In the Realms of the Unreal: Henry Darger

In1973,when80-year-oldHenryDarger, a retiredChicago janitor anddishwasher,was too frail to climb the stairs tohis third floor apartment at 851 Webster Avenue in Lincoln Park, he asked his landlord Nathan Lerner for help in moving into an old age home. Darger had lived in his Chicago apartment for 40 years, and it was filled with his accumulated possessions. Lerner asked Darger what to do with everything in his apartment and was told, “It’s all yours.”1(p15) When Lerner examinedDarger’s abandonedapartment,he founda treasure trove! The shy reclusive hospital janitor had lived a secret life as a visual artist and a writer of epics.2 Darger’s small, cluttered, 1.5-room apartment was filled with stacks of newspapers andmagazines that rose to the ceiling, leaving only a narrow path to the oval table where he worked. One entire wall was covered with a collage titled The Battle of Calverhine (first epigraph) containing hundreds of images. Among the debris were found 7 huge handbound volumes of typed pages of narrative and a dozen more unbound bundles of typed and handwritten pages in a nearby trunk. Lerner had discovered Darger’s masterpiece, an illustrated bookmore than 15 000 typed pages longwith approximately 300 images.Darger titled itTheStoryof theVivianGirls, inWhat is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the GlandecoAngelinianWarStormCausedby theChildSlaveRebellion (hereafter referred to as The Realms of the Unreal). In addition, he found the 8500-page handwritten sequel, Adventures in Chicago, and Darger’s 5084-page autobiography. The Realms of the Unreal is filled with colorful landscapes, fantastic creatures, and epic battle scenes between opposing forces of good and evil on an imaginary planet.1,2 After writing the text (completed in the 1930s), Darger illustrated it. The action takes place on an imaginary planet that is “1000 times as large as our own world and with our earth as its moon.”1 The Catholic Nations (Abbieannia, Angelinia, Abyssinkile, Protestentia, and Calverinia) and the protective Blengiglomenean Serpents are in a war against the Glandelinians, fallen Catholics who enslave and torture children. The war lasted 4 years and 7 months and follows a sequence of events similar to World War I and incorporated certain aspects of the American Civil War into the narrative. His heroines are the 7 Vivian princesses (Violet, Jenny, Joice, Catherine, Hettie, Daisy, Evangeline, and Gertrude Angeline, their adoptive sister) who lead the uprising against the slave holders. The7braveViviangirls, princessesofAbbiennia, aremodeled after Joan of Arc; their mission is to free the child slaves. This involves them inmany life-threatening episodes.Darger, a deeply religious man, wrote that “They fought...as if not only ledby the spirit of theMaidofOrleansbut byChrist.”1 Like JoanofArc, theViviangirls are innocentandsaintly.Tragically, when their army of prepubescent fighting girl soldiers lose in battle, they are rounded up by the enemy and tortured. They are strangled, hanged at the gallows, or dismembered as they call out inpain and terror. In thebattle scenedepicted in the figure,3 the prepubescent band of girl warriors is in themidst of retreat during a violent storm. Someof girl soldiers are running away,while others, armedwith rifles, stand to fight. Darger captures the emotions of someof the children during thebattle scene: one child standing in the center is preoccupied, another in front is tearful, a dark-haired girls distractsherself by looking at apurple flower, another child looks out blankly or perhaps thoughtfully at the ongoingbattle, and another girl lookswarmlyup towardoneher companions. Just as Joan of Arc cut her hair and dressed as aman in battle,4 the girl warriors convey elements of both femaleness and maleness. The naked girls all have prepubescent male genitals.4 Darger’s long narrative focuses on the atrocity of child slavery, abuse, and murder. The Realms of the Unreal apparently is Darger’s creative way of working through aspects of his own traumatic early life experiences and his continuing concerns about wartime and other atrocities that occurred during his lifetime. Darger was a solitary, deeply religious, and inventive man who worked as a janitor by day and wrote and illustrated his writings at night. His neighbors (who saw him as reclusive and odd) often heard him carrying out imaginary dialogues with his characters.1 He had one close friend in his early years, Whilliam Schloeder, who joined with him in establishing the 2-man Gemini Society for the protection of children. Writing and art making allowed Darger the means to express his views on issues that concerned him, including injustices against children, the importanceofprotecting childhood innocence, and his relationship with God. Darger’s question to God about why God allowed children to suffer remained unanswered.