The Troll King

 Many undefined phenomena’s turns our simple human imagination loose, simply because the unseen plays an important role in our beliefs about almost everything.

In dreams the human brain functions in a realistic manner, a perfect example of such is a painting drawn by John Henry Fuseli around 1871-1872 named  “The Nightmare”.

Fuseli, a Swiss born artist who lived most of his life in England, was the iconic genius of his time. In the late 18^th century most artists were influenced by a style called “Romanticism”. This style was widely known among legendary artists at that time.

When we wonder, on what does Romanticism mean? Our brain immediately thinks of “Love”. But if we actually took a closer look and reviewed the basic concept of Romanticism we would actually find out that it really explores the imaginative inner realms of the mind, a human point of view in expressing words like, I feel, I think, I act, I live, I am an individual, my life is my own, freedom, love, the sense of creating the unseen world of books, tales, sayings and legends.

In “The Nightmare“ Fuseli created an unseen supernatural threat, which astonished us as the

“Incubus”.  
 This all came from European folklore.
( An Incubus is a devious creature of the night,

 a demon known to surmount or lay upon helpless women in their sleep and conduct in sexual activities with them.

The disturbing cold look on the Incubus’s face haunted its viewer and gave an infamous reputation that speaks for itself. The symbolism is as clear as it can get. It displayed an occurring nightmare of a sleeping woman. the room seem effected with a soft concentration of light. This style in painting is called Chiaroscuro, and it literally means “Light-Dark”.

Many Artists use the style “Chiaroscuro” in their painting technique; it’s when they illuminate a dark area, like painting a lit candle in a dark room. The mix of dark and bright colors smartly gives an illusion of a light source.

Then there’s a crazed mare lurking from behind the curtains, and that itself wasn’t a random use of canvas space. If we actually took a closer look on the origins of the word nightmare we would find out that it actually means “An evil spirit that suffocates sleepers”.  Fuseli showed a cryptic message of some sort. To explain more take the symbol of a drawn eye, a heart and the letter U, what does that look like? It clearly shows the symbol and the formation of the sentence “I love you”. In Fuseli’s painting The nightmare it does exactly that, the atmosphere seems dark and at night time, the mare is there just like the “I love you” sentence, and for Fuseli he wanted to symbolize the night-mare. 

There was also a vile of what seemed to be some kind of medication. Back at that time people were extremely superstitious, and some strongly believed that if women didn’t have any children their most likely to have lost their mind and gone insane.  In order to calm those women down doctors prescribe a dangerous hallucinogenic drug called Optisulin. The drug did calm women down, but with terrible side effects that mostly lead to death and some serious cases of addictions.

 The whole theme represents an intense sexual sight.

Another theory about the message art scholars debated about this painting is that the sleeping woman is Anna Landolt. Anna was Fuseli’s lover, they were deeply in love and Fuseli planned to ask her hand in marriage, sadly Anna’s father did not agree and they were forced to leave each other. Heart broken Fuseli created this masterpiece out of frustration, Fuseli then was reincarnated within the Incubus in the painting. The painting represented an erotic aspect of lost love and the pain Fuseli faced on a daily biases knowing she was never his.

We as soul beings of this planet love to explore the infinite imaginative realm of dreams and unexplained fantasies. Being allured to this beautiful yet disturbing iconic image is only natural.

 After all it does really tap into pages of our brain that only our wildest dreams managed to show.