larvatus prodeo

Rachel calls again. She asks whether Michael ever loved her. If so, how can he treat her that way? Michael reminds her of her predecessor turning out the same question. From each according to her ability, to each according to her need. Rachel has had her chance. Michael gave her many opportunities to get things right. She chose to salt the ground and poison the well. She is feeling sorry now. She wants to know what would happen if she came back. Michael declines to predict. She wants Michael to know that she had her reasons for striking out at him. Michael declines to excuse. She wants to know what to do with her tender feelings. Michael suggests an appropriate receptacle.

Y a-t-il des folies mathématiques et des fous qui pensent que deux et deux fassent trois ? En d’autres termes, l’hallucination peut-elle, si ces mots ne hurlent pas [d’être accouplés ensemble], envahir les choses de pur raisonnement ? Si, quand un homme prend l’habitude de la paresse, de la rêverie, de la fainéantise, au point de renvoyer sans cesse au lendemain la chose importante, un autre homme le réveillait un matin à grands coups de fouet et le fouettait sans pitié jusqu’à ce que, ne pouvant travailler par plaisir, celui-ci travaillât par peur, cet homme, le fouetteur, ne serait-il pas vraiment son ami, son bienfaiteur ? D’ailleurs, on peut affirmer que le plaisir viendrait après, à bien plus juste titre qu’on ne dit : l’amour vient après le mariage.     De même, en politique, le vrai saint est celui qui fouette et tue le peuple, pour le bien du peuple. — Charles Baudelaire, Fusées

Is there not a mathematical madness, and madmen who think that two plus two make three? In other words, can hallucination, if these words do not cry out [from being conjoined together], invade the realm of pure reason? If, when a man accustomed himself to indolence, to daydreaming, to idleness, to the point of incessantly postponing important matters till the day after, another man woke him up in the morning with great flailings of a whip, and whipped him mercilessly till he, unable to work for pleasure, would work from fear, that man, the tormentor, would he not really be his friend, his benefactor? At any rate, it could be said that pleasure would follow, far more assuredly than it is said that love comes after marriage.     Likewise, in politics, the true saint is he who whips and kills the people, for the good of the people. — Charles Baudelaire, Skyrockets, translated by MZ

Man Ray, Portrait imaginaire de D.A.F. de Sade, 1938
Oil on canvas with painted wood panel, 61.5x46.6cm
The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas

When I was writing a review of Alban Berg’s correspondence, I remarked to an elderly and very distinguished psychoanalyst that I was surprised by how many of Schoenberg’s students seemed to enjoy being so badly treated and humiliated by him. She replied, “I have no time to explain this just now, but I can assure you that there are a great many masochists and not nearly enough sadists to go around.”

— Charles Rosen, “The Scandal of the Classics”, The New York Review of Books, 9 May 1996