death, the driving force of nihilism.23 Unfortunately, Nietzsche 2 is not strong enough to overcome [überwinden] the sickly structure of Nietzsche 1. The Soothsayer (Nietzsche 1), just like Schopenhauer’s disciples (e.g., Philipp Mainländer, Richard Wagner in Tristan und Isolde (1865), the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu or even the young Emil Cioran), finds no other solution to the nihilistic deadlock than the defense of the will to death: “Alas, where is there still a sea in which one might drown?” (TSZ, II, “The Soothsayer”). In TSZ, Nietzsche has frequent relapses in Schopenhauerianism, to the extent that his own presentation of his philosophy as anti-nihilism is sometimes misleading. For instance, in a fragment that resonates with Schopenhauer, Leopardi and Eminescu, Zarathustra’s melancholy becomes obvious: “Something unknown is around me and looks thoughtful. What? Are you still alive, Zarathustra? Why? What for? By what? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to be alive?” (TSZ, II, “The Dancing Song”). Another fragment can be read both in an existentialist and a Schopenhauerian key: A long twilight limped before me, a sadness, weary to death, drunken with death, speaking with a yawning mouth. “Eternally recurs the man of whom you are weary, the small man.” . . . Naked I had once seen both, the greatest man and the smallest man. . . . All-too-small, the greatest!—That was my disgust with man. And the eternal recurrence even of the smallest. Alas! Nausea! Nausea! Nausea! (TSZ, III, “The Convalescent,” 2)

When Nietzsche 1 takes precedence over the anti-nihilistic background of Nietzsche 2, even the affirmative doctrines regarding the superman and, especially, the eternal return are replaced by their shadows: the diminished man and the last man, respectively the eternal return of the insignificant and the contingent, which transforms the positive doctrine into an analogon of damnation. The battle between Nietzsche 1 and Nietzsche 2, or that between the characters of the soothsayer and Zarathustra, takes place around the cardinal Christian virtue of pity, considered by Nietzsche a “sin.” Pity (or compassion) is Zarathustra’s last temptation, his last attempt on his way to emancipation from the long shadows of Christianity, Platonism, and metaphysics. A virtue with a controversial status in the history of philosophy, disavowed by Kant and Kierkegaard, praised by Rousseau and transformed by Schopenhauer into the cardinal stone of his ethical system, pity lurks around Zarathustra, like nihilism, “the uncanniest of all guests” (WP 1). Pity can be understood as a kind of disgusted contempt, as a reaction of the strong to the humble,24 as a “powerful insult” (Solomon 1976, 340–341), and this is the way it was often

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viewed by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. But for the Zarathustra in the context of the Cry of Distress (TSZ IV), which is a collective cry of the superior people, pity symbolizes the opposite of the nihilistic notion of adiaphoría or the stoic concept of apathy: pity is páthos, co-participation to “human suffering.” Compassion resonates with the love of humanity, which is repressed in a nihilistic fashion by the saint from the prologue: “Love of man would kill me” (TSZ, prologue, 2). The discovery of compassion through the soothsayer from the Cry of Distress represents the enantiodromy of thought toward its inferior sentimentality. If Christ’s last temptation is to flee the cross, Zarathustra’s last temptation on his long and hesitant road to Dionysian revolt is precisely the crucifixion on the tree of Schopenhauerism: “Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man?” (TSZ, prologue, 2). The Last Pope and the Ugliest Man The last pope represents theological nihilism: with the death of God the foundation of faith disappears. The last pope is “retired” [ausser Dienst] (TSZ, IV, “Retired”), being unable to run a dead church, a true funeral monument erected in the memory of the deceased god.25 The absolute priest, relegated to the profession of guardian of graves, symbolizes atheism in the bosom of the church. Although masterless, the pope is not free—for two reasons: first, after the revolutionary nihilistic moment (the assassination of the first principle: “First we’ve got to clear the ground,” wrote Turgenev (1998, 50)), the church servant cannot adopt the affirmative doctrine of the eternal return or the alternate transcendent foundation of the superman. For those who cannot create new values, nihilism is a stone hung around the neck. Second, Christianity dies, but its shadow remains26: the church disappears but the church structures remain. It is the mechanism by which God [Gott] is demoted to idol [Götze]: religion becomes inauthentic and mechanical, devoid of soul. It is a long process that is observed by Kierkegaard,27 Feuerbach,28 and Stirner29 before Nietzsche. Because the entire Platonic level of transcendence disappears, the idea of immortality vanishes: that is why the church has become a tumulus. If the priest no longer believes, being an atheist like the Great Inquisitor, the simple man does not believe: he only believes he believes. The shadow of God that arises after the death of the deity represents precisely this disjunction between form and substance: it remained the empty form (faith in faith), while the background (living faith, faith in a living God and in immortality) became rotten. The last pope deconstructs the idea that God means love: “Did this god not want to be a judge too? . . . [H]e built himself a hell to amuse his favorites” (TSZ, IV, “Retired”). It is rather the love of a cruel father, who does not hesitate to sacrifice his son. This is not the most disturbing aspect, but the

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degradation, the senilization of sacredness, its transformation into Götze, in the ghost, in a living corpse, which survives (in pure dead form): “Eventually . . . he became old and soft and mellow and pitying, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a shaky old grandmother” (Ibid.). And the overdose of compassion was ultimately fatal to him: “One day he choked on his all-too-great pity” (Ibid.). To this decadent confession, in which Christianity is combined with Platonism and Schopenhauerianism (a version of passive nihilism), Zarathustra opposes the doctrine of active nihilism: “Away with such a god! Rather no god, rather make destiny on one’s own, rather be a fool, rather be a god oneself!” (Ibid.). The first part of the phrase is claimed from atheism (“no god”), the second involves an anarchic, libertarian component (“make destiny on one’s own”), the third accepts the risk of infatuation (“be a fool!”), the fourth goes beyond infatuation and reaches a declaration compatible with Jungianism (self = God). However, the Zoroastrian path could be summarized as follows: 1. atheism + preliminary nihilism; 2. anarchism + active nihilism; 3. psychopathology (megalomania, transgression of the category of normality); 4. the realization of individuation (access to God after the death of God). The last pope, who possesses a perfect insight, like the great therapists, detects precisely the “piety” [Frömmigkeit] of Zarathustra, for which atheism or even nihilistic antitheism are only preliminary forms of a Dionysian doctrine that does not exclude religious experience: “Some god in you must have converted you to your godlessness [Gottlosigkeit]” (Ibid.). Gottlosigkeit would be precisely the faith of nihilism, which transcends both Christianity and demonism, the investing of nothingness [–losigkeit] with religious attributes. Moreover, keeping the analogy with the atheist’s piety, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is such an influential book (a revolutionary book30 or an initiatory book) because the separation from religion is done by sublimating a religious background. From a stylistic point of view, TSZ is closer to the Bible, compared to the founding works of atheism, such as Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841), Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own (1844), and Bakunin’s God and the State (1882). It is the book of an atheist who does not believe in his own unbelief. The ugliest man31 is encountered by Zarathustra in a realm of death, in the valley of Snakes’ Death. From the beginning, the abominable form of the murderer of God is revealed: “But when he opened his eyes he saw something by the way, shaped like a human being, yet scarcely like a human

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being—something inexpressible” [wie ein Mensch und kaum wie ein Mensch, etwas Unasusprechliches] (TSZ, IV, “The Ugliest Man”). The most despicable man transcends the human category and can be named an “abhuman” subject, as researcher Kelly Hurley explains: “The abhuman subject is a not-quite-human subject, characterized by its morphic variability, continually in danger of becoming not-itself, becoming other” (Hurley 1996, 3–4). The “morphic variability” of the character from Zarathustra reminds of the dissolution of the character Helen from the gothic novel The Great God Pan (1894) by Arthur Machen: “The skin, and the flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as adamant, began to melt and dissolve” (Machen 2006, 62). Like the last pope, who oscillates between the nihilism of the death of God and the shadow of the dead deity, the most despicable man wanders to the edge of humanity, symbolizing a dark and destructive form of existence that has killed “what is highest in its own nature” (Rosen 1995, 220). The killer of transcendence despises mercy, being honored instead by the Zarathustra’s shame (Lampert 1986, 297). Moreover, the Nietzschean character is “the personification of all that is ugly, wretched, debased and pitiable” in humanity, “the living refutation that God’s creation is perfect and that God is good” (Burnham and Jesinghausen 2010, 177). Here is the motive for the crime: But he had to die: he saw with eyes that saw everything; he saw man’s depths and ultimate grounds, all his concealed disgrace and ugliness. His pity knew no shame: he crawled into my dirtiest nooks. This most curious, overobtrusive, overpitying one had to die. He always saw me: on such a witness I wanted to have revenge or not live myself. The god who saw everything, even man—this god had to die! Man cannot bear it that such a witness should live. (TSZ, IV, “The Ugliest Man”)

Piercing the “eye” of transcendence is reminiscent of God’s “empty bottomless socket” from Jean Paul’s “Speech of the Dead Christ from the Universe that There is No God” (1796) and could constitute, together with Hegelian philosophy, the source of the theory of gaze in Sartre’s fundamental work, Being and Nothingness: “The Other looks at me and as such he holds the secret of my being, he knows what I am. Thus the profound meaning of my being is outside of me, imprisoned in an absence. The Other has the advantage over me” (Sartre 1978, 363). In his posthumous work on ethics, the French phenomenologist returns with an even more spectacular description, which brings him closer to Foucault’s panoptic theory: “The king is never an object. He is the justifying gaze. And this gaze is freedom. In a monarchy, the

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king is everywhere. He has divine ubiquity, since each subject into an object by his gaze. . . . The entire kingdom lies under his gaze” (Sartre 1992, 145). Like Sartre’s king, being his divine analogon and the traditional source of his power, God (the sun) controls through sight the whole human kingdom: he continually transforms us into objects, he dissolves our identity structures of subjectivity. The most despicable man kills God out of prudery. He exaggerates his own importance to the level of paranoia: even if we were constantly monitored, what would be so spectacular to watch? In other words, the motive of assassinating transcendence is not heroic or sublime, like the confrontation between titans and gods in Greek mythology or like the transgressive intent of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, but a banal one, of a subject that cannot learn the existentialist lesson of arbitrariness and contingency. In this line of argument, the fourth part of Zarathustra, the one in which most of the shadowy figures of the superior people make their appearance, has, like Faust II, a demystifying, almost postmodern, status. Both the passive nihilism and the oscillating character of the last pope, as well as the prudery of the one who can no longer be minimized through surveillance, are rather related to the “human-all-to-human” character of the diminished man,32 which always mocks the grandeur of the superman. We can add that the most despicable man (as a personification of the collective shadow33) can be compared to the shadowy personality of the pale criminal in the first part of the work, a figure that awakens Jung’s amazement and disgust: “Here Nietzsche really becomes an intellectual criminal. . . . [A] natural feeling function . . . will be hurt by the special psychology here. . . . Your feeling refuses to touch upon that thing because it is altogether too pathological” (SNZ I, 459). From my perspective, just as God was demoted in the last pope’s confession to the status of “grandfather,” the most despicable man belongs to a diluted and diminutive humanity, despite the terrible consequences of his act. The Shadow Zarathustra’s shadow accompanied him in the adventure of nihilism (FreyRohn 1989, 157; Lampert 1986, 298). Just like the figure of the prophet, it contains in a concealed form the Schopenhauerian background of Nietzsche I. In the chapter “On the Vision and the Riddle,” we find an argument for the nihilist philosopher, who is in search of his own personal America, precisely to experience negation to the peak of reactivity and to pave the way for the anti-nihilism of the eternal return. In the section dedicated to the shadow, the German philosopher reveals some of the pitfalls of nihilism. Initially, the shadow is a “bold searcher” who embarked on “terrible seas” (TSZ, III, “On the Vision and the Riddle,” 1):

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With you I haunted the remotest, coldest worlds like a ghost that runs voluntarily over wintery roofs and snow. With you I strive to penetrate everything that is forbidden, worst, remotest; and if there is anything in me that is virtue, it is that I had no fear of any forbiddance. With you I broke whatever my heart revered; I overthrew all boundary stones and images; I pursued the most dangerous wishes: verily, over every crime I have passed once. . . . “Nothing is true, all is permitted”: thus I spoke to myself. (TSZ, IV, “The Shadow”)

In the first sentence, the shadow deplores the glacial coldness of the thinking function, the almost schizoid objectification of the thinker that breaks away from affect (“whatever my heart revered”), the conflict between Geist and Seele. In this sense, the shadow represses the function of feeling, the unlived pathetic life: the volcano of affections that lurks hidden while the main function continues its intellectual action. In the second one, the shadow assists the ego in its revolutionary activity, revealing absolute permissiveness (liberation from traditional programming) as well as disregard for prohibition. In the third sentence, the destructive component of active nihilism is revealed—that which dynamizes idols and transgresses borders, living “dangerously.” Like Zarathustra, the shadow is a follower of the Order of Assassins and finds out that there is no longer a stable and immutable concept of truth, as everything is allowed: “Nichts ist wahr, Alles ist erlaubt.” However, nihilism did not lead the shadow to an obvious goal (“Do I have a goal any more? A haven toward which my sail is set?” (Ibid.) and the initial enthusiasm turned into that Leopardian morbidezza of passive nihilism (“a heart, weary and impudent,” “flutter-wings,” “a broken backbone” (Ibid.). Moreover, the shadow is everlasting and does not have a “home” [Heim], wandering between “everywhere” [Überall], “nowhere” [Nirgendwo], and “in vain” [Umsonst]. First, we have here a reference to the demoralizing, narcotic action of passive nihilism, similar to that predicted by the prophet: “All is empty, all is the same, all has been!” [Alles ist leer, Alles ist gleich, Alles war!”] (TSZ, II, “The Soothsayer”). Second, the consciousness of futility alludes to the infernal aspect of the eternal return, described in the posthumous fragments as an extreme form of nihilism: “Duration ‘in vain,’ without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea [Die Dauer, mit einem «Umsonst», ohne Ziel und Zweck, ist der lähmendste Gedanke]” (WP 55). To put it simply, we could say that the Nietzschean shadow has distinct Schopenhauerian features. Or, trying to summarize, the path of nihilism is dangerous precisely because it operates with the destruction of the idea of divinity. The shadow of transcendence represses itself into the unconscious, which is why one has to fight two enemies: God and oneself. The nihilistic dimension of the shadow is also accentuated by the fact that, later, the shadow plays on the harp a remarkable piece containing a

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significant meontological thesis: Wilderness grows: woe unto him that harbors wildernesses!” (TSZ, IV, “Among Daughters of the Wilderness,” 2). The pendant of this verse is an aphorism from BGE 146: “Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.” The two Nietzschean sentences imply the identity between the nihilistic and the non-nihilistic subject, by combining the psychological component with the cosmological element. The abyss, respectively, the desert, is the source of the nihilist’s negating power, the matrix of his transgressive courage [Mut], the root of his destructive activity, the warrantor of the No, through which the lion confronts the dragon in the chapter “On the Three Metamorphoses.” Like a deity, the abyss is simultaneously on the outside and inside of consciousness. The work of negation begins under the influence of the abyssal Paraclete, which reprograms the subject, deconstructing it according to the nihilistic requirements (“you stare for a long time into an abyss”). Negation, however, must be conceived as a propaedeutic for affirmation. Eventually, the nihilist must “jump over his shadow—and . . . into his sun” (TSZ, II, “On Those Who Are Sublime”), otherwise the abyssal asceticism will lead him to self-nihilism, to a holocaust, in which he will be sacrificed on the altar of the abyss (“the abyss stares back into you,” “woe unto him that harbors wildernesses”). The confession of the Zoroastrian shadow is anticipated by the dialogue in The Wanderer and His Shadow din Human, All Too Human (1878–1880), work that opens the middle (post-Schopenhauerian) period of Nietzsche’s philosophy: The Wanderer: Only now do I notice how impolite I am towards you, my beloved shadow: I have not yet said a word of how very much I rejoice to hear you and not merely see you. You know that I love shadow as much as I love light. The Shadow: And I hate the same thing you hate: night. I love mankind because they are disciples of light. . . . That shadow all things cast whenever the sunlight of knowledge falls upon them—that shadow too am I. (HAH II, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”)

First, from this extended fragment, we note that Jung’s observation that Nietzsche would not have accepted the shadow is nonsensical (Liebscher 2000, 206). The relationship between ego and the shadow is one of comradeship, based on elective affinities. The delicacy of the tone also reminds us of a prominent Jungian analyst’s remark, that “the unconscious takes the same attitude toward the ego as the ego takes toward the unconscious. If, for example, the ego has a kind and considerate attitude toward the shadow, the latter

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will be helpful to the ego” (Edinger 1992, 137). Both the harmonious relationship between the shadow and the ego, and the noble constitution of the shadow, seem to anticipate the Jungian precept according to which “behind the shadow looms up the self” (SNZ I, 123), which is the reformulation of a Nietzschean idea.34 Moreover, the ego “loves the shadow” (like an archetypal gothic character) but also the light. The shadow hates the night, which means that understanding the shadow only through the category of demonism is absurd. The observation that the “luminous part of the shadow” (the Jungian conception that shadow energies are essential for creativity (Dixon 1999, 215)) appears, again, to be of Nietzschean origin: “I am . . . that shadow all things cast whenever the sunlight . . . falls upon them.”

NOTES 1. See for instance Bishop 1995, Dixon 1999, Golomb, Santaniello, and Lehrer 1999, Huskinson 2004, Lesmeister and Metzner 2010, Bishop 2016. 2. For the genesis and significance of TSZ, see EH, “TSZ” and Duhamel 1991, 9–11. 3. The doctrine of the superman and the idea of the death of God already are introduced in the prologue. The first description of the death of God is published in GS (125), conceived at the same time with TSZ. One may say that the Übermensch and God occupy the same ontological region. See for instance TSZ, I, “Of the GiftGiving Value”: “Dead are all the gods: now we want the overman [Übermensch] to live.” See also Cioran’s criticism of Nietzsche: “He demolished so many idols only to replace them with others: a false iconoclast, with adolescent aspects and a certain virginity, a certain innocence inherent in his solitary’s career. He observed men only from a distance” (Cioran 1976, 85). 4. See also Granier (1982, 29–30). 5. “The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow” (Heraclitus 2003, 37). 6. “Zarathustra as a whole is a sort of enantiodromic movement, it is the river of the unconscious and the chapters are like pictures of the waves of that underground current” (SNZ I, 275). 7. See, for example, Heidegger 1961a, 1961b. 8. “In habentibus symbolum facilior est transitus . . . For those who have a symbol, the passing from one side to the other, the transmutation, is easier” (SNZ II, 1248). 9. The conjunction between the eagle and the serpent is a powerful symbol. See Thatcher (1977, 253–255): “The eagle is solar and masculine . . . , the serpent lunar and feminine. . . . In many respects the eagle shares the attributes of Apollo, the serpent of Dionysus. From a psychoanalytical point of view the eagle represents the rational, conscious mind (ego) and the serpent the forces of unconscious (id or libido). Eagle and serpent stand in the same relation as spirit

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and body, alpha and omega, and embody a dualism which lay at the heart of Zoroastrian religion, a dualism which Nietzsche, ‘der erste Immoralist,’ seeks to transcend. . . . Just as Zarathustra sees in himself a counter-image of his Persian forerunner, so the eagle and the serpent, as agathodaemon, are set as counter-images, i.e., no longer enemies, but friends, beyond good and evil, and beyond death and time. . . . [T]he friendship between two traditionally hostile creatures points to a synthesis of symbolical meaning above and beyond the symbols.”

10. “With you I strove to penetrate everything that is forbidden, worst, remotest; and if there is anything in me that is virtue, it is that I had no fear of any forbiddance ” (TSZ, IV, “The Shadow”). 11. Even the eternal return has a gloomy aspect too: “duration ‘in vain’ . . . is the most paralyzing idea” (WP 55). 12. “You highest men whom my eyes have seen, this is my doubt concerning you and my secret laughter: I guess that you would call my overman [Übermensch]— devil” (TSZ, II, “On Human Prudence”). See also the idea of a prominent Jungian analyst, according to whom in Zarathustra we can find a “satanic complex” (FreyRohn 1989, 111). 13. CW 11, §252. Also see SNZ II, 1392: “One calls an imitative person a monkey, for instance, as the devil was called God’s ape, meaning one who is always doing the same thing apparently but in a very inferior way, a sort of bad imitation. But that is exactly what the shadow does.” 14. “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2, 4–5). 15. Transmutemini de lapidibus mortuis in vivos lapides philosophicos! (quoted in CW 12, §378). 16. “The dwarf is the image of mediocrity that lurks within Zarathustra-Nietzsche, and that mediocrity was the most frightening and distasteful thing that Nietzsche was willing to see in himself” (Barrett 1962, 193). 17. Cioran is anticipated by Freud (1961a, 36), who claims that the aspiration toward Übermenschlichkeit (what Nietzsche would call self-overcoming) is nothing else than a neurosis, and warns of the biological feature of mankind: “It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. . . . The processes involved in the formation of a neurotic phobia, which is nothing else than an attempt at flight from the satisfaction of an instinct, present us with a model of the manner of origin of this supposititious ‘instinct towards perfection’ an instinct which cannot possibly be attributed to every human being.”

18. Cioran considers the Übermensch a “preposterous, laughable, even grotesque chimera” (Cioran 1976, 85).

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19. “[A]s Nietzsche moves off toward the very great figure of Zarathustra, his shadow moves backwards to the monkey man and eventually becomes a monkey, compensating thus the too great advance through the identification with Zarathustra” (SNZ II, 1393). 20. “Jung sets out to present Nietzsche as the definitive neurotic, and to hide any evidence that his diagnosis of Nietzsche is really a self-diagnosis. . . . The shadow projection on to Nietzsche would explain why Jung is reluctant fully to acknowledge Nietzsche’s influence when it is deserved” (Huskinson 2004, 133, 170). 21. Wagner is disguised in the figure of the magician, who satirizes and ridicules the Nietzschean solitude. 22. Buddha is also ridiculed by Nietzsche: “The encounter a sick man or an old man or a corpse, and immediately they say, ‘Life is refuted.’ But only they themselves are refuted” (TSZ, I, “On the Preachers of Death”). 23. “And the earth is full of those to whom one must preach death. Or ‘eternal life’—that is the same to me ” (TSZ, I, “On the Preachers of Death”). 24. “I am ‘superior’ to the beggar to whom I give money because I have money and he does not” (Solomon 1999, 138). 25. “What then are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchres of God?” (GS 125). 26. “God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow.—And we—we must still defeat his shadow” (GS 108). 27. “Christianity’s idea was: to want to change everything. . . . The result . . . is: that everything . . . has remained as it was, only that everything has taken the name of ‘Christian’” (Kierkegaard 2009, 185). 28. “Religion has disappeared, and for it has been substituted . . . the appearance of religion” (Feuerbach 1989, xix). 29. “[M]an has killed God in order to become now—‘sole God on high’” (Stirner 1995, 139). 30. Rosen (1995, xiv). 31. See also Bishop (2016, 10–11) for the contrast between the ugliness of the killer of transcendence and the “beauty” of the superman. 32. “I walk among this people and I keep my eyes open: they have become smaller, and they are becoming smaller and smaller” [Sie sind kleiner geworden und werden immer kleiner] (TSZ, III, “On Virtue that Makes Small,” 2). 33. Frey-Rohn (1989, 151). 34. “The beauty of the overman [Übermensch] came to me as a shadow” (TSZ, II, “Upon the Blessed Isles”).

Coda

I would like to review some of the results of my research. First, the literary works I have analyzed (all conceived in the 19th century) anticipate the Freudian personal unconscious and the Jungian shadow (theories from the beginning of the 20th century). The 19th-century authors were among the first who claimed that we have to give up the classical conception of identity modeled on the divine personality. The Freudian id, personified by a character like Hyde, overturns the old relationship between master and slave, showing that we are not at all the masters of the unconscious, being “servants in our own house.” Moreover, I have noticed that duality is a prelude of the postmodern multiplicity of the ego. From Stevenson’s “assault” on the unity of the ego to the disintegration of the ego in tiny instrumental masks, from the transformation of the ego into multiple subpersonalities through the corrosive action of duality, starting from the 19th century the notion of the unitary ego must be abandoned. As I have mentioned, the destruction of subjectivity can be a consequence of the death of God, who can no longer be conceived as a voucher of fundamental values. Because the subject can no longer borrow the majesty of divinity, because, according to Nietzsche, “man is more ape than ape,” ego can no longer be ego: from a biological perspective, the “crowning of the creation” is nothing else than an animal, albeit a cunning and malicious one. From a psychological perspective, ego is no longer ego (“I am not what I am”), because, simply put, the ego does not exist anymore: the feeling of ego is illusory, and the metaphysics of the ego is yet another pious lie. Thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Mach, or William James have documented the demise of the ego at the end of the 19th century. Furthermore, I have observed a similarity between Jungianism and existentialism. For instance, if the double raises the question of alienation, the 143

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shadow refers to authenticity. From a sociological perspective, accepting the dictate of the multiplicity of the egos in nowadays society, it is hard to tell if we can resist alienation. On the other hand, there could be a hedonism of alienation, a Sisyphic happiness (to adjust Camus’s expression), which consists in accepting fragmentation and splitting without spite. The yes uttered to the perishable and the tiny, the elation in playing an unsuitable part, the consent to un-identification: all these assume the awareness of the fact that we are broken mirrors and that we are proud with our undiagnosable disease. “Quit being perfect, let’s evolve” is one of Tyler Durden’s imperatives from Fight Club. I am not longer myself because maybe I do not want to be myself anymore. Alles was tief ist, liebt die Maske [“Everyone profound loves masks”], according to Nietzsche. Je suis le sinistre miroir/ Où la mégère se regarde! [“I am the looking-glass of pain/ Where she regards herself, the shrew!”], according to Baudelaire. “The looking-glass of the shrew,” “the mask without a face”: accepting the alienating feature of existence is a source of energy, which transforms negativity into action. Referring to authenticity, the term “persona” can be seen as an analogy to the existentialist inauthenticity, having much in common to the Heideggerian das Man or the Sartrian mauvaise foi. If persona was a lie, the shadow would often be an inconvenient truth. The problems occur not when we lie to the others, but when we deceive ourselves. Furthermore, we can imagine a succession of masks which represent various degrees of inauthenticity. While persona is a synonym for untruth and inauthenticity, we cannot say that the shadow and authenticity are the same thing: the identification with the shadow is only a deeper lie. Indeed, authenticity is a controversial and unstable virtue: when we believe we are authentic, we are often immersed in falseness. Despite this fact, it can be argued that the progression toward authenticity consists in the withdrawal of projections and the evolution toward the acknowledgment and the acceptance of the shadow: “The path of attention” (Robert Bly) becomes necessary, along “discipline” (Edward C. Whitmont) and “humility” (Eugene Pascal). Another personal conclusion refers to the reconstruction of the idea that the 19th century prefigures the 21st century. In the 1880s, many important modern themes have occurred in the Western culture. To name just a few: the “assault” against identity (see for instance Rimbaud’s and Nietzsche’s works), the problem of sexuality (moving on from the Victorian bashfulness to the Schopenhauerian-Freudian pansexualisms), the concept of the Übermensch (anticipating antihumanism), the connection between the discovery of the unconscious and Schopenhaeur’s irrationalism, the problems of evolutionism and degeneration, the feeling of lassitude, of permanent possibility of the apocalypse, and others. One may almost say that the 21st century begins in the 1880s.

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I have also noticed that the connections between several authors, such as Oscar Wilde and Søren Kierkegaard, Mary Shelley and Emil Cioran, Guy de Maupassant and Friedrich Nietzsche, shows us that between philosophy and literature there are only distinctions of method, and not of substance. If for a philosopher the history of philosophy is indispensable, and for a historian of philosophy history is just as necessary, one might say that for a philologist, philosophy can be as important as literary theory. Conversely, a historian of philosophy should study the history of literature, because literature intuitively reveals the abstractions of philosophy. For instance, when we become aware that Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation and Byron’s Manfred are conceived around the same historical moment (1817–1818), we may see with new eyes both the Schopenhauerian pessimism and the Byronic megalomania. Another conclusive reflection shows that the double and the demonic are interdependent. I first wanted to study the literary works under the hermeneutical lenses of either the double or the demonic. However, the double is inherently demonic, parodying the existential subject, just like the devil parodies God (the link between simia dei and simia hominis). If it was obvious that all the seven works I have studied relate to the double, I would also like to review their liaison with the demonic. Medardus from The Devil’s Elixirs sees his devil in Victor (his shadow). Frankenstein’s creature is a Miltonian Luciferian. “William Wilson” can be read either as an attack on the superego (Marie Bonaparte), or a dualism between the shadow and the shadow of the shadow. If the superego goes way, there is only the night of the id: the triumph of the instinct. When consciousness dies, the shadow becomes denser. In Dostoyevsky’s Double, Golyadkin Junior, is a devilish alter ego. Stevenson’s Hyde is absolute evil or the archetypal shadow. In Maupassant’s “The Horla,” the shadow is a predator which announces the end of mankind’s domination. In Wilde’s Dorian Gray, the picture is a “magic mirror” of the true shadow. I should also to mention some of the limits of my research. First of all, there are some quantitative limitations. I have focused my research on 19thcentury romantic and post-romantic works. The 20th century would deserve a book of its own. Several 20th-century books are related to the Jungian shadow: Golem (1914) by Gustav Meyrink, The Steppenwolf (1927) by Hermann Hesse, Despair (1934) by Vladimir Nabokov, Mephisto (1936) de Klaus Mann, Doctor Faustus (1947) by Thomas Mann. I have mentioned that a study on the Jungian shadow in postmodern literature (on Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996), José Saramago’s The Double (2002), etc.) should also consider the anarchetypal feature of the shadow. Moreover, there are other 19th-century literary works which prefigure the theory of the Jungian shadow but have not been analyzed here because of the limited space: Melmoth the

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Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin, Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satans (1826) by Wilhelm Hauff, The Great God Pan (1894) by Arthur Machen, and so on. Second, there are some qualitative limits of my book, for instance, there could be supplemental immersive research. It would be interesting to study in the future the connection between the constitution of the double at Jean Paul and Schelling’s egology. Kierkegaard’s and Wilde’s aestheticism deserve an extended comparison. Another research which transgresses the limits of my book would take into consideration the history of the daimonic from Plato to Heidegger. The duality of Robert Schumann’s compositions provides interest for a book regarding the shadow in music. Furthermore, there are potential contemporary research leads to the Jungian shadow. Keeping in mind Victor I. Stoichita’s essay on art history, Short History of the Shadow (1997), a similar history of the musical shadow (from Bach to Ligeti) can be written. A study dedicated to the shadow in film should analyze foremost expressionist movies. For instance, I think of the iconic frame from Murnau’s Faust (1926), in which the personification of the archetypal shadow, Mephisto, dominates Faust’s village with his colossal size and unleashes the plague. The Shadow in Film should also refer to existentialist movies: for instance, Ingmar Bergman’s work. Contemporary filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Lars von Trier, Joachim Trier, Nicholas Winding Refn, Robert Eggers, Ari Aster deserve a chapter in this virtual book. TV series such as Hannibal, True Detective, Penny Dreadful, The OA, and others also should be taken into consideration. Another promising lead refers to 20th-century Gnosticism from Jung and Hesse to Cioran and Philip K. Dick: the idea of moving on from God’s shadow to the God of Shadow (Abraxas). Gnosticism replaces the simple belief in God with the more advanced “knowledge” of God and could provide a solution to the crisis of contemporary spirituality. The connections between Jung and existentialism deserve a separate book: authenticity and persona, anxiety and fear of development, the death of God and the God within, anima and the second sex, and so on. Another study regarding the relationship between the discovery of the unconscious and nihilism. Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Nietzsche, Bahnsen, and Mainländer reveal the irrational trait of existence and arrive at antinatalist conclusions: if life was only suffering, then death is release and salvation. Another paper can be written on inspiration understood as “shadow work” (acknowledgment and possible “enlightening” of the shadow), a way to become conscious of the unconscious. Paraphrasing the observation of the analytic psychologists Lutz and Anette Müller, that the third great revolution (after Copernicus and Darwin) was started by Freud and Jung, when they have discovered and tried to map the huge and strange territory of the unconscious. Beyond its archetypal value,

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the shadow is a metaphor of the id, a part of our personality which we usually are not aware of. As long as dissociation, duality, and the obscure alterity the demonic (what Otto called mysterium horrendum) exist, the shadow will continue to grow. Put another way, the shadow is an answer (but an answerquestion) to the existential question of our identity crisis: “Who am I?” It may be concluded that one has to be careful about “knowing” too much about the shadow. The most basic and logical definition of the unconscious is that it simply cannot be known. We have seen “through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor. 13, 12) scenes from a foreign land, glimpses of an ontological nightmare, where the archetypal shadow reaches the density of a black hole. Perhaps conceptual language falsifies the Dionysian experience of the shadow; therefore, we should approach with metaphors. We have seen that the shadow cannot be construed as external to the human being. But do we live in a world of shadows, or are we shadows ourselves? “What, as Shadows, can we touch with our shadowy/ Hands? Our touch is absence and vacancy.//” (Pessoa 2006, 363).

Appendix 1 Year Zero: The Avant-garde of the Avant-garde

The year 1888 is a turning point in the cultural history of the world: on the last page from Nietzsche’s AC, modernity is (re)created in the mind of a distressed author. “And time is counted from the dies nefastus when this catastrophe began,—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not count from its last day instead?—From today?—Revaluation of all values! . . . // . . . Given on the Day of Salvation, on the first day of the year one . . . War to death against vice: the vice is Christianity” (AC 62). The day Nietzsche refers to, the day when these words are written, is September 30, 1888. This “day” marks a moment when the universal culture reached a dead end, a sort of “continuous end,” a feeling described by Verlaine (2011, 95) in the sonnet “Languor” (1883), for instance in his famous stanza “I am the Empire at the end of its decline.” 1888 is a sort of “ground zero,” the moment when the triumphing nihilism overtakes and displaces the Christian and Platonic heritage of the Western culture. Considering the year 1888 a landmark in the confrontation between old and new, between the feeling of exhaustion and the presentiment of avantgarde, I will refer to a series of ideas from works published by poets, philosophers, and scientists who can be considered participants in the Nietzschean revolution: “The Garden of Proserpine” (1866) by Charles Swinburne, Les Chants de Maldoror (1869) by Lautréamont, “Memento mori” (1872) by Mihai Eminescu, The Strange Case. . . (1886) by R. L. Stevenson, Beiträgen zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886) by Ernst Mach, Confessions of a Young Man (1888) by George Moore, and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde, and others.

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THE END OF THE I The physicist Ernst Mach claimed in his work Beiträgen zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886) that the ego is just a “bundle of sensations” (Mach 1918, 19–20). Mach goes on to quote Lichtenberg to defend his main thesis: “It thinks, we should say, just as one says, it lightnings. To say cogito is already too much if we translate it as I think. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical necessity” (Lichtenberg 2012, 152). He also adds that the “I” is “beyond redemption” [unrettbar] (Mach 1918, 20). Lichtenberg’s aphorism is closely related to Rimbaud’s famous reflection from a letter to Georges Izambard (1871): “It’s wrong to say: I think. Better to say: I am thought . . . I is an other” (Rimbaud 2008, 113). The death of the unitary I prepares the way for the Doppelgänger: when I disappear as myself, I can survive as an other to myself. The other me is able to do things I cannot allow myself to be aware of. My unlived and repressed life finds its force of expression in my double. Lichtenberg’s and Rimbaud’s deconstructions of the Cartesian cogito (“it thinks = it lightnings,” “I think = I am thought”) go against the traditionally rationalistic orientation of the Western culture. For Rimbaud and Lichtenberg, thinking and existence can never be one: thinking is only an accident, a flash of lightning that sometimes enriches us, but mostly makes us blind to the silent workings of the id. The two of them prefigure the Freudian discovery of the unconscious claiming that the I as cogito is derivative. The I is erased “like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea” (Foucault 2005, 422) and the lightning of the cogito will be swallowed in the dark night of the id. The duality of the subject (am I me or the other one?) prefigures the further disintegration of the I. Freud spoke of ego, superego, and id in his second theory of the structure of the psyche, and, as we have seen, Jung further divided the psyche into persona, ego, shadow, anima/animus, and self. Therefore, the double, the shadow, or the other me may be only the first of his kind and open the gates for a “legion” of secondary selves: “[Ma]n is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow . . . and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens” (JH 55–6). “The assumption of one single subject is . . . unnecessary,” Nietzsche wrote, in the same line of argument, “perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects” (WP 490). Furthermore, to Dorian Gray, “man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature.” Wilde’s hero also despised those “who conceive the Ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence” (DG 136–7). As I have stated in the introduction, duality as the end of the monarchy of the I prefigures postmodern multiplicity: the strong

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and unitary I was replaced by a series of functional and convenient secondary selves. Rephrasing the discoveries of these authors, we can say: I was once myself. But once I met my double, I became receptive to all my virtual secondary selves hidden inside me. Furthermore, the human being is not one, but truly multiple. The is an army of others, aspects of our many-faced self, which never stops growing, adjusting, and evolving. THE END OF GOD Although Hegel, Stirner, Feuerbach, and Mainländer anticipated the theme of the death of God, Nietzsche provided in GS (1882) its classical description: Where is God? . . . We have killed him—you and I! We are all his murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? . . . Are we not continually falling? . . . Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? . . . God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! (GS 125)

The death of God and nihilism1 are intrinsically connected. Nihilism is an alarm signal, a sort of “zero hour” of mankind, when our most precious values are put to the test, when we acknowledge the fact that “Being no longer needs to be thought of as endowed with stable structures and ultimately with a foundation” (Vattimo 1993, 164). In the Nietzschean fragment, a certain disorientation is discernable, which does not concern only divinity, but also the relationship of the existential subject with the transcendent. If God died, a certain conception regarding the human being would die too. If the pattern of “image and likeness” disappeared, we would find in the mirror the distinguishing features of the ape or, even worse, the face of nothingness, the “black skull” (Ligotti 2010, 42). As Foucault and Deleuze have argued (Deleuze 1988, 130), when God has died, the human being began to die as well. Moreover, in this fragment, Nietzsche reveals the essential difference between anti-theism (as nihilism) and atheism. If the atheist refers with neutrality at the inexistence of God, some nihilists almost bemoan his death in an emotional discourse. The nihilist is, therefore, ambiguous, if not dissociated, when he mentions God. If the atheist reflects with a certain satisfied coldness the impossibility of a “prime mover,” nihilists such as Nietzsche and Cioran may be suspected of a repressed worship (disguised in hatred) of God. For instance, Cioran defined himself, in Stavrogin’s fashion, as a “believer who couldn’t believe” (Zarifopol-Johnston 2009, 185). This nihilistic ambiguity

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is also visible in George Moore’s fragment from the Confessions of a Young Man (1888): Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He dreamed; again He is denied by his disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who hold naught else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and feet, Thy hanging body . . . Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame with Thy light than ever before—Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth century. The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in the ruin Thou hast created. (Moore 2004, 110–112)

The impression of profanation, present in George Moore’s text, refers mostly to a profanation of the human being, who has lost his inner sun, which is being replaced by the black sun of nihilism. Thinking of the theologies of the death of God, one might say that the death of God is still a Christian event, a religious Ereignis, while the mere acknowledgment of his inexistence is based on the detachment of the Enlightenment proposed by those who promote the “new atheism.” One can almost say that the difference between nihilism and atheism is similar to the one between Gnosticism and agnosticism. Nihilism can be seen as a modern gnosis (Couliano 1992, 250), based on a passionate and unconventional knowledge of God. Even when it is violent or aggressive, nihilism directly targets divinity. THE END OF GOD II The most radical version of anti-theism from the 19th century is found in Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror (1869). His hatred and disgust of God is a consequence of his pre-Cioranian antihumanism: “Stupid, idiotic race! You will regret having acted thus! It is I who tell you. You will regret it! My poetry will consist exclusively of attacks on man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought never to have bred such vermin” (Lautréamont 1978, 73–74). God is seen as an absolute predator, the instantiation of a brutal ideal, aiming to destroy humanity. In one of Lautréamont’s fragments, God is reminiscent of Goya’s Saturn. In others, he is a disgusting alcoholic who rests, while the rest of the creation is condemned to incessant toil. We find

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ourselves at the antipode of Platonism and Christianity. The only relationship between the creator and the creature is an intense reciprocal hatred. I slowly raised my splenetic eyes, ringed with bluish circles, towards the concavity of the firmament and I, who was so young, dared to penetrate the mysteries of heaven! Not finding what I was seeking, I lifted my eyes higher, and higher still, until I saw a throne made of human excrement and gold, on which was sitting—with idiotic pride, his body draped in a shroud of unwashed hospital linen—he who calls himself the Creator! He was holding in his hand the rotten body of a dead man, carrying it in turn from his eyes to his nose and from his nose to his mouth; and once it reached his mouth, one can guess what he did with it. . . . First he ate his head, then his legs and arms, and, last of all, the trunk, until there was nothing left; for he crunched the bones as well. . . . And he would continue his savage meal, moving his lower jaw, which in turn moved his brain-bespattered beard. Oh reader, does not this last-mentioned detail make your mouth water? (Ibid., 85)

To establish the sharp contrast between early romanticism and post-romanticism in the perception of the image of God, Jean Paul’s “Speech of the Dead Christ from the Universe that There Is No God” (1796) is more than eloquent: I traversed the worlds, I ascended into the suns, and soared with the Milky Ways through the wastes of heaven; but there is no God. I descended to the last reaches of the shadows of Being, and I looked into the chasm and cried: “Father, where art thou?” But I heard only the eternal storm ruled by none, and the shimmering rainbow of essence stood without sun to create it, trickling above the abyss. And when I raised my eyes to the boundless world for the divine eye, it stared at me from an empty bottomless socket; and Eternity lay on Chaos and gnawed it and ruminated itself.—Shriek on, discords, rend the shadows; for He is not! (Jean Paul 1992, 182)

For the romantic subject, God’s inexistence was an anguishing revelation, a condemnation to cosmological solitude. It even can be seen as an individual symbolic death sentence, as some Nietzschean commentators argue. If the human being lost God, he or she would accept nothingness as a primordial principle: a chaotic freedom he or she was not prepared to embrace. Everything changes in Lautréamont’s universe: God sits on a throne of excrement and gold with “idiotic pride.” The lost God was a real God: he died, but no one contested his legitimacy. Lautréamont’s divinity is almost subhuman. Reduced to excrement and gold (a devalued alchemic work), the cannibalistic God can no longer be perceived as a founding principle. In reality, the new God is a sort of heinous negative model. One cannot follow or worship him, one may at the most

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tolerate him as an original flaw of creation. Lautréamont’s description is much more radical than Nietzsche’s “God is dead.” Echoing the German philosopher, one may speak in this context of the super-death of God. In another fragment, the French poet imagines an even more degraded picture of God. God (or his absence) no longer produces romantic anguish (which can also be found in Nietzsche’s famous aphorism from GS), only disgust and contempt. God becomes a grotesque, ludicrous, and senile character: He was lying stretched out on the road, with his clothes all torn. His lower lip was hanging down like a heavy chain; his teeth had not been cleaned, and the blond waves of his hair were full of dust. . . . Floods of wine filled the ruts which had been hollowed out by the nervous jerkings of his shoulders. . . . Blood flowed from his nostrils: as he fell he had knocked his face against a post. . . . He was drunk! Horribly drunk! Drunk as a bug which in one night has gorged three barrels of blood; his incoherent words resounded all around; I shall refrain from repeating them here, for even if the supreme drunkard has no self-respect, I must respect men. . . . Man, who was passing by, stopped before the unrecognizable Creator; and for three full days, to the applause of the crab-louse and the viper, he shat on his august face! (134–5)

Maldoror’s God no longer exists as an authoritarian instance, inspiring only contempt. He is lower than the animals, which toil for their food, while he indulges in debauchery. Disgraced by the human being, he is too drunk to take notice. His total decline suggests that he occupies a position he should have vacated a long time ago. THE END OF ALL THINGS I The post-Schopenhauerian project of universal crime initiated by philosophers such as Philipp Mainländer, Eduard von Hartmann, or Julius Bahnsen brings death in the proximity of the romantic subject. The dead man is no longer outside the city walls, conquering the reflecting subject. Through Poe, Rollinat, Nietzsche, or Eminescu, one may observe this nihilistic turn. In “The Madman” (1883), Rollinat brings death in his comfort zone: “I’d like to bury myself in an old castle . . ./ To have two or three graveyards instead of gardens/ Where I could roam all night alone” (Rollinat 1917, 298). The funeral discourse becomes a serious option, because the human being becomes more aware of his/her perishable nature; moreover, it is in the nature of nihilism to exalt itself in a self-destructive and masochistic fashion before individual/universal extinction. The triumph of nothingness is also a cathartic way to suppress anguish.

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Nietzsche’s Zarathustra carries the dead body of the tightrope walker and sees himself as “the mean between a fool and a corpse”: “Dark is the night, dark are Zarathustra’s ways. Come, cold, stiff companion! I shall carry you where I may bury you with my own hands” (TSZ, prologue, 7). Eminescu in his poem “Mortua est!” (1871),2 influenced by Novalis and Poe, no longer sees death as a ceremony of separation: the physical death of the anima prepares us for personal death and the triumph of nihilism in a meaningless universe: “For when suns are extinguished and meteors fail/ The whole universe seems to mean nothing at all” (Eminescu 1964, 43). In E. A. Poe’s “The Sleeper” (1831–1845), the gentleness of the eternal slumber of the beloved contrasts concrete reality of the corpse: “My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,/ As it is lasting, so be deep!/ Soft may the worms about her creep!” (Poe 1984, 65). The separation between the living and the dead is now removed and their confluence is seen as a source of nihilistic power. Lautréamont’s hero, Maldoror, is hosted by a gravedigger and feels fine in this ambiance. One may say that in Lautréamont’s memento mori, we move from the concept of universal death to the one of universal crime. It is a shift operated with nihilistic force, through a transgressive leap. A textual reference for the first concept can be found here: [The Gravedigger:] I have seen many drawn up under the flag of death—the once-handsome man; the man who remained handsome even after death; men, women, beggars, kings’ sons; the illusions of youth, the skeletons of old men; genius; madness; idleness and its opposite; the false and the true-hearted; the mask of the proud, the modesty of the humble; vice crowned with flowers and innocence betrayed. [Maldoror:] I thank you for your kindness Gravedigger, it is grand to contemplate the ruins of cities; but it is grander still to contemplate the ruins of human beings!’ (Lautréamont 1978, 60–61)

We are beginning to see death as a grand, general, forceful equivalation. Universal death is a medieval theme, but it would not have become so viral in romanticism, had it not been based on individual death (the anguish of my death—as a personal apocalypse—becomes the “seed” and prototype of universal death). Byron’s “Darkness” (1816) prefigures Lautréamont’s move from universal death to universal crime. However, the French poet oscillates between romanticism and surrealism when he parodically constitutes his apocalypse: “If the face of the earth were covered with lice as the sea-shore is covered with grains of sand, the human race would be destroyed, a prey to dreadful pain. What a sight! With me, motionless on my angel wings in the air to contemplate it!” (Ibid., 92) To appreciate the surrealist component

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of the text, the previous apology of the louse must be recalled: “You may be sure that if their jaws conformed to the measure of their infinite desires, your brain, the retina of your eyes, your spinal column and all your body would be consumed. Like a drop of water. Take a microscope and examine a louse at work on a beggar’s head; you will be surprised. Unfortunately these plunderers of long hair are tiny” (Ibid., 88). Lautréamont immanent apocalypse contains a near evolutionist trait. It is just, according to the French poet, that a species of predators (either the louse or the shark) should replace a stagnating species. The spectacle of torment is presented cynically and sarcastically. Furthermore, the ego becomes an agent of the apocalypse: “What a sight! With me, motionless on my angel wings in the air to contemplate it!” (Ibid., 92). Taking into account that God has failed in creating a meaningful and valuable world, the poetic subjects takes over its functions and “unmakes” in his imagination the evil produced by divinity. Maldoror dethrones God, saving the failed creation, repairing God’s mistake in a sinister fashion. The joy of the void, the spectacular nihilization, the contemplative delirium of chaos is a direct connection between Lautréamont and Cioran, who wrote in A Short History of Decay (1949): “The spectacle of man—what an emetic! Love—a duel of salivas . . . All the feelings milk their absolute from the misery of the glands. Nobility is only in the negation of existence, in a smile that surveys annihilated landscapes” (Cioran 2012, 7). THE END OF ALL THINGS II The destruction of the ego and the eclipse of divinity lead to the idea of a universal ending. The theme approached among others by Jean Paul, Byron, or Leopardi knows a post-romantic resurgence in the works of Swinburne and Eminescu. “Then star nor sun shall waken/ . . . Only the sleep eternal/ In an eternal night,” writes Swinburne (2000, 139) in “The Garden of Proserpine” (1866). Furthermore, Mihai Eminescu’s “Memento mori” (1872) is a powerful initiation into nihilism: “Deathlike time spreads its arms and becomes eternity./ When nothing will persist on the barren landscape/ I will ask: What of your power, Man? – Nothing!!” (Eminescu 1993, 125–126). One can say that Swinburne’s and Eminescu’s thanatophilia from their apocalyptic texts (what Freud called destrudo or the death instinct) is a symptom of Schopenhauereanism, also visible in Cioran’s early writings. If Swinburne’s poem gives the impression of exhaustion and of fading of the will to live reminiscent to passive nihilism, Eminescu observes that the being is filled with nothing, and, as an active nihilist, allies himself with this nothing to complete the work of absolute destruction.

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We can argue that Schopenhauereanism survives and even thrives today in the Antinatalist philosophies of David Benatar, Thomas Ligotti, Eugene Thacker, Jim Crawford, or Nic Pizzolatto. Antinatalism, the doctrine which claims that nonexistence is preferable to existence, because life is pure suffering, is based not only on Schopenhauer’s views but also on Cioran’s and Thomas Bernhard’s works. “Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight—brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal,” reflects the nihilistic Rust Cohle from True Detective (Pizzolatto 2014). “I wish I were never born. I wish my children had never been born. I wish the sun would explode and crisp us all as we sleep, leaving the Earth a charred, barren, lifeless ball of nothing,” writes Jim Crawford (2010, 48). Why has the will to die replaced the will to live? Because death removes not only meaning from life but also pleasure and security. Life is a disguised death, but death is something else: if life was pure suffering, death would be the end of suffering, the radical purity, the only absolute in a tedious existence of compromise, half-truths and mediocrity. But while we breath, life in the universal abattoir is sheer terror: “We resemble lambs playing in the meadow while the butcher already makes his selection of one or the other of them with his eyes” (Schopenhauer 2017, 263). NOTES 1. “God is dead. It is the historical hour of nihilism” (Safranski 1997, 260). See also Prideaux (2018, 379): “Nietzsche’s statement ‘God is dead’ had said the unsayable to an age unwilling to go so far as to acknowledge the obvious: that without belief in the divine there was no longer any moral authority for the laws that had persisted throughout the civilisation built over the last two thousand years.//What happens when man cancels the moral code on which he has built the edifice of his civilisation? What does it mean to be human unchained from a central metaphysical purpose? Does a vacuum of meaning occur? If so, what is to fill that vacuum? If the life to come is abolished, ultimate meaning rests in the here and now. Given the power to live without religion, man must take responsibility for his own actions.” 2. Trans. Corneliu M. Popescu.

Appendix 2 The 19th Century from Romanticism to Post-Romanticism (Chronology)

1774  1782  1785  1789  1793  1794  1795 

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther. William Beckford’s Gothic novel Vathek. William Cowper publishes The Task. The beginning of the French Revolution. William Blake finishes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Francisco Goya completes Yard with Lunatics. Schelling publishes as a twenty-year-old Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy or on the Unconditional in Human Knowledge. 1796  Jean Paul coins the term “Doppelgänger” in the first volume of Siebenkäs. 1797  The first book of Hölderlin’s Hyperion. 1798   Coleridge and Wordsworth publish Lyrical Ballads, marking the beginning of English Romanticism. 1799  Jacobi’s open letter to Fichte, in which he coins the term “nihilism.” 1800  Novalis, Hymns to the Night. 1801  Beethoven composes the Sonata No. 14 in C Flat Minor, Op. 27 (Moonlight Sonata). 1802  Ugo Foscolo, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis. 1803  The beginning of the Napoleonic Wars. 1804  World population reaches 1 billion. Bonaventura, Nightwatches. The first version of Senancour’s Obermann. 1805  The Battle of Trafalgar. The beginning of Britain’s naval supremacy. The premiere of Beethoven’s Third Symphony (Eroica). 1806  Kleist completes The Broken Jug. 1807  Hegel, The Phenomenology of the Spirit. 1808  The first edition of Goethe’s Faust. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation. 159

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Appendix 2

1809  Schelling, Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom. 1810  The University of Berlin is established. Kleist, On the Marionette Theater. 1811  Shelley publishes The Necessity of Atheism. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. 1812  Napoleon invades Russia. Grimms’s first collection of fairy tales. 1814  Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba. Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl. 1815  Congress of Vienna. Napoleon’s Hundred Days. The eruption of Mount Tambora. 1816  “The year without a summer.” An unusually cold summer caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora. Hoffmann’s Devil’s Elixirs. P. B. Shelley, “Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.” 1817  Byron’s Manfred. 1818  Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein anonymously in London. Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. John Keats, “Endymion.” P. B. Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” The first edition of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. 1819  Byron’s Don Juan. John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of Medusa. John William Polidori, Byron’s physician, publishes “The Vampyre,” one of the first modern vampire stories. 1820  Antarctica is discovered. P. B. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. John Clare publishes Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. Robert Southey’s “The Cataract of Lodore.” 1821  Napoleon’s death in exile. The beginning of the Greek War of Independence. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey. Sardanapalus and Cain by Byron. 1822  Hazlitt, Liber Amoris. 1824  T  he premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Schubert, Death and the Maiden. 1825  The Decemberist uprising from Saint Petersburg. 1826  Mary Shelley, The Last Man. 1827  Leopardi, Small Moral Works.

The 19th Century

161

1828  Nerval translates Goethe’s Faust. 1830  The July Revolution. The premiere of Berlioz’s Symphony fantastique. Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. 1831  Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. The Invasion of Algiers. 1834  The Spanish Inquisition is officially abolished. 1835  Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin. 1836  Lenau’s Faust. Musset, The Confession of a Child of the Century. 1837  The start of the Victorian era (the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign). Chopin composes The Funeral March from his second sonata. 1838  Lamartine, The Fall of an Angel. 1839  Poe’s “William Wilson.” Lermontov finishes The Demon. 1841  Emerson, Essays. First Series. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. Kierkegaard defends his doctoral thesis On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. 1842  Gogol’s Dead Souls. 1844  Stirner, The Ego and Its Own. The first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. 1845  The beginning of the Great Famine in Ireland. 1846  The first use of anesthesia. Chopin’s last Polonaise. Dostoyevsky’s Double. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. 1847  E. A. Poe’s “Ulalume.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. 1848  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto. The Year of Revolution. Schumann’s Manfred. 1849  The inventions of the safety pin and the gas mask. Franz Liszt completes the Danse macabre S. 126. 1850  The beginning of the Taiping Civil War which will take about 20 million lives. The end of the Little Ice Age. Wagner’s Lohengrin. Schumann’s Third Symphony (Rhenish). John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents.

162

Appendix 2

1851  Schopenhauer’s Parerga and Paralipomena. Melville’s Moby Dick. 1853  The beginning of Crimean War between France, British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire. The premiere of Verdi’s Traviata. 1854  The beginning of the siege of Sevastopol. 1855  Friedrich Gaedcke isolates cocaine. Nerval’s Aurélia is published posthumously. The first edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. 1856  In the Bessemer process iron is converted to steel. The first oil refinery in the world is built in Ploiești. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary. 1857  Leon Scott invents the phonautograph, the first device able to record sound. Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal. 1859  Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. The construction of the Suez Canal begins. The premiere of Charles Gounod’s Faust. 1860  Baudelaire publishes Artificial Paradises. 1861  The start of the American Civil War. The Russian empire abolishes serfdom. Maxwell’s four equations. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. 1862  Victor Hugo, Les Misérables. Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons popularizes the term “nihilism.” 1863  The world’s first underground railway in London. The controversial The Luncheon on Grass by Édouard Manet. 1864  Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground. 1865  The premiere of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1866  Gustave Courbet, The Origin of the World. Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment. Swinburne, Poems and Ballads. 1867  Alfred Nobel invents dynamite. Ibsen publishes Peer Gynt. 1868  Brahms completes the German Requiem Op. 45. 1869  Lautréamont, Les Chants du Maldoror. The first edition of Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. Tolstoy’s War and Peace. 1870  The start of the Franco-Prussian War. 1871  The beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution. The Paris Commune. Darwin’s The Descent of Man.

The 19th Century

163

1872  N  ietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy. Eminescu works on “Memento mori.” Dostoyevsky’s Demons. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Böcklin’s Self-portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle. Bruckner’s Third Symphony. Bizet, L'Arlésienne. 1873  Rimbaud, A Season in Hell. 1874  James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night. 1875  The premiere of Bizet’s Carmen. Grieg’s Peer Gynt. 1876  The premiere of Brahms’s First Symphony. Gustave Moreau, The Apparition. Lombroso, The Criminal Man. 1877  Edison invents the phonograph. 1879  Edison tests the light bulb. Félicien Rops’s Pornocratès. 1880  T  he first version of Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead. The first philosophical occurrence of the term “shadow” in Nietzsche’s The Wanderer and His Shadow. The third and final version of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. 1881  The assassination of Tsar Alexander II. 1882  The statement “God is dead” in Nietzsche’s Gay Science. The premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal. Bakunin’s God and the State is published posthumously. D’Annunzio’s New Song. 1883  N  ietzsche writes the first book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Auguste Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s Cruel Tales. The first version of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. Paul Bourget, Essays of Contemporary Psychology. 1884  Huysmans, Against Nature. 1885  L  ouis Pasteur invents the rabies vaccine. Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony op. 58. Maupassant’s Bel Ami. 1886  Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing’s first edition of Psychopathia  sexualis. 1887  Maupassant’s “The Horla.” 1888  Jack the Ripper’s murders from Whitechapel. Gymnopédies by Erik Satie. Nietzsche writes The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, The Twilight of Idols, The Anti-Christ and Ecce homo.

164

Appendix 2

1889  Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Odilon Redon’s Death: My Irony Surpasses All Others! 1891  Wilde’s Dorian Gray is published in a book form. Huysman’s Down There. 1892  Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte. Stefan George and Hugo von Hoffmannstahl create the literary journal Blätter für die Kunst. 1893  Lionel Johnson’s “The Dark Angel.” 1894  The first gramophone recording. Machen’s horror novella The Great God Pan. 1895  Oscar Wilde’s trial. Alexandru Macedonski’s Excelsior. The discovery of the X-rays. Jean Lorrain’s “The Possessed.” 1896  Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra Op. 30. 1897  Wilde writes De profundis in prison. Strindberg, Inferno. Bram Stoker, Dracula. James Ensor, Death and the Masks. 1898  H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. 1899  Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Ravel, Pavane for a Deceased Infanta. 1900  Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. 1903  J ung’s doctoral thesis On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena (CW 1).

Appendix 3 The Individuation from the Persona to the Self

Jung (1) Persona The persona is “the mask of the actor” (CW, 9/I §43). “The persona . . . is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be” (CW 7, §246). “One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is” (CW 9/I, §221).

(2) Ego

“By ego I understand a complex of ideas which constitutes the centre of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity” (CW 6, §706).

Exegesis An effective persona must take into account three factors: “(a) the physical and the psychic constitution; (b) the ego-ideal: what / how I want to be . . . ; (c) the ideal of the environment, how people would want me to be” (Jacobi 1971, 54). “It is evident that a persona is an indispensable part of the personality. People with a deficient persona are really at a great disadvantage in outer life. They have no shield against the projections of others and are in constant danger of falling back into the original state of participation mystique with their environment” (Hannah 2000, 76). “The ego is itself the centre of consciousness and it is what we refer to when we use the terms ‘I’ or ‘me’. It is responsible for our continuing sense of identity so that we still feel ourselves at 80 to be exactly the same person we were at 8” (Stevens 2001, 62). (Continued)

165

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Appendix 3

Jung “Yet without the ego, consciousness is unthinkable” (CW 8, §611). “We understand the ego as the complex factor to which all conscious contents are related. It forms, as it were, the centre of the field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness” (CW 9/II, §1). “My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you” (RB 330). (3) Shadow The “inferior personality” (CW 7, §78, CW 9/I, §513, CW 9/II, §15). “The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself and yet is always thrusting itself upon him directly or indirectly” (CW 9/I, §513). The shadow represents “the thing [the individual] has no wish to be” (CW 16, §470). “And indeed it is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow-side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism” (CW 7, §35). “There is no development unless the shadow is accepted” (CW 9/I, §600). “The personal unconscious . . . corresponds to the figure of the shadow so frequently met with in dreams” (CW 7, §103).

Exegesis “It even seems as if the ego has not been produced by nature to follow its own arbitrary impulses to an unlimited extent, but to help to make real the totality—the whole psyche. It is the ego that serves to light up the entire system, allowing it to become conscious and thus to be realized” (von Franz 1964, 162).

The shadow is “the dark, unlived, and repressed side of the ego complex” (von Franz 1995, 3). The shadow is the “part of the personality which has been repressed for the sake of the ego ideal” (Whitmont 1978, 160). The shadow is “the ‘other’ in ourselves” (Hauke 2000, 133), das Andere in uns (Wolff 1959, 152), der dunkle Bruder der Menschheit (Neumann 1993, 92). “When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people—such things as egotism, mental, laziness, and sloppiness, unreal, fantasies, schemes, and plots. . . . If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious” (von Franz 1964, 168).

From the Persona to the Self

167

Jung Exegesis “The anima is a personification of all (4) Animus, “The animus corresponds to feminine psychological tendencies anima the paternal Logos just as in a man’s psyche, such as vague the anima corresponds feelings and moods, prophetic to the maternal Eros” hunches, receptiveness to the (CW 9/II, §29). irrational, capacity for personal “As the anima produces love, feeling for nature, and—last moods, so the animus but not least—his relation to the produces opinions” (CW 7, unconscious. It is no mere chance §331). that in olden times priestesses “The projection can only be (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to dissolved when the son fathom the divine will and to make sees that in the realm of his connection with the gods” (von psyche there is an imago Franz 1964, 186). not only of the mother but “But the animus does not so often of the daughter, the sister, appear in the form of an erotic the beloved, the heavenly fantasy or mood; it is more apt to goddess, and the chthonic take the form of a hidden ‘sacred’ Baubo. Every mother and conviction. When such a conviction every beloved is forced is preached with a loud, insistent, to become the carrier masculine voice or imposed on and embodiment of this others by means of brutal emotional omnipresent and ageless scenes, the underlying masculinity image, which corresponds in a woman is easily recognized. to the deepest reality in However, even in a woman who is a man” outwardly very feminine the animus (CW 9/II, §24). can be an equally hard, inexorable “Woman is compensated by power. One may suddenly find a masculine element and oneself up against something in a therefore her unconscious woman that is obstinate, cold, and has, so to speak, a masculine completely inaccessible” (von Franz imprint. This results in a 1964, 189). considerable psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have called the projectionmaking factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit” (CW 9/II, §29). “The self is the sum of all polarities (5) Self “I have suggested calling the and paradoxes, a synthesis total personality which, though between past, present and the present, cannot be fully future possibilities of development, known, the self. The ego is, between light and dark, ‘divine’ by definition, subordinate to and ‘demonic’, ‘feminine’ the self and is related to it like and ‘masculine’, normal and a part to the whole” (CW 9/ pathological, becoming and II, §9). death” (Müller and Anette Müller 2003, 377). (Continued)

168

Appendix 3 Jung Exegesis “According to the testimony of many “The ego stands to the self as myths, the Cosmic Man is not only the moved to the mover, or the beginning but also the final as object to subject, because goal of all life—of the whole of the determining factors which creation. “All cereal nature means radiate out from the self wheat, all treasure nature means surround the ego on all sides gold, all generation means man,” and are therefore supraordinate says the medieval sage Meister to it” (CW 11, §391). Eckhart. And if one looks at this “Sensing the self as something from a psychological standpoint, irrational, as an indefinable it is certainly so. The whole inner existent, to which the ego is psychic reality of each individual neither opposed nor subjected, is ultimately oriented toward this but merely attached, and about archetypal symbol of the Self” (von which it revolves very much as Franz 1964, 202). the earth revolves round the sun—thus we come to the goal of individuation” (CW 7, §405).

Appendix 4 The Moments of the Shadow

Moments (1) Projection

Jung

Exegesis

“Projection causes the least amount “Projections change the world of distress to the ego, which can into the replica of one’s own observe its twin but at a safe unknown face. In the last enough distance to allow for analysis, therefore, they lead an illusory sense of separation” to an autoerotic or autistic (Moores 2010, 26). condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains “The deep and unjustified antipathy, the most irrational forever unattainable. . . . The idiosyncrasy . . . are the results more projections are thrust in of the projection of the shadow” between the subject and the (Trevi 2009, 18–19). environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions” (CW 9/II, §17). “If you imagine someone who is “It is a very difficult task to disentangle such a projected brave enough to withdraw all factor from the carrier of the these projections, then you get projection. Perhaps one of the an individual who is conscious most dependable indicators of a pretty thick shadow” (CW of a projection is the presence 11, §140). of emotion. If other people’s “Experience shows that there are weaknesses or bad qualities certain features which offer make us unduly angry, we may the most obstinate resistance be pretty sure there is some to moral control and prove projection involved, because almost impossible to influence. at bottom we do not resent the These resistances are usually weaknesses of others, they may bound up with projections, even give us a pleasant feeling of which are not recognized as superiority. The weakness or bad such, and their recognition is a qualities that we resent are always moral achievement beyond the our own” (Hannah 2000, 78–9). ordinary” (CW 9/II, §16). (Continued)

169

170 Moments (2) Recognition

(3) Dissociation

Appendix 4 Jung

Exegesis

“The shadow is a moral problem “Because a great part of the shadow is unconscious (and that challenges the whole identifiable with the personal ego-personality, for no one unconscious), the analysis can become conscious of the of the projections and the shadow without considerable dream material will gradually moral effort. To become lead to the enlightenment conscious of it involves of the inferior aspects of the recognizing the dark aspects of personality and of the nonthe personality as present and differentiated . . . functions” real” (CW 9/II, §14). (Trevi 2009, 21–2). “The future of mankind very much depends upon the recognition of the shadow. Evil is—psychologically speaking— terribly real” (JWL 143). “Recognition of the shadow . . . leads to the modesty we need in order to acknowledge imperfection” (CW 10, §579). “With respect to Stevenson’s “The essence of hysteria is a Strange Case, dr. Jekyll is systematic dissociation, a unable to acknowledge or loosening of the opposites to integrate the inferior part which normally are held firmly of the personality . . . and is together. It may even go to compelled to live a double the length of a splitting of the life, duplicating his horrible personality, a condition in shadow, which became which quite literally one hand autonomous and escaped no longer knows what the from the control the ego” other is doing. As a rule there (Trevi 2009, 23–4). is amazing ignorance of the shadow; the hysteric is only aware of his good motives, and when the bad ones can no longer be denied he becomes the unscrupulous Superman and Herrenmensch who fancies he is ennobled by the magnitude of his aim” (CW 10, §424). “Neurosis is intimately bound up with the problem of our time and really represents an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the individual to solve the general problem in his own person. Neurosis is selfdivision” (CW 7, §18).

171

The Moments of the Shadow Moments

Jung

Exegesis

“Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in, a dissociation of personality analogous to the splitting of the world today by the Iron Curtain. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern man, no matter on which side he lives. And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his shadow side, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbour or in the man beyond the great divide” (CW 10, §544). “The identification with the (4) Identification “That is the moment of shadow is . . . the reverse Dionysian frenzy. . . . The of the dissociation of the seizure transforms him into a shadow” (Trevi 2009, 24). hero or into a godlike being, “The identification with the a superhuman entity. . . . The shadow may be seen as psychological observer knows a defensive intrapsychic this state as ‘identification mechanism . . . The concept with the shadow,’ a refers to the taking over phenomenon which occurs of our own shadowy parts with great regularity at such or at least of some of their moments of collision with the relevant components in unconscious” (CW 7, §§40–1). our own identity. The “A man who is possessed by his destructive actions are no shadow is always standing longer considered foreign in his own light and falling for the ego, as exceptional into his own traps. Whenever reactions or regrettable facts, possible, he prefers to make being accepted as ‘normal’ an unfavourable impression on and naturally belonging to others. In the long run luck is our own personality” (Vogel always against him, because 2015, 43). he is living below his own level and at best only attains what does not suit him. And if there is no doorstep for him to stumble over, he manufactures one for himself and then fondly believes he has done something useful” (CW 9/I, §222). (Continued)

172 Moments (5) Integration

Appendix 4 Jung

Exegesis

“The integration of the shadow “Psychologically we can say is the taking upon ourselves that the situation has thrown of the obscure and negative off the conventional husk part of the personality with and developed into a stark the purpose of gaining a new encounter with reality, with psychological dynamic and no false veils or adornments a new use of the psychic of any kind. Man stands forth energy repressed by the as he really is and shows what shadow or, in other words, was hidden under the mask of the use of the negative as a conventional adaptation: the pole of the new energetic shadow. This is now raised to field” (Trevi 2009, 25–6). consciousness and integrated “The integration of the shadow with the ego, which means . . . is foreign to human a move in the direction of nature; a great achievement wholeness. Wholeness is would be to perceive it and not so much perfection as accept it” (Kast 2016, 19). completeness” (CW 16, §452). “The integration [of the “Medical treatment of the shadow] is the beginning transference gives the patient of the objective attitude a priceless opportunity to regarding our own withdraw his projections, to personality” (Wolff 1959, make good his losses, and to 153). integrate his personality. The impulses underlying it certainly show their dark side to begin with, however much one may try to whitewash them; for an integral part of the work is the umbra solis or sol niger of the alchemists, the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality, the weakness that goes with every strength, the night that follows every day, the evil in the good” (CW 16, §420)

Appendix 5 A Note on Archetypology

According to Paul Schmitt (1945, 98), arché contains in itself the double significance of “cause” and “hegemon,” which makes us simultaneously think about “preeminence” (or “originality”) and a dominant, power-position. Further on, týpos reminds us of “coin minting.” According to Corin Braga (1999, 5), the concept of “archetype” draws attention to the invariant, which precedes logically and chronologically the later, secondary sequence of the phenomena, just as the intelligible prototype takes precedence over the sensitive copy. The term “archetype” appears in the works of authors such as Cicero and Pliny the Younger. In its philosophical sense, it is first encountered in the Hebrew philosopher of Greek expression Philo of Alexandria. In his book On the Creation [De opificio mundi], the archetype refers to the connection between man and the “image of God.” The Jewish philosopher draws attention to the fact that this image does not refer to the physical resemblance between man and God, but to the mental similitude—“the sovereign element of the soul”— between Creator and Created (JWL 130–1; CW 9I, §5). A second author who deals with archetypology is Bishop Irenaeus, who noted in Adversus haereses: “The creator of the world did not fashion these things directly from himself but copied them from archetypes outside himself” (CW 9I, §5). Its next philosophical occurrence can be found in a fragment from Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of initiatory writings from the 2nd and 3rd centuries attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (CW 11, §89 (65)). In this volume we also find the characterization of God understood as “archetypal light” [archétypon phós] (JWL 130–1; CW 8, §275 n.). The work of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names (conceived in the 5th century), contains another reference to the notion of archetype: “Perhaps, however, someone will say: ‘The seal is not entire and the same in all the printed copies.’ 173

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Appendix 5

I answer that this is not due to the seal itself (for it gives itself wholly and identically to each), but the difference of the substances which share it makes the impressions of the one, entire, identical archetype [primitivae formae] to be different” (Dinoysius the Areopagite 2018, 78). Moreover, the configuration of the concept of archetype comprises the Augustinian term “main ideas,” used by the Christian theologian in his treaty Eighty-Three Different Questions (question 46, paragraph 2): [F]or in fact the ideas are certain original and principal forms of things, i.e., reasons fixed and unchangeable, which are not themselves formed and, being thus eternal and existing always in the same state, are contained in the Divine Intelligence. And though they themselves neither come into being nor pass away, nevertheless, everything which can come into being and pass away and everything which does come into being and pass away is said to be formed in accord with these ideas. (Augustine 1982, 79–80)

According to Jolande Jacobi (1959, 49), the foundation of ideas as the main forms, distinguished by their essential “non-formation” and their belonging to the divine intelligence, is similar to the Jungian definition of the term “archetype.” On the one hand, the concept of “archetype” is in a strong, original position and, on the other (like Augustine’s “main ideas”— though it is “unformed” in itself), it has the capacity to impose its shape, to configure, to “stamp” the structure of the soul. According to Jung, the source of the archetypes must be sought in the mythologemes and the fundamental symbols that appear in dreams and proclaim the appearance of a deeper layer of the unconscious, which Jung calls “the collective unconscious” so as to distinguish it from the narrower Freudian concept of the “personal unconscious.” [I]n dreams, fantasies, and other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the individual, but more often without any sign of them. These “primordial images,” or “archetypes,” as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions. (CW 8, §229) I have often been asked where the archetypes or primordial images come from. It seems to me that their origin can only be explained by assuming them to be deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity. . . . Not only are the archetypes, apparently, impressions of ever-repeated typical experiences, but, at the same time, they behave empirically like agents that tend towards the repetition of these same experiences. (CW 7, §109)

A Note on Archetypology

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In the study based on his 1919 Belford College paper, “Instinct and the Unconscious” (CW 8 §§263–282), Jung uses the term “archetype” for the first time, claiming that “[j]ust as his instincts compel man to a specifically human mode of existence, so the archetypes force his ways of perception and apprehension into specifically human patterns” (CW 8, §270). Before being redefined as archetypes, the mythologemes and symbols of psychic life had been called “primordial images” [Urbilder] or “archaic images” [urtümliche Bilder]—a term belonging to Nietzsche’s professor, Jakob Burckhardt—or “dominants of the collective unconscious” [Dominanten des kollektiven Unbewußten]. One can clearly see that Jungian archetypes have (1) a philosophical significance: to archétypon eidos, the archetypal form of Corpus Hermeticum, the primitivae formae of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite or the Augustinian ideae principale, which are essentially unformed [quae ipsae formatae non sunt] and belong to the divine intellect; (2) a mythological significance: mythologemes and symbols that appear in dreams and mental illnesses and which, as Jung claims, cannot be explained by the Freudian concept of the “personal unconscious”; (3) thirdly, a biological significance. Probably one of the defining aspects of the archetype is its ability to preform, to “stamp,” to create form and configuration: archetypes’ “natural images engraved on the human mind, helping it to form its judgments,” argues the founder of analytical psychology (CW 8, §275), this idea being encountered in the history of philosophy in Nicolas Malebranche, Francis Bacon, or the scholastic metaphysics. Of course, the Platonic ideas,1 the Kantian categories, and ideas2) and the Schopenhauerian prototypes and ideas3 anticipate the Jungian concept. We could say, together with James Hillman, the creator of archetypal psychology, that the archetype is “the most ontologically fundamental of Jung’s concepts” (Hillman 1975, 142). Taking into account the fact that there are at least three meanings of the term “archetype” (metaphysical, psychological, and cultural), archetipology must focus on the cultural dimension of the term.4 Moreover, we have narrowed our research theme to the romantic and post-romantic prose of the 19th century, which prefigures the psychological treatment of the Jungian archetype of the shadow. In the 20th century, there are also literary works that become eloquent when applying the hermeneutics of Jungian archetypology (Meyrink’s Golem, Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, etc.), but they could be the subject of secondary research. But it is especially romanticism and post-romanticism that fit with the issue of the dual and

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demonic shadow: ego versus. non-ego, the discovery of inner darkness, of the “shadow brother,” and so on. If we were to extend our research onto postmodern prose in the future, we would find more useful a concept similar to the anarchetype, defined by Corin Braga as “a broken archetype, an archetype with which the center of meaning, the logos of the work, has been pulverized” (Braga 2006, 250) or as “a concept that is anarchic to the idea of model or center” (Ibid., 277). The archetype is a concept that suits the modern subject, who, although dissociated (in Baudelaire’s, Rimbaud’s or Nietzsche’s versions), hasn’t renounced to the idea of seeking unity and totality, while the anarchetype mirrors the postmodern subjectivity, broken up into multiple identities and multi-focused (Braga 2007, 16). Whether we are schizoid from a Rimbaudian point of view or we celebrate with Deleuze “the pulverizing” of the identity “that exploded in a galactic cloud of meanings” (Braga 2006, 250–251), we are all obliged to minimize the corrosive effects of dissociation. NOTES 1. “In Plato, however, an extraordinarily high value is set on the archetypes as metaphysical ideas, as ‘paradigms’ or models, while real things are held to be only the copies of these model ideas” (CW 8, §275). 2. “Kant defines [the idea] as the “archetype [Urbild] of all practical employment of reason,” a transcendental concept which as such exceeds the bounds of the experienceable” (CW 6, §733). Lucy Huskinson argues that the archetype is not “logically isomorphic” with Kant’s Idea (Bär 1976, 114) and that “that a more appropriate influence on Jung’s archetype is Schopenhauer” (Huskinson 2004, 76–78). 3. “[T]he primordial image acts as a mediator, once again proving its redeeming power, a power it has always possessed in the various religions. What Schopenhauer says of the idea, therefore, I would apply rather to the primordial image” (CW 8, §751). 4. However, the validity of psychological archetypes in Jungian psychotherapy is a strong argument against their purported lack of relevance. The difference between the Freudian treatment method based on a certain pansexualism that had to be administered to the repressed Victorian society and Jung’s “dangerous” method, inspired by mythology and first presented in its radical form in CW 5, is also revealed in the closing scene of the film A Dangerous Method: “What he’ll [Freud] never accept is that what we understand has got us nowhere. We have to go into uncharted territory. We have to go back, to the sources of everything we believe. I don’t just want to open a door and show the patient his illness, squatting there like a toad. I want to find a way to help the patient reinvent himself, to send him off on a journey, at the end of which is waiting the person he was always intended to be” (Cronenberg 2011). For the source of this argument, see FJL 294:

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“I imagine a far finer and more comprehensive task for ΨA than alliance with an ethical fraternity. I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centres, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were—a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal. That was the beauty and purpose of classical religion, which from God knows what temporary biological needs has turned into a Misery Institute. Yet what infinite rapture and wantonness lie dormant in our religion, waiting to be led back to their true destination!”

Appendix 6 The Shadow in Music

Taking into account that music has an obvious imaginative dimension (Nagari 2016, 29–33) and that death1 (Trevi and Innamorati 2008, 162; Vogel 2015, 55) and madness are two of the concepts belonging to the shadow, I will focus my research on the shadow in music2 on the two aforementioned themes. 1. The theme of death as an aspect of the shadow in music has two different subthemes: (a) The subtheme of agony, understood as oscillation between life and death, both as “death of death” (Feuerbach) or as continuous death, as “deathless death” (Kierkegaard and Cioran). From this perspective, death is seen, against Epicurus’s famous argument, as immanent to life. The allegretto from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major Op. 92 renders the unrest of the one who hesitates between life and death. The ostinato from the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven’s symphony (the theme is first played by cellos and violas, then the violins take over the first melody, while the cellos and the violas play the second melody) seem to configure the ambiguous and heterogenous trait of agony, oscillating between despair and resignation, between the will to life and destrudo. The dialogue between the violins, cellos, and violas leads us into a territory transcending both being and non-being, into a metaphysical no man’s land, where life is desirable, death seems acceptable, but the space within them is infernal. The moment of extreme anxiety when the goddess Maat prepares her feather to weigh the unworthy soul is revealed to us. The first melody comes back in a fugato at the end of the movement after Beethoven develops a more serene theme with the woodwinds (with the clarinet in the foreground). The repetition of the agonic theme 179

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seems to indicate a resurgence of the nightmarish trait of existence and a sort of suspension of decision (between death qua life and death qua death there is no choice). If Mozart, with his inherent delicacy, arrives at a sort of regressive micromania, a sort of reconciliation with the defeated status, like a terminally ill who assumes a fetal posture (see the molto allegro from his Symphony No. 40), Beethoven makes the universe burn along the depressive subject. Through contagion, the world is set on fire on account of an extreme inflammation of the romantic ego, as if the suicide of certain individuals can cause apocalypse. The sadness of Beethoven’s hero is similar to the “black despair” of a colossus who could blow up the cosmos in a fit of anger. (b) The subtheme of mourning famously linked by Freud to melancholy. Now agony is transcended and the ocean of non-being has swallowed the island of the existential subject. A perfect sample of the “experience” of death qua death can be found in Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor Op. 35 (1839). The famous theme of the funeral march is cut off by a lento only to later come back in full force. This dreamy lento seems to emphasize through contrast the vigor and the rhythmic violence of the march, the supremacy and intransigency of death. The lento might be seen as an elegy of the soul who does not want to renounce her world (or as a lamentation of the one dispossessed by living). However, the theme of march comes back with self-assurance, with an almost meta-human harshness. One might say that it is impossible to believe in post-existence after this apology of the coffin, which transforms us from individual into thing. The lento speaks of our perishable and vulnerable nature and of the unrealizable wish to stay alive of the individual touched by death. Nevertheless, the final repetition of the march, with its mechanical atrocity, transgressing the anthropic domain, reminding us that man can be squashed like a bug, can be understood—in a Sartrian mood—as contempt of the living over the dead. Chopin syncs with the shadow of death, which consumes souls from the beginning of time, symbolically allying himself with the supreme executioner to desensitize his melancholic spirit, to die easier. 2. Madness has many distinctive moments: (a) The bipolar phase can be described through the depression-mania alternance introduced by Kraepelin in the psychiatric nosography (Radden 2000, 259–260) and, obviously, through a marked cyclothymic aspect (the trait of Golyadkin, Dostoyevsky’s character3). The depressive4 dimension is found in the adagio sostenuto from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C flat minor Op. 27 No. 2 (1801). This adagio, probably the most famous Beethoven’s piece,

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along with the bagatelle Für Elise and the opening theme of the Fifth symphony, is usually seen as unrequited love poem. In the first part of the sonata, the anger and the violence are repressed, and Beethoven creates the portrait of the feeling type. However, the presto agitato, the third movement, destroys the credibility of the notions of “love,” “soul,” “delicacy.” Beethoven’s daimonic character is revealed in the presto: we witness the extraversion of a sentimental human being, who could say, like Nietzsche, Flamme bin ich sicherlich [“Flame I am assuredly”] (P 250). The depression is transformed into mania with a fury which would burn down the planet if Beethoven’s soul were anima mundi, if the cosmic order resonated with the individual tragedy. Coming back to the adagio, I must note that before being a love poem, it is also a hymn of isolation. From my perspective, it reveals the ontic incapacity of the union of souls, the preeminence of separation. The excruciating desire mirrors the distancing from the order of mankind. The unrequited love justifies the tragic fury from the presto; moreover, while the libido diminishes, the shadow of death descends upon the sonata. The adagio presents the ordeal of subjects who wakes up alone in a slumbering dead world, a deaf world without fellow creatures. (b) The schizoid or dissociative phase reminds of the shadow and the double. The original version of Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana op. 16 (1838) was conceived in only four days. The first movement, Äußerst bewegt in D minor, feels like a continuation of Beethoven’s presto from the Sonata No. 14. Schumann imagines a subject who lives in an unimaginable tension in the poles of human life, mentioned by Shestov (1982, 280). Not also in the equator, because there is something icy in this unrest: we are listening to the music of inner disintegration and the leap to madness. Reminding of Chopin, a slower movement cuts off this Äußerst bewegt, but the dreaming here has a delusive, almost hysteric, effect, and cannot break free from the dissociative chains. It seems that Schumann’s fantasy starts where Marlowe’s Faust ends, at the open gates of hell. Furthermore, Kreisleriana suggests the image of a suicidal who jumps into the abyss, not with resignation, but with frenzy. The seventh movement of the composition, Sehr rasch, transports us into a schizoid bolgia. If Chopin’s funeral march had an inhuman touch, suggesting the transformation of the individual into a thing and the sinister merger with the coffin, Schumann’s work seems to exemplify the experience of death in a concentration camp through the machinal and repetitive efficiency of the execution. Seven of the eight phantasies for piano are very short, five are fast, three slow, presenting a conflicting

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picture. In fact, the whole composition has a dual character (two broken mirrors are facing each other), and we almost feel “the wind of the wing of madness” (Baudelaire 2006a, 106). (c) The autistic phase, of total isolation. If the arrietta from Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 can be seen as a sort of end of music (just like the finale from Chopin’s Sonata No. 2), it still can be interpreted as the labor of an individual who is programmed to exercise his natural dispositions, albeit despite himself. The Große Fuge op. 133 (1825) is the end of the end and the beginning of musical deprogramming. No more alterity, no more intersubjectivity, total autism: it is almost as if we were watching the depth of hell from a submarine or if we visited the basement of mental hospital where incurable patients are isolated. In this sense, Beethoven’s fugue contradicts the Freudian thesis from Westworld: “The human intellect was like peacock feathers. It's an extravagant display intended to attract a mate. All of art, literature, a bit of Mozart, William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and the Empire State building . . . just an elaborate mating ritual” (Joy and Nolan 2016). According to Wittgenstein (1986, 225) “if a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” This sort of meta-human language is presented to us in the Große Fuge: how does a deaf man feel, after he has become estranged from the humanism of the Ninth Symphony, from the barbaric religiosity of the Missa solemnis and from the explosive exuberance of the last sonatas? It is a sort of deafness that does not refer to hearing but to the sense of mankind. As if Beethoven set foot on a foreign planet and watched the explosion of Earth from great distance. Große Fuge symbolizes absolute incommunicability, a trait that the absurd theater only manages to parody it. If music assured unmediated access to the sentimental earthquake of the composer, Große Fuge can be considered a foray into the mind of a member of another species. NOTES 1. Analytic psychology and existential psychotherapy meet in this point. 2. Double metaphor: the shadow is a metaphor in itself and the musical shadow is a meta-metaphor. 3. See chapter 6. 4. The adagio from Sonata No. 14 is closer to melancholy than depression. It contains a propensity toward Thanatos, like Novalis’s Hymns (1800), but also a certain delicacy deprived of clinical traits.

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Index

Abraxas, 37, 146 Adler, Alfred, 53 Adorno, Theodor W., 63n12 aesthetics, 115, 121n13 alienation, 4, 12, 20, 23n2, 55, 74, 143–44 analytical psychology, 1, 3–5, 7, 21, 44, 92, 123, 125, 175 anarchism, 60, 63n17, 107, 134. See also nihilism Angelus Silesius, 39n8 anima, 31, 126, 146, 150, 155, 167, 181 antihumanism, 2–3, 6n1, 58, 106, 144, 152. See also not-man antinatalism, 146, 157 anxiety, 34, 39n8, 48, 61n2, 73–75, 79, 101–3, 105, 107nn1–2, 110–11, 128, 146, 179; abyss, 5, 79–80, 84, 104, 109–10, 112, 138, 153, 181; anguish, 23n7, 80, 105, 153–55; fear, 4, 13, 16, 34–35, 61n2, 83, 90–91, 94, 97, 101, 103–4, 107, 111, 113, 119, 124, 137, 140, 146; terror, 27, 41, 71, 79, 81, 107, 111, 157; vertigo, 67, 80 apocatastasis, 31. See also Origen Apollonian, 102 archetype, 3–4, 8, 10, 15, 20, 37, 39n11, 43, 71, 106, 173–76, 176nn1–2, 176n4; anarchetype, 3,

72n9, 145, 176; archetypal, 5, 8–9, 19–20, 24n19, 33–34, 38n8, 43, 117, 123–24, 139, 145–47, 158, 173, 175; archetypal psychology, 175; maternal, 4, 167. See also anima; social. See persona atheism, 54, 61n4, 63n4, 133–34, 151, 152, 160 Augustine, 35, 174–75 Aurelia, 44–45, 49–51 avant-garde of the avant-garde, 3, 6, 149; continuous end, 2, 149; year zero, 149; zero hour, 2, 15, 127 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 146 Bacon, Francis, 175 Bahnsen, Julius, 146, 154 Bakunin, Mikhail, 119, 120n2, 134, 163. See also anarchism Baudelaire, Charles, 6n1, 33, 38n8, 41, 46, 51, 57, 58, 61, 62n11, 116, 118– 19, 126, 144, 162, 176, 182 Baudrillard, Jean, 1, 58 Bazarov, Yevgeny, 116 beauty, 34, 55, 109, 112–14, 118–19, 120n3, 141n31, 141n34, 177n4 Beckett, Samuel, 2, 82 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 131, 159–60, 179–82 201

202

Being [Sein], 9, 74 being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-Sein], 10, 53, 55–56, 73, 84 Being-with [Mit-sein], 55, 73 Belcampo, 46, 48–49 Benatar, David, 157 Bergman, Ingmar, 2, 146 Bernhard, Thomas, 38n6, 157 black sun, 28, 69–70, 102, 152 Blaga, Lucian, 35 Blake, William, 1, 37, 50, 98n8, 111, 159 Bleuler, Paul Eugen, 57 Bonaventura, 48–49, 159 Borges, Jorge Luis, 67 Braga, Corin, 3, 71n2, 173, 176 breath [prāṇa], 103 Buddha, 131, 141n22 Burckhardt, Jakob, 175 Byron, George Gordon, 2, 20, 29, 32, 53–55, 58, 62n7, 145, 155–56, 160 Cain, 29, 54, 59, 63n15 Caliban, 2, 61, 62n8 call of conscience [Ruf des Gewissens], 12, 67 Campbell, Thomas, 25n21 Camus, Albert, 54, 60–61, 81, 144 Chopin, Frédéric, 161, 180, 182 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 173 Cioran, Emil: and antihumanism, 2–3, 6, 6n1, 61, 61n3, 105, 107, 130, 152; on anxiety, 101, 107n2, 108n3; compared to Nietzsche, 52, 58, 75, 129, 139n3, 151; compared to Schopenhauer, 107n2, 131–32, 156–57; on death, 91, 101, 107n2, 179; on decreation, 120n2; on depression, 61n2; on excess, 50; as existentialist, 5; as feeling type, 86n10; on Gnosticism, 146; on God, 59–60; on hatred, 56–59; as nihilist, 58, 62n7, 151, 156; on nostalgia of paradise, 119; on philosophy and literature, 145; on psychosis, 31,

Index

39n9, 56, 72n6, 75, 84; on religion and sexuality, 44; on solitude, 55–56, 60; on superman, 52n4, 130, 139n3, 140n17 Clare, John, 25n22 Cobain, Kurt, 50 Cohle, Rust, 58, 157 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 49, 53, 55, 159 contingency, 43, 71, 74, 80, 114, 136 Couliano, Ioan P., 152 Cowper, William, 67, 159 Crawford, Jim, 157 Cypher, 83 Darko, Donnie, 61 Darwin, Charles, 146, 162 Darwinism, 3; animalic, 71, 97; ape, 6, 39n8, 70, 89, 90, 127, 130, 140, 143, 151. See also Nietzsche; beast, 90, 97, 105, 116, 152; para-Darwinism, 6, 107. See also Nietzsche; degenerationism, 3; pre-humanity, 90 Dasein, 13–14, 28, 61, 73–74, 101, 103–6, 111, 131 Dazai, Osamu, 71, 72n11 death, 5, 20–21, 31, 42, 49, 51, 52n18, 54, 59, 68–71, 74, 78–79, 90, 91, 97, 98n3, 98n6, 101–3, 106, 107n2, 112, 113–15, 119, 126, 128, 131, 132, 134, 139n3, 140n9, 141nn22–23, 149–50, 153–57, 160, 163–64, 167, 179–81; agony, 50, 78, 179–80; of God, 2, 9, 19, 33, 35, 61, 107, 125–26, 129, 133–35, 139n3, 143, 146, 151–52. See also Nietzsche; immanence of, 91; living, 47, 56, 61n2, 78–79, 86, 119; of man 2, 6n1; murder, 28, 44, 51, 57, 62n12, 68, 71, 78, 94, 97, 98n1, 134, 151, 163; suicide, 20, 23n2, 31, 34, 50, 57, 68, 86–87, 97, 105, 115, 119, 180. See also madness; super-death of God, 154; universal, 6, 25n22, 155. See also anxiety

Index

death instinct, 18–19, 36, 39n9, 156; destrudo 156, 179; Thanatos, 18, 182. See also Eros; will to death [Wille zum Tode] 19, 51, 131–32. See also Mainländer. See also Freud decreation, 110, 112–13, 119, 120n2 Deleuze, Gilles, 151, 176 demonic 3–5, 15, 17–19, 24n12, 27, 31– 37, 38n6, 38n8, 43–44, 47–48, 50, 58, 62n7, 71, 76, 94, 97, 102, 109, 145, 147, 166–67, 176; antidaimon, 36; daimon, 12; daimonic, 5, 36–38, 50, 54, 124, 131, 146, 181; daimonism, 34. See also devil derealization, 28, 67, 104 despair, 42, 61n4, 68, 78, 179–80 destruction, 3–4, 6, 6n1, 18, 30, 35, 45, 48, 60, 62n12, 63n17, 68, 75, 81, 94, 116, 120, 125, 137, 143, 156; creative, 120n2. See also decreation; self-destruction, 34, 54, 58. See also identity; nihilism devil, 1, 3, 5, 17, 27, 29, 31–33, 36, 38n8, 39n8, 41, 43–44, 47–48, 50, 52n14, 54–55, 62n7, 70–71, 84n2, 85n5, 89, 93, 94, 97, 98n8, 105–6, 118, 126, 129, 140n12, 145, 160; Antichrist, 37; enemy, 31–33, 43, 55, 57, 110; inner, 17, 32, 38, 38n8, 70, 118; Lord of Lies, 98; Lucifer, 32, 37, 54, 59, 70–71, 74, 85n7, 93, 98, 109, 111, 115, 145; Satan, 20, 32–34, 37, 38n8, 39n9, 41, 49–50, 51n2, 54, 70–71, 84, 85n5, 89, 97, 119, 140n12, 146; satanic principle of suffering, 31, 84. See also Cioran; simia dei [God’s ape] 39n8, 145; snake, 35, 109–10, 112 Diaconu, Mădălina, 31, 54, 57, 61n4 Dick, Philip K., 61, 73, 83–84, 86n11, 146 Dionysian, 34, 37, 97, 133–34, 147, 171 Dionysos, 126 divinization [theosis] 8, 43–44, 119 Dorn, Gerard, 129

203

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich, 1, 6, 29, 33, 41, 46, 66, 70–71, 73, 75–79, 81–82, 84, 107, 145, 161–63, 180 Dracula, Count, 2, 90 Dragomir, Alexandru, 75 double, 1–6, 27–32, 35, 38n6, 39n8, 41–42, 45–46, 48, 52n14, 55, 66–69, 71, 72n9, 73–77, 79–80, 82, 95–97, 98n8, 102, 130, 143, 145–46, 150–51, 160, 170, 173, 181, 182n2; alterity, 2, 28, 30–31, 42, 55–56, 62n12, 66, 68, 80, 85, 103, 105, 107, 114–15, 147, 182; Doppelgänger, 4, 27, 33, 80–81, 84, 103, 150, 159; duality, 1, 3, 5, 8, 27, 29–30, 35, 39n9, 39n11, 41, 71, 75, 84, 92, 96, 98n8, 102, 119, 124, 130, 143, 146– 47, 150; multiplicity, 27, 29, 35, 48, 95–96, 143–44, 150; other, 3, 9–10, 12–15, 18–19, 21, 23n9, 27, 28, 32, 35, 37, 38n8, 39n12, 42, 44, 47–48, 51, 51n1, 55–58, 62n5, 62n8, 62n12, 66, 69, 74, 76–77, 80–81, 85nn4–5, 91, 93–94, 97, 105–7, 110, 114, 116– 18, 124, 135, 139n3, 139n8, 144, 150–51, 165–67, 169–71; plurality, 35, 41 Durden, Tyler, 103, 144 dwarf, 6, 127, 129–30, 140n16 ego, 1, 2, 5, 7–17, 20, 23n1, 23n3, 23n7, 24n16, 24n19, 28–36, 38n4, 38n8, 39n8, 42–48, 52n8, 65, 67, 74, 76–82, 85nn4–5, 90, 93, 95–96, 102–4, 107, 114, 118, 124, 125, 131, 134, 137–39, 139n9, 143–44, 150, 156, 161, 165–72, 176, 180; alter, 116, 145; anti-I, 4; ego-ideal, 10, 17, 165–66. See also persona; egoism, 30; egology, 6, 30, 38n2, 146; I=I, 28–29, 114; ego-self axis, 5, 7–9, 14, 36; individuation, viii, 6, 8-9, 20, 31, 34, 55, 66, 115, 126, 134, 165, 168; monarchy of, 21, 150; non-ego,

204

Index

29–31, 74, 79, 176; not-I, 1, 3–4, 6, 44, 46, 76–77, 80; pre-individual, 109, 111; pseudo-ego, 12. See also persona; self, 2, 5–9, 12–15, 17, 20, 24n12, 27, 29, 34, 36–37, 38n12, 42–44, 46–48, 52n9, 52n15, 56–58, 73–74, 78, 80, 93, 106, 110, 114, 124–26, 128, 134, 139, 150–51, 165, 167–68; subject, 2–3, 8, 14, 21, 25n24, 27–30, 35, 48, 53–55, 58–60, 62n12, 68, 74, 80, 82, 84, 95–96, 102, 112, 115, 135–36, 138, 143, 145, 150–51, 153–54, 156, 166, 168–69, 176, 180–81; superego, 32, 34, 36, 42, 45–46, 65, 67–69, 72n3, 90, 92–93, 97, 104, 111, 145, 150 Eichmann, Adolf, 12, 70 Eliade, Mircea, 120n4 Ellis, Havelock, 90 Eminescu, Mihai, 8, 20, 58, 62n7, 63n14, 74, 80, 85n7, 132, 149, 154–56, 163 Epictetus, 12 Epicurus, 120, 179 Eros, 18, 41, 45, 49, 51, 167; libido, 4, 16, 22, 41–42, 45, 46, 49, 51, 56, 92, 118, 139n9, 181; sexuality, 3, 42–46, 49–50, 52n5, 144; Venus, 42, 44 estrangement, 4, 20, 29, 47, 55, 59, 94. See also alienation Euphemia, 45–46, 52n15 event [Ereignis], 152 evil, 3–14, 18, 20–21, 32–33, 63n15, 71, 86n11, 92–94, 96–97, 98n2, 98n5, 99n8, 104, 107n2, 110, 112, 115–19, 120n3, 121n11, 131, 140n9, 145, 156, 170, 172 existentialism, 5, 143, 146 Fall, 3, 6, 109–10, 161; Eden complex, 6, 119; innocence, 28, 30, 109–10, 115, 139n3, 155 Faustian, 90, 113 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 133–34, 141n28, 151, 161, 179

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 3, 29, 38n2, 45, 48, 104, 114, 120n8, 159. See also identity; Schelling fin de siècle, 3, 91 fire, 49–51, 52n16, 54, 61n2, 94, 98n4, 115, 131, 180 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 61n1, 120n4 Flaubert, Gustave, 50, 162 Foscolo, Ugo, 54, 62n5, 159 Foucault, Michel, 2, 6n1, 135, 150–51 Frankenstein, Victor, 2, 5, 31–32, 53– 54, 57, 160 freedom, 5, 45, 52n10, 59–60, 68, 71, 80, 90, 119, 135, 153, 160 Freud, Anna, 7 Freud, Sigmund: on anxiety, 107n1; compared to Cioran, 140n17; compared to Jung, 5, 126, 146, 176n4; on death instinct, 18–19, 39n9, 156; on id, 5, 18, 42, 150; on megalomania, 52n8; on melancholy, 180; on narcissism, 30; on neurosis, 33; on paranoia, 2, 21, 73, 86n12; as sensation type, 86n10; on sexuality as numinosum, 43, 52n5; on superego, 97, 150 Frey-Rohn, Liliane, 20, 24n14, 38n8, 43, 85n5, 123, 126, 136, 140n12, 141n33 Fuseli, Henry, 33, 102–3 Gautier, Théophile, 54, 60, 62n5, 112, 116, 120n3, 161 gaze, 17, 20, 42, 47, 94, 104, 135–36 Gide, André, 121n15 God, 6n1, 9, 20, 31–33, 35–38, 38n5, 38n8, 39n8, 39n11, 42–44, 49–50, 52n9, 54–56, 59–61, 62n4, 62n7, 63n15, 71, 80, 83, 85n5, 90, 97, 106–7, 108n4, 110, 112, 114, 118, 124–26, 128–29, 133–37, 139n3, 140nn13–14, 141nn25–26, 141n29, 143, 145–46, 151–54, 156, 157n1, 163–64, 167, 173, 177n4; complex (“I am God”), 52n9, 83, 106, 114;

Index

creator, 62n8, 76, 85n8, 97, 110, 120n2, 127, 152–54, 173; dark side of, 20, 34. See also Abraxas; devil; image of, 43, 97, 173; inner, 9, 36, 38n8, 39n8, 43; Jesus Christ, 37–38, 39n8, 41, 52n14, 60, 98, 133, 135, 153, 161, 177n4; of Shadow 146. See also Abraxas; within, 8, 146. See also death; devil; misotheism; nihilism Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 2, 8, 18, 35, 52n16, 55–56, 62n7, 78, 124, 159, 161 Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich, 43, 74, 84, 84n3, 104, 106, 161 Golyadkin, Yakov Petrovich, 29, 31, 33, 66, 75–84, 145, 180 Goya, Francisco de, 152, 159 Gray, Dorian, 1–3, 6, 28, 30–31, 33, 35, 47, 86, 90, 93, 96, 109, 111–13, 115–19, 145, 149–50, 164 Hannibal, 61, 121n13, 146 Hartmann, Eduard von, 5, 95, 99n10, 146, 154, 162 hatred, 28, 39n8, 56–57, 59–60, 62n11, 63n15, 94, 128, 151–53 Hauff, Wilhelm, 146 hedonism, 111–13, 117, 144 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 68, 95, 102, 110–11, 115, 119, 135, 151, 159 Heidegger, Marin, 2, 5, 10, 12–14, 28, 53, 55, 58, 67, 86n10, 101, 114, 139n7, 144, 146 Heissenbüttel, Helmut, 87n13 Helios, 37. See also Abraxas hell, 13, 15, 16, 31, 33, 73–74, 76, 78, 91, 94, 98, 99n8, 102, 106, 111, 115, 118, 133, 159, 163, 166, 181–82; damnation, 31, 79, 97, 115, 132, 161; harrowing of, 33, 73, 102; inferno, 9, 31, 68, 71, 76–77, 79, 91, 106, 115, 118, 164 Heraclitus, 49, 125, 139n5 Hermes Trismegistus, 173

205

Hesse, Hermann, 3, 25n25, 29, 37, 38n4, 50, 145–46, 175 Hillman, James, 175 Hitler, Adolf, 70 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 1, 41–42, 44–45, 48–51 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 23n2, 34, 159 Huskinson, Lucy, 126, 130, 139n1, 141n20, 176n2 Husserl, Edmund, 1 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 50, 116, 120n5, 163 Hypatia, 98 Hyperion complex, 77 Iago, 48, 58, 71, 74, 76 Ibsen, Henrik, 9, 162 id, 4–5, 8, 13, 18, 24nn15–16, 29, 31, 44–46, 48, 50, 65, 67–70, 72n3, 89– 90, 92, 97, 102–4, 143, 145–46, 150 identity, 4, 12, 20, 28–31, 35–36, 44–45, 58, 66–67, 72n9, 73, 75, 80–81, 84, 90, 92–93, 95, 97, 104, 107, 115–16, 119, 120n8, 136, 138, 165, 171, 176; crisis of, 21, 28–29, 78, 147; destruction of the principle of, 1, 48, 81, 90, 94–96, 144; divine, 4–5, 35, 143; post-identity, 1; un-identification, 4, 31, 57, 58, 144 ignorance [avidyā], 30 indifference [adiaphoría], 78, 133 inferiority, 17–18, 21–22, 53, 57, 67, 90, 93, 97–98, 118, 126 inflation, 7, 9, 20, 43, 46, 53, 93, 114, 130 insanity, 16, 55, 67, 84, 104. See also madness; psychosis Irenaeus, 173 isolation, 2, 5, 25n24, 31–32, 53, 55, 62n8, 73, 77, 84, 106, 115, 181–82 Jack the Ripper, 90, 98n1, 163 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 51n1, 159 Jacobi, Jolande, 9–10, 14–15, 76, 165, 174

206

Index

James, William, 1, 143 Jean Paul, 4–5, 27, 38n1, 51n1, 55–56, 135, 146, 153, 156, 159 Jekyll, Henry, 1–2, 29, 31, 35, 89–90, 92–97, 102–3, 117–18, 131, 163, 170 jester, 6, 52n4, 127–29 Johnson, Lionel, 120n3, 164 Jung, Carl Gustav: about his mental illness, 126, 141n20; on archetypes, 174–75; compared to Freud, 4, 17–18, 21, 146, 176; compared to Hesse, 37; compared to Nietzsche, 4–5, 12, 20, 45, 91, 123–26, 141n20; compared to Sartre, 11; compared to Schopenhauer, 5, 11, 15; on egoself axis, 7; and existentialism, 5, 146; and Gnosticism, 37, 146; on individuation, 8; on persona, 9–12, 23n7, 76; on shadow, 4, 16–18, 22, 23n3, 32, 37, 70; on structure of the psyche, 4, 7, 18, 150; on theory of stages of life, 23nn1–2; on theosis, 23n4 K., Josef, 71, 82 Kafka, Franz, 71, 82 Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich, 70 Kierkegaard, Søren, 1, 3, 5–6, 78–80, 101, 110–11, 116, 119, 132–33, 141n27, 145–46, 161, 179 Kleist, Heinrich von, 34, 159–60 Lady Macbeth, 57, 71 Lagerkvist, Pär, 3 Laing, Ronald David, 29, 67, 73 last pope, 6, 133–36 Lautréamont, Comte de, 2, 6n1, 54, 57, 58, 61, 62n7, 106–7, 149, 152–56, 162 Lenau, Nikolaus, 63n14, 161 Leopardi, Giacomo, 59, 63n14, 132, 137, 156, 160 Lermontov, Mikhail, 54, 161 Levinas, Emmanuel, 102, 114 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 95, 150

Ligeti, György, 146 Lombroso, Cesare, 90, 163 London, 89–92, 98nn3–4, 160, 162 Lorrain, Jean, 106–6, 164 Lucka, Emil, 39n8, 48, 52n14 Maat, 179 Mach, Ernst, 1, 48, 95, 143, 149–50 Machen, Arthur, 91–92, 98n4, 135, 146, 164 madness, 20, 24n17, 31, 34, 36, 48, 54, 56–57, 75, 104, 106, 130, 155, 179– 82. See also insanity; psychosis magician, 141n21 Mainländer, Philipp, 5, 19, 132, 146, 151, 154 Maldoror, 57, 59, 149, 152, 154–56, 162 Malebranche, Nicolas, 175 Manfred, 29, 53–55, 59, 145, 160–61, 163 Mann, Klaus, 3, 145 Mann, Thomas, 3, 23n7, 145, 175 Marlowe, Christopher, 136, 181 master, 16, 24n16, 50, 70, 77, 102–3, 107, 116–17, 130, 131, 143; master morality [Herrenmoral], 107; servant, 24n16, 45, 63n16, 70, 90, 102, 133, 143; servant of the servant, 46; slave morality [Herdenmoral], 107, 128 Maturin, Charles, 146 Maupassant, Guy de, 1, 3, 5–6, 28, 33, 56, 99n10, 101–7, 108n4, 119, 145, 163 Medardus, 27, 31–32, 41, 43–49, 51, 52n11, 145 Medusa, 30, 42 megalomania, 43, 46, 52n8, 134, 145 Meister Eckhart, 8, 168 melancholy, 20, 34, 47, 53, 54, 61n2, 74, 119, 131–32, 180, 182n4; depression, 36, 53, 61n2, 78, 124, 180–81, 182n4; mania, 180–81 Mephisto, 3, 18, 52n16, 117, 146. See also devil

Index

Meursault, 54, 81 Meyrink, Gustav, 3, 145, 175 Milton, John, 37, 56, 59, 74, 98, 145 minority of one, 55. See also George Orwell mirror, 1, 22, 28–30, 41, 46, 51n1, 56, 70, 75, 84n3, 85nn4–5, 94, 96, 101, 104, 109, 117, 144–45, 151, 182 misotheism, 62n7, 63n15 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 180, 182 Mr. Robot, 61 mysterium horrendum, 32, 34, 147. See also Rudolf Otto mysterium tremendum, 47. See also Rudolf Otto Nabokov, Vladimir, 3, 145 narcissism, 5, 28, 30, 52n8, 69, 85n4, 114–15, 120n9 Neo, 81, 109 Nerval, Gérard de., 69–70, 98n8, 161–62 neurosis, 4, 32–34, 56, 68, 140n17, 170 Nietzsche, Friedrich: about his mental illness, 43, 75, 125–27, 141n20; about philosophy of literature, 145; compared to Baudelaire, 33; compared to Cioran, 3, 6n1, 58, 60, 139n3, 140n17; compared to Foucault, 2; compared to Freud, 19, 24nn16–17; compared to Hartmann, 95; compared to Jung, 91, 123–27, 130, 136, 138, 141n20; compared to Rimbaud, 2, 35, 48, 103; on death of God, 133–36, 151; on death of subject, 95, 150; on decreation, 120n2; on daimonic, 34, 181; on eternal return, 125–27, 129, 131–33, 136–37; as existentialist, 23n10, 79; as intuitive type, 86n10; as nihilist, 6n1, 58, 60, 80, 125, 130–33, 136, 141n22, 146, 149, 151, 154; as paraDarwinian, 90, 143; on persona, 11, 76, 144; as Schopenhauerian, 5, 11, 19, 24nn16–17, 130–33, 136, 146; on

207

selfhood, 78, 121n14; on shadow, 4; on will to power, 11, 45; Zarathustra as his no. 2 personality, 8–9, 24n19 nigredo, 70, 91 nihilism, 2, 5, 19, 54, 56–58, 60, 61n4, 62n4, 62n7, 63n17, 69, 78, 119, 126, 131–34, 136–38, 146, 149, 151–52, 154–56, 157n1, 159, 162; active, 6n1, 125–26, 129, 134, 137; anti-nihilism, 126, 129, 132, 136; meontology, 48; nobody [Niemand], 14, 28, 58; nonbeing, 19, 79; nothingness, 9, 13, 56, 58, 78–80, 109, 120n2, 134–35, 151, 153–54; passive, 125–26, 129, 134, 136–37, 156; pre-anti-nihilism, 63n17; theological, 133. See also atheism; Cioran; death; God; Nietzsche; Schopenhauer nostalgia, 28, 34, 73, 119 not-man, 54, 57–58, 60–61, 71, 89, 93– 94, 105–7; abhuman, 135; inhuman, 5, 105, 181; last man, 25, 53, 106, 127, 129, 132, 160; subman, 60, 105; superman, 125–33, 136, 139n3, 141n31, 170. See also antihumanism; Cioran; death; Nietzsche; nihilism noumenon, 8; numinosum, 43, 45, 52n5 Novalis, 52n18, 69–70, 98n7, 155, 159, 182n4 Onfray, Michel, 115, 119 ontological insecurity 29, 80. See also Ronald David Laing Origen, 31 Orwell, George, 55, 71 Otto, Rudolf, 32, 34, 47, 147 Ovid, 30, 113–15 Pain, Barry, 106, 108n4 Palahniuk, Chuck, 3, 68, 145 paranoia, 2, 5, 21, 25n24, 33, 83, 84, 86nn11–12, 114–15, 136; existential, 6, 46, 73–74, 80, 83, 84, 114–15 Pascal, Blaise, 23n9

208

Index

Pater, Walter, 3, 120n10, 163 paternalism, 33, 97 Pauli, Wolfgang, 80 Pechorin, Grigory Alexandrovich, 54 persona, 5–6, 9–18, 23n7, 28, 35–36, 42, 45, 47, 57, 69, 75–78, 80, 92–93, 97, 117, 144, 146, 150; bad faith [mauvaise foi] 12, 17, 21, 93, 128, 144. See also the they [das Man]; depersonalization, 14, 20; identification with, 12, 14; inauthenticity, 74, 92, 144; mask, 9–16, 23n7, 24n12, 76–77, 165, 172; personology, 77; professional, 11, 14, 92 pessimism, 5, 145. See also nihilism Pessoa, Fernando, 147 Philo of Alexandria, 173 philosophy of literature, 2–3 Phoenix, 78 Pinter, Harold, 82 pity, 97, 132–35, 152 Pizzolatto, Nic, 58, 157 Plath, Sylvia, 23n2 Plato, 36, 146, 176n1; anti-Platonism, 56; Platonism, 33, 126–27, 131–34, 149, 153, 175 Pliny the Younger, 173 Plotinus, 29 Poe, Edgar Allan, 1, 28, 32, 53–54, 65, 67–69, 72n7, 154–55, 161 portrait, 18, 43, 97, 109, 118–19, 121n17, 163, 181 projection, 5, 7, 21, 25n24, 30, 32, 44, 57, 59, 67, 77–78, 83, 141n20, 144, 168, 169, 170. See also paranoia; end of the world, 62n10; target of, 13, 165. See also persona; withdrawal of, 22, 98, 172. See also shadow Protagoras, 116 Proust, Marcel, 1 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 173, 175 psychoanalysis, 4–5, 19, 45, 48, 126

psychosis, 4, 12, 20, 23n4, 29, 31, 34, 39n8, 55–56, 76–77, 83–84, 104, 106, 126. See also insanity; madness; mania; neurosis; paranoia; schizophrenia Rank, Otto, 34, 59 repression, 7, 17, 19, 21–22, 24n14, 24n17, 32, 42, 78, 86, 111, 126 resistance, 17, 24n17, 78, 126, 169 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 36, 80 Rimbaud, Arthur, 2, 35, 48, 66, 94, 103, 119, 121n12, 121n19, 126, 144, 150, 163, 176 Rollinat, Maurice, 154 romanticism, 1–3, 153, 155, 159, 175; post-romanticism, 1–3, 153, 175 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 132 Sade, Marquis de, 53 Saint Anthony, 43, 47 Saint Medardus, 43 Saint Rosalia, 44–45, 51 Saramago, José, 3, 145 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 5, 11, 76, 79–80, 110, 128, 135–36 Saturn, 130, 152 Sauron, 104, 117 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 29, 38n2, 45, 104, 114, 120n8, 146, 159–60. See also identity schizoid, 71, 137, 176, 181 schizophrenia, 8, 57–58, 96, 99n9, 126. See also madness; psychosis Schopenhauer, Arthur, 5, 6n1, 11, 14– 15, 18–19, 24nn16–17, 49, 51, 58, 60, 86n10, 95, 99n10, 107n2, 125– 26, 129–34, 136–38, 144–46, 154, 156–57, 160, 162, 175, 176nn2–3 Schreber, Daniel Paul, 2, 33, 56 Schumann, Robert, 146, 161, 181 Seidel, Alfred, 58 self-overcoming [Selbst-Überwindung], 16, 128, 140n17 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 18–19, 67

Index

shadow, 3–7, 10–13, 15–22, 23n3, 24n12, 24nn14–15, 25n26, 27–38, 38nn7–8, 39n12, 39n14, 42, 44–48, 57, 60–61, 65, 67, 69–71, 72n9, 74, 76–78, 80–82, 84, 89–90, 92–94, 97, 98n6, 102–4, 109–10, 115–19, 123–26, 128, 130, 133, 135–39, 140n10, 140n13, 141nn19–20, 141n26, 141n34, 143–47, 150, 163, 166, 169–72, 175–76, 179–81, 182n2; acceptance of, 39n12, 144; archetypal (transpersonal) 19–20, 33–34, 38n8; bright side of, 22, 37, 138–39; collective, 2; half-shadow, 4; identification with, 20–21, 36, 44, 94, 171; integration of, 20, 22, 36, 98, 172; personal, 19–20, 33–34, 38n8; shadow of the (supershadow), 3, 6, 32, 70–71, 72n9, 130, 145 Shelley, Mary, 1, 55–56, 145, 160 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 160 Shestov, Lev, 42, 181 Silenus, 59 Sils Maria, 124, 126 Smerdyakov, Pavel Fyodorovich, 70 solipsism, 73, 80, 83, 114–15. See also paranoia soothsayer, 6, 130–33, 137 Stavrogin, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, 70, 151 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1, 4, 6, 33, 44, 48, 71, 89–90, 92, 95, 96–97, 102, 117–18, 143, 145, 149, 163, 170 Stirner, Max, 6, 30, 38n5, 58, 107, 133–34, 141n29, 151, 161 Stoichita, Victor I., 146 Stoker, Bram, 98n3, 164 stranger, 4, 10, 13, 32, 37, 44, 54, 67, 79, 81, 92, 130 Strindberg, August, 126, 164 surrealism, 112, 155 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 58, 63n15, 149, 156, 162 systemic anomaly, 54, 62n6, 81 syzygy, 68

209

Tamburlaine, 136 Tat Twam Asi, 18, 93–94 Thacker, Eugene, 157 the they [das Man], 13–14, 16, 58, 73, 81, 144; averageness, 13–14, 93; diminution, 14; disburdening of being, 13–14; leveling down, 13–14 Thomson, James, 63n15, 91, 163 Tolkien, J. R. R., 104 transgression, 4, 34, 47, 54, 106, 110, 114, 117, 127, 134 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich, 116, 133 twin, 15, 21, 25n21, 57, 84, 97, 169 typology, 82, 85n10, 92; feeling type, 86n10, 181; intuition type, 83, 86n10; sensation type, 82–83, 86n10, 118; thinking type, 86n10 ugliest man, 6, 133–35 uncanny [unheimlich], 32, 92 Valentinus, 37 Verkhovensky, Pyotr Stepanovich, 70 Verlaine, Paul, 3, 149 Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Jean-MarieMathias-Philippe-Auguste de, 63n16, 119, 163 Wagner, Richard, 51, 131–32, 141n21, 161–63 Weil, Simone, 120n2 Whitman, Walt, 29, 38n3, 162 Wilde, Oscar, 1–3, 6, 28, 32–33, 48, 68, 93, 96, 109, 112, 115–17, 119, 120n5, 120n9, 145–46, 149–50, 164 will to life, 24n15, 156–57, 179. See also death instinct will to power, 11, 44–45, 125 Wilson, William, 1, 5, 28, 31–32, 65– 71, 90, 131, 145, 161 Winnicott, Donald, 8, 126 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 182 Wordsworth, William, 2, 159 worldview [Weltanschaaung], 33, 73 Wotan, 126

210

Wotton, Henry, 3, 109–12, 116–19, 120n10 Yeats, William Butler, 37 youth, 23n2, 53, 67, 92, 109, 112–13, 117–19, 131, 155

Index

Zarathustra, 6, 8–9, 20, 24n19, 42, 52n4, 53, 85n5, 114, 123–37, 139n2, 139n6, 140n9, 140n12, 140n16, 141n16, 155, 163–64 Žižek, Slavoj, 4 Zweig, Stefan, 34–36

About the Author

Ştefan Bolea is currently working as an associate lecturer within the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca and as an editor of the literary magazine Apostrof. He is also the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the cultural e-zine EgoPHobia. He has received his second doctorate summa cum laude in Comparative Literature in September 2017 (after a first one in Philosophy in 2012) with an interdisciplinary investigation on the archetype of the shadow in the literature. He has won research fellowships in Oslo, Munich, Paris, and Vienna. He also has two BA’s in Philosophy and European Studies and one MA in American Studies. He is the recipient of twenty national and international prizes of literature and selections from his texts were translated into English, German, French, Portuguese and Ukrainian. He published twelve books in Romanian. His activity encompasses a remarkable number of articles in both Romanian and English published with journals such as Philosophy Now, Philobiblon, Studia Philosophia, Caietele Echinox, or Meta. He maintains active profiles on ResearchGate and Academia​.e​du and he is currently working on a book on existentialism. Personal site: http://stefanbolea​.ro​/category​/english

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