Curing the monster Some images of and considerations - Prof. Dr ...

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events in the present in so far as these historical events are united as 'history'
through a new tradition. Without such a (re)integration of the new into history which
- at least so far as the history of art is concerned - especially during the last
centuries has been a history of the previously new or avantgarde, the avantgarde
remains meaningless and falls into oblivion as soon as it is antiquated by the very
next avantgarde.
As in art, the function of the avantgarde in mythology or symbolism could be to
look at the apparently assured interpretations of our ancestors from a different
perspective, i.e. to recognize again as unknown and surprising what has been
regarded as evident and familiar. To the extent that traditional myths and images
have to be rediscovered or reinterpretated from newly created or shaped
images, the new myth may also appear in another light.
To create such a new tradition often enough means recognizing the social as well
as the unconscious dimensions these images refer to and are built upon as parts
of a common culture. This, for example, means that ancient images often carry
latently, so to speak, more cristallized meaning than we are able to reactivate
contemporarily or that we, in a non-conscious manner, are referring to earlier
images; we may even quote from them without being aware of the fact or of its
sources.
In order to demonstrate more explicitly what I mean by it, I would like to start with an
example which, in the present context, appears to be interesting, because it might
contribute towards a better understanding of the SCOS-dragon. On my hunt for the
dragon I found a picture of one of the adventures of Baron Münchhausen fighting
the dragon in what appeared to me on first sight as quite a curious way of dragon
slaughtering. Münchhausen, a German army officer of the 18. century, well known
for his countless adventurous journeys, once killed a dragon in Nubia by sticking a
cake made of pitch and poison on a long stick into the dragon's throat. As soon as
the monster had swallowed it, it burst into pieces with a terrible bang. Well, I
thought, just another of those curious stories of Münchhausen like the one in which
he pulled himself up by his own hair out of the swamp (cf. Watzlawick 1979) or akin
to the one in which he rode on a cannon-ball. But only later, when I discovered