Picturing the Black Dada Nihilismus (Part 3)
You basically need a PhD in everything to understand Baraka’s “Black Dada Nihilismus” but let’s not eliminate the possibility that the poem itself is Dada—and perhaps the poet himself has a little bit of bitch in him. And, of course, every professor of poetry will tell you eventually that poetry is not meant to be understood completely. So keep this in mind when I suggest that when Baraka writes “B.D.N.” and “Trismegistus” he is referring to Masonic thought. Now Masonic thought is what makes every well-educated, rich white boy of any skin color sit up and take notice. Because the Masons made America happen. Masonic imagery is on every funky dollar bill—next to that eagle holding the Indian-killing arrows. So dig, baby, the Masons are to the ancient Egyptians, what our Black Dada Nihilismus is to the so-called “Narmer Palette.” Do you feel what I mean? What am I smoking? Hit this chief… But before you do, I can’t take credit for finding the Masonic references in “Black Dada Nihilismus.” Much respect for the mother of my third child, whom I affectionately call “Professor T.” She made this complete thought possible, the funky thangs to play whiff.
Next slide please:
Our African woman, darkly packed into the bottom of the frame looks cold stone in love. She can’t be seeing the ridiculous character that’s stimulating her. In fact we see her eyes closed. She is feeling something inside of herself. Maybe it’s because of a few winks in my UCSB art history classes from the Reagan-era 1980s, but I can’t help but compare the expression on this woman’s face to the Ecstasy of St Theresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In Bernini’s marble sculpture, a cold steel arrow held by a figure we have been trained to call “an angel” is about to pierce the heart of the faithful. Here, in the rasx() context, Baraka suggests a relationship between the “protestant” modernist color geometries of Mondrian to Catholic stained glass windows in the line, “The protestant love, wide windows, color blocked to Mondrian.” It is this obscure, flimsy, suggestion of a reference that permits me to build a similar relationship between the modern, African woman’s face and the Catholic sculptural visage of Bernini.
Again, when we take away all of the pomp and papal smoke of the censer, we have a military instrument being used to ‘inspire’ (not to impale). We have an angel with the Renaissance equivalent of the 1960’s M1 rifle vibrating with awesome power. The pious women can’t resist. Is not our Black Dada Nihilismus wielding such a seductive instrument of violence? Is he not girded with the ceremonial armor of war? Will our Black Dada Nihilismus put down his weapons and study war no more? Or will he bring his violent ways into the lives of ‘his own’—those African women enraptured. Baraka writes:
nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.
Black dada nihilismus, choke my friends
Do we think that our Black Dada Nihilismus can switch off all of this violence confused with sexuality and become intimate without a surprise attack? I don’t think our Black Dada Nihilismus can break his religious ties and abandon the missionary position. Clearly he is not alone, as these women appear to submit to all of his Greco-Roman-Hollywood trappings, encasing an ancient African self, an ancient Egyptian motion blur… “what ugliness, learned in the dome, colored holy… a moral code, so cruel…”