Transfigured Night

After giving way to the experience of enchantment, a host of consequences seem likely. 

In particular, the sense of time's passage is likely to change in bizarre ways. Stretched time, accelerated time, no time, back in measured time and realizing how weird time has been. Until time and times are done. 

Space also alters the way it makes room. 

So, nothing major-- just the two fundamental dimensions of our consciousness. This is how we recognize an enchantment. By the return to normal and that concomitant perspective of "wow." 

The Oceanic Bliss Experience (tm?) gets a bad rap from a lot of therapists and contemporary rationalists-- admittedly, it's overwhelming and prone to being misinterpreted. The skepticism about the experience started almost as soon as it was described-- in a letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland called it "the oceanic feeling," and speculated that it is the origin of all religion, and, of course, Freud quickly reduced it to merely a vestige of infantile non-differentiation. Rolland's exact phrase: Mais j'aurais aimé à vous voir faire l'analyse du sentiment religieux spontané ou, plus exactement, de la sensation religieuse qui est (...) le fait simple et direct de la sensation de l'Eternel (qui peut très bien n'être pas éternel, mais simplement sans bornes perceptibles, et comme océanique).

I remember family systems pop-psychologist-celebrity John Bradshaw in particular dismissing this experience with regard to sex and love, as just another sign of love addiction and re-enactment compulsion. It is a very, very strong hit, and yes, can completely disorient a person and lead to misapplication in decision making, impulsive behavior,etc. 

But it's fun. 

And it can be healing and inspiring in so many ways, as long as it has some kind of container. Or even if it doesn't, for a while. Or ever. 

I think we need more room in this current life for the Dionysian spirit in its spiritualized form. The eruption of terrifying savagery and compulsive hedonism seems like merely the shadow of this experience, which of course emerges when the more creative side is repressed. One of the things I love about the popular music of the '60s and early '70s is how unabashedly expressionistic it was. It lacked reserve. It was flagrantly enthusiastic and it seems like, at the time, it was cool to be wild in public. 





It seems like now, there is often just tremendous restraint in the arts, at all times. It seems rare to witness something wild and with that touch of Blakean spiritual frenzy. The aesthetic these days is not just cool, but polar. And, like the Roman semantic depletion, our Dionysius is inextricably associated with inebriation and a kind of desperate "wild party" attitude that merely makes clear the current poverty of our visionary lives. Girls gone wild has nothing to do with wildness. 

I think this is at least in part what Tero Saarinen is trying to communicate here, in this stunning and truly demonic/blissful vision:




Of course, it's not just ecstasy, but terror as well- and this is the most authentic way to characterize the core of the Dionysian experience. But Saarinen's narrative arc is about transformation, which may well not be possible by any other means. 

In Schoenberg's incredible early piece (Op.4!), Verklärte Nacht, maybe the last truly Romantic orchestral composition, he found a way to express the overwhelming feeling of love that pays no heed to existing circumstance-- the piece was inspired by Mathilde von Zemlinsky, the sister of his piano teacher and a woman who, at the time, was unavailable. Schoenberg was deeply moved by Richard Dehmel's poem, and, while Verklärte Nacht is entirely instrumental, Schoenberg wanted to capture the spirit of the story:

Transfigured Night

Two people walk through a bare, cold grove;
The moon races along with them, they look into it. 
The moon races over tall oaks, 
No cloud obscures the light from the sky, 
Into which the black points of the boughs reach. 
A woman’s voice speaks: 

I’m carrying a child, and not yours, 
I walk in sin beside you. 
I have committed a great offense against myself. 
I no longer believed I could be happy
And yet I had a strong yearning
For something to fill my life, for the joys of
Motherhood
And for duty; so I committed an effrontery, 
So, shuddering, I allowed my sex
To be embraced by a strange man, 
And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it. 
Now life has taken its revenge: 
Now I have met you, oh, you. 

She walks with a clumsy gait, 
She looks up; the moon is racing along. 
Her dark gaze is drowned in light. 
A man’s voice speaks: 

May the child you conceived
Be no burden to your soul; 
Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming! 
There’s a glow around everything; 
You are floating with me on a cold ocean, 
But a special warmth flickers
From you into me, from me into you. 
It will transfigure the strange man’s child. 
You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine; 
You have brought the glow into me, 
You have made me like a child myself. 

He grasps her around her ample hips. 
Their breath kisses in the breeze. 

Two people walk through the lofty, bright night. 

--Richard Dehmel (translator unknown)