Interview with Munch’s “The Scream”
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 9 Dec 2019
Gary Corseri – TRANSCEND Media Service
“It is your human environment that makes climate.”
–Mark Twain
The Scream, by Edward Munch, 1893
[Interviewer’s note: It wasn’t easy to track him down. Using my best contacts in the demimonde, I located him in a pied-a-terre walk-up in a Paris slum. I was frisked by a bodyguard with an uncanny resemblance to Marlene Dietrich–whisky voice, dangling cigarette and all. (It wasn’t unpleasant!) “The Scream” had his back to me out of respect for my person while “Marlene” frisked. When “Dietrich” had finished, she excused herself to keep guard in the hall.
The Scream turned, his mouth twisted into a rictus of pain, horror and terror. The air in the room seemed to be sucked into that rictus, and I gasped. Then the air turned blood-red. The sensation that ran through me was one of an inexpressible, shuddering hollowness that turned my bones to icicles. The Scream gestured me to one of two wooden chairs; I moved leadenly in a dream, set up the recorder, and the interview began….]
INTERVIEWER: Perhaps we should begin with…that is…I think most people would want to know what you’ve been doing, where you’ve been, since you were stolen from the Oslo Museum….
SCREAM: You mean in 1994? Or, recently?
INTERVIEWER: Well…uh…both….
SCREAM: First thing is…I want to set the record straight…. I wasn’t stolen! I wanted out! I wanted out for a long time. You can’t imagine…no “civilian” can…. What it’s like… what it’s like…to be gawked at by strangers, day after day, night after night…. Probing with their searching eyes–your very being, your very soul…. And all their cruel assumptions! You can’t imagine! I got the word to the Underground, thru my literary and artistic contacts…and they helped me.
INTERVIEWER: I want to be sure I’ve got this right.… You’re saying it was an “inside job”?
SCREAM: “Inside,” “outside”—what’s the difference? You put someone like me in a museum, it’s like putting a Bengal tiger in a zoo! People come and gawk, but they have no context, no sense of the larger picture. They leave the museum, and they forget about you. I don’t want people to forget, ever…. You got a cigarette?
INTERVIEWER: Sure….
SCREAM: (taking a long drag–) I haven’t slept for days.… I’ve been wandering up and down the beaches in Asia, seeing the washed-away lives…. I’m like Rimbaud, you see. What did he say? (I’ve forgotten my French!) Something like, “It is raining in my heart.”
Sometimes…people just need me to be with them, to scream beside them, because they’ve used up all their screams.… I’m going back tomorrow.… I came here to help organize relief…. There’s too much to be done.
INTERVIEWER: The Brits caught you the first time! They brought you back!
SCREAM: 1994 again, ey? Only out for 3 months then…. They brought me back. It’s better organized now, though. We’ve got a better phony picture up there now. Wonders of modern Tech and all! They haven’t caught on yet. Maybe they never will!
I’ve traveled, you know…. Not just here…but…throughout history…. I was there…. When the pilgrims signed the “Mayflower Compact”—I was there…. In 1066—I was there for the Magna Carta…. When Euripides wept for the Trojan Women—I was there…. And at Wounded Knee, and in Ford’s Theater, and in Dallas, November 22, 1963—I was there….
INTERVIEWER (tentatively–) But…you couldn’t stop it? None of it. Couldn’t you have—
SCREAM: What? “Ours not to reason why/ Ours but to do or die.” That’s the general theme, you know. Humanity! Mostly, it’s a sham….
INTERVIEWER: How do you keep going?
SCREAM: Why do you think I look like this? Why do you think I grieve?
INTERVIEWER: For all of us?
SCREAM: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?” Are you satisfied? For myself…and, for all….
INTERVIEWER: I don’t know how people can live without hope….
SCREAM: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick…but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”
INTERVIEWER: So it was written…. “Proverbs,” wasn’t it?
SCREAM (leaning forward): But what if the desire never “cometh”? What if the tree withers, the fruit rots on the vine?…
Do you know that the poor give much more, relatively, than the wealthy? That’s documented…. That, too, makes me scream! Not just the suffering, which is overwhelming. Even I had to get away—though I can never really get away. The images haunt me.… But…the sheer stupidity, the complacency, the fatuous complacency.… It doesn’t matter what they say…. A lot of people say the right things. A lot of promises, empty rhetoric, whatever. It’s the politicians’ craft, you know. And it infects this modern age! “Social media” you call it? It’s not very sociable, is it? So much repetition! So many people “screaming” at one another! (Pardon my pun, by the way!)
INTERVIEWER: A lot of Americans are kind, empathetic, even noble.
SCREAM: Yes, they are.… And most of them are outside of government “service”.… And that’s worth screaming about, isn’t it? A lot of Americans will dig deeply into their pockets—the poor even more than others–and they’ll look beyond race and religion and reach out, person-to-person, because it is the right thing to do. I do not mean “right” in terms of “left” and “right,” and I don’t mean it in terms of some particular religious doctrine—or lack thereof. I do not mean it in the sense of the “human” thing to do. [Here, it seemed he gave me an ironic, friendly wink—with one of his goggle-like eyes!] I like to add a final “e” to “human”! “E” for ‘exceptional’! “E” for ‘exquisite’! “E” for ‘exemplary’!… It is, then, the humane thing to do!
INTERVIEWER: Then, there is some hope?…
SCREAM: All right…. You’ve got it now…. We have to live through hopelessness. See the light! It’s rare, it’s difficult, God knows!
INTERVIEWER: “Say not the struggle naught availeth”?
SCREAM: It better avail…. Or…what are we?… We’re all entangled, aren’t we? There’s another just like you…somewhere in this Quantum Universe. Spin you, spin another—any which way…and that entangled particle will correspond…. Yes…there always is, it keeps us going. It is a dreadful hope. And…it is the life force. It is the last shred of our humanity in Pandora’s box of phantoms, charms, nightmares, regrets and horrors.
INTERVIEWER: And, yet, you scream….
SCREAM: I never said it was easy, did I? You remember Conrad’s ending to “Heart of Darkness,” don’t you?
INTERVIEWER: “Oh, the horror!”
SCREAM: Yes….
INTERVIEWER: But…what are we to do? We are few and they are many—those who are content with the status quo. Those who do not want to question or challenge—out of complacency, fear, ignorance….
SCREAM: Or their own power. Where one stands, depends on where one sits, you know…. There are a thousand and one reasons not to foresee…. People get “set” in their ways…. What was it Voltaire said? “It is difficult to free slaves from the chains they revere….”
INTERVIEWER: It’s a lot to think about…. You’ve given me so much to consider….
SCREAM: Only a beginning…. A sketch of possibilities. You must fill in the details…with your life…. Do not just “consider.” “Re-consider!” “Test axioms on your pulses!” Keats said. What was true may not be true again. And, what was not true before, may be the best solution now…. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
INTERVIEWER: That one I know! Socrates!
SCREAM: The gadfly of Athens….
INTERVIEWER: I understand…I think I understand…why they “locked you up,” put you in a museum! You’re advocating revolution!
SCREAM: “What’s in a name?” Juliet asked. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’
INTERVIEWER: Not quite! If we called it a “shit-bar,” no one would want to smell it!
I thought I detected the shadow of a smile here….
SCREAM: Call it whatever you want! A revolution of the heart and mind together–that’s the important thing!
INTERVIEWER: We march, we sign petitions, we vote, we write, we cry out, we talk to our Red State brothers, our Blue State brothers…. What else can we do?
SCREAM: Keep at it! Learn and re-learn! Life is learning. Life is teaching. The best learning and the best teaching are mutual. Hone your dialogues. Elevate your discourses. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asked. And, of course…he was….
Kill your television sets and retire your computers. Look at the world! Do you know what I heard a foreign tourist say in Phuket after the tsunami?.… “It looked like a movie!” Can you begin to understand how mad that is, how out-of-joint all your judgments and perceptions are? Life doesn’t look like a movie! A movie looks like life!
There was a knock on the door. THE SCREAM was busy–so many claims upon his precious time. I thanked him, and he seized my hand in his bony grip, squeezed until it hurt, and he would not let go. He began to wail. It was a keening sound of grief, loss and damnation. And a siren sound, too—ambulances and police cars in it; and the sound of bombs falling was in it, and tsunamis and cyclones.)
SCREAM: You tell them! Don’t let them forget! For the sake of their humanity! For the Reality and Meaning and Purpose they worship above money and above self-interest! For the sake of the Earth…and for the children.…
______________________________________________
Dr. Gary Corseri is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. He has published/posted poems, articles, fiction and dramas at Transcend Media Service and hundreds of publications and websites worldwide. He has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta. He edited the “Manifestations” literary anthology. He has published 2 novels and 2 poetry collections, has taught in US public schools and prisons and in US and Japanese universities. Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Dec 2019.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Interview with Munch’s “The Scream”, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
An amazingly creative commentary using “the scream”’as a trope for commentaries about humanity and it’s egregious offenses and assaults on life. A gripping commentary compelling a full reading as each line connects us personally and and symbolically to our past and present, and even our likely future.
Lifts the classic painting to new levels of relevance and contemporary implications. A painting now speaks beyond its long cast meaning and interpretation. This creative act now offers an opportunity to portray paintings and statues as more than their initial meaning and symbolism.
The world is now alive with opportunities for insights and lessons as each creative work now speaks. Brilliant.
T
Hello Dr. Marsella,
Our friend, Antonio, kindly informed me that you had commented on my article. I read your observations in a kind of stupor, thinking: “this is too good! I must be sleeping and dreaming….”
I pinched myself and your golden words are still there. Admiring the work I’ve read by you at the TMS site (and have sometimes had the effrontery to comment upon), your comments here are especially propitious. In fact, this is exactly what I hoped to convey, how I hoped to connect:
“…Lifts the classic painting to new levels of relevance and contemporary implications. A painting now speaks beyond its long cast meaning and interpretation. This creative act now offers an opportunity to portray paintings and statues as more than their initial meaning and symbolism. The world is now alive with opportunities for insights and lessons as each creative work now speaks….”
I’m sure you know about “ekphrastic poetry.” Now, we can take that bold step a further step. Artists of different genres–and their audiences–can “transcend” the old borders, live out of their circumscribed boxes, breathe fresh air, dialogue and resonate.
I posted this “Interview” on my FB page, hoping to have the sort of response with which you’ve enriched me above. May I ask a favor? May I copy and paste your comment on my FB page, citing you? (I can use your professional title or not, as you wish.) The main thing is to stir ideas, to listen as the old masters speak to us again, sing or lament across the centuries, gather us to behold the world anew. And the new craft-masters will also sing.
I’m sure good Antonio will pass your good word to me, if that works for you.
Blessings–
Gary Corseri
Proceed with my full blessings. You have opened and sanctions a “creative” genre! Conversations and reflections with all forms of art as an opportunity to extend their meaning and possibilities for informing, educating, and transcending a more static end.
Proceed, and with the contribution now derived, free art from any confines imposed by its form, meaning, and consequence.
Amidst the swirling chaos of despair, cynicism, and anger now present in our world and mind, tap art as an endless source for renewal and rebirth of insight and hope!
Proceed with with a courageous fervor needed now to quench the stasis of mind brought by acquiescence to power and position.
Proceed!
Grazie mille, Signore Marsella. And, thanks again to Antonio for his wise stewardship of this important site.
The art critic and brilliant thinker John Berger once wrote that “paintings were there to reveal a presence behind an appearance.” This brilliant piece by Gary Corseri does just that and does it so that it speaks to us now. This is a rare achievement that takes deep poetic, intellectual, and creative skills that Gary has in abundance. He has taken taken a painting that has become a cliche and made it ring with truth. Bravo!!