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Part of Fragmentary Presences / Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue
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DARIUSZ
traces of various cognitive significance that have to
be now subjected to laborious interpretations. Let us,
therefore, ask: who really died on that day, month and
year? Who was the person described in a seventeenthcentury dictionary as: Nobilissimus Carolus Gesualdus,
Princeps Venusinus, nostrae tempestatis Musicorum ac
Melopaeorum, princeps? Who was Carlo Gesualdo?
This disturbing mystery of identity is the topic of
the following text.
CZAJA
Fragmentary Presences.
Portraits
of Carlo Gesualdo
Voices from the past
Ideal and dearly beloved voices
of those who are dead, or of those
who are lost to us like the dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams;
sometimes in thought the mind hears them.
And for a moment with their echo other echoes
return from the first poetry of our lives like music that extinguishes the far-off night.
Constantine Cavafy, Voices1
He died.
The prince died.
Prince Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa died.
The ultimate deathbed chord of this biography re
sounded on 8 September 1613.
The funeral ceremonies had been celebrated, the
body laid to rest in a grave, the book of life is closed.
Evoking already at the very onset, and in such a de
monstrative manner, the conventionalised metaphor
of the book of life shut for always - and announced
by repeating the word: “died” thrice - I would like to
draw attention not so much to the simple and obvious
(?) fact of the biological end as to clearly and firmly
accentuate a frustrating circumstance, namely, that
contrary to all appearances in the eyes of the living
the cognitive situation connected with recreating and
naming the "truth” about the finally ended existence
of the prince of Venosa does not change for the bet
ter. Despite the fact that this book of life has been
already granted a last chapter and that it has a definite
epilogue that cannot be corrected, the meaning of the
biography still refuses to arrange itself into a legible
pattern.
Carlo Gesualdo disappeared irretrievably and will
no longer answer any of the questions of interest to us.
Nor will he resolve the doubts intriguing us. The fact
that his voice became silent for always in a mental and
cultural situation so distant from ours multiplies prob
lems even more. We are left only with traces of his life,
378
The concept of a facial composite belongs, as we
know, to the dictionary of criminal studies. In situa
tions of particular threat the police draftsman, basing
himself on the testimonies of eyewitnesses, executes
a portrait of the felon in accordance with certain ac
cepted routines. Such a drawing, often a painstak
ing attempt at the coordination and synchronisation
of assorted, at times contradictory observations now
pieced together is to become a reliable likeness of the
perpetrator pursued by the law. It is intended to be his
recognisable portrait. The end effect is thus a resultant
of the percipience and memory of the witnesses and
the talent and skills of the draftsman. Arrest warrants
containing the portrait are dispatched in pursuit of the
living (although sometimes in the course of the search
they become the dead), making it possible - in both
cases - to verify this type of collective work. We can,
therefore, assess the degree of the proximity between
the depiction and the designate, between the likeness
and the person whom it was supposed to represent. In
other words, the value of this cognitive method can be
easily verified by means of a simple comparison.
This is an uncomplicated model situation. Real
problems appear when the construction of such a
portrait from memory - regardless whether compre
hended literally (visually) or figuratively (rhetorically)
- involves a person from the past who, in addition,
lived several hundred years ago. Then the degree of
complications relating to its execution suddenly grows
and the possibilities of verification leave, euphemis
tically speaking, much to desire. How can we reach
the truth about a person from the distant past? Which
historical testimonies should we trust, and why? In
what manner will our suppositions become legitimate?
Finally, how and, predominantly, is it at all possible
to achieve a facial composite of an historical figure?
A t this point it appears appropriate to recollect the
concept of a facial composite. It is difficult to resist
the impression that in the case of a reconstruction of
a biography from the past the work conducted by an
historian resembles that of a detective, while interpre
tations unambiguously bring to mind a trial based on
circumstantial evidence. Only by following traces left
behind by memory can we come close to solving the
mystery of identity.
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
Apparently, it is precisely this sort of difficulty tack
led by historians-detectives - both nominal 2 and selfproclaimed - who had tried or still attempt to "draw”
a portrait of Prince Carlo Gesualdo of Venosa from
a perspective of 400 years. In this case, the detective
metaphor assumes all the traits of literalness. Keep in
mind: the goal is to create a convincing and adequate
facial composite of a composer and ... murderer. Now
for a closer look at several contemporary procedures of
rendering his likeness indelible.
One of the most fascinating "research” hypotheses
intent on revealing the mystery of the life of Carlo Ge
sualdo is the television documentary by Werner Her
zog: Death for Five Voices (1995).3 From the very first
scenes Herzog convinces us that he is acting in the
manner of a genuine documentarian. We are thus of
fered numerous photographs from “visiting the site of
crime” and of places connected with Gesualdo’s life,
competent musicologists provide a specialist commen
tary to his musical oeuvre, and professional singers per
form his madrigals (II Complesso Barocco under Alan
Curtis, The Gesualdo Consort under Gerald Place).
Everything falls into place according to the well-tested
scenario for a documentary film about an artist: some
material about his life and a presentation of his works
- enough not to bore the viewer and shown preferably
interchangeably so that this compilation might gen
erate a pattern as legible as possible and offer a con
vincing portrait of the artist resurrected thanks to the
director’s knowledge, intuition and skill.
Basically, this is the scheme applied by Herzog. He
would have not been himself, however, if had he not,
apart from resolving the mystery of Gesualdo, added a
few new puzzles. Nothing is unambiguous and the film
lacks straight lines. It is time, therefore, to follow in
detail the manner in which Herzog construed a por
trait of Gesualdo and arrived at the truth.
In Death for Five Voices the lead parts are actually
played by voices. This does not, however, as the title
may suggest, involve madrigals for five voices com
posed by Gesualdo or the voices of singers heard upon
several occasions in the film. From the viewpoint of a
reconstruction of life events the foremost factor are
the voices of a number of characters building the pro
tagonist’s facial composite, the intriguing and memo
rable polyphony of Herzog’s document. Let us for a
moment disturb the chronology of the film so as to
present two sequences of voices composing two ver
sions of Gesualdo, two portraits: the first reconstructs
the life of the composer, and the other concentrates
on his music. Kaleidoscopic narration contains several
significant figures creating a rather picturesque group
of experts bringing us closer to the meanders of the life
of the prince of musicians.
In view of the fact that Gesualdo’s greatest pas
sion was music it does not come as a surprise that
Herzog chose his witnesses from among professionals.
The chief narrator of the film story about Gesualdo is
Gerald Place, a musicologist, expert on the prince’s
music, and conductor of The Gesualdo Consort, who
recalls and relates in the manner of an encyclopaedic
archivist assorted basic facts from the composer’s bi
ography.
Musicologist I: As musicians working at the end of the
twentieth century we can’t help but recognise Gesualdo as
a kind of a musical visionary. Looking back there seems
to be a whole gap between the end of Gesualdo’s life and
Wagner and that kind of late nineteenth-century Romantic
writing. There is really nothing in between and it seems very
strange to us. This amazing music comes out of an awfully
amazing life story. And it was this life story, the biography
that first led musicians to look at Gesualdo at all. And had
his life not been so extraordinary (my emphasis - M.C.)
perhaps we may not even now be bothering to look at his
music. Philip Heseltine, an English scholar better known
by his pseudonym of Peter Warlock, became so involved
with Gesualdo, he edited a lot of his music. It was he that
first saw it as a kind of prefiguration of Wagner. He got
so involved that he actually thought he was Gesualdo and
became so deranged he committed suicide. So Gesualdo
has all sorts of influences now across the centuries. He
was born in 1560 or 1561, we think, and his elder brother
died when he was19 so Gesualdo himself became prince
of Venosa. And this was the point when he was already
writing a lot of music and already become involved as a
composer. And perhaps his duties as prince formed a con
flict with his interest as an amateur musician. The fact that
he was an amateur musician is very significant because he
was able to do things for himself. He didn’t have to please a
patron, he could follow whatever line musically he wanted.
1586 saw his marriage to Maria d’Avalos, who was one of
the most beautiful women of her time. In fact it’s been sug
gested that she was the model for Leonardo’s Giaconda.
By the time Gesualdo married her shed already been wid
owed twice. ... The source describes her husband’s death
as an excess of connubial bliss ... Soon after a son was
born to Gesualdo and Donna Maria, and then things took
a nasty turn. An uncle of Gesualdo’s, who was a cardinal
in fact, started making advances to Donna Maria. And
he discovered that in fact somebody else was interested in
her - Fabrizio Carafa, the most noble, eligible duke of his
generation. Naturally, the uncle was exceedingly jealous
and went straight to Gesualdo and told him all the details.
Gesualdo’s reaction was to plan a murder.
In turm, the statements made by Alan Curtis (Mu
sicologist II) mainly contain the motif of Gesualdo’s
brilliance and originality:
It’s not a coincidence that the same music critics who
call Gesualdo’s music incompetent and the work of an am
ateur are themselves usually incompetent am ateu rs.. It
is the great composers of our century who have recognised
the great genius of Gesualdo, above all, perhaps, Stravin
379
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
sky who admired Gesualdo’s music so much that he even
made two pilgrimages to Gesualdo, to the village, to see
the castle.
In this posthumous debate an opinion is also ex
pressed by an Historian, who confirms Gesualdo’s gen
ius and extraordinary life with foremost emphasis on
the irremovable presence of biographical motifs in his
oeuvre (especially from a later period):
In this castle Carlo Gesualdo spent the last 16 years
of his life in total solitude and hideous torment, torn from
within, pursued by furies and demons. He was an artist
of the highest rank. He had a touch of genius anticipat
ing an artistic movement, which did not develop until the
beginning of our own century, namely, Expressionism. In
madrigals, his favourite art form, he expressed his inner
most being, his entire inner world steeped in delusion and
madness. He seemed persecuted by furies and demons
(my emphasis - D. C.). Gesualdo died here. There are
two versions of his death. According to the first he died of
asthma. According to the second, however, his death was
caused by excessive torture. He maintained a staff of about
twenty servants whose task it was to subject him to con
tinuous whippings. The injuries, which he suffered from
these painful flagellations caused infections that finally led
to his death. We don’t’ know that [he was a masochist]
for certain. According to some stories 1 heard he was. I do
know that one of his servants had to spend every night with
him in bed ... allegedly to keep him warm.
Musicolologist I also underlines the enormous suf
fering of the composer in the last years of his life. In
terestingly, in doing so he uses the same expression as
the historian: After the murder things settled down again.
There was no trial; it was deemed a justified act. And this
began an intensive period of musical activity for Gesualdo.
All the music that’s come down to us was after the murder.
... We know very little about the last 16 years of his life. He
became a recluse in his castle, deep in melancholy, haunted
by demons (my emphasis - D. C.), racked by remorse and
self-accusation. 1n 1611 his last book of madrigals, his sixth
book was published and then in 1613 he died.
There also appears a Worker employed at the cas
tle, whom the camera finds busy in the ruins of Gesualdo Castle. Gap-toothed, he invites the viewer inside
by citing a refrain from Dante (Lasciate ogni speranza....) and unconsciously (?) assumes the role of Cha
ron guiding us in one of the infernal circles: Abandon
hope all ye who enter here. 1 work here alone. Nobody
else wants to work here. There’s a curse weighing down
on this castle. A mad woman from the asylum in Venosa
haunts this place now. Elsewhere: Come along, let me
show you what he did after he killed his wife ... The whole
valley once looked like this. Everything was green covered
with woods, and he cut everything down. He was afflicted
with the most horrible insanity . All by himself, without
any help from anybody. 1t took him] about two or three
months, for sure.
The remarks about the prince’s insanity are con
firmed and commented on by the erudite Musicologist
I. Life astonishingly becomes combined with literature,
as if events from the life of Gesualdo prefigured an
episode from a Shakespearean tragedy: Gesualdo had
to flee immediately . and we hear that he started to cut
down the forest. 1t sounds like something out of Macbeth.
As if the forest was some kind of a threat to him. And
worse, he had to kill or killed his second child because he
was convinced that it was the product of this illicit union.
And vice versa. Now the musicologist’s laconic
statement devoid of details is supplemented by the cas
tle Worker: They say Gesualdo decided to let his second
child die because he suspected it wasn’t his child. He told
his servants to put the little boy on a swing hanging from a
balcony [he points] ... back there. They had to keep the
child swinging violently for three days and three nights. He
brought in choirs, which had to sing there [points again],
in the background, on either side of the arch. They kept on
singing until the child was dead. . A madrigal about the
beauty of death.
The worker’s statement is confirmed by a Piper
wandering around the ruined chambers without any
obvious purpose. Asked about his presence in the cas
tle he answers with fear, if not slight madness in his
eyes: 1 come here once a week to play music here into these
holes and cracks. Because there is an evil spirit haunting
this place. The spirit is Gesualdo’s.
The motif of the haunted, cursed place becomes
even more intensive after the appearance of the ear
lier announced Mad Woman of Venosa caught una
wares by the camera when, carrying a portable tape
recorder, she hides in the abandoned castle interiors:
1 am the reincarnation of Maria d’Avalos, Gesualdo’s
wife. 1 belong to this place. My room is up there and our
kitchens are down here . He composed it [the music]
shortly before he committed the murders. He refused to
speak. He just dropped dark hints. The last time he spoke
to me about ten days before the murder. And he said:
death alone can kill. He didn’t say a word after that. He
just sang eerie songs. (...) 1 live in heaven, but you can
find me with a helicopter if you fly around the big chan
delier in the La Scala opera house in Milan. 1n the second
row right by the pillar there is a box all clad in red damask.
That’s where 1 live.
In an extremely expressive and, at the same time,
enormously funny scene in a kitchen we come across
yet another piece of evidence. Two Cooks - husband
and wife - talk about Gesualdo’s wedding and accen
tuate, understandably, the culinary motif. The con
versation recalls a typical quarrel of a married couple
in which the function, quite literally, of advocatus diaboli is assumed by the wife interfering into the story
recounted by the master cook:
He: Gesualdo worked miracles for this wedding.
She: Who is this Gesualdo, anyway —a devil?
380
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
He: No, he could afford it. And beyond that, he was
very demanding. He was very rich. 125 courses for a
1000.
She: He was a devil, this Gesualdo, a devil incarnate!
(...)
He: One of the courses was quail (...). There were as
many as twenty baby goats grilled, just imagine (...) As it
turns out, Gesulado was cuckolded (■ ■ ■ ).
This demonic motif is present and expanded in a
statement made by the warden of a certain Neapoli
tan palace. In response to questions he answers from
a glassed-in control room: He lived on the ground floor
[he points]. It was here the double murder of the wife and
her lover took place. That night was very chaotic. All sorts
of things happened. On these stairs a monk even t raped
the corpse of Gesualdo’s wife. It had been done over there.
As we know Gesualdo was a demon and an alchemist.
However, he was certainly highly intelligent ... He experi
mented on human bodies as well. The victims’ skeletons
are still on exhibit in San Severn's chapel just around the
corner... .
The Archivist confirms the alchemical interests of
the composer from Venosa. Assuming the pose of a se
rious museum expert he presents the museum exhibits
on show: One of them will certainly interest you. This
disk here in the display case. It comes from the personal
possessions of Prince Carlo Gesualdo. This is confirmed
by a document I would like to show you. It is a letter to
his alchemist personally signed by Gesualdo and offering
him a large sum of money, an enormous amount in those
days, to enlist his aid in deciphering all these mysterious
signs. The prince had spent sleepless nights trying to un
ravel these strange symbols. In the course of this activity he
became lost in a labyrinth of conjectures and hypotheses.
He almost lost his reason in the process but he never came
to a conclusion.
This litany of in extenso cited opinions
calls for critical commentary.
First, consider the sort of film we are watching. It
certainly - and this is our first reaction - is not a fea
ture movie. If the latter is to denote a film referring
to fictional characters and telling about events first
conceived by the author of the scenario then Herzog’s
film is certainly a document, which, regardless of as
sorted classifications, deals in one way or another with
reality existing outside the screen. A t the same time,
it does not always reflect, imitate or copy (whatever
these verbs are supposed to mean) faithfully. None
theless, it refers to a reality that existed in the past and
whose existence is indisputable. Reasoning in this way
we accept that there really did live a Carlo Gesualdo
and a Maria d’Avalos, that their tragedy is not literary
fiction but historical reality confirmed by documents,
and that the prince’s music was not composed post fac
tum nor is it a hallucination. We agree that the film,
381
despite the fact that, for obvious reasons, it does not
show actual persons, is not a reference to a world of
fiction. It does, however, contain certain signals that
compel us to not so much doubt the purely documen
tary record (assuming that this "’purity” is not a fig
ment of the imagination) as to subject the identifica
tion to certain retouching.
Take the scene at the castle with the auburn
haired mad woman. Initially, this sequence contains
a discernible documentary record, and authenticity is
underscored by means of a hand-held camera if it were
not for the fact that a moment later the glance of an
expert recognises that the part of the insane woman is
played by the celebrated Italian singer Milva. In other
words, the scene is not, as could be assumed, a direct
record ”of reality” but pure creation by the director
(naturally, performed by an actor). If this is the case
then our caution has been stirred to such a degree that
we may deliberate whether other scenes (for instance,
the one with the piper or the psychiatrist) had not
been created by applying the same method. Obviously,
this is not a charge levelled against Herzog but solely
an attempt at additionally defining his strategy. Documentarians are familiar with the expression "staged
documentary”, which means that not all scenes reflect
existing reality, "the sort that truly exists”, but some
have been evoked by the intervention of the director.
Hence the question: what is the sense of such fictionalisation of a documentary? Why would a director
introduce an obviously created scene into the actual
(at the topographic and musical level) scenery of the
film? In other words: what is the purpose of the mas
querade involving the mad woman, mentioned here by
way of example? Apparently, the only sensible answer
is that this is one of the film’s intentionally applied
rhetorical strategies. 4 Herzog introduced the scene to
enhance the effect of persuasion or, more precisely, to
win the viewer over to his vision of the lead protago
nist.
Who is Herzog’s Gesualdo? Note at the onset that
he strangely resembles other characters from this di
rector’s film catalogue. What did Herzog accentuate
in the first place? The predominant emphasis is on Gesualdo’s total and radical o t h e r n e s s, distinctness
vis a vis the surrounding world of the period, etymo
logically comprehended eccentricity and exoticism.
Herzog discovered a trait probably best expressed by
the German term: unheimlichkeit, the uncanny. Suffice
to recall that such a characteristic could be easily ap
plied in the case of many other earlier fictional charac
ters filmed by Herzog: Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, Woyzzek,
Kaspar Hauser... The overall impression suggests that
his whole filmography gravitates towards a single type
of protagonists, especially those who transgress the
frame of normalcy, i.e. that, which is domesticated
and native, who decidedly, albeit for different rea
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
sons, transcend the framework of the so-called nor
mal world and, finally, whose biography has “branded”
them. Herzog examines them with the passion of a
true botanist studying a new specimen in his herbari
um and attempting to describe its original features. Or
to put it differently: he observes with interest and tries
to understand the rules of this “strange” life and those
that support a model of existence totally at odds with
the universal one; in this case: artist and murderer!
If this identification is apt then one can go on to
say that Herzog’s film rhetoric underlines in the Gesualdo character predominantly the motif of insanity.
This is the purpose served by conspicuous remarks
referring to his “real” biography and by all scenes, re
gardless whether staged or not, that are to render this
recognition more profound and accentuated. I have in
mind, by way of example, the above-mentioned scene
with the insane female singer and the genuinely funny
(sic!) fragment about new ways (horse-riding) of treat
ing mental illnesses. The same purpose is served by the
cited statements about the killing of a child, cutting
down trees in a whole valley, or flagellation on the
verge of deviation. In the film Herzog suggested dis
tinctly that almost everything that is connected with
Gesualdo is part of a range of madness and that many
people - even years later - who had contact with him,
were interested in him or wrote about him became
stamped by the irremovable stigmata of insanity.
To this opinion we must add the extremely definite
motif of Gesualdo’s demonism.5 It comes to the fore in
the farcical scene with the cooks and the street thea
tre enacted (here still in the buffo convention) in the
locality of Gesualdo, the recurring refrain about the
persecution of the prince in the closing years of his life
by ”demons and furies” , and tales about his anatomi
cal experiments and alchemical quests. With uncon
cealed predilection Herzog enjoys a motif straight out
of a Gothic tale, together with abandoned and haunted
castle ruins and the palace of Prince d’Avalos filmed
in such a way as to grant it the features of a haunted
residence familiar from Romantic horror stories.
Both motifs are the whole time counterpointed by
declarations made by musicologists stressing Gesualdo’s pioneering achievements and insufficiently ap
preciated musical genius, but the rhetorical construc
tion of the film is such that it accentuates first and
foremost the two mentioned elements of his likeness
as if Gesualdo’s demonism and insanity were the ob
ject of knowledge while his musical genius had to be
believed (unless his works were heard first). It could
be said that the “dark” side of the portrait is shown
directly, while the “light” one possesses only a declara
tive status.
Yet another obvious feature of the film: notice that
Herzog built Gesualdo’s portrait out of numerous opin
ions. This is a truly polyphonic documentary construc
382
tion and there would be nothing surprising in it were
it not for the fact that all voices are arranged upon the
same level and that the author openly legitimizes the
cognitive status of assorted languages. Suffice to notice
that the reconstruction of the lead character attaches
importance to routine historical and musicological
discourse although the vernacular, the language of
the legend or folk apocrypha is just as essential. Each,
Herzog seems it be saying, contains a certain particle
of truth about the protagonist. Naturally, in such an
attempt at revealing the truth about the film charac
ter the director resorted to a strategy familiar to the
cinema. A paradigmatic example of its application
is Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and a parody remake
can be found in Woody Allen’s Zelig. Recall that the
employed cognitive method consisted of reaching the
“core of the truth” by constructing a biography out of
assorted points of view and, more precisely, the multi
plication of numerous perspectives, their contrast and
confrontation and, as a consequence, the creation of a
photographic “multiple portrait”. But this is not to say
- and the case of Citizen Kane leaves no doubt!6 - that
we have attained a situation in which a multi-voice
portrait ideally overlaps the portrayed person.
In the case of Herzog this film obviousness has
its not so evident side. Note that in both mentioned
films the persons interrogated in order to determine
the truth about the protagonist (it makes no differ
ence that he is fictional) knew him personally, kept
him company, talked with him, in a word: dealt with
him in one way or another. Meanwhile, in Herzog’s
documentary film the worker, the keeper or the cook
- whose opinions resemble somewhat, naturally toutes
proportions gardées, a classical chorus commenting on
the fate of the tragic hero - talk about Gesualdo, born
more than 400 years ago, almost as if he had been their
acquaintance or at least someone whom they knew
well. The time chasm between them vanishes in an
amazingly easy manner! After hearing several state
ments we are willing to almost believe that the story
took place "yesterday” or at least during the lifetime of
the interlocutors. The past has been included into the
present right in front of our eyes. Gesualdo appears to
be “lifelike” and his story proves to be palpably present
while we, the spectators, are drawn into the range of
its direct impact.
Ultimately, the portrait of Carlo Gesualdo ex
ecuted by Herzog is a resultant of assorted voices (in
cluding those that sing) and poetics. This is an openly
hybrid and non-cohesive likeness. Apparently, Herzog
reports rather than explains. He assumes the position
more of an understanding listener than an exegete. If
I am right he is more interested in the life of the artist
than the oeuvre. Nevertheless, the selection of voices
and their exposition, the arrangement of the accents
and the configuration in the film narration are not an
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
innocuous venture. All elements belong undoubtedly
to the domain of persuasion. To put it still differently:
Herzog does not film reality but his perception of it.
His portrait of Gesualdo betrays the distinctive “hand
writing” of its author.
The film strategy adopted by Herzog is also unclear
and inconsistent. On the one hand, it seems that he
is moved by the biography of his protagonist - other
wise, why would he even embark upon it? - and tries
to understand the motifs of his activity, to reach the
prince’s ‘’heart of darkness” while multiplying assorted
voices and interpretations. He acts in the manner of a
scientist who gathers "documents” (biographical and
musicological) and perhaps also an anthropologist who
places his trust in the power of collective imagination,
the apocryphal legendary stories repeated years later.
On the other hand, Herzog includes openly fictional
episodes subjectivising the narration and placing it on
the side of “make belief’; more, in several places the
very way in which he films betrays an ironic approach.
This time the director seems to have been amusing
himself (and the audience) with stories about the
strange life of Gesualdo, brimming with bizarre scenes,
and with contemporary memory about him. In those
fragments the tragedy and burden of Gesualdo’s life
383
and art vanish in the unbearable lightness of staged
episodes, and the whole presented story turns out to
be material for a play that could appear at best as part
of the Grand Guignol repertoire. If we were to forget
for an instant than we are dealing with a documentary
then Herzog’s film, a genuine ’’short film about killing”,
could be regarded as belonging to the thriller genre or
as a crime story with elements of the macabre.
Within this context the two last scenes appear
to be emblematic. In the first, the musicologist Alan
Curtis formulates sentences intended as a summary of
the story about the musician and the murderer:
There is still much risk taking and I think that’s one
of the clues to Gesualdo. Performers must also take risks
and be dangerous and then the beauty of this wild music
comes forth. Magnificent, powerful words that cannot
be treated otherwise than seriously. Only a moment
later, in the closing scene, a young man playing the
part of a character from a colourful historical spectacle
uses a cell phone while facing the audience: The Gesu
aldo film will be finished any moment now anyway. This
is a clear-cut meta-textual message, somewhat akin to
the director winking at us. Herzog seems to be saying:
"Don’t treat all this seriously, that what you have seen
has just as much in common with historical truth as
a masquerade enacted in front of your eyes, a special
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
occasion for dressing up in an historical costume”. He
also appears to be following the recommendation in
Vladimir Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,
a fascinating story in which the narrator - just as Her
zog - tries to recreate out of numerous sources of in
formation a biography of his half-brother, a recently
deceased man of letters: keep in mind that whatever
people say the story is actually composed of three stra
ta. First, the storyteller shapes the message, which is
then distorted by the listener in his own manner, while
the dead protagonist conceals the truth from both of
them.7 The irony of the title of Nabokov’s book is ob
vious: the real life of Sebastian Knight is inaccessible
for cognitive operations. Here, “real” means “false”
and we can find out but a little about the writer’s “real
life” since he evades us the whole time - an excellent
use of the ambiguity of the English word: knight - in
the manner of a chess-piece.
We cannot exclude that Herzog’s documentary
is ultimately a confession to having been defeated, a
declaration that a credible portrait of an historical fig
ure is a cognitive chimera. This is, however, only a
supposition. Just as there is probably no satisfactory
answer to the question whether the above-mentioned
inconsistency was an intentional premise on the part
of the director or whether it comprises a certain “add
ed value” in the film.
The mystery of identity
Madrygał żałobny, a story by Gustaw HerlingGrudziński, delves into the same topic as Herzog’s film
- the mystery of the life and music of Carlo Gesualdo.
True, the medium is different - word, narration, liter
ary fiction - but the main problem remains the same.
A comparison of Herling’s story with Herzog’s docu
mentary film - apart from the obviously identical lead
character - could be extremely interesting and instruc
tive for two reasons. First, the story originated in a di
ary kept by the author and not only does the fragment
cited in extenso blend with the narration but the latter
too is stylised to bring to mind a documentary record:
the narrator unambiguously bears a resemblance to
the author, a trick that - often applied by the “late”
Herling - is to stress the para-documentary character
of the story. Secondly, he noted with undisguised dis
gust in parentheses added years later and now already
an integral component of the story: Werner Herzog re
cently made the film: Gesualdo - Death for Five Voices,
not very successful, with the exception of the music.8
The tale about the composer from Venosa is part
of a rather extraordinary love story. To put as con
cisely as possible: while in Naples the narrator made
the acquaintance of a young music student named
Anna Fiedotova, the daughter of a Russian father
and a Polish mother. They share not only enchant
ment but predominantly a passion for the music and
person of Carlo Gesualdo. A motif of importance for
the narration structure: Anna returns together with
her dying father to St. Petersburg and from that mo
ment her conversations with the narrator about the
prince of musicians assume the form of correspond
ence. Understandably, Anna is more interested in
Gesualdo’s music, while the narrator - in the tragedy
of Gesualdo’s life, whose critical point is the murder
of his wife.
The diary inserted into the story echoes the story
of the murder of Maria d’Avalos committed by Gesu
aldo, known already from the filmed commentaries of
musicologists, but now the accents are arranged differ
ently. Herling distinctly emphasised moderation and
tried to emulate the passionless style of a chronicle.
Nor does he shock the reader with bluntness and con
strued his record in such a manner as to produce the
impression that he was registering only facts. Here are
fragments of the same albeit n o t the s a m e story:
Carlo Gesualdo originated from an upstanding Neapoli
tan family, whose princely tile was connected with estates
and castles in the region of Venosa, along the boundary
between Apulia and Lucania (...) He married Maria
d’Avalos of an equally honoured Neapolitan family. He
was Maria’s third husband. She had rapidly expedited the
two previous spouses to the netherworld, having won the
cognomen of “man-eater". Maria was considered to be the
most beautiful woman in Naples and an embodiment of
sensuality. The prince of Venosa was her senior and had
two passions: music and the chase. Chroniclers of the pe
riod stressed the former, and in their opinion he made a
mistake marrying such a fine-looking and temperamental
woman since he was capable of only a single passion: Mu
sic (...) Occasionally, he did not venture into the marital
bedroom for long stretches of time, and Maria - lonely and
ablaze with anger —listened to the sound of instruments
and the words of songs coming from the “workshop". He
treated her as a tool for satisfying his rare “caprices" and
for sexual distraction. Maria d’Avalos was considered the
most beautiful woman in Naples, and the handsomest man
was Fabrizio Carafa, “archangel" and the duke of Andria. Their affair instantly tuned into passion devoid of
all restraint (...). This went on for as long as the prince,
immersed in his madrigals, lived with his eyes closed. He
opened them in 1590. On 16 October he feigned a hunt
ing expedition and several hours after departure returned
to the palace at midnight. Together with his secretary and
three servants the prince burst into Maria’s bedchamber.
It follows from the evidence of witnesses that after the lov
ers were murdered by the prince and his entourage, the
cuckolded husband returned from the threshold to the bed
room and crying out: “Non credo essere morta"! (I do not
believe she is dead!) cut the corpse of his unfaithful wife
with a short sword from groin to neck. Chronicles mention
double frenzy: that of a betrayed husband who inflicts tor
ment on the corpse of his wife and that of the two lovers,
384
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
who on that night knew what awaited them and prepared
for death in ”an embrace of love".9
Herling tried to reconstruct the historical circum
stances of the crime, accentuated Gesualdo’s noble
birth, and did not neglect to remark on his craving for
music and the absence of passion for his wife, men
tioning the exceptional cruelty of the crime, present
also in the story told by Herzog, as an important detail.
Here, Herling referred to chroniclers and witnesses
but nowhere, neither in the diary nor in the story, did
he cite the sources of his knowledge. According to the
author, the historical, ergo authentic character of the
confessions is to be testified by their language: non
literary, maintained in the style of a report, a purely
chronicle-like statement. Facts, as it is said in similar
situations, are to "speak for themselves”.
The first important signal of the character’s con
ception suggested in the story is the text of a brochure
purchased in a Neapolitan antique shop and entitled:
La verita sul principe assasino, issued several years af
ter the prince’s death and signed with a pseudonym.
Here is a fragment cited by the author: It is said that I
loved music more that I did Maria; and that this became
the cause of the tragedy. I refute with all the force of my
pained (addolorato) heart. I have never loved anyone in
my life as I did Maria from the very first meeting. Now I
am not only the murderer of my wife and her lover. I am a
widower doomed to the existence (may it be as brief as pos
sible) of a living corpse. All that was my innermost self had
died on 16 October 1590 (the day of the slaying). May
God, beseeched by St. Charles Borromeo, take pity on the
tormented soul of man who (I admit) wavered whether
the terrible price of marital infidelity is not worth paying
to save a woman beloved above all. 10 The fact that this
apocryphal text is cited already at the beginning of the
story is rather symptomatic and indicates the trend
of the literary construction of Gesualdo’s portrait. It
shows that the narrator (author?) 11 openly rejected
the objectivistic stand and resigned from meticulously
weighing various assessments and arguments. On the
contrary, he clearly betrays a willingness to defend Gesualdo and seeks circumstances justifying the crime.
The ensuing exchange of letters accentuates this motif
even stronger - the correspondence contains a highly
emotional dispute about Gesualdo’s true likeness.
The main problem in the polemic conducted via
correspondence is the mystery of the murder and even
more so: the perpetrator’s special virulence - his return
to the bedroom and the abuse of his wife’s body. There
emerge assorted explanations of this fact. Anna cites
the renowned psychologist Litayev and proposes the
following summary: We cannot exclude that Carlo Gesualdo was as if killing himself, committing suicide driven
by despair while torturing the dying or already dead wife
with such passion and cruelty. Such cases, or similar ones,
385
occur rarely (...) in the tangled labyrinths of the human
psyche: they can be described as “suicide via murder"}2
This sort of explication was totally repudiated by
another psychological authority, Professor Marconi of
Naples, whose expert opinion was cited in a letter sent
by the narrator to St. Petersburg. The scholar replied:
I regard as absurd the notion of suicide in the form of mur
der, of killing oneself via another, murdered person. When
Anna was still residing in Naples she came here sometimes
and together we listened to music (...) and I always advised
her to cease pursuing psychological quests and to limit her
self to analysing the work. An artist is above all his work,
and it is deceptive to sift through his biography. The truth
is in the madrigals and not in the murder of her and her
lover. I don’t doubt that Carlo Gesualdo changed rather
radically after this bloody incident because I am certain
that the transformations left an imprint upon his oeuvre; it
is there that they should be sought.13
This reflection, expressed here with rare clarity and
determination, claims that becoming acquainted with
the nature of an artist possesses decisive and unques
tionable primacy in the dispute: biography or oeuvre,
life or works. This conviction will be later confirmed
not only in the opinion of a cited (authentic) musicological authority14, but also in a conceit that is the
author’s invention and according to which in the last
years of his life Gesualdo composed the final madrigal:
Blessed Desired Death, as if leaving his musical testa
ment to the next generation. The thesis is clear-cut:
upon a basis not subjected to rational analysis the art
ist i s within his work that, in turn, is his t r u e likeness
in which the memory about him becomes petrified.
While preparing inventories aimed at facilitat
ing the execution of a likeness of Carlo Gesualdo it
is simply impossible to bypass the sole extant portrait
of the prince, mentioned in the story and kept at the
Capuchin monastery in Gesualdo. This painting ap
pears in Herzog’s film, first in fragments and then as a
whole, although without any additional commentar
ies. Meanwhile, in Herling’s story it fulfils a cognitively
important function: Carlo Gesualdo had the church and
the adjoining monastery built in 1592. Sixteen years af
ter his death they were expanded upon the request of a
nephew of Pope Gregory XV, who married a niece of the
Prince of Musicians. The painting is indeed a "pearl” for
which a church “shell” was created. It is known as Il par
don di Carlo Gesualdo, and we know that the Prince of
Musicians commissioned it from a Florentine (and rather
average) painter named Balducci, but we cannot tell when
it was commissioned and when the artist executed it just
as it remains unknown who “forgave" whom. The title
indicates that it was Carlo Gesualdo who “forgave" his
unfaithful wife and her lover. But certain details of the
painting indicate that it is he who asks for “forgiveness” for
slaying the lovers. Quite possibly, the madrigalist intended
the painting to be ambiguous. Let us not forget that his
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
first madrigal, composed when he was a young man, was
entitled: Delicta nostra ne reminiscaris, Domine /Re
member not, Lord, our sins (offenses).15
Interestingly, according to the suggestion made by
the narrator it is not the word but the music and the
image that become the most credible witnesses of the
biography. Both - and this is worth stressing - remain
outside and above the word, as if Herling was saying:
listen closely to Gesualdo’s music and enter into this
curious and inimitable world of sounds; listen to don
Carlo’s madrigals, especially the later ones, and look
at the ambiguous likeness of the tormented prince
- perhaps the truth about him hides beyond verbal
constructions in the substance of sound and painterly
form.
From the viewpoint of its structure Madrygał
żałobny is composed - similarly as Herzog’s film - of
several heterogeneous elements. This ’’building block“
construction demonstrates distinctive features of the
absence of linearity.16 We are dealing with the afore
mentioned fragment of a diary or a fictional old print,
accompanied by elements of a chronicle, an essay, a
fragment of an authentic scientific dissertation, an ecphrasis of Gesualdo’s portrait and, at the end, a quasi
reportage with a scene of listening to the prince’s mu
sic played on a portable CD player (borrowed from the
scene with the mad woman of Venosa?). In contrast
to Herzog’s document, however, it is obvious that as
sorted elements are much better composed into the
story and create a well-devised whole. The similarity
of the two narrations is embedded in one basic fact:
both apply in their cognitive strategies a combination
of “truth” and ”make-belief’. Although the point of
departure is composed of historical sources the two
portraits rather ostentatiously introduce an admixture
of fiction into the factographic material.
We should ask now: what sort of “truth” about
Carlo Gesualdo did Herling defend? It follows quite
clearly from the story that the prince’s nature mani
fests itself not in the repulsive murder but in his mu
sic, the madrigals. Naturally, the author recorded the
event described by chroniclers but did not discuss it
in detail, and it is obvious that he did not perceive
it as the prime issue of Gesualdo’s story. The accents
are arranged entirely differently. First and foremost,
the narrator defends the thesis that contrary to facts
and common sense the prince was uninterruptedly in
love with his wife. In conversations with Włodzimierz
Bolecki, Herling, already without resorting to the mask
of a narrator declares outright: The prince of Venosa
was a very wealthy person (...) If he were concerned with
money he could have married someone else, and thus the
marriage to Maria d’Avalos must have been determined by
profound love for her. The problem with describing his life
consists of the fact that he was not only an aristocrat but
also an artist; I found this just as captivating —an artist
386
and his private life. (...) I was attracted to the interpre
tation, expressed in the story by Anna F., that Gesualdo
loved his wife very much and regretted his terrible deed
but was forced to commit it by the customs of his epoch.
This means that Gesualdo was a slave of the honour code
of the period —he could not refuse to slay an unfaithful
wife because he would have become a universally despised
laughing-stock. The honour code is also associated with
the fact that after killing his wife Gesualdo expected that
the relatives of Maria’s lover would take revenge since he
had done so with the hands of his servants and not personally.17
A t this point there appears with great clarity the
fundamental question of the principles of construct
ing a facial composite. How to produce a living, multi
sided and nuanced biography of a historical character?
And in particular: how to construct a biography of an
eminent person towering above his epoch so that it
would not be schematic or succumb to standards bind
ing in popular biographical literature. In his excellent
comments on biographies Yuri Lotman indicated the
numerous difficulties and traps awaiting the biogra
pher. One of them is simplification: A biographer as a
rule selects a single line (presumably: dominating) and then
describes it. The portrait gains expression and is cleansed of
all contradictions but becomes schematic.18 Apparently,
Herling’s hostility, not formulated outright, towards
the “life” part of the Herzog documentary film comes
from exactly such a conviction about the simplified
and sensational character of the film story, the exag
gerated emphasis on the scandalous dimension of the
story about the prince of Venosa.
Nothing comes for free. The method of a contex
tual explanation of Gesualdo’s deeds accepted by Her
ling is also not as innocent as it might appear and falls
into a different trap awaiting the biographer and men
tioned by Lotman who emphasized: He who wishes to
understand the life of an outstanding person faces a much
more complex task. An interesting personality is not passive
in reaction to the mass-scale psychology of its time. (...)
The attitude of such a personality towards the psychologi
cal norms of the epoch resembles that of a poet towards
grammar - norms originating from the outside are freely
selected and creatively transposed. The historian is assisted
by his habit of working with a literary text. And correctly
so, since the life of Leonardo da Vinci, Pushkin, Blok or
Mayakovski followed a course determined by laws govern
ing creativity, resembling the labour of a sculptor working
with a slab of granite —the resistance put up by the mate
rial is overcome by the force of creativity and obstacles
change into art.19 In other words, it is true that in this
case a fragment is an element of a wider configuration,
but such is its nature that even the most conscientious
reconstruction of the whole cannot fully explain its
idiomatic ontology. Taking into account Gesualdo’s
uniqueness can references to the context of the epoch
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
in order to “explain” the prince’s behaviour suffice as
ultimate elucidation? The suggestion made by Lotman
compels us to question such a solution.
Apart from the fact that the author of Madrygał
żałobny pointed out the historical context as essential
for understanding the crime committed by Gesualdo
it is possible to discern something else in this obses
sive motif of love: the mysterious radiation of a myth.
Note: both in the story and his commentary Herling
brought to life - albeit rather unintentionally - certain
elements of the Orpheus myth, placing his protagonist
within a mythical perspective and at the same time
extremely perversely reinterpreting the myth. Recall
how in the classical version the great musician and
singer descends to the underworld in order to leave
it with his dead wife - his love is supposed to shatter
the gates of death. In the story, Gesualdo - Orpheus d
rebours, so to speak - first murders his wife and then
over a span of years, in an act of penitence and in the
fashion of Orpheus, tries with his music, every note
and line of the lyrics to restore her to life, to regain
and extricate her from the land of silence. The words
of the madrigals are greatly evocative: Ardo per te, mio
bene (I burn for you, my love), Cor mio, deh, non piangete (My heart, ah, do not weep)... The unpredict
able and frenzied chromatic of his music penetrates
the boundary between life and death in an attempt at
somehow infiltrating this wailing wall.
This is not the end. Herling provided an interest
ing commentary to Herzog’s film, but Madrygał żałobny
also has an intriguing literary supplement. A rather
little known story by the German author Wolfgang
Hildesheimer with the enigmatic title: Tynset is a sur
prising commentary to Herling’s portrait of Gesualdo.
Here, the figure of Carlo Gesualdo - whom the text de
scribes significantly as the only murderer of his kind20
- appears twice, each time unexpectedly, rather mys
teriously, and without any earlier announcements. In
this multi-strata text, subtly written in the form of an
inner monologue, the narrator, suffering from insom
nia, settles the accounts of his life. This kaleidoscope
structure is a collage devoid of narrative cohesion - a
variation on the theme of death. The peculiar locality
of those fragmented reflections, conducted in a hal
lucinatory and unreal rhythm, is the narrator’s ”white
state” 21, his bed. In Hildesheimer’s literary composi
tion, built upon the basis of distinctly musical princi
ples and with meticulously calculated returns of sig
nificant motifs, the titular Tynset (the name of a small
Norwegian town) plays a special role. On the realistic
level it is the desired and never realised destination of
the narrator’s journey, while on the level of the meta
phor it proves to be a cryptonym of the murkiness of
the world, the impossibility of taking a look ”behind
the curtain”. It is another name of a metaphysically
comprehended puzzle. 22 As I have mentioned, the
prince of Venosa appears in the story twice. The first
fragment is a detailed depiction of the murder scene,
intentionally omitted by Herling. This is an attempt at
a return to the past, a verbal depiction of the horror
of a tragedy that took place at the time. The second
fragment is a successive - and totally different than
Herling’s - literary attempt at recreating the final mo
ments in the life of the composer:
Here I lie, on a cold November night, on a bed on
which murder had been committed on another November
night - on this bed on which ten years after the murder the
perpetrator laid having returned to the crime scene and
the bed of the crime, unthreatened with an inquiry and
protected by his rank, on the bed on which lies the mur
derer, Don Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa, in the last
years of his life, restless, rejecting slumber, indifferent to
matters of life, suffering, variants of love, and even his sin,
discouraged, without solace, half-glancing at God, on this
bed, on which lies the murderer, Don Carlo Gesualdo,
on his last nights, whose thoughts turn to God while
desiring forgiveness, on which lies the murderer Carlo
on his last night, impatiently and futilely awaiting a
single word from his Creator - I am not saying that the Creator should say that
word, no, this is not what I am saying - on this bed on which lies the divine Gesualdo in
his last hour, already absent, a stranger to this world, to
everything, also his Creator, all alone, he lies in his last
hour and the black, restless eyes in his El Grecoesque
face are not dimmed but deeply penetrate space (...)
Don Gesualdo lies and listens, and behind him
lies his lute, although not in the gently dimmed har
mony of a Dutch still life but angry, with sudden
outbursts of animosity, cast aside after the last dis
sonance and wounded, perforated, upside down, with
the keyboard at the bottom, the chessboard of his
aroused and dangerous fingers, those seismographs of
his cruelty, the servant of his unpredictable will and
caprices, while in another chamber, which no one had
entered for years, lies yet another long unused instrument
of his wild and senseless hunts - his crossbow, with a loos
ened bowstring, deep in the ground, next to Gesu Nuovo,
lie two skeletons arranged in a straight line, for long free
of the suffering of bodily desires and now alike, that of his
first nymphomaniac wife and her last love, a nephew of
one of the popes,
somewhere along the route of an escape to the east, a
dagger, the murder weapon, becomes covered with rust,
and thus everything has found its place and is finally
and fittingly laid to rest,
he lies, these are already his last minutes and his eyes
become glued to that skull beneath the wooden baldachin,
the skull, which I cannot see because, bereft of colour, it
has vanished,
he sees the skull and a will-o’-the-wisp, which does not
exist because it is inside him —
387
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
he lies and suddenly laughs, once again grows silent
and listens,
but no longer to his compositions, his voices, a soprano,
a falsetto, a tenor and a bass, which he frequently sang
since no one else was capable of doing so, but he no longer
hears himself and his voice,
he does not hear the already fading breath, whisper,
acute delight, sforzato, sudden elevation to an ecstasy that
produces numbness, to a place where beauty becomes in
sufferable, where death and love blend into a single fulfil
ment and are linked, and where the unexpected becomes
an inconceivable event,
he no longer listens to the chords, modulation, harmony
and enharmonic of the bold, unrestrained and incorrect
transitions from a flat minor to C major, he no longer
makes his way anywhere or slides along chromatic steps
o morire o mor-i-i-re- morire, yes, this is where he is, but he does not listen
to death, love, God, or his Crux Benedicta, he does not
hear those disembodied voices —
he lies and listens to other things, lies in the anticipa
tion that he will hear something unfamiliar, but does not,
he hears nothing, he lies with his head on the very same
spot where my head is, listening in the void, looking into
the void, he dies immortal, incomprehensible, great, an ad
mirable puzzle, a murderer, inter mortuos liber, here, on
this wintertime bed on which I now lie on a cold November
night.23
Yet another poignant, immensely intensive and
imposing Apocrypha describing the last moments in
the life of Carlo Gesualdo. In this case, the element of
fiction has been stressed outright ostentatiously. A f
ter all, this literary scene is not based on documents
nor does it try to ‘’prove” its historical assignment - it
is a pure game of the imagination. And yet it deals
with something of importance, something that one
would like to describe paradoxically as “real”. In the
light of attempts recently undertaken in historiogra
phy and consisting of bringing “poetry” and “prose”
together, and in view of endeavours at annulling the
rigid division into the “fictional” and the “historical”
24 this remark could be more than an attractive para
dox.
The cited works are involved in a curious dialogue.
The texts talk with each other, supplement each
other, and cast a light on each other. Objects famil
iar from Herzog’s film, a powerful and gloomy piece of
furniture in the palace of Prince d’Avalos, the site of
pleasure and crime, and two ghastly skeletons from the
San Severo chapel are motifs that recur, albeit in a dif
ferent setting, in the Hildesheimer narration. Recall: a
moment before death Herling’s protagonist composes
his last madrigal, but in Tynset Gesualdo rejects music
and earthly sounds while unsuccessfully straining to
hear music from the other world.
388
In the Hildesheimer text Gesualdo - similarly
to the mysterious name: Tynset - is portrayed, so to
speak, entirely within a puzzle, an unsolvable tangle
of ambivalence. His antonymous descriptions multi
plied in the story are, after all, symptomatic: the “mur
derer” mentioned upon several occasions has a strong
counterpoint in “the divine Gesualdo”, ”immortal”,
”great”, “admirable creature”. Herling unintention
ally continued the Orpheus motif, but Hildesheimer
clearly referred to the Biblical motif of Cain, the first
murderer, his incomprehensible deed and even more
inexplicable gesture of divine protection already after
the crime had been perpetrated. Damned and divine.
The divine murderer. This literary portrait - close in
this respect to Herling’s story - not only observes con
tradictions but is based on them, as if suggesting that
the ‘’true” Gesualdo either is - must be! - a jumble of
those contradictions or does not exist. If we cleanse
his biography of all those contrary elements whose ar
rangement into a cohesive whole poses such a difficult
task, then our portrait will change into a caricature
operating with a very limited repertoire of means. In
the earlier cited article Lotman accentuated that a
good biography is capable of disclosing the necessity of
assorted, mutually tied lines of life. In an ideal portrait
those lines permeate each other. One shines through the
other, inspiration through the mounds of life circumstanc
es, light through smoke. A portrait in the sfumato style.25
The literary vision of Gesualdo from the Hildesheimer
novel - a portrait of the prince of Venosa drawn with
barely several lines - appears to be an ideal realisation
of those recommendations.
In a similar spirit Hugo von Hofmannsthal in his
brief but penetrating sketch about Oscar Wilde, pos
sibly the best ever written on the topic, described the
ambivalent nature of a biographical portrait. Hof
mannsthal traced the mystery of the writer’s double
by evading all schemes aiming at unambiguity. A t the
same time, he firmly stressed that Wilde’s "true” im
age does not emerge from accentuating only a single
side of the biography. On the contrary, the at least
partial solution of the mystery of identity consists of
understanding that the truth of life is embedded in
mutual permeation, convolutions, the imposition of
assorted and sometimes totally contrary and, it would
seem, mutually excluding motifs, and that, threatened
with distortion, it has to be the truth of the entity of
experience:
We must not make life more banal than it is, nor turn
our eyes away so as not to behold this band when for once
it can be seen on a brow.
We must not degrade life by tearing character and fate
asunder and separating his misfortune from his fortune. We
must not pigeonhole everything. Everything is everywhere.
There are tragic elements in superficial things and trivial
in the tragic. There is something suffocatingly sinister in
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
what we call pleasure. There is something lyrical about
the dress of a whore and something commonplace about
the emotions of a lyric poet. Everything dwells simultane
ously in man. He is full of poisons that rage against one
another. There are certain islands where inhabitants pierce
the bodies of their dead relatives with poisoned arrows, to
make sure they they are dead. This is an ingenious way of
expressing metaphorically a profound thought and of pay
ing homage to the profundity of Nature without much ado.
For in the truth the slowly killing poisons and the elixir
of gently smouldering bliss all lie side by side in our living
body. No one thing can be excluded, none considered too
insignificant to become a very great power. Seen from the
viewpoint of life, there is not one thing extraneous to the
Whole. Everything is everywhere. Everything partakes of
the dance of life.
In the words of Jalal-ud-din-Rumi, ’’He who knows the
power of the dance of life fears not death. For he knows
that love kills.26
The most profound sense of all attempts at build
ing the image of a character from the past, work on
creating his portrait, is well described by the Polish
word: wywoływanie (invoking) together with its in
teresting semantic, both when the issue at stake is
the commonplace wywoływanie po imieniu (calling by
name) or the more complicated wywoływanie fotografii
(developing a photograph), but also when one con
siders the suspicious practice of wywoływania duchów
(calling up ghosts). After all, each of those phraseo
logical collocations, although in a different manner,
mentions the process of distinguishing someone from
the anonymous mass, a gesture that differentiates but
also, more extensively, brings to life. What else is a
portrait if not an attempt at capturing - painting, tak
ing photographs, filming - someone’s uniqueness, at
recording in an image or a word the single, inimita
ble stigmata of personality, that differentiating sign,
that property described by Duns Scouts as haecceitas,
a quality distinguishing each of us from the common
human denominator.
The portrait constructions recalled here are three
attempts at materialising the spirit. Their “veracity”
and "adequacy” are not the question of some sort of
a comparison to so-called historical truth because
in this instance - so to speak - the evidence is miss
ing. Their ultimate sense is thus supplemented by the
spectator/reader. Actually, we are the matter of those
works. Now all rests on us. Those portraits can only
nurture our imagination. The portrait of Carlo Gesualdo depends only on us. After all, each one of us
decides which of the presented hypotheses - the crime
macabresque, the tragic melodrama or the empathic
soliloquy - appears to be more convincing. It is we
who ultimately decide whether the prince of Venosa
is to be remembered or forgotten27, and whether in
our eyes he deserves to be eternally damned or will be
redeemed.
Nothing can be precisely analysed, named and un
derstood. Experience is indifferent to argumentation.
Regardless into which narration we place our trust the
existence of a "dark spot” in biographical cognition
remains a fact. To believe that even the most all-sided
biography leaves no mysteries is, according to Hermione Lee, the excellent biographer of Virginia Woolf,
to become the victim of the most seductive and false
myth of the biography. 28
To be continued
In one of his most recent interviews Bernardo Ber
tolucci admitted to the journalist that for some time
he had been cherishing a dream: he would like to
abandon modern themes, which absorbed his atten
tion in the latest productions, and focus on the past.
The lead character would be an historical figure; the
director would like a time machine to transfer him to
the sixteenth century. I am fascinated by Gesualdo da
Venosa, a Neapolitan composer, author of madrigals and
sacral music. Igor Stravinsky called him the precursor of
twentieth-century music. De Venosa married one of the
most beautiful women of his time, but he was much too
fond of music and Maria was much too fond of sex. She
had a lover and Gesualdo’s family urged him to kill her.
I would like to tell the story of this man in love with a
woman, music and the very notion of love.29
A successive film about the prince of Venosa, an
other biographical construction, a successive facial
composite, and yet another anthropological study told
in the language of film. Regardless how we would as
sess upon the basis of such a laconic announcement
the value of this project (one may deliberate whether
the drama of Gesualdo can be reduced to two simple
formulas: he was much too fond of music and she was
much too fond of sex) one thing is certain: the story
of the prince, musician and murderer unexpectedly
goes on. More: it seems to have become increasingly
intensive. The prince still possesses a strange force of
attraction. As we can see, a successive chapter of this
story is ahead of us.
This is truly amazing - so many years after his death
Carlo Gesualdo is doing quite well.
He lives on.
389
Endnotes
1 C. Cavafy, Głosy, in : C. Cavafy, Wiersze zebrane, transl.
and prep. Z. Kubiak, Warszawa 1992, p. 8.
2 Among more important writings see: C. Gray, P
Heseltine, Carlo Gesualdo. Prince of Venosa. Musician and
Murderer, London 1926; G. Watkins, Gesualdo: The Man
and His Music, introduction: I. Stravinsky, Oxford 1973;
A. Vaccaro, Carlo Gesualdo, principe di Venosa: l’uomo e I
tempi, no place of publication 1998.
D ariusz C zaja • FRAGMENTARY PRESENCES. PORTRAITS OF CARLO GESUALDO
3
Awarded two important prizes: Prix Italia (1996) and
Best Television Film Award (1997).
4 On various meanings of the term "rhetoric” and in par
ticular its film applications cf. M. Przylipiak, Film doku
mentalny jako gatunek retoryczny, “Kwartalnik Filmowy”
no. 23:1998, pp. 5-20.
5 To this motif we should add the reflections of Cecil Gray,
who upon the basis of suggestions made by Thomas de
Quincey in his celebrated essay: On Murder Considered
as One of the Fine Arts (Polish translation in: T De
Quincey, Wyznania angielskiego opiumisty, transl, M.
Bielewicz, Warszawa 2002, pp. 330-418) outlined a
meticulous parallel between Gesualdo's precise and
painstakingly conceived music and the just as carefully
planned murder of Maria d'Avalos, cf. C. Gary, P.
Heseltine, Carlo Gesualdo. Prince of Venosa. Musician and
Murderer, London 1926, pp. 63-74 (the chapter: Carlo
Gesualdo considered as a murderer is by Gray, while com
ments by Heseltine, mentioned by Place, concern the
prince's music). Interestingly, this trace appears also in
the recently composed musical entitled Gesualdo
(authors: B. Fernandina, S. Breese), in which Gesualdo
is described as the “dark prince” or “prince of darkness”.
A description of the spectacle and fragments of the
music are available on: Official Website for Gesualdo - A
New Musical.htm. The rather curious and bombastic
score does not evoke Gesualdo‘s sophisticated composi
tions but confirms his astonishing presence in pop cultu
re.
6 Suffice to recall the emblematic scene ending the film.
The fence around Xanadu Castle features a sign with
the inscription: No trespassing, which apart from the
literal meaning possesses also a metaphorical one and is,
for all practical purposes, a categorical declaration: no
entry into someone's innermost core!
7 V. Nabokov, Prawdziwe życie Sebastiana Knighta, transl.
M. Kłobukowski, Warszawa 1992, pp. 45-46.
8 G. Herling-Grudziński, Madrygał żałobny, in: Don
Ildebrando i inne opowiadania, Warszawa 2000, p. 112.
9 Ibid., pp. 114-117.
10 Ibid., pp. 123-124.
11 This wavering indicated by a question mark is not acci
dental. In many of his stories Herling intentionally
confused tracks and imposed upon the biography of the
protagonist/narrator his own life story. Such an appro
ach was aptly noticed by Ewa Bieńkowska: I always had
the impression that Herling’s stories are more personal than
the records in his Dziennik. This is intimacy transposed into
fictional narration, but translucent and obvious in the most
important tangles of history. ( ...) In the stories the writer
attaches increasing prominence to the fact that he is experien
cing the deceit of a double portrait, the night-time listening to
Gesualdo ..., E. Bieńkowska, Pisarz i los. O twórczości
Gustawa Herlinga-Grudzińskiego, Warszawa 2002, pp.
130-131.
12 Ibid., pp. 125-126.
13 Ibid., p. 127.
14 The acclaimed Italian musicologist Massimo Mila,
author of, i.a. Breve storia della musica, the source of the
fragment about Gesualdo's music cited in the story.
15 Ibid., pp. 133-134.
16 Attention was drawn to this feature of the construction
of Herling's numerous stories by A. Morawiec in: Poetyka
opowiadań Gustawa Herlinga-Grudzińskiego, Kraków
2000, pp. 122-123.
390
17 G. Herling-Grudziński, W. Bolecki, Rozmowy w Neapolu,
Warszawa 2000, p. 182.
18 Y. Lotman, Biografiya - zhivoye litso, “Noviy Mir” no.
2:1985, quoted after a note signed by H. C. and entitled:
Jurij Łotman o biografistyce, “Literatura na świecie” no.
11:1985, p. 352.
19 Ibid., p. 352; another biographistic trap mentioned by
Lotman, who described it as the sin of a ”cheap belles
lettres approach”, is realised in an almost model-like way
by Madrygał. Powieść o Gesualdzie da Venosa, a story by
the Hungarian author Laszlo Passuth (Warszawa 1981).
This copious (almost 600 pages!), horribly boring story
about the prince's life, built almost entirely out of
conventional elements and brimming with hundreds of
less or more necessary details from the epoch, proves the
aptness of Lotman's successive comment: If the expressi
veness of the historical background is greater than that with
which the main protagonist of the biography was depicted
then the narration compels the reader to conclude that the
object of the biography is interesting solely as the son of his
age, a representative of something: an epoch, a milieu, an
estate, op. cit., p. 350.
20 W Hildesheimer, Tynset, transl. A. Rosłan, S. Lichański,
Warszawa 1973, p. 159; in the medley of characters
populating Hildesheimer's novel we come across Cain (a
brief theological dissertation deals with his crime) and
the Ghost of Hamlet's father, but also ”real” German war
criminals from the Endlosung era. An interpretation of
Tynset maintains that this is one of the most shocking
literary records of the Holocaust and in particular the
memory trauma associated with it, cf. M. Cosgrove,
Traumatic Memory in Wolfgang Hildesheimer s Tynset, a
paper presented at the Conference of University Teachers
of German in Great Britain and Ireland, National
University of Ireland, Maynooth, 8-10 Sept. 2003; sum
mary available on the Internet page of the conference.
21 Hildesheimer, op. cit., p. 141.
22 Following the example of Giorgio Colli I comprehend
the concept of the puzzle in the Early Greek manner: an
a-logical being, a dialectical tangle of contradictions, a
reality enrooted in an inconceivable divine sphere, cf. G.
Colli, Narodziny filozofii, transl. S. Kasprzysiak, Kraków
1991, pp. 52-60.
23 Ibid., pp. 141-143.
24 See the particularly instructive reflections by Hayden
White, Poetyka pisarstwa historycznego, transl, various
authors , Kraków 2000, p. 105.
25 Lotman, op. cit., p. 353.
26 H. von Hofmannstahl, Sebastian Melmoth, transl. P
Hertz, “Zeszyty Literackie” no. 53:1996, p. 65.
27 From the viewpoint of the purely musicological dimen
sion of Gesualdo's works nothing seems to indicate that
they are to be forgotten. See: numerous papers read at
the La musica del Principe. Studi e prosettive per Carlo
Gesualdo conference held in Venosa on 17-2003 and the
Music Conservatory of Potenza.
28 H. Lee, Biomitografowie, czyli życiorysy Virginii Woolf,
transl. J. Mikos, “Literatura na świecie” no. 7-8:1999, p.
349.
29 Kino sprzeciwia się czasowi. Z Bernardo Bertoluccim rozma
wia B. Hollender, “Rzeczpospolita” no. 26:2004 (“Plus
Minus” supplement, 31 April).