Flowers of Evil

Once in a while I discover the reason I’ve taken a photograph. This doesn’t happen often. In fact, there was a space of ten years between the time I made this photograph at left and “discovered” its raison d’être. I cannot say where I made the original image (memory being imperfect, note-taking, even less so), but I did at some point apply some photo dye to a paper print. Perhaps this was ill-advised. Regardless, I like the colorized image. 

Titling my work is not one of my strong points (my oldest daughter, Julie, used to make fun of my titles). So, any help I can get is appreciated. Not being above plagiarism, I’ve stolen words and phrases from books, magazines, song lyrics − ultimately, from other people. When I came upon the collection of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, it was like I found the Grail!  

I found this lovely volume while browsing the fine book section at Long in the Tooth, a fabulous used/new-book-and-music shop in Philadelphia. The couple who own it cater to a rather specialized clientele – in other words, they have cool stuff that I like. I’d heard of Baudelaire, but had no idea what his work was about. Thumbing through the book for a minute made me realize it had to be mine. Not only is this 1857 collection of poetry fabulously intense reading (forget Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn that you had to read in high school!), but for my photographic images, I can pretty much open the book anywhere and grab a fine title line! A casual thumbing rewards you with such gems as:

"Under a stricken sky"

"The twin goddesses, Force and Grace"

"Trembling like a soul in pain"

I’ve sprinkled this article with some of my original images, graced with titles borrowed from Les Fleurs du mal. For the kind of cemetery photography that I do, Baudelaire’s poetry offers descriptive candy. Merely opening the book and reading any line will serve quite nicely. But that one line can easily suck you in. Before you know it, goths, horror fans, and cemetery travelers alike may find themselves reading the entire poem, then the one after that, and so on. 

"The black hearses of my dreams"

Baudelaire was a French poet of the mid-nineteenth century. Bitter. Hated people, critics especially. Widely recognized as an innovator of French literature (Wikipedia), his work influenced an entire generation of poets, including Arthur Rimbaud (A Season in Hell). Baudelaire had great difficulty getting his work past the censors of the day, mainly because his writing is violent, brave, vulgar (for the time), and highly sexual – all of which make Flowers of Evil a collection of exquisite poetry that is oh so worth reading! (And oh so worth plagiarizing.)

Baudelaire was fascinated by Poe's evocation of the dark side of the imagination, which influenced the sinister seductiveness of his own work. “These themes and influences play a predominant role in Baudelaire's 1857 collection of poetry, The Flowers of Evil, which juxtaposed the negative themes of exile, decay, and death with an ideal universe of happiness”(ref).

"A smile not ever, neither do I weep"

Baudelaire and his publisher were both prosecuted at the time, as Flowers of Evil was viewed as “an insult to public decency."As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined and some of his poems from the work were suppressed (the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949)(Wikipedia). Which is all very surprising to me, as the work is certainly not as horrible, hideous, and gruesome as the work of another French writer, the Marquis deSade, who was imprisoned and sent to an insane asylum as a reward for his work. Ah, the power of the written word – and the possible consequences when you grant people freedom of speech.

The French Novel

My only experience with the French novel up to the point of my discovery of Baudelaire was a Humanities course I took in college (1978!), called “The French Novel.” I had heard it was easy – read six novels and give an oral presentation at the end of the semester. The course description was accompanied by the two most beautiful words in the English language: “No tests.” A cake course, I thought. 

Between reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Zola’s Nana, and a few other classics, I had to come up with a topic for my 45-minute speech. Early on, I learned to pick up on clues left by people as to their likes and dislikes (a skill that has allowed me to be nuts-on with buying Christmas presents over the years). The professor who taught the French Novel course would mention the work of the Marquis deSade every now and then, which was enough for me to pick up on the fact that he was a fan. And, not knowing anything about deSade's writing, my nineteen-year-old curiosity was piqued. 

"The tomb is hungry"

My presentation would be on deSade's work. After procuring some of his books (not easy, as its basically all violent porn), I devised a presentation. At the end of the semester, I brought a couple of the books to class, with the intention of not showing them to anyone. During my speech, I referred to his Gothic fiction in vague terms, never once quoting deSade. It was a small audience, maybe six guys and twelve girls. As I spoke, I could tell they were getting more and more nervous, yet curious about deSade’s writing. I kept saying things like, “You shouldn’t read this if you have a weak stomach,” and “Really, this is the most horrible thing you’ll ever seen in print. Please don't open the book unless you really want to.” 

I’d considered it experiential learning, in a way. People loosely throw around statements like, “That teacher is such a sadist! He gives SO much homework!” Perhaps we shouldn’t use the term so lightly?

"The sacred holocaust of your first flowers"

By the middle of my presentation, I’d worked them to a fever pitch. The flowers of their curiosity were opened and in full bloom, ready for my Evil. I picked up one of the books, Justine, and held it out to a student, with the suggestion that they may open it and read a few words if they dare, then pass it along. As I continued speaking, I totally ignored their reactions. Someone would receive the book, hesitantly open it, read for a couple seconds, maybe half a minute, close it, and pass it on. Every face was shocked. In the span of fifteen minutes, three young women burst into tears, got up and fled the room. I wasn't actually prepared for that, but I soldiered on. The professor loved my delivery and I got an “A” for the course. Over a year later, I actually overheard a couple of freshmen discussing the particular professor who taught the French Novel course. One of them said, “It’s a tough course. I heard only one person ever got an “A.”

When you learn more about something (like cemeteries, for instance), you typically become more comfortable with the idea. Not so with deSade's work. And maybe not so with Baudelaire's, either. So why read such dark literature? Other than providing witty titles for artwork, what other purpose can it serve? Filmaker/author John Waters points out a possible benefit to all of us: "No one ever committed a crime while reading a book!"

Links and Further Reading:

Long in the Tooth on MySpace

Marquis deSade

The writings of the Marquis deSade are not for the faint of heart, so I purposely avoided linking to any of them. However, if I've aroused your curiosity, please hunt for them yourself - but you've been warned.

Books by the Marquis deSade:

Justine

The 120 Days of Sodom

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man

Then there's the (2000) movie about deSade, Quills, starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet and Joaquin Phoenix (not for the squeamish). 

A Cemetery, Only Half-Abandoned

Funny how life is simply a constant realignment of priorities. Time was, I wouldn’t go near a cemetery unless it had obvious and grandiose angel monuments. For ten years, I never read an epitaph. A few years ago I began to appreciate cemeteries for more than just their statues. I had no choice—with all the angels shot, I had to dig deeper into cemetery life, that is, if I wanted to continue spending ridiculous amounts of time in them.

I found myself in a weird state last week, New Jersey, to be exact. I was attending an opening reception for some photographer friends at a gallery in the lovely little town of Haddon Heights, NJ. I always carry a map to scout out cemeteries, and I noticed a small one in the area that I decided to check out on the way home.

Mt. Peace Cemetery in the town of Lawnside coexists with the Home Depot, just across White Horse Pike in South Jersey. I pulled onto its ungated grounds, got out of the car and began walking around the neat and tidy graveyard. Grass was cropped short and piles of old flower pots and cuttings lined the cemetery’s wooded perimeter. Lots of Civil War veterans’ graves with small flags waving, but that was about it—a small, sad little cemetery, as my Grandmother would’ve said. At first glance it seemed to have nothing to recommend it; at second glance I was sure it didn't-- until I noticed the tombstones in the woods.

The two sides of the cemetery not bordered by roads were bordered by a forest, essentially. It was densely wooded with vines encircling the trunks of gnarled trees. Bushes with red berries and wildflowers all but covered - scores of old tombstones! Were people buried in the woods, or did cemetery trees just thrive randomly in the fertile soil amidst these lonely graves?

As I walked back through the thicket over fallen trees and empty beer cans, I quickly realized the dates on the stones were not so old. Most stones were of a soft material which lost its detail to the elements over the past century, but some showed dates as recent as the 1930s. Old Mortality must have been on a bender when he was due to ride through Lawnside. It appeared as though somewhere along the line, the groundskeepers decided it really wasn’t worth maintaining the older section.

The cemetery is twice its apparent size—half in plain view from the street, half hidden under the dark foliage cover. Scores of graves litter the forest. Toppled and sunken headstones are easy to trip over, as many are not obvious poking through the wildflowers and vines. Treading among the stones I couldn’t help wonder why people would lose interest in a cemetery, in their own history. How do you just forget about all these people who died? The untended area was shadowy and packed with ghostly stillness, even as daylight filtered through the leaves above. Massive spider webs stretched from tree to tree and creepy shadows played on headstones. I got an unsettling feeling, something akin to that which Mark Twain described as “when one woke up by accident away in the night, and forgotten sins came flocking out of the secret chambers of the memory.”

To add to the creepiness, there’s an old house in the woods, in a clearing beyond the trees. Imagine having a graveyard in your backyard—or rather, a graveyard as your backyard! Not even a fence to provide a psychological barrier between you and the scores of dead bodies mouldering in the ground. Forget wasting money on Halloween Fright Nights—walking through here at night would do it for me.

A good distance into the thicket I came upon a headstone with an old folding chair beside it. The deceased’s given name was “Anna;” the chair was tattered and rusty. Anna found peace in 1935, but obviously her mate did not. I immediately thought of the cinematic vehicle used in the movie “Rocky Balboa (2006),” where Rocky kept a chair at Adrian’s grave to sit on while he visited. Anna and Adrian were relatively young when they died (both in their forties), but whereas Adrian was fictionally romanticized, Anna was a true love lost. The pain suffered by her mate must have been the kind Baudelaire knew:

"When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit aching for the light
And all the wide horizon’s line is hid
By a black day sadder than any night"

He could not forget Anna, yet he is long forgotten himself, along with the scores of other people in these lonely graves. As I sit in my comfortable living room a few nights later typing this, its pouring outside. I can’t help but think of that chair in the dark, in the rain.

I knew nothing about Mt. Peace Cemetery prior to my visit—exploration is more personal that way. Afterwords, I did some research. Mount Peace was organized in 1890 by African Americans to provide a burial place for their dead—they were excluded from other cemeteries because of race. Bear in mind that until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African-Americans were not allowed to drink from "white" water fountains or use "white" bathrooms. Even in death, there was segregation. Mt. Peace was designated as a "black" cemetery, one of the few along the East Coast (GSGI, 2003). Aptly named, it may have been the only place these people finally found peace.

In 1952, the company that owned and maintained Mt. Peace went bankrupt, and the 18-acre site fell into disrepair. A fire in the cemetery office destroyed all of the records and maps of the plots. With the inscriptions worn away from the stones, the dead have effectively disappeared. However, their presence is certainly felt. By 1978, Mount Peace was overgrown with shrubbery and had become a virtual dumping ground. Cleaning it became a neighborhood volunteer project. Residents came out every Saturday during the spring and summer bringing their own tools and equipment to clean up and cut back the undergrowth. The dividing line I noted earlier is simply where the volunteer cleanup crews ran out of resources. The Lawnside, NJ Historical Society continues to expand its efforts to restore and protect the cemetery.

Links for more information:

Garden State Ghost Investigations (GSGI)
Lawnside Historical Society
Mt. Peace Video Documentary

Freddie Krueger

Somewhere in the past , back when wishing was still of some use (possibly 2004), I found a rundown cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia and ventured inside with my camera. Groundskeepers were busily whacking weeds and mowing grass. It was a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon, not at all the conditions under which one might have the wits scared out of one.

I roamed around a bit, photographing the busted up statues, when I came upon a grand old stone building half built into the earth, half out. The outer half said "Receiving Vault 1870," over its long-sealed doorway.

Receiving vaults were used in the olden days to store bodies of people who died in the winter months before motorized hydraulic excavating equipment like the backhoe became available. Sometimes it was just impossible to manually dig a grave in the frozen ground. Come spring, the bodies would be buried.

Infrared Image of Receiving Vault

So there I am setting up my camera on its tripod to shoot the grand entrance to the receiving vault amidst all the noise of the mowing equipment, weed whackers, etc. Bright sunny day, I'm not thinking at all about the corpses fading in the cemetery all around me (as Baudelaire would say). Suddenly, Freddie Krueger is standing next to me dressed in jean overalls, a plaid shirt, and straw hat -- holding a pitchfork! I was rather startled by his size more than his clothes and accoutrements. I'm six-foot-two, so he must have been six-six -- an imposing figure covered in bits of grass and hay. He says something to me, but I can't hear him clearly over the sound of mowing equipment. With all the noise, he could kill me and no one would hear my screams. I ask him, "What did you say?"

He repeats, "Are you with us or against us?" Um, well, hmmm....not much opportunity to run unless I want to leave my camera and tripod behind. So I say, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean." He repeats in a steady tone, "Are you with us or against us?" Ok, so now thoughts of Marathon Man are flooding my brain, specifically the part where the Nazi dentist is torturing Dustin Hoffman while repeatedly asking, "Is it safe?" (If you've never seen this movie, and have a strong stomach, feel free to watch the scene here.)

I have a strong urge to reply,  "Oh, I'm totally with you on this," and beat a hasty retreat, but I bite my tongue. He repeats the question a couple more times until Freddie finally drops the intimidation act and realizes that I'm not his enemy. He explains to me that his company just bought the cemetery and is restoring it. As part of the renovation, they're planning to build a crematorium on the grounds and the neighbors are up in arms about it. Hence the question "Are you with us or against us?"

Whew. I make some small talk with him (as much as I comfortably can after peeing my pants), and then say goodbye, good luck, or something ridiculous like that. I left and I've never been back to that cemetery. I wonder if they ever built the crematorium? If anyone reading this knows, please add it as a comment! I can only manufacture so much history, you know.