In the spiritual world of pre-modern civilization, personal value does not exist. The only thing that exists is a holistic and transcendental spiritual world, which includes personal destiny. Therefore, in pre-modern civilization, the spiritual world of an individual is not related to There is no division between the whole of the times. All the consciousness and actions of the individual are the commanding links of this transcendent whole will. Therefore, in the pre-modern civilization, there was actually no madness in the personal sense. All madness was the expression of the will of God: either God conveyed information to the world through these crazy behaviors, or God punished individuals. Once the individual's subjective consciousness is awakened, the dominance of "Tao of Heaven" is overthrown, and "Tao of Humanity" creates the opposite of "Tao of Heaven", the era of modern civilization begins, and then all the individual diseases brought by modern civilization will gradually manifest. . Kierkegaard once said about the autism of modern people: "The idea of loneliness is that a person emphasizes himself as a number, and when a person emphasizes himself as one, this is loneliness." The quantitative thinking mode of modern rationalism In itself, it is a manifestation of extreme lack of confidence: because all the actions of an individual cut off the connection with the "Dao of Heaven", if you don't rely on the seemingly huge number to add psychological comfort to your spiritual world, then people will completely lose. The meaning of its existence and all the possibilities of the future. Splitting makes people desperate, so we need dreams, all kinds of modern art, and all kinds of spiritual means to pursue and miss the whole state before splitting. Of all Herzog's works so far, the most direct and touching feature film that confronts the fragmentation of modern civilization is "The Mystery of Kaspar House". In Herzog's own words: "I have a feeling that the film is like a self-assessment after so many years of work. It seems to draw a line out of what I did before that point. , and depicts where I will go from then on." The author regards this film as Herzog's warmest and most affectionate work, and also the most authentic expression of his soul. He inherited the essence of volitional romanticism from Goethe, Rilke, and Trakl. The video performance of the previous modern directly inserted into the modern showed the difference of writing, and then surpassed the current nostalgic literary and artistic works. Modern mourning - For the pre-modern, Herzog did not simply lyrical, not mourning, but pursuit. The film opens with two of Herzog's favorite elements: the mirage and the opera. These two elements have no plot connection to the film's content, but it is directly connected to the romantic style. The use of filters adds a dreamlike feel to the landscape. So how to understand the romanticism of the title that seems to have nothing to do with the actual content? It is a metaphor, which metaphors the significance of Casper's existence in modern civilization: the rise of romanticism in the history of literature and art is itself a reaction in the field of literature and art to the social production mode of machine industry by individuals in the Victorian era . The objects of romanticism are usually those whose personalities are suppressed, their personal talents cannot be developed, and their personal wishes and aspirations cannot be realized. They are often pessimistic and dejected, and they often look at them with an illusory and dream-like point of view. Modern civilization, and pre-modern cultural landscapes have become the escape they dreamed of looking for. Romanticism is a trend of literature and art that can only arise in an industrialized society, and what it pursues is precisely the pre-modern or fringe-modern culture with an anti-industrial society world outlook - this is a generalization of the dramatic conflict in this film. Take a closer look at the specific elements of the opening title: the sunset, the close-up of the swan, the pond surrounded by trees, the two people rowing in the pond, and a tower with a clear medieval Gothic style next to it. These elements are directly linked to the Middle Ages, especially to the Dutch school (paintings by Bruegel, Bosch, etc.)—these elements are the immediate origins of Romanticism in cultural history. And in the film—especially in the part where Casper was adopted by a scholar—these elements of romanticism are more frequent, and some scenes even make no sense in the plot. The most obvious one is Casper lying in bed with tears in his eyes, and then the camera cuts to a panoramic shot of the swans on the lake and the two boaters: this montage is more of a question than a narrative : Do they point to the narrative content of the film, or to Casper's vision? The next episode further obscures the issue: Casper wrote to the scholar that he went rowing yesterday. At this point, it is neither feasible nor feasible to interpret the sight as Kasper rowing or as he "dreams" of someone rowing. Art tells lies, but it shows truth. This filter of narrative obscures the preciseness of the system of signification, and Herzog once again brings the drama between the image and the audience: the romantic element becomes a mystery that transcends sentimental lyricism and also Beyond deconstruction, this riddle-making means is its own constructive end, in which Herzog wants to place his worldview securely. Before Kasper's adoptive father took Kasper out of the cellar, he did two things that the film focused on showing: one was to teach Casper to write his name, and the other was to use a toy horse to convey his wishes to him. The hope of being a great knight. "Writing Your Name" is a very pivotal plot, it means the complete collapse of Casper's old world at this moment. Gilliam once said a sentence that shows his true heart-to-heart connection with Herzog: "When Adam starts to name everything in the world, the world is finished." To borrow Derrida's theory, in Casper Before learning to write, his spiritual world and the real world were completely integrated into a whole of existence, and there was no communication problem between the two, because they were completely unified; and once these things were named—this is the "Horse", I am "Casper", means "difference" is introduced into an otherwise airtight existence. Or look at this scene with the theory of Freud and Lacan, that is, before learning to write, "I" is the only existence in the universe, the only center, once the word symbol begins to cut its own spiritual world, "I" "There is a consciousness of "self", the inner and outer of "I" are no longer one, they are separated by words, and then all the external things and all behaviors in the eyes of "I" have " Meaning"——The introduction of "meaning" finally determines the distance between "I" and all "not-I". And this distance that can never be bridged is the ultimate cause of "me"'s spiritual emptiness. "Life is troublesome and literacy begins". It can be said that modern civilization has developed the character symbols to the greatest extent. The more complex and precise the structure of the character symbol system, the more it means that the world is divided more and more finely, but the sense of distance is also more and more It is obvious that the alienation of modern people, the various diseases of modern society, and the sense of emptiness that individuals will always fill in their dissatisfaction are all derived from this increasingly complex and sophisticated system of written symbols. As Foucault said: "Language is the first and final structure of madness, the constitutive form of madness." Writing as the tool of language is the fundamental force that defines madness. "Writing" is a theme of the film, and later we saw that although Casper learned to write, he always used words that modern civilization could not recognize for his writing. The written resistance expresses Herzog's attitude towards modern civilization. Therefore, in modern society, once an individual's behavior is separated from this symbol system, and once the meaning of this symbol system cannot be communicated with this person's behavior, then this person will be included in the ranks of "crazy". But these lunatics were completely normal in pre-modern culture and were even seen as having divine powers. Kasper is shown by a circus to earn income In one scene, we see the outliers in four modern civilizations. Their shapes and actions are incompatible with this symbol system. But one dwarf played the role of childhood Mozart: a musical genius embraced and even touted by modern civilization. But this "Mozart" was so engrossed in meditation that he didn't say a word. The next explanation is: "He was looking for the black hole of the universe, but his family forced him to go to school. Since that day he has not said a word, and the whiteness of the paper has blinded him." This is a typical failure to enter the language system of modern civilization. character of. He echoes Casper, even more extreme than Casper, with the narrator's hands dangling in front of his eyes without paying attention, "He travels through the darkness, searching for the black holes of the earth, fascinated by underground caves and sewers. "The reason why this madman is named "Mozart" is also related to Herzog's love for music: Herzog believes that music can improve his own cultivation far more than literature. And of all art forms, music is the art form that is farthest from reason. Music is the most difficult to express its beauty in words. The connection between music and pre-modern civilization here is reminiscent of the church musicians who played Chopin's piano pieces in "Traces of Life": "It's a mysterious force that Chopin doesn't understand, the only thing he knows is that he sometimes He vomited blood." In this film, Casper later met such a pianist (the same person played the role of the two pianists), his parents died and his eyes were blind, but he did not say a word every day immersed in music. Perhaps in Herzog's world, music is the closest thing to pre-modern civilization, the most powerful resistance to modern rational writing systems. Caspar, who is caught in the modern rational power system of writing, has two tools to express his nostalgia and miss his pre-modern state, except for music, it is a dream. In the film, he had a total of three dreams, and these three dreams were made after he was adopted by scholars and educated in modern civilization. Herzog made these three dreams by projecting images onto an old yellowed wall, and then filming the projections on the wall with a camera. The first dream is a pure vision of a great plain full of buildings resembling castles and pagodas. This is a dream that does not include any human behavior and has no narrative at all, and Casper didn't use words to describe the specific content of the dream. He only said "I dreamed of Cokas" and then fell into a state of vision. Think of this as Casper's first learning of the "dream" function. Casper in the cellar can't dream (before this dream, the scholar also said to him "I'm surprised you didn't dream when you were imprisoned"), because his inner and outer worlds are integrated; only We only dream when the language system of modern civilization divides "me" and "world" as a way to find or miss the whole sense of the past. Visible dreams are also a linguistic sign system, except that it is a linguistic sign system that helps us communicate with the pre-modern state. "The retrograde effect of dreams not only translates our thoughts into an original mode of expression, but also awakens the characteristics of the original spiritual life. . The simplicity of the dream showed that he was not yet too familiar with the grammatical system to complicate it, so it was just a glimpse back into that pre-modern state that had just passed away. After Kasper's first attack, he had a second dream, which was far more complicated than the first. The dream is a mountain climbing process by some people dressed in modern clothes, and the voiceover shows that Casper has learned how to describe the specific content of the dream in words. The historical dislocation between the content of the dream and the plot of the film once again shows the connotation of spiritual vision and the drama between the image and the audience. After the third dream, the second real fatal attack Kasper encountered, he had already reached a fairly advanced level of control over the word system of dreams. Not only can he describe the environment and characters in the dream, but also the actions of these characters, the purpose of their actions, and the development of the dream are described in detail. The soundtrack of this passage is the famous "Canon", and Herzog's idyllic nostalgia for the pre-modern state of mind culminates in this dream: it is a camel procession dressed in Muslim clothing, and the leading old man is a blind man. He led the group forward by savoring the sand. The most wonderful part of this dream is when Casper said that they came to the northern city with the guidance of the old man, "The story starts here, but how it will develop next, I don't know." After the transformed image effects, the dislocated historical era, and the ambiguous time and plot, it finally reached the ultimate dissolution of itself in the complete "end" of a "beginning" - this was the beginning of a story, but it came to an abrupt end. The end of the whole film. Here Casper "expresses not the sublime subversion of narrative time's mystery and simplicity, but the inexhaustibility of narrative desire itself, through the lack of a mechanical ending." He successfully dispels the production of language with his mastery of the language system." difference" ambition, but at the same time the coming of his physical death. Herzog, in the most lyrical way in all of his works, shows the "everything" that human beings once existed by portraying the image of Casper, who was thrown into the modern "wolf slave" for no reason from the pre-modern state. The state of the Garden of Eden, where everything has no name, evokes the audience's long-lost pure nostalgia. Of course, modern reason will not give up the "cutting" of the premodern state. As Foucault summed up Casper's historical period: "Modern rationalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries faced two tasks with madness: first, it had to encode madness as disease; second, it had to encode madness at the same time. Dangerous." The reason why the scientists at the end of the film dissect Casper's body is to give a statement about the abnormality of this person within the scope of science. Casper's corpse was cut into several parts by a scalpel, and our spiritual world was also cut into a complex circuit system by the scalpel full of "encoding desire" by modern reason. road. These scientists were still "successful", they thought they had found an unusual sulcus in Casper's brain, so that his abnormality was accurately verified by this text grammar system. The film ends with a running call from city officials about this "sophisticated certification." A pre-modern soul thus "has come and gone", and he has no influence other than to provide modern rationalism with the material needed to produce a number of psychological analysis papers. This is the humble status of the pre-modern spiritual world in today's modern civilization.
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