Once upon a time there was an artist who was endowed with a terrible gift – when he painted a portrait, it revealed the innermost secrets of the subject to all who looked upon it. The artist, being a fellow of good conscience, (but also unable to stop himself painting, for that was his destiny), devised a strategy. If anyone wanted their portrait painting, he would say to them: ‘I will happily paint your picture. But on one condition. You may look at it yourself, but you must never, ever, show it to anyone else.’ People were happy to agree to these terms, as they knew that they would learn much from looking at his painting of themselves: one’s innermost secrets are, after all, rarely known to oneself. The artist entered into this pact of secrecy between himself and his subjects with the highest motives: he knew that people would learn much from seeing their own secrets laid bare in his brush-strokes. By looking at his paintings, he felt, they would be able to live better, happier, lives. Thus, he was able to continue painting, and people’s secrets stayed hidden, and not out in the world where they could cause upset and havoc. He was the most celebrated artist in the land, despite the fact that no-one had ever seen anything he had painted.
One winter’s day, however, when the weather was cold and no-one had come to his studio to request a picture for many days, the artist decided to paint a self-portrait. He set up a mirror and his easel and mixed his paints, and began tracing the outline of his own features. He worked on the picture for several days. As he worked he was pleased – his brush-strokes were unusually keen, the likeness was, he had to admit, exceptionally good. But when the painting was dry and he looked upon it again, it told him a terrible secret: it told him that in his heart of hearts, he didn’t enter into the pact of secrecy with his subjects in order to protect them – he did it because he liked the feeling of having wriggled like woodworm into the lives of so many people. He liked the fact that all over the land, people couldn't help peeking at pictures of themselves, and either saying a small prayer of thanks to him, or muttering dark words of hatred.
The artist was greatly distressed by this revelation, and smashed his easel, stamped on his paints so that they burst all over his feet, and resolved never to paint a picture again. After several days however, he realised that as long as he was alive, he couldn’t keep himself from painting. So instead of portraits, he resolved to change his subject. From this day forward, he told himself, he would paint only still lives; Vases of flowers, tiny ornaments, arrangements of bottles. Never again would he paint a human face. Never again would he unwittingly reveal a secret.
The artist painted his bottles, flowers, ornaments etc for just a few months before, quite unexpectedly one blustery evening, he was killed at his easel as he worked on a painting. A rich merchant, suspecting his wife of infidelity, had found a miniature that the artist had painted of her. On looking at the portrait, he saw instantly that his wife had not in fact been unfaithful to him, but that her heart harboured a secret much worse: in truth, she had never loved the merchant, she found him ignorant, and had married him out of a mixture of pity and greed. Unable to take out his rage on his wife, whom he loved, he sought out the artist, and stabbed him through the heart. He then took the paintings that were hanging around the studio, the paintings of bottles and flowers and ornaments, and flung them into the river.
It is said that the paintings floated away, and have turned up over time at all four corners of the globe. It is also said that you can tell them instantly: they are strange and unsettling to look at. Because although the artist never again revealed the secrets of another human subject after the day he painted his self-portrait, his terrible gift was still at work: the bottles, ornaments, fruit, etc – all these inanimate objects are also full of secrets. But they are speaking in a language we cannot understand. The effect of seeing one of these paintings, saturated as it is with the whisperings of objects, is said to be upsetting in ways that hang just out of reach, like a sneeze that never quite comes. The world of objects, it seems, is a frightening and unpleasant place. We should be thankful we do not have to learn what is really going on. We are saved only from this knowledge by the muteness of Things.
From E F Walser’s Forgotten Folk Tales, Colophon Press, 1923.
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It is easy to see why this tale ended up in Forgotten Folk Tales. Speaking frankly, it is an opportunity squandered. Walser clearly thought so too – his unpublished papers contain some 700 additional pages of notes concerning this one story alone, many of them being his own elaborations and imaginings of the lives of those who had their portraits painted. (As with all of the tales collected in Walser's volume, one gets the distinct impression that Walser saw these strange directionless failures as almost his responsibility. He desperately wanted to help them 'come good'). On several occasions he calls the Artist's Tale 'the tale that went awry'. The artist, after all, should have been a minor figure, a catalyst as it were, in a grander piece. Who cares, really, for the fine morals of painters? – especially one who seems to regard portraiture somewhat pompously as a mere branch of self-help? And who wants to read about well-kept secrets, anyway? And just as we get down to some interesting stuff, we veer off into some hokum about creepy ornaments. No! We want more in the rich merchant vein: love, money, greed, deceit, violence of certain types, beautiful women with dark secrets in their hearts. Just generally more about beautiful women, if we’re honest.
Why then is it reproduced here? Let me just say this: I visited Tadeusz Deregowski’s rented flat in North London, in the winter of 2003, to look at some fine monoprints he had made. While he was in the kitchen, searching for a second wine glass, I fell to perusing his bookcase. Mr Deregowski did not have a copy of Walser’s Forgotten Folk Tales. (Indeed, as I was to learn later, nobody does,) but he did have a well-thumbed edition of Hasselmann’s Objects, Dreams, Terrors. I dimly remembered that Hasselmann had been a disciple of Jung, but that the two had had some kind of falling-out after Hasselmann had penned a drinking song parodying Jung's theory of archetypes. I took the book down from the shelf, but before I could turn to the biographical note to check my recollection of its author's infamy, a folded piece of paper fell out from between its covers. I unfolded it. It was a photocopy of the Artist's Tale. Feeling somehow that I had come across something that Deregowski would not have wished me to see, I quickly read the extract. There were angry-seeming jottings in the margins. Just as I was tilting the page this way and that, trying to decipher the scrawl, (was it Deregowski's? I could not tell), there was an exclamation from down the hall. Deregowski had found a second glass! Hastily, I folded the Walser tale up, and slipped it back between the pages of Hasselmann, and returned the book to the shelf.
What it means to Deregowski I cannot say. I have never mentioned it to him. You could ask him about it now I suppose. I suspect he will deny ever having owned such a thing as a work by Hasselmann, though. For myself, after leaving Deregowski's flat that night, with Walser's tale buzzing in my head, my life was never quite the same again. I was intrigued by the existence of such a thing as a book of forgotten folk tales. My search for Walser's work had all manner of unexpected effects on my life. But that is another story entirely – one that contains more than enough money, greed, deceit, violence of certain types, and not nearly enough love nor beautiful women. No beautiful women at all, if I'm honest.
Nicholas Parker, London, March 2007.
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Devious Journal Entry
