Sizzling for Enlightenment

by Björn Vedder

“Since Eva, the first of mothers, they are all serpents, permanently seducing the poor man with their poisonous tongue to Sin, sizzling him into deepest perdition.”

(Maler Müller)

In his drama ‘Golo and Genoveva’, the words Maler Müller lets his Knight Wallrod recite about the Widow Mathilde, whom he has – for his own and the misfortune of many others in the piece - desperately fallen for (1), are one topos of the image of women in Christianity: The woman seducing the man to Sin by sensually decoying him. However, this also sheds a light on the male self-concept, hence a man needs to be easily seducible in this meaning, as such mere sizzling and allurement of a woman are all it takes to make him act in evil manners. His voluptuous desires are his weakness. Being hit there, he can no longer defend himself. Unable to resist he follows the decoying woman, like the iron needle follows magnetism – without any free will. Wallrod is just the same. Accordingly, he sees the only way out of his misery, into freedom and back to his own moral sovereignty, in murdering Mathilde – if he wasn’t just to weak to execute his plan: Entering her room with his drawn sword in hands, she already awaits him there, with an open blouse and flowing hair – and Alas!, in the instant he touches her hair a “hellish fire” strikes him, and makes him unresistingly fall for her again.

In truth however, it is not Mathilde’s passion he has fallen for, but his own. Mathilde has only set up his inner passion against his rationality – which makes her both dangerous and desirous. She provides him with a justification for being irrational, unsteady and immoral, allowing him to be irrational out of weakness and to deeply enjoying his own lust. His monologue while being kissed perfectly shows how much he relishes such justification: “Poisonous irresistible Viper! Tying me thousand and a thousand times! (…) Oh stop! Killing thee was I came here… killing thee! – And still!

Mathilde: You had such thing in mind?

(…) Wallrod: Oh am I not right? Have I not done everything for you? You! You have feasted on my life, the blossoms of my youth, rank, hope, honour, whatever I could I sacrificed to you. You took it, swallowed me, like a hungry harrier. Everything, religion, conscience! I am the wax in which you engraved your turpitude. (…) I nearly wish to cry for and pity myself. My head, used to wear that helmet of honour, now bereft all of his tresses of youth for your sake! There is no part of me not screaming and moaning over my sacrifice for you!” And so on. If Mathildewould not seal Wallrod’s lips with a kiss and send him to bed, he would very likely go on and on with his lament. “Sorceress!” he calls out again, “If you would lead, I’d follow you through hell” he adds, before lying down with her. (2)

This scene, taken from a drama of the late ‘Sturm und Drang’ is very illustrative for the theme Katrin Kampmann chose for her cycle EXIT PARADISE, since it clearly shows how Christian tradition, while using images of Adam and Eve, the Fall of Man, seduction by the serpent, is not primarily dealing with relations between genders – since the characters act in open contradiction to the schematic opposition of the rational man and the passionate woman – but with the relation of a human being towards his or her inner passion and sensuality itself. In this tradition there is a permanent inner conflict between rationality and passion, elaborated in the characters of the honourable, but weak man and the demonic female temptress, hence only on a visual layer working with these pictures, whereas, on a deeper meta-level, in truth dealing with human beings as such.

If Kampmann shows us her Eve, biting into the apple with pleasure (‘Eva’) or happily reaching for it on the tree (‘Sündenfall in 10, 9, 8,…’), she is showing us a figuration of sensuality and passion, inseparably tied to being human. Accordingly – and therefore not only concerning biblical tradition – it is just consequent to also show Adamwith the apple (‘Adam’).

Of course such recognition also needs a certain kind of evaluation, as what is tied to being human may not be separated from ones own life or suppressed, without diminishing or dismembering parts of this life. Only the man or woman willing to fully accept his/her passion and sensuality will be able to be a thoroughly human being. Kampmann reveals this in her paintings – not only by her choice of figures and subjects, but also by the expressive colourfulness of her paintings, the zones and fillings of her pouring, and the interaction and overlapping of shapes, as we can see it in the paintings ‘Eure Augen aufgetan’, ‘Nenn es, wie du willst’, and ‘Serpentine’. The pieces also present themselves – from a formal perspective – as the “centre of all opulence and lust” (3), as Heinrich Heine once said about the mons veneris.

This artistic lust for passion can also be found in Kampmann’s fine-art-prints, in which the underlying watercolour-structures are shimmering beneath the contours of the dark print. The inner connection between painted structures and drawing, zones and contours, colours and lines is remarkable, developing an analogy for the relation between sensuality and rationality, body and mind. The paintings reflect this connection by using an interplay between flowing, partly poured coloured zones and sharply defined white spaces, which the beholder may fill out with own impressions and feelings, as it happens with the figure of Eve in ‘Sündenfall in 10, 9, 8,…’. The anthropology elaborated in the paintings may thus be transformed to the beholder; the formal principles of the composition lead the reception.

This painted anthropology reveals itself only in front of the background of the Christian image of women, intensively shown in the above-mentioned scenes and figures, which makes it necessary for Kampman to also deal with it. She therefore attends to another character next to Eve, namely Lilith (‘Lilith’), who in some written records is called the first wife of Adam, whereas in canonical Bible tradition is only mentioned as a demon. (4) In Lilith, the connection between sensuality and demonism on the one hand is more clearly visible than in Eve as ‘evil temptress’, whereas on the other hand Lilith is also seen as the more emancipated image of a woman. Tradition describes her as a woman of unsurpassed beauty, created by God in the same way as Adam. Accordingly, she is not willing to subordinate to Adam and demands the same rights for herself. Adam does not agree with that and asks God for a more obedient woman, whom he is provided with in the person of Eve. Lilith on the other side is expelled from Paradise. However, Eve is not only less self-confident and demanding, but, as a consequence thereof, also less appealing, which soon leads Adam to missing Lilith. His yearning for Lilith finally leads him to leaving Paradise and searching for her. This is his personal ‘Exit Paradise’. He finds her on the other side of the wall circumventing the Garden Eden, where she’s hunting men and killing them. (5) She has become a murderous ‘femme fatale’, a wraith of the night. Kampmann takes up this legend and reflects about its continuation in art. The fine-art-print ‘Dark Days Lilith’ refers to Ben Ketai’s horror-movie ’30 Days of Night. Dark Days’ (2010) and to Lilith as Dracula’s daughter in the corresponding Marvel-comic (‘Lilith, Daughter of Dracula’, (1974-) ). Another print, ‘The Vampire’, continues with this motif and connects it to the same-named painting of Philip Burne-Jones from 1897, which provided the inspiration for Kampmann’s own print.

In the depiction of Lilith, her hair – again – is the most important attribute to demonic seduction. In Goethe’s ‘Faust’, when Lilith appears on Blocksberg during the Walpurgisnacht, Mephistopheles warns Faust:

“Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,

The splendid sole adornment of her hair!

When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare,

Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.” (6)

Kampmann takes up this motif as well and shows Lilith as ‘Medusa’, with her seductive sensuality culminated in her raven hair. “Black like raven-wings” also says the officer Bellona in a drama by Maximilian Klinger: “I have seen a Goddess, a shining, glorious, true Goddess, I Pigme, I. (…) Oh I have seen, have seen a woman. Two eyes glowing like the sun, and able to be gentle like the moonlight. I stooped down and entrusted it to my shield. Long hair, black like raven-wings. Down the ivory neck, like… I do not know how to name or describe it, but it’s roaring still in me.” (7)

One might say that all this would only be of historical or general philosophical interest, if there were not the crude images of gender and fantasies of martyrdom in the heads of Islamic warriors, with the same roaring and inner conflicts in current times of 2015. Kampmann tells us about a discussion between an Islamic-State (IS)-fellow and a woman, where this woman asked the man what would happen to all the women supporting IS-warriors, if in Paradise there would be 72 virgins awaiting each of these warriors after an honourable death. Would there also be men for those women, or would they at least be of service for all those warriors, rewarded with 200-fold manpower? Definitely not, the IS-fellow answered, as those women were impure and therefore had no place in Paradise.

It might sound ridiculous, backward and totally against emancipation, for western ears to be confronted with such complementary dream-images of Virgin and Whore. Nevertheless, as Kampmann’s pieces about the demonic temptress remind us, it is not so long ago that in Christian tradition a very similar conflict concerning our own sensuality has had to be handled and has been externalized using similar figurations – if such conflict has yet been overcome at all. Accordingly, Kampmann’s work does not only strive to clarify things, but also seeks a dialogue between western (Christian) and Islamic cultures. The similarity in composition, colouring and formal details as described above, between ‘Sündenfall in 10, 9, 8,…’ and ‘Propaganda Paradise’ gives evidence thereof. The comparison of those pictures once more shows that demonization of female passion and imagination of ones own commitment to enjoy it are two sides of the same coin. This coin is characterized by the inner conflict not only in accepting your own passion but also as to the irresistible power it might have over us. Nothing less is demanded in order to be a truthful human being. By revealing this background of fantasies concerning Eve and Lilith, Virgin and Whore, Kampmann’s serpents do not seduce us to Sin, they are rather sizzling and whispering for Enlightenment.

based on the original German version by Björn Vedder

(1) Maler Müller, „Golo und Genoveva. Ein Schauspiel in fünf Aufzügen“, in: Mahler Müllers Werke, hrsg. v. Anton Georg Blatt u. a., Bd. III, Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1811, S. 114, (2.Akt, 4. Szene)[Reprint Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1982].

(2) Ebd., S. 142ff. ( 2. Akt, 6. Szene).

(3) Heinrich Heine, „Die Göttin Diana“, in: Ders., Sämtliche Schriften, Bd. VI.1, hrsg. v. Klaus Briegleb, München: Hanser, S. 426-436, hier: S. 433.

(4) Jesaja 34, 14.

(5) Vgl. im Talmud Eruvin 18b, Pesachim 12b, Schabbat 151b u. Vera Zingsem, Lilith. Adams erste Frau, Leipzig: Reclam, 2000.

(6) Johann Wolfgang Goethe, „Faust I“, in: Ders., Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe, Bd. III, hrsg. v. Albrecht Schöne u. Waltraut Wiethölter, FfM: Insel, 1998, S. 7-164, hier: S. 146, [Verse 4123-4126].

(7) Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, „Simsone Grisaldo. Ein Schauspiel in fünf Akten”, in: Heinz Nicolai, Hrsg., Sturm und Drang. Dichtungen und theoretische Texte in zwei Bänden, Bd. II, Darmstadt: WBG, 1971S. 1063-1143, hier:1111f. (3. Akt, 2.Szene).