Abstracts of Sessions Friday, October 17

Caroline Blinder (England):

The Artist and His Model – Henry Miller’s Introduction to Brassaï’s Histoire d’ Marie (1949)

The idea of artmaking as a male prerogative often seems to be based on the presence of the female model, be it in the role of muse or as a catalyst for the creative process. For Henry Miller, his longstanding friendship with the Hungarian photographer Brassaï was instrumental in their shared vision of Paris as a feminised landscape, and the foundation for some extraordinary writing, on Brassaï’s abilities as a photographer in Miller’s essay ‘The Eye of Paris’ (1941) and in Miller’s later ‘Quiet Days in Clichy’ (1956), illustrated by Brassaï. In various forms, then, Miller’s ideas of masculinity as the generative force in artistic creation were frequently channelled through Brassaï’s illustrious career as an observer of Parisian woman.

All the more fascinating then that Miller’s French introduction to Brassaï’s little know collection of prose poems ‘Histoire d’Marie’ (1949) has not been translated, nor written about other than as an aside, an example of Brassaï’s brief foray into poetry. The little book - a series of short entries, commentaries, and observations by a cleaning woman in Paris – counters the traditional relationship between artist and model on multiple levels. Instead of a character whose primary role is to accentuate the documentary abilities of the male gaze, Marie’s first-person narratives are, according to Miller, versions of a life lived on the margins, brutally honest, and as such quintessential examples of joy in the face of strife. Marie represents the labour that underpins the romanticism of Paris, but she also illuminates the falsity of female stereotypes in ways, that I hope to show, are unexpected within Miller’s universe.

Sarah Garland (England): 

I love everything that flows": Miller’s Watercolour Practice.

Recent work on enchantment and magic suggests that the everyday might be "transformed by our deliberate attention” (Katherine May).  Miller's writing on painting can be, I argue, taken in this twenty-first century moment as a prototype for wider practices of embracing accident, surrender, and intuition. The paper will connect Miller's approach to 'flow' in painting to his ekphrastic prose as well as to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow," suggesting that Miller's watercolor practice fosters a state of absorbed fluidity and creativity that allows him to rehearse and describe moments of joy. This paper examines Henry Miller's lifelong engagement with watercolor, examining how his practice seeks out and generates self-enchantment, particularly, as he says, when verbal expression falters. "I turn to painting when I can no longer write. Painting refreshes and restores me," he writes. Drawing on "To Paint is To Love Again" and "The Waters Reglitterized," as well as "The Angel is My Watermark," this paper analyzes how Miller's relationship with the properties of paint, water and paper, his embrace of mistakes, and his emphasis on intuitive gestures reveal how the practice functions as an exemplary source of self-enchantment, returning Miller to experience and to a regenerative phenomenological world.

Eric Lehman (United States): 

Keeping Human in an Air-conditioned Nightmare: Henry Miller Finds Microculture at Big Sur.

In the 21st century, the “mass society” that Miller resisted has become a megalopolis of both real and virtual connections. At the end of the 20th century, this interconnected world seemed to promise unfettered freedom and unlimited culture. However, these promises have remained mostly unsatisfied, while the internet and the global society it serves have become sources of fear, anxiety, and schism.

How might Henry Miller’s work help guide the conversation around the topic? One way is through his ideas around small, place-based “neighborhoods” and “tiny communities,” which we can productively call microcultures. In Miller’s later works, such as Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, he provides the parameters for these microcultures, confronting questions about social relationships, the price of fame, and the limits of nomadism. Using the people of Big Sur as a model, he shows how positive microcultures – not a global society – can produce not only happiness, but culture itself, through exceptional writers, artists, and thinkers. Through his stories and ideas he demonstrates what studies social sciences have later confirmed, that an interrelated but limited web of real human connections is the best way to nurture our souls.

Places like Big Sur or Brooklyn’s 14th Ward or Montparnasse can nurture both human connection and cultural growth if they remain healthy. Henry Miller provides ideas for how to do that. He shows us how to challenge the “air-conditioned nightmare” of global society, how to pay attention to the place we live now, and how to reestablish the things that keep us human.

Jakub Kloza (Poland): 

“The light of Greece opened my eyes”: Epiphany Structures in Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi

Finn Jensen wrote about The Colossus of Maroussi, this exceptional work of Henry Miller, as “the journey into the light.” The religious background of this piece was described, as well as the role of these inspirations in Miller’s oeuvre. I will highlight the significance of solar imagination and metaphors recurring in The Colossus of Maroussi, “the light” mentioned by Jensen, which is, in my opinion, strongly connected with a specific tradition of articulating religious experience. Light, brightness, flash, and clear vision are typical metaphors of epiphany present at various levels of Miller’s work. I intend to describe the epiphanic structures in Miller’s novel, starting with the classical epiphanies, where the metaphor of light and the removal of masks are associated with the knowledge of subjective and higher truths. Epiphany implies a momentary transcending of the currently experienced space and time, so I will describe moments of eternal duration, the experience of timelessness, which paradoxically takes place in the passing moment (similarly to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Augenblick). 

My conclusion will include an interpretation of the glimpses of divinity that Miller sees in man, especially the Greek, and a description of the aphoristic poetics of The Colossus of Maroussi and the convictions it expresses about the power of language and narration, which makes literature a medium for modern religious experience. I am strongly convinced of the usability of a postsecular approach in which the process of modernization isn’t parallel with secularization, but it is sensitive to how religious ideas and forms still occur in “A Secular Age” using the title formula of Charles Taylor’s monumental work. The purpose of my presentation is to examine The Colossus of Maroussi with different conceptualizations of epiphany, starting with a fairly new perspective proposed by Polish literary scholar Ryszard Nycz (Literature as a Trail of Reality: The Poetics of Epiphany in Modern Polish Literature, 2001). As far as I am concerned, this proposition designed for reading modern literature is somehow limited because of the textual approach excluding the ethical issues, which are crucial for Miller’s literary philosophy. To get around these limitations of the method, I will confront it with classical Taylor’s proposal on reading epiphany (Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, 1989). The aim of my speech is to show how reading Miller in the context of epiphany poetics gives us an opportunity to recognize the basics of ethical engagement and the new sincerity of the metamodernistic tinge.

James M. Decker (United States):

 "Some beautiful blank book": Henry Miller’s Intermedial Transformation

An early critic, Nicolas Moore, observed that Henry Miller’s writing “is not orderly or logical” (11), a phenomenon he later attributes to jazz improvisation and an “organic” form (13). Numerous other commentors, such as Karl Orend, Caroline Blinder, and Sarah Garland, have also noted the influence of other arts on Miller’s seemingly extemporized style. Indeed, most of Miller’s major critics point out factors contributing to his prose style and emphasize areas of the humanities such as painting, poetry, cinema, philosophy, burlesque, among others. As Finn Jensen has remarked, Miller was a great syncretist, drawing from diverse and often contradictory traditions, and Katy Masuga reminds us about the “very absurdity” (179) of attempting to unravel the mysteries of influence. Masuga suggests, though, that Miller’s critics can “open fissures” that can help illuminate his works for readers and suggest paths for further exploration.

By examining Miller’s adoption of what Irina O. Rawjewsky deems the “illusion-forming quality” (54) of intermedial references, scholars can investigate one such “open fissure.” Miller’s kaleidoscopic prose—full of improvisational energy, tonal shifts, and interplay between gritty realism, bizarre fantasy, and self-analysis—exemplifies Klaus Bruhn Jensen’s observation that intermedial approaches can “stress the innovative or transgressive potential” of a text (1). In Miller, this transgression arises from his radical use of what Michel Foucault calls a “technology of the self” aimed at self-transformation (18). Foucault views technologies of the self as a means to overcoming “governmentality,” the institutions and thought systems that collectively lead individuals to self-regulate in a way that aligns with state goals.

For Miller, total creative dedication, no matter what the medium, exemplified freedom from governmentality. As he articulates it in Sexus:

The world would only begin to get something of value from me the moment I stopped being a serious member of society and became— myself. The State, the nation, the united nations of the world, were nothing but one great aggregation of individuals who repeated the mistakes of their forefathers…. the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, … recognized only one kind of activity—creation. (206)

Miller’s fascination with intermedial references lies not within the various artistic fields themselves but in their capacity to lead one away what Foucault calls the “arbitrariness of institutions” (11). Such an intermedial strategy, then, constitutes a care of self that subverts state ideology and underscores the need for individual transformation through the arts.