Spellbound

March 17, 2009

Does anyone out there remember the 1945 Hitchcock flick Spellbound?
The story takes place in a Freudian world characterized by incestuous
desire, repressed guilt and the like. It stars a dashing Gregory Peck
as the head of a mental asylum who becomes catatonic whenever he sees
vertical lines (due to a traumatic childhood experience, bien sur) and
the breathtaking Ingrid Bergman as the analyst whose most ardent
desire becomes to help the Peck character discover and understand
himself (no surprise there). Freudian psychology was in its heyday,
and Salvador Dali, who had been passionate about cinematic art since
his adolescence, created a stunning surrealistic dream sequence for
the film – haunting eyes being cut apart with scissors, faceless men,
crooked wheels, nightmarish landscapes – you get the idea. According
to the Surrealist manifesto written by Andre Breton in the 20s,
surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms
of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would
be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a
surreality.”

So what is it that has brought Spellbound to mind? By sheer
coincidence, I happened to be touring Dakar with two French
psychiatrists attending a professional conference here, friends of
friends who had demonstrated French teranga, accommodating me on their
houseboat the summer before I came to Senegal. For people who spent
most of their time wading through the murky waters of the
subconscious, they were refreshingly down to earth, and we had a
marvelous time. At an unpretentious place with a nice ocean view
called Le Relais des Sportifs we ate ‘dibi’ for lunch, short for
dibiterie, or a lumberjack sort of platter laden with grilled meat
(usually mutton, less frequently chicken is available), onions and
fries and usually eaten with one’s fingers. Thus heartened, we headed
uphill to the Mamelles lighthouse, built in 1864 and, according to
some sources, a major player among the world’s great lighthouses.

The lighthouse is built on one of two gently rounded swells (hence the
evocative name ‘mamelles,’ referring to some of the highlights of the
female anatomy. Wonder what Freud would have had to say about that?).
Its light (a thousand watt halogen bulb) has a range listed at 57 km
(almost 36 miles), but poor maintenance of the equipment is taking its
toll, and with an erosion rate of 2 m or 6.5 ft per year, the survival
even of the structure itself is endangered. The Fresnel lens it houses
(considered state-of-the-art from the late 19th through the middle of
the 20th century, though most have now been retired from service), was
created by a French physicist for use in lighthouses and was specially
designed without the weight and volume of material which would be
required in conventional lens design. With its large aperture and
short focal length, this lens allows light to be visible over much
longer distances. Fresnel’s ideas have been incorporated into modern
aircraft carrier systems, cinematography, photography and even solar
thermal energy systems.

From the outside of the structure, you have superb views of Dakar and
all its environs, giving you a feel for the vastness of the continent.
Once you go inside, however, it is an absolutely phantasmagoric
experience: there are wonderful twisting staircases, shaky vertical
ladders to be climbed upon, and finally mirrors, glass, prisms and
blinding refracted sunlight everywhere. It is stunning, simply
breathtaking, and an altogether unique experience: the accompanying
photos cannot begin to do it justice, so come to Senegal and be
spellbound, too!

 About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com