The Last Words of Caligari (The Charlatan)

I. Wherein “Caligari,” leader of the Tragedy House, speaks of impure meals and a deadly West African root extract.

"Good evening, children; sons and daughters of abomination. As descendants of Adam it is our curse to share in the pain of expulsion. We of the Tragedy House suffer twice, for we are shunned by our own kind, who are outcasts of nature, driven from the kingdom of beasts. Let us thank the Great Pessimist, who taught that man can never return to the kingdom of beasts.

"Now let us hold in our minds what unites us at this moment.

"Madness, children. The madness of our convictions. The madness of renouncing the age-old ways. In these barren mountains, under blind stars, we live as misfits scornful of all privileges claimed by the mightiest of nature’s predators, penning our farcical plays and dreaming up new pantomimes from our trunk full of costumes. Our cousins in the valley think us mad; let them lap up their spoils, the greediest of earth’s consumers. Meanwhile we smile through our makeup into the panic that sweeps all humanity in the jaws of madness.

"Tonight I speak of madness: For who does not think of madness at the mention of Caligari?

"Who among you does not recall the ending of that wicked little film, wherein the entire preceding story is revealed to be the fantasy of Francis, an inmate of an insane asylum? There is a reason I ask you to study the movie. It is to question its reliability, for in my mind Francis’s narrative is not alone in warranting suspicion — we must give context to the second story that debunks the first. Compelled to soften Francis’s tale of a sleepwalker programmed to kill and a hypnotist’s murderous obsession, the filmmakers were obliged to recast it as a fabrication of mental illness, and yet in their invention we see the ultimate delusion.

"For these men bowed to the overarching impulse to repress the truth that human beings exist as martyrs on the altar of a purposeless universe. Like courtiers in a Jacobean tragedy we bleed for the sake of bleeding, powerless to break the cycle of causality and addicted to any haven from our terror of the slaughter. Even our little colony knows the urge to repress this sickening knowledge, for our isolation speaks to the instinct of all threatened creatures to seek higher ground.

"As artists attuned to the human cry against a universe that is meaningless and unjust, we, children, are particularly sensitive; yet through our creativity and fellowship we have diminished the power of repression in order to sink deeper, with compassion and even curiosity, into the cosmic panic, the underlying fears that torment us.

"Indeed, as the Great Pessimist has shown, human beings dread not only death, but life itself. Not only the traumas and shocks, but the endless repetitions, the futile efforts. The mundane world leaves us incurably sick. We were doomed from the moment Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Always we feel the pangs of alarm as if we had swallowed poison and wait for its effect: In our imaginations, in that excess of cognition that has armed us mightily against other beasts, we turn upon ourselves. Visions of agony, of horrible prolonged suffering, unfold and proliferate behind the scripted scenes of our daily lives. For the sake of doing business we dismiss them; yet at 4 a.m., exhausted but sleepless, we shiver while the devil scrapes his fiddle over us.

"You have heard me tell the story of Sherlock Holmes, in which the detective performs an experiment. To discover how a murder was done he seals himself at the crime scene, whereupon he and his assistant experience the sinister effects of a West African root extract called the devil’s foot. When inhaled, the drug works by stimulating the brain centers that control the emotion of fear, thereby driving the victim mad with terror or frightening him to death. But while Watson hastens their escape from the chamber, we can never free ourselves from our own naturally occurring version of the devil’s foot. Instead we must live with our milder narcotic, moving through a reality inked and fused with shadows of horror. That we have devised strategies for enduring this is nature’s way of seeing we prolong our stays on earth a while longer.

"But I say it’s madness, children, to go on in this manner. Madness every day to distract ourselves with ambition and fancy, and every night take our dose of the devil’s foot. What we do in these mountains is nothing more than the artist’s countermeasure of sneaking up on this madness, this tragic state of affairs where we humans carry impure meals within ourselves, foul matter we cannot disgorge. For we too have the word 'Meal' carved into our brows, someday to be sucked up by another sharer of life’s burdens.

"Every animal senses it will someday be nature’s meal in one form or another, but we must wonder what it all means, and what may follow. It is into this pool of anxious speculation that we, you and I, wade with sympathy and compassion for all victims of creation. In our painted faces and tattered costumes we meet our panic, squeeze its shoulder and disarm it with a rueful smile.

"Who is mad? We who do this, or those who would change every disquieting thought or experience into a fantasy?

"Some of you have queried why it is my friend and I have borrowed the names Cesare and Caligari. What does that cinematic duo have to do with the Tragedy House? You wonder if I am serious in showcasing my friend nightly in the large open cabinet beside me, keeping him heavily sedated and under hypnosis for the purpose of eliciting prophecies. Do I believe my companion’s predictions? Or is this merely performance?

"The answer is both. It is genuine but also theatrical, with a grand end in view. I have said as artists we approach our subject sneakily. Through kind words and gentle arts we convince our man to put down his weapons and let the world go on without him. Our man is, of course, the cosmic panic that torments us. Of course, we cannot let him wander off over the horizon but must accompany him on his journey. For we are joined to this man. To his loneliness. To his despair when he turns his thoughts toward the future and perceives a world without him, wondering what the shadows hold in store.

"That is what draws me to prophecy; it is what makes me human. Like all men and women my eyes are pinned to the curtain of death, my imagination spinning with pictures of what lies beyond it. You, too, children, if I haven’t misjudged your shrewd caricatures upon the stage, hunger for a message of the future as you dance like flames around an open grave.

"And so I command Cesare to open his eyes and peer into the future for us; hush, now, he speaks."

II. Wherein Cesare, a false prophet, speaks true.

"Ye children of exile —

"For nigh on a year we’ve dwelt on this mountain, transmuting our despair into bitter comedy. In fools’ costume we’ve meditated on the step each must take after exhausting his clay in the repetitions of life. Gazing down into the valley, we see these repetitions mirrored in our counterparts, who move through a million poses, their progress an illusion of the longing that propels them. Estranged from the land, wretched mutants in the power they wield over it, they deceive themselves that their empires, their achievements, even their memories and desires, are as sword strokes cleaving through the fabric of blind forces.

"It is thus, for self-deception is vital for survival. And we refrain from disillusioning them, knowing with what rancor we would be judged. Yet we withhold our own judgment, because we swing through the same repetitions, the same poses forced on us by terrestrial urgency. If only humanity had not been cursed to see through the marvel of animation to the empty gestures that organize its existence; then it could suffer its career as painlessly as a toymaker’s experiment soon to be added to a heap of broken dolls.

"Children of Caligari, we have promised you deliverance and so you shall have it. This shelter finds us together for the last time. Salvation comes with a twist — a reversal of fortune conceived by your leader and me before we had ever guided you into these mountains and through the gates of the Tragedy House. But first you will know why we took the names Cesare and Caligari, and why we turned to an old German film for the following device.

"One, it was right that your theatrical interests be embodied in a showman such as Caligari. Two, it was useful to imitate Caligari and offer Cesare as an instrument of prophecy. Three, it was advantageous to highlight the film’s twist ending as a means of rejecting repression and also to prepare you through ritual predictions for what I am about to tell you… for we have reached the final act of the greatest performance we will ever give under these blind stars.

"Brothers and sisters, at supper you were given tainted bread. The wafers you received contained a neurotoxin — our antidote to the devil’s foot. It is through the powers of science that I predict you will all die within minutes, the result of your respiratory centers shutting down. My words will shortly have no meaning for you as you struggle — internally, for you may add paralysis to your ordeal — with the survival instincts that grip us to the very end. You will die in the positions in which you took your seats, together with your leader and me, for recall that we shared the same bread. Together we will be churned up and mashed into the bolus of pathos and despair that was once the Tragedy House, soon to be digested into the void.

"Here, then, is your final prophecy: Behold Cesare, the Last Messiah. My voice issues the words of doom. They shall wrap thee like a shroud, weave like cloth over your millionth and last pose. May we cry for the kingdom of beasts and for our cousins in the valley, and smile as we trail like fading whispers into annihilation. For not only shall we be infertile, we shall lead our race’s secret resistance to a world that offers us only poison and enslavement.

"Now follow me into the darkness and the end of madness.

"And may the universe forget us.

"Amen."