“Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all”
–Nadja by Andre Breton
Though I have spent the entire quarter struggling with the consequences of exposing myself to a constant stream of media intended to psychologically torment the ingester, I have never been more uncomfortable as I have during this specific week. Obsession is naturally a creepy subject, but it is essentially just a subtle form of week one’s theme of madness. I figured that I would be so numbed to terrible things that this week would be something of a breeze. An easy final topic to help myself relax among the other work that comes with finishing an academic year.
As I’ve already stated, the reality was clearly far different from the idea that I had in my head. I was most definitely not ready for this. I sort of knew what Lolita was about, but nothing could have prepared me to watch it. I was vaguely familiar with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but I never expected it to be one of the most unsettlingly grounded Lovecraft stories that I would read. I expected Nadja to be pretty unsurprising, but (while it was not creepy in any way) it caught me off guard more than any of my other books.
Not only that, I was especially unprepared for the dark place that I went to write the song that I did centered around obsession. I knew that for sure obsession would be one of the best topics to write music about from the get-go, so I was writing for it as soon as I had the vaguest idea of what to do. Towards the end I will talk about the song in more depth, but for now I will explain what made this week so shocking to me.
The first story I read was The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft. I ensured that this story was the one that made the cut, since it is definitely about obsession, but it’s a different kind from the obsession in my other stories. Nadja and Lolita are both stories of obsession over a romantic partner, while The Case of CDW has to do with a young man that is absorbed into his work.
The tale goes something like this: Charles Dexter Ward is a young man from a rich family in Rhode Island that learns of the exploits of an ancient ancestor, Joseph Curwen. As Ward learns more and more about his ancestor, he begins trying to find Curwen’s grave and emulating his work. The story is told mostly from the perspective of Marinus Bicknell Willett, a doctor that the Ward family hires to monitor Charles’ increasingly obsessive behavior.
Plenty of shenanigans occur, and there’s a lot of mystery involved, but it is eventually revealed that Curwen was an evil necromancer who, along with two other necromancers from different countries who managed to make themselves immortal, began resurrecting and torturing history’s most brilliant figures in order to gain their knowledge to apply in an unknown great evil plan. It is also revealed that Charles successfully resurrected Curwen, and, since Charles bore a striking physical resemblance to Curwen, Curwen at some point murdered Charles and took his place to resume his work. Curwen’s whole plan is thwarted when Marinus successfully recites a spell that returns the necromancer to the grave.
Yes, it may not sound particularly grounded like I said it was, but when most of the other stories I read from Lovecraft involved fanciful beasts, gigantic plotting gods, and a plane of existence only real in people’s dreams, necromancers seemed pretty damn grounded. This story actually reminded me a lot of a (much) longer version of Herbert West-Reanimator from way back in week 4, because both stories involve raising the dead. This one scared me a lot more though. Herbert West wasn’t a particularly sane or great guy, but he at least was being scientific and not trying to take over the world. Joseph Curwen invoked magic and had a malicious plot. He also openly committed murder and kept a pit full of wailing resurrected ghouls to rob graves and do his bidding.
Obsession ties into this story through Charles Dexter Ward’s absorption into his ancestor’s work. The effect that it had on him proved ultimately fatal, but it did a lot more than that. He drove his poor mother crazy from worry and irritation, and he basically completely lost touch with the outside world. He was an intelligent, promising young man, but he chose to lock himself into his room instead of going to college. I think that the message here is lessened drastically by Lovecraft’s choice to have Charles’ obsession be the result of a spell that Curwen cast from the past to ensure that at some point an ancestor would become obsessed with him and bring him back to life. Lovecraft is really good at writing scary things, but when it comes to making interesting characters he sometimes fails. I think that it would have been a far more effective message about obsession with ones work if Charles was actually drawn in organically. Instead, Charles was a smart young man that could do no wrong and wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the almost comically evil Joseph Curwen.
Moving on from the one that had the least effect on me to Nadja by Andre Breton, which left me more confused than anything. Sure, it’s an old book, it was translated from French, and Andre Breton was “known as the leader of the Surrealist movement in literature, and is still so regarded today,” but for some reason I really expected a pretty standard novel about a man becoming unhealthily attached to a mysterious woman. That was almost what I got. Nadja is a great novel, even a fantastic one, but I don’t think I liked it. I’ve spent far too much time thinking about whether or not I liked it, and that on its own is enough to make me decide that it really wasn’t for me. Maybe it was the fact that the first third of the book is aimless rambling about surrealist ideas with only an incredibly vague connection to the actual narrative, and no followable structure. Maybe it was the fact that 70% of the sentences are 6 lines long with 5 commas, a parenthesis break, and an asterisk. That was probably the most frustrating thing about the book, since he was talking about abstract ideas in long meandering sentences that were far too easy to get lost and confused in. Maybe it was even the fact that the last quarter of the book after the narrative is over is the author again rambling on about surrealist ideas, this time in relation to the absence of Nadja herself (who, keep in mind, may or may not have even been real).
With all that frustration aside, the actual narrative was quite captivating. The narrator is a married man who one day meets Nadja on the street. They spend a great deal of time together over a 10-day period, and eventually Nadja is all he talks and thinks about until he is with her. She falls in love with him, and he keeps her around because of her ability to talk at length with him about his favorite topic, surrealism. Her ideas about life draw the narrator in, and he is fixated on her for that very brief amount of time. Eventually, she talks too much about herself and the narrator decides that he can’t keep seeing her (since he is married). It is revealed shortly after that that Nadja is insane and is admitted to a sanitarium. That all says quite a bit about the narrator as far as I’m concerned. He mentions that ultimately, he doesn’t even want to know what has become of Nadja, and in that last quarter of the book waxes poetic about her absence.
What’s interesting to note about the theme of obsession in this book is that it actually isn’t really about Nadja. The narrator has this 10-day connection with this poor young girl, and ultimately when he learns more about her he loses all interest. I think what the narrator is really obsessed with is his beloved surrealism. Not only is the entirety of the non-narrative portion just him speaking in gigantic sweeping sentences about his love for the concepts of surrealism, he is only obsessed with Nadja herself because she is able to engage him in conversation about it. Once she evolves from a beautiful, surrealism-loving robot into an actual person, the obsession is lost and the narrator stops giving her money and even decides to stop seeing her all together. It disturbed me rather thoroughly when he did this.
I’m not sure if it was intended by the author, but by the end of Nadja I rather hated the narrator. His scattered thinking, harsh opinions about work and authority, and his loss of interest in Nadja left a distinctly poor taste in my mouth. I finished Nadja a few mornings ago, and once I had finished the book I found my day actually rather ruined. If one thing is certain after reading this book, I am in no capacity a die-hard surrealist. I suppose if I ever become such a man, I will have to revisit Nadja and her utterly mad philosophies.
Lastly, and most psychologically impactful, I watched Lolita (1997). I’m not going to say it was a mistake watching this film since it fit perfectly into my theme, but I’m pretty tempted. I’ve never had more of an emotionally exhausting and uncomfortable experience in my entire life than I had watching Lolita. I originally wanted to read the book, but it was far too long. Indeed, the movie is so long that I don’t feel like writing a plot summary. Quick version: Lolita is about a man who is a pedophile. He is obsessed with young girls (which he calls nymphets), and he is in particular obsessed with the adolescent daughter of his eventual (though brief) wife. The girl is named “Dolores,” is called “Lo” by most people, and the main character, Humbert Humbert, nicknames her “Lolita.” The film (and I assume as well the book) is very well made, but it is shocking and horrific. The mother dies, and Humbert is given custody of Lolita. They begin a romantic and sexual relationship, and the story moves from there.
The story is very compelling because it tries to trick you into liking Humbert. It paints him as a sympathetic character who is just doing what he feels is right, but he’s really just a pedophile. Every scene with him and Lolita is exceedingly uncomfortable, and I was squirming in my seat throughout the 2-hour and 15-minute runtime.
The obsession portrayed in Lolita is more what I expected to find during this week, except it has the fun added touch of the woman being a young girl. Humbert is so obsessed with her that she manages to walk all over him, and he even eventually kills a child pornographer that takes her away from him. Once Lolita is pregnant and married, he still shows up at her door, hands her an enormous sum of money, and begs her to leave with him. Though I hesitate to call this “love,” this is basically the very common idea of doing anything for love. In fact, I won’t even call it love. Obsession transcends love in the worst way possible, and it is common for an obsessed person to refer to love as the source of their actions.
So, I learned a lot from these stories. Mostly, I learned that it’s important not to get caught up. Don’t fall down a rabbit hole. Stay strong. Don’t let ambition deprive you of a rich life and be able to recognize when something isn’t going your way, even if you want it really badly. Not following this advice has essentially led to these three stories, and it’s led to many other amazing, creepy, and unsettling tales just like them. I like to think that I personally tried my hand at making one.
The song that I wrote for this week is called Madeleine. I believe that is some of my best, most creative work. It is a terrifying song. I took it as an exercise in writing from a perspective that is several stones throws away from my own. Since it is merely an exercise, the premise is fairly simple. Man becomes obsessed with woman, does creepy things. I think I took it just far enough. I will post the lyrics here, but I think I did a great job with the music as well. It’s a simple 4-chord song, but I try to vary my level of control based on the control of the character in the song. For a while it’s fairly normal and tightly played, but as more gets revealed about the character’s actions, the attack of the downstroke is more aggressive, and the vocals change subtly from smooth to a little wobbly. Then, in the breakdown, everything comes out, and the characters true nature is revealed. A screaming possessive man that has fallen deeply into his obsession for a co-worker. I’m sure that writing and playing this song has freaked out my suitemates. It definitely creeps me out. Once I figured out how to play it just the right way, I had to stop playing it for a while. I don’t want to remain in that mindset for too long… I think it all links back perfectly to the quote from Nadja at the top of this essay, the very last line of the book: “Beauty is CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all.”
Madeleine:
We met at a party
About a year ago
I remember it clearly
You were sitting there alone
Maddy…
I approached you slowly
And I asked what your name might be
I could tell that you wanted me
So I asked for your number politely
Maddy…
I took that number
And I hung it up on my wall
next day I called it, lover
But it wasn’t your number at all
Maddy…
The betrayal hurt
But imagine my surprise
The next day at work
You’re the new hire and your desk is located right next to mine
Maddy…
I could tell that you knew me
You were really giving me the eyes
We talked only briefly
But I knew that someday you’d be mine
Maddy…
You really confused me
When you flirted with other guys
And I know you have sex, baby
Couldn’t you see the pain in my eyes?
Maddy…
I was keeping a record
Of the clothing that you wore
Your taste is impeccable
If only you weren’t such a…
Maddy…
Now I’m writing this letter
I’m rather unhappy
Maybe now you’ll like me better
If you see how much I love you, know so much about you, get married, have children, you’ll stay home be watching them, everything planned so meticulous, baby, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you
Maddy, you belong to…
You belong to me