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No creative energy without sexual energy
Paulus Manker
Talking about Alma we are not allowed to omit her sexual importance
for people she lived with, and you once said that there is
no creative energy without sexual energy.
Joshua Sobol
It is obvious that sexuality played a very important part
in Alma´s life, and in her relationship with her men.
Take only the description of the terrible failure that Mahler
had with her, which marked probably their relationship for
the rest of their common life for seven or eight years, and
which made of her a terrible frustrated woman in her marriage
with Mahler.
Then the value that she attaches to the sexual experience
that she had with Gropius, although she is comouflaging it,
and putting it into very poetic terms, speaking about their
remaining awake until the nightingale song broke with dawn
etc. - you know, all that stuff. But she is speaking about
their bodies mingling, and the experience of their souls mixing
together, whilst their bodies are... so, anyway, it is obvious.
And then the description of the meeting between Kokoschka
and Alma, their immediate falling in love with one another
on first sight. The next thing which happened was, that Alma
stepped into his studio, into his atelier. There was another
woman there who was painting, working in his atelier. And
Alma stepped in, and the first thing she did was to grab the
easel and the paint of that other painter, and she threw it
out from the atelier. An act of aggressive possessiveness
when she entered the atelier, and she said: "That is
mine!" And from that moment all what happened is, that
they had sex in a very wild rhythm, so to speak, and he was
painting and making love to her all the time, intermittendly.
The experience with Werfel also starts with a very bloody
sexual experience, that terrible story of the sex they had
that wild night, where Baby Martin was, so to speak, kicked
out of her womb through sexual intercourse with Werfel.
So you see that sex played a very important part in her life.
She probably aroused her partners, and made them feel very
potent. She probably ingretiated their feelings of masculinity,
and gave them a feeling that they were of great value. And
I think that for every human being it is important to feel
that sexually he is being or she is beeing accepted, and not
only accepted but appreciated. This is important. It is important
for animals, of course. That´s what all the fighting
is about amongst animals. Because I believe that artistic
activity has a lot to do with animal life, not less than with
intellectual life. I think that our artistic urges come from
our animal soul, from our "Anima", and from that
part of ourselves which is the part which makes the nightingale
sing or which makes the doves croon, the pigeons croon or
- god knows - which make the goats bellow. That´s where
music comes from. It is an expression of the sexual instinct,
and the sexual urge.
And I think, that is where writing comes from. We try to
achieve with our words what we sometimes cannot achieve with
our bodies. Because words are illimited, and you can let your
imagination run free. Artistic creation is a tranformation
of voice, anyway. Either by music or by colours or by words
or by movement. But it is our voice that comes out, and the
voice has basicly to do with sexuality. With the announcement
"I am here and I am ready" or "I am here and
where are you?" Which is the beginning of any language.
So I believe what Kokoschka said about Alma: that one night
with Alma gave him energy for an entire week of creative work.
She was not sucking him up, but pumping energy into him. That
was his description for the sexual experience with Alma. I
think that probably she had that gift to make her partners
feel that they have to go and give full expression to those
voices that she aroused in them. What I am trying to explain
here may seem"mystical", but I do believe that it
is not mystical shit, that it is mystical truth about what
she did to her partners. And we have the testimonies about
it.
< Alma - a monster of the 20th century
> Mother
figure or femme fatale?
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