Unica Zürn: Beyond Bizarre Mary Ann Caws
The most incredible ideas begin to flower like jasmine.1
HOW STR A NGE, THIS TA LE
The story of Unica Zürn reads, from one perspective, quite like a nightmare, and from another, like the source of one of the most extraordinary outpourings of a febrile imagination ever visible on paper. Zürn spent her life telling and drawing the tale of that life: thus the fascination exercised by her most peculiar art and her two major writings: Der Mann im Jasmin (The Man of Jasmine or L’HommeJasmin) and Dunkler Frûhling (Dark Spring or Sombre Printemps), both autobiographical in feeling and also in fact, although the facts were in the crucial cases to come later than the writing. We might call this play of selves and pronouns an inter- and intra-self-reflection. As a preliminary move, let us look at a few of the predominant details about this endlessly and willfully mysterious being. She was born in 1916 in Berlin-Grunewald, as Nora Berta Unika Ruth, the 1
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Unica Zürn, L’Homme-Jasmin, trans. Ruth Henry (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are from this edition of the text and are the author’s own. Citations will hereafter appear in the text as HJ.