MM T 2734. Sketchbook. The Mad Author’s Journal

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MM T 2734, p. 0-R

MM T 2734, p. 0-Ri

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only   these pages and the last two
sheets are written [in] 1929
Everything else [from] after the Clinic 1908–1909

The mad Author’s Journal

    Accounts I set down or received
from a dear friend – whom I met
at the Clinic in Copenhagen  [in] 1908
– and who little by little
became totally mad

    I add to this a good amount
of my own accounts
it is essentially emotional states
and philosophical reflections – and reflections
on my paintings –

    All of these accounts
that I have recorded – and that I
have received from my insane friend
I am attempting to collect – as they somehow
complement each other – There is a good
amount which my friend has written and
which he apparently has intended
as novels or short stories –
It is about first Love – [between] Madame Heiberg 
and Brandt  – a love that
for him is unrequited – then
many years later there is a Woman who
loves him – He is pursued by her and
by his own conscience – 

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Credit and Debit

    Love

    Talent

    Hate

    Fear

    Courage

The distribution of Energy –

    Genius and Crime

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    Friends are disguised Enemies – they sneak into Your House
eat Your Food drink Your Wine and stab You in the Back –

    The wealthy man who gives – steals Twice – First he
has stolen the Money – then he steals Human
Hearts with his Gifts –

To my Friends

Marry a French Tart or
a Norwegian Country girl – but never wed a Norwegian
Lady

    In Kristiania  thanks to the Bohemian movement
Common Revellers; Men about town and
Libertines have become a Kind of superior
Sect, a Religious Species – the sacred Animals
the sacred Swine –

    He was a great Swine but a gifted Author
or He is a great [man] but a poor Author

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About the painter S. It is a Christ yet
he will not let himself be hung on the Cross

    Great Art is necessary in order to paint
great Pictures so that one takes Notice
of them – Many pictures are created so
big that they are not visible – like many of
Krohg ’s pictures in the [National] Gallery  –

    Study of social behaviour – Cause and Effect
Priest to the Man who has been skinned alive –
He has suffered greatly      he has
sinned greatly –

    About a dear Colleague –
Lisping foppishness, beer-fuelled brutality
and foolish kindness

    It is not easy to have a Crown made out of
Horns and not be King

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    M      Love is the Law of Life – for Propagation –

    B      – Love has become a great Addition
to the Benefits on Earth for the Progressive
Human Being – like Beer, and Wine – and Morphine

    The Vice has acquired the fetching Name of Love
– to perform vice Night and Day means to
make love often – says the modern Woman
– Strangely enough she means that this applies only
to herself – When the Man permits himself to love
it is Abuse and Brutality and  … 

MM T 2734, p. 8

The Laws of Free Love

    One enters into a free Relationship with
a Woman because one cannot or does not wish
to be wed – (when it becomes apparent that one behaves like
Cat and Dog) one is forced to marry because
one has entered into the free Relationship

    The free Relationship then becomes a Trap and hardly free
Former Engagements were indeed better

    When Clavenæs  attacked B L            and D 
because they travelled about and lived together
– the entire Chorus raised an Outcry

    – When I travelled to Italy with a
Woman – because I believed that she had Consumption which
she claimed she had – the same Chorus
raised an Outcry against me –

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    No one is worse than the Lady to acknowledge
free Love for her own part

    (It would seem by the way that it is necessary to
be two for this Affair – if they do not wish to share mutual
love)

    Sphinx was self-righteously resentful when Clavenæs 
pointed out to her the inappropriateness of
defending free Love –

Free Love

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    From the Camp of the Mute 

    Krohg  and Petersen  as
 … 

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    Why I did not wish to exhibit
that frieze

    Free Love

    They have entered a free Relationship – She was
a Witch – They are being forced into Marriage
He      Will I be married to all her Gigolos as well

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The  …  Wedding gift
A 1:20 [scale] model of a Heart
and a Cuckold’s crown

    The Hedgehog raises its bristles against the baying of Dogs
If the spines are torn off what remains is a sensitive
defenceless Animal

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The three Trolls

    I will castigate him in the Newspaper
The wealthy Girl –  I will bribe his
Friends

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    Previously one divorced
when one behaved like Cats
and Dogs –

Now one gets married
when one is [like] Cat and Dog –

    The wealthy bourgeois      The wealthy Press

    1902 Kilos of
Gold

    Fine Art Painter

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    I act either precipitously and with Inspiration
hastily (thoughtlessly and unhappily – and with Inspiration and happy
effect) or with long Deliberation – and
anxiously – the Result is then often weaker and can
be a failure – the Result can become the work’s
Undoing –

    This applies to me as a painter and as
a Human Being –

    The Sick Child and Spring were both
Results of enduring Work lasting years – In
the most complete Spring I had been able
to utilize Numerous fortuitous
Elements – It was less nervous
and was not overworked or destroyed by
invasive precipitous emotional States –
The Sick Child was a more impetuous Mixture
of mindless Work – inspiration – and
nervous Deliberation over a long Period – It was
completed thanks to Numerous inspired and precipitous
Reworkings – The work very unwillingly
abandoned – Hence its more spontaneously powerful
Effect –

    –

    My Pulse is either intense to violent
Nervous attacks – or slow with a brooding
Melancholy –

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    At the present time I use up to 8 Days on a
Letter –

    At other Times I note down my Impressions
in Haste precipitously – or [in a state of] inspiration

    Madame N
A Life-size Portrait – was not accepted for 100 Kr[oner]
Another 4 Children would cost 100 Kr per Head hence a long
Process –

21st January –

    There was mention again in Kristianiablad  of the large Sale to the Gallery
From 1884–1909 – I have sold in Norway for a total of
20,000 Kr that is Half of the cost of Expenses
per Year for Paints Canvas Studio and Models –
On the other hand a good Number of People
came into Possession of my Pictures in various Ways
– For a Pair of Shoes (Karl Johan Street which was later sold
to Germany) for 80 – 20 – 5 Kr – A dinner at the Grand  for 2 Kr for the Portrait of Jensen
40 [bottles of] Chateaubria … 
from  Ulberg
he was in fact the best payer
The picture I received 5 Kr for was sold to a
stranger who later sold it to
a Gallery in Bergen  for 1500 – For one Picture
The Girl on the edge of the Bed I received 60 Kr the latter
subsequently sold to a Gallery for 2500.

    A dozen such Pictures are found in the same
Gallery – now a Couple of Pictures have also
been sold to [a] Copenhagen – Gallery –

    Aside from occupying Space in the
Galleries so that I myself cannot sell – the same persons

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naturally complain about the fact that I permit myself
to sell directly – On top of which they are so
quick to explain that my earlier
Pictures are naturally the best – and that I persist
like the Crawfish in advancing forward backwards –
– and thereby also directly impede Sales –
– And then there is an outcry over the Gallery Prices.
There is no outcry (in the case of Frits T .) when small pictures of mine are
sold for 1500 – 2000 Kr – when they themselves have
come into Possession of them for a mere pittance
– I am excluded from all Types of Commissions –

    While Commissions for Portraits are assigned to me from Stockholm
– Copenhagen – Berlin, even Chemnitz – have in
20 Years given me a Portrait commission which I now
have difficulty in accepting Due to my Health –

23 Misfortune and Punishment evoke a Feeling
of Guilt – even when the Punishment
is unjust –

26th –  On the one Hand to hang on by every
Means possible – Terminally ill with Consumption – simulated Suicide
etc. – (on the one Hand to be moored)
[and] a Relationship to all of ones
Friends on the other hand – is a Mixture that
could cause even a man with strong nerves  to leave his
Senses –

    It brings out the Animal in One

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As long as the photographic Camera does not exist
in Hell or Heaven – Painters
have no cause to fear Competition from it

    Art is the opposite of Nature –

    Dogs and Cats are the most pampered
Creatures – and Societies for Their Protection
are continuously being founded

    The Treatment I was Subjected to
was such that I had the Desire to Declare
myself an Animal and find refuge in
the Society for the Protection of Animals

    Love can turn to Hate
A feeling of Compassion to a feeling of Cruelty

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    The Periphery of the Soul

    The lifeline

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(Only   these two sheets have been written [in] 1929  … 
the same goes for the first page in the binder. The remainder [in] 1908–1909)

while the memories of the first
love cast their long shadows
inwards – He attempts in every way
possible to dissuade the Woman who
loves him from Love –
He explains to her his
inability to love – That because of the
curse that the congenital
diseases – physically and spiritually have
cast on him and his family he
has come to consider it
his sacred duty to refrain from marrying
and to refrain from starting a family –

    He behaves impossibly and is in
every way brutal – gets drunk –
it is to no avail – finally in a kind of
unconscious astral state he fires
a shot while she is present – it
destroys his arm – and cripples
him –

    The disfigurement with its
continuous reminder drives
him mad in the end – These accounts
in their present state are not fit to
be published – many of the madman’s accounts
are “mad” and interesting for shedding light on his condition
– Like Leonardo’s anatomy drawings – the anatomy of
 …  – the soul is dissected here – the mechanisms of the Soul

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    When I write down these
accounts with drawings – it is
not in order to narrate my own life –
For me it is a question of studying
certain hereditary phenomena that
are decisive for a human being’s life
and fate – such as insanity in general It is
a study of the soul that I have [conducted]
when I can actually study my-
self – use myself as an
anatomical spiritual compound – Yet when
it mainly has to do with a
work of art and a study of the soul [I] have
changed and exaggerated – and have used
others for my investigation – It is therefore
a mistake to view these accounts as confessions
Therefore I divide the work –
as did Søren Kirkegård – in two
the painter and his overwrought
friend the Author –

    As Leonardo da Vinci analysed
the inner organs of the human body and dissected
corpses – I attempt to dissect the soul
– He was forced to write backwards as it
was against the law then to dissect corpses
– Now it appears that it is dangerous and
frivolous and immoral to dissect spiritual
phenomena –

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    I also believe that as a
semi-scientific study – it
should not be viewed by all and sundry
– Certain details such as the mother
with the embryo – which depict in words
and drawings the most exalted moment in a
human being’s life – or one of the three
most exalted – birth – conception –
and death – It should in fact like
birth and death – be framed
within an altar – yet [if] misunderstood it
can appear vile

    When I look through my writings
I find much that is naive – and there are also
laments about my unkind fate
which do not seem manly    But then again it is perhaps written
for comfort – How I shall make this fit in I do
not know yet since it belongs there in a way –
Nevertheless since it is meant to be art it must – be cropped
and purely unintentional laments be removed

    Generally one could say that
I doubt yet never reject or
mock religion – There has been a
disparaging of the overly pietistic Spirit that
dominated my childhood and that aside
from my own illness from the time I saw
the light (was practically dying when I came into the world
and had to be christened at home) and my mother’s early
death [at] 5 years of age – and the persistent illness at home
hereditary tuberculosis – gave me the impression of
a congenital curse – and unkind fate – At the same time that
my grandfather’s death [from] tuberculosis of the spine – An inherited nervous
disorder bordering on insanity

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