Iakov Levi

The Prodigal Son by Arturo Martini and the Wrestling of Jacob by Marc Chagall

 May 31, 2005

          

            The Prodigal Son (Opera Pia Jona Ottolenghi - Aqui Terme - Al.)

Roberto Salvini, a Master of art criticism, speaking of the sculpture by Martini, writes:

The movement of the two figures one towards the other, which is represented at the very moment of its arrest, the inter – twining of the arms into the beginning of an embrace, the sharp  and questioning glance of the father, they are all elements which make the reading of the issue involved plane and clear. At the same time, the Roman – style clothes hint at the historical timing of the evangelist parable.  However, nothing of all this would be relevant to the value of the oeuvre d’art, if it had not been expressed through an individual language, the central theme of which is the permeating of the air and the light of the plastic surface, the porousness of the material, which seems consumed by time. In this way, a dimension of space is created around and inside the group of the two images, which are projected into a mythical distance (Guida all’arte moderna, Garzanti, Milano 1954, p.83 [the translation from Italian is mine])

It seems to me, that nothing can be added to a so brilliant critical assessment. However… the sensation is that there is something more in the representation, a story inside the story, which does not invalidate the manifest representation, but that hints at a more archaic and latent substance: a deeper layer from which the present image was engendered. 

When I first looked at the sculpture, I was at a certain distance, and I had not yet read the title of the composition.

The primal sensation, which is always the one that better reconnects to our unconscious, was that we are dealing with a scene describing a wrestling. It was as if the two men were to hold each other in a Greek – Roman wrestling position, or they were two Judo – wrestlers at the beginning of their fight.

Then, coming closer, I realized that the scene was dealing with an embrace. It was as if, under the artist’s fingers, an act of mutual aggression had been transformed into a loving thrust.

Only at this point, I reminded what I had previously written in  Rembrandt and the Prodigal Son: under the Gospels’ overlay, were hidden the mnemonic traces of the youngest son of the Primal Horde, who was the vicar of his brothers, and who returned home in order to kill the Father. This repressed content was captured at first by my unconscious, as it occurs to other visitors.

If we analyze Salvini’s comment, we find the same traces of the primal event, which had been unconsciously captured by the great critic: “ The movement of the two figures towards each other represented at the very moment of its arrest, the inter – twining of the arms into the beginning of an embrace [the wrestling], the sharp  and questioning glance of the father [as in the mutual gauging of two wrestlers] they are all elements which make the reading of the issue involved plane and clear [at which level, the manifest of the latent one?]… which seems consumed by time. In this way, a dimension of space is created around and inside the group of the two images, which are projected into a mythical distance"  [= into an archaic time, which is timeless as prehistoric and psychic events].

Art is one of the most important instruments for decoding unconscious collective contents. Those are transmitted from the artist to the public at the unconscious level, circumventing the censoring filter of consciousness. The spectator captures them and identifies with.

Dealing with art Freud wrote: “art offers substitutive satisfactions for the oldest and still most deeply felt cultural renunciations, and for that reason it serves as nothing else does to reconcile a man to the sacrifices he has made on behalf of civilization ("The Future of an Illusion" (1927), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, The Hogarth Press, London 1953, Vol. 21, p.14).

In the biblical parable, the central motive of the youngest son who returns home in order to kill the Father was repressed. The scene of reconciliation was overlaid on the act of aggression, according to the common proposal of religions. However, the aggressive element, having been repressed, pressed for recognition too.

Every repressed content, which is inhibited from discharging its energies, accumulates in our psyche, and causes a certain amount of sufferance.
As Freud says, civilization demanded instinct renunciation, namely renunciation of the aggressive drive  towards the Father, and permitted only the expression of the loving side of the two – faced medal of the ambivalent relation between Father and Sons. The result is the repression – accumulation of the other side. The artist, introducing in his Oeuvre the repressed element, helps the discharge of accumulated energies and the subsequent relief.

Marc Chagall and The Wrestling of Jacob (Dec. 5, 2005)

Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there
until the breaking of the day...
...The man said, "Let me go, for the day breaks."
Jacob said, "I won't let you go, unless you bless me."
He said to him, "What is your name?" He said, "Jacob."
He said, "Your name will no longer be called 'Jacob,'
but, 'Israel,' for you have fought with God and with men,
and have prevailed." (Gen. 32:24-8)

Chagall’s vitrage in the Fraumunster (Zurich)

Theodor Reik, in his essay “The Wrestling of Jacob” (in Dogma and Compulsion, International Universities Press, New York 1941, pp. 229 – 251), interprets the biblical story of the wrestling of Jacob as the mnemonic trace of a puberty rite. In those occasions, the adults of the tribe, who represent a paternal image and in the biblical myth are represented by the angel, threaten the youngsters and eventually circumcise them as a substitute of castration. Reik writes:

we find a reference to the tradition that Hercules had to engage in such a wrestling contest on two occasions; once with Hippocroon, when the hero, curiously enough, suffered an injury to the hip, and once in the Palaestra of Olympia, when he encountered his father Zeus, who for some time wrestled with him as an unknown adversary, but finally revealed his identity. Another observation may perhaps appear more significant: the rabbies declare that the vein which the God of Jacob injured is identical with the phallus. The same opinion is maintained in the book of Sohar (Parascha Wajischlach, p. 170). We venture to suggest that psychoanalysis has recognized this and other displacements in the myths in question, and that the symptom of limping has been interpreted as a euphemistic reference to castration. Now we seem to see the whole episode in a new light: The god castrates Jacob, or at least attempts to do so. (p.238)…
… The paternal generation, which after initiation accepts the sons as equally privileged, now consents to their desires. In the course of evolution this consent, conditioned by the emotional trend of the ambivalent attitude, assumes an increasingly prominent position in the foreground, until the original meaning of the initiation ritual is no longer perceptible. With the progressive repression of hostile impulses the paternal affection and care for the young become the central point of the initiation. (p.240)…

we should regard the words "I will not let thee go except thou bless me" as the expression of the eternal truth that no man can enjoy undisturbed happiness in life and love who is still fighting with the shade of his father. The partial conquest of the father is, like the reconciliation with him and his memory, a condition of cultural progress. (p.251)

          

George Minne: The Prodigal Son         Rembrandt: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (Berlin)

Giorgio De Chirico: The Prodigal Son

Links:

Rembrandt and the Prodigal Son. On Elder and Youngest Brothers
Pinocchio. The Puberty Rite of a Puppet