I AM WEDEKIND. That covers everything. It covers my propounding of the theory of the free spirit to Adelaide. I am a SURREALIST REVOLUTIONARY. I like stirring people up.
What I want is private time to myself, a private citadel in a magic forest to write my stories in. That is what I have always wanted. I want to leave a record of my life, and my nature. I am WEDEKIND. I am STEERPIKE. I am a RECORDER. IT IS ALL GOOD FUN, ISN’T IT. PEOPLE ARE RESENTFUL OF FREE SPIRITS. BE MORE DISGUSTING. I DON’T REGRET WHAT I SAID WITH ADELAIDE; IT IS ALL TRUE. I LOVE MY WILDNESS WITH THE TWO WOMEN CUSTOMERS. MY DELICIOUS VICTORY IS IN HOW I GET EVERYONE OBSESSED WITH ME. NOTHING BOTHERS ME. EVERYTHING INSPIRES ME. I AM A RULE-BREAKER. The terrible nights I had on Monday & Tuesday, and how calm I feel tonight. The attention fills me with power. NOTHING BOTHERS ME, I’M JUST COLLECTING MATERIAL.
I am NASTY. I am DISREPUTABLE, like Egon Schiele and Aubrey Beardsley and Wedekind. I love the RICHNESS, and DELICIOUSNESS, and NEW SENSATIONS of my life now. I AM a stirrer. I stir people up then retreat back into my kingdom. Writers are like that, they put all their energy into their work, they’ve got nothing left for other people. I live for the book; I live for creating the book. Always pretend to look upset when K— (or the others) are trying to bother me. MISCHIEF! I go where the story is.
SCHOOLBOY MISCHIEF! The pleasure of the boudoirs and the black porn films overwhelms everything. I am Wedekind, enjoying shocking the bourgeoisie. They must be seething with frustration, because they are still powerless to land a single blow on me, still not a mark on me. My book is coming together at last—that is totally thanks to them. I have been given an incentive to go to work and hang on to it. I am happy, & serene, & content, & joyful. Enjoying all the attention I get, revelling in their obsession with me, stimulated and inspired by it; winding them up, winding them up, provoking them, provoking them, so they will stimulate and inspire me even more. Luxuriating in how I have stirred them up, put myself into their brains all the time, while I am still enjoying the warm pleasure of my boudoirs, having more illicit pleasure than them, making their minds boggle, while they are powering and stimulating me.
I am Wedekind, shocking the bourgeoisie. Dream about a weird Soho-type crawl. My dreams are getting very vivid lately; why? I’m just keeping quiet, and keeping my lips sealed, and going on with my Wedekindian life. With mischief and determination, holding to my line. I should be strong, cocky, & smug: I’m leading the Wedekindian life. I love pushing the sexual bounds, the risk.
The new erotic world I live in now. Powder blue silk transparent nighties.
The Stockholm Experiment. The book is about Sweden, psychotherapy, and borderline autism. The Helsinki hypothesis.
I am on a higher intellectual plane, enjoying my high cultural pleasures, writing my vast 1,800 page The Man Without Qualities. Strolling so luxuriantly, eccentrically, with my Buddhist smile, with my blissful Taoist contentment. I AM GETTING UNDER PEOPLE’S SKIN. And I’m holding to my line. I’m keeping my lips sealed, just a mischievous grin as I leave them in my black trail again. “He’s still so smug, and happy with himself!” I feed off them. I need it. I am successfully winding everybody up, AND still smugly grinning. I was winding everybody up, I needed the confirmations that I’d got to them, at no cost to myself; I was being supplied with the energy I needed at last, at no cost to myself. How delicious to make them follow me to the Chandos, to the cinema, and then losing them at the opera, or at Plenty, or at Gross Indecency. They can’t touch me because I live on the intellectual plane, in the rich kingdom of shadows. They are THINKING about me. What a turn on; what stimulation. Still a naughty boy. Still schoolboy mischief. Still Wedekind. My shrewd plan is going absolutely brilliantly. That I am still killing myself laughing, and enjoying my cinema, & theatre, & opera; and floozies.
I live with Lady Tara in the magic citadel; she got up from the huge white sheets of the bed, and padded over to the window cut in the high wall; leaning against the window sill, looking out to the brown cliffs curving round in a circle to her right, the blazing deep blue skies, the green fauna motionless in the blazing heat. From the bed I watched Lady Tara’s perfect form bathed in the soft roseate glow. I suddenly sat up on the edge of the bed, and began manipulating the gift that nature gives only to men as my eyes longingly absorbed the picture she provided for me. After a while, she became aware of me and looked back over her shoulder. Our eyes met, and she smiled mischievously, before returning to looking out the window, but slowly bending forward and reaching a hand between her legs, to begin manipulating the gift that nature gave only to her. After a while, Lady Tara began to moan quietly, I came and stood beside her at the window, and with some more tender, loving manipulations, ejaculated out the window, down to the undergrowth a thousand feet below us. With a low sob, Lady Tara sank down over the window edge, letting her head rest against the outside of the Citadel wall.
I went out, slow and completely sated, Buddha-like. What a fascinating new experience.
I will go luxuriantly to Mephistopheles. You’ve got to see and be who you really are. Little Prince. I am sexually rampant and kinky. I go to Stockholm for it, Paris for it, Helsinki for it, Berlin for it. I become more superior every day. I become richer and more content every day. I was cockily enjoying myself. Like Wedekind. I lived in my rich black bejewelled kingdom of shadows. I used everything. People were giving me something more precious than I could ever pay for. I was like a god to them.
The more they attack me, the happier I become. The more people attack me so rancidly, the more calm, and self-assured, and cocky I become; because now I know: I have got you in my pocket. Because now I know: I can play you like a piano. Because I belong to that class of people for whom it is true to say: When you attack me, then I’ve got you exactly where I want you. When you attack me, then you have made your fatal mistake. I have got such extreme sensual exquisite pleasure to remember and draw on. They try so hard to knock my life, and I still enjoy my Oscar Wilde theatre, my cinema, my opera. I push them, and I push them: I lead a very free life. I am here to teach them. They have made my book proceed apace at last—a very uncomfortable fact for them to deal with. They’re helping me, they’re helping me—with every word they say they advance my book a little bit more. I do it because I shouldn’t do it. I’m FLAUNTING it, I’m FLAUNTING it! I’m teasing them with it. Flamboyantly, like Wedekind. I am driving them into a frenzy.
It is wealth to be content, and what wealth it is. The riches they are giving me on top of that! I’ve not got money worries, my life is very easy. The freedom of my life far outweighs its disadvantages. I plunge into bordello life.
Why is he getting more smug and serene? Be irritatingly and flamboyantly ECCENTRIC. To show that great people can do that. I am Wedekind, and I can still move wherever I want to move. I insist on my right to step over the line. I am autistic, and I insist on my right to shuffle round like Kaspar Hauser, and to go to my bordellos. I am Wedekind, I prefer the bordello life. Even discovery has had no effect on me, that is how suited to the bordello life I had become, how at ease in the bordello world I am, how that must infuriate them—I’m becoming smugger and cockier and more serene than ever.
Good, I choose war on them! I am having fun. So fantastic to be the centre of so much attention, and I’ve got a cocky, cheerful grin on my face. And you know what? I discover it does not destroy me! And you know what? I discover I love it! And you know what? I discover I can play them like a piano! And you know what? I discover I can pull all their strings like a puppet, and I discover I can loom over them like Fantomas looming over Paris! I discover they are filling me up with power. I discover I am starting to come into my own and be who I was always meant to be. I discover this pressure has begun the metamorphosis I was always waiting for so I can emerge as beautiful butterfly. I discover I am starting to bloom and blossom, and shoot up so I am towering above them, and leave them cowering and withering in my shade for lack of light. I’ve got Semele on my black obsidian platforms, in my Citadel, on the edge of the brown cliff. I choose to be in a state of war with them, my bordello life of pleasure is my decadent way of attacking them, it provokes them, and stirs them, and gets under their skin so much. I have stirred them up and what riches I am mining now. I like fun and naughtiness. If it’s not dirty & illicit, then it’s no good to me. I must get what is good to me. I prefer the bordello life. I choose the bordello life. I am a sexual adventurer. I am Wedekind: devoted to pointing out the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie. I feel only EXCITEMENT. Exhilaration. The joys of Spring. Ever since I was a baby, I’ve had complete withering contempt for them, and now they are beginning to see how much contempt for them I have. I like pushing people and pushing people, and I can’t help it. I cannot resist annoying the stupid people. I’m sorry.
They are trying to hurt you, trying to make you unhappy—so be happy! I love everything I’ve ever done, because I did it for pleasure. You think the community should tell me what they think I’m allowed to do or not to do? The trouble is if this fails, then there’s really nowhere else they can go then. There is nothing worse they can hit me with. This must be a very worrying time for them. “He’s still coming smiling contentedly through even this! He’s still prospering from even this!” They are doing what I want, Fantomas is pulling their strings.
It’s no good them trying desperately to hurt me now, I have chosen my preferred bordello life, and it doesn’t include them.
I am viciously intelligent, and I’m having a viciously rampant dirty sex life: that is unbearable for them! I’m going to rub it in their faces more and more; and still smilingly serenely enjoy my cultural life, and my weekly treats.
I am FEEDING off them. I am laughing at them. The more they throw at me the more serenity I find. The most vicious, nasty abuse of my life had led to me finding my greatest ever serenity. They had given me total freedom now. I am determined to set myself against people. Complete liberation. One should never worry about being thought NOTORIOUS! I’m so strong and powerful I can do what I want: so sexually rampant. Wild! Violent! Mad! Drama! Passion! I just potter about, being as ECCENTRIC as I want to be. How it infuriates them that I am so relaxed. I am Wedekind. I enjoy shocking the bourgeoisie. A pretty, helpful smile: “I’m just collecting my material, and writing my little books!” I am stirring up their repressed desires into a hysterical frenzy. By living wildly! I am getting under their skin. I am successfully PROVOKING. I live in Semele, with Lady Tara, on the black obsidian platform on the side of the brown cliffs, with the lush green fauna beneath us; classical music coming gently from the radio on the brown hexagonal table beside us. I live in culture, and high art. In my fiction I am trying to create my perfect place, and now in the Citadel I have found it. I had found my perfect place in the Citadel before, but then the approaching storm of November 1989 destroyed it. Now I have the perfect place again, I have regained the perfect place in the Citadel. Is a job so important to me then? It affects my perfect place like the moon affects the tides.
I am Wedekind. The provoker! I like being the centre of attention, obsessed over. I am Priapus. I live in the opera; I live in Semele. I can do exactly what I want. I prefer the bordello life. I am an ARTIST. “I think he likes daring people!” I do; to see who the stupid ones are. I’m just living my own life, quietly & privately. It is because they desire me. They envy me for my freedom, and my still resolute refusal to be social. Black stockings Wanda was nice last night, as was the big blonde Sandra, but not much else. Boulevard seems naughtier now, blacker, more anonymous. The pleasure I am getting away with. The fact I didn’t receive any insults this morning is quite insulting. When you’ve got a couple of drinks inside you and you’re racing around from place to place you really don’t notice anything much. I believe in rampancy. Letting yourself go. It is driving them into a frenzy. I am Wedekind, shocking the bourgeoisie. They’ve going to have to keep it up. Hostility takes more out of them. While I keep up my pleasure. I am daring them. I am deliberately fighting for my right to be strange. The thrill of doing something you shouldn’t; the power that gives you. Their fear, that their attacks are having no adverse effect on me whatsoever. The absolute consuming nightmare for them, that I am serenely prospering from it. I need to flirt with danger, and flirt with disaster, for the rich sweet bloody juices it gives me, rich in nutrients. I just cannot help myself. It is people’s weaknesses that make them interesting. It is people’s vices that make them attractive. What do I think of the people of Moloch? Rich material! Sweet and juicy. I insist on my complete freedom. Sumptuous and sensual.
I’m Wedekind! I can do what I want! Cockier than ever! Because I had successfully wound everybody up. I had got everyone thinking about me obsessively. Schoolboy mischief! “NOTHING gets him down!” It is all MATERIAL. That is all I see it as. It is fascinating to see what the scientific count is every morning. I am happily exploring my life. I DOMINATE THE SCENE IN MOLOCH. It’s on their mind all the time, the bordellos I spend my time in. They envy me for the rampancy of my life. Rapacious vampire. I thrive on opposition, it’s the only thing that gives me energy. I was the one leading the Wedekindian life and enjoying myself; they were the small resentful ones sniping from the sidelines. I love my black & red Wedekindian life. I am violently Weimar Berlin. They just make it richer; tastier. I had such contempt for people that I didn’t care who knows it. Such was my power. Become NOTORIOUS. What a thing! One should not be frightened of being thought NOTORIOUS. It usually means one is having more pleasure than everybody else. Like red rags to a bull, I am always showing them what I can get away with and prosper from. Totally enjoyable now.
"Throughout the early 1920’s, Jazz was rapidly replacing the more traditional musical forms in Cabaret and Revue but it was not until after the stabilisation of the currency in 1924 that many Berliners had the chance to experience it live.
Josephine Baker became an almost overnight phenomenon from which it was said “the women of Berlin were never the same again.”"
"Marlene Dietrich became an immediate international star on the strength of her performance as the temptress Lola Frohlich in Josef von Sternberg's classic tale of love and obsession. Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is a strict and humorless schoolmaster who is shocked when he discovers the boys in his class have been spending their time at a sleazy cabaret called The Blue Angel, where an entertainer named Lola (Dietrich) keeps the men in thrall and sells suggestive postcards of herself. Rath goes to the club in hopes of catching his students and giving them a severe dressing-down, but he instead finds himself entranced by the carefree atmosphere of the club, and is struck by Lola's earthy, sensual beauty. Rath finds himself strongly attracted to Lola, and she later entertains him in her dressing room. When word of Rath's infatuation with Lola spreads to his students, he is taunted mercilessly, and eventually Rath is dismissed from the school. While Lola agrees to marry Rath, she shows little affection for him and delights in humiliating him, making him her servant and forcing him to play a clown in her stage show."
" a decorated with a bust of emperor and black-gold-red curtains entertainment establishment - "Sideshow" (1900) - shows dignitaries and students who look just as greedy as the dance of a bored her skirt lifted "Sideshow"-girl."
Eros places an artist in conflict with the world, with what is average in life, he wrests him from the middle-class world and transports him to a sphere of tormented and ecstatic decay. -- Laurence Schifano
"The Romance Café was the most famous meeting place for writers, journalists, theatre and film people in Berlin in the Twenties. It was on the ground floor of a house in the Romanesque Revival style vis-à-vis the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, where now the Europa Centre stands."
“Bacon had seen how the Surrealists equated the desire to express something new with the need to shock, and it was to form the core of his own artistic belief. When the ‘wild boy from Ireland’ returned to London towards the end of 1928, he was set on a course that would not only scandalise conventional sexual and social morality. He had something far more subversive to do: to disrupt all notions of what art was and what it could express. Beneath the carefully calculated frivolity and the unresolved pain of a rejected son lay the iron determination of a man readying himself to throw a bomb and be held responsible for it.”
“Total abandonment to instinct, above all sexual instinct, was an ideal which Bacon maintained with astonishing vigour to the end of his days. If he had a sustaining belief, it was in the supremacy of instinct as the only guiding principle in life—a philosophy expounded at length by the Marquis de Sade. Bacon had an expert knowledge and considerable personal experience of extreme sexual behaviour—and of sado-masochism in particular. He made no secret of his taboo in this area. And when he said that he ‘painted to excite himself’, he surely meant to recreate certain extreme sexual sensations. It would be true to say that, at one level or another, much of what he painted is a projection of sado-masochistic practices, though, as if by some odd consensus of propriety, his pictures were almost never viewed in this light during his lifetime.”
"I feel myself to be an alien in the world. If you have no ties to either mankind or to God, then you are an alien."
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius, Ray Monk, Penguin Books, 1990.
"Philosophy, as I have understood and lived it to this day, is a life voluntarily spent in ice and high mountains - a searching out of all that is alien and questionable in existence, of all that until now has been held in the spell of morality..."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1888.
"Very few people find their real instincts. Every now and then there's an artist who does and who makes something new and actually thickens the texture of life. But it's very rare...You have to be able to be really free to find yourself in that way, without any moral or religious constraints. After all, life is nothing but a series of sensations, so one may as well try and make oneself extraordinary, extraordinary and brilliant, even if it means becoming a brilliant fool like me and having the kind of disastrous life that I have had. That is it."
Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma, Michael Peppiatt, 1996.
"It's only by going too far that you can hope to break the mould and do something new. Art is a question of going too far. Images can shatter the old order leaving nothing the same as before. The more artificial you can make it, the greater chance you've got its looking real."
Francis Bacon, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1987, Thames & Hudson.
'' Actually, I'm the most ordinary person possible. Its just that I like throwing myself in the gutter. Every artist wants to throw himself into the gutter. Its part of his life, its a necessity. You might say that I lead a gilded gutter life, I drift from bar to bar, from gambling place to gambling place, and when I don't do those things, I go home and paint some pictures. I am completely amoral. If I hadn't painted I would have been a criminal....I have always known life was absurd. Life is nothing but a series of sensations.......Life is so meaningless we might as well try to make ourselves extraordinary...I think of life as meaningless and yet it excites me. I always think that something marvellous is about to happen. How can I trap this transient thing? ''
...Francis Bacon in conversations.
SOHO (1999) 
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