Excerpt from Unica Zürn’s Dark Spring, pages 112-3:
She takes the ball of sealing wax into her hand and thinks about the fact that nobody knows what it contains. When they find her body in the morning, they will wonder what the meaning of this ball may be. … Perhaps they will want to bury her wearing her amulet around her neck.
Throughout Dark Spring Zürn, the unnamed female is infatuated with the idea of discovering sex and pleasure. She has found that every time she experiences a sexual high that it is fleeting, but she desires to prolong the experience. Because each encounter is so brief, she is left feeling let down and somewhat empty.
In the excerpt, Zürn’s unnamed female has collected several items (a strand of hair and a small photograph) from the object of her desire, an older man at the pool whom she watches and fantasizes about. Because pleasure is so brief, she decides that she is going to die at the peak of her delight, which was gaining these objects.
The strand of hair is extremely important because it is a physical piece of her desire. She seemed to realize that she was never going to be able to have sexual relations with the man, so the hair somewhat replaces the phallus. The hair is hidden in the ball of sealing wax because she doesn’t want to share her obsession with the man.
Death with the man’s hair around her neck symbolizes that she is taking him to the grave with her. To her there can be no greater pleasure because her brother already took away her first experience with sex and it was a disappointment because she felt there was nothing left to experience. Death is the only other thing she has left to experience. By having the hair around her neck in the grave means that she will always have that pleasure with her.
No comments:
Post a Comment