UNICA ZÜRN
THE HOUSE OF ILLNESS

SUZANNE DENNICE GUILLETTE

Love, surrealism, and the call of madness in a world out of reach

Mysterious, yes. Magical, certainly. Mad, no doubt. But hopeful? Can we say that The House of Illnesses: Stories and Pictures from a Case of Jaundice, an illustrated text written by a depressive, hallucinating, suicidal woman, is “hopeful”? Maybe . . . when pigs fly. Then again, given that the book was written by Unica Zürn, a German-born artist and writer of the post–World War II surrealist movement, the notion of pigs flying isn’t so far-fetched, now is it? In the realm of the surreal—in a sparkling, disturbing reality—just about anything is possible.

The House of Illnesses, written during Zürn’s stay at a French mental institution in the spring of 1958, traipses through the landscapes of her addled mind—which reportedly suffered from schizophrenia and dementia—incorporating wide-scope, fantasy-like visions (“the white haired man lay in the shadow of the old, very large cannon”) with sobering, real reflections (“the only thing I appreciated about him [the doctor treating her] were his excellent sleeping injections”). Originally published in 1977 as part of The Man of Jasmine, The House of Illnesses draws a fanciful, almost-enticing portrait of a mind (and therefore world) without boundaries. But the book, which was written during the early period of Zürn’s mental instability, was not seen in print until seven years after she committed suicide by throwing herself from the sixth-story Parisian apartment she shared with Hans Bellmer, the Belgian surrealist artist who was also her lover. In light of her self-inflicted death, can we really call this account of madness “enticing”?