In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

472 FRAMES
room, a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Her bed-cover was plain white;
her dressing table austere and generally devoid of articles, save for an
inexpensive brush, comb, and mirror. 123
Being an intellectual value rather than a sensual perception, this sobriety,
together with Mary Love's taste for the art of the past, makes it plausible
that she would opt for authenticity instead of artificiality and sensuality,
even regarding her own African-American culture. Without much encouragement
from friends or professional superiors, Mary is organizing
an exhibit of "primitive" African sculpture and handicrafts. What she
finds in this ancient culture is not only a collective legacy but also an
approximation of the truth inherent in elementary forms.
She had principally been occupied in borrowing from several private
collections specimens of primitive African sculpture, and she had been
astonishingly successful-lucky, she called it-in unearthing worthy
examples, representing the creative skill of a variety of tribes from
different localities in Africa. Moreover, early dates were more or less
reasonably ascribed to some of them. One strangely beautiful head was
said to have been executed in the tenth century, or even earlier, while a
box, exquisite in proportion and design, was said to have been created
in the fourteenth century. Mary was beginning to recognize the feel of
the older work, the soft, smooth texture, like that of the best Chinese
porcelains, of the wood, so different from that of the coarser, later
pieces. She knew something, too, now, about the more primitive design,
lovelier in its conception, because it was more honest, than the more
elaborate later traceries, created under Portuguese influence. "124
The configuration of values and choices that make Mary Love, a fictional
character, organize an exhibit on archaic African art is similar to the
motivation that makes Hans Friedrich Blunck, a lawyer and poet, write
novels on the life of prehistoric Germanic tribes. Yet two things distinguish
them. First, Mary's preference for authenticity is eccentric among
black people, whereas Blunck's is typical of the German intellectual
mainstream. Second, African culture occupies an eccentric position
within the current cultural mapping of the West, which is dominated by
the European culture of which Blunck's book is a part. Still, the fictional
Mary Love and the real Hans Friedrich Blunck both choose authenticity,
which, according to Heidegger, is decisive for any form of Dasein. They