Germaine Richier: Bat (1948-51)
Etching and aquatint on paper (385 x 536 mm)
Several days after first reading and I'm still haunted by Roethke's magnificent poem The Bat ...
It's not the bat by day who disturbs me; the bat who is cousin to the mouse and likes to hang out (literally) in the attic of an aging house and whose fingers make a hat about his head. I'm perfectly fine with the thought of such a creature, whose heart beats so slowly we think him dead.
Indeed, I don't even fear the bat who loops in crazy figures half the night. Just so long as he keeps his distance and, more importantly, keeps his own countenance. It's only when he comes too close and reveals that something is amiss or out of place that I'm disturbed; when, as Roethke writes, it becomes apparent that even mice with wings can wear a human face.
It's not the bat by day who disturbs me; the bat who is cousin to the mouse and likes to hang out (literally) in the attic of an aging house and whose fingers make a hat about his head. I'm perfectly fine with the thought of such a creature, whose heart beats so slowly we think him dead.
Indeed, I don't even fear the bat who loops in crazy figures half the night. Just so long as he keeps his distance and, more importantly, keeps his own countenance. It's only when he comes too close and reveals that something is amiss or out of place that I'm disturbed; when, as Roethke writes, it becomes apparent that even mice with wings can wear a human face.
In my mind, such an image is uncanny to the nth degree. So much so, that one is tempted to use the more ambiguous (and thus more troubling) German term, unheimlich, which Roethke, as the son of a German immigrant, might appreciate. For unheimlich means more than outside of one's normal experience and familiar frame of reference (or beyond one's ken, as our friends north of the border might say).
Roethke's human-faced bat is not just a bit creepy or queer: it is that which should have remained forever in the shadows and never been spoken of, but which has - thanks to him - come to light and to language; it is thus the un-secret (and here we recall that heimlich doesn't just mean homely, but also that which is hidden or concealed).
In a proto-Freudian sense that looks back to Schelling, the unheimlich is, we might say - and I'm going to have to consult with my friend Simon Solomon on this - the obscene intrusion of the occult into the known world in such a manner that it curdles the milk and violates the natural order of things.
Notes
To read The Bat, by Theodore Roethke, please visit the Poetry and Literature page of the US Library of Congress: click here.
To read part two of this post on French sculptress Germaine Richier and her 1946 piece La Chauve-souris, click here.
To read the post that anticipates or prefigures this one on Roethke and the Bat Boy, click here.
Germaine Richier's brilliant artwork seen here can be viewed by appointment at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms (Ref. number P11286) .
Roethke's human-faced bat is not just a bit creepy or queer: it is that which should have remained forever in the shadows and never been spoken of, but which has - thanks to him - come to light and to language; it is thus the un-secret (and here we recall that heimlich doesn't just mean homely, but also that which is hidden or concealed).
In a proto-Freudian sense that looks back to Schelling, the unheimlich is, we might say - and I'm going to have to consult with my friend Simon Solomon on this - the obscene intrusion of the occult into the known world in such a manner that it curdles the milk and violates the natural order of things.
Notes
To read The Bat, by Theodore Roethke, please visit the Poetry and Literature page of the US Library of Congress: click here.
To read part two of this post on French sculptress Germaine Richier and her 1946 piece La Chauve-souris, click here.
To read the post that anticipates or prefigures this one on Roethke and the Bat Boy, click here.
Germaine Richier's brilliant artwork seen here can be viewed by appointment at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms (Ref. number P11286) .
That Richier image is excellent.
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