Iakov Levi
Caravaggio and La
Madonna del Serpente*
Oct.20, 2003
Most successful sublimations are, of course, part
and parcel of cultural trends and become unrecognizable as sexual derivatives. (Erik.H. Erikson, Childhood and
Society).
True, some sexual energy can and must be
sublimated; society depends on it. Therefore, by all means, render unto society
that which is society’; but first render unto the child that libidinal vitality
which makes worth-while sublimations possible. (Erik.H. Erikson, Childhood and Society).
La Madonna del serpente (Galleria Borghese)
What the father hath hid cometh out in
the son;
and often have I found in the son the father's revealed secret.
[or in the daughter the mother's]
(Nietzsche, Thus spake Zarathustra, 29,
"The Tarantulas")
This outstanding work of art shows a little
child treading on a snake. His mother’s foot is between the child’s
and the snake, so that the child is treading on it and on the serpent.
As I have sustained in Why
is the Lady so Sexy?, the serpent is the symbol of the fantasized missing
female penis (1) .
Therefore, the child is treading on his mother's
penis.
In works of art, as in dreams, the representation is always the outcome of a
condensation. In our case, the image condenses the anal sadistic drive of the
child and the object of the drive: the mother.
The Virgin's foot, which interposes between
the child’s and the reptile supports the
representation through a repetition. The mother’s foot is a repetition of
the serpent. As Freud has shown in "Symbolism in Dreams" (1915-17),
hands and feet are penis' substitutes.
In dreams, repetitions stand for affirmation. As is said in the Bible: "Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, 'The
dream of Pharaoh is one ...The dream was doubled to Pharaoh, because the thing
is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass' " (
Gen. 41:25-32). And with the words of Theodor Reik:
"the unconscious behaves like the ancient
languages. Both express the importance and significance of a process by means
of repetition" ("The Puberty Rites of Savages", in
Ritual. Psychoanalytic Studies,
Farrar, Straus & Co.,
Both, serpent and foot, like Oedipus’ feet, are a displacement of the
penis.
Treading, like every locomotor - muscle activity is
the acting out of an anal sadistic drive (2).
Henceforth, the child is treading on the mother's penis as synonymous of
castration, through a regression to the anal sadistic level of psycho - sexual
evolution, in the same way as clitoridectomy is acted
out on virgins in many African and Asian countries.
That we are dealing with a regression from the genital level is expressed by
the penis pointing at the snake, hinting at the direction of the libidinal
flux discharging through the left leg into the reptile, and by the nervous
tension of the muscles.
As the Virgin's foot is a repetition of the
snake, so Saint Anne, the grand - mother, is a repetition of the Virgin,
confirming that the child's anal sadistic libido is directed at the mother.
After all, a grand - mother a "twice - mother".
The double representation of the missing female penis, foot and serpent,
matches its equivalence in the double representation of the woman as Virgin and
as Mother.
The language of the composition, where the
Virgin's foot and the snake are compressed in the lowest part of the painting,
while the women counter - point (one above the other) the energies that are
discharging from the upper side into the lower, confirms the equivalence
between the two parts.
Through repetition, a concept asserts its meaning.
With the words of Nietzsche:
It is good to repeat oneself and thus bestow on a thing a right and a left foot [as in the painting above]. Truth may be able to stand on one leg; but with two it can walk and get around (Human, All-Too-Human II, 13, "The Wanderer & His Shadow")
Art relieves the sufferance
inherent in the energetic accumulation of the repression. As Freud has shown,
the pleasure consists in a reduction of the accumulated tension generated by
the unpleasure:
Sensations of a pleasurable nature have not anything inherently impelling about them, wehereas unpleasurable ones have it in the highest degree. The latter impel towards change, towards discharge, and that is why we interpret unpleasure as implying a heightening and pleasure a lowering of energetic cathexis (The Ego and the Id, II)
Dealing with art Freud wrote:
art offers
substitutive satisfactions for the oldest and still most deeply felt cultural
renunciations, and for that reason it serves as nothing else does to reconcile
a man to the sacrifices he has made on behalf of civilization ("The Future of an Illusion" (1927), in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, The
Hogarth Press, London 1953, Vol. 21, p.14).
In Civilization and its
Discontents (1930), speaking of the artist, Freud says:
Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world. In this, sublimation of the instincts lends its assistance (in op.cit. p.79).
And, of course, the artist
himself knows best:
At its best,
art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a
while (Isaac Bashevis
Singer)
The Oeuvre d'art penetrates
us without passing through consciousness, and relieves the sufferance
discharging the tension of the repressed drive, in our case an anal sadistic
urge.
The tension is expressed by the contracted face of the child and by his
determined and nervous legs. In art, the language is the vehicle of the
drive's energies.
And the revealed secret, as mentioned
in our opening citation from Nietzsche?
Are not every revelation, secret, and mystery
a hint to the mysterious missing female penis?
Of the serpent is written: "Now the serpent
was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made (Gen.
3:1). "More subtle", or "craftier -
wiser" as it is sometimes translated, is a wrong translation from the
Hebrew 'Arum. The original meaning of the word 'Arum is
"naked". Only later it acquired also the meaning of
"astute" - "wise".
When we have a double meaning of a word, the more concrete is the original, and
the more abstract meaning is the later overlay.
Therefore, the right translation of the Biblical verse is: "Now, the
serpent was more naked than all the beasts of the field which the Lord had
made"
The serpent is naked, and as such also astute, undecoded,
and mysterious like the female genital.
The revealed secret, as hinted by Nietzsche and expressed by
Caravaggio's painting.
The child in the painting is equivalent of the young heroes of Greek mythology,
Ovidius' Apollo, Heracles, Perseus,
Theseus, and even Saint George, who must defeat a
female phallic monster, serpent or dragon, in order to be able to overcome
their initiation rite.
Caravaggio's painting is a flash from a segment of their initiation saga, in
which the woman's defeat - and the defeat of her scaring missing penis in order
to be able of acting out genital penetration (possessing the woman) - are acted
out through a regression to the anal sadistic level.
La Madonna
...And...is equivalent to Saint Michael (or Saint George) killing the
dragon.
= 
Arnold Böcklin:
"Die Pest" 1898 : The female penis as a
serpent (a flying dragon) and as a plague.
Women and Their
Snakes
Links:
Caravaggio and the Deposizione
nel sepolcro
Caravaggio, Clitorectomy
and the Talion of the Woman
Soccer Games and Caravaggio
Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis
Why is the Lady so Sexy?
Three Women: the Penis
NOTES
* My thanks to Chiara
Lespérance for suggesting to my attention
Caravaggio's painting.
(1) Freud says that the serpent is one of
the "less understood" male phallic symbols. ("Introductory
Lectures on Psycho - Analysis; Symbolism in Dreams", 1915 - 1917, in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Ed. and Trans. J.
Strachey, Hogarth Press, London 1964, Vol.XV,
pp.149-155).
Although Freud defines the snake as a male phallic symbol, he was induced into
error by the fact, as he himself says, that the woman is fantasized having a
penis similar to the masculine one ("The History of an Infantile
Neurosis", in op.cit., Vol.XVII, pp.121-2).
Therefore, we should not wonder if there is some confusion on the substance of
the female penis, as the child himself is very confused on this issue.
In a letter to Fliess dated the 26th July 1904 he
says: “Until now I did not know what I learned from your letter-that you
are using [the idea of] persistent bisexuality in your treatments. We talked
about it for the first time in
Therefore, Freud had unconsciously perceived that the right association is
"serpent = phallic masculine part of the woman", namely, the clitoris
as pre- vaginal phallic stage. If he had interpreted the snake as a male penis
he would not have raised the question of ambisexuality
in this context, and he would have interpreted the dream of the woman as a
desire for the male penis.
In one of his last works, published posthumous, Freud hinted that he was close
to draw the right conclusion:
The terror of the Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. The hair upon the Medusa's head is frequently represented in works of art in the form of snakes, and these once again are derived from the castration complex. It is a remarkable fact that however frightening they may be in themselves, they nevertheless serve as a mitigation of the horror, for they replace the penis, the absence of which is the cause of the horror. This is a confirmation of the technical rule according to which a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration (Medusa's Head, 1940).
The snakes are placed on
Medusa's head. Therefore, they are the representation of her penis, and
not that of the male.
Furthermore, dealing with the theme of the "Taboo of Virginity",
where he exposited the psychic danger to a couple where the man firstly
deflowers the female, Freud writes:
A comedy by Anzengruber shows how a simple peasant lad is deterred from
marryng his intended bride because she is "a
wench who'll cost her first his life". For this reason he agrees to her
marrying another man and is ready to take her when she is a widow and no longer
dangerous. The title of the play, Das Jungferngift
["Virgin's Venom"], reminds us of the habit of snake -
charmers, who make poisonous snakes first bite a piece of cloth in order to
handle them afterwards without danger ("The Taboo of Virginity",
1918 [1917], in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud,
Ed. and Trans. J. Strachey, Hogarth Press, London 1957, Vol.XI,
p.206)
Freud's association between snakes
first bite and the woman's imene is enlightening.
The significance of the snake as a female phallic symbol becomes clear if we
notice that in mythology the reptile is always associated with goddesses and
never with gods and heros.
Herodotos knew that the snakes come from Mother Earth
LXXVIII. This was how Croesus
reasoned. Meanwhile, snakes began to swarm in the outer part of the city; and
when they appeared the horses, leaving their accustomed pasture, devoured them.
When Croesus saw this he thought it a portent, and so it was. [2] He at once
sent to the homes of the Telmessian interpreters,1 to
inquire concerning it; but though his messengers came and learned from the Telmessians what the portent meant, they could not bring
back word to Croesus, for he was a prisoner before they could make their voyage
back to
"the snake, they said,
was the offspring of the land, but the horse was an enemy and a
foreigner". Meaning, the snake is a phallic symbol and an offspring of the
Land, herself the symbol of the Mother. It comes from her, it is her penis. The
horse, instead, is an enemy. He comes from outside. Meaning, he is a male
phallic symbol, an outsider, like the masculine penis, which is outside and
strives to penetrate her. Like the Trojan horse, which deflowered the city.
The same concept of the Serpent as phallic symbol of Mother Earth is found in
Ovid's, Metamorphoses.
After the Deluge, Mother Earth generates
from inside herself an enormous serpent (the Python).
But of
new monsters, Earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
Thee, Python too, the wondring world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight:
So monstrous was his bulk, so large a space
Did his vast body, and long train embrace. (Metam., I: 435
- 445, Transl. by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden)
(2) For muscle eroticism, and for loco motor
anxiety as defense from anal - loco motor eroticism triggered by the regression
from the genital level, see: Karl Abraham, "A Constitutional Basis of Locomotor Anxiety" (
1913), in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, Translated by D.Bryan and A.Strachey, Hogart Press,