Lafl das T ̧fleln, lafl das Holbeln,
heilig halte die Ekstasen.^29Morgenstern created doodles and used them as vignettes between his
poems, and these validate personal visions and dreams, an uncon-
scious or delirious side of art. These drawings in Galgenlieder are
evocative of Kleeís painting and his drawings.^30 Morgensternís text is
covered with hieroglyphs and squiggles of the kind that appear in
Kleeís art and Paulinís poem ë í from Walking a Line. As E.H.
Gombrich notices in his essay on ëThe Image and Word In Twentieth
Century Artí where he discusses the work of Paul Klee in relation to
Morgenstern: ëThey are the dreams which arise when the controls are
relaxed and ecstasy wins over fussing and correcting. But they are
more than dreams, they are intimations of a possible reality.í^31 This is
a reality at the beyond of discursive strategies or at a nonsensical limit
alluded to by Morgensternís ecstatic doodling.
Here, it is useful to draw on the concept of dÈlire from Jean-
Jacques Lecercle:
DÈlire as I shall now use the word is a form of discourse, which questions our
most common perceptions of language (whether expressed by linguists or
philosophers), where the old philosophical questions of the emergence of sense
out of nonsense receives a new formulation, where the material side of
language, its origin in the human body and desire, are no longer eclipsed by its
abstract aspect (as an instrument of communication or expression). Language,
nonsense, desire: dÈlire accounts for the relations between these three terms.^32DÈlire is understood as a potential delirium at the basis of all discourse
whereby the writer or speaker totters on the brink of language and
29 Christian Morgenstern, Galgenlieder, Palmstrom (Berlin, 1905). My
translation: ëLet the molecules career/ leave them to their own confections/
Never fuss about corrections/ Ecstasies thou shalt revere.í
30 Klee’s drawings sometimes take the form of elaborate doodling. This is evident
in his diaries and in the exhibition of his drawings from the Bürgi Collection at
the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh from 12th August–
22nd October 2000.
31 E.H. Gombrich, ëImage and Word in Twentieth Century Artí, Word and Image,
Vol.1, No.3, JulyñSeptember, 1985, p.230.
32 Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy Through the Looking Glass: Language,
Nonsense, Desire, Problems of Modern European Thought (Essex: Hutchinson,
1985), p.6.