My dear friend Marius,
I will get straight to the central argument of your last e-mail.
I don’t have encouraging news about our colleague Santer del Fiore. One
of the female nurses, an old friend who I met last week at the Cafe’ Pultovski,
informed me that he’s been transferred to Saint Disma Sanatorium where he’s receiving
treatment in strict isolation. We talked at length and she disclosed details which
I noted down.
Until now, the worst crises del Fiore has sufferred from, given his condition,
were partial paralysis, clinical depression and infrequent hallucinatory
periods. But recently his condition has deteriorated rapidly.
In the hospital where he was latterly being treated, del Fiore has
spurned the odds against himself precariously: he was forced in a straight
jacket after sexually assaulting a Polish female doctor. He aggressed her from the
rear, all the while bestially uttering Kagura! Kagura! If memory serves me well, this articulation originated
in the East and was used to refer to female genitals offered votively to the
gods.
As you’re aware, del Fiore has
been obsessed with sexuality for the last three years or so. At first we all
thought he was expressing this manic compulsion within academic parameters. We
were under the impression that Santer del Fiore could elaborate on his dynamic
theories related to logos and eros in an intellectual framework.
He had to recover his self-esteem after he had been forced to resign from the
Faculty of Humanities. The nurse informed me that in the previous hospital he
was all the time downloading material on the interconnections between women and
cats, later found on his hard disc. They also came across stuff on the cult of
vaginal exhibitionism, the tokudashi practice in Tokyo and Kyoto and
similar ana-suromai rituals as practiced in ancient Greek religious
festivals. Hospital technicians discovered also two terracotta reproductions (probably
from the British Museum), depicting prostrate women shielding their vulva with
their hands.
Fragments of a document pertaining to Nietzsche’s relationship with
women, in particular those referring to extracts from Why I am so Wise, were also found on his computer. However,
things seemed to be different from what we had imagined. Besides the philosophical
fragments on Nietzsche and sexuality, on Santer del Fiore’s desk, wrapped in a
black plastic bag, the nurses found a number of pornographic titles such as Maria Monk, which recounts the exploits
of a novice nun in the excessive and sadistic vices that take place at the
Cadiere Convent under the supervision of a middle-aged priest called Pere
Beaumarche. Another volume found in del Fiore’s possession documents the
history of lesbianism, from Sappho to bondage magazines in the United States.
On the title page of the volume about lesbianism del
Fiore noted in pencil:
The refined
vengeance of the American male against the killer species’ matriarchy, with
exciting passages denoting women flagellating one another.
Other literature found in his possession includes the exploits of a
masochistic concubine as told by a certain Leopold von Sacher Masoch, as well
as a history of fetishism between prostitutes and physically deformed men, and
even that between „normal” men and disabled women. In red markings, Santer del Fiore highlighted
this reference from Chap.9, p.237:
…the
original associative link between a man’s libido and defects of beauty are
quite unknown to the patient.
It was from the lengthy conversation at the Cafe’ Pultovski that I
discovered that three or four days before the sexual assault on the doctor,
Santer del Fiore was alternating between states of staring emptily into space
and mental confusion. On the eve on the incident, with utter indiffference, del
Fiore had stripped from the waist down
and cradling his penis, declared to a new medical student: Now that I’ve
reached 55, I insist that you carry out an analysis of my sperm velocity.
Of a weird
aesthetic interest were the designs encountered on the walls of his room. I had
already noticed these images the last time I visited him but he didn’t want to
talk about them. They consist of a series of elongated female figures devoid of
any facial features, with messed up hair and their mons veneris
exceptionally enlarged, to the the extent that it’s out of proportion to the
rest of the body. Labels in a bold font had been stuck below each figure.
Here’s a selection, just to get an idea:
-
Like a
butterfly with broken wings, I circle the humid ledge of a deep well.
-
Descending
the abyss I might reach the stars.
-
Entering
I will provoke my own fate in the medium-sized opening.
-
Akin
to a prisoner, lost after being exiled, I will attempt suicide in her bosom.
From a literary perspective,
perhaps the most interesting aspect of the sexual obsession that took hold of
Santer del Fiore is connected to what he started referring to as Flagrant
Vulvas with Digital Poetry. These consist of a series of collages,
visual arrangements composed of cut-out pictures from pornographic internet
sites intertwined with lines lifted from sex spam invading his computer. Quite frankly, technically the „compositions” del Fiore has
come up with reminded me of your experimental „visual poetry” phase at the
start of the Seventies, when you were still under the influence of the Memphis
movement.
Anyway the montage that Santer del Fiore created with images and words
from electronic mail include enlarged penises, cross-dressing, bondage-cum-discipline,
fellatio, cunnilingus, sadomasochism, voyeurism and miscellaneous fetishes. He
also has a compact catalogue of webcams and the name of a site in Los Angeles
entitled Sex & Swinger Personal Site, where exhibitionist
female participants frolick together in front of a camera.
Dear Marius, I tried to remember all that I know so far. Besides
informing you of Santer del Fiore’s mental state, as you requested, you might
make use of these details in the research you are presently undertaking on
archetypes and the concept of the anima and animus in a post
modern context. Incidentally, in respect of archetypes, about six months ago, del
Fiore had observed that he was attuned to Berkely’s postulations that
archetypes are images that existed in God’s mind when creating the world, even
though the Irish philosopher lacked the
courage to state that when God hatched those images he was in a manic and
divine drunken state.
Should I have further news, I’ll pass it on to you immediately. In the
meantime, here’s hoping that our campanion Santer del Fiore will cease
spiralling into the implacable vortex of the autumn of his life.
With best wishes, as always,
Walter
Translated by paricia gatt with the author