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Henry Miller's life ecology 

The man in town. Henry Miller and Modernism
Forfatter: Finn Jensen
Forlag: Multivers (Danmark)
Jensen highlights Henry Miller's ability to navigate between lightness and heaviness, humor and pathos in a great book about the full range of the diverse author's universe.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

The story of Henry Miller's life and authorship is the story of a man who makes the journey into the heart of modern life – the thieves of Paris, the arts, the city, the anonymity, the loneliness – taking the best of it and using this insight to discover something new sides of life. What begins with norm breaking, anarchy and looseness ends up as a matter of finding new spirituality, a creative force, a new language, a way of life. In Jensen's book, almost unfolded in three cemetery life stages: the aesthetic, ethical and religious.

Blood transfusion. "We need a blood transfusion." "The culture is dying because it only sees life in a linear progression." that which nourishes the creative. As of Crab's turning circle Miller makes the crucial move to turn the enjoyment into something creative. Creating is about giving way to what passes through one's self: a line, a rhythm, a color, investing oneself in the slightest movement. For Miller, as he swims, fucks, hikes or senses the ancient temples. Pleasure as surplus, as cosmic rejoicing. Being the spirit of the movement. A drive towards a movement bigger than ourselves, as Finn Jensen writes. Only this way, according to Miller, can we build a belief in being able to change lives.

The conflict and hell "are more fruitful than paradise".

The sybilic (ambiguous) in everything. According to Finn Jensen, a turning point in Miller's understanding of this enjoyment will be the journey to Greece. The meeting of the earthly people, the poets, the earth, the air, the sun, the mountains, the Aegean Sea, becomes the force that paves the way for a new prose to come together with the powers of the earth, with the people, the universal poetry, the light, the hymn songs. , the sybilic fables where the passage of life awakens and flows. Forever in the probably best book The colossus from Maroussi: "I remember one day I went with Seferiades (AC: Greek poet) to a piece of land where he intended to build a bungalow. There was nothing special about the place – it even seemed a bit sad and miserable. Or rather, it was – at first glance. I never had the opportunity to 'consolidate' this my first impression. It changed character right in front of me as he, as an electrified jellyfish, led me from spot to spot, spreading around herbs, flowers, shrubs, stones, soil, slopes of ponds, small islands and so on. ... He could stare at a continent and read the history of the Medes, Persians, Dorians, mines and Atlanteans. He could also read in this country some fragments of the poem which he would form inside his head on the way home, while asking a thousand questions about the New World. He was attracted to the Sibylline character in everything, his gaze dropped. He had a way of looking forwards and backwards, to have the subject matter of his recitals rotated and clearly demonstrate his multifaceted aspects. When he talked about a thing or a person or an experience, it was like caressing it by his tongue. "

Organic literature? What separates Miller from both the liberated self and the neoliberal self-realization of our time in today's era is referred to by Finn Jensen as a vitalism and cosmology about the flow of life, the core of which is the dedication to what Miller calls the "heart of the earth". According to Jensen, today we can see Miller's apolitical 'voice' transformed into a 'minor literature' and thus political anarchist literature (Deleuze / Guattari). Miller as eco-literature? Miller's language as a connecting force precisely because the words themselves do not strike. Because it takes a life, a life to live, because language needs forces, substance, earth. Miller's prose is itself like a plant-like organic movement. This is according to Finn Jensen Crab's turning circle og Capricorn turning circle that Miller elevates the individual story of suffering to a cosmic conquest of the world and our connectedness. It is through this journey that the boy from the backyard transforms into the angel from Brooklyn.

Apollon and Dionysus. Miller is an unrelenting romantic. And the pitfalls are in line. But Jensen highlights Miller's ability to navigate between ease and heaviness, between humor and pathos. For if Miller can teach us anything today, it is that Nietzsche's Apollon / Dionysos dualism has completely collapsed, if it has not been for a long time. For example, the hidden "Apollinean" (rational, powerful) exploitation of the overtly "Dionysian" (ecstatic, destructive) in the culture – watch almost any hip-hop music video of the past 20 years, it's not Dionysos with its aftermath (ecstatic Kvindelige)? – while the obviously Apollinian undoubtedly hides strong destructive and ecstatic impulses ... Miller's emphasis on the Dionysian and tragic (eroticism, sensuality, passion) can all too easily go berserk, where ecstasy becomes the target. But art must, above all, demand the artist's full attention, ie form. The Apollinean temperament can handle uncertainty, displacement and loss of control. You create commonality out of shape. Without Apollon we end up with limp art and bad thinking, but without physicality and foreign encounters, the art and mind lose blood. For many years, I have seen Miller's own example of life, his attitude to life and charm as his strongest contribution to the arts and culture.

Creating is about giving way to what passes through one's self.

Simplicity. In the conversation book Ét life is enough (Georges Belmont) he expresses why he regards conflict and hell as more fruitful and productive from an artistic point of view. “It is more fruitful than paradise. That is why I love to portray the bad side of being and creature. It is infinitely more passionate and living ... The impossible is worth more than the unlikely. The impossible is a thousand times more attractive! ” He found a house at Big Sur in California out to the Pacific Ocean. Here he lived on a rock, painted and wrote and loved. “If you make yourself simple, wise, there are no social problems. It is first and foremost our own inner restlessness that creates them. As an American, I have had good conditions to see the ridiculousness of this activity. It's like insects. When you sit and look at the life of the insects, you ask yourself: Why do they go around like this? What exactly are they doing? But especially: Why? " Later, he described the insect life of Americans in the essay book The air-conditioned nightmare. But he always returns to the affirmation: “Life is perhaps a huge orchestra where we each play an instrument. What matters is playing the instrument you can, no matter what. " Finn Jensen has written a great book about the full range of Miller's universe.

Alexander Carnera
Alexander Carnera
Carnera is a freelance writer living in Copenhagen.

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