The Art of Lying Down
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Behind a curtain we find a gallery of erotic loungers. With her restrained exhibitionism, Audrey Hepburn is the epitome of stylish reclining. Her eye contact with the photographer implies more than just awareness of how attractive she is. Douglas Kirkland photographed Marilyn Monroe from above in bed, hugging a pillow and gazing lasciviously into the camera with half-closed eyes. The result—One Night with Marilyn, Horizontal Classic—plays with the observer’s expectations, even though its desirable subject remains out of reach. In contrast, reclining men, at least those shown in bed, have always been something of a rarity in art. In 1972, Burt Reynolds posed on a bearskin rug for a Cosmopolitan centerfold. With a broad smile, a cigarette clamped in his teeth, and an arm strategically blocking the view of his groin, he is a highlight of this unusual collection. Ferdinand Hodler’s The Night shows a very different scene: awakened by some nocturnal spirit, the artist finds himself surrounded by six other reclining figures, representing both genders and largely unclad. As we descend through the museum, we see unconscious figures displayed on the lower floors and lifeless bodies in the basement. Here, for example, we can admire Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson, in which a group of doctors in training gather around a partially dissected corpse.
The view from horizontal: “In a frame formed by the arch of the eyebrows, nose, and mustache, a portion of my body appeared, so far as it was visible, with its surroundings.”
Are You Still Lying Down?
The French expression être allongé, which means “to be stretched out,” is used only for people and animals, while the German verb liegen and the English lie can also apply to things. Recline, for its part, is something that only animate beings do. Arrente, the language of the Australian aborigines living near Alice Springs, contains the verb ngarinyi, which can signify not only “to lie down” but also “to sleep” and “to camp for the night” and serves as a handy euphemism for sex. Speakers of Trumai, an indigenous language of Brazil, can choose between two words for lie: the general chumuchu and the more specialized tsula, which refers to lying down on something other than the ground or floor. Korean also has two words to describe the act of assuming a horizontal posture—namely, nwup- and cappaci-. The first indicates a high degree of control; it is something done consciously and intentionally. The second can happen accidentally or by mistake and can also mean “to fall backwards.” In Chantyal, a Tibetan-Burmese language spoken in Nepal, no fewer than seven different expressions for lying down exist. Some include specific movements, and others do not. Are we making mountains out of linguistic molehills if we ask whether lying down itself is different when it takes place in a different verbal universe? If we consider how much language shapes and influences our perceptions, then the words we have for lying down surely play a role in how we understand and perform the act.
The art of lying down is a fixture in our behavioral repertoire. It is a versatile activity that can be carried out in a variety of locations, spaces, and contexts. Anyone who has ever lived has lain down, but cycles of boom and bust are evident, too. Some epochs and cultures celebrated “cultivated,” conscious reclining more than others. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europeans looked longingly toward the East, hoping to find inspiration for their own relaxation in real or imagined practices there. While they labored under many misconceptions, their intensive search forever altered Western furniture and the ways we lie on it.
How will the way we split our time among lying down, sitting, and standing change in the future? Will we rediscover the pleasures of Roman reclining? Or unwind the way Ottomans did? Given the increasingly apparent desire for a new understanding of time, our culture seems ripe for for a new balance between vertical and horizontal existence, and ready to embrace horizontal relaxation. Lying down could play an important role in what the Korean-German cult philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the art of lingering, part of an approach to revitalize the contemplative life and preventing existence from “declining into to a mere series of momentary presents.” Some celebrities enjoy being photographed in bed, forty years after John Lennon and Yoko Ono protested the Vietnam War by staying in bed for a week. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek is among them. In fact, Žižek, dubbed an “academic rock star” by The New York Times, goes several steps farther. Not only does he show us his underwear and provocatively display a picture of Joseph Stalin, but he lies naked in bed and philosophizes. Žižek is the best-known protagonist of a new generation of thinkers who vaguely sense that something is off about the vertical/horizontal ratio of our lives. In his diary Lines and Days, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk challenges readers to simply “stay in bed.” He writes: “You don’t have to rush off into the vita activa just because the sun is already out when you wake up.” It really seems as though the age of the New Horizontal has arrived, and you don’t need genuine enlightenment or even cheap esotericism to explain why. This shift is a logical backlash to the compulsive idea that to get anywhere, everything must constantly be in motion. Our burned-out postmaterial society is thinking things over, and the reassessment of the horizontal is in full swing.
Of course, lying down requires no justification or complex philosophical basis. It is an actual down-to-earth activity. When we lie down, we are close to the ground and perhaps even adapt to it. The experience cultivates a bond. We let go and relax, taking a break from the constant stream of short bursts of attention that otherwise make up our days. No self-help book is ever going to teach us the “right” way to recline—we are born with an innate understanding of the grammar of horizontal orientation—but in the midst of a culture of restlessness, we can discover or rediscover the art of lying down, reduced to its bare essentials. Relaxing and stretching out all four limbs is a luxury. It is an art that we intuitively grasp, and although to understand it better, we can approach it from many angles, something irresolvable remains—a final secret, if you will. Without it, time spent horizontally would simply represent a physical state rather than a mode of living and being. Yet the art of lying down does not exist just for its own sake. It is inextricably linked to other art forms: the art of doing nothing, of being content with little, of enjoyment and relaxation and, of course, the proverbial art of love.
One of the world’s largest reclining Buddhas is 150 feet long and 50 feet high. Made of plaster and brick, the statue is covered with a fine layer of gold leaf and sports intricate mother-of-pearl inlays on the soles of its feet. For more than two hundred years it has lain in the Wat Pho temple complex in Bangkok’s historic district. Stretched out on his right side, the Buddha supports his head in his hand, removing pressure from his heart. He sleeps, and even in this position his vision pervades him so fully that he stays perfectly relaxed. No unrest can touch him; he is pure mystic calmness. Is he still here or already elsewhere? Let us stop for a moment at the end of our journey to take in the sight of this enviable serenity.
“What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to lie down and stare”: 150-foot reclining Buddha
For Further Reading
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Illustration and Photo Credits
This page, this page, this page, this page, this page from Giedion, Sigfried: Die Herrschaft der Mechanisierung: Ein Beitrag zur anonymen Geschichte (Mechanization Takes Command). Hamburg, 2000 / this page, this page from Wright, Lawrence: Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed. London, 1962 / this page Murat Oğurlu / this page, this page, this page, this page from Bilz, Friedrich E.: Das neue Naturheilverfahren. Lehr- und Nachschlagebuch der naturgemäßen Heilweise und Gesundheitspflege (The Natural Method of Healing). Leipzig, 1898 / this page from Kuhbier, Max: Menschen am Wasser. Berlin, 1936 / this page with the kind permission of culture images/Lebrecht / this page courtesy of Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky, USA/Park Museum Collection / this page, this page from Coppersmith, Fred, and J. J. Lynx: Patent Applied for: A Century of Fantastic Inventions. London, 1949 / this page with the kind permission of the Fondation Le Corbusier / this page with the kind permission of the Sigmund Freud Privatstiftung Vienna / this page with the kind permission of VG Bild/Kunst / this page from Mach, Ernst: Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen. Jena, 1911.
All other illustrations and photos are from the author’s personal archive or a source that could not be determined.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to Wolfgang Hörner, Peter Brandes, José João Carvalho, Olaf Dufey, Detlef Feussner, Herbert Gebhard, Petra Heizmann, Thomas Kluge (Ravi Inder Singh), Thomas Laser, Ulrich Meyer, Stanislaus von Moos, John Newman, Severin Perrig, Sebastian Posth, Florian Ringwald, Philipp Sarasin, Evelin Schultheiss, Hari Steinbach, the Sigmund Freud Museum, and my parents, Helgard and Siegfried Brunner, who first taught me the art of lying down.
My thanks also to Valerie Merians, Dennis Johnson, and Kelly Burdick of Melville House, who took an early interest in bringing my book to English-speaking readers.
Last but not least, I was delighted to work once again with my friend and frequent translator Lori Lantz, who writes exactly as I would if my native language were English.