Metaphors in the Art of Goya: A Theory of Unconscious Development

The Dream (preparatory drawing) by Francisco de Goya

The Dream (print) by Francisco de Goya

"The dream of reason produces monsters." Francisco de Goya (source)

The purpose for exhibiting the creative process of a master painter as Francisco de Goya, showing his initial sketch, and final print, runs parallel to a theory I have in relation to the role of the unconscious, and its impacts on the life of both the sleeper and the awake. 

Firstly, my theory is founded on lived experience. The foundation is as follows: If a person follows their natural sleep-awake patterns, without conscious intervention, the body cycles through an internal clock more expansive than the twenty-four hour day. Incrementally, each day one wakes later, sleeps later, and eventually earlier. In the course of over a year of practicing this experiment of consciousness, I have found the twenty-four hour clock to be limiting and a mere fixed point around which my sleep and waking cycles orbit, as a celestial body around its true source of gravity. 

Is this an effect of seasonal, environmental, or psychological pressures? The theoretical part now kicks in. With the exhibition of Goya's creative process in visual representing the night of Man, he is accosted by a host of demons, and in turn, upon waking, those demons become monsters of reason. So, if we allow the regenerative natural patterns of sleeping and waking to unfold, with complete abandon and in lieu of the normative twenty-four hour clock, we give way to a natural creative energy sourced deep within our unconscious, that nourishes our very life-breath with the heartbeat of self-knowledge. 

With this, the world of dream is merely a doorway, as is a metaphor or a myth, towards a more holistic regenerative consciousness of self-awakening. 

See related post: In Defence of Sleep: Regenerative Sleep Cycles of Archaic Man

__________

After hours downtown mall. Winter night. Midwestern city. The street is dim, and I stand, as to wait for a companion, or a bus home. Alone, my eyes scan the glass exit doors with a longing nostalgia for company. As I consider my absolute solitude, two prostitutes brush up against me. They closed in out of nowhere. After a moment of disdain, I begin to hear an inner curiosity.

Cocotte on the Road by E.L. Kirchner

"How much?" I ask, imploringly. "500 dollars" she says with a soft smirk. "I don't have that much." I respond, with dry humour, having never intended to act on my curious insides. Surprisingly, my wife steps through the hall behind us and into the background. She sets up her instrument and begins to play. I drift, flying towards the awake. Her unconscious body, her subtle spirit had called me forth, from the fantastic night of isolation.

___________

What of human sound,
The frequent lust to prepare noise in strength of intellectual wonder
and produce unfathomable beauty
            of the entire body
                        descending to and from the ear’s tragic centering
In our musical society, and what to compare “human music” to the grandiose law of nature, expressed in the mere calls of bird and beast revolving their unchallenged voices around the veil of a gross acoustic hall,
            whose rendering dreams an unforgiving welcome to the Earth’s living
            hall,
                        led to a thoughtless demeanor
                                    yet within the mind of man
...

to find a source,
                                                not necessarily of communication
                                                            between human, bird and god,
                                                but a direct connection
                                                            that spells mystery
                                                                        from an inspired gift to all
her sound.

excerpts from "Of human sound"

A Joycean Saga of Psyche, Muse of Endless Night

Mary Ellen Bute's only feature, "Passages from James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake'" begins:

One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wide-awake language, cut-and-dry grammar and go-ahead plot. (James Joyce)

“History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” James Joyce, from Ulysses

As my sleep cycle changes, I wake later in the day. It is winter. I rise at sundown, fall at sunrise. The sun and I keep a syncopated rhythm of broken and drunken days. My consciousness rains down on my dreams with the lucid bearing of a child at home in the nonsense play of indecision and fear. I listen only to night. I am not a human. I am not adapted to earth. I am not a person. I am not adapted to houses. I am not. I am adapted to mind. I think, therefore I am not. 

_________

a blonde, a young woman, of especial high class, buries herself in the busy sheets of a paid for hotel room as she awaits her dowry, and her parents exit, content with the happening, for she is to be their high dollar ticket, and they are proud 

Blonde Nymph by Paul Emile Chabas

and in the fading night, she switches rooms to bed in a flophouse, the creaking wooden floors spell prostitution and drug rings, alcohol seethes from speakeasy days, and she cowers belligerently in her room, a knock at the door bleeds into her chest with suicidal unction 

Metropolitan angle (angle whore) by Hans Baluschek

as she opens candidly, two brothers of separate age walk in gently, greeting her with an offering of simple company, yet as the night creaks on with their failed step over the late seeds of a youthful calling, their clothes are shed 

Youth in a Blue Coat by Sasha Schneider

and then she is open arms as they both slide neatly under the covers of anonymous life, and as hours pass, they become good friends, while the older brother hangs his head by the window, all are naked and congenial, the two younger playfully brush paint over a great canvas blocking the doorway and most of the wall

Beatrice Addressing Dante by William Blake

she says, “you’re a fucking brilliant painter!” the Blakean shapes form over the imagistic head of the younger brother at play with the feminine creation as he eyes his brother to gain inspiration into the form and build that supports the color and stroke of their altered midnight state of sudden friendship 

Psyche Opening the Door into Cupid's Garden by John William Waterhouse

a hollowing filled with laughter and unending play, and in other rooms, an inkling leaks through the creaking floorboards and drip-coffee ceiling, filters of sound are pierced through with eager ears, willing to join, and finding true human pleasure of heart in the abuses of Psyche’s night 

_________

An irony to amuse
This, my, and our patchwork of brains,
To walk, or march,
Perfectly balanced in dress
With the polluted eye of an urban observer
Taking in the sidewalk trash as the stuff of inspiration
...

In one outlandish, unruly day,
Simultaneously, all vibrations still,
To skeletal ghosts, ravaging the blank canvas of history
With painted cries

In the evil fornication on a wine-lush express
Down each and every late Saturday street
Dead with incestuous chores

In popularized & Westernized dreaming
Gone, gently in the summer prairie heat,
Dealing prostitution’s cape
...

Breeding a kindred sisterhood
In the tall, and greatly embodied community of passionate grace
In today’s great human victory against the undead tyranny
...

Cyclical pain follows in succession
To unchain confederates, bothered,
From American poverty
Filling the sobbing eyes of migrants, sacrificed
To a brutalized ending, motherless & lost

excerpts from "1st Independence"