Reflections on the meaning of erotic mysticism are not to be expected from Cornell’s journal which is given to spontaneous jottings and chance associations. Nevertheless he was aware that the daily exercise in self-scrutiny was a revolutionary innovation. Andre Breton and the Surrealists had encouraged exploration of every aspect of the unconscious, no matter how bizarre or anti-social. Accepting the quest, Cornell pursued and welcomed inner states that Americans of his generation thought of no importance, if not improper. He freely used the language of obsession-compulsion, writing of a late night journal entry: “this scribble may not be the ideal—but as cognizant as one is of its ephemerality there exists compulsion”. He goes on “penning at 3:30 AM with a sense of never having done it before! ... skies spread out with the softest deep fleecy scant dark shown—Cassiopeia barely discerned—cool or even cold” (p. 236). The leap from self-observation into absorption by celestial wonders, a sort of mystical transport out of self, is characteristic of Cornell’s imaginative habits. It is what leads beyond sexual anxiety to the wonders of cosmic imagery in some of his best boxes. He seldom dwells on troubling moods or free associations which might have revealed origins in current relationships or family history. The journal is seeking visionary wonder, not conducting auto-analysis of the rich deposits of inner experience. It could therefore be called escapist, except that Cornell cannot help but reveal a sense of isolation and yearning. When human relations are dwelt upon, they tend to produce disconnectedness, even disorganization or dissociation, as termed in the language of attachment. For instance on May 29, 1956 he recorded: “one of those visitations or moods just (hovering on deep depression) and exultation in endless unfoldment of city doings in many directions (and the accompanying energy for this seemingly endless inclination (thirst whatever it is)—by night (at home) that feeling with remorse at not having come home directly ... nervous kind of reaction sometimes (often) at home should be the signal for metaphysical work ...” (p. 206). There follows a disjointed catalogue of impressions from his “city journey”, but nothing coherent emerges until he writes, “on the verge of that magical feeling about many things of the past—and healthy sense—not too nostalgic—the changing scene on Third Ave.” (p. 207). Here matters end and we are not taken into the meaning of “home” which could have been examined. The need is evident for some sort of reclamation of past experience, for “repair” or integration of its dissociated elements. Cornell goes only as far as pledging “metaphysical work” to enhance “magical feeling” about his “past” and the home which so grips him that he must escape. Instead of taking these half-articulated feelings into reconstructive analytic treatment, he pursued a mythology in art which, at its best, transmutes dissonant experience into impersonal healing archetypes.
There were also more proximate protective factors against depression. The intensity of Cornell’s exposure to his difficult and impinging widowed mother was buffered by sharing care for disabled brother Robert. Though of normal intelligence and equitable temperament, Robert never walked and was
housebound; Joseph, his main caregiver, saw to Robert’s physical needs and devised entertaining pastimes. Devotion to Robert led to playful exchanges that stimulated Joseph’s inventive fantasy. The brothers’ closeness tended to exclude mother. Games and hobbies, especially toy trains, enveloped the brothers in a world of their own, complete with private code words. Play developed in the sense that the analyst Donald Winnicott understood it: the necessary precursor of true creativity. Looking after Robert limited Joseph’s freedom, but it also concentrated his fantasy, increased his humanity and kept him close to the workshop where new ideas were given form. Robert was often the first to see new boxes and delighted in them. After Robert died in 1965, Joseph paid tribute with a Rene Magritte-inspired collage showing a toy train. In 1972 he also incorporated Robert’s drawing of a “Playboy” rabbit into a memorial collage, remarking of his brother: “To the end ... he retained the pure joy of the child-mind although cruelly plagued” (p. 393).
Although their mother made it Joseph’s duty to look after Robert, resentment seems not to have resulted. Joseph’s struggle against chronic “morbid sadness” (p. 152) was less a function of indenture as Robert’s caregiver than of the unmourned loss of their father and the consequent financial and social dislocation of the survivors. However, we lack Cornell’s reflection on the concatenation of losses. Diane Wildman writes, “Cornell was as reluctant to reveal the details of his life as he was to sell one of his works”. she adds, “Cornell always insisted that his art was the result of a loving and understanding milieu, without which it would have been impossible”.11 Lynda Hartigan repeats this anodyne view: “Cornell retained indelible impressions of his childhood in a close-knit family, and in subtle and direct ways his art contained reverberations of his childhood interests and experiences”. Hartigan cites the “warm relationship [of the Cornell children] with their maternal grandparents” as more sustaining than with their own mother.12 But loss of grandparents compounded the grief for loss of father. This helps to explain why Cornell was so imbued with an idealized past that masked unmourned sadness, and why objects were so emotionally charged with desire. The surrealists’ typical concern with irrational connotations of ordinary objects prompted reflections on a “kind of happy marriage with my life-long preoccupation with things. Especially with regard to the past ... mystical sense of the past—empathy for antiques—nostalgia for old books, period documents, prints, photographs etc.” (p. 387). Words follow on creativity as “consolation”, a way to recover pleasurable aspects of the family past. Occasionally the journal reports fond memories of early days in Nyack where the family lived, but there is no concerted reconstruction, only search for consolation.
Cornell knew he was entrapped, that his erotic impulses were strange and wayward, especially towards adolescent girls. By 1959 he was able to write, “youth [:] what is the obsession?—desolation resulting from clinging unrelenting pressures (outrageously obscure) unresolved stalemate unwilling, or stupidity of girls in meeting home situation and so the way in which trivialities seem to glow with a warm consolation & strangers are endowed with qualities they don’t possess or at least it would be embarrassing to them with one’s own endowment in such a mood” (p. 263). Convoluted though this statement may be, it is among Cornell’s best insights into his predicament. Idealized young girls lured him off the pathway of self-transcending art. Cornell was never as successful as the painter Balthus at bringing desirable youthful females into his art. Nudes are not admitted to his shadow boxes or collages and Cornell only rarely shows more than a glamorous tightly framed head and shoulders. When there are exceptions, as in Untitled: (Sequestered Bower) (1948) the nude is a plastic doll, while in the collage The Sister Shades (1956) the topless women have their backs turned to the viewer. Chaste restraint thus separates Cornell’s art from that of the other subjects of this study, Picasso, Bellmer and Balthus who all indulged in exposures and manipulations unthinkable to this American artist.