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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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