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ΨΧς

Lord Byron on His Deathbed, painted by Joseph-Denis Odevaere

Clyfford Still - 1957

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

H. Biberstein's depiction of` de Sade
 

That perhaps best summarizes the overall feeling of ΨΧς, though it is far from an innocent "Huh?" since it is a deliberately dark and brooding work. It started from a pure chaos I discovered in my mind and it is inspired by themes found in the works of Lord Byron and Marquis de Sade; so it should not come as a surprise that it is a work full of ominous storm clouds and forbidden imagery. At the core of  ΨΧς there lies an intricate stream-of-consciousness that almost functions as a background noise and so even though there is a lot of 'continuity' in the work, it is not in the traditional sense, but rather is a melting together of different strains of reality, because of which different 'stories' are applicable to different characters and psyches mutually blend into one another to form a strangely chaoistic synergy.

As I began tow write on ΨΧς I immediately had to think about the paintings of Clyfford Still because more than any other painter of 'abstract expressionism' he portrays an image similar to what I envision, a constant splinter that rips  through the fabric of all our being and as such there always is confusion. The basis of my view goes back to the thinking of Martin Heidegger and his notion of man as the world-building creature; what Heidegger forgot though is to insert the notion of madness and the true extent of anxiety; and it is precisely from that point that ΨΧς sets sail, so like the overture of Wagner's Flying Dutchman it begins tumultuous, the reader is not allowed to have a comfort zone; the work is meant to pull the reader inside (in this respect ΨΧς is obviously the other pole of Naturalism) and to make him experience life on a whole new level, as a constant turmoil rather than the pretty affairs of a stagnant consciousness; life as such becomes something rather feeble, not something that can be taken for granted and the persona or psyche of individual is never anything stabile but always is something dark and confusing.

Although ΨΧς is a definite work of literary fiction and is far away removed from any genre or pulp, there still is a great deal of horror present in the work. There is nothing in the work though that makes it a traditional work of horror; rather there is the presence of that sinister undercurrent; especially concerning this aspect I enjoy the work of Lovecraft, a writer who I think is sadly enough undervalued and is often seen as mere pulp and genre horror. The point in the work of Lovecraft is however always something enigmatic; it is never horror in the obvious sense, instead there is what I call 'pure horror', there is an affliction of the mind in which all the sudden you are faced with an alien kind of outlook, the geometries of living are no longer what they once were. 'Pure horror' is an internal event, has nothing much to do with killers and bloodshed, it is something that happens inside of the mind and this really is what ΨΧς  is all about, sudden twists, impossible and perception; it is about a true nightmare, the kind that people say could not ever possibly occur; you wake up bathing in sweat with a rapid breath and that is just the start of it, what happens next, what suddenly unfolds in your mind ... that is horror!

There are a few more explicit moment in ΨΧς but other than that the mere casual reader might not see the influence of the Marquis de Sade, as it deals with his ideas more than with the directness of his style and imagery; more importantly the work is my own, there is no need to copy anyone, I just enjoy the thoughts of other people and in a way ΨΧς is all about 'other people' mingling into one self; the whole world becomes a demonic entity. It is not about madness in any traditional/clinical sense; rather it deals with freedom and destruction; about the emergence of a new world which most are unable to deal with; and though far from explicit in the text, there is an ethical dimension quite close to some of Nietzsche's thoughts. Perhaps there are  some disturbing 'images' in ΨΧς, this however is to catch the reader off-guard, the aim is for the text and the reader to become one with each other and so for there to be a living story. At the end it is a metaphysical adventure, it is about 'pure mind' and about that gargantuan concept called reality; there is quite a twist really on gothic horror (especially certain ideas found in Shelley's Frankenstein); the supernatural is no longer something 'out there' rather it is the disturbance within and that is what ΨΧς is all about: the within!