Piggy in the Mirror

A face, a mirror and an animal (not a piggy) and a secret peek 

 

 

It has been suggested that there are links to 'Nausea' by Jean Paul Sartre. In an interview in 2012 Robert Smith says that he studied Camus and Sartre in the original French.

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p31, Penguin Modern Classics

...Anny and Velines thought that I looked alive; it may be that I am too accustomed to my face.

When I was young my Aunt Bigeois used to tell me: 'if you look at yourself too long in the mirror, you'll see a monkey there.'

...I must have looked st myself even longer than that: what I can see is far below the monkey, on the edge of the vegetable world, at the polyp level. It's alive, I can't deny that... The eyes in particular... are horrible. They are glassy, soft, blind, and red-rimmed; anyone would think they are fish scales... I push my face forward until it touches the mirror. The eyes, the nose, the mouth disappear; nothing human is left...

I slip gently into sleep...

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An entire half of my face gives way, the left half of the mouth twists and swells, uncovering a tooth, the eye socket opens on a white globe, on pink, bleeding flesh...

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I'm going to sleep with my eyes open; already the face is growing larger, growing in the mirror...

 

p51 

I tear myself from the window and stumble across the room; I glue myself against the looking glass. I stare at myself, I disgust myself: one more eternity. Finally, I flee from my image and fall on the bed. I watch the ceiling, I'd like to sleep.

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p198ff

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She adds, with a determined tone with which you end old quarrels:

'It didn't suit you at all'

I can't remember what hat she's talking about. 

'Did  say it suited me?'

'I should think you did! You never talked about anything else.And you kept sneaking a look at yourself in the mirror when you thought I couldn't see you.'

 

A tightrope walker, a mirror and a beast

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There are at least three possible references that link Piggy in the Mirror to 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' by Friedrich Nietzsche.

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In Nietzsche's, book Zarathustra comes down from the mountain in a twisted Moses fashion to announce the death of God  and the birth of the superman to the people in the Agora, the market place. He arrives as a tightrope Walker heads out on a tightrope across the market place above him. His message is lost as the tightrope walker falls and dies and Zarathustra becomes the object of disdain and ridicule as he carries the corpse away.

 

Zarathustra (Zoroaster) was the lynchpin of the Parsee religion and is often considered to be the first religion that identified the difference between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ 3000 years ago.

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Zarathustra speaks as the tightrope walker is beginning his walk across the market place on a wire high above him.

 

 

P14

Behold, I teach you the superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy. When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out:

“We've heard enough of the tightrope walker; now let's see him also!" And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tightrope walker, who thought the words were for him, began his performance.

 

Zarathustra is later horrified by his appearance in a mirror:

 

P68

Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke? Did not a child come to me, carrying a mirror?

"O Zarathustra" - said the child to me - "look at yourself in the mirror!"

But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart throbbed: for not myself did I see therein, but a devil's grimace and derision.

 

Later he refers to the 'beast inside'.

235

For fear of wild animals - that has been longest fostered in man, inclusive of the animal which he conceals and fears in himself: - Zarathustra calls it 'the beast inside.'

 

This is a nice online version:

 

https://nationalvanguard.org/books/Thus-Spoke-Zarathustra-by-F.-Nietzsche.pdf

 

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