Page 14 - VICTOR HAGEA : Amazing
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As for perfection and grace, such attributes seem to Rilke, the “wholeness” of the inanimate object comes
remain apparently exclusive for the über-marionette from the absence of consciousness, which is the source
and the doll. This is so because they perfectly seem to of passions and torment. Therefore, the puppet or the
imitate the innocence state of man in Paradise, now doll could be called perfect, man is imperfect. But
lost. This idea one could find at Rilke, Klee, Craig, among perfect things, the doll was credited by Rilke
and many other artists or thinkers. The point is that with a quality more special, more absolute than that
the fall brought man consciousness, which became of other things, even the marionette. The marionette
the source of passions. Man is halfway between the is nothing but fantasy, but the doll has none, and
unconscious puppet and an infinite knowing divinity; therefore so much “less than a thing.” The doll is a
he is neither a “Gliedermann” nor “Gott.” (Rilke) By “Being-less-than-a-thing,” and it is this truth in its
contrast, the un-aware puppet is graceful because it irrevocability that makes the secret of her absolute
reminds of a golden age, the original paradisiac state superiority. (Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke,
of man. Band VI, Frankfurt, 1966, p. 1069)
ROMANCE All this makes a great contrast to the romantic couple
in the foreground. The passionless gaze and the
Victor Hagea’s Romance brings close to the eye that impassible body of the puppet run in opposition to
sacrosanct graceful presence of the unaware doll. Both the tender feeling and passionate relation in which the
sublime and dominant in her appearance, she holds, couple is engaged. They look like the proto couple of
as it were, the dice of fate, the cards, or, as Rilke might Adam and Eve before their adventure in Paradise. The
say, holding the keys back to Paradise. Apparently, a amniotic liquid seems to point out to some primordial
puppet is a thing, soulless matter. But for some artists, waters, before creation, as water is the arché, according
obviously for Hagea too, it was a special “thing.” It to Thales, the first element of creation. But the
has a special significance. Its close resemblance and threatening appearance of water points out also to the
dissimilarity with the human is disconcerting. It places deluge, or to some lethal drama, which relates also to
the puppet in between realms. It introduces a paradox. the unconscious, which governs psychologically man’s
The puppet is paradoxical. It could be “less-than-a- relationship with woman. There is an archetypal
thing,” says Rilke. On some occasions, “it” could connection between water and its generative powers
be more than a human: she/he could hold a super- and woman, in which in a mysterious way creation
body. But it always seems to hide a secret. Perhaps, and death are intertwined.
the secret of our origins: the human-paignion, the
companion of gods praised by Plato. Specifically for Nicoletta Isar
Copenhagen October 2008
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