SAA home pageDreamers and Exiles -
Talk given to the Scottish Astrological Association,
September 2006.
Morelle Smith
I was a little puzzled when
I first came across a definition of Neptune as illusion or disillusion. Neptune
to me, was a different order of perception, one I consider more real than
ordinary everyday perception. It’s this space time bounded world, as eastern
religions have long recognized, that’s an illusion. But I’ve come to think that
Neptune can show this to us, very clearly and perhaps that’s where the
disillusion comes in - a disillusion with the material tangible world that’s
ruled by space and time.
I recently read in Phyllis
Atwater’s book Beyond the Light, an
account of someone’s NDE where she stated that before incarnation, an agreement
is made, to accept the space time world as real, to act in it as if it was
reality. And of course it is a kind of
reality, and very real for the continued existence of the body and a certain
aspect of the mind, that is linked in with the body and the sense of ‘I’, a
sense of individual existence. But our greater reality and existence, as
religions and spiritual teachings tell us, does not lie in the limited
body/mind that we call by our name. And Neptune in a chart can show us the
sliding door between one world or reality and another. Is that door unmarked or
overlooked? It is wide open? Is it right in front of our eyes, or do we have to
look for it through a maze or labyrinth of buildings, roads or different
countries before we come across it, usually when we’ve given up looking? Does
it sap our will to live or does it spur us onto oblique or meandering paths
that make no sense to our friends, but feels like the only way we can take, to
find again a bliss we once tasted, a love that opened up our hearts, a sense of
being infused with a divine presence that makes ‘ordinary’ life tasteless and
pallid in comparison? Neptune’s ‘danger’ if you like, can lie in the
unattractiveness of ‘ordinary’ life, once you’ve tasted of the cup of a more
heightened reality, a more blissful existence.
A feeling of being an exile
is common for Neptune/Pisces types. Even if the land/reality from which they
feel exiled is not consciously remembered, the feeling is there. And if it is
remembered, the overriding question can become - how do I get back there? There
are, of course, different approaches, but it’s the creative solution that
interests me for in any form of creativity, you connect with a different
reality, you ‘lose yourself’ in what you’re doing, you lose your small, time
bounded self and participate in a larger reality. ‘Poetry’ as Stevie Smith
said, ‘is a strong way out’, a way out of the limitations of everyday
perception.
Some very sensitive Neptune
types find this world with its limitations, its ugliness, its brutality and
lack of compassion, very difficult to live in and seem to be always looking for
an exit strategy. Others survive the initial disillusion and deep sense of
exile, and manage to bring some of the sparkle and the grace and the profound
compassion, into this world.
And this is what Annemarie
Schwarzenbach managed to do in her life, leaving us the stories of her trials,
her difficulties, her travels and her eventual spiritual breakthrough.
In the Damascus Drum café
in Hawick I found a book by Ella Maillart entitled The Cruel Way. In this book she describes an overland journey to
Afghanistan, made in 1939, with a companion, who was also a writer. She did not
give her companion’s real name, but this person aroused my curiosity. Then a couple of months later, in a bookshop
in Toulouse I came across one of Annemarie’s books and discovered that she was
Ella Maillart’s companion.
Annemarie Schwarzenbach was
born on May 23 1908 in Zurich (click here for birth chart). She studied history in Zurich and Paris. In 1931
she received her doctorate and wrote her first book. Throughout her short life
she tried all the Neptunian ways to reach that elusive expanded consciousness,
including travel, writing, drugs and suicide attempts. She was committed to the
struggle against fascism, and supported social reform for the poor and
disadvantaged. She experienced powerful love affairs with both men and women,
travelled widely, and was a celebrated writer, and prolific journalist and
photographer.
The word angel keeps
cropping up in people’s descriptions of her - a fallen angel, devastated angel,
inconsolable angel.
And many of the photographs
of her are striking, unsettling even. She looks as though she sees through all
the facades and the falseness of human life - she looks as though she has none
of the usual human armour or protectiveness. It’s unsettling because you see
into the soul and it looks as though she cannot hide what she sees, or who she
is. As if she’s missing the mask we all create, to some extent. It’s as if a
skin that we usually grow, is missing in her, she never learned how to grow a
protective carapace.
Carson McCullers (writing
in 1940):
‘She was very beautiful,
her face framed with short blond hair. She had an expression of indefinable
suffering. I know this face will haunt me for the rest of my life.’
Ella Maillart (in The Cruel Way):
‘so thin that she was
almost ethereal, she sat most of the time drooping and silent. At first I
thought she hearkened to some inner music. Then I knew she was searching; she
listened beyond the words just spoken in the hope of catching a lingering
resonance from a world endowed with more significance than ours; she was
waiting for a fundamental note. Or to use another metaphor, she looked beyond
us as if we were so many prisms, trying to catch a gleam from the original undifferentiated
light.’
Catharine Pozzi:
‘there is such grace in her serious face. But she has a troubled
expression, as if brought on by
invisible suffering. When in her company one gets a feeling of curious
instability. Utterly charming but not very well-balanced’
Claude Clarac, her husband,
talks about
‘the complexities of her
character, which made her live in a world of contradictions…Pulled as she was
between [her] conflicting needs for escape and for attachment, it was
impossible to follow her in the emotional world, coloured by literature, in
which she had shut herself….she was beautiful; she radiated a natural charm
which it was impossible to resist.’
A sense of exile is a
feeling of separation from an emotional homeland.
You may try and find this ‘homeland’
through relationships, through travel to other countries, through drugs,
suicide attempts and creative outlets.
AM tried all of these. But
her story is not that of a victim but that of a determined fighter, and is
ultimately one of success.
Let’s see how this sense of
exile manifested.
1) Relationships.
“I had no hope of freeing
myself from [my mother], no hope of ever being simply myself.”
Her relationship with her
mother was difficult all through her life. Her mother seemed to have adored her
when she was young, but increasing disapproved of her as she became older and
more independent. She was a very controlling woman. Annemarie was often torn
between wanting to have her mother’s affection and approval, and living her own
life. She found this deeply upsetting.
In her various love affairs
- mainly with women - she seemed to want an impossible fusion with the beloved,
could not bear separations from them. Her first love was for Erika Mann, and
their friendship - though it changed its nature - remained throughout her life.
Right from the beginning however, Erika, though she had a loving friendship
with her, kept some emotional distance. So with her, and with other people she
feel a deep emotional attachment to, she never quite found the total belonging
she was looking for.
2) Drugs
Annemarie was introduced to
morphine in 1932. It said in her biography that she could not control her
intake when she was on her own, (though she did when she was with the Manns)
and that her constitution was too sensitive to drugs. She once talked about ‘the
relief that only drugs can bring’. But her life, almost to the end, was marked
by attempts to give it up, spells in rehab clinics and drug cures, repeated
falling back into the habit,
self-dislike, depression, misery and suicide attempts, which all seemed
to be linked to her inability to control her habit.
3) Travel
“this desire, this
nostalgia for the infinite, that is surely the real motivation for every
authentic traveller. I’m clearly one of those incurable travellers” (Annemarie
Schwarzenbach)
She did an enormous among
of travelling in her short life. These brought mixed experiences. On the one
hand, they always gave her material for writing - travel writing, articles for
newspapers as well as photographs, material for prose and poetry. Almost all
her travel was related to her professional work - initially as an
archaeologist, and later, as a journalist/photographer and writer. But travel
sometimes was very difficult for her, as she felt separated from her homeland,
her friends, and particularly during the war, from the suffering going on in
Europe. But it was through a combination of travel and work that she had a
spiritual breakthrough, an epiphany, in Africa.
Her travel projects
included:
Seven months in the near
east - Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, working as an archaeologist. When she came back, she
wrote a book - with photographs -about her experiences.
Four months in Iran - she
married Claude Clarac (a French diplomat) there. She did some travelling there,
but mainly writing - stories and travel writing.
Two trips to the USA, both
lasting several months, where she wrote many articles with photographs on the
plight of the poor, particularly black people, victims of racial discrimination
as well as poverty.
An overland journey to
Afghanistan, with Ella Maillart (1939). Out of this came many articles,
photographs, and a book of travel writing.
Several months in the USA -
(1940/1). Although she was commissioned to write articles, she found it
increasingly difficult, given the war situation in Europe and her own personal
problems.
Coming back to Europe, she
worked as Lisbon correspondent for the Neuer
Zurich Zeitung, then spent several months in the Congo (1941/42).
Here she wrote articles, a
novel and other prose; she did not get into destructive relationships or drug
habits, and, most importantly, she experienced epiphany.
4) Writing
The determination to write
came even before she started travelling. She’d completed two novels in her
early twenties, before her first trip to the near east. This activity continued
throughout her life, and was the one that she felt most passionately for.
‘Writing was the only
ritual of her life; she subordinated everything to it.’ (Ella Maillart)
She had two kinds of
writing - her journalism, commissioned work which was factual and objective,
and her more personal writing, the poetic, the lyrical and the mystical. She enjoyed her journalistic work, but towards
the end of her life, after her epiphanic experience, she felt that her authentic
writing ‘ecriture sincere’ [ie the
most important] was in her lyrical prose and poetry, writing that described her
own profoundly personal experience.
The life and chart we’re
going to look at shows this particular struggle - the tendency to merge and
identify on an emotional level, leading to addiction to relationships and
drugs; the pain of physical withdrawals and emotional separation and isolation.
It also shows the way her life was very much lived as part of the times she
lived in. In her twenties and early thirties she experienced the rise of
fascism and the outbreak of war. Her worst crisis came when she was literally
as well as emotionally, an exile, in the USA. Her breakthrough and epiphany was
experienced when she came back to Europe and contributed to the war effort, by
becoming a war correspondent, first in Lisbon and then in Africa. While some
people were only too glad to get away from the war, she could not bear to be in
a safe place while her people were suffering.
In USA, 1940/41
She said “how can I enjoy my life while at home the
death toll mounts and legions of refugees take to the roads.”
“even though I’m living safely in a country at peace,
I feel threatened and anxious, waiting, in limbo”
“it's useless for me not to want to hear news of the
war; it is a fact, which confronts our world and we don’t have the choice. And
so, I could not find peace even in Tibet.”
Life story
She seems to have enjoyed
her studies in history up till the point when she wanted to have time for her
own writing. She almost completed a novel in fact before finishing her masters
degree (Les Amis de Bernhard). It was
inspired by meeting Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann. [Transiting Uranus
square Neptune/Venus; ‘c’est le coup de
foudre’] Erika and Klaus Mann, her brother, also writers and performers,
were to remain important throughout her life.
19th September 1931 - she
leaves Switzerland and home, for Berlin, [transiting Saturn conjunct Uranus;
Transiting Uranus sextile Mercury] the artistic capital of Europe (via Alsace
and Freiburg); the summer had been difficult with her parents unhappy about the
company she kept.
November-December 1931 -
she wrote Nouvelle Lyrique - an
account of a young man’s unhappy love - his sense of being ‘a stranger in the
world’. [transiting Neptune opposite Moon]
At the end of 1932, she’s
writing a lot. In November she met Mopsa Sternheim, who introduced her to
morphine.
1st January 1933 - Hitler
was voted in as chancellor. Later that year, her received her first writing
commission - Went to the Pyrenees - Barcelona, Pamplona and Andorra, with the
photographer Marianne Breslauer, to write articles.
12th October 1933 - she
left on the orient express for near east. [transiting Jupiter Opposite Saturn]
For seven months she spent time in Turkey, Syria, Beirut, Damascus, Jerusalem,
Baghdad and Teheran, working as an archaeologist.
She returned to Europe at
the end of April 1934. She wrote up her journal notes into a book - Hiver au Proche Orient which was
published six months later, illustrated with her photographs.
She was forbidden to stay
in Germany from July 1934; also she was not allowed to stay at the German
legation in Teheran, where she’d stayed before, and was friends with the
ambassador and his wife.
She began writing a series
of ‘recits’ inspired by her time in the east.
She was deeply upset by
what was going on in Germany; on 30th June - night of the long knives - several
opponents to Nazism were murdered and there was a mounting fear.
On 17th August 1934, she
accompanied Klaus Mann to the first congress of Soviet writers in Moscow.
[Transiting Jupiter trine Mercury]
Mid September 1934, she was
back in Persia; she met up with the archaeological expedition and felt ‘une peur irraisonnee’ take hold of her.
At the end of September
1934 she met Claude Clarac from the
French embassy and they spent long hours talking together. [transiting Neptune
sextile Venus]. She returned in the middle of December.
She then rented a house at
Sils, a part of Switzerland she liked a lot, (Nietzche had also lived there)
but she took an overdose of drugs.
14th January 1935 - after
receiving an upsetting letter from her father, she cut her wrists.
In April 1935 she left for
Tehran, after saying yes to Claude Clarac’s offer of marriage. ‘je sentais que j’allais
vers une prison’ [transiting Saturn conjunct Moon]. On
the 13th April, she arrived at Bierut. Claude Clarac met her there and they
drove through Syria and Iraq to Tehran. In May 1935, they were married at
Tehran. That summer she wrote the stories ‘Orient
Exils’. She later became ill with malaria.
Her meeting with Yale, the
Turkish ambassador’s daughter, was a profound and significant event in her time
in Iran. She wrote La Mort en Perse as a journal while she was there. She was deeply
upset by Yale’s death. [Aug 1935 - transiting Saturn conjunct Moon] It was
there that she met Barbara Wright, an American photographer.
In October 1935 Annemarie
returned to Europe. In Germany, support for the Nazis was growing. Erika Mann
married WH Auden in June 1935 to get British nationality. Annemarie went on a drug cure but suffered
awful withdrawals, with nausea, spasms, and cold sweats. She spent the next
nine months in Europe, sometimes at Sils, sometimes with the Manns.
In January 1936 Annemarie
was ill again, and her symptoms resembled those of withdrawal. [Saturn conjunct
Moon]. In March Hitler invaded the Rhineland and dissolved the Reichstag. By
spring of that year La Mort en Perse was
finished. In August she travelled to the United States, after an invitation by
Barbara Wright.
On her first visit to the
USA she wrote many articles. [transiting Jupiter opposite Mercury]
On her second visit she was
particularly interested in the lives of agricultural workers and the problems
of racism. She made photographic documentation of the lives of rural people hit
by the Wall Street crash and the Depression and who were living in poverty and
terrible conditions. Her reporting projects also took her to the mining regions
of Pittsburg.
By mid February she was
back in Europe, where Mussolini and Franco were turning to Hitler. After a
research trip to Soviet Turkestan in April 1937, she met up with Claude Clarac
in France in July. She had not seen him
for 2 years.
In September 1937 she
returned to the USA. [transiting
Jupiter conjunct Uranus]. She travelled through the Carolinas, Tennessee,
Virginia, Georgia and Alabama and witnessed the shocking conditions in which
some people, especially black people,
lived; they lived in shacks, with very little money, and had no trade unions to
lobby for better conditions. During this time she
wrote and published about
twenty articles.
In February 1938 she
returned to Europe with Klaus Mann and in March of that year Hitler marched
into Vienna and declared the Anschluss. Annemarie went to Salzburg and was
horrified by the changes; she wrote an article describing what was going on. In
September 1938 she was in Prague, writing articles as Hitler took over.
Annemarie described
1938 as an ‘annee maudite’ as she
spent several months in clinics. [April
1938 - Saturn return; Saturn also square Venus/Neptune]. So wretched did she
feel in fact that in October of that year, while in a clinic, she wrote her
testament, feeling that she would soon die. [Pluto sextile Sun; Saturn square
Venus/Neptune]. But also while she was in a clinic she wrote La Vallee Heureuse, a new version of La Mort en Perse. This was written in a
state of frenetic intensity; for days she wrote feverishly without sleeping or
eating.
In September 1938 she met
Ella Maillart and when the latter suggested they go to Afghanistan together,
Annemarie was keen to go as she had just finished La Vallee Heureuse. They left in June 1939 and after twelve weeks
of travel, they arrived in Kabul. War broke out in Europe in September and
Annemarie became ill; she was feverish, insomniac, getting very thin, battling
with depression and taking morphine substitute. She could also be violent when
suffering withdrawals.
In October Annemarie went
to Afghan Turkestan, to stay with archaeologist friends who were working there.
This time, she had no drugs, and endured a complete severance. Two weeks later
she was back in Kabul, and began to work on her articles. In December she was
writing in a trance-like state, just like the previous year.
Professionally, this was a
very good time for her. Between July of 1939 and October of 1940
she wrote about sixty articles and took hundreds of photos. By the
beginning of 1940, she was Back at Sils, working on her photos and articles. In
April of that year she decides to go to the USA with Margot von Opel, who was
about to emigrate. In May, Hitler moved into Holland, Belgium and towards
Paris.
She wanted to return in
mid-June (with her father), but was persuaded to stay away from the war. But
she felt trapped, not able to return to her country. [transiting Pluto sextile
Sun]. She went back to alcohol, drugs, stimulants, and crises of rage; she was
deeply upset by the war. She was so deranged, that at one point she even
attacked Margo von Opel.
By September 1940, she was
obsessed with the idea that she had to return to Europe, and perhaps join the
resistance; she was unable to work or write, and had got thinner. October 1940
saw her ‘descent into hell’; she would walk in the streets of New York,
weeping. She attacked Margot, and then was horrified at what she’d done. Margot
had just persuaded her to see a doctor when she received news of her father’s
death.
In November she told a friend, Erika Anderson,
that she was going to kill herself. She then drank bottles of spirits and
sleeping tablets. Erika found her and Annemarie was taken to hospital. She went
into a psychiatric clinic in Connecticut but became violent and broke the
windows; she was then put in a straitjacket and taken to a locked ward. She managed to escape but later cut her
wrists. By a miracle she was taken to hospital in time to save her. Finally she
was allowed out on the condition that she did not return to the USA.
On 1st February 1941 she
left the USA for Lisbon, and wrote articles there for a Swiss magazine. She
returned to Switzerland for a brief visit in April; but she only stayed two
weeks at Sils as her family had given her money on condition that she leave the
country!
Again she crossed France by
train, returning to Lisbon and from there sailed for the Belgian Congo,
the ‘territory of the government of
free France.’ ‘Never have I felt so close to events and involved in a positive
way, in the tragic conflict’ she wrote. But the colonials were suspicious of
her. There was her unconventionality, and the influence she held over the wives
of officers and diplomats. In addition, she was German speaking, her family was
on good terms with the Nazis and her husband was forced to work for the Vichy
government; she was even interrogated on suspicion of being a spy.
In June 1941 [transiting
Jupiter conjunct Sun] she had a mystical experience. It is Interesting that in
this situation where she was not trusted and was even suspected of being a spy
and so hardly felt at home here, this was where she had a mystical experience,
which affected her profoundly. She then travelled into the interior, the heart
of the equatorial forest, to visit a Swiss couple who lived there. During that
time, she wrote in a kind of trance, without any stimulants.
By mid-September 1941 she
was back in Leopoldville, wrote a dozen articles, (and received a much warmer
welcome than she had in June.) She realized that her article writing was ‘of no
real importance compared to one page of sincere writing.’ She then began
writing, in October 1941, The Miracle of
the Tree, which she finished in February 1942. [October 1941 - transiting
Uranus one degree away from conjunction with Sun]. This work is the evolution
of her philosophy.
Just after finishing it, in
February 1942, she was hospitalized with malaria. The following month she left
Africa for Lisbon and wrote ‘Leaving
Africa’ on the boat. She worked hard writing articles in Lisbon [transiting
Saturn conjunct Sun]. At the end of May 1942 she went to Morocco to see Claude
Clarac. [transiting Uranus conjunct Sun]. They got on very well together and
were planning for the future; she intended to return in the autumn.
She then returned to Sils
and spent several weeks there, rewriting part of The Miracle of the Tree, on her publisher’s advice. It becomes a
different manuscript, a poem in prose. But on the 6th of September 1942 she
fell from her bicycle, hit her head, and was in a coma for three days. On 19th
October, she was taken back to Sils, as it was known that she loved it there.
But her friends were not allowed to visit and even her husband, who came over
from Morocco, was not able to see her.
On 15th November 1942, ‘when
the bells called the faithful to church’ she died (click here for chart of her death).
What do we mean by homecoming?
‘One night, looking at an
eucalyptus tree in the moonlight, she had felt that the tree claimed all of her
attention, “like a celestial music” and communicated that it was her task not
to let herself be distracted by the problems of the external world, so that she
could find the necessary concentration to listen to “the music of the turning
world” and to try to access truth, words of truth. From this experience of a
kind of illumination, Annemarie creates a personal philosophy of reality, a
theme which she often returned to in her letters to Ella Maillart and Carson
McCullers.
On the one hand we have the
artificial and superficial reality of the world, and of human society - the
false reality - and on the other hand, the deeper reality of the soul, longing
to communicate with the world. It is our soul that is our “inner self”, the
pure, invulnerable and eternal part of us. Unfortunately, the inner self is
thwarted by our “lower self”, too dependant on the contingencies and
conventions of the world which surrounds us. But the more one suffers, the more
one comes up against difficulties, and the more one can leave behind the lower
self, thus allowing the soul to free itself. To be free, is to remain stronger
than events. Put in another way; it is in completely detaching from [trivial]
circumstances, refusing to be affected by them, that one attains inner freedom.
It’s true that this detachment cannot be done without suffering, but that is
the necessary situation which puts us in a position to listen to the inner
voice.’ [She then talks about how Annemarie had already been in that situation
when she was locked up in the clinic in the USA, and again in Africa when she
was with people who did not accept her, and suspected her of being an enemy
spy]. ‘In disengaging from the “false reality” she let go of the lower self and
bit by bit regained the space of freedom, indispensable for realising the
sacred mission which had been given her by God - to write, to find the words
which came closest to the truth.’
(from Dominique Laure
Miermont’s biography - Annemarie
Schwarzenbach ou Le Mal d’Europe, translated by Morelle Smith)
In the manuscript ‘Leaving
Africa’ Annemarie summed up her six month stay in Africa. “There
I learned to overcome my fear of worldly powers, there I found the source of
true joy and an inner freedom, a new joy in life and which increased tenfold my
capacities. There I learned to distinguish the true and indestructible ‘self’
from the vulnerable personality, dependant on the favourable or unfavourable
nature of the environment and worldly partnerships. And finally, in my exile in
the mountains, I’ve glimpsed for the first time the possibility of
subordinating this mortal self, vulnerable and suffering, to the knowledge and
the will of the one true and eternal self, which manifests in our infallible
moral conscience and in our deepest freedom. Yes, that mountainous place in the
lower Congo became for me something like a paradise on earth and I know that I
will feel nostalgia for Africa.”
On the Banks of the Congo
(Annemarie Schwarzenbach)
Here
it is again, this silence,
as
if an angel has appeared, said nothing
but
has raised his hand. Angel,
what
signal did you use before
to
let me know that it was you?
They
say that foreign lands have many things to teach us,
But
all I feel is fear and
This
stinging in my eyes; all paths lead nowhere
And
it hurts even to breathe.
I
link my hands together, then they drift apart,
Fall
lifeless in my lap.
My
distress is so pervasive
that
I don’t know where to turn.
The
hours slip past, I wanted to protest
About
the way that I’ve been tossed around
in
all directions for so many years,
And
I only have one life.
I
want to let it go,
Lose
it in the space
Of
one heart beat; but I have seen
The
fire, and heard such music,
that
has pierced my suffering,
Erased
all doubts, and sometimes memories of this
Ripple
through the landscape
like a tidal wave.
A
hundred times my despairing soul
Has
fallen in love with death but was refused it.
After
such failures, what remorseless flame
Still
feeds my will to live, what love
Do
I have to give to this glaring sky,
To
this cramped moon and to the ball of fire -
Reminder
of our divine connexion and the eternal wheel -
Which
Will rise again, slowly, tomorrow.
Perhaps
I should have lain down like the condemned
And
fettered souls who wait for cock crow,
I
should have known perhaps that the fiery wanderers on the horizon
save
us, and that a roof over one’s head
Is
enough for the homeless child, who,
long ago
Held
in his hands the dove of peace
O
tenderness!
But
I know that night’s pathways
Are
like bridges lowered from the sky
And
its enough, always, to take just one step forward
Through
the fields of poppies. Confused I may be
But
I won’t give up on my attempts to make things better,
Turning
my back on failure,
Keeping my eyes wide open
Despite
the stinging dust.
Here,
there is the bright, unbroken light.
Here,
the wide river that nothing can hold back.
Over
there, the stars turn and then come to rest,
High
above my valley, where the wild goats roam
And
where the snowline shrinks
Before
the still and peaceful lakes,
May
the Son of man return
In
peace, amen.
(translated by Morelle Smith)