Henry Darger

Henry Darger was a recluse who wrote a 15,000 page illustrated novel titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. Matthew Michael quotes Stephen Prokopoff:

The story recounts the wars between nations on an enormous and unnamed planet, of which Earth is a moon. The confict is provoked by the Glandelinians, who practice child enslavement. After hundreds of ferocious battles, the good Christian nation of Abbiennia forces the ‘haughty’ Glandelinians to give up their barbarous ways. The heroines of Darger’s history are the seven Vivian sisters, Abbiennian princesses. They are aided in their struggles by a panoply of heroes, who are sometimes the author’s alter-egos. The battles are full of vivid incident: charging armies, ominous captures, alarms and explosions, the appearances of demons and dragons.

Darger’s work includes some disturbing portrayals of violence visited upon hermaphroditic children. Matthew Michael writes on his Darger site:

Darger’s paintings, as well as the passages of the Realms of the Unreal they illustrate, often are disturbingly violent. Great numbers of clothed and naked children are strangled, eviscerated, and tortured by cruel Glandelinian soldiers. The numerous, explicit depictions of torture have led several critics to speculate as to whether Darger was in fact a child murderer or serial killer. He most probably was not.

The “most probably” is not particularly comforting, but the general consensus seems to be that Darger’s was a troubled and violent mind which, in a testament to the benefits of art therapy, found expression through the creation of his epic work, rather than through acts of violence.

John Ashbery has written a long poem on Realms of the Unreal.

Art in America’s article on Darger is particularly good.

Anyway, this is what I’m researching today.