The Enigma of Good and Evil: The Moral Sentiment in Literature (Analecta Husserliana)

THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL; THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN LITERATURE

A N A L E C TA H U S S E R L I A N A THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH VOLUME LXXXV

Founder and Editor-in-Chief:

A N N A -T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Hanover, New Hampshire

For sequel volumes see the end of this volume.

THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL; THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN LITERATURE

Edited by ANNA-TER ES A TYMIENIE C K A The World Phenomenology Institute, Hanover, NH, U.S.A.

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning A-T. Tymieniecka, President

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-10 ISBN-13

1-4020-3575-6 (HB) 978-1-4020-3575-3 (HB) 1-4020-3576-4 (e-book) 978-1-4020-3576-0 (e-book)

Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springeronline.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART ONE P THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL SECTION I THE MORAL SENTIMENT ˜ OZ / A Question of Interest? Between Good ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

and Evil in IInstinto de Ines by Carlos Fuentes

5

DOROTHY G. CLARK / Being’s Wound: Evil and Explanation

in T he Killer Inside Me

17

LJUNG-BARUTH / A Paradox of Love: The Manifestation of Life and the Moral Sentiment in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Her Son’s W ife

29

ANNIKA

WILLIAM EDELGLASS / Levinas’s Language

47

SECTION II RECOGNIZING GOOD AND EVIL REBECCA M. PAINTER / Sympathy for the Devil ?: A Historical

Tour of Literature and Cultural Representation

65

JONES-CATHCART / Kierkegaard’s Fear and T rembling: An Experiment in the Self-Recognition of Evil

77

ANDREW

LEWIS LIVESAY / Beyond Evil in Heart of o Darkness: Levinasian

Face-to-Face as Reliable Narration

91

RICHARD S. FINDLER / Bartleby’s Existential Reduction and

its Impact on Others

119 v

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION III THE INTUITION OF GOOD AND EVIL MICHEL DION / The Intuition of Good/Evil in Marcel Proust’s

` la Recherche du T emps Perdu: From the Axis of Time to the A Axis of Desire

141

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA / The Changing Landscapes of

Good and Evil in the Moral World of Huckleberry Finn

163

ROSARIO TROVATO / Nature and a Calm Mirror: Anna Maria

Ortese’s Ethics

171

MEGAN LAVERTY / The Interplay of Virtue and Romantic

Ethics in Chang-Rae Lee’s A Gesture L ife

191

MICHAEL D. DANIELS / Camus’ Meursault and Sartrian

Irresponsibility

207 SECTION IV

VIOLENCE AND THE MORAL SENTIMENT JORGE GARCIA-GOMEZ / Death, Truth, and Sinfulness: Of

Various Characters and Scenes in Ramon del Valle-Inclan’s V Comedias Barbaras

227

TONY E. AFEJUKU / Accusation, Betrayal and Murder in

Literature

273

GARY BACKHAUS / Autobiography and the Impossibility of

Evil in Kurt H. Wolff ’s Existential Sociology

283

GEORGE R. TIBBETTS / Adventures in Greeneland: The Moral

Sentiment in Three Novels of Graham Greene

309

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS / On the Fourfold Ontology of Evil

Throughout Western Tradition and its Final Disappearance in the Present Time

317

SECTION V THE EXISTENTIAL DIMENSION OF ETHICS PREDRAG CICOVACKI / Searching for the Abandoned Soul:

Dostoyevsky on the Suffering ff of Humanity

367

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MICALLEF / Reading Achille Mizzi: A Phenomenological Hermeneutics of the Christian Narrative

vii

BERNARD

399

ALAIN BEAULIEU / Gilles Deleuze et la Litterature: Le Langage,

la Vie et la Doctrine du Jugement

417

LAWRENCE KIMMEL / Culture and the Philosophy of Life: The

True, the Good, the Beautiful, and the Sacred

433

SECTION VI MORAL SENTIMENT AND LITERATURE RAYMOND J. WILSON III / The Phenomenology of Ethical

Criticism: How Literature Affects ff Ethical Development

445

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI / Moral Sentiment and

the Ethics of Representation in Holocaust Literature PETER WEIGEL / The Aesthetics of Salvation in Sartre’s Nausea N

455 473

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS / ‘‘With Foolish Shadows, With Hollow

Signs’’: A Reflection on Subjective Perception and Personal Identity in Hispano-American Golden Age Intrigue I Comedies

491

GARY BACKHAUS / The Medicine-Dreams of Chief Plenty-

Coups: A Study in Phenomenological Anthropology

517

PART TWO P LITERATURE IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS SECTION I ˜ ALIRA ASHVO-MUNOZ / Searching Moral Standards in a

Love Diatribe

555

MARLIES E. KRONEGGER / Bizet’s Carmen ‘‘L ’Amour est un

Oiseau Rebelle ...’’

563

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA / In Search of Moral Standards –

Walker Percy’s L ancelot W

565

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH / In Search of a Moral Erotic

Standard: Female Subjectivity and Eros in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Rough-Hewn and T he Brimming Cup

573

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION II M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE / Morals in History: Violence

and the Ideal of Peace

587

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER / Phantom Relations and the

Writer’s Niche in Paul Auster’s L eviathan W

603

SITANSU RAY / ‘‘Some Freedom within a Small Range’’: Tagore

on Moral Standard

619 SECTION III

TSUNG-I DOW / The Search for a Universal Standard of

Morality: Filial Piety and its Chinese Experience

627

RAYMOND J. WILSON III / In First Century Rome: A Test Case

of Literary Influence on Ethical Development

643

REBECCA M. PAINTER / Literature and the Play of Attention:

A New/Ancient Look at the Roots of Evil PETER WEIGEL / Dostoyevsky on the Problem of Evil

655 675

TONY E. AFEJUKU / Poetry in the Cerebral Cortex, the Nervous

System and the Digestive Tracts: A Study of Romanus Egudu’s Moral Poetry

701

WILLIAM EDELGLASS / Asymmetry and Normativity: Levinas

Reading Dostoyevsky on Desire, Responsibility, and Suffering ff

709

SECTION IV KRISTINE S. SANTILLI / The Redemptive Gestures of the Poetry

of Wisława Szymborska

729

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS / A Life Beyond Go(o)d: A Criticism

of Wisdom and the Foundation of a Poetic Conception of Life Based on Goethe’s Faust F

749

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED / Antigone’s (Re)turn:

The E´thos of the ‘‘Coming Community’’

787

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ix

R. KENNETH KIRBY / ‘‘I Know Everything’’: The Governess’s

Failures of Consciousness in T he T urn of the Screw

813

MICHAEL DANIELS / The Politics of Intersubjectivity and the

Logic of Discourse

831

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI / Literature as the

Laboratory of the Moral Life: Building Moral Communities Through Literary Study

845

APPENDIX: CONFERENCE PROGRAMS

865

INDEX OF NAMES

875

At the Harvard Faculty Club: Max Statkiewicz, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Madalina D’Fiaconu, Tony Afejuku, Bernadette Prochaska, Avelina Cecilia Lafuenta, Raymond I. Wilson III.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In this collection of studies we bring to the public fruits of our two conferences in Phenomenology and Literature. The first part of the volume gathers papers read at our 27th Annual Conference of the International Society of Phenomenology and Literature, ‘‘T he Enigma of Good and Evil; T he Moral Sentiment in L iterature’’, held at the Harvard Divinity School on May 14 and 15, 2003. The second part brings together studies of our 28th Annual Conference of the International Society of Phenomenology and Literature ‘‘L iterature in Search of Moral Standards’’, held at the Harvard Divinity School on May 12 and 13, 2004. Our warm thanks go to the participants in these two scholarly gatherings who came from various parts of the world to share their ideas. I also thank our dedicated secretary, Jeff Hurlburt, and our copyeditor, Ryan Walther, for their contributions toward preparing this volume for publication. A.-T.T.

xi A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, xi. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

Louis Houthakker and Floor Oosting in front of our exhibit at the SPEP 2004.

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

A QUESTION OF INTEREST? BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL IN INST INT O DE INES BY CARLOS FUENTES

L ’hydre, univers tordant son corps ecaille d’astres. Jorge Luis Borges

Possible and contradictory consequences emerge from streams of consciousness and human actions in the textual activity of Carlos Fuentes’ novel, IInstinto de Ines, which question concepts outside and above the disseminating play of language. The narrative appears as a lament, in a Proustian sense of lost, a recollection or memory story that unites various temporal planes. The novel mixes realities from the leading characters by presenting a fictional other, a creation in the protagonist mind, produced by the consequences of the instinct of Ines. This phantom or entity emerges from inexplicable possibilities, reminiscence of Borges’s short story ‘‘El otro’’ in which he quotes Victor Hugo: ‘‘L ‘L ’hydre univers tordant don corps ecaille d’astres’’, which in Fuentes, surfaces in the labyrinthine reflections of a conductor, his oblivious worldview on the face of destiny, life and death. As he wanders through this inferno the conductor, Gabriel, sees his reflection in unadorned mirrors, sees hell as a destination and inevitable description of reality. A textual unfolding takes place, an autre, which refers to the paradoxes of time. Disassociations, contradictory intentions and multiple perceptions form the textual structure. Fear and a sense of treachery are perceived from unexpected events, forming the unknown. This fear of unknowns relates to evil and continues as a constant recurrence until the novel ends. The otherness, ‘‘an autre,’’ focus on Gabriel’s interiority, creating a sense of contradictions and double intentions. It is not the old Christian evil of centuries – the devil – nor an extreme evil but an opportunistic evil emanating from silence and complacency, inherent in our postmodern sense of the normal. Indifference, ff silence, poisoning, pollution, rapes, murders, genocide and extinction calmly viewed are part of daily occurrences in modern existence. The numbing of all sensation and exclusion from hope is also a kind of evil, an unrecognizable modern personal hell, which presents an inevitable description of today’s world. As the characters take walks on the beach and, oddly, converse against 5 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 5–15. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

6

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

a background of falling bombs, one perceives that the language takes an operatic role: In all his important uses of the word autre, it is clear enough, Derrida names by it something completely other, something that cannot be returned to the same form of dialectical sublation or Auf hebung. What is somewhat less easy to think or see is the relation of the other to a special and paradoxical kind of speech-act.1

Concordantly Fuentes relates these conversations to the events that surround the characters, as in the following: ... el Diablo no es una encarnacion singular-jas, jas, Mefisto-sino una hidra colectiva-hop, hop, hop-.2

This implicit approval, insinuated by denial, is part of a tolerated subterranean and obdurate ignorance that causes destruction and affects ff individuals and cultures alike, a discretionary destructive power with official indifference ff to the value of human life. Fuentes’ narrative is based on Gabriel’s romantic encounter with a soprano, Ines Prada, under the falling bombs of the German L ufwaV aVe in wartime London, who later confronts his absolutism. It surpasses the theme of personal confrontations as it is intimately related to musical and literary perception, to forms of interpretation, possession and deliverance rooted in the structure of the musical and literary genres and explores the philosophical mysteries of death and love, good and evil. It also relates to the consequences, manifestations, significance, outcomes and inter-textualities that validate sounds, with the linguistic and the musical. Music as an abstract language is a universal form of communication with the capacity, inherent in its abstract nature, to transcend cultural boundaries; one that acknowledges the empty or non-self-identical nature of the sign. La mu´sica es la imagen del mundo sin cuerpo.3

References to musical scores (especially to the opera Faust F ) abound through the narrative, founded in the fluidity and rhythm of musical sounds in the usage of a metonymic chain which appears linked to a range of interpretations. Essential differences ff and similarities between the two concordant parallel narrations provide links to temporal and spatial frames. The narrative continues as a ghost story, unfolding displacements of an autre in a deconstructive sense, parallel to the central storyline. The strategy used by the narrator based on beliefs from the factuality of past

A QUESTION OF INTEREST?

7

events creates a lament, while the present transforms as a direct result of these previous occurrences. These past eloquent and influential experiences now impose a coherent temporal order in the protagonist’s life, and finally he perceives his past and present in a unity as he approaches the final moments of his career, while achieving a displacement of power as the world now seems merely a reflection of the order of things. Aristotle wrote that being is said in many ways: ‘‘to an legetai pollaklos’’. It is clearly stated in the narrative that what is culturally perceived as good has a direct correlation to the dominant forces of power. Inserted in the narration at the eve of the final event is Christian primordial time, when the first man and woman existed, whose passion broke the boundaries imposed by behavioral patterns in order to forge history, or the history that endlessly repeats in a spiral linking the narrative metaphorically to the history of mankind. The prevalent forces at play in the story undermine the personal motives behind good and evil, seen as a primordial dimension in most human actions. Must people see advantages as good and disadvantages as evil, and create a logic for them? This distinctive marker prompts the reader to consider the essential differences ff between the forces presented. The text uses the visionary genre reminiscent of Fuentes’ famous ghost novella, Aura. The arrangement in Ines is through Gabriel’s stream of consciousness in the detailed presentation of facts, a labyrinth of remembrances intertwined with actualities that produced in Gabriel a reductis ad absurdum of life, first as unconscious undermining of his resolution and avoidance of issues that constituted a feasible answer to his difficulties. The denotation of what is good and evil is inferred in the specific references to Hector Berlioz’s opera ‘‘L ‘ a Damnation de Faust’’ as well as Goethe’s book. Others include T o the L ighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Giuseppe Verdi, Alexander Dumas and Jean Cocteau. In the internal monologues, V in somewhat obscure deliverances, certain characteristics alluding to the protagonist’s personality persistently refer to his introspective contradictions. These references to Berlioz’s opera infers in the fluidity and swift succession of moods, in its abruptness and transitions from sadness to joy, from earthy brutality to translucent beauty and in a sense of heightened reality; a personal operatic world which creates a haunting view of an artistic reality with a sense of otherness. All conveys a sense of double consciousness leading to the character’s final subjugation. This at first started as ironic juxtaposition creating the energetic activity indifferent ff to his life drama, unfolding as a libretto.

8

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

An internal use of emplotment imposes temporal order when the narrator tells a succession of events restructuring time in a transformative mode. In any potentially repercussive event, one must wonder about the choices, repetitions, and consequences that could happen. The evil in ff silence, question is attested in the normality of evil, in the indifference, ignorance and dominance that leads to destruction when the reader perceives how convenient all of it was for him. Intertwined with Gabriel’s remembrances are his priorities that prompted him to choose and to conceal the decisions that propelled them. Hence the text becomes a transformative mode between Literature, Criticism and Philosophy by questioning the role of intentionality in the forces of good and evil. A predicament cannot be fully resolved, due to the inherent complexity and combined qualities that exist in defining evil. Thomas Aquinas explicitly wrote on the importance of intentionality as a major factor in any action: Et tunc incidit malum ex eo quod aliquis vult illud bonum; sed ex eo quod non vult aliud bonum.4

What makes us horrible is intentional cruelty, a direct reflection of our interiority that is the differential ff factor according to Aquinas. As a practice, the existence of evil in Christianity -the devil- has been shrewdly tolerated as the counterbalancing force to the goodness of God. The contradiction or duality of this dogma was debated in the early years of Christianity as in Origen (Origen contra Celsus, 7.68). Fuentes specifically refers to this factor of intentionality in ones’ actions: ... tu horror es horroroso, carese de grandeza, es un miserable horror porque no entiende, jamas podra entender, que la inmortalidad, la vida, la muerte y el pecado son espejos de nuestra gran alma interior, de tu pasajero y cruel poder externo ...5

It is the horror without grandeur, the difference ff and complacency that mirrors one’s interiority; the silence that tolerates cruelty and its consequences. As beings we have a cruel fleeting external power with the capability for destructive or constructive power, just as life relates to death. Many evils result from frailty or dominance. In Fuentes’s text, one feels persuaded that no privileged discourse can claim to speak the truth of its own vision unless it shows its intentions. This style of discourse is also referential to textual production, specifically to the author’s role in postmodern literature. This hinges on the ontological status of the narrator and its identity or non-identity with the author, a doubling that shapes the reading experience between author, narrator, and reader. In

A QUESTION OF INTEREST?

9

Fuentes the narrator subverts the explicit authorial intentions in the process, enabling the narrative to penetrate the reader’s mind with ambivalence, by using certain subtle incongruities, time gaps and the character’ self delusions, as clues intentionally planted to create the mystery. In the philosophical questioning implicit in the written, musical and spoken, assertions require countervailing statements. One is aware that tensions, inconsistencies, or divisions are more emphatic than are systematic architectonics; the structure of the narrative seems to become an operatic libretto. The text investigates a complex and sophisticated path, taking issue with the psychological aspects of post-war years, validating and explaining, at first, Gabriel’s unique claim to truth. The conductor finally faces the indomittance of Ines’ spirit, the devil he once called, when she liberated herself from his authorial power. Later he refers to it as her instinct, her impetuous responses to his indomitable authority. Gabriel had repressed his internal fears of not being able to achieve absolute control during a performance and rehearsal, trying to possess the work in its reenactment, not becoming an instrument at its service. The musical references in the novel point to his unexplained emotions, which language in its explicitness can not profoundly say, making musical sounds a better vehicle for expression, reaching to the core of his incapacity for proper self expression. Music possesses a power, which is not imitation but raises affections ff to which ideas correspond. This concept was explained by Kant in his Political W ritings6 The grandiose defensive rationalization that Gabriel has reflects on his personal claims for dominance, hidden by his anxieties, fears and inabilities. The rational nature of self-evidence appears in progression when Gabriel tries to be logical while exploring the philosophical mysteries of life and death. The narrative requires a level of self-critical awareness, as it deconstructs in argumentative strategy and defines evil as an otherness that summons, complicates and challenges human perceptions. ... Certainly deconstruction tries to show that the question of reference is much more complex and problematic than traditional theories supposed. It even asks whether our term ‘reference’ is entirely adequate for designating the ‘other’. An autre, the other, which is beyond language and summons language, is perhaps not a ‘referent’ in the normal sense that linguists have attached to this term. But to distance oneself thus from the habitual structure of reference, to challenge or complicate our common assumptions about it, does not amount to saying that there is nothing beyond language ...7

The first reference in this paper, a quote of Borges quoting Victor Hugo, guides us through the turns a life could take; the inexplicable

10

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

possibilities of its unfolding; ‘‘le univers tordant’’. Fuentes relates it to F Faust , musical and literary, to a reflection in mirrors that seem daunting: ... que el Diablo no es una encarnacion o singular – jas, jas, Mefisto – sino una hidra colectivahop, hop, hop-. Atlan-Ferrara querı´a, inclusive, renunciar-o al menos creer que renunciabaa ese poder autoritario que hacıa de el, el joven y ya eminente conductor europeo ‘‘Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara’’, el dictador inevitable de un conjunto fluido, colectivo, sin la vanidad o el orgullo que podıan estigmatizar al director, sino que lo lavaban del pecado de Luzbel ...8

To achieve self-authenticity the protagonist creates arguments, interpretatives pretexts and devices, that deconstruct into allegories of readings, in an effort ff to access the meaning of truth and to come to terms with good and evil. The narrative presents the individual and collective ff in scope and magnivalidations of power equally evil in essence, different tude. It explores that reading as much as writing is a device that cannot be separated from the act of memory (which is a basis for referentiality). The text is a rhetorical construct that activates the act of memory, providing a storyline which engages the reader. Lisant autant qu’il ecrit, dechiffrant ff ou citant autant qu’il inscrit, cet acte est aussi un acte de memoire (l’autre est deja e la, irreductiblement), cet acte prend acte. En te rappelant, il se rappelled. (Reading as much as it writes, deciphering or citing as much as it inscribes, this act is also an act of memory [the other is already there, irreducibly], this act enacts itself. In recalling you, it remembers, it reminds itself, it recalls itself to itself ).9

Fuentes’ narrative as an act of memory points to texts as rhetorical constructs that claim that any reader is guided through and beyond the themes presented in order to question a sense of self-understanding. The anamnemia in the text refers to the protagonist’s recollections, a parallel reference created by the narrator, in another, distant time. The primordial man and woman that appeared in the final episode give the Proustian sense of recaptured time, reflecting a future catastrophic preamble. As a dilemma it shows the past as prognosis for the end of humanity. Several times the human quest for dominance has taken a retrogressive path, a consequence of ignorance, as might be relevant now when an ultimate risk arises in the possible annihilation of the species through a lack of solar protection. When directing an orchestra, Gabriel similarly felt this dilemma: Situado en el precario equilibrio entre dos creaciones-la del compositor y la del director-la voz debıa ser colectiva para inspirar fatalmente la falta individual del heroe y su condena.10

A QUESTION OF INTEREST?

11

As balancing act, this precarious equilibrium maintains a level of good versus the evil, the few and the collective. In the novel, an assemblage of possibilities manifests truth in both assumptions, forming a spiral progression. Repletion, reiteration, anaphora and internal rhyme subvert the narration’s linear progress into a circular progression, showing the disjointed world of truths and lies, hidden in the established precepts and protocols. A textual discourse demonstrates, in the resemblance and contrast, a regulative notion of logical consistency that leads to the principle of ‘diV iVerence’, which underlies the possible and disparate meanings. The previously quoted passage from the novel demonstrates how individual guidance and collective autonomy could be a source of argumentative logic, usually justified by its premises of good or evil. The essence of human nature has remained constant while the capacity for destruction has augmented and the range of cruelty has widened. The idea that written language necessarily has to say what it means or means what it says diverts from the hidden intention. There are valid premises in spoken language, in literature and in human behavior, which includes ambivalence as a valid response. The ambivalent nature of language referred to by Plato, that was taken up by Husserl and Heidegger, questions the dilemma of writing versus speech, as Fuentes similarly questioned. Throughout the progression of the narrative, the recurrence of repressed possessiveness becomes a sign of Gabriel’s deeply ambivalent strategy to achieve excellence by repeating previously established patterns in personal dealings in his instances of conscious searching. They form parts of the internal monologues. The integrity of speech-act develops after the first personal confrontation the conductor had. Digressions of textual complicity between the author and the reader relate, in this novel, to themes and figurations from Faust F , both the literary and musical, as the protagonist searches for life’s meaning and differentiates ff between good and evil. The most revealing instance, almost at the end of the novel, is when Gabriel surrenders his authority after conducting his last performance of Berlioz’s ‘‘L ‘ a Damnation de Faust’’ knowing that his days as a conductor have concluded and his authority has been transferred or reduced to that of an old man at the mercy of a hired nurse; the same person who, while being away at this most honored performance, purposefully destroyed his well-kept symbols of power, a crystal rock as fragile as he is now. His life is almost over and finally he recognizes what is valuable, ironically after a lifetime of misguided efforts. ff Truth liberates the soul from evil and love joins all temporally, past, present and future, as he concludes that

12

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

actions must be accompanied by direction while striving to reach illumination and that all depends upon man’s own selection and intention. Si, Dicke, todo esta en su lugar. No necesitas romper mas sellos de crystal ... Hoy dirigı el Fausto F por u´ltima vez. Margarita ascendio al cielo para siempre. Ya no soy prisionero de Inez Prada, mi querida Ulrike ... – Tranquilızate. Tu´ sabes muy bien que no tienes rival. En vez de una amante, necesito una criada.11

After a lifetime of achievements Gabriel recognizes his vulnerability and understands the reasoning of Ines, why she reacted so instinctively. Mostly he was deceived throughout life by appearances. Derrida wrote about the discrepancies between appearances and realities: (la phenomenology) ... simplement la realite de la chose mais la realite de la chose en tant qu’elle apparaıˆt.12

Irony, paradox and ambiguity take issue in the narration. The realm of consciousness in the recollections presented by Gabriel explained and validated his character and also created the otherness. Gabriel’s defenses in his personal selections are inextricably inter-twined with truth, purity, art and excellence, logical referential mediums for the emotions and instincts that he excluded. The novel refers to life and death, good and evil, and to the end of a cycle, a eulogy for Carlos Fuentes Lemus, the author’s unfinished future, in a mirror of reversed eras. In ‘‘M ‘Mateo XXV I ’’, Borges wrote about the unity of life with death and the impossibility of separation: ‘‘L ‘ a muerte es vida vivida, la vida es muerte que viene’’. Derrida also wrote about this duality of presence in one’s existence: La mort. Chaque foi c’est la mort puisqu’il s’agit de vie. Le plus grand risque c’est la mort. [Et encore, je n’en suis plus si sur].13

This everlasting presence of death in life is mostly ignored, but seems inextricably bound to the polarities that exist in good versus evil. Life has a theme of defiance and death is the ultimate risk and validating force that underscores human actions, completing the spiral cycle of existence. The novel ends mysteriously: Se sento´ en la cama y alargo los abrazos, musitando una lengua extrana, como si convocara un parto o una muerte.14

A QUESTION OF INTEREST?

13

Surprisingly Ulrike, the nurse who wants to see Gabriel die ritualistically, sets in motion the imminent possibility for his transcendence. Purposefully left unanswered, this quest follows another strange passage when Gabriel takes his last crystal rock, murmurs some words and inadvertently his consciousness follows into the unknown: Entre tus pechos cogara el sello de cristal que el te habra obsequiado antes de amarte ... han trastocado los tiempos; le han abierto un campo prohibido a lo que les sucedio antes.15

A collision of times has taken place as the reader finds the arrival of the threshold of humanity. The past now is validated in a new cycle and Gabriel finds himself again vulnerable as an infant. The final monologue reiterates that perfection: beauty and power were Gabriel’s only quest, disregarding the consequences. The text proposes another deconstructional device that questions the existence of Ines: He vivido para mi arte, no para las emociones faciles, adios, Inez. Regresa a donde esta´s ahora.16

Ines is dead or was always non-existent, which served as device for understanding the working of consciousness and the meaning of life itself. In the shifting of the real fantasy exists, since meanings usually relate to a set of specific socio-cultural context. Literature has used the fantastic, the irrational, to dwell in literary verisimilitude since Cervantes, to emphasize the importance of fiction for the understanding of life. The text partakes in a vision from ordinariness to universality by a projection of constantly searching for ultimate beauty and perfection. Gabriel created an artistic persona that confused control with assurance, forgetting that art is a harmonious principle. As art mirrors life and life mirrors nature, man paradoxically returns to the same vague quest time after time, to identify his self with artistic expression and to find the meaning of life. Here interestingly is a man who mirrors himself in a woman, the one he previously considered the caused of evil. ... le principle des principles de la phenomenology, avec le retour aux choses meme, c’est la re`gle de l’intuition.17

Gabriel presents his self-imposed critique of consciousness. Language and truth in the narration were construed as depending on a validating content of intentional actions, to force the reader to appeal to the causes of intentionality in actions and to seek the basic foundation of good or evil. An uncanny double logic causes a reversal, as in Plato’s Pharmakon,

14

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO-MUN

poison becomes the cure, in a final validating paradox behind the premise of what was Ines’ instinct. Approaching death, life is reconciled in oppositions, with the paradoxes and dogmas that have formed so much senseless misunderstanding. Lo importante no era el, no era el nombre, sino el instinto. ¿Ves?18

The final episode presents the prevalence of love and the intentionality for good as the only everlasting quality that surpasses time since the concept of Christianity’s original sin. Written in Cartagena de Indias where Gabriel Garcıa Marque´z (the author’s colleague) is terminally ill, the novel probably points to another eulogy and places literature as a valuable forum to question human endeavors, the motives behind the actions and the good and evil that transform life and death. Fuentes’ elegant prose is poetic in both language and scope, creating an irreducible singularity in this text. T emple University

NOTES 1 John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, Applying to Derrida (London: McMillan Press, 1996), p. 155. 2 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 30. 3 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 139. 4 Ralph McIneerny, Aquinas on Human Action, a T heory of Practice (The Catholic UP: Washington D.C., 1985), p. 91. W 5 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 130. 6 Immanuel Kant, Political W ritings, ed. H. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1973). 7 John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, Applying to Derrida (London: MacMillan Press, 1996), p. 154. 8 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 30. 9 John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, Applying to Derrida (London, MacMillan Press, 1996), p. 166. 10 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 31. 11 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 138. 12 Jacques Derrida, Sur Parole, Instantanes Philosophiques (Paris: Editions de l’aube, 1999), p. 76. 13 Jacques Derrida, Sur parole, Instantanes Philosophiques (Paris: Editions de l’aube, 1999), p. 48. 14 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 141. 15 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 144. 16 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 139.

A QUESTION OF INTEREST?

15

17 Jacques Derrida, Sur Parole, Instantanes Philosophiques (Paris: E`ditions de l’aube, 1999), p. 84. 18 Carlos Fuentes, IInstinto de Ines (Mexico: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 50.

REFERENCES Barry, Kevin. L anguage, Music and the Sign: A Study of Aesthetics, Poetics and the Poetic Practice from Collins to Coleridge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Brannigan. John, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, Applying to Derrida. London: MacMillan Press, 1996. Cohn, Dorrit. T he Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles. Diferencia y repeticion. Gijon: Ju´car, 1988. Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. London: Athlone Press, 1982. ——. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1977. ——. Sur Parole, Instantane Philophiques. Paris: E`ditions de l’aube, 1999. ——. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s T heory of Signs. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern UP, 1973. Fenves, Peter. Raising the T one of Philosophy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Fuentes, Carlos. IInstinto de Ines. Me´xico: Alfaguara, 2000. Gibson, Andrew. T owards a Postmodern T heory of Narrative. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996. Hejenstein, Ludwig W. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, Blackwell, 1963. Hartman, Geoffrey ff H. Saving the T ext, L iterature/Derrida/Philosophy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. Krieger, Murray. V isions of Extremity in Modern literature, Vol. I. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1973. McInerny, Ralph. Aquinas on Human Action, a T heory of Practice. W Washington D.C.: The Catholic U of America P, 1992. Norris, Christopher. T he Deconstructive T urn, Essays in the Rhetoric of Philosophy. London: Metheun, 1982. Ricoeur, Paul. T ime and Narrative, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

DOROTHY G. CLARK

BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION IN T HE KIL L ER INSIDE ME

Jim Thompson’s 1952 noir novel T he Killer Inside Me is a powerful early postmodern representation of evil – one that reflects the moral catastrophe of WWII and is proleptic of current philosophical discussions. The novel’s narrator and protagonist, Lou Ford, is a complex, confounding, ultimately enigmatic sensibility comprised of several voices; Ford spins a narrative out of the cultural imaginary that instructs us in the problematics of evil in the postmodern world. While Iago may have said too little about his evil, and Eichmann too much, Lou Ford falls somewhere in between but tells nothing more than Eichmann or Iago about the sources of evil. Like Iago’s acts and Eichmann’s bodies, Lou shows rather than tells us about evil; yet paradoxically Lou’s evil is inextricably bound up in his narrative, in his telling. In this paper, I will investigate the strategies of this narrative and the ways they gesture towards even as they cover up and obscure the causes of his evil. We can compare Lou’s narrative strategy to a psychoanalytic symptom – a symptom attempts to conceal a conflict or the unacceptable. Its every manifestation reveals the very truth it is designed to mask; yet, uncannily, that which it attempts to reveal keeps disappearing. Evil, we will see, is what keeps disappearing, keeps slipping away; in the post-Holocaust world, we have only the material reality of the dead bodies – and in the face of these bodies – no explanation is adequate. This postmodern uncertainty about the nature of evil typifies what is generally described as the condition brought about by the devastating events of World War II. We remain caught in the literal and metaphoric meanings of Auschwitz. As Susan Neiman describes in Evil in Modern T hought, the Holocaust left philosophers and theologians in a state of moral vertigo and helplessness ‘‘because our conceptual resources seem[ed] exhausted’’ and ‘‘our trust in the world [was] shattered’’ (281), for shattered also was our faith in God, in Reason, and in ourselves. Written just a few years after the rupturing events of WWII, and long W before its full ramifications had saturated the cultural imaginary, T he Killer Inside Me surprisingly captures this condition and unveils a world in which making meaning becomes both imperative and impossible. The formulaic narrative structure of pulp/detective fiction with its clear plot 17 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 17–28. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

18

DOROTHY G. CLARK

devices and ultimate clarifying climatic resolution provides Thompson with a playful and deadly serious way to represent both the desire and impossibility of making sense. We enter a world in which, as Susan Neiman notes, we are homeless and irremediably wounded. T he Killer Inside Me depicts this post-Holocaust world as the anus mundi, a world morally devastated, its apparent decency, like its narrator Lou Ford, masking corruption. For Thompson, the tension between reality and appearances was at the heart of his vision; ‘‘There is,’’ he said, ‘‘only one plot: things are not what they seem’’ (Polito 7). In T he Killer IInside Me, this traditional notion becomes a dizzying kaleidoscopic assault of shifting appearances. The novel’s setting, Central City, depicts a world, to paraphrase Yeats, where the ‘‘center cannot hold’’ and moral anarchy has been set loose. ‘‘Things are not what they seem’’: Central City – appears the mythic jewel of small town America, but is filled with corruption. As Robert Polito writes, ‘‘T he Killer Inside Me detonates some myths of small-town America the benevolent cop, the kindly physician, the free and open country. The public guardians of morality, justice, and power all are whitened sepulchers, privately depraved or criminal. Ford’s family, Central City – each is a stinking prison’’ (350). Central City is morally eviscerated, a fallen world, and Lou a potent reflection of its corrupt core. A spectacular representation of this moral cataclysm, Lou Ford’s astonishing first-person narrative both proposes and, at the same time, ironically rejects all Grand Narratives about evil in the human character. Unlike Iago, who offers ff no self-explanation for his actions, Ford is presumably telling us this narrative to explain why and show how he killed, in order to present the proof the authorities could not have – which he tells us is himself. This narrative illuminates the post-war problematic of evil by, first, embodying evil in Ford’s ‘‘career’’ as a serial killer, and then by deconstructing all attempts to understand what he has done by using the theoretical templates available in the twentieth century. But Ford does not merely present and then reject attempts to explain his acts. Like a ‘‘good’’ postmodern (anti) hero he shows exactly how each model of explanation can be used to craft a plausible account of his actions, and then he humorously establishes a devastating distance between himself, as impenetrable and inexplicable agent of evil, and all such merely believable explanations. Through Thompson’s impeccable use of the literary device of the unreliable narrator, Ford’s every ‘‘explanation’’ is subverted, destabilized and left behind, its inadequacy to be ciphered by the reader. In the final

BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION

19

analysis Ford’s evil has no explanation, and his toying with us undercuts all those sober, confident templates that a post-Holocaust world has tried, sometimes with little enthusiasm and certainly with little success, to apply to the phenomenon of evil. Ford is a constant, self-consuming commentator on his own character, a kind of literary critic of his own life narrative, all of whose erudite self-understandings are unmasked as empty. He is always already beyond all the accounts he offers ff of himself, a Derridean diffe ff ´rance a generation before there was a Derrida. Lou, like the evil he ostensibly is trying to explain, keeps disappearing behind his explanations and in the end disappears into the ellipsis of the text – a textual blackhole – a fitting end for an impossible narrative. Just as Derrida begins his papers by explaining the situation and manner in which they came to be written, so in a similar fashion does Lou begin his story by giving us his narrative strategy and letting us know from the very inception of the impossibility of his enterprise. Lou’s ostensive purpose – to explain why he committed his crimes and to present the truth about himself – is continually undercut by the proliferation of personae in a narrative that he self-reflexively critiques for us. He is a writer, a playwright plotting action and constructing characters for himself as actor in a narrative that involves a paradoxical narrative structure – captured by narrative theory in the confounding phrase ‘‘Whoever you invented invented you too’’ (Kenan 95) – but a phrase that well captures the complexity and instability of this narrative. The first chapter encapsulates his method. A deputy sheriff in the small Texas town of Central City, Lou has constructed a persona that enables him to carry on his police duties and be a member of his community. It is a persona meant to fool his neighbors, to keep them from knowing the truth about him. This persona is a composite of stereotypes and cliches: He is a Hollywood version of a Texas cop, a Gary Cooper spin-off – he is goodness in a Stetson: Kind, compassionate, gentlemanly, always courteous, non-violent (he doesn’t wear a gun and has the reputation of talking criminals down), and he is informed by American Enlightenment optimism and belief in reason; there are no bad people – just ones who need guidance; as he tells us: ‘‘Anyway, people are people, even when they’re a little misguided. You don’t hurt them, they won’t hurt you. They’ll listen to reason’’ (3). These lines end the novel’s first page. Like the citizens of Central City, we are fooled by this too-familiar construction, taken in by ready-at-hand language, ideas, and images from our cultural imaginary. Lou shows his hand in his perverse presentation of what is his persona’s signature trait: the utterance of skeins of platitudes;

20

DOROTHY G. CLARK

for example his trademark is to relentlessly reel off such common wornout phrases as ‘‘Every cloud has its silver lining; if we didn’t have the rain we wouldn’t have the rainbows’’ – and so on. Lou reveals to us that he uses this character trait sadistically to toy with and torture others, ‘‘Striking at people that way is almost as good as the other, the real way’’ (5). Lou’s persona offers ff him two strategies: First it allows him to fool people; he is a self-conscious creator, deceiving through the use of toofamiliar language and imagery. He uses this language to deflect attention from himself, but also, and most significantly he intentionally bores his neighbors as an act of veiled violence; language is a weapon of his. We are immediately alerted that his forthcoming narrative with its skein of explanations, – controlled by the voice of Lou’s hokey deputy sheriff persona – is not only suspect and problematic, but possibly itself a weapon – a way to torment his implied reader. But he will substitute for the worn-out wisdom of cliches, the familiar cultural templates we have come to expect when trying to make sense out of evil. In the process of toying with us, Lou subverts our traditional strategies to make sense out of evil, rendering them as worn-out and empty as the platitudes that both conceal and reveal his true nature. He will, in fact, attack reason itself, for as he tells us continually and enacts for us in his brilliant narrative, he is of all things a man of reason, and it is reason that informs this narrative’s purpose to make sense. T he Killer IInside Me illustrates what Kant meant by the inscrutability of the ground from which we will actions of good or evil; we simply cannot know evil. Evil we will see can only be sensed and experienced in the concrete; it remains as elusive and slippery as the sensibility controlling this narrative. Evil is ultimately mute – extralinguistic despite the apparent surety and linguistic brilliance of Lou – it evades him ultimately as it evades us. We are left perplexed by the narrative and in epistemological confusion. Lou’s narrative employs five familiar templates that reflect traditional, modern, and postmodern explanatory models of evil; all of these will prove inadequate to the their proposed task. If there is a Grand Narrative, it is one in which Lou uses the appearance/reality outer/inner world motif to pitch to us a too-apparent Freudian psychoanalytic explanation for his actions. This story accounts for evil outside a theological framework, appealing to an intelligent, implied reader for whom science and psychoanalysis have filled the absence left by the death of God. In 1952 (and even today), this explanation would have been considered an enlightened approach to human behavior, immediately recognizable and acceptable. According to this story, early sexual trauma created his problem. Lou

BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION

21

was sexually abused by his sadomasochistic housekeeper who was angry at having her affair ff end with Lou’s dad – a doctor and icon in their small Texas town. The abuse creates the ‘‘sickness’’ in Lou which initially T manifests when Lou at about 15 sexually assaults a 3B year old girl; to protect Lou, Mike, his newly adopted older brother, is asked by their father to take the rap. Lou suppresses the sickness, never leaves town despite his lineage and intelligence, and becomes a deputy sheriff. ff To hide the sickness of the true Lou – the killer inside him – he constructs the persona of the stereotypical small town peace officer – an act he performs as if he were a character in a play that he is writing. The sickness erupts again when he is asked as part of his police duties to visit Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute. He winds up in a sadistic sexual relationship with Joyce – the sickness now breaking through his defenses; he brutally kills Joyce, Elmer Conway – Joyce’s lover and the son of a powerful industrialist who Lou believes murdered his adopted brother Mike, Johnnie Pappas – a minor delinquent kid Lou has especially befriended and who the authorities initially believe killed Joyce and Elmer, Amy – a schoolteacher and his long-time girlfriend and lover, and a bum – who becomes a pawn in Lou’s machinations to kill Amy. Bob Maples, the kindly elderly sheriff who has known Lou all his life, commits suicide after Amy’s murder apparently from the shock of realizing the truth about Lou. A good rhetorician, Lou offers ff ample support to buttress this rationale, but his presentation is transparently manipulative and unreliable. The plotline itself privileges this interpretation. Lou begins his tale by recounting his initial meeting with Joyce and then carefully tells and shows us how the killings committed during the previous three months directly result from this encounter. To prevent any doubts his reader may have about the cause of his ailment, Lou identifies his problem by manipulatively and selfconsciously italicizing it as ‘‘the sickness.’’ To further bolster his psychoanalytic argument, he provides the implied reader with a series of corroborating claims: he notes how much Amy looks like Joyce, so that he would have to ‘‘kill her a second time’’; and then confirms this observation by the recounting of a revelatory moment in his father’s office when religion ironically gives him reason to kill: opening a dusty bible, he discovers in the book of God (maybe, in fact, in Revelations) a picture of the dreaded housekeeper, Helene – who resembles both Joyce and Amy. If we have any doubts about what has ignited his evil, these are put to rest in a penultimate chapter in this rendition of a totalizing narrative. At the beginning of Chapter 22, Lou sets up his final rationale by reminding the implied reader of his fundamental reasonableness –

22

DOROTHY G. CLARK

‘‘you know I don’t do things that don’t make sense’’ (209). A few pages later, he dispassionately presents a scripted recounting of the sexual trauma with Helene, the resultant conflict with his father, and the killings (‘‘Anyone. Amy. Joyce. Any woman who, even for a moment, became her. I’d kill them. I’d keep trying until I did kill them [217]).’’ However, in lines just following this seemingly certain explanation, Lou suddenly switches gears, as he appears to become aware of this explanation’s inability to contain all the factors of his narrative; he himself undercuts and destabilizes his Grand Narrative: The bum. The few others, I’d struck out at. I don’t know – I’m not really sure about them. ... They were all people who didn’t have to stay here. ... Maybe I think that the guy who won’t fight when he can and should deserves the worst you can toss at him. Maybe, I’m not sure of all the details. All I can do is give you the general picture; and not even the experts could do more than that. (218)

Lou surprises us not only by indicating the inadequacy of his Grand Narrative, but also by clearly indicating that he has killed many more people than recounted in it. He immediately offers ff a technical description of a psychiatric disorder as another rational and scientific hypothesis. Lou may actually have ‘‘a disease, or a condition, rather, called dementia praecox. Schizophrenia, paranoid type. Acute, recurrent, advanced. Incurable. It was written, you might say, about – But I reckon you know, don’t you?’’ (219). Like the persona of the corny, helpful cop with the annoying penchant for endless platitudes, Lou’s discourse has toyed with us and put into question two of the most familiar and generally accepted scientific explanations for evil human behavior: childhood trauma and psychosis. We are aware of a sensibility behind this discourse that uses rationality and coherence against itself, that won’t be confined by theoretical frameworks – and that, in fact, mocks them. Lou’s brilliant and disconcerting discourse further undercuts itself by offering ff two other templates that also account for human evil. One rationale has been clear from the beginning of his retelling of his actions: revenge. Because he is certain that the construction magnate, Hendricks Conway killed his adopted brother, he states directly his desire to kill his son Elmer in order to make Hendricks suffer ff as his own father had. The plausibility of this rationale is heightened by another character, Joe Rothman, head of the labor union, who infers that Lou killed Elmer for just this reason. We can also justifiably infer that the killings of Amy and Joyce – who look like the malevolent Helene – are similarly acts of revenge. Right before the murders of Joyce and Elmer, Lou declaims

BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION

23

Joyce and Elmer were going to die. Joyce had asked for it. The Conways had asked for it. I wasn’t any more cold-blooded than the dame who’d have me in hell to get her own way. I wasn’t any more cold-blooded than the guy who’d had Mike knocked from an eight-story building. ... It was the only way I could, and it was the way it should be. I’d be doing to him what he’d done to Dad. (44–45)

Lou’s engages our deep cultural understanding of the powerful role of revenge in human life as he argues that he is not a cold-blooded, calculating murderer but instead a victim of passion. In a surprising instance of postmodernism, Lou’s narrative also proposes as yet another template what looks very much like Nietzscheian perspectivism. Near the end of the narrative, the authorities, knowing he is the murderer, but apparently needing his confession to prove it, confine Lou to an asylum; on the eighth day of his incarceration, a flamboyant attorney, who may be seen as the text’s metonymic figure for a deity, emancipates him and gives him the Word. The Word as shared by Billy Boy Walker is his philosophy of moral relativism – derived from nothing less than his agricultural studies: I’d seen everything in black and white, good and bad. But after I was set straight I saw that the name you put to a thing depended on where you stood and where it stood. And ... and here’s the definition, right out of the agronomy books: ‘A weed is a plant out of place.’ Let me repeat that. ‘A weed is a plant out of place.’ I find a hollyhock in my cornfield, and it’s a weed. I find it in my yard, and it’s a flower. You’re in my yard, Mr. Ford. (236–237)

Walker’s perspectivist definition of morality is followed by his psychologiW cal assessment of Lou’s apparent confession to him: ‘‘You had to like people ... to keep telling yourself you liked them ... to offset ff the deep, subconscious feelings of guilt ... More important, it was part of the burden you had to carry to stay here and suffer’’ ff (237). Walker becomes a convenient final support for Lou’s Grand Narrative – depending on where you’re standing, Lou is not a psychopathic killer, but a victim, a victim of trauma. However, by this point in the narrative – just pages from its culmination, Walker’s words ring hollow. In addition to the various ways that I’ve noted how this grand narrative has subverted and destabilized itself, Lou’s vivid depiction of the vicious murders he has committed makes it impossible to consider him a flower misplaced. I will return to this point in a moment, but one murder is particularly relevant here. Early in the text, Lou uses the absence of a moral center as an explanatory prelude to his murdering the trusting young Johnnie Pappas whose murder also illustrates the narrator’s manipulative discourse in the service of his killing. In response to Johnnie’s assertion that Lou is a ‘‘square

24

DOROTHY G. CLARK

joe,’’ Lou presents a vision of a world in moral and epistemological disarray: ‘‘Am I [a square joe]? How do you know I am, Johnnie. How can a man ever really know anything? We’re living in a funny world, kid, a peculiar civilization ... it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way’’ (118). Lou coldly kills Johnnie mocking religion by prefacing his act with lines from Ecclesiasticus (‘There’ a time for peace ... etc.) and a fitting blackly humorous platitude – ‘‘This hurts me more than it hurts you’’ (120) The cold-blooded brutality of this murder, with its profound betrayal of trust and friendship destabilize special pleadings of any sort – Lou’s ostensive lecture on the world’s moral emptiness as explanation to Johnnie for what is to occur disappears in the wake of Lou’s calculated recounting of Johnnie’s murder peppered with its dark linguistic play in the service of furthering pain. Johnnie’s murder instructs well that the depiction of evil is itself always an excess of any containing framework whether it is Billy’s moral relativism argument or any of the other familiar templates discussed above – even psychosis. Lou is well aware of this impossibility to contain and know evil. In a metanarrative moment and with characteristic playful, sadistic linguistic skill, Lou deconstructs his own narrative, confirming the inadequacy of reason to understand his actions: ‘‘We might have the disease, the condition; or we might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell; or we might be innocent of what we’re supposed to have done. We might be any one of these three things, because the symptoms we show would fit any one of the three’’ (222). Lou’s comments about the equivocal truth of his condition are inseparable from the perplexing, manipulative structure of his narrative – which is, certainly, the most supreme symptom, for like the evil it attempts to depict and interrogate, it conceals rather than reveals, continually eluding containment and definition. Each of the templates I’ve discussed dismiss the agent from responsibility; yet in the above quote Lou offers ff the possibility that he is quite responsible – ‘‘cold-blooded and smart as hell.’’ If T he Killer Inside Me has something equivalent to a traditional narrative voice it is this consciousness, a polyvocal construct. Like evil, it is elusive, able to brilliantly and shockingly switch registers from hokey cop to insightful social critic to masterful logician; a few examples will help illustrate this phenomenon. We are, of course, aware of a clever, intelligent consciousness immediately, in the first chapter. As the narrative unfolds, we learn that this consciousness is quite brilliant – he understands three languages, knows higher math and science – toys with calculus equations for fun, knows both the

BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION

25

discourse and substance of sophisticated medical issues, can quote directly and allude to works of high literature and, at will, engage in high literary and philosophical language. There are other voices – ones we might associate with psychosis, which sotto voce-like comment viciously about the murders to be committed and those already enacted; and then, finally, there is an ambiguous, all-too-human voice, seemingly moved by the human losses he has committed – truly caring for poor Johnnie, feeling slighted by his cohorts after the murder of his beloved (of course, whom he has murdered), feeling gratitude towards Billy for his understanding. These polyvocal phenomena that we identify with Lou and the controlling sensibility that is also Lou comprise a construct that cannot be contained by any of Lou’s appropriations of explanatory templates for evil. Along with the horrible depictions of the killings themselves, this greater sensibility informing, commenting upon, and constructing the narrative both destabilizes the rational templates and makes us sense active, volitional evil – makes us aware of a sensibility ‘‘cold-blooded and smart as hell.’’ Thompson ends his novel with a series of postmodern black jokes integral to its narrative structure and which serve as a final coup de grace to any attempt to find meaning or sense out of the evil committed by Lou. With consummate narrative sleight of hand and postmodern selfreflexivity, Thompson uses pulp/detective fiction narrative formula to represent the problematics of truth. Whether it has been the ‘‘proof ’’ Lou promises to offer ff about himself or the evidence the authorities will muster to finally snare him – truth has been both present and absent throughout the narrative, a promise hinted at, but in keeping with good detective fiction formula, its revelation has been delayed to coincide with the plot’s climax and denouement, the final unraveling when all the pieces are to fall together and meaning achieved. One level of ‘‘truth’’ is represented by the prostitute Joyce Lakeland. She is simultaneously the source of Lou’s evil, what has ignited the sickness, and the secret evidence the authorities will use to make Lou confess the truth, an evidence Lou has provocatively hinted at throughout his narrative. Throughout his narrative, Lou intimates that Joyce may have survived his attack; her possible survival and re-emergence as ‘‘evidence’’ makes her both present and absence in his narrative very much like the truth of evil Lou ostensibly is providing. At the plot’s climactic moment, Joyce does return, but she is swathed in bandages, more mummy than human, literally present but absent; and, in a final playful gesture at the impossibility of knowing truth, Lou rekills Joyce and by so doing figuratively and literally kills truth in the novel’s final pages.

26

DOROTHY G. CLARK

But not evil; as Lou kills Joyce he describes himself as beastlike in language replicating his self-description when he first killed her, ‘‘I could feel my face twisting, my lips pulling back from my teeth’’ (244). This image of bestial killer is reinforced as his diction disintegrates seemingly into madness, ‘‘Two hearts that beat as one,’’ I said, ‘‘Two – ha, ha, ha, – two – ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, – two – J-jesus Chris – ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha – two Jesus ...’’ (244). Yet, this apparently clear evil performance is itself unreliable, for Lou immediately corrects himself and returns to his role of narrator and narrative-commentator, ‘‘And I sprang at her, I made for her just like they’d thought I would. Almost.’’ (244). Consistent with the narrative’s polyvocality, the ending shifts amongst several voices subverting our ability to know the truth about Lou – while insisting on the truth of the evil act itself. This final murder – both shocking and manipulatively playful – is followed by another metafictional joke that further underlines the stunning unreliability of this narrator and the epistemological disaster it embodies. Prior to his reunion with Joyce, Lou perceives his end is near – conveniently coinciding with the narration’s end. Returned to his father’s house by Billy, Lou prepares for the climatic moment of his narrative and his life, by soaking the upstairs of his home with alcohol and lighting slow-burning candles. Just after the murder of Joyce, we are told, ‘‘And it was like I’d signaled, the way the smoke suddenly poured up through the floor. And the room exploded with shots and yells, and I seemed to explore with it, yelling and laughing, and ... and ... that’s – all’’ (244). Apparently, the house is exploding with flames and we are somehow witnessing the end of Lou’s life as he will be consumed by flames and his narrative will perform its own self-consummation. But Lou is not finished providing us with rationales for his actions. His final template ends the narrative itself. It is worth quoting the novel’s final lines: Yeah, I reckon that’s all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our kind. Y Us people. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad. All us folks. Me and Joyce Lakeland, and Johnnie Pappas and Bob Maples and big ol’ Elmer Conway and little ol’ Amy Stanton. All of us. All of us (244).

We are left with a pretty conventional religious vision that suggests the presence of an afterlife and paints a picture of a flawed humanity tainted by original sin; for the all who start the game with a crooked cue includes the conventionally good and bad – whether it is the too sincere Bob

BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION

27

Maples, foolish Elmer Conway, trusting Johnnie Pappas or supposed harlotry of Joyce and Amy. Lou’s final words implicate not only all the players in his story, but all of us too. The novel’s final three words ‘‘All of us’’ with its suggestion of the evil implicit in the human condition, paints a picture of human life that fits what Paul Ricoeur speaks of as the tragic mode – humanity is caught in the web of fate and if there is order and meaning to this life, it comes in the form of a wicked and mocking god. Following so closely the end of World War II, this vision is also proleptic of what Hannah Arendt will later call the ‘‘banality of evil’’ – making us profoundly aware of the immanence of evil in human concerns. But all of this has come from a narrative that has seemingly deconstructed itself literally in smoke and gunshots. How then are we to understand this tale? From whence has this narrative been written? Are we reading words left by Lou before he died? If so, why didn’t they burn with him in his house? Or are they, as one critic surmised, a voice from the grave? This answer is also unsatisfying, for if the supernatural enters this tale it does so by reducing its potency. Is it then from an insane asylum? Has Lou made the whole thing up? This narrative whose major stated intention has been to make sense for us presents us instead with a brilliant and penultimate example of unreliability; we are left unable to make sense, unable to know even the truth of its existence, let alone an understanding of the nature of evil. We are left nonetheless with an awareness of evil as an unique phenomenon in human affairs ff – what Paul Riceour identifies as evil’s ‘‘absolute character of irruption’’ (Dews 51) and what Blanchot points to as its ‘‘singularity’’ – defying categorization as the ‘‘unverifiable, the improper’’ (Bernstein 231). What this novel suggests is extraordinarily unsettling. It holds up an evil person as a mirror to the culture, and reflects back on us how woefully coherent, and uninformative, our modern narratives about evil really are. What gets called into question is an important, profound cultural project – the colonization and conquest of those darker regions of the human soul in which evil dwells. What Ford suggests about evil is very much like what Derrida suggests about death – ‘‘il n’y va pas’’ – there is no step there, no passage we can take to arrive at an understanding of it. We do not, cannot understand evil, not because it is beyond us, but because it, like death, is genuine aporia, an unmendable rent in the fabric of being and meaning, a wound filled with darkness that no amount of talk and writing can heal. California State University, Northridge

28

DOROTHY G. CLARK BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernstein, Carol L. ‘‘ ‘Happy Endings’/Unendings.’’ Rethinking Evil. Contemporary Perspectives, Maria Pia Lara (ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Dews, Peter. ‘‘ ‘Radical Finitude’ and the Problem of Evil.’’ Rethinking Evil. Contemporary Perspectives, Maria Pia Lara (ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Kenan, Shlomith Rimmon. Narrative Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Neiman, Susan. Evil in Modern T hought. An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. Polito, Robert. Savage Art. A Biography of Jim T hompson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Thompson, Jim. T he Killer Inside Me. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1991.

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

A PARADOX OF LOVE: THE MANIFESTATION OF LIFE AND THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER’S HER SON’S W IFE

‘‘The universe ... now revealed itself to her as a huge, malign conspiracy against any attempt to make sense of it.’’

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper stems from and is an elaboration of my recently completed doctoral dissertation ‘‘A Steady Flameless Light: The Phenomenology of Realness in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s T he Brimming Cup, Her Son’s W ife, and Rough-Hewn’’.1 Here I will focus on the phenomenology of the moral sentiment in Her Son’s W ife (1926). When taken at face value, the moral question at stake in the novel remains one-dimensional and detached from the immediate manifestation of human experience. When looking more closely at the text’s thematization of moral values we discover a pervasive idealization of vitality as moral self-presence. Paradoxically, the notion of ‘life’ is both the guiding principle for the protagonist’s formation of moral values and that which prevents her from experiencing moral feelings. Vitality is phenomenalized as the condition of possibility for moral goodness, for love, and for the rightful expulsion of evil. Goodness and love can be ‘true’ only if they properly represent vitality. In Her Son’s W ife, vitality gives phenomena objective meaning. In this paper, drawing on the phenomenology of Michel Henry, I call meaning which is objectively present to itself affective ff meaning.2 Non-presence, or that which is not idealized as the full presence of vitality has no place in and for an existence which deems itself right, worthy, and morally good. Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s writing is very much concerned with the questions of presence and morality.3 To my knowledge, however, no research on Canfield has been done from a dedicated phenomenological perspective. Here I hope to show how life4 as objectified self-presence problematizes the manifestation of the moral sentiment so that the morality that pertains to it is only a quasi-morality: a morality that is lacking in consideration of and responsibility for the other.5 When reality no longer applies to the protagonist’s idealization of vitality, Mrs. Bascomb finds that her ‘‘poor 29 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 29–45. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

30

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

little recipes for tidy moral house-keeping were scattered like straws in the chaos’’ (HSW, 175). In this paper I hope to show how at the peak of a ferocious struggle for the preservation of morality as selfsame vitality another morality emerges. This other morality I will call ethics. 2. METHODOLOGY

Edmund Husserl confronted the issue of presence by focusing on the ways in which phenomena come to givenness. He discovered ways in which presence can either be objective or nonobjective.6 This discrepancy was highlighted by Heidegger as a distinction between some types of phenomena that are given zuhanden and other types that are given vorhanden.7 In the latter type of presencing, the phenomenon in question comes to view as something objectively present, as something that could be posited in-front-of an objective gaze. Such objectifying presencing deprives presence of its unself-conscious immediacy – the immediacy which can be defined as always already taking place. Phenomena that come to givenness in and as this immediacy are not objectified or objectifiable. They are present in a blank or blind way. In this study, I use phenomenology’s ability to critique objectified presence in order to make distinctions between different ff types of phenomena in Her Son’s W ife: phenomena that are present in a nonpresentational way, and phenomena that are present only by means of reification. Methodologically, I rely on the model of affectivity ff set up by the French phenomenologist Michel Henry and on the phenomenology of ethics delineated and described by Emmanuel Levinas. Both of these thinkers have in common that they challenge their predecessor Martin Heidegger. Henry’s explications of the affective ff life do not subscribe to the Heideggerian understanding of subjectivity as being-in-the-world. Michel Henry challenges Heidegger’s view by forwarding an understanding of subjectivity as affectivity ff (immanence). He makes a fundamental distinction between affectivity ff and sensibility. Sensibility is conditioned by objective transcendence. It is turned toward the world as a place where affective ff meanings are fabricated by means of a system of representation. Sensibility creates selfsame presence, the authority of which has been successfully questioned by the school of deconstruction. I use Henry’s notion of affectivity ff to delineate a type of presence in Her Son’s W ife that is affective ff but untouched by affective ff objective meaning. Emmanuel Levinas critiqued Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein’s world as one fundamentally undisturbed by alterity. Because Dasein is

A PARADOX OF LOVE

31

always alongside the other but never truly faces the other, Levinas claims that Dasein’s world is devoid of ethics. By placing metaphysics before ontology, i.e. ethics before Being, Levinas delineates human experience as always conditioned by absolute solitude – the solitude of the absolute I – but also as being in an ‘impossible’ relation with that which cannot be given in terms of objectification, representation, or thematization. He names this relation with alterity or the other, the ethical relation, or ‘‘conversation.’’ The two philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Henry are utilized in this paper to phenomenologically delineate the ontological and ethical dynamic of Canfield’s novel Her Son’s W ife. Contrary to some readers of Michel Henry, I do not see his ontology of immanent affectivity ff as precluding the possibility of Levinasian ethics. Only an ethics produced by a transcendent system of principles (by sensibility) would be repelled by Henry’s philosophy. Henry’s phenomenology repels the possibility of transcendent morality but not immanent feelings of love and responsibility. In this paper, I will maintain that affectivity ff is an ontological condition of possibility for Levinas’s ethical relation. For Levinas, ethics comes before everything, including ontology and affectivity. ff This is ethics par excellence and that which constitutes the uniqueness of Levinas’s thought. But this priority is given at the ethical level of existence, not the ontological. Ontologically, ethics is conditioned by affectivity. ff It is conditioned by the I. As Levinas himself points out, the metaphysical ethical relationship can only have as its point of departure the absolute I (T &I, 36).8 To combine the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas with that of Michel Henry is indeed problematical but not unheard of. In ‘‘The Disqualification of Intentionality: The Gift in Derrida, Levinas, and Michel Henry,’’ Jeffrey ff L. Kosky points out that we find an absence of objective givenness in both Henry’s concept of affectivity ff and Levinas’s idea of infinity. For Levinas and Henry, the appearing [of phenomena] is already there accomplishing itself when the [objectifying] gaze comes on the scene, seeing it and making it an object. The horizon which the gaze sees is not the original scene of appearing, and the intentionality of this gaze is not equivalent to the power of making it appear (T DI, 192).

According to Kosky, Levinas’s thought of radical transcendence and Henry’s thought of radical immanence both cast out ‘‘every possibility of fully realized self-relation, a denial that means that the self does not constitute itself and so does not constitute the prior origin of all phenomena’’ (T DI, 195). Phenomena appear, for both, as invisible, as originally

32

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

untouched and unconstituted by the objectifying gaze of the knowing subject. Here, I utilize both Levinas and Henry to phenomenologically describe and uncover the ‘invisible’ structure of auto-affectivity ff and ethics in Canfield’s Her Son’s W ife. Edmund Husserl saw that what shows itself in experience does not perform this showing in the name of straightforward presence. Commenting on Husserl’s somewhat objectifying theory of ‘intentionality,’ J. N. Mohanty emphasizes that the ‘‘intentionality of consciousness is wider than its objectivating function, all consciousness is not presentational.9 This word presentational is central in my inquiry. In originating modern phenomenology Husserl came to see that all phenomenological research needs to depart from a problematizing moment in which phenomena are scrutinized in terms of their ability or failure to manifest presence. In what is currently called new phenomenology10 what is valued in the showing-of-itself-in-itself of the phenomenon is its nonpresentational rather than presentational force. Mrs. Bascomb – the protagonist in Her Son’s W ife – produces and secures a world by making all phenomena objectively presentational. These phenomena are not only objects but also people, feelings, events, and relationships: her love for her son, her love for her granddaughter, her housekeeping, her body, her son’s body, her granddaughter’s body, her social life, her suffering, ff other people’s suff ffering, plants, thoughts, experiences, time – everything past, present, and future. Mrs. Bascomb values all phenomena according to their ability to manifest themselves as vitality. She gathers all presentationally secured phenomena into a presentational ensemble. In this study, I call this ensemble ‘life.’ For Mrs. Bascomb, only phenomena that are posited as vital and vigorous count as truly living. Life understood in this way is not just biological aliveness. It is the site where all that counts as living attains a special type of selfpresence. For Mrs. Bascomb anything that falls short of ‘life’s’ presentational self-intensity has no intrinsic value and is not granted reality or moral worth. Mrs. Bascomb’s feelings about her house-plants perfectly illustrate her idealization of vitality as (her own) moral superiority. She was proud of the invariably flourishing condition of her house-plants both here and in her room at school. She had a good deal of contempt for women who did not succeed with them, and enjoyed seeing those in other classrooms wither and droop, while hers were always crisply green. (HSW 24–25; emphasis added)

However, Mrs. Bascomb’s view of ‘life’ as the barometer for moral and ontological worth is most notable in her feelings for her granddaughter

A PARADOX OF LOVE

33

Dids. Dids’ lovability directly reflects her power to manifest ‘life.’ She is ‘‘a strong, healthy child with an excellent digestion, and hence a large fund of good nature’’ (HSW, W 85) who takes ‘‘to herself with the avidity of healthy youth all the life-stuV u which was offered ff to her’’ (HSW, W 168; emphasis added). In Dids, her grandmother beholds the place where ‘life’ becomes presentational. She is for Mrs. Bascomb a ‘‘warm germ of life, so small, so living, so great’’ (HSW, W 62; emphasis added). Dids ‘life’ somehow also includes Mrs. Bascomb. When Dids is first held by her grandmother as a newborn, Mrs. Bascomb finds that all her capacity for W 62; emphasis living poured into the morsel of flesh in her arms’’ (HSW, added). 3. THE NATURAL PERSPECTIVE

Mrs. Bascomb cannot be made to abandon a causal and explanatory world. She safeguards sense by viewing everything objectively.11 She must always have a world and always have ‘life’ as the meaning that makes this world self-present and morally ‘right.’ She secretly dreads a shattering of the ego’s sense of itself as a world-phenomenon. But suddenly everything around her begins to assume a worldless ghostly shape. At this point, Mrs. Bascomb finds that her way of securing her world by resorting to objective thinking is useless. Her dizziness begins with her son’s senseless marriage to a woman who does not make sense or world. From a purely natural perspective, it would seem as if Her Son’s W ife derives its energy from the commonplace that it is unwise for a mother to live with her married son (HSW, W 88). A widow, Mrs. Bascomb has great plans for her son despite the fact that Ralph in no way resembles his father, John Bascomb, the man she still respects as spiritual guide and father figure (HSW, W 20). Mrs. Bascomb’s life comes to a halt when she one day receives a letter from her son informing her that he has made a runaway marriage with Lottie Hicks (HSW, W 27). Lottie turns out to be the weakest of characters, a fatal circumstance for a mother-in-law guided by her husband’s motto ‘‘Character is destiny’’ (HSW, W 21). As Lottie and Ralph move in with Mrs. Bascomb for lack of money, the moral atmosphere of the house begins to dissolve. Fiercely blaming Lottie for this, Mrs. Bascomb discovers that she can do nothing to prevent the defiance of her puritanical moral principles. However, Mrs. Bascomb finally finds a means of neutralizing Lottie. Noticing that Lottie is remarkably unvigorous during and after pregnancy, Mrs. Bascomb one day realizes that it might be possible to slowly

34

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

turn Lottie into an invalid. She screens herself from guilt by telling herself that she is doing this for the sake of Dids, her little granddaughter who is quickly degenerating into a delinquent under Lottie’s slack supervision. Mrs. Bascomb hires a quack doctor to fuel Lottie’s hypochondria. From being a woman who imagines that she has pains in her feet, Lottie slowly turns into a woman who believes that it would be dangerous to get out of bed. Unscrupulously, Dr. Pell and Mrs. Bascomb manipulate Lottie’s mind and body. Mrs. Bascomb uses her own money to write out the monthly check for Dr. Pell. As a result, Lottie becomes an invalid looked after by Mrs. Bascomb (HSW, W 249). This is how Mrs. Bascomb manages to save her sparkling little granddaughter Dids as well as her son from Lottie. Mrs. Bascomb has sacrificed her daughter-in-law and her own conscience to save her son and granddaughter from a life that does not meet her own presentational moral standards. These are the events of Her Son’s W ife understood straightforwardly. However, I hope to elucidate the novel in the light of something that excludes naturalism as a guiding principle, i.e., phenomenology. Here, other aspects of the text are uncovered: phenomenalizations of human experience as irreducible to the natural attitude. By uncovering these aspects, I hope to show that the novel’s thematization of moral values runs counter to the development of an affective ff existence for which moral experience is suddenly and unexpectedly phenomenalized as feelings of love. At the peak of her violent struggle to maintain presentational control, Mrs. Bascomb is surprised to find her feelings disentangled from the presentational world of representations. Shocked into a state of worldlessness, she has found that her old moral principles of right and wrong no longer apply to existence. When she is forced to depart from these principles, she eventually experiences an absolving of love from her own objectifying presence-bestowing ego. At this point, love makes an appearance as affectivity ff rather than as aff ffective meaning. It makes an appearance as a non-presentational response to the other. For the protagonist love finally arises as an ethical experience impossible to will, to idealize or to objectify. Love manifests itself as affectivity ff and as an involuntary response to the other: it is aimless, wholly different ff from the objectifying intentionality of affective ff meaning.12 4. ALTERITY: THE PHANTOMLIKE PRESENCE OF LOTTIE

When Ralph brings home his new wife, Mrs. Bascomb immediately notices that Ralph’s life-partner is deficient. Nothing in her points to ‘life.’ As

A PARADOX OF LOVE

35

nonlife, Lottie arises to Mrs. B as alterity. For the protagonist this is the beginning of a nightmare. In Lottie, Mrs. Bascomb is confronted with a ‘‘phantom’’ (HSW, W 45). ‘‘The spot where she had first seen Lottie could never be like any other spot in the world to her‘‘(HSW, W 45: emphasis added): For an instant, before her in the dusk, stood a figure which every time she looked in through that door was thereafter to confront her in that room. ... On it, that first night, as through the years to come, stood Lottie ... cheap, ignorant, vulgar ... everything which Mrs. Bascomb detested ... Mrs. Bascomb pushed a button and the glare of the electric-bulb emptied the room of the phantom. (HSW, W 45)

For Mrs. B, Lottie does not belong to the world of light and reason, to the region of lucid sense-bestowal and affective ff (objective) meanings. In meeting Lottie, Mrs. Bascomb has not only been introduced to the nonpresentational, she has been introduced to herself as the nonpresentational. Her own irreality begins with Lottie’s phantomlike presence. Years later when Mrs. Bascomb is carrying out her malicious plan to turn Lottie into an invalid she will still wonder ‘‘who ... this strong unscrupulous woman now living in her body’’ actually is (HSW, W 218). When Mrs. B reads the letter from Ralph delivering the news about his runaway marriage she loses sight of herself and the sensible world: ‘‘the woman who read this letter ... was wondering passionately who she was’’ (HSW, W 28). In the interval between the moment when she had dropped her eyes to the letter, and the moment when she had raised them to look again at the world, everything had changed. The ... furniture glared at her menacingly, like ... demons, swollen with anger. She gave a cry of terror at the sight ... (HSW, W 28; emphasis added).

Mrs. Bascomb eventually finds that she can forestall her own reaction to Lottie’s irrealness by disregarding her and placing all her investments in Lottie’s daugther Dids, the vigorous grand-child who adequately expresses the nature of life as self-present vitality. When Dids is born, Mrs. Bascomb sees a strong resemblance between her and her grandfather. As an incarnation of John, Dids appears to her as self-present vitality (and therefore as a moral force). Dids resemblance to her grandfather gives Mrs. Bascomb hope for the future in spite of the life-deficient nature of Dids’s mother. The baby girl’s ‘‘face [was] as calm as that of a Buddha, her eyes wide open, gazing up fixedly. As their gaze met, John Bascomb’s

36

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

widow woke from her long nightmare. The eyes were those of John Bascomb, set under John Bascomb’s brow’’ (HSW, W 55). In Her Son’s W ife, Mrs. Bascomb’s late husband is no mere person. He is the origin of ‘life’ and vitality. As such, John defines ‘being’ and ‘goodness.’ This means that he is also the principle by which the reality of the Bascomb family is defined. Mrs. Bascomb religiously wears the picture of her husband and his motto ‘character is destiny’ in a locket about her neck. It is only when Mrs. Bascomb eventually is completely deprived of worldhood by the irreal and phantomlike Lottie that the W 196). This removal appears in conjunction with locket is removed (HSW, the protagonist’s overwhelming guilt for turning her daughter-in-law into an invalid. On the very night that Mrs. Bascomb obsessively washes her hands to rid herself from guilt she also takes off the locket (HSW, W 195). 5. AFFECTIVITY: RESPONDING TO THE OTHER

When Mrs. Bascomb finds that she no longer has ‘character’ she also finds that she sometimes cannot control her actions. If ‘character’ defines reality this must mean that Mrs. Bascomb, who no longer has ‘character,’ has become irreal. Plotting to make Lottie an invalid she feels that there is a ‘‘numbed unreal person acting in her place’’ (HSW, W 191). Lack of character has led Mrs. Bascomb into the vicinity of something that is different ff from the reality by which she has formerly defined being. This reality seems to be disturbed. ‘‘There was something so unrestful in the air of the house’’ on the night when she takes off her locket (HSW, W 194). Mrs. Bascomb’s pallor was ‘‘more than pallor’’ (HSW, W 192). She looks so ‘‘awful’’ that her son Ralph is aghast. ‘‘[T]here passed like a lightning flash of insanity through Ralph’s mind the notion, ‘Mother looks as though she had killed Lottie.’ ‘Where’s Lottie’? he asked loudly. ‘Upstairs in bed,’ said his mother in a grave voice’’ (HSW, W 192). Mrs. Bascomb is killing Lottie. But action is problematized by a displacement of the presentational objectifying attitude. This dislocation is irreal for Mrs. Bascomb. It makes an appearance as affectivity: ff as the ego’s unexpected response to the other. During Dr. Pell’s first visit, Mrs. Bascomb slid her chair nearer and took Lottie’s soft hand in hers. It was the first time she had ever made a motherly gesture towards Lottie. It did not seem to her now that she had really made it. ... But ... she felt Lottie’s moist, clinging fingers close gratefully on hers. (HSW, W 191)

Holding Lottie’s hand is part of Mrs. Bascomb’s strategy. But it is not a necessary part. Suddenly she finds that she is involuntarily affectionate. ff

A PARADOX OF LOVE

37

Eventually, Mrs. Bascomb will also find herself listening to Lottie even though she does not intend to do so (HSW, W 212). Mrs. Bascomb finds that she no longer is her firm controlled self. In these moments affectivity ff seems to become absolved from affective ff meaning. As this happens, feelings become free from presentational morality and affective ff meaning.13 Momentarily, in and as the beginning of the ethical relation, the world and its sense-making processes exercise only secondary power over her. 6. VIOLENCE

At the outset of Her Son’s W ife violence is camouflaged. Mrs. Bascomb’s calm and controlled appearance as the intelligent, respected, and slightly superior schoolteacher does not immediately signal the dynamic of vioW 6 ). Instead, an air of moral propriety accompalence to the reader (HSW, nies her attitude. As I have pointed out, John Bascomb’s widow manages her existence by objectifying manifestation. In doing so she deprives phenomena of their nonpresentational energy and reduces them to selfsameness. My phenomenological reading of violence in Her Son’s W ife contradicts the thematic development of violence in the novel. In Her Son’s W ife, violence is thematized. Thematically, Mrs. Bascomb is depicted as a person who initially is not violent but who in desperation becomes violent – first by resorting to outright rage and later by turning to cold and calculated brutality. According to my phenomenological reading, the phenomena of violence runs contrary to this current. When Mrs. Bascomb resorts to the strategy of making Lottie bedridden it may seem as if she has once more returned to cool and calculated thinking. It could be argued that the strategy that Mrs. Bascomb eventually forms to safeguard Dids as ‘life’ exclusively reflects objective thinking in the manner of her earlier behavior. However, if we take a closer look at her strategy we notice something peculiar. Rather than being shaped by Mrs. Bascomb, the plan takes its own shape and assumes its own substance. There is a gap between Mrs. Bascomb as a selfsame ego and the plan. In fact, the strategic cruelty of Mrs. Bascomb’s plan fills her with ‘‘mortal horror of herself ’’ (HSW, W 191). The subjectivity that the plan reflects is not the presentational objectifying self that Mrs. Bascomb identifies with. Therefore the plan seems ‘‘to bear no relation to her’’ (HSW, W 189). Its manifestation is in fact strikingly similar to Mrs. Bascomb’s own involuntary affectionate ff behavior toward Lottie. In both cases, Mrs. Bascomb for the first time experiences herself as passive in relation to her immediate feelings.

38

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

The helplessness that Mrs. Bascomb experiences when she finds that ‘‘anger’’ and ‘‘violence’’ are useless weapons against Lottie brings her to a complete standstill (HSW, W 167). To stand ‘‘breathlessly still’’ and do ‘‘nothing at all’’ implies a withholding of the presentational attitude. Mrs. Bascomb learns to listen to Lottie’s complaints about physical disorders and to patiently take care of the household. She becomes docile and restrains her ‘‘old passionate violence’’ (HSW, W 165). One morning when Lottie decides to have breakfast in bed (being increasingly impeded by ill health), a thought springs up in Mrs. Bascomb: ‘‘Oh, if Lottie could only take all her meals in bed!’’ (HSW, W 181). It is not until Dr. Pell comes to visit Lottie that Mrs. Bascomb is surprised to find the ‘‘other half ’’ of this thought – its ‘‘predestined mate’’ (HSW, W 188). This occurs when Lottie explains to her mother-in-law that the doctor perfectly understands her problem. Dr. Pell has pointed out that another woman ‘‘would have been flat on her back in bed’’ if forced to deal with Lottie’s ailment (HSW, 188). Of all that Lottie said, one phrase only had meaning in it for Mrs. Bascomb. ‘Flat on her back in bed.’ The phrase had burst with a shout in her mind. Poised there on the vast dusky surface of forgotten and rejected thoughts, it was excitedly peering and fumbling about for another idea which belonged with it. ... What was it? (HSW, W 188; emphasis added)

Peculiarly enough the thought itself seems to have an autonomous existence – it was ‘‘excitedly ... fumbling’’ for its mate. When at the sharp sound of a doll falling to the floor Mrs. Bascomb gives a ‘‘nervous start,’’ the co-belonging idea finally crystallizes. ‘‘[T]here it was ... grown to monstrous proportions since the day she had let it sink into her mind. It towered above her now like a djinn let out of the bottle. She looked up at it horrified. It seemed to bear no relation to her’’ (HSW, W 189; emphasis added). The two ideas leap together ‘‘[1]ike chemical elements’’ and simultaneously become ‘‘something else, which neither of them had been before’’ (HSW, W 189). Yet Mrs. Bascomb knows that ‘‘every atom’’ of these ideas comes from ‘‘her own heart’’ (HSW, W 189). There is now a segment of Mrs. Bascomb that has been disentangled from the controlling habitual procedure of making everything presentational. These ideas reflect a nonpresentational Mrs. Bascomb. Instead of manifesting themselves as strategic and neutral products of objective thinking, they manifest themselves primarily in terms of spontaneous affectivity. ff Mrs. Bascomb has no control. In the same way as her involuntary affectionate ff behavior toward Lottie reflects lack of control (and in a sense a lack of presentational selfhood), this evil plan also reflects loss

A PARADOX OF LOVE

39

of self-control. Mrs. Bascomb suddenly finds herself in a blank in which affective ff meaning is no longer functional. The malicious plan that is formed in Mrs. Bascomb’s mind is conditioned by nonpresentational energy released from affective ff meaning. I suggest that Mrs. Bascomb’s terrifying strategy to control Lottie is also paradoxically a nonpresentational response to Lottie as the other. Mrs. Bascomb cannot deprive Lottie of alterity and reduce her to selfsameness. She finds herself unable to respond to this incapacity in a presentational fashion but is instead immersed in passivity. For the first time, Mrs. Bascomb realizes that she cannot change being itself. 7. UNEXPECTED SURPLUS

It is only when Mrs. Bascomb finds herself utterly passive and helpless that it becomes possible for her to truly face the other, i.e. Lottie. This event takes her by surprise and is not planned for. It arises as an unexpected surplus of the seemingly rational strategy to control Lottie. Mrs. Bascomb is no longer an exclusively objectifying person. She can no longer wholeheartedly steer the objectifying process and the deprivation that adheres to it. Reality is problematized for her when she finds out that the ‘‘real’’ Lottie is not the Lottie that she has known. Paradoxically, when Lottie is kept in the sickroom effectively ff objectified and shut off from the outside world, another Lottie is uncovered: ‘‘Lottie revealed herself quite otherwise’’ than Mrs. Bascomb had expected (HSW, W 212). Mrs. Bascomb is astonished to find that her daughter-in-law’s behavior reflects not superficiality but a deeply settled distrust. When the narrator points out that Mrs. Bascomb comes to realize that ‘‘nothing ever happened inside Lottie’’ (HSW, W 215), the voice announcing this is not contemptuous. Lottie does not lack inner reality because she is superficial. The lack reflects a larger deprivation. When we learn that Lottie ‘‘was beaten sodden by the bareness and emptiness of life as it had been open to her’’ (HSW, W 214), bareness and emptiness predefine Lottie. These qualities are what she is. She cannot be anything else. Although Lottie’s physical existence is invalidized by Mrs. Bascomb’s strategy, another part of her experiences the opposite of invalidization. This other part of Lottie is freed from crippledness. Never before has she experienced care or been listened to. I do not intend to exhibit the social circumstances and influences which may have caused Lottie’s miserable situation. What is revealed between the four walls of the sickroom is not primarily the identity of a previously oppressed woman. What is revealed

40

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

is a certain depth in affectivity. ff On one level Lottie has allowed herself to become objectified and manageable. On another level, however, she receives something from Mrs. Bascomb’s strategically planned care that is unplanned for.14 8. LOVE WITHOUT ‘LIFE’

As we have seen, the appropriation of Lottie is a false neutralization. Mrs. Bascomb’s reappearance in a comprehensible world is a false return. Lottie’s mother-in-law is infected by the nonpresentational. An abyss of nonpresentational energy has opened up in her. The abyss is not transcendent and it does not reflect any choice.15 This is why all of the protagonist’s actions are futile. Lottie may be invalidized, may be killed. Nothing would be changed. Nothingness or a blank has taken the place of Mrs. Bascomb’s vital ‘life’-loving heart. This nothingness is abysmal not because it reflects a lack of something but because it reflects nothingness, a blank. In this blank, love eventually arises as a feeling-phenomena released from presentational meaning. Presentationality, affective ff meaning, ‘life’ are all cancelled out beforehand. At the end of the novel, Mrs. Bascomb does not seem to be alive in a presentational sense. We learn that she has ‘‘been so little conscious of herself ’ during the period after Dids’ birth ‘‘that she seemed scarcely to have lived ... at all’’ (HSW, W 249). Mrs. Bascomb has stopped living. The only one who still moves towards life in a presentational sense is Dids. When Dids in the final pages of the novel is getting ready to leave her home for college, this signals that she is ready for ‘life.’ Mrs. Bascomb has succeeded in subduing the antivitalistic and antimoralistic chaos imposed on Dids by Lottie. Thematically ‘life’ and presentational morality have won. Dids is in every way a shining product of Mrs. Bascomb’s careful and controlling supervision. ‘Life’ triumphantly marches out of the house to announce its victory. The victory of ‘life’ is Dids. But something other than ‘life’ remains. The house itself remains. In the house Mrs. Bascomb and Lottie remain. When Dids is gone the house is filled with an ‘‘empty silence’’ (HSW, W 287). Mrs. Bascomb wonders if she herself is still ‘‘alive’’ (HSW, W 287). ‘‘She did not seem to herself to draw a breath. She felt as though she had died’’ (HSW, W 287). I maintain that these feelings reflect the fact that the protagonist no longer ‘lives’ in a presentational sense. But Mrs. Bascomb still exists. Phenomenologically this discrepancy between ‘living’ and existing is what dominates the novel’s final pages. This discrepancy is not

A PARADOX OF LOVE

41

thematically recognized. Thematically we are rather provided with a sentimental account of how Lottie will be the new person giving Mrs. Bascomb a reason to ‘live.’ Mrs. Bascomb’s feeling that Dids’ departure constitutes ‘‘the end’’ for her is interrupted by Lottie’s childlike call for her. ‘‘This was the end. Now there was nothing left for her, nothing at all. Emptiness ... emptiness ... She heard a voice calling lamentably, ‘Oh, Momma! Oh, Momma!’ It was Lottie’’ (HSW, W 287). Now, Mrs. Bascomb can see that the previouosly irreal and phantomlike Lottie is ‘‘a forlorn little phantom, a helpless, desolate child who ought never to have been born, doomed from the hour she drew breath, ignorant, unprotected, warped, stunted’’ (HSW, W 288). Lottie is no longer demonized. Now, Mrs. Bascomb loves Lottie as she should have loved her when Ralph first brought her home – as a daughter. But Mrs. Bascomb’s love for Lottie does not reflect ‘life’ or moral presentationality. What the text thematically fails to recognize is that rather than learning to love Lottie and deciding to be morally responsible for her within the context of ‘life,’ Mrs. Bascomb realizes that she loves Lottie and thus responds ethically to her. This realization and this response occur outside of ‘life.’ Mrs. Bascomb’s love for Lottie is not situated in the presentational ‘world.’ It does not adhere to presentational morality. I contend that even though the text – in keeping with its overall thematic structure – thematizes Mrs. Bascomb’s love for Lottie as a love that reflects ‘life,’ Mrs. Bascomb’s love in the final analysis also becomes manifest as nonpresentational. Standing there at the door of that room [watching Lottie cry], Mrs. Bascomb felt something strange come into her empty heart. As if it had been slowly seeping in and piling itself higher and higher against the barrier which shut it out from her life, it was there ... At the sound of Lottie’s disconsolate weeping it overflowed the barrier. (HSW, W 288; emphasis added)

Here we witness a discrepancy between thematized and unthematized levels of the text. Thematically the protagonist has finally let her love for Lottie into her ‘‘life.’’ From this perspective, love is relative to ‘life.’ ‘Life’ lets love in. Love reflects and represents the meaning of ‘life.’ This is the thematized outcome of Her Son’s W ife. But on an unthematized level the work recognizes a manifestation of moral experience that is less than presentational: feelings of love that are phenomenalized without affective ff meaning. Love that does not mean or have an aim is recognized by a nonpresentational voice in the text – a whisper so to speak. The love which resonates in Mrs. Bascomb’s heart is unfamiliar: it is ‘‘something

42

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

strange’’ – a response to the other occurring to the side of ‘life’ and its self-present representation of moral meaning. University of Vermont U NOTES 1 Annika Ljung-Baruth. A Steady Flameless Light: The Phenomenology of Realness in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s T he Brimming Cup, Her Son’s W ife, and Rough-Hewn. Ph.D. diss., Stockholm University, 2002. 2 Michel Henry defines ‘‘affective ff meaning’’ as ‘‘something which signifies feeling’’ (EM, p. 629; emphasis added). In contrast to affectivity, ff aff ffective meaning pertains to representation and perception. ‘‘T he perception of feeling necessarily takes place as its representation in the sense of a ‘simple representation’, in the sense of a portrait’ or ‘concept’ ’’ (EM, p. 628). 3 In Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s novels and short stories these questions become issues of human, social, philosophical, pedagogic, cultural, political, and aesthetic importance. To my knowledge no research on Canfield has been done from a dedicated phenomenological viewpoint, or from any perspective that addresses the question of presence as it has been discussed in phenomenology throughout the 20th century, and within deconstructive controversy over the past two or three decades. Most of the research done on Canfield sees her works as reflecting the writer’s sociohistorical position in time and ideological standpoint in politics. As a phenomenologist I look at different ff aspects of the texts – aspects which are not comprehensible in terms of socio-historical contextualization. Although my analyses of Canfield’s texts have political or ideological relevance, my procedure arrives at such relevance by means of my textual investigation, rather than vice versa. 4 In all of her texts, Canfield seems to have promoted the notion of ‘life’ as a form of barometer. This tendency is particularly evident in her view on literature. As a Book-of-theMonth-Club judge, Canfield recommended books that could be described as ’’pulsingly alive’’ (Radway; AFB, p. 281; emphasis added). Nonfictional books were also examined by all of the judges for their ability to ‘‘infuse abstractions with warm-blooded humanity and the vitality of the individual life’’ (Radway; AFB, p. 281; emphasis added). In an article on the contemporary painter and writer Rockwell Kent, Canfield celebrates art as vitality: ‘‘Art to the artist is quite simply Life ... of which he has an amplitude and intensity. ... What he does ... is to thrill us awake to ... all life’’ (Schroeter; ‘‘DCF and Rockwell Kent’’ in DCF N Newsletter , 4:2, 1997, p. 8). In Canfield’s graduating thesis on the French playwright and poet Emile Augier, she praises his realism as ‘‘life itself. ... It is the soul of a problem, of a society, of an epoch, which reveals itself ’ (Washington; DAB, p. 26). The tendency to celebrate life is understandable from a commonsensical viewpoint. However it also reveals something less innocent, namely a presentational ontological hierarchy based on vitality. 5 In this study, I use the term ‘‘other’’ in the same sense as Emmanuel Levinas. For him, the ‘‘metaphysical other is other with an alterity that is not formal, is not the simple reverse of identity, and is not formed out of resistance to the same, but is prior to every intitiative, to all imperialism of the same’’ (T &I, pp. 38–39). The relationship between the I and the other cannot be assimilated by an objective gaze – it cannot be represented by the I. ‘‘The metaphysical relation can not be properly speaking a representation, for the other would therein dissolve into the same. ... The other with which the metaphysician is in relationship and

A PARADOX OF LOVE

43

which he recognizes as other is not simply another locality; this other recalls Plato’s Ideas which, according to Aristotle’s formula, are not in a site. The sway [ pouvoir] of the I will not cross the distance marked by the alterity of the other’’ (T &I, p. 38). Levinas’s ‘‘other’’ differs ff essentially from Michel Henry’s definition of the term. For Henry, the other is always assimilated into the world of the same and therefore always empowers the same. Rather, Henry’s notion of radical immanence delineates that which the same cannot control. Autoaffectivity ff cannot be assimilated by the objective gaze, it cannot be represented. In Her Son’s W ife, auto-affectivity ff arises as Levinas’s definition of alterity. This alterity is not transcendent in an objective sense: it does not reflect affective ff meaning. Instead, transcendence for Levinas is only transcendent because it transcends the objectifying capacity [sway] of the same. 6 Transcendent objectivity is bracketed through phenomenological reduction. ‘‘We put out of action the general positing which belongs to the essence of the natural attitude; ... If I do that. ... I am exercising the phenomenological [reduction] ... which also completely shuts me off ff f rom any judgment about spatiotemporal factual being’’ (Husserl; IIdeas I, p. 61). That which remains after the reduction is the ‘‘phenomenological ‘ residuum’’: ‘‘a region of being which is ... unique and which can indeed become the field of a science of a novel kind: phenomenology’’ (Ideas I, pp. 65–66). 7 Heidegger; BT, T p. 82. 8 ‘‘The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other is possible only if the other is other with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure, to serve as entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I. ‘‘(T &I, p. 36) 9 Quoted in Burt C. Hopkins, IIntentionality in Husserl and Heidegger (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), p. 240. 10 For the ‘‘new phenomenologists,’’ the eidetic reduction lays bare that which is nonpresentational rather than that which is presentational. In this way, ‘‘new phenomenology’’ challenges Derrida’s critique of Husserl: ‘‘Whereas Derrida reads Husserl as a prisoner of the metaphysics of presence, bound by the idea of a theory of knowledge, Marion reads Husserl as showing the way out of the metaphysics of presence and thus beyond deconstruction’’ (Janicaud; PT T T, p. 9). 11 In Michel Henry’s T he Essence of Manifestation, this position from which Mrs. Bascomb can view everything objectively is called ‘‘objective Being.’’ ‘‘Objective being’’ is defined as that which is assumed by the self in the relation with the ‘‘other.’’ The relation with the ‘‘other,’’ or ‘‘foreign Being,’’ empowers the self because in this relation the self gains the freedom to assume an attitude with regard to the other. Even the subjection of the self to the ‘other’ is always ‘‘a subjection which constitutes freedom itself ... upon which is founded the possibility of taking an attitude and of thus assuming that which is distinguished, namely, objective Being’’ (EM, pp. 295–96). Self-sacrifice enables Mrs. Bascomb to assume the attitude of ‘‘objective Being.’’ Objective Being is an attitude assumed by an individual who understands herself from the viewpoint of ‘‘the other.’’ To understand oneself from the perspective of the other always becomes problematical since this perspective in reality is always beyond one’s own comprehension. The attitude of objective Being is seductive because it allows the subject to convince herself that she knows what the other thinks of her. Furthermore the subject bases her own self-understanding on this false ‘‘knowledge.’’ As a result the individual taking on the attitude of objective Being achieves a state of being in which her selfunderstanding is not genuinely based on the other’s understanding of her (as she has managed to convince herself ). Instead her self-understanding becomes based on her own independently created assumption about the other’s understanding of her. In this way,

44

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

the individual, or subject, can always control the meeting with ‘‘the other.’’ By creating a pseudo-comprehension of the ‘‘other’s’’ understanding of herself, the individual (the same, the self, the subject) ensures a situation in which she never has to face anybody – in which she is completely alone. By negating herself and her own desires for the ‘‘service of others’’ (HSW, W p. 26), Mary Bascomb has successfully managed to create a world where she tells W p. 26). However, Mrs. Bascomb herself that she is never ‘‘getting anything for herself ’ (HSW, does in fact ‘‘get’’ something for herself. When situating herself in a ‘‘subordinate’’ position with respect to ‘‘the other,’’ or ‘‘others,’’ by sacrificing herself and her desires, Mrs. Bascomb creates a pseudo-comprehension of the other’s understanding of her own person. As a result she can build her own self-understanding on that comprehension. In this way Mrs. Bascomb achieves mastery over herself and others. She achieves a state of being in which she feels justified to feel superior to the other through her very subordination. Before Lottie’s arrival Mrs. Bascomb’s existence is managed by inverting the idea of self-sacrifice. Instead of sacrificing her own desires for the wellbeing of others, Mrs. Bascomb sacrifices her own desires exactly to achieve gratification of her own desires. ‘‘You feel that it is worth making sacrifices for a son who is a credit to you’’ (HSW, W p. 19) she tells Margaret Hill, the ‘‘approved’’ girlfriend of Ralph, before receiving the shocking news. 12 In Her Son’s W ife, moral experience finally arises as affectivity ff – as the pre-self-conscious immediacy of feeling. For Michel Henry, the concept of morality would most likely be situated in the transcendent world of affective ff meanings. Here, however, I make use of Michel Henry’s philosophy of affectivity ff to delineate something that is not reducible to a concept – moral experience as immanent and nonpresentational. For Levinas, love is ‘‘not reducible to a knowledge mixed with affective ff elements which would open to it an unforeseen plane of being. It grasps nothing, issues in no concept, does not issue, has neither the subject-object structure not the I-thou structure’’ (T &I, p. 261). 13 Michel Henry defines affective ff meaning in terms of ‘‘unreal feeling[s]’’ (EM, p. 627). The ‘unreality’ of an ‘‘unreal feeling’’ is conditioned by representation. ‘‘What is a feeling deprived of its reality, a feeling f which does not experience itself interiorly and does not originally present itself to itself in its aaV Vectivity and through it? It is merely a represented feeling. We will call it an ‘unreal feeling.’ An unreal feeling is a feeling given in representation instead of being a feeling in its aV aVectivity’’ (EM, p. 627). Perception does not touch feeling as such but is in itself an instance of representation. In this way perception is always removed from affectivity. ff ‘‘[P]erception presents the thing itself only when the latter unfolds its Being in the milieu of transcendent Being and belongs to it, when for it, appearing means to be extended-in-front-of ... [P]erception which moves about in this extended-Being and appropriates it, does not reach feeling itself, attains neither its Being nor its reality but merely ‘something which stands for it’, which refers to it’’ (EM, p. 628). ‘‘That which presents itself beneath the intentional gaze, ... whether perception or simple representation, this is, as we have seen, not feeling itself but ‘something which stands for it’ ’’ (EM, p. 629). Affective ff meaning is unreal because it reflects a transferal of that which is ontologically untransferable (feelings) to the milieu of transcendence. In this milieu these feelings are supposedly ‘understood’ and fulfilled as ‘meaning.’ But the fulfillment of this meaning is impossible. Fulfillment of feelings requires feelings and feelings are no longer feelings in this space. ‘‘Every aV aVective meaning is in essence transcendent and consequently ‘empty’ ... This is why the characteristic of a ‘meaning aimed at in a void’ with which it is endowed and which belongs to it as its most notable property is not provisional, it is an eidetic property and hence an insurmountable one’’ (EM, pp. 629–30). In Her Son’s W ife, reality and irreality shift sides with regard to affective ff meaning and affectivity. ff Mrs. Bascomb thus perceives her life as real ‘life’ when it is defined

A PARADOX OF LOVE

45

by irrealness (in Henry’s terms), i.e., when it is defined by transcendence or the supremacy of objectivity which pertains to transcendence. As I have mentioned, Mrs. Bascomb experiences ff from aff ffective meaning as an irreal loss of self-control. She the disentanglement of affectivity finds herself unreal when she no longer can identify herself as an objectively meaningful person. Mrs. Bascomb finds herself to be most real when she is most unreal. In this way reality and irreality cross over into each other in the novel. 14 This becomes obvious when Mrs. Bascomb after a number of years of Lottie’s invalidism proposes that a ‘‘professional’’ nurse take care of Lottie instead (HSW, W p. 274). Apparently Lottie does not at all value the fact that the nurse would have the ‘‘skill’’ that Mrs. Bascomb lacks (HSW 274). 15 The abyss that has opened up within Mrs. Bascomb is immanent rather than transcendent. This means that it cannot be understood from an objective point of view. This abyss reflects sheer affectivity ff rather than objective thinking. Aff ffectivity is ‘‘that which is determined in itself by the absence of all choice ... That which in itself is fundamentally determined by the impossibility of every possibility with regard to self, of every taking of a position and of every ‘assuming’ concerning its own Being’’ (EM, p. 296). Note that whereas the abyss itself reflects affectivity ff rather than objectivity, Mrs. Bascomb’s fear of the abyss certainly reflects objective thinking.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Canfield, Dorothy. Her Son’s W ife. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926; New York, Virago, 1987 (‘HSW’). Heidegger, Martin. Being and T ime. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993 (‘BT’). Henry, Michel. T he Essence of Manifestation. Translated by Girard Etzkorn. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ff 1973 (‘EM’). Hopkins, Burt C. IIntentionality in Husserl and Heidegger: T he Problem of the Original Method and Phenomenon of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993. Husserl, Edmund. IIdeas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. Translated by F. Kersten. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982 (‘Ideas I’). Janicaud, Dominique. Phenomenology and the ‘‘T heological T urn’’: the French Debate. Translated by Bernard G. Prusak, Jeffrey ff L. Kosky and Thomas A. Carlson. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000 (‘PTT’). Kosky, Jeffrey ff L. ‘‘The Disqualification of Intentionality: The Gift in Derrida, Levinas, and Michel Henry.’’ Philosophy T oday 41 (1997): 186–197 (‘TDI’). Levinas, Emmanuel. T otality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969 (‘T&I’). Mohanty, Jithendra Nath. T he Concept of Intentionality. Missouri: Warren H. Green, Inc., 1972. Radway, Janice A. A F Feeling for Books: T he Book-of-the-Month-Club, L iterary T aste, and Middle Class Desire. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977 (‘AFB’). Schroeter, Joan G. ‘‘DCF and Rockwell Kent.’’ DCF Newsletter 4:2 (June 1997): 4–9. Washington, Ida H. Dorothy Canfield Fisher: A Biography. Shelburne, Vt.: New England W Press, 1982 (‘DAB’).

Max Statkiewicz, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, William Edelglass.

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

Poetry – conversion into the infinite of pure mortality and the dead letter.1 Paul Celan

I. INTRODUCTION

The eighteenth-century moral sentiment theorists believed that sympathy was a mechanism through which the passions of one person were communicated to another. There was some disagreement concerning exactly how the mechanism worked. Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that the spectator imagined herself in the position of the other and thereby felt the other’s passions from a first person perspective. Hume described a third person perspective that Max Scheler termed ‘emotional infection,’2 a process through which the self feels the other’s passions precisely as the other’s. There was, however, general agreement that in addition to reason, sentiment played a significant role in moral life. The cultivation of sentiment was considered a mark of excellence and the ‘man of feeling’ became a model of moral worth. The primacy of sentiment in moral experience led to a view of feeling as a legitimate end in itself, not simply a mechanism for moral understanding and action. Compassion, for example, was acknowledged to be a suffering ff for the suffering ff other and a motivation to alleviate the other’s suff ffering, but it also had a pleasure of its own; compassion, as Rousseau noted, was ‘sweet’.3 The eighteenth-century emphasis on imagination and feeling valorized the role of literature. Literature was regarded as a source of feeling uncontaminated by worldly concerns; literature provided sentiment for its own sake. Precisely for this reason some critics considered fiction to be dangerous, for it could indulge the sentiments without leading to nobility of character or moral action in the world. William James believed an excessive indulgence of sentiment for the imaginary characters that populate novels and the theatre could lead to moral indifference ff towards those for whom we are actually morally responsible.4 The Russian aristocrat, to cite one of James’s examples, may be overcome with tears of pity for a character on stage while outside her coachman freezes to death.5 47 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 47–62. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

48

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

In his 1948 essay, ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow,’’ Emmanuel Levinas extends James’s critique with the claim that the arts lift objects to an ontological dimension not subject to ethics. The disinterest of aesthetic pleasure, Levinas claims, is an unethical quietism: art undermines the obligation that weaves us into the ethical dimension of intersubjectivity. Against the notion that the arts may serve to arouse and cultivate moral sentiment, Levinas argues that ethics is not based on feeling, nor is it mechanistic. Yet, paradoxically, Levinas’s own texts are highly poetic; his words move Y and affect ff his readers. My purpose in this paper is to explore the tension between Levinas’s critiques of poetry, the image, and moral sentiment theory, with his own powerfully affective, ff poetic language. I will argue that the Levinasian account of poetry in the period after T otality and I Infinity provides insight into the problematic status of Levinas’s own writing. Moreover, I will suggest that there is a deep moral sentiment that Levinas’s writings both describe (for example, when he writes of compassion, fear for the death of the other, generosity, and responsibility) and inspire (through theoretical content as well as evocative and invocative language). At the heart of this exploration is the significance of language for Levinas’s project of ethics as first philosophy. II. LANGUAGE AND THE ETHICAL RELATION

The Levinasian critique of Western ontology is well known: in its attempt to think the Other, Western ontology appropriates the Other into the Same, subsuming alterity into a moment of self-consciousness. This domination of the Other by totalizing thought is a form of violence, for in representing the Other to itself, totalizing thought defines the Other in terms of the Same. But the Other is exterior to any relation defined by the Same; the Other is precisely exterior to all conceptual relations, unthinkable, beyond any universalizing essence that ‘captures’ both the Same and the Other. Levinas is essaying an alterity exterior to thought, an otherness that cannot be thematized or subsumed by the Same – hence Levinas’s subtitle to T otality and Infinity: ‘‘An Essay on Exteriority.’’ The I-Other relation, Levinas emphasizes, is not reciprocity or reversibility, relations that would demand a totalizing view encompassing both I and Other. In its transcendence and exteriority the Other is outside comprehension by the mind or adequation by a concept or idea; this is the infinity that Levinas situates beyond totality. Thought and perception have their origin in intentional activity, sending rays out into the world that seek to comprehend and grasp what is other. But language, Levinas insists, does not originate with conscious-

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

49

ness; it is always arriving, given by the Other and questioning the Same.6 Thus in language we relate to the ‘‘absolutely foreign,’’ to ‘‘transcendence, radical separation, the strangeness of the interlocutors, the revelation of the other to me’’ (T I 73/T eI 70). The ‘work of language’ is the entering into relationship with the source of meaning that cannot be thematized. Language, discourse, and conversation constitute a relation with alterity in its exteriority that leaves the transcendence of the other intact. The demonstration of this extraordinary claim is one of the main tasks of T otality and Infinity. The relation with the Other constituted by language, is the ethical relation. The Other as interlocutor who questions, teaches, and commands, escapes thematization. This escape, always leaving behind the Other as theme, is ‘‘the formal structure of language’’ that ‘‘thereby announces the ethical inviolability of the other’’ (T I 195/T eI 213). Levinas locates this ethical inviolability and the origin of language in ‘the face’ (le visage), a nudity without attributes. The face manifests the one who expresses and her expressing, the very signifying of signification. Signification, Levinas writes, ‘‘is preeminently the presence of exteriority’’ (T I 66/T eI 61). The face, though it breaks into the phenomenal and disrupts Being, is not another object of perception apprehended as a content and comprehended by the I; it is neither seen nor touched. Incommensurable with objects that are given, the face exceeds form and representation, constantly overflowing any image, irreducible, Levinas claims, even to the image of overflowing. The face is not a content of any perception or thought but ‘‘is present in its refusal to be contained’’ (T I 194/T eI 211). The face is the origin of discourse that calls for a response to the Other. The ‘face to face’ constitutes the relationship with exteriority and enables the commonplaces that language creates. It is through language that I have access to the exteriority that is the relation with the Other. For language does not subsume the Other but arrives from the Other who gazes at me, who interrogates me, and thus constitutes the ethical relation that cuts across vision, knowledge, and essence, marking the world of Being with ethics. III. VIOLENCE AND THE IMAGE

Implicit in Levinas’s characterization of the face in T otality and Infinity is a critique of the image. The face exceeds any image; it is the very antithesis of the image, which in its hardening congeals into essence and subsumes the Other, ‘alienating’ exteriority (T I 66/T eI 61). The image,

50

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

like the totalizing concept, seeks to circumscribe the Other as a particular essence, capturing him in a form. Images are ‘‘immanent to my thought’’ constructed through intentionality, ‘‘as though they came from me’’ (T I 297/T eI 331). This critical interpretation of the image, present in a number of Levinas’s writings, is given its most forceful and sustained account in ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow.’’7 In this essay, written during the years of Existence and Existents and T ime and the Other, Levinas argues that images are a kind of shadow reality. Unlike the sign, which leads directly beyond itself, a ‘pure transparency,’ the image is opaque (L R 135). Images also lead to things they represent in the world (L R 134), but we linger, pausing on the image itself. The object represented is thus lifted out of its ontological dimension, ‘disincarnated.’ Colors and forms, the elements that constitute an image, indicate not the presence of the object represented, but its absence (L R 136). In this absence, the object is freed from the demands of responsibility and ethics. Time, for Levinas, like language, is constituted by the relationship with the Other; time is the ethical horizon of consciousness. But the image is lifted out of time; it is ‘‘an instant stripped of the essential characteristic of the present, its evanescence’’ (L R 138). Congealed into essence, the image cuts off the possibilities of the Other and removes her to a time that is no longer subject to ethics.8 The critique of the image is at the heart of Levinas’s general critique of the arts. The ‘meanwhile’ in which the image is caught is the ‘eternal duration’ of art: ‘‘something inhuman and monstrous’’ (L R 141). Art, according to Levinas, is irresponsible, because through the image it frees objects to a shadow reality. This shadow reality, characterized by rhythm, beauty, and charm, does not demand an ethical response, but rather contemplation and ethical quietism. Art has traditionally been characterized by completion, by the finality of the last stroke, the perfect ending to which nothing can be added. The image is always searching ‘‘for a more complete presence.’’9 Instead of a world that calls for offering ff and sacrifice, in its wholeness and completion the world of images calls for nothing. Art disengages the spectator from moral commitments in the world, and for this reason ‘‘the proscription of images is truly the supreme command of monotheism’’ (L R 141). IV. THE SAYING AND THE SAID

In ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ Derrida comments on the tension between Levinas’s distrust of poetry and his poetic style. Derrida acknowl-

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

51

edges that Levinas is wary of enthusiasm, charm, and the violence of Dionysus, ‘‘and forbids poetic rapture, but to no avail.’’10 This tension between Levinas’s philosophy and his writing is also manifest, Derrida insists, in Levinas’s discussion of the Other. Derrida argues that ‘‘Levinas in fact speaks of the infinitely other, but by refusing to acknowledge an intentional modification of the ego – which would be a violent and totalitarian act for him – he deprives himself of the very foundation and possibility of his own language.’’11 That is, according to Derrida, Levinas appears to be caught in a paradox: he is called to address the Other, but his language appears to treat the Other as a being in the world, and thus subsumes the Other in totalizing thought. In the years following its publication, Levinas also came to believe that the language of T otality and Infinity was still under the spell of ontology.12 The ontological language, he felt, betrayed the non-phenomenal rupture of Being. Much of the task of Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence is to articulate, and practice, a language that does not subsume all meaning to ontology, a language that resolves the tension between Levinas’s philosophy and his own writing. This task is accomplished through his distinction between the saying (le Dir) and the said (le Dit), a distinction already present in his early works, but not fully developed, or realized, until Otherwise T han Being. The thematized discourse of the said is structurally coherent. It is grammatical, logical, narrative; it identifies and fixes meaning with clarity. In the considerations of practical life, such as questions concerning the best method to feed, clothe, and provide housing to the destitute or medicine to the suffering, ff the totalizing discourse of the said is necessary. But the infinity of the idea of the other brings theoretical incoherence into the realm of totality, and leads from the said to the saying which erupts out of the clarity and systematization of the said. The saying is an upsurge of communication, a sincerity and openness, the very signifyingness of signification that overflows all possible grammars. The saying is ‘‘the giving of signs, giving a sign of this giving of signs’’ (OB 15/AE / 31). The saying is a meaning that cannot be subsumed by Being; it is the mark, instead, of transcendence, the horizon of the said, its incommensurable presupposition. There is no simple opposition between the saying and the said, nor a dialectical relationship that could be totalized. Thematized in the said, the saying leaves only a trace, and is betrayed. But without the said the saying is mute. Levinas, however, argues that the said can be reduced to the saying, leading to the otherwise than being, beyond essence. This

52

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

Levinasian reduction to the beyond essence unveils no new realm wholly separate from the natural attitude – the otherwise than being is not another name for the mystical or some supernatural reality. The reduction shows the possibility of diachronic language: the simultaneity of the saying and the said that betrays it – the possibility of unsaying the said, the possibility of a discourse that does not dominate and subsume transcendence.

V. POETRY

But what writings exhibit a reduction from the said to the saying? Who seeks to unsay her own said? Despite his critique of the arts and the images they employ, Levinas acknowledges a model for his own writing in the words of poetry.13 It is in poetic language that the philosopher learns of the possibility of a discourse in which there is no mapping of the saying to the said. In Otherwise T han Being it is the poet who inspires the philosopher with the possibility of realizing her own philosophical task (OB 170/AE / 263). Poetry, is a ‘‘modality of the otherwise than being.’’14 Starting in the 1960’s, Levinas addresses the ethical rupture of Being accomplished by poetry in meditative and generous essays15 engaging the work of Schmuel Josef Agnon,16 Maurice Blanchot,17 Paul Celan,18 Edmond Jabes,19 Michel Leiris,20 and Marcel Proust.21 These essays explore the ways in which poetic language is diachronic, the presence of a simultaneity of meanings that cannot be assembled into a totality. Levinas observes in these poets the unsaying of the said, signification that is a pure signifying: ‘‘closer to us than any present, the Unpresentable will be represented in the poem. It will be the poetry of the poem. Poetry signifies poetically the resurrection that sustains it: not in the fable it sings, but in its very singing’’ (PN 12). The poem, for Levinas, is the fact of speaking to the other prior to thematization that preserves her exteriority and transcendence. Levinas affirms Celan’s characterization of the poem as ‘‘the spiritual act par excellence’’ (PN 46). The poem is pure touching, pure contact, grasping, squeezing – which is, perhaps, a way of giving, right up to and including the hand that gives. A language of proximity for proximity’s sake, older than that of ‘the truth of being’ – which it probably carries and sustains – the first of the languages, response preceding the question, responsibility for the neighbor, by its for the other, the whole marvel of giving (PN 41).

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

53

Poetry, according to Levinas, ‘‘transforms words,’’ ‘‘breaching the walls of immanence, disrupting order’’ (L R 156). Levinas admires individual poets for particular reasons: Blanchot for his commitment to neutrality and justice; Leiris for his recognition of the impossibility of closure; and Jabes for his revelation of exteriority. But explorations of specific texts quickly move to more general claims concerning poetic language per se. In ‘‘The Servant and Her Master,’’ a discussion of Blanchot and Levinas’s most extended interrogation of poetry, he clearly includes all poems – ‘‘from the Iliad to Remembrance of T hings Past’’ (L R 156) – in his characterization of poetry as an unsaying of its said. These poems and novels can be dominated by the coherence of the said, appropriated as cultural artifacts, bought and sold, ranked and consumed. But for Levinas, poetry is the refusal of absolute closure, the giving of signs before thematization, the opening to transcendence. VI. LEVINASIAN POETRY

These characterizations of poetry as a modality of the otherwise than being, a discourse that ruptures ontology and opens to exteriority, seem to contradict Levinas’s earlier critique of the arts, including poetry.22 It appears, as Travis Anderson suggests, that Levinas ‘‘justifies art despite himself.’’23 Yet Levinas’s sympathetic interpretation of poetry bears little resemblance to the position subject to critique in ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow’’: that the artist is able to portray the ineffable, ff to surpass perception. This position includes the claim that somehow the work of art is able to express the essence that is forever beyond reach of conceptual or common language. Levinas is referring to Kant and the Romantic aesthetic tradition, a tradition that became the ‘‘dogma of knowledge through art’’ (L R 131). Kant had argued in the Critique of Judgment that reflective judgments do not share the same cognitive limitations as the determinant judgments of the first two Critiques. The appeal of the aesthetic is its promise to take us beyond concepts, to a truth that is lost in practical or theoretical experience. Levinas found this view, that art has immediate access to a reality beyond the reach of philosophy, widespread amongst his contemporaries. It was against the interpretation of the artwork as ‘‘more real than reality’’ (L R, 130) that Levinas argued that art is a shadow of Being. He insisted, and never altered his view, that art does not represent a truer reality. In T otality and Infinity and some of his early writings on art and

54

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

poetry Levinas emphasized the rhythm and drama that possess the capacity to enrapture, to beguile and charm. Levinas never lost his distrust of the intoxicating power of poetry. Nevertheless, there is a significant shift in his thinking regarding the role of the arts, and in particular a more generous understanding of the poetic. It is prose in contradistinction to poetry that in the early 1960’s is the ethical language of T otality and I Infinity . A decade later, in Otherwise T han Being it is poetry that demonstrates the possibility of a reduction from the saying to the said, a ‘modality of the otherwise than being.’ The shift in Levinas’s evaluation of poetry is preceded many years earlier by a poetizing of his own writing. Though it often presents a Heideggerian interpretation, Levinas’s dissertation, T he T heory of IIntuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, possesses Husserlian clarity. Levinas’s early writing is often straightforward and methodical. But by the mid-1940’s Levinas is developing his evocative and invocative style.24 Moreover, his texts abound with perceptive and provocative metaphors, such as his description of art as a shadow of reality. With the prominence of the distinction between the saying and the said in Otherwise T han Being, and the imperative to unsay his own said, Levinas’s writing is further poeticized. The ‘beyond being’ requires a new grammar; it cannot be clothed in the light of theoretical clarity (OB 19/AE / 37). Indeed, Levinas’s French text avoids the copula, as well as predicative and declarative assertions, preferring instead the recurring use of participial phrases, a practice Alphonso Lingis found too awkward to follow in his English translation.25 But a literal translation would emphasize the poetic qualities of Levinas’s text. Here, for example, is a passage in which Sea´n Hand preserves Levinas’s grammatical structure: Vulnerability, exposure to outrage, to wounding – passivity more passive than any patience, V passivity of the accusative, trauma of accusation suffering ff to the point of persecution by a hostage, implication, in the hostage, of the identity substituting itself for others: Self [Soi] – defection or defeat of the identity of the Ego [[Moi ]. This pushed to the limit, sensibility. Thus sensibility as the subjectivity of the subject. Substitution for the other – one in the place of the other – expiation.26

This ‘participial language’, with its frequent repetition of terms and phrases – ‘passivity more passive than receptivity’; ‘subjectivity of subjection’; ‘the-one-for-the-other’; ‘the immemorial past’ – gives Levinas’s texts the chanting quality of a prayer or a poem. As David Michael Levin argues, in this affective ff language Levinas achieves more than the mere description of the deep structure of moral experience that precedes and

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

55

makes possible the superficial moral experience we generally perceive. Levin claims that Levinas’s poetic words ‘‘are being used literally, but in such a way that they may alter that to which they are referring in the very process of referring,’’27 thus ‘‘enabling and enacting that of which [they] speak.’’28 Levinas’s poetic unsaying of the said, his reduction of the said to the saying, enables a reduction from shallow to deep moral structures, to deep moral sentiment. VII. LEVINASIAN MORAL SENTIMENT

To speak of a ‘Levinasian moral sentiment’ appears antithetical to Levinas’s philosophy, and especially his critique of moral sentiment theory. Levinas rejects moral sentiment theory because he thinks that ethics is not grounded in natural feeling, nor is it mechanistic. Yet Levinas regards the compassionate suffering ff for the suff ffering of the other as a primary feature of ethics. In ‘‘Useless Suffering’’ ff Levinas characterizes compassion as the very ‘‘nexus (nœud meme) of human subjectivity, to the point of being raised to the level of supreme ethical principle‘‘(EN 94/en 104). In making compassion the ‘supreme ethical principle,’ Levinas situates himself in a tradition that includes the great eighteenth-century moral sentiment theorists. Rousseau, Joseph Butler, Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith, all gave compassion for the other’s suffering ff a prominent role in their moral theories. They explained compassion through natural sympathy, which was thought to account for how the other could become a concern for the self. As Nietzsche points out, and defenders of pity and compassion from Aristotle through the moral sentiment theorists acknowledge, these sentiments are not simply directed towards the other. This is clear in Schopenhauer’s On the Basis of Morality, which calls the question of how the self feels compassionate pain ‘‘the great mystery of ethics.’’29 Schopenhauer resolves the mystery of compassion with the metaphysical structure of a unitary Will that underlies the many appearances of the world: because there is no real plurality, concern for the weal and woe of the other is explained as a concern for the self. For Levinas, however, there is no problem of how the self can make the suffering ff of the other its own: subjectivity is constituted in a preoriginal concern for the Other. Subjectivity as substitution is realized in compassion, a compassion of a different ff order than that described by moral sentiment theory.30 Moreover, he argues against Heidegger and most moral psychologists since La Rochefoucauld, that not all emotions are self-reflexive.31 Some emotions, such as fear for the death of the Other

56

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

or compassion, can be directed towards the Other with no concern for the self. These emotions constitute a sensibility to the other that precedes the relationship of cause and effect: ff ‘‘The other ffrom whom I suffer ff is not just the ‘stimulus’ of experimental psychology, nor even a cause which would be somehow thematized by the intentionality of suffering.’’ ff 32 Levinas, who found no evidence for natural benevolence or sympathy in twentieth-century European history, sees in the vulnerability of subjectivity a relationship with the other ‘‘antecedent to being affected ff by a stimulus’’ (CP 146). The sympathy of traditional moral sentiment theory, to use Levin’s term, is ‘superficial’. Deep moral sentiment, what Levinas describes as compassion and fear for the death of the Other, is anterior to natural processes. According to Levin, Levinas does not simply seek to describe the deep structures of moral experience; his words also speak to these deep structures, contact and move them. This contact and movement, occasioned by his poetic saying, is itself Levinasian moral sentiment. Unsaying his own said, refusing completion and finality, Levinas’s poetic texts disrupt superficial moral experience, clearing a space for the deep moral sentiment they describe. Levinas’s texts do not seek to stimulate sentiment. Instead, his words disclose the sentiment which is always already present, but generally concealed by ontology. VIII. CONCLUSION

Language, as the ethical relation, is at the heart of Levinas’s project of ethics as first philosophy. Antecedent to Being, Levinas asserts, there is a meaning (le sense) that signifies, but this signification cannot be thematized for it is beyond the light of the thought. Responding to the call of the otherwise than being and conceptualizing it in writing betrays the saying in the said. In Otherwise T han Being Levinas observes, ‘‘in this betrayal the indiscretion with regard to the unsayable, which is probably the very task of philosophy, becomes possible’’ (OB 7/AE / 19). Philosophy, then, in formulating theses and arguments betrays the very subject it is responsible to say. For this reason Levinas sets himself the task of unsaying the said, rupturing the conceptual structure of essence and ‘extracting’ the otherwise than being. Given Levinas’s understanding of language how are we to read his own words? How should we interpret a philosophy that recognizes its betrayal of the otherwise than being and seeks to unsay its own said? The challenge of interpreting Levinas’s original philosophical writings is

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

57

increased by the ambiguous character of their statements. His careful phenomenological descriptions are interwoven with ‘descriptions’ of the non-phenomenal that is beyond Being. This leads Jean-Franccois Lyotard to argue that Levinas’s texts are essentially prescriptions that situate the reader outside the universe of knowledge.33 D. H. Brody claims that for Levinas ethics signifies itself ambiguously, and his writing is ambiguous because that is the only way he can write about ethics.34 In a similar vein, Krzysztof Ziarek writes of a hermeneutic of ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’: ‘‘the unerasable insecurity of the ‘maybe’ marks the ethical language of ‘otherwise than being’ apart from Being by disallowing any settlement or resolution of its precarious mode of signifying.’’35 Lyotard, Derrida, and other commentators have made use of the conceptual resources of J. L. Austin’s speech act theory to interpret Levinas’s statements.36 According to Austin the performative statement is not simply a representation but also a presentation, or, one could say in Levinasian terms, an offering, ff or an imperative. Perhaps this is also what Theodore de Boer means when he recommends that Levinas’s terms ought ‘‘to be taken in an ethical sense.’’37 That is, Levinas’s writings are not to be interpreted and evaluated simply as descriptions or explanations, for they blur the distinction between theory and praxis. In his ‘‘Preface’’ to T otality and Infinity Levinas had sought such a blurring, or rather a ‘disappearance,’ of ‘‘the traditional opposition between theory and practice’’ (T I 29/T eI 15). Acknowledging this move has led to the exploration of ways in which Levinas’s writing is itself a kind of ethical activity. Emphasizing the perlocutionary aspect of the text enables the interpretation of characteristically Levinasian claims, such as ‘‘the eye does not shine; it speaks’’ (T I 66/T eI 62). These claims appear to navigate an ambiguous region between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought,’ Hume’s distinction that guides much contemporary moral thought. Thus Levin writes of Levinas’s ‘‘equivocal modality of ... rhetoric, supposedly engaged in the phenomenological description of the primordial ‘inscription’ but oscillating, in fact, undecidably between descriptive and prescriptive, constative and performative, literal and metaphorical modes of discourse.’’38 Levinasian descriptions, prescriptions, metaphors, questions, hyperbole,39 and inscriptions,40 cannot be categorized as purely theoretical claims. Commenting on some of the non-theoretical characteristics of Levinas’s writing in a note to ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ Derrida observes that T otality and Infinity proceeds like waves upon a shore, with repetition, renewal, and enrichment. Moreover, he adds, ‘‘the use of metaphor, remaining admirable and most often – if not always – beyond rhetorical

58

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

abuse, shelters within its pathos the most decisive movements of the discourse.’’41 For these reasons Derrida characterizes T otality and Infinity as a ‘work of art’. Levin also emphasizes the affective ff quality of Levinas’s writings. The frequent repetitions of words and phrases, their ‘‘inspirational invocations’’ and ‘‘incantatory quality’’ ‘‘address us, his readers, in a powerfully affective ff modality, immediately making contact with our body of feeling and affecting ff the moral experience from which we draw our thinking.’’42 Derrida’s characterization of T otality and Infinity as a work of art, and Levin’s description of Levinas’s language as affective ff and poetic support my claim that Levinas functions not only as a philosopher, but also as a poet who discloses the depths of Levinasian moral sentiment. For Levinas, the task of philosophy is to recall us to the pre-originary, the proximity of vulnerable sensibility, to the saying that leaves its trace in the thematizing said. Levinas’s philosophy reminds us that the refutation of skepticism is never final, that philosophy, like poetry, can never be interpreted for the last time; that philosophy does not have infinite tasks but is an infinite task, a never ending project whose greatest success is its failure to complete itself. To write in a way that conforms to what he says, Levinas cannot succumb to the clarity of theoretical discourse; he turns instead to a language that is meaningful not because of its capacity to represent, but in its opening to the Other. ‘‘Ethical language, which phenomenology resorts to in order to mark its own interruption, does not come from an ethical intervention laid out over descriptions. It is the very meaning of approach, which contrasts with knowing’’ (OB 193/AE / 150). This ‘meaning of approach’, the saying in its plenitude of generosity and offering, ff is characterized by Levinas as poetry. During the course of Levinas’s career the exploration of language and his own writing practices moved to the center of his philosophical project. His became an affective ff use of language, as Levin emphasizes, ‘‘an evocative, invocative, exhortatory use of language, a metaphorical and poetizing use of language.’’43 It is a language that brings the reader to the deep moral ‘experiences’ it describes. Can we not say of Levinas, what he wrote of Max Picard, that his ‘‘reading of faces and the world is not always conceptually justifiable, nor phenomenologically convincing. It is poetically certain’’ (PN 96). This is not to say that Levinas is writing poetry. My purpose in this paper has not been to make of Levinas a poet, thereby removing him from the responsibility of philosophical thinking. (Levinas, whose discourse has occasionally been categorized as more ‘Hebrew’ than ‘Greek’, that is, oriented more towards the religious than the philosophi-

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

59

cal, vigorously defended the philosophical status of his philosophical writings.44) I do hope, however, to have shown that Levinas’s interrogation of poetry illumines the problem of his own language; his critique of the arts notwithstanding, the poetic is an important hermeneutic category for understanding the statements that constitute Levinas’s texts. He is a philosopher who learns from poets how to write in such a way that his language does not betray his philosophy. Moreover, Levinas, who rejects mechanistic and naturalistic accounts of morality, cannot be considered a moral sentiment theorist in any common sense of the term. Yet through his poetic saying he seeks to address the compassion that is always already present, and constitutes, he believes, the entrance of ethics into the world of Being.45 Department of Philosophy Colby College Waterville, ME, USA W NOTES 1 These words are quoted by Levinas in Proper Names, Michael B. Smith (trans.) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 42. For an English translation of this line from Celan’s ‘‘The Meridian,’’ see Paul Celan, Collected Prose, Rosemarie Waldrop (trans.) (New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1986), p. 52. For the original German see Paul Celan, Gesammelte W Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), Vol. 3, p. 200. 2 Scheler’s nuanced phenomenological treatment of fellow-feeling in T he Nature N of Sympathy remains, as Paul Ricouer notes, ‘‘unequaled’’: Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, Kathleen Blamey (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 192. 3 See Rousseau’s Emile or On Education, Book IV. 4 William James, Habit (New York, 1890), p. 63; quoted in Norman Fiering, ‘‘Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism,’’ Journal J of the History of Ideas, 37: (1976): 213. 5 Ibid. 6 Emmanuel Levinas, T otality and Infinity, Alphonso Lingis (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 204; T otalite et Infini (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ff 1961), p. 224; hereafter cited in the text as T I followed by the page number, and T eI followed by the page number. 7 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow,’’ in T he L evinas Reader, Sea´n Hand (ed.). (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 130–43; hereafter cited in the text as L R followed by the page number. 8 This critique will be echoed in Merleau-Ponty’s 1952 discussion of classical perspective: ‘‘The whole scene is in the mode of the completed or of eternity ... Things no longer call upon me to answer, and I am no longer compromised by them ... Perspective ... is the invention of a world dominated and possessed through and through by an instantaneous synthesis.’’ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence,’’ in T he MerleauM

60

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Michael B. Smith (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), p. 87. 9 Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence, A. Lingis (trans.) ´ de (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p 29; Autrement qu’eˆtre ou au-delaA l’essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ff 1974), p. 52; hereafter cited in the text as OB followed by the page number, and AU followed by the page number. For a further discussion of Levinas’s critique of the aesthetic, see Jill Robbins, ‘‘Aesthetic Totality and Ethical Infinity,’’ in Altered Reading: L evinas and L iterature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 75–90. 10 Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ in W riting and DiiVerence, Alan Bass (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 312. 11 Ibid., p. 125. 12 See Emmanuel Levinas, DiY i cult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, Sea´n Hand (trans.) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) p. 295; DiY i cile L iberte (Paris: Albin Michel, 1976), p. 412; also Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: T hinking-of-the-Other, Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 197; Entre Nous: Essais sur le penser-a-l’autre (Paris: Grasset, 1991), pp. 231–32; hereafter cited in the text as EN followed by the page number, and en followed by the page number. 13 In addition to poetical language, Levinas finds another model for unsaying the said in prophetic speech. 14 Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names, Michael B. Smith (trans.) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 46; hereafter cited in the text as PN followed by the page number. 15 Jill Robbins, in what is the most systematic and careful scholarship on Levinas’s relationship to art, literature, and the poetic, describes his characterization of these particular poets as ‘‘Exceptions’’ to the otherwise problematic discourse of poetry. Jill Robbins, Altered Reading, pp. 132–54. 16 Levinas, ‘‘Poetry and Resurrection: Notes on Agnon,’’ in Proper Names, pp. 7–16. 17 Levinas, ‘‘The Poet’s Vision,’’ in Proper Names, pp. 127–39; ‘‘The Servant and Her Master,’’ in Proper Names, pp.140–49; ‘‘A Conversation with Andre Dalmas,’’ in Proper N Names, pp. 150–55; ‘‘Exercises on the ‘Madness of the Day,’ ’’ in Proper Names, pp. 156–70. 18 Levinas, ‘‘Paul Celan: From Being to the Other,’’ in Proper Names, pp. 40–46. 19 Levinas, ‘‘Edmond Jabes Today,’’ in Proper Names, pp. 63–65. iV ures,’’ in Outside the 20 Levinas, ‘‘The Transcendence of Words: On Michel Leiris’s BiV Subject, trans Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 144–50. 21 Levinas, ‘‘The Other in Proust,’’ in Proper Names, 99–105. 22 There is some ambiguity regarding whether Levinas is justifying art in general or singling poetry out. In ‘‘The Servant and Her Master,’’ Levinas observes that ‘‘perhaps we are wrong to name art and poetry that exceptional event — that sovereign forgetfulness — which frees language from its servitude towards the structures in which the said prevails.’’ The important point, Levinas adds, ‘‘call it poetry or whatever’’ (L R 153) is that there is a discourse that escapes closure and totality. In a note to this same essay Levinas makes a stronger statement: ‘‘We said earlier that the word poetry referred to the disruption of immanence to which language is condemned in becoming its own prisoner. There is no question of considering this disruption as a purely aesthetic event. But the word poetry does not after all name a species whose genus is referred to by the word art. Inseparable from speech (le verbe), it overflows with prophetic meanings’’ (L R 159). Distinguishing poetry from the plastic arts, however, does not escape the contradiction to his earlier work: in ‘‘Reality and its Shadow,’’ Levinas explicitly associates poems, poetry, and poets, with his critique of the arts. Moreover,

LEVINAS’S LANGUAGE

61

in later essays Levinas acknowledges a response to exteriority and transcendence in the work of painters and sculptors. ‘‘Incompletion,’’ he notes, ‘‘not completion, would seem, paradoxically, to be the fundamental category of modern art’’ (Outside the Subject, p. 147). No longer searching for a completion that cuts off possibilities and captures the Other, modern plastic arts are not subject to Levinas’s earlier critique. 23 Travis Anderson, ‘‘Drawing upon Levinas to Sketch out a Heterotopic Poetics of Art and Tragedy,’’ Research in Phenomenology 24 (1994): 92. 24 At the same time he begins to refer in his philosophical writings to European literary traditions, especially Shakespeare, but also Dostoyevsky, Dante, Homer, Cervantes, and Proust. 25 See Lingis’s comments on altering Levinas’s original grammar in his introduction to Otherwise T han Being, p. xliv. 26 Sea´n Hand, ‘‘The other voice: ethics and expression in Emmanuel Levinas,’’ History of the Human Sciences, 10:3 (1997): 64. 27 David Michael Levin, ‘‘Tracework: Myself and Others in the Moral Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas,’’ IInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 6 (1998): 387. 28 Ibid., p. 386. 29 Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, trans E. F. J. Payne (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), p. 144. 30 See Otherwise T han Being and ‘‘Useless Suffering’’. ff 31 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, Richard Cohen (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), pp. 119–20; E´thique et Infini (Paris: Fayard, 1982), pp. 118–19. 32 Emmanuel Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, Alphonso Lingis (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p. 146. 33 See Jean-Franc¸oise Lyotard, ‘‘Levinas’ Logic,’’ in F Face to Face with L evinas, Richard Cohen (ed.) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 117–58. 34 D. H. Brody, ‘‘Emmanuel Levinas: The Logic of Ethical Ambiguity in Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence,’’ Research In Phenomenology, 25 (1995): 177–203. 35 Krzysztof Ziarek, IInflected L anguage: T oward a Hermeneutics of Nearness: Heidegger, L evinas, Stevens, Celan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 99. 36 Jean-Franc¸oise Lyotard, ‘‘Levinas’ Logic,’’ in F Face to Face with L evinas, p. 122; Jan de Greef, ‘‘Skepticism and Reason’’ in F Face to Face with L evinas, p. 171–72. Brody, ‘‘Emmanuel Levinas: The Logic of Ethical Ambiguity in Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence’’ 189–90; Y. A. Kang, ‘‘Levinas on Suffering ff and Solidarity,’’ T ijdschrift voor Filosofie 59 (1997): 497; et al. 37 Theodore de Boer, ‘‘An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy,’’ in F Face to Face with L evinas, p. 93. 38 Levin, ‘‘Tracework,’’ p. 345. 39 Paul Ricoeur employs the term ‘hyperbole’ to describe Levinas’s idiosyncratic style. See Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, pp. 337–40. 40 David Michael Levin employs the term ‘inscription’ to emphasize that Levinas’s language is intended to address us in our bodies and emotions as well as our thoughts; Levin, ‘‘Tracework,’’ p. 383. 41 Derrida, W riting and DiiVerence, p. 312. 42 Levin, ‘‘Tracework,’’ p. 383. 43 Ibid. 44 In ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ Derrida questions Levinas’s hard distinction between his non- philosophical or religious, writings, and his philosophical work. According to Jill

62

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

Robbins, ‘‘the distinction between the philosophical and the nonphilosophical writing is not absolute. It breaks down, in any case, after 1975 with the publication of Of God W ho Comes to Mind. Even before 1975, there are decisive indications in his philosophical work that his ethical thought takes inspiration from the Hebrew tradition.’’ Jill Robbins, Altered Reading, p. xvi. 45 See ‘‘Useless Suffering’’. ff

REBECCA M. PAINTER

SY MPAT HY FOR T HE DEV IL ? A HISTORICAL TOUR OF LITERATURE AND CULTURAL REPRESENTATION

It started as an experiment: a kind of apologia for the value of literature and the humanities in helping students deal with the experience of evil. It took the form of a cross-disciplinary course based on works in literature, film, cultural history, philosophy, theology and psychology. I insisted that the subtitle, ‘‘Sympathy for the Devil?’’ retain a question mark, for reasons given later. The first day I asked students for a short essay on their idea of evil, then left the room to get more copies of the syllabus. In my brief absence several students had walked out. Those remaining reported that one departing student had prophesied that anyone who took the course would surely roast in hell. Despite that threat, the course kept a determined following. Then came the devastation of September 11, 2001, and I knew something had clicked. Politicians and media pundits had begun tossing the word ‘‘evil’’ around, a term the Oxford English Dictionary described as little-used except in literary English. Once associated with fusty fire-and-brimstone religious sermons, accusations of ‘‘evil’’ are now hurled at opponents from either side of a battle against terrorism. To my surprise, present and past students began thanking me – not for preparing them for the tragedy of 9/11, but for giving them tools of the imagination with which to examine its significance. What follows is a brief tour of the ideas examined and generated in that course, which focuses not entirely on the literary representation of devil figures. After writing their initial personal views of evil, students read the New York T imes altercation between Edward Rothstein, the newspaper’s culY tural critic, and Stanley Fish, leading defender of postmodernism. Rothstein questioned whether pomo’s moral relativity had been shelved by the stark realities of September 11. If postmodernism challenges notions of objective truth and rejects the possibility of a ‘‘transcendental ethical perspective,’’ he wrote, how could they converse credibly on terrorist attacks? Fish, in this exchange, replied that postmodernists can indeed condemn terrorism, and that truth does exist ... it’s just that there can be ‘‘no independent standard of objectivity.’’ Rothstein responded, and I tend to agree, that this sounded a lot like the relativism that Fish heatedly denied. ‘‘In Fishean pomo,’’ Rothstein remarked, ‘‘all we have are competing claims, whether the issue is the numerical value of pi or the assertion 65 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 65–76. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

66

REBECCA M. PAINTER

that the Mossad destroyed the World Trade Center.’’ Why, he asked, ‘‘does the existence of disagreement, obstinacy, error, blindness or stupidity undermine the possibility of objectively judging truth?’’ (NY T 7/13/02, B1). An apt question, my students commented. They thought maybe Fish should spend some time reading Faust F , as they were. Goethe’s restless doctor had his motivations – the pursuit of power and sensual experience. But getting Gretchen pregnant and abandoning her, blindly thinking that by staying away he was somehow sparing her his unsavory company, was how he chose to act. Mephistopheles facilitated their liaison, of course, but it was Faust’s self-absorbed disregard for Gretchen’s wellbeing that caused her to despair, lose her child, and be condemned to death for murder. Did they need an independent standard of objectivity to fault those ethics? Rothstein noted that postmodernism is an outgrowth of Enlightenment ideas that differing ff perspectives be accounted for and the ‘‘other’’ be respected, if not fully comprehended. It seems that this very Western notion of objectivity forms part of what the Islamist terrorists are attacking. They have their own definition of truth, concerning which the weighing of all sides is rather unimportant. They have their own idea who is evil: those who do not follow their interpretation of Islam. This, my students found, replicates a very ancient practice – the demonizing of one’s rivals or opponents – described well in A History of the Devil by the cultural historian and theologian Gerald Messadie. They learn from Messadie that the earliest figure of the devil dates from ancient Persia or Medea, when Zoroaster, a magus or Medean holy man, tried to demonize the rival Vedic pantheon. Zoroaster associated these rival gods with evil spirits who supported the Zoroastrian evil god, Angra Manyu or Ahriman, who was locked in perpetual combat with the good god, Ahura Mazda, until a final judgment day when Ahura Mazda would prove victorious. In Zoroaster’s time the Vedic priests had a lock on political power, as they alone could advise the military and political leaders, as per the ancient Hindu caste system. Zoroaster and his fellow magi, being local spiritual leaders, tried to discredit the Vedic clergy by blacklisting the old Vedic gods as demons. As Messadie explains, the battle of good and evil was posited as a matter to be resolved by the magi, who were supposedly able to determine whose soul would be saved in the final judgment. Therefore these magi had more lasting power than kings. It was ‘‘a reform unique in the history of civilization up to that point’’ (86), but which came to fruition only in the JudeoChristian era,

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL?

67

when the Christian church succeeded in establishing the devil as its political opposition. We read in Luke 4 that the last of Jesus’ three temptations in the desert was Satan’s offer ff of worldly power, which Jesus rejected as inferior to that of God, whose kingdom is not of this world. To Messadie, this echoes Zoroaster’s message about spiritual versus political power. The Hebrews, interestingly, had been exposed to Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian captivity, and had studied it because it was the only other form of monotheism. Students found this edifying, but responded more personally to Karen Armstrong’s observation in her book In the Beginning: A New IInterpretation of Genesis, that when Adam and Eve tried to blame one another for their actions, ‘‘Sin is shown to dissolve community; it is presented as the opposite of wholeness and integrity.’’ (30) Because ‘‘sin fragments the soul’’ we try to hide our nakedness (30). Another contemporary view of evil provided by Armstrong – but well exemplified in Faust F – perceives sin as the grasping at experience without concern for the consequences (31). We considered whether eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge suggests consuming a substance not gained from personal experience. Cain killed Abel without considering that he might be exiled forever. Students of Christian upbringing were surprised to learn that, according to Armstrong, Jewish tradition lays little blame on Adam and Eve for their transgression, that they along with the serpent are viewed as aspects of humanity (Armstrong 30). The exiled Cain personifies the nomadic nature of the early Hebrew tribes who were aware of their collective guilt, including that of murder. In fact, many students sided with Cain. Why did God favor Abel’s offering ff over his? It did not seem fair. Killing his brother was a bit extreme in their view, but it was God’s favor the brothers were after. In those days that meant survival itself. Closer reading was called for. Cain, it seems, simply placed some of his first harvest on the altar, while Abel offered ff the choicest cuts of newborn lamb. Symbolism flags went up: God liked this special attention – wouldn’t we all? Having won God’s favor, Abel got the reward many unfavored students of this world feel like giving to a teacher’s pet. Thomas Aquinas, their next assignment, offered ff some insight on the murderous Cain. A key factor in Aquinas’ treatise On Evil is that people only will themselves to do evil ‘‘under some aspect of the good’’ (9). So, they reasoned, Cain must have felt that if he got rid of Abel God would find favor with him, there being no one else’s offering ff to distract Him. What aspect of the good, they considered, would cause a student to steal $20

68

REBECCA M. PAINTER

from another student’s backpack? Obviously, financial well being, they agreed. But if the student felt he had enough money, theft would not enter his mind. It was mentioned that some serial murderers had told interviewers that their crimes were their only claim to fame, and who does not desire at least 15 minutes of that? Aquinas provided other nuggets. What he considers the root of all evils strikes a chord with Buddhists and Hindus. This is cupidity, or desire, known to Eastern religions as the seed of attachment and suffering. ff Although Aquinas was a firm believer in the devil, he does not permit us to blame that entity for our own sinful acts. The devil’s role is to ‘‘inflame our hearts with hidden desires’’ (111), to persuade us to act against our best interests. The ultimate cause of sin, says Aquinas, is our own ‘‘changeable will’’ (112). After all, Eve meant to obey God, but the serpent persuaded her to change her will, and she chose to act upon that suasion. That was Genesis. By Aquinas’ time the Church had determined in the Council of Nicea that the Devil, formerly the angel of light, was the first to turn against God, and has been seeking to corrupt our wills ever since he got ejected from Heaven, along with his cohorts, thus forming an ‘‘inverse angelic hierarchy’’ (Messadie 258). While not all students accepted this demonology, they all accepted Aquinas’ verdict that willed ignorance – appearing in such forms as racism, sexism, and political intolerance – is sinful simply because it is voluntary, not innocent (127). When, for example, does a freedom fighter become a terrorist? When he does not want to know about the goodness of his proclaimed enemy. When does a freedom-loving American become an Ugly American? When she does not consider the humiliations imposed with American consent upon the world’s less powerful, and their justifiable rage. And what about poor persecuted Job? In the Book of Job Satan is one of God’s counsel of angels, able to converse directly with Him, proposing his next assignment and obeying God’s prescribed limits. Here Satan lives up to his name, which is Hebrew for adversary. What is disconcerting is that Satan and God seem to be on the same team. Only with Christianity do we see a fully demonized Satan, and even in the Gospels he reappears occasionally in his adversarial, non-malicious testing role. Why, students wondered, did an omniscient Deity need to have this man Job tested for virtue and loyalty? They found Messadie correct in stating that in the Old Testament God sends both good and evil spirits into the world. In I Samuel 16:14 one reads, ‘‘Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit ffrom the L ord tormented him’’ (emphasis added). ‘‘Satan

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL?

69

is not the Devil’’ here, Messadie opines, rather ‘‘he is the suffering ff desired by the will of God’’ (237). When students read the New Testament, they find that the devil acquires new characteristics. Unlike in the Old Testament, Satan is made responsible for violent possession, is associated with illness, and now causes erratic and pointless torments rather than purposeful adversarial tests. Jesus’ ability to exorcize evil spirits led some Church Fathers, but not all, to believe that the demons will all eventually be converted. This leaves behind, for Messadie, the disturbing suggestion of a divine bargain or cosmic confidence game using Jesus Christ to foil Satan (Messadie 259). Perhaps the Hebrews had acquired the notion of the devil as God’s enemy from the Persians during centuries of Babylonian captivity. It was, understandably, a useful concept when their very identity was threatened. Messadie posits that such a borrowing from Zoroastrianism was politically motivated, as the Hebrews despaired of regaining their national autonomy and needed a scapegoat (248). Perhaps Job’s trials were not, after all, for God’s reassurance; rather, his story might have served to inspire fortitude among the much-afflicted Hebrews. Even so, some argued, all this does not explain why there is so much evil around, so insidiously widespread. Even Aquinas’ explanation that evil can inspire virtue, that people are at their best facing and overcoming it, offers ff cold comfort in times when ‘‘collateral damage’’ of innocent civilians killed in Afghanistan far exceeded the number of those killed by the Al Qaeda terrorists whose leaders we tried unsuccessfully to bomb into oblivion. Maybe Milton could help. His Satan is eloquently defiant, famous for his ‘‘unconquerable will,’’ his ‘‘courage never to submit or yield’’ (I. 106–108). His resounding cry, ‘‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven’’ (I.254) resonates deeply with adolescent rebelliousness. Still, students are drawn up a little short when this grandiloquent ex-angel baldly states that he is driven by envy and revenge, and plans to wage war against mankind ‘‘by force or guile’’ (I.121). It takes them a while to appreciate how hard Milton toiled to show the sinister cracks in this powerful visage, and the immense irony that after Milton’s Satan literary history was never the same. Bravado in high dudgeon had made the conniving culprit attractive, his exiled status pitiable, and Milton ever after accused of secretly siding with him. Milton’s Satan seems to have had the appeal now enjoyed by the likes of Osama bin Laden. Milton’s Satan seemed a major stimulant for Goethe’s Faust. F Here, too, Mephistopheles gets the best lines. Students were impressed by Goethe’s

70

REBECCA M. PAINTER

raunchy humor. They admired Mephisto’s in-your-face candor – heartless of course, but a refreshing change from political correctness. Faust evidently takes the motto ‘‘Better to reign in Hell,’’ etc. to heart, with a twist. This bored academic doctor insists that the Devil serve him, and sets remarkably modern terms for the price of his soul. He is brazenly ‘‘not afraid of Devil or hell’’ (I.370). Students smirk that scholarly pursuits have left him ‘‘the wretched fool [he] was before’’ (I.359). He, as they readily understand, craves power and sensual delight. Mephisto will take Faust’s orders, and the deal will go in the devil’s favor only if the man stops striving. If he says to the moment, ‘‘Abide, you are so fair,’’ he’ll gladly be chained on the spot (I. 1700–1701). Fat chance – he knew himself too well. Students see from Faust F ’s Prologue in Heaven that God has special fondness for those who strive. Mephisto approaches the Lord more or less as does the Satan of Job, and is assured that God ‘‘never hated’’ negating spirits like him. In fact they were the least of His concerns: more challenging to this Deity is the human spirit of non-striving, the preference for uninterrupted rest’ (I.34 1). Now this was something they could all relate to: the couch potato syndrome! Nevertheless, they could see that Faust seduces and abandons poor Gretchen, getting her pregnant and leaving her pining out of some deluded impulse to protect her from himself. They had no trouble figuring that Gretchen’s baby never would have died, and she accused of murder, if he had interrupted his striving to keep her company. But Faust did love Gretchen, and tried to save her from the hangman’s noose. Of course, she refuses to escape with him, takes her punishment like a woman, and goes straight to Heaven, where her prayers help save Faust from damnation. Not that he ever stopped striving, though. His last goal as an old man was to build some kind of housing project for the poor on reclaimed marsh land. Foiled demonic bargains aside, what students find compelling about Goethe’s ‘‘Tragedy’’ is its indulgent sophistication, its wit, its compassion for bungling ambitious strivers and those who love them, and its refusal to condemn. An attitude well received by today’s callow youth. Curiously, Goethe makes the last word a mysterious pronouncement about longsuffering ff love: ‘‘The Eternal-Feminine/Lures to perfection’’ (II.12110). This line seems to make the standoff between Othello and Desdemona, their previous assignment, more understandable. Othello was the striving one, made a general for his exploits and military prowess, his sufferings ff so brave and pitiable that Desdemona fell in love with him who told of them. Desdemona’s selfless love for Othello seemed much

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL?

71

like Gretchen’s for Faust. Othello did right to marry Desdemona, their love was mutual, so what went wrong? Why did he listen to Iago and not to her? Why was he not saved by his constant striving? Well, a few students observed, he certainly did not strive very hard for the truth – accepting all the malicious deceptions of ‘‘honest Iago’’ at face value. The real problem, many students thought, was this couple’s lack of communication. It was simple: if Desdemona and Othello had ever talked things over respectfully, the whole tragedy would never have occurred. So much for the bias of one’s time. But they had a point. More insidious, it seemed, was Iago’s refusal to explain himself at the end. Evil has no desire to clarify itself – why should it give the comfort of understanding to its victims? Othello was willing to speak of his crime, and take his own life to pay for it. As one commentator put it, Othello re-established order and justice by killing the enemy within (Kernan, Othello lxiii). But what was that internal enemy? Fair guesses included Othello’s own insecurity, his fear of being mocked for having an unfaithful wife, his horror at losing hard-earned status as an outsider, a Moor, honored and empowered by the civilized Venetians. The power of the Eternal-Feminine, it seems, had escaped him. Some students pondered that even if Desdemona had cheated on him, if he’d loved her so deeply he might have forgiven her. One thing was all too clear about Othello: he sank by the weight of his own gravitas, to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton regarding Satan. If only he’d been able to take a few jabs at Iago, show a bit of humor about his alleged status as a cuckold. The sly devil might have lost the steam he needed to fog up the Moor’s mind and sour his heart. At least that’s what some students felt as they reveled in C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape L etters. Lewis claimed that it is Faust, not the witty ‘‘pernicious’’ Mephisto, who ‘‘early exhibits the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of Hell’’ (7). In a way, that was Othello’s problem: obsessed with his self image, not smart enough to smell evil and take the tactic recommended by Martin Luther and Thomas More – the devil being unable to endure mockery (Lewis 17). T he Screwtape L etters are deliciously wicked, offering ff a wealth of advice to Wormwood, Screwtape’s young nephew and trainee devil, on how to corrupt the soul of his human patient. Students responded readily to textual questions such as, Why is murder no better than cards, if cards can do the trick? Answer: ‘‘The safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot ...’’ (XII, 54). When are human virtues less formidable? When a man knows he has them, especially the virtue of humility (XIV, 58). Why is flippancy

72

REBECCA M. PAINTER

the best form of humor? Because it enables humans to talk of virtue as if it is funny. ‘‘It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection ff between those who practice it’’ (XI, 51). Joy and fun are of little use to devils, since these promote charity, courage, contentment and other properties antagonistic to their agenda. All quite fun to read. They are more pensive when Screwtape advises Wormwood to get his patient to focus on the future, since all the vices, he says, are rooted in it – fear, lust, greed, and ambition. Hard for ambitious young people to accept Screwtape’s warning, that God wants people to focus on eternity and the present, so devils should keep humans ‘‘hagridden’’ by pursuit of the rainbow’s end: ‘‘never honest, nor kind, nor happy now,’’ but using every gift offered ff them to place on the altar of future happiness (XV, 62). Living in the present is more likely to make humans happy, this senior devil advises, so break it up. It is touching to have students check when Lewis wrote these epistles: smack in the middle of World War II, serialized in the Manchester Guardian, British newspaper of record for the working class. Their faces soften with this information, considering Screwtape’s admonition that Wormwood shouldn’t be too gleeful that the Germans were waging another one of their wars. Wartime, unfortunately, brought out heroism, selflessness, and the fear of W death, which caused too many people to depend on God (XXVIII, 100). Better to have people survive the war so their souls could be sullied gradually by worldly experience, pride, and attachment to things – the ‘‘Creeping death,’’ the decay of youthful hopes and loves (XXVIII, 101). When Wormwood’s patient is killed by a bomb, Screwtape is furious. Snatched up into Heaven by the Enemy, the young man died feeling ‘‘a complete cleansing,’’ like ‘‘a scab had been removed from an old sore’’ (XXXI, 109). To Screwtape’s disgust, he escaped the clutches of competition, the philosophy of Hell, the zero sum game, that one person’s profit has to be someone else’s loss. What was Lewis driving at with this twisted story? A few saw through to the enormous compassion, the indirectly urgent boosterism for a beleaguered nation. Lewis wanted people to see the real enemy, to fight the real battle, one they all had a chance to win. Our class read Screwtape for comic relief as we absorbed the grim realities of George Victor’s remarkable study, Hitler: T he Pathology of Evil. Screwtape had proclaimed that ‘‘To be greatly and effectively ff wicked a man needs some virtue’’ (XXIX, 103). Where was Hitler’s small measure of virtue? Some ventured that the young Adolf had survived being beaten unconscious by his father, and had discovered that if he did not cry or

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL?

73

otherwise express pain, the beatings stopped. Hatred of his father, and shame at being beaten by him, had caused Hitler to fixate on his father’s illegitimacy, and on the possibility that his paternal grandfather was Jewish. His father’s cruelty, Victor posits, led to Hitler’s deep self-loathing, telling others that he was ‘‘rotten to the marrow’’ (18), which he eventually associated with the taint of Jewish blood, though he had never been mistreated by Jews. He loved his mother, but her suffering ff at the hands of his father might have triggered Hitler’s grandiose desire to be a savior figure, trying to rid the world of Jews and other people of mixed blood. His policies, Victor asserts, were meant to prevent someone like Hitler’s father from ever being born again (18). He distorted German history to resemble his own family history (37). The cruel training of SS troops, deliberately inured to the suffering ff and killing of others, eerily recalls Hitler’s boyhood self-discipline in squelching the expression of his own suffering ff to escape his father’s cruelty and thus to triumph over him. Such a fantasy drives many mistreated youth. But when acted out, it is known to bring little solace. ‘‘Hitler hated and destroyed,’’ Victor claims, ‘‘not because of a lack, but because of an excess of ... guilt ... he vainly tried to escape the pain of guilt by committing more crimes’’ (91). He had determined that his conscience made him a coward, so he tried to eliminate it and become a raging madman, spending hours rehearsing his body language and rhetoric. Alienated people, this author remarks, try to change themselves by pretense (88). In student parlance: ‘‘Fake it till you make it.’’ Understandable perhaps, but why would an entire nation buy into the ravings of a sociopath, a nut case? Victor’s theory seemed worth considering: many German fathers were brutal disciplinarians like Hitler’s (103), and the German people had been humiliated by the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty after their WW1 defeat. Grandiosity and conquest seemed a national ego-boost, and achieving racial purity an extra bonus. lt seems that many Germans felt vicariously empowered by the Fuhrer’s raging speeches, threatening his enemies as if they were right in front of him. Victor claims, from much research, that Hitler gave the German people a life and a future to believe in, and to stop believing in him meant the end of their world (102). It’s not a far cry from the ideology of today’s terrorists. Now what did Screwtape say about the road to Hell being paved with future intentions? Aquinas, it seemed clear, would have identified the trouble with Hitler. The Fuhrer willed to do evil under a perverted aspect of the good. His psychosis became clear when his secret plans – more secret even than the

74

REBECCA M. PAINTER

Final Solution – were discovered. In his insane search for racial purity he would have gone on to eliminate most of the German population by sterilization. Hardly anyone would have been left to perpetuate the Master Race. Students were perplexed by Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem. What was so banal about Adolph Eichmann’s self-defense that he was just following orders? He had meticulously supervised the transporting of Jews and others to the death camps; he was not stupid. Arendt claimed that ‘‘sheer thoughtlessness’’ had ‘‘predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period’’ (379). She said he was ‘‘not Iago and not Macbeth,’’ and would never have murdered his boss in order to inherit his position (379). All right, but what about his telling the court that he had accepted the ‘‘revaluation of values prescribed by the [Nazi] government’’ (379)? Was that simply banal, or something else? Would Aquinas have seen this as a form of willed ignorance? Arendt claimed that Eichmann had no motives at all, except for ‘‘extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement’’ (379). She stated that there were many like him, ‘‘neither perverted nor sadistic,’’ but ‘‘terribly and terrifyingly normal’’ (373). They seemingly did not intend to do wrong, so the legal system is hard put to pronounce guilt, or to identify their ability to distinguish right from wrong. Some students latched onto the fact that Eichmann and so many others put their own survival first, and that meant going along with acts of unspeakable inhumanity. This turned out to be not far removed from what a genetic researcher, Daryl Downing, described in a recent article entitled ‘‘Evolution, Evil, and Original Sin.’’ Downing explains that the concept of original sin was applied to a static concept of human origins, not an evolutionary one. Sin and selfishness, he asserts, are genetically inherited from ancestral, prehuman species as part of the survival instinct. To C. S. Lewis competition might be the philosophy of Hell, but to a biologist it determines what organisms will eat or be eaten. Therefore Adam and Eve did not ‘‘fall’’; rather, they chose predictable survival behavior, seeking knowledge that might give them an edge in the contest of life. Fortunately, Downing’s theory leaves room for the human capacity to evolve in moral consciousness and unselfish values. That possibility is approximately where my ‘‘Sympathy for the Devil?’’ course leaves students off. ff To bring them more or less up to the moment, they view the film ‘‘The Talented Mr. Ripley,’’ based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and discuss whether or not they feel sympathy for Tom Ripley, the talented

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL?

75

loser who kills a rich young man and is awarded his inheritance, having convinced the father he is more deserving. Oh yes, he also kills a man who truly loves him because he witnessed a scene that would give away Tom’s lowly identity, and he kills another young man who accused him correctly of being an imposter. The horrible fact for most is finding ourselves rooting for Tom, for his survival, knowing he is a murderer. This feeling evidently was so common that Highsmith wrote four more novels in the Ripley series. In none of which does Tom get caught. Without admitting it, it seems that many readers feel that Tom’s wiliness is somehow ‘‘cool.’’ This kind of response to lawlessness drove the eminent critic Roger Shattuck to condemn such popular sentiment in a piece for T he Atlantic Monthly titled ‘‘When Evil Is ‘Cool’.’’ Shattuck writes: ‘‘In the ideal of cool complicity in criminal violence lurks the suggestion, spotted by Pascal and La Rochefoucauld, of greatness in evil and of evil.’’ In the film Pulp Fiction, Shattuck claims, ‘‘Evil is not overcome. Evil is accepted and admired.’’ But that movie was a satire, students protested. Maybe, but Shattuck observes that nothing in the film ‘‘suggests that [it] sees around or beyond the horrible actions it portrays with the utmost cool.’’ Such a treatment, ‘‘broken by a few thrills and laughs,’’ absorbs the murderous gore into ordinary life and neutralizes it.’’ This film could be placed in the same genre as T he T alented Mr. Ripley, except the latter leaves one feeling more uneasy about one’s complicity. Shattuck points readers to Emerson’s essay ‘‘Experience.’’ In it one finds an ominous insight: ‘‘... [T]here is no crime to the intellect.’’ Emerson describes our tendency to excuse in ourselves as learning from experience what we call sin or crime in others. Shattuck voices dire concern that postmodern intellectuals have tried to transform sin and evil into a so-called positive term, ‘‘transgression,’’ wherein evil can be perceived as ‘‘supremely cool’’ or ‘‘splendidly wicked.’’ This goes far beyond the evolutionist’s concept of aggression as a survival skill. It gives students much to ponder in their own culture of youthful coolness, and strikes a chord with Ron Rosenbaum’s provocative essay, ‘‘Degrees of Evil: Some Thoughts on Hitler, bin Laden, and the Hierarchy of Wickedness.’’ Rosenbaum interprets Hitler as someone conscious of his criminality in trying to conceal his authorship of the Final Solution. Yet the Fuhrer takes cynical pleasure in referring to it as a ‘‘rumor’’ in one of his ‘‘Table Talk’’ sessions, recorded for posterity. This is also reflected in the ‘‘sadistic irony’’ of the words above the gates to Auschwitz: ‘‘A ‘ rbeit macht frei ’’ (‘‘Work makes you free’’). ‘‘Whoever put them there,’’ Rosenbaum notes,

76

REBECCA M. PAINTER

‘‘must have taken a cruel artistic pleasure in authoring them, knowing the camp’s purpose.’’ Seeing the video of bin Laden’s ‘‘complacent grin,’’ his ‘‘self-satisfied chuckle while discussing the details of murdering thousands ...’’ Rosenbaum feels that bin Laden shares the same wicked amusement and a metaphysical handshake with Hitler. Even before 9/11/01, students commented upon finishing this course that it gave them a much larger vocabulary to discuss what before they had been unable to articulate. So now, when when our media and political leaders use the term evil as freely as do factions that wish our country harm, these students are better able to see more than one side. I wish them well, and hope they can somehow get beyond the postmodern stalemate that everything evil is relative. Marymount Manhattan College BIBLIOGRAPHY Aquinas, Thomas. On Evil. Translated by Jean Oesterle. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Armstrong, Karen. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Downing, Darryl P. ‘‘Evolution, Evil and Original Sin.’’ America, Nov. 12, 2001, 14+. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Goethe’s Faust: Part One and Sections from Part T wo. Introduction and translation by Walter Kaufman. New York: Doubleday, 1990 [1961]. Lewis, C. S. T he Screwtape L etters (with ‘‘Screwtape Proposes a T oast’’). New York: Touchstone, 1996 [1961]. Messadie, Gerald. A History of the Devil. Translated by Marc Romano. New York: Kodansha America, Inc.: 1997 [1993]. Milton, John. Paradise L ost and Other Poems. Edward le Comte (intro.). New York: Mentor/Penguin, 1981 [1961]. Rosenbaum, Ron. ‘‘Degrees of Evil: Some Thoughts on Hitler, bin Laden, and the Hierarchy of Wickedness.’’ T he Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 2002, 63+. Rothstein, Edward. ‘‘Moral Relativity is a Hot Topic? True. Absolutely.’’ New Y York T imes, 13 July 02, late ed.: B7+. Shakespeare, William. Othello. Edited by Alvin Kernan. New York: Penguin/Signet Classic, 1998 [1963]. Shattuck, Roger. ‘‘When Evil is ‘Cool’.’’ T he Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1999, 73+. Victor, George. Hitler: T he Pathology of Evil. Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 2000 [1998].

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND T REMBL ING: AN EXPERIMENT IN THE SELF-RECOGNITIO N OF EVIL

‘‘If it were only so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?’’ – Alexsandr Solzenitzyn

Can we recognize evil in ourselves, and if so, how is such self-recognition possible? These questions lie at the foundations of the history of philosophy1 and motivate contemporary philosophical, political, and theological attempts to address the reality of evil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.2 In this paper, I will argue that this discourse on the self-recognition of evil can be elucidated through a close reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s work, Fear and T rembling.3 I will interpret this text as a philosophicoliterary experiment in the self-recognition of the moral agent.4 While it is true that this experiment does not always consciously thematize the problem of the self-recognition of evil as I will describe it, I will argue that beneath the text’s surface, Kierkegaard, in the guise of Johannes de Silentio, constructs a hermeneutical reflection on the possibility of recognizing evil in the self. I will show that this reflection confronts the reader with two different ff and conflicting explanatory accounts of how the self-recognition of evil occurs. The first account maintains that an agent can recognize evil acts of will insofar as he is aware that he is sacrificing egoistic gain for the sake of duty. Hence, on this ‘‘oppositional’’ account, given an opposition between selfish motive and moral motive, it is possible for an agent to comprehend his true motivations for willing an action, thereby allowing him to choose in a self-transparent manner.5 By contrast, the second account maintains that this oppositional account fails to acknowledge the possibility that motivation, even when apprehended in opposition to moral duty, is not an immediate datum of consciousness, but is rather susceptible to self-deception. Such self-deception would entail that an agent’s real motive for an action need not be 77 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 77–90. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

78

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

immediately self-transparent to him, and for this reason, it might be possible to redescribe an agent’s alleged motive in the guise of its opposite. In section one, I will analyze key passages in Fear and T rembling, in addition to relevant entries in Kierkegaard’s journals, which indicate that the opposition between selfish and moral desire is what allows de Silentio’s Abraham to recognize that his decision to sacrifice Isaac is not based on selfish motives. I will argue that this understanding of self-recognition is largely what motivates a common reading of Kierkegaard’s Abraham offered ff by commentator and translator Alastair Hannay. In section two, I argue that Hannay’s reading ignores the possibility that Abraham’s inner life is subject to self-deception and is, therefore, not immediately self-transparent. This possibility is suggested primarily by passages about Abraham which Kierkegaard later scribbled in his journals in a series of attempts to reconceive or revise his descriptions of the aqedah myth. Consequently, I will suggest that for Kierkegaard the real significance of Abraham’s spiritual trial is never explicitly announced within the text, but is only detectable along the penumbra of the universe of discourse which Johannes de Silentio develops inside it. In the concluding section, I shall argue that this textual penumbra is itself suggestive of a lack of conceptual clarity at the heart of discourses about evil. If self-deceptive evil is only indirectly recognized within the work, it is because the reality of evil is itself never manifested as a presence, but is only sensed between the interstices existing at points of fracture between phenomena. Accordingly, the silence de Silentio exhibits can be seen as illustrating our own inability to recognize the self-deceptive processes which mask our own evil tendencies.

I. SPIRITUAL TRIAL AND OPPOSITION IN ABRAHAM

Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and T rembling, claims: ‘‘Abraham I cannot understand; in a certain sense I can learn nothing from him except to be amazed’’ (F&T 37). What de Silentio cannot understand is not the act of sacrifice described in the Biblical account, but rather the inner disposition exemplified by Abraham, the knight of faith. Such a person is: the single individual who is higher than the universal, [and one who] ... determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. (F&T 70)

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND TREMBLING

79

Furthermore, this absolute relation to the absolute entails that the knight of faith cannot communicate the meaning of his actions to others. For: Abraham cannot be mediated; in other words, he cannot speak. As soon as I speak, I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me. As soon as Abraham wants to express himself in the universal, he must declare that his situation is a spiritual trial ..., for he has no higher expression of the universal that ranks above the universal he violates. (F&T 60)

Since Abraham cannot communicate his reasons for acting to others, his existence is different ff from the tragic hero, who de Silentio tells us can communicate why he acts as he does to others (F&T 46). The tragic hero is heroic because he chooses to do his duty while having to deny all possibility of satisfying his other wishes. His is a life marked by sacrifice in the name of duty, for he ‘‘relinquishes himself in order to express the universal’’ (F&T 75) and ‘‘expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it’’ (F&T 79). Nevertheless, the tragic hero is consoled by his knowledge that a grave sacrifice ought to be made, and in knowing that this is his duty, he may communicate his reasons for acting to others. This life of infinite resignation provides, therefore, a kind of tranquility inasmuch as the pain involved in resigning the self to its existence ‘‘reconciles ... [it] to existence’’ (F&T 45). On the other hand, de Silentio tells us that since the knight of faith exists in absolute relation to the absolute, neither his moral nor his extramoral desires can be fulfilled: ‘‘The tragic hero gives up his wish in order to fulfill this duty. For the knight of faith, wish and duty are also identical, but he is required to give up both’’ (F&T 78). Accordingly, the knight of faith: is kept in a state of sleeplessness, for [he] ... is constantly being tested ... and at every moment there is the possibility of ... [his] returning penitently to the universal, and this possibility may be a spiritual trial ... as well as the truth. He cannot get any information on that from any man, for in that case he is outside the paradox. (F&T 78)

We see, then, that the knight of faith’s existence is marked by his inner struggle with the paradox of faith. Unless a penitent return to the universal occurs, the knight of faith must remain vigilant against not only the possibility that such a return to the ethical is a temptation which he ought to avoid, but also the possibility that his own teleological suspension of the ethical is itself untrue or misguided. Meanwhile, from the point of view of the nonbeliever, the knight of faith must be mistaken, since it is only in returning to the universal and admitting that he has

80

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

suffered ff a spiritual trial that the knight of faith can give expression to his inner experience. For this reason, de Silentio says: ‘‘I cannot think myself into Abraham ... for what is offered ff me is a paradox’’ (F&T 33). Assuming that a knight of faith cannot communicate his plight with others, is it possible for such a person to communicate what he is doing and why he is doing it to himself ? Can one know that one is the knight of faith, or does the knight’s incapacity to communicate his situation to others entail that his own actions will remain enigmatic even to himself ? De Silentio suggests that such comprehension is possible: Whether the single individual actually is undergoing a spiritual trial or is a knight of faith, only the single individual himself can decide. But from the paradox itself several characteristic signs may be inferred that are understandable also to someone not in it. The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation; the spurious knight is sectarian. This is an attempt to jump off the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a bargain price. The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it. ... But the knight of faith, on the other hand, is the paradox; he is the single individual, simply and solely the single individual without any connections and complications. (F&T 79)

Since the true knight is isolated, paradoxical, and unable to have any ‘‘connections ... [or] complications’’ with the world, his inner life cannot correspond with an outer expression. This claim does nothing to eradicate the paradox, however, since in the absence of any possible outer expression of one’s own self-understanding, it is difficult to conceive how selfunderstanding would be possible at all. Without any connection to the world, the self, together with its sense of purpose and sources of motivation, would become a vanishing point without content.6 One way of understanding this problem would be to define the knight of faith’s experience in terms of an opposition between moral duty and selfish desire. Alastair Hannay has argued that Abraham’s inner experience exhibits a content which can illuminate his own self-understanding when he chooses to sacrifice Isaac. He writes: [t]he Abraham story is not like an everyday one. As Johannes de silentio tells it there can be no deception or self-deception of that kind. Abraham could not be wrong in believing that he has no selfish interest to serve in abandoning Isaac. There is nothing Abraham could envisage for his own benefit that was not identical with his hopes for Isaac. There is therefore no basis in Abraham for the general doubt one may entertain about a sacrificer’s honesty, that people often do have motives to conceal purely selfish reasons for disregarding the wishes and interests of those whose interests they would be expected to protect. That being so, when we are told that Abraham abandons Isaac in order to prove his faith, we cannot suspect, as in ordinary life we often can, that this is just a cover that serves to conceal some more mundane interest. (‘‘Introduction,’’ Fear and T rembling 22)

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND TREMBLING

81

Hannay is claiming that Abraham, in spite of contravening the ethical, can at least know that his own motivations for choosing to leave the ethical by sacrificing Isaac are not dishonest. While Abraham may not know that this is God speaking to him and that a teleological suspension of the ethical is required of him, he can know, according to Hannay, why he chooses to act as he does. This awareness is made possible by the sheer magnitude of the choice confronting Abraham: since it is obvious that he loves Isaac more than himself, whatever the final judgement of his situation is, his reasons for choosing as he does cannot be selfishly grounded. Accordingly, there could be no darker, more selfish motives lurking beneath Abraham’s immediate self-understanding in his confrontation with Isaac. As Kierkegaard claims ‘‘the point in the whole story lies in Abraham’s being genuinely assured that he loves Isaac more than himself ’’ (Journals and Papers 908). Ironically, this problem concerning what one’s real motives are is a familiar problem in the ethical as well. In particular, deontological ethics is often concerned to tell us not only what our duty is, but also that our sense of duty ought to be the suY u cient motive for our actions.7 And a common solution to the problem of self-knowledge in ethics also consists in looking for an opposition between selfish desire and moral duty. This position is, for example, discussed by Kierkegaard in the following journal entry: Precisely in order that it shall become clear whether it really is ‘‘conscience’’ alone which decides (not a belch, a lazy notion, caprice, confused thoughts, foolish aping ... etc.), precisely for this reason there must be opposition and constraint. The qualification ‘‘conscience’’ is so inward that it takes all the filtering possible to find it; but if it is found, if it really is that and only that which determines me – then all regulations be hanged – I laugh at them. (Journals and Papers 1246)

In order for duty to be actualized and not something else – one would need – or, at least, ideally hope to have in order to satisfy one’s selfdoubts – a clear opposition between ego and duty which might show one how and why one acts as one does.8 If this is true, then the experience of moral struggle would be a sort of litmus test by means of which selfknowledge of one’s real moral worth might be gained. We see, then, that Kierkegaard tries to provide us with an account of how an agent can recognize evil motives within himself. This account holds that in cases in which a clear opposition between selfish desire and duty exists an agent can know whether or not he acts for moral reasons rather than immoral ones.9 The basic intuition behind this strategy would

82

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

seem to be that duty is never more apparent than when it is offset ff by and defined in opposition to inclination. And ironically, even though the knight of faith cannot justify his choice within the ethical as the tragic hero can, the oppositional account of self-recognition would suggest that the knight faith is still able to understand the real motives for his choice insofar as this choice is made under moral constraint.

II. SELF-DECEPTION AND THE SELF-RECOGNITION OF EVIL IN KIERKEGAARD

In this section, I want to turn to an alternative account of self-recognition offered ff by Kierkegaard. As mentioned in the introduction, this account holds that the possibility of self-deception makes the prospect of recognizing one’s real motives for choosing an act problematic. lf this account is accurate, it would cast doubt on Hannay’s suggestion that a moral agent in Abraham’s situation might be immune to the redescriptive possibilities created by self-deception. As indicated before, this account is not explicitly discussed in the published work, Fear and T rembling Nevertheless, the existence of such an account can be inferred from entries in Kierkegaard’s journals which, while not part of the finished, published version of Fear and T rembling, draw our attention to deeper questions concerning Abraham’s inner life which were not explicitly addressed in the published text. First, let us consider how de Silentio characterizes Abraham’s motivation: ‘‘To the question ‘Why?’ Abraham has no other answer than that it is an ordeal, a temptation that ... is a synthesis of its being for the sake of God and for his own sake’’ (F&T 71). Insofar as the isolated knight of faith can comprehend his own reasons for doing what he does, then, these reasons must not only be his but also God’s. ‘‘Why, then, does Abraham do it? For God’s sake and – the two are wholly identical – for his own sake’’ (F&T 59; italics mine). Kierkegaard himself invites this ambiguity – this fusion – between God’s reasons and man’s when he writes: The more the phenomenon, the appearance, expresses that here God cannot possibly be present, the closer he is. This is the case with Christ. The very moment the appearance expressed that this man could not possibly be the God-man – no, when the appearance expressed that, men even refused to recognize him as a man ... , then God was closest to actuality he had ever been. (Journals and Papers 3099)

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND TREMBLING

83

The ambiguity between God and man which is framed in terms of the binary appearance/presence poses a peculiar problem for evaluating the knight of faith: namely, if the knight can only know that his own interests and God’s must be identical, then how can the knight ever know that his reasons for acting really do coincide with God’s rather than stemming from self-deceptive attempts to disguise and furtively justify pathological self-interest? How could one be certain that one really was motivated to sacrifice one’s son for the sake of God rather than through hidden bloodlust? For these reasons, Kierkegaard writes: [n]o religious person, even the purest, has sheer, purified subjectivity or pure transparency in willing solely what God wills, so that there is no residue of his original subjectivity, a residue still not wholly penetrated, a remote portion of residue still uncaptured, perhaps as yet not even really discovered in the depths of his soul – out of this come the reactions [i.e. anxiety’s manifestations]. (Journals and Papers 4384)

Hence, according to Kierkegaard, the knight of faith may never be able to know whether or not his subjectively biased status in existence has been cleansed, so to speak, of enough of its egoism to will a nonpathological act.10 This problem of knowing one’s motivation for an act is, however, not simply a problem for the knight of faith. For while it is true that Abraham faces a situation of an extreme nature, one could argue that all decisions made by finite agents might be subject to the redescriptive possibilities of desires which were initially hidden by self-deception. Kierkegaard suggests this sort of possibility when he claims that inner existence can be: dialectically complicated almost to the point of madness ... It is in fact a kind of obsession. Humanly speaking, the sufferer ff is completely without guilt. He himself does not, as in sin, provoke these thoughts; it is just the opposite, these thoughts plague him ... In order to endure this agony, a specific kind of religiousness is needed, is required ... Before you, O God, I am nothing; do with me as you will, let me suffer ff all this which almost drives me to madness ... Consequently the sufferer ff endures with the help of religiousness. But now comes the consciousness of freedom with responsibility. In itself the suffering ff is perhaps the most tortuous of all sufferings ff for a free being, thus to be as if unfree in the power of something else. But the responsibility of freedom asks: Is a person not responsible for his thoughts, then? This concern breeds new anxiety, since the suffering ff now also seems to become guilt. What shall he do now? Here the understanding is again exposed to a collision, and if there is self-centered willfulness and obstinacy in him, he loses his mind. (Journals and Papers 4370)

A person – whether he really is the knight of faith or not is unimportant11 – has such thoughts because the anxiety surrounding an act – and the memory of the act – is extreme, and this anxiety is seen as arising because

84

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

it is in principle always possible to question what the real moral meaning of an action is. This suggests, then, that for Kierkegaard, redescription is a universal problem for finite existence. Granted, if one is the knight of faith, then one may doubt what God’s command was or why one acts as one does; equally, however, one could argue that the reason any person commits an act need not be immediately self-recognizable. Indeed, even one’s thoughts about one’s choice may not be immune to this problem. One’s thoughts sometimes appear to run away from and torment one uncontrollably, but then as a sort of second-order reflection on the ontological status of these thoughts themselves, one may even have doubts about whether or not the inner dialogue one is having – indeed, must have – with oneself results from freedom or unfreedom. One does not know – but may wish to believe one way or the other – whether or not one is even responsible for tormenting oneself.12 Hence, not only does the ambiguous nature of the relation between man and God make the self-understanding of an agent problematic; it is also the case that our relation to our own self-understanding can become mired in a sort of introspective ‘‘second-guessing’’ which both results from and engenders a deep sense of anxiety over who we are as free agents. Given this model of understanding the free agent, then, it would seem counterintuitive to claim, as we saw Hannay did, that Kierkegaard regards Abraham as immune to such self-deceptive despair.13 This point is seen, albeit in an extra-textual source, in the following passage in which Kierkegaard describes Abraham as ‘‘second-guessing’’ himself, as it were, about the motivation behind his choice to sacrifice Isaac: What have you done, you poor old man! That was not required of you at all; you were my friend, and I merely wanted to test your faith! And I also shouted to you in the last moment, I shouted: Abraham, Abraham, stop! Faint also with the broken hearted weariness of a deranged mind, Abraham answered, ‘‘O Lord, I did not hear it [the call to stop this insanity]; yet now that you speak it, it seems to me that I did hear such a voice. Oh, when it is you who commands a father to murder his own son, one is somewhat overstrained at such a moment – therefore I did not hear your voice. If I had heard it, how would I have dared believe it was yours?’’ (F&T (supplement) 267; italics mine)

This selection, which is an alternative, unpublished version of the story,14 indicates that Abraham’s inner life is subject to doubt and redescription. Indeed, the relation between Abraham and his own self-description is both striking and puzzling here. Abraham only seems to know that he

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND TREMBLING

85

heard the voice, but he is unsure. Yet this uncertainty is masked by the counterfactual claim that, even had God decided to intervene, deciding to go against this other voice would have been too difficult to bear. On some level, then, Abraham clearly knows that which on another level must somehow escape his explicit, conscious awareness. Consequently, we see that Kierkegaard’s Abraham should not be understood as possessing a self-awareness whose veracity and transparency are beyond all doubt. Rather, Abraham is understood as retracing his own steps because he finds it necessary to question his own decision-making processes and motivations, and this indicates that, contrary to the oppositional interpretation of the text, Abraham’s real reasons for sacrificing Isaac are neither capable of being inferred from the extreme nature of his decision nor immune from redescription. III. CONCLUSION

In this paper, I have described two different ff accounts of how the selfrecognition of evil can occur. In reconceiving Fear and T rembling as a literary experiment in which both of these accounts are made manifest, I have tried to point to the difficulties inherent in grasping our own moral worth as free agents. On the one hand, the oppositional account endorsed by Hannay surely plays a role in not only Kierkegaard’s understanding of self-knowledge, but also in our everyday conception of motivation. And the need for such an account seems clear. For the real motivation behind our actions need not be immediately apparent either to us or to others, and we might wish to believe that we are much more honest with ourselves than we truly are. Kant cautioned us against this tendency when he wrote: ‘‘one is never more easily deceived than in what promotes a good opinion of oneself ’’ (Religion 85). And like Kierkegaard, he too suggested that the clearest insight into our motivations might be gained through the opposition characteristic of moral struggle. And this strategy seems to be confirmed in everyday life. For in believing that a person is sacrificing his own interests for the sake of duty, we are perhaps more inclined to think the motivation underlying a person’s act must stem from non-selfish motives. On the other hand, we can argue, along with Kierkegaard, that a simple opposition between self and duty is both an incomplete account of moral motivation and an inadequate criterion for grasping our real motivation. lt is incomplete because there are certainly cases of morally worthy conduct which will fail the test simply because the motives under-

86

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

lying an action are over-determined.15 It is inadequate insofar as it presupposes that we have a clear, self-transparent understanding of our motives in the first place; but if this assumption were itself placed in suspension, it would be difficult to comprehend how we could understand an opposition which requires us to sacrifice ourselves for the universal. Both the knight of faith and the tragic hero have to know already that they truly love what they must sacrifice, since without this knowledge, the meaning of their spiritual trials would be dubious. Yet it is precisely this privileged access to our inner lives which the second account called into question. If Abraham does not know that he loves Isaac more than himself, then what can be said of Abraham as an agent? By extension, what if none of us can be assured of the true meaning of our relationship with the other? Is one ever certain that one’s response to the other arises, as Kierkegaard’s description of Abraham suggested, out of a true conviction that one loves the other more than oneself ? In making such a response, do we not need to be aware not only of how to deal with the other on his or her own terms, e.g. taking a different ff perspective or accepting possible disagreement, but also of what really motivates us in our intercourse with the other?16 If such concerns do matter to us as agents, it may be because we know that responsibility itself is primordially understood as a paradox. As Derrida says: Abraham’s decision is absolutely responsible because it answers for itself before the absolute other. Paradoxically it is also irresponsible because it is guided neither by reason nor by an ethics justifiable by men or before the law of some universal tribunal. (T he Gift of Death 77)

If true justice does necessitate such fear and trembling in the face of the other, then could we not understand de Silentios silence as itself indicative of our inability to accept this most awesome of responsibilities? Could we not further suggest that Kierkegaard’s attempt to redescribe the Abraham story – a redescriptive experiment which was conducted after the work had been completed – illustrates the peculiar ontology of evil? Indeed, could we not also ask whether the decision not to entertain such descriptions in the original, published work serves to delineate or sketch out how evil often appears to finite self-conscious beings such as ourselves and where such appearances are apt to manifest themselves? Evil is not present in the work, but is only introduced to it through passages which were uncovered in our attempt to ascribe a meaning to it. It exists along

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND TREMBLING

87

the penumbra which the reader’s hermeneutic engagement of the work constructs. Similarly, real evil, in spite of whatever grotesque imagery it might conjure up, might not be seen either in the world or ourselves; rather, it might be the case that it is only perceived in those rare moments ff a diff fferent reading of our own existence, being in which we dare to offer willing like Abraham to accept the awesome responsibility which is held in check by the fragility of our own self-understanding. Given this fragility, it may be the case that evil is, much like Kierkegaard’s idea of God, never more present than in those moments during which it appears to have disappeared utterly. Thus, to Hannay’s Abraham, who is uniquely different ff from everyday man, we should counterpose our own: the Abraham who is a cipher for our flight from responsibility, who cannot not be irresponsible in the very act of being responsible. Such a substitution is, of course, not meant to be communicated, but rather lived. Yet who among us does face fear and trembling as Abraham must have? And, indeed, might not the claim that one does live in this manner itself be a form of self-deception which masks one’s true responsibilities? It may be, therefore, that de Silentio’s silence must be our own, and yet unlike the fictitious entity designated by that famous pseudonym, we cannot remain silent forever. We must truly act at some point, so that we might face the other, as well as the other in ourselves. University of North Florida U NOTES 1 If we consider the Greek adage ‘‘gnothi seauton’’ in the context of Socrates’ quest for selfknowledge, for example, we see that knowing one’s moral status, and not simply understanding oneself from the point of view of disinterested, theoretical knowledge, was of paramount importance. When Socrates admits that he is unsure of whether or not there is a Typhonic beast lurking beneath the immediate data of his self-conscious experience, he can be taken as asking about his worth as a moral agent (Phaedrus 230a). Only through asking such a question can one have any certainty that there is not a hidden evil existing within oneself. 2 Consider Arendt’s attempt to come to grips with the ‘‘banality of evil’’ in her Eichmann in J Jerusalem , for example. More recently, philosophers such as Peter Dews have argued that we have already entered a new paradigm for thinking of evil: rather than regarding evil – qua the political, the personal, the historical, and so on – as a distinctively theologically laden problem, we now think of evil in a-theological, post-metaphysical terms. See especially his comments on the problems associated with an a-theological paradigm for grasping evil in ‘‘ ‘Radical Finitude’ and the Problem of Evil: Critical Comments on Wellmer’s Reading of Jonas’’ in Rethinking Evil, Lara (ed.) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001),

88

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

pp. 46–52. In general, I take it that contemporary investigations concerning evil have arisen largely as new responses to an old theological problem. In the wake of Auschwitz, Rwanda, and the Palestinian issue in the Middle East, we no longer ask: ‘‘Why does God allow for such horrible things?’’ but rather: ‘‘Where did we go so terribly wrong?’’ 3 I will designate the Hong translation of Fear and T rembling & Repetition simply as F&T when providing parenthetical citations throughout the paper. 4 For some of the main readings of Fear and T rembling, see Ronald M. Green, ‘‘Developing Fear and T rembling.’’ T he Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, A. Hannay and G. Marino (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 257–281. The reading I am endorsing does not fit into these standard classifications. 5 The classic formulation of this is found in Immanuel Kant’s doctrine of radical evil with its insistence that to choose an evil maxim is to choose a pathological inclination in opposition to a maxim which, with law-like universality, is morally binding on all rational agents. 6 One recalls that the ethical repentance advocated by the judge in Either-Or II was characterized by isolation as well; nevertheless, this isolation is supposed to make possible our concretion in the world, while in the current case, we are presented with an isolation which, if it is to remain truly isolated, must not have any connections to anything outside of the single individual. 7 Such a concern is voiced, for example, in modern Kant scholarship. See Barbara Herman, T he Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 8 Notice that this would make cases in which one’s duty and desire were to coincide deeply problematic, since no opposition would exist. Kierkegaard is suggesting, then, that it is the opposition between desire and duty that seems to provide a clearer criterion of the actual moral character of one’s action. Additional passages supporting the oppositional view may be found in J Journals and Papers 1264 and 4367, as well as in T he Concept of Anxiety 143. 9 Or, in Kant’s terms, one can know whether or not one’s will is pathologically affected. ff 10 As Kant says, there is no such thing as a diabolical will. 11 Indeed, as I interpret Kierkegaard, even a nonreligious person might suffer ff a comparable form of anxiety and anxious reflection. To cite one example: ‘‘A’’ in Either-Or I appears to suffer ff from a high level of anxiety over his existence and, in particular, his inner life is constituted by metareflections on his memories and his sense of boredom with the present, all this in spite of the fact that he is an avowed aesthete. 12 There is, I would argue, an ambiguity between necessity and freedom that is disclosed in a phenomenological description of certain experiences such that one may believe that one is the way one is because of one’s nature, while being uneasily suspicious that such reasoning is a subterfuge which ignores the ways in which we do in fact choose who we are. Here I am thinking, for instance, of an abusive parent who sees his behaviour as resulting from ‘‘the way he is,’’ while perhaps later acknowledging how ‘‘the way he is’’ is in some sense also a result of freely chosen behaviour. Interestingly, James Giles has tried to reconcile the problem of guilt over one’s thoughts in Kierkegaard. The problem arises because Kierkegaard does claim in some places that the self is innocent and that such thoughts really plague it like a disease over which it has no control; at the same time, however, Kierkegaard also claims that it is our anxiety – which he associates with freedom – which not only provokes such thoughts but intensifies them to the point of ever-deepening despair. Giles points out that what Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Kierkegaard is addressing here is not unlike Freud’s N N Neurosis. For Freud found cases in which seemingly ‘‘innocent’’ patients who suffered ff great anxiety over malevolent thoughts about others often found much later – even to their own surprise – that they unconsciously wished something bad would happen to them. For Giles,

KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND TREMBLING

89

this indicates that anxiety-ridden thoughts that frequently plague us are an indication of a deeper existential problem in the self and he argues – correctly, I believe – that Kierkegaard defines this problem in terms of freedom. See Giles’ ‘‘Kierkegaard’s Leap: Anxiety and Freedom,’’ in Kierkegaard and Freedom (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 69–92. 13 Indeed, considering that the work’s title is derived from Philippians 2:12, Kierkegaard clearly wants us to associate the life of faith with both fear and trembling. And one might argue that the most extreme form of fear and trembling consists not of the subject’s encounter with some object, e.g. a snake or a violent attacker, but rather of the sort of regret and anxiety created by self-suspicion. As Nietzsche says of the pale criminal, ‘‘[T]here is yet another madness, and that comes before the deed. Alas you have not yet crept deep enough into this soul ... ‘Why did this criminal murder? He wanted to rob.’ But I say to you: his soul wanted blood, not robbery ... His poor reason, however, did not comprehend this madness ...’’ ‘‘Pale Criminal,’’ T he Portable Nietzsche, Kaufmann (trans.) (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982), pp. 150–151. 14 The journal entry is apparently from 1851, some eight years after Fear and T rembling was originally published. It is but one of many such entries from this period which mark a return to an experimental reflection on Abraham’s inner experience. 15 Here I am thinking of a case in which one performs an act not only because it is right, but for other reasons as well, e.g. saving someone’s life because it is moral and because the person is a loved one. In such a case, there might not be an opposition between duty and an agent’s other desires, and consequently, there would be no criterion for discriminating one type of motive from another. 16 When I originally wrote this, three-hundred thousand U.S. troops surrounded Iraq in preparation for war. No doubt there was self-sacrifice involved here. Soldiers and civilians on both sides have since died, and many have been separated from their families for many months – or even longer. That we have sought to bring democracy to the Iraqi people: this is at least one proposed motivation supposedly vindicated through our oppositional sacrifice. Yet if democracy really mattered to us, why do we continue to support such dictators throughout the world? Why have we done so in the past? Do we bring the sword to Iraq for the other or for ourselves, and should we become clear about why we act before acting? Indeed, do we need to know who this other is in whose name we commit such actions, or would it be more revealing to say – as few actually do – that such actions are really only for us, no matter how they might affect ff the other?

BIBLIOGRAPHY Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin, 1994. Derrida, Jacques. T he Gift of Death. Translated by David Willis. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Dews, Peter. ‘‘ ‘Radical Finitude’ and the Problem of Evil: Critical Comments on Wellmer’s Reading of Jonas.’’ In Rethinking Evil. Edited by Lara. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Giles, James. ‘‘Kierkegaard’s Leap: Anxiety and Freedom.’’ In Kierkegaard and Freedom. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.

90

ANDREW JONES-CATHCART

Green, Ronald M. ‘‘Developing Fear and T rembling.’’ In T he Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. Edited by A. Hannay and G. Marino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hannay, Alastair. ‘‘Introduction,’’ Fear and T rembling, by Søren Kierkegaard. London: Penguin Books, 1985. Herman, Barbara. T he Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ——. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Translated by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concept of Anxiety. Translated by Reidar Thomte. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. ——. Either-Or: A Fragment of L ife. Edited and translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books, 1992. ——. Either-Or. Translated by Walter Lowrie, Vol. 2. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974. ——. Either-Or. Translated by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Vol. 1. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959. ——. Fear and T rembling & Repetition. Translated by Howard Hong and Edna Hong. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. ——. P Papers and Journals: A Selection. Translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books. 1996. ——. J Journals and Papers. Translated by Howard Hong and Edna Hong, 7 vols. Bloomington, IN and London: University of Indiana Press, 1967–1978. ——. J Journals of Kierkegaard. Edited and translated by Alexander Dru. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1959. Papers and Journals: A Selection. Edited and translated by Alastair Hannay. London: ——. P Penguin Books, 1996. Nietzsche, Friedrich W. ‘‘Pale Criminal.’’ T he Portable Nietzsche. Translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Viking Penguin, 1982.

LEWIS LIVESAY

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS: LEVINASIAN FACE-TO-FACE A S RELIABLE NARRATION

The first point about Marlow to which I would call attention is that he remains unassimilated into his society. This pertains to both young Marlow in Africa and to mature Marlow in England. Aboard the Nellie N , the ship on which five men gather on the evening when Marlow recounts his youthful encounter with the ‘‘remarkable’’ Mr. Kurtz, this character exists as an outsider in relation to the social group. It is a critical commonplace in reading Melville or Conrad to presuppose that the ship gets read as society, and my reading readily accommodates this metaphor. The social group aboard the Nellie N includes Marlow, the ship captain and owner who is a Director of Companies, a lawyer, an accountant, and the frame narrator. We suspect that the frame narrator is, like the others, a man of social accomplishment and wealth. His historical allusions suggest that he is educated. The four men joining Marlow have long since given up their youthful lives as sailors to pursue professional careers in London, and they have made it in the world, with high status jobs and each one owning two homes. We know this because, late in the story, Marlow realizes how his story about Kurtz lies outside the normal powers of perception that they now routinely exercise. Marlow challenges his mates to see. Marlow is describing the despair he felt on the approach to Kurtz when all signs indicated that Kurtz might be dead, and Marlow says that he felt a ‘‘lonely desolation ... [as if ] I had been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life’’ (79). One of the four men sighs, as if in protest against Marlow’s relation to Kurtz, as if the connection to Kurtz could ever match the relations on board the Nellie, N and Marlow turns defensive. The frame narrator reports Marlow’s response: ‘‘ ‘Absurd!’ he cried. ‘This is the worst of trying to tell ... Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal you hear normal from year’s end to year’s end’’ (80). To Marlow, his mates clearly do not always exercise what Coleridge has called ‘‘the willing suspension of disbelief ’’ allowing entry into the transcendental deduction away from the natural attitude. These men are 91 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 91–118. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

92

LEWIS LIVESAY

comfortably ensconced in a lifestyle with set assumptions about a social order that they want to see preserved. They have settled into the comforts of material security, and they renew out of nostalgia their so-called ‘‘bond of the sea’’ on a yacht, cruising down the safe and secure environs of the Thames estuary. The only one who is different ff is Marlow. As the frame narrator attests, ‘‘He was the only man of us who still ‘followed the sea.’ The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class’’ (18). These men have all known and accepted each other all their adult lives, but Marlow still remains unincorporated into the group, sitting off from the others in ‘‘the pose of a Buddha’’ (20). If the ship is society and the four successful men represent society’s patriarchal leaders as men who seek to conserve the ‘‘totality’’ of their status and power, then to these men, in his atypicality, Marlow represents what Emmanuel Levinas would call the ‘‘enigma’’ that can open the people who want to see to what lies beyond the ontology of what we know and maintain about being – the realm of ‘‘beyond’’ that Levinas calls ‘‘otherwise than being.’’ Because the four men on the ship represent conformity to traditional values that support their lives, traditional values that they are thus not overly inclined to question, Marlow represents an alterity that challenges their order of being. It is for very good reason, then, that the frame narrator refers to a Marlow story as ‘‘one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences’’ (21). The social realm, the totality, can only be held in place by an order of categorical imperatives which demand that life be read as ordered with meanings being assigned to experiences, thus bringing them to closure. Marlow, as we will see, does not hold to the norms to which his cohorts implicitly subscribe. It is only when reading Marlow from within the perspective of social ‘‘totality’’ that he can be easily branded as ‘‘an unreliable narrator.’’ Indeed, that is what F. R. Leavis does when he laments the ‘‘adjectival insistence’’ that develops mysteries resisting easy assimilation into the timeless ideals of British tradition (216). The assumption that Marlow can be read within the ‘‘totality’’ of British ideals also allows for Chinua Achebe’s critical outrage when he identifies Marlow with Conrad and calls Conrad ‘‘a thoroughgoing racist’’ (257). The same assumption informs the postcolonial deconstruction of binaries, such as light/dark and Europe/Africa, that leads Benita Parry to conclude that Conrad’s ‘‘endeavor to devise an ethical base for imperialism is doomed to fail’’ (28). Finally, similar thinking informs Patrick Brantlinger’s lament that Heart oof Darkness exists in a category with novels that ‘‘insistently invoke an idealism that they don’t seem to con-

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

93

tain’’ (296). All three readings by Leavis, Parry, and Brantlinger have been widely received and highly praised with good reason. I simply point out how all three readings presuppose that Marlow and by extension Conrad exist to uphold the values of British culture and British preeminence throughout the world. Clearly, if that premise is taken as ordained, Marlow makes an easy target for critical judgment. The crown, most assuredly, has had greater champions. One could even condemn Marlow for telling what literalists of the imagination see as a lie, thus betraying British honor when Marlow lets the Intended believe that Kurtz died with her name upon his lips. As a result of what is frequently perceived as a transgression against established conventions, Marlow is taught today in high school and college classrooms as the embodiment of ‘‘the unreliable narrator.’’ However, I would like to offer ff another interpretation of the ‘‘lie’’ and of Marlow’s reliability. With the title of one of his best known works, T otality and Infinity, Levinas provides terms with which to make a distinction. In Conrad’s novella, British tradition represents a ‘‘totality.’’ My thesis maintains that Marlow can be read as a figure attempting to situate himself outside ‘‘totality’’ after a traumatic encounter with ‘‘infinity.’’ In Levinasian terms, this makes Marlow a ‘‘disturbing’’ narrator, a figure who can readily be taken as upending the reader’s ontological foundation, and if that happens, as I believe it does, then Marlow should be viewed not as an unreliable narrator, but as a highly reliable narrator. He sees more, says more, and represents more than the totality can accommodate. Marlow seeks to present the ‘‘saying’’ of infinity that will disorient the ‘‘said’’ of totality. Reading Marlow through a Levinasian perspective creates the possibility of advocating for an ethical narration that bears witness to the alterity of what Kurtz attempts and how the attempt (not the man) frees Marlow from his imprisonment within the natural attitude. We must remember that Levinas’s ‘‘said’’ derives from what Husserl first called the natural attitude. The ‘‘said’’ of accumulated assumptions that holds civilization in place must be upended in a face-to-face confrontation with an alterity that unravels ideology as the ‘‘lie’’ that shapes consciousness. Jill Robbins describes this confrontation: ‘‘The epiphany of the face interrupts the gaze and the habitual economy’’ (9). There is a ‘‘lie’’ in Heart of Darkness, but it is not the fabrication that Marlow conveys to the Intended about how Kurtz died with her name on his lips. The ‘‘lie’’ at the heart of the novella stems from the rationalizations of civilization itself, fostering our blind commitment to comfortable ways of reading, consuming, and possessing the marginalized other. For Levinas, denial of those who have

94

LEWIS LIVESAY

been excluded blocks us from developing an ethics of alterity and the needed form of ‘‘saying’’ that works to dismantle the ‘‘said’’ of the all too familiar. Disruption is not easy to handle for those who rely on ‘‘totality’’ to maintain some sense of stability in their lives. In the middle of Marlow’s narrative, he suggests that all people wear masks and perform their ‘‘monkey tricks’’ as players who feign an identity. One of the men on board retorts, ‘‘Try to be civil, Marlow’’ (60). The veneer of civilization, resting on its natural attitude that must be taken-for-granted and not questioned, constitutes a social contract for the ruling class, a ruling class that does not appreciate any revelation of its arbitrary claim to authority. This claim, when dispassionately reduced, proves itself to be far from inevitable, transcendent, and naturally endowed. ‘‘Try to be civil’’ means: Let us maintain the appearances that make possible an economy of exchanges to preserve a status quo to support, in other words, the pretense of civilization that separates us from savagery and from the ego becoming completely unchained. However, this veneer of civilization will prove, as Marlow learns, to be a ‘‘lie.’’ In an oft quoted line, Marlow says, ‘‘You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie.’’ Marlow’s distaste for duplicity depends on his sensory grasp that a lie contains ‘‘a taint of death, a flavor of mortality’’ (49). Civilization hoods our eyes with scales and plugs our ears so that we cannot receive messages about the mortality that reminds us of ultimate alterity. The wanting to forget and not see death is very human. Civilization is a lie; death is real. Ethics opens us to the truth about the unhomely and strange to which we usually remain blind. (The imagery of blindness runs consistently throughout the novella.) The ‘‘totality’’ of comfortable categorical imperatives determines what we can see and not see. Within this framework, identity is constructed. Thomas Carl Wall describes the ‘‘totality’’ that Levinas is working to undermine as follows: ‘‘An anonymous mimesis precedes and permanently erodes all identity. My being is not my own’’ (43). The ‘‘same’’ forever looks to perpetuate more of the familiar. As Mark Taylor puts it, ‘‘... the said totalizes differences’’ ff (198). This is why Levinas opposes an ethics based on identification and empathy. Identification is much like metaphor; it proves to be a mimesis that clandestinely perpetuates similarity. Such identification turns the other into an entity that the self can readily accommodate. This is why Wall describes the Levinasian project as ‘‘a responsibility that places me in question, for only there, outside essence, can I meet the other as other than other-I’’ (59). Within ‘‘totality,’’ mimetic identification never allows

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

95

the other to exist on his or her terms in all of another person’s incomprehensible dissimilarity. To get outside or beyond essence, one does not go by way of opposition, for opposition is still going to be embroiled in the dialectic of terms that must be transcended. Instead, one must disrupt the system to recognize its controlling mechanisms and enter a ‘‘radical passivity’’ to prepare to upend what has been appropriated into the lie of the Said. The allusion to Marlow as Buddha resonates, for in much of eastern mysticism, the process of study and prayer involves detachment from the way of the world along a path of immersion into an austerity akin to the reductions that take one out of a socially conditioned epistemology. In a similar vein, Levinas shares an affinity not just with the perspective of Buddhist detachment, but also with literary sensibility – with what John Keats in discussing Shakespeare called ‘‘negative capability.’’ Levinas too seeks a final reduction that unties consciousness from reason, allowing the subject to become passively saturated in the immediate, defamiliarized alterity of a primordial intuition prior to reason and the structure of ontology. In ‘‘The Trace of the Other,’’ Levinas describes responsibility for another as going beyond what we can comfortably know or assume about another individual. Levinas describes this ethical imperative as a purification ‘‘which empties the I of its imperialism and its egoism, ...’’ (353). An excess follows from opening oneself beyond the categories of reason to embrace the other and permit the other all of her or his uniqueness. Levinas concludes by saying, ‘‘Because of this unassimilable surplus, we have called the relationship which attaches the I to the other the idea of infinity’’ (353). Beyond the limits of reason, alterity takes us into a sensibility that is irreducible to cognitive reason. Only outside of the confines of essentializing category can the other in its abundance be met in a genuine experience that does not collapse back into the self-other dialectic of traditional Western epistemology. In my reading, it is certainly ironic that Kurtz’s disillusion with imperialist controls led him to an existence that ultimately mirrored those very controls in hyper-form. However, it is in Kurtz’s attempt to surpass the traditional that Marlow discerns an impulse that disrupts Marlow’s faith in traditional totality. Marlow realizes how imperialism fails to provide sustenance beyond material comfort and personal status for subjects committed to it. A process of questioning that suspends certitude about selfhood disrupts epistemology with the attempt at ‘‘saying’’ more than can be thought. Robert Eaglestone describes this endeavor as follows: ‘‘The saying breaks up identity and opens to the other because it is in the saying that the

96

LEWIS LIVESAY

finite and limiting strictures of being, of essence, of identity standing alone, are overcome’’ (143). Responding to Marlow as disembodied ‘‘voice,’’ a point developed by both Peter Brooks and Vincent Pecora, Marlow comes to see Kurtz’s attempted rebellion as an alternative to ontology. Through Kurtz, Marlow catches glimpses of the trace in both its vocal and visual manifestations. The metaphor of vision (along with the adjoining pattern of blindness already mentioned) is central to the story. The young Marlow, as opposed to Marlow the narrator, is seen in the story as learning how to see into alterity. Much of what he first sees at the time that he embarks from Brussels on this adventure into the Congo ought to register as absurdity. Nothing that he is seeing in those first months fits any so-called patterns of normalcy upon which civilization is constructed. But young Marlow shows two traits that blind him to the ways that the novella ultimately depicts the outright injustices of imperialism. First, Marlow exhibits tremendous ‘‘restraint,’’ learned from a stoical British culture, allowing Marlow to stifle emotion and judgment. This very word – ‘‘restraint’’ – proves to be one of the touchstones in the novella, and we will return to it. Secondly, Marlow shelters himself in a work-ethic to avoid encounters with that which is beyond his comprehension. Marlow likes control over that which he can exercise mastery, and he attributes much credit to the ‘‘efficiency’’ that keeps civilization running. Marlow says that work allowed him to ‘‘keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life’’ (43). At that time immersion in work proves his salvation from what he could not then comprehend. The same proves true of society: ‘‘What saves us is efficiency – the devotion to efficiency’’ (20). Most people transcend their ego by becoming involved in the utilitarian idea of social efficiency as the greatest good for the greatest number. This keeps society – or in the terms of the story, the ship – afloat. When addressing the question if he had ever come close to submitting to the temptations, the lure of the id, Marlow responds, Who’s that grunting? You wonder I didn’t go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no I didn’t. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments be hanged? I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes – I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. (63)

Like an ostrich burying his head in the sand, Marlow buries himself in his work. Marlow has already told us where his identity lies socially in

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

97

his role as captain whose job is to protect the ship. The young Marlow has his commitment. He says that for a captain ‘‘... to scrape the bottom of the thing that’s supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin’’ (60). Society must be kept afloat through blind commitment to efficiency, and the empire has its soldiers who serve its survival. For a while Kurtz too was one of these soldiers, but Kurtz always had, as we shall see, another motive, and it was this other motive, rather than his soldierly motive, that led him to become, as Marlow will say, both ‘‘lost’’ (106) and ‘‘mad’’ (107). What happens around Marlow when he embarks from Brussels encompasses him within mounting absurdity. Many critics have compiled this sequential catalogue of mounting inanities. Here are the absurdities that most critics highlight: – The dissonance begins in Brussels at corporate headquarters with the women knitting black wool seeming to know more than the corporate CEO and leaving Marlow with an impending ‘‘uncanny’’ feeling (26). – The doctor measures Marlow’s skull for science even though he has never gotten to measure anyone after returning to test his hypothesis about change. In retrospect, if the doctor never has access to a comparative after, or if he truly believes, as he says, that the ‘‘changes take place inside,’’ what would be the point of the first measurement? – The incongruity continues when Marlow is taking his leave from his aunt, who has used her influence to procure this job for her nephew. The aunt blindly pontificates about imperialist justification for ‘‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways’’ (28). Even the young Marlow suspects that such rationalization is a sham, and suggests that the Company is probably more interested in its profits. – On his trip down the Atlantic to the Congo, Marlow beholds a French man-of-war aimlessly ‘‘shelling the bush’’ (30). Here is a ship, with three men a day dying, and it is attacking unseen opponents. With classic British reserve, Marlow calls this ‘‘a touch of insanity’’ (31). – At the first station on the coast Marlow beholds more ‘‘objectless blasting,’’ presumably to begin a railroad into the jungle. Cliffs ff appear to be randomly blasted, under the aegis, naturally, of ‘‘efficiency.’’ – Marlow then wanders into ‘‘the grove’’ of infernal demise. Here is a ‘‘taint of death’’ on a grand scale, again rendered with tremendous stark objectivity. All the Africans who do not fit ‘‘the idea’’ of civilization and support it with efficient labor are cast aside to the periphery as inutile and thus inhuman. Marlow says of the native men that ‘‘lost in

98

LEWIS LIVESAY

uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and then were allowed to crawl away and rest’’ (35). Marlow then fixates upon a minute detail that strikes him as not fitting the scene, as if the scene itself makes any sense, and Marlow, looking at ‘‘a bit of white worsted’’ that this dying man has about his neck, asks himself if this material might have ‘‘any idea at all connected to it?’’ (35). Marlow never questions the white rags he will wrap about leaking steam-pipes because that practicality is obvious to him, but a white rag about the neck of a slave mystifies him more than the fact that the man has been enslaved by an imperial conqueror. So much is taken-for-granted: the shelling, the blasting, and the white worsted. The only explanations for these absurdities have to do with the perspective of efficiency, for which ultimately we must remember power is an accident at an-other’s expense. – The obsessive compulsive accountant at the coast station maintains starched shirts and perfect ledgers in the midst of oppressive heat and chaotic conditions (36). Marlow also learns that the efficiency of communication only goes so far, because the accountant will not send any letters up-river to Kurtz. The accountant fears that any written messages will be read and used against him. – On his tramp inland to the Central Station, Marlow stumbles over a dead African ‘‘with a bullet-hole in his head’’ (39). Much later, the young Marlow will learn that his predecessor, Fresleven, died in a dispute over a couple of hens (23). Mention should also be made of the death of a Swedish captain who hangs himself for no apparent reason (32). In this world, to say the least, life is cheap. People die slow deaths, or quick violent deaths; others go on as if nothing has happened. – When Marlow meets the manager of the Central Station, he immediately discerns that this man ‘‘had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even’’ (42). From this manager, Marlow learns that his boat has been unnecessarily damaged in an inept effort ff to embark toward Kurtz without a captain to steer – without Marlow that is. Perhaps this is the first time that Marlow comes a little unhinged. He describes himself as ‘‘becoming scientifically interesting’’ (40) – an allusion back to the doctor, meaning that internal change is beginning to occur. This is when Marlow announces that he will ignore the situation and focus his attention on ‘‘the redeeming facts of life’’ made possible by work (40).

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

99

Marlow patiently contends with these situations, all of which emanate ‘‘a taint of death.’’ And yet in looking at critical accounts, I find most readers do not become morally repulsed until the scene describing the heads propped on stakes to form a fence about Kurtz’s abode. My contention is that the native – other has been debased long before the approach to Kurtz. The entire imperial project has people standing in blood, much like Marlow finds himself when his helmsman is murdered and Marlow’s boots become soaked with the blood of the ‘‘other.’’ Is this not an echo of Macbeth’s dream of standing in a pool of blood in which he realizes that no matter what direction he takes, backwards or forwards, the stain of blood cannot be removed? Kurtz’s crime is truly abhorrent, but everyone associated with this venture has been covered with blood long before we ever reach the Inner Station. There is no escape from guilt; in Levinasian terms, we are all ethically bathed in the blood of others. And yet, by contrast, Marlow’s restraint in recounting the details without passing judgment on the monstrosities that he beholds would seem to reappear in readers as a tolerance for such unthinkable abomination. Marlow begins the journey with little sense of responsibility for the ‘‘other.’’ The young Marlow is very intent on keeping himself busy and not overstepping his bounds. He commits to doing his job and never feeling sorry for himself. An internal ‘‘check’’ keeps him from feeling victimized. Any person with less resolve would be broken down by the Kafkaesque sequence of developments that Marlow beholds. Marlow insulates himself and survives in stoic denial. Society itself wears a veil of protective justification with platitudes about philanthropy and team spirit, as when the station manager builds a round table to keep people from fighting over the opposite head of the table. The problem for the individual involves finding protection from such duplicities that cover and never address internecine resentments. In Africa, these seething conflicts can come out in the open because, as Marlow points out, the return to nature takes us to a place where ‘‘out there there were no external checks’’ (42). Marlow’s declaration that ‘‘out there there were no external checks,’’ with no commas between the two instances of ‘‘there’’ virtually makes the felt sense of Dasein an echo of itself in this uncanny realm – ‘‘out there there ...’’ Marlow goes on to describe this sense as follows, ‘‘The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there – there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were – No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it – this suspicion of their not being human’’ (62). In this quote, once again, we have the

100

LEWIS LIVESAY

repetitive ‘‘there.’’ What Marlow calls the ‘‘accustomed’’ look keeps us trapped in the natural attitude. This represents what is for humans their normal homely perspective upon an insulated and familiar reality. Freud has established quite vividly that ‘‘... the unheimlich is what was once heimisch, familiar; the prefix ‘un’ [‘un-’] is the token of repression’’ (‘‘The Uncanny’’ 245). The excursion up the river takes Marlow into the ‘‘unearthly’’ back to what is the uncanny and unhomely – ‘‘out there there ...’’ As for the word ‘‘unearthly,’’ it forms part of that linguistic labyrinth that Leavis demotes as ‘‘adjectival insistence’’ and that deconstructionists promote as undoing hierarchy. Deconstructionists read the wilderness as opposite the norm and thus get caught in a dialectic of culture and nature – self and other. This dialectic is presupposed, as already noted by Achebe and Parry. It is the basis of most postcolonial readings. In Western thought, it is hard to think outside the dialectic. Derrida deserves credit here for being among the first group to begin grasping how Levinas is attempting to go beyond an ontology based on dialectic to ‘‘dream of an inconceivable process of dismantling and dispossession’’ (82). Following this line of thought, Jill Robbins warns us that ‘‘the habitual economy is shot through with violence and the drive for possession’’ (64). Through Levinas, Derrida has come to witness the violence inherent in the way that both dialectic possesses the other and binary deconstruction mounts a counter-resistance of the marginalized opposing the conquering other. In both instances, whether one is thinking from the point of view of the colonizer or the colonized, the other is treated not as individual but as enemy. As Derrida says of Levinas, he is endeavoring to show us how ‘‘... the only incarnated nonviolence ... is respect for the other’’ (96). That’s an impressive and hopeful thought, but incarnate nonviolence does not allow many options for thinking. To think the beyond of ontology, we can only proceed with what T. S. Eliot, in Four Quartets, called ‘‘hints and guesses’’ (199), or what Levinas would F call the nonviolent and passive countermoves of ‘‘disruption’’ and ‘‘transgression.’’ Otherwise, we will be stuck with the imperialism that justifies conquest. In ‘‘Signature,’’ Levinas praises Husserl for having alerted us to the crisis of our time. Levinas leaves no doubt exactly how he sees this crisis: ‘‘... Husserl has thus brought into question the Platonic privilege, until then uncontested, of a continent which believes itself possessed of the right to colonize the world’’ (179). Imperialism inspires self-interest and ego, and this path denies alterity. The dialectic is blind to the evil that pervades the world when human beings fail to see a need to sacrifice themselves for fellow human beings.

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

101

I believe we can attempt a Levinasian reading of Heart oof Darkness by suspending the dialectic of light/dark and Europe/Africa through understanding that the entire novel never gets outside Europe. That ship floating up the Congo – what Marlow calls ‘‘the tin-pot’’ – is European society. As Marlow declares, he never went ashore ‘‘for a howl and a dance’’ (63); he never went native, a la Kurtz. I would contend that Kurtz is consumed by the European dialectic and that this is the very ‘‘horror’’ of which he ultimately speaks at his death. That is not to imply that Marlow is totally free of the dialectic. As Levinas strains to make clear in T otality and Infinity, all thinking, for better or worse, tends to partake of the dialectic. We are stuck, and yet Marlow makes an effort ff to resist being pulled into a dialectic of self and other. At times, he resists the dialectic when he refuses to play the game of company politics, or when he shows concern for another who merits human consideration. Two moments from ‘‘the grove’’ of death scene provide examples of each impulse. In the first example, where identification would privilege violence, Marlow resists. This happens when he is walking down the hill to get to the station, and he passes six Africans in chains being marched to their imprisonment. They are being guarded by another African with a rifle, who is called ‘‘one of the reclaimed’’ – that is, he is one of the first to accept being colonized. The other Africans are called ‘‘criminals’’ for being outside the law of European totality. When this ‘‘reclaimed’’ African first sees Marlow, he hesitates, and then realizing Marlow is not there to reprimand him, he gives Marlow a big smile of complicity. Marlow says that this assimilated African ‘‘seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings’’ (23). Marlow, however, does not identify with this imperialist ‘‘great cause’’ (33). He will do his job, but from the beginning, he has resisted all of the company’s rhetoric about its divinely sanctioned manifest destiny to colonize. From his first meeting with the august and powerful CEO in Brussels, Marlow realizes that a relationship is implied ‘‘as though I had been let into some conspiracy’’ (25). By definition, a conspiracy masks itself to deceive and conquer. In short, a conspiracy depends upon a lie. By extension then, in this novella, Europe represents the totalizing lie. The whole narrative is encased in this lie, from which Marlow progressively will take pains to detach himself. The second significant encounter that Marlow has in ‘‘the grove’’ of death is with one of the so-called prisoners. Marlow descends into a shade beneath the trees, a darkness in which he suddenly sees the flickering

102

LEWIS LIVESAY

eyes of the invalided and immobile Africans who have crawled here to expire. Suddenly, as the text reads, ‘‘I saw a face near my hand’’ (35). Marlow comes face-to-face, the Levinasian moment, with a native. He looks into that face to behold ‘‘sunken eyes [that] looked up to me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly’’ (35). This is an intense moment. Marlow does not depart. He looks back at the other and endures his discomfort. He gives the African a biscuit that he had been saving from the Swedish captain. It’s a small gesture, but this exchange reveals what Levinas calls the ‘‘gift’’ – a reaching out to the other with no expectation of reciprocity; that is to say, with no dialectic implied. If the question now becomes, has Marlow transcended the dialectic of power relations? – the answer must be an emphatic ‘‘No.’’ We have already noted the considerable avoidance tendencies in Marlow: his internal restraint and his immersion in work. Beyond that, I would contend that the novella presents a powerful case for how difficult it will be to make the Levinasian move to escape the encompassing mechanisms of ‘‘totality.’’ Those very mechanisms have become ingrained within each of us as a superegoic gaze from which no one in our society is totally free. Certainly, the four men with Marlow on the Nellie, N each of the four with his two residences, have all settled into a comfortable place within the ‘‘totality.’’ These men all feel at peace with the gaze. In Heart of o Darkness, the gaze has two dominant manifestations. We have already briefly touched on each, but additional explanation will help clarify how a subject becomes enmeshed in these two entanglements. The first manifestation of the gaze is internalized as the consciousness of Europe itself. Europe is everywhere in this novel, and Africa virtually nowhere. Europe is behind the ‘‘conspiracy’’ (25) that privileges ‘‘these just and high proceedings’’ (33). All the talk at the Coast Station and the Central Station is about how Kurtz is destined to become ‘‘a somebody in the Administration before long. They above – the Council in Europe, you know – mean him to be’’ (38). This ‘‘council’’ watches over all these Europeans and regulates their behavior inside the conspiracy to conquer. The text informs us that the brickmaker, who makes no bricks, ‘‘alluded constantly to Europe’’ (46). He refers to ‘‘the cause intrusted to us by Europe, ... higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose’’ (47). It’s all a lie. As Marlow sees vividly, life at the Central Station, much like the Coast Station, involves ‘‘backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station, ...’’ (46). The incident with the Eldorado Exploring

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

103

Expedition further reinforces the conspiratorial theme with a counter conspiracy, talking about how ‘‘the danger is in Europe’’ (58). Because no one is to be trusted, Marlow avoids relationships and immerses himself in the solitude of his work. He attempts to repair the ship, when the rivets finally arrive. But no one man can repair the ship of society. Marlow’s ship, his ‘‘tin-pot,’’ continues to spring leaks all the way upriver to Kurtz. The absurdity of the hegemonic controls exerted by the system do not come out into the open until late in the novella when the manager of the Central Station realizes that he can advance his own interests in the eyes of the Council by scapegoating Kurtz. When the manager sees what Kurtz has done at the Inner Station, he first downplays the incredible horde of ivory by referring to it as ‘‘mostly fossil’’ (101). He next plots to have that horde credited to himself by seeing that Kurtz is turned into a non-entity in the eyes of his superiors: ‘‘I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter’’ (101). This is the moment at which Marlow faces his greatest dilemma. He has to decide if discretion really is the better part of valor, and at the very least he should keep his mouth shut. If he pursues this option, he can maintain his status in the ideological hierarchy and look to advance his own economic and career interests. Marlow, however, refuses to allow the Council and the imperialist enterprise to become his superego. In fact, he is overwhelmed by the hypocrisy inherent in this imperialist conspiracy. He thinks to himself: ‘‘... I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief – positively for relief ’’ (101). So Marlow defends Kurtz. At this point, Marlow understands that whatever Kurtz’s motive happens to be, he is not part of this ‘‘flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly’’ (34). Kurtz has somehow resisted the conformity inherent within ‘‘the gaze,’’ as he does not bring his motivation into correspondence with the imperatives of the dominant ideology in the same way that the other powerful people throughout this story have done. This reading puts me in opposition to Kimberly Devlin who sees Kurtz and the other company men as sharing the same ‘‘desire to be the subject of the powerful colonialist gaze’’ (719). I believe that Kurtz is not motivated by money in and of itself. That is why I find Kurtz outside the ‘‘conspiracy.’’ Like Kurtz, Marlow declines to be a party to the imperialist stratagems, and he realizes the price, thinking to himself that his ‘‘hour of favor was over’’ (101). This moment in the novella, as I see it, is the moment of greatest moral conflict for Marlow. This decision to resist the

104

LEWIS LIVESAY

dominant ideology and pursue his own code of ethics ensures in effect ff that, unlike the other four men aboard the boat in the Thames, Marlow will never own two homes or a yacht. Marlow refuses to be ensnared by the ‘‘weak-eyed devil,’’ and the system will reciprocate by denying him access to the economic and political spoils that go with complicity. That the interlocutors express discontent with Marlow’s manner of telling his story suggests their resistance, conscious or unconscious, to his choices. While they understand and accept Marlow as an old friend, they apparently have chosen a different ff road in life. From this perspective, I can concur with Ian’s Watt’s conclusion that Marlow ‘‘is the only person in Heart oof Darkness who has an active and disinterested sense of personal responsibility for others’’ (242). Only Marlow can approach the other in a Levinasian sense without design. We will see this in Marlow’s relationship with Kurtz and with others, but let us come back to this relation in a moment, after completing an examination of the dual projection of the gaze. The second manifestation of the gaze, the one that dominates the novella, is the setting. Once again, I would emphasize that I do not read the African wilderness in the novella as literal African landscape, but rather as a psychological projection of otherness. Imperialist power has its raison d’eˆtre in dominance, and this means someone must be dominated – in this case, the colonized. Power relations demand an imbalanced selfother binary opposition. On this point, Brook Thomas makes a very helpful observation when he notes that ‘‘... for Conrad, European control of non-European cultures is a symptom of its inability to control ‘the Other’ within itself ’’ (250). The group to be colonized is never approached with respect for the other’s integrity. Instead, the presupposition that other is less operates from the outset. This is a very important point. Whether a reader will grant Conrad an awareness that imperialism diminishes both conqueror and conquered determines whether or not one sees him in the way advocated by Achebe and Parry, by Johanna Smith, and by Frederick Karl. Their readings depend on an assumption from which one must see Marlow as an unreliable narrator. Smith asserts that ‘‘Marlow’s narrative aims to ‘colonize’ and ‘pacify’ both savage darkness and women’’ (170). Karl decides that the narrator unwittingly lies to the Intended ‘‘to preserve his (Marlow’s) own illusions’’ (131). Many interpreters are inclined to see Marlow – and sometimes Conrad by extension – as unconsciously controlled by colonialism. Smith, for instance, implicates Conrad in Marlow’s duplicity, whereas Karl leaves open the possibility that Conrad has set Marlow up as a dupe of colonialism. By contrast,

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

105

only a few critics, Vincent Pecora being one, see Marlow and Kurtz as resisting dominance by authority and thereby, in Pecora’s words, achieving insight into our ‘‘inevitable spiritual connection with all other human beings, a connection that requires self-sacrifice and worldly renunciation’’ (1002). Pecora’s approach parallels the Levinasian approach that provides justification for seeing Marlow as reliable narrator. To assert his integrity and thus qualify as reliable narrator, Marlow must resist the projection of European ideology as deity to which one pays homage; at the same time, Marlow must resist submission to the libido. The danger of going outside social boundaries is that ‘‘out there there were no external checks’’ (42). In this novella, the pleasure principle is incessantly projected as the wilderness. Freud has made us aware that the unconscious is the realm of the libido. Freud describes the id as ‘‘dark, inaccessible.’’ He goes on to add that it is ‘‘a chaos, a cauldron full of seething expectations’’ (‘‘Dissection’’ 73). Two points, made repeatedly throughout Beyond the Pleasure Principle, are that the unconscious has no sense of time, and the unconscious does not know negation. All these terms bear on the depiction of the wilderness in Heart oof Darkness. In the terms of L ord Jim, this is ‘‘the destructive element’’ (129). Marlow returns to Brussels and to the realm of the natural attitude shaken, but he realizes that the realm of ‘‘totality’’ is the one that we inevitably inhabit. His encounter outside ‘‘totality’’ has been a brush with ‘‘infinity,’’ and he is not well-disposed upon his return to Brussels to engage the everyday perspective of people going about their daily, routine business. Marlow describes these ‘‘intruders’’ upon his sensibility as ‘‘commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety’’; and Marlow goes on to compare such typical insouciance as being ‘‘like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of danger’’ (114). This simile resonates tremendously, because ‘‘folly’’ is one of the touchstone words in the text of Heart oof Darkness. At the outset of his narrative, Marlow alerts his interlocutors that the point of his story will be to confirm that, in Africa, ‘‘he would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weakeyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly’’ (34). To identify ‘‘folly’’ with Europe reinforces my earlier contention that this novella was never about Africa, but always about Europe. In the implicit terms of this work, ‘‘folly’’ represents epistemological commitment to ‘‘totality,’’ allowing the imperialist assumption that the rest of the world awaits hegemonic assimilation. From this perspective, Marlow becomes a Levinasian figure symbolizing how the individual ought to reach out

106

LEWIS LIVESAY

to others, whether giving a biscuit to a starving man or attention to the bedridden Kurtz. Marlow recognizes full well that Kurtz is both ‘‘lost’’ (106) and ‘‘mad’’ (107). And Marlow proves willing to believe that Kurtz saw as much in his final moment. That interpretation at best represents an unprovable hypothesis, but that is not what is crucial about the interchange between Kurtz and Marlow. The real significance of their relationship is that Marlow partakes of Kurtz’s ‘‘horror.’’ Marlow enters into Kurtz’s world. And this experience does change him. Marlow narrates this point in unmistakable terms: ‘‘It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through’’ (113). That is a key line in the novel that does not always receive much attention. In a Levinasian reading, we need to understand that Marlow meets Kurtz in a ‘‘face-to-face’’ encounter and looks into his soul with him. The word employed in the text for this process is ‘‘intimacy’’ (106). Most critics describe Kurtz’s motivation as ambiguous and unresolved. Peter Brooks refers to the narrative as ‘‘unreadable’’ – as ‘‘unspeakable’’ (250), and J. Hillis Miller, in his fourth essay on the novella, refers to it as ‘‘a self-perpetuating system of an endlessly deferred promise’’ that culminates in ‘‘an inaccessible secret’’ (126, 127). By contrast, I am not at all inclined to see the Kurtz who goes to Africa as an ‘‘unspeakable’’ and ‘‘inaccessible’’ mystery. On that aspect of Kurtz, I would say that what drove him to Africa and what kept him there can be inferred from the text. Whether or not Kurtz truly loves the Intended back in Brussels does remain uncertain, but that he must win her hand becomes an absolute motive for him at the moment he departs for Africa. Marlow describes the intensity of this relationship in very imperial terms; he says of Kurtz that ‘‘... he had conquered one soul in the world ...’’ (84). What drove Kurtz to Africa is the desire to win the hand of his Intended. From clues in the text, we can infer that what stood between the couple would have been the patriarch, her father – a man of power and status, who could prevent this union. Marlow catches sight of the secret that has fueled Kurtz’s entire motivation when it is noted that ‘‘... her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn’t rich enough or something’’ (120). This is Kurtz’s deep, dark secret: lack of money and status. Like Gatsby, Kurtz is simply not rich enough to win the hand of the woman he idealizes and get himself accepted into the highest ranks of society, and so Kurtz goes off to Africa to earn fame and fortune, but he gets sidetracked in what Marlow calls ‘‘primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power’’ (110). At first, Kurtz’s time in Africa is well spent at impressing

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

107

everyone in the chain of command, and they all project that Kurtz is destined to join the upper echelon. He is set to rise up the ranks of the revered, something he harbors in his fantasy. Having been rejected by those at the summit, he longs to be accepted and even envied. Marlow sees this fantasy as childish. Marlow describes this fantasy and narrates Kurtz’s very words: ‘‘Sometimes [Kurtz] was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet him at railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things. ‘You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability,’ [Kurtz] would say’’ (110). Kurtz envisions himself on a pedestal. And that’s what undoes him. Buying into the European hierarchy and then unwittingly recreating it in tribal Africa undoes Kurtz. In Africa, Kurtz realizes that having conquered a tribe, he does not have to keep working in hopes of returning to Europe and waiting on others to recognize him and grant him permission to marry into an important family. In Africa, Kurtz has already arrived. He does not need kings to meet him at stations and treat him by association as royalty. In Africa, at his station, he has become king. Marlow intuits this motivation long before he ever meets Kurtz. Back at the Central Station, Kurtz overhears a conversation between the manager and his renegade uncle, who is head of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, a group of pirates living in folly as they seek ‘‘to tear treasure out of the bowels of the land’’ (55). By contrast, Kurtz has always operated not out of greed, but out of desire to receive recognition from others. That is the one constant in Kurtz’s life. What changes is the group from whom Kurtz seeks recognition. When Marlow hears the manager and uncle plotting against Kurtz, he begins to realize why Kurtz did not take all of his ivory thus far accumulated, cash in his chips, so to speak, and go home as a rich man. The reason has everything to do with whatever Kurtz divines in the lure of the wilderness that has seduced him. Narrator Marlow reveals the truth that formed in the mind of the young Marlow. This truth forever eludes the two bandits who would never be able to comprehend why Kurtz remained up-river. Marlow reports, ‘‘They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dug-out, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home – perhaps; setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness ...’’ (57). Kurtz relinquishes his idealized ‘‘home’’ in favor of returning to the uncanny, his abode in the unhomely wilderness.

108

LEWIS LIVESAY

Kurtz’s dream of being met by kings need no longer be a dream; he can possess his unconscious desire immediately. At the Central Station, Marlow has a resonant foreshadowing of Kurtz’s captivation by the wilderness, but young Marlow does not yet see the truth about how Kurtz, in pursuing his dream, has derailed himself by attempting to totalize ‘‘infinity.’’ Kurtz attempts the impossible, occupying the place at the center of the universe reserved for the gaze. Marlow describes this condition as a relationless state to which Kurtz succumbs when he submits to the self-absorbed dream of ‘‘getting himself adored’’ (93). Kurtz encounters the libidinously objectified life-force as a powerful and cruel wilderness, and for a while, he lives out the egomaniacal fantasy of being at the center of his universe. Throughout Heart oof Darkness Conrad employs dream imagery to convey a sense of solipsism. The word ‘‘dream’’ (or its plural form) appears fifteen times in the novella, and virtually every occurrence signifies an absence of responsible relation. Here in Marlow’s words would be one such instance: ‘‘It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dreamsensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams’’ (50). The dream state submits to the libido in which the other is envisioned at the mercy of the id. Marlow recognizes that ‘‘Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, ...’’ (95). In the id, the other can never be recognized as an-other in its own right. The ‘‘wilderness’’ in Heart oof Darkness operates as an objective correlative of the pleasure principle. It is ‘‘dark, inaccessible.’’ The recurrent word associated with the wilderness is ‘‘dark’’ – or one of its manifestations as in ‘‘darkness’’ or ‘‘darkly.’’ It is the most powerful image in the entire text. What Conrad does essentially is make the darkness of the wilderness ‘‘immense’’ and ‘‘impenetrable’’; he then puts a face on this phenomenon. That is to say, the principal trope of the novella, figuring libido, is prosopopeia. In a Levinasian reading, this imagery is particularly significant, since a Levinasian encounter is about the possibility of a ‘‘face-toface’’ interaction. Kurtz does what most men never do: he faces unbridled libidinous energy at a fever pitch. Marlow is making this point when he says to his interlocutors that the fool never wrestles with the devil for one’s soul, because the fool never reaches beyond the mundane, and the devil would not bother with the fool, since the devil’s victory would bring him no significant victory. At the other extreme, says Marlow, the saint

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

109

would be too fixated upon heaven ever to fall into temptation. And thus he concludes that ‘‘most of us are neither one nor the other’’ (82). For the majority, most will have moments when each one is forced to confront the transcendence of what Levinas calls the ‘‘beyond’’ – what Heart of Darkness calls ‘‘the threshold of the invisible’’ (114). Marlow tells the story about his own brush with death. He says that this battle, which most expect to be a mighty and defining moment, is rather hum-drum and insignificant: ‘‘I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. ... If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair’sbreadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say’’ (113). Kurtz, by contrast, does have something to say. He does what most never do; he looks into the face of death and passes judgment on himself. Marlow calls this affirmative and ‘‘remarkable.’’ The undisciplined and inarticulate aggression within each is described throughout the text with phrases such as ‘‘brute force’’ (20) and ‘‘forgotten and brutal instincts’’ (107). Such energies are concentrated in the image of the wilderness looking back at us as ‘‘the sunlit face of the land’’ in which can be read ‘‘a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart’’ (58). For the most part, Marlow looks to avoid this encounter. As already noted, his inclination is to lose himself in work: ‘‘What saves us is efficiency – the devotion to efficiency’’ (20). During the entire descent into the wilderness, Marlow has focused on reading the river to keep the ship afloat. He has had no time to face the ‘‘impenetrable darkness.’’ And yet he has not been in total denial. Using a very Levinasian term, Marlow allows that he caught the ‘‘trace’’ of his involvement in this immense alterity, the forbidden wilderness. Marlow acknowledges his ‘‘remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar’’ in which one must admit ‘‘the faintest trace of a response to that terrible frankness’’ (63). Marlow goes on to say, ‘‘The mind of man is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all of the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage – who can tell? But truth – truth stripped of its cloak of time’’ (63). Here we apparently are in the heart of darkness at the center of the libido. The terms in this passage have unmistakable parallels to Freud. When man exists beyond negation, he becomes capable of anything since he feels no internal restraint and no external check upon his desire. Outside civilization, he is also outside time. What remains is the sheer ‘‘brute force’’ of taking.

110

LEWIS LIVESAY

For most, immersion in ‘‘the destructive element’’ is avoided by compliance with the internalized gaze of the superego. Here restraint provides anchors as external checks to hold in place a sense of purpose that channels energy: ‘‘What redeems [conquest] is the idea only’’ (20). The ‘‘idea’’ is some commitment – some cultural relation that is supposed to anchor the activity. Marlow recognizes, as noted, that the ‘‘idea’’ for most of the people in the Company is a profit motive. This self-interest is masked by subterfuge in feigning selfless loyalty to the best interests of the Company. For the educated and refined leaders, ‘‘the idea’’ behind conquering the other is masked by a ‘‘philanthropic pretence’’ (46). Marlow ruminates over how ‘‘All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz’’ (83), and it is this ‘‘brute force’’ (20) of human aggression, with unchained libido masquerading as socially just cultural institution, that Marlow ultimately recognizes as the ‘‘lie.’’ In my view, this realization can be read as parallel to Levinas’s insight that the ‘‘Said’’ of totality separates us from true relation to other, putting in place a feigned relation of obligation to the maintenance of the economic order. Now an important distinction must be made. The above commentary appears to be moving in a direction that invites a move into a Freudian–Lacanian reading which would take account of what postmodern criticism has come to call the eternally split subject. Such a move countervails the Levinasian approach. Yet this is tough to see because Levinas does not always escape the dialectic that he seeks to escape. Dialectic subsuming persists as a difficult point when we attempt to envision the ‘‘saying’’ beyond the ‘‘said.’’ I believe that Gibson sees Marlow as mimetically loyal to Kurtz because Gibson sees Kurtz as fulfilling Marlow’s own repressed desire to become the center of the universe. Gibson sees Marlow as a ‘‘secret sharer’’ in Kurtz’s experience, and reads Kurtz as an alter-ego, a psychic substitute for what Marlow would like to have. Gibson, then, would not put much credence in Marlow’s claim that ‘‘Mr Kurtz was no idol of mine’’ (95). By contrast, I take that pronouncement at face value. Gibson reads Kurtz as a figure driven by the Freudian ‘‘will to mastery’’ (60), and Gibson concludes that Kurtz’s obsessive self-absorption represents ‘‘a projection of Marlow’s own drive to totalization’’ (62). With this point, I would respectfully demur. Gibson is perfectly right in seeing the goal behind the Levinasian project as the attempt ‘‘to escape being as the principle of selfhood’’ (37). In contrast to Gibson, I emphasize how Marlow understands that Kurtz only appears to make a move to escape the principle of European selfhood, when he reversed course on his voyage to the Central Station with

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

111

the stash of ivory and went back into the wilderness. Kurtz may seem to turn his back on European selfhood, seeking self-advance outside established hierarchy; he seems to circumvent the dialectic of colonizer and colonized. The fact, however, is that he did not accomplish this move. Kurtz must have thought that he was escaping the gaze of the European other in not returning home to win the father’s approval for the hand of the Intended. By staying in Africa and becoming the patriarch ruling over the tribe, Kurtz has recreated and lived out the dialectic of imperialism from which he thought he had escaped. Instead of freeing himself from the hierarchical system, Kurtz metamorphoses into the father of the tribe. He has become what he resents. He has reenacted that system – that lie that blinds oneself to the other. The point that I would emphasize to Gibson is that Marlow understands full well that Marlow is both ‘‘mad’’ and ‘‘lost.’’ My reading depicts Marlow as more in tune with Levinasian sensibility than Gibson would allow. In this light, I would say that Marlow is true to the Levinasian project in his ‘‘response to the other as other (and not as alter ego, another version of the same, ... )’’ (Wall 50). The difficulty here may very well have to do with how Levinas attempts what Critchley calls ‘‘a phenomenology of the unphenomenologizable’’ (‘‘Traumatism’’ 231). ‘‘Infinity’’ simply cannot be seen, cannot be reduced, cannot be figured within the Said. Evil, too, as Richard Bernstein stresses, functions like ‘‘infinity’’ in that it implies an excess that it ‘‘nonintegratable.’’ Bernstein asserts, ‘‘ Just as infinity ruptures totality, so too does evil’’ (176). The entire problem involves the confusing way in which Levinas struggles with specifying evil. Obviously, he is not going to equate it with transcendence, and so at times he posits a dialectic of good and evil beyond ontology. This move is put forth, for instance, in the essay ‘‘Evil and Transcendence.’’ The difficulty with this solution is that any dialectic automatically pulls us back into ontology, the realm of the dialectic. Levinas is at his best, in my view, when he operates beyond the dialectic, and what he offers ff in such moments is simply the idea of an impersonal and ethical responsibility. Levinas locates a subjectivity that is prior to the split forever presupposed in Freudian and Lacanian analysis. For Levinas, the originary subject exists as an ethical entity with a pre-conditional receptivity to alterity. For Levinas, the original has not been fractured and fragmented to the extent that it is utterly lost and unrecoverable, as Freud and especially Lacan would contend. We have two helpful secondary sources to support this contrast between Lacan and Levinas. First, Paul-Laurent Assoun provides an essay in

112

LEWIS LIVESAY

which he explains how ‘‘the return to alterity’’ through a trauma ‘‘that removes the subject from its (self )-mastery’’ constitutes a descent removing the subject from the cultural confines of status, thus allowing the individual to confront the other in a face-to-face encounter without one’s usual armaments against intimacy. In very complex and yet I believe accurate Levinasian terms, Assoun talks about how this experience of defenseless openness to the other ‘‘makes it possible to experience the paradox of an irreversible separation that is combined with an impossibility of detaching oneself ’’ (90). In living through Kurtz’s ‘‘extremity’’ and in taking responsibility for this ‘‘lost’’ man’s soul, Marlow does separate himself from the ‘‘will to power.’’ He achieves the near impossible task of detaching himself from the dominant ideology by assuming responsibility without expectation of exchange. Quite clearly, by advocating for Kurtz, Marlow gains nothing. He loses his position and any hopes of procuring status through working to become the Company man. Critchley, like Assoun, distinguishes how Levinas theorizes trauma not as a split subject, but rather as an alternative form of intersubjectivity. This is why Critchley calls Levinas’s project ‘‘an excessive and interrupted phenomenology’’ that aims at recovering the original presence of privileged moments that transport us out of the natural attitude. Critchley calls this state ‘‘the traumatic dimension of the sublime’’ (‘‘Das Ding’’ 205). Perhaps we should look to Edmund Burke as a philosophical avatar of Levinas in that Burke grasped in ways that Kant never did how much evil permeates the sublime. Burke and Levinas, unlike Kant and Hegel, do not avoid that which cannot be readily incorporated into the dialectic. Any overflow of meaning ought to take one out of the natural attitude into a position of rapt and disinterested attention. In the natural attitude, one remains imprisoned under the gaze, making an ideological subject respond to the other according to culturally regulated expectations. In the natural attitude, responsiveness is systemically controlled by norms that condition behavior. Krzysztof Ziarek describes the self-other dialectical relation as follows: ‘‘In the relation to the other, the Same is watched, looked upon by the other. This scrutiny that the Same undergoes under the gaze of the other is the primary determinant in the relation to the other’’ (226). As a result, dialectical language confirms cultural roles and essentialist distinctions that remain indifferent ff to primordial alterity. Ziarek gives us a nice phrase to describe how Levinas seeks the ‘‘entraced ‘ethicity’ ’’ of a pre-relation that does not judge or categorize the other. Responsibility for the other is non-relational, and in Marlow, I read such openness and commitment to Kurtz.

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

113

In my reading of Conrad’s novella, I promote Marlow as a character to be seen living the Levinasian project of taking responsibility for the other. Marlow consistently extends himself towards a radical alterity, giving more of himself each time. The first instance is a retrospective awareness that ruptures natural attitude based on an impersonal efficiency. Here’s how Marlow describes the memory of his connection to the African who is killed on the final approach to Kurtz: I missed my late helmsman awfully – I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don’t you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back – a help – an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me – I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory – like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. (84–85)

Marlow describes his involvement in the life of the African as an assimilation. At the same time, Marlow full well knows that this man is a cannibal. Marlow has already ruminated intensely on the complete puzzle over why these Africans, who were starving, did not mutiny and have themselves a feast. In retrospect, it makes no logical sense. This entire connection between two men of such dissimilar viewpoints makes no logical sense. First, Marlow praises the cannibals for their extraordinary ‘‘restraint’’ in the face of ravishing hunger (71), and then moments later, Marlow laments the man’s demise from his having ‘‘had no restraint, no restraint – just like Kurtz – a tree swayed by the wind’’ (85). These seeming contradictions reveal how Marlow’s mind has transcended a logic that avoids contradictions and has advanced to a viewpoint of radical acceptance of the other. Whether Marlow is praising or blaming the helmsman, he is doing it from a perspective of intimate compassion. It’s not the praise or blame that matters, but simply the embracing of the other. Marlow will use the same word that he used to describe his connection to the African, namely ‘‘partnership,’’ in accounting for his connection to Kurtz. When Marlow defends Kurtz against the Company men who are prepared to scapegoat Kurtz and take credit for the ivory that he has accumulated, Marlow realizes, ‘‘I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms’’ (110). ‘‘Partnership’’ implies responsibility. Marlow has moved beyond logic and pragmatic self-interest. He

114

LEWIS LIVESAY

describes his connection to Kurtz as one that was both ‘‘forced’’ and ‘‘accepted’’ – clearly another contradiction, but in this realm of radical alterity, logic does not control the Saying. Responsibility does not distinguish with categorical differences; ff rather, Marlow sees transcendencies where others cannot venture. Marlow achieves empathic condensations. He will equate the helmsman and Kurtz. He will equate the African princess and the Intended. Marlow does not distinguish in imperialist terms of conqueror and conquered, European and African, white and black. Marlow’s envisioning attains an integrity that is distinctly open and encompassing, distinctly Levinasian. In two further instances, Marlow takes responsibility for another. The first instance, which rarely gets observed, is Marlow’s concern for the Russian who has been nursing Kurtz. Marlow saves this man’s life. Marlow remembers the conversation between the Central Station manager and his uncle in which the manager says that he will never have the up-river territory under control until he can eliminate ‘‘unfair competition’’ (57). So much for Keynesian economics or Adam Smith’s idea of ‘‘the left hand’’ pacifically regulating the other. Think about that phrase: ‘‘unfair competition.’’ To an imperialist, there is no such thing as fair competition. The uncle tells the manager what he has to do. He has to catch the competition and hang him (57). At the Inner Station, Marlow remembers this overheard exchange and correctly identifies the Russian as the target to be eliminated. Marlow warns the Russian and helps him to escape. The Russian asks Marlow for a favor. He asks for a pair of shoes, his having come asunder (103). Marlow has already thrown overboard his best pair of shoes that had become soaked with the blood of his helmsman. It’s never clear how many pairs of shoes Marlow has brought into the jungle. Nevertheless, he gives up a pair, some tobacco, and the copy of the book by Towson. In this situation, such benefaction, I believe, can be read as representing what Levinas calls ‘‘a gift.’’ It is the giving of oneself to the other with no hope of reciprocation. I believe the same reading applies if we look to the second instance to be considered here. Marlow extends himself in going to see the Intended. He reaches out to another with no possible reward for himself. He brings her the letters from Kurtz, another gift. As already noted, I do not see Marlow’s allowing the Intended to remain in her illusion as a literal ‘‘lie.’’ The main point of the novella is that the real ‘‘lie’’ is imperialism, and how it divides humans against each other. Kurtz’s need for money to win acceptance into the Intended’s family drove him away from her more than any other factor. The lie that social status determines identity is

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

115

what the dominant ideology works to uphold. In a realm where power and prestige determine self-worth, the Intended has opted for a contrarian viewpoint by believing in love, just as Marlow has opted for his contrarian viewpoint by believing in ‘‘efficiency.’’ These constructions of a ‘‘separate peace’’ outside the dominant ideology are reasonable alternatives to the greed and self-interest that consumes most of the others who are going about their lives under the unquestioned pretense that power is the natural order of existence. In living for her lost ideal, the Intended is possibly living more keenly than all those people whom Marlow passes outside ‘‘hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams’’ (114). All are ensnared within the ideological web of conspiracy. Marlow makes the humane choice to allow the other her world. The Intended will continue to live out her life under the gaze of a lost love. She will be ‘‘loyal to the nightmare of [her] choice’’ (104), and this detached melancholia that paralyzes her desire may be a more genuine existence than the blind chasing after goods and power that typifies the natural attitude of imperialist ideology. By allowing the Intended her choice to believe in her ideal, Marlow is not deceiving her. The deceit inheres within the dominant ideology that claims to offer ff freedom, but instead lures people into the service of ‘‘a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly’’ (34). In this regard, Marlow saves the Intended from seeing how imperialism has destroyed her noble love. Marlow has taken responsibility for all the people with whom he has come in proximity. He has done this through a process of what Levinas calls ‘‘substitution.’’ Marlow pays respect to the other. Early in the story, Marlow tells how his predecessor in the Congo, poor Fresleven, was killed over a pair of hens. Nobody ever bothered to give this man a burial. Marlow went out and found the bones. Presumably, he gave the man a proper burial. Marlow will do the best he can for the helmsman, not leaving him to the cannibals, and he will also help to bury Kurtz. After burying Fresleven, Marlow says that he ‘‘stepped into his shoes’’ (24). Later, he will throw a pair of shoes overboard after they become soaked in the blood of the helmsman, and he will give another pair of shoes to the Russian. The shoes can be a read as a signifier of Levinasian ‘‘substitution.’’ Marlow as Buddha-like figure embodies the spirit of ‘‘substitution’’ that Levinas takes such pains to describe non-dialectically in his greatest work: ‘‘The responsibility for another, an unlimited responsibility which the strict book-keeping of the

116

LEWIS LIVESAY

free and non-free does not measure, requires subjectivity as an irreplaceable hostage’’ (OBBE 124). What we are always free to do is to act in the best interest of the other. This choice, claims Levinas, is what will free us from ‘‘the imperialism of the ego’’ (OBBE 128). Evil, then, has very much to do with the prison-house of the ego. It is the ego that shelters one from perception of alterity and our innate responsibility to the other. A Levinasian approach to reading relationship in Heart oof Darkness opens a path to see Marlow as a caring individual who takes responsibility for others. He reaches out, which is always the first step. Marlow focuses our attention on evil and the ‘‘flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly’’ to disrupt the natural attitude that shields us from the other. By dispassionately turning his attention ‘‘to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart,’’ Marlow makes us confront our human need for an ethics beyond ontology (58). This ethical summons constitutes my reason for concluding that a Levinasian reading of Heart of o Darkness helps us to envision Charlie Marlow as a reliable narrator. Saint Peter’s College Jersey City J

BIBLIOGRAPHY Achebe, Chinua. ‘‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of o Darkness.’’ In Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative T ext, Background and Sources, Criticism, third ed. Edited by Robert Kimbrough. New York: Norton, 1991. Assoun, Paul-Laurent. ‘‘The Subject and the Other in Levinas and Lacan.’’ In L evinas and L acan: T he Missed Encounter. Edited by Sarah Harasym. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Bernstein, Richard J. ‘‘Levinas: Evil and the Temptation of Theodicy.’’ In Radical Evil: A Philosophical Investigation. Cambridge: Polity, 2002. Brantlinger, Patrick. ‘‘He ‘ art oof Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?’’ Murfin: 277–98. o Darkness.’’ In Reading for the Plot. Brooks, Peter. ‘‘An Unreadable Report: Conrad’s Heart of Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Conrad, Joseph. Heart oof Darkness (1899). Edited by Robert Hampson. New York: Penguin, 1995. ——. L ord Jim: Authoritative T ext, Backgrounds, Sources, Criticism (1900), second ed. Edited by Thomas C. Moser. New York: Norton, 1996. Critchley, Simon. ‘‘Das ‘ Ding: Lacan and Levinas.’’ In Ethics – Politics – Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, L evinas and Contemporary French T hought. New York: Verso, 1999.

BEYOND EVIL IN HEART OF DARKNESS

117

——. ‘‘The Original Traumatism: Levinas and psychoanalysis.’’ In Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy. Edited by Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley. Routledge: London, 1999. Derrida, Jacques. ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas’’ (1964). In W riting and DiiVerence (1967). Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Devlin, Kimberly J. ‘‘The Eye and the Gaze in Heart oof Darkness: A Symptomological Modern Fiction Studies 40(1994): 711–35. Reading.’’ M Eaglestone, Robert. Ethical Criticism: Reading After L evinas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems, 1909–1962. New York: Harcourt, 1976. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Translated by James Strachey. SE 18: 3–64. ——. ‘‘The Dissection of the Psychical Personality’’ (1931). Translated by James Strachey. SE 22: 57–80. ——. ‘‘The Uncanny’’ (1919). Translated by James Strachey. SE 17: 219–56. Gibson, Andrew. Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel: From L eavis to L evinas. London: Routledge, 1999. Karl, Frederick J. ‘‘Introduction to the Danse Macabre: Conrad’s Heart oof Darkness.’’ In Heart oof Darkness. Edited by Ross C. Murfin . Boston: Bedford, 1989. Leavis, F. R. ‘‘ Joseph Conrad.’’ In T he Great T radition: A Study of the English Novel. New York: Doubleday, 1954. Levinas, Emmanuel. God, Death, and T ime (1993). Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. ——. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974). Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998. ——. ‘‘Phenomenon and Enigma’’ (1957). Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998. ——. ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow’’ (1948). In T he L evinas Reader. Edited by Sean Hand, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. ——. ‘‘Signature’’ (1963; rev. 1976). Edited by Adriaan Peperzak, translated by Mary Ellen Petrisko. Research in Phenomenology 8 (1978): 175–89. ——. T otality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961). Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. ——. ‘‘The Trace of the Other’’ (1963). In Deconstruction in Context: L iterature and Philosophy. Edited by Mark C. Taylor, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. ——. ‘‘Transcendence and Evil’’ (1978). Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998. Miller, J. Hillis. ‘‘ Joseph Conrad: Should We Read Heart oof Darkness?’’ In Others. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Murfin, Ross C., ed. J Joseph Conrad: ‘‘Heart of Darkness.’’ Second Ed. Boston: Bedford, 1996. Parry, Benita. ‘‘He ‘ art oof Darkness.’’ In Conrad and Imperialism. London: Macmillan, 1983. Pecora, Vincent. ‘‘He ‘ art oof Darkness and the Phenomenology of Voice.’’ EL H 52 (1985): 993–1015. Robbins, Jill. Altered Readings: L evinas and L iterature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

118

LEWIS LIVESAY

Taylor, Mark C. ‘‘Infinity: Emmanuel Levinas.’’ In Altarity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 185–216. Wall, Thomas Carl. ‘‘Levinas’s Ethics.’’ In Radical Passivity: L evinas, Blanchot, and Agamben. W Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Watt, Ian. ‘‘‘Heart of W o Darkness.’’ In Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Ziarek, Krzysztof. ‘‘Semantics and Proximity: Language and the Other in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.’’ Research in Phenomenology 19 (1989): 213 – 47.

RICHARD S. FINDLER

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION AND ITS IMPACT ON OTHERS

In this paper, I interpret ‘‘Bartleby the Scrivener’’ by Herman Melville in terms of the Sartrean existential reduction and examine the impact the reduction has on being-with-others. Through this interpretation and examination, I show how anxiety becomes a moral sentiment that makes it possible to disclose the possibility of an ethical relationship. The character of Bartleby, from Herman Melville’s story ‘‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’’1 has similarities to the character of Roquentin, from JeanPaul Sartre’s Nausea. N 2 In Nausea N , Roquentin undergoes an existential reduction, through which Roquentin’s involvements with the life-world become suspended and Roquentin begins to experience the facticity of his existence. This existential suspension of the life-world takes on the form of nausea, a mode of anxiety, and Roquentin finds himself faced with his own existence in what Sartre would consider to be an authentic manner. In this state, Roquentin has the ability to choose freely his manner of existence. Yet, what Roquentin’s choice is remains hidden from the reader. Melville also has Bartleby suspend his involvements with the life-world, and does so by having Bartleby ‘‘prefer’’ not to act. Bartleby is affected ff in ways that are similar to Roquentin, in the sense that Bartleby’s anxiety, or nausea, allows him to maintain his existential suspension and to live, or exist, under the reduction. As for Roquentin, this suspension would allow Bartleby to chose freely his manner of existence. Unlike Roquentin’s choice, the reader sees Bartleby’s choice, and his choice is to remain suspended from all involvements, which eventually results in Bartleby’s death. In other words, Bartleby chooses to die.3 It is as if, to use Roquentin’s words, Bartleby says, ‘‘I’m free, there is absolutely no more reason for living.’’4 However, unlike Sartre’s depiction of Roquentin, Melville focuses on the way that others are affected ff by Bartleby’s suspension of his everyday involvements rather than on how it affects ff Bartleby. Bartleby’s suspension constantly challenges those around him and makes them question their own involvements. In other words, Bartleby brings the existence of others out into the open, makes others aware of their bad faith and makes them begin to undergo their own anxiety. Bartleby’s act impels others to wonder 119 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 119–138. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

120

RICHARD S. FINDLER

what their role in life is, to undergo their own reduction and to question what their responsibility to others is. Hence, the experience of angst leads to the possibility of acting ethically. Sartre’s understanding of the reduction is useful for the exegesis of ‘‘Bartleby.’’ Sartre’s understanding of the reduction, though influenced by Husserl, is less a theoretical reduction and more a sense of a suspension that occurs in existence, or in everyday life, and that impacts the way I live by making me question my existence. In other words, an existential reduction brings to the fore the angst that is always present in life but that is covered over by staying involved in everyday activities. However, the awareness of angst is rare, and in my everydayness, I allow myself to understand myself in terms of my relationship with things at hand or with my involvements.5 My existence ‘‘is immediately in situation,’’6 and in my immediacy I exist as an ‘‘unreflected consciousness.’’7 When I exist as an unreflected consciousness and am immersed in my everydayness, ‘‘everything happens as if I (actually ‘‘we’’ in the text) lived in a world whose objects, in addition to their qualities of warmth, odor, shape, etc., had the qualities of repulsive, attractive, delightful, useful, etc., and as if these qualities were forces having a certain power over’’ me.8 While consciousness is unreflected in its immediacy, it is not unconscious. As a mode of consciousness, unreflective consciousness is intentional, as all consciousness is.9 Only as unreflective, consciousness is conscious of its object as it is given to consciousness in an experience (Erlebnis), and given in such a way that being conscious of its object is all consciousness is in its immediacy. Sartre calls this immediacy of consciousness ‘‘non-positional,’’ which means that ‘‘consciousness is not for itself its own object’’ but has for its object, or its content, what it is conscious of.10 But consciousness itself has no content. In other words, as unreflected and intentional, consciousness has neither a substantial ego, nor a ghost nor a homunculus that inhabits it. All consciousness exists only as what it is conscious of. For example, when I am hungry I am conscious of my hunger, and this consciousness is all that I am at that moment. There is no other sense of myself at work in the experience making me be hungry. I am, so to speak, a hungry consciousness. However, immediate intentional consciousness is not simply objectdirected, as it is in empiricism. As stated by Thomas W. Busch in his work on Sartre, intentional consciousness is ‘‘non-positionally selfaware.’’11 For consciousness to be intentional means that it must be both

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

121

intending its object and grasping its object as it is intended, or, to use Husserl’s language, there has to be both a noetic and a noematic component to consciousness. So when I am situated, I am the one caught up in the act. Such is the act in its immediacy, and while there is objectawareness, there is also self-awareness, only non-positionally. The fact that there is both an intending and an intended in any given experience makes it possible for me to become aware of myself in my immediacy through an act of reflection. To become aware of immediate, intentional consciousness, I must exercise an act of reflection and make my immediate consciousness the act I become conscious of. Thus, through reflection I can come to see myself in the experience, only in a modified manner. As such, reflective consciousness is a founded mode of consciousness, or a second order consciousness, that is dependent upon the unreflected consciousness for its possibility. Since it is a second order consciousness, all I can see is what is going on in the immediacy from a different ff perspective. But I do not get back to something more primordial, or to something that is prior to my situatedness. Instead, I only see what is already there, only now I see it reflectively, or in a reduced manner. In other words, the reflection reveals something about my immediacy that I do not pay attention to in my situatedness. The reduction can begin when the act of reflection takes place. Sartre has a provocative way of describing reflection. He says that reflection ‘‘poisons’’ the unreflected consciousness. Perhaps another way of saying this is that reflection taints or contaminates the immediacy of experience. In the unreflected mode I do things ‘‘impersonally,’’ while on the reflected level I act with some awareness of myself as the actor.12 As Sartre says, it ‘‘is on the reflected level that the ego-life has its place.’’13 Hence, I contaminate the experience by becoming aware of myself in the experience and thereby modify the immediacy. Even though Sartre views reflection as a poisoning of the immediate experience, consciousness cannot remain at all times on the level of immediacy, even though much of what I do remains on the level of immediacy. At times I am going to be compelled to reflect. Things happen to me during my life that are going to motivate me to direct my consciousness of the object to a consciousness of that consciousness of the object. Things go wrong; things come up missing; people get in the way; life is messy; and you begin to question yourself. However, the reflective consciousness initially remains non-positional, since I am not aware of the reflection of the reflection. Instead, I reflect

122

RICHARD S. FINDLER

on my act in its immediacy and see the act in its mediacy. This nonpositional reflection is an ‘‘accessory reflection, which certainly perceives consciousness as consciousness, but insofar as it is motivated by the object.’’14 To illustrate this, let me recall the hungry consciousness. When I am hungry, a desire arises within me of wanting something to eat, and my desire compels me to go and find something to satiate my hunger. In my immediacy, I am conscious of my hunger, and let us say that I am hungry for some ginger cookies. In Bartleby, ginger cookies are the cookies the scriveners eat while they are copying, both to satiate their hunger and to moisten their mouths, since copying legal documents is ‘‘a dry, husky sort of business.’’15 But let’s say that I can’t find the ginger cookies, and these missing cookies make me reflect on my hunger. This reflection poisons my immediacy, and I become aware of myself as hungry for the cookies. My act has undergone mediation, and I see myself as hungry and thwarted in my attempt to eat the cookies. Perhaps I even come to blame the cookies for not being there, and I wonder what happened to them. Further, when I blame the cookies, I believe that the cookies are making me want them. In other words, I believe that something is making me hungry and almost compelling me to eat. On the level of non-positional reflection, the reflection remains impure, since I am still fastened onto the object and my interaction with the object in this reflection. In other words, I have become aware of my psychic state of hunger, but I still allow myself to be determined by the experience. To lift myself out of this immersion, I need a pure reflection, which is rare, that makes me realize that the object has no power over me and hence makes me realize my freedom. It is almost as if my freedom calls out to me, seeks to reveal itself to me in my situatedness and cuts me lose from the meaning I have accepted about the current state of affairs. ff It is almost as if there is a constant call to take up my existence as my own, or a call to authenticity. But the call, if one exists, is only a call to myself in my situatedness, where I can reflectively apprehend myself and do so positionally. In other words, I come to see myself as being other than the objects I am conscious of on the unreflected level. This is what angst is for Sartre.16 Nor do I want to acknowledge my freedom necessarily, since authenticity is not always pretty. Bartleby in his way responds to the call and prefers not to be involved with life. The choice may not be pretty, but it is a choice. There is no plan for authenticity that can be laid out ahead

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

123

of time. The only question I can have is what will I do with my life when I become aware of my freedom. This opens up the moral issue for me. Bartleby serves as a literary example of someone who undergoes existential anxiety. Bartleby works as a scrivener, and his work is to copy the voluminous amounts of legal documents that come into the Chancery’s office. When he first comes to work for the Master of the Chancery, Bartleby does ‘‘an extraordinary quantity of writing,’’ but in time he comes to prefer not to copy any longer.17 This refusal, or this preference not to, occurs incrementally over a brief time period. In opposition to Bartleby, most people in a job believe they must adopt a posture, play the role they were hired for and try to become or be that role. For Sartre, trying to be what you are not is a mode of bad faith, even if it is done sincerely. The characters of Turkey and Nippers, who are also scriveners and have their odd ways about them, can be said to be in bad faith. When Bartleby prefers not to do what is asked of him, the other scriveners are ready to thrash Bartleby for not being a scrivener. However, Bartleby has begun to put his posture/role into question and has begun to disengage himself from his everyday activity. To suspend his activity, Bartleby has to become aware that the role he is playing does not determine him, and he has to become aware that the copying is not controlling him. Instead, Bartleby must come to see that the role he is playing is only a possibility that he can chose to do or choose not to do. If he is to become aware of his freedom, then he has to apprehend this possibility. He also has to become aware of what he has been, a scrivener, and then become aware that what he has been does not have to impact him in the present, i.e., though he has been a copyist, he does not have to be one. Further, he has to realize that his future is not determined. In other words, he has to realize that he does not have to keep copying and nothing compels him to keep copying. He either chooses to do it or not to do it. As Sartre says, ‘‘I apprehend my freedom as being the possible destroyer in the present and in the future of what I am.’’18 In his preference not to be a scrivener, Bartleby apprehends his freedom as being the possible destroyer of his present and future and refuses to participate in existence in the way that others expect him to act. He suspends his activity, and his angst creates an existential reduction. Bartleby is ‘‘the strangest’’ scrivener the Master of the Chancery ‘‘ever saw or heard of ’’ as anyone who suspended their involvements to the extent that Bartleby has must be.19 But it is Bartleby’s angst and its effect ff on others that interests me, and that I now turn my attention to, and to understand this, I need to recount

124

RICHARD S. FINDLER

the events of the story. Prior to Bartleby’s appearance at the lawyer’s office, nothing is out of the ordinary. The Master of the Chancery, the narrator and who I will refer to as the Master, describes himself as ‘‘unambitious;’’ he seeks out ‘‘the easiest way of life;’’ and he prefers to live outside of the limelight.20 He is ‘‘an eminently safe man’’ who wants merely to be about his business of copying documents and avoiding law courts.21 Further, the Master describes himself as even-tempered and claims that John Jacob Astor said he was both prudent and methodical.22 The Master’s office on Wall Street is divided into two rooms by a glass partition, and the office has been closed in by newer buildings such that the windows tend to look out on other buildings. Exterior light comes mostly from a ‘‘spacious skylight shaft,’’ though some light trickles through the few windows.23 The office does not seem to be the cheeriest place in the world, but it suits the Master’s low-key personality. The employees, who amount initially to two copyists and an office boy called Ginger Nut, are competent, though the two scriveners have peculiar quirks in their personalities. Turkey, a copyist in his sixties, works well in the morning, but he drinks at lunchtime and becomes a bit dysfunctional in the afternoon. His face is described as having ‘‘a fine florid hue’’ in the morning, but that from noon to quitting time, his face is blazing ‘‘like a grate full of Christmas coals.’’24 Nippers, the copyist who is in his mid-twenties, suffers ff from ‘‘the action of two evil powers – ambition and indigestion.’’25 He has ‘‘an irritable, brandy-like disposition,’’ even though he does not drink, and he is dissatisfied with his position in life.26 Yet strangely enough, the two scriveners harmonize with each other. Nippers’ irritability tends to manifest itself in the mornings, but he is ‘‘comparatively mild’’ in the afternoon and gets his work done.27 Turkey works well in the morning, but becomes somewhat messy and careless in the afternoon. So, ‘‘when Nippers was on, Turkey was off, ff and vice versa,’’ and while the Master has come close to firing them, the Master also thought that this was a ‘‘good natural arrangement.’’28 So the Master tolerates the two employees. Everybody appears to know their roles and carries them out without question. Due to the increase in copying work that comes with being Master of the Chancery, the Master hires Bartleby. Bartleby is very ‘‘sedate’’ and ‘‘quiet,’’ a marked contrast to Nippers and Turkey.29 The Master likes Bartleby’s nature, so he puts Bartleby in his office by a window that gives a little light but that looks out on the building next door. Further, he places Bartleby’s desk behind a ‘‘high green folding screen,’’ perhaps creating the first recorded cubicle in the business world.30

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

125

At first, Bartleby is a prodigious copier. However, the scrivener’s job requires exact copying of legal documents, so proofreading is an essential part of the job. The proofing was usually done by one person reading the document and the other person, or people if more than one copy was involved, editing the copy. So on Bartleby’s third day of employment, the Master calls on Bartleby to help him proof a small document. When the Master asks Bartleby to come to his desk and help him proof the document, Bartleby replies from his work station in a mild, firm voice, ‘‘I would prefer not to.’’31 The Master is stunned into silence. He believes Bartleby must have misunderstood him, so he repeats his request in an unambiguous manner. Again, Bartleby replies ‘‘I would prefer not to.’’ The Master raises his voice to Bartleby; he cannot believe what Bartleby is saying. After all, Bartleby is his employee, and Bartleby prefers not to do what is being asked of him. The Master goes over to Bartleby’s desk demanding an explanation, but when he looks at Bartleby, there is ‘‘not a wrinkle of agitation’’ on Bartleby’s face, nor is there any ‘‘uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner.’’32 Had Bartleby shown anger or defiance, the Master would have thrown him out of the office. But given Bartleby’s demeanor, the Master is at a loss for how to handle the situation. Bartleby goes back to copying, the Master calls on Nipper to help him proofread the document, and the Master, who is very busy, forgets about the incident for the time being. After all, perhaps this is merely a momentary quirk or Bartleby is not feeling well, and it will pass. However, a few days after the first incident, Bartleby is again asked to proofread with the entire staff, ff and again he says, ‘‘I would prefer not to.’’33 The Master’s initial response is to be ‘‘turned into a pillar of salt;’’ he is stunned, motionless, objectified for a few seconds.34 Then he bounds over to Bartleby’s work station and ‘‘demands’’ an explanation for Bartleby’s refusal.35 All Bartleby replies is that he would prefer not to. So the Master tries to ‘‘reason’’ with Bartleby, to show Bartleby that it is his duty to examine his work, and he asks Bartleby to respond, but all Bartleby will say is that he prefers not to.36 So the Master believes he should look toward ‘‘disinterested’’ people for his support, and turns to his employees to help him pressure Bartleby into proofreading.37 (I am not sure how his employees are disinterested.) Given that it is the morning, Turkey remains calm but agrees with the Master, Nippers wants to throw Bartleby out forcibly, and Ginger Nut thinks Bartleby is ‘‘a little luny.’’38 So with the support of the group, the Master calls on Bartleby to do his duty, but Bartleby does not respond and continues copying. Again, the

126

RICHARD S. FINDLER

Master has pressing work and resolves to deal with the issue later. The group, sans Bartleby, proofreads the documents. Turkey comments on how irregular this is, and Nippers is so agitated (it is the morning) he can barely sit still and swears under his breath. In his preference not to, Bartleby has begun to remove himself from his everyday involvements, and by doing so, makes the others around him question what is going on. In other words, the others are thrown into a reflective posture and are made to wonder why Bartleby won’t do his duty. Bartleby has begun to act as an obstacle to their immersion in their everyday activities, and instead of remaining immersed, they are become aware of what they do through Bartleby’s preference not to do what he is asked to do. Their angst begins to manifest itself. As a result of Bartleby’s preference and the reflection on the part of the Master, the Master begins to pay attention to Bartleby’s strangeness more than he had previously, because the reflection makes Bartleby stand out. The Master is able to shift his attention away from his immersion in the situation, and instead notices elements of the situation that had been there but were not overtly noticed. The Master notices that Bartleby never goes to lunch, never goes out during the day, and seems to exist on ginger cookies. Further, the Master begins to seek a cause for Bartleby’s actions, so that Bartleby’s action can be determined and understood, but the Master cannot come up with one. The Master’s reflective consciousness remains non-positional at this point, given that he blames Bartleby for this agitation. Bartleby’s ‘‘passive resistance’’ elicits two responses from the Master: either enlightened self-interest or confrontation.39 On the one hand, the Master perceives Bartleby as useful, since he copies prodigiously, and the Master can feel good about himself for helping such a strange character whom another employer would fire. On the other hand, the Master wants a reason for Bartleby’s preferences, and provokes Bartleby at different ff times to try and get a reaction out of him. When he is confronted, all Bartleby replies is ‘‘I would prefer not to,’’ and the preferences keep piling up. When asked to proofread documents, Bartleby prefers not to; when asked to go on an errand to the post office, he prefers not to; and when asked to call for Nippers, who is in the other room, Bartleby prefers not to. Even when the Master calls on Bartleby vehemently to respond to him and Bartleby emerges from his cubicle, Bartleby appears ‘‘like a very ghost’’ who says I would prefer not to, and then disappears behind his cubicle again. Bartleby’s strange presence, his ghost-like quality, is also a

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

127

strange absence that becomes ‘‘a fixed fact’’ of the Master’s office that the Master gets used to having around.40 But the circumstances get stranger. On the way to church one Sunday, the Master stops at his office, only to have Bartleby ‘‘in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered deshabille’’ open the door for him.41 Bartleby says ‘‘quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then and – preferred not admitting’’ the Master at the moment.42 Bartleby suggests the Master ‘‘walk around the block two or three times,’’ at which time Bartleby would be done.43 You would think that Bartleby would feel caught at that moment, and that the Master would force his way into the office to oust Bartleby. But Bartleby’s demeanor does not appear to change. Instead, the Master feels as if he is caught doing something wrong, which is a strange state of affairs. ff As a result of feeling caught, the Master does what Bartleby asks him to do and slinks ‘‘away from his own door.’’44 The Master feels ‘‘disarmed,’’ ‘‘unmanned’’ and impotent before Bartleby.45 In other words, Bartleby’s look and presence provoke shame in the Master. While Bartleby’s previous preferences have begun to bring the Master’s everydayness into question, this confrontation at the office brings the other into focus in a way that reveals what the Master has covered over for the most part. The Master deals with people primarily as clients or employees, that is, as things of use. He tries to keep people at a safe distance. Yet, when the Master looks at others, the things in the environment gain their significance from the way the things are related to the others. For example, the employees are not merely furniture, but they are placed in the office in a way that creates a space for them that allows the Master to feel in control. Even Bartleby’s cubicle is arranged by the Master to make him feel as if he has placed Bartleby properly. The Master tries to control Bartleby’s and his employees’ space by arranging them where he wants them to be. Yet the space occupied by the employees remains a space the Master cannot occupy, and hence the Master cannot put himself ‘‘at the center’’ of their space.46 The Master can apprehend their space but cannot occupy it, and so in effect ff has to recognize that these people are not mere objects. The other always has an uncontrollable element, and the Master has already experienced this uncontrollable element in Turkey’s and Nippers’s personalities before Bartleby comes on the scene. Yet, Nippers and Turkey do not seem to look at the Master, and hence Y do not really pose a threat to the Master. For example, one afternoon when Turkey is tipsy, the Master is about to fire him for sealing a

128

RICHARD S. FINDLER

document with a moist ginger cookie. Turkey makes an ‘‘oriental bow’’ to the Master and thereby averts his gaze from the Master. The Master is able to feel as if he is in control, since he is not looked at, and he forgives Turkey for his sloppiness. But what happens when the other looks at the Master? When Bartleby looks at the Master at the office door, the Master feels caught even though the Master is doing nothing wrong. The Master is seen by Bartleby, and that look takes away the control the Master believed he may have had over the situation and the other. The Master becomes ‘‘conscious of being looked at,’’ his vulnerability comes to the fore and the possibility of reflection arises. The look from the other carries with it a sense of ‘‘recognition,’’ and the Master comes to feel shame through being recognized.47 In other words, the Master becomes aware of himself in a way that is not possible without the confrontation with the other. Of course, upon reflection, the Master wants to undo his shame and impotence, and he returns to the office intent on confronting Bartleby, only to find Bartleby physically gone from the premises. But Bartleby’s absence still haunts the office. The Master realizes that Bartleby has been staying there, and this realization makes the Master perceive Bartleby’s ‘‘solitude.’’48 The Master begins to feel melancholy and pity for Bartleby. The Master claims that this is the first time he has ever felt melancholy for someone, and he realizes that he and this strange creature are similar. In other words, the Master develops a strange bond of empathy for Bartleby. The Master searches through Bartleby’s meager belongings, and this makes the Master reflect further on Bartleby’s strangeness. He realizes that Bartleby never speaks ‘‘but to answer,’’ that he never reads, that he stares for long periods of time at the brick wall outside his window, that he never goes out and that he never talks about himself.49 Even more striking is the Master’s awareness that Bartleby’s ‘‘austere reserve’’ has tamed the Master, which makes the Master fear Bartleby.50 The Master is not afraid for his life. Bartleby is not the murderous type. But the Master has been unmanned, made to feel impotent and made to feel empathy for this strange creature. In other words, the Master has been enslaved. However, the Master does not want to be enslaved, so the pity and melancholy turn to ‘‘repulsion.’’51 The repulsion leads the Master to want to take action, and the Master resolves to find out from Bartleby who he is. If the Master cannot find out, then he resolves to pay Bartleby off and dismiss him. The Master wants to regain his mastery.

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

129

The look of the other reveals the relationship between the Master and Bartleby to be one of ‘‘conflict.’’52 As long as the Master does not notice the look, that is as long as the people around him play their roles, the Master does not feel threatened. But when the Master is looked at, the conflict arises, the sense of being enslaved reveals itself and the need to regain control comes to the fore. Freedom is threatened and needs to be retrieved. The next day the Master questions Bartleby, who replies that he prefers not to answer. When the Master asks Bartleby to be a ‘‘little reasonable,’’ Bartleby replies, ‘‘At present, I would prefer not to be a little reasonable.’’53 Nippers gets angry at Bartleby (keep in mind that is the morning), everyone in the office starts using the word prefer without being aware of it, and the Master resolves to get rid of the ‘‘demented man.’’54 However, notice that the resolution of the previous day did not get rid of Bartleby. Instead, in the situation where the confrontation actually takes place, the past is put out of play, and the resolution is shown to have no power in the present moment. To think the resolution will have power is to be in bad faith. To realize it does not have power is to have some awareness of one’s freedom in a given situation. In other words, the resolution is not a cause, and nothing happens as a result of the resolution. Instead, a sense of angst arises because there is some realization that a choice has to be made in the situation, if there is going to be any action taken. As usual, the choice is to put off the decision. The next day, Bartleby is staring out the window at the brick wall, and when the Master asks him why he isn’t writing, Bartleby says he has ‘‘decided upon doing no more writing.’’55 When asked why, Bartleby replies ‘‘do you not see the reason for yourself ’’?56 At this point, Bartleby’s angst has consumed him. He is angst-ridden, has suspended his involvements, is existing under the reduction and sees no sense to his activity. However, the Master does not see the reason for himself, and instead seeks a physical explanation for Bartleby’s refusal. He believes Bartleby’s eyes are bothering him, so the Master feels sorry for Bartleby and excuses him from writing. When the Master believes Bartleby has had enough time to rest his eyes and asks Bartleby to resume work, Bartleby informs the Master that he has ‘‘permanently given up copying.’’57 Y Yet, Bartleby won’t leave and remains ‘‘a fixture’’ at the office.58 Bartleby has become a ‘‘millstone’’ to the Master, and a millstone is ‘‘not only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to bear.’’59 The Master cannot retrieve his mastery as long as Bartleby remains.

130

RICHARD S. FINDLER

The Master gives Bartleby six days to leave the office. Still, the Master cannot help but feel Bartleby’s solitude, and he feels ‘‘sorry’’ for Bartleby while also feeling an ‘‘uneasiness’’ about him.60 As such, the Master wants to help Bartleby, but he cannot locate a ‘‘single relative or friend’’ to take him in, so the Master resolves to help him find a new place and to give him money for the transition.61 But six days later Bartleby is still in the office, and when the Master tells him he must leave, Bartleby says ‘‘I would prefer not.’’62 The Master commands him to go, but Bartleby remains silent. Then the Master leaves Bartleby a tidy sum of money that he wants Bartleby to take when he leaves, and tells him to be gone by tomorrow. Bartleby nether responds nor moves. On the way home, the Master thinks to himself that he handled the situation ‘‘masterfully.’’63 He neither verbally nor physically abused Bartleby. The Master only ‘‘assumed the ground that depart he must,’’ and he believes Bartleby will be gone in the morning.64 However, in the morning the Master begins to have his ‘‘doubts,’’ noting that Bartleby is ‘‘more a man of preferences than assumptions.’’65 This realization on the part of the Master sums up the relationship between Bartleby and the others around him. Bartleby does not fit the Master’s assumptions regarding the way people should conduct their lives. In other words, Bartleby does not assume his proper role and cannot be counted on to act as everyone else does. Instead, Bartleby lives through his preferences, that is, through the choices that he makes. Bartleby’s angst makes it possible for him to do this, and Bartleby’s preferences disrupt the assumptions.66 Upon his arrival at the office, the Master listens at the door and hears nothing. He believes Bartleby must be gone, and he feels relief. The Master reaches for the key under the mat, only to bump against the door and hear from inside the office, ‘‘Not yet; I am occupied.’’67 Again, the Master is stunned into silence, ‘‘thunderstruck’’ as he says, and he acquiesces to Bartleby.68 The Master walks around the block until Bartleby is ready to admit him. While the Master is circling the block, he wonders what he should do about Bartleby. Given Bartleby’s demeanor, the Master believes he cannot simply throw him out, so the Master resolves ‘‘to argue the matter with him again.’’69 When the Master confronts Bartleby, the Master appeals to the custom of a gentleman to take not too subtle hints and to do as he is asked, which in this case is to quit. Bartleby replies that he ‘‘would prefer not to quit’’ the Master, even though he will no longer copy, and returns to his cubicle.70

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

131

The Master goes into a state of ‘‘nervous resentment,’’ and he calls to mind a murder that took place in a similar office setting between two men named Adams and Colt. The Master is so angry that he is thinking about killing Bartleby. The Master catches himself instead of allowing the ‘‘old Adam of resentment’’ to get the better of him, the Master remembers Christ’s commandment to ‘‘love one another.’’71 The Master considers this to a be a ‘‘vastly wise and prudent’’ principle, since it will keep the Master out of trouble. In other words, the Master follows the commandment out of self-interest, not because it is right per se, and begins to feel charitable toward Bartleby. After all, the Master thinks Bartleby ‘‘has seen hard times and ought to be indulged.’’72 The Master remains optimistic that Bartleby will leave soon, but Bartleby does not leave. The Master begins to read texts by Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Priestley on predestination and providence, and convinces himself that Bartleby’s ghostly presence has come into the Master’s life for a reason. Besides, Bartleby is ‘‘harmless and noiseless,’’ so why not let him stay?73 However, Bartleby cannot stay because life intrudes. The Master’s clients and colleagues are beginning to talk about the strange scrivener, and the Master’s reputation is threatened. Further, Bartleby casts a general gloom over the premises, so he must go.74 Again the Master appeals to Bartleby to leave, but Bartley ‘‘prefers to abide’’ with the Master.75 The Master will not throw Bartleby out. Such a cruel act on ‘‘such a helpless creature’’ would bring dishonor on the Master, given that the Master would then be seen by others and hence shamed.76 The Master is unsure what he ‘‘should’’ do, and he is faced with a moral dilemma – to allow Bartleby to remain or to throw him out onto the street.77 The Master keeps seeking for an external cause or reason for Bartleby’s strange behavior, but he cannot find one. The two options presented in the dilemma really do not present an adequate solution to the problem. So the Master comes up with a novel solution. Since Bartleby prefers to stay and will not quit the Master, the Master ‘‘will quit’’ Bartleby.78 In other words, the Master will move to another office and leave Bartleby behind. If Bartleby would happen to follow him, the Master will have him arrested for trespassing. The thinking on the Master’s part is that if he can get some distance from Bartleby, then the Master will gain back control over his life and not be enslaved by Bartleby’s presence. The quitting is a mode of flight

132

RICHARD S. FINDLER

accompanied by the belief that distance will absolve the Master of responsibility. Again, the Master makes an assumption. The movers come in and take everything out of the office, including Bartleby’s folding screen, but Bartleby is still there – a forlorn figure. The Master is about to leave, but Bartleby’s presence is so disturbing that the Master feels his ‘‘heart in his mouth.’’79 The Master’s conscience is afflicting him, and he forces some money on Bartleby as he hurries from his empty office. Bartleby does not follow the Master to the new office, and the Master begins to feel relief. But the Master is not rid of Bartleby. The assumption that flight and distance would resolve the Master of responsibility does not work. The Master is not a self-contained monad, and others intrude upon him. Bartleby remains at the old office, and the new tenants are having the same problem with him, that is, he prefers neither to copy nor to leave. The new tenant holds the Master responsible for Bartleby. even though the Master claims to have no responsibility. The new tenant plans to get rid of Bartleby. However, the next day the old landlord wants the Master to come and get rid of Bartleby. The new tenant has gotten Bartleby out of the office, but Bartleby continues to haunt the building. Everyone is holding the Master responsible for Bartleby, and the Master ends up acquiescing and goes to speak to Bartleby. The Master implores him to leave; Bartleby ‘‘prefers not to make any changes.’’80 The Master offers ff to find other jobs for him besides copying. Bartleby gives his typical reply of preferring not to, but he adds at this point ‘‘but I am not particular’’ to each job offer. ff 81 Bartleby will not even go home with the Master. Bartleby simply prefers ‘‘not to make any changes at all,’’ and he wants ‘‘to be stationary.’’82 The Master is exasperated and leaves. He believes he has done everything he can do and has absolved himself of his responsibility. His conscience is clear. Bartleby has preferred not to accept what the Master offered ff him, and the Master can assume his customary ways. However, the Master finds out that Bartleby has been ‘‘removed to the Tombs as a vagrant.’’83 The officials want the Master to come down and make a statement regarding Bartleby. The Master goes to the Tombs and tells the officials that Bartleby is ‘‘eccentric’’ but ‘‘honest,’’ and they ought to treat him kindly.84 Then the Master goes to see Bartleby. Bartleby sees the Master and says, ‘‘I know you ... and I want nothing to say to you.’’85 A strange phrase, but the phrase is revelatory. Bartleby does not say ‘‘I don’t have anything to say to you,’’ but ‘‘I want nothing to say to you.’’ Again, it is

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

133

what Bartleby prefers. Bartleby has placed himself under the existential reduction, suspended his involvements with life and wants to remain stationary. If Bartleby were alone, he would be able to be this way. But Bartleby finds himself faced with a part of existence that he cannot control, viz., his confrontation with others. He wants to free himself from his involvements, but he cannot free himself from the other. The other is a constant intrusion into Bartleby’s life. Further, Bartleby finds himself in conflict with others, as the Master finds himself in conflict with Bartleby. Through his suspension from his involvements, Bartleby wants to have mastery over his life and enact his freedom. However, Bartley cannot place others under the reduction; and instead, through his reduction, Bartleby draws attention to himself and draws others to him in a way that threatens his mastery. In other words, Bartleby is as caught by the other as the Master is caught by Bartleby. The Master tries to soothe Bartleby, and he asks the grubman to feed Bartleby well. But Bartleby refuses to eat. Still, the Master cannot desert Bartleby. The Master returns a few days later to check on Bartleby. The jailer says that Bartleby is asleep out in a grassy spot, that is enclosed by high walls and is quiet like a tomb. The Master finds that Bartleby has gone to sleep with ‘‘kings and counselors,’’ i.e., Bartleby is dead.86 The story for all intent and purposes should come to an end at this point. Nonetheless, the Master cannot get Bartleby out of his thoughts and continues to seek for a cause for Bartleby’s preferences. He really cannot find out anything about Bartleby’s life prior to coming to work as a copyist, but the Master hears a ‘‘rumor’’ about Bartleby’s previous occupation.87 The rumor is that ‘‘Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter office in Washington.’’88 The Master surmises that dead letters sounds ‘‘like dead men,’’ and then surmises that Bartleby’s forlorn personality would have been further aggravated by being in such an environment.89 The Master ends by saying ‘‘Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!’’90 Of course, this is only a rumor; its truth is more than questionable; and it is the Master who connects dead letters with dead men. So I find out more about the Master than I do about Bartleby, who forever remains a mystery. Yet, it is the mystery of the other that draws out the various responses Y that the self has when the self is confronted by the other, and the mystery of Bartleby elicits responses from the Master. These responses involve choices the Master must make regarding how to act toward Bartleby. In other words, the Master is forced to question how he should respond to

134

RICHARD S. FINDLER

Bartleby’s preferences because, once Bartleby voices his preferences, an appeal is made and a response must begin. Only in this context, it is Bartleby’s disengagement that provokes the response. This disengagement keeps disrupting the Master’s assumptions about life, which makes the Master experience a sense of angst. The Master has to figure out how to respond, and he has to respond out of his freedom because all his accustomed responses are useless. Where does the angst arise for the Master? As pointed out, the Master’s angst arises with Bartleby’s first preference. Through Bartleby’s preference, the Master is forced to question himself and is at a loss regarding how to handle the situation. Nothing in the Master’s background prepares him for this situation. The situation is out of the ordinary, and for the Master to act would require him to make a decision in the present without the support of his past, customary beliefs. Bartleby’s act put the Master into a situation where he must question himself, and the selfquestioning posture puts the past out of play. The Master is not sure what to do when angst overcomes him, and all he can do is decide not to act. In other words, the Master’s awareness of his freedom results in the Master fleeing his freedom. This response is typical for the Master. When he realizes he has to make a decision, the Master often decides not to decide. Thus, the Master deals with his anxiety and his freedom by fleeing from the awareness of his freedom. This act of inauthenticity, or bad faith, is a choice through which the Master hides from himself. However, there are times when the Master’s angst forces him to consider making a choice freely. For example, the Master’s repulsion to his feeling of melancholy and pity for Bartleby is a mode of nausea, or angst. Through the nausea, the Master becomes aware of his enslavement and realizes that he wants to regain mastery of himself and over Bartleby. The choice to try and regain the mastery is a choice made with the awareness of freedom. Yet, the resolve of the Master lapses when he confronts Bartleby, and again the Master decides not to decide. There is a response that is almost an authentic moment on the part of the Master, and that is when the Master finds himself in a state of nervous resentment and considers killing Bartleby. In this moment, the Master realizes his freedom. On the one hand, the Master realizes that nothing external prevents him from killing Bartleby; on the other hand he realizes that all that prevents him from killing Bartleby is himself. However, the Master cannot bear to acknowledge his freedom once he realizes it and begins to cover over this awareness. He recalls Christ’s

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION

135

commandment and sees it as a principle of self-interest that will prevent him from performing the act. Further, the Master reads texts on predestination and providence to hide the fact of his freedom from himself. But the principle and the readings do not work, and the angst keeps returning. Strangely enough, it is only when Bartleby is in the Tombs after the Master has given his statement and finally gets his distance on Bartleby that the Master returns to see Bartleby in an act that could solely be a result of the awareness of his freedom. After all, once the Master gives his statement and leaves the Tombs, there is no compulsion for him to return. Instead, the Master prefers, or chooses, to return to the Tombs to see Bartleby and does not assume that he has to see Bartleby. The Master has a moment of authenticity. Of course, the Master arrives only to find Bartleby dead. Many of the Master’s responses to Bartleby are inauthentic, in the sense that the choices are based on assumptions of what is customarily accepted or based upon peer pressure; but some border on authenticity. Yet, regardless of whether the Master’s choices are authentic or inauthenY tic, the responses that the Master makes regarding Bartleby are choices that involve an ‘‘ought.’’ The Master has to figure out how he ought to treat Bartleby, since there is no predetermined plan regarding what to do with him. Bartleby undoes all the Master’s assumptions and reveals the Master as groundless. This groundlessness shows itself through the Master’s angst, and the Master has to keep confronting his freedom and figuring out what to do in the situation. The Master realizes that only he can decide what he ought to do. In other words, the awareness of freedom that arises through the feeling of angst in a given situation makes an ethical act possible. But what should be done? Usually, when the Master confronts his freedom and realizes he has no ground from which to operate, the Master flees his responsibility. His tries to conceal his freedom and dispel the angst that overtakes him. Instead, he seeks out accepted ethical precepts or accepted doctrine, but they prove to be ineffective ff for deciding what ought to be done. What keeps arising is that there is no firm foundation, and the Master must decide freely if he is going to figure out what he ought to do. In other words, the Master needs to maintain the anxiety and not try to flee it. The angst serves as a moral sentiment through which the Master becomes aware that what he ought to do can only be decided by him. The angst manifests his freedom, and the realization arises that the responsibility for his choice arises solely from him.91

136

RICHARD S. FINDLER

In other words, angst makes me realize that I am the ‘‘author’’ of my given situation and that I am solely responsible for my act.92 However, what I will choose to do in the situation cannot be determined ahead of time. All I have in the situation is a choice, and whether I will kill or let live, help or ignore, rob or leave alone, allow for someone’s preferences or disallow them is up to me. Thus angst does not provide me with a principle through which I can decide what I ought to do. Angst only leads me to the fact that I exist with a choice regarding what I ought to do, that is, angst reveals me as situated ethically. Slippery Rock University NOTES 1 Herman Melville, ‘‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’’ in Bartleby and Benito Cereno (NY: Dover Publications, 1990). 2 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea N , Lloyd Alexander (trans.) (NY: New Directions Publishing Corp., 1964). 3 Why does Bartleby choose to die? Perhaps confronted with the realization that he is the one who gives meaning to his life and not some transcendent being, Bartleby sees no sense in continuing his life. But who truly knows what another chooses? The other is closed off from me, and all I can ever see are the results of what others do and not how the other decided to act. 4 Sartre, Nausea, p. 156. 5 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, Hazel E. Bames (trans.) (NY: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 35. 6 Ibid., p. 39. 7 Jean-Paul Sartre, T he T ranscendence of the Ego: An Existentialist T heory of Consciousness, Forrest Williams and Robert Kilpatrick (trans.) (NY: Farrar, Hill & Wang, 1991). 8 Ibid., p. 58. 9 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 36. Sartre says that ‘‘the consciousness of man in action is non-reflective consciousness. It is consciousness of something ...’’. 10 Sartre, T ranscendence, p. 41. 11 Thomas W. Busch, ‘‘Sartre’s Use of the Reduction: Being and Nothingness Reconsidered,’’ in J Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy, Hugh J. Silverman and Frederick A. Elliston (eds.) (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1980), pp. 17–29. 12 Sartre, T ranscendence, p. 58. 13 Ibid. 14 Jean-Paul Sartre, T he Emotions: Outline of a T heory, Bernard Frechtman (trans.) (NY: Citadel Press, 1948), p. 91. 15 Melville, op. cit., p. 8. 16 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 30. 17 Melville, op. cit., p. 9. 18 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 37.

BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

137

Melville, op. cit., p. 3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid, p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 255. Ibid., p. 258. Melville, op. cit., p. 17. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid. Ibid. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 364. Melville, op. cit., p. 19. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 23. I want to thank my wife, Jean, for drawing out the implications of this passage in the text.

138

RICHARD S. FINDLER

67 Melville, op. cit., p. 23. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., p. 24. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., p. 25. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., p. 26. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., p. 27. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., p. 28. 80 Ibid., p. 29. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., p. 30. 83 Ibid., p. 31. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., p. 33. 87 Ibid., p. 34. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Strangely enough, Sartre’s idea of ethics is similar to Kant’s idea of duty. For Sartre, an authentic ethical act requires the self to be in angst, that is, to become aware of his/her freedom so that the self will not choose what ought to be done based either upon assumptions or upon bad faith. For Kant, a dutiful act requires that the self not be motivated by inclinations but only be motivated out of respect for a law that the self gives to him/herself. Thus, both Sartre and Kant contend that an ethical act is an autonomous act. However, they disagree on what constitutes autonomy. 92 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 554.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Busch, Thomas W. ‘‘Sartre’s Use of the Reduction: Being and Nothingness Reconsidered.’’ In Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy, Hugh J. Silverman and J Frederick A. Elliston (eds.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1980. Melville, Herman. ‘‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’’ In Bartleby and Benito Cereno. NY: Dover Publications, 1990. Sartre, Jean-Paul. T he Emotions: Outline of a T heory. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. NY: Citadel Press, 1948. ——. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Hazel E. Bames. NY: Philosophical Library, 1956. ——. T he T ranscendence of the Ego: An Existentialist T heory of Consciousness. Translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kilpatrick. NY: Hill & Wang, 1991.

MICHEL DION

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/ EVIL IN MARCEL ` L A RECHERCHE DU T EMPS PERDU: PROUST’S A FROM THE AXIS OF TIME TO THE AXIS OF DESIRE

INTRODUCTION

` la Recherche du T emps Perdu (1913–1922) is both a revolutionary A novel in the history of literature and an essay on human nature, mixing philosophical ideas and psychological realism. ‘‘La Recherche n’est pas qu’un roman: on peut en discuter les idees, comme on le ferait pour un essai ou traite de philosophie’’1 ‘‘Proust clot-il l’histoire du genre romanesque ou s’il en enrichit le genre? Ca depend de la fonction attribuee au vocabulaire psychologique par lequel on nomme les motifs attribues aux gens: leurs emotions, passions, croyances, desirs, soucis. Le plus souvent, ce vocabulaire psychologique est utilise pour expliquer les faits et gestes de quelqu’un’’2

In this unusual novel, there are very few important (external ) events. Everything happens within the Narrator’s consciousness, so that this is a novel focusing on reflection about our perception of things, persons and events, and the decisive role it actually plays in our whole life. In ` la Recherche du temps perdu is a novel about the relative that sense, A character of perception and the absoluteness of consciousness. Like Dostoyevsky,3 Proust believed that internalization (as a movement towards our inner consciousness) could give birth to more genuine or altruistic behaviors. In this paper, I will deal with the intuition of good/evil as expressed in ` la Recherche du T emps Perdu. Indeed, Proust dealt with such an A intuition from two basic axes: (1) the axis of Time: Proust analyzed sociological determinisms in his own society and era, and tried to resolve the mystery of interpersonal relationships. In doing so, he described the decisive role of perceptions and beliefs in our self-understanding and understanding of our world. Because such perceptions and beliefs are inherently linked to memory, Proust described the phenomena of remembering and ‘‘having-forgotten’’. Finally there would be no remembering without Time in which it is rooted; (2) the axis of desire: Proust analyzed emotions and feelings, particularly as they are connected with 141 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 141–161. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

142

MICHEL DION

happiness/unhappiness. In doing so, he faced the issue of pleasure but above all, that of desire (as essential to the human condition).

I. THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

T he Intuition I According to Proust, Intuition is, as the good sense for Descartes, the most widespread phenomenon (LP: 332). It is only through intuition that we can understand social phenomena as well as individuals. Social phenomena cannot help us to understand human being as such, if we do not take the opportunity to grasp the mystery of individual human beings (CG, II: 339). Only the impression, even when it seems to be hardly grasped, is a reliable criterion of truth and must be apprehended by our spirit. Only our impressions, when considered as criteria of truth, are able to make our spirit perfect and joyful (TR: 238–239).4 In raising impressions to the rank of such criteria (defining existential truth, rather than Truth-itself ), Proust is thus defining intuition as that power through which our perceptions, values and beliefs are made possible. That’s why he said that even our moral beliefs are not always identical to what our good sense is dreaming about (AD: 159). Our moral beliefs are nurtured by our impressions, our intuition of what reality seems to be. In that context, people largely vary in accordance with their moral beliefs. Immoral and moral people share intense reluctance to given actions. The basic difference ff is that such actions are not the same (AD: 258). ‘‘Proust cherche donc l’absolu dans le temps concret, mais c’est grace a` l’intuition plutot qu’a` la raison.’’5

Reason claims it could know things as they are. Proust (following Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) believed that we cannot know the essence of things (objects, persons, events). We can only reach their appearances. And such appearances are made available through our intuition, since reason would rather consider them ‘‘as if ’’ they would represent things as they are. The intuition of good/evil has a threefold structure: (1) an impression expressing human subjectivity: such an impression is manifested through our sociological determinisms (axis of Time), as well as our emotions and feelings (axis of Desire); (2) a conviction from a generalization (out of objective facts): such a conviction if acquired through our perceptions

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

143

and beliefs (axis of Time), as well as our feeling of happiness/unhappiness (axis of Desire); (3) a certainty gained from the analysis of human nature: such a certainty comes from memory processes, such as remembering and ‘‘having-forgotten’’ (axis of Time), and from the way we distinguish desires and pleasures (axis of Desire). So the way Proust defined such an intuition of good/evil will be quite different ff if we take the axis of Time or the axis of desire as a reference point. The only real common element would be the dialectics between vices and virtues. T he N Notion of Good A human being is made of qualities we finally are able to discover or reveal (AD: 247). According to Proust, our virtues are progressively associated with virtuous actions accomplished in accordance with our duties. When we are deciding whether or not to realize actions that would not be directly connected with given virtues, we are in a state of psychological weakness. We are then excluding the possibility that such actions could generate the basic virtues guiding our own life (AOJ, I: 86). The most universal thing in the human world is not good sense, but rather goodness (AOJ, II: 118–119), said Proust. Although goodness is a universal phenomenon, its essence remains veiled. Goodness is hidden so that we must try to discover its presence among others (and oneself ) (SG, I: 77). In our existence, we can only actualize goodness when there is no egoism or self-interest. Egoistic people are able to show their own goodness (that continues to exist, as a potentiality of their being), if they get rid of their egoism (AOJ, II: 118–119). Goodness is a disinterested attitude through which we are giving (emotional, cognitive) rewards to those we are observing, because of the pleasure such an observation is providing to us (AOJ, II: 136). According to Proust, the progress of civilizations makes possible for everybody to show unknown (until then) qualities or virtues so that it favors friendship, but could increase antipathy from others (SG, I: 206). Truth is one of the most basic values emphasized in Proust’s works. Truth can manifest itself without any word. We can reach existential truth without taking words into account. We only have to perceive external signs that reveal such a truth (CG, I: 70). For instance, we often trust those who deepen the understanding of truth (CG, I,: 305), although in human life, it is very difficult (if not, impossible) to know Truth-itself (AD: 200). From our daily life, we know that saying the truth is always troubling or shocking for some people (SG, I: 320). That’s why Truth-

144

MICHEL DION

itself is not identical to existential truth, according to Proust. Interpersonal relationships make us aware that a given individual has an ever-changing conception of truth, so that others can hardly succeed in understanding or grasping such a conception (LP: 13). Existential truth is always changing for a given individual, while Truth-itself seems to eternally remain the same. In our human predicament, we have access only to existential truth, said Proust. T he Concept of Evil An evil being is impossible, according to Proust, since then evil would be a natural trend, inherent to its essence rather than a distorted result of its actualization (DC: 174). Heredity has sometimes increased the power of our bad habits and vicious attitudes (LP: 146). We could also observe that wrong actions are the cause of continuous negative effects, ff for the doers as well as the observers or the victims of such actions (SG, II: 298). Even the notion of guilt is deeply influenced by our self-image, so that our way to understand and resolve moral dilemmas could be distorted by unconscious desires. Thus, individuals who are guilty of a given fault try to believe that people are accusing them of another fault (SG, I: 209). When analyzing the reality of evil, Proust is particularly concerned with mischievous personalities. Indeed, mischief implies an exaggeration of others’ sufferings ff (CG, II: 326). It is either inherited or acquired through education (SG, II: 238). Mischievous people do not feel that they bear a voluptuous cruelty. Hatred often inspires such a mischief, while anger provides its power and intensity. However, mischievous people (when they are not sadistic personalities) perceive their victims as mischievous people (CG, I: 178). Mischievous people can always claim the appearance of right behavior or thought (CG, I: 283). Mischievous people like to presuppose that their victims have suffered ff more in the past than what most people believe (AD: 240). These are kinds of distorted understanding of guilt through which mischievous people show a fragmentary self-image. Lying is one of the most important vices expressed in Proust’s works. A lie can be surrounded by four contradictory laws of behavior: (1) the wish to appear as a natural and courageous individual; (2) the instinctive reaction to hide secret relationships; (3) a mix of shyness and ostentation; (4) the intuition of what others know and keep secret (LP: 203). Those who lie while affirming they are saying the truth are feeling the hysterical pleasure to lie rather than seeking to convince others of the truthfulness

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

145

of their sayings (AOJ, II: 124). Some persons strongly affirm the truthfulness of their ideas, while they have partly reflected reality and partly falsified it (AOJ, II: 125). Proust is convinced that the most famous principles or precepts are not the most truthful (AOJ, II: 309). Proust explains this assertion by claiming that: (a) sometimes, we find out a given mistake in our opinions or ideas. Rather than replace it by a given truth, we substitute another mistake for the former one (AOJ, II: 349); (b) we often falsify the basic truths guiding our existence, whether it is the truth of our feelings, the truth of our misunderstood personalities (that requires Time to be unveiled), or the truth of our destiny (AD: 89). Within such lies, we feel that there is part of our existential truth (LP: 339); (c) some people always try to reinforce their lies. Although they would confess that their lies are more painful than the truth, they would continue to lie in order to be in accordance with what they have said about themselves or with their values and beliefs (LP: 370). For instance, men who are saying that their mistresses are gentle are partly lying to others as well as to themselves. Of course, such gentleness is part of the reality. But the gentleness of the mistress can be used for self-glorifying aims. It also can reveal how such men consider their mistresses as blessings. However, what such gentleness has been for them is also linked to pains and doubts, and a vain search for truth. The existential truth they are searching for is unveiled by lies (AD: 47–48). The permanent knowledge of our lies or faults makes us neglect the fact that such lies or faults are, most of the time, ignored by people, and that our lies are usually perceived as truths by others. We are unable to see that it is through our daily life experiences and words that others can perceive what we attempt to hide. For instance, in the aristocratic society, all vicious people can find supporters of their vices (SG, I: 190). Masters like to see their servants accepting their obvious lies as truths (SG, I: 315). Sometimes a lie reveals our fears and desires. We then negate what we would have preferred not to see or observe, although people we are talking with can shortly become aware that such a negation does not reflect reality (SG, II: 27). Most of the time we are lying to ourselves, since the most painful hatred we could feel is that following from ourselves (SG, II: 35). As long as we lie to others (and ourselves), we have lost the awareness of our ‘‘lying process‘‘(SG, II: 68). Lies of self-glorification are committed by inferior beings that need to destroy others in order to fill the gap of their inner voidness (DC: 205). Proust observed that in love relationships, lying is a most necessary tool. We claim that we got rid of it, in order to deepen our relationships

146

MICHEL DION

with our lover. We hate lies and are troubled by their presence, since lies can break relationships. We believe that lies can hide the worst faults while by hiding them we are unable to detect their actualization. Lying is a pathogen agent that is universally applied and that can cause unhappiness among those who do not have a strong power to resist its destructive power (LP: 160). Sometimes, we clearly feel that somebody is lying to us, although we do not detect what is underlying or hidden behind such a lie (LP: 167). It is particularly true in love relationships: the intensity of jealousy is doubled when we feel a lie asserted by our lover. Then we cannot reach the existential truth that is thus negated (LP: 168). A plausible or probable fact is not identical to a ‘‘real fact’’ (reflecting reality as such). Such a distinction between a plausible (or probable) fact and a real fact exerts a decisive role in our interpersonal relationships.We often feel such a distinction in love relationships, so that our jealousy is then excited (LP: 168). Strongly asserting that it is cruel to lie requires lying much more than others while safeguarding our sincerity (LP: 168–169). Every dialogue is made of lies that sometimes hide a feeling of hatred or self-interest much less perfectly than a good reputation can veil bad habits (that could be ignored throughout our life) (LP: 193). In love relationships, dialogues between partners of adultery are full of lies, as well as dialogues between such partners and third parties (LP: 202). Partners of adultery always choose the lying facts, and their assertions are unconsciously determined by factors we, as third parties, consider to be much more important than the (real) facts themselves (LP: 202–203). There is a type of lie dealing with people we know (and our relationships with them), or about what we are, what we love, what we feel towards our lover (lies of intimacy). Such a lie opens our consciousness to the absolute novelty and the unknown, so that we can reach worlds that we otherwise would have been unable to grasp (LP: 205). Lies of intimacy have important side effects, ff because we are guilty of any lie, particularly when we have convinced others that we will always say the truth. We all know that such a promise cannot always be applied. When someone is no longer our lover, we thus no longer have an interest in lying, since our heart has become indifferent ff to his (her) lies. We are no longer concerned with his (her) life (LP: 213). In love relationships, there could be a large discrepancy between the truth that has been distorted by our lying lover and the opinion or idea about such a truth we have built (out of such lies) (LP: 321). According to Proust, lying is necessary to human beings. It is guided by our search for pleasure. We lie in order to safeguard our pleasure, or

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

147

our honor (if the unveiling process of our pleasure contradicts honor). Throughout our life, we lie particularly to those we love, since they make us fear the loss of our pleasure and search for their consideration or affection ff (AD: 190). Lying is often an aspect of a given personality. Among women who otherwise would not lie, lies are natural defenses (from a disordered form to a very organized, sophisticated form) against such a danger that could destroy their whole life: love (AD: 196). Intellectual and sensitive beings do not share a basic trend of lying. Even very wise men live in a world of possibilities. They deeply feel pains inflicted by their female lovers and never have a clear perception of what such women wanted/did (and of the men they loved). Such wise men share a kind of delusion so that they would not understand what their female lovers would impose on them. They express a high level of suspicion towards words and ideas enunciated by their female lovers. Behind any (false) action, they believe that there is another (true) one. They cannot find what action their female lovers have actually undertaken or which people they have actually met. Wise and sensitive beings can only try to approach such a universe of false and true relationships and, in doing so, deepen their jealousy and excite their intelligence (AD: 196–197).

II. THE AXIS OF TIME

According to Proust, we often feel a strong reluctance for given people who look like us, with similar (but much more intense) vices, as well as for those who develop such vices from which we have been able to be healed. Such beings mirror what we could become (in developing the intensity of our vices) or what we were before we got rid of such vices (SG, II: 29–30). A human being is made of vices others are finally able to tolerate or accommodate (AD: 247). Some individuals use their virtues to cover their vices, while others agree to show their vices so that they will be considered as clearly manifesting what they are (TR: 65). The people we generally love with an extreme intensity are those who have some virtues as well as the ability to use them in favor of their vices (LP: 206). A) Sociological Determinisms and Interpersonal Relationships Peoples and nations as collections of individuals actually show the same deep, mysterious tendency not to see reality as it is (SG, II: 224). Proust’s

148

MICHEL DION

understanding of societies seems to be influenced by Nietzsche’s will to believe, that is, the refusal to see reality as it is and the replacement of reality by a set of supposedly hidden realities. Nations only repeat and amplify the life of social cells, or individual beings. If we cannot understand the mystery and laws governing individual beings, we cannot grasp the meaning of international conflicts. We must master individual psychology in order to deepen our understanding of social masses (TR: 104–105). Within conflicts, nations act as if they were individuals. Human beings (as well as nations) actually change very slowly. The logic of their behaviors is continuously based on their passions. Their arguments to defend their decisions are nothing but real extensions of their passions (TR: 108). Human beings search for a political regime or a social system that is a simple continuation of the former one (AOJ, I: 188). The instinct of imitation and the loss of courage characterize societies and working masses (SG, II: 96–97). Societies emphasized a kind of hatred against scrupulous attitudes that is almost equivalent to their respect for etiquette (LP: 261). Si Proust a decrit le grand monde social tout au long de la Recherche du T emps Perdu, il ne faut pas oublier que c’est un au-dela du grand monde qu’il pourchasse dans un dedale de defauts, de mesquineries, de mensonges et de vices, comme s’il avait l’espoir que ce grand monde perdu, il allait le sauver; il en desespe`re souvent et pourtant cette queˆte est continuelle (...)6

In some cases, various personal advantages cannot guarantee the level of happiness that is perceived as lower than that of others. Then envy functions as a tool to fill the gap and makes the difference ff (AOJ, II: 152). Specific advantages and self-image are important only in the mind of the people belonging to a given social group and for exciting the imagination of others looking at the existential condition shared by such people (SG, I: 153). Social differences ff are nothing but the mold of a given era. Every social class has its own pathological beliefs and conducts (LP: 10). Even individual good beings can participate in murders committed by social masses, as if it would be a natural thing to do (TR: 186–187). A title of nobility is more important when people want to own it and is less important when the offer ff is larger than the demand (AD: 249). Proust is fascinated by the role played by snobbery in the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Le snobisme dans le roman de Proust joue le role d’un leurre vers lequel les ambitions, les desirs et les passions de l’homme s’elancent dans le vide, accusant ainsi leur demesure, a` jamais sans support dans l’objet derisoire vers lequel ils s’exercent.7

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

149

Princes know their social status and rarely show snobbery (snobbery is a grave sickness of our soul that does not negatively affect ff the whole personality). They believe they are superior to others who do not belong to their rank, whether they are members of bourgeoisie or aristocracy (AOJ, I: 189; LP: 8). Even the humble pleasures of servants are either refused or considered with humor by their masters (SG, I: 261). Duties and responsibilities (as well as rights) of masters are integral parts (manifestations) of their dominion (LP: 147). Masters make their servants know only the (fictive) part of reality that could maintain respect towards them (AD: 49). We can belong to a royal family by blood, but to the populace through our mind (CG, I: 240; II: 514). Members of the bourgeoisie can be full of goodness and gentleness, but much less than members of aristocracy (DC: 322). Aristocrats can exert a significant influence on wise people who know what they are, rather than on people of the street (SG, II: 63–64). Aristocrats believe they can do everything. Because of their family names, they believe that nothing is prohibited to them. When aristocrats lose money and pleasure, they tend to practice fraud and other dishonest customs (DC: 371). They assume that it is wiser not to hide themselves (SG, II: 157). Members of the aristocracy are educated so that their family names are seen as a substantial advantage they can never lose. Due to their family names, it is much less difficult for aristocrats than for members of the bourgeoisie to convince others of their own opinions. Aristocrats try to raise themselves quite close to the rank of princes and dukes, in claiming that their family name implies an explicit or implicit advantage, whether it consists in political contacts, literary or artistic renown, or large patrimony (AOJ, I: 89–90). Most of the people do not understand the importance of family names in the same way as aristocrats actually do (SG, II: 63). Among members of the aristocracy, there are fixed patterns of behavior to express our joy to spend time with other people (AOJ, II: 99). Aristocrats are able to show goodness and benevolence towards people that are affected ff by a strong feeling of inferiority. However, they do not question the existence of such inferiority. Otherwise, it would be equivalent to selfdestructive behavior (SG, I: 131). According to Proust, our social personality is built by others’ thoughts. We project on others our prejudices and perceptions of their personalities, so that when we see them and communicate with them, we are seeing and communicating indeed with our prejudices and perceptions (DC: 29). So, when someone is affected ff by an unhappy event, such an event actually influences a very small part of the notion we have of his (her) being. We

150

MICHEL DION

will feel emotion or compassion for him (her), only out of this small part of the global notion of his (her) being we have developed throughout our relationships. The individual living an unhappy event will be touched only in a small part of the total notion he (she) has developed of himself (herself ) (DC: 95). We try to find out in things, events and beings our own psychological projections (DC: 97; AOJ, II: 107). There is generally a discrepancy between our self-image and our words, so that words tend not to represent our real being (AOJ, II: 121). That’s why Proust concluded that it is a bad habit to talk about our self and our faults. It is also a bad habit to denounce others’ faults that are analogous to ours. It seems to be an indirect way to talk about our self. We are attracted by what actually characterizes our personality, although we are able to identify what characterizes the personality of individuals we meet (AOJ, II: 121).When we talk about ourselves, we believe that others are blind. However, we continue to repress our own faults, so that they become unconscious (AOJ, II: 122). We are often able to modify our views (images) of others, so that such images could be in accordance with their real personality. In the meantime, the others’ personality has already changed. We are then unable to reach a kind of continuity between our perspective and their real being (AOJ, II: 267). Our relationships with others, our friends and relatives are apparently fixed. In fact, they are eternally changing (CG, I: 274). We should never use virtue and virtuous conduct to the detriment of others (CG, II: 409). All relationships can be used for utility and/or pleasure, either presently or in the future (CG, II: 554). When someone knows that his (her) opinions are not shared with others, he (she) tends to presuppose that others have a prejudice he (she) cannot make disappear. He (she) is not ready to accept motives that could let the dialogue be open-ended (CG, II: 586–587). According to Proust, we do not have access to the real life of others: we cannot know their life (LP: 54). Usually, we hate what looks like us, since our struggle in life means the absolute self-affirmation, that is, the certainty of our uniqueness. We cannot sustain the view of our own defaults, because we tend to believe that the uniqueness of our personality implies its perfection. According to Proust, some defaults or qualities are much less linked to individuals than to specific moments of their lives, from a social viewpoint. They are almost external to such individuals (TR: 347–348). Our own mistakes and faults rarely make us more indulgent to others’ faults (TR: 395). When we observe others’ faults and understand the basic

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

151

circumstances in which such faults have been committed, we tend to actualize the same faults in our life (LP: 235). The fact that we observe others’ faults seem to function as an ‘‘a priori’’ justification of our mimetic behavior. Most of the time, we cannot understand the basic motives of others’ behavior (LP: 303). Others can never adopt our viewpoint (AD: 27). If this principle is true, we should never hate others, because of specific remembering of their mischievous behaviors. We actually do not know that in other moments, their soul has accomplished very good things. Their mischief as well as their goodness will come back in their life (LP: 314). We know we ignore a lot about others’ personality. We rarely admit that what we know is hardly understandable. Our own being remains a total mystery for oneself as well as for others. As Proust said, we express what is the less personal in our being, what we consider a minor aspect of our personality. We also manifest our detachment from some characteristics we don’t actually have (LP: 330–331). According to Proust, our relationships with others actually exist only in our thought. Existential solitude is our basic condition. Human being is a being that cannot overcome its own being, that knows others only within itself (AD: 34). Differences ff between individuals can be due to their personality (that could be linked to attitudes of egoism/altruism, hatred/love, freedom, anger, fear), to their education and family values (AD: 198–200). Our self-abnegation is often perceived as egoism, since others believe we have chosen the easiest duties for our self-sacrifice (TR: 367). Sometimes, others know much more about us than we thought. However, they also could fall into a false view of our self through excessive hypotheses or delusional impressions (TR: 27).

B) Perceptions and Beliefs Facts can contradict but never destroy our beliefs. They can never reduce the influential power of our beliefs on our perceptions and actions (DC: 159). It is through the prism of our beliefs that we actually perceive others, their qualities and defaults (AOJ, II: 348). We know others only through our beliefs, although we could also deepen our understanding through others’ words and actions. That’s why Proust said that we do not have a direct knowledge of other people (CG, I: 72). Reality does not consist of our beliefs (CG, I: 277). Our beliefs distort reality in a radical manner, so that we tend to believe that they actually ‘‘are’’ reality itself (TR: 240). The way others perceive our actions and gestures does not

152

MICHEL DION

look like our own self-image (CG, I: 277). Others are different ff from what is conveyed by our perceptions and beliefs (AD: 107). We often believe that various circumstances do not repeat past events. But we sometimes consider as mistakes what we saw as truths in the past (SG, I: 164). When we learn something about someone, we draw some consequences that are often not connected with the (real ) facts (LP: 4). We should be concerned with particular facts only because of their general meaning (LP: 141). Our errors (of interpretation) hinder us when we question our beliefs (LP: 179). We live much more for some dreams than for what we believe in (AD: 30). Our view of an objective fact can vary according to our emotional/cognitive state of mind (AD: 100). Sometimes, our judgments are apparently justified by facts we actually ignored (TR: 418). A large part of our beliefs (in spite of our good faith) is based on a misunderstanding of some premises (AD: 236). We need beliefs in order to fulfill the requirements of existential truth (TR: 188). Our actions, words and attitudes are isolated from the world, from people who have not directly perceived them. There seems to be a permeable space that allows for expression of a given part of our being. However, such a space remains unknown and its permeability can vary infinitely from one individual to another (CG, I: 276). Our worldview (the world as our social, emotional and historical universe) is made of arbitrary ideas and fragmentary views, so that we use them to draw frail conclusions or hypotheses (AD: 155). There is a discrepancy between our true impression of a given thing, event or being and the way we will make an image of it (TR: 225). Our perceptions are colored by our concerns and the sensations we experienced at the instant of the perception itself (TR: 244–245). When we know a given event, we assume that the known part represents the whole event itself, while others actually look at the same event in a very different ff way (AD: 261). So, our perceptions are imperfect (TR: 225). We often judge life out of some representations and images of human life. Words or gestures made in the past actually reflect contents that are not logically linked to them and that have been distinguished by our mind. Our being is continuously changing, so that such a judgment about life is always conveyed, in spite of the possible contradictions within our own being (TR: 226–227). Contingencies make impossible an absolute connection between reality and our mind (TR: 354). Some errors committed by our senses can explain the way we falsify reality as such (TR: 438). Every reality (whether it is a tree, the sun or stars) is probably very different ff than the way we perceive it (CG, I: 71).

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

153

(...) l’oeuvre tend vers la contemplation du monde des Idees, dans un Temps absolu. Car chez Proust, le desir s’accomplit finalement en spectacle plutot qu’en action engagee, et se porte vers une ve´rite qui est essentiellement reve´lation de la Beaute.8

Proust was influenced by Schopenhauer and Schelling (and perhaps Schiller and Schlegel). In ‘‘The World as Will and Representation’’, Schopenhauer said that our world is our representations. Things are not immediately given. Only their representations are immediately given to us. We actually know appearances and phenomena rather than things themselves. Although Proust seems to remain influenced by the Platonic ‘‘world of Ideas’’ (particularly, Truth-itself ), he strongly puts the emphasis on existential truth, thus following the example of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Les idees sont des succedanes des chagrins; au moment ou ceux-ci se changent en idees, ils perdent une partie de leur action nocive sur notre cœur, et meme, au premier instant, la transformation elle-meme degage subitement de la joie. Succedanes dans l’ordre du temps seulement, d’ailleurs, car il semble que l’element premier ce soit l’Idee, et le chagrin, seulement le mode selon lequel certaines Idees entrent d’abord en nous. Mais il y a plusieurs familles dans le groupe des Idees, certaines sont tout de suite des joies.9

According to Proust, we say things we need to say and that will remain incomprehensible for others. We talk only to ourselves (AOJ, I: 297). Our words are filled by others with a substance that is quite different ff from the basic meaning we have put in such words (AOJ, I: 275). Our desires could make our sayings more isolated from our thoughts (CG, II: 363). Our thoughts are not always in continuity with our sayings (TR: 109). Between our self and the other, there is the wall of a foreign language (CG, II: 529). C) M Memory and Remembering Memory makes unity between all parts of remembering, so that we cannot abstract any portion of it without destroying it (DC: 440). Our memory puts together images of societies we have successively lived in (TR: 341). Our imagination takes for granted that accessory parts of our discourses and attitudes have almost not impregnated others’ consciousness, so that our words stay within their consciousness for a very short period (AOJ, I: 138–139). We cannot rebuild a past state of things, because our knowledge (accumulated since that moment) and our remembering make such a rebuilding process impossible. We are no longer free to see our past

154

MICHEL DION

(without taking those factors into account), except under the free form of our future (AOJ, I: 208–209). In that sense, remembering could recreate lost/dead beings and things, although we thought they had disappeared for eternity (DC: 57). Sometimes, our remembering is close to our consciousness; in other moments, it is far from our existential awareness (CG, I: 100; AD: 70). The images chosen by our remembering are as arbitrary as those created through our imagination and that have been indeed destroyed by (real ) facts (SG, I: 232). There is less egoism in pure imagination than in remembering (SG, I: 235). Through remembering, the existence of our body makes us presuppose the continuous, eternal survival of our past joy, goods and pains in our consciousness. Because we forgot something, we can recover what we were in the past and consider things, events and beings out of our past perspective or viewpoint. We can thus suffer ff because we are no longer our present self, but rather what-we-were. Whatwe-were loved what we presently look at with indifference. ff In our memory, images of our past tend to disappear, so that we cannot recover our real past (AOJ, II: 8). From our remembering, our mind excludes everything that could not be useful to our daily life experiences and relationships (AOJ, II: 350). The laws of memory are governed by the laws of habit (that decrease the vitality and power of everything). The best part of our memory is within us but cannot be reached. It is in a state of ‘‘having-forgotten’’. Having-forgotten implies that our mind is no longer able to replicate a real moment of life and must therefore substitute conventional images that could be born from our instinct of conservation and our propensity to protect ourselves from suffering ff (SG, I: 241). Selon Proust, la memoire serait l’espace du souvenir, tout comme elle est espace de l’oubli (...) Souvenir et oubli sont deux figures de la memoire.10

We easily forget what we have not deeply developed in our mind, or what has been dictated by imitation or surrounding (changing) passions. Changing passions make our remembering modify itself (LP: 32). Havingforgotten sometimes modifies the way beings appear to us (TR: 343). Having-forgotten is one of the forms of Time that destroys our surviving past (AD: 138). Having-forgotten is progressively created by time. It deeply modifies our notion of time (AD: 174). Our images kept in memory are most of the time far from reality. Habit continuously transforms and molds the external aspects of given

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

155

things, events or beings (LP: 60). Any person reveals itself both as a pure collection of past moments and as a powerful individual whose essence totally depends on memory. A memory continuously lives in our consciousness, as do those persons who are the crucial actors of such remembering (AD: 60). Within our memory, some past moments keep their power to put our being in a future that has become a more recent past (AD: 71). Memory cannot overcome the past (AD: 94). Our remembering is linked to what we have known (AD: 176). Remembering is born into interpersonal relationships (AD: 268). From its first appearance, a memory is going far from the first impressions (TR: 276). Facing the same event, different ff persons do not remember the same aspects. It is particularly true with our friends and relatives. Even lovers do not share the same remembering as to their love relationships (TR: 350, 353). What other people are for us, that is, their representations in our memory, tends to change. According to Proust, Time modifies people but not the representations we have of them. People can change and our memory could remain the same (TR: 368–369). Memory introduces past into the present without modifying it (as it is when it was the present), and thus annihilates a dimension of Time that makes an accomplishment of life possible (TR: 422). En offrant ff ainsi l’espace de la memoire comme valeur refuge en plus du spectacle mondain et de ses drames, Proust ne se contente pas de rejoindre un courant philosophique qui lui est contemporain et qui, de Bergson a Heidegger, diffe ff ´remment mais par une convergence symptomatique, cherche a saisir l’etre en interrogeant l’opacite du Temps. Plus encore, sa mise en mots d’un temps sensible traverse les categories metaphysiques. Elle conjoint des oppositions (idees, duree, espace d’une part, force, perception, emotion, desir d’autre part) ` la Recherche du temps est intrinsequement e´thique: au (...) la construction memoriale d’A desarroi du monde et de soi, il ajoute la Recherche infinie de ce temple perdu, de ce temple invisible, qui est le temps sensible de nos memoires subjectives (...) Ce temps sensible qu’il nous convie de rejoindre est le temps des exces sensuels, des extravagances erotiques, des feintes et des trahisons’’11

Proust dealt with Time by connecting it to sensitivity. He then adopted the Nietzschean focus on life, body, instincts and passions (as constituting the real/moral world). D) T ime Proust insisted on the distinction (close to Bergson’s philosophy of time) between chronological time (that could be mathematically calculated) and lived time (basically linked to consciousness).

156

MICHEL DION

On one hand, duration is not always the same (DC: 404). We are not aware of what Time realizes through duration (AOJ, I: 144). Our own passions create a kind of dilation of Time, while those passions we inspire in others reduces the flow of duration (AOJ, I: 295). Such perceptions could also vary from one individual to another (TR: 314). The more our time is far from what we aim at, the more its duration seems to be long, since we apply very short measures or because we are only focusing on the task of measuring such a duration (CG, II: 392). On the other hand, Proust described the essence of Time through its positive and negative impact on human existence. According to Proust, we tend to consider some habits and passions as permanent characteristics of our being (DC: 292). We can meet people we have not seen for many years, but we cannot abolish Time and its effects ff on human life (SG, II: 41). Time has a distorting perspective and a destructive action (TR: 294, 300). That’s the negative impact of Time. Everything (individuals, societies, nations) is impregnated by Time (TR: 302). Time has an original power of renewal, while respecting the unity of beings and laws of life. Time works very slowly (TR: 306) and adds something new to beings (TR: 321). That’s the positive impact of Time. Proust believed that only our past is real. As individuals, we are bearers of the continuity of our life, linking our present to our past (TR: 342–343). Only the wise reflections of the past (traditions) can help us to preserve our future (AOJ, II: 201). Le futur peut alors etre envisage sous un autre jour; ce n’est plus la crainte permanente, l’angoisse de l’etre qui est engage dans des strategies a courte vue (ce que Proust appele l’‘‘action’’ en pensant a la mondanite et a` l’amour) mais le grand espoir de ce qui est desormais decide a` regarder en face l’ensemble de ses determinations, a considerer sans faiblesse tous les mobiles de ses implications dans le monde, meme et surtout les plus falsificateurs, ce que le Narrateur appelle ses ‘‘erreurs.12

The shadows of our past are what we call our ‘‘future’’ (AOJ, II: 201). Our future is already part of our being (SG, I: 106). We mentally represent our future as the pure reflection of the present as it is projected into a void space. Indeed, our future follows from uncontrollable causes (LP: 308). Our future is what exists only in our thought (AD: 4). We are expecting a future that our will has built out of fragmentary parts of our present and past. We then keep from such temporal parts only what we need for our utilitarian ends and needs (TR: 229–230).

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

157

III. THE AXIS OF DESIRE

Proust said that a vicious being always shows the same virtues (such as courage and generosity) in trying to hide its vices from people he (she) is engaging. Vices give us some abnormal ways of life, so that they create suspicion about people who try to hide their vices (DC: 381). Every vice requires a specific knowledge we are generally proud to share with others (AOJ, II: 121). If we could understand past experiences of each other, we could find out some vices that we have completely hidden in our life, other vices we got rid of. We would conclude that we would never be attracted by such vices, while we have actually been their instruments. If we cannot perceive such vices among others, we will be unable to excuse them (AD: 250). The progress of civilizations creates new vices that could favor friendship with people sharing same or similar vices, and could increase antipathy from others (SG, I: 206). A) Emotions and Feelings When we try to translate, to express our feelings, we can rarely abstract them from our self (DC: 165). Our self is the bearer of our feelings, so that they cannot be defined out of their connection with the self. Sometimes, a feeling has contradictory aspects (AOJ, I: 293). We then manifest our feelings in using contrary signs (SG, II: 196). In looking at others’ feelings, the worst reaction would be to negate (or negatively judge) feelings that we cannot experience or identify in our life. Our pains can be real, although people cannot understand them (AOJ, II: 146–147). Proust believed that we always want to hide our feelings, so that we are rarely concerned with the best ways to manifest them (CG, I: 208–209). B) Happiness/Unhappiness U Out of our (psychic or moral) pains, we can create a future happiness (DC: 393). But unlike our beliefs, the satisfaction of our desires does not automatically gives us happiness (AOJ, I: 152). The real function of happiness, as it is provided by Nature, is to destroy any attitude of ownership towards happiness. Nature makes happiness impossible, said Proust. Either we will never reach happiness, or happiness will give birth to painful experiences (AOJ, I: 310). Proust is here defining Nature as the ultimate stumbling block for happiness. Nature seems to have the final word on human happiness. Proust clearly adopted an Eastern

158

MICHEL DION

approach of happiness, as it is influenced by Hindu/Buddhist values and beliefs about happiness and pain. Proust even asserted that the aim of happiness is to make unhappiness possible. Within happiness, we are able to have strong relationships with others, full of trust and affection, ff so that unhappiness will follow from disturbed relationships with such people. If we would have never experienced happy events, unhappiness could never be cruel and fruitful (TR: 272). Happiness occurs when people have become indifferent ff to it. Such an indiff fference towards happiness makes us much more flexible, so that we could be satisfied by a quite imperfect happiness (AOJ, I: 314–315). The fact that in our imagination, happiness has specific characteristics comes from a prior identification of desires that have been inspired by such happiness, rather than precise information about such happiness (AOJ, II: 13). In that sense, happiness is always an individual reality. We substitute the synthesis of various (cherished) people we have met and pleasures we have felt, so that we design an abstract image of happiness. Such a synthesis has indeed excluded the real meaning and import of happiness. Thus, our judgment on human life is distorted by such a delusion about happiness (AOJ, II: 22–23). Unhappiness created by a given fact generally nullifies any happiness it has been able to provoke (AOJ, I: 309). Sadness can be provoked either by our thoughts about a given being, or by memory (words, correspondence). A cruel memory is qualitatively different ff from our image of the past event. According to Proust, the past that has given birth to such a cruel memory continues to exist within us, except when we have preferred to substitute a ‘‘Golden Age’’ (in which the world is totally reconciled). Remembering makes us feel how our representations and images are far from reality itself, although reality is always changing (AOJ, I: 314). The present happiness linked to a person we loved in the past but that we no longer love is not the same happiness that made us sad in the past. The only reliable judge is our self that prevails when such unhappiness was apprehended. Such a self no longer exists. If it could be reborn, it would only make our present happiness disappear, whether or not it is identical to our past happiness (AOJ, I: 315). Because of the fact that others make us suffer ff (and then are tools for our unhappiness), they open our mind to existential truths that would have otherwise been closed to our perception (AD: 78). Real happiness can be found through the final extinction of our desires. Only having-forgotten makes it possible to extinguish the power of desires (AD: 33–34). We could observe here how Proust was attracted (through Schopenhauer’s ideas) by Hinduism.

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

159

C) Desires and Pleasures Pleasure is the accomplishment of a prior (changing) envy. Such envy can vary according to our dreaming experiences, our remembering and our personality (CG, II: 393). Proust believed that we cannot find pleasure when we are focusing on searching for pleasure itself (CG, II: 479). Every being is searching for its own pleasure (SG, I: 85–86). There is a discrepancy between our desire and what we believed to be its object (AOJ, II: 315). The difficulty of reading an object of a desire increases the intensity of the desire. If the object cannot be reached, our desire will disappear. The absence of any doubt (much more than the anxious doubt) makes us feel the expectation of an infallible desire intolerable, since our anticipated representations are multiplied and because duration is divided into small parts, as if they would have been made by anxiety (CG, II: 393). When we desire a given object or being, we suffer ff so greatly because of its absence that we cannot sustain the presence of another object or being (SG, I: 205). Desires are characterized by an exclusivist view and the attention to all details in life (LP: 56). When we understand that we cannot change the world in accordance with our desires, our desires are modified. We are then indifferent ff to what we wanted to change in the past (AD: 35). When we regret something, it has the effect ff of increasing our desires (AD: 86). And our desires can create new beliefs (AD: 93, 190). Desiring implies a transition from a former state of things (or state of mind) to a future one, and thus the acceptance to leave the former to the profit of the latter (AD: 184). Like Spinoza (‘‘Ethics’’), Proust looks at human being as a ‘‘being of desire’’. Every feeling, emotion or thought is directly connected with the experience of desire. Et sans doute, nous avons tort de croire que l’accomplissement de notre desir soit peu de chose, puisque des que nous croyons qu’il peut ne pas l’etre, nous y tenons de nouveau, et ne trouvons qu’il ne valait pas la peine de le poursuivre que quand nous sommes bien surs de ne le manquer pas. Et pourtant on a raison aussi. Car si cet accomplissement, si le bonheur ne paraissent petits que par la certitude, cependant ils sont quelque chose d’instable d’ou ne peuvent sortir que des chagrins. Et les chagrins seront d’autant plus forts que le desir aura ete´ plus completement accompli, plus impossibles a supporter que le bonheur aura e´te´, contre la loi de nature, quelque temps prolonge, qu’il aura recu la conse´cration de l’habitude. Dans un autre sens aussi, les deux tendances, dans l’espece celle qui me faisait tenir a ce que ma lettre partıˆt, et, quand je la croyais partie, a le regretter, ont l’une et l’autre en elles leur verite. Pour la premiere, il est trop comprehensible que nous courions apre`s notre bonheur – ou notre malheur – et qu’en meme temps nous souhaitions de placer devant nous, par cette action nouvelle qui va commencer a derouler ses consequences, une

160

MICHEL DION

attente qui ne nous laisse pas dans le desespoir absolu, en un mot que nous cherchions a faire passer par d’autres formes que nous nous imaginons devoir nous etre moins cruelles le mal dont nous souffrons. ff Mais l’autre tendance n’est pas moins importante, car, nee de la croyance au succes de notre entreprise, elle est tout simplement le commencement, le commencement anticipe de la desillusion que nous eprouverions bientot en pre´sence de la satisfaction du desir, le regret d’avoir fixe pour nous, aux depens des autres, qui se trouvent exclues, cette forme de bonheur.13

CONCLUSION

` la Proust’s readers could conclude that the intuition of good/evil in A Recherche du T emps Perdu could give birth to a king of Nietzschean notion of nothingness. Indeed, Proust actually said that the world is the kingdom of nothingness (LP: 264–265). Our world is a world where everything is perishable (AD: 271). Proust was indeed quite influenced by Eastern religious beliefs (through Schopenhauer’s ideas). Above all, we could say that according to Proust, life is ambiguous. Life is a set of ambiguities we are confronted with and from which we try to get our meaning of life. But we should also remember that Proust did not express a nihilistic state of mind. When Proust is dealing with notions of good and evil, he is only searching for the the moral borders of that meaning of life and thus the foundations of human behavior. Both Time and desire actually reveal the grounds he was searching for. Any intuition of good/evil cannot exclude their basic influential role. U Universite ´ de Sherbrooke Quebec NOTES 1 Vincent Descombes, Proust. Philosophie du roman (Paris: E´ditions de Minuit, 1987), p. 81. 2 Vincent Descombes, Proust. Philosophie du roman (Paris: E´ditions de Minuit, 1987), p. 83. 3 Proust was deeply influenced by Dostoyevsky’s emphasis on consciousness (rather than external events). Dostoyevsky (particularly in Crime and Punishment and T he Kamarazov Brothers) has analyzed the deepest consciousness of the characters he has created. The whole ` la Recherche du T emps Perdu would not be sustainable without structure of Proust’s A Dostoyevsky’s influence (LP: pp. 364–367). ` la Recherche du 4 In this paper, we will use abbreviations in referring to each part of A ` l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (AOJ); Le T emps Perdu: Du coˆte´ de chez Swann (DC), A coˆte´ de Guermantes (CG); Sodome et Gomorrhe (SG); La Prisonniere (LP); Albertine disparue (AD); Le temps retrouve (TR). ` la Recherche du sens, Paris, Beatrice5 Ghislaine Florival, L e desir chez Proust. A Nauwelaerts, 1971, pp. 23–24.

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL

161

6 Louis De Beauchamp, L e petit groupe et le grand monde de Marcel Proust (Paris: E´ditions Nizet, 1990), p. 10. 7 Jean-Fancc¸ ois Revel, Sur Proust (Paris: Denoel/Gonthier, 1970 (1960)), p. 90. ` la Recherche du sens (Paris: Beatrice8 Ghislaine Florival, L e desir chez Proust. A Nauwelaerts, 1971), p. 23. 9 Proust, L e temps retrouve´, p. 271. ` la Recherche du T emps Perdu 10 Laı¨la El Hajji-Lahrimi, Semiotique de la perception dans A de Marcel Proust (Montre´al: L’Harmattan, 1999), p. 37. 11 Julia Kristeva, L e temps sensible. Proust et l’experience litteraire (Paris: NRF essais, Gallimard, 1994), pp. 210–211. ` la Recherche du T emps Perdu (Paris: PUF, Coll. ‘‘E´tudes 12 Gerard Cogez, Marcel Proust. A litteraires’’, no 24, 1990), p. 61. 13 Proust, Albertine disparue, p. 43–44.

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPES OF GOOD AND EVIL IN THE MORAL WORLD OF HUCKL EBERRY FINN

Intertwined in the life-world of Huckleberry Finn, created by Mark Twain is Huck’s experience of good and evil, as it is engaged in a physical landscape along the mighty Mississippi River of the United States. Moreover, in this physical landscape, Huck experiences the moral and psychological dilemmas of a teenage boy in a young country seeking for moral identity. Added to the landscape of Huck’s world are a million possibilities of good and evil perceptions and actions. Huck and the reader are invited to a confrontation of the multiple landscapes of good and evil, in an interplay that Wolfgang Iser calls the interplay between ‘text and the reader.’ For Iser every ‘reading moment’ continues to reveal new landscapes, and the reader’s perception is constantly shifting so that the textual ‘interplay’ with the reader takes place, as it does on Twain’s ‘rounded slopes’ of good and evil. It is common for Huck Finn to tell us that he cannot see his landscape clearly. I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece and took a look; but it there was a boat around I couldn’t see it, for stars and shadows ain’t good to see by. Then we got out of the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still – never saying a word.1

The physical landscape itself is full of obscure evils. The shadows and the ‘slipping sown in the shade’ experienced by Huck Finn give the reader the impression that the landscape of the youth is indiscernible. There is an obscurity in Huck’s vision of his environment as there is an obscurity in the novel’s presentation of Huck’s version of his future and his very identity. There are shadows in Huck’s vision as there are shadows in Twain’s text. Wolfgang Iser examines the interplay between the text and the reader and states the obvious. Every reading moment, says Iser, continues to reveal new landscapes, and the readers’ perception is constantly shifting so that the textual interplay with the reader takes place on Twain’s ‘raft slipping along down in the shade.’ Iser refers to motion in the text and the reader in terms of ‘communicating structure.’ He claims 163 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 163–170. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

164

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

Communication in literature is a process set in motion and regulated not by a given code but by mutually restrictive and magnifying interaction between the explicit and the implicit, between revelation and concealment.2

PHYSICAL LANDSCAPE

The revelation/concealment in the text of Mark Twain engages the landscapes of good and evil in the experience of the physical world of Huckleberry Finn. The river is ever moving, and the shadows in the trees on the river-sides are ever concealing secrets that are important to Huck. In the very first paragraph in the book, Huck exposes his plan, his hope to live in a free world. He lives in the ordered world of Judge Thatcher and the widow Douglas, who has taken Tom as her son. But he longs for something better, for escape. The widow interprets this longing in Huck’s own words. The widow she cried over me and called me a poor lost lamb.3

Huck knows that he is a misfit of sorts in the mainstream world of order and education that the widow and her sister Miss Watson create for him. In this setting Huck is imprisoned. He says: I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining and leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, ff who – whoing about somebody that was dead and a whipporwill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me.4

The good life that Huck dreams about is obscure to him. He hears the mournful leaves in motion and the crying birds. Escape is necessary for him. The wind, he knows, is whispering something to him, but he cannot figure out what the wind is saying. Of course, the wind is saying, MOVE on to a place where the dog does not cry about someone who is dying. Eric Solomon highlights Huck’s obscure vision and his desire for escape. The very fluid form of the book magically reveals Huck escaping with a slave ‘‘down the great river in pursuit of freedom and in flight from family tradition. ... This allows Twain to approach the dream of inconclusiveness that often attracts American novelists.’’5 The comic tension in Huck, his reference to ‘I couldn’t make out what it was,’ and the ‘inconclusiveness’ expressed by Solomon, results in a condition of obscurity. What is the good that he seeks’? Why is evil present even in the mournful cries of nature’? The physical landscape is

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPES OF GOOD AND EVIL

165

often hidden in fog and darkness for Huck. And the physical landscape is all that Huck knows. When he escapes from the shed his pap had locked him in, he bloodies the place with the pig he had killed for the purpose. Huck creates an evil world of killing and death, leaving behind some of his hair on the axe and he manages to present a scene of murder, his own death so that he will not be accountable again to his old identity. The first phase of his moral world is an escape from what he senses as entrapment, to the good life of freedom. And so he heads for his free life on Jackson Island: I got out amongst the driftwood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before.6

Twain presents us with an Edenic condition of Huck, rapt in a kind of happiness, a communion with his environment, lying on his back, in the canoe that is floating on a fluid marvelous world of the mighty Mississippi. He reflects on the moonlit sky, and smokes his pipe. He seems absolutely free. He experiences goodness.

PSYCHOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE

But the freedom Huck experiences in his Edenic world on the river is soon in danger as he encounters the many characters who people his picaresque adventures. He meets Jim on Jackson Island, a fellow fugitive who was the slave of Miss Watson, and together they journey toward a freedom that has dimensions beyond the physical landscape. Jim dreams of freedom from slavery, a freedom that transforms his very identity. He dreams of owning himself, and he dreams of buying the freedom of his wife and children. His relationship with Huck becomes a relationship of kin. Jim protects Huck and Huck protects Jim. Huck teaches Jim to read the Bible, and Jim teaches Huck to perceive good and evil in the people they meet. Jim is superstitious, and he knows all about snakes and storms, and spiders and healing potions. There is a primitive good nature in the Jim that Mark Twain creates as a companion to Huck. The revelation/ concealment that Iser claims is ever present (simultaneously) in the text is essentially found in the experience of Huck and Jim. Jay Martin claims that the psychological pattern of parent-son or brothers is common in

166

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

Twain’s works. Jim is actually a father figure to Huck, and when Jim actually sees the dead pap in the flooded house on the river, he shields Huck from the unpleasant sight and assumes a position of moral protector for the youth. Twain famously described the theme of Huckleberry Finn as the conflict between ‘‘A sound heart and a deformed conscience.’’ In Huck’s story, conscience suffers ff defeat. ‘‘Twain was himself engaged in the same struggle to defeat his conscience and reveal his sound heart.7 In the episode where Jim and Huck come to Cairo and Jim is about to be free, Huck’s conscience is graphically in moral conflict with his better judgment. It is against the law to hide a fugitive slave or to assist that slave in gaining freedom. Huck knows that he is breaking the law. Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish too, to hear him because I begun to get it through my head he was most free, and who was to blame for it? Why me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way.8

The irony of the episode is almost comic. The reader (and Twain, of course) see poor Huck, miserable because of a ‘distorted conscience.’ In fact Twain plays with the experience. He has Huck say, ‘‘I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.’’9 We see Huck as he acts out the morality that is Twain’s. Huck, acting against the law protects Jim through the long and arduous journey that both dream about so heartfully. The struggling conscience of Huck trying to hold onto the dream of freedom as the ‘good life,’ is best seen in his experience with Jim on the raft. The raft becomes a house and home for the two escapees. Jim even builds a little house on it, and an area where they can cook fish. The raft is the glorious symbol and tangible reality of an Edinic world. After conflicts like the feuds between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, and even their touching the evil of murder in their adventures on the land, Huck and Jim remove to their haven on the raft. I never felt easy until the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Jim got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk and pork and cabbage and greens – there ain’t nothing so good in the world when it’s cooked right – and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smotherey, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.10

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPES OF GOOD AND EVIL

167

But this good, tranquil life of Huck and Jim on the raft is shattered, for evil invades it in the form of the Duke and the King, two more escapees. Except that the Duke and King, sometimes rather stupid and comic rascals, are forever escaping the law, ever ready to commit some new crime. They incorporate the opposite characteristic of what Twain calls the theme of the novel, the ‘‘distorted conscience and a sound heart.’’ They have no conscience and their hearts are unsound to the point that they betray Huck and Jim and they even sell Jim for bounty. Evil is present on the raft with splendid goodness. The presence of evil incorporated in the Duke and King give a dimension of ‘negation,’ to an unwritten text in the novel. In discussing negation, which one can associate with the physical boundaries which allow slavery in one area, and not the other, negation is also found in the human landscape of thought. Iser remarks that negation makes ‘‘it possible for the fundamental asymmetry between text and reader, to be balanced out’’ for it initiates ‘‘an interaction whereby the hollow form of the text is filled by the mental images of the reader. In this way, text and reader begin to converge and the reader can experience an unfamiliar reality under conditions that are determined by his own disposition.’’11 The ‘unfamiliar reality’ is found in the convergence of the text and reader in the tension of the human landscape. The Edenic condition of life on the raft for Huck and Jim in Twain’s text incorporates a negativity that is both psychological and philosophical. Huck and Jim cannot know the outcome of their quest for freedom. They can only hope, and their hope becomes their life struggle. They contend with their fluid environment narrowly escaping the great possibility of annihilation when a large boat crashes into their raft. Negativity, the unsaid, prevails throughout their changing landscape. Huck and Jim as well as the reader never really know what a new day will bring. Huck and Jim have a contrived agenda. But when the crooks invade the raft and manipulate the actions of Huck and Jim when they adventure into a town, neither Huck or Jim can discern the machinations and intentions of the crooks. Most often the intentions as well as the backgrounds of the two evil men are never found in the text of Twain. Another aspect of negation, an unsaid language, or a distorted conscience, as Twain likes to refer to it, is the lie of Duke and King. Their identity is changing like the ever moving water of the Mississippi. They pretend to be someone different ff perpetually. However, the identity change by Huck is comic. When he becomes Mary Sarah Williams or even George Jackson, and near the end, a mistaken Tom Sawyer, his identity-

168

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

changes fit the picaresque adventures of the youth on the run. But with the Duke and King, the identity changes are crafted for wrongdoing, always in a manner that is mercenary. There is an innocence that Twain maintains in Huck that he does not give to the crooks, Duke and King. In Pokerville the Duke and King work out a great scam in which poor farmers pay two dollars for one year’s subscriptions to a kind of religious paper. The Duke and King leave with the money and move on to Arkansas with Jim and Huck, where they change their names, this time to the Shakespearean actors, David Gerrick and Edmund Kean, and people pay for their great ‘‘Shakespearean Revival.’’ To sell more tickets, the rogues add a line on the poster: LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED. Certainly Twain has his tongue in his cheek as he contrives the schemes of the ornery King and Duke. Their fluidity of identity is like the fluidity of the river landscapes, and like the fluidity present in Wolfgang Iser’s wandering viewpoint. Change is the flow of the reality in this novel. It is hard to see what is before us, as it is hard to grasp the meaning that is ever in motion with the ever changing, many-faceted scoundrels. Their downfall comes when they finally pretend to be the heirs of a fortune of the venerable Southern family of Peter Wilks. In this episode, the moral voice of Twain is heard in Huck’s own reflection on the crooks, for Huck knows about their corruption. Well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them and said all kind of things to W them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them and lean upon them and cry, and told the king all about his brother’s last moments, and the king he took it all over again on his hands to the duke and both of them took on about the dead tanner like they’d lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.12

Ironically, at the beginning of the novel Twain makes the announcement that the novel must not have a moral. He says ‘‘persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished.’’ However, Huck is truly the moral voice in the novel. When Huck reflects about the Duke and King, and says ‘‘it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race,’’ the comedy of the scene has departed. Twain is himself reflecting on the quest for freedom and the difficulty in obtaining that precious commodity of our human endeavor. The novel basically is about freedom, its presence and its absence. Huck and Jim are forever running. When they achieve some sense of bliss on the raft, an ultra fluid bliss, their very fragile happiness is invaded upon by scoundrels, thieves, liars in the form of the

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPES OF GOOD AND EVIL

169

Duke and King, so that finally Huck concludes that ‘it was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.’ Twain won’t let his young hero pine for long, however. RIGHT wins over WRONG. Good conquers evil, The fraudulent behavior of the Duke and King is uncovered. They are banished, and the reader senses that the end has finally come for the two crooks. The rightful heir is awarded the stolen money. However, more adventures await Huck. Jim has been sold by the Duke and King, and freedom and imprisonment take on a graphic and unfortunate dimension of reality. Twain creates a prison where Jim’s foot is shackled by a strong chain to a metal ball, and the man is nailed inside the shed. So now Twain again resorts to the comic, in having Huck and Tom work out Jim’s rescue. There is considerable scholarship regarding the outcome of the novel. Twain said that if anyone found a plot in this novel, he should be shot.13 The whole story of the adventures of Huck Finn can be erased if the truth be known. Jim was free all along. Tom finally tells Huck that Jim has been free all along. Huck has to explain to Aunt Sally. I’ve knowed him all his life and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will.14

Actually Jim is pleased when he is out of chains and the boys give him forty dollars for the inconvenience they had caused him. However, the reader is left with a joke. What was the whole story for? Gerald Graff claims that By using Huck’s voice to narrate the book, by including a range of other colloquial dialects, and by sometimes satirizing the pretensions of genteel speech, Twain sets up an apparent obstacle to the application of ponderous analysis.15

Throughout the book is the presence of the unsaid, the negativity in the text. Twain wanted it that way. This is a fun book. It is the story of a youth in a young country, trying to become someone, to achieve a moral identity. And Huckleberry Finn does become someone. He is a youthful everyman on a journey through swamps and thickets, hiding his identity at times, escaping to a blissful life on a raft, where even there he cannot hide from evil. He knows things and he doesn’t know things, but he has a faithful companion. Twain’s story is not unrealistic. Huck Finn will have to live in a real world, although he has a heart of a wandering Odysseus and carries his

170

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

moral sentiment with himself. In the end, Twain gives Huck his own wisdom to say There ain’t nothin more to write about, and I am rottin glad of it because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it, and ain’t a go’in to no more. But I guess I gotta light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

Marquette University NOTES 1 Mark Twain, T he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1967), p. 64. 2 Wolfgang Iser, T he Act of Reading: A T heory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1976), p. 6. 3 Twain, p. 1. 4 Ibid., p. 3. 5 Eric Solomon, T hirty Years in the Classroom, in One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn, Robert Satteimeyer (ed.) (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), p. 249. 6 Twain, p. 36. 7 Jay Martin, ‘‘The Genie in the Bottle, in One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn, Robert Sattelmeyer (ed.) (Colombia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), p. 70. 8 Twain, p. 102. 9 Ibid., p. 103. 10 Ibid., p. 130. 11 Iser, p. 226. 12 Twain, p. 176. 13 Mark Twain, T he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in T he Anthology of American L iterature II, George McMichael (ed.) (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000). In this unabridged edition of the 1885 publication there is a NOTICE at the beginning of the novel, ‘‘persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot’’ (p. 264). 14 Twain, p. 303. 15 Gerald Graff, ff Mark T wain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Case Study in Critical Contraversy (Boston: Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1995).

ROSARIA TROVATO

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR: ANNA MARIA ORTESE’S ETHICS

What does one do, when one sees ‘‘sufferance, ff abuse’’, ‘‘goodness, unjustness’’? When ‘‘all things – also people, faces, books – [are] emptiness and appearance, [are] images, whose materiality and liberty [are] completely illusory’’? When ‘‘one thing alone live[s] really, almost other from the life of matter: sufferance ff and the suff ffering emotion (among such emotions also love and joy)’’?1 My answer is: asking why. Asking why, as children do, assumes that such appalling events in life (or those of stories) cannot take place gratuitously, capriciously. Asking why, as philosophers have not stopped doing, is encouraged by a call to wonder that was initiated with the very birth of philosophy. Anna Maria Ortese’s answer is: writing. Writing wonderful novels, poems and short stories that tell unexpected, W amazing stories, stories that talk of women who are also wrinkly and green, humble and sad, simple and simply monstrous animals; of requited but unhappy loves taking place in a Naples at the end of the XVIII century, obscured by the despairing song of a goldfinch; of sad Arizonian pumas who died – but may be resurrected – and still love their torturers, and ... so on and so forth.2 This double answer is the reason why I dare attempt to turn Ortese’s inspired poetry, her concrete, natural mysticism, her unsettled metaphors, but also the conceptually changeable panorama of her (indeed unchanging) values,3 into a linear, coherent, quasi-philosophical discourse. I attempt this conversion aware of the difficulties of flattening into the three-dimensional world of coherent concepts a fantastic thinking that was born having a thousand dimensions. A world where Milanese business-men and American professors live side by side with magic lenses, phantasms, premonitions; where children have been living three hundred years; where animals are sometimes also human beings; where young people are momentarily also old; and where some characters double themselves and then converge into one another again. I dare talk of Ortese’s thought, supported by the acknowledged philosophical,4 and, definitely, metaphysical5 quality of her novels, by the belief 171 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 171–190. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

172

ROSARIA TROVATO

that her indignation was not so much political, as philosophical,6 and as if sharing, in a dialogical affiliation, her ethical topics. The backbone of my article will be given by a collection of essays and interviews, Corpo Celeste,7 in which the author herself has spoken conceptually: I will shortly expand on the novels of the so-called trilogy of the beasts-angels,8 suggesting for them interpretations that will try to be coherent with Ortese’s concepts, but that are certainly not going to exhaust the thousands of possible readings made possible by this narration (that has been called symbolic and allegoric), which is tinged with dreams and reveries – with all that this means, in terms of interpretability.

UNREALITY

An experience in Ortese’s life, an autobiographical trace she loved to talk about, lies at the beginning of this view. The entrance of Ortese in literature was made when she was nineteen, through a poem, ‘‘Manuele’’, written after the death, at sea, of her brother, a young sailor. This poem forever marked Anna Maria’s idea of what literature could and should do. Manuele’s death revealed the fleeting nature of life. From that moment on, impermanence becomes the cipher of the relationship with the world. Impermanence means, finally, unreality. ‘Cosı`ı, le cose passavano! E irrevocabilmente, sembrava. Percio tutto quanto accadeva, se la sua parte seconda era il non esistere piu, era cosa illusoria. Questa qualita del tempo, di formare le cose per poi cancellarle, agı in modo profondo sulla mia mente, insieme alle forme, e di continuo mi si proponeva come un enigma. Il tempo si consumava: che ne era delle forme espresse da ogni tempo?’9 (‘So things went by! And irrevocably, it seemed. So, if the second part of all that took place, was no more existing, it was an illusory thing. This quality of time, of forming things and then efface ff them, aff ffected deeply my mind, and, together with forms, came up continuously as an enigma. Time wore out: what had become of the forms expressed by all the times?’)

Thus, unreality is strongly marked by a relationship with time. Time goes by, passes. Death comes up. With the words of an early poem10 (important for us in order to show the solidity of this topic and of this view in Ortese’s work from the thirties up to the nineties), the words ‘‘vita funerea’’ (funereal life), ‘‘ricca inesistenza’’ (rich inexistence) go together with ‘‘continui mutamenti’’ (continuous changing) and with ‘‘disparire’’ (disappear), ‘‘deperire’’ (waste away, decline, deteriorate). Unreality means, in Ortese’s world, mere appearance (that which lingers briefly, since it is not), and, at once, bare existence11 (that which is, but

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

173

unrecognised, undefended, unsupported, like a small child without a parent). This double interpretation, as we will see, will show us the way to redemption. As appearance, unreality is not innocent. It is, rather, exposed to faking, pretension, envious usurpation, grotesque buffoonery. ff In the poem ‘‘Circo equestre’’, the words coming up for such imposture are ‘‘shadow’’, ‘‘mask’’, and ‘‘gypsy caravan’’. In the young Ortese’s variation of the well known topic of the sadness and tragedy in the grotesque of the circus, when the hope of a way out (or better, a way up, as we will see) becomes dubious, a screaming paroxysm will be reached through the painful fury of monkeys and tigers’ dances, and by horses’ flights. A noise, a metaphoric (and sometimes not only metaphoric – an indeed true, but full of metaphoric connotations) noise is omnipresent in such contexts – but we will return to this topic later. As bare existence, the world is deprived of any significance. Ortese talks also of ‘‘vita senza aggettivi’’ (life without adjectives), and ‘‘fisicita assoluta’’12 (absolute physicality). Meaninglessness reveals a lack, a need: of respect, attention, reception, expression, understanding, love. In other words, there is a sort of substrate, waiting to be acknowledged, accepted, understood, in order to be able to go on being:13 in Ortese’s cosmology such matter is nature. NATURE

Nature, ‘‘la natura della Terra’’ (the nature of the Earth), means to Ortese ‘‘la flora, la fauna, entro l’atmosfera, le acque’’ (flora, fauna, within the atmosphere, waters) and, of course, jasmines, roses, the azure violet,14 strawberries, mandarins;15 and beasts: ‘‘la palummella’’ (the dove) contrasting with the goldfinch of the eponymous novel, ‘‘la scimmia di Mindanao’’ (Mindanao’s monkey), ‘‘l’umile tartarughina del Levante’’ (the humble small turtle of the east), to whom Corpo Celeste is dedicated, the horse appearing in In sonno e in veglia, in an impressing, violent and pitiful scene. But nature are also the sea, as we saw, and the Earth, which Ortese will call, revelingly, a ‘‘celest body’’ (this is the translation of the title just mentioned) – but let us not run forward. Nature is even the human being itself, who is a part of nature and has a nature, (‘‘queste due nature: quella del mondo e quella della umana famiglia’’, ‘‘these two natures: that of the world and that of the human family’’) even if he would like to forget it, at the advantage of a hierarchy that ought to crown his primogeniture and superiority.16

174

ROSARIA TROVATO

More about nature, at this moment of our analysis, we cannot say: with an ostensive gesture we can point out referents deprived of the complex symbolic richness that accompanies them – that accompanies them, at least, in literature, and, indeed, always, in Ortese’s literature. In the same way as we single out meaningless plants, animals, planets, human beings, so can we single out meaningless words: the very names by which we indicate what surrounds us, they too may lie down as uncommunicating entities, in wait of definition. Language appears to be able to lack significance, too. I can straightforwardly anticipate that the overall tendency of this theory of knowledge is indeed ethical, because nature is endangered. Alone, left as it is, it is exposed, as if naked. And the same we can say of language, as we have seen. The danger for nature is to be misacted, to the point of being ignored as if not existent at all; of being misinterpreted, as if in need of proving ‘‘usefulness’’; of being undervalued, as if having to be finalised to something, and having no autonomous dignity; of being inferior, and to be there only to provide the means for the triumph of men at its expenses. The danger we are dealing with is indeed an inevitable destiny: ‘‘la vita non e` chiara’’ (life is not clear), it includes large ‘‘stralci di assurdo’’ (fragments of absurd).17 ‘‘Tutto il mondo [era] come una stranezza e una meraviglia quasi non sopportabili, ove non si desse loro un’espressione, una voce ordinata.’’18 (‘‘The whole world [was] an almost unbearable strangeness, a wonder, if one did not give them an expression, an ordered voice.’’). But this is, in conclusion, the ethical problem of a theory of knowledge, we start to think. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ‘‘NATURAL’’

In no more than one of her essays,19 (one in which Ortese gives probably the best key to understand a painfully criticised book, Il mare non bagna N Napoli ), Ortese talks about ‘‘la filosofia del naturale’’ (the philosophy of the natural), ‘‘il culto della natura’’ (the cult of nature). They are accompanied by complacency and happiness; in the history of Italian literature, they go along with slowness in expressing thoughts.20 The concept of a philosophy of the natural points to a risk, that we could rank first logically, if not chronologically in the development of Ortese’s thought: it is a risk saturating nature with the presumption of knowing it already, without the need to listen to it. Therefore, the ‘‘natural’’ is incarnated at its best in the metaphor of noise, a superimposing,

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

175

deafening, blunting noise. Even a background noise, in as much as it shares the inability to signify the unreal.21 Then, nature becomes obvious, a self-sufficient fact that is not in need of deciphering. A nature that suffices to itself, that is ‘‘as it is’’. The ‘‘natural’’ becomes thus a model for life. Man starts to live as a domestic animal, deeming himself to an assured decadence. Because, in fact, such nature becomes a nature without humanity. The ‘‘philosophy of the natural’’ is full of moral implications. It assumes that nature displays in no way any charity and any ‘‘spirito di soccorso’’ (inclination to assistance). And, as it pretends that beasts do, it assumes ‘‘che la vita umana sia sempre e solo trionfo sull’altro’’22 (‘‘that human life is always, only a triumph on the other’’). The natural implies instrumentally using nature: ‘‘L’uso della natura! L’uso cieco e utilitario della natura del mondo e della famiglia umana era per me, rappresentava per me, la conclusione prematura, l’arresto della crescita’’23 (‘‘The use of nature! The blind and utilitarian use of nature of the world and of the human family was to me, represented to me, the premature conclusion, the standstill of growth’’). The natural exploits, it does not recognise, it is blind in front of nature.24 But, as Ortese tells us, with a daring interpretive move, this is the nature (‘‘nel suo aspetto usuale’’, in its usual appearance) that the great Leopardi saw as deceitful (‘‘inganno’’).25 Precisely this deceit is the reason why there is no more reality, no reality for nature and no reality for men. Where there is only appearance, and nothing else, unreality is what remains. The ‘‘natural’’, insists Ortese, is an inexistent category: when the perception, the interpretation, the feeling of reality rest on such inexistence, then degradation (which one tries to disguise as desecration) becomes a destiny.26 The ‘‘natural’’ is properly ‘‘una convenzione, un falso, una retorica di comodo, impugnato come religione o filosofia, [che] si trascina dietro, nel loro vivere spicciolo, alla giornata, senza supporto di idee, intere generazioni’’27 (‘‘a convention, a fake, a convenient rhetoric, grasped as a religion or as a philosophy. It carries along with itself entire generations, in their living from hand to mouth, from day to day, without the support of ideas’’). One interesting example of the philosophy of nature is in the consideration Ortese has enjoyed as a woman writer. ‘‘Uno scrittore-donna, una bestia che parla, dunque. E tale – quando a mio modo ho usato la parola ‘‘anima’’, e giudizio della mente – sono stata dappertutto. Perche la donna, nei paesi antichi, o morti, deve restare la donna: cosa a cui non credo.’’

176

ROSARIA TROVATO

(‘‘A woman-writer, a talking beast, then. And such – when I have used in my own way the words ‘‘soul’’, ‘‘mind judgement’’ – I have been everywhere. Because the woman, in old or dead countries, must remain the woman: something I do not believe’’). She must remain the ‘‘woman’’: in other words, a well known category, seemingly real, solid and existent: but, and here is its deception, never thought out, deprived of significance. There is nothing else to understand, nothing to explain, nothing to assist. It is as it is, period. But the unreality produced by the philosophy of the natural is not a despaired finale. The philosophy of the natural finds a counterpart in something real. REALITY

Let us read again the quotation that opened my essay: ‘‘one thing alone live[s] really, almost other from the life of matter: sufferance ff and the suffering ff emotion (among such emotions also love and joy).’’ 28 And now let us go back to the nineteen year old Anna Maria, writing the poem ‘‘Manuele’’, and to how she saw her writing. She explains: It was ‘la mia prima prova scritta: rendere con la parola scritta, e un sentimento calmo – rendere in modo estatico – qualcosa di atroce e soprattutto insondabile. Questo fenomeno apocalittico (ma anche incantatore) del vivere, essendo tanto intenso e sfuggente a qualsiasi prova o analisi di parte – essendo l’insondabile o inafferrabile ff stesso – non si puo rendere che in uno stato d’animo contrario, che indichero come: l’ammirazione o contemplazione della sua immensita e (per noi) ferocia. [...] in questa calma e in questo sorriso soltanto potra imprigionare l’orrore che ha subito. E’ il caso dello specchio. Solo una superficie gelida ed elegante – assolutamente immobile – potra riprendere il moto scompigliato di un albero scosso dal vento, o il levarsi fresco di belva di un’onda verde del mare.’29 (‘It was my first written proof: to express with the written word, and with a calm feeling – to express in an ecstatic way – something dreadful and, most important, unfathomable. This apocalyptical (but also enchanting) phenomenon of life is so intense and elusive for every proof or partial analysis – is the unfathomable and the ungraspable itself –, cannot be expressed but in a contrary mood, that I will indicate as: admiration or contemplation of its immensity and (for us) fierceness. [...] only in such calmness and in such smile it will be able to catch the horror it has undergone. It is the case of the mirror. Only a gelid and elegant surface – absolutely still – will be able to retell the ruffled movement of a tree in the wind, or the fresh rising of a green sea wave.’)

In the feeling of the apocalyptic, of the indecipherable horror and fierceness of life, Ortese finds reality. But such reality is petrifying, it blocks with its painfulness. Painful emotions, in all of their horror, because of their horror, are the very quintessence of reality, that which remains,

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

177

when all the rest fades. The excess of (fake) interpretation that the natural presented proves outrageously insufficient to satisfy the anxiety generated by the horror of violent emotions, by the dreadful, the unfathomable. The natural is not able to express and solve in understanding this knot that tightens and finds no loosening. That binds into aching, hostility, blindness with no way out. On the one hand the natural is solidified, and, on the other hand, reality and its pain cannot flow any longer, cannot find their solution. The natural is opposed to culture, to the ‘‘second’’ nature; strong emotions are the opposite of reason; the shock is hot, and would need cold reflection. Knots burn, but tend to behave as facts, as things: they should become mute and insignificant, voiceless. In the dimension of the natural they do not denote anything, they do not talk, they do not refer, and they have no relationship to symbols. This is the reason why writing will become so dear to Ortese.

THE SKY

More real, more true than the bare existent, which is impermanent and insignificant, is the idea. Thought is second nature. Ortese describes a visit to a museum: ‘Vidi un Raffaello ff di piccole proporzioni. Tutte le altre cose che vidi le ho dimenticate, proprio perche quel RaV aVaello mi colpı. Rappresentava un cielo. E quel cielo – in qualche modo che devo ritenere straordinario – capovolgeva ogni idea che avevo sulla realta, era piu vero, piu reale di ogni cielo del mondo reale. Sulla sua consistenza non potevano esserci dubbi. E la sua straordinarieta era in questo: che sostituiva dunque la prima creazione con una seconda, che si poneva pero come la prima, perche preesistente a questa, essendo l’idea di questa. Diceva – o era come se dicesse – al cielo naturale: %T u vai e vieni. Non resti. Ed ecco, io – Cielo di RaV aVaello – resto, perche non sono il cielo naturale, sono l’idea di qualsiasi cielo. Cosı`, resto.&’30 (‘I saw a tiny Raffaello. ff All the rest that I saw, I forgot, precisely because that Raffaello ff stroke me. It represented a sky. And that sky – in some way that I must consider extraordinary – turned upside down every idea that I had on reality: it was truer, more real, than every sky of the real world. Its consistence did not live room for doubts. Its extraordinariness laid in this: it substituted the first creation with a second one, which posited itself, however, as the first, because it pre-existed it, being its idea. It was saying – or it was as if saying – to the natural sky: ‘You come and go. You don’t stay. And here I am, – RaV aVaello’s sky – I stay, because I am not the natural sky, I am the idea of every sky. So, I stay’).

It is not by chance that the painting in question is the picture of a sky: the sky, the hyperouraneous sky, the place where Plato placed ideas. It

178

ROSARIA TROVATO

is impossible not to talk of Platonism when reading this key passage. And to attest to this, we will find the second series of concepts of the poem quoted before: side by side with descending and perishing, there is a possibility of redemption: ‘‘procedere’’ (to proceed) ‘‘salire’’ (to climb), ‘‘divenire’’ (to become), and then ‘‘scale’’ (ladders), ‘‘rampe’’ (flights):31 the dimension is vertical. But talking of Platonism, by way of Ortese, is as inevitable as insufficient. In fact the second, upsetting discovery of Anna Maria will be that ‘‘tutto il mondo era quel sovramondo. Anche la Terra e il paese dove abitavo; e la collocazione, o vera patria di tutti, era quel sovramondo!’’32 (‘‘The whole world was that super-world. The Earth too, and the village where I lived; and the collocation, or the true country of everyone, was that super-world!’’). Finally, the sky, inhabited by stars and angels, as Ortese discovers with palpitating surprise, is inhabited by the Earth itself, the Earth, this ‘‘corpo celeste’’, this ‘‘celestial body’’. The sky is itself a part of nature. The Earth with its beasts (that little by little, take the place of the angels populating the first short stories of the author); the Earth with the perennial movement of its sea; the Earth, with its ‘‘patria concreta’’ (material motherland), its ‘‘paese vero’’ (true country), the ‘‘modest’’ home it offers, ff consistent with Ortese’s desire33 which is not a paradise, but possibly, in case, rather a material garden, as in the Islamic tradition, or, better still, a city or a town, as the many that Ortese visited, lived in, and made the subject of so many of her novels, in her persistent move through Italy, always tormented by need. This is the reason why Ortese’s view never becomes a form of idealism. ‘‘Tutto e` corpo’’ (‘‘all is body’’), she insists. And suffering, ff indeed, depends on us having a body. How could animals become the object of ethics, if not for this reason? We can easily understand Ortese when she says that the relationship with the sky is the feeling for the external, with something that was before, with essential ingredients of life, of freedom, with what Ortese calls breath.34 More difficult to understand is how the external can coincide with the world in which we are already; that the sky is the earth, through the equation earth=celestial body=Earth. What turns the same unsatisfying unreality surrounding us into reality? Or, in other words, what makes the difference ff between the ‘‘natural’’ sky and Raff ffaello’s? The answer stands out easily: Raffaello’s ff sky passed through human thought (more: not only through thought, but also through art – but let us not run forward).

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

179

REASON

Thought has the gift to turn unreality into reality. ‘Cosı, la natura dei pensieri, unicamente la natura interiore dei sentimenti [...] si pone come reale’35 (‘Thus, the nature of thoughts, only the inner nature of feelings [...] is posed as real’).

The nature of thoughts is the only real, and, vice versa, to become real, everything must be thought out: ‘Per diventare realta – cosa umana – natura e societa dono essere ripensate. Anche l’uomo dev’essere ripensato, altrimenti si perde nella natura, ritorna irreale.’36 (‘To become reality – human thing – nature and society ought to be rethought. The human being too, needs to be rethought, otherwise she gets lost in nature, and becomes unreal’).

So, unreal is the unknown. And reason not only knows, but understands. Like a friend telling ‘‘I understand you’’, which means ‘‘I am going to help you’’. Thought goes (mostly) together with reason. As we already expect, reason is an imperative especially when we are faced with sufferance: ff ‘La ragione dovrebbe illuminare continuamente tutto, dovrebbe illuminare il disordine e il dolore. C’e molto dolore, nel mondo, ce n’e piu che in tutti i tempi, perche l’irreale – il nonconosciuto – e assai piu profondo’ (‘Reason should continuously illuminate everything, it should illuminate disorder and sufferance. ff There is a lot of suff fferance, in the world, because the unreal – the unkonwn – is much deeper’).37

Reason is the humanity in nature: it humanises nature, and it is the nature of human beings, their task in the universe. The human being becomes naturalised when she sleeps, when she does not use her reason: he becomes ‘‘l’uomo-pietra’’ (the stone-man), ‘‘l’uomonatura’’ (the nature-man). So to say, she fails in taking her place and her responsibility in the universe. Reason is awakeness, dream is lack of reason. Sleeping is not a sin: nature sleeps. ‘‘La natura – animali, alberi – sono l’uomo senza la difesa dell’intelligenza razionale, sono l’uomo senza tempo, l’uomo che sogna’’.38 (‘‘Nature – animals, trees – are the human being without the defence of rational intelligence, are man without time, the man that dreams’’). Three concepts appear in this quotation. In the first place, there is continuity between man and nature, as much as there is between an iguana and a woman, a puma and a beloved friend:

180

ROSARIA TROVATO

‘T utto e` uomo. Io sono dalla parte di quanti credono nell’assoluta santita di un albero e di una bestia, nel diritto dell’albero, della bestia, di vivere serenamente, rispettati, tutto il loro tempo. Sono dalla parte della voce increata che si libera in ogni essere – al di la di tutte le barriere – e sono per il rispetto e l’amore che si deve loro’ (‘Everything ‘ is human. I am among those who believe in the absolute sanctity of a tree and of a beast, in the right of the tree, of the beast, to live serenely, to be respected all along their time. I side with the uncreated voice that is freed in every being – beyond all barriers – and I am for the respect and the love that is due to them’).39

But from the quote above we learn also that rationality, intelligence are forms of defence: that, as they appear in nature, they should be rendered available for the entire nature. In fact, they are a strength that should be used to conceal and assist, but that can be turned to one’s advantage at the expenses of others. Finally, the quotation tells us also that dreams, which are deeply human, belong to nature too: nature perceives, feels, enjoys, and, more important than ever, suffers. ff Reason permits us to see this continuity, even if dreaming is not the only task of man: ‘‘il sognare di una cosa che e` gia sogno, e` ribadire un errore’’40 (to dream about something that is already a dream is to reaffirm an error). This view is entirely marked by an ethical call: ‘‘chi sottomette con durezza, o mercifica, o tormenta comunque la Natura, nei suoi figli che dormono, o la guarda senza pieta o fraternita, e` ancora e sempre il temile uomo-nature, uomo pietra, l’uomo, appunto, che dorme’’.41 (‘‘Those who submit with harshness, or traffic with, or torment nature, in its sleeping sons, or looks at her without pity or fraternity, he is still, always, the formidable nature-man, stone-man, the man, exactly, who sleeps’’). Through reason we get to know that nature is ‘spesso, matrice di umano e specchio della stessa ragione. Vediamo straordinarie illuminazioni nella natura, solidarieta da creatura a creatura, e consapevolezza, in ogni creatura, appena interrogata, quasi a livello di sogno’42 (‘nature is often, cast of human and mirror of reason itself. We see extraordinary illuminations in nature, solidarity from creature to creature, and awareness, in every creature, just questioned, as at the level of a dream’).

In other words, reason also is not as totally bound to the human realm as it might seem: nature has some. Reason casts charitably the gift of significance upon nature, but nature is not a stranger to reason. But, reason, illumination, understanding: they are rare, unlikely, and not at all easy (as they purport to be in the ‘‘natural’’). Often Ortese lets us understand that knowledge is only a glimpse, and it is impossible to go to the very end. She talks willingly of a nature that is ‘‘inconoscibile nella sua essenza’’43 (‘‘unknowable in its essence’’), of the pain of fruits’

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

181

and flowers’ unknowable being (‘‘dolore del loro inconoscibile essere’’).44 Reason sees permanence, immortality. ‘‘Ma non e dell’uomo la ragione; gli passa accanto, lo sfiora’’45 (‘‘But reason does not belong to man; she passes by next to him, she touches him on’’). Unreality is massive: and the real becomes real probably more because it insistently questions, impresses, strikes, asking for being understood, than because it is knowable and known. The task of reason, the task of illuminating, is more bound to the imperative of recognising that there is something that was not grasped, and that expects, deserves attention, than to an accomplished, fulfilled, successful knowledge. And knowledge, we can now say, is not really the point. Rather thinking, rethinking, understanding, and telling. A second differentiation ff between the ‘‘natural’’ and what is ‘‘thought out’’ becomes visible: the thought-out goes along with the awareness that knowing (understanding) is not as smooth as it seemed. And, since ‘‘all is human’’, the task of classification for practical ends is not the most obvious one: we do not necessarily know human beings – we listen to them, we recognise them, we pay attention to them, we love them. What we do know, is that they are not so easily classifiable, not destined to be used, not candidates for violence. An important part of this ethics consists in demanding the recognition that something ‘‘was there before’’ (‘‘qualcosa che era prima – una legge, per esempio, un’inclinazione alla pieta’’,46 ‘‘something that was before – a law, for instance, an inclination to piety’’). Unreality does not mean we are called to create: because matter had already a form, before us, even if not a name. The point is trying to listen to it. Again: ‘‘la vita [...] e prima dell’uomo, prima ancora della cultura, e chiede di continuare ad essere, e essere amata, come l’uomo chiede di continuare a essere, e a essere accettato, anche se non immediatamente capito e soprattutto non utile’’47 (‘‘life [...] is before man, before culture, and asks to go on being, to be loved, as man asks to go on being, to be accepted, even if not immediately understood and, most important, not useful’’). In other words, understanding is memory: as memory, it is mostly preservation. There is no connection between understanding and practice, apart from the connection consisting in the call for preservation, for assistance. No big plans, no finalities:48 all of this falls outside of ethics. Ortese’s entire utopia rests in a project of correct understanding. This means also a quest for identity – identity of humans, of countries (‘‘patrie’’, motherlands, like earth), of nature, an identity that, as we know, is ‘‘memoria, ricostruzione, riconoscimento’’ (‘‘memory, reconstruction,

182

ROSARIA TROVATO

recongition’’). Without identity, the Earth becomes a land to occupy. ‘‘Ritrovare l’identita, dunque – o cercarla: subito l’occupazione si fa impossibile’’ (‘‘finding back the identity, then – or looking for it: soon the occupation becomes impossible’’).49 LANGUAGE

As we have seen, language can be naturalised and made insignificant by the ‘‘natural’’. The symbolic dimension is not to be created or planned. Ortese’s ethics is never actively practical, and is realised through a correct contemplation. So, in the same way as turtles and violets are already there, and need human thought to be elevated to its understanding,50 symbols are also there, but they risk becoming mute if none are attentive to them. There is a ‘crescente sottrazione [...] di conoscenza del linguaggio [...] che procede, secondo me, da una perdita piu grave e terribile di sentimento del vivere. Questo sentimento era tutt’uno dai tempi della Bibbia e piu in qua con la cognizione del vivere terreno. Si sapeva cos’era una mela, un cavallo, il declinare o il sorgere del sole. Oggi, di cio, non si sa piu nulla. Come pretendere che la lingua, simbolo sempre diverso e sempre uguale di questo sublime mondo terrestre, possa piu svegliare quelle immagini? Come dell’amore, per esempio!’51 (‘growing deprivation in the knowledge of language, proceeding, according to me, from a more serious and awful loss of the feeling of life. Such feeling, at the time of the Bible and further was one thing with the cognisance of the earthly living. One knew what an apple, a horse, the sunset and the sunrise were. How can one pretend that the language, everchanging and ever-lasting symbol of this sublime earthly world, may awake those images any more? Images of love, for instance!’).

The result is the passage from a culture of convention and memory to the culture of physicality that we know well: ‘‘La parola viene rimandata al grido. Chiunque dica o scriva riferendosi a qualcosa che era prima [...] non e` udito’’52 (‘‘The word is send back to screaming. Whoever says or writes making reference to something that was before [...] is not heard’’). Symbols do not talk any more. ‘‘Se c’e bisogno di aiuto, l’aiuto e impossibile: cio perche i segnali sono cambiati. Quali sono?’’53 (‘‘If one needs help, help is impossible: because symbols have changed. What are they?’’). But language is not there only to say ‘‘help’’, or to say it in one word. At least, not for a writer. What does Ortese mean, then? She advocates that the nightingale may return to speak in Keat’s voice, that the daffodil ff may find once again in Wordsworth her illumination, that the tree may

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

183

be Emily Dickinson’s, and the tiger may reveal herself forever through the pages of Blake. To the ‘‘isolated and perennial mind’’ of poets nature does send glimpses of her unknowability and of her being forever, that is, of her being real. The poets signify the richness, the dignity, the beauty: ‘‘ci raccontano il mondo come emozione e ragione di un Ignoto al quale tutti apparteniamo’’54 (‘‘They tell us the world as the emotion and the reason of an Unknown to which we all belong’’). They put an end to the oppression of the secret of so much beauty. (Not by chance, all these examples are taken from the beloved Anglosaxon and American literatures.) Language returns to its history, to the sedimentation that has turned words into symbols. As we said, Ortese’s theory of knowledge is a sieve: a sieve necessary for us to recognise ‘‘what was before’’. And language, exactly as nature itself, shouldn’t be remade: the imposition of a language would be equal to the ploughing of the human soil, starting a work of colonisation and rule. One should rather keep the ‘‘memoria di lingua e linguaggio del passato; e degli affetti, ff i pensieri, i dolori delle passate generazioni, [che] altro non sono, lo sappiamo, che identita di nazione’’55 (‘‘memory of language of the past; of the affects, ff thoughts, sufferance ff of past generations, [which], as we know, are nothing but the identity of a nation’’). And back once again to the writing of ‘‘Manuele’’, the first poem, the beginning of literature. Literature comes on burning emotions as a defence, as sublimation: as a mirror, as we have seen. And, at this point of the essay, let us start to let talk about the symbol that is so precious to Ortese: ‘‘mirror’’ is the dry, sharp, unique and unmoving metaphor for what Ortese means here. We can search the literary forms that talk in this symbol: Perseus, Medusa – a sight that allows watching the horror and makes it bearable; but also, inevitably, Narcissus – a sight that returns a loveable view on oneself, literature as proof of the author’s aesthetic value; and, in the end, Dorian Gray’s picture is somehow a mirror too: inevitably, a mirror to ask about one’s identity and one’s justification in life: and life is, as Ortese did not get tired of saying, an exam.56

VIOLENCE

It is important to be clear about what is at stake in this reading of Ortese’s thought, which started as a merely cognitive affair. ff In this regard, Ortese writes much more effectively ff than I could ever do:

184

ROSARIA TROVATO

‘La violenza – l’aggressione che si presenta sempre inattesa, di un’ombra a un’altra ombra – e` proprio l’orrore annidato nel vivere universale. Anche la natura aggredisce: ma nell’uomo la violenza, vista naturalmente al rallentatore e senza suoni che distraggano, ha qualcosa che gela il sangue. Si ha proprio la sensazione di una cosa estranea al mondo – al mondo della luce – che viene da fuori, e viene come uno spettro. Sı, sento la violenza come uno spettro. E so che essa e cosı` conscia della sua natura impossibile e dolorosa, da cercare il rumore, e magari le musiche per attuarsi. Basti pensare come si va alla guerra, come si effettuano ff massacri. E come si gridano cose eccelse quando si spiega la propria forza su esseri inermi. E come si innalzano le proprie ragioni, chiamandole ragione, quando si distrugge un altro, e spesso sono folle d’altri. A questo riguardo, mai sono cominciati i Buchenwald, e mai sono finiti. I campi di morte, genuina creazione umana, ignota alle stesse fiere, sono eterni. E sempre si valgono del rumore, della musica, anche la piu alta, per legittimare il gioco del dolore. Ecco, io odio la legalita dei distruttori e l’arte che intende decantare lo spirito di distruzione (questo e la violenza). E so che se un attimo solo la musica e la copertura dell’arte cessassero intorno a qualsiasi uccisore; e costui o costoro potessero vedersi [...] senza rumore affatto, ff senza suoni, o musiche e parole importanti, e senza pubblici sostenitori, del tutto in solitudine ... subito l’uomo afferrerebbe ff tutto l’orrore di essere quello, di essere malattia o follia, e vorrebbe fuggire. Non dalla giustizia, ma da se stesso. Ma nessuno si vede mai. Nessuno – macellai, eroi e ragazzi per bene che distruggono un loro simile o un cane – ha il vantaggio di un impassibile specchio.’57 ‘Violence – the aggression that comes always unexpected, the aggression of a shadow on another shadow – is really the horror lurking in every life. Also nature aggresses: but human violence, seen in slow-motion and without distracting sounds, has something that runs your blood cold. You really have the sensation of something stranger to the world – to the world of life – that comes ffrom outside, and comes as a ghost. And I know violence is so conscious of its impossible and painful nature, that it seeks noise, and best than all music, to enact itself. Suffice to think the way one goes to war, the way one massacres. And the way one shouts lofty things when one displays one’s force on defenceless beings. And the way one raises one’s reasons, calling them the reason, while destroying another – who are often crowds of others. From this point of view, Buchenwalds never started and never ended. Death camps, a genuine human creation, unknown to wild beasts, are eternal. And always turn to noise, and music, the loudest one, to legitimate the game of pain. Here it is: I hate the legality of destructors and the art that extols the spirit of destruction (this is violence). And I know that, if just for a moment, music and the cover of art stopped around any killer, and he or they could see themselves [...] without any noise, without any sound at all, no music, no important words, no public supporters, in perfect solitude – then man would grasp all the horror of being that, of being decease or madness, and would like to run away. Not from justice, but from himself. But nobody sees ever oneself. Nobody – no butchers, no heroes, and no well-bread boys who kill a fellow human being or a dog – has ever the advantage of such an impassive mirror.’

‘‘WHY?’’

As emotions arise, awe-inspiring, with the painful experience of one’s own life, so they come when one is confronted with the sight of goodness, and of evil, of injustice, of use and abuse. These emotions fall on us as puzzles;

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

185

they make us restless, they weigh on us, astonishing, confusing, in need of elaboration. This explains the comprehensive engagement of a literature (Ortese’s literature) that perceives the endangered fate of nature as the exposed fate of a beloved younger brother. Literature tries to understand – and mirrors – and invites the reader to ask herself ‘‘why?’’ Why does Ilario think that the ‘‘humble, thoughtful’’,58 small iguana Estrellita is a fallen creature, obscure, evil? Why is Aleardo-Daddo upset in discovering that she collects stones as if they were coins, and why is Aleardo wrong in his project of buying her freedom? Why is God called to a fault (it appears only to present everyone with his cumbersome corpse and the need to find an assassin), and turns into a white butterfly? Why does the puma Alonso entrust himself to the ‘‘violence and vulgarity’’59 of his privileged young torturer, with an act that reminds one, tragically, of the immolation of a humble god? Why does the professor Jim Opfering take on himself the responsibility for the pain suffered ff by Alonso?60 Why does Elmina refuse the love of the man she loves, turning down her obedience to the imperative of being happy? Why does she listen to the funereal voice of a goldfinch reminding oppressively of suffering, ff of the ‘‘dolore nel cuore di ciascuno ... Un pianto che non si acquieta cosı presto, anzi mai, credetemi’’ (‘‘pain in the heart of everyone, ... a cry that does not rest so easily – nay, that does not rest ever, believe me’’)?61 We could begin an answer saying that the very same cry of the goldfinch did not let Ortese rest. The call for help of iguanas and turtles, of pumas and dogs creates suffering, ff of the same petrifying nature that we have learned to recognise when talking of the loss of affects. ff Goodness, in turn, has suffering ff – this is so deeply unjust! – which is real and inexplicable, burning. ‘‘Noi sappiamo benissimo come il bene sia piu imperscrutabile del male, la innocenza quasi impossibile. Il male si puo quasi sempre capire. Il bene no: non ci appartiene’’62 (‘‘We know very well how goodness is more inscrutable than evil; innocence almost impossible. One can always understand evil. Not so goodness: it does not belong to us’’). It is too easy to ask who Elmina’s (chosen) suffering, ff and her lovers’ (inflicted) suffering, ff really help, since they are not exchanged for the happiness of someone else, but are rather given in pawn till the redemption of all suffering ff in the world – in other words, till the end of time. Yes, in the end, they simply add to the overall unhappiness of the world. They are, in other words, the cruel, the due, and the only honest answer laying

186

ROSARIA TROVATO

in one’s control, to the sad, questioning look coming up from those who suffer ff and see us off ffensively rejoicing. Then charity becomes justice in the imperative of being charitable with everyone, none excluded. An ethical world of mere charity and of inexhaustible attention towards suffering ff becomes the only possibility for justice itself to exist, in front of those who suffer. ff Justice demands universality: either all, any, ‘‘unto the last’’, as Ruskin said – or not me, adds Ortese’s Elmina, not me among the privileged. This is the consequence of taking suffering ff seriously: you do not solve it helping some; you should be able to reach every single suffering ff creature. Ortese’s views start from being ethical and remain only and fully ethical, because her solution is deemed to be individual. And, in fact, one does not jump honestly from a theory of knowledge to the engagement to answer the call for help, through universal (transcendental, for instance) escapes, without including in the duties of such universality not only an ethical law calling every subject (as in a Gesinnungsethik), but also an ethical concern with reaching every suffering ff addressee (as in a Verantwortungsethik V ). For this very reason, Ortese’s moral world is not a world in which there is only charity (and no justice): it is, rather, a world where justice (and its claim to universality) is taken seriously to the end. This is a conclusion that a good number of philosophers (namely, critical theorists) have reached, addressing the problem posited by the unfulfilled and unfulfillable task of the Enlightenment – a task that, as long as it is only partial, turns into an opportunist betrayal of its own universalism.63 The best candidates to be excluded from such universality are, to Ortese, the ‘‘figli piu deboli, forse piu buoni’’64 (‘‘the weakest sons, maybe the mildest’’); ‘‘i suoi figli piu modesti e discreti’’65 (‘‘the most unassuming, the most considerate daughters’’); ‘‘la Terra, e tutti i suoi verdi cuori’’66 (‘‘the Earth, and her green hearts’’). She declares: ‘‘Amo cio che e piccolo, amo le cose e creature infinitamente piccole, mute, che ci guardano con coraggio’’67 (‘‘I love what is small; I love infinitely small things and creatures, who look at us with courage’’). Her protagonists are old, stranger ones, those who are seen as obstacles. The Beast – ‘‘la Santa Bestia, dovrei dire, perche ultima immagine della legge creatrice’’68 (‘‘the Saint Beast, I should say, because she is the last image of the creating law’’). But sometimes she says also ‘‘Cesare, come un passero’’69 (‘‘Caesar, as well as a sparrow’’). She talks of the ‘‘Tristezza della Gioia e Compassione per gli Ultimi’’ (‘‘Sadness of Joy and Compassion for the Last’’).

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

187

And with this sequel of definitions, names, and identities, Ortese gives us the expression of what nature (no more a bare existence) becomes when it meets its recovered symbols, its ancestral language, in the thought and in the art of Anna Maria Ortese. It has been said (by one of the most credited Italian critics) that Ortese’s views are nihilistic.70 This interpretation definitely wrongs Ortese: it reads her as if her views were without a way out; in other words, as if her claims were not understandable (an offence ff that Ortese’s literature, dedicatedly committed to understanding, did not deserve). Ortese’s protest against modernity, her dissatisfaction with the utilitarian view of life, her criticism for the power to monetarize everything (lives!) may well be a demanding program, but it is not an absurd, and even less a nihilistic program. On the contrary, it cannot be said that Ortese does not come to terms with all that an engagement so seriously means: she should be credited for the perfect honesty with which she shows the reader, up to its extreme consequences, all the puzzling, unacceptable, horrifying consequences that the cruel song of the goldfinch inflicts on Elmina, on her truthful lover, but also on the sacrificial puma Alonso and on his far (in time and space) friend Jim, to the sensitive Daddo. Finally, when Ortese looked in the mirror of literature, at the end of her life, in search of her identity, finding it full of masterpieces that had opened so much understanding, we can doubtlessly conclude that she did recognise a beautiful image. But what could we say of the unhappy Elmina: what if she saw in her magic lens? In a novel where all other characters see her, question about her, try to understand her, interpret her, wonder what might be her truth, we never hear her thinking or explaining, or revealing. What would be her own view of herself, when reflected in (and reflecting on) the mirror of her story? What about Alonso, who could not do anything else than die, and cover Jim with the pain and fault of his suffering? ff What about Daddo who cannot rescue the iguana, and is not rescued by anyone – and certainly not by his dreaming, clumsy, unable Estrellita? I believe Ortese posited for us this problem, a true ethical problem, which is still burning, in spite of being reflected in the mirror of literature. Faithful to her poetics of reality and unreality, she passed on to us unexplained mysteries. But we are limited and wrong if we think that understanding is only made of answers: often, it is also made of ‘‘why?’’ ` degli Studi di Milano Bicocca U Universita Facolta di Sociologia F

188

ROSARIA TROVATO NOTES

1 Anna Maria Ortese, Corpo Celeste (Milan: Adelphi, 1997), p. 72. From now on, this book will be indicated as CC. 2 For the titles of the three novels whose plots are briefly given here, see, footnote 8. 3 According to a critic (Monica Farnetti, Anna Maria Ortese (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1998), pp. 79–89), Ortese’s writing compares to the sea, a central presence in her pages and in her life (she was born in Rome; but lived in Libya as a child; passionately loved Naples – which frames what has been called Ortese’s toledian phase – a love ended with an unsettling quarrel; found finally a settlement in Rapallo, when she was getting on in years). As the sea moves continuously, but its movement is in some way eternal, and its changing is unchanging, so one could say that the passage of certain values from one concept to another, from one metaphor to another does not prevent seeing returning attitudes in Ortese’s work. 4 See Pietro Citati, ‘‘La principessa dell’isola’’, in the Adelphi edition of L ’Iguana I , 1986, p. 199–200. 5 See Dario Bellezza, the lucid ‘‘Fra incanto e furore’’, in the Rizzoli edition of the same novel, 1978, p. vi. 6 An idea shared by A. Giuliani, ‘‘Anna Maria Ortese scrittrice in esilio’’, in L a Repubblica, 11/3/1998. 7 For reference, see note 1. 8 L ’iguana (1st ed. 1965), Il cardillo addolorato (1st ed. 1993), Alonso e i visionari (1st ed. 1996). 9 CC, p. 64. 10 A. M. Ortese, ‘‘Circo equestre’’, in Il mio paese e` la notte (Rome: Empiria, 1996), pp. 157–162. 11 Ortese uses this expression talking about some sad cities where she lived in solitude, cities ‘‘without reason or reasons to exist, apart from one: mere existence’’. CC, p. 95. 12 CC, p. 20. 13 CC, p. 52. 14 A. M. Ortese, ‘‘Circo equestre’’, op. cit. 15 CC, p. 124. 16 CC, p. 151. 17 Francesca Borrelli, ‘‘Con malinconia e fantasia’’, in Il Manifesto M , 15/5/1993. 18 CC, p. 47. 19 A. M. Ortese, ‘‘Attraversando un paese sconosciuto’’, in CC. 20 CC, p. 98. 21 There are countless passages in which Ortese complains about the excess of noise, also in her private life, in her houses: deafening, unbearable noise; a carrier of headache and stunning; an obstacle to writing and living. Noise is indeed the big metaphor, loaded with the unconscious strength of a presence in one’s own life, of the oppression of being surrounded by the philosophy of the natural. Often noise and music go together – as in a poem ‘‘Il circo equestre’’. Do not miss the recurrence of this topic – noise and music – in the passage on violence that will be quoted later, namely at p. 184. 22 CC, p. 32. 23 CC, pp. 39–40. 24 The clash between a category named ‘‘natural’’ and an instrumental use of nature is only apparently paradoxical. In Italy, the generation before mine has been the last witness of the convergence of human naturalness and of the fight against nature. The more men were living

NATURE AND A CALM MIRROR

189

in the vicinity with nature, the more they have been ruthless and merciless with it. Ecology, ff first of which is a key for our sensitivity to understand Ortese (in spite of many differences: all the fact that Ortese’s attention goes not to species, but to individuals) – ecology has come partially after Ortese’s production (the author started to write in 1937, while the triumph of modernity has come in Italy with the boom of the fifties, and only some decades after intense industrial production, pollution, extinctions, arose the idea that nature could be in danger, and should be cherished rather than exploited). 25 CC, pp. 98–99. 26 CC, p. 20. 27 CC, pp. 99–100. 28 CC, p. 72. 29 CC, p. 66. 30 CC, p. 97. 31 A. M. Ortese, ‘‘Circo equestre’’, op. cit. 32 CC, p. 10. 33 CC, p. 158. 34 CC, pp. 44–45. 35 CC, pp. 98–99. 36 CC, p. 100. 37 CC, pp. 103–104. 38 CC, pp. 102–103. 39 CC, p. 52. 40 CC, p. 101. 41 CC, pp. 102–103. 42 CC, pp. 102–103. 43 CC, pp. 108–109. See also CC, p. 123. 44 CC, p. 124. 45 CC, pp. 107–108. 46 CC, p. 20. 47 CC, p. 52. 48 CC, p. 113. 49 CC, p. 115. 50 CC, pp. 102–103. 51 CC, p. 89. 52 CC, p. 20. 53 CC, p. 21. 54 CC, p. 123. 55 CC, p. 24. 56 On the topic of life as an exam – not a gift, not a prize but not even a punishment – but a school and an exam, Ortese returns often: among others, CC, p. 46, and, most of all, CC, p. 148. 57 CC, p. 110. 58 A. M. Ortese, L ’iguana (Milan: Rizzoli, 1978), p. 28. 59 A. M. Ortese, Alonso e i visionari (Milan: Adelphi, 1996), p. 158. 60 ‘‘Pretendo, a questo punto, di essere abbandonato da tutti, indicato come complice massimo nella disgrazia del mondo (che e la persecuzione e morte del Cucciolo), e di pagare per la mia inerzia e feroce silenzio, pagare qui a Genova fino in fondo. Oppure, se Vi piacera,

190

ROSARIA TROVATO

negli States. Ma che io paghi, Signore, che io sia destituito di ogni valore e privato di ogni stima.’’ Ibid., p. 211. ‘‘I claim to be abandoned by everyone, pointed at as the greatest accomplice in the disgrace of the world (namely the persecution and the death of the Puppet), and to pay for my inertia and my fierce silence, pay here in Genova, till the very end. Or, if you will like it better, in the States. But I should pay, Lord, I should be destituted of every value and deprived of every consideration’’. 61 ‘‘Per Ingmar [Neville] non c’era, tuttavia, piu nulla da sapere. Egli si sentiva entrato in una terra di mostri, dove le azioni piu rivoltanti erano considerate ottime o forse intese a una logica cristiana, solo se avessero affermato ff un principio utile all’interessato. Capı alla fine che la sua vita era mutata, che il mondo era questo – e nessuno puo illudersi di cambiarne, con rivoluzioni e tribunali, l’immobilita fondamentale, ne procedere alla sua comprensione senza prima averne visitato le citta sotterranee, le tristi citta del cuore, il vero sottosuolo di tutti i grandi rivolgimenti e poi impietramenti politici. Lı era il male: nel cuore pronto alla menzogna, e inconsapevole della propria ignominia. E comincio a vedere nella dura e fredda Elmina, fredda di cuore ma anche di parola, nella sua miseria e ignoranza fondamentale, nel suo No sempiterno a tutti i programmi della Joie J , qualcosa di giusto: ma non percio le perdonava. Si sentiva morire, pensando alla donna amata, e insieme sperava ... non sappiamo precisamente in che.’’ A. M. Ortese, Il cardillo addolorato (Milan: Adelphi, 1993), p. 331. ‘‘For Ingmar there was, however, nothing else to know. He felt as if he ahd entered in a land of monsters, where the most revolting actions were considered very good or maybe meant to pursue a Christian logic, if only they had supproted a priciple useful for those concerned. He understood, eventually, that his life had changed, that the world was this – and nobody can delude himself to change, with revolutions and tribunals, its fundamental immobility, nor to begin with its understanding, without having first visited the underground cities, the sad cities of the heart, the true subsoil of all big political upheavals and then blockings. There was evil: in the heart ready for lie, and unaware of its ignominy. And started to see in his hard and cold Elmina, cold in her heart and also in her word, iin her misery and fundamental ignorance, in her eternal ‘‘no’’ to all the programs of the Joie J , something right: but this was not enough to forgive her. He felt like dying thinking to his beloved, and at the same time he hoped ... we do not know precisely what.’’ 62 A. M. Ortese, Alonso e i visionari (Milan: Adelphi, 1996). 63 A philosophical version of this conclusion is to be found in Rino Genovese’s books. Indeed, Ortese’s refusal of many aspects of modernity makes it an easy task to compare her ideas to those of the Critical Theory. 64 CC, p. 118. 65 CC, p. 124. 66 CC, p. 125. 67 CC, p. 158. 68 CC, p. 128. 69 CC, p. 115. 70 P. Citati, ‘‘La principessa dell’isola’’, op. cit.

MEGAN LAVERTY

THE INTERPLAY OF VIRTUE AND ROMANTIC ETHICS IN CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GEST URE L IFE

In this paper I examine the opposition in moral philosophy between Virtue Ethics and what I am calling Romantic Ethics. Over and above the theoretical dialogue among philosophers concerned with these broad ethical paradigms, I am especially interested in how this opposition may be both exemplified and illuminated through literature, and have chosen the novel, A Gesture L ife, by Chang-rae Lee as a striking case in point. I use the term ‘Virtue Ethics’ to denote moral philosophies that fall within the Aristotelian tradition. ‘Romantic Ethics’, on the other hand, refers to the philosophies of Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Raimond Gaita and Chris Cordner in so far as they all have something in common with the Romantic tradition. Both Virtue and Romantic Ethics consider that the question of ethics – what it is to live well – should be answered phenomenologically: that is, it should involve an examination of what human beings experience as meaningful in their lives, in particular as it includes the significance of others. Romantic ethics, in an effort ff to capture the ‘depth’ of meaning in inter-personal relationships, radicalizes our experience of the other to such an extent that it makes conventional morality seem banal and superficial. Virtue ethics, by contrast, attempts to capture the ‘breadth’ of meaning in inter-personal relationships normalizing them to such an extent that it fails to take account of our deepest personal attachments, making them seem aberrant or simply irrelevant. I will argue that we need to retain the insights of both theories because they function as opposing forces in dialectical relationship in which we all exist. The ethical imperative therefore becomes one of accepting and living within this dialectic. It is to allow our day to day living to be informed and shaped by experiences in which we are radically claimed by the alterity of a unique other (this is the Romantic Ethics aspect), but also to acknowledge social convention as the necessary mediating ground for the living out of our personal and not so personal relations with others (the Virtue Ethics aspect). I support this thesis using Chang-rae Lee’s novel, A Gesture L ife as a paradigm. It represents the ethical life as one of balancing a socially conventional understanding of ourselves and our obligations to others with those intense, deeply personal experiences, 191 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 191–205. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

192

MEGAN LAVERTY

that claim us in relation to a radically individualized other – the character of which transcends our social relational categories. A Gesture L ife is set in 1963, in suburban America. The novel’s protagonist is the seventy year old Franklin Hata. The novel intersperses the events of Hata’s life in 1963, with the significant events of Hata’s past. Franklin Hata, affectionately ff known as ‘Doc Hata’, was a Korean orphan, adopted by a Japanese couple. After serving in the Korean war Hata emigrates to North America where he buys a medical and surgical supply store, ‘‘Sunny Medical Supply’’ in the middle class suburb of Bedley Run, which he operates as a successful business until his retirement at the age of 68 or 69. He sells the business to Mr and Mrs Hickey and their son Patrick who has a congenitally diseased heart and is in a critical condition waiting on a heart transplant. In late middle age Hata adopts a daughter from Korea, whom he calls Sunny. In the short term the adoption does not bring Hata the kind of happiness that he had anticipated, for although he adopted Sunny when she was still an infant and cared for her most diligently, their relationship is one of estrangement and alienation, with Sunny leaving home in her late teens. In 1963 Hata is ultimately reunited with his daughter, Sunny who is now more mature, less angry at her father and has returned to Ebbington with her own son Thomas. Even the title of the book, A Gesture L ife, sustains opposition ... It accentuates the duality of ‘‘gesture’’ by coupling it with ‘‘life’’. A gesture can be an inconsequential action or movement of the body, the significance of which is magnified by its expressive quality. For example a hug between friends might express their joy and gratitude at each other, a mother might absentmindedly caress her baby as an expression of love, an individual gives a card as a gesture of appreciation or brings a pot of soup as an expression of their sympathy. But gestures can also be normally significant actions that are done without genuine import or feeling. For example, it might turn out that an attempted suicide, when examined, is mere gesture. Such actions are intended to provoke a response from the other, more than they are an expression of the individual performing them. They comply with, and are read according to, a certain code. Hence they are often associated with artificiality or insincerity, but constitute much of human interaction. What then is meant by the term ‘gesture’ when it is coupled with the term ‘life’ as it is in the title, A Gesture L ife: Is life essentially an inconsequential event, the significance of which is given by the meaning we experience it as expressing or revealing? Or conversely, is life a potentially consequential event that most of us only ever live conventionally? I read

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

193

the novel A Gesture L ife as defending the view that life is neither one nor the other but both and that this is the essential paradox of human life. To live well in this sense, is to resist the resolution or dissolution of this paradox and to live, not as though life were one or the other, but rather as a fusion of the two. This idea is, in fact, suggested by the end of the novel. A Gesture L ife lends itself to this reading because the narrative structure works to establish the essential character of the fictional characters, while at the same time unraveling or deconstructing this essentialism: showing life and individuals to be unpredictable, inconsistent, confused, subject to whim and so on. It allows for the highlighting and sustaining of profound tensions and ambiguities in the deepest convictions of its characters, engaging in the simultaneous connection and juxtaposition of such apparent oppositions as inner and outer, public and the private, intimacy and alienation, past and future and so on.1 It also permits irony, both literary, and as a way of living, perhaps most notably typified by Socrates. Irony as a way of living has uncertainty at its core.2 ‘‘It suggests depth. It does not guarantee it.’’3 The enigma of ethics, is embraced rather than resolved: an individual can never be sure as to whether she is, or should be, claimed by the conventional or the transcendent. Irony as a way of living manifests itself in a certain lack of explicability. An individual is always in a perpetual relationship of doubtfulness with respect to herself in her relationship to others and vice – versa. Irony reflects a certain irreducibility that may or may not show itself in a plurality of interpretations. It keeps us vigilant without turning us into vigilantes and it keeps us fallible without turning us into skeptics. Rather than strong moral conviction, almost Cartesian certainty and the absolute arbitration of reasons, Ethics come to be associated with self-doubt, acceptance of opacity and accountability within mystery. Character is undeniably reflected but not summative. One thing of importance that arises from the acceptance of this paradox is that it establishes irony as being integral to the properly ethical life.4 VIRTUE ETHICS VERSUS ROMANTIC ETHICS

Although I distinguish between Virtue Ethics and Romantic Ethics there is much that unites them. They both respond to a legacy of the Enlightenment, namely a way of doing moral philosophy, impoverished by its construal of action as initiated by the will and derived by reason. In contrast to this approach, Virtue Ethics and Romantic Ethics are

194

MEGAN LAVERTY

concerned with the inner life of the individual, action as a reflection of the individual in her relation to others, and the possibility of a life well lived. Both schools of thought acknowledge that there are no rules for how to achieve the good life, but that it is a matter of judgment for which the only preparation is good habits of thought, desire and action. The emphasis is on vision rather than choice, discernment rather than determination, sensitivity to the particularities of individuals and contexts rather than with obligations of a universal character, narrative rather than decision theory. Romantic ethics is explicitly anti-theoretical, conceiving of ethical theory as extending what it is we already do as individual subjects i.e. give expression to an ethical outlook. Virtue Ethics is divided between those who are anti-theoretical and those who view it as a way of engaging in ethical theorizing but for the purposes of this paper I do not need to resolve this issue here. Virtue ethics has its origins in Aristotle and is undergoing a revival in contemporary moral philosophy.5 The Aristotelian virtues have been extended, although not wholly without contention, to incorporate more contemporary Christian virtues like compassion and modesty for example. My concern here is not with the subtleties inherent in Virtue Ethics and its many forms, but rather to characterize the approach of Virtue Ethics as distinct from other approaches, in particular that of Romantic Ethics – hence my characterization will emphasize only those features relevant to this contrast. As an ethical theory, Virtue Ethics is optimistic in outlook, connecting what is meaningful or valuable with what it is to flourish as a human being. To be virtuous is to have excellent character and to have excellent character is to fulfill one’s nature. Given that we are happiest when we fulfill our nature, we are happiest when we are virtuous. To be virtuous is to flourish as a human being. Given that to be virtuous includes being in a certain relationship with others, human flourishing or eudaimonia, cannot be understood without reference to other individuals with whom we engage, the institutions in which those engagements takes place, the traditions that inform those institutions and so on. Virtue Ethics is teleological or future oriented. Put simply, an individual aims to achieve what is valuable not just in any given situation, but for her life as a whole. She evaluates and determines how to act in a present situation in light of her aim for her life overall and the significance of the situation in relation to it. However an individual’s conception of what is valuable is mediated by the values inherent in the relationships, institutions, traditions in which she participates: family, religion, sports, education for example.

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

195

The aim in Virtue Ethics is the creation of the good life as reflected in one’s good character, the determination of which is given by the relationships, cultural practices and traditions in which one is a participant. We can get a sense of what this involves by examining Aristotle’s image of the virtuous man as represented by the megalopsychos: ‘‘he never, or only reluctantly makes a request, whereas he is eager to help others’’; ‘‘he cannot bear to live in dependence upon someone else, except a friend, because such conduct is servile’’; ‘‘in troubles that are unavoidable or of minor importance he is the last person to complain or ask for help, because such an attitude would imply that he took them seriously’’; ‘‘his gait is measured, his voice deep, and his speech unhurried’’.6 Aristotle’s megalopsychos exemplifies worldly self-possession, or alternatively, an ability to comport himself appropriately before his peers. He is conversant without being garrulous, he does not gossip, he appears with the right people but is not obsequious in his dealings with them. He is duly respected and admired by his peers, allowing him to flourish amongst them. The emphasis in virtue ethics is on creating a certain kind of self, one in actual communities with others’ – family, religious, civic, recreational etc. Two comments: first, for behavior to reflect character, it must be behavior that is characteristic of the individual, that is, behavior that the individual performs repeatedly and not just exceptionally; second, although character is relational it excludes a disproportionate need of an individual other as reflected in Aristotle’s exploration of friendship as an ethically paradigmatic inter-personal relationship. Virtue, as opposed to the disproportionate extremes of vice, is to be appropriate to or in harmonious equilibrium with oneself, one’s peers and one’s world, as well as the values that inform them. It includes a proper regard for oneself and others according to their worth. It is a world of honor, shame, praise, blame, admiration, contempt etc. Virtue Ethics construe ethics in relational and worldly terms, for to understand myself is to understand myself not in an existential relation to others per se, but in relation to others as they exist in a community as determined by the practices of that community. Hence, my relationality and the creation of myself within that, is mediated by the institutions, roles, customs and traditions of the community in which those relationships are made possible. Being-for-others is essential to virtue because how one appears or is made present in the public world is to constitute one’s identity as virtuous – a certain kind of appearing is partly constitutive of the reality.

196

MEGAN LAVERTY

With the renaissance of Virtue Ethics contemporary philosophers have responded to what they see as its limitations. Although it is not surprising that the philosophers opposed to virtue ethics – Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Raimond Gaita and Chris Cordner for example – W align themselves with Plato in some way, the term ‘Romantic’’ better captures what they have in common independently of whether or not they have a religious metaphysics. Putting aside the terminological and metaphysical differences ff between the diff fferent positions, these moral philosophers consistently elevate qualitatively or phenomenonologically distinct experiences that uniquely and profoundly claim the individual as given in relation to a reality that transcends her. As with the central tenet of Romanticism, they claim that ‘‘the universal can be achieved in a manner that is each time singular.’’7 They construe the ethical task as being open to, and preparing the ground for, these experiences, speaking out of them as well as allowing them to properly condition how one acts. Some examples: In her writings, Murdoch refers to our experience of a soaring kestrel, learning Russian,8 and the appreciation of beauty in art or nature.9 W Weil speaks of looking as opposed to eating. Gaita writes of remorse as ‘‘a recognition of the reality of another through the shock of wronging them’’, of being ‘‘struck by a particular woman’s love for her unborn child’ ’’,10 and a wonder in response to Mother Teresa which is a wonder ‘‘that human life could be as her love reveals it.’’11 Cordner directs the reader’s attention to ‘‘a depth of meaning in sexual love,’’12 Tolstoy’s story of the change that Ivan Ilych undergoes on his deathbed,13 remorse and compassion as well as romantic love14 as realized in Shakespeare’s The W inter’s T ale, characterized by Florizel’s answer to what he experiences as the reality of Perdita. Romantic Ethics thinks these experiences are of critical ethical importance because it assumes that a fundamental feature of individual engagement with the world is that it simultaneously centralizes and serves the subject of that engagement. The different ff philosophers characterize this feature in different ff ways, referring to human engagement as egoistic, selfserving or overly governed by our own projects and ends. Murdoch takes it as fundamental that human beings are naturally selfish, speaking of the self as an egocentric mechanism, ‘‘a historically determined individual relentlessly looking after itself ’’, ‘‘reluctant to face unpleasant realities’’, constantly seeking ‘‘consolation, either through imagined inflation of self or through fictions of a theological nature’’, ‘‘even its loving is more often than not an assertion of self ’’.15 W Weil relies on a theory of reading, arguing that all human experience is necessarily interpretative – appearance grips

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

197

us as meaning – and that we interpret experience in relation to our projects which are in turn a response to our ineradicable need. Gaita and Cordner refrain from drawing such a stark contrast, allowing for divergence of degree rather than just kind. In contrast to Weil and Murdoch, they begin from those indisputably ethical experiences and then talk about how this primary or basic experience can become corrupted or perverted by racism, sentimentality, self-indulgence, fear etc. They have a more complex and subtle vocabulary for the ways in which we can go ethically wrong, but the point is the same: Namely, that our more ordinary engagement, however one characterizes it, prevents us from seeing reality, speaking truthfully, responding to the other in the way that they want to be read etc. The ethical for what I am calling Romantic Ethics, is tied to an experience of the ethical, in part because it uniquely takes us out of ourselves, and in part because it put us in connection with what is real or inviolably absolute, whether it be referred to as God or Good. These philosophers agree that the subject matter of ethical reflection is primarily those experiences, action and speech that have a certain authority16 and that a good part of the moral difficulty is rising to the situation in such as way as to ‘‘truly to realize what belongs to it, and also truly to realize oneself in response to it.’’17 These experiences are intensely personal and subject to the particularities of individuals and the imaginative landscapes they inhabit, but universally involve a ‘‘being present’’, a self-forgetful engagement with what is ‘‘other’’, a connection with what is real or true, an experience of time as timelessness, an attention to the individuality of what is given, and a relationship of love towards it. The dimensions of these experiences require greater explanation but the important point for the purposes of this paper is that the explanation won’t rely on, and indeed transcends, what is available to us in our social relations, traditions and conventions etc. Rather, to do justice to them, we will be compelled look to notions of the eternal, the infinite, our common humanity, and what Coleridge called ‘the soul of man’. On this view, ethical necessity is the requirement that the individual take account of what he has done and been in light of a significance that is given by experiences that claim him in his sense of life. Hence Romantic Ethics is more tragic in its outlook than Virtue Ethics, for it connects the ethical life with a certain kind of personal integrity which sometimes compromises one s psychosocial well-being. Cordner gives the example of a father who ‘‘might find himself in circumstances where the only thing

198

MEGAN LAVERTY

he can do is give up his job, on which he thrives, in order to look after his severely retarded child full-time. One needs a tin ear to say of such a man that his doing this is his way of ‘flourishing’. What he does is abandon flourishing in order to do what he finds he must.’’18 Although Romantic ethics might have greater explanatory power with respect to the significance of ethics in our lives and oftentimes its cost to our happiness, there are at least two problems associated with it. First, the philosophers cited above acknowledge that ethically significant experiences are subject to being corrupted by sentimentality, banality and selfindulgence for example, and identify dialogue and reflection as a significant means by which to correct such corruptions. But the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate persuasion in this kind of dialogue is not at all clear. When dialogue is assumed to be impersonal, truth is a matter of justification by reasons, but when the interlocutors are assumed to be speaking personally, the issue is one of truthfulness and if argument is not the arbiter of truthfulness, then what is? Is it the poetics of what is said? Whether or not I am moved by it? But this relies the erroneous assumption that language is pure expression when it is really encoded by culture. To put it another way, what role is there for the materialist and deconstructive analysis of the poetics of what is said? What is the ethical significance of the fact that Gaita’s and Cordner’s examples – a female psychiatric nurse caring for her patient and a woman who having just been brutalized by her husband tenderly reaching out to him as he is taken away by the police – cry out for feminist analysis? Further, whilst it is clear that Romantic ethics deepens our sense of the relationships in which we participate it is unclear from it how my responsibilities extend to those I am not in relationship with. It is not surprising therefore that these philosophers focus on our intimate and familiar relationships while offering ff little direction for what an individual’s obligations are to society in general are and how she is to conduct herself in relationship to it. To formulate the point somewhat differently, ff they leave it open as to how individuals are to enact the universal, realizing it in and over time. In either case – our responsibilities to those individuals with whom we are not in relationship and the issue of acting – we need to refer to our social context as the conventions governing behavior and the interpretations of it. In the language of Seyla Benhabib, we require knowledge of how my action will be interpreted and need to look at the expectations for these relationships as they are lived out in the day to day. But this inevitably seems to direct us to the broader social context as well as the conventions governing behavior.

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

199

Each of the ethical theories has problems when viewed apart from one another and the specific problems of each theory seem to be uniquely ameliorated by the alternative one. Virtue Ethics conceives ethics as being about the kind of person that one is, which is nothing more than the way one projects oneself to be in the world of others. Hence it is unable to do justice to the unconditional claim that individualized others have on us and that they arise contingently and indiscriminately. Romantic Ethics does justice to this experience of being claimed by another, but in so doing ignores the equally important ethical question of how one is to honor what one is claimed by in action – a question for which Virtue Ethics seems to have an answer. I read A Gesture L ife as illustrating both the impasse and why it is significant that we resolve it. READING A GEST URE L IFE IN THE CONTEXT OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY

A Gesture L ife culminates with Hata’s joyful reconciliation to living in that he at last determines how to go on in a meaningfully way. But what he decides to, is at odds in significant ways with his living up to that point. Hata sold his business to the Hickeys, and although Mrs Hickey is deceased, Mr Hickey behaves acrimoniously towards Hata, and Hata does not visit their son in hospital, he decides to organize ‘‘an anonymous line of funds for Patrick Hickey, so that he might remain in the PICU for however many days he can hold on and wait’’ (pp. 355). This is significant in that it is strikingly disproportionate to his relationship with the Hickey family – it is excessive in its generosity and the self-sacrifice that it requires. It costs Hata the funds he might have used to buy a smaller house in Bedley Run, allowing him to remain with his daughter Sunny, and grandson, with whom he experiences for the first time in his life the ‘‘pure joy that come from something like simply holding Thomas’s hand as he leads us through some mall, or watching as he and Sunny orchestrate the pulling of a T-shirt over his head, his sturdy little arms stuck for a moment wiggling with half-panic and half delight’’ (pp. 233–4). Hata’s gift of unlimited funds for Patrick Hickey’s hospitalization is not a gesture in the sense of being expressive of any feelings he might have towards him or his parents. But neither is it a gesture in the sense of being disingenuous or contrived, for Hata donates the funds anonymously at great financial and emotional cost to himself, for it robs him of the daily interaction with his daughter and grandson. It is inexplicable: it teeters between being either a profoundly significant act and/or nothing

200

MEGAN LAVERTY

more than Hata’s perversity or escapism. Hata himself, accepting this mystery, describes his resolution with a newly found ironic tone: I’ll have just enough to go away from here and live out modestly the rest of my unappointed days. Perhaps I’ll travel to where Sunny wouldn’t go, to the south and west and maybe farther still, across the oceans, to land on former shores. But I think it won’t be any kind of pilgrimage. I won’t be seeking out my destiny or fate. I won’t attempt to find comfort in the visage of a creator or the forgiving dead. Let me simply bear my flesh, and blood and bones. I will fly a flag. Tomorrow, when this house is alive and full, I will be outside looking in. I will be already on a walk someplace, in this town or the next one or one five thousand miles away. I will circle round and arrive again. Come almost home (pp. 355–356).

The degree of fulfillment that this seemingly incongruous life plan gives Hata makes sense in light of the contrast between the two ethical paradigms elucidated above. From its first sentence, A Gesture L ife represents Hata as the unproblematic actualization of a virtue ethic, enjoying, in his own words, a ‘‘harmonious relation between a self and his society’’. Like Aristotle’s megalopsychos, he has a flawless character. He receives an almost Oriental veneration as an elder’’ (p. 1); he is ‘‘loved and respected by all (p. 31); the house in which he lives ‘‘isn’t the grandest’’ in town, for that would constitute a vulgar display, but it is nonetheless ‘‘one of the special properties’’ in the area (p. 16); Hata is not given to unseemly displays of emotion or passion. He reflects ‘‘Even when I received welcome cards and sweets baskets from my immediate neighbors, I judged the exact scale of what an appropriate response should be.’’ Shortly into the novel, Hata suffers ff smoke inhalation when a fire in his house gets out of control. The deterioration in Hata’s health and the damage to his home constitute disturbances in Hata’s once seamless composure. The present becomes an excuse for remembering the past with the narrative increasingly juxtaposing the two. Hata recalls the scathing criticism of his estranged daughter, Sunny, which – while she does not use the same words – echoes Bernard Williams’ criticism of Aristotle, namely that he is more interested in having a reputation for courage than actually being courageous, thereby displaying a certain moral self-interest. Sunny says to Hata, Maybe you don’t know it, but all you care about is your reputation in this snotty, shitty town, and how I might hurt it ... all I’ve ever seen is how careful you are with everything. With our fancy big house and this store and all the customers. How you sweep the sidewalk and nice-talk to the other shopkeepers. You make a whole life out of gestures and politeness. You’re always having to be the ideal partner and colleague (pp. 94–5).

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

201

Captain Ono, Hata’s medical officer in the war, makes the same criticism although formulates it differently. ff He says, ‘‘You, Lieutenant, too much depend upon generous fate and gesture. There is no internal possession, no embodiment. Thus you fail in some measure always. You perennially disappoint someone like me’’ (pp. 266). The suggestion is that Hata has used his ‘good’ character to shield himself from being subject to the uncertainty of contingency as well as the passion, need and loss associated with intimacy. The novel explores the all to human fear and need of intimacy through the themes of adoption, prostitution and organ donation. For these are all to an extent, artificial contrivances of intimate forms: I love an adopted child as though it were my own biological child; In contracting a prostitute I engage in an expression of love with someone I don’t love or maybe even know; receiving an organ allows my body, me, I exist with parts of someone else. But adoption, prostitution and organ donation also constitute attempts to ward off loss of one kind or another, whether it be loss of familial continuation, loss of a physical intermingling with another, and ultimately loss of life. Hence they have an ambiguous status in human life. They are used in the novel to raise the question of the extent to which Hata’s virtuous character is a genuine expression of his common humanity that bonds him with others, and the extent to which it is an attempt to protect himself from that very bond and all that is associated with it: hurt, loss, failing etc. Hata is represented as sheltering in a virtue ethics because for him intimacy and contingency are associated with his deepest moral failing. This failing is manifested in two separate events. The first event involves his relationship to a Korean girl, Kkutaeh, to whom he refers to as K and with whom he fell in love during the war when he was in his late teens or early twenties. K, with four other girls, are unwilling prostitutes for the soldiers of Hata’s camp. As it turns out K is held in reserve by Captain Ono, because he recognizes what he calls her superior breeding. Hata is given the charge of caring for her, which he does with great tenderness and affection. ff Hata reflects, ‘‘that he felt himself drawn to her, drawn to her very presence, which must finally leave even such a thing as beauty aside’’ (pp. 240). Hata fervently declares and consummates his love for K, but is unable to protect her from what she herself foresees. She is brutally raped and killed by thirty men. His yearning, wishing and hoping amounts to ‘‘a complete and utter fraudulence’’ (pp. 295). Hata continues in his belief that he loved K, dreaming about her, clutching at the remains of her dress and her memory, in the

202

MEGAN LAVERTY

realization that his epiphany of another as ‘other’, as uniquely claiming him, did not realize itself in anything other than her brutal death. This experience has enormous significance in the context of Hata’s life because it is one of the few times that he actually connects with another human being. Recounting the event effectively ff concludes the narrative of Hata’s remembered past with its narrative status being used to mimic its psychological status as the organizing principle of his memory and life. The reader discovers that Hata is more like the tragic hero of the Romantic tradition than the unproblematic actualization of virtue, echoing Goethe rather than Aristotle. For it is in this moment that Hata feels himself claimed by the unconditioned – he is claimed by that which leaves even beauty aside – as given to him in the person of K. It is a moment of rare connection with another human being that changes everything. It is an experience of the whole, which gives a different ff significance to the parts. The second event involves the termination that he organizes for Sunny in the third trimester of her pregnancy – something they both profoundly regret and which haunts Hata as he attended the termination. The novel leaves it ambiguous as to Hata’s precise motivation for the termination. It partly includes his desire not to be publicly disgraced, but also is an extension of what has already been noted in the novel as Hata’s inability to step outside his being-in-relationship-with-Sunny. He is so subject to their relationship that he is incapable of responding to her in anger for example because this would have been to assert his independence, an independence that he never seemed able to find. As with K, his love for Sunny overwhelms his sense of what is best for her in some external sense. So he concludes that with both cases, the loving impulse had not been enough. ‘‘And though nearly every soul I’ve closely known has come to some dreadful or grave misfortune, I instead persist, with warmth and privilege accruing to me unabated, ever securing my good station here, the last place I will belong’’ (pp. 346). These two experiences were profoundly meaningful for Hata, but the point of them in the context of the novel is that Hata’s naivety and the detrimental consequences of this naivety. In the first instance he is naive about the importance of social hierarchy and convention in mediating our relationships with others. Hata does not understand that his profound love for K does not alter her status in the camp as a sex worker. She understands her status in the camp and the consequences of being kept from the men without explanation, which is why she begs Hata to kill her as an act of mercy. Hata can’t do it, in part because he believes his

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

203

love will change everything, in part because his psychology is inadequate to the task, and perhaps in part because he does not love her enough. In the second instance his naivety about the materiality of human existence, complimented with his inability to step outside the claim that his love for Sunny has on him, leads to a termination of a pregnancy that in this particular instance they both regret. It follows that one must be able to distance oneself from what one is claimed by, and be claimed by what one feels distant from. In the case of Hata, he discovers that he needs to enact a distance in his love for Sunny, and that he needs to enact a more loving relation with those whom he experiences only distance. Hata finds such a solution by being generous but not overly generous, to Sunny – he does not leave her everything as he once assumed he would, but he gives her enough to secure her and Thomas’s future welfare at the same time as he asserts his independence from her by traveling – and also by being generous to the Hickeys with whom he pointedly does not have a personal relationship but who need his help. We should not conclude that this is, in some sense, an objective resolution, for others to faithfully imitate in their lives. It is merely a resolution for this particular character at this point in his life that an individual so moved might chose to follow in the context of her life with quite different ff effect. ff

CONCLUSION

Virtue Ethics, in its emphasis on the creation of character, seems incapable of capturing the peculiar depth of our connection with the other and the connection of ethics with our being claimed by another as that which transcends us and to which our being is subject. Romantic ethics does justice to the depth and ethical significance of this connection but offers ff little hope for how we are to do justice to this connection in how we live it out. For it seems true that if we live out of and honor these relationships we need to have a sense of the social or public context in which these relationships inevitably exist. So the call to be ethical, which we cannot but take up – we are all moral conscripts as Murdoch puts it – is heard precisely in the interplay, and the negotiation of the interplay between the transcendent and the social, the esoteric and the conventional, the personal and the impersonal. But to do so is to subject one’s ethical self to an attitude of irony, for ethics always has the potential to be other than it seems.19

204

MEGAN LAVERTY NOTES

1 I am not intending to suggest by this that philosophical theorizing cannot do these things, only perhaps that it is more accessible in literature. 2 I am here drawing on Alexander Nehamas, T he Art of L iving: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berekeley: University of California Press, 1998), Chapter 2. 3 Nehamas, T he Art of L iving, p. 67. 4 I am suggesting that moral certainty or conviction does not need to be a condition for the possibility of ethical action, but rather ethical action is made possible by a certain position of fallibility with respect to what one takes to be an imperative for action. This is because it isn’t the certainty as to the right thing to do in any situation that saves us from acting egoistically, for this is to assume that we know in advance what the right thing is, but a sensitive discernment as to what the situation calls one to do which necessarily extends to one’s own imperatives for action. 5 My depiction of Aristotelian virtue ethics is informed by Christopher Cordner’s portrayal in ‘‘Aristotelian Virtue and Beyond’’, Chapter Two of Ethical Encounter, pp. 20–45; by Raimond Gaita’s portrayal in Good and Evil; and by Alasdair MacIntyre’s in After V irtue: A Study in Moral T heory (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1985). 6 Aristotle, Ethics (London: Penguin Books, 1976), pp. 157–158. 7 From the Foreword by Rudolphe Gasche to Friedrich Schlegel: Philosophical Fragments (Minnesota: Regents of the University of Minnesota, 1971), p. xi. 8 Iris Murdoch, T he Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 89. 9 Ibid., p. 65. 10 Ibid., p. 123. 11 Ibid., p. 206. 12 Christopher Cordner, Ethical Encounter, p. 5. 13 Ibid., pp. 65–68. He explicitly argues that the transformation in Ivan Ilych’s understanding lies beyond what can be learnt from Aristotle or any thoughtful resuscitation of him. 14 Ibid., Chapter 7, ‘Romantic Love’, pp. 130–146. 15 Murdoch, T he Sovereignty of Good, p. 78. 16 Gaita, Good and Evil, p. 4. 17 Cordner, Ethical Encounter, pp. II. 18 Cordner, Ethical Encounter, p. 22. 19 I would like to than Laurance Splitter for a reading an earlier draft of this paper. This paper was presented at the 27th Annual Conference of the International Society of Phenomenology and Literature, at Harvard Divinty School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 14, 2003 and to the Department of Philosophy, University of Tasmania, Hobart, May 28, 2003. I would like to thank the people in attendance for their comments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Ethics. London: Penguin Books, 1976. Buber, Martin. I and T hou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958. Cordner, Christopher. Ethical Encounter: T he Depth of Moral Meaning. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

CHANG-RAE LEE’S A GESTURE LIFE

205

Gaita, Raimond. Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception. London: Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1991. Lee, Chang-rae. A Gesture L ife. New York, Riverhead Books, 1999. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After V irtue: A Study in Moral T heory. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1981. Nehamas, Alexander. T he Art of L iving: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Nussbaum, Martha. L ove’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and L iterature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

MICHAEL DANIELS

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

In the wake of post-structuralism. with its glorification of the libidinal play of unaccountable, fragmented subjectivities, the concept of personal responsibility has been rehabilitated. From the French fascination with various forms of neo-Kantianism to the American interest in homey (albeit demagogic) books on the virtues, personal responsibility is regaining currency. But what, exactly, does it mean to be personally responsible? When Albert Camus suggested in ‘‘Neither Victims Nor Executioners’’ that non-violence was the ‘‘responsible’’ position for intellectuals to take on the Algerian crisis, he was reproached for legalistically evading responsibility by his erstwhile friend Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre, who offered ff up the concept of ‘‘absolute responsibility,’’ and viewed any attempt to obscure the nature of this ontological burden for oneself as ‘‘bad faith,’’ regarded Camus’ position as just such an attempt: ‘‘If you’re not victims when the government which you voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving ... have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of a doubt, executioners.’’1 For Sartre, who tentatively advocated revolutionary violence, taking responsibility meant acknowledging that ‘‘bloodying one’s hands’’ is unavoidable. The concept of personal responsibility is well considered within the context of French existentialism, which made it one of its hallmarks. In this essay, however, I shall approach personal responsibility from the vantage point of its opposite, personal irresponsibility. Towards this end, I shall consider Meursault, the protagonist in Camus’ T he Stranger, whom I take to be one of the most irresponsible characters in literature. The depths of Meursault’s irresponsibility can best be appreciated, fittingly enough, within Sartre’s psychoanalytic framework. I

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre offers ff up the ontologically rooted phenomenon of bad faith, which, for present purposes, can be explicated as follows: consciousness, which is intentional (nothing more than that which it is conscious of ), reflectively reconstitutes the Self, which does not exist in consciousness but as an object in the external world. There is no 207 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 207–223. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

208

MICHAEL DANIELS

intrinsic Self, and the Self that does exist is perpetually being transcended. Despite this state of unremitting transcendence, however, at any point in time there are the undeniable facts of our particular existences, which (however we choose to interpret them) define the range of our possible projects. These brute facts, which are inexorable, constitute our facticity. Thus, Sartre tells us, there is a ‘‘double property of the human being, who is at once a facticity and a transcendence’’.2 It is in a person’s approach to the relationship between these two properties, which is marked by an irresolvable tension, that bad faith arises; ‘‘Bad faith does not which either to coordinate them or to surmount them in a synthesis. Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. ff It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other’’.3 Sartre provides numerous illustrations of individuals who flee from either their facticity or transcendence. For example, there is the homosexual and his interlocutor., the ‘‘champion of sincerity.’’ The former, despite repeated homosexual encounters, refuses to draw the conclusion that he is a homosexual; instead, he sees both his past behavior and his present inclinations as part of a ‘‘restless search.’’ Conversely, the latter demands that the homosexual sincerely avow what he is, ‘‘a homosexual.’’ Both are in bad faith. The homosexual denies responsibility for all that he has done by perpetually pushing his conception of Self into the future, and thus perpetually beyond the reach of his ability to make judgments about himself – he makes a mockery of his past and present choices. The champion of sincerity, on the other hand, pushes the homosexual’s conception of Self into the past in order to make it a thing – he denies the homosexual’s (and perhaps his own) freedom to make future choices, which is what enables us to transcend what we presently are. The former flees facticity; the latter, transcendence. All persons in bad faith fall one way or the other off the tightrope of good faith. Like the homosexual, the ‘‘flirtatious woman’’ denies her present choice to flirt by miring herself in conversation, thus enabling her to hypnotically ‘‘transcend’’ her body. And, like the champion of sincerity, the waiter who makes being a waiter a part of his very being and the man who makes anti-Semitism the lynchpin of his existential outlook deny their future choices by concretizing themselves in their facticity. Despite the dual nature of bad faith, there is one primary trait that all individuals in bad faith – regardless of whether they are fleeing transcendence or facticity – share in common: they are swapping some set of

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

209

human traits for another. To flee into facticity is to embrace those traits which one presently possesses at the expense of those that one might possess; to flee into transcendence to reject those traits that one presently possesses in favor of those which one does not yet, and might never, possess. The particular set of human traits that a person chooses at any point in time, whether the person is explicitly aware of these choices or not, are consonant with that person’s underlying project. And this underlying project, in turn, is given its impetus by what Sartre refers to as the ‘‘fundamental project,’’ a universal project which he describes as follows: The best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human reality is to say that man is the being whose project is to be God ... God, value and supreme end of transcendence. represents the permanent limit in terms of which man makes known to himself what he is. To be man means to reach toward being God. Or if you prefer. man fundamentally is the desire to be God. ... While the meaning of the desire is ultimately the project of being God. [however]. the desire is never constituted by this meaning; on the contrary, it always represents a particular discovery of its ends. These ends in fact are pursued in terms of a particular empirical situation, and it is this very pursuit which constitutes the surroundings as a situation. The desire of being is always realized as the desire of a mode of being.4

In T he Stranger, Camus, through the personage of Meursault, gives us one more example of an individual in Sartrian bad faith. But, as I shall argue, Meursault is not merely another example of bad faith; rather, he is a radical example of it. For unlike the examples that Sartre provides, Meursault is in bad faith because he rejects Sartre’s ‘‘fundamental project,’’ and, derivatively, the reflection that comprises the ground for all human transcendence. Unlike other escapes into facticity, such as the waiter and the anti-Semite, who create their Selves through their respective projects of becoming ‘‘maximum waiter’’ and ‘‘righteous victim,’’ Meursault, by rejecting the desire to be God, rejects the intrinsic human responsibility for creating a Self. He has no projects. An atom buffeted ff by the cosmic winds, he has fled into meta-facticity and, ultimately, death, his unarticulated project. II

Years after T he Stranger was published, Camus characterized Meursault Y as an honest man who ‘‘doesn’t play the game’’: Lying is not only saying what is not true. It is also and especially saying more than is true and, as far as the human heart is concerned, saying more than one feels. This is what we

210

MICHAEL DANIELS

all do every day to simplify life. Meursault ... does not wish to simplify life. He says what is true. He refuses to disguise his feelings and immediately society feels threatened ... You would not be far wrong then in reading T he Stranger as a story of a man who, without any heroics, accepts death for the sake of truth. I have sometimes said, and always paradoxically. that I have tried to portray in this character the only Christ we deserve.5

In ‘‘Camus’ L ’Etranger and the Truth,’’ Robert C. Solomon points out that after numerous interpretations of T he Stranger, all of which held Meursault to be the ‘‘totally honest man, Conor Cruise O’Brien dispelled this claim ‘‘in its scope, not in its essence.’’ After enumerating situation in which Meursault did not tell the truth, O’Brien concluded that what Meursault was true to his feelings. Solomon, in turn, disputes O’Brien’s interpretation on the grounds that ‘‘Meursault neither lies nor tells the truth, because he never reaches that (meta-) level of consciousness where truth and falsity can be articulated ... [He] is a philosophically fantastic character who ... is an ideal Sartrian prereflective consciousness, pure experience without reflection, always other than, but also nothing other than what he is conscious of at the moment.’’6 Although at odds, both of these interpretations deserve to be credited – but each only in a qualified fashion. In this way they can be reconciled, thus explaining my seemingly paradoxically claim. As O’Brien has correctly pointed out, Meursault is not an honest man in any conventional sense; moreover, as we will see shortly, O’Brien’s statement that he is at least honest in regard to his feelings is a more problematic claim than appears at first blush. To understand Camus’ claim of honesty, we must consider it within the context of his broader philosophical position. It is from this standpoint that his can be made intelligible. Thus, in T he Myth M of Sisyphus, which was written shortly after T he Stranger, Camus states: ‘‘If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this.’’7 Camus sees no contradiction in this in virtue of what he sees as the absurdity of human existence, or ‘‘the Absurd,’’ which is characterized by consciousness searching for meaning in a universe that refuses to provide any, a universe in which man must live ‘‘without appeal.’’ Sisyphus is wise, then, not only because he knows this to be so, but, more importantly, because he lives his life accordingly. It is within the context of this meaningless universe that Meursault is an honest man. He refuses to impose values when there are no grounds for doing so: ‘‘the absurd teaches that all experiences are unimportant.’’8

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

211

Thus, when Meursault impassively lies to the police on behalf of Raymond, he is being dishonest in one sense, but from the standpoint of our metaphysical condition he is being honest, for ultimately, like the death of his mother, it makes no difference. ff And when Meursault failed to vest these same happenings with a nonexistent meaning for the prosecutor, judge, and jury, and was consequently convicted and executed, he became a martyr whose death bore witness to the human condition. It is in this way that Camus tells us that Meursault is ‘‘the only Christ we deserve.’’ Meursault is a ‘‘metaphysically’’ honest man. Is it the case, however, that under the threat of death a metaphysically honest man would refuse to lie to his judges about how he felt about his mother’s death? Lying for himself would have been no more nor less a breach of the metaphysical truth that Meursault allegedly held dear than lying for the local pimp. Why didn’t he do it? O’Brien’s claim that it is because ‘‘his own feelings, and his feelings about his feelings, are sacrosanct’’ is too contrived. The example that O’Brien uses to show Meursault’s alleged fealty towards his feelings – that while Raymond beat the Arab girl he did not send for the police because he dislikes them – is a psychological manifestation of a more complicated situation.9 For the present, however, it bears emphasis that the picture of Meursault that I have taken from Camus, that Meursault is a metaphysically honest man, does not validate O’Brien’s claim that he is true to his feelings. To conclude otherwise is to vest our universe, and therefore the feelings of a metaphysically honest man, with a coherence that Camus himself did not believe it has. To the contrary, if our encounter with the universe is fraught with meaningless and ambiguity, the encounter between the metaphysically honest man and his feeling would follow suit. From all appearances, on the other hand, Solomon’s claim would seem to be correct. As it exists for him and is revealed to us, Meursault’s consciousness is nothing more than a ‘‘piece of flat, colorless glass.’’10 There would be no question of Meursault’s fealty towards his feeling because, quite simply, ‘‘he does not even have the feelings, much less feelings about his feelings, to which he is supposed to be true.’’11 But suppose that there are aspects of Meursault’s consciousness which he does not reflect upon. The contents of this estranged part of his consciousness could not be exposed to us – the book’s first-person presentation all but precludes this. Theoretically, then, there could be more to Meursault than meets the eye. To confirm whether this is the case, of course, we are relegated to drawing inferences from what is presented to us – but sometimes, as will be seen shortly, this is more than enough to bear fruit.

212

MICHAEL DANIELS

Indeed, the strong visceral response that Meursault evokes in many who read T he Stranger, regardless of whether it takes the form of identification or revulsion (or both), belies the notion that there is nothing more to Meursault, that he is merely this flat philosophically fantastic character, for such a character, to my mind, could not generate this type of response. Yet again, from all appearances, it is undeniable that he is philosophically fantastic. The answer to this paradox lies in viewing Meursault from the standpoint of having implicitly made a prior decision to reject Sartre’s fundamental project, the (contextual) striving to be God. To strive to be God, Sartre teaches, is to strive to ‘‘the permanent limit in terms of which man makes known to himself what he is.’’ Such human striving, which takes form within the context of our respective empirical situations, is clearly based upon reflective consciousness. It follows, then, that to cut the fundamental project off at its root, Meursault must do away with reflective consciousness. The unreflective consciousness that we encounter in the first part of the book is the result. It bears emphasis that for a man with such a (anti-) project, there is no less drastic step that can be taken. This is because even stark escapes into facticity are tinged with a desire to transcend that stems from reflective consciousness. To recall Sartre: bad faith ‘‘must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity.’’ Thus, the anti-Semite’s flight into facticity entails constituting his universe, passing judgment, absolving himself of his failures, and, finally, transcending those ‘‘oppressing Jews’’ upon whom he has passed judgment – all God-like acts of constituting a (his) universe. His ‘‘transcendence’’ takes place within his facticity. And what enabled the anti-Semite to jumpstart this project was the nihilating power of his reflective consciousness, which, in dialectical fashion, enabled him to constitute his world in this way (as opposed to another), as well as perpetually reinforce this constitution by (his) empirical data. Within Sartre’s framework, then, reflective consciousness ordinarily nihilates the objects in the world, thus enabling us to constitute our subjective universes in a particular way. In this ongoing process of focusing upon some object, de-emphasizing or casting out from consciousness others, and vesting the former with a unique subjective meaning, we each construct our Self. In contrast, Meursault’s reflective consciousness has turned its nihilative powers back onto itself – reflective consciousness nihiliating (never irrevocably, for Meursault is human) reflective consciousness. In this way, Meursault negates nothing less than his selfhood. His project, naturally unarticulated, is to have no project. Thus, like all

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

213

humans, he has retreated into the realm of bad faith; he is ‘‘philosophically fantastic’’ only in the magnitude of his flight. The impetus behind his flight, however, is the same as the impetus behind our own; he has simply taken it to its logical and inhuman conclusion (This is where his ability to effect ff us lies). For Meursault, then, metaphysical honesty is tantamount to metaphysical and bodily death. How is such a project formulated? What textual support is there for this hypothesis? It is to these questions that I now turn. III

To be in bad faith is to ‘‘lie to oneself ’’.12 Unlike the duality that exists between the liar and the one lied to in the case of ordinary deceit, however, in the case of bad faith this phenomenon takes place within a single consciousness. Thus, according to Sartre, the person in bad faith ‘‘must know in [his] capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from [him] in [his] capacity as the one deceived ... [He] must know the truth very exactly in order to conceal it more carefully – and this not at two different ff moments, which at a pinch would allow [him] to reestablish a semblance of duality – but in the unitary structure of a single project.’’ The theoretical problem that persists after this formulation, clearly enough, is the contradictory notion of a knowing person being able to induce this duality, this state where he both knows and does not know, while being unaware that he is doing so. Sartre addresses this problem by asserting that ‘‘there is no question of a reflective, voluntary decision, but of a spontaneous determination of our being. One puts oneself in bad faith as one goes to sleep and one is in bad faith as one dreams’’.13 In Self -Deception, Herbert Fingarette argues that Sartre’s reconciliation of this contradiction is less than satisfactory because he equivocates between claiming that bad faith is merely something that happens spontaneously and that it is something that we actually put ourselves into. Furthermore, he argues that Sartre has not told us how we keep ourselves in bad faith, i.e., how we continue to both believe and not believe after we have entered into it.14 Using a framework that is terminologically akin to Sartre’s, Fingarette fruitfully addresses these problems. According to Fingarette, bad faith is made possible by the ontological distinction between prereflective and reflective consciousness. Prereflective consciousness is constantly engaged in the world, and at a myriad of levels; it is thus beyond our capacity to be aware of all of our engagements. It is only when we ‘‘spell-out’’ or reflect upon our engagements that we

214

MICHAEL DANIELS

actually become aware of them. But we do not spell-out at random; rather, we implicitly size up a situation to determine whether there is a compelling reason to spell it out or avoid spelling it out. Thus a repeated failure to spell-out a certain engagement in the world does not arise from an inability to spell-out. Instead, ‘‘it is the adherence to a policy (tacitly) adopted. ‘He cannot admit it, cannot let himself become conscious of it,’ here means ‘He will not’; but the ‘will not’ refers to a general policy commitment and not an ad hoc decision not to spell it out.’’15 Within the Sartrian framework, Fingarette thus explains how we can simultaneously know and not know. We can know something prereflectively, but not reflectively. Indeed, since, according to Sartre, the Self is constituted by reflective consciousness, by implicitly relegating knowledge to the realm of prereflective consciousness, i.e. by disavowing it, we can keep our conception of Self intact. Sartre’s flirtatious woman, for example, despite engaging in behavior that is not consonant with chastity, can, by disavowing knowledge of here behavior, maintain her own conception of her Self as chaste. This is how bad faith inexorably leads to the ‘‘inner disintegration’’ that Sartre speaks of.16 Utilizing the Sartre-Fingarette bad faith framework, it can now be seen that although he appears as such, Meursault could be more than a pure prereflective consciousness. Instead, he could have tacitly adopted a ‘‘general policy commitment’’ that was based upon the desire to be a nonreflective consciousness. A perusal of T he Stranger bears out the existence of this tacit commitment. At two points in T he Stranger – both of which involved his being questioned by an authority figure – we see that Meursault was not always the wholly unreflective, Self-less individual that is narrating the story. We first observe this when Meursault’s employer confronts him with the possibility of taking a position with a new branch office in Paris. After an encounter in which Meursault expressed his typical indifference ff to the proposition, to which the employer replied that he had the grave defect of a lack of ambition. Meursault tells us: ‘‘I’d have preferred not to vex him, but I saw no reason for ‘changing my life.’ By and large it wasn’t an unpleasant one. As a student I’d had plenty of ambition ... But, when I had to drop my studies, I very soon realized that all was pretty futile.’’17 The second fissure in Meursault’s otherwise nonreflective consciousness can be observed when his lawyer asked him whether he had experienced grief over his mother’s death. Recounting the incident, Meursault tells us: ‘‘I answered that, of recent years, I’d rather lost the habit of noting my feelings, and hardly knew what to answer. I could truthfully say I’d been

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

215

quite fond of Mother – but really that didn’t mean much’’18 (Meursault is telling us here that he no longer spells-out his feelings). As a result of being questioned in these situations, Meursault is being forced to reflect, which means, more precisely, that he is being forced to reflect upon his underlying (anti-) project of nonreflection, thus threatening to cause him to spell-out this radical project in bad faith. This is why Meursault ‘‘dislike[s] being questioned’’19 (and contrary to O’Brien’s claim, this is why Meursault refuses to call the police when the Arab girl is being beaten; it is not just that he dislikes them). Fortunately, Meursault had a job that was well suited to his desire not to be questioned. From all appearances, his clerical job involved the solitary task of wading through bills of lading.20 For such a man, who allegedly loves the sand and sea, Sunday must be the day on which he truly lives; yet, Meursault tells us, Sunday is the very day that cannot abide. On the first Sunday that he recounts, Meursault, after having spent the night with Marie, awakens, realizes that she is no longer there, and then is seized by an unpleasant thought: ‘‘I remembered it was Sunday, and that put me out I’ve never cared for Sundays.’’21 Meursault went back to sleep, ate lunch, and then felt at ‘‘lose ends.’’ After reading the newspaper and cutting out an advertisement, he went ‘‘as a last resource’’ out to the balcony where, for the remainder of the day, he focused upon the parade of people in the street. At nightfall – as if to make certain that his Self had not somehow materialized – Meursault glanced in the mirror, in which he saw only the corner of his table, some breadcrumbs and his lamp.22 This relieved him: ‘‘It occurred to me that somehow I’d got through another Sunday.’’23 It should be apparent that Meursault dislikes Sundays because, more than any other day of the week, it is the day upon which his consciousness is most likely to be thrown back onto itself. This is not to suggest that a revelatory ‘‘why’’ cannot arise while a person is at work; instead, for someone who has a general policy commitment of not reflecting, of not spelling out, i.e., someone who implicitly does not want to ask ‘‘why,’’ the office can be a receptive place. In his Notebooks N , Camus writes: ‘‘Never give up – always demand more. But stay lucid, even during office hours.’’24 Meursault’s charge, however, is the opposite: he must avoid lucidity, even outside office hours. While it is clear that Camus and Meursault are at opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to the life of the mind – Camus did not renounce the human project in the face of an indifferent ff universe, but struggled to ascribe meaning to it, a meaning which took the form of a metaphysical

216

MICHAEL DANIELS

revolt in which lucidity was not a casualty but a driving force – it is equally true, but by no means as clear, that their sensual natures are at opposite ends of the spectrum. It would thus be a mistake to conclude that the price tag of the ‘‘pure’’ sensual experience is lucidity, for in anything more than a superficial sense, Meursault is incapable of a sensual experience – and it is precisely from his anti-project that this incapability stems. Indeed, the apparent contradiction of this sensualist’s aversion to the one day on which he has the greatest capacity to indulge his sensuality completely unravels once the utter poverty of his sensuality is fully appreciated. If when he states that ‘‘one must choose between living and telling’’ he means living and telling at the same time, Sartre’s Roquentin from Nausea may be right. But he is not right if he means that one cannot live if one has a consciousness that reflects. To the contrary, if one does not reflect, one cannot have a true sensual experience, for it is prior reflection which constitutes the aesthetic sensibilities that are its very foundation. These aesthetic sensibilities – constituents of the Self – bridge the experiencing subject and the ‘‘objective’’ experience to forge the indissoluble unity or ‘‘oneness’’ that is the hallmark of true sensual experiences. Thus, when compared with a real sensualist, such as Camus, it is the unreflective Meursault who is a relative bystander. Meursault, whose anti-project does not permit the construction of an aesthetic sensibility from prior reflection, experiences the beach and his girlfriend in the same atomized way that he experiences all else. He does have physical experiences, such as when Marie flings her arms around him and his ‘‘senses tingle’’,25 but they are disjointed and unemotional, and thus cannot be experienced in any heightened way. Meursault’s anti-project thus operates as a prophylactic; due to the disunity that it engenders, his sensual experiences are muted. Indeed, as befits his project, virtually all of Meursault’s sensual experiences are muted in the first part of T he Stranger. There is, however, one notable exception: his experience of the ubiquitous sun. The failure of Meursault’s anti-project to dull the sun’s heat and light as it dulls all other experiences is attributable to the fact that the sun embodies the metaphysic which engendered his anti-project. In a way that qualitatively differs ff from all else, it is the unrelenting, un fathomable sun which dominates the two events that lead to what Meursault refers to as his ‘‘undoing’’.26 Initially, at his mother’s funeral, Meursault speaks of the sun as he speaks of nothing else. He not only continuously speaks of the heat, light, and discomfort that it generates, but, in a high uncharacteristic

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

217

manner, he also speaks of its effects ff in a philosophical way: ‘‘The full glare of the morning sun, with everything shimmering in the heat haze, there was something inhuman, discouraging, about this landscape.’’27 Similarly. it is the obtrusiveness of the sun that plays the deciding role in Meursault’s killing of the Arab: A shaft of light shot upward from the steel, and I felt as if a long, thin blade transfixed my forehead ... All the sweat that had accumulated in my eyebrows splashed down my eyelids, covering them with a warm film of moisture. Beneath a veil of brine and tears my eyes were blinded: I was conscious only of the cymbals of the sun clashing on my skull, and, less distinctly, of the keen blade of light flashing from the knife, scarring my eyelashes, and gouging into my eyeballs. Then everything began to reel before my eyes, a fiery gust came from the sea. while the sky cracked in two. from end to end, and a great sheet of flame poured down through the rift. Every nerve in my body was a steel spring, and my grip closed on the revolver.28

Meursault is not just recording his sense impressions here. Up to this point, when describing his physical impressions, he laconically uses such adjectives as ‘‘hot’’ and ‘‘cool’’; as to these happenings, however, he is exceedingly eloquent. The explanation for this sudden burst of articulateness lies in the fact that this experience, no doubt paradoxically from our perspective, is the basis for a metaphysical epiphany. For this ‘‘metaphysically honest man’’ who rejects the desire to be God because it is a meaningless universe, this experience is the revelation of pure ambiguity and meaninglessness. It is both the validation of his project’s conception and its coming to fruition. Indeed, toward the end of his trial, when the Judge asked what his motive for the crime had been, Meursault haltingly put the blame where he thought it belonged: ‘‘I tried to explain that it was because of the sun, but I spoke to quickly and ran my words together. I was only too conscious that it sounded nonsensical ...’’29 Of course, Meursault’s anti-project stemmed from neither his ‘‘metaphysical honesty,’’ which did not require the actions that he took, nor from a desire to be ‘‘absorbed in the present moment’’,30 which was precluded by the very project that he had chosen. Instead, as I will now show, metaphysical honesty and sensuality are nothing more than Trojan horses which enable Meursault to avoid spelling out his suicidal project. It is his longing for death, not an indifferent ff sun, which led him to kill the Arab. IV

When we first meet Meursault at the beginning of the book, his project is already well under way; that is, he has already committed what we

218

MICHAEL DANIELS

might call metaphysical suicide. This type of suicide takes the form of positing himself as inert; like a lump of malleable clay, he has no casual efficacy, but exists for the indifferent ff universe to do with him as it will. It is not just that he denies his particular choices, but, more radically, he denies (at least for him) the very concept of choice. As Sartre would quickly point out, however, Meursault does make choices even if he himself is ostensibly unaware of the; his freedom to choose, which can perpetually manifest itself in choosing not to choose, is inescapable. This is explained, as we saw earlier, by the duality that is inherent in bad faith. Even though Meursault’s metaphysical suicide is a radical project in bad faith because it consists in the wholesale negation of his Self, his consciousness still contains the same duality that is present in all bad faith: it contains both the deceiver and the deceived. Meursault is the deceiver – that part of Meursault’s consciousness which makes the determination to put him bad faith – formulates the decision to categorically not spell-out. This self-covering policy hides from Meursault the deceived (who appears as pure unreflective consciousness) the choices that Meursault the deceiver is making, as well as the fact that there is an underlying project towards which these choices are aimed. While Meursault is still alive, the project of Meursault the deceiver is incomplete. Even metaphysical suicide is at best provisional, because while Meursault the deceiver appears to be hegemonic by dint of his negation of the reflective consciousness that might expose him, he is not immune to radical changes from events that are beyond his control. There is still the potential for some form of reflective consciousness to be reestablished (indeed, this is what occurs while Meursault is in jail). Thus, in order to concretize metaphysical suicide, i.e., concretize the negated Self, it is necessary for physical death to occur. And it is precisely towards the physical analogue to his metaphysical suicide that Meursault is striving throughout the book. If we return to the ‘‘scene of the crime’’ and consider its narration by Meursault the deceived, it can be seen, as already discussed, that everything that he does he claims to do because of the sun. However, these events are not caused by the sun, but by Meursault the deceiver whose project is to undo Meursault. We can see this by contrasting what Meursault the deceived says with what, based upon his actions, Meursault the deceiver actually means. Upon returning from the altercation with the Arabs in which Raymond was slashed, Meursault chooses not to follow Raymond up the wooden steps of the bungalow, where he could have escaped the light ‘‘thudding

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

219

in [his] head,’’ because he ‘‘couldn’t face the effort ff needed to go up the steps.’’ Instead, he decides to walk on the beach: ‘‘To stay, or to make a move – it came to much the same thing. After a moment I returned to the beach, and started walking’’31 (‘‘Here’s my chance. To stay or to move – it makes all the difference ff as to whether I realize my project or not. Thus, despite the oppressive heat and light, I returned to the beach’’). And, predictably, as Meursault walked on the beach, he found the sun intolerable. Nevertheless, he tells us, ‘‘I wasn’t going to be beaten, and I walked steadily on’’ (‘‘Whatever the circumstances, my project was not going to be thwarted, and I walked steadily on’’). As Meursault progressed, he tells us, he saw that Raymond’s Arab had returned. He maintains that he was ‘‘rather taken aback; my impression had been that the incident was closed, and I hadn’t given a thought to it on my way here.’’ At this point, the Arab saw Meursault, and his hand went to his pocket. In response, Meursault gripped Raymond’s revolver. And now, in the midst of the heat, Meursault asserts, ‘‘it struck me that all I had to do was turn, walk away, and think no more about it. But the whole beach, pulsing with heat, was pressing on my back.’’ At this point, Meursault the deceived is having his doubts; it is the weight of Meursault the deceiver and his underlying project, not the heat, which is pressing on his back. There is now one final opportunity for Meursault to avoid a killing. He stood there and just waited – but not for long. Thus, Meursault tells us: ‘‘I couldn’t stand it any longer, and took another step forward. I knew it was a fool thing to do; I wouldn’t get out of the sun by moving a yard or so. But I took that step, just one step forward. And then the Arab drew his knife ...’’ Even the veritably unreflective Meursault the deceived knew at the time that it was foolish for him to move forward, but the impulse to do so was clearly irresistible. This impulse stemmed neither from the sun as metaphysic, since from the sun’s standpoint whether Meursault moved forward or retreated was purely a matter of indifference, ff nor from his mundane desire to avoid a blazing sun, since Meursault himself has just asserted that for these purposes the step was of no benefit. Instead, his impulse to move forward stemmed from his underlying project, the project of Meursault the deceiver, which was about to come to fruition. Meursault might have died by the Arab’s hand; instead after shooting the Arab once, he ‘‘fired four more shots into the inert body’’32 for no obvious reason, thus nominally shifting the job of self-executioner to the State.

220

MICHAEL DANIELS

This rendition of the killing of the Arab illustrates that Meursault was making choices throughout the incident. Due to his inner disintegration wrought by his radical bad faith, however, he could not articulate the reason for these choices, and thus attributed them to something outside himself. Nevertheless, it is Meursault who is responsible for orchestrating the events that led to his demise, not some abstract metaphysic. This becomes all the more apparent once he is incarcerated, for while in jail, Meursault begins to reflect and, consequently, develop a Self. The emergence of this Self – which will ultimately articulate Meursault’s death project – is predicated upon two factors, both of which are the result of Meursault’s changed circumstances. First, for Meursault, a day in jail is akin to a Sunday on which he could not leave his apartment and expose himself to some form of undemanding stimulation, such as the beach or a movie. In jail, moreover, he could not even repair to his bedroom with Marie or his balcony, where he could distract himself by watching the people on the street. Incarceration for Meursault was thus like an endless string of tobaccoless Sundays that utterly devoid of stimulation, the type of Sundays on which consciousness may have nothing to focus on but itself. The ‘‘problem’’ in jail, therefore, as it was for him on Sundays, was ‘‘how to kill time’’33 – a problem to which jail could provide no real answer. Thus it is when Meursault is told that he has been incarcerated for six months, which ‘‘seemed like one and the same day’’ in which he had ‘‘been doing the same thing all the time,’’ that he first saw his expression in the tin pannikin.34 (When Meursault did not see himself in the mirror on a Sunday night, it will be recalled, it dawned on him that he had ‘‘got through’’ it. He had no chance of ‘‘getting through’’ [avoiding reflection in] jail.) Second, unlike his life in the external world, where his unreflective consciousness was able to effortlessly ff glide through a matrix of superficial social interactions relatively unscathed, Meursault becomes the center of attention while in jail and on trial. His consciousness is forced back onto itself because that is where those around him are focusing. Meursault thus begins to develop a self-identity in response to the magistrate’s frequent interrogations of him. (Of course, this is why he had disliked being questioned.) Nonetheless, Meursault tells us that he began to feel like ‘‘one of the family,’’ and that he got so used to the examinations that he was ‘‘almost surprised at having ever enjoyed anything better than those rare moments when the magistrate would pat him on the shoulder [and call him] Mr. Antichrist ...’’35

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

221

As the trial progresses, Meursault becomes increasingly reflective, and, correspondingly, increasingly Self-Aware. He comes to understand the disdain in which he is held by those who are in attendance, which causes him to have the ‘‘foolish desire to burst into tears,’’ and then, more profoundly, to realize that regardless of his actual ‘‘crime,’’ he is ‘‘guilty.’’36 He also comes to enjoy hearing himself talked about while he is in the prisoner’s dock.37 And, finally, as he languishes in his cell following his conviction, Meursault becomes obsessed with ‘‘the problem of circumventing the machine, learning if the inevitable admits a loophole.’’38 He even goes so far as to establish a little ritual in which he first accustoms himself to the idea that his appeal has been denied, and then considers the other possibility, that it is successful, which causes a ‘‘sudden rush of joy racing through [his] body and even bring[s] tears to his eyes’’39 In short, he appears to be preoccupied with preserving the life of his newly found Self. What are we to make of this? Does the tragedy of this novel lie in the paradox that the process which has given Meursault his Self back is the very process that will now, while he is fully conscious, take it away? Has Meursault, through the coming into existence of his Self, transcended his death project at precisely the time at which the success of the project can no longer be avoided? Is the man that will be put to death no longer the same man that was initially put on trial? These questions must be answered in the negative. Although a Self has been generated, a Self that seems to be opposed to its execution, Meursault is still in bad faith. The duality between Meursault the deceiver and Meursault the deceived (with help from his ‘‘friends’’) has broken through into the realm of reflective consciousness and selfhood. Of course, what can now be said is that Meursault is no longer in radical bad faith, but he is still in bad faith, and the project of Meursault the deceiver is still operative. Meursault’s new enthusiasm for life, then, is merely a strategy for employing his newly found reflection in a way to avoid spelling out his project, for a person who does not rebel against death while staring into its maw has no choice but to acknowledge that it is precisely death that he seeks. It is only upon Meursault’s rejection of the chaplain’s counsel before his execution that he obliquely comes to realize that it was death that he had been striving towards all along. I’d been right. I was still right, I was always right. I’d passed my life in a certain wax, and I might have passed it in a different ff way, if I’d felt like it ... All the time. I’d been waiting for this present moment. for that dawn. tomorrow’s or another day’s. which was to justify

222

MICHAEL DANIELS

me. Nothing. nothing had the least importance. and I knew quite well why ... From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come.40

For Meursault, who had long ago sought an escape into the metafacticity of the gray stone walls that surrounded him, stone walls that would not now reciprocate his desire to see a fleeting earthly thing within them, death came towards him not like a slow persistent breeze, as it comes towards us, but as a strong wind rushing to fill the vacuum of where his Self should have been. This ‘‘persistent breeze’’ was not to justify him, however, but was to justify his self-abnegating project, which was fostered by his belief that whatever its length, ‘‘it’s common knowledge that life isn’t worth living ...’’41 Even upon the cusp of death, however, Meursault could not truly acknowledge the breadth of his underlying project. Thus, when he tells us that, while gazing up at the night sky, ‘‘for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference ff of the universe’’,42 he is the only one that believes it, for we know that he had opened up his heart to this condition a long time ago. T rinity University L awrence, Kansas NOTES 1 Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon, T he W retched of the Earth, Constance Farrington (trans.) (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 25. 2 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel Barnes (trans.) (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966), p. 98. 3 Ibid., p. 98. 4 Ibid., p. 724. 5 Preface to Albert Camus, T he Stranger, Matthew Ward (trans.) (New York: Vintage International, 1988). Quoted in Robert C. Solomon, ‘‘Camus’ L ’Etranger and the Truth,’’ Philosophy and L iterature 2 (1978): 141–2. 6 Ibid., pp. 144–5. 7 Albert Camus, T he Myth M of Sisyphus and Other Essays, Justin O’Brien (trans.) (New York: Vintage International, 1988), p. 88. 8 Ibid., p. 46. 9 Conor Cruise O’Brien, Camus (London: Fontana Modern Masters, 1970), p. 22. 10 Solomon, op. cit., p. 147. 11 Ibid., p. 144. 12 Sartre, op. cit., p. 89. 13 Ibid., p. 113. 14 Herbert Fingarette, Self -Deception (London: Routledge, 1969), pp. 94–5. 15 Ibid., pp. 47–8.

CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SARTRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY

223

16 Ibid., p. 96. 17 Camus, T he Stranger, op. cit., p. 52. 18 Ibid., p. 18. 19 Ibid., p. 25. 20 Ibid., p. 30. 21 Ibid., p. 25. 22 Solomon, op. cit., p. 147. 23 Camus, T he Stranger, op. cit., p. 30. 24 Albert Camus, N Notebooks: 1935–1942, Justin O’Brien (trans.) (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1963), p. 73. 25 Camus, T he Stranger, op. cit., p. 65. 26 Ibid., p. 76. 27 Ibid., p. 18. 28 Ibid., p. 76. 29 Ibid., p. 130. 30 Ibid., p. 127. 31 Ibid., p. 73. 32 Ibid., p. 76. 33 Ibid., p. 98. 34 Ibid., p. 101. 35 Ibid., p. 88. 36 Ibid., p. 112. 37 Ibid., p. 123. 38 Ibid., p. 136. 39 Ibid., p. 143. 40 Ibid., pp. 151–2. 41 Ibid., p. 142. 42 Ibid., p. 154.

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS Of Various Characters and Scenes in Ramon del Valle-Inclan’s Comedias barbaras

In dealing with the Comedias barbaras, time and again one finds a curious situation. For example, there are characters whose role is only secondary in one of the plays, or that are just referred to by name in it, but not in others. Unless one is prepared to say that Valle-Inclan repeatedly exercised aleatory choices in the construction of his trilogy, or, consequently, that the plays in question are significantly devoid of unity and completeness, one must at least consider the possibility of regarding the role played by such characters in any one of the plays in the light of their part in others. Moreover, it is true that Valle-Inclan sometimes presupposed, in a given play, the features that would have defined a particular character, or even that he merely alluded to them or gave them simply in outline therein. It seems to me that a finding of this sort, or just a surmise of such occurrences, would incline the reader, or a perceptive member of the audience, to have recourse to matters that would transcend the given play, say, by imaginatively gaining access to the other parts of the trilogy where a presentation of the relevant features or actions would be more satisfactory, if indeed he or she is adequately to grasp, let alone appreciate, the manner of being, life attitude, and physical appearance of the character in question.1 Definitely, if such clues go unheeded, one cannot justly come to terms with the concreteness and individuality of the action wherever the subject thereof is merely sketched. Indeed, a character so ‘‘constituted’’ would appear to us as unjustifiedly puzzling, and we would thus be tempted to take the work under consideration as imperfect, if not as an outright failure. As an alternative, I would like to entertain a hypothesis about the Comedias barbaras, a hypothesis which, given its anticipatory nature, can only be presented at this point as a purely formal, or nearly empty, formula. It reads as follows: the unity exhibited by this trilogy of plays (and therefore the unity of each play) is one by Gestalt or structural coherence.2 In other words, if I am right, it would be impossible, without serious distortion and attendant vagueness, to proceed to the examination of the plays by taking any one of them as if it were a self-enclosed whole; 227 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 227–271. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

228

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

rather, for that purpose one would have to bear in mind its manifold relationships to the other two. Accordingly, I would argue that the Comedias barbaras are structurally linked to each other in such a fashion that one would have to take each one of them as a component of an encompassing organic totality of meaning. Each play would thus be given not only by itself but, as well and essentially, by way of an array of internal references to the other members of the trilogy. Of course, I do not mean to suggest thereby that there is no such thing as the Comedias barbaras as singular entities, or that each of them is entirely devoid of sense by itself. Otherwise, no play belonging to the trilogy could be understood at all by means of separate readings or performances. My point, however, is precisely the opposite, to wit: that the unity of signification of each play, and that of the trilogy as a whole, is given and constituted primarily and precisely by means of a network of reciprocal, internal references demanding mutual confirmation. If such is the case, every singular reading or performance of a particular play belonging to the trilogy, however meaningful it may be, would nonetheless, of necessity, prove insufficient, and it would therefore leave anyone – whether reader or member of the audience – not only unfulfilled in his or her expectations, but eager as well to gain the proper satisfaction thereof by following the clues which, even if contained in any given play (as they certainly are), transcend it in specifically and intrinsically given directions toward the other members of the trilogy. It is not my intention to de-emphasize, not even by implication, the problematic character of the hypothesis in question. To begin with, let me point to the fact that the chronological order of composition of the ´ guila de blason [Heraldic plays forming part of the trilogy (namely, A Eagle], Romance de lobos [Romance of Wolves], and Cara de plata ´ guila de blason3 was [Silver Face]) is apparently inconsistent with it. A written or published in 1907, Romance de lobos4 in 1908, and Cara de plata5 in 1923. The contradiction lies not so much in the fact that the interval between the date of composition or publication of the first play and that of the last play of the trilogy is considerable (to wit: sixteen years) or, consequently, in the fact that, stylistically speaking, Cara de plata may be less similar to the plays preceding it than to those belonging to the later period of Valle-Inclan’s work, the so-called esperpento or ‘‘absurdist’’ plays, as it does in my decision to appeal to attitudes, outward appearances, utterances, and actions found in the various plays, without taking into account the gap between their composition or publication dates.6 Again let me say that the justification (or the lack thereof ) for

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

229

this procedure can only be found as one in fact proceeds in making use of it and can thus evaluate its results. It seems to me that there is no sufficient a priori reason (say, the mere acknowledgment of the temporal interval separating the plays) to reject the adoption of such a method, for, in my opinion, both the procedure and its results can only be judged by means of a reflection on the signification of each play within the contexture of the trilogy which is being formed. Furthermore, a failure to take into account such differences ff is not only an inconsequence rooted merely in the interpretive method herein employed, but is also a result of Valle-Inclan’s not infrequent use of it. As Zamora Vicente for one has shown in his book on Valle-Inclan’s L uces de bohemia, one finds that the author of that work has availed himself of a device that consists in ‘‘ignoring a strict chronological order by turning the present into the past ... and by transforming the present into a memory. ...’’7 In the Comedias barbaras, such a disregard for a ‘‘strict chronological order’’ has a bearing not so much on a reversal of the temporal index of facts, utterances, and actions, as it does on the ‘‘development’’ of the signification of various aspects of character, attitude, and action, quite independently of the dates of composition or publication of the play in question (and, consequently, of the concreteness of each play and the contents thereof ). It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that one may say that the plane on which the Comedias barbaras exists is intemporal, inasmuch as the whole they constitute amounts to the structural coherence of mutually referential significances. The unity of the trilogy – and this is what I will endeavor to show – is precisely the intemporal nexus of meanings that is being constituted at every turn (i.e., in every play) by way of reciprocal references to the other plays of the trilogy, and by means of one’s anticipatory search and identification of such mutual references.8 In my judgment, then, the contradiction or inconsistency I alluded to before is only apparent. Bearing that in mind, let me now attempt to show what sort of structural unity is proper to the Comedias. ´ RBARAS THE GENERAL SENSE OF THE COMEDIAS BA

As a first step, I would like briefly to formulate the general notion being concretely worked out in Valle-Inclan’s trilogy, even if it is at the risk of provoking the formation of apparently arbitrary anticipations or of giving the impression of entertaining unfounded views. At least, such a decision may preclude that one easily go astray in the midst of the complexity of the Comedias. One is entitled to do so, of course, if one is alive to the

230

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

condition that one must be ready, at every turn, to modify, even to a significant degree, the interpretive formula that served as one’s point of departure. In light of these caveats, I may now venture to say that lust and overweening pride are the basic forms of sinfulness constituting the mainsprings of the trilogy; indeed, that is the case insofar as they are embodied in the defining attitudes and actions of Don Juan Manuel Montenegro, the principal character of the Comedias. Such forms of sinfulness are not merely translated by him into practice in conjunction, or even in succession, but are for him foundationally interconnected manners of acting and self-awareness. From the very beginning, they spontaneously manifest themselves in his life, in the sense of being both his habitual and ancestral ways of being. Now, this is certainly true, but not as if they merely belonged to the human race as a whole, but especially to the Montenegro’s stock. At the same time, one could even say that those species of sin reach such depths in him as to be of immoderate proportions and of an intentionally and affectively ff titanic quality. Moreover, the condition they breed is so distinctive of him that one may say that, in all probability, it is the root itself out of which originates the ultimate sense of Don Juan Manuel’s life. In fact, it was a realization like that which served Pedro Salinas, the great poet and critic, to justify, in his own eyes, the account he provided for the title of the trilogy. To that effect, ff he argued as follows: ... [the trilogy entitled Comedias barbaras] is, strictly speaking, an antecedent of his esperpentos [or absurdist plays], one more step taken in the direction of the esperpento style. This is so because, conceptually, ‘‘barbarous’’ rings like ‘‘huge’’, ‘‘enormous’’, or beyond the norms of civil [society]; absurd [or excessive]; [and] incapable of drawing level with us. When Valle[-Inclan] grows fond of the barbarous and sets out along that novel stylistic path, he betrays himself as one already feeling an urge for deformation, which instead of [making him] strive after lylac-like forms [as he did in his Sonatas, makes him] dream of monsters.9

As Salinas has indicated, Valle-Inclan was thus led to deformation, if by this term one does not understand arbitrariness, or even a deliberate falsification of man’s reality and affective ff life, on the author’s part, but rather the pitiless insistence with which he emphasized certain very real things a human being is, does, or feels. This is the reason why Salinas placed Valle-Inclan’s urge for deformation on a new plane of stylization, an urge that would accordingly reach its full development during his esperpento phase, although as the result of enacting other choices. In fact, he continued to pursue the process of stylization he had followed in his

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

231

Sonatas, but no doubt in a different ff fashion. ‘‘The pirouettes and twistedness displayed by the esperpento [or absurdist] entities, already found in the Comedias barbaras, Divinas palabras [Divine Words], and La pipa de Kif [Kif ’s Pipe], are opposed [by him] to the plastic-art dignity shown by Bradomın in Princess Gaetani’s salons or at the Carlist court’’.10 The path of stylization, then, no longer leads him into a sphere of refinement and aristocratic feeling, by means of which to exalt the human element and reach the decadent peaks of art for art’s sake;11 on the contrary, he pursues it so as to be able to deliver us unto the abyssal depths of certain passions. In fact, at this stage of his production, ValleInclan employs ‘‘grimaces instead of faces’’,12 thereby achieving success in carrying the process of stylization further, though in a novel way that is perhaps more intimate and human. One must nonetheless try to grasp exactly the nature of the nexus established by means of the pair deformation-stylization. In my opinion, Julian Marı´as has given expression to it most precisely, when he argued that those concepts must be regarded as being ultimately connected with the notion of ‘‘de-realization’’,13 which is the name for a ‘‘form ‘ of literary thinking strictly speaking’’,14 one which, however, ‘‘does not mean either idealization or irrealization’’.15 De-realization is a process consisting in ‘‘starting out on the basis of reality, [while] keeping hold of reality [as one contemplates it] even with relentless eyes, but in order violently to part company with it, in order to kick it, if you will’’.16 That notwithstanding, it would be an error to take the idea of de-realization as if it were the embodiment of ressentiment, in the sense given to the word by Max Scheler in his famous book devoted to its consideration.17 It cannot therefore be the equivalent – as the attitude of ressentiment certainly would – of the concealment of the positive aspects of the real, or to the spurning of them in the exercise of bad faith, even to the point of selfdeception. And it cannot amount to that because of Valle-Inclan’s great love and respect for the integrity of the reality of a human being, especially as given in the context of his living together with others. Even though it is true that Valle-Inclan dynamites18 reality, one can nonetheless assert that he does so while remaining faithfully and radically open to it, for such is his essential disposition, as was witnessed quite forcefully by Marı´as when he said: It is like a splendid apple, a red, green, juicy, fragrant apple ... [harboring] a worm within, but still a splendid apple.19

232

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

What Valle-Inclan presents and constitutes in his work – at least after the composition of his Sonatas – is the reality of man, whole and complete, in his living together with others and with himself. This is not, however, a matter of self-knowledge, or a question of the knowledge of others, which would be given instantly and once and for all, but rather something that would result from long effort, ff even from one’s irritated resistance against it. To the contrary, Valle-Inclan is grappling therein with those difficulties found in living which involve neither sheer beauty nor mere horror; one may even say that, during this creative phase, he does not focus on pure pleasure but fundamentally takes in the experience of suffering ff as well. One could even contend that Valle-Inclan’s work – better yet, the constitution and development of it – is, from this point onwards, an experimental endeavor to arrive, no doubt, at self-knowledge, but at a self-knowledge that is both universal and profoundly personal, one achieved indeed by way of the intent imagining of possible human lives. Hence, it would not be false, not even venturesome, to assert that V Valle-Incla n’s novel work (including therein his Comedias barbaras) is born out of despair,20 with the proviso that, in adopting such a stance, he is being faithful to human reality by taking it in its entirety. Zamora Vicente, for one, develops a critique of Valle-Inclan’s work which is consistent with this understanding thereof, even though he adopts a socio-historical standpoint to examine it. Accordingly, he addresses the author of the Sonatas by saying that ‘‘[h]ere lies the weakness of the Sonatas: an excessive [appeal to the] fantastic when reality demands [that we follow] other paths.’’21 Openness to the real is thus no longer acted upon by Valle-Inclan as it was in the Sonatas, namely, as an occasion for the ‘‘rebirth of sensations, [as] a delightful toning down of the past [that would turn it into] something ethereal and bright, covered by gold dust, [into] something like those reminiscences about life that our dreams bring us at times.’’22 No more, then, is the author after the ‘‘gold dust’’ of dreams and of the privileged moment (‘‘at times’’); he has ceased to be in pursuit of the transient memory of things felt, of those things that at once pass into zones of vagueness and ... [would] not serve to condition the circumstances as a whole. (Such is altogether the opposite of the esperpento [or absurdist play], which [is something of ] deep and bitter strength that stubbornly attaches itself to the mind.)23

Or to put it bluntly: at that transional point, Valle-Inclan was in search of integral reality, as it was only possible in terms of the mixed attitude of fidelity and despair he had then adopted.

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

233

Let me now attempt to show how in fact he achieved his goal in the Comedias barbaras. 1. L ust and Sin As Amado Alonso perceptively pointed out, the efficacious [influence] ... exerted on the reader’s sensibility is not equivalent to speaking to him or her of love, religion, and death, but rather to presenting him or her with these three subjects together ...24

Even though Alonso was referring here to the Sonatas, his remark retains its validity when applied to the Comedias. One must, however, introduce a qualification, namely, that sin – as that which serves to establish the nexus between those three dimensions – is no longer found to be something ‘‘deserving adoration because of its perversity, whether actual or potential,’’25 since in fact, for that to happen, human reality would have to be regarded from without as a mere esthetical object. But sin is now taken by Valle-Inclan as an internal, dominating force, indeed as an overwhelming one. A human being is considered by him as having been planted in sin, sin being precisely the medium in which he grows till death. To put it in the playwright’s own words: Sin is your life’s companion, and [yet] you do not think that death can take us by surprise! Every night your flesh burns with the fire of impurity, and the retinue you bid welcome to in your bed, and give shelter to under your sheets and soothe to sleep in your arms, is sin’s serpent as it dons its tempting shapes. (AB, pp. 11–12)

In this passage, one must note, above all, that sin is presented as the concupiscence of the flesh, for, despite the fact that sin is the universal failure to be human, it seems never to work its way in us in an abstract and diffuse ff fashion, but always concretely. Here one can see that sin is, to begin with, one’s own desire as it is consummated every night in the other’s flesh; but, further, one can also grasp that sin is the concreteuniversal nexus binding any two human beings, and one can do so precisely because of that inner, intrinsic reference in us to another. Or as V Valle-Incla n himself put it: ‘‘Sin is blood, and it turns men into brethren, just as the blood of our parents does!’’ (RL , p. 602) We will have an occasion to see how Don Juan Manuel becomes aware of his sinfulness and comes to terms with the history, if any, of such an accomplishment. He resists, no doubt, acknowledging his sin as his own,

234

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

that is to say, as something that he does and in regard to which he can exercise his freedom. Instead he tries to lead his life as if it were the mere expression of the telluric-natural elements of his being, although later he will attempt – by distancing himself from the attendant awareness of his sinful activities – to lay the blame of lust on his natural makeup, a dimension of his being for which one can seemingly bear no moral responsibility. Or to put it in his own words: Since a man is in need of many women, and yet he is provided with only one, he has to seek them outside. I [his home]. If I had been provided with ten women, I would have been like a patriarch ... would have loved them all, and I would have loved their children, and the children of my children. ... Without that, my life appears as a great sin.’’ (RL , p. 618; vide p. 648)

Inasmuch as the universal nexus between human beings is here rendered concrete in the form of lust, it is possible to follow it as a definite path to perdition. In the remarkable exchange between Don Juan Manuel and Fuso negro, such a realization is embodied by way of personification and myth. Children are not just born of lust; they also are the fruit of a ruse of the Devil. We hear that [h]e moves on the rooftops breaking the tiles, and he goes down the chimneys to mount women and make them pregnant by means of a trick of his own. ... Without that trick ... there can be no children. (RL , p. 669)

That notwithstanding, in the painful and difficult path he follows towards his own truth, Don Juan Manuel finds his own moments of lucidity, during which he cannot but acknowledge that the transformation of one’s disposition to lust into sin depends on the use one puts it to. Accordingly, when he flees from his wife’s home (a flight later to acquire the sense of journey toward himself ), he runs into Sabelita, who seems to be trying to save him from death, while in fact she is the instrument that would bring about the Knight’s other possible death. It is at that point that he says to her: ‘‘The Devil does not call you Isabel! ... The Devil will call you the voice of a lie, crow of ingratitude, slave of hypocrisy, embers of lust!’’ (RL , p. 663). But Isabel has already taken up another shape and function, and he likewise is no longer the man who once abducted Sabelita and spoke thus to his servant, Don Galan: But is it worth it to repent and become holy so late, when World, Devil, and Flesh can offer ff me so few occasions of sin? If [only] I had thought of that thirty years ago! Now it

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

235

appears to me as the scruple of a Pharisee. It is not worth it! Tonight I’ll bite into this bunch! (CP, p. 133)

At this point, Don Juan Manuel is risking self-deception as he regards, if only as an element of his past, the possibility of becoming holy, as if that were a real possibility of his own. Perhaps one could find a genuine link between holiness and the Knight’s nature, one that would be rooted in his passional and telluric natural makeup, but that is all. Nonetheless, the temptation to conceal from himself what he truly is lasts only for a fleeting moment, since he has now come to realize that thinking of becoming holy is to him just as the scruple of a Pharisee. And yet he succumbs to the temptation of lust, which is of an altogether different ff sort, and he does so in the worst way possible, namely, with the unwillingness proper to what is habitual to him. As he says: ‘‘It is not worth it! Tonight I’ll bite into this bunch!’’ However, at a later stage of his life, when he is about to die, Don Juan Manuel no longer sees Sabelita as a mere occasion of sin but as the temptation that may lead him to perdition; that is to say, as the stumbling block that may divert him from his destiny. This is no other than the consummation of his life, at the point when life ceases to be a journey towards oneself, for homo viator must surrender his course once he has arrived at genuine self-knowledge. And yet the role played by Sabelita at that juncture in Don Juan Manuel’s life is not entirely negative, since she has come to serve him as an occasion of salvation. No wonder the Knight adds these words at that point: ‘‘Isabel, my name for you is remorse!’’ (RL , p. 663). That notwithstanding, one may not fully appreciate the meaning of his utterance until one learns that remorse is only the necessary or negative condition rendering salvation possible, for something more is indeed required therefore. In fact, Sabelita is the one who not only is aware that something else is needed as well, but the one who also takes the steps required to secure it. Perhaps the reason is that she has already undergone a form of experience of which Don Juan Manuel is bereft until quite late, namely, the experience describable as the ‘‘fear of death’’ (AB, p. 83). It is just the fear that liberated and allowed her, at last, to break the ‘‘bond of sin’’ (ibid., p. 84). In order to have the courage to leave the Knight, she must come to live in the dread anticipation of death, for that is the only coin she may use for the purchase of her repentance. Repentance is just that additional factor which must be at work in oneself, and that one is in need of if one’s salvation is ever to arrive, at least when one’s situation is regarded from a subjective point of view. Now, as has

236

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

already been pointed out, sin is the universal though negative link existing between a man and a woman, but, if that is so, then a response to the need we feel for each other must be forthcoming ffrom without, a response which would constitute, objectively speaking, the suY u cient condition for the possibility of salvation of the subject involved in the experience of sin. Obviously, however urgently and decisively required it may be by virtue of the intrinsic makeup of the sinner, such a response would nonetheless be in the nature of a gift, and thus its efficacy would be predicated not only on the sinful subject’s need thereof, but also on his or her free acceptance of it. This objective condition and response is no other than forgiveness, as can be gathered from what Isabel says to Dona Marı´a, the Knight’s wife and butt of Isabel’s offense, ff to wit: ‘‘if you forgive me, my soul will be freed from remorse. Good-by, mother dear’’ (ibid., p. 85). But, as I suggested before, this is precisely what the Knight is being denied. As he says: ‘‘Only that holy woman whose executioners we were calls you Isabel’’, a name which, given the context, can only mean ‘‘freed from sin’’. And yet he does not rest his case there, for he is forced to add: ‘‘But on Satan’s lips one cannot find the love belonging to her now silent mouth!’’ (RL , p. 663). It is puzzling not to find the subject of incest raised in the trilogy, except occasionally and, to all appearances, as if it were a matter having nothing to do with Don Juan Manuel. Thus, when as a result of Pichona’s complaints about having been forsaken by Cara de Plata, Don Farruquino, the latter’s brother, offers ff himself as a suitable substitute. Then, upon being rejected, he has this to say to Pichona: ‘‘Bashful Lucretia, does incest horrify you?’’ (AB, p. 113). And yet one would venture the thought that this kind of sin and form of the concupiscence of the flesh is certainly at work in the play, Cara de plata. Undoubtedly, it is present there, although only objectively, inasmuch as Don Juan Manuel chooses Sabelita, knowing full well as he does that Cara de plata is courting or wooing her (cf. CP, p. 25). Nonetheless, Don Juan Manuel claims ‘‘ignorance’’, a behavior which, even though it cannot be identified with sheer pretense or even with bad faith, could very well signify that the Knight’s incestuous ‘‘intentions’’ (i.e., to possess his son’s wife and thus, through an intermediary, become one with his son) constitute an unconscious motivation for his action (cf. ibid., pp. 134–135).26 2. Death and Sin As has already been indicated, a connection seems to exist between sin and death. Moreover, such a relationship curiously exhibits a future-

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

237

tending dimension.27 For example, Brother Jeronimo speaks to us of death as of an event that may catch us unawares as we are actually engaged in committing sin; and again, Sabelita speaks of her dread expectation of death as a means to earn her freedom from sin. In other words, the link in question cannot be regarded as a statically given nexus, but rather as one which is being constituted at every turn by the dynamic mediation of the expectation of one’s own death. Let me now attempt to substantiate this point. The old woman going by the name of Liberata la Magnıfica may prove interesting in this connection. Five years having already elapsed since she had lost her sight, she is then just a few hours away from her death. This is certainly no time for joy, and Liberata appears to know it. Once again we find ourselves confronted by the nexus existing between two phenomena, namely, a tense projection toward the future and an attendant feeling of sadness. It is in that predicament that she says: ‘‘How sad is the expectation of death!’’ (AB, p. 145). But even more important is the lived union or synthesis of the anticipated event of her death and the fruits of her lust, to which she points when she asserts: The fire of youth leads us to commit the offense ff of providing the great Satan with armies. Every year, the innocents who suckle at their mothers’ breast crucify our Divine Lord. Oh, the day of our death! Oh, the day of our death! (ibid., p. 146)

This imprecation apparently signifies two things at once, as one may realize if one bears in mind not only its immediate context but what precedes it as well. Accordingly, it means, on the one hand, that death is the price to pay for endowing lust with its fruits (a realization by virtue of which one can anticipate death both with urgency and as a matter of justice); but, on the other hand, it means that death is the event that should come to pass if such fruits are to be avoided. In other words, what is being expressed here is precisely the peculiar temporal sense of living one’s death in such a fashion, to wit: as the burning future of our past, that is to say, as the essential possibility of our well-deserved future annihilation that is inscribed therein. Even the theme conveyed by the chaplain is unexpectedly transformed when he tells thus that ‘‘[d]eath is our companion since we are born’’ (RL , p. 637), an utterance leading us almost at once to the cry, ‘‘[w]retched flesh!’’ This formulation of the matter could certainly be regarded as trite, were it not for the broader context of which it is a part, namely, that in which consideration is given to the shipwreck of the boatmen who had brought Don Juan Manuel to Dona Marı´a’s house on

238

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

the day of her death. In this connection, let me just mention the two occasions in which the Poor Man of St. Lazarus, an impressive figure among the beggars, plays a meaningful role. The first time he tells us that [t]he great houses are consumed as candles at a wake, when the sons rise against their fathers and go to battle for their inheritance. (RL , 638)28

The comparison between the destruction of the houses and the ‘‘dying’’ of the candles at a wake (and above all the fact that the flesh is qualified with the value of wretchedness) can be seen as the means which endow the commonplace uttered by the chaplain with unusual significance. The flesh, which, as has already been indicated, is linked with concupiscence itself and is identified as an occasion for perdition, is now regarded as something dying little by little, just as the candles slowly burn away at a wake. In light of this, one could even go as far as to say that the wretchedness of the flesh is substantially equivalent to its particular temporal flavor, i.e., that which belongs to an inevitable and gradual process of annihilation. Later on, the same Poor Man inveighs against the odd concept entertained by Dominga de Gomez when she sees the world, the place of the flesh, as the home for at least some. As she puts it, the ‘‘world is only for the rich’’ (RL , p. 640). Yet the Poor Man hastens to point out why that is not so when he asserts that the world is for no one. What is a rich man to do if he finds himself pulling after himself the chain of his captive’s illness? The world is a dark prison through which the souls move until they become alight. (Ibid.)

The ideas of flesh, prison, and world appear here combined with the notion of homo viator (or, more precisely, of expiating soul). The note of future-directedness re-emerges at this point, and it does so in connection with death, which is seemingly given the sense of being an occurrence in which the souls become alight. Death is thus seen as the event in which one is freed from one’s flesh and one’s imprisonment in the world and, therefore, from one’s sin. It comes as no surprise, then, that one is urged to think of death. So as not to lose sight of the true significance of life and of its possible concealment, one must reflect on death. It is of interest in itself that this counsel is articulated by one of the voices of the Santa Compan˜a. We find it in that wondrous and hair-raising scene at the very beginning of Romance de lobos when we hear this demand: ‘‘Think of the moment of

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

239

your death, sinner!’’ (RL , p. 601). The same requirement appears to be conveyed as well by the facial expression of Dona Marı´a’s corpse, for, as Seamstress Benita and Dona Moncha wrap her in a shroud, Benita exclaims: ‘‘Jesus, she seems to be making a face at us!’’ (ibid., p. 616). What is this if not a call for us to keep in mind the personal reality and phenomenon of our anticipated non-existence? Indeed, it is only by heeding that call that one may prove capable of taking hold of one’s life – that is, of its sense and direction – with a measure of justice. Don Juan Manuel too realizes that what he has been obstinately hiding from himself are the sense of journey and the connection between life and death, which are given anyone as integral dimensions of the experience of living itself. To use Wilhelm Stekel’s terminology, what Don Juan Manuel had wanted to avoid is dread (the dread of death that served to liberate Isabel) and ended in the dread of dread, a resolution which, in its counter productiveness, must be revised at all costs, as one can gather from these words: [Sabelita] had not taken into account that she was leaving me, plunged into sadness, all to myself, as I am getting old! ... The sorrow I’m feeling now and have never felt before is the sadness of old age, is the beginning of coldness. The time has arrived when every day, every hour, sounds like another stroke of the hoe into my grave. (AB, p. 99)

Lust had been just the instrument that served Don Juan Manuel to cloud his mind, and even to blind him to the significance of his life as a directed journey. But now, suddenly, upon finding himself alone and deprived of the company of another in sin, he is overcome by old age, the proximity of death, and the loss of his life as already past. Again the sense of life’s temporality and irreversibility bursts violently into his life and forces him to face his impending death as a trustworthy witness. Lust, which had consoled him about the fact of his death, was of necessity a paradoxical resource, for it allowed him to conceal himself from himself (serving him thus as an occasion of perdition), and at the same time provided him with an opportunity for reflection and thereby for salvation. Now then, two ideas I have already mentioned appear to be intimately linked. I have in mind the notions of death as one’s just desert and of life as the search for meaning. Let me now examine their connection more closely, and allow me to do so by regarding life at a point characterized by significant completion or fulfillment. A most clear instance of this is found in Romance de lobos. We encounter Don Juan Manuel speaking about his vision of the Santa Compan˜a in these words: ‘‘After having seen the lights of death, I wish, if I must be death’s own, to see no other lights’’

240

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

(RL , p. 604). Indeed, death discloses itself to him as his destiny, and yet the sense of his ineluctable vocation hardly became available to him then. ‘‘My heart has a presentiment’’, he says, ‘‘but I do not know what it is a presentiment of ’’ (ibid.). Valle-Inclan establishes here a bond between light and destiny, between disclosure and ignorance. It is important to note that in this passage he does not speak of a sequence of events but of the dialectical unity thereof, for what is disclosed and illuminated is just his ignored destiny. If this is so, are we not entitled to wonder about the destiny which becomes available to him precisely as a premonition? First of all, I would say that it amounts to the evident fact that he will soon die (ibid., p. 646). Or to express it concretely in Don Juan Manuel’s own words: ‘‘Marıa Soledad, wait for me! ... Your eyes are open, and I feel you’re looking at me ...’’ (ibid.). And a little farther on: ‘‘My grave lies already open!’’ (ibid., p. 647). But this is not all: life is not only a sequence of events that are always and necessarily on the brink of occurring; it is also a series of occurrences that are being expected without the benefit of any search on one’s part (ibid., p. 667). The sorrow coloring the Knight’s life at that moment is rooted in his feeling that his life is complete and, therefore, that he is then living in the concrete anticipation of his own death, which nonetheless fails to arrive. His sorrow is the more far-reaching the clearer his sense of an impending death is, since he understands it to be his own personal destiny. The employment of the idea of light (and the symbols thereof ), a notion of which Valle-Inclan had already availed himself from the very beginning of the play during the night scene involving the Santa Compan˜a, renders this point evident. The burning candle (in conjunction with the reflection of the flame as it trembles and swings back and forth on the Knight’s closed fist), functions as an objectivated, externalized, mythical version of what later will become an inner light, revelation, and presentiment or truth about himself. As he says, a ‘‘great candle, a pure light, has caught fire within me, and guides and illuminates me’’ (ibid., p. 667). The lights of death not only exclude any other source of illumination (thus requiring him to be faithful to his expected death), but they also come to play a positive, active role since they guide and illuminate his life at that moment. Accordingly, I would say that Don Juan Manuel, in the expectation of his death, has achieved complete clarity about the sense of his life, a sense that includes, on the one hand, an interpretation of his past as sin, mental darkening, and selfconcealment, and, on the other, the notion of opening up, on his part, to his own death as the just desert for such a past. Nothing else is now to him of any value; other lights are of no avail, and not even is lust of any

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

241

use to him in terms of the consolation and distraction it once afforded ff him. No doubt, remorse and repentance are at this point possible for Don Juan Manuel, but I wonder whether he will be capable of being forgiven. Isabel was granted forgiveness by Dona Marı´a, and Don Juan Manuel must be forgiven too. One finds here another reason for his death, since now it is possible for him to come face to face with his wife only in death. Hence the appropriateness of expressions like ‘‘wait for me!’’ and ‘‘I feel you’re looking at me’’ that he then uses. In view of this, I may conclude that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of death as the sense of Don Juan Manuel’s discovery about himself. His passionate nature and stormy life of lust and overweening pride vanish once they fail to structure his existence any longer, let alone drive it forward; they remain solely as the sinful remnant and burden of his past, which cry to be overcome only at the price of his own death. It comes as no surprise, then, that Don Juan Manuel’s desire is fulfilled at the hands of his own son in the final scene of the play. As we have had an occasion to appreciate, he must needs die, if indeed he is to be done justice in conformity with the enlightenment he has achieved, consisting as the latter does in the duty of fidelity to self. But the manner and agent of his execution are also necessary. Accordingly, in a moving and farsighted fashion, Don Juan Manuel discloses to himself the just outcome. Thus he speaks as follows: Where [can] I come to expect my death without being hounded by their voices? ... In what wolf ’s or lion’s lair will I seek to hide myself ? ... I find no peace in life! I kept wolves, and now my livestock devour me! I engendered monsters and am now accursed! Why is it that that woman’s womb was delivered of demons, instead of winged angels? The sower was accursed! The seed was accursed! (RL , p. 663)

And yet he attempts to conceal from himself the very thing he has come to perceive so clearly: Death, tarry no longer! Take me out of this well of serpents and surrender me to the worms! ... Let your children, and not mine, devour me! Death, tarry no longer! God, if because of my sins, you love me not, let Satan snatch me away! (Ibid.)

But since the necessary link between sinfulness and deserts has already been established, the nature of the outcome may not be doubted. The accursed sower is to die, and he is to meet his end at the hands of no others than the monsters he had engendered: ‘‘... now my livestock devour me!’’

242

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

FEATURES OF VARIOUS CHARACTERS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS

As has already become apparent, the Knight is the central figure in ValleInclan’s Comedias barbaras. That certain knowledge notwithstanding, the deeper sense of Don Juan Manuel’s role in the trilogy would remain inaccessible to us, were we not to attempt to come to terms with his character. The white-haired, bearded patriarch (RL , p. 673) is a complex and multidimensional man whose contradictory and most concrete nature is subject to various changes that do not proceed along one direction only, or even in an ineluctable and pre-conceived fashion free from the possibility of relapse. One could even go as far as to say that he is paradigmatically human, as to both his virtues and his vices. He is ‘‘one of those womanizing and tyrannical Spanish noblemen who are [at once] hospitable and violent’’ (AB, p. 13; cf. CP, p. 22). Or as it is asserted in Cara de plata: he is like a ‘‘Swabian king at his Lantano´n manor’’ (CP, p. 22). Lust and overweening pride, as we have seen, are at the core of the passional dispositions forming part of his character (cf. ibid., p. 14). These two sources of action, however, do not merely exist side by side within the inner makeup of the Knight; rather, they constitute an indissoluble unit by means of which Don Juan Manuel is and becomes what he is. One can appreciate this point most clearly in the following stage direction provided by Valle-Inclan, in which he says that DON JUAN MANUEL has been taking a walk ... since dawn, when he left his bed after having cast out his new concubine with the barbarous disdain of an infidel. (AB, p. 127)29

One can thus affirm that violence is inherent in his prideful attitude, and yet one cannot contend that his violence is always of a piece, for it can be given vent either by means of the sublime, exalted manner proper to his aristocratic demeanor and action, or through the corrupt, vile, and despotic ways which often lead him to a kind of mockery ‘‘blazing like rage, the cruel, violent, fierce form of mockery of tyrants’’ (AB, p. 69). Let me first consider Don Juan Manuel’s tyrannical style. His passional disposition becomes manifest as soon as he perceives himself being slighted, however incidentally. Consider the following example. For fear of what the Knight could come to suffer ff at the hands of the bandits, who had seized him and taken possession of his house, Sabelita, filled with ‘‘sudden power’’ (AB, p. 21), disregards his commands, and he pays her back as follows: THE KNIGHT: SABELITA: THE KNIGHT:

I will cut off your hands! Forgive me, sir! Disobedient bitch! (Ibid., p. 22; cf. pp. 38, 39, and 65)

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

243

In the very tone of his imperious voice, one can sense here the nobleman’s despotic stance which makes his concubine and others tremble (cf. ibid., ´ guila de blason give expression p. 24). Scenes IV and V of the First Act of A to the tension that has been growing in Don Juan Manuel’s breast as he feels outraged and restrained by the bandits, a situation presented, for example, by the following stage direction: DON JUAN MANUEL sees them coming, and his rash spirit boils up. He raises his other pistol, and the bluish glimmer of the shot’s flash casts its light, for a moment, on his antique portrait’s face. (Ibid., p. 26)

The outlets for the nobleman’s masterful attitude, which betrays his acknowledgment of no other rights but his, are not confined to his family’s domain. The sexton, for instance, formulates this point very well when he remarks that the Knight ‘‘laughs at the laws’’ (CP, p. 42). Nonetheless, the attitude in question is perhaps best appreciated when it is translated ´ guila de blason. into action, as, for example, in Scene II of Act Ill of A There we witness Don Juan Manuel violently rejecting the attempt – on the part of the court’s clerk – to take down the Knight’s deposition about the outrage he has suffered ff at the hands of the bandits. He pours scorn on the kind of justice dispensed by ‘‘clerks, bailiffs, ff and jails ... an invention good for women, children, and those old men whose hands shake’’ (AB, p. 67). By contrast, the form of justice he has respect for is the one carried out by himself personally, as it befits a lord in the feudal tradition (cf. ibid.). But the tyrant’s attitude, by which he is a law to himself as well as to others, is not just a matter of political and family tradition; it is also something deeply rooted in Don Juan Manuel’s passional life, as one can gather from the following exchange: THE CLERK OF THE COURT: My person is sacred, my lord Don Juan Manuel! I am acting in my official capacity of representative of the judge. THE KNIGHT: I am the judge here! THE CLERK OF THE COURT: I am representing the king. THE KNIGHT: I am the king! ... THE CLERK OF THE COURT: You are not a man, my lord Don Juan Manuel! THE KNIGHT: I am a lion! I am a tiger! (Ibid., p. 68)30

Undoubtedly, Don Juan Manuel has achieved here total lucidity about himself, a lucidity without parallel in his own life. He now sees himself as a telluric, destructive force beyond all control. In other words, he has, presently, come to the realization that he had always lived (and had always taken himself to be) like Nature herself. For the most part, he had

244

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

acted as if he were completely free from any sense of responsibility for the consequences of what he did, and as thoroughly exempt from being circumscribed by any normative bounds. And yet that is not all: the curious novelty, at this point in his life, is his having discovered that all along he had acted as if his will and action were the origin of the law itself. Now then, it is precisely Don Juan Manuel’s primitive and boundless force that earns him the recognition of others, a recognition of his ‘‘authority’’ that is, however, contradictory.31 Thus, Don Farruquino, his own son, can only think of him as being the opposite of silence and peace, for, as he says, ‘‘I surmise he has not [yet arrived), because it is too quiet at home. ... Don Juan Manuel will not come as silently as death’’ (RL , p. 625). Perhaps this implies some form of mutual recognition, as may be gathered in terms of Don Juan Manuel’s own comparison of himself to his children, when he asserts: ‘‘They are wolf cubs, a wolf ’s offspring’’ ff (ibid., p. 644). Indeed, the very people of the region perceive them all as men of the same ilk, as is verified by the Deacon of Leson’s calling them ‘‘jungle barbarians’’ (CP, p. 67), the sexton’s portrayal of them as ‘‘fierce wolves’’ (ibid., p. 64), and the abbot’s pointing – as he prophesies despite himself – to the price that is to be paid for their excess, when he says: ‘‘In the end, they will bow their heads, and, if they don’t, they will be condemned to hell’’ (ibid.). And yet the Knight’s experience of his wife’s death produces for him an almost unthinkable result. He comes thereby to reflect on his life, an act by which a sense of guilt and of his own limitation arises in him. In fact, guilt and limitation turn out to be intimately connected for him, inasmuch as the limits in question are those imposed on him by his selfacquired sense of guilt and remorse and by his consequent feeling of powerlessness. For the first time in his life, the world effectively ff resists his will and forces him to feel something that does not come to him spontaneously and fervently. The death of his wife Dona Marı´a is responsible for causing in him sensations so unexpected that, surprisingly, they make him reflect on himself. But, what is more, it is precisely his wife’s death which decisively renders him powerless to alter his life, since forgiveness and salvation can only be granted to him by her. Accordingly, the only thing left then in his hands is self-judgment and self-condemnation. No wonder he exclaims: ‘‘I’ve always been the worst man in the world! Now I sense I’m leaving, and I want to repent!’’ (RL , p. 644). However, this is just what he cannot secure for himself, since repentance and forgiveness are dialectically interrelated. Don Juan Manuel himself acknowledges the fact: ‘‘The two of us together – let’s try to dig her out

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

245

from the grave. I want to see my dead wife! .... Perhaps she’ll talk to me!’’ (ibid.). Her words, presently denied him, cause his self-judgment, later in the play, to become purified and reach an unbearable intensity: Woe, I have been a great sinner, and my life a dark night filled with lightning and thunder! .... That’s why I find myself so afflicted with punishment in my old age! .... God, so as to humble me because of my pridefulness, willed it that Satan beget monsters in that saintly woman’s womb! (Ibid., p. 678)

One must keep in mind that Don Juan Manuel gains such wisdom and global vision of himself only a few moments before he dies at the hands of his son, Don Mauro. With total clarity, he now realizes that such ‘‘a dark night filled with lightning and thunder’’ was just the highest degree reached by his overweening pride, an achievement that meets with and deserves the punishment of death at the hands of his children, the wolf cubs that God allowed to be inflicted on him. God is thus the ultimate limitation which, because of his pridefulness, he experiences as the source of his humiliation. In the final analysis, the Knight has got – or better yet, he just is – one sin. As he says: ‘‘Only one, filling up my entire life!’’ (ibid., p. 648). It was his overweening pride which made him carry out the execution of that saintly woman with the impiousness, with the cruelty of a Roman centurion of the times of Emperor Nero. ... A sin committed every day, every hour, every moment. ... (Ibid.)

V Valle-Incla n has thus dramatically brought together the classical nexus consisting of inner chaos, worldly imbalance, and self-punishment. As I hinted above,32 others came to recognize the Knight’s elementary force and overweening pride, though they did so in a contradictory fashion. My thesis was then formulated only in part, since I insisted merely on their rejection of him and left out of consideration the opposite effect ff which was also produced in those who rejected him.33 I have in mind the fascination and attraction he caused in them. It may very well be that Don Juan Manuel’s often reiterated self-identification with Satan is not just an expressive device he avails himself of (cf. CP, pp. 103 and 108). One must not be oblivious of the belief that Satan is not only the principle of evil, the prince of darkness, and the ruler of the world; he is also Lucifer, the most beautiful of the angels.34 In my opinion, one of the passages that best renders the fascination produced by the Knight’s manner of being and acting is found in the following exchange between Sabelita and her aunt Dona Jeromita, an exchange that takes place when the latter comes to take her niece away from Don Juan Manuel’s house:

246

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

˜ A JEROMITA: ... Where is your godfather? DON SABELITA: Oh, aunt, do not talk to him! Do not go and see him! ˜ A JEROMITA: What are you afraid of ? DON SABELITA: His arrogant spirit! ˜ A JEROMITA: Do not frighten me! DON SABELITA: My godfather is king! ˜ A JEROMITA: Well, I shall be queen! (CP, p. 45) DON

It is to be noted that the reaction manifest here is twofold and contradictory: on the one hand, Sabelita is afraid of Don Juan Manuel’s arrogant spirit, but, on the other hand, she is also attracted and subdued by it. This is a surprising but hardly inexplicable fact. Its justification, however, is not limited to the reasons just proposed but requires our going much deeper, well beyond the esthetic dimension and even the fundamental experience of the tremendum-fascinans. A clue to it may be found in Sabelita’s characterization of him as king, for such a title is significant not just as a form of praise on her part (after all, she had also employed it with regard to Cara de plata), but as well as a way of conveying her hatred of the man who had subjugated her. It may very well be that the ambiguity discovered in Sabelita’s use of the term ‘‘king’’ is rooted in a duality identifiable in Don Juan Manuel’s character itself. However, this point should not be understood as if it meant that there are two distinct parts in the Knight’s spiritual makeup, but, rather, as indicating that only one inner reality exists in him which is nonetheless intrinsically divided. In other words, the Knight’s character and attitude manifest themselves unitarily and yet in contradictory ways, namely, as those belonging to both despot and nobleman. One can see this most clearly when Dona Rosita contrasts him with his various sons: ‘‘They only take after their father in their despotism, but they are most unlike him in his nobility. Within Don Juan Manuel lives a king’’ (AB, p. 17). This is sufficient, I believe, to make obvious, at once, the ambiguity of the term ‘‘king’’ as employed here, as well as the one which lies at its basis, namely, that of the Knight’s own character; moreover, it serves to show us that he is no mere mask or abstraction but a complex and most human figure. In fact, the poor, the servants, and the beggars are capable of perceiving in him precisely that humanity and nobility which are integral parts of his character. To that effect, ff consider, first, the behavior of his servants: Let those who offend ff him so be hanged! .... He was a father to the poor! .... He was a mirror to the rich! .... He was the greatest knight in the world! .... Fast stronghold! .... Radiant sun! .... Bold as a bull! (Ibid., p. 27)

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

247

In this passage, one must notice not only that Don Juan Manuel is being praised by his servants, but also the reasons that lead them to do so, for it is his strength and his courage that make him appear resplendent (L ux, Lucifer) to them and move them to sing his praises. Furthermore, it is his boundless courage and his obliviousness to fear that likewise move the ‘‘giant figure of the leper’’ to rush at – and enter into – the house which now belongs to the Knight’s sons, although not without first bursting out in praise: ‘‘He is our father! He is our father!’’ (RL , p. 677). Accordingly, one should say that his lordship does not merely consist in his acting despotically and violently but, at the same time, in his displaying nobility and the splendor of goodness. His is a lordship founded in Nature. Secondly, let us turn our attention to Don Juan Manuel’s aristocratic disposition. One finds evidence of it, to begin with, in his gestures and demeanor, as one learns, for example, of his ‘‘great lord’s voice, highflown and magnificent’’ (AB, p. 14),35 but one can also see it taking shape by means of the attitude in which he lives, as when he ‘‘smiles with the nobility of a prince’s acceptance of his vassals’ gifts’’ (ibid., p. 37). Only such a man deserves the ‘‘loyalty of his old servants’’ (ibid., p. 40); only a man like that can take his natural superiority for granted, as is clear from this exchange: THE KNIGHT: SABELITA: THE KNIGHT:

You are not for him [i.e., Cara de plata]. I do not claim that either. You’re worth more. (CP, p. 26)

It is Don Juan Manuel’s non-mediated sense of his own superiority which permits him to take himself as arbiter of such things and, indeed, as the man of greater worth to whom Sabelita is destined. In fact, that is precisely the justification that allows him later to abduct her: THE KNIGHT: SABELITA:

With me forever! Forever! (Ibid., p. 78)

The abduction takes place with his goddaughter’s consent, which is given as to a natural law. Only a knight like him can instill into poor men and beggars the degree of respect that would place him, in their eyes, immediately under God (cf. RL , p. 608) or assign to him the role of God with regard to his sons: ‘‘A father is like the God in Heaven! (ibid., p. 630). A knight like him is the rightful lord and champion of the forsaken and mad, for ‘‘he walks among them as an old patriarch among his progeny: Sorrow, Misery, and Madness’’ (ibid., p. 675). Only a soul endowed with

248

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

such nobleness and rage can have a commensurate feeling of magnanimity and indignation for the suffering ff of the dispossessed and outraged: Your soul is marked by the iron of slaves, and you are beggars because you must. The day when the poor gather to burn the planted fields and poison the fountains shall be a day of great justice. ... That day will come, and the sun – a sun of fire and blood – will wear the face of God. The houses set afire will be better ovens for your hunger than those of bakers! And the women, and the children, and the old men, and the sick, will cry in the midst of fire, and you will sing, and so will I, because I will be the one to guide you! You were born poor, and you won’t ever be able to rebel against your fate. Those of us who were born with the energy of lords shall have to bring about the redemption of the lowly when the light comes to shine in our consciences. In my own begins to shine the light of the storm! Now I, among you, imagine myself to be one of your brothers and take it as my duty to go through the world with my hand outstretched, and, since I was born a lord, I find myself to be more of a bandit’s mind than a beggar’s. You, poor beggars, resigned souls, children of slaves, you shall be saved by us lords, when we become Christians! (RL , pp. 621–622)

It is thus, as possessed of a conscience alight, that Don Juan Manuel rushes to redeem the poor and is awarded his rightful prize at the hands of his son, an event constituting the very culmination of Romance de lobos. And he brings that about by effecting ff a synthesis of greatness with rage, of nobility with anger, a synthesis so perfect indeed that it becomes instantly translated into gesture and the very appearance of his flesh: ‘‘... and on his face [one could see] the arrogance of a king and the paleness of Christ’’ (ibid., p. 679). This depiction of the Knight’s passional makeup would be incomplete and, thereby, a falsification, were I not to present another essential aspect of his character. This other facet is suggested by his sense of justice, insofar as it is already manifest in his nobleness and anger. I hesitate to give this element a name, for, unless I do so adequately, I will fail to grasp it precisely as the feature which serves both to allow for a synthesis of greatness with violence and to give it expression. That notwithstanding, I believe I would not be too far off the mark if I were descriptively to refer to it as Don Juan Manuel’s measure of tenderness and compassion. Such a feature and inclination already appears, though nameless, in his acknowledgment that Sorrow, Misery, and Madness are his progeny.36 It becomes evident, however, when it grieves him that anyone should think, as he himself does, that his sons are precisely those who want to rob him, for it was then that he felt his eyes ‘‘fill slowly with tears’’ (AB, p. 33). But it also becomes clearly available to us when he leaves his house, as he can no longer remain under the same roof with Sabelita and with his wife, who has forgiven her. This sense of not being worthy and

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

249

of being incapable of justly setting himself against his predicament moves him to leave his house and, already at the door, to ‘‘linger ... and sob’’ (ibid., p. 153). It is precisely the capacity to feel and act in that fashion, and not just his disposition to anger, that allows him to suffer ff at the injustice perpetrated against him by his sons: ‘‘Two tear drops roll down the cheeks of the highborn old man, and they disappear into the snows of his beard. The beggars and the servants rush on the door’’ (RL , p. 676). This is how Don Juan Manuel’s living and multifaceted character really stands, to the extent that he turns out to be a complex man divided against himself and engaged in a permanent battle between violence and nobleness, between impulse and conscience, between extroversion and self-access. To put it briefly: in the Comedias barbaras, the Knight constitutes himself for what he is by struggling in the direction of synthesis and death by means of forward and backward movements and self-negations. At this point, it is opportune, it seems to me, to turn our attention to some of the people who are carried away by Don Juan Manuel’s comportment in such conflicts. We are already acquainted with Sabelita, but not so much in her own terms as in view of her relationship to the Knight, that is to say, insofar as she plays the roles of goddaughter and ‘‘friend’’ (cf., e.g., AB, p. 12). This point should came as no surprise to us, nor should it be taken as if it were a peculiar view, since the Knight’s individual and social nature, as we have had more than one occasion to see, is such that everything is referred to him and is absorbed by his life. It will thus be of some value to draw a more definite picture of Sabelita. For instance, in Cara de plata, she is presented, in a seemingly natural way, as a young girl all freshness and grace: ‘‘she is standing high above, her breasts hanging loose, her honey-colored hair arranged in two plaits, her forehead round and lustrous, her habit Nazarene’’ (CP, p. 17). Soon after that, the ‘‘singing sound of her voice is heard, as the purple and dramatic tone of her Nazarene habit, in the midst of the green of the lemon trees, is lit up against the old stones of the gallery’’ (ibid., p. 18). And yet all that varied, sensuous wealth will vanish, since the transformation she is to undergo once she becomes the Knight’s concubine will force her to turn inward and henceforth remain aloof from external appearance and reality, willing no longer to laugh and enjoy her youth. But if this is so, it is legitimate to ask about the nature of such a transformation. Perhaps it would be best to answer the question bluntly by saying that she has became Don Juan Manuel’s servant. She herself is aware of her new condition, as can be gathered from her own words, to wit: ‘‘He treats ff me with every woman he sees, and yet I cannot me like a slave, he offends

250

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

stop loving him. For his sake I shall damn my soul!’’ (AB, p. 15). Here we have found a formula that articulates Sabelita’s conflict succinctly but profoundly. It is not just that the Knight keeps her in submission and insults her as he would a slave; rather, her complete situation involves as well the fact that she subjects herself to him from within, that is, by her own decision. She lacks a will or initiative of her own (ibid., p. 56), and there lies a paradox. In fact, this absence in her is so extreme as to involve her being bereft of the courage necessary even to ask him about his own sensations and feelings (ibid., p. 30). But this characterization is hardly sufficient. One must go one step further and ask how such a profound and disconcerting metamorphosis is at all possible. Certainly no gradual process or simple logical reason may account for a change of such proportions. Only something like the force of a gale wind or the influence exerted by the strongest of wills could explain it. But that is precisely what is at work here, since the power of Don Juan Manuel’s personality does not fall short of that. Once Sabelita has been taken and finds herself at the Knight’s Lantano´n manor, she beseeches him to return her to San Clemente, the house of her aunt and uncle. In response, he cries out that she should leave and not come back, since she is free to do so at any time (though, as she realizes, she is unable to do that.) It is then that she herself discovers the reason for her impotence: ‘‘Don’t you tie me to this threshold, you magnet from hell! .... King of Heaven, unchain me, for here I’m lost!’’ (CP, pp. 102–103). Don Juan Manuel thus appears to be for her both a source of attraction and a means of subjection, and so much so that only God can break the spell, the spell that the Knight has cast on her. Indeed, despite his protestation to the contrary, he is well aware of the fact, as one can gather when he says: ‘‘You belong to me!’’ (ibid., p. 103; cf. p. 106), and then proceeds to demand that she surrender herself to him, not only bodily but completely, since nothing less than her soul’s submission to him would do: SABELITA: THE KNIGHT: SABELITA: THE KNIGHT: SABELITA: THE KNIGHT: SABELITA:

What do you want my soul for? I want it for myself. Deliver it to me! I deliver it to Satan. It’s mine! Godfather, do not be my damnation! I am Satan, and I damn you! Godfather! (Ibid., p. 103)

It is at this point that we witness a most interesting outcome, namely,

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

251

the coming together of Don Juan Manuel’s overweening pride, aristocratic mastery, and lust. As he exclaims: ‘‘Call me infernal monster. Cursed am I a thousand times, for I do not even respect the flower of your innocence’’ (ibid.). Sabelita is completely defenseless before this: the spell that the Knight’s greatness and mastery casts on so many people, even on those who hate him, reaches here its maximum intensity of effect. ff How could one explain it? Perhaps the key may be found in the repeated references to damnation present in the exchange and in the Knight’s self-identification with Satan, which go hand in hand with his seduction and possession of his goddaughter. The fascination produced by him is now overpowering, as it seems to be the case whenever insurmountable boundaries and prohibitions are involved. One must keep in mind that Sabelita is Don Juan Manuel’s goddaughter, and that he has kissed her at his home as if she were his own child. It is as if the ‘‘God of Heaven’’ (RL , p. 630) himself had come to steal his ‘‘niece’s virginity’’ (CP, p. 130). This is plainly both an act of seduction and an outrage, indeed an instance of violation of the interdiction against incest, which is thus felt to be attractive and horrifying at once. This is certainly not a theme that arises here for the first time; in fact, it is re-appearing at this point, though it presently does so exhibiting its genuine face and performing the basic role ValleInclan assigned it in the Comedias barbaras. Accordingly, one may say that Sabelita loves her ‘‘father’’ and behaves as a woman in love in regard to him, caught as she is in the prison of love. When Don Juan Manuel offends ff her, her ‘‘hoarse voice sounds with jealous firmness under the veil of her tears’’ (AB, p. 38). In fact, when she abandons the Knight’s house, she feels like a ‘‘poor forsaken woman’’ (ibid., p. 90). It is just by virtue of her love for him that she has offended ff her ‘‘mother’’ and proven ungrateful to her, a realization that powerfully contributes to Sabelita’s suffering, ff since she also loves her ‘‘mother’’ dearly, as one can clearly sense in these remarks: ˜ A MARI´A: DON

LA ROJA:

Because of her I’ve undergone the greatest sorrows of my life! She has grown oblivious of the fact that I took her in, and that I raised her as if she were my daughter! The troubled girl also weeps over her having shamed and deceived her godmother. ... (Ibid., p. 82)

Now then, Isabel’s character becomes manifest in two ways: on the one hand, in terms of her weakness or vulnerability as a woman in love, a condition exacerbated by the fascination provoked in her by her incestuous relationship with the Knight and his tumultuous personality; on the

252

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

other hand, by means of the delicateness and sweetness proper to her affections, ff a fact that allows her to be split between two loves and two obligations, and which eventually will permit her to withdraw into herself, reach the plane of reflection, and – by way of the experience of guilt – undergo the sequence of remorse, repentance, and forgiveness. Like her lover and ‘‘father’’, Sabelita neither is a unidimensional figure nor does she play the role of a mere dramatic device; on the contrary, hers is a complex human life in which she struggles through contradiction toward the establishment of the truth of herself. Only on the basis of a ‘‘nature’’ of that sort can one clearly account for the meaning of this moving encounter with her ‘‘mother’’ and lover’s wife: ˜ A MARI´A: DON

SABELITA: ˜ A MARI´A: DON

You ask me for my hands but I had given you my heart. I wept over you as one weeps over a dead daughter. I felt no jealousy but sorrow, the very great sorrow of having been deceived by you. Was I not your mother? Mother, my mother! Yes, I was your mother, but no longer. (Ibid., p. 83)

As I pointed out before,37 Isabelita comes to her peace because Dona Marı´a forgives her. On that occasion, however, I failed to indicate that she is not forgiven all at once. Even though I will return to this point later, from the standpoint of Dona Marı´a’s life itself, I would like at least to say at this juncture that forgiveness is not a mere outcome, but the result of a process the first phase of which is just verbal in character (cf. AB, p. 84). One can see this on the occasion when Dona Marı´a apparently pardons Sabelita and yet does not welcome but dismisses her to go, abandoned and lost, ‘‘along the highways’’ (ibid., p. 86) of the world. By contrast, genuine forgiveness, which will only come later, requires granting shelter and love. That is why Dona Marı´a herself hesitated, even though it was already too late, once she had let Sabelita go. But, perhaps unbeknownst to herself, Dona Marı´a engaged then in prophesying as follows: ‘‘I shall be responsible for the evil befalling her. ... When she finds herself alone, she may [well] fall even lower’’ (ibid.). If my description is correct, then a gap exists between the first and last phases of the process in which Sabelita seeks and gains forgiveness and salvation. Such a gap is precisely the space constituted by her as she undergoes purgation and redemption through suffering. ff The passional tone thereof is that of fear, and its moral quality is despair. Indeed, that is what is given insightful expression by Sabelita when she addresses the cow that is grazing by her: ‘‘If I only could avoid thinking of the sorrows

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

253

of my life to be like you, my poor Marela!’’ (AB, p. 141). Now, feeling totally forsaken after having run away from her home and been refused genuine forgiveness, Sabelita escapes into the world. But the world rejects her too, and she withdraws into herself feeling abandoned by all. To put it in Valle-Inclan’s own words: SABELITA flees through the empty streets, continually believing that she hears cautious and treacherous footsteps pursuing her in the dark. She thinks of death, while, at the same time, she fears the dangers of the night. (Ibid., p. 91)

Once again we are faced – this time in a subtle fashion – with the complexity of Sabelita’s character. The world has proven to be inhospitable, and therefore she wants to flee from it through death. And yet the world is also shelter, at least possibly. If not, how could one explain her abiding fear of it? To fear the world is a way of accepting it, however paradoxically, and of thus living in it. No wonder she reacts as follows to the people she meets on the roads: ‘‘Don’t harm me, for the love of God!’’ (ibid.). It is in such terms that one can account for her odd behavior at this point, for it cannot be characterized as the abandonment of the world on her part, but rather as her search for solitude in the world, for where else can one be alone? Valle-Inclan puts it as follows: SABELITA, unable to hold back her tears, flees without replying; she runs away, in the pangs of madness, in order to be alone in the midst of the countryside in the aloneness of night, under the distant and miraculous stars that turn themselves on and off, ff just as her thoughts do in the darkness of her unvarying, tiresome, constant sorrow. (Ibid., pp. 96–97)

It is here, precisely, that the secret of her purgation lies, for the latter apparently consists in her abiding in the world in solitude, in her living in the world only through her thoughts, in her leading her own life only by reflecting on her own constant sorrow. However, this phase is not equivalent to merely suffering ff purgation through the reflective experience of sorrow and shame. As a transitional period, it involves as well the undergoing of temptation on her part, as V Valle-Incla n himself had already told us when he pointed out that ‘‘she thinks of death.’’ The obsessiveness of her thought ushers now into compulsiveness, for she wants her death, she seeks her death, she tries her death out. But to do so is tantamount to yielding to the temptation which consists in attempting to flee from the world once and for all, a project which, if successfully enacted, would nullify her capacity to repent and would thus permanently close the door to her coming to a state of

254

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

readiness for genuine forgiveness. In acting in that fashion, she would certainly succeed in undoing not only her existence, but also – and this is the decisive point – in canceling out the very possibility of gaining access to the manner of living that would be oV oVered to her through forgiveness. As Valle-Inclan says: [t]errified, the two old women straighten themselves up. SABELITA is in the middle of the river, and the waters carry her away. ... The two old women pray kneeling by the banks [of the river]; and the BOATMAN anxiously makes them out while he swims skewing the current. Finally he steps onto the sand, straightens himself up, and comes out of the river carrying SABELITA’s lifeless body in his arms.’’ (AB, pp. 141–143)

In the following scene, the Pilgrim informs Dona Marı´a that the people assembled at the banks of the river are congregating around a ‘‘woman who drowned and is lying on the sand’’ (ibid., p. 144). Later on, Don Galan would seem to confirm this bad piece of news when he exclaims: ‘‘The white dove is no longer in this world!’’ (ibid., p. 146). And yet that is not true; it is only a mere appearance, for ‘‘[s]he is not dead; her heart is beating’’ still (ibid., p. 148), as the woman called Visoja soon comes to verify. Sabelita has succumbed to temptation and has thus ended in failure. But this is not, however, the same thing as being at an impasse, which, after all, would redound to just leaving us with a sense of frustration and a bitter aftertaste. From a dramatic standpoint, her unsuccessful attempt to flee is, at the same time, the culmination point of the process of remorse and repentance she has been living through and the final step she takes ´ guila de toward the resolution of her conflict. In fact, the last scene of A blason serves to bring Isabel’s salvation to term and to round off the character of the Knight’s former concubine by charting her a path – by means of an inner and necessary process – toward the truth of herself. This unfolds by means of an encounter between the Knight and the absent Isabel. La Roja warns him of what is about to happen, as she says: ‘‘Master, what are you doing sitting at table with that bad woman [that is, with Liberata, his new concubine], when death is coming in through your doors?’’ (AB, p. 150) The piece of news turns out to be somewhat puzzling to him, prompting him to ask: ‘‘Whose death?’’ (ibid., p. 151). La Roja immediately proceeds to interpret the event referred to when she adds: ‘‘The death of innocents!’’ (ibid.). Yet, without fully understanding his own meaning, he hastens to reply: ‘‘If so, we sinners couldn’t care less about it.’’38 (ibid., p. 133). And he fails fully to understand his own meaning because, even though he knows himself to be a sinner and

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

255

thus avows his indifference ff to such deaths, untouched as he is by them in his condition, he has not however come yet to grasp that he really cares about the would-be death of this particular innocent. Nonetheless, he does care about it and will continue to care about it, as will become evident in what follows and has already been suggested,39 because, as a result, an unbridgeable gap between him and the innocent person in question will open up and, consequently, a wall limiting his will will be erected. The innocent person is of course Sabelita, who at that moment deserves to be called Isabel by him.40 But how is this possible? How may this incestuous woman, both a betrayer and a suicide, ever be regarded as innocent? An essential transformation does indeed take place precisely when the process of coming to repentance and forgiveness, which had been interrupted by the necessary phase of purgation through suffering, ff is brought to a conclusion. Sabelita earns at this point Dona Marı´a’s genuine forgiveness, through which the former is restored to her status of daughter and beloved (cf. AB, p. 152) and is saved from the inclemency of the world and the aloneness of her sorrow. Dona Marı´a offers ff her now the permanent shelter and protection of her home, and she does so in the most unusual of ways: ˜ A MARI´A: DON

THE KNIGHT: ˜ A MARI´A: DON THE KNIGHT: ˜ A MARI´A: DON

You’ll leave this house [she says to her husband], and you will not come back as long as this child is here. Our Lord’s will was for her not to die, for she was alive when she was taken out of the river. ... I have forgiven her, and she has become my daughter again. Where is she? She’s here! .... But don’t you try to see her! Who would stand in my way! I would! .... I who would leave this place taking her with me; I who, for charity’s sake, would, as we come to the first house, ask for a place for the two of us. (Ibid.)

Here we are witnessing the transformation of this woman into the mistress of her own household, as she brings her own power into confrontation with the irresistible domination exerted by Don Juan Manuel. She succeeds nonetheless in defeating him, and this occurs for two reasons: first of all, because the Knight finds himself face to face with the power of love, justice, and forgiveness, a force all in one before which he appears to find himself completely disarmed, possibly by virtue of the fact that, for the first time in his life, he begins to peer within himself with some depth;41 secondly, because this event is the outcome and culmination of ´ guila de blason has the movement toward Isabel’s own truth which A

256

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

meant for her, since, as the sense of her life in fact becomes her actual destiny, Sabelita is finished as a dramatic character and the play must needs come to an end.42 Let me now turn my attention to a few other particular characters, since, in my opinion, they are of special interest to clarify, whether directly or indirectly, the sense and tone of Don Juan Manuel’s life. I have in mind Dona Marı´a, Don Galan, and Fuso Negro [Black Spindle]. We have already had more than one occasion to meet and come to terms with Dona Marı´a, the Knight’s wife, but, if I am not mistaken, she deserves a further though brief examination. When she makes her appear´ guila de blason, she is at once presented as a ‘‘lady who was ance in A still beautiful despite her stoop ...’’ (AB, p. 58). She comes on stage, we are told by Valle-Inclan, while ‘‘wiping away her tears’’ (ibid.), words which serve to depict her, in one stroke, as a suffering, ff resigned woman. Moreover, in the extraordinary third scene of Act IV, where the vision is encountered, the Child Jesus characterizes her by saying: ‘‘You are too old and would get tired’’ (ibid., p. 105), a sentence in which the word ‘‘old’’ possesses, if I do not misunderstand the text, a meaning that is not limited in its application to the physical domain. She is indeed an old woman, although her age is possibly better gauged by her life experience and wisdom. She is well acquainted with her own strengths, which are few, especially if they are viewed in light not only of Don Juan Manuel’s tyrannical ways, but also of his lustful desires.43 Furthermore, she has chosen to lead her life apart from her husband’s, and she has done so without any semblance of hatred, for, as we hear, the ‘‘resigned lady looks at him with tenderness, as grandmothers look at children when they lie to cover up their mischief ’’ (ibid., p. 59). Indeed, she has found ways to win the love of the poor, the servants, and the beggars (cf. RL , pp. 632 and 633),44 no easy achievement on her part if one keeps in mind that the period of agony involved ‘‘lasted thirty years’’ (RL , p. 614). The scene where this vision appears comes up without warning. It is perhaps for this reason – and not just on account of its content – that one must characterize it precisely as a vision. Let us consider it for a moment. We read: ‘‘In the thick of the forest, THE CHILD JESUS and ˜ A MARI´A sit down at the edge of the road to take a rest’’ (AB, DON p. 105). The rainbow extends through the whole of the visible sky, and the twelve black bells toll the death knell in the distance: the twelve bells are hanging, as would twelve hung men, from the branches of a giant tree. (Ibid.)

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

257

Undoubtedly, Valle-Inclan succeeds here in depicting the lugubrious character of the place and the sorrowfulness of the situation. The bells are black, they are hanging as twelve hung men from the branches of a giant tree, and they toll the death knell. But for whom do they toll? ‘‘They toll for Sabelita,’’ the Child Jesus tells Dona Marı´a. They toll because of Sabelita’s yielding to mortal temptation at the river, when she tried to flee from herself and the world. One can say, accordingly, that all of it serves to frame the scene; moreover, if so, it serves as the primary means of interpreting its meaning. Here I have in mind the domain of Sabelita’s own truth, as we have had an occasion to appreciate in the case of her suicide, or attempt at suicide, the sense or function of which is now precisely under consideration.45 The relevant self-judgment, however, does not pertain to Sabelita or – for that matter – to Don Juan Manuel, for it is Dona Marı´a who is called at this point to confront her guilt. On her own, she is able to grasp that this is what she is required to do, and yet she attempts to displace her own guilt, by putting it squarely on the Divine Child’s shoulders, as she cries out to him: ‘‘Save her [Sabelita] from dying in sin, my Child Jesus!’’ (ibid.). However, he refuses to accede to her request and does so in the simplest and most effective ff of ways, which is to leave Dona Marı´a alone with her own responsibility, when he responds by saying: ‘‘If such a thing came to pass, you would have presented Satan with the gift of her soul’’ (ibid.). But while they are engaged in conversation, they slowly approach the ‘‘tree from whose branches the twelve bells are hanging, and, as they get close [enough] to them, they find them transformed into twelve crows cawing overhead’’ (ibid., p. 106). This is precisely the evidence needed to confirm the interpretation I am proposing, since, as we hear, Dona Marı´a shudders and proclaims the meaning of the sign: ‘‘The flight of the twelve crows covers up my heart!’’ (ibid.).46 At this juncture, Dona Marı´a is overcome by guilt and remorse, feelings which resist leaving her until she comes to repentance and forgiveness. The bells, then, are also tolling for Dona Marı´a, since, as the Child Jesus warns her, she must pray not only for Sabelita but for herself as well. It was a sin to have discovered that her goddaughter had already repented without however feeling pity for her because of her distress. As she is told, ‘‘[i]f she dies in mortal sin, you will also go to hell’’ (ibid.). Dona Marı´a is being accused here not only of having committed a sin of omission, but, as well, of feigning ignorance about Sabelita’s possible fate: Are you oblivious to the fact that that unfortunate girl was to find herself alone, bereft of anybody’s protection? .... You did not want to protect her because you’re evil, Dona Marı´a.

258

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

In heaven, they are angry at you, for you let a woman who had repented commit sin again. (Ibid.)

Dona Marı´a is thus regarded as liable – no more, no less – for the sin of another, for the perdition of another. And again – for we have come full circle – we return to the notion of sinfulness as the universal link uniting all human beings, though such a nexus shows itself at this juncture under a new aspect, for it is being claimed not only that all human beings are brethren by virtue of their sinfulness, but also that we are all responsible for the sin of all human beings. Their brotherhood is rooted in their own condition and, consequently, in their own responsibility, which are reciprocally related. The Child Jesus’ words serve, at this point, to corroborate the centrality of the interpretation that I have advanced concerning the dramatic conflicts found in the Comedias barbaras. He says: ‘‘Learn to hear the voice of truth, Dona Marı´a. Weep, but do not obfuscate my words with your tears’’ (ibid.). Which one is then the voice of truth? Which one is the voice that Dona Marı´a wants to cover up with her entreaties, prayers, and tears? Which one is the voice she wants to silence so as not to feel guilt or assign herself responsibility and thus evade her own obligation to act? Which one is the voice she wants to block up in order not to come to repentance and, therefore, to the grasping of the genuine sense and destiny of her life? The key to answer these questions had already been supplied by Dona Marı´a herself when she provided the interpretation of the significance of the bells: the twelve bells become the twelve crows that cover up her heart. We have accordingly witnessed a passing from the objective plane to the subjective, from the external domain to the internal, from the alien sphere to one’s own, thus effecting ff a return to the origin by having come full circle. In that fashion, Dona Marı´a has appropriated her feeling of guilt. In the present context, she in fact is being urged to do so truly and completely, by committing herself to accept, as her own, even the remotest consequences of what she has done and failed to do. Therefore, one may say that the Child Jesus, as the voice of truth, is Dona Marı´a’s genuine voice. In fact, the Child Jesus is the symbol of her personal destiny of salvation, of her coming to the truth of herself. Here one finds her speaking to herself and calling on herself by the mediation of the Child Jesus, because what she is risking – always, but now self-consciously – is her own authenticity, which is the sense of one’s own truth and thereby one’s aspiration to self-coincidence.47 Don Galan is Don Juan Manuel’s personal servant, and yet he performs a function of considerable importance.48 Valle-Incla V n presents him at the

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

259

´ guila de blason by drawing beginning of the second scene of Act II of A this masterly portrait of him: He is old and ugly; he is a lying and timorous fellow; he is acquainted with many stories which he relates with malice, and he also plays the buffoon ff at his master’s house.49 (AB, p. 31)

Moreover, he is a particularly lewd creature, and in many respects a ridiculous man. Now then, this is not at all an accidental fact, but indeed an element contributing to the dramatic strength of the play, serving as it does to characterize Don Galan as the negative and caricature of Don Juan Manuel as a man of power and lust. One may appreciate this point by focusing, even for a moment, on the servant’s conversation with Liberata, his master’s new concubine: LIBERATA: ´ N: DON GALA LIBERATA: ´ N: DON GALA

LIBERATA: ´ N: DON GALA LIBERATA: ´ N: DON GALA LIBERATA: ´ N: DON GALA

Fright! Whenever I hear the dogs [barking] I cannot help it – my flesh shudders. Gorgeous it is! Stop neighing, you’re in rut! If I were, I would lick you all over. ... Your flesh is so white that I would also bite you sometimes. But I would do so with greater love than Don Pedrito’s bloodhounds. Right now, Don Galan? No, not here. ... Behind the door. Watch out! If the master heard you! He would laugh. My word, you know your tricks! That’s how I earn my bread50 (Ibid., p. 110)

´ guila This behavior notwithstanding, Don Juan Manuel, at the end of A de blason (p. 154), will characterize him – and rightly so – as a ‘‘good soul’’,51 since he is – and one should not forget this – the most innocent person of the three who leave the house burdened with their sins (ibid., p. 153). Between the vixen and the wolf that come out, the buffoon ff is like a star in the night (ibid., p. 154). As we saw above, Valle-Inclan has referred to him as a ‘‘buffoon ff at his master’s house’’. Liberata is surprised to find him to be someone who ‘‘know[s his] ... tricks’’. But this fact is precisely what allows him to ´ guila de blason. Let me take a closer look at his perform his function in A behavior. The Knight himself gives succinct expression to that role when he says: I have no sorrow and, if I had any, Don Galan would drive it away. Why are you weeping, Isabel? If you do not know how to laugh like that fool, go and wipe off your tears where I cannot see you.’’ (Ibid., p. 34)

260

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

This is of course the classical task discharged by a buffoon, ff whether in real life or in a play, namely: to make another laugh, to distract him or her from pain, to hide the sad truth (‘‘I have no sorrow ...’’).52 And yet the role played by Valle-Inclan’s buffoon ff is more far-reaching, since he is meant to promote Don Juan Manuel’s self-blocked search after himself. First, one comes face to face with Don Galan’s grimace, which is used by him as an instrument to emphasize – by way of contrast and background – the deceitful aspect of his master’s action and his own ridiculous (because impossible) claim to pridefulness. The best way to render this claim evident is, in my opinion, merely to present the following three neighboring passages of the play: [A.] THE KNIGHT hits the table with his fist. The buffoon ff jumps as he feigns grotesque fright, and shudders while his tongue hangs out and his eyes roll. THE KNIGHT hurls a plate at his head, and the buffoon, ff catching it in midair, begins to lick it. (AB, p. 54) [B.] [THE KNIGHT] ... gets up from his armchair and, wearing a sorrowful and arrogant expression, walks back and forth from one wall to its opposite. The buffoon ff remains seated on the floor while he keeps the plate on his head, like a would-be Mambrino’s helmet. (Ibid.) [C.] THE KNIGHT kicks him down. The buffoon ff puts spit in his eyes and pretends to weep meekly. (Ibid., p. 55)

Don Juan Manuel’s ‘‘mask’’ cracks at the buffoon’s ff actions. His feigning, the would-be Mambrino’s helmet, the pretense of a shudder, the imitation of a dog, all of that serves to underscore the play-acting and concealing dimensions of Don Juan Manuel’s conduct. But in Don Galan’s grimace (or in the negative aspect thereof ), one may detect another dimension, indeed a positive one, which consists in rendering the truth manifest by indirection and which serves as a means for the Knight to achieve a straightforward consciousness of himself. And this is known by him full well, as is evinced by the following exchange: ˜ A MARI´A: DON THE KNIGHT: ˜ A MARI´A: DON THE KNIGHT:

How can you put up with such insolence in a servant? Don Galan is my jester! And the voice of my conscience too! ... Don Galan, the voice of your conscience! With his taunts and insolent ways, Don Galan edifies my soul, as Don Manuelito does for yours with his sermons. ˜ A MARI´A: Hold your peace and don’t blaspheme! You’ll be my perdition! DON THE KNIGHT: I’m not blaspheming. Both tell us bitter truths. Your chaplain sprinkles holy water on them, and mine wine. (AB, p. 71)

Though unbeknownst to her, Dona Marı´a was right after all when, previously, she had said to Don Galan that dogs are a nuisance ‘‘when

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

261

they bark’’ (ibid., p. 70). The lesson accepted by Don Juan Manuel from the one voice of his conscience, as it imparted its bitter truths53 (cf. ibid., p. 127), is one for which she is not yet ready, as we have had the occasion to see.54 Later on, when she has already learned to listen to the voice of her conscience, she will be able to understand her husband’s words by means of the Divine Child’s admonition, to wit: ‘‘Don Juan Manuel listens to his servant’s cruel taunts, but you are not willing to listen to the Child Jesus’’ (AB, p. 106). Therefore, and despite all appearances or perhaps because of them, the buffoon’s ff voice turns out to be the voice of truth, and the Child Jesus becomes Dona Marı´a’s own Don Galan in this respect. Finally, let me turn to Fuso negro,55 whose name may refer to the narrow, long lozenge often employed in coats of arms.56 This, in itself, is a puzzling fact, especially since the noun Fuso is qualified by the adjective negro (black). Whose coat of arms could Valle-Inclan have had in mind in inventing this character? Possibly it is Don Juan Manuel’s own, for, as we will have an occasion to see, the two characters are related to each other in important ways. To begin with, Fuso negro is a mocking figure – we find him, for example, ‘‘sticking out his tongue’’ (CP, p. 22); but he is also an impressive man, capable of frightening people: His throbbing, blackish buttock is seen through the tattered patches [of his trousers.] T ouporroto´u! And of a sudden he turns around and begins to dance, performing entrechats. T ouporroto´u! (ibid.)

His reiterated cry may well be a sign of his madness; after all, the cast of characters of both Romance de lobos and Cara de plata portrays him as a madman. Nonetheless, neither the fact nor the meaning of his madness is clear; indeed, one finds that even doubt is cast on his madness, as, for instance, one hears in the following exchange: THE KNIGHT: MORCEGO’S WIFE: FUSO NEGRO:

Why would they say, Fuso negro, that you are mad? It is he who says that, so that he won’t have to work. Boys say that, so that they may throw stones at me. In every village, there must be one madman and one heir to the manor. (RL , p. 666)

One thus finds in him a mixture of cleverness and even craftiness, on the one hand, and worldly wisdom (and even a sort of moral-psychological insightfulness), on the other, as one may gather from these words:

262

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

FUSO NEGRO: The heart is like the apple of one’s eye. Whatever it directs its glance to it comes to possess in the depths within. Sometimes a fountain, sometimes a rock formation. ... Sometimes a wolf ’s bared teeth, at other times brightness. (Ibid.)

Perhaps the secret key to this character (and to the paradoxical effect ff he produces, namely, at once allure and disgust) may be found in what Salinas sought to convey by the formula, ‘‘madness, subject to norms’’, a combination ruled by the ‘‘principle’’ given expression, according to him, by the following two verses, located at the end of Fin de carnaval (Carnival’s End): ‘‘Lining Iron [Pata P de cabra] wore / a prior’s mitre.’’57 Or perhaps it is the result of mixing wisdom and depth, on the one hand, and lust and the spirit of dance and frenzy, on the other, for Fuso negro is capable – between boasts and exaggerations – of arriving at a clear view, as one may come to understand from these words of his: Do you know who I am? Or the studies I’ve pursued? Do not risk a bet, or you’ll loose! Everything has gone wrong! The world I see is, as it were, out of whack. Between a Friday and a Tuesday it goes to smithereens. (CP, pp. 57–58)

Or again: The world is about to end. It is well primed for that. What’s the use of changing customs and taking up new posts? Yet they appointed me bishop! Theologians were few and far between, and those few lived together with women without the benefit of marriage. (Ibid., p. 54)

Now then, by virtue of his madness, he could come to entertain wild fantasies about being endowed with a quasi-infinite virility, as we hear in these lines: A young woman is coming to me from America aboard a ship. T ouporroto´u! I’ve got her pregnant! I have not yet seen her but I’m at work with her every night. We sin in the dark. One must sin! He who does not sin is damned! (Ibid., p. 75)

Or as he says immediately thereafter, by indulging a fantasy which is emotionally charged, especially with hatred: In her belly she is carrying thirty-seven male and thirty-seven female infants. Tonight I’m riding my horse, the wind, and I’m at work with you [Sabelita], and I cut her throat.’’ (Ibid.)

In fact, he goes as far as to produce really grotesque visions and fables worthy of a Bosch:

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

263

What a good idea, out of a bad idea: to release all the wine in the world and let it all run into a hundred-thousand-jet fountain! What a very good idea! Let cows shed loaves of bread, rather than dung, from under their tails! (Ibid., p. 76)

And as if this were not enough, he then proposes another ‘‘excellent’’ idea: ... the world is out of whack. I know the cure, and others do too, but no one would own up to it. The first one to speak up will be shot four times, by order of the misbegotten Government. (Ibid.)

The world is corrupt, thoroughly evil: this is the key to understand the madness and the sexualization of Fuso negro’s hatred. It is, therefore, a world worthy of king Satan: if he were in charge, women would go about naked. And from the end of one Friday to the end of another [we would be] drinking and eating and fornicating. (Ibid.)

But his free-wheeling fantasy and his hatred are not only given verbal expression; they are translated into action too: matters of fantasy are no doubt involved, as in: ‘‘[a]t the convent, I can sleep with the blessed nuns and fornicate with them successively, seven at a time’’ (ibid., p. 127), but so are various forms of behavior, like besieging Sabelita at the romantic porch, demanding that she show him her legs, and pouncing on her and devouring ‘‘her tongue’’ (ibid., p. 77), and doing so with ‘‘phallic triumph, boastful laugh, burning eyes, and frenzied hair in disarray’’ (ibid.). This was the occasion when the Knight and Fuso negro met face to face for the first time in Cara de plata, for it was then that Don Juan Manuel burst into the scene with a fury so final that, as a result, Fuso negro’s lustful madness was overcome: ‘‘Without as much as a thought, a cursing and violent horseback-rider jumps over the atrium wall, while the madman – a frightening figure whose hair was in disarray – stirs under the horseshoes ...’’ (ibid.). The Knight’s lust and overweening pride here outdo his image as the perpetrator of Sabelita’s violation. And yet none of it succeeds in establishing the decisive connection between the Knight and the madman. That comes to pass differently. ff When the Knight flees from his house and is ready to die, Fuso negro finds him in a cave by the sea. It is then and there that two things occur which are worth insisting upon, if indeed we are to bring our understanding and proper interpretation of the Comedias barbaras to term. First of all, it comes as a surprise to the madman to see the Knight in a place so unsuited to his rank and condition. Accordingly, Fuso negro proposes to the Knight what, in the former’s eyes, would appear to be a fair exchange.

264

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

As he says, the ‘‘madman shall go and reign in your palaces. He will wear a white sheet as his robe, and his crown will have a paper border ...’’ (RL , p. 668). Now, this is a question of justice, for, if Don Juan Manuel chooses to become a hermit, the hermit and beggar should become a master. When all is said and done, a king of this sort will fit like a glove in a household where the sons only dishonor the Knight’s noble line (cf. ibid.). In effect, ff the function performed here by the madman consists, as he engages in his taunts and fantasies, in rendering the truth manifest about the personal condition and lineage of a man who has even lost his self-respect. But, secondly, the madman has another role to play, one in fact whose reach is more profound. At this point we return to what we had found at the beginning of Romance de lobos, namely, the maddening vision of the Holy Company. As we had the occasion to see,58 the symbols and images having to do with light serve the purpose of pointing to Don Juan Manuel’s possible triumph over himself, which would occur if and when he reaches his own proper limit or source of inner illumination for his life. It is precisely at this juncture that the madman and the chastised Knight become brothers in spirit, and this is only fair, for they achieve that outcome in the realm of madness, of fanciful visions. In fact, Don Juan Manuel contemplates a scene that has the effect ff of contorting his mind: An angel and a demon are opening a grave for me by the light of a candle. The angel digs, the demon digs. ... One at the head, the other at the feet. ... The demon with a scythe, the angel with a golden shell. ... (RL , p. 668)

For a moment the Knight doubted his sanity, wondering as he did whether the scene was a reality or a vision. His state was far removed from the self-sufficiency of the pridefulness he once enjoyed. The awareness of his finite condition began to take root in him as his overweening pride started to dissolve. Consider for a moment the way Don Juan Manuel was in Cara de plata. Could such a man ever imagine himself stepping out of his own mind, as it were, to engage in self-doubt, as he apparently found no confirmation for his thoughts and feelings in experience? And yet that is just what took place, for we find him asking the madman for corroboration of what he was seeing with his own eyes: ‘‘Don’t you see them, Fuso negro, my brother?’’ (ibid., p. 669). Please note the designation employed by the Knight; it is most revealing, expressing as it does their intimate connection, which consists in Fuso negro’s relationship to Don Juan Manuel the ‘‘Elder Demon’s tall tales’’ (ibid.). In other words, the

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

265

madman’s account amounts to the disclosure of the possible sense of the vision, that is to say, of the Knight’s own destiny. For who else could the Elder Demon be but Don Juan Manuel himself ? Just as the Child Jesus was Dona Marı´a’s authentic being, so is the Elder Demon’s the Knight’s own. The Child Jesus, Don Galan, Fuso Negro: three stars in the firmament of the mockery of truth. Now then, should anyone have questions about this interpretation, it would be, in my opinion, sufficient to hear the following words of Don Juan Manuel to answer them: I doubted whether my senses were delirious. ... I can hardly make out your shadow in this cave. I’ve come here to die. ... My entire life I was a rabid wolf, and, as such, I want to perish of hunger in this cave. ... Brother Fuso negro, cut my head off and take it to my sons. You will see how those monsters born of my blood would clothe you in silk. (Ibid., p. 668)

One could say, therefore, that the Knight may at that juncture grasp the true sense or destiny of his life, to wit: his death at the hands of his sons as the well-deserved prize for his pridefulness.59 He would have been able to do so not because the said sense or destiny had remained in the dark (though ready-made and concealed), while now it would have become illuminated and thus available to him for the first time; but, rather, by virtue of the fact that it was being illuminated and had become accessible to him at that point precisely as the fruit of his action of freely constituting and accepting it. Such is the death he symbolically anticipates in the event of his decapitation, inasmuch as the head stands for power, the power of a man’s thought over his placement at the world. His is the head that was to be presented to his sons ‘‘on a silver platter, as they were sitting at table’’ (RL , p. 665) and ready to ‘‘eat it as a delicious dish’’ (ibid.), an occurrence in which the Knight would succeed in totally surrendering his will to them and, at once and consequently, in empowering them. To be sure, that is a cruel and grotesque end, and yet it is a just one. In fact, it is much more than that, for it is not merely the last thing to happen in Romance de lobos, but it is also its necessary denouement. We have thus seen how the Knight’s movement toward the truth of himself has been brought to completion and fulfillment, just as it analogously happened in the case of the paths respectively followed by Sabelita and Dona Marı´a. In my opinion, the demonstration of such developments was adequately carried out by showing that reciprocal references of meaning exist in Valle-Inclan’s trilogy, references which are verifiable therein as one proceeds from play to play and from character to character,

266

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

and in a manner which is, for the most part, independent of the chronology of composition and the temporal determinations of the dramatic action. L ong Island University NOTES 1 It goes without saying that the content of such anticipations must be subjected to proper and relevant corroboration. 2 Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, T he Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 139: In a Gestalt-contexture, which I venture to say is verified repeatedly in the case of the Comedias barbaras, ‘‘[t]here is no unifying principle or agency over and above the parts or constituents which co-exist in the relationship of [parts] mutually demanding and supporting each other. T he Gestalt ... is the balanced and equilibrated belonging and functioning of the parts, the functional tissue ... in which they exist in their interdependence and indetermination.’’ This ‘‘unity of the theme’’ has of course to be shown, and I will attempt to do so in the course of this investigation about Valle-Inclan’s trilogy of plays, and yet I do not wish to deny the paradoxical nature of the endeavor, inasmuch as these plays were composed at different ff times, and to the extent that the themes in question exhibit diachronic features and are subject to a ‘‘historical’’ development. Cf. infra, n. 48. ´ guila de blason, 4th. ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976). 3 Ramo´n del Valle-Inclan, A Henceforth I will refer to this work in the body of the essay by means of the abbreviation AB, followed, when relevant, by the page number. It should be noted that, throughout this study, all the translations from the Spanish are its author’s. 4 Ramo´n del Valle-Inclan, Romance de lobos in Obras escogidas, 5th. ed. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1974), I. Henceforth I will refer to this work in the body of the essay by means of the abbreviation RL , followed, when relevant, by the page number. 5 R. del Valle-Inclan, Cara de plata, 4th. ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976). Henceforth I will refer to this work in the body of the essay by means of the abbreviation CP, followed, when relevant, by the page number. 6 Cf. infra, n. 48. 7 Alonso Zamora Vicente, L a realidad esperpentica (Aproximaciones a ‘‘L uces de bohemia’’), 2nd. enl. ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1974), p. 180. 8 I do not mean to say, of course, that Valle-Inclan cast the three plays in his imagination prior to committing them to writing, or that, at least, he had at his disposal an outline thereof (and of their correlations). Such a thesis would not only prove unverifiable, but, even if not, it would really be unnecessary for the actual construction of the plays. It would have been enough that they – as they were being written – could be realized in terms of certain mutually referential guidelines useful for the conformation of other possible plays (and aspects or features thereof ), and that – to that extent and in that sense – the latter would serve as an anticipatory nexus creative of a unity given, by way of foreshortening, to the author and, consequently, to the reader and audience. 9 Pedro Salinas, ‘‘Significacion del esperpento o Valle-Inclan, hijo prodigo del 98’’ in L iteratura espan˜ola. Siglo XX, 2nd. ed. (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1972), p. 91. 10 Ibid., p. 97. 11 Cf. ibid., pp. 89 and 90.

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

267

12 Ibid., p. 97. 13 Cf. Julian Marı´as, ‘‘Pensamiento y literatura en el 98’’ en L a generacio´n del 98 (Madrid: Ciclo Cultural ‘‘Politeia’’, March 2, 1977). 14 Ibid., p. 6. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Max Scheler, Ressentiment trans. W. W. Holdheim (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961). V ide also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘Christianity and Ressentiment’’, in M Merieau-Ponty , ed. by H. J. Silverman et al., trans. M. B. Smith et al. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1992), pp. 85ff. ff 18 Cf. J. Marıas, loc. cit., p. 7. 19 Ibid. 20 Cf. P. Salinas, op. cit., p. 99. 21 A. Zamora Vicente, L as Sonatas de Valle-Inclan, 2nd. ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), p. 69. 22 R. del Valle-Inclan, Sonata de estı´o in Opera omnia (Madrid: Rivadeneyra), VI, p. 20. 23 A. Zamora Vicente, L as Sonatas de Valle-Inclan, pp. 137–138. 24 Amado Alonso, ‘‘Estructura de las Sonatas de Valle-Inclan’’ in M Materia y forma en la poesı´a, 3rd. ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), p. 226. 25 A. Zamora Vicente, L as Sonatas de Valle-Inclan, p. 46. In what follows, I shall often refer to Don Juan Manuel as the Knight, Valle-Inclan’s own appellation for him. 26 I should not fail to mention the obvious homosexual component of this situation. Now, this is nothing novel in Valle-Inclan’s work, for Bradomın had already referred to such a dimension as the divine sin and temptation of poets (cf. Sonata de invierno in Sonata de oton˜o. Sonata de invierno, 7th. ed. [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1975], p. 150). (The Marques de Bradomın is, of course, the main character of the Sonatas.) In this connection, one should not overlook the various and repeated references to Cara de plata’s handsomeness, even if they are given expression by women (cf. CP, p. 18), as well as Don Juan Manuel’s ‘‘indulgent and crude affection’’ ff for his son (ibid., p. 23). One must nonetheless insist on the unconscious character of the role played by such motifs, a fact which is, of course, in keeping with the tumultuous, unreflective, and extroverted nature of the Knight. The obfuscation of such motifs goes so far as to bring about their externalization by projection, their objectification, and even, so to speak, their mythologization (cf. RL , p. 669). 27 Cf. supra, pp. 233 and 237. 28 It is worth noting that this passage conveys the synthesis of the historical and personal forms of death, and it does so by appealing to the reality of a family-house’s abidingness in time and through its decadence. Here the notion of inheritance has both an explicit sense (i.e., that of a legal institution) and an implicit one (i.e., that of a natural and historical event). The flesh and the law thus serve to establish a bond of reciprocity between life and death. 29 Cf. J. Marıas, loc. cit., pp. 5–6 for a consideration of the essential role played by ValleInclan’s stage directions and the problems arising therefrom concerning the reading and possible representation of his plays. 30 The locus classicus for this opposition between nomos (even if only by convention or doxa) and phusis (understood as ‘‘wild nature’’) is, of course, Odysseus’ assessment of Polyphemos. Cf. T he Odyssey of Homer, trans. By R. Lattimore (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), ix, ll. 214–215, p. 142: ‘‘I would encounter a man who was endowed with great strength, / and wild, with no true knowledge of laws or any good customs’’. V ide also ix, ll. 175–176 (ibid., p. 141), ll. 189–191 (ibid., p. 142), ll. 256–257 (ibid., p. 144), ll. 267–268 (ibid.), and ll. 275–279 (ibid.).

268

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

31 I will attempt to justify this judgment later. Cf. infra, pp. 245f. 32 Cf. supra, p. 244. 33 To this end, it would be of some interest to examine the Abbot’s attitude toward Don Juan Manuel, as well as his actions insofar as they concern the Knight. Let me just point out two things: 1. the Abbot is both attracted and repelled by Don Juan Manuel; 2. the Abbot’s character is, so to speak, a toned-down version of Don Juan Manuel’s, and the former’s violent personality is a sort of caricature of the latter’s. 34 Cf. ls. 14, 12 in Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, nova editio, 4th. ed., ed. A. Colunga et al. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965), p. 690, right col.: ‘‘Quomodo cecidisti de caelo, / Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?’’, where the word ‘‘Lucifer’’, a non-biblical name for Satan literally meaning ‘‘light bearer’’, signifies the ‘‘morning star’’ and is, in this sense, employed to speak of Christ. (V ide Luke 10, 18, Ap. 22, 16, and 2 Pt. 1, 19; see also A. Zamora Vicente, L as Sonatas de Valle-Inclan, pp. 46–50 and 65). It is thus not inconceivable to have the duality of Satan and Lucifer represent the nexus of evil or ugliness (as the cause of repulsiveness) and goodness or beauty (as the cause of attractiveness). In this connection, see the related concepts of tremendum and fascinans f in Rudolf Otto, T he IIdea of the Holy, trans. J. W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), chapters iv–vi. 35 Cf. AB, p. 130: ‘‘With a lordly motion, he strokes the lady’s silver hair and leaves.’’ 36 Cf. supra, p. 247. 37 Cf. supra, pp. 235–236. 38 The emphasis is mine. 39 Cf. supra, pp. 248–249. 40 Cf. supra, p. 234 and RL , p. 663: ‘‘Only the saintly woman of whom we were the executioners calls you Isabel!’’ 41 Here I have in mind a referential nexus which is in need of development and confirmation, as will happen in Romance de lobos. 42 I have repeatedly employed terms like ‘‘one’s own truth’’, ‘‘sense of one’s life’’, ‘‘destiny’’, and the like. In the present context, I have used them not only together, but as constituting an essential unity as well. Perhaps I should avail myself of this opportunity briefly to clarify their meaning by means of the following observation. By ‘‘one’s own truth’’ I understand ‘‘self-coincidence’’, in a sense proximate to that assigned by Ortega to the same felicitous and insightful formula. (Cf. Jose Ortega y Gasset, En torno a Galileo, Lecture vii in Obras ff The ‘‘self ’’ Completas [Madrid: Alianza Editorial/Revista de Occidente, 1983], V. pp. 81ff.) in that expression is not to be taken as if it meant something given, or even pre-given, but rather as something being constituted by the person in question by way of projection (and its translation into action) and eventual acceptance (or rejection). This notwithstanding, the term is not to be construed as if it signified just any matter for subjective activity, since what the person is risking is his or her own abiding happiness. The ‘‘state’’ that the word ‘‘selfcoincidence’’ seems to point to could then be defined as the would-be harmonious coming together of one’s own inclinations and one’s socio-historical makeup, as mediated by one’s projections and consequent actions. Accordingly, the ‘‘self ’’ in question is being proposed as ‘‘one’s life sense’’, in the twofold acceptation of ‘‘meaning of one’s life’’ and ‘‘te´los of one’s vectorially structured effort ff of living’’. No doubt, the ‘‘self ’’ thus understood is the meaning of one’s life, and yet it is not lived as if it were something lying ready-made somewhere, but rather as that which must be discovered and constituted in the work of self-projection, which, of necessity, goes hand in hand with one’s attempt at self-actualization through action. Moreover, such a ‘‘self ’’ is functionally identical with one’s own destiny under two aspects: on the one hand, as that which one is called to be and, on the other, as the meaning of one’s

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

269

life with which one is to coincide under the prevailing set of socio-historically interpreted circumstances. (Cf. Antonio Rodrıguez Hue´scar, Jose J ´ Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical IInnovation. A Critique and Overcoming of Idealism, trans. J. Garcı´a-Go´mez [Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995], Part II, §§ 9–10.) But, if this is so, then, whatever one’s destiny materially turns out to be, it would be marked by necessity. However, this does not mean that one’s destiny would be ‘‘something’’ that would come to pass no matter what, regardless of our understandings thereof and our efforts ff of self-projection. Rather, it would be ‘‘something’’ which, though as yet uncovered, is nonetheless operative in one; it would be that in the absence of which one would fail to be oneself and thus to achieve happiness. Accordingly, the ‘‘self ’’ so understood is obviously a paradoxical ‘‘entity’’, inasmuch as it is in one sense, and it is not in another. It would hence come as no surprise that I avail myself of the phrase ‘‘actual destiny’’ or a variant thereof, in which the qualification ‘‘actual’’ is meant to signify one’s real coincidence with the necessary sense of one’s life which, however accomplished or explicated it may become, is nonetheless always in the works (and an outcome mediated by one’s efforts ff of self-understanding and self-actualization) and thus never altogether determinate. Consequently, happiness is, at best, partially ideal and, unendingly, a materia actuosa that is continually pulling one ahead in the midst of one’s life. ‘‘One’s own truth’’ as the ‘‘sense of one’s life’’ qua destiny unceasingly keeps one in via and therefore ‘‘guarantees’’ one’s condition as a restless but directed being. (Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, ‘‘[Prologo] A ‘Historia de la Filosofıa’ de E´mile Brehier’’ in Obras Completas, VI, pp. 409ff. ff and Aristotle, De anima, ii, 5, 417 b 5–7.) 43 The lamentations heard on the occasion of Dona Marı´a’s death appear to be sincere (cf. RL , p. 634). Another related thing worth taking into consideration is the way in which some of them are constructed after the litanies to the Virgin. 44 This could easily be shown to be the case by conducting an examination of the motives which have led her to keeping her distance from her husband’s life and, above all, through an analysis of the attitude of pious resignation with which she did so. It can also be confirmed by taking a look at her submission to her sons. In my opinion, however, the briefest and most vivid way of presenting Dona Marı´a’s condition is simply to quote the Child Jesus’ judgment of her when he said ‘‘[h]ow fearful you are, Dona Marı´a’’ (AB, p. 107). The accusations Don Juan Manuel levels at himself throughout Romance de lobos (and which we have already seen, cf. supra, p. 244) serve to verify and confirm the point. The opinion of others can also be a means to corroborate it (cf. RL , p. 614). 45 Cf. supra, pp. 253ff. ff 46 For the questions of omens in general, vide Adrian Garcıa-Herna´ndez Montoro’s excellent book, El leon y el azor (Madrid: Los de hoy, 1972), pp. 17, 33, 63, 64, 70, 73–75 and 78–80, and for the question of omens involving birds, see the section entitled ‘‘Anejo [al capı´tulo II]. Los presagios en la gesta de los Infantes’’, ibid., pp. 106–110 (and notes, p. 122). 47 I must insist on the dramatic importance that this scene has for the denouement of the play, for it contains the elements required for Isabel’s repentance and forgiveness to be reached. It is here, perhaps, wherein lies the positive root of the proposed universal human brotherhood in sinfulness, namely, self-coincidence (or its failure) as the exemplar that serves as the condition for the possibility of the other’s self-coincidence (or its failure). What is involved here is the necessary call to be oneself and the call to be what is necessary, without however carrying the force of law, depending as it is on the fact that what one is called to be must be freely constituted by oneself. In other words, it points to something that one must come to hear and heed in freedom, for otherwise one would – on the strictly human level, as opposed to the sphere of nature – remain a mere outline, empty and inactual. Indeed, the

270

´ MEZ JORGE GARCI´ A-GO

possibility of losing oneself always hangs over oneself. (Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, op. cit., Lecture vii; Martin Heidegger, Being and T ime, trans. J. Macquarrie et al. [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], §§ 9, 12, 40, 41, and 64; and supra, n. 42.) ´ guila de blason, even though Don Galan appears in all three 48 This is especially true in A Comedias. He plays a secondary role in Cara de plata and is of no importance in Romance de ´ guila lobos. This fact is no doubt thought-provoking, given the essential function he has in A de blason. I do not think this is arbitrary or the result of carelessness or even chance. I am inclined to believe that it finds its origin in Valle-Inclan’s creative will itself, if one judges on the basis of the referential nexus which is at the core of the Comedias barbaras taken as a structural whole. In my opinion, one must say that the role played by what I may characterize as the movement toward one’s own truth (cf. supra, n. 41) is at the root of the various degrees of importance of Don Galan’s different ff functions in the several plays of the trilogy. As we will have an occasion to see in what follows, Don Galan is one of the instruments employed ´ guila de blason, while Dona Marı´a takes by Valle-Inclan to promote such a movement in A up that function in Romance de lobos. By contrast, in Cara de plata (which – from a structural, as opposed to a chronological, standpoint – is an introductory play) no one is responsible for that role with respect to Don Juan Manuel, as indeed it must be, for this character’s unlimited impulsiveness and overweening pride are here of primodial significance. In my opinion, this is the function assigned by the author to this play in the entire trilogy; in fact, it constitutes the factor leading to the characteristic denouement of the play, in which we come face to face with Don Juan Manuel’s carrying his prideful self-affirmation to the extreme of blasphemy and even sacrilege. Employing this criterion of significance, I propose the following thematic-developmental arrangement for the trilogy, one which, as one can easily ascertain, is at odds with the chronological order of composition: 1. Cara de plata (1923); ´ guila de blason (1907); and Romance de lobos (1908). Despite Don Juan Manuel’s prideful A self-affirmation at the end of Cara de plata, or perhaps because of it, his tirade nonetheless gives expression to his self-doubts, as, for example, when he says, ‘‘I am afraid of being the Devil!’’ Now then, if correct, this proposal would disclose the existence of the global structural unity or Gestalt coherence proper to the trilogy; in fact, it would serve to confirm it by underscoring the referential nexus or nucleus being worked out along the path toward the truth that Don Juan Manuel strives to traverse in the other two plays. 49 Cf. AB, p. 109 for the theme of Don Galan’s malice. 50 In this passage, it is worth noting the bestialization undergone by Don Galan, as indicated by the references to neighing and the dogs. I shall return to this topic. 51 The phrase used is ‘‘un alma de Dios’’, which literally means ‘‘a soul of God’’. 52 I should not fail to mention the fact that Don Juan Manuel’s way of dealing with Don Galan includes kicks and insults, especially the words ‘‘fool’’ and ‘‘imbecile’’ among the latter. (Cf. AB, pp. 71 and 127; CP, p. 132. On this subject, cf. A. Zamora Vicente, L a realidad esperpe´ntica, p. 142.) Zamora Vicente also refers to the employment of words like ‘‘admirable’’ and ‘‘imbecile’’ in the practice of criticism by members of the early twentieth-century literary Spanish literary movement called ‘‘modernism’’. V ide Juan Ramo´n Jimenez, ‘‘Ramo´n del Valle-Inclan. Castillo de Quema’’, El Sol (Madrid), published on the occasion of ValleInclan’s death and reproduced in Zamora Vicente, op. cit., pp. 141–142; for Ruben Darı´o’s use of ‘‘admirable’’, see R. Valle-Inclan, L uces de bohemia, Scene XIV. 53 Here Don Galan functions in his role of instrument of conveying the truth as he becomes complicit in the activity of concealment. 54 Cf. supra, pp. 256–257.

DEATH, TRUTH, AND SINFULNESS

271

55 Fuso negro gives rise to a problem similar to the one posed by Don Galan’s presence in the trilogy, since the former appears only in two of the plays. One may possibly account for this fact by noting that, in Cara de plata, his action serves to reinforce the element of lust, which, as we have already seen, is so important in Don Juan Manuel’s vehement and unbounded behavior. In Romance de lobos, which is the other play in which he appears, Fuso negro seems to act as an instrument aiding in the Knight’s search for the truth of himself. Moreover, that Fuso negro is a madman probably proves of value in emphasizing the function he actually possesses in each of the two plays. Finally, it may very well be that he ´ guila de blason at all, because those two functions are superfluous in does not figure in A this play. 56 A ‘‘lozenge’’ is a heraldic device in the shape of a rhomb which is ‘‘placed with its longer axis vertical’’, say, in coats of arms. Cf. W. Little et al., T he Oxford Universal Dictionary, ed. C. T. Onions, 3rd. rev. ed. with addenda (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 1173, right col. 57 P. Salinas, loc. cit., p. 96. 58 Cf. supra, pp. 239–240. 59 Cf. supra, p. 241. As may have become apparent to the reader, there is more than a faint echo of King Lear in the Knight Don Juan Manuel. Interesting though that may be, this is not the place to demonstrate or even illustrate this claim. At the risk of sounding superficial, let me just point out that both Knight and King are originally afflicted with a profound lack of self-knowledge, King L ear and the Comedias being the media to work out and overcome it; moreover, both characters are ‘‘assisted’’ toward self-understanding and ‘‘fulfillment’’ (i.e., in death) through their conflicts with their ‘‘side-kicks’’ (although, in the case of the King, this role is played mainly by one character, while in that of the Knight, it is split in two, to wit: Don Galan, the buffoon, ff and Fuso negro, the madman.

TONY E. AFEJUKU

ACCUSATION, BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN LITERATURE

I must say that it would be very unpatriotic of anyone to bring up fictitious charges against his fellow-citizen, whatever his motivation, ... because he happens to wield some kind of advantage. Isidore Okpewho, T he L ast Duty, p. 88

‘‘Accusation, betrayal and murder in Literature’’ – I have always been fascinated by this topic. I have always found it exciting and enthralling – ever since I became deeply interested in Literature as a subject and as a discipline one could pursue to the highest level. And this deep and abiding interest in Literature dates back to 1968. But why do I begin this essay on a personal note? Why do I adopt the autobiographical or impressionistic style here or elsewhere in this essay? David Daiches helps to answer. To quote him: ‘‘Art is meant to be experienced, and in the last analysis the function of criticism is to assist that experience (397). Let me qualify this statement immediately by stating that, in one way or the other, the ‘‘experience’’ of art, as embedded in the topic under focus, has been ‘‘lived’’ by every reader and critic, especially if consideration is given to the reader’s or critic’s observation of actual life which writers enact in literature. Thus it should be understood, in other words, and again in the words of Daiches, which I am in perfect agreement with, that ‘‘the movement from literature to life and back again is continuous’’ (274). As a practical critic, I find the ‘‘experience’’ of art and real life empirically thrilling, captivating, as I shall demonstrate immediately by tackling my subject from an impressionistic perspective. Of course, from this angle the moral sentiment embedded in the essay shall be better appreciated. Thus that year, 1968, was when I ‘‘stumbled’’ onto two books that opened my eyes to the ways of mankind that an English Restoration poet, the Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot severely attacks in his well known ‘‘Satyr Against Mankind.’’ 1968 was when I ‘‘stumbled’’ onto Silas Marner by George Eliot, the nineteenth century English female novelist who was actually Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans. 1968 was also when I 273 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 273–282. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

274

TONY E. AFEJUKU

‘‘stumbled’’ onto T he Outsider by the twentieth century Franco-Algerian novelist, dramatist and essayist, Albert Camus. The first named novel, Silas Marner, was a recommended text our Principal and English teacher, the late Rev. Fr. Jeremiah Cadogan, a native of Ireland, taught us. It was from this novel, which I read when I was barely fifteen, that I knew what it meant to be accused falsely and to be persecuted (unjustly). Silas Marner was a weaver, the ‘‘famous’’ weaver of Raveloe who was falsely accused of theft and was found guilty via lot-casting. Of course, whether or not the truth came out many years after – after Silas Marner inevitably became a misanthrope and a ‘‘miser,’’ a lover of his gold and pennies earned from his honest work, but which he never really spent because of what mankind turned him into, does not matter. But Silas Marner was particularly shattered in his period of crisis when the friends and neighbours whom he expected to stand by him ditched him. Let me quote a passage: A small minority shook their heads, and intimated their opinion that it was not a robbery to have much light thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that Master Marner’s tale had a queer look with it, and that such things had been known as a man’s doing himself a mischief, and then setting the justice to look for the doer. But when questioned closely as to their grounds for this opinion, and what Master Marner had to gain by such false pretences, they only shook their heads as before, and observed that there was not knowing what some folks counted gain; moreover, that everybody had a right to their own opinions, grounds or no grounds, and that the weaver, as everybody knew, was partly crazy. (92)

Suddenly Master Marner, the dutiful, honest and skillful weaver had become ‘‘partly crazy’’ being doubted and rejected. When I read the above passage and several others I knew, at that impressionable age, what it meant for one to be in a crisis. I knew that a crisis period was the best time to identify and weed out charlatans, saboteurs, betrayers and fair weather friends, neighbours, colleagues and companions. I knew that a crisis period was a time when people’s commitment to a cause or a friend, neighbour, colleague and companion could be properly assessed. Indeed, from the experience of Silas Marner I knew how a good man could be lied against, betrayed, battered and murdered. Of course, Silas Marner did not die physically but his good name, integrity and reputation were killed, even though, I presume, his light shone forth radiantly again when Dunsey, Dunstan Cass, the real thief was discovered in the end via his ‘‘corpse’’ and the stolen money beside ‘‘him’’ where ‘‘he’’ lay dead. From Silas Marner’s story I got to learn that no matter how rough the ocean might be, it could not (and cannot) sink the calabash. It was a boyish perception, but how true!

ACCUSATION, BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN LITERATURE

275

Why should men behave the way they do? What is the nature of man that makes him fall in love with evil? Why is evil so strong in the world? At barely fifteen I was determined to find answers to such questions which I found perplexing and fascinating. I wanted to understand human nature. And I read and read till it hurt. I read and read till I nearly broke my back. I read and read till I nearly died. And what I read were mainly literature books. I read drama (plays), poetry, fiction, autobiography and essays in Rosicrucian digests. And the college library was well known to me as I was well known to it. One day I chanced on T he Outsider – and blessed forever the god of voracious and uncurbed reading, for my world changed, especially after reading the passage below: One day, when inspecting my straw mattress, I found a bit of newspaper stuck to its underside. The paper was yellow with age, almost transparent, but one could still make out the letter-print. It was the story of a crime. The first part was missing, but one gathered that its scene was some village in Czechoslovakia. One of the villagers had left his home to try his luck abroad. After twenty-five years, having made a fortune, he returned to his country with his wife and child. Meanwhile his mother and sister had been running a small hotel in the village where he was born. He decided to give them a surprise and, leaving his wife and child in another inn, he went to stay at his mother’s place, booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister completely failed to recognise him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large sum of money he had on him, and in due course of the night they slaughtered him with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body in the river. Next morning his wife came, and without thinking, betrayed the guest’s identity. His mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well. I must have read that story thousands of times. In one way it sounded most unlikely; in another, it was plausible enough. Anyhow, to my mind, the man was asking for trouble; one should not play fool tricks of that sort. (82)

The story the above extract contains is a very pathetic one indeed. It is tragic, very tragic. But why is man so greedy and so wicked? Why is man such a betrayer? Why is man so cannibalistic? These questions, I remember, were what agitated my perplexed mind when I first read the above passage. A guest comes to visit me, believes in me, confides in me, and the next thing that happens is his slaughter, his murder by me! And to boot, I discover later that he is my brother! How do I feel thereafter? What do I feel? What do I do? What the extract taught me more in those years of my growing boyhood was that no matter what, I must learn, in the words of Marcus Aurelius, ‘‘never [to] be angry with my brother ... for he and I were born to work together.’’1 And every man was my brother! If I learned how not to be angry with my brother I would lead a perfect life, I would not accuse any man falsely and not betray and slay any sibling created by our Almighty Father.

276

TONY E. AFEJUKU

I have been talking of 1968. A few years ago I encountered the above story again in the guise of a play(-let), Found and L ost, written by a young, relatively unknown Nigerian playwright, Sonny Samson-Akpan of University of Uyo, Nigeria. The play is an adaptation of the above extract which Samson-Akpan has skilfully transformed into his moving creation with authentic, plausible Nigerian characters. The little but poignant addition in Samson-Akpan’s version is the accusation levelled against the visiting stranger and guest by the two women – the visitor’s mother and sister – both of whom eventually slaughter him. They accuse him of theft, not to his face though. They say only a thief can have so much money that the visitor shows them. How on earth can one man have so much money which the stranger tantalises them with? Of course, in their moment of madness they forget that they themselves are poor, and even if the stranger stole the money which is so excessive as their poverty-stricken eyes perceive it, it is no justification for the murder which they are about to commit just because they want the man’s money, the man who is their son and brother whom they thought they lost to the Nigerian civil war! In any case, they create a reason for killing him but almost immediately the truth comes out and they come to an untoward end. Man, wherever he may be, in Czechoslovakia or Nigeria, is crooked, is a cannibal. This is what Samson-Akpan, in his adaptation, is saying. Man is the same every where. In fact, literature generally tends to stress this as a fact of life, of existence. Books after books I came across right from 1968 – and even before 1968 – have this as their major thematic preoccupation. The theme of betrayal, of death or of murder is there in M Macbeth by Shakespeare, A M Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, T he Crucible by Arthur Miller, Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, T hings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and many other plays, stories and novels. F Let us take Macbeth M briefly. Macbeth, the protagonist of the play, in his mad ambition to succeed King Duncan, mercilessly slaughters him. The deed is so heinous and the stench that results from it pervades every where about Macbeth. He and his wife find it difficult, impossible, to wash it off of them. King Duncan is not only Macbeth’s cousin, he has just rewarded and honoured him with a new title for winning another battle on behalf of the good and heavenly king and the entire kingdom. King Duncan himself is visiting Macbeth’s home where he hopes to spend the night and announce to Macbeth that he is now the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth betrays the king’s hope, trust, generosity and confidence and slaughters him. He murders the pious king, and thereafter his own world crashes, collapses – even though he ‘‘reigns’’ temporarily as king. The

ACCUSATION, BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN LITERATURE

277

murder scene or the scene that immediately succeeds it is such that I always want to believe, against all senses of decency, that there is art in murder. There is skill in murder, for the murderer must be an artist of sorts. Many people, including some of the most perceptive critics around who may not grasp accurately my turn of mind here, may find this point unacceptable; but if only they can take a careful look at the ‘‘knocking at the gate’’ in Macbeth M . To underscore the point let me quote De Quincey, who shares my feeling and perplexity: From my boyish days I always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth M : it was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect ff for which I never could account: the eff ffect was – that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity: yet, however obstinately I endeavoured with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect. ff (81)

The murder scene and the gate knocking scene that succeeds it complement each other. Both show the (artistic) coarseness and vulgarity – or if you prefer it, vulgarness – of human nature. Both scenes produce the ff in one. Perhaps this needs some clear qualification. Murder same effect is an ‘‘incident of coarse and vulgar horror,’’ and as such the victim must receive our sympathy as he displays a natural instinct to cling to life, an instinct which is ‘‘indispensable to primary law of self-preservation.’’ Even in instances where the victim is asleep or unaware of the dastardly act, the same effect ff is still produced in us, for we must assume or perceive the victim to be displaying this same instinct, natural to all living human beings. Furthermore, in the murder scene and gate knocking scene in M Macbeth , the murderer’s ‘‘storm of passion’’ is displayed – his jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred – which create a hell within him, and into which we not only look but also plunge ourselves in order not to lose grasp or comprehension of what is before us. Both scenes are artistically, skilfully conceived and rendered. Reading them, we are made to feel that the ‘‘human nature, i.e. the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man, – was gone, vanished, extinct; and that the fiendish nature had taken its place’’ (De Quincey 83–4). And, in a way, we also sympathise with the victim, the murderer, who has fallen to this state. The dialogues and the soliloquies themselves marvellously, wonderfully accomplish these effects ff in us. One point that runs through this essay so far is that the false accuser, the betrayer and the murderer are bad and evil people who belong to the

278

TONY E. AFEJUKU

same world, who sell the same wares and who must of necessity share the same hell. They are immoral and obscene fellows that writers from age to age, generation to generation, century to century and country to country, must continually dwell on if literature must perform its role credibly and nobly to society and life generally. And talking about ‘‘obscenity,’’ I wish here to address my mind to another variant of it by way of a quotation from a short story entitled ‘‘The Missing Organ’’ by Wale Okediran, a young and upcoming Nigerian medical doctor-writer: ‘‘Now, now, now, ... . . I thought you said your genital is missing.’’ ‘‘Yes, doctor.’’ ‘‘Then what’s this – is this not your genital that we are looking at?’’ No, doctor, this is not my own.’’ ‘‘It’s not your own?’’ ‘‘No, doctor, mine is bigger than this.’’ ‘‘Then whose own is this on your crotch?’’ ‘‘I don’t know doctor. All I know is that mine is bigger and not as ugly as this one.’’ ‘‘You see now, officer. I’m innocent ...’’ ‘‘You’re not, you’re not. You stole my organ ...’’ ‘‘Look here, do not waste our time. You first of all said that you had no genital, now you’re saying that it is not your own. How did this get to where it is?’’ ‘‘I think it’s a fake one, Sir.’’ ‘‘Fake organ? I have heard of fake drugs and fake spare parts. I never knew they’ve started making fake organs in this country.’’ ‘‘I have to test it to know if it’s genuine, Sir.’’ ‘‘... You really want to test the organ?’’ ‘‘Yes, Sir.’’ ‘‘Are you married?’’ ‘‘Yes, I am.’’ ‘‘Then go home and test it on your wife.’’ ‘‘No, Sir, I prefer another woman. My wife is currently pregnant.’’ (10)

This excerpt will obviously elicit several reactions, pleasant and unpleasant, almost at the same time, from readers. Its deceptive simplicity, its wry, sardonic humour, its several themes of superstition, exploitation, deceit, false accusation, man’s fiendish, wicked and devious nature, etc. – all of which underscore its murderous obscenity, can hardly escape the reader’s lens. In 1994, at the yearly conference of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) held at the University of Benin, I had a discussion with Wale Okediran, the author of the excerpt. In our brief discussion I tried to zero-in on the aforesaid murderous obscenity and what uncomplimentary remark(s) it might elicit from some persons who might consider them-

ACCUSATION, BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN LITERATURE

279

selves ‘‘moral’’ readers or critics. In his reply, if I remember correctly, Okediran said that the question of obscenity was precisely part of the meaning and effect ff he wanted to convey in writing the excerpt and the whole of ‘‘The Missing Organ’’ generally. Our ‘‘moral’’ readers need not query Okediran, for many Nigerians are obscene people – very superstitious, very dirty, immoral, pernicious and evil-minded; they are liars, betrayers, exploiters, money lovers and rule benders; and to crown it all, they are murderers. All the four or five characters in the story, with perhaps the possible exception of the victim, are supposed to exemplify these and more attitudes that the story is meant to convey. Of course, one can disagree with the writer, and say that his perception of his people is ultra-negative, but going by the actual experiences of certain persons in the country, one can not but agree with Okediran. If we realise how in the country victims of crimes have been turned into scape-goats and accused persons, because offenders ff against their persons have the right connections and know the right persons and the right buttons to press, or because they know how criminally to smooth-talk themselves out of tight corners, then Okediran must be right indeed. The story as a whole is suggestive, very suggestive of the human condition in our part of the world. At this point, I wish to make some references to Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, a remarkable English historical play in which there is a ringing affirmation that orders of state can never supersede orders of conscience, for state authority is transitory but moral authority constant. In this play, Sir Thomas More, a remarkable intellectual and lawyer of the first order, is the protagonist. His king, Henry VIII, wants him to accede to his divorce of his queen, Catherine, his brother’s wife whom he had married against advice and against Christian tenets which forbid a man to marry his brother’s widow. The king’s reason for wanting to divorce Catherine is her inability to produce for him (and England) an heir to the English throne. Now he desires a second marriage, but first he must divorce Queen Catherine, and he needs Thomas More’s consent, not necessarily because Thomas More, ‘‘a man with an adamantine sense of his own self,’’ is well known for his integrity, virtue, strong will and unbending nature. If Thomas More sanctions the divorce – and by implication the king’s second marriage to Anne Boleyn – the king’s action will not ruffle a lot of feathers; it will receive the blessing of even the Pope and others (statesmen and company) likely to kick against the unholy act. Sir Thomas More refuses to budge and he is nailed – he is betrayed, falsely accused of treason against the state and is eventually

280

TONY E. AFEJUKU

hanged when he refuses a last minute chance of reprieve if only he is prepared to accede to the orders of state and let the king have his way. The hatchet-man in the whole dirty business is none other than Richard Rich who eventually succeeds Sir Thomas More as Lord Chancellor. Any time I read the play I am always fascinated by the first exchange between both men. Let me quote extensively from it: RICH:

MORE: RICH: MORE: RICH: MORE: RICH: MORE:

RICH: MORE: RICH: MORE: RICH: MORE:

Oh, everyone’s affable ff here ... (More is pleased). Also of course, the friendship of Sir Thomas More. Or should I say acquaintance? Say friendship. Well, there! ‘A friend of Sir Thomas More and still no office? There must be something wrong with him.’ I thought we said friendship. The Dean of St. Paul’s offers ff you a post; with a house, a servant and fifty pounds a year. What? What post? At the new school. (bitterly disappointed): A teacher! A man should go where he won’t be tempted. Look, ... Richard, in office they offer ff you all sorts of things. I was once off ffered a whole village, with a mill, and a manor house, and heaven knows what else – a coat of arms I shouldn’t be surprised. Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher. Perhaps, a great one. And if I was who would know it? You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that ... O, and a quiet life. (laughing): ... You say that! Richard, I was commanded into office; it was inflicted on me ... Can’t you believe that? It’s hard. (grimly): Be a teacher. (4–5;6)

This exchange between Rich and Sir Thomas More takes place very early in the play. At this time the former is nothing politically and otherwise; he is yet to have any gainful employment, and he wants More to recommend him for some gainful or important political office. More, a very perceptive person who quickly sees through people, knows at once that Rich is a sly and an unreliable man, a man whom the lure and spoils of political office would tempt to surrender and slay his best friend at the slightest opportunity. More does not trust him one bit and does not really want to have anything to do with him, at least politically; he is not prepared to recommend him for any political office and advises him to be a teacher because as a teacher Rich will not be in a position to be the demon and murderer he turns out to be in the end, all because of transient power and ephemeral position.

ACCUSATION, BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN LITERATURE

281

My abiding interest in the above passage, however, lies in the eternal truth it contains in respect of the everlasting nobility of the teacher and his or her profession. Yet if we go by what is happening in our dear fatherland today one wonders whether the teacher has any quiet life to live or whether his or her nobility has not been murdered by the powers that be, or snatched from him or her by even the very pupils who were destined to testify to his or her fineness and greatness. To round off this essay, I wish to say that literature, as I have tried to demonstrate in the examples cited above, is life. It is a true reflection of life. It can alter and has altered human beings and the world. In it we see our ugliness, coarseness, obscenity, rottenness, iniquities and immorality for what they are. And in depicting these failings, it equally shows our beautiful sides, for a writer who condemns something wrong in us and (our) society is by that act asking us and society to do that which is right, humane and patriotic. A writer who asks us not to accuse our neighbour falsely and bring up fictitious charges against him or her, a writer who asks us not to betray our fellow man, a writer who asks us not to injure our neighbour’s character or kill his or her person physically, morally or otherwise is asking us to check our nature, is asking us not to ‘‘beastialize,’’ if one may coin the word, our humanity. For human beings are not beasts and are not meant by their Creator to be beasts. And even if this beast, this evil in us, perchance triumphs, it never conquers, for life is not meant to be conquered and ruled by evil. Literature and life itself teach us this. I have known this since my boyish years – regardless of what Plato thinks and says about literature and life in his Republic. We W shall ever need literature for our public or private moral, social, political, psychological or philosophical edification. University of Benin U Nigeria

NOTE 1 This quotation of Marcus Aurelius was a favourite of my primary four class teacher. He often repeated it, especially while disciplining two or more fighting pupils whom he always charged with, in his own words, the ‘‘crime of pugnacity.’’ Ever since 1963, when I first heard Aurelius’s quotation from him, it has been one of my unforgettable quotations. Sadly, from then up to now, I have not had the opportunity to read carefully Marcus Aurelius’s M Meditations .

282

TONY E. AFEJUKU BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bolt, Robert. A M Man For All Seasons. London: Heinemann, 1960. Camus, Albert. T he Outsider. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961. Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to L iterature. London: Longman, 1981. De Quincey, Thomas. ‘‘On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth M .’’ In De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other W ritings. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. Eliot, George. Silas Marner. London: Nelson and Sons Publishers, n.d. Okediran, Wale. ‘‘The Missing Organ.’’ Rake 4 (1991): 9–10. Okpewho, Isidore. T he L ast Duty. London: Longman, 1976. Samson-Akpan, Sonny. Found and L ost. Uyo: Modern Business Press Ltd., 1992. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth M . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1947.

GARY BACKHAUS

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF E VIL IN KURT H. WOLFF’S EXISTENTI AL SOCIOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

By having reflected on certain supra-mundane personal experiences exhibiting the character of an intensified ineluctable immediacy from which the invention of new meanings had irrupted, the sociologist, Kurt H. Wolff, ff developed an existential methodology called surrender-and-catch. The experiential state of surrender involves radically suspending one’s socialization – the bracketing of as many notions received from one’s cultural tradition as possible. The surrenderer is thrown back upon his or her essential humanness, those uniquely human meaning-bestowing capacities that he or she shares with all of humankind. Surrender is the occasion for the maximum transcendence of empirical subjectivity and the fullest identification with transcendental subjectivity. But at the same time the surrenderer is thrown back upon his or her unique individuality, because the surrenderer encounters the ineluctable within his or her own situatedness from which he or she finds out what sense emerges from it. These newly emergent meanings are called the catch of surrender. Surrender-and-catch is offered ff as a serious response to the unprecedented crises of our times and to the failure of objective scientific thought and praxis to attenuate those crises. Wolff ’s approach of cognitive love entails total existential commitment and involvement – the complete opposite of the traditional objective and detached scientific attitude. In his radical vindication of the subject, Wolff sustains the hope that newly created meanings can lead to a better world. Wolff makes a strident claim that surrender is the antidote for the hegemony of instrumental reason, the form of reason characterized by mastery, calculation, and manipulation. Wolff also maintains that surrender is the utmost exercise of substantive reason, for it invents what is to be for humankind from the transcendental subjective source. And he more strongly asserts that surrender is an experiential modality that is incapable of evil. Although Wolff offers ff some explanation for this claim, his discussions are too brief to substantiate this great normative promise of surrender-and-catch. I provide theoretical support for the Wolffian doctrine of the impossibility of an evil catch by relating it to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s philosophy of life, especially 283 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 283–308. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

284

GARY BACKHAUS

relying upon her elaboration of the Benevolent Sentiment and the creative function of the Imaginatio Creatrix. Integral to Wolff ’s sociology is an autobiographical and literary transdisciplinary moment. By linking existential life, artistic endeavor, moral activity, and social science in the creative moment of existential experience and transcendental subjectivity, Wolff ’s innovative methodology of surrender-and-catch is corroborated by Tymieniecka’s doctrine of ontopoiesis and the Human Condition. The convergence of the uniquely human sense-bestowing capacities (the Aesthetic, Objective and Moral Senses) activated in certain radical experiential states can creatively transcend (onto-poiesis – first-makings) meaning-sedimentations in the human sphere. Wolff ’s employment of the autobiographical form is his choice of medium for the objectivation of the catches of his surrenders. Wolff ’s existential sociology exhibits the highest potential for improvements of life’s historical progression in and through its transcending-transcendental catches, objectivated through a creative, autobiographical literary moment. This link to a literary form means that Wolff ’s claims concerning surrender-and-catch is also applicable to certain other forms of literature as possible media for surrender. Thus his existential sociology is worthy of attention by those involved in creative writing in light of the convergence of existential sociology and the literary medium. Demonstrating that there is a veritable link will hinge on whether there are shared characteristics that mold the creative moment in literature as a non-evil objectivation that provides the potential for ameliorative human transformations. This goal is met by elucidating Wolff ’s surrender-and-catch through the corroborating standpoint of Tymieniecka’s treatment of creativity, for it is there that Wolff ’s faith in surrender, hope for humankind through its catches, and claims of its non-evil (loving) ‘‘harvests’’ are contextualized in an articulated, systematic, philosophic foundation. WOLFF’S SOCIOLOGY: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MOMENT

Since I emphasize Wolff ’s sociological writings and not his writings in the Belles L ettres, it is necessary to justify why his works warrant inclusion in a volume devoted to literature. Both artistic works and Wolff ’s sociology of surrender-and-catch are products of creativity/meaning-invention. Sociology, as an objective science of the social, does not proceed in a creative manner, but rather as an operational procedure for the apprehension and causal analysis of social facts. By contrast, Wolff ’s writings exhibit the drama of human life in the quest for meaning. Wolff ’s existen-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

285

tial turn vindicates the subject through the investigation of experience but with special interest in sociological significance. There is an autobiographical moment to all of his writings, and some of his works are autobiographical in form. Furthermore, much of his work exhibits literary qualities by eliciting various literary modes: prose poems, poems, stream of consciousness, the palimpsest technique, psychological drama, and the existential search for authenticity. With Wolff, ff art (creative objectivation) and science (the quest for knowledge) converge in life (existential meaning) through his autobiographical descriptions (literary form) of surrendering (radical experiential state) as translated into the catch, the ‘‘harvested’’ meanings emerging through surrender. It is the autobiographical moment by which Wolff ’s sociology converges with an accepted high literary form. Autobiographical form reached a high literary standard early in the Western tradition with Saint Augustine’s Confessions.1 This early exemW plar makes apparent that it is not possible to separate the autobiographer’s intellectual thoughts from his existential life. In order to understand the meaning of his thoughts, it is necessary to understand his life, and to understand the meaning of his life, it is necessary to understand the thoughts that he has been living. Augustine’s life is exemplary in the search for authentically lived existential meaning. Augustine encountered the intellectual/spiritual orientations of his day and in his commitment to search for truth unmasks their illusory distortions as well as his own delusory consciousness. Similarly, when Wolff writes about Durkheim, Simmel, Weber, and various other sociological thinkers, he treats their thoughts as occasions for his own personal transformations. ‘‘In suspending tradition, surrender tests it – tests it with the greatest rigor that a human can muster, thus finding out what, at its most honest, he or she can truly believe.’’2 In this subjectivist tradition, knowledge is the existential quest for meaning in life (immersion in experience) and not a professionalized and partitioned secondary realm (the detachment of theoretical consciousness). The presentation of knowledge in an autobiographical form is not meant as an aesthetic or narcissistic escape from the everyday world, but instead the everyday is transformed into a transcendental medium for the communication of existential truth. ART AND SOCIOLOGY

Wolff also advocates forms of sociology other than his own that share aspects with the world of art. As art (in its various forms) opens up worlds that transcend everyday reality, subjective sociology opens up the

286

GARY BACKHAUS

worlds of social actors to the imagination of others. An example that Wolff cites from the Chicago School is a description of what it is like to be a machinist, which is articulated in a way that makes that world present.3 Fully absorbed4 in the description of such ‘‘realms’’ the reader transcends the temporal dimension of his everyday experience. The world opening dimensionality of subjective experience exposes the reader to meanings that are hidden from, or unencounterable within, his own everyday experience. The difference ff between art and subjective forms of sociology, however, seems to lie in the fact that the sociologist reemerges from the articulation of those transcendent worlds back into the everyday, which is sociology’s fundamental province. ‘‘What we are faced with are historical realities, thrown up by history.’’5 However, by transcending everyday realities,6 by the opening up of subjective worlds, these qualitative sociologists envision the everyday through a greater perspective from which they are enabled to suggest improvements in the sociality of the Human Condition. ‘‘We need to transcend the world of history, of everyday, if we would have any chance to recognize it.’’7 Once recognized, world-opened – uncovered in its Being, it is possible to reflect on traditions and conventions and to make a critical turn that rejects features that are shown to be undesirable/harmful/evil. Thus, after having been absorbed by sociology, rather than by art or another occasion, we reemerge into the everyday world wanting to do something in this world that contributes to averting our end, to increasing the chance of the human condition to survive its fatal danger, and to emancipate itself from it and from the flaws of its antecedents.8

Having stated this difference ff between what may be called the aesthetic moment of art and the practical and critical moment of world-opening sociology, there are, however, forms of art that also seek to contribute to a better world. Some artists intend to enlighten minds for the purpose of motivating the practical ameliorative transformation of the world. Thus, art, as well as sociology, can make a critical turn, a diagnostic of the times, and serve to motivate improvement in the Human Condition. These two functions, world opening and critical evaluation, are prominent in Wolff ’s promotion of certain qualitative sociologies but these qualities can be found in certain artistic works as well. A better model is to envision a continuum between the practical and the aesthetic such that artists of all kinds and qualitative thinkers, such as Wolff, ff are to be located along it in terms of the relative confluence of practical critique and aesthetic enjoyment. As discussed, Wolff ’s existential sociology exhibits a highly literary quality. Thus Wolff ’s method and claims should be of great

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

287

interest to those literati whose motivations and creative depths may indeed converge with the surrenderer of Wolffian sociology. And, in fact, surrender applies to all forms of meaning-invention and thus its experiential state is equally applicable to literature as well as to Wolffian sociology. THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF HISTORICITY

The normative aspect of Wolff ’s sociology is traced to the influence of his sociological mentor, Karl Mannheim.9 Mannheim formulates a sociology of knowledge through which he espouses the tenet that thought is to be understood in relation to the social milieu in which it is articulated. Worldviews are generated from a social actor’s sociohistorical situatedness. Distortions arise when those social actors, mistake, consciously or unconsciously, their worldview as encompassing the whole of reality. Mannheim conceived of a normative sociology whereby a relatively detached intelligentsia, a group of veritable political scientists trained in the sociology of knowledge, would be able to envision the relational truth of reality based on apprehending the dynamic plurality of worldviews that constitute modern complex societies and political relations. The fundamental categories of worldview are ideologies, the perspectives of those whose interests are to serve their hegemony, and utopian worldviews, the perspective of those whose interests are to serve their wish-images of empowerment. These political scientists trained in the sociology of knowledge have the best possible view of the relational web of worldviews that constitute reality and thus advise rulers how to best serve a pluralistic political body of peoples. Wolff radicalizes Mannheim’s goal for a normative social science through the notion of surrender, which is an existential response to the diagnosis of the severity of the crises in our historical times, i.e. the possibility of worldwide destructions. Wolff seeks the transcendence of the socio-historically relativization of meanings and the constitutive parameters that inform those meanings. The experiential state of surrender overcomes the delimited parameters of a particular person’s thinking as it is embedded in the meaning-generalities of her or his culture. The surrenderer sheds empirical subjectivity for transcendental subjectivity, the essential and universal human capacities for meaning-invention that are uniquely human. Through surrender a socially typifiable empirical subject transforms herself into a representative of humanity. Even though each catch of surrender is unique, because catches are concretized transpo-

288

GARY BACKHAUS

sitions of the meaning inventions of transcendental subjectivity, they are translatable into catches for others. ‘‘Pure being experienced in the experience of being is simple, immediate, in no way mediated but, indeed, mediable: mediability suggests how the ineluctable truth of the experience of being may also be valid for men other than the experiencer.’’10 ‘‘But since surrendering to something that claims the whole person, the human being in the person, and since this is the element common to all catches, they are translatable one into the other.’’11 Thus, the autobiographical moment of Wolff ’s writings eschews his own empirical subjectivity, which consists of particularizing the generalities or typologies available within his cultural milieu. Through autobiography, he surrenders-to his own life as a transcendental subject, a unique universal representative of humanity. Wolff ’s sense of surrender and autobiography throws light on why St. Augustine’s Confessions sets the precedent constituting autobiography as great literature and how his own autobiographical moments merges sociology with literary form. The high form of autobiography offers ff a translatable catch and this is why one is transformed upon reading these autobiographical writings. Autobiography becomes great literature through its transcendental function and is distinguished from lower forms of autobiography, which emphasizes the empirical subject and thus borders on the level of mere triviality and gossip. TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WORKS

Two works of Wolff are thematically autobiographical: T ransformation in the W riting: A Case of Surrender-and-Catch and O L oma! Constituting a Self (1977–1984). In ‘‘Transformations’’ Wolff takes up the themes of e´migre, the biographical project concerning his life by his student, and that of fieldworker, as occasions for surrender, that is, he assays the historicity of these particularizing typifications of his empirical subjectivity in order to invent new meanings from them. So, as the received meanings that pertain to various periods of his life are suspended, catches emerge. Wolff remarks of the two parts of the word ‘‘autobiography:’’ ‘‘between one’s life and writing on it; as well as another distinction which is implied in ‘‘auto,’’ that is, between oneself and one’s life.’’12 He clarifies that: ‘‘the relation between surrender and autobiography is that of surrendering to one’s autobiography, that is, to one’s life as that of a representative human being.’’13 But, the transcendental I is only universally human in its uniqueness. The empirical subject is mixed phenomenon and is situated historically, socially, and culturally. It is against those features

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

289

shared with other beings, object-characteristics, that the unique-universal ‘‘I’’ assays its own historicity. In his encounter with other theoretical orientations such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, and critical theory, Wolff makes them an autobiographical occasion by surrendering-to them. In surrendering-to, for example, hermeneutics, Wolff suspends received notions that inform what hermeneutics is supposed to be and by doing this suspends its very presuppositions. Wolff manages to invent meanings unintended by hermeneutics and the other various orientations that he surrenders-to because they are ‘‘tested’’ within the bare immediacy of Wolff ’s subjectivity through which meaning-inventions must manifest. From the early 1940s until 1974 Wolff conducted studies of Loma, a small isolated Spanish-speaking community in Northern New Mexico. By the title of the work, O L oma! Constituting a Self (1977–1984), a reader who knows this of Wolff ’s professional life expects to read about his contact with the Lomans, a journal or diary kept during his stays. My first attempts at reading the book were frustrating because I could not find the anticipated content. The book began to remind me of Beckett’s ‘‘Godot’’ for I kept waiting for Wolff ’s exegesis concerning his collected data, but I finally realized the book’s sense. The projected goal of planning to write his definitive book on Loma looms over him as he records sociological insights emerging from his own life. Superseding a conventional sociological study of Loma, which perhaps were the inauthentic goals of Wolff as professional sociologist, are autobiographical reflections of Wolff the existential sociologist. Wolff ’s sociology manifests directly from his living reflections and is artfully written in the style of a personal journal or diary. I select one example from the book to illustrate the convergence of Wolff ’s autobiographical literary form, social psychological insights, and existential-transcendental reflection. He learns that a woman with whom he was once in love but had jilted him is dying from the effects ff of a brain tumor. He admits of his ambivalence in his decision to visit and finds himself needing to merely play at the typewriter just for the purpose of feeling that he has some sort of control of ‘‘affecting ff something totally passive.’’14 But he could not rid himself of the ungraspability of the situation and increasingly dreaded the approaching visit. During the encounter her distorted face and ‘‘unacceptable’’ swellings greatly disturbed him, but during a moment of lucidity she managed to stroke his hand. He remembered having been in love with her, but also how later she insensitively told him that he merely amused her. ‘‘Now I felt no

290

GARY BACKHAUS

affection, ff I felt pity and rage that she should be so disfigured and so sad.’’15 ‘‘What I felt with distinctness was my wish that she should die!’’16 But the next day he unmasks his bad faith: ‘‘What about me wanting to be released – from her claim on me, my love, my care, my doing something about her misery and that was what was behind my desire for her to be released from her suffering! ff So that my horror on seeing her was the mask of my horror of myself. That I was horrified of myself for not caring, for wishing her not to be any more, because she was of no use to me!’’17 What follows is the surrendering-to the unmasking through which he asks questions of himself in order to suspend inauthentic meanings that he might use to distort his immediate feelings. He recognizes a series of remorses toward his own weaknesses. And from that ineluctable immediacy the catch emerged authentically displayed. He notes, ‘‘I know ... that under every ultimate depth there’s ... more.’’18 Then he asks, ‘‘But is all there is to the catch this time this acquaintance with my immorality? I think, I fear and hope there is more in the net!’’19 There is great poignancy in this catch and its translatability lies in the truthful recognition of one’s own culpability and weaknesses – a representation of humanity and not merely an empirical type, which recalls the confessional writing of Augustine. Wolff knows that at times he exasperates his readers and he strategically utilizes the occasion for the purpose of redirecting their expectations. I have reopened the fat folder of comments and am sick of reading, rereading, again reading again: I must begin, .. . not by responding to these responses or by reading them once more to see what modifications or additions or strictures I must apply to what I have written on surrender already. No, I must surrender, instead, to this rained-out Sunday morning – and mean what by surrendering to it? My dear fellow (Somebody asks), is there no discipline (left in you)? Are you telling me, ... you’re jotting down whatever comes into your (ravenous, starved) mind? Yessirree, ... you have done nothing worse than hit the nail on the head, ... you didn’t mean to hit the mind, ... but you did hit it, and the hole you made shows it empty, delighted to spill whatever enters it lest its emptiness, which it reads as purity, be disturbed.20

The palimpsest becomes a literary technique and an existential strategy to open the mind to the possibility for surrender. Wolff takes up materials ‘‘once again’’ but in a way that scrapes them clean of sedimentations. One cannot will to surrender through this palimpsest technique; surrender befalls. However, surrender-to focuses upon an object of exhaustive concern. So, the above quote is meant to be instructive. Wolff cannot surrender-to the project of writing if it does not manifest as the exhaustive concern and so the reader must be prepared to follow him in the flow of

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

291

his stream of consciousness. Wolff occupies himself with the ‘‘rained-out Sunday morning’’ as preparation, which opens his being for a surrender experience. In one of his two most recent books, A W hole, a Fragment, Wolff translates his early prose poem Vorgang V , written in 1935. This poem was written fifteen years prior to Wolff ’s conscious articulation of surrenderand-catch in 1950, but the experience it records exhibits its characteristics. Wolff experiences the suspension of meanings and the ineluctable character of immediate experience. In vain he attempts to maintain the bare immediacy of experience while apprehending meaning and through the impossibility of this project he uncovers the unfathomable abyss between immediate experience and language. ‘‘Concepts, that is, words, cannot do justice to experience.21 Wolff also uncovers a related abyss through his doctrine of the paradox of socialization. ‘‘Without socialization, which tells us how to meet the world, we have no way of meeting it in any fashion; at the same time, we cannot meet it other than in a particular fashion which we have learned by socialization; thus the paradox of socialization results as our access to the world being limited to the choice between none and one-sided distortion.’’22 And so, I ask, if words offer ff only a distortive means of jumping the abyss, why would Wolff write a poem or anything? The answer to the question begins with the notion that through creative invention, literary art and philosophical thought are capable of suspending socialization. The surrenderer reaches the bare immediacy of experience, the ineluctable, and all attempts to give it meaning must jump over the abyss through language, nevertheless, socialization can be transcended. This transcendence allows for the autochthonous emergence of a more fundamental function of language. Wolff states that ‘‘the word is the processual means of the ineluctable.’’23 Words are needed to word the ineluctable.24 So, upon reaching the ineluctable or bare immediacy of experience, new meanings come forth as ‘‘wording.’’ And, as Wolff reaches the ineluctable immediacy of experience his writing flows as a poetic stream of consciousness. Wolff distinguishes between two uses of language: wording and expression of thought. ‘‘In wording, the word is both ineluctable and processual. Ineluctable because not to be struggled out of, processual because visible, accessible sign of the ineluctable itself. The becoming processual of the ineluctable is creation.’’25 As processual, wording returns to the birth of meaning and thus transcends the socialized sedimentations of conventions. Words functioning as expressions of thoughts have lost this origin; they function as socialized conventions.

292

GARY BACKHAUS

So, in poetic surrender wording is the manifestation of newly created meanings for the wording process is a moment of the ineluctable; wording befalls us. Otherwise, words are used to carry already formed meanings that are sedimented in the social milieu. But it is necessary to realize that the ineluctable is not the processual and thus the new meanings that are created do not exhaust the ineluctable, yet they succeed in establishing a primordial relation to it. In a 1948 letter to Wolff, ff the Austrian poet Hermann Broch writes, ‘‘The attempt is to bring about, so to speak, a primordial relation between subject and object. ... With this the existential enterprise is undertaken much more seriously than the existentialists have ever done it. It is a wholly new approach to poetry, entirely original.’’26 As surrender brackets socialization and assays historicity, wording brackets conventions of thought and assays meaning sedimentations. THE COMPONENTS OF SURRENDER-AND-CATCH

In the chapter, ‘‘Toward a Conception of Sociology,’’ included in his other most recent book, W hat it Contains, Wolff offers ff an example of surrender from which he illustrates the components of surrender. Like many of his other books he provides a discussion of the following characteristics: suspension of received notions, total experience, total involvement, pertinence of everything, identification, and risk of being hurt. I shall just reference briefly this most intense experience of surrender, which occurred while showering! I focused on the inverted ‘‘T’’ formed by two tiles, or rather by the intersection between them. ... I was suddenly very happy and quite surprised! Somehow the whole world, ... had shrunk into this meeting of two lines at right angles, at the unforgettable, as it were vanishing and yet so overwhelmingly present point, not just the world in its materiality but all problems as well, all problems, ... all isms together: they had been absorbed by this point, suspended, neutralized in it, and I knew this! ... I was happy because all problems had gone away, if only from myself. I felt that which this means: I no longer feared to die.27

This experience is saturating, meaning that Wolff ’s whole being was given over to the surrender – there is no part of him kept apart from it. The distance between socialized roles and ‘‘personal self ’’ is attenuated. The attentional component of total involvement is full absorption. In this experience Wolff was fully absorbed in the ‘‘inverted T.’’ Epistemologically, full absorption entails the disappearance of the subject/object differentiation, ff because in bare immediacy there is no epistemological distancing. The suspension of received notions concerns the

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

293

tiles, grout, and shower stall, as well as Wolff ’s own being, all of which re-emerge carrying new meanings. The pertinence of everything entails partitioning all other meaning-contexts and relegating them and only them to the irrelevant. Thus, everything outside of the surrender experience is completely irrelevant and everything within the experience is completely and equally relevant. Since received notions are suspended everything within the experience is open to whatever emergent meanings are invented. No socialized relevancy contexts inform what is to open up to meaning-invention. The materiality of the grout and tiles were completely irrelevant, it was the symbolic function the ‘‘inverted T,’’ in all its details, absorbing all the various problems that showed pertinence. Identification is the aim of the surrender, not the aim of the catch. This means that there is affirmation of oneself as surrenderer, which allows the catch to emerge from the cognitive lover’s experience. Wolff identified himself as the cognitive lover of this experience and thus not only did the experience unfurl, but he was able to transpose the inverted T into the catch – losing the fear of death. The risk of being hurt in this instance does not entail a physical hurt, but the communication of this experience involves the risk of being laughed out of the academy by fellow social scientists. Surrender-to exhibits the same components as surrender, but it is pre-directed towards an object of exhaustive concern.

ARGUMENTS PROVING THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF AN EVIL CATCH

In his various writings, Wolff provides various arguments to prove that the catch of a surrender experience cannot objectivate evil. Here, I have collected these arguments and I have named them. The fundamental point is that the transcendental character and the transcendence (e.g. bracketing socialization, assaying historicity) of surrender preclude evil. The transcendental qualities that are unique to being human are engendered through surrender in a way that eliminates the means for generating evil. a) T he Cognitive L ove Argument Wolff states that the delight of surrender is the synthesis of love and learning.28 Cognitive love is a synonym for surrender – the desire to know is the love for the catch. ‘‘The transcendental, unique-universal subject is possessed of those exclusively human characteristics which come into view in cognitive love.’’29 So the transcendental subjectivity of surrender is not

294

GARY BACKHAUS

‘‘characterized by all exclusively human traits.’’30 It excludes the human activities of ‘‘murder, rape, theft, cheating, all other crimes and sins.’’31 Cognitive love makes ‘‘the lover present in all presence’’ and so is ‘‘exhaustively defined as that being which is loving.’’32 ‘‘The murderer, swindler, liar, thief, lecher’’33 engender human being as mixed phenomena – both subjects and objects. These forms of activity involve human traits that are embedded in the objectified aspect of our being, which is shared with other non-human entities. Even though non-human entities do not murder and swindle, such evil activities are a moment of an objectivating function that does not issue from the transcendental subjective source and thus involves ‘‘mixed significances’’ that flow from objectivating humanity. As empirical beings, we are caught up in everyday relevancies, pragmatic dealings, and instrumental rationalities that do not issue from a pure state of love. Wolff claims that ‘‘ ‘lover,’ is an exclusively human possibility of the human being.’’34 The key to this argument is to accept the doctrinal claim that surrender purifies experience, because it is a genuine form of love.

b) T he Sociotic-Biotic Argument Wolff derives this argument from the fact that as human beings we know what we are doing and we carry a sense of the moral import of our actions. ‘‘None of the unique human features ... could exist without what is both their cause and their logical necessity, that is, consciousnessconscience.’’35 He recognizes that there are functional senses of evil that are socio-historically constituted. Borrowing from Arthur Child, Wolff calls this relativity, sociotic.36 But Wolff insists that evil is a biotic category, because it ultimately threatens the fundamental ‘‘life force’’ of survival. Survival needs provide us with an instinctual response to avoid evil. And this moral moment accompanies human life regardless of the sociotic constitution of evil. Surrender entails the maximum identification of the transcendental with the most empirical, the essentially and universally human with unique individuality. The surrenderer transcends the socio-historical relativity of sociotic morality, but remains in conformity with the biotic. When people remain caught up in the everyday so that their actions are filtered through the sociotic relativities, they can be led into evil for the achievement of their instrumental purposes.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

295

c) T he Constitutional Prerequisite Argument Wolff distinguishes three prerequisites that must be manifest to a human existence before surrender is possible: maturational, situational, and constitutional.37 The maturational prerequisite means that the sedimentation of received notions must have already occurred in order for suspension to be possible and that the person must exhibit the sophistication of mind to be able to suspend those notions. The situational prerequisite concerns the noninterference from embodiment. One must be ‘‘gathered’’ in order to surrender. Distractions must be attenuated, which means nothing impedes the surrenderer from meeting the requirements for the surrender experience. The constitutional prerequisite is most directly relevant because it involves the reasoning faculty that discriminates between good and evil. Wolff claims that at this juncture in history, surrender and surrender-to are ‘‘the utmost exercise of reason – that is, of the capacity to find out what is for, rather than against, human beings.’’38 Reason would be at its utmost exercise because it would be clear of received notions standing against the a priori rejection of evil. ‘‘Such a definition of human nature excludes the possibility of the catch of surrender to be evil or false; by definition, the exercise of reason cannot lead to evil or falsehood.’’39 d) T he Argument from Faith Surrender-and-catch ‘‘is moral in its essence.’’40 Evil contradicts it in idea and experience because surrender-and-catch is a response to the ‘‘most evil experience of our time, genocide and the threat of the genocide of all of us.’’41 Evil that appears to follow from surrender could only be the result of cognitive infatuation or blind faith, and not faith ‘‘based on examined experience.’’42 Wolff sees an analogy with the religious problem of discerning whether the received message is from God or the Devil. But surrender-and-catch is a faith, not in tradition, but a faith besieged in crisis. ‘‘The morality of surrender is surrender to morality.’’43 The faith is that the catch, which is morally shaped precisely as a response to crisis, introduces a new objectivation that possibly leads to a better world. e) T he Argument Distinguishing the Catch from the Fact of Surrender Wolff makes the distinction between the catch of surrender and the fact of surrender. Evil may come from the fact of surrender, i.e., consequences

296

GARY BACKHAUS

that are not inherent to it. ‘‘Suppose a man or a woman who is married or has a lover falls in love with another human being, surrenders to him or her, and the original lover or spouse suffers ff from this ... , which we consider evil.’’44 Consequences such as this can follow from surrender. The catch, which is the wholly overwhelming encounter with love, did not cause the suffering. ff The fact that it occurred is to be considered the cause of the suffering. ff Factuality is the inevitable sedimentation of all objectivations; even the objectivations of geniuses are open to the most mundane empirical implications. Nevertheless, the transcendentality of the catch cannot be denied, and it functions quite differently ff than the empirical repercussions that are indirectly attached to it. f) T he False Surrender Argument If something evil seems to be the catch ‘‘it would have been surrender aborted or surrender betrayed.’’45 In surrender aborted the surrenderer surrenders too little, i.e. unable to suspend essential aspects of the experience, and in surrender betrayed the surrenderer surrenders too much, i.e. loses himself, ‘goes native’.’’46 An example is a lover who loses himself in the beloved, the surrender of selfhood. The former occurs when some idea has too much sway over a person who then is unable to suspend it.

EVALUATION OF THE ARGUMENTS

Each of the arguments that I have collected is quite insufficient alone to prove the exclusion of an evil catch from surrender, but each tends to gain strength when taken in relation with the others. Further support is gained by integrating the arguments into a context, a philosophical system that further grounds them in a coherent framework. I will discuss weaknesses in the above arguments, but I will support each argument with tenets from the others in order to help overcome the weakness. Then, I turn to Tymieniecka’s system, which can further strengthen Wolff ’s fundamental claim. Considering the cognitive love argument, one still might ask how is it that the transcendental nature of humankind is not subject to the corruption of original sin? For if transcendental subjectivity does carry defects, then it seems that cognitive love, even though it is ‘‘pure,’’ might be unable to save the catch from being evil. This can be stated in a nonreligious way, but the essential point is that Wolff offers ff no defense for

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

297

the supposition that transcendental subjectivity carries no defects. A defense might be that stripped of sociotic meanings, the transcendental is left with the biotic significance of survival. This instinct entails a fleeing from evil as that which threatens survival. This still might leave the possibility for evil agency but then this supposition is rejected on the basis of the discriminating faculty, which does not work against humanity and so rejects a priori the doing of evil. It seems then that if evil did follow, culpability could not be pinned on the intentions within the creative act. The only possibility is that of ‘‘original sin,’’ which requires the need for its removal through divine agency. And even here I think Wolff offers ff his faith argument, which entails surrendering to morality, which is not merely a form of morality, but a faith in the morality of surrendering as the highest expression of exclusively human existence. In other words the highest form of trust is placed in the transcendental nature of love (which some theologians would claim is God). But if forms of love, even the love of ‘‘the gods,’’ are susceptible to evil taintings that could then affect, ff or should we say, infect, catches, then how is it that surrender resists such? A way to strengthen the defense is to concede the susceptibility to evil taintings, which explains why surrender can turn into the false forms of surrender-aborted and surrenderbetrayed. These delineations allow for the claim that a successful surrender resists evil possibilities that arise in its situation. But if it does not, the surrenderer loses her or his selfhood, or clings to an empirical meaning that she or he is unwilling to surrender. Corruptions generate evidence and thus evil consequences can be traced to abortive/betrayed moments. Concerning the sociotic-biotic argument, it can be asked how the biotic notion of survival that supposedly pervades surrender is sufficient to preclude evil? As already stated the discriminating faculty that a priori rejects evil complements the biotic instinct. And so in the state of cognitive love, a person is free of sociotic relativity, which frees the biotic instinct to function purely. Reason discriminates from this purified basis and thus rejects evil. Mistakes can be made, of course, but they would not be culpable. But some evil does not threaten survival, and so would such evil still be possible? The answer to this I think is that all evil is related to the biotic, if the sociotic has been fully bracketed. Reason functions on the basis of the biotic, which through its own organization sets parameters to avoid evil. And, reason ensures that evil remains excluded during the activity of meaning invention. How is it that reason discriminates without error when inventing new meanings within surrender, but strays when dealing with sedimented

298

GARY BACKHAUS

meanings? If so, we would have to avoid establishing traditions to avoid evil, which seems to further suggest that traditions do not promote goodness, both of which are absurdities. Traditions are only established and transcended through meaning-inventions. But since the reason that emerges in surrender is not instrumental reason, it does not carry a function that is harnessable for evildoing. The invention that comes about in surrender is brought forth from a reason that opens to exclusively human possibilities, but evil opens us to what we are as mixed phenomena. Since we don’t know the purpose or the substance of the invention before it emerges, instrumental calculation cannot function. In the everyday by which we operate as mixed phenomena, instrumental reason is necessary and sometimes its employment yields to evil. Wolff states that the exercise of reason cannot lead to evil ‘‘is based on the faith [italics mine] of the human being’s capacity to surrender and catch, and this faith can be tested by surrendering to it.’’47 Faith requires an irrational leap, even if we are to have faith in the reasonableness and hence the morally discriminating capacity of surrender. Surrender-andcatch as a methodological cultivation is claimed to be the proper response to the unprecedented crisis of our time. When in crisis, humankind turns to non-everyday provinces to make the world understandable and to provide solutions. ‘‘And this radical approach has inherent in it the hope [italics mine] and the excitement of the true nature of our time, thus a contagiousness seizing consciousness which effect ff changes of lives and ‘‘applications’’ of its ideas.’’48 And so we are to have faith in surrender, which offers ff us hope through its love of the catch. But the advocation of faith, hope, and charity (love) has not foiled the incurrence of evil in human history. But this faith in surrender-and-catch is not a blind faith in the sense that it requires surrender’s radical experientiality that expunges the possibility for evil. The faith leads to hope that the invented meanings will help us out of the crisis. What else can we believe in but the power of love (a cognitive, not a blind love), if it opens us to an exclusively human realm that precludes evil? Distinguishing the catch from the fact of surrender exonerates the catch from moral criticism. But the questions is, in its real occurrence is it possible to separate the catch from the fact, even though we can conceptually do so. The catch follows directly from the discriminatory function of substantive reason. This reason focuses on the catch itself and not factual contingencies. The question is, should it? But if reason within cognitive love is not instrumental, then calculation of contingencies is out of the question – they are irrelevant to the catch that is brought forth. If

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

299

something good emerges, then the contingencies that perhaps result in evil are not caused by the catch; they are what occurs do to the sociotic evil possibilities of humankind as a mixed phenomena. It is the responsibility of instrumental reason to preempt or to reduce the evil from arising through contingent factors – this is an empirical concern. The notion of false surrender seems to be an ad hoc principle that protects surrender from criticism. In other words, if you spot evil, then it could not be the catch of surrender. ‘‘Why not?’’ because it is defined to preclude it. If evil manifests, surrender must have been betrayed or aborted and so one reflects to uncover the problem. But the strength of surrender is built on the many principles, which are open to analysis, and thus what is uncovered as that which foils the surrender is not an arbitrary selection. It should be possible to explicate and demonstrate how the surrender was betrayed or aborted. The interrelation of the arguments has strengthened the plausibility of the non-evil claim, but only by allowing certain presuppositions to stand: our questions did not continue deeply enough to uncover the ungrounded presuppositions. For example, we cannot assume Wolff ’s claims about the nature of the biotic. A philosophical system that explicates the biotic moment of human existence must be able to provide support for what he claims is its nature. So, only a philosophical system in which Wolff ’s thought can be contextualized and from which explanations can be derived that grounds Wolff ’s experientially based descriptions can a more adequate justification be given for his non-evil dictum. For this purpose, I turn to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Philosophy of Life and the Human Condition. TYMIENIECKA’S TRIADIC DOCTRINE OF HUMAN SENSE BESTOWAL

Benevolent Sentiment: T he Impossibility of Evil Tymieniecka propounds a philosophical system by which meaning is constituted throughout life’s process of evolving organizational stages. Life involves a non-substantive dynamic progression of principles of organization, which results in stations of relatively stable perduring individuals. These individuals are contextualized within the manifold of relations with other entities. There exists, then, the vertical dimension of progressive organizing principles and the horizontal spacing of individuals at particular stations of organization. These individuals perdure through their functional relation in the whole – in terms of their ecological relation

300

GARY BACKHAUS

with other entities and their conservation of the emergent vertical organizing principles. In Tyrnieniecka’s system the Moral Sense is one of the three sense bestowing functions that emerge at the human station of life. The Moral Sense concerns relations with Others and it includes a discriminating function that constitutes the axis of what is right and wrong. The Benevolent Sentiment functions to provide the Moral Sense with a justifying reason as it takes into consideration the Others. This function is presupposed by the Objective Sense as it is a component in the process of conducting moral deliberations. The Objective Sense provides the means for establishing the constituted system of meanings through intentionality. The Aesthetic Sense provides the self with an enjoyment of its acts, especially enjoyed are those acts that are morally benevolent as they lead to sentiments of self-worth. Wolff links the faculty of discriminating right and wrong to the experience of surrender and he claims that surrender involves the utmost exercise of reason. As the Moral Sense is the most progressive sense of life’s evolution, Tymieniecka’s system corroborates this point. The Moral Sense is generated only through the process of moral deliberation. Tymieniecka does not begin with a set of a priori values or principles that are to be followed. Since morality is negotiated through a deliberative valuational process in her system and does not begin from a set of received notions, it is highly compatible with Wolff ’s surrender, which brackets all received meanings. As sense is created within surrender in conformity with the discriminating function of substantive reason, it is alleged to exclude the possibility of evil. However, Wolff neither isolates this discriminating faculty nor recognizes it in its beingness. My goal is to show that surrender entails in an extraordinary manner the functioning of what Tymieniecka calls ‘‘the Benevolent Sentiment.’’ And if this can be shown, the impossibility of an evil catch in Wolff ’s methodology gains a more adequate or stronger support. The Moral Sense includes a valuative process that bestows the senses of approbation or disapprobation. The Benevolent Sentiment provides the basis for the differentiation. ff ‘‘The intuitive factor which gives to valuative experience its specific moral significance has been identified with the spontaneous sentiment of benevolence brought in by the Moral Sense.’’49 ‘‘The benevolent instance of experience is both a spontaneous surge and a spontaneous striving; it is a propensity to put into action the benevolent qualitative content, as it is concretized in the benevolent sentiment.’’50 The Benevolent Sentiment is an immediate empathy with

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

301

others that holds in check self-interest, even the self-interest in survival. I argue that surrender involves the intensification of the Benevolent Sentiment, which is elucidated by revisiting the characteristics of surrender. Total involvement means that the whole self is engaged in the immediacy of experience without the aid of already constituted meanings. The whole self is absorbed in a way that everything in the experience is pertinent. Identification with the surrender means that the self must lose itself in the surrender to find the self again, which is the process of love. The risk is the consequence of making oneself vulnerable, as an authentic opening to the emergence of new meaning. Benevolence (a component of Wolff ’s cognitive love) as a spontaneous intuition thrives as a moment in the sense invention that occurs through the creative moment of surrender. There are no already constituted meanings, habitualities, or already formed impositions that can thwart the spontaneous surge of benevolence. Surrender amplifies benevolence because the discriminating faculty is at its highest functioning power due to the total self fully absorbed in the experience. Thus, there is no part of the self that is left for involvement in self-interested calculations, which guarantees the non-functionality of instrumental reason. This is why the self is so vulnerable in the experience of surrender. The benevolent intuitional activity is a component of substantive reason at work in surrender. Tymieniecka remarks that the spontaneity of the Benevolent Sentiment makes it compatible with the notion of instinct, which then provides a context for Wolff ’s category of the biotic. The genetic emergence of the Moral Sense shows the link to bios as an earlier level of vertical organization in the human life’s progressive organization. Wolff rightly links surrender to the biotic, but does not articulate how the emergent organization of sense moves beyond it. What needs further explication is how surrender is generated from it but remains connected to it. Tymieniecka explains the genetic process: the Moral Sense ‘‘is released within the individual’s evolutive progress marking the threshold to pass from the gregarious to the specifically human life.’’51 Tymieniecka makes the following distinction: ‘‘While instinct is uniquely oriented to the survival of self-interest – the benevolent sentiment is oriented to the surrender of self-interest to the common interest of other beings [italics mine].’’52 By sociotic Wolff refers to the already constituted complex of objectified meanings that are then the stock of meanings available within a particular society. As already constituted these meanings crystallize into habitualities in which their originary bestowing capacity is not ‘‘reanimated.’’ Thus an individual, as a particular-general member of a society, accepts these

302

GARY BACKHAUS

meanings and lives by them. In living these habitual meanings, the vital link is diminished, which means the societal member does not dig below this already sedimented set of meanings to invent new meanings. Tymieniecka explicates that the genuine process of moral deliberation, the surrender to the common interest of humankind in some concrete instance, involves this genetic link to the deeper sources of sense. ‘‘Revitalization’’ is a return to the juncture by which meanings from the vital/sensory level of existence, ‘‘the biotic,’’ are transformed into specifically human meanings. These meanings over time do sediment into the sociotic component of life. But the activation of the benevolent moment transforms instinct (survival’s self-interest) into taking into consideration the (survival) interests of others – genuine moral sentiment, which involves an exclusion of evil. Ingenuine morality is constituted in the sociotic sphere, because it does not animate the biotic source for the moral component of meaning-invention and just accepts what has been deposited and sedimented already. Genuine moral process entails a negotiation of sense that returns to and then builds upon the biotic, transforming animal gregariousness through surrender to human benevolence (cognitive love). Wolff ’s surrenderer is radically thrown back upon the biotic; no socialized meanings are left. So the surrenderer must invent meanings through the purist experience of the Benevolent Sentiment. A further argument for the impossibility of an evil catch through surrender involves examining how evil emerges. ‘‘In extreme opposition, the negative deviation from the positive ‘‘for of the benevolent to the negative ‘‘against’’ of the malefic valuation leads us ... to posit cognitively the moral Evil as the opposed final sense-direction.’’53 Surrender opens up what is for humankind. The ‘‘against’’ life and humankind cannot arise within surrender, for that would mean that in its most exclusively human state, which is a progressive stage in life’s evolution, humankind turns against itself. In surrender we emerge as the unique-universal self, which means we identify with that which we share exclusively with others. A living entity that contradicts existence in its highest state of being is an absurd notion. Thus evil arises through corrupting the Benevolent Sentiment. This cannot happen in surrender and so must happen in our particular-general being. ‘‘The moral spontaneity, diverted from its natural orientation, being dwarfed by the suppressing of its qualitative prompting, diverts some of its impetus and force into a malefic propensity, morally negative.54 The malefic sentiment which penetrates the functional system ... , turns the subject from his natural give-and-take prompting into an effort ff at rational calculation. ... This automatically shrinks the

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

303

network of his morally significant intersubjective arteries.’’55 Here we have an explication for surrender aborted (not enough is given) and betrayed (too much is given) as well. Either we reason as mixed phenomena in self-calculative self-interest or we fall back into it through false surrenders. T he Aesthetic Sense: L iterature, Surrender-and-Catch, and the Exclusion of Evil Tymieniecka remarks of art and literature that ‘‘in the origin of their enactment and in the awakening of their reception in the spectator or reader as well – they penetrate to the Archimedean point from which human life takes off, ff that point at which our animal functions and forces receive the impetus as well as the resources which the onset of the Human Condition brings.’’56 Tymieniecka explicates that this dark zone of the soul is the space in which the creative forge or the Imaginatio Creatrix transforms pre-human meanings into exclusively human significances. The everyday life-world consists of already objectified meanings, the already ‘‘humanized zone of Nature within us.’’57 The everyday world does not keep our ‘‘subliminal soul in an active, expanding, flourishing state.’’58 ‘‘However, artists, writers, philosophers insofar as they are creators have roundabout access to it through the creative function.’’59 Wolff ’s surrender-and-catch can be situated in the context of Tymieniecka’s system by recognizing that surrender is a radical process of returning to the Archimedean point of life. The surrenderer is stripped of all meanings, which brings her to the bare immediacy of experience. Without any meanings, the surrenderer returns to the forge deep within, generating meanings at the very moment that the human soul emerges from its lesser organizations in the vital sentient organization of meaning. It is the agency of the Imaginatio Creatrix that meets the ineluctable in the bare immediacy of experience. Forced to create meanings or go insane, the surrenderer invents – the emergence of the human form of life that transcends ‘‘survival.’’ Tymieniecka provides an explication elucidating the vulnerability of the surrenderer and the very real possibility of insanity. The descension into the primal soul by the creative individual is the same as that of the psychotic destructuring of conscious functionality; the same elemental pre-human forces are met. The difference ff between them is that when reaching this ineluctable point, the surrenderer, through the Imagination Creatrix, fabulates new meanings, while the psychotic remains locked in his destructured promptings.

304

GARY BACKHAUS

Since surrender requires the total self in full absorption, it is necessary to explicate the aesthetic moment of the surrender experience, which by the procedure that I have followed, will be contextualized in Tymieniecka’s system. Tymieniecka recognizes the enjoyment function as a ‘‘unique moment present in all experiences.’’60 ‘‘Although stretching through intentional directions outside, in enjoyments it [the subject] is self -absorbed; in the enjoyment the subject becomes the innermost foothold for himself; he is the one who lives [italics mine]’’.61 In surrender, Wolff claims that the subject is thrown back on himself, what he truly is as a uniqueuniversal representative of humankind. Since the surrenderer reaches the bare immediacy of experience without any meanings, it seems obvious that the self-consuming enjoying function remains irreducibly present. The self is living in its acts, yet at the bare level in which the surrenderer has arrived, it is the vital organization of life that is reached, which must be transformed into new human meanings. The vital sense serves only life-survival meaningfulness; its scope is restricted to the animal phase of existential progress.62 Without any human meanings operative in bare immediacy the inventive function must be activated and through the Imaginatio Creatrix, the aesthetic sense crystallizes out of the vitality of self absorption. And as Wolff translates his surrenders into words, it is the wording process described earlier that brings out new meanings – an elevation of self-enjoyment to aesthetic enjoyment through ‘‘poetic objectivation.’’ Thus, we have begun to uncover how Wolff ’s sociological writing converges with literature, for they both involve an elevation of selfenjoyment into the aesthetic sense through activating the inventive function of the Imaginatio Creatrix. This is not to conflate Wolff ’s sociology with literature, but it presents them both as issuing from the same source – their overlapping convergence in the creative depths. ‘‘The ‘aesthetic’ ‘ significance of life which enters into the existential self -interpretation of the human being is at its roots poetic.’’63 So, both Wolff ’s sociology and literature share the aesthetic significance, which is channeled for different ff objectivatons. But it must be recognized how the Aesthetic Sense relates to the Moral Sense in the radical state of surrender. The risk of being hurt as a component of Wolff ’s surrender does not entail physical danger but could include it. The risk does entail the very serious condition of being totally vulnerable, especially to insanity, which does involve putting one’s existential being at stake. This risk situation does not remain at the significance level of survival, however, because the Moral Sense emerges through the Benevolent Sentiment. The Benevolent Sentiment grows with the enjoy-

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

305

ment function such that when the aesthetic sense is released through the inventive function, the result precludes the possibility of an evil catch as an expression of the enjoyment of the Moral Sense. T he Objective Sense: T he Impossibility of Evil in the Concretized Catch The Catch is the objectivation of surrender that is translated into a medium-form, which allows for its transmission. In this paper I have focused upon surrender through the way that it is concretized in a catch that concerns existential sociology, autobiography, literary works, and their convergences. By relating objectivation to Tymieniecka’s system, it is necessary to discuss the functioning of the Objective Sense. To prepare for this, it is necessary to recognize that all three human senses function in peculiar ways in the surrender experience. The Benevolent Sentiment is provided that ‘‘space’’ to function in its purity, allowing it to generate directly from the biotic sphere. No sociotic meanings obstruct its functioning. But it must be understood that the Moral Sense involves a deliberative process that takes into consideration Others, which is a non-objectivating act. In addition, the self-enjoyment that crystallizes into the Aesthetic Sense is free from disturbances, for the whole self is totally absorbed in the surrender experience. The Aesthetic Sense is ‘‘poetically’’ intensified because surrender necessarily involves the creation of new meanings. But the Aesthetic Sense as self-consuming is also a non-objectivating sense. So, in order to understand how new meaning is to be concretized through some medium the function of the Objective Sense must be elucidated. In the radical situation of surrender, the Objective Sense arises through the surrenderer’s constitutional prerequisite of the function of substantive reason in the discrimination between good and evil. Thus, the inventive function is already strained of evil, the malefic system, as it engages in the process of objectivation. The newly emergent Objective Sense is concretized in some medium constituting the Catch. The Imaginatio Creatrix then operates within the parameters placed on the prerequisite structurings of surrender. The three fundamental human senses are orchestrated under the direction of the surrender modality, thus the forging of human meanings through all three senses have excluded evil. Thus, the concretization of the catch of surrender excludes evil. CONCLUSION

The purpose of this paper has been to augment Kurt H. Wolff ’s arguments claiming the impossibility of an evil catch in his methodology of surrender-

306

GARY BACKHAUS

and-catch by contextualizing his explications in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s philosophical system, the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition. An auxiliary purpose has been to show the importance of Wolff ’s claim for the realm of literature, for his existential sociology converges with the autobiographical form of literature and with its creative moment. Those writers who engage literature in an existential, genuinely creative way are already practitioners of surrender, but whose catch is objectivated in a literary work. Wolff objectivates the catch of his surrenders in terms of sociological insights. However, I have shown that through the autobiographical moment Wolff ’s sociology converges with literature, and that literature that is concerned with the crises of our times and that transcends meaning sedimentations, converges with the goal of Wolff ’s sociology. The exclusion of evil from the catch of surrender, in the convergence of sociology and literature offers ff great hope based on the new insights for vision of a better world. Wolff ’s vindication of the subject and the subject’s inventive capacity thus takes on a sense of paramount importance. From such a viewpoint, literature gains much significance in meeting our needs to find out what is for humankind. Tymieniecka has grounded this view in her philosophical system, so Wolff ’s surrender-and-catch gains by being contextualized in a system and Tymieniecka’s system gains through a radical existential mode of engagement that perfects the relation between creativity and morality, the pinnacle of her system. Morgan State University M NOTES 1 Augustine, Confessions F. J. Sheed (trans.) (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1992). 2 Kurt H. Wolff, ff Survival and Sociology: V indicating the Human Subject (London: Transaction Books, 1991), p. x. 3 The book that Wolff cites: Roger Tulin, A Machinist’s M Semi-Automated L ife (San Pedro, Calif.: Singlejack Books, 1984). 4 ‘‘Fully absorbed’’ is one of the characteristics of surrender. When we are fully absorbed everything within the experience is pertinent and everything else is thoroughly attenuated and relegated to the far horizons of experience. 5 Wolff, ff Survival, p. 7. 6 Transcendence of everyday realities is an important aspect of surrender. When one read world-opening sociology, one puts aside one’s own everyday meanings in order to enter the described world and from there see new meanings. Surrender, however, involves meaning invention, but what attracts Wolff to these sociological works is how non-everyday meanings

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL

307

replace one’s own everyday in a world-opening way, which means we learn to see the world from another point of view. 7 Wolff, ff Survival, p. 7. 8 Ibid., p. 8. 9 See Karl Mannheim, IIdeology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, translated by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1985). 10 Kurt H. Wolff, ff Surrender and Catch: Experience and Inquiry T oday (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1976), p. 128. 11 Wolff, ff Survival, p. 74. 12 Kurt H. Wolff, ff T ransformation in the W riting: A Case of Surrender-and-Catch (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), p. 16. 13 Ibid., p. 24. 14 Kurt H. Wolff, ff L oma! Constituting a Self (1977–1984) (Northampton, Mass.: Hermes House Press, Inc., 1989), pp. 124–25. 15 Ibid., p. 125. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., p. 129. 18 Ibid., p. 131. 19 Ibid. 20 Wolff, ff Sorreder, p. 28. 21 Kurt H. Wolff, ff A W hole, A Fragment (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002), p. 4. 22 Ibid., p.4. 23 Ibid., p. 26. 24 Ibid., p. 27. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 48. 27 Kurt H. Wolff, ff W hat It Contains (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Book., 2002), p. 13. 28 Ibid., p. 43. 29 Wolff, ff A W hole, p. 81. 30 Ibid., p. 80. 31 Ibid., p. 81. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Wolff, ff O L oma, p. 141. 35 Wolff, ff W hat It Contains, p. 16. 36 Ibid., p. 17. 37 Wolff, ff T ransformation, pp. 82–83. 38 Ibid., p. 497. 39 Ibid. 40 Wolff, ff T ransformation, p. 104. 41 Ibid., pp. 104–105. 42 Ibid., p. 105. 43 Ibid., p. 107. 44 Wolff, ff W hat It Contains, p. 17. 45 Ibid. 46 Wolff, ff Surrender, p. 24. 47 Ibid., p. 497.

308

GARY BACKHAUS

48 Ibid., p. 499. 49 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘The Human Being – Individual and Moral – as the Articulating Factor of the Human Sciences,’’ in Analecta Husserliana vol. XV, p. 22. 50 Ibid., p. 26. 51 Ibid., p. 24. 52 Ibid., p. 25. 53 Ibid., p. 27. 54 Ibid., p. 28. 55 Ibid., p. 29. 56 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, L ogos and L ife: T he Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Ontopoiesis of Culture (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), pp. 21–22. 57 Ibid., p. 34. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., p. 24. 60 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘Aesthetic Enjoyment and Poetic Sense. Poetic Sense: The Irreducible in Literature,’’ in Analecta Husserliana Vol. XVIII (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985), p. 12. 61 Ibid., p. 15. 62 Ibid., pp. 16–17. 63 Ibid., p. 20.

Louis Houthakker and Gary Backhaus.

GEORGE R. TIBBETTS†

ADVENTURES IN GREENEL AND: THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN THREE NOVELS OF GRAHAM GREENE

One of the most persistently difficult questions in the relationship between philosophy and literature is whether or not literature can be a source of moral knowledge. Noel Carroll. for example, in a recent article in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism identifies three arguments as the J leading arguments against the view that literature can be such a source. The first is the banality argument, which maintains that literature does not provide the reader with new knowledge but merely recycles ‘‘truisms that readers already know ... most of the implied general truths said to be available in [literature] ... are presuppositions that the reader ... must bring to a [literary work] in order to understand and respond to it appropriately.’’1 The second, the no-evidence argument ‘‘... rejects the thesis that ... literature provide[s] anything worth calling knowledge at all ... For knowledge, properly so-called, must not only be true, ... it must be supported by evidence ... fiction cannot educate, since it has no knowledge (no justified true belief to dispense).’’2 This is, of course, the same argument that Plato used in his Republic. The third argument is the no-argument argument. Peter Kivy is one of the leading defenders of this view. He maintains that ‘‘... [literary works], where they contain or suggest general truths, do not argue in their behalf at best they merely assert or imply them and ... [in the case of literary criticism, it] ... does not typically lavish attention on arguing for or against the truths allegedly disclosed in the [literary work]’’3 Carroll for his part questions the validity of these arguments and calls attention to the fact that philosophers often use such devices as thought experiments or other illustrative material that is comparable to literary works to justify the positions they take on issues. In many cases, this illustrative material is drawn from the domain of fiction. How, rightly asks Carroll, can those philosophers reject the claims of literature to be a source of moral knowledge when they themselves use similar material to bolster their arguments? †Deceased.

309 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 309–316. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

310

GEORGE R. TIBBETTS

What this all comes down to is that there is more than one source of knowledge – more than one way of knowing. Human behavior is contextsensitive. For that reason, it cannot best be understood or known through purely intellectual means. Why? Because in the process of socialization, which is a continuing, ongoing process, we internalize beliefs about acceptable and unacceptable behavior that are peculiar to us and that remain latent within us until, given the appropriate circumstances, they manifest themselves in overt behavior. Since literature deals with human behavior that occurs within specific contexts, the kind of knowledge that it provides is more useful than intellectual or propositional knowledge in enabling us to understand that behavior. Nowhere is this truer than in the novels of Graham Greene – particularly those written between 1940 and 1955: T he Power and the Glory, T he Heart oof the Matter, and T he End of the AV AVair. These are novels of belief – specifically belief considered within the context of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Each of the principal characters in these novels – the whiskey priest in T he Power and the Glory. Major Scobie in T he Heart of the Matter, and Sarah Miles in T he End of the A AV Vair – has internalized those teachings in his or her own way and their behavior, as it is presented in the novels, manifests those internalized beliefs. In 1938 Greene went to Mexico on a trip sponsored by the publisher Longman Green. The purpose of this trip was to investigate and report on the violent oppression of the Roman Catholic Church by the Mexican government, particularly in the state of Tabasco. In 1939 Greene published a report of his findings in the travel book T he L awless Roads. The next year he published the novel, T he Power and the Glory. The protagonist in T he Power and the Glory is an alcoholic priest, a so-called whiskey priest, who is attempting to escape from a Mexican police lieutenant who is pursuing him and who shares the government’s violently anti-clerical bias. The priest, in spite of some serious lapses – he is not only a drunk but has fathered an illegitimate child – nonetheless has not forsaken his priestly vocation. In the end this leads to his martyrdom. His character is based on the account Greene had heard of an actual whiskey priest who had been executed by the Mexican authorities. T he Power and the Glory is a novel about compassion and the superiority of compassion as a source of moral behavior over the formal rites and rituals of the Church. Three incidents in which the whiskey priest is either the giver or recipient of compassion are the defining moments in the novel.

ADVENTURES IN GREENELAND

311

The first of these is the whiskey priest’s encounter with Coral Fellows, a young girl who aids him in his attempt to escape and agrees to provide additional help in the future should the need and opportunity arise. The second incident, the priest’s experience while in jail, is the most important of these defining moments. The cell is so crowded that it is barely possible to move. The stench of urine and other smells is oppressive. The noise is unbearable. When his cellmates learn that he is a priest, one of them points out that they have a martyr in their midst. This, however, is a role that he disavows. Greene describes the subsequent scene: ‘‘Everybody when he spoke listened attentively to him as if he were addressing them in church. He was moved by an enormous and irrational affection ff for the inhabitants of this prison.’’ 4 Even later when he has to confront the possibility that one of his fellow prisoners may turn him in to collect the reward money offered ff for his apprehension, he was ‘‘... touched by an extraordinary affection. ff He was just one criminal among a herd of criminals ... he had a sense of companionship which he had never received in the old days when pious people came kissing his black cotton glove.’’5 No one, in fact, does inform on him, however, and the lieutenant not only frees him but gives him five pesos. Greene’s emphasis on the superiority of actions over words can be seen in the characters of both the lieutenant and Coral Fellows. Neither has any use for the church but both display the compassion that is an important part of the teachings of the church. There is an earlier incident, for example, in which the lieutenant comes across a group of Mexican boys. The boys are, of course, fascinated by the lieutenant’s gun. After removing the bullets so that they don’t accidentally shoot either him or themselves, he allows them to play with the gun. As he stands there watching them, he thinks to himself that this is why he’s doing what he’s doing – not because he enjoys hunting people down and executing them – but so that children like these can grow up to live in a better Mexico, one free of the corrupting influence of the church. Eventually the priest manages to reach the borders of a neighboring state where he can find safety. This sets the stage for the third incident. A mestizo who had been looking for opportunities to betray the priest ever since they had met earlier in the novel, reappears. The mestizo tells him about the American fugitive, James Calver, who is dying and needs to receive the last rites of the church. At first, the priest is hesitant but eventually his humanity and his compassion for those in need overcomes

312

GEORGE R. TIBBETTS

his fear. He returns to minister to Calver’s needs and is arrested by the lieutenant and his men. Even at this point the lieutenant’s behavior towards the priest is that of one human being towards another. The priest asks the lieutenant for the opportunity to confess to another priest before he is executed so that he may die in a state of grace. The only priest available is Padre Jose who has in effect ff forsaken his priestly vocation and has capitulated to the demands of the Mexican authorities. Even though he is given immunity from any prosecution by the lieutenant, Padre Jose refuses. Shortly afterward, the priest is executed. R. H. Miller pretty much sums up Greene’s intent in T he Power and the Glory: ‘‘What Greene has succeeded in doing is to create a microcosm both in the prison scene and in the whiskey priest’s ministry generally of the Mexican experience and to show that the only true salvation consists in living the gospel message, not in providing only material well-being but in honoring the Christian ideal, which is to show in external acts a goodness to others. Greene’s theology is one of works. We are what we do for others.’’6 During World War II Greene spent the years 1942 and 1943 serving in MI6, the foreign branch of the British Secret Service. He was stationed in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This experience was to become the basis for T he Heart of the Matter which was published in 1948. The protagonist in T he Heart of the Matter is Major Richard Scobie. Scobie is an example of an essentially good but weak man whose weakness entangles him in circumstances he cannot control. This creates in him an unbearable sense of guilt that leads eventually to his suicide. It all begins when he tries to raise money to finance his wife’s trip to South Africa where both of them agree she would be happier than in Sierra Leone. His concern for his wife’s happiness may seem on the surface to be motivated by feelings of compassion. However, here as elsewhere in his dealings with people, he is motivated more by pity which is the opposite of compassion and a feeling of superiority because he is in this way able to take responsibility for and exercise control over the lives of others. He first tries to negotiate a loan from the bank, but the bank manager turns him down. After considerable soul-searching and against his better judgment, he negotiates a loan from Yusef, a Syrian merchant living in Sierra Leone. Yusef is a bit of a pariah in the community who, rumor has it, is involved in such illegal activities as diamond smuggling. Scobie

ADVENTURES IN GREENELAND

313

does not realize it at the time but the loan from Yusef will prove to be one of the factors that contributes to his downfall. His downfall begins in earnest when he becomes involved in an extramarital affair ff with Helen Rolt. Helen is a young woman – considerably younger than Scobie who is middle-aged – who is one of a handful of survivors from a shipwreck. She has very recently been married and has lost her husband in the wreck after only a week of marriage. When she is brought ashore, she is taken to the local hospital. Scobie meets her there and they soon fall in love with each other. It is not surprising that Scobie should be attracted to Helen. He lost a daughter when the girl was very young and Helen becomes a daughter substitute for him in addition to becoming his mistress. Shortly after Scobie begins his affair ff with Helen, he receives a letter from his wife telling him that she has tired of life in South Africa and intends to return home. This, of course, is not welcome news. His wife does come home and from that point onward Scobie proceeds to weave a web of deception and lies. He pretends, for example, that he does not know Helen when he meets her at a dinner party. When he arrives home from the party, his long-time servant Ali tells him that he has received a note from Helen and also that Yusef is waiting for him. Yusef wants a favor from him. He wants Scobie to help him smuggle some diamonds out of the country. Scobie indignantly refuses. But Yusef tells him that he knows the contents of Helen’s note. Scobie then has no choice but to agree to do what Yusef asks. From that point onward his destruction is rapid and certain. He makes all kinds of excuses not to go to mass and receive communion. To do so he would first have to go to confession and confess his adultery and his other sins and he won’t – indeed, given his character – he can’t do that. He begins to distrust people more and more, including Ali who has given him many years of faithful service. He shares his feelings with Yusef who tells him not to worry, he (Yusef ) will take care of the problem. Ali is subsequently murdered. Scobie, of course, knew very well what Yusef meant when he spoke of taking care of the problem and he now has the knowledge that he sent Ali to his death added to his burden of guilt. His dealings with Yusef, his adulterous affair ff with Helen Rolt, and his complicity in Ali’s death prove to be too much for him to handle and he kills himself. The protagonists in the other two novels – the whiskey priest and Sarah Miles – reach a point in their lives where they allow God to take charge of those lives. This proves to be their salvation. Scobie cannot do

314

GEORGE R. TIBBETTS

this. Yet if a person chooses to live within this system of belief, this is precisely what he or she has to do. Otherwise God simply cannot help them. As the time of Scobie’s suicide draws nearer, he involves himself in a dialog with God about their relationship. God’s part of the dialog, in the truest sense, goes to the heart of the matter. ‘‘You say you love me,’’ says God, ‘‘and yet you’ll do this to me – rob me of you forever. I made you with love. I’ve wept your tears. I’ve saved you from more than you will ever know. I planted in you this longing for peace only so that one day I could satisfy your longing and watch your happiness. And now you push me away, you push me out of your reach. There are no capital letters to separate us when we talk together. I am not Thou, but simply you ... Can’t you trust me as you’d trust a faithful dog? All you have to do now is ... confess ... the repentance is already there, straining at your heart. It’s not repentance that you lack, just a few simple actions ... Or if you must, continue rejecting me but without the lies anymore. Go to your house and say goodbye to your wife and live with your mistress. If you live you will come back to me sooner or later. One of them will suffer, ff but can’t you trust me to see that the suff ffering isn’t too great?’’ 7 T he End of the A AV Vair, published in 1951, is, like the other two novels, based on Greene’s personal experience. It is an account told in the first person by Maurice Bendrix, an author and Sarah Miles’s lover, about his affair ff with Sarah and its aftermath. The affair ff itself began in the summer of 1939 and ended with a V-1 bomb attack in 1944. Bendrix, writing in 1949 deals, with the period from the beginning of the affair ff in 1939 until Sarah’s death in February 1946. The occasion for Bendrix’s narrative is a request made to him, shortly after Sarah’s death, by Henry Miles, a British civil servant and Sarah’s husband, that Bendrix help him unravel the mystery of Sarah’s secret life. Henry quite rightly suspects that Sarah was having an affair. ff What he does not know is that she was having the affair ff with Bendrix. Bendrix himself is more than a little curious about the reason for Sarah’s breaking off their affair. ff This leads him to hire a private investigator to assist him. The private investigator finds Sarah’s journal or diary in which she gives a detailed account of her relationship with Bendrix and why she broke off their affair. ff The proximate cause, it turns out, was the V-1 bomb that hit the house in which she and Bendrix were meeting and which she feared had killed Bendrix. She tells of her prayers to God that He bring Bendrix back to ff life and her promise to God that if He does so, she will end her affair

ADVENTURES IN GREENELAND

315

with Bendrix. It is not only the end of this affair, ff however, but the beginning of another affair ff – the beginning of Sarah’s spiritual affair ff with God. It is, as Maria Couto puts it, ‘‘... a powerful representation of a journey into a new awareness, a spiritual journey, in fact, which connects love of man with love of God.’’8 R. H. Miller goes even further and compares Sarah to St. Catherine of Genoa ‘‘... moving in her own way through London, searching for God, performing tender acts of love, and touching in her special way the lives of those around her.’’9 Her love for Bendrix still has a hold on her, however. She goes to a priest and asks him if there is some way by which she can marry Bendrix and still remain a good Catholic. He tells her that not only can she not marry Bendrix, she cannot continue to see him if she wishes to remain a good Catholic. In a letter written to Bendrix and discovered by him after her death, she tries to help him understand what has happened: ‘‘I believe there is a God – I believe the whole bag of tricks; there’s nothing I don’t believe. They could dig up records that proved Christ had been invented by Pilate to get himself promoted, and I’d believe just the same. I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell in love. I’ve never loved before as I love you, and I’ve never believed in anything before as I believe now. I’m sure. I’ve never been sure before about anything. When you came in at the door with the blood on your face, I became sure. Once and for all. He’s [i.e., God’s] come, but you cleared the way yourself. So you see it’s all your fault, Maurice, it’s all your fault.’’10 These are novels of belief – belief that has its origins in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. But it is belief that has been internalized and that manifests itself in the behavior of the characters in the novels. Literature has been the medium through which the moral knowledge that is derived from this behavior has been conveyed. Indeed, because of the contextual nature of the behavior, literature is the most effective ff medium to accomplish this task. IInstitute for the Psychological and Pedagogical Study of Voice Performance Philadelphia, Pennsylvania NOTES 1 Noel Carroll, ‘‘The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge.’’ J Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60: I (Winter 2002): 4.

316

GEORGE R. TIBBETTS

2 Noel Carroll, op. cit., p. 5. 3 Noel Carroll, op. cit., p. 6. 4 R. H. Miller, U Understanding Graham Greene (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 65–66. 5 Graham Greene, T he Power and the Glory (New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1996 [c. 1940 by Graham Greene]), p. 165. 6 Graham Greene, op. cit., pp. 167–168. 7 Graham Greene, T he Heart of the Matter (New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1996 [c. 1948 by Graham Greene]), pp. 289–290. 8 Maria Couto, Graham Greene: On the Frontier – Politics and Religion in the Novels (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), p. 81. 9 R. H. Miller, op. cit., p. 85. 10 Graham Greene, T he End of the A AV Vair (New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1996 [c. 1951 by Graham Greene]), pp. 182–183.

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLO GY OF EVIL THROUGHOUT WESTERN TRADITION AND ITS FINAL DISAPPEARANCE IN THE PRESENT TIME

Terrified by his wantonness, Saint Augustine thought that evil was a T ‘‘privation of being’’ (Confessions, VII, 2),1 and this idea, essentially based on his weakness with respect to his own desire, has prevented the Western tradition from seeing evil’s fundamental role in the unfolding of any conception of man. This text aims to make up for such a misunderstanding. Its conceptual development follows this way: the roots of my personal approach to the subject (I), the distinction between what will be called the problem of evil and the riddle of evil, as well as the explanation of the problem as such (II), the disclosure of the four opposite possibilities to lay the foundations of an ontology of evil (III) and the exposition of each of them: the tragic one (IV), the Christian one (V), the romantic one (VI) and the Dionysian one (VII), adding at the end a brief meditation on why the disappearance of evil has come to be the rise of the current aberrant lack of sense (VIII). I

We are wont to say that fundamental happenings are lived as such and they are recognizable from a distance, which makes them more intense while experienced. Nevertheless, notwithstanding if this vision is a common one, I think it is completely wrong, for the decisive events – those that change our entire existence – are hardly perceived when they take place. In the moment they seem, rather, to be insignificant coincidences – supposedly to be forgotten straightaway – just to evince their real transcendence later. My first meeting with evil was one of these coincidences. I remember an article in the newspaper, which I read too many years ago when I was a little boy. A young man – a bricklayer or a worker – brutally killed his wife and his only son because this last, just a suckling child, had been crying for some hours at night. According to his declaration, the man was soundly asleep when all of a sudden he awoke. He was not angry at all; nevertheless, he seized a big hammer he used in his job and mashed his son’s head with one single blow, not saying a word. He 317 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 317–363. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

318

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

also killed his wife, who saw what he had done and had remained flabbergasted for a moment, when she reacted and started to beat him. A photograph of the homicide accompanied the article in the paper. I shall not pretend that I remember the image perfectly, but what left an indelible memory in me was the man’s expression: sheer horror. It was as plain as a pikestaff that the wretched man could not believe what he had done, because he had always been a peaceful person, a loving husband and a responsible father. He was not a drunkard or upset at the moment of the crime; he had practically committed it in total calm, a fact that explains the precision wherewith he acted. I do not know anything more about him; perhaps he was killed by other prisoners in jail (which is the usual punishment inflicted by prisoners to infanticide parents); or perhaps he got probation some years later and was able to start a new life. Anyhow, his fate does not matter here. What is important is that he was right when saying that he had not known what had happened. For the truth is that (although any amateur psychologist could easily prove the contrary) his crime was absolutely unexplainable – not, at least, by common sense. Neither circumstances nor antecedents provided a reason. No secret motive was conceivable: as a bricklayer, he did not have any possibility of living a double life, since he scarcely earned enough to live on. If a man like this had had a problem, his family would know it straightaway because of his attitude. People who work hard do not have inner or ‘‘transcendent’’ conflicts. Thus, this murder (which I should have forgotten thereupon) was my first and decisive meeting with evil. Of course, before reading that news, I had experienced some forms of evil; such as that strange cruelty characteristic of most little children, wherewith they probably try to make up for adult tyranny. However, that cruelty possessed a perfectly clear reason: some boys were bad and some others were good. The bad ones could have been good if they had wanted. In addition, they must have wanted that. That was all. Evil was, therefore, a hindrance on the way to obtain maternal approbation. However, my own mother would have been incapable of answering why a man had killed his family. For a boy, such an act was simply beyond nature. Rather, it had been. From then on, I began to notice how evil pierces man’s depths and creeps behind will and understanding, distorting our purposes and conceptions. Nevertheless, I do not speak here of evil deeds committed because of some reason to act in such a manner as, for example, a desire for revenge, born in response to an

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

319

outrage, or the greed that upsets some people. In these and other similar cases evil is a mere reaction, totally determined by its cause. What happens, yet, when it literally springs from nothing? When it exhibits a power that is even more terrible because it is not directly exerted but remains in a latent state, until it bursts without any previous warning? Independently of how we can judge horrible crimes (like the one I have narrated), and not intending any moral or juridical justification for them, it must be said that that sort of crime shows that evil can be an absolute force, which acts upon man in a moment without his slightest participation. This is the phenomenon I call the riddle of evil. Unlike a problem, which is a logical or empirical contradiction to be solved by means of concepts and/or specific actions, a riddle has to be personally answered. This means that solving it demands you put yourself at stake. No method is available to clarify a riddle, for it is not a question solvable by hearsay or shrewdness: it imposes directly on every person, and if it is not elucidated, it starts to insidiously undermine our own convictions – concretely, those that concern our individual identity. So does evil; and thereby it is the touchstone of any reflection about man. In essence, if there were not evil, man would never be philosophically interesting. It is the necessity to determine his relationship to it that makes man (both considered as a species and as individual ) the ground of an ontological problem and a moral riddle.

II

We have just spoken of the riddle of evil, emphasising its complexity. Instead, what can be called the problem of evil is extraordinarily simple. It does not figure out what evil is in itself or how it devastates personal identity; it deals rather with evil as a medium to bring up other questions; the main of which is the necessity to lay the foundations of a sociopolitical establishment capable of fixing rights and duties independent of any ontological determination. An example will evince what I mean. There are forms of evil so devastating that no one can be unaware of them, and war is the most terrible of these. A lot of reasons can be alleged to explain and justify war, including those provided by the venerable philosophical tradition which runs from Saint Augustine to Kant. For example, Kant says in his Critique of Judgement that

320

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

War itself, when it is carried out with order and with a holy respect for the civil rights, is somehow sublime and makes more sublime simultaneously the mentality of the people that carry it out, because of the dangers that it has braved and whereby it has affirmed its own courage. Contrariwise, a lengthy peace could favor the mere trade spirit, and, through it, selfishness, cowardice and wantonness, deflating so the mentality of a people.2

According to this passage, war has a utility whereby it gets justified as a sort of last resort against the decadence of a society aimed just to trade and leisure; so. it is not totally irrational and can be integrated into a moral conception of existence that takes into account the aggressiveness man points against his fellows. War offers ff a vent for some forces, perhaps organic or cultural that otherwise would inflict a sustained wound to the social body. Still more, war could be used as an excellent prop for a theodicy (and, in fact, it has been used so), since it conciliates atrocities and sufferings ff not only with eventual welfare, but also with man’s nature: War, which is not a deliberated enterprise of men (excited by unbridled passions), is a deeply W concealed and maybe intentioned enterprise of the supreme wisdom, aimed to prepare, if not to lay the foundations of the lawfulness of the states, and through it, the unity of a morally established system. And in spite of the horrible torments wherewith the human species is overwhelmed by it and of the misfortunes, perhaps even greater, that are provoked by its preparation during peace, war is an impulse (inasmuch as the hopes of getting a peaceful state of happiness for people are moved away more and more) to develop to the utmost the gifts that are used for the culture.3

What the ultimate cause of war is, or how it could be transcendentally determined by some ‘‘supreme wisdom’’, are questions not even alluded here. Kant passes over this point, just underlining that war can be useful to sustain the concept of man’s progressive moral enhancement through history. Since this outlook, war, which is the worst form of historic evil, has a positive function that makes it comprehensible, although only via a transcendent agent’s hypothetical intervention. This passage, instead of emphasizing the horrors of war, and deducing from them a pessimistic conclusion about human nature, disdains any further lucubration and concentrates on how man can make the most of his own destructiveness. The question about the essence of that aggressive drive, wherewith man was inoculated since the beginning of time, is left out, and not because of a lack of profoundness – let us remember that it was Kant who put pen to paper – but because any answer to this would imply precisely what Kantian philosophy argues against throughout: a metaphysical conception.

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

321

I will label this Kantian way of looking at the question of war as an ‘‘instrumentalist conception of evil’’. What characterizes this conception is its reduction of evil to a starting point to explain some other idea or theory – whether moral or not. Besides, this approach implies the justification of evil phenomena by some kind of reason (in this case, a merely hypothetical one); justification that here appears integrated with teleology, but that can be related to the most diverse problems, according to the interests of the different ff thinkers and ideologists. Anyhow, this use of evil is aimed to affirm humanity as an ideal, which for Kant is the foundation of a cosmopolitan society whereof every citizen – from the ruler to the last of the subjects – must simultaneously be a member of that society and a conscious prop. We shall not analyze this instrumentalist conception, because it is linked above all to socio-historic questions that escape our present study. Nevertheless, I would like to underline that this conception, for which evil is subordinated to some peculiar utility (whether historical or of any other kind), has frequently been used to justify the most overwhelming horrors; especially throughout the last two centuries. During this time it furnished arguments to foster the most awful genocides. Of course, this justification of evil has nothing to do with the philosophical approach we have just mentioned. What Kant and other philosophers took as a reason to favor individual liberty and general moralization happened to become the contrary, but without the conceptual development provided by those thinkers. That is the strange fate of the greatest ideas: a man devotes all his life to make them understandable, but later the most brutal individuals seize them effortlessly. ff III

The problem of evil led us to a practical answer, notwithstanding whether it is sustained on philosophical reflection or not. This problem does not have to be, perforce, solved metaphysically or transcendentally; it is enough that it fosters a conception of man whereby an ideal or a real coexistence could be established. Once this has been done, evil stops being philosophically interesting. That is why the problem of evil is properly solved once a system of duties and rights has been stipulated in such a way to allow society go on. The riddle of evil is something very different. ff It is not a contradiction that could be clarified without further ado; it is an anomaly that resists, time and time again any effort ff to overcome it. Evil is enigmatical because

322

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

it is always axial to understanding what man is, but it cannot be properly surveyed with the concepts whereby man himself is defined as a person, i.e., a being who acts by himself, who needs his fellows to live a really free life and – above all – who is up to check the natural enmity that opposes him to the others. This last characteristic shows how this riddle must be brought up: it must be related to the complexity inherent to personal identity. Judged in light of the riddle, evil is a force in permanent contradiction with what a person is or intends to be: his purposes, his conceptions and his attitudes are deformed by it in such a way that he eventually becomes incomprehensible to his cherished ones and to himself. Still more, evil is exerted through a conscious resistance that makes its triumph – when it happens – even more overwhelming (we refer to people crushed by their own wants and their obsessions to overcome them). Caught in the fight against evil, the person ends up living for it. This is the case of the ascetic who did not ever get true inner illumination: not even in the desert roasted depths can he rest in peace who is aware of his abyssal proclivities. In such a situation – which is more usual than normally accepted – the person is tantalized by evil although he had not done evil at all (or rather, he is tantalized precisely because of that). Moreover, this has another consequence: stricto sensu, when speaking of man with regard to evil, one refers to some concrete person and not the whole species abstractly considered. As a matter of fact, the riddle shows that the identity entailed between man and person is far from being clear, in spite of the decisive role it has in society foundation. Indeed, since the beginning of history the person had to be defined, if not in contrast with society, at least in an always agonic relation to it. And I do not allude to contradictions peculiar to modern societies, but to a question that has been at the core of the conflicts that all and sundry men have lived in relation to their own humanity, which all of a sudden is revealed to be opposite to coexistence with the others. Greek tragedy shows this is not hairsplitting, but it is a fundamental matter for anyone, whether one is directly involved in conflicts or not; as a matter of fact, tragedy shows that every human being has to answer at least once in his life the riddle of evil (that is to say, he has to put at stake his own identity), just because he is a human being. If every person has to prove his own humanity, then no one can be human if he has not elucidated evil through his own farsightedness. This also corroborates that the riddle leads inevitably to an ontological conception of oneself. There is no way to face evil without the personal

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

323

knowledge of what man is that we call wisdom. Even if the wise person does not have any philosophical thought (a lack that is the rule for average people), he must anyhow determine by himself the identity of his life by means of his own will. Indeed, although the riddle forces us, in order to solve it, to appeal to an ontological background, this background does not necessarily implicate the affinnation of transcendence either for the good or for the evil. I mean that in the terms of the riddle (as they appear in the meeting of Oedipus and the sphinx a meeting which is the archetype of the riddle itself ), good does not exist beyond evil and vice versa, since both are defined by their mutual opposition, and their solution does not lie in the triumph of either of them over the other but in the knowledge of how they participate in the task of keeping and unfolding reality (which in this case is linked to Oedipus’s lucidity with regard to the sphinx’s question and his blindness concerning his own fate). The riddle reveals how this conciliation should be understood. On principle, there are four possibilities for that: the tragic participation, the Christian, the romantic, and the Dionysian. Each possibility excludes one other of them, and each one implicates some determined ontology, whose elucidation is what concerns us. Good and evil tragic ontology postulates that both of them exert, simultaneously, an overwhelming power upon man. And since they are all-embracing, they end up being the same, although not for man, who must be careful not to trespass the limits that – without him knowing how – have been enacted by Fate. Anyway, if he is ill-fated, no contention will save him from that Fate; and even if it does not affect ff him personally, he will have to, however, suffer ff the consequences of evil, just because he is a man. This shows that his existence is not safe from horror and desperation. Oddly enough, since this is a common fate, he can be relieved of his distress for he knows that all his sufferings ff will be integrated into the eternal order of the cosmos. Contrariwise, the Christian ontology of good and evil implicates that neither of them is absolute in existence; instead of been exerted upon man, man has the power to opt for either good or evil. However, evil is subordinated to Good (the capital letter is compelling here) because evil is not an original ground but a deviation, a monstrosity that could be eradicated by means of our effort. ff A choice must be made all the time, precisely because good and evil, although relative to man, are absolutely opposite. This fact demands a transcendent nature where the opposition

324

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

can be solved in favor of good (rather of Good, since it is identified with God). The romantic ontology is, no doubt, the most disturbing of these four. It postulates that evil has a tyrannical power upon man, whose will and understanding are carried away by it. Evil does not defeat good in the end but at the very instant; it makes its most when man tries to resist it, and it gets victory by forcing man to carry it out completely aware of what he does. Therefore, no conciliation between good and evil is possible here (except, maybe, an imaginary one). The Dionysian ontology answers the riddle in such a way that it should perhaps not be taken into account, since it affirms that neither good nor evil exist by themselves, but they are simply anthropomorphism of forces with no moral sense. Therefore, the choices to be made time and time again are linked not to a universal framework but to the possibility of creating a concrete order by means of choice itself, notwithstanding this, such an order has to be obeyed once the choice has been made. On the whole, these four possibilities define what evil is and, still more, what man can be. Whether felt as some fatal force, free option, ominous impulse, or nature to be created, evil leads to the most intense experience of humanity, which stops being an abstract essence for the individual and changes into something that must be generated by will. Man is not human because of his organic condition, but because he faces evil. The wisdom gotten by the riddle is not at all absolute (not even for Christianity), like that wisdom whereby human history could be hypothetically explained as a teleology aimed to man’s progressive moral enhancement (in accordance with the Kantian passages we have commented on), but it is unmistakably personal. The wise man is he who solves the riddle and is up to developing the farsightedness required to save him from being wiped out by the riddle’s unforeseeable possibilities. The complexity of evil shows that this learning is within no one’s reach, and that not even conscious decision is enough to beget lucidity if one does not have the temper required for it. Moreover, there is something a lot more important than decision or temper: fate (again, even for Christianity, at least in its Calvinist interpretation). Farsightedness is an inborn gift that any person can cultivate or disdain, not the issue of constant effort. ff This is why the riddle of evil is eventually incomprehensible, though based on common sense or on instrumental conceptions of intelligence and existence. The riddle and the wisdom provided by it will be metaphysi-

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

325

cal chimeras for anyone who conceives evil just as pathology or a condition of existence not worth analysis after having noticed it. What is, then – in order to conclude this section – the final interest in the riddle of evil? Without doubt, to reveal how personality is affirmed by or against some individual tendencies and resistances. Sheer individuality, we know, is not the real aim of any philosophical reflection.4 Nevertheless, when it is represented with the universal sense contained in the same concept of ‘‘personality’’, it becomes something fundamental to understanding man. And no personality can exist if evil has not been previously faced.

IV

Let us outline the four ontologies of evil; the first whereof is the tragic one. We will analyze it by glossing some passages of Oedipus the King.5 The behavior of this tragic protagonist, all throughout the work and up to the moment immediately previous to his knowing who he is son of, is one of the most complete representations of self-confidence. Oedipus believes he has fled the horrible fate that sentenced him to kill his father and commit incest with his mother, the fate that Apollo’s oracle revealed to him. He has defeated the sphinx and saved Thebes; he has ruled for several years with justice and shrewdness, and has had an excellent offspring. ff What else could he wish? His happiness could not be marred, not even if his origin was shameful: I seek to know my birth, low though it be, and Jocasta perhaps is shamed (for like a woman, she is proud of heart) at thoughts of my low birth; but I, who count myself the child of Fortune, fear no shame. My mother she, and she has prospered me. And so the months that span my life have made me both high and low; but whatsoe’er I be, such as I am I am, and needs must on to fathom all the secret of my birth (vv. 1114–1126).

These words do not allow any doubt: Oedipus is the son of his own prowess and deeds, and anyone in his situation would be as proud as he is. He is the perfect embodiment of the self-made-man who lives in peace with gods and men. Nevertheless, there is an awful irony in all that he has done, for the more he has fought against his destiny, the more he has

326

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

carried it out. At the level of fate, his efforts ff to escape evil have been a total failure. How come? The clues to this question – at least insofar as Oedipus is concerned – were provided since the very beginning of work. In his dialogue with a priest – who has gone to the palace together with the people to implore Oedipus’s help to save the city from the deadly epidemic that decimates it – Oedipus underlines how wise he is and how he has shared the Thebans’ griefs: O children, wailing loud you tell me not Of woes unknown; too well I know them all Your sorrow and your wants [...] And lo! Ye have not come to break my sleep, But found me weeping, weeping bitter tear, And treading weary paths in wandering thought (vv. 63–65 and 70–72).

And although he adds thereupon that he has sent Creon to Apollo’s sanctuary in Delphi in search of the cure, his attitude towards the god’s oracle is contradictory. After knowing by Teiresias that he is the evil being who has infected the city, he flies into a rage against the old prophet, accusing him of plotting. The violence of the meeting between these two characters is certainly explainable by Oedipus’s shock, since Oedipus has been all of a sudden publicly charged with a crime. Notwithstanding, an attentive reading of the scene shows that what is at stake here is the protagonist’s blindness, who has assessed everything at his vital success without his heeding that all he has done is a consequence of his efforts ff to belie the oracle. The rest of the tragedy is determined by this question. Oedipus did not listen to the enigmatic oracle; he did not try to clarify how it would have been possible for him to commit those crimes. Above all, he did not try to placate fate by the religious means at hand, such as sacrifices and deprecations. Instead, he ran away and tried to live by his own law. His action was, implicitly, in defiance of Apollo, although it was not a conscious rebellion but a supposedly prudent action. For a person who has lost any intellectual relationship with the divine, or at least with its vulgar representation that is the basis of popular piety (which is the case of the nowadays average learned person), understanding why Oedipus has done evil is hard; specifically because he is a good man: he shows all the time his resistance against the revealed horrors, and thereby he abandons Corinth – where he was the crown prince. His moral excellence, however, was stained by disrespect for Apollo’s words.

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

327

This impious attitude is linked to Oedipus’ violent temper, which he manifests repeatedly and that is the cause of his final undoing, for he pronounces the sentence against the criminal without his knowing who he is or why he has acted that way. The horror of the situation lies in that he condemns himself to universal opprobrium and permanent solitude. Moreover, he has acted not compelled by justice or piety, but to protect his own position. He obeys Apollo’s oracle more by ambition than by piety: Not for the sake of friends, or near or far, But for mine own, will I dispel this curse; For he that slew him, whosoe’er he be, Will wish, perchance, with such a blow to smite Me also (vv. 143–147).

Moral good can be religiously evil: this is the conclusion of what has been tragically shown. After taking into account the total development of the work, it is now clear that morality must be determined by religion, or rather, by the gods’ will, and not by any personal experience. None lives long enough to discern good and evil; therefore, it is better to limit self-confidence and to obey the gods, something that Oedipus would have surely ignored if he had not been so brutally compelled to do so. That human wisdom is nothing when faced with divine designs is even more terribly underlined in the fate of the character who suffers ff the greatest punishment: Jocasta. Since the beginning, she mocks the oracles more than once, and says that no man can be trusted when prophesying. She also anticipates Oedipus’s remarks with regard to the empire of chance over man, and says that it is a nonsense to be afraid of the future when nothing is reliable in life, particularly something communicated by an oracle: Why should we fear, when chance rules everything, And foresight of the future there is none; ‘Tis best to live at random, as one can (1010–1012).

Jocasta’s role in reinforcing her husband’s self-confidence is decisive in showing how one’s own blindness can lead to wretchedness. It is a thrilling irony that she herself is the first one to grasp the truth. In the course of the third episode, wherein she realizes who Oedipus is, her transformation is absolute: her words before the Corinthian messenger, who has come to make clear Oedipus’s origin, are defiant, but after having listened to him, she is completely bewildered and instead of propping Oedipus she

328

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

tries to dissuade him from investigating his identity. For me, the couple’s final dialogue is the passage in this work where punishment against man’s stupidity is represented with the most fearful crudeness: JOC. Who thou art, hapless, mayst thou never know! OEDIP. Will some one bring that shepherd to me here? Leave her to glory in her high descent. JOC. Woe! Woe! Ill-fated one! My last word this, This only, and no more for evermore (vv. 1106–1110).

As we see, Jocasta suffers ff perhaps even more than Oedipus, since she dies without her having the opportunity to get wisdom at the end, which is what he gets in Oedipus in Colonus. She embodies a crueler fate, so to speak: the fate of one used by the gods to help and to carry Out someone else’s fate, and is thrown away after having performed her function. She stands for one who does not deserve to be respected as a person and is reduced to an element of other people’s circumstances. With this, we come to the heart of the matter. We have set out so far what could be called the tragic human components: self-confidence, false wisdom, haughtiness and – above all – impiety; such are man’s faults. Notwithstanding this, none of them is an answer for the riddle of evil because of a ghastly motive: as the miserable Oedipus shows, evil is previous to any action, to any man’s desire. No human error, not even the worst, is comparable to the perfidy of fate. Therefore, the character’s anguished question is at bottom addressed to the incomprehensibility of the divine: What man more wretched than this man who speaks, What man more harassed by the vexing Gods? (vv. 844–845).

How, then, could there be here any conciliation? How could the riddle be answered if the conclusion is that gods have man at their disposal? If good and evil are interchangeable because none knows his own fate, tragedy should be interpreted as the assertion of the infinite relativity of individual life. Gods need man to keep the order of the cosmos – that is why they do not destroy him at one blow; but they can perfectly crush and lead to ignominy whomever they want. Man’s life is dispensable both for the gods and for other men: Oedipus was ill-fated just like Laius was killed. Gods take human life as men take other men’s lives. However, the similarity does not go beyond this. Gods are powerful enough to do what they do, but man is not so powerful; if he intends to break the limits that

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

329

Fate has determined for him, he will suffer ff the consequences. Therefore, he must always fear Gods, and with all the more reason after having been destroyed by their unfathomable designs: OEDIP. Cast me with all thy speed from out this land, Where never more a man may look on me! CREON. Be sure I would have done so, but I wished To learn what now the God will bid us do. OEDIP. The oracle was surely clear enough That I, the parricide, the pest, should die. CREON. So ran the words, but in our present need ‘Tis better to learn surely what to do. OEDIP. And will ye ask for one so vile as I? CREON. Yea, now thou, too, wouldst trust the voice of God (vv. 1481–1490).6

That is an unbearable truth, but anyhow truth; since man cannot move Gods either by means of his prays or his sufferings, ff being respectful to them is better for him. Instead of getting exasperated, he has to calm himself to match the cosmic order as soon as possible. Moreover, the best is to realize that if one goes unnoticed, one may not be the object of divine wrath and of something essentially unexplainable: divine envy. This is the only conciliation I find here, but I think it is by no means a negligible one. Each individual is determined by an everlasting order whereby even his most minute actions spur or might spur some terrible outcome. Such actions cannot be considered as good or evil in the light of human necessities and standards, just as a man cannot be conceived as being ruled by himself. Only his total life course can show what a man was; but by then he will have died and any judgement concerning his behavior or his person will be a waste of time, unless his life can become an opportunity for others to learn how to behave when misfortune arrives: From hence the lesson draw, To reckon no man happy till ye see The closing day; until he pass the bourn Which severs life from death, unscathed by woe (vv. 1581–1584).

V

Properly speaking, evil is not enigmatical for a tragic conception of human existence, precisely because evil is inscribed in the nature of things and not even the gods are responsible for it. Evil is prior to any personal action, and man is ever subjected to its devastating potency. Nevertheless,

330

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

what seems logical at the level of human existence is completely aberrant at the level of sheer individuality. We have already said that evil is fundamental when considering individual life. A man overwhelmed by fate cannot be comforted by reminding him about the inscrutability of fate or telling him that his suffering ff is due to some hidden atrocity. Neither of these reasons suffices to justify the destiny of the one scourged by divine design. Tragedy itself shows that it is not enough to say without further ado that contradiction between individuality and fate is imputable to the nature of things. Personal wretchedness demands understandable causes. And they are, surprisingly, a lot nearer than what Oedipus’s anguish allows him to believe. They are in the sullenest depth of every man’s heart. We have emphasized that although Oedipus was virtuous and benevolent (whereby he was loved and respected by the Thebans) he was also haughty, violent and, above all, impious. However, the dramatic development of the tragedy shows that he had not realized that. When Teiresias tells him the truth, he flies into a rage because he thinks Teiresias accuses him unjustly. He accepts his fate only after having seen for himself the crimes he committed. The action of putting his eyes out by himself is a symbol for the acknowledgement of his blindness: he must learn to see his interiority. An ontological way of being, defined by its opposition to a cosmic law (which is, as I have tried to show, the meaning of the ‘‘interiority’’ here at issue), is hinted at in tragedy: oddly enough, when characters speak of how they feel or what they think about fate’s cruelty, they always refer to facts, but not to themselves. Contrariwise, interiority is fundamental for what was hereinbefore called the Christian ontology of good and evil. For this conception, the riddle of evil is not set out with regard to fate but to intenority. The riddle does not ask why gods destine some people to commit crimes; but rather why men do evil. The way to get an answer to this will be by analyzing individual interiority. Explaining the change of emphasis from one conception to the other is a task that exceeds this paper. However, we can mention at least one of the most determinant reasons for that change: the absolute irrationality of individual existence in the tragic conception. Notwithstanding how much the hero would be lifted by misfortune, he would be destroyed by a determinate prior to him; and his only possible relief – final reintegration into the cosmic order – is at bottom nonsense, a poor compensation for a horror that no man would like to live. Who would like to share Oedipus’s destiny? None would. The only person prompted to do so,

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

331

Jocasta, dies even more frighteningly than Oedipus. In a word, tragedy postulates a life conception that no sensible person would like to embody: therefore, tragic characters are mythical and royal individuals, not common ones, as Aristotle reminded us when he stated that tragedy depicts men better than they are.7 This slant to individuality conceived in terms of ‘‘interiority’’ culminated in the Christian conception of the person as a divine work. In spite of his weakness and proclivity, every man is by himself the only aim of Creation. Man’s subordination to an unfathomable destiny is simply out of the question; still more, destiny hinges completely upon man’s will. For that reason, good and evil are relative to his choices: man is what he chooses to be, and all his actions have absolute transcendence. Nevertheless, as actions can be done involuntarily or unwillingly, what is central at the end is why he performed them. Interiority is always in the foreground. In this frame, the riddle of evil gets a relevance unthinkable in tragedy: since tragedy affirms that gods have man at their disposal, man’s actions cannot be judged in terms of sheer will, because independently of what he wants, he is determined to do something. Therefore, in tragedy, evil shall be defined as beyond individual will, by means of the interplay between fate and objective consequences: whether Oedipus wanted to kill Laius or not, it was the case that he had been destined to do so and, as a matter of fact, he actually did it. That is all. However, if man is supposed to act always by himself, the problem is then quite different. ff Nothing is above his will and (except when he suffers ff mental disorders or physical diseases that prevent him from freely choosing and acting) he can and must be responsible for all his actions. In this way, interiority becomes the element whereby evil is determinable. Evil is neither imputable to the gods, nor to the circumstances, nor to one’s temper: it springs only from will. It is not a coincidence that this theory has been explicated for the first time in one of Western thought’s milestones: T he Confessions by Saint Augustine.8 This work was written to praise God and to shed light on the most thorny problem that the Christian conception of existence has to face: how God’s infinite goodness can be identified with the evil that reigns all over the world and, above all, in the depths of the human heart. Instead of concealing the problem, St. Augustine sets it out in the first lines: Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears

332

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee (I, I, 1).

In spite of their absolute dissimilarity, God and man are united by love, which is more powerful than any determination of fate. However, love cannot spring from man for he is a sinner. Love is exclusively provided by God; rather, love is God himself when His own perfection is communicated to all of His creatures. God is good and love and life; and not precisely natural life, but the spiritual and eternal one. For that reason, God is the only being that can satisfy man’s desire for immortality. Sublime as it seems, this vision leads us directly to the question: how can man be carried away by evil if he has been created by God to love Him? St. Augustine’s answer is unequivocal: because of the original sin that Adam transmitted to all his offspring, ff a sin whose eff ffects are clearly perceivable at the very moment of every human being’s birth, when the newborn cries so violently that his weeping may be taken as the best proof of the evil tendencies that pre-exist in every man’s consciousness: Hear, O God. Alas, for man’s sin! So saith man, and Thou pitiest him; for Thou madest him, but sin in him Thou madest not. Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? For in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth. Who remindeth me? Doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself. I remember not? What then was my sin? Was it that I hung upon the breast and cried? For should I now so do for food suitable to my age, justly should I be laughed at and reproved. What I then did was worthy reproof, but since I could not understand reproof, custom and reason forbade me to be reproved. For those habits, when grown, we root out and cast away [...] The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence (I, VII, 11).

Man can only unsuccessfully try to eradicate, by himself, this innate proclivity. He needs perforce God’s help, for the fight against evil is at bottom a fight against his own being. Man cannot be good by himself. Still more, he is nothing by himself. Of course, he has a life apparently ruled by him; notwithstanding, the more he does as he pleases, the more he goes to evil. Why is this so? Because man is naturally ill disposed. Thereby, every manifestation of his nature has an evil aspect, whether he notices it or not. This possesses an obvious consequence: man is infinitely miserable. Stricto sensu, his entire existence shows the contradiction between his evil nature and God’s love, a contradiction that becomes more rending if he follows his natural drives, that is, his natural evil. That is why no evil

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

333

man can be at peace however much he strives to conceal his own desperation beneath cynicism or pleasure, the worst of which is the pleasure of doing evil for evil itself. Does such a pleasure really exist? Is it not, perhaps, a chimera of human blindness? St. Augustine answers these questions in a passage wherein he narrates that when he was 16 years old a group of friends and he stole some pears, although they knew that they were tasteless and they were not going to eat them: Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared Ito enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself. A pear tree there was near our vineyard, laden with fruit, tempting neither for color nor taste. To shake and rob this, some lewd young fellows of us went, late one night (having according to our pestilent custom prolonged our sports in the streets till then), and took huge loads, not for our eating, but to fling to the very hogs, having only tasted them. And this, but to do what we liked only, because it was misliked (II, IV, 9).

At first sight, this petty larceny shows that evil can be done by itself: the pears were stolen just for enjoying the bizarre pleasure always involved in performing dangerous feats. However, that pleasure is contrary to the most elemental instinct. No determination is more overwhelming than self-preservation; but human passion for risk seems to belie it: although what the saint and his friends did would have been hardly dangerous, it implicated a possible shame that should have been taken into account. How can this be explained? Oddly enough, it is not necessary to turn to some mysterious cause; man’s interiority is at the same time very simple and wholly unfathomable. It is simple because all contradictions are comprehensible when taking into account man’s sinful nature. It is unfathomable because those contradictions prevent man from knowing himself. When analyzed by a sensible observer, he seems to be transparent, for his passions are soon evinced, but when he analyses himself, his own misery blinds him. Now, what is perceptible in every man’s interiority is his tendency to tyrannically impose his desires. Man acts as if he were the center of the universe, or as if his passions were the measure of nature, an attitude that seems more preposterous when considering man’s weakness. In fact, the more he tries to impose his will, the more his impotence is evinced. Why is it so? Because of his unbearable mortality, which acts as his counterweight to sinfulness.

334

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

If we heed the negative aspect of the question, it will seem as if man struggled to dominate, at any cost, the wrong ways and to overcome his inner contradictions. Nevertheless, this negativity is not so relevant at bottom, precisely because human proclivity cannot prevail over the love whereby God manifests Himself in man’s interiority. Thus, the positive aspect is emphasized at the end: on trying to do evil, man tries to be as powerful as God is. In a word, evil shows that man wants to be God: What then did I love in that theft? And wherein did I even corruptly and pervertedly imitate my Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Thy law, because by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy Omnipotency? (II, VI, 14).

This is why evil cannot be desired or done by itself it is always determined by a good finality, blurred by sin. Evil is enigmatic just for the individual who suffers ff it, but not for he who has defeated it thanks to God’s mercy. Still more, this hidden orientation of evil to good is the cause of an additional benefit in the earthly plane of existence. It reveals that man wants to join his fellows. This is good but not enough, since human affections ff are not the aim of his heart, which can only be satisfied by God: What fruit had I then (wretched man!) in those things, of the remembrance whereof I am now ashamed? Especially, in that theft which I loved for the theft’s sake; and it too was nothing, and therefore the more miserable I, who loved it. Yet alone I had not done it: such was I then, I remember, alone I had never done it. I loved then in it also the company of the accomplices, with whom I did it? I did not then love nothing else but the theft, yea rather I did love nothing else; for that circumstance of the company was also nothing (II, VIII, 16).

To get his final aim, man has to give himself unconditionally to God’s will: he must confess his sin and prostrate himself. Nevertheless, not even his self-humiliation would save him if. God did not trace a providential plan for his redemption. St. Augustine repeats unceasingly that if man cannot do anything good by himself, even less will he be able to save himself. All good is done by God. Notwithstanding, what is more important here is that the union point between God and man is precisely at the most conflictive organ: the heart. God therefore lives in the same place where our most shameful passions are harbored. That is why God requires man’s total submission. Provided that, He then sees that man renounces evil and takes him out from sin once and for all:

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

335

I was troubled in spirit, most vehemently indignant that I entered not into Thy will and covenant, O my God, which all my bones cried out unto me to enter, and praised it to the skies. And therein we enter not by ships, or chariots, or feet, no, move not so far as I had come from the house to that place where we were sitting. For, not to go only, but to go in thither was nothing else but to will to go, but to will resolutely and thoroughly; not to turn and toss, this way and that, a maimed and half-divided will, struggling, with one part sinking as another rose. (VIII, VIII, 19).

This mercy has a providential condition. God’s providence never ceases, in spite of all the horrors that overwhelm man in his evil; contrariwise, He exerts His providence most lovingly at the very moment when man thinks he has been utterly forsaken by God. For this is how God tests human endurance. Although St. Augustine is by no means a mystic, his explanation of the value of evil for personal redemption is very similar to those of evil transcendence given by some great mystical writers. Evil gives man the opportunity to share the creative potency of God, since the individual must subdue it before he can return God’s love. This part of his redemption hinges upon man himself. Of course, if he can carry it out that is not because of him, but because God is present in man’s interior. This strange coexistence of God and man inside the human heart leads to the almost inextricable inner confusion that every individual experiences, especially those who have been reluctant to answer to the voice of God resounding inside them. Man is a ‘‘dark riddle’’ – as St. Augustine says – until he answers that voice; but from that instant on his life is altogether different. ff This is displayed in one of T he Confessions most famous passages, wherein the saint narrates his conversion. The narration is preceded by a reflection on the contradictory manifestations of will that are peculiar to the man who simultaneously wants to be with God and to keep the false pleasures that sin provides: The mind commands the mind, its own self, to will, and yet it doth not. Whence this monstrousness? And to what end? It commands itself, I say, to will, and would not command, unless it willed, and what it commands is not done. But it willeth not entirely: therefore doth it not command entirely. For so far forth it commandeth, as it willeth: and, so far forth is the thing commanded, not done, as it willeth not. For the will commandeth that there be a will; not another, but itself. But it doth not command entirely, therefore what it commandeth, is not. For were the will entire, it would not even command it to be, because it would already be (VIII, IX, 21).

Will is not one and the same all the time; it is rent between evil and man’s transcendent nature. Its fluctuations evince again the weakness of

336

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

the individual who is carried away by that shameful resignation to custom, which reduces him to his lowest animality just precisely when he is disposed to change from the depth of his heart. All these contradictions disappear at one blow as soon as the individual wholehearedly makes the decision to obey God, no matter how hard it can be. Moreover, the most astonishing thing is that he then discovers that obedience is not the overwhelming weight that he had supposed, carried away by his own tyrannical tendencies. To the contrary, once God and man are united, obedience is much easier than the pleasure that evil previously provided. How sweet did it at once become to me, to want the sweetnesses of those toys! And what I feared to be parted from, was now a joy to part with. For Thou didst cast them forth from me, Thou true and highest sweetness. Thou castest them forth, and for them enteredst in Thyself, sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more hidden than all depths, higher than all honor, but not to the high in their own conceits (IX, I, 1).

Faced within the common man’s psychology, the conversion told by Saint Augustine seems unbelievable and almost absurd. It was an instant metamorphosis that uprooted evil forever. Nevertheless, and beyond its dramatic circumstances, conversion is not so far from man’s reactions at moments of highest exaltation. Even the heart’s most despicable movements can be as intense as what the saint describes. The problem is neither the intensity of the experience, nor the sensation of being beyond time that it provides, but the fact that it is absolute for the rest of one’s life. How can a man get this literal assumption of eternity at every moment? Only by God’s providential grace. Providence is the axis of the Christian conception of man and evil, and holds the same function that fate’s determination held in tragedy. The tragic hero is determined to the exploit whereby he is led to his undoing; his recompense – so to speak – is wisdom. Christian’s, for their part, are providentially led by God to unite with Him; however much they had plunged into evil before, they can be spared by divine providence. Unlike tragic determination – which has sense only for the hero, but never for the common man whose life fortunately lacks transcendence (tragedy reminds us time and time again that the worst thing for a man is to stand out) – Christian providence is universal: no man, not even the thrall, is forsaken to evil. Since every individual has been created in God’s own image and likeness, everyone’s life is absolute by itself, and it is providentially aimed to God. Nevertheless, a man’s life will not be fulfilled

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

337

if he lets himself be carried away by earthly existence and forgets his heavenly essence. In order to prevent this, every man has to set an example for all the others, which implies that his life has to be in the foreground. However, any life has a double dimension: the worldly one – beneath the tyranny of vanity – and the inner one – that is beneath one’s own proclivity. These dimensions ought to be judged by different ff standards: the worldly one hinges on a law of justice, enacted by religious authority; the inner one must be ordered by the heart, which needs to be previously purified of its evil by the loving action of God, to whom man is led via his selfhumiliation. Since the original identity of these dimensions has been broken by sin, man should live asunder; which would be unbearable if God did not providently assist him. This is seen in every individual, but especially in the lowest ones; and it must be recognized by them, so they can be up to the infinite love harbored in the human heart, a love wherewith they will be united once they have defeated evil. Thanks to this, evil will be finally integrated into redemption. VI

The romantic ontology of evil sprang from what can be called the very touchstone of modern science, since Newton on: the fact that rational determination of nature does not match any human end or intention. Whereas since Plato and Aristotle’s times metaphysics had structured its conception of nature beginning with the assumption that in any process concerning facts there is a transcendent correspondence between regularity and final accomplishment (correspondence is meant by the Greek ‘‘cosmos’’), it has been considered that independently of the abyssal transformations experienced by science during the last three centuries – in accordance with the development of surveys and investigations – such an idea is indemonstrable and cannot lay the foundations of an explanation aimed to study specific phenomena and to modify them to man’s advantage. This is what led to the peculiar link between knowledge and technological improvement whereby science has been defined at least since the first half of the 18th century.9 Of course, although the refusal of metaphysical or, rather, teleological explanation was necessary in view of the impossibility of methodical determinations and beyond any argumentative subtlety the would-be element or elements of nature and their total development through experi-

338

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

ence different ff fields (fields that, on the other hand, proliferate unceasingly insofar as the scientific investigation discovers new phenomena that call for systematization), it did not tally with the insurmountable desire of reason to attain a final unity of experience whereof man’s own existence was simultaneously principle and entelechy. This idea is tantamount to the ontological primacy that man used to enjoy over any other being (God included, somehow) in accordance with metaphysics. In sooth, inasmuch as reason provides the only valid framework for the universality of every empirical knowledge, it cannot be confined in experience, and a lot less in scientific experience, precisely because this is compelled by its dynamism to transcend what can be objectively determined. This entails that in any rational conception of nature there will always be a not so hidden contradiction between epistemological systematisation and essential comprehension.10 Time and time again, science has been considered useless in providing a rational ground for individual existence, even from a theoretical perspective (which leads to the final failure of the so-called ‘‘behavior sciences’’, which – as psychology or pedagogy – hinge upon a narrow standard of normality and are utterly ineffective ff in solving the problems inherent to existence as such), and has consequently been branded as an abstraction by those who strive supposedly to go to the very root of the unbalance inherent in human existence, e.g., Kierkegaard’s epigones. Romanticism (defined here in accordance with our present interest and without considering its historical and cultural implications) postulates that evil springs suddenly from the interstices in the fundamental differff ence between reason and scientific knowledge, or – to speak more concisely – in an ideal whole orientated to man’s fulfillment versus experience of objective determinations. In a universe where he is just a biological specimen, as dispensable as any other one, from bacteria to whales, and where diseases and disasters are no longer symbols of an invisible fate or god, man harbors the suspicion that nature is neither an harmonic system of ends nor a rational system of laws, but a chaotic manifestation of forces and phenomena, which reveal an ominous perfection that is, notwithstanding, aimed against the human desire for a rational framework to life. Everything – from physical elements to organic forms – matches the natural whole, except man; and although nature is objectively determinable, that is not enough to provide a reason for human wretchedness, or rather, for the individual’s wretchedness, particularly when that wretchedness is endured by a man who is, in addition, the evildoers’ laughingstock.

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

339

Tragedy solved that contradiction by appealing to a concatenation of justice and ignorance beyond individual guilt: whether a man does evil by himself or not, he is always responsible for everyone else (that is the meaning of the moral concept of ‘‘fellowship’’) and has to participate with his own sufferings ff in the infinite reestablishment of a cosmic balance, which was destroyed by man’s mere existence. However, this solution – which is by itself far away from being acceptable for those who suffer ff a tragic fate – is completely aberrant when considering that no reason makes up for misery or grief and – moreover – for the inner unbalance that unceasingly tantalizes everyone. Independent of the misfortunes and sorrows that at certain moments devastate us (let us remember that tragedy cannot provide a permanent but just a transcendent framework for existence, since it has an absolute sense that is experienced only once in a life, thus the reason why the hero has to die after acknowledging his fate), what is unbearable for anyone is the overwhelming agitation of his own being, whose diagnosis and supposed healing was the declared aim of the Christian conception of existence, as it was set out through the Augustinian elucidation of personal life. Such a conception is based on the assumption of a Providence that is peculiar to each human being; a Providence that has been reduced to a sophism by modern thought, besides having always been denied by the hopeless and wounded, and which is more a mockery than a relief when there is no faith to prop it up. Thus, without either a tragic balance of existence or a providential assistance for withstanding the misfortunes – and even the mere fact of ageing – man is left at the mercy of desperation. Nevertheless, a nature indifferent ff to man and his permanent inner anguish would not have been enough to spark off a romantic ontology of evil in the absence of the real clue to this conception: the animosity of both nature and heart. No matter how regular nature could be in accordance with scientific theories or how fortunate someone could be according to his life’s objective framework, the truth is that everything in nature exhibits a strange, ominous drive, reflected by a similar enmity that springs from everyone’s interiority. This double animosity – expressed in indiscernible ways – is precisely the origin of the human tendency to outline an ideal justification for existence, which does not hinge upon nature but upon reason alone. This tendency winds up being more a useless escape than an effective ff overcoming. Since romanticism stresses the impossibility of reconciling these two extremes, it may be considered the most interesting of the four ontologies of evil we have elucidated so far. According to it, man is cloven between

340

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

nature awry with violence and his own destructiveness. Nature (except for scientific universality, led by the idea that every process is understandable in a specific knowledge field) has to be studied as an abrupt process that defeats reason because it seems alternatively alien to man or aimed to annihilate him – which is even worse. There is no way to reconcile objective order, vital drive and humanization; still more, the opposition of these terms is reproduced both at generic and individual levels. This suggests that nature is against every man exactly as every man is against every other man and, above all, against himself, an idea that cannot be justified either by logical principles or by moral ends. In view of human destructiveness and nature’s violence, rationality looks like a chimera, an aberration belied by facts. That every human phenomenon stems from an elemental contradiction is one of mankind’s most ancient ideas, corroborated by myths and legends all over the world. Romanticism is not original in postulating this idea, its originality lies rather in its method of conceiving such contradiction, as opposed to the objectivity whereby modern reason is defined. From a rational perspective, nature cannot be a chaos that looks anthropomorphic all of a sudden when it releases its destructive potency against man; notwithstanding, it is true that when man is carried away by the confusion and the perennial restlessness that mar all his joys, he perceives for a moment, with perfect clarity, the terrible image of chaos. This image shows nature’s final non-sense, wherefrom the horror of existence springs precisely when everything is apparently in harmony, except the individual who projects it. Perhaps the most unbearable horror is that of a man suffering ff a terrible agony amidst a delightful sunny evening. A literary body of work where all of these aspects are masterfully set out is that of Edgar Allan Poe.11 In A Descent into the Maelstrom, natural violence gets emphasized from the beginning, by describing a bloodcurdling landscape on the Norwegian shores from a crag at the top of a cliff whipped by howling winds: I looked dizzily and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters were so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer’s account of the Mare T enebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, ff whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever (270).

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

341

This description matches perfectly the main feature of romantic ontology: evil is beyond reason, because it is the all-encompassing drive to perpetual opposition and destruction. Inasmuch as natural elemental forces contend – as if they were the expression of an endless hatred – and crush every living being within their reach, all metaphysical theories that speak of natural harmony and final fusion sound like a truism aimed to console those who cannot tolerate the way things are. The misery and violence suffered ff by men – and animals alike – hardly allows them to adjust to the idea of nature as a self-regulated whole (as metaphysics and common sense have always proclaimed), but they are also straightforwardly irreconcilable with the image of the universe as the creation of a sovereign Wisdom. On the contrary, nature is – or at least seems to be – subjected to a diabolical intelligence that unceasingly acts to destroy every being, every kind of organization, an impression emphasized in the quoted passage by the violent attack of the surf against the cliff and, especially, by the roar that transforms the landscape into a desolate hell. For what could have been one of those melancholic sites that induces meditation and spirituality, provokes instead a mind’s total unsettling, because of the roar wherein a dreadful although elusive presence is felt. This presence is embodied all of a sudden in the being around which the narrative unfolds: the whirlpool called the Maelstrom. No other natural phenomenon would have been better than this to make visible the perturbing unbalance of potency and destructivity that romanticism discovered in nature: a whirl is perfectly explainable by objective reasons, but because of its terrifying power it should be perceived as an evil agent, whose only goal is to annihilate every existence and, concretely, every men’s existence. In other words, it is impossible to experience the destructiveness of a whirl without seeing it as a being totally concentrated on tearing everything to pieces for no specific reason, although with a terrible awareness of what it does, which is without a doubt the origin of mythical and magical thought (which perceives behind any phenomenon the manifestations of some hideous will ), as well as of animism, whereby modern science branded them as aberrations. Nevertheless, it must be said that the opposed forces so vividly described in this passage suggest the voluntary outburst of an entity so monstrous that no idea is able to match it: The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an

342

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven (271).

The natural human tendency to see wretchedness as an injustice consciously inflicted by an evil potency (a tendency that neither personal maturity nor culture can totally eradicate from the average individual ) could be considered to be the best proof of a universal intuition that evil is the very principle of natural order and, even more, that it is present in every manifestation of nature; that is to say, it is infinitely reproduced. Actually, that intuition is harbored not only by man: it is also borne by animals, whose instinctive ferocity and desire could be seen as an expression of their obscure consciousness that no matter how much they try to flee, they will be crushed as soon as that blind will happens to act. Of course, all this sounds like mere anthropomorphic daydreaming, a sample of those equivocal schemes that – for lack of profundity – substitute explanations for free association and vindicate a panicky unconsciousness among all living creatures. Nevertheless, provided that this tendency is not taken objectively but it is, instead, interpreted just like a psychological reaction from whoever sees nature’s contradictions, it can supply us with a useful image to communicate the contradiction entailed by the regularity that determines nature in accordance with rational causality, and, on the other hand, by the sudden outburst of terror sparked off by the perception of nature in the teeth of disaster. It is not casual, then, that Poe reminds us in this passage that ‘‘no human imagination can conceive nature brutality, for what is aberrant here is not violence as such but its undeniable orientation, its animosity, the simultaneously all-embracing and indeterminable will to squash, to scourge, and to destroy, which is not linked here (differently ff from what happens in tragedy) to a cosmic justice, but to a physical causality, which man – compelled by anguish – rejects for all he is worth. Nature cannot be as destructive as it seems to be in the light of the mechanical interplay of forces and phenomena; beyond explanations incapable of furnishing a true relief, one feels that no landscape would terrify in such a measure if there were not a sound cause for it. No matter how much reason disdains this branding as an imaginative confusion, whoever is sensible enough would also think, with the view of such a landscape, that an evil presence was within an inch of venting on him; something that, to top it all, does not happen at the end. Nature keeps as regular as ever with regard to man; he shivers because of the imposing power he perceives throughout

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

343

everything, but nothing more is revealed to him, notwithstanding his whole impression is that what he sees is a lot more than a physical phenomenon: The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound [whirl]; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom – but the yell that went up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempting to describe (277).

The comparison between the thunder of the whirl and the roar of an evil being is again the vehicle to unfold the contradiction I have elucidated between nature’s animosity and the stillness of the Heavens (a contradiction that leads to that between physical objectivity and animosity). Nature is against man insofar as it is at bottom against any rational order, a fact suggested by ancient myths, according to which chaos was turned into cosmos only after the titans (Uranus’s early and abominable offspring) ff were overthrown by the Olympic Gods, commanded by Zeus, who doomed his enemies to live forever in a dark abyss.12 From down there, however, they try uselessly, time and time again, to recover their former greatness; and although they always fail, their potency is awful enough to spark off devastation and death. Now, could this apocalyptical image be reconciled with the objective order according to which nature has been explained by science, or with the transcendent harmony whereon it was framed in accordance with metaphysics? Not at all. For opposite reasons, neither science nor metaphysics can make it comprehensible; and the same happens with the description itself, which just shows the horror without intending to justify it, although underlining that man’s existence and nature (which have perforce to be thought, both of them, in accordance with the same principle) are felt, nevertheless, as the two extremes of an insurmountable contradiction which only the most archaic myths have dealt with. In order to grasp the function of evil in nature and concretely in human individual existence, it could be convenient to confront what has been said in this section with the Kantian remarks on the feeling of the sublime, that appear in the Critique of Judgement, paragraph 23 (A76). As we see, for Kant this feeling is directly linked with the imaginative possibility of overcoming the bounds imposed by the violence of nature in order to get a resoluteness able to fulfill moral law, which, because of its very sanctity,

344

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

demands every action to be determined solely by the law and not by any sudden drive. Instead of that, Poe’s passages underline the impotence and terror experienced by anyone in view of the most imposing natural phenomena, while for Kant these are simply the starting point of a psychological process, which is irrelevant at bottom to appraise the moral value of actions. Thus, Poe insists that imagination is never up to nature’s monstrous strength, although (differently ff from what Kant does) he does not deduce from that disproportion consequences concerning man’s moral capacity or incapacity to surmount his own evil tendencies. Rather, it leads to a vision of man as a being trapped amidst fighting entities, which are devastating enough to unsettle the correspondence postulated by reason between existence and reality, a correspondence that is the essence of justice and personal responsibility. Needless to say this entails in no way that existence lacks a moral ground, or that man is abandoned to himself in a universe where no sense is perceivable. What this shows is rather that in absence of a principle to identify his drives with some archetypical Wisdom, or at least with a natural order kindred to his wants and ends, man has to live as if he were permanently about to be swallowed by an unfathomable whirl like the one described by Poe. The tautness sparked off by such a vital situation adds more desperation to existence, up to the point at which either man dies or finally goes mad. Regardless of what happens, man is destroyed, living surrounded by hallucinations and nightmares which overwhelm most of the people, whether they confess it or not. Inasmuch as nature is threatening for the individual but there is no way to figure out why it is so, the risk of falling into a hopeless imbalance is close at hand for everyone. Thus, man discovers, in the light of nature crushing potency, not an image of his inner moral greatness (as Kant postulated), but a repulsive tendency aimed against him, which leads to man’s necessary flight from it, taking refuge in culture, which is a ‘‘second nature’’ created by man himself. Nevertheless, the remedy has been worse than the disease because nature is not only an external determination, but it is, above all, the framework of man’s internal being: in the middle of culture – a world supposedly made to his measure – man meets time and time again in himself a force incomparably more violent than that of nature. These are the same awful drives he had hoped to escape, but now he cannot get rid of them: in view of the impossibility of venting them on others without his risking everything, their hallucinatory condition becomes more and more unbearable, and man ends up going mad, provided that there is no

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

345

way to explain why men cannot coexist peacefully and – still more – happily. It would seem that nature had been conceived by an intelligent being, simultaneously evil and shrewd, who furnished existence precisely with the measure of wretchedness and horror required to keep man on tenterhooks, but in such a way that he could endure and even enjoy it. As a matter of fact, and beyond the exaggerations of the sloppy (who are wont to see their meaningless boredom as a cosmic tragedy), human coexistence offers ff an appearance a lot more vulgar than disturbing. Because of that the unsettlement perceptible, at every step in all and sundry men, demands to be figured out more carefully: is it not absurd for people endowed with intelligence, beauty and even richness to be perpetually in the doldrums more often than not? On the other hand: is it normal that someone who behaves as a normal person hides a contorted face beneath his would-be calmness? Of course, it is. And this is why the romantic ontology of evil is incomprehensible without a peculiar psychology, or rather a mental pathology, one that is structured not in order to purify (as tragedy does) or redeem the soul (as in Christianity) but to bring to light the radical unintelligibility of the human mind. This ‘‘Copernican revolution’’ implies that inasmuch as nature is reducible – in spite of its threatening potency – to the background of culture, or to a kind of immense warehouse whereof all the supplies for satisfying human growing needs could be taken, the problem is not how to keep it outside the human world, but how to check it inside everyone. It is in the mental space where nature becomes really mortal for the individual, for there is no way to regulate the sudden outbursts provoked for no apparent cause or by causes utterly alien to the way someone defines his own life. Thus, the real threat entailed by nature is not the violence of the wild regions on the Earth’s edges, but the ferocity and the criminal tendencies hidden in every person. Poe dedicated three of his narratives to figuring out how evil is sheltered in man’s interiority, and how its outcomes led him to discover an aberrant force, which could be considered the example by antonomasia of the riddle of evil, since it rejects the perfunctory metaphysical definition of ‘‘faculties of soul’’ and compels us to reformulate utterly our conception of individual inner complexity and the theoretical framework to analyze it. The narratives whereof I speak are T he T elltale Heart, T he Black Cat and – above all – T he Imp of the Perverse.13 The last of these begins by reminding us that, because of having not so secretly inherited the dogmatic confidence of theology in the final identity between reality and transcendent reason (a confidence that stems from a metaphysical need to find

346

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

an absolute ground for existence), science has neglected the study of the most interesting human drive, which Poe explains in a passage that is worthy quoting in extenso: It would have been wiser, it would have been safer to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being! [...] Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong [...] Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse – elementary [...] It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists (517).

The passage’s content should be unfolded from its ground, which is the necessity of an empirical approach to man’s being. Contrary to man’s definition as a rational being and the identification between rationality and a sovereign wisdom (whose more proper name is God), man has to ff between reason and be understood by means of that original difference existence whereby his being is defined. This difference ff compels us to grasp it as a complex whole; thereafter, the first step to lay the foundations of a really philosophical anthropology or science of man starts from that difference ff and rejects completely the metaphysical mystification of divine wisdom and man, not precisely because of epistemological causes (which, independently of censures against the obscurantism fostered by religion, would in any case be irrelevant to the precise meaning of human existence without God), but by its final insignificance and abstruseness. When man is defined as a fallen spirit or as a divine creature made after God’s own image and likeness there is no way to discern without prejudices the strange tendency to do evil that is perceivable at each moment in every man, unless one appeals (as Saint Augustine did) to an original proclivity, which is as groundless as the rest of the metaphysical ideas concerning man.

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

347

It would be necessary, then, to have new principles and methods to determine a human being’s complexity to the extent allowed by man’s own behavior, and these principles and methods must be furnished by modern natural sciences. In this case, by phrenology, a trend of psychology which states that the brain works by zones, so that if one of these were damaged, the corresponding function would straightaway cease while the other zones would go on with their job, a fact which reinforces the necessity to abandon the reduction of all mental processes to a unity (this reduction’s most famous example is the Cartesian cogito). In total opposition to such a mystification, phrenology makes it possible to survey and understand a series of phenomena that would not have been perceivable otherwise, and whereof the most disturbing one is perverseness. With regard to this, it is worthy noticing that although the word ‘‘perverseness’’ has had fundamental moral connotations through history, the concept meant by it is not morally definable in accordance to what Poe says. The main feature of the romantic ontology as it has been unfolded so far is that evil is not a cosmic force or a sinful drive aimed respectively against the universal justice or God’s supreme goodness as tragedy as Christianity had thought, for in both cases evil was just a deviation of a precedent good order. In other words, if there were a cosmic rationality or a conscious First Cause, evil would not be original by itself, which contradicts what introspection uncovers to everyone: that evil is an all-embracing force prior to reason, prior to any end, prior to archetypes, and – above all – prior to individual will. This explains why evil is utterly incomprehensible no matter how powerfully it could be experienced at any given moment. This contradiction between an absolute potency and an elusive, almost insignificant, identity is what the romantic ontology presents as the very kernel of evil: since it is an absolute strength, it ends up disappearing into imagination’s permanent flow and unfathomable corporeal processes. Evil is never visible at first sight, neither in mind nor in body; it creeps behind probable causalities, and when it is eventually perceivable as such, it is because it has finally burst against man. No concept is adequate for it because it is the permanent diversity of reality and desire; something that clearly expresses the etymology of the very word: ‘‘per-verseness’’, which literally means ‘‘by the contrary’’, and can be understood either merely as a deviation or deformation of certain form, or as an original multiplicity, not determinable by reason, although it is not completely unintelligible (this last is the meaning that has to be kept in mind here). Thus, the biblical narration of man’s fall, when the serpent tempted Eve

348

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

with the possibility of being like God and enjoying the science of good and evil, could be interpreted as the apparition of perverseness, which is not a deviation but the revelation of a possibility to become identical to the principle of reality itself. This explains why the drive figured out in this passage is contradictorily experienced as an organic desire that can be normally satisfied and as an unnamable entity, which quietly but adamantly corrupts the individual from inside to outside without touching its victim’s intelligence, except at some sudden moments of total lunacy, for its goal is to annihilate the individual’s will so to have evil actions done as if they were unintentional. This contradiction is expressed by the narrator of T he T elltale Heart as follows: ‘‘It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none’’ (354). Of course, this lack of motivation is more apparent that real, for although there is a motive, it is not linkable to an immediate good for the evildoer. In other words, the motive is not rational, but it corresponds with causality – whose principles seem to be illogical if focused on the identity of reason – and good; this has been the ground of any survey of the soul since Socrates onwards, and especially for Christianity (as was shown before). Nonetheless, the motive is somehow (in the light of introspection) comprehensible for the agent, however much it is alien to reason and incommunicable. It is the temptation to go beyond order, to prove that one is superior to any prohibition; an idea expressed in a passage identical to the previously quoted one: And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart – on of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is L aw, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself – to offer ff violence to its own nature – to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only (383).

Whether this drive is prior or not to the order it intends to violate is a question that has been discussed time and time again throughout history, and which we will not take up here. However, it must be said that according to romantic ontology it is, certainly, prior to order, for it would otherwise be necessary to justify evil by means of the Augustinian

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

349

theory of original sin, which has become nonsense in view of the brutality of nature and man’s complexity and which leads to the conclusion that the first condition required to untangle this complexity is the adoption of a psychology up to the diversity and opposition of all the drives that act beneath consciousness. Having set out the necessity of this new approach to the question of the riddle of evil is without a doubt the reason for the immense relevance that romanticism has had in our understanding of the riddle of evil and, by extension, of the disappearance of the metaphysical framework that used to integrate human existence and divine providence. No God can be at the ground of such a contorted drive, and no reason is enough for one who suffers ff it. While tragedy and Christianity were determined by a metaphysical conception of nature and human being, romanticism – which appeals to reason just to show more persuasively how irrational evil is – is determined by a curious mix of narrative, intellectual exercise and even criminal report; a mix that finds its unity thanks to a very interesting use of irony. This last feature leads us to what is, perhaps, romanticism’s most interesting consequence with regard to the comprehension of the function that evil carries out in human existence: that justice wherewith evil is punished is no longer universal compensation or fate, but it is now circumscribed to the merely legal aspect of the question, and thus it lacks the potency to transform the evildoer’s very being. It is only the application of a penal correction, a condition that matches the other side of the question: that the mental dimension wherein all this process unfolds lies always in the indecipherable confusion of lucidity and madness. This confusion stems – for its part – from the final possibility of reducing evil to hallucination and crime to vulgar murder, as is suggested by the narrator at the beginning of T he Black Cat: My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified – have tortured – have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror – to many they will seem less terrible than baroques (381).

That evil can be mistaken for a vulgar outburst and fate is conceived as the unbalance inherent in individual decadence and a boring marriage is, in both cases, the best index of the total extinction of evil’s potency and, with that, of the reduction of the wisdom furnished by it to a simple regret (which the evildoer experiences because he has marred his possibility to be happy and, above all, to be normal). A life defined by a

350

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

passionate crime is a shade less than a parody of the greatness of tragic existence, and reminds one of the complaints of Saint Augustine because of the petty larceny of his infancy. In spite of the intensity of the drama sparked off by it, evil can no longer match an ontological and moral conception of the identity between nature and man. It remains just as a psychological risk – which has to be overcome in order to get socially acceptable behavior – and all its profundity is in incidental utility: ‘‘[It would be judged] a direct instigation of the arc-fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good’’ (519). It is as plain as a pikestaff that this is not a justification such as those used by metaphysics in order to integrate every evil fact or action into a final end, wherein all contradictions would be solved thanks to God’s providence. Instead, the romantic ontology is based on the idea that evil is a principle both of nature and of human thought and it cannot be justified. Thus, its would-be participation in the development of good (however much its expression happens to be impressive) is more a desperate resort than a bearable idea; and if it is taken as it should be (that is to say, as an irony), it is then useful not to morals but to the imaginative projection intended to overcome the infinite gulf between reason and existence. VII

We have dwelt upon romanticism a lot more than upon tragedy and Christianity because it provides in fact the most important ontology of evil, insofar as it makes it impossible to reconcile rationality with the sudden violent drives that orient the individual’s inner life, even against his will. Now, if the romantic final reduction of evil to imagination has an ironic sense, this is because romanticism is ruled (notwithstanding its declared combativeness and refusal of any transcendent conventionalism) by the most determinant of all metaphysical assumptions, i.e., that reality is rational and vice versa, that reason is real (according to the famous Hegelian formulation in the foreword of the Philosophy of L aw), although their identity is no longer based on the nature of things but on the unfolding of a consciousness which fights against limitations in order to get an absolute idea of itself, however much that idea happens to be compensated by endless suffering ff at the level of pure subjectivity. It is enough, indeed, to read again Poe’s passages to see to what extent they square with rationalism and with a moral conception of existence, which are now even more complete because they seem to have been

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

351

overcome by imagination’s potency. But they have not truly been overcome, which is evident by the fact that the story’s thread is unfolded by an omniscient subject who strives to impose unity by means of reflection and memory, although the events he tells confirm time and time again that he is originally split, and that he is not up to fathoming his own being. In other words, romanticism becomes interesting from a philosophical standpoint because it brings to its limit the transcendent individual identity with which Christianity intended to solve the contradiction posed by tragic injustice. Ontologically absolute, the subject transcends himself – however much he is conditioned and even subdued by his real conditions of existence (the most disturbing of which are his limitations when faced with the complex facts of causality) – and projects an existence that is private for him, not due to its lack of universal recognition – which is the real meaning of the term – but to its capacity to do it by himself. For romantic subjectivity, no order is superior to will, but since will is always hindered by unavoidable limitations, existence has to be a perpetual contradiction. Although it is transcendentally infinite, will is compelled to obey the finite whereby nature is determined. If, at the level of its expressions, this contradiction – or rather, mystification – leads to ravings, crime and modern subjectivity’s permanent imbalance, at the philosophical level it sets out the necessity to reformulate the whole conception of human existence, further than the dualisms implicated in any kind of metaphysics. This intellectual enterprise’s extreme achievement is the Dionysian ontology, which is best unfolded in Nietzsche’s T hus spake Zarathustra.14 To understand this ontology demands a new metaphysics, which unlike the cosmological, the theological and the psychological ones (which respectively determine the tragic, the Christian and the romantic ontologies of evil), takes for granted neither universal rationality (whether objective or subjective; transcendent or immanent) nor the identity of an individual who is determined by his own nature to square with some omnipresent reason. Contrary to the idea of an efficient or final reconcilliation with universal reason because of a teleological development, Dionysian ontology proposes a very strange dynamic conception of human existence, which is based on a sui generis perception of the subjective drives and passions that oppose man to the rest of the life (insofar as he is the only one able to get a rational representation of himself ). At the same time they, oddly enough, enable him to identify himself with these other living beings (since man is carried away the same as any other animal).

352

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

Indeed, if for a moment the metaphysical dogmas concerning man’s very boasted rational determination were laid aside and individuality were analyzed as acutely as possible, it would be plain as a pikestaff that the average man never or almost never acts through his understanding. Far from evincing reason in the actions whereby his life is defined, man shows a terrible brutality more often than not, which implies the two meanings of the concept ‘‘brutality’’: stupidity and cruelty. Instead of figuring out why a being that is capable of soaring up to the highest ideal – his identification with God – is so easily carried away by grudges and insanity, metaphysics disdains whatever phenomenon or tendency is contrary to reason’s would be primacy. However, the problem is not this (since these remarks are by no means a vindication of irrationality), but that reason is unjustifiably identified with social normality, which hinges to a large extent upon prejudices and customs that are unacceptable as supreme rules for behavior and personal formation. In any event, no theoretical absurdity goes beyond this simple fact: the average man is more an ontological aberration than a metaphysical standard, and he resists, in his deeds, the clarifying strength of thought because – like the mythical Proteus – he changes time and time again, and (for the desperation of any kind of metaphysicians) he lacks consistency (both psychological as well as moral). Even if every man must be thought of as a rational being capable of comprehending his own existence, it has to be realized, that he also has, very frequently, to be treated as if he were the most despicable thrall. In accordance with this, Dionysian ontology postulates that evil springs originally from the heart of human nature, which is none other than an imbalance irreducible to the anachronistic metaphysical dualism bodysoul or – in a version more graspable for modern thought – to the bodymind dualism. As a matter of fact, the multiple expression of that enigmatical entity that we call ‘‘man’’ compels us to reject this or any other dualism, in order to match the complexity of a being who is by principle weak enough to mar his entire life, provided that he is going to satisfy his pettiest whims, and bold enough to carry out feats that border on the sublime. Still more, what is really fascinating here is how both weakness and boldness are not contrary drives for man, for both show – each to their own – that the only nature whereof man can be totally sure is the mere possibility to be whatever, for what is fundamental here is not the final outcome of any drive but its endurance: The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest in itself, the most necessary soul, which out of joy flings itself into chance:

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

353

The soul in Being, which plunges into Becoming; the possessing soul, which seeks to attain desire and longing: The soul fleeing from itself, which overtakes itself in the widest circuit; the wisest soul, to which folly speaks most sweetly: The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and countercurrent, their ebb and their flow: – oh, how could the loftiest soul fail to have the worst parasites? (III, 56, 19).

Therefore, human possibilities must not be understood as concerning the fulfillment of an essence through its becoming, which would be tantamount to saying that man is potentially what he must be in action. There is no act to be fulfilled and there is no standard wherewith existence should be measured; consequently, a noble man’s parasites are not faults perceptible in the light of some archetypical identity but limitations that stem from his inability to find an order to endlessly express his own imbalance, and this inability is evil itself. For the problem here is not at bottom imbalance, but its being circumscribed to one of its manifestations without noticing that they are utterly casual for themselves since they could be haphazardly begotten: ‘‘To compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance’’ (III, 56, 3). Thus, the imbalance in particular manifestations are worthwhile insofar as they are voluntarily integrated to keep the process as a whole within the reach of every individual, who must make the decision to repeat it time and time again, until a new possibility has been outlined by his strength of will. From this perspective, evil is equal to an imbalance which has not become a possibility exciting enough to compel anyone to create a unique way of being a man; that is to say, a being with no definitive identity, who is, nevertheless, in the permanent unfolding of his own identity: this is the only real aim of human existence inasmuch as it offers ff the possibility to endlessly imagine what to be at the next moment; which is by no means something that could or (still more) should be experienced by anyone, and even less by people who have never felt the necessity to order their inner confusion. These people are impervious to their most basic possibilities, and if all of a sudden they wanted to live what they had forgone until then, it is sure that they would be destroyed by their haste and slovenliness, since being a man is not a goal for the impulsive (rather repulsive) ones, who are wont to compensate for their lack of steadiness by means of violence and mistake whim with will: ‘‘To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the hardest for all of you, you sublime ones!’’ (II, 35).

354

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

This is comprehensible solely if metaphysical outlooks concerning will’s substantial infinitude are put aside, and will is figured out according to the abovementioned inner complexity of individuality, which prevents us by principle from defining it as a faculty that could be determined according to a universal rational framework. It is true that man can do what he wants and that his will can match his understanding with regard to some specific triteness, but it is completely impossible for him to do so when his whole existence is at stake, for there is no way to determine from top to bottom the multiplicity of elements that intervene at any singe moment. This fact reminds us that the weakness inherent to every human is not a fault but a way of being, whereby anyone has at hand the capability to deal with whatever he has to face and above all with the hardest thing he will have to deal with: death. For death must be lived with the same intensity, but also with the same relativity that pleasure and joy are experienced. Thus, will has to be defined beyond individual intentionality; and we must bear in mind that man never acts abstractly but in accordance with his own possibilities, which include a conjunction of circumstances and causalities that are perhaps irrelevant to appraise the situation from a normal standpoint, but are decisive to knowing human existence in its peculiarity. This peculiarity lies in the possible identification of will and all the conditions whereby it is surpassed and carried away throughout life. For example, a will engaged in a task without possibility of being accomplished would be absurd and must be considered a whim: a fruit of mere stupidity. And vice versa, a situation that excluded reinforcement of will could never be considered human. This does not exclude, of course, conscious self-damage – whose extreme case is suicide – provided that we admit that whoever commits it is at least after an imaginary way of being (without pain or sorrow), however much he claimed he hated life. Because of all this, will must be concretized by means of a decision made with no other basis than the pure drive to be forever, a decision that does not spring only from mind, since no drive can be sustained apart from body, and which corroborates that both of them are interchangeable labels and not definable substances. Body also is an expression of the will, and it is equally complex: ‘‘Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage – it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body’’ (I, 4). That is why will is never identifiable with oneself, no matter how much it happens to be integrated with self-identity. Nevertheless, a new contradiction arises then, inasmuch as man is defined by his finitude, but the possibility we have spoken of

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

355

has to be infinite to match the unfolding of an imbalance which should be sustained forever precisely as such; that is to say, as a unity capable of enduring whatever interference is alien to its dynamism, and which should simultaneously be organized enough to integrate and shape the energy surplus generated by itself. This contradiction between finitude and infinitude is another formulation of the ontological complexity that has been commented on throughout the last paragraphs, and which has to be surveyed in the light of the metamorphic nature of drives. In other words, since the contradiction is not absolute, it is not then due to the very nature of the forces that participate in the process (it has been said that man is not thinkable beyond specific determinations), but to the mystification of will as a faculty ordered by or opposed to reason, on the one hand, and of the concept of time used to prop up that mystification, on the other hand. This has, consequently, to be solved by appealing to an understanding of time which is unattainable for metaphysics. Will is meaningful at bottom only when it is pretended to be identifiable in a temporal dimension, and not when conceived on the fringe of time, which would be possible only for a divine will, of which no rational proof can be furnished and that is utterly irrelevant in order to lay the foundations of human existence. Now, if will is not a faculty but the metamorphic unity of multitudinous drives and the required circumstances to carry them out, it is, then, more felt or intuited than properly determined by the individual. In other words, everyone acts after having somehow perceived what his possibilities are, which implies that everyone does just what he can do, however much this is hidden to his consciousness. As has been mentioned, a ‘‘free will’’ is – when metaphysically defined – a concept as insubstantial as ‘‘soul’’ or ‘‘decision’’ are. However, what has to be stressed now is not that fact, but the necessity to reconsider the nature of time. When time is studied from the perspective set out here, it does not appear as a duration of mathematically ordered instants, but as the ‘‘eternal recurrence of the same’’, which refers to the conditions and strengths whereby any particular instant is defined. This conception of time is without a doubt the very kernel of the Dionysian paradigm of evil and, of course, of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It postulates that future, present and past – which are considered as dimensions naturally or substantially different ff from each other both by common sense and by vulgar approaches to the question (an assumption upheld by metaphysics too) – are at bottom possibilities of being that can get indistinctly actual-

356

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

ized. For example, man dwells in the past or in the future more often than not – whether consciously or not – as disgruntled people and daydreamers corroborate to so large a extent to say that men living heedful of the present are exceptions that require a lot of convincing. For the present is not a state or a natural dimension; it is in sooth the opening of a possibility to be carried out by means of a decision, which has to be interpreted either as the everlasting struggle against the haphazard or simply as the necessity to face the lack of determination that is at the very core of life. If the complexity inherent to any man (even to the godforsaken ones) is used to elucidate this question, it will be as plain as a pikestaff that time has no impervious continuity but it is rather a simultaneity of perspectives, and it appears or disappears led by the parallel multiplicity of drives with which those perspectives are not immediately identifiable. Thus, the link between temporal projections and voluntary projections can never be taken for granted, for it hinges upon an undiscernible unity of man and circumstances, which explains why every moment can be interpreted from completely opposite standpoints (without perforce implying a logical absurd) and why something that someone judged as good at a certain moment is judged by the same person as evil at some other time. Therefore, nothing has vital meaning unless it is sustained through purpose: sharing a life with someone else can be less important than a short time spent with a stranger, and this is not tantamount to the sloppy idea that existence has two levels: the real and the imaginary, and that the second is the fundamental level used to appraise one’s own life, since such an idea leaves aside the fact that when imagination is really creative it cannot be branded as daydreaming but has to be carried out since it changes then into the motor of existence. On the other hand, Dionysian ontology has rejected substantial conceptions of will and time because of their irrelevancy to understanding individual identity and the potencies furnished by it. Thus, to say that identity is an imaginative creation means that everyone can create a possibility from his own experience and from his own capacity to keep the exact balance of tautness and looseness required to go on. This shows that will is indeed the thread of the multitudinous drive which everyone calls their existence, but only if it is determined by time and vice versa; since it orients time through the multiplicity of possibilities, will is the compelling measure of any temporality, in such a way that neither of these two elements – mutually identified in imagination – can

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

357

claim to be the single principle of the vital process. It has to be borne in mind that time has primacy with regard to will, since it frees possibilities that would remain unattainable otherwise. Time is also opportunity, the precise instant when everything is possible for someone, and it has to be seized to carry out one’s own will. This feature is expressed by Nietzsche through the abstruse idea of the eternal recurrence of the same, which is brought up with unforgettable intensity in a song that is worth quoting in extenso: Will – so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner. Willing emancipates: but what is that called which still puts the emancipator in chains? ‘‘It was’’: thus is the Will’s teeth-gnashing and most lonesome tribulation called. Impotent towards what has been done – it is a malicious spectator of all that is past. Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time’s desire – that is the Will’s most lonesome tribulation (II, 42).

This passage – and other similar ones – would be utterly unintelligible if they were assessed by means of a metaphysical theory of time: how could the slightest blink be overcome if time were substantial for itself and every one of its moments were objectively defined? The past would be as impenetrable as the future, and the same would be true of the present, which would just appear to be straightaway lost. Links among these three dimensions would be incomprehensible, and the same thing would happen to the ontological difference ff between time and other kinds of things. Now, although this could seem very original, it is just partially original, insofar as it appeals to something that everyone has felt since the beginnings of history: that, independently from time’s metaphysical nature and/or the devastating effects ff of life’s organic conditions, its vital function never matches either chronological succession nor material decadence, which for man is synonymous with aging, senility and death (not knowing which of these is the most frightful). In accordance with what was said in the first paragraphs of this section, Dionysian ontology is as metaphysical as the other three ontologies, although in this case the term ‘‘metaphysical’’ does not mean at all the existence of any final aim (whether a cosmic, theological or natural one) but the impossibility of establishing a correspondence between time and will’s discontinuous frameworks, unless such a correspondence is furnished by imagination, with all the problems attendent to this, since no imaginative operation can provide the founda-

358

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

tions of an existence that is also experienced in the very frequently irrational movement of mind and subjectivity. Thus, although Dionysian ontology vindicates the romantic pre-eminence of imagination, it is not contrasted with reason and, additionally, it gets rid of the risk of madness and ravings that haunts romantic individuality. Imagination does not oppose reason because it acts at a superior level of existence, where there are no things or events but only possibilities in permanent generation, which leads us to time and eternity’s final identity through a recurrence that hinges simultaneously upon individual will and all those circumstances that man cannot forestall. The most notable outcome of this recurrence is that evil has to be considered as insubstantial as the rest of reality (including man’s very being), for it would be a contradictio in terminis that everything was definable within imagination’s unfolding but just evil kept its identity on the fringe of it. This transformation of the sense of evil must be assimilated to the framework of poetic creation, and it must be understood by the effects ff it can provide in order to reinforce the total movement of the vital drives, for which individuality is incidental just precisely because time is identical to eternity and will to the enigmatical correspondence between circumstances and individuality, which compels us to create new possibilities, as that of the perpetual redemption of the process as a whole. Provided that existence goes on, evil is not only acceptable but even desirable: ‘‘For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds’’ (III, 48). VIII

In the preceding sections, it has been shown that the riddle of evil was conceivable solely after postulating that reality is a rational whole, whose grounds are simultaneously the principles of a personal life totally fulfilled. This idea (which is, no doubt, the greatest intellectual achievement in history) was Hellenic thought’s touchstone since its first formulation in Homer’s work onwards. In fact, Hellenes (independently from having been changed into a modern myth by German philosophers who – from Hegel to Heidegger – proclaimed to be their spiritual heirs) were the only people able to encompass, by means of one and the same logos, the nature of things as well as human being’s inherent complexity. Thereat, they had perforce to face evil, for no rationality would be sustainable in the light of the imbalance whereby individual life was adamantly subdued.

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

359

In Hellenic thought there was so keen an awareness of evil that instead of generating desperation or resignation it created a desire for understanding. Such a desire unfolded in the two aspects of this question, which we have distinguished since the beginning: the problem of evil and the riddle of evil. The first one was solved by creating a socio-political framework – democracy – which, in spite of its limitations, is still the ideal of any rational coexistence, because it allows one to settle oppositions and differences ff through dialogue. The second one, the riddle, resisted the solutions provided by mythology, tragedy and ethics, which must be studied as existence conceptions opposed to one another in their respective metaphysical ground, and on whose differences ff we will not dwell, for we have dealt with them throughout these lines, although it must be underlined that – independently from them – it is the case that these three conceptions share the same aim, that is to say, eradicating evil from reality (which is impossible inasmuch as evil is an elemental force), rather than figuring out if there is some logic capable of harmonizing evil with the idea of an absolute fulfillment of every human being, in order to clarify why an individual man is never equally meaningless and dispensable as any other individual life. If man were so, some individuals could be sacrificed for the sake of the other’s welfare whenever it were required; that was an idea against which Hellenic culture was aimed throughout. Still more, it would have been enough that a single man were dispensable to turn the idea of rational identity between reality and individual life into nonsense. Hellenes knew this acutely, and the theoretical development in their culture that goes from mythology to philosophical ethics shows their effort ff to overcome it. Even what is, perhaps, the strangest idea ever conceived, that of a transcendent world, which since Plato to Kant was the metaphysician’s hobbyhorse (a world supposedly ruled by sovereign good; identified with God by Christianity), even it must be interpreted as an extreme solution to evil, inasmuch as it offers ff a compensation for it, although such a solution is finally useless to make up for life’s sorrows. Needless to say, the modern fight against metaphysics – which since Descartes was focused on an epistemological standpoint – is at bottom related to the incongruence posed by evil in the universal rationality of the individual human life, and that the refusal of transcendence wherewith metaphysics intended to palliate or to simulate that contradiction is also the refusal of theological transcendence, which has sparked off more confusion and scepticism than real understanding. Of course, if metaphysics has to be rejected – which is what has actually happened during the

360

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

last two centuries, both in the field of culture and thought – it follows that metaphysic’s most awkward assumption (the idea of a provident God, who is the ground for every individual existence) has to be also rejected, and together with it, the conception of man that has prevailed in the Western tradition for almost two millennia. Thus, what is perceivable in the final dissolution of providential explanations of individual existence – a dissolution that was the real axis of last century’s culture – is not precisely the triumph of objectivity or some questionable ‘‘turn to immanence’’, but something a lot more decisive and intriguing: the revelation of the riddle of evil beyond the Christian theological framework. The question of the strange manifestations of evil during the last decades – questions based on obscure drives and alienation (as in the case of Nazism) – should be posed rather from the standpoint of the previous question of what happens with the present lack of meaning that evil suffers ff and the corresponding transformation of it into something absolutely trite, reproducible ad infinitum. Now, in order to attain a ground to reflect on this question, and without my proposing to trace an identity between the fourfold ontology brought up in this text, I will recapitulate what I have elucidated, so as to show its relevance for the present time, an age which can be defined for more than one reason as the first epoch in history utterly alien to the riddle of evil and to the rational framework of personal life inherent to that riddle. Tragedy sprang from the irreducible contradiction between justice and responsibility that fate defines, and it tried to overcome such a contradiction by appealing to farsightedness. Provided the ignorance of even the wisest men with respect to their own being (whereof the most terrible example is Oedipus), it is better to limit oneself, as far as possible, to life’s essential wants and to play an average role in society, avoiding the unbridled chimeras begotten by stupidity and haughtiness. Man is not allowed to trespass the spheres wherein Gods have absolute dominion. From this slant, tragedy sought to reduce the catastrophic outcome of evil integrating man in the universal structure of a nature ruled by Gods. Christianity, for its part, freed nature from evil by identifying this last with the individual heart’s sullen drives, and, with that, it turned individual life into a question concerning one’s permanent fight against oneself, a fight whose compensation would be eternal redemption. This implied for the first time, that every existence had a transcendent identity with a reality defined as Creation, an identity that demanded, nevertheless, to be fulfilled even beyond the grave. Thus, although Christianity was forced

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

361

to polarize the terms of the riddle and even to overwhelm man with the consciousness of sin (a concept unintelligible to tragic thought) in order to preserve God’s absolute goodness, it also opened the door to what could be called the ‘‘economy of evil’’, that is to say, the utilization of evil for orientating every individual’s behavior and desires, and not only those of the noble, for whom tragedy was conceived. Romanticism, which we have considered as the quintessence of the riddle of evil (since it opposed reason and individual life point by point, making impossible their reconciliation except through the vital drives bursting out in crime and mental instability), lead to a purely imaginative conception of evil by revealing that the same facts that could be interpreted as the most awful transgressions are also explainable as simple everyday life incidents or unmotivated deeds due to vulgar coincidences. And although it is true that romanticism was based to a great extent on the idea that evil is the kernel of reality (notwithstanding what logic said), it traced a clear line of discontinuity between evil as such (circumscribed to wild nature, whether physical or psychological ) and individual life. Thenceforward, evil could no longer be a vital force axial to an individual’s enhancement, but a mere pathology. With the Dionysian ontology, evil was finally understood as the differff ence between a drive and its ideal representation, a difference ff that is transformed, time and time again, thanks to the inexhaustible possibilities involved in the eternal recurrence of the same. A drive is always aimed at reinforcing the whole movement of reality, even at the expense of the individual; but that does not stand for insurmountable evil, because man is in essence just the incidental identification of drive and time, which amounts to saying that all his life hinges upon chance’s unfathomable recurrence. As this epitome shows, in spite of its historical roots in ancient and Christian thought, the riddle of evil is a modern question because it has had to be faced – since romanticism onwards – without the transcendent framework furnished by metaphysics, romanticism reduced this framework, either by means of objectivity – whereon science and coexistence are based – or by means of a pathos haunting everyone in the depth of his heart. The ‘natural’ identity of rationality and individual life was thenceforward devastated. Thus, romanticism should be understood, on the one hand, as the origin of the only real philosophical reflection on evil: the Dionysian reflection on evil, which is a statement that has to be focused from both Nietzsche’s thought inner development and the disturbing silence that

362

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

has covered evil along the subsequent reflections on existence. For, although the analysis of anguish and finitude provided by Heidegger, the existentialists (Sartre and Camus, above all) and hermeneutics have brought to light an undeniably original comprehension of man, none of them have taken advantage of that comprehension in order to lay the foundations of a rational approach to life. On the contrary, they have underlined the total irrationality of its grounds; this is alien to the riddle of evil that sprung – as it has been shown – from the Hellenic effort ff to identify man and reality by means of reason. In other words, without a rational vital framework, there is no evil (but then, there is no humanity either). Of course, this remark does not ignore that the modern concept (or rather, concepts) of reason are not at all immediately comparable to those of ancient thought, which is the condition sine qua non to appraise correctly this point: however reason could be defined, it is a determination alien to the contemptible ‘‘freedom’’ of individual imagination that is nowadays considered as existence’s real ground. This leads us to a second historic issue concerning romanticism, that is to say, a pseudo-solution to evil that is far from being philosophical or even intellectual: the society of leisure and consumerism that has been structured with terrifying speediness and efficiency in the course of the last century and a half. This society, for the first time in history, has turned evil into something meaningless, a contingent incident to be overcome as soon as possible and whereby no personal farsightedness is attainable. This final barrenness in evil (perceptible in all the social dimensions of present-day existence) compels us – instead of fostering the optimism proclaimed by their apologists – to figure out its sinister identity with the irrationality of contemporary social coexistence and the individuals’ shallow bewildering, who are not evil enough to get up to change their petty misfortunes into real paths of self-formation. That is to say, average individuals have nowadays no cultural space to reflect about life because they lack the indispensable evil ground to do so. What the outcome of such a want could be is something we cannot predict. Perhaps it will lead us to the everlasting pleasure to which contemporary society is supposedly aimed; or perhaps (which is a lot more probable), it will lead us to unimaginable forms of massive brutishness. Anyhow – and this is our only certainty – we will have to deal with it. Therefore, it is better then to do it consciously. Vale. V Meritorious University of Puebla, Mexico M

ON THE FOURFOLD ONTOLOGY OF EVIL

363

NOTES 1 See section V and the corresponding notes. 2 Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, 23 vv., ed. of the German Academy of Sciences (Berlin: 1902–1955), v. V, p. 263. 3 Ibid., p. 433. 4 Aristotle, Poetics, 1451b. 5 Sophocles, Oedipus the King, ed. Charles W. Eliot and trans. E. H. Plumptre, The Harvard Classics VIII, part 5 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909–1914). In all quotations, the numbers in brackets correspond to the numbers of the verses. 6 I would like to mention that this interpretation of the role of the gods does not heed the difference ff that exists between them and Fate itself, which is fundamental in all the Hellenic cultures and particularly for tragedy. For example, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound is developed throughout by the final subjection of the gods themselves to Fate: Zeus can be as arbitrary and tyrannical as he likes, but he shall be responsible for his actions exactly as man is. Anyhow, in my interpretation of Oedipus the King I did not emphasize this because I think that it is not relevant for my present purpose. 7 Poethics, 1448a 8 All quotations of this work come from Pusey’s English translation, which appears in the following electronic address: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod / /augustine/Pusey. Roman numerals at the end of each reference refer respectively to the book and the chapter in the work, while Arabic ones refer to concrete paragraphs; a convention universally used to quote T he Confessions. 9 With regard to this point, it is enough to quote a passage from the Great Instauration by Bacon, that was published in 1620, to corroborate that the only aim of the modern paradigm of science is to benefit human existence by whatever means at hand: ‘‘[I would like that the wise men consider] what are the true ends of knowledge and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things, but for the benefit and use of life [...]’’ [Francis Bacon, Selected Philosophical Works, Ed. Rose-Mary Sargent (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 1999)], p. 75. 10 Needless to say, this last remark is a mere synthesis of the questions elucidated by Kant both in the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’’ of the Critique of Pure Reason and in the introduction to the Critique of Judgement. Still more, it could be said that the work of Kant as a whole is nothing but the analysis of this mentioned contradiction. 11 All quotations of these works refer to the following edition: Sixty-Seven T ales, ed. Alix Perry (New York: Random House, 1990). Numbers in brackets indicates the respective pages after the text. 12 Hesiod, T heogony, v. 807 and ff. ff 13 They appear respectively on the pages 354–357, 381–387 and 516–520 of the abovementioned edition. 14 Quotations of this work are taken from the English translation by Thomas Common, which is contained in the following electronic address: http://www.luminary.us/nz/ zarahustra.html(.) Roman and Arabic numerals at the end of each passage will refer respectively to the corresponding part and song of the book (when a second Arabic numeral, it will mean the particular paragraph of the song).

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL: DOSTOEVSKY ON THE SUFFERING OF HUM ANITY

T he depth of the anthropological question is first touched when we also recognize as specifically human that which is not reason. – Martin Buber

I. BACK TO THE UNDERWORLD

Plato once described the human predicament by using the memorable simile of the cave: we are all prisoners chained in the cave of shadows, and our liberation would consist in coming to the surface and seeing things as they really are. Over the eons, Plato’s insightful diagnosis has lost its original subversive bite and what contributed most to its erosion was – paradoxically – an overzealous dedication to it in the form of modernity’s urge toward the Enlightenment. Light has been associated with truth, with knowledge and with liberation. Like Prometheus, man has endeavored to steal the bright fire from the gods and become his own master. This Platonic urge toward the surface and the Promethean striving for fire have apparently brought us out of the darkness and liberated us from the oppressive constraints of collective identity as dictated by tradition, whether religious or tribal. By desacralizing and despiritualizing the world of our predecessors, we have apparently escaped from the cave and now dwell on the surface. We thus face a different ff challenge than the one depicted by Plato and live in a very different ff epoch. In furthering our search for true reality and an ideal social arrangement, we may have stolen too much fire: what it has not burned in our pious striving toward eradicating all the remnants of the shameful past has been buried beneath the surface of the earth and in the depths of the psyche. But what remains of that abandoned soul, and how can we find our home in this soul-less world? Plato wanted to exile those poets who, as if going around with a mirror, reflected the visible world, the images of images of images, instead of finding enough courage to leave the cave and look at the forms, the ideal archetypes themselves, as philosophers do. The times have changed, however, and so have the roles. Plato demanded only purity and uprightness 367 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 367–398. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

368

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

for his ideal city, but perhaps we need to see and smell the earth before we can recognize and appreciate true gold. Far more than philosophers, in our time poets are the ones who have enough wisdom and courage to see the world in which we live for what it is. Poets help us understand our predicament by appropriately calling our surface-oriented world a ‘‘pit without depth’’ (Marina Tsvetaeva), or ‘‘the Waste Land’’ (T. S. Eliot). In this well-lit and infinite, de-centralized and demystified reality in which we reside now, every perspective and evaluation is just as good as any other. Modernity’s high aspirations toward a cosmopolitan world of inalienable human rights and universal happiness have deflated into the fragmentary and relativistic world of the hopelessly solitary and spiritually homeless postmodern man. Is there anything in our flattened and alienated world that may yet suggest that the current lonely individualism and spiritual emptiness are not our permanent destiny? Is there anything that can encourage us to cultivate our deeper longings, rather than ridicule them as the shaggy ghosts of an outlived past? Postmodernists may leave us dumbfounded, but Plato already suspected that even Lethe, the mythical river of forgetfulness, could not wash away all that a soul has learned and experienced; recollection is thus always possible. Expressed in more recent, psychoanalytic language, not only does what we outgrow – the earlier stages of the individual and collective development – not disappear, it continues to exert its invisible and irremovable influence over our later experiences and decisions. Keeping that in mind, it need not be so unexpected that an encouragement for our languishing spiritual aspirations may be found in the repressed and ‘‘dark side’’ of our nature. Endless and destructive wars, countless premeditated murders, sins and wickedness of all imaginable kinds testify that the demons of the past have not disappeared after all. Although they still hide and burrow in the same places as before, they have merely assumed new forms and received different ff names. Thus the basic direction of our assignment becomes clear: if we still sincerely search for who we are and our role and place in reality, we need to find our way back to the underworld and confront our own demons. We need to retrieve our lost soul and find our place in the world. We could hardly find a better guide to introduce us to that world than the great Russian novelist Fyodor Michailovich Dostoyevsky (1821–1881). What recommends Dostoyevsky are the following four qualities: his immense desire to describe human lives as truthfully as possible; his deep look at the volcanic nature harbored in every human being; his

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

369

profound understanding of the tragic side of life; and his masterful ability to express this tragic drama in his novels and short stories. Dostoyevsky’s works put right in front of our eyes and force us to confront what we usually do not see and do not want to see. Like the tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky’s works are those mirrors in which we can recognize our hidden side; they are the true mirrors of our tormented humanity. Before Freud, Dostoyevsky was called ‘‘the great seer of the soul.’’ His penetrating and disturbing insights into the pit of the human soul were not, like Freud’s, based on psychiatric work with patients, but mostly on his own agony. From the premature deaths of his parents, of his first wife, of his beloved brother, of two of his children, to his own trembling in front of the firing squad, four years of punishment in Siberia spent with the worst criminals of Russia, a gambling passion and depressing poverty, the often recurring epileptic fits, Dostoyevsky experienced his own enormous share of misery and suffering. ff His cup was often overfilled, his quest to hear or touch his silent and distant God so frequently in vain, yet his faith had always found ways to reassert itself. Dostoyevsky was the seer of the soul because he himself made frequent – involuntary more often than intentional – journeys to that different ff world. What could Dostoyevsky find there? What if there is nothing good or profound to find in the underworld? Why did he not stay there but – like an enlightened philosopher in Plato’s cave allegory – had to return to where he came from? What could he bring with him back to this world? What if these painful journeys reveal only the meaninglessness of human suffering ff and human existence? What if they only deepen an already devastating spiritual isolation and homelessness of postmodern man? II. DOSTOYEVSKY AS A NOVELIST AND A PHILOSOPHICAL WRITER

While his great contemporary Tolstoy loved to write about land, nature, and pastoral life, Dostoyevsky’s dramas take place in a modern metropolis – particularly in his beloved and yet hated St. Petersburg – with all of its unnatural and often inhuman codes of urbanity, with its cruel and irreconcilable discrepancy between obscene wealth and crushing poverty. Unlike Tolstoy’s great epic novel War and Peace, which stands erect and static in its transparent lucidity and monumentality like a grand Olympian temple of antiquity, Dostoyevsky’s fiction is a vivid example of an eternal Heraclitean flux. Reminding us of detective novels, their sequence of action develops with extreme swiftness, because the author does not allow

370

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

anything to impede its progress. In T he Brothers Karamazov, the greatest and the largest of his works, Dostoyevsky could not find any occasion in the eight hundred page novel to pause and describe a landscape or the sky; it is all about human beings, about their complex, often twisted, but always passionate relationships. His reader is immediately thrown into various grim affairs ff and events, even before the characters themselves have been introduced. These affairs ff and events did not emerge in Dostoyevsky’s imagination, but were in most cases his accounts of actual murders and similar dramatic events, often already known to his readers at the times of the publication of his novels. He did not have to invent his stories, for he was convinced that ‘‘there is nothing more fantastic than reality itself.’’ Dostoyevsky not only firmly followed this powerful insight throughout his literary career, he even ascribed to it his very birth as a writer.1 Umberto Eco has recently compared reading a narrative text with walking through a fictional wood and distinguished two ways of doing so.2 The first is to try one or more routes in order to find the fastest possible way out and discover what happens with the main character. This kind of reading resembles attempting to find the Euclidean shortest distance between two given points (in this case the introduction and the conclusion), or like solving a crossword puzzle. The second way of reading resembles walking through the wood in order to discover what it is like and to find out why some paths are accessible and others are not. Except for cheap detective stories or romances, which we ‘‘get’’ in the first reading, most novels allow and invite the second kind of reading as well. A peculiarity of Dostoyevsky’s novels is that they allow – virtually demand – only the second and not the first kind of reading. The secret is in his method of writing; in distinction from most other novelists, Dostoyevsky does not build his novels around usual novelistic plots. Novels with plot are generally concerned with the success or failure of the main hero: he has some definite task to perform and we read to discover whether, and how, the hero succeeds in accomplishing it. Dostoyevsky’s characters do not have a definite task, and he does not hide his indifference ff toward the issue of whether they succeed or fail. What interests Dostoyevsky is not so much what his characters do, but rather why they do what they do. In Crime and Punishment, for instance, the main character Raskolnikov commits a double murder early in the novel, and the main concern of the novel deals with Raskolnikov’s attempt to figure out his real but hidden (as opposed to apparent, yet false) motives for this premeditated murder.

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

371

Plot in a novel is often a sign of its author’s effort ff to make life seem more conclusive than it really is; plot gives life an appearance of a firmer structure than it actually has, it creates an illusion agreeable to our weak faith. That is why we often prefer the first kind of reading and look for a firm plot in the novels we read. But Dostoyevsky wants us to engage into the second kind of reading and to do it from the first pages: he needs no illusion of certainty and has no intention of giving any. It was reported that Tolstoy was annoyed by Dostoyevsky’s novels because he firmly believed that a true novelist – more precisely, any artist – gives his readers answers to those ‘‘accursed questions’’ of life and human destiny.3 Dostoyevsky unearths many questions and rarely offers ff anything but preliminary answers. In this, he resembles a philosopher far more than an artist. Dostoyevsky was not – and yet very much was – a philosopher. ‘‘I am weak in philosophy, but not in my love for it,’’ he wrote to one of his friends. ‘‘In my love for it I am strong.’’4 Dostoyevsky had no formal training in philosophy, yet he was an avid and curious reader, familiar, if not always with the original works, then at least with the main ideas of Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Bentham, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx. Dostoyevsky had a burning interest in philosophical and religious questions, especially those concerning the nature of man and his relationship to God; apart from Socrates and Plato, few philosophers could match his furiously passionate pursuit of these questions. We do not know whether Dostoyevsky ever read Plato’s Apology, or any of his dialogues, but Socrates’ categorical imperative: ‘‘Care for your soul!’’ could have been Dostoyevsky’s credo as well. The soul is the center of all of his preoccupation, for the soul is that which makes us be what and who we are. The task certainly is to care for that soul, but to do that, we need to reveal all the obscurities which prevent us from understanding how to care for our soul and why it is so crucial that we do so. If for Plato the forms are more real than the world of shadows that we call reality, for Dostoyevsky the soul is more real and more important than all the other realities that the outside world imposes on men. In our modern, post-Cartesian philosophical tradition, if the soul is not expelled from our universe altogether, it is associated with the intellect and its cognitive and moral capacities. Moreover, the rational subject is treated as if having a privileged cognitive access, at least into his own cognitive representations and motives for actions. Nothing looks less appropriate to both Plato and Dostoyevsky; neither an infallible first

372

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

person approach, nor a detached neutral point of view is really available to us. This is why, like Plato’s dialogues, Dostoyevsky’s novels present a polyphony of voices, and we always run a great risk when trying to reduce this polyphony to the monologue form of a philosophical treatise, to which we have become so accustomed after Plato’s brilliant student Aristotle. As with Plato, in Dostoyevsky’s works the dialogical form is not a mere form; it is a structural unfolding of a complex self-recognition and self-realization. We can never be fully sure which of the characters, if any, represents the author’s own view. To create even more voices and perspectives in his novels, besides the multiple characters, Dostoyevsky often uses narrators. They do not always play the same role, but all of his narrators have one important thing in common: they are never presented as omniscient.5 Yet another device in Dostoyevsky’s novelistic repertoire is the use of a confessional form. Even when we are dealing with the confessional, apparently monological form of the underground man, however, we should not assume that he represents Dostoyevsky’s own views, for at least some of his views may be those of an imagined interlocutor. Consequently, one of the advantages of the dialogical form is that more than one character can represent, even if in an incomplete and indirect way, Plato’s or Dostoyevsky’s thoughts and standpoints. Nor could we be sure that Plato and Dostoyevsky want to reveal all of their insights about the questions under discussion; they both use false leads, but they also leave clues, and their readers have to follow them to their logical conclusions on their own. For both thinkers, the world and the soul are anything but transparent; if we can reveal their secrets at all, that cannot be done by a straight walk through the woods of reality, by the first kind of reading that Eco called to our attention. In both authors’ writings, the puzzle is not solved for us, so that we simply have to follow their accounts to the end to find out the solution. Instead, we are invited to be active readers, genuine participants in a collaborative, never-ending effort ff of pondering the secrets of both the external and – no less importantly – the internal world. Dostoyevsky’s dialogues, however, are even more inconclusive, almost more negative, than their Platonic counterparts. Plato, especially in the early Socratic dialogues, recognizes our ignorance concerning how to live our lives in the best way, despite one or more of the characters’ earlier convictions to have a sufficient understanding or mastery of the problem. Plato’s conclusions are negative in the direct sense, but positive in the

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

373

indirect: once prejudices and misconceptions have been realized and removed, the ground is prepared for true insight and genuine transformation. Things are both more open-ended and inconclusive in a different ff way in Dostoyevsky. First, one of the fundamental points of his dialogue is to lead the main characters to the recognition that no one individual ever controls the entire situation; the long arms of contingency and coincidence invariably play an important role. Reading Dostoyevsky always makes us wonder whether man is really as autonomous and individualistic as Kant and other moralists of the Enlightenment would like us to believe. In Dostoyevsky’s novels it is invariably clear that complex factors and forces, as well as other people, are part of the ultimately incalculable equation of life. Their presence and their roles are at least one reason why the situations in which the characters find themselves are uncontrollable and their outcome unpredictable. There are angelic, ‘‘meek’’ characters in Dostoyevsky’s novels – primarily women and children – who lead the reader to this realization. But this message is too important to be conveyed by secondary characters alone. Perhaps the best known example is the character of Alyosha Karamazov, whom Dostoyevsky called ‘‘the main hero’’ in the ‘‘Author’s Preface’’ to his last novel. Alyosha is a witness and a messenger, yet mostly a passive medium; he is more of a catalyst than a true agent (in the sense in which moral philosophers understand agency). Alyosha can clearly sense that the storm is coming, he even suspects where it is coming from, and yet – despite his best efforts ff and intentions – he can really do nothing to prevent the murder of his father and self-destruction of his brother Ivan. Another such character is Prince Mishkin – ‘‘the poor idiot’’ – somewhat more central for his story and more active in his attempts to mediate within the whirlpool in which he finds himself. Despite both Alyosha and the Prince being extremely positive, loving, and sensitive – to a great extent Jesus-like characters – they could not hinder the calamities of those whom they so deeply love.6 The second and more important sense in which Dostoyevsky’s dialogues end on a more inconclusive note than do those of Plato concerns Dostoyevsky’s conviction of a deeper rift within human nature than Plato, and most philosophers after him, was willing to recognize. In a somewhat oversimplified way we can say that, in Plato, the enemy is ignorance – in all of its forms and manifestations – and the cure is reason. In Dostoyevsky, reason is part of the problem and never the whole solution. Let us express the matter in a more precise way. In a truly Platonic spirit, Aristotle famously declared in the opening sentence of Nicomachean

374

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

Ethics that ‘‘every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit ... aims at some good.’’ As rational beings, humans strive toward the highest of all goods: eudaimonia. In his first truly revolutionary work, Notes from the Underground, which set the tone for all of his later novels, N Dostoyevsky directly opposed the Aristotelian credo, and with it the optimistic outlook of almost the entire history of Western philosophy. If Dostoyevsky were not fully familiar with the ‘‘elements unleashed’’ before his exile to Siberia, he had surely experienced them in the frozen ‘‘house of the dead.’’ Just as his beloved and infernal St. Petersburg, monumental as it was, was built over endless and undermining swamps, Dostoyevsky came to realize that behind the apparently solid core of human beings, manifested in their everyday relations, hidden fluid and daimonic forces break to the surface in extreme situations. In N Notes from the Underground, Dostoyevsky allowed his hero, so worthless that he does not even have a name, to declare that good and happiness do not have to be our goals; we do, as we should, at least occasionally pursue their opposites. This anti-hero dares to throw into our faces the conviction that ‘‘reason is only a twentieth part of who we are,’’ that deep within ‘‘we are all cripples,’’ that ‘‘we are stillborn.’’ The underground man challenges us to find our missing, repressed half: ‘‘For my part, I have merely carried to extremes in my life what you have not dared to carry even half-way, and, in addition, you have mistaken your cowardice for common sense and have found comfort in that, deceiving yourselves. So that, as a matter of fact, I seem to be much more alive than you.’’ If Socrates was a gadfly, what do we call this annoying underground man? The concerned citizens of Athens managed to ‘‘liberate’’ their lives and their city of Socrates, but how do we fight against this ghostly, Nibelung-like cripple, especially when we recognize that every one of us harbors him in our inner psyche? That is how Dostoyevsky trapped himself into starting this underworld journey, the search for his own soul and for the buried soul of humanity. No one who has carefully read his works could easily refuse to follow Dostoyevsky over the threshold of the underworld. III. ON EVIL AND PRIDE

Socrates was convinced that no one would choose to do wrong willingly. Man’s nature is such that he can will only that which he perceives as somehow valuable. Due to his ignorance, misunderstanding or misconception, man may be mistaken about what he takes to be valuable, but such

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

375

mistakes could be corrected through insight, understanding, and knowledge. Thus, moral evil consists not in the choice of evil as such, but in our preference of lower over higher goods. Since man naturally tends to choose values which are close at hand and tangible, his choice among values affords ff wide scope for the rejection of higher goods. Precisely because higher values are so easily (and perhaps naturally) hidden from man’s sight, man has to strive relentlessly toward the highest values, toward the highest aspirations. Socrates wants us to hope that, however difficult it may be, it is possible to emerge from the cave and see reality in its true colors. Dostoyevsky certainly shared the conviction of the desirability, even indispensability, of pursuing the highest values and the highest aspirations. In one of his last novels, T he Possessed, he had his character Stepan Trofimovich declare: ‘‘The whole law of human existence is that man should worship something immeasurably great. The Immeasurable and the Infinite are just as necessary to man as is the tiny planet on which he lives.’’ Let us formulate this basic law of human existence as follows: Human beings have always been attracted to what is great and superior.

The ‘‘problem’’ with understanding and interpreting Dostoyevsky is that his other characters, not only in T he Possessed but in all of his other novels, also argue in favor of another, contradictory yet equally basic law of human existence: Human beings have always been attracted to what is low and inferior.

Against Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and many other rationalistically and optimistically oriented philosophers, Dostoyevsky’s ‘‘underground’’ characters try to show (better yet, remind us) that it is possible to desire to be evil, to choose evil for evil’s sake. It is quite possible to be attracted by evil, even when we recognize it as such. If we could honestly confront ourselves, each one of us would recall that, at one point of our lives or another, we have known those ugly and shameful urges in the depths of our souls. These demonic forces are not equally strong in each one of us, but they do not leave anyone’s psyche unattended. Dostoyevsky was equally unimpressed by the Augustinian interpretation of evil in terms of privatio boni. On this view, the good alone has substance; evil has no substance of its own, but exists only as a diminution of the good. Dostoyevsky was never persuaded by this view; evil should

376

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

not be seen as an absence, or privation of good, but as a fundamental force, a powerful, volcanic undercurrent in human life. Evil is exceedingly real. For Dostoyevsky, St. Augustine’s doctrine is dangerous and performs humanity a disservice by allowing us to not take evil seriously. The less seriously we take evil, the more likely are we to fall prey to it, either as perpetrators or as victims, or both. Of far more interest to Dostoyevsky than the learned theological hair-splitting about the nature of evil was St. Augustine’s close association, virtually identification, of evil with sin. Interestingly enough, despite Dostoyevsky’s absorbing commitment to Christianity, neither his literary works nor his correspondence and journalistic writings reveal any deep fascination with the biblical account of the Fall. The disobedience of Adam and Eve did not represent in Dostoyevsky’s mind the most potent symbol of evil. What fascinated him far more was another tale from the Old Testament that stood out as an archetype of evil: Cain’s murder of his brother.7 Dostoyevsky’s book T he House of the Dead offers ff a catalog of the most gruesome murders, accounts of which he had heard during his prisontime and camp-labor in Siberia. Murder also stands at the center of his three brilliant novels, Crime and Punishment, T he Possessed, and T he Brothers Karamazov. Unlike many murders committed in the blindness of a momentary and uncontrollable passion (as portrayed in T he House of the Dead and other works), the murders of Crime and Punishment, T he Possessed, and T he Brothers Karamazov are premeditated. Dostoyevsky did not draw any terminological distinction between the two kinds of crimes, but perhaps we can clarify his much greater concern with the latter kind by invoking Martin Buber’s distinction between sin and wickedness: ‘‘Sinners again and again miss God’s way, the wicked oppose it in accordance with the basic attitude of their constitution. The sinner does evil, the wicked man is evil.’’ Sinners may be misguided but ‘‘pure in heart,’’ while ‘‘the wicked are those who deliberately persist in impurity of heart.’’8 In his post-Siberian years Dostoyevsky was very opposed to the thenpopular view that the roots of evil are social. Under the influence of Rousseau and the spreading ideals of Fourier’s utopian socialism, the young Dostoyevsky was disgusted by the horrifying social injustices in Russia. Even his first novel, Poor People, revealed his grievous sympathies for ‘‘the insulted and the injured.’’ A member of the revolutionary ‘‘Petrashevsky’s circle,’’ the young Dostoyevsky was persuaded that evil

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

377

was introduced into the world by a historical process, and that it could also be eradicated in the same way. During his years of Siberian exile, he came to believe that the roots of evil go far deeper. It is not that he suddenly forgot about poverty and the helplessness of the desperately poor. They continued to crowd his novels, and he himself lived frequently at the very edge of the social abyss. Although Dostoyevsky remained entirely absorbed by contemporary humanity and its miserable social and spiritual conditions, he nevertheless turned with great fervor, not always justly, against all those who were preoccupied with designing social or religious utopias for the future happiness of mankind. He showed little patience for those reformers of humanity who believed that man’s nature is essentially good, but that it got distorted through unfavorable social environments or inappropriate upbringing. Instead of equally distributed social goods, or depersonalized and autonomous human rights, Dostoyevsky could only focus on the complex and contradictory character of man. In that character, more than in any miserable and unjust social condition, Dostoyevsky saw the real danger for humanity.9 The monster that Dostoyevsky recognized in Siberia, which turned him against his own earlier convictions, was humanity’s proud nature. The sinners, the poor, and the innocent are the victims of mindlessness, misery, and injustice, but the wicked ones are victimized by a greater evil: pride. Ignorance can be removed, poverty eliminated, injustice corrected. But pride? How can we fight pride? Dostoyevsky was firmly convinced that the true sickness of man is rooted in his enormous pride. All of his great late novels center on the problem of pride and its destructive effects. ff The underground man, Raskolnikov, Kirilov and Stavrogin, Nastassya Filipovna and Aglaya Yepanchina, Versilov and Arkady Dolgoruky, Ivan and Dmitry Y Karamazov, and numerous lesser characters find themselves arrested in the whirlwind of their lonely pride. They have to deal with its horrifyingly destructive consequences for themselves and others, especially those they love the most. Why did Dostoyevsky see pride as the ultimate root of evil? He associated pride in its milder forms with self-centeredness, in its extreme manifestations (‘‘titanic pride,’’ ‘‘satanic pride,’’ ‘‘Promethean pride’’) with selfdeification.10 Pride is man’s obsession with himself, which leads to denying reality to anything else and anybody else; pride begins with the elevation of one’s self over others, leads to fragmentation of that self, and concludes with its spiritual or physical self-destruction. In his first true confrontation

378

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

with the ugly side of pride, when he created the underground man, Dostoyevsky was both shocked and fascinated by what he found. By penetrating inward, he could see how pride is based on insecure and unworthy foundations, but also how powerfully attractive it is and how difficult it would be to shake off. ff Like a true pioneer, Dostoyevsky must have been surprised by his own findings, and his first journey did not go very far: it began with a miserable, isolated, and empty creature and ended up with an equally miserable, lonely, and pathetic wretch. The underground man turns inward to find an Archimedean point on which to base his egotistical ambitions, but all he uncovers is a bottomless pit. The more he searches, the more fully isolated he feels, as if there is a ‘‘stone wall’’ between himself and other human beings. This wall is so high that not even a sympathetic character of the fallen women, Lisa, who suffers ff so deeply and understands the pain of lonely separation from other human beings, can extend her hands over that wall. In creating his last underground man, Ivan Karamazov, Dostoyevsky compensated for all the shortcomings and roughness of his first-born underground creature. The sheer span of Ivan’s transformation and the number of obstacles and demons which he had to encounter make Ivan one of the greatest characters in Dostoyevsky’s opus, as well as one of the finest literary creations of all times. The first underground man is despicable, yet not truly tragic: he is an ugly scarecrow about whom there is hardly anything admirable (except for his brutal honesty, for which we are not prepared). Ivan is an altogether different ff story. The discrepancy between Ivan’s self-conscious gifts and ambitions on the one hand, and the magnitude of his fall and guilt on the other, displays for us the power of evil in its full tragic sublimity. The sublimity of Ivan’s fate resides in the greatness of his self-willed, rationally guided ambition, in his superbly articulated and irrefutable reasons for returning to God ‘‘his ticket.’’ His tragedy resides in the depth of self-deception to which his pride seduces him and the pitiable consequences of that seduction. IV. THE ANTINOMY OF FREEDOM

Dostoyevsky understood the modern man’s intense pride, his oscillation between a horrifying sense of solitude and his insatiable desire for selfdeification, in terms of perverted freedom. He regarded freedom as man’s supreme value. Freedom stood out for him as that which truly characterizes our humanity: man cannot renounce his freedom without renouncing himself and ceasing to be a human being. Unlike many humanists and

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

379

philosophers of his time, Dostoyevsky did not understand freedom in terms of reason, autonomy, goodness, or perfection; freedom rises above all of them and can never be reduced to any one of them. There are two mistaken conceptions of freedom that Dostoyevsky wanted to avoid. One was characteristic of the rationalistically oriented philosophers of the Enlightenment: their mistake was to identify man’s freedom to choose with his freedom to choose what would be rational to desire. The other mistaken conception was that of the Romantics: they misconceived freedom as self-expression and self-creation. According to Dostoyevsky’s point of view, the existence of freedom does not mean that man is in charge of his own fate, that he fully understands what he does or what he chooses, or that he always strives toward the best and the highest. For Dostoyevsky, freedom is only possible in the face of contingency and uncertainty, in a world in which there are no guarantees of any kind. Freedom is only possible through the imperfection of the world and the imperfection of man. To be free to choose means to be free to choose between good and evil, and – as Dostoyevsky knew from his own experience – man often willingly and consciously embraces the latter. Like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky was fully aware that freedom is more complex than just choosing what we like, and that freedom puts an enormous burden on man’s shoulders. In War and Peace, Tolstoy’s main hero Count Pierre Bezukhov finally – after a long and futile search – finds his genuine freedom in imprisonment, through the awakening of his own soul to what values are truly important for him. Dostoyevsky’s characters could also encounter freedom only within the confines of their souls.11 This freedom is not clearly revealed in the stable conditions of human life, in broad daylight, but bursts out in obscure urges and drives that, when completely unchained, lead man either to insanity or to criminality. In his works Dostoyevsky intentionally ‘‘emancipated’’ some of his characters from the established social order, and developed their destinies to their inherent limits. By so doing, he led not only his characters but also his readers through the gates of hell which, unlike Dante’s inferno, are located in the underworld of the human psyche. The guilty conscience of Raskolnikov and the divided psyche of Ivan are something that, through Dostoyevsky’s novels, we recognize as lurking in the internal abyss of our own nature. I have never heard about any crime I could not have committed myself, Dostoyevsky seems to be saying, and saying that not only for himself but in the name of us all. In Dostoyevsky’s first major adventure into the chasm of that underworld, in N Notes from the Underground, all we see is negativity,

380

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

pathology, and a self-destructive will. By the time of his last work, T he Brothers Karamazov, his eyes were already well adapted to the darkness and he painted a significantly different ff picture. To be sure, black (‘‘kara,’’ from Karamazov, is the Turkish word for black) was still the dominant color. Yet, in addition to the dark drives and desires that lead to cruelty, destructiveness and evil, the underworld is now seen not only as the source of an insatiable will to power, but also as the source of an affirmative will to life. Dmitry, who dwells more in the underworld than on the surface, is a symbol of the thirst for life, a symbol of a desire to experience the life to its fullest. The mysterious bow of the venerable Father Zosima in front of Dmitry is not only a recognition of that desire but also an indication, developed more explicitly toward the end of the novel, that the underworld may also be the true homeland of spirituality. There may, after all, be light even at the heart of darkness. We are not forgetting that these are all hints and symbols, rather than elaborate philosophical doctrines. Nevertheless, in connection with his diary and correspondence, these allusions are clear enough to reveal what was presumably Dostoyevsky’s central preoccupation and the main torment of his adult life. Following Kantian terminology, we can express this agony as an antinomy: T hesis: Freedom is the main reason why man’s world is full of wickedness, suffering ff and misery. Antithesis: Freedom constitutes the main dignity of man and his world.

This tension was truly antinomical for Dostoyevsky because of his thorough commitment to both claims. The world was full of wickedness, suffering ff and misery, and he believed that man’s freedom, freedom to chose between good and evil, was responsible for that evil. Despite that, he was equally convinced that freedom was the true source of man’s dignity. Man’s freedom is great not because it makes it possible for us to choose anything we want, but because it leaves open a window of opportunity – a very small window, Dostoyevsky would add – to oppose our natural tendencies and inclinations and avoid total subjection to the overwhelming centripetal force of the proud ego. Freedom is not only man’s greatest gift but his most grievous burden as well; it is both man’s pride and his tragic destiny. Is there, then, any way out of that terrible antinomy? Before answering this question, we need to clarify what Dostoyevsky did not consider to be an acceptable solution.

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

381

Had Dostoyevsky been a philosopher in the technical sense of that word, he would have probably defined evil as the result of degenerated freedom and arbitrary self-will. He closely associated evil with self-satisfactory egoism and individualism, and the most dreadful and radical evil he ascribes to prideful selfishness and narcissism of a special kind. We may be initially surprised that it is not the evils of Fyodor Karamazov, or his oldest son Dmitry, that really worried Dostoyevsky. Rather, it is Ivan, a progressively oriented and apparently righteous young man, who presents the deepest challenge. Although Fyodor and Dmitry are both lustful, deceitful, and (in a word) immoral, Dostoyevsky considered Ivan’s vice to be far more dangerous. But what is Ivan’s vice and what kind of evil does he symbolize in Dostoyevsky’s eyes? Ivan stands for those who would accept the previously mentioned thesis and deny the antithesis. He gives a powerful voice to those who blame God for creating a blatantly unjust world and implanting in man an unhealthy desire for freedom and spirituality. Thus, God is truly responsible for man’s immense and undeserved suffering, ff and it is up to a few brave, Promethean men to refashion God’s faulty creation. One of them is Ivan’s ‘‘Grand Inquisitor,’’ who is committed to ensuring that human beings have enough bread and a ‘‘proper’’ faith, although in return they have to abandon their freedom and any genuine spiritual aspiration. The Grand Inquisitor, and not Jesus, is the true hero of humanity, for he (and his organization, i.e., the Church) dispels man’s unrealistic hopes (‘‘heavenly freedom’’) and protects humankind from unnecessary suffering. ff Is not, then, the loss of freedom an acceptable price for shepherding man within the walls of social justice, peace and happiness? Is not the loss of freedom an acceptable price for subduing man’s worst enemy, his pride? No author has succeeded as well as Dostoyevsky in presenting his opponents’ arguments in more pointed and powerful ways than they were able to do themselves. By citing examples of the horrible suffering ff of innocent children, Ivan undermines the usual understanding of evil as sin, as well as any attempt at theodicy. He presents a challenge which is unmatched in the whole canon on evil, and we know from Dostoyevsky’s correspondence that he himself believed that the logic of Ivan’s arguments in Book V of T he Brothers Karamazov is flawless and irrefutable. Ivan’s challenge throws us into ‘‘the furnace of doubt,’’ and Dostoyevsky was deeply concerned that his intended antidote in Book VI, in the form of the Elder Zosima’s affirmation of the life of suffering ff and love, would not be properly understood. Indeed, there is hardly a reader who had not been convinced – at least initially – that a message of love of the humble

382

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

and dying Orthodox priest fades like a pale shadow in comparison to the erect and vital figure of the Grand Inquisitor. No one wants to suffer, ff nor does anyone want to see innocent children being tortured. Our first inclination is to avoid suffering. ff Man has always dreamt about different ff ways to restructure the world so that evil can be eliminated. If such a goal can be accomplished at the loss of freedom, would not the means be acceptable, considering the noble goal? Dostoyevsky did not think so. On the contrary, he called the rejection of the antithesis ‘‘the most extreme blasphemy.’’ Ivan’s path of self-deification for the few and slavery for the rest transforms man into a fully diabolical creature; what on the surface looks like a genuine concern for humanity turns out to be nothing but a deep contempt for it.12 In some ways, slaves are in an even better position than their self-appointed masters. Dmitry is a slave of his passion, he is an immoral man, yet his soul is not lost and he has a chance for a genuine spiritual awakening and transformation. But even Jesus could not soften the hardened soul of the Grand Inquisitor. Nor could Alyosha’s kiss melt the frozen heart of his brother Ivan. Ultimately, there is no rational justification for suffering ff and evil. Ivan failed to discover one, and Zosima did not even attempt to find one. To Ivan’s demand that we first understand the meaning of life before we can accept it, Zosima’s reply was that the acceptance of life comes first. Only by choosing between good and evil can man come to discover life’s meaning.13 There is, then, no escape for Dostoyevsky from the tragic antinomy of freedom and suffering. ff Nor should there be any. Instead, we have to live with both freedom and suffering. ff Freedom is man’s tragic destiny, but he must carry this cross, for it not only pulls man down but also puts him in a dignifying position to choose what he truly desires, what he thinks and feels is best. According to Dostoyevsky, This is the path that we should follow. This is the road of freedom, and it is the road of suffering. ff Following this path takes us to the underworld, it forces us to confront our pride and our shadow. Good and evil must coexist, so that man can make a choice of his own free will. The choice does not concern the dilemma: Shall we suffer ff or not?, for suff ffer we must. Instead, the challenge that every free human being must face is: What kind of suffering ff makes human life worth living? V. ON THE TIGHTROPE

Had Dostoyevsky been a philosopher in the usual sense of that word, this would have been the end of the matter: perhaps the antinomy would

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

383

not have been solved in that way, but at least it would have been resolved. For better or for worse, Dostoyevsky was a philosopher in a different, ff certainly more complicated and perhaps deeper sense. That philosopher rejected, even laughed at, what he called a ‘‘Euclidean reason,’’ and with it a ‘‘Euclidean world.’’ For this reason and in this world, there is one and only one shortest distance between two points, two plus two is always and necessarily four, and everything we do is either good or bad. In what Dostoyevsky considered to be the real world, things were far more convoluted and the boundaries more blurred. Moreover, they were more convoluted and blurred not only in the external world, but most importantly in Dostoyevsky’s own psyche. He would not have been such an impressive devil’s advocate had that devil been merely a product of his imagination. Quite the contrary: the devil was devastatingly real, he was an inhabitant of Dostoyevsky’s psyche, and – the great seer of the soul was utterly convinced – of everyone else’s inner world as well. In N Notes from the Underground the main character poses ‘‘an idle question’’: ‘‘Which is better: cheap happiness or exalted suffering?’’ ff As if that were a mere rhetorical question, he asks again: ‘‘Well, which is better?’’ If the clear, Euclidean answer was not offered ff right away, it was indicated both before and after. In fact, hardly any reader can forget an earlier paragraph when a related question was asked and answered by this crippled man with the full force of a proud and egotistically blinded conviction: ‘‘Is the world to go to rack and ruin or am I to have my cup of tea? Well, so far as I’m concerned, blow the world as long as I can have my cup of tea.’’ The underground man does not remain unparalleled in his lonely and blind egoism. In T he Possessed, Kirillov similarly champions pride and his own freedom, however perverted it may be: ‘‘I am better off worshipping my own nothingness!’’ In T he Brothers Karamazov, Ivan makes a disturbing ‘‘confession’’ to his brother Ayosha: ‘‘I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance.’’ Dostoyevsky expressed similar thoughts in his correspondence and the published diary. There is an often-quoted letter to Natalya Fonvizina, a wife of an ex-convict, who gave Dostoyevsky a copy of the New Testament on his way to Siberia. This was the only book prisoners were allowed to have, and Dostoyevsky read it often and knew many of its passages by heart. He kept this copy of the New Testament close to him for the rest of his life. To this same Natalya Fonvizina, whose gift and simple act of

384

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

pure Christian faith touched Dostoyevsky so deeply, he confessed immediately after his release from prison in 1854: ‘‘About myself, let me tell you that I am a child of this age, a child of unbelief and doubts to this very day and shall be (I know this) to the day I am laid in my coffin. What terrible torment I have suffered ff and am suff ffering now because of this longing to believe, a longing that is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I have against it.’’ Ten years later, in 1864, sitting next to the body of his first wife who had just died hours ago, Dostoyevsky wrote his reflections: ‘‘To love another being as oneself, according to Christ’s commandment is impossible. Man is bound on earth by the law of personality. The Ego holds him back. Only Christ was able to do this, but Christ is a perpetual and eternal ideal towards which man strives and according to the law of nature must strive against.’’ In 1876, Dostoyevsky wrote the following lines in T he Diary of a W riter in his own, first-person view: ‘‘I declare that love of mankind is totally inconceivable, incomprehensible, and utterly impossible without a concomitant belief in the immortality of the human soul. Moreover, I maintain that an awareness of one’s utter inability to help or to be of the slightest benefit or relief to suffering ff mankind, while simultaneously being thoroughly convinced that mankind does suffer, ff can even turn the love in one’s heart into hatred for it.’’ What we find in these passages, and indeed throughout Dostoyevsky’s entire opus, is a gigantic and merciless struggle between an intense, animal-like drive to believe, to accept a leap of faith, and an ever-recurring doubt, with all of its gnawing uncertainties. What we see in these passages is a thinking that is not just examining the firm borders of the known and the unknown, of reason and faith, but the thinking that finds itself facing an abyss. Constantly oscillating and balancing between the seemingly irreconcilable opposites, Dostoyevsky was like Nietzsche’s tightrope walker. Yet Dostoyevsky did not ‘‘philosophize with a hammer’’; a hammer can perhaps break one’s will, or one’s skull, but it can neither make us understand nor make us more human. Nor was Dostoyevsky tempted to escape the unbearable weight of the existential doubt by looking for any illusory distraction from that excruciating wavering; instead, he was trying to evoke human sensitivity and compassion. How could Dostoyevsky hope to evoke sensitivity and compassion in his readers amidst his own doubt? Could we ever tell which among the conflicting views was Dostoyevsky’s own? Ivan chooses pride, Dmitry, suffering. ff While Ivan points out the meaninglessness and unjustifiability

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

385

of suffering, ff Dmitry comes to realize that suff ffering need not be caused by sin, but rather is necessary for the forgiveness of sin; only suffering ff can evoke the humanity of our hearts. Like Ivan, Dostoyevsky collected the stories of senseless and cruel suffering ff of innocent children, and like Ivan he refused to accept any theodicean cover-up operation that would absolve the Creator and beautify the creation. Dostoyevsky went even further than Ivan in reminding us that unjustified and meaningless sufferff ing is by no means limited to children; the tragedy of the Karamazov family may arise from their own folly, but the misfortune of the Captain Snegirev (little Ilyusha’s father) and his family is, in all of its senselessness, beyond their fault and control. Such issues genuinely tormented Dostoyevsky. He was sure of the devilish nature of pride, but what to do about it? Dostoyevsky was not willing to gamble on the value of freedom: even if a victory over pride was possible through a sacrifice of freedom, the price would be unquestionably too high. But is such a victory possible without the sacrifice of freedom? Would it be possible through suffering? ff This is what Dostoyevsky was hoping to convince both himself and his readers, but he was fully aware that this ambition may have been too big a bite for human reason to swallow. Dostoyevsky knew enough about the Critique of Pure Reason to be aware of Kant’s insight that human reason can neither prove nor disprove anything about what the Russians call those ‘‘accursed questions’’ concerning the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. He also knew enough of Kant’s proposed solution not to be satisfied with it: with these questions, we are stepping not only over the cognitive boundaries of reason but also outside of its sphere of interest. We are now in the domain of faith. Faith was telling Zosima that the necessity of suffering ff on earth lies at the very basis of religion. Faith was leading Dmitry to dream about ‘‘a poor babe’’ and sincerely to accept his share of responsibility for the murder of his father – not because Dmitry killed him, but because he desired to do so. Dostoyevsky tried to convince his concerned publisher that the blasphemous Book V of T he Brothers Karamazov – the one that contains the ‘‘Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’’ – would be immediately and sufficiently answered in the next book on the pious Zosima. If Dostoyevsky was sincere in his correspondence, then he unintentionally deceived not only his publisher but himself as well. Ivan’s ‘‘treatise’’ was not successfully answered by another ‘‘treatise,’’ called ‘‘Some Thoughts and Teachings of the Elder Zosima.’’ If it is indeed possible to answer Ivan’s challenge in any satisfactory manner, the remaining five hundred pages of the novel

386

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

do that far more successfully.14 What we find there is a sketch of the opposite directions in which Ivan and Dmitry’s lives unfold. Ivan’s ‘‘Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’’ is a reminder of how astonishingly powerful human reason can be; his further life is a testimony of how, if not accompanied by good character and faith, love and trust, this forceful reason can lead to a devastating, utterly self-destructive doubt. By counter-position, Dmitry’s life is a reminder of how shallow, meaningless, and destructive human life can be. His life is also evidence of how through faith and suffering ff humanity can elevate itself to something truly worth of admiration. As readers, we can hardly trust Zosima’s preaching of how ‘‘we are all responsible for the sins of everybody else.’’ Zosima’s attempt to ‘‘shame us into righteousness’’ is too direct, too abrupt. But after we follow the ups and downs of Dmitry’s journey of spiritual transformation, we can trust Dmitry when at his trial he sincerely accepts the court’s decision that sends him to Siberia. We can also believe Dmitry when he makes a humble expression of his newly awakened faith by declaring: ‘‘One can find a human heart there also, in the mines, under the ground.’’ No underground man and no Ivan could honestly make such a statement. Dmitry’s acceptance of suffering ff does not cancel the fact of meaningless suffering. ff Rather, acceptance of suff ffering provides a needed and potent counterbalance for meaningless suffering. ff There is a lot that is human, positively human, even in the mines of Siberia, even in the darkness of the underworld. There is something to find there: not made by man, but for man to find. Another human heart, another person’s suffering ff and yet compassionate heart, can be found there as well. If Dostoyevsky himself was not always persuaded as to whether, and how, we can love our neighbors, in his newly found faith Dmitry is sure of that. In fact, at the time of his awakening and transformation, nothing seemed simpler and more obvious to Dmitry than that: What is his suffering ff in comparison to the torment that his brother Ivan has to go through? What is his sacrifice in comparison to what beautiful Grushenka gives up in order to accompany him to Siberia and voluntarily bind herself for his penalty for the next twenty years? Yes, it seemed clear to Dmitry, it is possible to overcome one’s pride by suffering ff for others. It is possible to be liberated from the chains of the ego’s cave through suffering ff and sacrifice. However painful it may be, nothing else can so fully awaken our sense of humanity, our humility and our dignity, as much as compassion. Ivan and Dmitry’s internal struggles are Dostoyevsky’s artistic way of expressing what he saw as the central dilemma of modernity: Is it possible

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

387

to transform the world into a realization of the Christian ideal without a belief in Christ? While many modern thinkers agreed on a positive answer to this question and disagreed about the ways in which this could be done, Dostoyevsky was firmly convinced that a positive answer is not only deeply flawed but also extremely dangerous. The modern secular view is mistaken because there can be no brotherhood without a common father; it is not possible to introduce a sense of brotherhood by means of foreign institutions and external legislation. The logic of the Grand Inquisitor – that all human beings need is ‘‘bread and circuses’’ – may work for a while, but unless they are completely tamed into animaux domestiques, sooner or later they are going to rebel against it. Sooner or later human beings are going to realize that ‘‘anthills’’ and ‘‘crystal palaces’’ are not in their best interest, that – as the underground man calls it – their ‘‘most advantageous advantage’’ can consist only in their independent and free volition.15 The secular view is dangerous because a denial of any higher power unleashes the demonic elements in man for which neither science nor morality can account; our modern history teaches us that without a higher power man has a very hard time resisting the temptation to deify himself. The delusion: ‘‘You shall be like God,’’ led Raskolnikov first to imagine that he is a Napoleon and then kill a worthless old pawnbroker and her sister; it led the Grand Inquisitor to assume the role of a judge and burn heretics. In principle, the transgression is the same: once man oversteps one sacred limit, nothing is sacred to him any more. Thus Dostoyevsky would not have been surprised in the least to see that Raskolnikov’s temptation of the ‘‘superior individuals’’ also seduced the likes of Hitler and Stalin to murder millions in their attempts to establish their own final solution, their own vision of a perfect world. As Kirillov expressed it in T he Possessed, ‘‘There will be a new life, a new man; everything will be new ... Then they will divide history into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God to ... To the gorilla?’’ If the dream of brotherhood is not going to lead to more genocide, man has to accept a higher power instead of pretending to be one. Brotherhood can only be created through self-sacrifice and compassion, not through the egotistical pride of modern man. For someone like Kierkegaard, who would be very sympathetic to Dostoyevsky’s point of view, this would mean an attempt to establish an immediate, direct relation with the Absolute. The Russian thinker had, however, a different ff line of reasoning. Like Pascal, Dostoyevsky believed that ‘‘ours is truly a

388

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

hidden God,’’ a deity that cannot be approached directly. If our living unknown God can be approached at all, it can be done only by genuinely relating to other human beings. In one of the most memorable passages of Crime and Punishment, Sonia, an uneducated and fallen woman, tells Raskolnikov, a young intellectual and a murderer, what he needs to do to restore the broken ties with the rest of humanity and his abandoned God: ‘‘Bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.’’ Sonia – a Russian nickname for Sophia – brings Raskolnikov to understand that suffering ff is not God’s punishment for our sins, but rather an affirmation of life, of every human life. In T he Brothers Karamazov, instead of advising Alyosha to run away from his immoral family and stay in the monastery to dedicate his life to prayer and inner purification, the elder Zosima demands of him to leave the monastery and live in the world, among people, among his brothers, among children. As Buber conveyed it, in the true spirit of the elder Zosima’s wisdom: ‘‘Man can become whole not in virtue of a relation to himself but only in virtue of a relation to another self. The other self may be just as limited and conditioned as he is; in being together the unlimited and the unconditioned is experienced.’’16 The most profound expression of Dostoyevsky’s unorthodox faith is, however, to be found where we may expect it the least: in the seemingly devastating victory of the Grand Inquisitor over Jesus Christ. The true spirit of Christianity is symbolized by the rejection of three temptations from the devil. Christ refused to save men either by choosing authority over the ‘‘kingdoms of the earth,’’ or by giving them earthly instead of spiritual ‘‘bread,’’ or by performing miracles and giving them proofs that he was divine. As Ivan put it in the ‘‘Legend,’’ ‘‘[I]n those three questions the whole of subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature.’’ Dostoyevsky would fully agree, but would draw a different ff lesson from Christ’s refusal of the devil’s temptations than did Ivan and his Grand Inquisitor. From the devil’s claim that ‘‘nothing is more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom,’’ the Grand Inquisitor concluded that freedom must be taken from man for his own good. Dostoyevsky, by contrast, was prompted to believe that it is then all the more important to preserve that eternal craving for freedom; even though it implies the capability of sin and risking to do wrong, it elevates man’s dignity by allowing him to preserve his conscience, to suffer ff for his errors.

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

389

Could such suffering, ff despite the pain it brings, nevertheless be our blessing? Is the valley of suffering ff the vale of character-making and soulfinding? Dostoyevsky stopped short of stating that explicitly. Yet he undoubtedly thought that, at least in some moments of our lives, suffering ff may lead us to overcome the walls that divide human beings, that it can lead us to sense the presence and grace of the divine. Raskolnikov experienced one such moment – which turned his life around – when he knelt before the harlot Sonia, in recognition that she represents the suffering ff of all humanity. For Dmitry, it was the moment when he woke up from the terribly nightmarish dream of ‘‘a crying babe.’’ After a wild night, the night when he spent three thousand rubles on a drinking spree with Grushenka, when he was accused of killing his own father, drunk, exhausted and overwhelmed Dmitry fell asleep on an old trunk. When he woke up, he noticed that, despite being such a worthless and accursed man, someone had had mercy on him; someone had put a pillow under his head. Such moments of intense suffering ff and full awakening of our imperfect humanity are as rare as they are precious. Dostoyevsky thought that they are so valuable that, if nothing else, fully experiencing and appreciating such moments makes our lives worth living. VI. LIVING IN THE WORLD OF SUFFERING, FINDING THE ABANDONED SOUL

Dostoyevsky’s books are like magic fireworks, but when we close them and the harsh reality sobers our idealistic enchantments, doubts creep in again. Why suffer? ff How could suff ffering be anything but meaningless? How could suffering ff – any kind of suff ffering and suff ffering for any cause – make life worth living? Do we have to follow Dostoyevsky to the underworld in order to appreciate, even promote, suffering? ff If that is the message to learn, why not just stay on the surface and pursue what the underground man calls ‘‘cheap happiness,’’ even if this surface world is nothing but a ‘‘waste land’’ or a ‘‘pit without depth’’? Any rationalistic and hedonistic calculus would always have problems with accepting suffering, ff because of the automatic and commonsensical association of suffering ff with something undesirable. Imagine, however, a world without suffering. ff More precisely, imagine a world without a human capacity for suffering, ff especially suff ffering for others.17 Could we call that world human? Would we like to live in a world of that kind? What shocked Dostoyevsky in the pits of Siberia was not so much the horrifying savagery and the undignified human conditions in which pris-

390

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

oners were treated worse than beasts. What stunned him most of all was that after a while people could accept that kind of life as normal; they become numb for their own suffering ff and the suff ffering of others. He perceived that moral numbness as more undignifying and dehumanizing than any physical pain, deprivation, or brutality. As if anticipating Huxley’s Brave New World, Dostoyevsky was truly frightened of the prospect that this kind of numbness, of emotional and spiritual death, might also be induced by a humanitarian or religious transformation of life in which everyone would feel cozy, well-fed and secure. He was afraid of a utilitarian and socialist morality single-mindedly focused on ‘‘justice and happiness for all,’’ for he was scared of a world in which ‘‘earthly freedom’’ would be the only, or even the main measure of how we should live. Dostoyevsky was afraid of a humanism that does not recognize and accept the imperfect nature of man, his never-ending inner struggles and opposing impulses; he was scared of a humanism which would lead to a denial of freedom, an utter despiritualization of man, and a destruction of his faith. Dostoyevsky voiced such concerns especially when he wrote about the rich and the privileged. He did not have very many nice things to say about them; he found appalling their greed, pride, self-satisfaction with their lives and insensitivity to those less fortunate. Yet the reader could hardly resist the impression that Dostoyevsky also felt sorry for the wealthy; he believed them to be victimized in their own way, by never being completely awaken for their own humanity. As was the case with Dickens, whom Dostoyevsky deeply admired, from his first novel to his last, Dostoyevsky’s proper milieu was the poor and the sick, the insulted and the injured. But instead of pitying them and lamenting their bad luck, most of those characters are treated in a sympathetic way, as being remarkably alive and intensely human in their agony and misfortune. They are alive and human in two distinguishable yet deeply connected ways. First, their prolonged suffering ff – whether due to poverty, diseases, epileptic seizures, prostitution, drunkenness, death, or any such extreme states – seemed to be a necessary precondition for their authentic insights about the nature of humanity and the real value of life. Only they can see and feel what people in normal circumstances, who live normal lives, so easily overlook. It is as if in their extreme misfortune they have somehow been liberated from the cave’s arresting chains and deceptive shadows; as if only in their horrible situation their eyes and hearts were able to open fully. Their intense suffering ff exposes for them those dimensions of reality that we need not even suspect to

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

391

exist. In that way, they remind us of those rare and fortunate ones in Plato’s allegory who are allowed to leave the cave and see reality for what it is. The analogy continues even further: fortunate philosophers, like those of Dostoyevsky’s eccentric heroes who suffer ff so intensely, would not be believed when they return to the cave of normal life and attempt to share with others their unsharable experiences. In Dostoyevsky as in Plato there are different ff dimensions of reality, not apparent to our senses or our Euclidean reason and in many ways more distressingly and devastatingly real than what we see and hear and touch and smell every day. The flat Euclidean world does not exhaust the whole of reality; in fact, it misses its most weighty aspects, good and bad. For both Plato and Dostoyevsky there is a lot to uncover in those hidden layers of the world. One true reflection of our humanity is just how hard we try to find these richer and perplexing worlds. Not so much the destination but the intensity of passion with which we pursue our search reveals who we are. That, however, is where the analogy with Plato ends and where the discrepancies become more pronounced. Let us mention four such differff ences. The first and the most obvious one is that those awakened through suffering ff would see reality for what it is in a diff fferent way than Plato’s fortunate philosophers. The insights of Dostoyevsky’s characters, just like his own insights during his epileptic fits, were temporary and unstable. Reality does not open its hidden gardens once and for all. Even in these blissful and wretched moments we are not invited to join the immortals in their feast, but must be content to collect occasional crumbs that fall from their table. Another related and more important difference ff deals with the content of what is experienced in these precious moments, and with how they affect ff us later in life. Unlike Plato’s dialogues, not our mind’s eye but our heart is being primarily nourished in Dostoyevsky’s novels. Just as Dostoyevsky did not consider man to be a predominantly political animal, he was not convinced that man’s rational aspect should be emphasized at the expense of all others. The Dostoyevskyian pilgrimage does not lead to definitive cognitive insights, but to temporary changes of attitudes toward ourselves and especially those near us. Plato’s philosopher may be forced to leave the paradise outside the cave to share his insights with the less fortunate, or he may believe it is his obligation to return and stir up commotion in the cave. In Dostoyevskyian journeys underworld, the heart awakens for the suffering ff of our neighbors. The transformation need not consist in choosing to serve or help others, or in a conscious

392

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

decision to dedicate our work, even our lives, to others. Rather, it resides in something more fundamental, yet also less resolute and permanent, and this brings us to the third difference ff between the two outlooks. The way that Dostoyevsky conceived of reality was not only sharply opposed to earlier Platonic and later modern outlooks, but strikes us as pre-Platonic and almost mythological. From Plato on – including the Christian tradition – the symbolism of ‘up’ and ‘down’, of upper-world and under-world is clear to us: up is superior to down, the upper-world is the world of truth and the under-world is the world of illusion. In reversing this symbolism, Dostoyevsky not only anticipated the development of psychoanalysis but also vividly evoked some primordial elements in our experience of reality. The symbolism of parricide from T he Brothers Karamazov, for instance, is clearly archetypal, and is intended as such. The literal meaning of the word ‘archetype’, let us recall, is ‘implanted (typos t =stamp) from the beginning’. The archetypal material points to the roots of our thinking and our being, in contrast to the surface preoccupation of the modern man, who lives under the illusion that, following one of his utopian visions of blissful reality he can recreate or restructure the world ex nihilo.18 A journey underworld – the polar opposite of the Promethean striving toward mastering the fire in order to recreate or control the external world – is a mythological motif for an inner spiritual transformation. This journey typically does not take place in our customary linear time, nor does it involve the biological life-cycle: birth, development, death. A mythological underground journey takes place in cyclical time, where the relevant sequence centers on the elements of spiritual transformation: a death of the old and a rebirth of the new. This is why Dostoyevsky’s novels always appear to begin in the middle of some complicated affair, ff rather than to begin ‘‘from the beginning.’’ They indeed begin in the middle, if we consider them through the perspective of linear time and linear plot patterns. But eventually we recognize – at first more intuitively than fully consciously – that they deal with a typical transformation that is occurring in a cyclical conception of time. Dostoyevsky created the experience of cyclical time and cyclical plot by using the device of ‘‘doubles’’ for his heroes: Raskolnikov’s double is Svidrigailov, Prince Myshkin’s double is Ragozhin, Ivan’s double, Smerdyakov. In linear plot, we deal with individuals; in its cyclical counterpart, with types and archetypes. The role of doubles not only creates material for an intrigue and for pointing out contrast between characters, but also, at least in

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

393

Dostoyevsky, for revealing the internal complexities and contradictions of human nature.19 This brings us to the fourth, probably most important difference ff between Plato and Dostoyevsky. Unlike Plato, Dostoyevsky did not believe that – literally or symbolically – there are two worlds or even two layers of the same world, so that we dwell either in one or in the other. Dostoyevskyian journeys are not shifts from one world to another but from one aspect of the same personality to another. All of these aspects are real and important, all of them reveal who we are. As Dostoyevsky stated in T he Adolescent, ‘‘It has always been a mystery and I have marveled a thousand times at that faculty in man ... in cherishing in his soul his loftiest ideal side by side with the most abject baseness, and all quite sincerely.’’ This dual, contradictory, and antinomical aspect of human nature that is so characteristic of Dostoyevsky’s understanding is beautifully captured in the famous lines by the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva: ‘‘ ... the voice of heavenly truth against the earthly truth.’’ The key word here is ‘truth’: in Dostoyevsky, unlike Plato, what characterizes our humanity most of all is not our position between one true and one illusory world. Our problem is more complex, insofar as we are torn between one truth and another truth, or, as Dostoyevsky expressed it in T he Brothers Karamazov, between earthly bread and heavenly bread, between earthly freedom and heavenly freedom. Both are genuine and indispensable, and yet they continually compete against each other. Their battlefield is the human soul. We can now appreciate anew the insight that the choice of the dialogue was not, for Dostoyevsky, a matter of mere form. Rather, it was a genuine, perhaps the only adequate opportunity to give expression to different ff voices that coexist within our inner nature. Things are even more complicated than that, and this complexity reveals the true difference ff between the polyphony of a dialogue and the monological view of a philosophical treatise. In his works, ‘‘Dostoyevsky the human being’’ and ‘‘Dostoyevsky the thinker’’ were never far from each other, they never lost sight of each other. Through a dialogical form with its concert of voices, Dostoyevsky found the way to express his various doubts and anguishes, hopes and convictions, as well as those of other real thinkers and real persons. In his works, Dostoyevsky could let them confront each other and clash with each other, without necessarily imposing or favoring any particular outcome. A traditional philosophical treatise would try to establish a theory of human nature. Dostoyevsky’s theory of human nature is that, in fact,

394

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

there is no such theory, that no such theory could adequately explain reality. Dostoyevsky’s polyphony suggests that there is no single satisfactory theory, nor should there be any; what exists is a true multi-dimensionality of human nature, even within one single human being. Pressed to be more specific about the lineal conditions of humanity, Dostoyevsky would point out two such extreme boundaries within which our pride and our humility endlessly struggle with each other: our voluntary and involuntary involvement in the thick continuity of human events and natural happenings on the one hand, and our frightening helplessness in the face of contingency, on the other. We are never alone and fully isolated individuals, but always belong to some communities and the world as a whole. Our actions, thoughts, and values are part of that world and deeply influenced by its course of events. We are free to make our own decisions and try to change ourselves, other people around us, and even our entire world; but we can never be masters, only co-participants in that world. In the end, our lives and our world are under the influence of forces we can neither fully fathom nor control. If that is so, what lesson can be derived from our attempts to understand our world and ourselves? If there is a message to bring back from Dostoyevsky’s journeys to the underworld, what would it be? Perhaps no more, and no less, than the following. To journey underworld is to confront our humanity. For Dostoyevsky this means something different ff than for Descartes and other philosophers and writers of modernity. For the Russian thinker, an individual is never fully an isolated, atomic unity. An individual is so integrated with others – sometimes well and far more often not – that even when we journey inward, into the depth of our own psyche, it does not separate us from others but, quite the contrary, brings us into a more intimate and meaningful relationship with them. Dostoyevsky was not only unmotivated to write about a Robinson Crusoe-type of hero, but even found it necessary to oppose Descartes’ celebrated ‘‘cogito ergo sum’’ argument, which constitutes the prologue of modern individualism. In Dostoyevsky’s words, ‘‘Thou art – this means not merely ‘thou art perceived by me as existing’, but ‘thine existence is experienced by me as my own’, or ‘through thine existence I know that I am’. Es ergo sum.’’20 On a different ff occasion, he formulated it in less philosophical language: ‘‘To perceive one’s existence, to be able to say ‘I am’ – that is a great gift. But to say ‘I am not’ – to perish for the sake of others – whoever can do that stands possibly even higher.’’21 The lesson of Dostoyevsky’s journey underworld is that our humanity has to be comprehended not as an ‘‘I’’ but as a ‘‘Thou.’’ I can become a

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

395

person, a human being in a true sense of that word, only by relating to others, by opening myself toward them and tying my fate with theirs. I am a person, a moral and spiritual being, not by focusing on my own point of view, but by responding to my neighbor and the world as a whole. Even in my suffering ff I freely choose ‘‘Thou’’ over ‘‘I.’’ My freely chosen suffering ff for others and with others, my free and willing submission to the inevitability of destiny, represents both the opposite of that proud and lonely self-absorption that so worried Dostoyevsky, and the kind of suffering ff he believed made life worth living. In Dostoyevsky’s story ‘‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,’’ the hero – a ridiculous man who dreams about a much happier future for our suffering ff humanity on another planet – communicated his concerns in the following way: ‘‘Is there suffering ff on this new earth? On our earth we can truly love only with suffering ff and through suffering! ff We know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love.’’ Do Dostoyevsky and his ridiculous characters convince you? Perhaps not, for Dostoyevsky could not always convince himself either. Like the rest of us, his life fluctuated between a pursuit of ‘‘cheap happiness’’ on the well-lit surface of the world and ‘‘exalted suffering’’ ff in the darkness of the underworld. Unlike the rest of us, he dwelled in that hidden realm far more often and had a much firmer conviction that we have a chance to be human and alive in a far greater degree when we remember and revisit the depths of our own souls.22 College of the Holy Cross NOTES 1 Quoted from T he Dostoyevsky Museum in St. Petersburg: A Guidebook, by N. Ashimbaeva and V. Biron, trans. J. J. Day (St. Petersburg: Lyceum, 2000), p. 19. 2 Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 27. 3 According to Isaiah Berlin, this phrase – which became widely used in Russian culture – was coined in 1858 by Mikhail L. Mikhailov, when he tried to render ‘‘die verdammten Fragen’’ in his translation of Heine’s poem ‘‘Zum L azarus.’’ See footnote 1 of Berlin’s essay ‘‘The Hedgehog and The Fox,’’ reprinted in T he Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Ferrar, Straus and Giroux), pp. 445–446. 4 Quoted from James P. Scanlan, Dostoyevsky the T hinker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 1–2. For the best and most comprehensive account of Dostoyevsky’s life and thought, see the indispensable five volume set by Joseph Frank: Dostoyevsky: T he Seeds of Revolt, 1821–1849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Dostoyevsky: T he Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Dostoyevsky: T he Stir of

396

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

L iberation, 1860–1865 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Dostoyevsky: T he Miraculous Years, 1865–1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Dostoyevsky: T he M Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Among the best Russian biographies are: Konstantin Mochulski, Dostoyevsky: His L ife and Work, trans. I. R. Titunik and R. Durgy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); and Leonid Grossman, Dostoyevsky: A Biography, trans. Mary Mackler (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975). 5 This point is emphasized by Joseph Frank; see his Dostoyevsky: T he Miraculous Years, 1865–1871, pp. 290–291. For a valuable discussion of the role of dialogue and Dostoyevsky’s writing technique in general, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, trans. and ed. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 6 On the relevance of ‘‘meekly’’ characters in Dostoyevsky, see, for instance, L. A. Zander, Dostoyevsky, trans. Natalie Duddington (London: SCM Press, 1948); Ernest J. Simmons, Dostoyevsky: T he Making of a Novelist (New York: Random House, 1962); and Eduard Thurneysen, Dostoyevsky, trans. K. R. Crim (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964). 7 In T he Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky links the murder motive of the old Karamazov by this biblical reference; he first puts a version of it in Smerdyakov’s mouth, and then even more explicitly in Ivan’s. This has been pointed out by Frank; see his Dostoyevsky: T he Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881, p. 602. M 8 See Martin Buber, Good and Evil, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), especially pp. 141–143. For an account of the problem of evil in the Enlightenment period, see Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern T hought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). For a detailed discussion of Dostoyevsky’s view on evil, see primarily Nicholas Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, trans. Donald Attwater (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1965), ch. 4, pp. 89–110. See also Scanlan, op. cit., especially chs. 2–3, pp. 57–117; and Peter Vardy, T he Puzzle of Evil (London: HarperCollins, 1992). 9 Lev Shestov was very supportive of this aspect of Dostoyevsky’s thought. See his Dostoyevsky, T olstoy and Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Bernard Martin and Spencer E. Roberts (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969). 10 For further discussion of this issue, see my article ‘‘Trial of Man and Trial of God: Reflections on Job and the Grand Inquisitor,’’ Diotima: A Philosophical Review, 2: 2001, No. 2, pp. 83–94. On the problem of pride in Dostoyevsky, see also Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Y. Freccero (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), especially chs. XI-XII, pp. 256–314. 11 For a very useful comparison of the two greatest Russian novelists, see George Steiner, T olstoy or Dostoyevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). In their insistence on the importance and complexity of freedom, both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky probably had the same opponent in mind: Nicolai Chernyshevsky. His seminal novel W hat Is to Be Done? (1862) had a very profound effect ff on the Russian cultural and political scene. Orlando Figes argues in his book N Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), p. 221, that this book ‘‘became a bible for the revolutionaries, including the young Lenin, who said that his whole life had been transformed by it.’’ Chernyshevsky argued that it had been scientifically proven that free will is impossible, and that rational egoism is at the bottom of all ethics, of all virtue and sacrifice. On Dostoyevsky’s negative reactions to Chernyshevsky’s book, see Joseph Frank, Dostoyevsky: T he Stir of L iberation, 1860–1865, pp. 286–295 and passim; see also Frank, Dostoyevsky: T he Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881, pp. 72 ff. ff

SEARCHING FOR THE ABANDONED SOUL

397

12 Here is how Dostoyevsky himself explained the meaning of the ‘‘Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’’ to students of St. Petersburg University: ‘‘What that poem is saying is that if the Christian faith is combined and corrupted with the objectives of this world, then the meaning of Christianity will perish. Human reason will abandon itself to unbelief, and in place of the great ideal of Christ a new Tower of Babel will be built. Where Christianity had an exalted view of mankind, under the new order of things mankind will be viewed as a mere herd, and behind the appearance of social love there will arise an open contempt for humanity.’’ Quoted from Geir Kjetsaa, Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A W riter’s L ife, trans. Siri Hustvedt and David McDuff (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989), p. 339. For very different ff discussions of the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, see Vasily Rozanov, Dostoyevsky and the L egend of the Grand Inquisitor, trans. Spenser E. Roberts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972); Ellis Sandoz, Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (Baton Rouge: Lousisana State University Press, 1971); and Joseph Frank, Dostoyevsky: T he Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881, pp. 567–703. 13 Tolstoy expresses the same thought in War and Peace in the following way: ‘‘By loving people without cause, [Pierre] discovered indubitable causes for loving them.’’ According to Clifton Fadiman, ‘‘In this sentence ... lies the essence, the center, the inner flame, of the prerevolutionary Russian novel. It is only after one has pondered its meaning that one can understand what lies back of the sudden changes in Tolstoy’s and Dostoyevsky’s characters.’’ Quoted from Fadiman’s ‘‘Foreword’’ for War and Peace, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), xxxii. 14 Frank points out that ‘‘in an entry in his notebook set down after the work had been completed, [Dostoyevsky] wrote that ‘the whole book’ was a reply to the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.’’ See Frank, Dostoyevsky: T he Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881, p. 571. 15 For further discussion of these views, see Monroe C. Beardley, ‘‘Dostoyevsky’’ Metaphor of ‘Underground’,’’ J Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. III (June 1942), pp. 265–290. See also Frank, Dostoyevsky: T he Stir of L iberation, 1860–1865, pp. 310–347. 16 Martin Buber, ‘‘What is Man?,’’ in Between Man and Man, trans. R. G. Smith (New York: The Macmillan, 1965), p. 168. Jaroslav Pelikan has correctly emphasized that Dostoyevsky Fools of Christ: Essays on the draws a sharp line between the Holy and the Good; see his F T rue, the Good, and the Beautiful (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955), esp. ch. 3, pp. 56–84. 17 This point, which Dostoyevsky could have easily made himself, was emphasized by Nicolai Hartmann. See his Ethics, trans. S. Coit (New York: Macmillan, 1932), especially vol. 2, chapter XI, section (d): ‘‘Suffering ff as a value.’’ For a useful discussion of suff ffering from a Christian point of view, see also Max Scheler, F Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. Manfred S. Fringes and Roger L. Funk (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973), especially pages 330–348, and Scheler, ‘‘The Meaning of Suffering,’’ ff in the collection of his essays published in English under the title On Feeling, Knowing, and V Valuing , translated, edited and introduced by Harold J. Bershady (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 82–115. For a discussion of suffering ff in Dostoyevsky, see Berdyaev, op. cit. 18 See more on this in Arthur Koestler, T he Art of Creation (London: Picador, 1975), p. 353. As Koestler correctly points out, an unconscious recognition of archetypal material significantly affects ff our reading of a text: ‘‘[W]henever some archetypal motif is sounded, the response is much stronger than warranted by its face value – the mind responds like a tuning fork to a pure tone.’’ For further discussion of archetypes and symbolism in Dostoyevsky, see Zander, op. cit., and Ralph Matlaw, ‘‘Myth and Symbol in T he Brothers

398

PREDRAG CICOVACKI

Karamazov,’’ in T he Brothers Karamazov and the Critics, ed. Edward Wasiolek (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1967), pp. 108–118. W 19 This has been pointed out by Yuri M. Lotman, who also provides a very instructive ff between linear and cyclical plots; see his book U Universe of the discussion of the difference Mind: A Semiotic T heory of Culture, trans. Ann Shukman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 153–159. For further discussion of the role of doubles in Dostoyevsky, see Rene´ Girard, Dostoievski: du double a l’unite´ (Paris: Plon, 1963), and Dmitry Chizevsky, ‘‘The Theme of the Double in Dostoyevsky,’’ in Dostoyevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Rene W Wellek (Englewood Cliff ffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962), pp. 112–129. 20 Quoted from Victor Terras, Reading Dostoyevsky (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), p. 84. 21 Quoted from Geir Kjetsaa, op. cit., pp. 365–366. 22 I am grateful to Nancy Mardas, Thomas Lowler, Jeffrey ff Bernstein and Adam Musser for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

BERNARD MICALLEF

READING ACHILLE MIZZI: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS OF THE CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE

... antiquity forgot, custom not known, the ratifiers and props of every word. Shakespeare T he literary critic, as it were, weaves a little further on the greater tapestry of tradition that supports us. H. G. Gadamer

POETIC DISTORTION AND SIGNIFICANT BECOMING

The work of one Maltese poet, Achille Mizzi, provides ample opportunity for applying Hans Georg Gadamer’s view that interpretation loosens the traditional fixity, without yet losing the traditional effect, ff of the text. The greater part of Mizzi’s oeuvre is concerned with defamiliarizing sacred myth, and thus offers ff a poetic method unique in its hermeneutical opportunities for deciphering the inherited archetypal constitution of our present-day selves. This often involves poetic devices as the combined effect ff of evoked and significantly altered myths, comprising doctrinal beliefs and forms of behaviour pertaining to unconsciously retained archetypes. It also involves the reader’s discernment and selection of those poetic effects ff most consequential to and re-enactive of his unexamined mythical prejudice, artistic techniques that bring the poem into significant being in so far as what their artistic effect ff says questions, revives into discourse, what the reader is culturally committed to be. A meaningful poem, it is my intention to show, always allows the reader both to draw on his own uncritical articulation of past sacred narratives, and to resume their condensed meaning as a serious moral dialectic, one worked out in the opaque space opened up by the multivocality of verbal art. In the process, both text and reader are put in question, undergoing what I term significant becoming, their merging into a common third element lying as much beyond the written word as it does beyond the cultural mould of its reader. This third element is in many ways similar 399 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 399–415. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

400

BERNARD MICALLEF

to Hans Georg Gadamer’s fusion of the text’s and the reader’s horizons into an encompassing dialogue, whose very purpose is to understand what is already known in excess of itself, and to Paul Ricoeur’s recovery of the documents of existence, which entails the dialectic between language as ongoing structuration and language as inherited structure. Poetic understanding is in this light accomplished only when the word’s symbolic potential to say more confronts an institutionalized myth simultaneously understood as having previously said less. Sacred documents and mythical narratives predetermine which specific artistic techniques will most significantly and excellently bring them to life, while they are themselves only preserved in the surplus of meaning provided by working out those techniques. Being committed to an archetypal structure, even if unconsciously and naively so, thus forms the fundamental prerequisite for a meaningful measure of artistic liberation, a significant becoming occasioned by the interplay1 between the institutionalized closure of archetypal structures and their susceptibility to further artistic originality. According to this process, in which earlier confines alone qualify what ensuing manner of poetic excess best stands for artistic liberation, it is significance, rather than meaning, that affords ff what the interpreter of literature truly looks for. The notion of archetypal regression achieved through artistic progression has a long history. It suffices to mention, here, the epitome of this paradox in the medieval system that made truth immutable through its mutation into historical reference, tropological sense, allegorical implication, and anagogical transcendence, only for these modifications to be reintegrated once more into its sameness. St. Augustine’s earlier resolve to treat as allegorical any literal meaning in Scriptures incongruent with pre-established Christian values bears the seeds of this process of retention through extension. Under his influence, the allegorical and anagogical ramifications of medieval exegesis proliferate only because their supplementation continues to be motivated and guided by the need to perpetuate one doctrinal truth. Having already determined if a verbal sign is to be taken figuratively or not, this essential truth asserts its sameness through representative otherness. This is where the potentially endless polysemy of the sign merges with the larger semiotic unit we recognize as a predetermining code, the preconditioning system of beliefs that motivates representational variation only in so far as it thereby reaffirms itself. In Ricoeur’s words, ‘‘an isolated symbol has no meaning; or rather, an isolated symbol has too much meaning; polysemy is its law,’’ for it is the ‘‘economy’’ of the whole encompassing and configuring system, the

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

401

contextual arrangement composed of mutually reinforcing signs, that makes polysemy a regulated creativity.2 The medieval system of artistic or representative progression within a pre-established and regressive system of beliefs thus prefigures the hermeneutical circle: it foregrounds the innovative aspect made salient only in relation to its productively recovered background. Restricting our field of analysis to Achille Mizzi’s archetypal imagery will readily yield a recurring paradigm of the Christian narrative, made accessible through various forms of poetic excess in meaningfulness. In the poem ‘‘Judgement,’’ the poet’s dreamlike state presents the Sistine Chapel’s painting of Judgement Day coming under the ravages of a global nuclear fallout. This involves the immediate paradox of a Christian iconography of preordained doom paradoxically disintegrated by the very magnitude of destruction fulfilling the sacred narrative it portrays. The paradox is most poignantly conveyed along a series of highly problematic comparisons, similes that dismiss any naive recovery of orthodox belief: I dreamt of the Judgement in the Sistine Chapel molten and smudged oozing like water paint, the flesh of the Eternal Father hollowing like a burst blister. And the classical measure, balanced like a centrifugal ring of giants casting the radiance of the gods like radium, I fancied as a circus going round in a deranged circle with a fool’s laugh echoing a hollowness like a pebble flung into the funnel of a chasm.

Gadamer’s sense of creating something exemplary not simply by following rules but through a novelty discovered while participating in its communally shared procedure is what is achieved by similes such as ‘‘molten and smudged oozing like water paint,’’ or ‘‘the flesh of the Eternal Father / hollowing like a burst blister’’.3 Here, the archetype of preordained doom is rehearsed into a new ironic awareness: a catastrophic modernity undermining the physical durability of the same pictorial medium of preordainment that foretells it. On the other hand, the fears attendant on a brave new world must remain cognate with that mythical concept that, as Roland Barthes points out, is impoverished into an abstract concept only as new connotations are acquired by its signifier.4 The more

402

BERNARD MICALLEF

abstracted the archetype of preordainment, the more susceptible it is to becoming a signifier in a new metalanguage, a higher-order discourse able to disclose the contingency of religious iconography without denying the archetype of universal doom. Mizzi’s paradoxical simile stands out as a modern dilemma only by virtue of the way it strikingly stands within the narrative prejudice of Christian preordainment, the whole narrative unity in which the reader’s cognizant being must stand in order for this technique to be rendered efficacious. What if the subject-matter of preordainment were as inchoate as its pictorial medium is transitory and protean, as hollow as its depicted godhead is a ‘‘burst blister’’? The connotative effects ff of art are co-extensive with posing a threat to the narrative integrity that supports their interpreter; they are effects ff because the interpreter is primarily committed to being a dasein, a being-there in a world that is already religiously and morally constructed. When Mizzi likens ‘‘the radiance of the gods’’ to the effulgence ff of radium, bringing on a par beatific and worldly, divine and nuclear splendor, it becomes that more evident how disconcertingly his similes combine an archetypal memory (divine manifestation, numinous radiance) with the poetic event of saying more (a man-made demonstration of earthly power). The poem’s iconographic effacement ff in fact culminates in a final disquieting comparison, the image of the Eternal Father falling ‘‘from the height to which he was raised / by Michelangelo’’ onto ... Picasso’s fabric like an overwhelmed mute whose tongue has become a pumice, his writing soot.

Here too, the accidental transformation from Renaissance to modern art leaves little doubt as to the pictorial contingency suggested. The contingent possibilities of myth-making are in fact themselves exposed through the equivocal nature of Mizzi’s simile, its ability both to dramatize a preordained doom and to put in question the pictorial medium of preordainment. Such poetic instances, in fact, convey a system of beliefs while assuming an aesthetic viewpoint, one that is regulated by the shared practices, norms, and products of the literary field concerned. The religious repertoire combines with a poetic repertoire because issues arising in the first can now only be resolved through more effects ff obtained by the interpreter in committing himself to the second. The combined effect ff of an archetypal narrative and the artistic techniques that adduce it problematically – thereby justifying the need for interpretation – leads to

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

403

a new type of knowledge, one avoiding both that the archetypal narrative be abandoned and that it repeat itself into irrelevance. This type of knowledge gives rise to the portrayed world of the text, in which the reader’s mode of being is tantamount to his hypothetical becoming, itself conceivable only in terms of aesthetic distance from and a renewed synthesis with his pre-given world. Let us, for the moment, simply recall that modern literature and aesthetics are themselves very much concerned with returning creatively to the past. Literary modernism, it has been widely pointed out, owes its greater accomplishments to taking up again myth’s early dilemmas through its distortive techniques of literary analepsis – Mann’s use of the Faust legend and the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, Faulkner’s recourse to the history of the American South, Joyce’s Dublin set against the background of Homeric epic, and the various archetypal models of Yeats, Eliot, Gide, Kafka, and Giraudoux are the more likely examples.5 In addition, one cannot disregard the movement’s self-depiction as an expression growing out of a relentless interaction with the texts of antiquity. Ezra Pound had early spoken of a modernity discovering and rediscovering ancient texts by appropriating their possibilities of refinement, or by ‘‘using the word in some special relation’’ to the traditional context where the reader is accustomed to find it.6 T. S. Eliot, for his part, claims that the new can only be appreciated as judged by the standards of the past, which is in turn retained only in constituting our present.7 One is thus the true bearer of tradition only if one surpasses, through applying, the legacies of preceding writers. This accords well with more recent phenomenological approaches to traditional texts such as those of myth. M. Eliade, for instance, conceives of contemporary ceremonies, rituals, and rites as re-enactments of the primordial events of myth, thereby gaining some measure of control over the primary deeds that have primordially formed and continue to control our present-day selves.8 Modern art itself can be seen as ‘‘an initiatory gnosis,’’ an initiation ceremony, allowing its few initiates to rebuild archetypal ‘‘ruins and enigmas’’ into our contemporary world.9 In the poem ‘‘Judgement,’’ the reader who expects simile to fulfil its conventional function of clarifying an image through explicit and vivid comparison (‘‘like’’ and ‘‘as’’) is bound to undergo this revival of archetypal language as a present-day enigma, a modern re-enactment of a primordial event. In the poem, simile serves to reveal the icon’s indeterminacy of representation, and thus to undermine the archetype of preordained fate that belongs to sacred symbolism. Both the medium and the meaning of

404

BERNARD MICALLEF

sacred myth are put in question through such comparisons as that between the nuclear disintegration and the cubistic production of God’s image, or that which likens the destruction of frescoes to the process of another pictorial medium (‘‘oozing like water paint’’). These similes force the reader to intuit the mytheme of preordained fate as a meaning subject to transitory forms of iconographic representation. Instead of being reduced to a noema, the mytheme of preordained fate is experienced as an aesthetic noesis. Instead of being simply realized by a global thermonuclear destruction, the mytheme of preordained fate is experienced as the poetic indeterminacy between a nuclear fallout that fulfils and a nuclear fallout that reshapes sacred icons. The mytheme of preordained fate thus becomes an irreducible concept, lived only through significant aesthetic accretions to its problematic nature. This open-endedness of the mytheme of preordainment is made all the more evident with another passage from the same poem: Cul-de-sac Greek tragedy has one fate that everyone predicts. Destiny ... But the rending scythe’s shadow that’s descending shall be suspended by whom?

The unresolved sense of destiny here has a threefold nature: the Greek variant of irrevocable fate in tragedy, the syntactical fragment ‘‘Destiny ...’’ and the medieval allegory of death. With the poem’s reference to Greek tragedy, to elaborate just one example, comes a subtle divergence away from Christian eschatology towards the notion of hamartia. It would be a misrepresentation to confuse hamartia with knowingly incurring God’s wrath as in Genesis, since hamartia is often a consequence of blindness to one’s own flaws, even where these include hubris, the Greek counterpart to Christian pride. Hamartia fluctuates between arrogance and ignorance, sin and stupidity, and cannot be fully subsumed under the Christian notion of voluntary transgression. The passage, in fact, causes divergent allusions to fate to clash, bringing about a verbal hiatus precisely after the centrally positioned and key term ‘‘Destiny ...’’. Through the absence of predicate, ‘‘Destiny ...’’ almost becomes fate as a blank prophecy, a prediction that is omitted and may be variously filled in from one age to the next, thereby accumulating a variety of archetypal forms from its past divergent myths: Greek, Christian, and medieval. A further significance emerges: the inquiry about who shall suspend the scythe’s ‘‘descending

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

405

shadow’’ acquires an enigmatic shift from a wielder of the scythe – the archetypal harvester of men emblematic of Death – to an unknown and seemingly powerless interceptor of its falling shade. This combination of poetic techniques is the poem’s and the reader’s significant becoming, their synthesis into a higher-order awareness of the intensifying yet amorphous image of fate. It is poetry as the significant becoming of this enigma of destiny that constitutes the meaningful experience of fate as an iconographically foretold yet historically unspecified doom.

CONJECTURING AND MAINTAINING A LEITMOTIF

As a conjecture that must also endure through literary excellence, Mizzi’s enigmatic leitmotif of fate, iconographically foretold yet historically undefined, maintains its own conceivability by virtue of artistically excelling in what it already thematically concedes. Its validity is demonstrable, in other words, only as an aesthetic phenomenon retaining meaning through aesthetic variation. This means that its familiar schema of ambiguity, its distinctive open-endedness, can only subsist as a poetic experience when other works shed new light upon it. Mizzi’s poem ‘‘Green Peace’’ provides one such instance. In this work, the Chernobyl thermonuclear disaster leads to a blending of Greek and Christian deities into one protean image of divine retribution. It thereby recalls the indeterminacy between Greek or Christian mythoi of destiny hanging over a nuclear fallout in ‘‘Judgement,’’ and to this extent reveals the consistency of a leitmotif. However, ‘‘Green Peace’’ is also an artistic mode of consistency, and can validate the dynamics of a literary leitmotif only through excelling in what the latter thematically concedes. The verses It was he who forewarned us that it shrivels as a citron does the apple-tree in the centre

allude to the biblical image of God, in pursuit of whose omniscience man mythically revolts, but the anaphoric pronoun ‘‘he’’ points back to the antecedent pagan image of Jove, who at the poem’s start is enviously poised to strike against man’s earthly accomplishments. The Chernobyl disaster, referred to in the poem’s epigraph and implied as the manner of doom preordained for man’s original sin, is thus also divergently portrayed as Greek nemesis, a divine interference into man’s earthly prosperity and well-being. It must be recalled that the Greek pantheon was

406

BERNARD MICALLEF

dominated not by moral concerns as much as by primordial drives, not least of which envy. While it is, on the one hand, the biblical God’s voice that in the poem ordains ‘‘From everything you shall taste ... / but the tree in the middle you shall not touch,’’ it is, on the other, an envious Jove who hurls sparks to kindle ‘‘with strontium / the teats on cattle udders.’’ Behind the recurring scenario of a global nuclear catastrophe, therefore, there now stands not a single clearly portrayed deity together with its unadulterated narrative, but the alternative possibilities of divine judgement and divine envy. The poem’s intertwining of mythical alternatives is the significant becoming of Mizzi’s leitmotif of preordained fate, existing – as every poetic leitmotif must – as the praxis of preserving a theme through connotative excess. It works like Ricoeur’s fundamental condition for significant interpretation: the merging of an institutionalized tradition with the symbolic event of its ongoing discourse.10 ‘‘Green Peace’’ resumes a complex leitmotif of preordainment through interweaving the righteous principle of divine retribution with the destructive principle of divine envy, that is, through a further moral enigma in which man’s nuclear accomplishments and accidents are seen either as an illegitimate pursuit after divine knowledge, echoing the fall of paradisal man, or as an enviable exploration of his prospects for earthly power and prosperity, malevolently interrupted by Greek nemesis. The reader’s commitment to the leitmotif of preordainment can henceforth be experienced only as an irreducible dilemma, a nuclear reality which evokes the archetype of preordained fate not as a sedimented eschatology, but as the historical uncertainty of either having done the presaged wrong or being oneself wronged by an unjust deity. In forming a poetic leitmotif, moral and literary concerns have also been merged and hypothetically lived through by the interpreter. The effective ff reading of myth must itself entail, as Barthes points out, an equilibrium between impoverished meaning ‘‘ready for signification’’ and artistic form accomplished in ‘‘caricatures, pastiches, [and] symbols’’ recovering it on a new signifying level: ‘‘myth is a pure ideographic system, where the forms are still motivated by the concept which they represent while not yet, by a long way, covering the sum of its possibilities of representation.’’11 The mythical phenomenon of preordainment in Mizzi – successively interpreted as the contingency of sacred iconography, as a blank prophecy still to be historically filled in, as a bricolage of Christian and Greek archetypal residues, and through the conflict between original sin or envied progress – is anything but a static image. It is, as Gadamer

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

407

would say, the product of a historical consciousness predetermined by that which has gone before and enduring as an effective ff history.12 Instead of presenting itself as a static mythos, Mizzi’s leitmotif of preordainment invites the reader to revive the precariousness of myth-making at the inauspicious advent of a nuclear age. The act of reconstructing mythical alternatives from the past and of living the immediate fears of a brave new world that evokes them is what fate in ‘‘Green Peace’’ is about. Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation as a detour back to one’s inherited and overdetermined symbols sheds light on this process of archetypal meaning recovered through the enriching distanciation from it effected ff by one’s own world. Interpretative practice, says Ricoeur, involves two orientations: one that would seek to recover meaning from the past, as in Freudian psychoanalysis with its return to childhood and primordiality, and one that would seek to construct meaning teleologically, in front of itself, as in Hegelian phenomenology with its prospective synthesis. Ricoeur stresses that this hermeneutical duality, ‘‘oriented [both] toward the resurgence of archaic symbols ... [and] toward the emergence of new symbols,’’ is a tension inherent in the individual symbols themselves.13 We might add that this conflict between the retrospective and the prospective orientations of understanding is nowhere more evidently at work than in the very dynamics of a literary leitmotif. Any artistic leitmotif endures as the struggle of verifying sameness in variation, of allowing a recurring signified to be recognized through the excelling instances of its poetic alterity. As much the making of an interpreting subjectivity as it is a literary procedure, a poetic leitmotif is ultimately the reader acknowledging thematic familiarity through artistic enhancement, heightening recognition through the venture of novelty, or, as Gadamer would say, having his own prejudice ‘‘properly brought into play by being put at risk’’.14 Mizzi’s leitmotif of preordained fate, now a precarious mythography problematized by a nuclear age, actualizes this logic of consistency through development, in which further poetic instances may gain relevance. The poem ‘‘Fission,’’ for instance, resembles ‘‘Judgement’’ in setting out from a subliminal state of mind, its religious and nuclear images once again intermingling to form apparently involuntary associations. It also recalls Mizzi’s metamorphosing iconography through its depiction of the biblical bush ‘‘burning radioactively (... ) as beheld / by Moses.’’ The modifier ‘‘radioactively,’’ effectively ff fitted into a long revered and reassuring icon of divine manifestation, amounts to a syncretism of nuclear and numinous intensities forging an uneasy union of man-made destruction

408

BERNARD MICALLEF

and divine omnipotence. The poem’s single unbroken syntax grafts a feared radioactive fallout on to the sacred image of divine supremacy. It reads: In the dark pigeon hole of your temple’s unconscious coos serenely the dove brooding on the egg whence at times hatches the tremendous vision of the living God burning radioactively in a flaming bush as beheld by Moses.

The condensed transitions between inviting and daunting, divine and human, archaic and modern manifestations of power transforms the unresolved legacy of sacred symbols into the anarchic figure of modern man, capable of entitling as ‘‘Fission’’ what will poetically culminate in sacred revelation. In our postulated leitmotif of an unresolved mythos of fate there now occurs a momentous reversal of archetypal roles: the nuclear threat that had earlier triggered the dilemma of divine retribution or envy now itself encompasses, as the poem’s title, the biblical manifestations of God (dove and burning bush). Significantly, what brought about a subliminal fear in ‘‘Judgement’’ – a nuclear fallout dissolving a sacred iconography – ‘‘Fission’’ now employs as the incorporating title and the prevalent icon for sacred revelation. Man’s nuclear age now supersedes his icons of a preordaining God, and provides its own supreme icon of awesome manifestation. But if God can be portrayed ‘‘radioactively,’’ this appropriation of a sacred by a profane icon has come about neither as an isolated nor as a definitive statement. In ‘‘Fission’’ nuclear menace must still emulate the eschatological narrative out of whose foreshadowed doom its significance was first brought to light. Would the poem’s reversal of mythical and nuclear roles have arisen without a prior commitment to the Christian eschatological narrative? Above all, does our reader’s experience of poetic depth not continue to presuppose an equal profundity of archetypal understanding, the fundamental concept of destiny itself ? It is, therefore,

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

409

neither by disavowing nor by arresting the dynamics of an archetypal leitmotif, but instead by assuming a retrospective faculty excelling into a new thematic moment that reading Mizzi’s poetry attains to significant becoming. Poetry, it will be shown in the next section, can best excel15 in what it best remembers. HISTORICITY AND POETIC EXCELLENCE

Gadamer remarks that the knower and the known are not ontically present to each other, but relate on the basis of an historical development common to both. The knower’s historical understanding belongs to its tradition not through any identity with it, but through taking up again its partially forgotten legacy, through the regressive and progressive task of belonging to tradition.16 This generates the creative retention of what may be known only through a surplus of meaning. Poetry holds a special place in this hermeneutics, allowing tradition to be meaningfully evoked through further contributions whose significance it preconditions. The work of art, observes a leading critic of modernity, is first set against the immediate familiarity of ordinary language (which is of course governed by unconscious archetypes), then singled out amidst the more specialized norms and genres of a specific literary tradition, then appreciated for those deviations made salient against the ‘‘linguistic norms established by ... itself ’’.17 This self-engendering process is likewise presented by B. Engler, for whom the ideal reader, versed in the historical evolution of textual effects, ff uses this background knowledge to assimilate further interpretative conditions, ultimately losing the distinction between contributions made by the text and those coming from the interpretative occasion.18 This convergence of background and foreground, of sedimented meanings and aesthetic novelty, is what poetry as an instance of significant becoming is all about. It is a becoming in that the poem’s past realizations must always be aesthetically regained in order for its mode of being to remain artistic, and it is significant in that aesthetic novelty is made discernible only as an effect ff upon prior meanings. The interplay between the closure of meaning and the originality of poetic language can now be more cogently put forth. The intensity of the poetic experience I attribute neither to a diminishing commitment to one’s institutionalized practices and values as maintained by a Christian narrative, the predetermining framework of beliefs through which alone one first comes to discern and perform poetic deviation as such, nor to failing to exceed this commitment by way of poetic enigma, polysemy, or

410

BERNARD MICALLEF

distortion. On the contrary, poetry continues to speak to us with intensity because its historicity, its legacy in representative otherness, foregrounds the marginalized or discarded aspects of our institutionalized selves. Through its relative defamiliarization, we excel in what we are, our moral and cultural sentiment being restored through a poetic activation of latent questions inhering in our archetypal being. Poetry thus dramatizes the historical struggle of faith. Even where this entails the unconscious fear of a nuclear age usurping a sacred myth, such an apprehension can only be authentically situated within that broader prejudice of sacred narrative. This is what allows religious concerns to endure in the new determinacy of literary comprehension, even if only for dramatic evaluations and hypothetical conditions of the moral self. This fusion of horizons helps the reader respond meaningfully to the rest of Mizzi’s poetry, justifying his selections from the poet’s collection according to their contribution to a growing archetypal sense. Mizzi’s early poem ‘‘Encephalograph,’’ for instance, can be selected for the way it anticipates much of what has been said so far. It portrays man ending up with a miscellaneous patrimony of mythical ‘‘playthings and breakages’’ due to his mythological retrospection, comprising Christian as much as pagan icons: The Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx guardian of the dead. Of Olympia the gods and centaurs with veins bulging on their thighs, not death’s emblem but an overflowing of life. Dante’s Inferno funnelling down, the golden Madonna of Byzantium, the nude Statue on Notre Dame’s altar, the myth of a Universe expanding like a pool’s ripple. Yesteryear’s gist made today’s mythology. Y

In ‘‘Encephalograph’’ myth offers ff a significant antecedent to the image of man as a problematic composite of unresolved archetypes. Mizzi’s informed reader will in fact find it difficult to resist interpreting it in the light of the poet’s later portrayal of archetypal images intermingling with aspects from a brave new world. Very early in Mizzi’s poetic mind, ‘‘yesteryear’s gist’’ only reaches the present-day mind as a mythologized history, susceptible to being rewritten by those later historical events, such as a nuclear fallout, prefigured by its archetypal imagery. The poem in fact heightens the allegorical potential of myth. It suggests what Mircea

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

411

Eliade says of Greek myth: its survival as poetry is due mainly to its becoming a cultural entity devoid of literal reference to sacred realities.19 Religiously uncertain yet poetically enriching, and ‘‘yesteryear’s gist’’ recalled only as modernity’s employed archetypes, myth here appears as an open-ended symbolic application of archaic meanings. Hence this early poem’s problematic image of an essentially mythologizing man, fist at once uplifted and wound with cobwebs: Meanwhile uplifted is Man’s arm beneath his feet and above his head the abyss and around his clenched fist cobwebs wound.

Man’s monumental and triumphant pose, with a mythical skein wound round his fist (in nothingness), discloses mythopoeia as a mode of being that can neither forget, nor replicate, nor yet substantiate its constitutive archetypes. The reader can likewise move on to Mizzi’s later works, expecting to find there a more refined employment of this mythopoeic endeavour. In the relatively recent poem ‘‘Ulysses,’’ for instance, the poet’s express need to be left bound ‘‘to the main mast,’’ his tormented mind ‘‘eagerly / grappling’’ with the siren song heard by Ulysses, recalls the foregoing image of man inescapably entangled in his own myths. The poem is a mythopoeic representation of the poet’s own enthralment by myth: Tormented leave me with the wound that gratifies, with a joy that hurts, with a song melting even the adamantine granite. Tormented leave me with this intoxication that crazes ... with the enchantment of myth.

Here too, it is the coming together of the archetype of irresistible enchantment and a modern attitude towards myth that makes for the intensity of the poetic experience. Mizzi’s significant self-portrayal – a problematic composite of sacred myths craving still the harrowing enchantment of myth – adopts both the declamatory tone and the archetypal role of one of its archaic narratives. Unable to subsist without archetypes as much as he is destined to see them accommodate to new circumstances, a product as well as an ongoing producer of myth, the poet seems left with

412

BERNARD MICALLEF

little choice but to allow this predicament to be vouchsafed by the grandiloquent voice and heroic act of myth itself. Between ‘‘Encephalograph’’ and ‘‘Ulysses,’’ the leitmotif of man as an ongoing mythopoeia progresses from an initial desacralization of archetypes towards a final admission that their preordaining discourse can never be abandoned, only re-applied. Our last example in this regard will be the remarkable poem ‘‘Olympus’’: After the fervours of stretching cylinders and gasping joints a struggle of grabbing and letting go of levers and axles ... let me liquefy dissolve an oily blot spreading into a rainbow a chloroform on seas of zirconium in the azure of the Ionian singing the purple-clad gods with a jowl of gold and ivory.

‘‘Olympus,’’ in fact, displays signifiers from the Greek and industrial worlds that abort their semiotic contexts only after evoking their respective universes of discourse. Moreover, the poem’s single, momentarily paused syntax elicits a strong sense of grammatical unity as in ‘‘Fission,’’ against which its incongruously juxtaposed elements are then an immediate and striking means of semantic discontinuity. In one syntactical flow towards the poet’s final hymn to the gods, the poem unites a modern industrial age of ‘‘cylinders,’’ ‘‘levers and axles,’’ ‘‘oily blot,’’ ‘‘chloroform,’’ and ‘‘zirconium,’’ with the world of bodily exertion portrayed by ‘‘fervours,’’ ‘‘stretching,’’ ‘‘gasping,’’ ‘‘struggle’’ and ‘‘grabbing and letting go.’’ Ultimately, the concluding hymn is itself sung to a pantheon ‘‘with a jowl / of gold and ivory,’’ which subtly echoes the same intermixture of mechanical and bodily parts retained throughout the work. The ‘‘purple-clad gods’’ invoke Mizzi’s attainment of sacred myth via a technological era. And the ‘‘oily blot’’ breaking down and dilating over a metallic (‘‘zirconium’’) or an aquatic (‘‘Ionian’’) expanse, and extended

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

413

by verbs of liquefaction (‘‘liquefy,’’ ‘‘dissolve’’ and ‘‘spreading’’), significantly refers to an industrial setting while yet evoking a sacrificial ritual (‘‘let me / liquefy dissolve’’). It is this subtle shift between its sacred evocation and its realistic role of breaking down as a solvent in an industrial scene that makes the ‘‘oily blot’’ a creative resurgence of myth. In fact, this shift parallels the whole poem’s ambiguity between the anthropomorphic world of Olympus, or classical Greece, in which the poet is still culturally rooted, and a modern industrial age of advanced metallurgy, through which alone could the archaic world be articulated. The metallic expanse of ‘‘zirconium’’ and the natural expanse of the ‘‘Ionian,’’ made grammatically symmetrical as objects of parallel prepositional phrases, enhance this indeterminacy. The poet’s declamatory tone likewise evokes the world of ritualistic myth as another component of the classical world whose anthropomorphic exertion fades into industrial ‘‘cylinders.’’ The intermixture of mechanical and bodily exertions, the conflation of zirconium’s advanced metallurgy with the Ionian’s expanse, the identification of a potentially real solvent with the poetic self still striving to pay homage to a classical pantheon, all testify to an anthropocentric code inevitably overrun by an industrial register. From this last example emerges the fact that the mythical sentiment in poetry is not a given but an effort, ff not a traditional text but the continuation of its memory. This explains why ‘‘Olympus’’ will go on speaking to us well after a first reading, its own significant becoming emerging within the reader’s precondition of being himself determined by Mizzi’s poetry. The poem’s failure to integrate into a complete image of human exertion, despite continuing to usher in an anthropocentric code of combative and athletic qualities, and the way its technological contemporaneity cheats the archaic world of its archetypal configurations while succumbing still to a deep sense of sacrifice and homage, illustrate how mythopoeia is neither the loss nor the mere repetition of myth. Mizzi’s telescoped metaphors20 in ‘‘Olympus’’ give much the same effect. ff Thus, the ‘‘oily blot’’ which represents the speaking self is itself metaphorized in natural terms by the secondary figuration of a ‘‘rainbow,’’ which is then renamed by ‘‘chloroform,’’ a volatile industrial solvent that shifts emphasis back onto the industrial register. The fact that this telescoped metaphorization never mentions its human tenor bears greatly on the emerging insight that the speaking self may after all belong neither to a finalized field (anthropocentric or industrial) nor an absolute mode (figurative or realistic) of discourse. Paying homage to ‘‘the purple-clad

414

BERNARD MICALLEF

gods’’ thus emerges not from a finite archetypal image, but from the interplay between the archetype and its modern equivalents. CONCLUDING COMMENT

One fundamental principle of historicist hermeneutics underlies the foregoing observations: that the anticipated whole under whose conditions of purpose and procedure an interpreter singles out relevant parts is itself completed only through understanding the parts. Significant becoming emerges from such meaningful reformulations of a postulated whole. This is why it was possible, in the first place, to loosen the traditional rigidity of a Christian narrative without yet losing its traditional effect, ff or to have a poetic experience of one’s moral sentiment. Being accessed through the distinctive resources, practices, and norms of a literary experience, the Christian narrative no longer remains a merely dogmatic structure, but proceeds along the questioning enhancements of a poetic intentionality. What this seems to require of the interpreting mind is a clear demarcation beforehand of the provisional whole in terms of which one perceives significant contributions, and an equally clear delimitation of the new competence through which that whole is to be enlarged. This, I believe, Gadamer suggests by his notion of an acknowledged bias, of being aware of one’s prejudice rather than endeavouring pointlessly to stand outside it. University of Malta U NOTES 1 One can subsume this use of the word ‘‘interplay’’ under Gadamer’s general conception of play as the act of superseding the subject, goal, or object of a game with the effort ff to realize playing itself, that is, through further tasks performed in individual games. It is this sense of the recognition of structure through progressive performance that functions also in the interplay between the closure of meaning and the originality of poetic language. H. G. Gadamer, T ruth and Method, trans. by J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall (London: Sheed and Ward Ltd., 2nd ed., 1989), pp. 101–7. 2 P. Ricoeur, T he Conflict of Interpretations (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 58. Ricoeur later maintains that ‘‘without the support of an economy, of an order in which the symbol signifies (...) symbols are threatened by their oscillation between sinking into the imaginary and evaporating in allegorism; their richness, their exuberance, their polysemy expose naive symbolists to intemperance and to complacency’’. Ibid., p. 60. 3 H. G. Gadamer, T he Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. by N. Walker; ed. and intr. by R. Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1986), p. 21. The articulatory aspect which inheres in this hermeneutics comes from Gadamer’s ability to see

READING ACHILLE MIZZI

415

understanding, interpretation, and application as essentially one hermeneutical act. As a consequence, interpreting the text acquires the circularity of a system sustained through its particular performances that are, in turn, granted by the possibilities of the system. 4 R. Barthes, Mythologies M , selected and trans. by A. Layers (London: Vintage, 1972), pp. 118–121. 5 P. Brooks, Reading for the Plot – Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 280. 6 E. Pound, ABC of Reading (London: Faber and Faber, 3rd ed., 1961), pp. 37, 56–7, 64. 7 T. S. Eliot, ‘‘Tradition and the Individual Talent,’’ in P. Faulkner (ed.), A Modernist M Reader – M Modernism in England 1910–1930 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1986), p. 87. 8 M. Eliade, M Myth and Reality, trans. by W. R. Trask (Illinois: Harper and Row (Waveland Press reissue), 1998), pp. 77–8. Early on in his work, Eliade subsumes the modern world’s ritualistic and textual performances under mankind’s need to re-enact ‘‘the primordial events in consequence of which man became what he is today – mortal, sexed, organized in a society, obliged to work in order to live, and working in accordance with certain rules’’. Ibid., p. 11. 9 Ibid., pp. 189–91. Eliade propounds a modern literature that ‘‘has taken the place of the recitation of myths in traditional and popular societies,’’ and that recalls initiation in a context that is ‘‘desacralized or simply camouflaged under ‘profane’ forms.’’ 10 P. Ricoeur, op. cit., pp. 29–30. 11 Barthes, op. cit., p. 127. 12 H. G. Gadamer, op. cit, 1989, p. 304. 13 P. Ricoeur, op. cit., p. 117. 14 H. G. Gadamer, op. cit., 1989, p. 299. 15 The verb ‘‘excel’’ in modern English usage is very indicative in this regard, having lost its object to the degree that one does not excel something as often as one excels in something, precisely in that which had previously been assumed as one’s habit of thought. 16 H. G. Gadamer, op. cit., 1989, pp. 261–2. 17 D. Lodge, T he Modes M of Modern W riting – Metaphor, Metonymy, and the T ypology of Modern L iterature (London: Arnold, 2000), pp. 2–3. M 18 B. Engler, ‘‘The Poem and Occasion,’’ in P. Verdonk (ed.), T wentieth-Century Poetry: From T ext to Context (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 162. 19 M. Eliade, op. cit., pp. 153–6. 20 Also known as complex metaphor, a telescoped metaphor allows the vehicle of one metaphor to become the tenor of another. The other main category is organic metaphor, in which an explicit vehicle refers to an implicit tenor. This type can also be claimed for the way the poetic self represented by the ‘‘oily blot’’ is never explicitly developed as a human figure.

ALAIN BEAULIEU

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE: LE LANGAGE, LA VIE ET LA DOCTRINE DU JUGEMENT

L’EXPRESSION D’UNE LANGUE E´ TRANGE` RE

Selon Deleuze, la litterature n’a d’autre tache que de faire naıˆtre une ` la langue originale et inconnue dans une langue ordinaire et courante. A suite de Proust, Deleuze affirme: «Les beaux livres sont ecrits dans une sorte de langue etrange`re.» (Proust, 1987, p. 297; Deleuze, 1993, p. 7). Fidele a une me´thode de citation qui demontre une violence interpretative certaine en autorisant la decontextualisation des enonce´s emprunte´s, Deleuze entraıˆne la definition proustienne de la litterature vers une expe´rimentation singuliere des forces chaosmiques, ces forces qui etaient jusquela demeurees le grand inquestionne de la phenome´nologie (Franck, 1981, p. 98, note 25). Pour mieux saisir ce dont il s’agit, il nous faut d’abord expliquer deux notions centrales pour l’esthetique deleuzienne: les devenirs et la vie impersonnelle. L’e´criture est pour Deleuze une activite privilegiee d’experimentation des devenirs. Toutefois, les devenirs deleuziens ne sont pas diriges sur une forme a imiter ou a laquelle ils pourraient s’identifier. «Ce qui s’oppose a` la mime`sis c’est, en termes deleuziens, les devenirs» (Ranciere, 1998, p. 184; cf. aussi Deleuze, 1993, p. 11; Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 375). Un personnage, un auteur ou un lecteur qui «devient» au sens deleuzien expe´rimente tout sauf le passage d’une identite a` une autre. En ce sens, l’anti-exemple litteraire des devenirs deleuziens est donne par le roman de formation. Pour Deleuze, devenir est plutot de l’ordre du processus. Mais un processus particulier qui transforme ce qui en fait l’experience sans eˆtre guide par une forme preexistante. L’expression litteraire des devenirs equivaut ainsi a la decouverte d’une zone d’indiscernabilite ou d’indiffe ff ´renciation (Deleuze, 1993, p. 11, 100; Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 343) entre deux entites (qui peuvent provenir de deux regnes diffe ff ´rents) en cre´ant des moyens langagiers inedits qui ne referent a` aucun modele pre´defini. L’originalite des nombreux ouvrages consacres par Deleuze a l’art (Deleuze, 1975, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1993, 1996) reside en ceci que ce qui est interroge est non pas l’œuvre accomplie, mais plutot l’art en train de se faire. D’ou le desintereˆt de Deleuze pour la question: «Qu’est-ce que l’art imite?». Ce qui importe, c’est plutot de savoir: «Quelles forces 417 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 417–432. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

418

ALAIN BEAULIEU

s’emparent des corps? Comment fonctionne la figure? Qu’est-ce que la sensation exprime?» La tradition hege´lienne en esthetique, dont on trouve un prolongement dans les positions de Heidegger et de Merleau-Ponty, cherche a donner un sens aux œuvres deja e cre´e´es en laissant inquestionne le processus anterieur de creation. Or, pour Deleuze, interroger les devenirs effectifs ff par-dela ou en-decc¸ a des theories de l’imitation vise precisement a` rejoindre quelque chose de plus fondamental par rapport a l’œuvre achevee: le present de la vie impersonnelle. ´rimentation des devenirs en litterature correspond a une deterriL L’expe torialisation radicale qui amene l’ecrivain (et le lecteur) a expe´rimenter une vie impersonnelle depourvue de toute interiorite et de toute volonte. «Deleuze pense la vie pre- et a- subjective, pre- et inorganique, pre- et non individuelle.» (Scherer, 1998, p. 16) Comme le souligne Deleuze dans son texte «La litterature et la vie» (1993, p. 11–17), la vie est proprement affective ff (remplie d’aff ffects) et autonome par rapport a toute sentimentalite. Elle conserve une independance par rapport au vecus particuliers (souvenirs d’enfance, fantasmes, recits de voyage, etc.). La vie pensee par Deleuze, c’est par exemple ce qui aspire la volonte interieure du personnage d’Achab dans le roman de Melville, non seulement en le privant de toute faculte de jugement dans sa poursuite effre ff ´ne´e de Moby Dick, mais aussi en rendant indistincts le capitaine et la baleine (Deleuze, 1993, p. 100; Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 298). La vie impersonnelle force ce dont elle s’empare a` devenir autre que lui-meme. Elle est investie d’une puissance de desorganisation qui ebranle toute organisation interieure prealable. La litterature n’a donc rien a imiter et aucune interiorite a` exte´rioriser. Elle est plutot l’expression des forces semi-organisees ou chaosmiques (chaos/cosmos) qui traversent, en les intensifiant, les corps (humains ou non) en ne laissant jamais indemne ce dont elles s’emparent. Cette machination a bien sur des consequences sur les modes d’ecriture qui ne sont plus domines par un ideal de simple nomination. L’expression litteraire de la vie autonome des affects ff et l’experimentation des forces impersonnelles privilegient davantage les begaiements grammaticaux et une serie de proce´des de composition non d’abord soumis aux conventions de la signification. E´crire trouve son point de depart dans cet enonce´: «Expe´rimente au lieu de signifier et d’interpreter!» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 173) Au cours de ce qui va suivre, nous nous interesserons moins aux interpretations particulieres de certains ecrivains par Deleuze, qu’a l’etude d’une eventuelle dette de Deleuze a l’egard de la phenome´nologie dans l’elaboration de sa definition de la litterature. Plus precisement, nous

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

419

e´tablirons certains rapports entre la conception deleuzienne du travail d’ecriture, la theorie heideggerienne du langage, et la critique husserlienne du jugement. LIBE´ RER LA GRAMMAIRE DE LA LOGIQUE

Les styles de Heidegger et de Deleuze sont conformes a l’originalite de leurs pensees. D’une part, on a la trouvaille heideggerienne d’un langage poe´tique en mesure d’assurer la calme demeure aupres de l’etre. De l’autre, l’eloge deleuzienne d’une langue irreguliere ou e´ve´nementielle, qui prend conge´ du monde de la signification. Chez Heidegger, le langage entretient des liens intimes avec le silence de l’etre, tandis que, chez Deleuze, la langue de la pensee en est une, tordue, a l’interieure de laquelle une savante conceptualite exprime des etats les plus singuliers. Les usagers privilegies de la langue appartiennent egalement, du point de vue des deux philosophes, a des familles distinctes. Les paroles poetiques qui remplissent Heidegger d’admiration sont d’abord celles des presocratiques avec lesquelles correspondent, comme dans un lointain echo, les vers de Holderlin, Georg Trakl, Reiner-Maria Rilke et Rene Char presente´s comme les protecteurs du mystere et du calme repos de l’etre. Pour sa part, Deleuze pense le langage a partir d’auteurs qui (hormis Herman Melville et Lewis Carroll) appartiennent de plein pied au XX siecle: Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Gerashim Luca, T. E. Lawrence, la litterature ame´ricaine avec F. Scott Fitzgerald en tete, Osip Mandelstam, Antonin Artaud, Carmelo Bene, Raymond Roussel, Henri Michaux, Robert Brisset, Louis Wolfson, etc. Ces ecrivains sont representatifs pour Deleuze en tant qu’ils sont parvenus a mettre la langue dans un rapport d’etrangete´ avec elle-meme. En depit des enormes diffe ff ´rences quant aux exemples utilises et aux re´sultats sur lesquels debouchent les reflexions de Heidegger et de Deleuze, on remarque tout de meme une motivation commune a leur entreprise. En effet, ff les meditations langagieres de Heidegger et de Deleuze prennent place dans le cadre gene´ral de ce qu’il est desormais convenu d’appeler le tournant langagier selon lequel le mot n’est plus un simple supplement par rapport a` la chose. Les philosophies de la conscience demeuraient aveugles a cette primaute du langage. Les theories langagieres de Heidegger et de Deleuze tirent quant a elles les consequences de cette situation en assumant la dissemination de la correspondance naı¨ve entre les mots et les choses jusqu’a faire de cette non-coı¨ncidence un enjeu premier pour la pensee. L’assomption de l’imperfection du langage amene

420

ALAIN BEAULIEU

Heidegger et Deleuze a considerer, respectivement, une finitude langagiere et un impouvoir de la pensee. Ces limitations rendent impossible la simple repre´sentation langagiere. En d’autres termes, la langue n’est pas seconde par rapport a` un message «objectif» qu’un interlocuteur «A» aurait a transmettre a` un interlocuteur «B». Au message par essence indetermine (le myste`re de l’etre chez l’un, les diffe ff ´rences d’intensites chez l’autre) correspond une nouvelle forme de communication qui a dorenavant pour taˆche de livrer l’indetermine (le devoilement de la Dite comme parole recueillante chez Heidegger, l’invention d’une langue etrange`re chez Deleuze). Des lors, le langage ne se donne pas comme une simple mediation, mais il constitue une fin en soi en se rapportant directement a l’indetermine. Ce nouveau langage trouve son expression a condition, comme le mentionne Heidegger, de «liberer la grammaire de la logique» (Heidegger, 1985, p. 132; 1927, p. 165) ou encore de produire, comme l’affirme cette fois Deleuze, des «agrammaticalites» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 93) comme autant de «moyens inadequats» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 142) qui viennent ebranler les conventions linguistiques. Chez Heidegger comme chez Deleuze, on hesite cependant a determiner si la nouvelle grammaire recherchee constitue une «antigrammaire» ou d’une «hypergrammaire» (Alfandary, 2001, p. 74). En effet, ff d’apres Heidegger, la langue est la limite absolue de la pensee, et selon Deleuze la langue mineure est invariablement cree´e dans ou a partir de la langue courante. En outre, la remarque suivante, par-dela toute l’ironie qu’elle contient, semble convenir aux projets heideggerien et deleuzien d’un renouvellement de la grammaire: «Nul n’est sense ignorer la grammaticalite, ceux qui l’ignorent relevent d’institutions speciales.» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 128) Il faut donc avoir une maıˆtrise parfaite de la grammaire avant meme de songer a` entreprendre le renouvellement de la logique grammaticale. Les e´critures de Heidegger et de Deleuze tentent de formuler une telle grammaire inedite. Et la litterature leur fournit de nombreux exemples d’une langue libere´e de la logique traditionnelle. Le style heideggerien parle la langue de l’etre, le style deleuzien, celle des regimes intensifs. Quelle est la caracteristique de la litterature privilegiee par chacun deux philosophes? La langue de predilection de Heidegger est entouree d’une aure´ole mystique. Selon Heidegger la langue de l’etre est paradoxalement en mesure de montrer tout en faisant silence, d’abolir la notion de distance entre le mot et l’etre, de maintenir la proximite du lointain, et de recueillir ce qui ne se laisse jamais apprehender objectivement. «Dire [sagan] veut dire: montrer, laisser apparaıˆtre, donner a voir et a entendre.» (Heidegger, 1981, p. 239). Le veritable parler possede, selon Heidegger, une dimension

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

421

d’extreme passivite qui se confond avec l’ecouter. Cette parole ecoutante qui montre en laissant etre, qui accueille sans s’approprier, c’est ce que Heidegger en vient a nommer la Dite (die Sage). Si la langue de certains poe`tes est adequate a` l’etre, c’est parce qu’elle est aussi la langue qui, par excellence, arrive a pre´server le sens sans le substantiver. Le style qu’admire Deleuze lance egalement un defi a la logique commune. Toutefois son aspect essentiellement affirmatif l’eloigne du rapport particulier de Heidegger avec l’experience de la calme attention et de la sereine contemplation. Chez Deleuze, la langue privilegiee vise, au contraire, a laisser apparaıˆtre un caracte`re d’etrangete´ et de non familiarite. De Heidegger a Deleuze, la destruction de la logique communicationnelle est dirigee vers des ennemis langagiers distincts. Pour Deleuze, il ne s’agit plus de combattre la langue de la technique, mais plutot, s’inspirant librement de Kafka, de livrer bataille a la langue de la litterature majeure. La` ou` Heidegger fait l’eloge de la poesie ontologique, Deleuze s’en remet a` la langue minoritaire depourvue de toute universalite et soustraite a tout espe`ce de «mot d’ordre». Plus precisement, la litterature mineure est la «litterature qu’une minorite fait dans une langue majeure» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 29). Elle est seule en mesure d’accorder de nouveaux usages a` la langue majeure (Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 127–139), et c’est a` travers elle que son usager devient lui-meme «dans sa propre langue comme un etranger» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 48). La langue mineure fait disjoncter la langue majeure jusqu’a rendre celle ou celui qui parle ou ecrit «bilingue meme en une seule langue» (Deleuze et Parnet, 1996, p. 11). C’est, par exemple, la langue produite par les mots-souffles (Deleuze, 1993, p. 141) et la langue-cri intensive d’Artaud qui n’a pour seul souci que de «briser le langage pour toucher la vie» (Artaud, 1964, p. 17). C’est aussi la langue de Gerashim Luca qui begaie sous l’effet ff des forces chaosmiques (Deleuze, 1993, p. 135–143), celle de Louis Wolfson qui fait eclater sa langue maternelle selon un procede complexe (Deleuze, 1993, p. 18–33) ou celle de Melville qui donne naissance a l’outlandish a` partir de l’anglais (Deleuze, 1993, p. 93). Il s’agit a chaque fois de faire de la langue le mode d’expression direct des intensites variables et contradictoires experimentees par des corps traverses par les forces exterieures. C’est alors que l’on assiste a une «cre´ation continue du reel par l’invention continue de modes de signifier singuliers.» (Joubert, 2001, p. 38) Si les disjonctions qui habitent la langue de Luca, d’Artaud ou de Beckett sont indiscutablement a l’œuvre dans leurs textes (cca s’entend et c¸ a se voit), il n’en va pas de meme pour la langue de certains ecrivains auxquels se refere aussi Deleuze et dont les textes donnent plutot l’impres-

422

ALAIN BEAULIEU

sion de former un systeme de connexions inclusives. Ainsi en va-t-il pour Kafka. Pour appuyer la these deleuzienne selon laquelle une langue aussi construite que celle de Kafka a comme seul et unique tache d’exprimer des regimes d’intensite, renvoyons d’abord a un commentaire qui abonde dans le meme sens. Alain Robbe-Grillet ecrit a propos de Kafka: «tout ce qui sonne un peu faux, tout ce qui manque de naturel, c’est precisement cela qui rend a l’oreille du romancier le son le plus juste.» (Robbe-Grillet, 1961, p. 140) L’œuvre de Kafka, qui a donne sa premiere version a la theorie de la litterature mineure (Kafka, 1954, p. 180–183), a un impact d’autant plus grand que les intensites qu’elle presente demeure inapparentes. Elles resonnent dans l’oreille du lecteur sans etre repe´rables dans le texte sous forme de cris ou de begaiements. Mais pour Deleuze, la litterature re´ussie est egalement celle qui parvient a transmettre des affects ff independamment des etats de chose dans lesquels les affects ff s’incarnent et de l’existence de la personne qui les experimente. Kafka a d’autant plus de style que son ecriture produit une grande quantite d’affects ff en donnant l’apparence d’etre la plus parfaitement reglee. Chez Heidegger la langue a pour tache de devoiler le sejour e dans l’etre, alors que chez Deleuze la langue est transportee dans un rapport d’etrangete´ avec elle-meme par lequel sont exprimees des intensites singulieres. En depit de cet ecart, Deleuze en vient tout de meme a` decerner une bonne note aux jeux heideggeriens de variations etymologiques. Dans son texte intitule «Un pre´curseur me´connu de Heidegger, Alfred Jarry» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 115–125), Deleuze n’etablit pas seulement un rapprochement loufoque entre les deux auteurs, mais il profite aussi de l’occasion pour faire l’eloge du penseur allemand. Cet hommage est d’autant plus remarquable qu’il constitue le seul passage ou Deleuze montre de maniere explicite des signes d’admiration pour Heidegger. On y apprend que l’etymologie anexacte pratiquee par Heidegger dans ses commentaires tardifs des fragments presocratiques a tout les caracteres d’une langue mineure. Si bien que les jeux linguistiques auxquels s’adonne Heidegger, ou «la vieille langue affecte ff l’actuelle qui produit sous cette condition une langue encore a venir» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 122), debouchent sur la creation d’une troisieme langue «inouı¨e presque e´trange`re» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 124). Dans la meme page, Deleuze compare le procede heideggerien a ceux de Roussel, de Wolfson et de Luca. En outre, la grille d’interpretation utilisee par Deleuze dans son analyse des trois langues de Heidegger avait servie, a la meme e´poque, a` e´tudier l’ecriture de Beckett (Deleuze, 1992, p. 66–79).

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

423

LE SILENCE ET LA ME´ TAPHORE

Heidegger et Deleuze accordent une place privilegiee au silence. S’agit-il d’une experimentation similaire? Il ne semble pas que ce soit le cas. L’estime de Deleuze pour la langue de Heidegger ne franchit pas l’eloge L des variations autour des etymologies anexactes. La pensee de Heidegger noue des liens particuliers avec le silence. Deleuze rend lui aussi hommage au silence qu’il associe, apres Heidegger, a une sorte d’etat paroxystique atteint par la langue. «Faire begayer la langue, ecrit Deleuze, et en meme temps porter le langage a sa limite, a son dehors, a son silence.» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 142) Concoit-on le silence de la meme maniere dans les deux cas ou, au contraire, lui attribue-t-on seulement une portee analogue? Pour Heidegger, dire a profusion en parlant peu revient toujours a communier avec l’etre et a` signifier beaucoup. Le vrai silence de la monstration, pour Heidegger, livre une reponse signifiante dans la Dite. Tout autre est le silence deleuzien. C’est un silence qui, loin de signifier beaucoup, ne signifie plus rien. Le silence est pour Deleuze l’atteinte d’un point asignifiant de la langue. Ce qui a d’ailleurs amene Philip Goodchild (1993) a utiliser la pensee deleuzienne du langage dans l’analyse des Mumonkan. Ces breves sentences issues de la tradition zen (ex.: «A monk asked Joshu, ‘‘Has a dog the Buddha-nature?’’ Joshu answered: ‘‘Mu’’») echappent a toute me´thode hermeneutique. Ce qui ne doit pas faire oublier que Heidegger, l’hermeneute, n’est pas non plus en reste par rapport a la pense´e zen (Duval, 1984). Par ailleurs, Deleuze et Heidegger ne parviennent pas a s’entendre sur le statut a accorder a la metaphore. Un desir de se rendre maıˆtre des me´taphores inedites sous-tend le jeu heideggerien des variations etymologiques. Heidegger en cree d’ailleurs un grand nombre en vue de reve´ler le signifiant majeur «etre». Par la, et meˆme s’il est l’unique veritable usager de ses metaphores, Heidegger cultive l’usage de ce que Deleuze considere comme une langue majeure. L’etymologie anexacte est mineure, mais le sens idealement universel attribue aux me´taphores appartient aux usages majeurs de la langue. Heidegger s’accorde les pleins pouvoirs sur l’etre en s’arrogeant un droit d’interpretation des metaphores ontologiques. Le reproche adresse par Deleuze et Guattari a la psychanalyse selon lequel la science freudienne n’aurait tente rien d’autre que de se rendre «maıˆtresse du signifiant, de la metaphore et du jeu de mots» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 50) peut etre retourne´ contre Heidegger. Deleuze souhaite detruire les deux faces de la signification: la substantielle et la metaphorique. Heidegger ne detruit la premiere que pour ennoblir la seconde. Les

424

ALAIN BEAULIEU

me´taphores abondent chez Heidegger: la Maison, la Dite, le berger, la clairiere, etc. Il cree un mythe, celui du Quadriparti. Bourdieu (1988, p. 89–90) parle de la pensee heideggerienne en terme d’euphemisation du langage. Ce qui est justifie du fait que, chez Heidegger, un mot ordinaire peut designer la grandeur infinie de l’etre, et un autre mot, signifier son contraire. Il y a une abondance de mises en garde et seul le philosophe le plus aguerri saisira le sens de l’usage multiplie des guillemets chez heidegger. En somme, les commentaires poetiques de Heidegger constituent une gigantesque metaphorique de l’etre pour laquelle les motsconcepts demeurent toujours inadequats dans le dire de sa grandeur. De son coˆte´, Deleuze est sensibilise par sa lecture de Kafka a l’extreme connivence entre le regime de la signification et la metaphore. «Les me´taphores, ecrit Kafka, sont l’une des choses qui me font desespe´rer de la litterature.» (Kafka, 1954, p. 525) Ce a quoi Deleuze et Guattari re´pondent: «Kafka tue delibere´ment toute me´taphore, tout symbolisme, toute signification, non moins que toute designation.» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 40) Si les metaphores importunent a ce point Kafka et Deleuze, c’est parce qu’elles presupposent toujours un signifie supe´rieur qu’elles ne font qu’exprimer par une voie indirecte, secrete ou codee. C’est par ce jeu detourne´ que «les metaphores sont des mots sales» (Deleuze et Parnet, 1996, p. 9). Contre l’usage de la metaphore, Deleuze oppose celui «des mots inexacts pour designer des choses exactement» (Deleuze et Parnet, 1996, p. 9). Il est faux selon Deleuze de croire en la perfection du langage, y compris celui de la poesie, car toute langue implique des rate´s. En outre, Adorno, bien qu’en empruntant une voie diffe ff ´rente, en arrive lui aussi a opposer la langue de Kafka a la langue sacralisee et au jargon de Heidegger. «Le jargon pourrait etre decrit, affirme Adorno, comme une re´plique ideologique de la paralysie des fonctions administratives dont la sobre langue de Kafka nous presente l’horreur, langue de Kafka qui est le parfait contraire du jargon.» (Adorno, 1989, p. 97) Toutefois, Deleuze refuse la methode adornienne qui consiste a hypostasier le moment negatif de la dialectique hege´lienne. Les ratages de la langue ont pour Deleuze une effectivite ff directe. Nous opposons la metaphorique heideggerienne a l’anexactitude langagiere de Deleuze. Mais Heidegger ne condamne-t-il pas lui aussi les usages de la metaphore? Et le nietzscheisme de Deleuze ne l’amene-t-il pas a concevoir la realite comme une fable accessible par des voies metaphoriques? La langue de Heidegger est dans une position similaire a celle de Platon. Chez l’un comme chez l’autre, on retrouve une virulente condamnation du discours d’images double d’un recours strategique a l’allegorie.

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

425

Platon exclut le poete et ses proce´des d’imitation de la cite juste tout en cre´ant lui-meme de nouveaux mythes. Et Heidegger desapprouve d’une main les usages de la «metaphorique [qui] n’existe qu’a l’interieur des frontieres de la metaphysiques» (Heidegger, 1962, p. 126) tout en inventant, de l’autre, de nouvelles metaphores. Des metaphores qui sont exclues de la partition metaphysique entre le sensible et l’intelligible et qui suggerent l’idee d’un retour au mythologique. Nietzsche se trouve dans une situation inverse. Il ne condamne pas la metaphore pour y revenir, mais il reprouve le recours au concept pour en creer de nouveaux. Le surhomme, le volonte de puissance et l’eternel retour sont bel et bien des concepts. Et pourtant, l’un des arguments de Nietzsche contre la metaphysique consiste precisement a` denoncer l’oubli de la metaphore et l’emploi ge´ne´ralise du concept. «Cet instinct qui pousse a former des metaphores, e´crit Nietzsche, cet instinct fondamental de l’homme.» (Nietzsche, 1991, p. 129) Avec Sarah Kofman, on peut dire que Nietzsche conccoit l’homme comme un «animal metaphorique» (Kofman, 1983, p. 44). Derrida, dans un texte intitule «La mythologie blanche», se confronte au probleme de la relation entre la metaphore et le concept, mais il favorise une indecision encore plus grande entre les deux notions. Une longue demonstration lui permet d’affirmer l’identite du discours metaphorique au discours conceptuel ou philosophique en ce que la metaphore, non moins que le concept, nourrit le desir de demeurer face au soleil, dans le vrai. «C’est a ce signifie majeur de l’onto-theologie que reviendra toujours la teneur de la metaphore dominante: le cercle de l’heliotrope» (Derrida, 1972, p. 318). Or, en tant qu’image non moins qu’en tant qu’essence, le vrai ne saurait re´sister a la deconstruction. Derrida se propose d’elaborer un nouveau type de discours situe «au-dela de la diffe ff ´rence entre le propre et le nonpropre» (Derrida, 1972, p. 273), du concept et de la metaphore. Cependant, ce depassement du dualisme plonge la philosophie dans une plus grande indecision en neutralisant toute les capacites d’affirmation. De son coˆte´, Deleuze court-circuite la problematique relative a la me´taphore en prenant resolument position en faveur de la realite du concept. «Le plan de consistance est l’abolition de toute metaphore; tout ce qui consiste est Reel.» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 89) Il faut lire dans cette affirmation le desaveu de la tendance irrationaliste caracteristique d’une certaine phenome´nologie a la faveur d’une effectivite ff re´elle du concept. En effet, ff seuls les concepts sont aptes a «rejoindre la vraie raison de la chose en train de se faire» (Deleuze 1956, p. 299; repris in Deleuze, 2002, p. 42), quitte a faire usage de moyens inadequats pour les exprimer.

426

ALAIN BEAULIEU

Dans son apologie des mots anexacts et des langues mineures, inventees et singulieres, Deleuze en vient-il a faire de la langue un fait simplement individuel? Les mots n’ont pas d’abord pour Deleuze une portee communicative et encore moins une valeur d’universalite. Leur anexactitude est-elle alors autre chose que purement relative? En vue de clarifier ce point, on peut speculer sur la position que Deleuze aurait adoptee en face de Wittgenstein sur la question du langage prive. Selon Wittgenstein, il est absurde d’attribuer une logique singuliere a` un langage prive puisque cette logique se donnerait alors comme une autre logique a coˆte´ d’une norme consensuelle a partir de laquelle toute parole prend sens. L’argument du scarabee developpe au § 293 des IInvestigations philosophL iques est l’occasion pour Wittgenstein d’exprimer l’impossibilite d’une logique langagiere relative aux sensations interieures d’un individu quelconque. Heidegger adopte une position similaire en privant le Dasein de toute interiorite subjective au profit cette fois d’une relation privilegiee a` l’etre. Toutefois, le langage qui neutralise toute vie interieure n’est plus pour Heidegger d’ordre logique, comme c’est le cas chez Wittgenstein, mais il acquiert un statut idealement poetique. Dans l’optique deleuzienne, les metalangues logique et poetique de Wittgenstein et de Heidegger sont des langues majeures qui ont pour effet ff d’ecraser toutes les ressources cre´atives des langues etrange`res a` leur propre langue. La langue mineure a` laquelle Deleuze donne ses droits constitue bien une sorte de langue privee en ce qu’elle est forcee de cre´er son propre code d’expression independamment des significations pre-determinees et imposees par la langue majeure. Toutefois, la langue mineure ne se definit pas, pour Deleuze, par sa capacite a` decrire un univers de sensations interieures. Au contraire, elle succede toujours a la dissolution du moi. Ce qui revient aussi a dire que la litterature mineure exprime des agencements collectifs d’enonciation sans sujet (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 33). Aussi longtemps que l’on conccoit l’invention d’une langue mineure dans les termes d’une creation subjective de concepts, on passe a coˆte´ de la dimension politique attribuee a` la langue par Deleuze (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 31–33) et qui fait defaut chez Wittgenstein et Heidegger. La langue mineure est une veritable machine de guerre. C’est d’ailleurs l’erreur de Bouveresse qui, dans son interpretation de Deleuze, omet de considerer le caractere impersonnel et revolutionnaire de la langue mineure pour la rappeler a l’ordre du discours logique de Wittgenstein (Bouveresse, 1996, p. 52, 105). Ainsi les trois philosophes (Wittgenstein, Heidegger et Deleuze) s’entendent sur la nullite de l’intereˆt philosophique que represente l’univers des

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

427

impressions subjectives. Chez Wittgenstein et Heidegger les sensations interieures productives de langues singulieres croulent sous le poids d’une langue majeure en equilibre (logique ou poetique), tandis que ces memes productions, par un effet ff de retournement anti-dialectique, acquierent chez Deleuze un caractere impersonnel et ouvrent sur la creation d’une langue mineure. Il n’y a pas de critere bien defini qui permette de diffe ff ´rencier la langue mineure de toute autre langue etrange`re comme celle des gazouillis d’enfants ou de la transcription de cris d’animaux. Deleuze parle seulement d’une necessite exte´rieure (les forces) qui conditionne l’apparition de la langue mineure. Ces singularites langagieres n’occupent aucune place dans les reflexions de Wittgenstein qui croit toujours etre en mesure de decrire adequatement les jeux de langage auxquelles elles appartiennent. Au contraire, chez Deleuze les langues mineures creent de nouveaux jeux inedits. Vouloir en rendre compte a partir d’un jeu de langage pre-ordonne logiquement, c’est trahir leur dese´quilibre en les ramenant a` un ordre majeur. Wittgenstein a, pendant un instant, frole le probleme deleuzien des langues mineures. Au § 261 des IInvestigations philosophiques, il ecrit, dans ` faire de la philosophie, on en vient au point un esprit tres deleuzien: «A ou` l’on a plus d’autre desir que de prononcer un son inarticule.» Mais tre`s vite Wittgenstein se detourne de la question et s’empresse de reintegrer le son inarticule dans un jeu de langage preexistant. «Mais pareil son, poursuit Wittgenstein, n’est une expression que dans un certain jeu de langage qu’il nous faut decrire maintenant». La ou` Deleuze s’efforce ff de «se servir de la syntaxe pour crier et donner au cri une syntaxe» (Deleuze et Guattari, 1975, p. 48), Wittgenstein ecrase les disjonctions syntaxiques sous une theorie des jeux de langage. Pour sa part, Heidegger etouffe ff les irregularites langagieres avec de savants commentaires ontologiques inspires d’une poesie authentiquement majeure. LA DESTRUCTION DU JUGEMENT

Dans le court texte tardif «Pour en finir avec le jugement» paru dans Critique et clinique, Deleuze associe les doctrines du jugement a l’heritage judeo-chretien de notre tradition contre lequel Nietzsche, Lawrence, Kafka et Artaud auraient pris position. Ne pourrait-on pas inclure le nom le Husserl a la liste? En effet, ff la phenome´nologie a originellement fait de l’abolition du jugement l’un des themes privilegies de son entreprise de pensee. La destruction du jugement parcourt l’œuvre husserlienne en prenant une tournure particuliere dans Expe´rience et jugement (Husserl,

428

ALAIN BEAULIEU

1970 [1938]). Titre qui est a entendre de la facc¸ on suivante: l’experience ante´-pre´dicative de la phenome´nologie contre le jugement predicatif. On constate que l’experience ante-pre´dicative a laquelle Husserl se refere renvoie aux dimensions de la receptivite et de la passivite (cf. premiere section de Expe´rience et jugement). Ces notions ont-elles trouve un accueil favorable chez Deleuze? Le jugement avec lequel Husserl se propose d’en finir est celui qui se rapporte aux actes objectivants. Il s’agit pour Husserl de depasser la predication de type kantienne de meme que la rupture radicale qui l’accompagne entre le sujet de la connaissance et l’objet a` connaıˆtre. La re´duction permet a Husserl de conquerir un monde phenome´nal anterieur a la separation kantienne. La sphere ante´-pre´dicative devient ainsi un lieu ou le sujet et l’objet ne se distinguent plus l’un de l’autre en etant lies dans l’intentionnalite. La charge critique de la phenome´nologie consiste a faire voir les limites du jugement, de la predication et de l’objectivation du monde a la faveur de l’experience de la constitution d’un univers ante-pre´dicatif. Mais la croisade husserlienne contre le jugement ne peut pas etre un modele pour Deleuze. En effet, ff il subsiste une diffe ff ´rence importante entre les deux entreprises sur la question du jugement. Alors que Husserl se positionne de faccon uniquement critique par rapport au jugement, la devalorisation deleuzienne du jugement passe, quant a elle, par des considerations d’ordre critiques et cliniques. Chez Deleuze, la condamnation du jugement ne releve que de maniere secondaire d’une decision logicocritique qui viendrait reorganiser l’ordre des choses en direction d’un univers ordonne et ante´-pre´dicatif. Deleuze suit ici de pres les traces d’Artaud qui, deja e , impliquait le corps et ses etats cliniques dans la condamnation du jugement. La resistance d’Artaud et de Deleuze au jugement n’est pas seulement une experience abstraite et intellectuelle, mais elle prend l’allure d’un combat livre concre`tement par le «Corps sans Organes» (CsO). La lutte contre le jugement va de pair avec la desorganisation du corps. Mieux le CsO est construit, mieux il pourra mettre fin au jugement. Dans son texte «Pour en finir avec le jugement», Deleuze l’affirme clairement: «Se faire un corps sans organes, trouver son corps sans organes est la maniere d’echapper au jugement.» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 164; cf. aussi Artaud, 1947–1949, 1974) De ce point de vue, l’annonce phenome´nologique de la fin du jugement n’est pour Deleuze qu’un vœu pieux, tout simplement parce que la phenome´nologie traditionnelle n’experimente pas le CsO, preferant adoter le modele du corps vivant (L eib) parfaitement organise en vue d’operer la constitution. Du point de vue deleuzien, la phenome´nologie husserlienne ne fait que

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

429

denoncer le jugement au nom de valeurs faussement superieures a la vie. Ainsi, Deleuze n’entrevoit d’autre alternative a la realisation de la desorganisation de la faculte de juger que celle qui consiste, pour le corps, a` mener un combat perpetuel avec les forces. Le corps entre dans un processus d’adaptation continue pour lequel il n’existe aucun lieu de repos a` partir duquel il lui serait possible de porter un jugement. La lutte menee contre le jugement n’est pas une guerre. Par la guerre, ff etre ane´antis. Mais la guerre est certains jugements peuvent effectivement accomplie par le mauvais CsO (cf. la distinction des trois corps in Deleuze et Guattari, 1980, p. 202) qui ne vise qu’a supprimer ce dont il s’empare. En revanche, le veritable combat permet au CsO de contracter et d’engendrer de nouvelles forces a mesure qu’il en perd. «Dans la guerre, ecrit Deleuze, la volonte de puissance signifie seulement que la volonte veut la puissance comme un maximum de pouvoir et de domination. [...] le combat ne passe pas par la. Le combat au contraire est cette puissante vitalite non-organique qui complete la force avec la force, et enrichit ce dont elle s’empare.» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 167) Ainsi, la guerre phenome´nologique menee contre le jugement n’est qu’une forme superieure de jugement qui rend impossible toute nouvelle apparition creative d’agencements de forces a l’interieur des CsO. Comment savoir si notre CsO fait seulement la guerre contre le jugement ou s’il mene un combat veritable avec les forces? Tout se joue ici dans l’intuition. Ne pas juger revient ultimement a sentir la presence des forces chaosmiques qui traversent le corps en lui ouvrant des horizons inedits. «Nous n’avons pas a juger les autres existants, affirme Deleuze, mais a sentir s’ils nous conviennent ou disconviennent, c’est-a-dire, s’ils nous apportent des forces ou bien nous renvoient aux miseres de la guerre, aux pauvrete´s du reve, aux rigueurs de l’organisation.» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 169) C’est aussi a la faveur d’une methode intuitionniste que le jugement est detruit par la phenome´nologie. Toutefois, l’intuition eidetique de type husserlienne n’a pas la meme porte´e pratique et ethique que chez Deleuze. La rigidite theorique avec laquelle Husserl se propose d’acceder a la sphere ante´-pre´dicative contraste remarquablement avec la promotion deleuzienne d’une creation de nouveaux modes d’existence. Deleuze associe l’absence de jugement aux modes creatifs d’existence. Le jugement bloque l’apparition de nouveaux styles de vie, tandis que le CsO ne cesse d’en produire. «Le jugement, ecrit Deleuze, empeche tout nouveau mode d’existence d’arriver.» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 168) Deleuze conjugue ainsi de maniere originale, d’une part, le theme de la desorganisation du corps et de la destruction du jugement par Artaud et, d’autre

430

ALAIN BEAULIEU

part, les processus de subjectivation penses par Foucault comme invention de nouveaux styles de vie. C’est dans les memes termes d’une creation de modes d’existence inedits que Deleuze commente le poeme d’Artaud sur le jugement de Dieu (Deleuze, 1993, p. 158–169) ainsi que le triptyque de Foucault sur L ’histoire de la sexualite (Deleuze, 1990, p. 128–138). Le CsO se cre´e des modes d’existence et il est en ce sens, pour Deleuze, comparable a une œuvre d’art libre de toute logique langagiere qui imposerait ses mots d’ordre. En outre, le CsO se distingue egalement du Dasein heideggerien qui possede un unique mode d’existence oriente sur la comprehension de l’etre. CONCLUSION

Quelles sont les consequences litteraires des propos deleuziens relativement aux questions du langage et du jugement? Disons d’abord que l’ecriture, comme d’ailleurs toute activite cre´atrice tel que la peinture (Deleuze, 1981), le cinema (Deleuze, 1983; 1985) ou la musique (Deleuze, 1996), vise pour Deleuze a exprimer des processus de desubjectivation. On n’e´crit pas pour devenir ecrivain, mais precisement pour e´viter de le devenir. Pas plus que l’ecriture n’a de modele a imiter, pas davantage l’auteur doit-il rendre son mode d’existence conforme a une forme-ecrivain fixe et preexistante. En ce sens, le travail d’ecriture constitue un moyen d’entrer en relation avec la machination de la vie des forces chaosmiques qui defie toute logique gene´rale d’appropriation en plus d’echapper a tout jugement. Nous avons vu de quelle maniere la conception deleuzienne du langage et de l’ecriture entretient certains liens de familiarite avec les travaux de Heidegger et de Husserl. Nous avons egalement montre les limites de ces rapprochements. Heidegger libere la grammaire de la logique traditionnelle, mais ce faisant, il tente aussi de formuler une nouvelle grammaire gene´rale constituee d’un ensemble de mots d’ordre ou de me´taphores codees: «comprends l’etre», «sois son berger», «vis dans la ` ce type de langue clairiere», «e´coute l’etre-langage qui parle en toi», etc. A majeure a pre´tention universelle, Deleuze oppose une langue mineure qui n’a plus rien a comprendre et pour laquelle tout devient affaire ff d’experiences singulieres des forces chaosmiques qui trouvent leur expression dans une langue nouvelle forgee a` l’interieure meme d’une langue constitue´e: les begaiements, les cris, les mots-souffles, les sons inarticules, etc. De son coˆte´, Husserl tente bien de definir un niveau d’experience anterieur au jugement. Mais la remise en question husserlienne des categories me´taphysique du Bien et du Mal demeure partielle en laissant au

GILLES DELEUZE ET LA LITTE´ RATURE

431

corporelle theorique la possibilite de renaıˆtre, au detriment de l’experience des forces de la vie, pour former un nouveau monde organise. La facc¸ on le plus efficace d’en finir avec le jugement consiste, pour Deleuze, a faire intervenir une dimension clinique. Des lors, il ne s’agit plus simplement de detroˆner une conception du Bien en chargeant l’intellect de definir une autre forme d’organisation ou un nouveau systeme de valeurs, mais plutot d’experimenter dans le corps lui-meme le caractere plus determinant de la desorganisation des organes sous l’action des forces chaosmiques. C’est cette expe´rience singuliere a` caracte`re partiellement mystique (de Gaynesford, 2001) que la litterature, selon Deleuze, a pour tache de decrire. En somme, alors que le travail d’ecriture s’est traditionnellement e´difie sur le modele «etatique» ( juger, identifier, reprimer, etc.), Deleuze propose de donner la parole a la vie en vue de «faire exister, non pas juger» (Deleuze, 1993, p. 169). Note: Je tiens a remercier le Conseil de Recherches en Sciences humaines du Canada pour l’appui financier. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adorno, Theodor W. Jargon de l’authenticite. Paris: Payot, 1989. Alfandary, Isabelle. «E. E. Cumings/Gilles Deleuze: ecriture et affect», ff T heorie – L itte´rature – Enseignement 19 (2001): 61–76. Artaud, Antonin. (poeme sans titre), Revue 84 5–6 (1947–1949): 97–103. ——. L e theaˆtre et son double. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. ——. «Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu», in Antonin Artaud, Œuvres completes. Paris: Gallimard, 1974. Vol. XIII, p. 67–104. Bourdieu, Pierre. L ’ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger. Paris: Minuit, 1988. Bouveresse, Jacques. L a demande philosophique. Combas: L’eclat, 1996. Buchanan, Ian and John Marks (eds.), Deleuze and L iterature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Colombat, Andre. Deleuze et la litterature. New York/Bern/Frankfurt am Main/Paris: Peter Lang, 1990. de Gaynesford, Maximilian. ‘‘Bodily organs and organization’’, in Deleuze and religion, Mary Bryden (ed.). London/New York: Routledge, 2001. Deleuze, Gilles. «Bergson 1859–1941», in L es philosophes celebres, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (ed.). Paris: Mazenod, 1956. ——. Cinema I. L ’image-mouvement. Paris: Minuit, 1983. ——. Cinema II. L ’image-temps. Paris: Minuit, 1985. ——. Critique et clinique. Paris: Minuit, 1993. ——. «L’e´puise», in Samuel Beckett et Gilles Deleuze, Quad et autres pieces pour la television suivi de L ’epuise´. Paris: Minuit, 1992. ——. L ’ıˆle deserte et autres textes. T extes et entretiens 1953–1974, David Lapoujade (ed.). Paris: Minuit, 2002. ——. Francis Bacon. L ogique de la sensation. Paris: E´ditions de la diffe ff ´rence, 1981.

432

ALAIN BEAULIEU

——. «Le temps musical», in L ire l’IRCAM, Pierre Szendy (ed.). Paris: IRCAM, 1996. ——. L ogique du sens. Paris: Minuit, 1969. ——. Pourparlers. Paris: Minuit, 1990. ——. Pre´sentation de Sacher-Masoch. Paris: Minuit, 1967. ——. Proust et les signes. Paris: PUF, 1964. Deleuze, Gilles et Felix Guattari. Capitalisme et schizophrenie II. Mille Plateaux. Paris: Minuit, 1980. ——. Kaf ka. Pour une litterature mineure. Paris: Minuit, 1975. ——. Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?. Paris: Minuit, 1991. Deleuze, Gilles et Claire Parnet. Dialogues. Paris: Flammarion, 1996. Derrida, Jacques. «La mythologie blanche», in Jacques Derrida, Marges de la philosophie. Paris: Minuit, 1972. ——. L e probleme de la genese dans la philosophie Husserl. Paris: PUF, 1990. Duval, Jean-Franc¸ois. Heidegger et le Zen. Sisteron: Presence, 1984. Franck, Didier. Chair et corps. Sur la phenome´nologie de Husserl. Paris: Minuit, 1981. Goodchild, Philip. ‘‘Speech and silence in the Mumonkan: an examination of use of language in light of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze’’. Philosophy East and West 43:1 (1993): 1–18. Heidegger, Martin. Acheminement vers la parole (trad. fr. J. Beaufret, W. Brokmeier et F. Fe´dier). Paris: Gallimard, 1981. ——. Eˆtre et temps (trad. fr. E. Martineau). Paris: Authentica, 1985. ——. L e principe de raison (trad. fr. A. Preau). Paris: Gallimard, 1962. ——. Sein und Zeit [1927], hrg von F.-W. von Herrmann, 10. Auflage. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1963. Husserl, Edmund. Expe´rience et jugement [1938] (trad. fr. D. Souche-Dagues). Paris: PUF, 1970. Joubert, Claire. «La question du langage: Deleuze a l’epreuve de Beckett». T heorie – L itte´rature – Enseignement, 19 (2001): 29–45. Kafka, Franz. Journal J (trad. fr. M. Robert). Paris: Grasset, 1954. Kofman, Sarah. Nietzsche et la metaphore. Paris: Galilee, 1983. Nietzsche, Friedrich. L e livre du philosophe. Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1991. Proust, Marcel. Contre Sainte-Beuve. Paris: Folio/Gallimard, 1987. Ranciere, Jacques. «Deleuze, Bartelby et la formule», in Jacques Ranciere, L a chair des mots. Paris: Galilee, 1998. Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Pour un nouveau roman. Paris: Minuit, 1961. Scherer, Rene´. «L’e´criture, la vie», in Rene Scherer, Regards sur Deleuze. Paris: Kime, 1998. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. T ractatus logico-philosophicus suivi de IInvestigations philosophiques (trad. fr. P. Klossowski). Paris: Gallimard, 1961.

LAWRENCE KIMMEL

CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE : THE TRUE, THE GOOD, THE BE AUTIFUL, AND THE SACRED

PREFACTORY REMARK

Philosophers, who as a profession are blessed with leisure and exempt from an obligation to be socially useful or productive, have a special obligation to address fundamental questions about the meaning of the human project not otherwise on the contemporary agenda. This is not an undertaking that requires technical language or special skills. William James describes the deceptively simple task of philosophy as ‘‘saying something true about things that matter.’’ That said, philosophy is not an easy undertaking; both its investigations and its results remain always open and without final resolution. It would probably be a good rule in philosophy, as in life, to always make truth lower case and plural. That would be in the spirit of James’ description. What, then, is relevant and open to philosophical investigation? There is an important sense in which everything matters. There is also an important sense in which there may be equally or more important matters than those that presumptively occupy most contemporary philosophers judging the truth of propositions. Anyone outside the professional domain would surely question the prerogative of philosophy to adjudicate which matters are of importance to culture. It is a more modest proposal to undertake the task of accessing and assessing emergent issues that independently make claims upon the mind and spirit of the world’s peoples. Nor are philosophers particularly well qualified or obligated to become problem-solvers. In the ordinary affairs ff of everyday life, philosophers have little to say that is not available equally to any thoughtful and sensible person – no special authority, for example, to make pronouncements on issues of abortion or euthanasia. The inevitable conflicts about such issues may be, in fact, not subject to solution but only resolution, and this can only be done properly and meaningfully within the lifefield of those persons for whom resolution is crucial. However it is to be conceived, philosophical inquiry should be pitched at a deeper level of consideration than popular counsel on personal action or public policy. 433 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 433–441. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

434

LAWRENCE KIMMEL I

There exist four fundamental values invariable in human culture: the True, the Good, the Beautiful, and the Sacred. Every culture seems to generate definitive activities in response to the foundational questions, as Kant put them: How do we know? W hat ought we do? W hat may we hope? – questions of knowledge, conduct, and belief. I recommend one additional question to Kant’s list: How can we create? This question seems commensurate with Kant’s, and brings into the mix the aesthetic category of the Beautiful, as a fundamental value of culture. It should be noticed that all these questions center in human agency, and so in an important sense, all the questions are moral. These four questions and parallel values are not the only terms in which to describe culture, of course, nor are they wholly independent questions or pure categories; they do appear to be primary ones. It might be objected that this accounting leaves out the most important value category of all: ‘‘the useful’’. It is widely presumed today that the issues of power and utility have displaced any earlier ideas about constituting values of social life or progress, and set modern culture apart. A popular and plausible view of contemporary political and professional life is captured in the declaration ‘‘No matter whether or not it is true, will it work?’’ Power and utility, so understood, are reductive categories, however, and tend, at best, to discount or explain away too much that is essential in human history. An understanding of the full moral life of human beings requires a comprehensive account of the activities associated with these four questions – of what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, and what is sacred – and an understanding of the relationships between them. The relations between inferring and validating connect to moral action and life conduct; both involve aesthetic experience and expressive construction, and the prior essential value activities all engage or fail to engage spiritual faith and religious belief: creating an essential fourfold. The importance of such categories, as canonical for culture, is that they provide a way of giving an account of the boundaries of what it means to be a human being, a being with speech (logos), and hence graced with a faculty of expression in which to create an identity and history. The identity of a people may be formed within the tradition of an oral culture in which stories are passed down, or in a literate tradition that produces a people of the book – or, in our time, a burgeoning world culture levered and leveled by electronic media. In each case an appeal to fundamental

CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

435

values is common, but results in individual expression within a totality of activities to define a particular culture. II

Perhaps the first and most important thing to say about the value of truth, given its dominance of concern in modern Western culture and the tradition of presumed rivalry between the truth claims of theology and science, is that there is no one authority on the distributive boundaries for this value. Rather, there are multiple perspectives that serve different ff cultural needs and so, too, different ff ways of adjudicating the judgment ‘‘true’’. A common practice since Francis Bacon is to insist that the value of knowledge is not that it yields truth, but that it generates power. If there are empirical truths in science, they are the repeatable truths of public consensus, provisional on further research and experiment: ‘‘true’’ is broadly defined in this context as ‘‘probable’’. In formal disciplines such as (two-value) logic and arithmetic, ‘‘true’’ is contextually defined in terms of the consistency of self-identity and non-contradiction: that is true, the denial of which is self-contradictory. Truth is differently ff conceived in the discipline of history; no factual claim can be true concerning history in the sense of testable or repeatable. There appears to be a certain common thread between scientific theories, historical treatises, and religious doctrines: all are ways of telling a story, the truth of which is determined within the scope and commitments of its practice. One relies on theories in science, accounts in history, beliefs in religion to make sense of the world, of tradition, of one’s life. Truth, generally, is a function of that trust and reliance. It is perhaps a mistake to identity the True even as the domain of knowledge. In religion, for example, truth is not primarily the truth of knowledge, but of faith: to be in the truth, in spiritual terms, is more a testimony of commitment than a claim of knowledge. In terms of Kant’s question, ‘‘What may we hope?’’ hope is understood in terms of the truth of faith, that is, the faith which teaches hope. Compare for a moment the complexity of marking the differences ff in the idea of knowledge between ‘‘I know my Redeemer liveth’’, ‘‘I know 12:3=1728’’, ‘‘I know Socrates was executed in 399 B.C.’’, ‘‘I know Latin’’, ‘‘I know today is Tuesday’’, etc. We certainly do make distinctions, and can give an account of these differences ff in terms of knowledge and belief, between knowing that and knowing how, for example – but only in a context of engagement, and for differing ff kinds of reasons.

436

LAWRENCE KIMMEL

A point that merits our serious consideration is whether the issue of truth, and the cultural value of the True, has a claim to priority, whether it carries a necessity somehow exclusive and decidable before all other values. Philosophical inquiry has been grounded in epistemology since Descartes, and the ensuing tradition would seem to presume the priority of the question ‘‘What is true?’’ As a kind of corrective, it is important to see that even where the context of inquiry is clearly one of seeking knowledge, the sense of a question is prior to any consideration of its truth. And sense depends on an understanding and reference to the other values we have set out: moral, religious, and/or aesthetic. So too, we may have occasion to insist on the connection between knowledge and understanding, for example, but there are also occasions for marking an essential difference ff between the two: one may have knowledge without understanding, and also come to an understanding in the absence of the possession of knowledge. It is possible to express or ascertain the presence of understanding, and yet be incapable of providing an explanation which knowledge requires. The familiar locution ‘‘I cannot define it, but I know it when I see it’’ was cited by a U.S. Supreme Court Judge in the troublesome case of trying to set rules for the adjudication of obscenity and pornography. Whether or not that observation should be an option for a Supreme Court Judge, it is a common fact of language use: Many can and do correctly use the subjunctive without the capacity to articulate the rule of that use. Nor is the mutual understanding of those in love contingent upon a verification of trust. It is possible to analyze certain characteristic clusters of the True, where the concerns are, for example, with what is certain, or rational, or necessary, or absolute, or universal, or reasonable, or predictable, or fulfilling ... Each of these concerns may suggest areas of cultural interest or activity, but all connect in different ff ways and contexts with the values fundamental to cultural life. III

What ought we do? As Kant’s question indicates, the Good is primarily related to doing and being, rather than thinking. But, as with the other fundamental values, this concept and category has no exact boundaries and will interface and overlap others that together constitute the cultural realm and moral life of human beings. Rather than attempt what is not possible – to give the essence of the thing, what goodness, or truth, or beauty is, philosophical analysis is limited to contrasting concepts that

CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

437

are otherwise integrative experiences. The idea of philosophical inquiry is to indicate a nucleus of meaning that in turn will illuminate different ff important aspects of our collective cultural life and history. Perhaps no one would expect that the Good would have more definite boundaries than the True, but it is important to note that in each case the concept marks a distinction, it does not name an essence. There are true answers, and good answers – which may or may not be the same. Both true and good apply in their own ways to many different ff things: propositions, friends, examples, compass directions, perspectives, angles, character ... and in each case the sense of the concept changes from its earlier employment, independently, even, of further context. It is a first thing, but not a final thing, to notice simple paradigms of opposition: true/false, good/evil, sacred/profane. Such paradigms usefully demonstrate that meaning requires contrast as well as reference: ‘‘Is this a good act?’’ Without knowing anything more it is appropriate to remark that an answer to this question depends on the sense of its asking as well as the context and nature of the act itself: ‘‘Good as opposed to what? Evil? Average? Useless? Stupid? Vulgar? Thoughtless? Or in further contrast, do you mean is it only good, not excellent? Merely common, not exceptional? Within the usual paradigm of modern philosophy, questions of knowledge and conduct are often divided, and partitioned into the areas of epistemology on the one hand, and ethics on the other. Thus it becomes the assigned task of ethics to make distinctions between worth and value, character and reputation, action and behavior, always to the end of a clarifying or confirming obligation. In line with our earlier citation about what matters, William James counsels elsewhere that philosophy must learn to use the broad resources of literature and the arts, rather than limit itself to logic and inference. It is a major step toward this goal to consider the basic unit of ethics to be moral life, not moral action, or moral rule, much less moral theory. The Good, like the True, the Beautiful, and the Sacred, pervades the cultural life of human beings, and no philosophy that is not responsible to this fact can hope to contribute to the betterment of the human condition. IV

Beauty, as a fundamental category of culture, is a key to the creative source and appeal of imagination. Human beings first delight in the immediacy of sensuous apprehension – aesthesos – and, when sensual immediacy is sustained, the mimetic activity of art arises. Aristotle marks

438

LAWRENCE KIMMEL

productive imagination as one of three characteristic forms of human intelligence: poiesis, making things, shaping the world of sight, sound, and motion in new ways of experience. In this sense, art is the most basic of all human cultural activities – a process of interaction with the natural environment that transforms nature into world. The ancient drawings on the cave walls of Lascaux remain a fascination for us that completes a circle of wonder, somehow connected to a primal passion for self-understanding. There is no real way out of this circle – wondering about wondering – and so the circle itself becomes magic, a source of continuing and creative wonder. It is as if something in us responds to the miracle of life; we strive to create things, are struck by the beauty of our creations, and hope those creations will somehow speak to us of who and what we are. The answer is found only in the activity, however: we are creatures who wonder, who find beauty in the world, and who rejoice in the things we make. What are we about – then in the dark caves of Lascaux and now in the creative continuance of art in our lives – that we are driven to picture to ourselves what is not present? An obvious answer is: to bring to presence what is not there, or alternatively to make more fully alive what is present. The empowerment of representation is a common choice to explain the activity that produced the ancient Lascaux Bison, as if the picturing commanded the presencing of food, much as dancing to produce rain. This may be part of an explanation, but surely not the whole of it. There is an elemental delight in the picturing and the picture itself – just again, as with the ecstasy of movement in the dance – that needs to be included in any account. Gombrich famously uses the example of the ‘‘dada’’ – the hobbyhorse of the child at play to begin an account of art and imagination, in which a stick and piece of string become the powerful surging flanks of a great horse beneath the child. This is a suggestion not a conclusion for Gombrich, but the analogy may help to make plain sense of the compelling urge of human beings to create. Bringing something to life, to presence through imagination, requires both immediacy of sense and reflection in the creative impulse, which in turn provides us with a sense of beauty that makes of our lives a better, truer, and more sacred journey. As a celebration of wonder, taking delight in oneself and the appeal of the other, Beauty may on occasion reach a depth of awe, a sense of the sublime that we associate with great art. Or, it may simply correlate with dramatic turns in our own sense of the world: the beauty of a fine summer day or of a mountain rainbow in the morning mist may stay in memory

CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

439

for a lifetime. From one point of view, beauty appeals on its own terms it has no need to be useful or concerned with possession or the exercise of power. It remains an open question whether beauty is a simple matter of recognition or a result of active creation – a resonance of self and other, or a provocation that generates art. Both require imagination, and are finally not separable: ‘‘seeing’’ is always in some sense ‘‘seeing as ...’’, recognition an act of creation. It becomes clear through analysis that beauty is a complex phenomenon, or a complex of phenomena, but in every instance it bears the signature of human culture. In our time, regrettably, beauty has often been degraded to surface cosmetics. Perhaps the casual reduction of beauty to the incidental is not so different ff from that of contemporary morality, which is widely regarded as an arbitrary list of social interdictions. The variable range of objectionable behavior ranges from manners to mayhem, but a relativist mentality draws no clear and absolute limits. Each new generation of moderns seems suspicious of moral values it regards as superimposed by an older generation no longer in touch with the vitality of their own lives. We may still picture ‘‘natural beauty’’ in terms of health and youth, but even this seems commercially appropriated by an industry in which appearance is everything – the occasion for health cults and an unnatural obsession with remaining young. Presumably, if one has the appearance of youth, this mirror of fac¸ade alone will sustain her spirit. At best this seems the wrong way about. In the temper of our time, the ethical and the aesthetic stand at risk in becoming negative value indices of contemporary culture. The philosophical challenge, leaving aside the vulgarities of popular culture, is to rediscover the positive features and functions of the Good and the Beautiful, toward a revitalization of a higher culture, one more creative and preserving of values necessary to a fully human community. Perhaps all our most fundamental and sustaining values including the true and the sacred have suffered ff irremediable devaluation in the contemporary world. It is widely believed, indeed presumed, that science has replaced religion as a source of knowledge; and if knowledge becomes the single adjudication of value, then it may be imagined, if not hoped, that science will equally displace the spiritual resource of religious faith, as well as the moral authority of tradition. When so abused, utilitarian abuse leads to cultural genocide. V

As a corrective to the idols of our time, a useful resource for an analysis of the general relation of the four foundational values we have discussed

440

LAWRENCE KIMMEL

is the Symposium of Plato. In this dialogue, recall, Plato examines the dialectical development of desire, in which the four values of interest to us here – the True, the Good, the Beautiful, and the Sacred are brought together in a synthetic union and transcendence of desire in the person of Socrates. Beauty, for example, functions both as the immediate occasion and object of desire (where eros means lack or need) and becomes, through dialectical development, the telic form or eidos which frames the most comprehensive form of all: the eidos of the Good. The Socratic form of this outline is roughly as follows: desire for the possession of beauty generates a search for knowledge of the good, which is the sacred task, given by the god. The cultural question that identifies the Sacred as fundamental is Kant’s question ‘‘What may we believe?’’ This domain of cultural life centers in the existential mode of possibility, not proof. Neither factual considerations nor discursive argument settle questions of spiritual conflict or disagreement when they arise. Discord unfortunately has become the rule in and among competing religions where the sacred is not a source of aspiration and devotion, but an article of authority and command. In its most positive creative expression, however, the spiritual is a mode of experience that integrates the individual’s sense of herself with the whole of existence, not one that eristically divides human beings from each other. In its basic meaning the sacred is usually distinguished from the secular. What is of primary importance in the sacred is that it defines two kinds of experience: an acute and general sense of the wholly Other, in which one stands in awe. Equally characteristic of the sacred is a sense of being complete and at one with the whole of existence. Both are elemental and transcendental modes of human experience. VI

So far, we have engaged in what may be called an analytic of four primary cultural categories: that is, we have distinguished each from the others in the experience and activities of cultural life and achievement. In reality they are not so separated. As logical categories, true/good/beautiful/ sacred are made distinct so that we can better understand and articulate the correlative logic of their connection. That is how explanation works in pursuit of knowledge. In cultural life, however, there is invariably an integration of that which we conceptually separate. For example, the tradition of philosophy sets out the logic of ‘‘the true’’ within the domain of episteme ‘‘theoretical’’ knowledge. The true, as far as it is a concern of

CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

441

science, is to distinguish and connect the things of the world as a system of relationships: to see the world as if we were independent of it, or, more to the point, as if it were independent of our intentions and descriptions – to see the world as an independent collection of interrelated things. Most simply, such a view of ‘‘the true’’ understands the task of all significant inquiry to be to explain world as a logical network of causal relations. But this is a limited view of both knowledge and truth. The True, as a fundamental value in culture, also figures essentially in the language and discourse of each of the other three categories; indeed, each figures in the discourse of all the others. In ethics, for example, the True is considered in terms of ethos, where ‘‘true’’ defines character, as in true to oneself, true to others, and true to one’s principles and responsibilities. So too, there is truth in art: the True as aesthesos, in sensuous apprehension, the truth of expression and of experience, in which a work is judged ‘‘true to life’’: vraisemblance characterizes the disclosing of the true (aletheia) as a presence of the real (Heidegger). Finally, in the context and language of the Sacred, there is the True in spiritual terms. I do not here refer to the theology of pronouncement in which various institutional religions lay claim to unique authority. The Christian scripture, not its theology, is exemplary of the point in which the sacred is a source of spiritual freedom and rebirth: The ‘‘V ida, Veritas, V ita,’’ (‘‘I am the way, the truth, the life ...’’) expresses an existential possibility in which a form of life and renewal (in faith) can be appropriated. Such possibility is the hallmark of sacred scripture in the world’s great religions. The point of this synthesis is merely to outline the obvious: the fundamental values of the True, the Good, the Beautiful, and the Sacred are essential resources for the fullness of human life and community. It only remains to bear witness in our collective experience and activity to the truth that everything matters, and that everything of consequence to human existence that finds expression in culture merits our deep concern and dedicated preservation. T rinity University San Antonio, T exas

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ETHI CAL CRITICISM: HOW LITERATURE AFFECTS ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT

Alfred Schutz suggests that a ‘‘completely worked-out theory of relevance is nothing else than a phenomenological theory of motivation’’ (Collected P Papers 4, 221). By the word ‘‘relevance’’ Schutz here refers to the hierarchy of typifications by which individuals navigate the life-world. For example, a person might simultaneously typify someone as acquaintance, lawyer, stamp collector, and as a member of a particular political party. In most situations, such typifications do not contradict each other, so that as we deal with the typified person in one aspect, we can simply neglect the others. Schutz’s point is that situations occur in which our various typifications conflict. The typification that governs our interaction, then, reveals itself as being higher in the rating system. In 1988, Wayne Booth revived wide interest in ethical criticism with his book T he Company We Keep: An Ethics of Criticism. In this long and roomy book, Booth may have presented insights that do not depend on his title’s concept. These would be unaffected ff by the following analysis. Also, if Booth only meant to throw out a catchy title metaphor, it might be unfair to hold him to all the implications of his figure-of-speech; however, the idea that the title implies the heart of his approach derives from the fact that he more specifically presents his essential view in his chapter, ‘‘Implied Authors as Friends.’’ Using a phenomenological perspective discourages us from accepting Booth’s friendship metaphor as a foundation of ethical criticism for three reasons. First, the experience of reading is the reverse of ‘‘friendship’’ for the implied author. Second, the phenomenological perspective contradicts the concept of friendship that Booth presents in T he Company We Keep. Third, it may be that we need to look not to the implied author for a foundation, but to the implied reader. I base my first objection on a phenomenological concept of friendship constructed from the work of Alfred Schutz. Although Schutz does not articulate a specific concept of friendship in the passages cited here, a reader can see principles for such a concept emerging from what Schutz does write. In Schutz’s phenomenology, agents structure their world by 445 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 445–454. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

446

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

typifications; for example, a person might typify another person as ‘‘deserving of respect’’ (Collected Papers 2, 240–241). If so couldn’t we extend that to assume that a person might typify another as ‘‘deserving of friendship’’? Such a typification takes its place in a ranked system of relevances. In the simpler case, if ‘‘respect’’ is ranked higher than economic motivation, one would refrain from taking economic advantage of the person one had typified as ‘‘deserving of respect.’’ Thus, an examination of the hierarchy of typifications would reveal that person’s ethical system. Among the possible implications of a typification of ‘‘deserving of friendship’’ would be that friendship implies individualization. Although a person may have other friends and realize that one’s friend has other friends, in friendship a person gets to know one’s friend as a unique individual. In contrast, a book offers ff pleasure and usefulness to all readers equally. Each reader is one of many to whom the book extends these benefits. Neither the author nor the reader knows the other as an individual. When I subject my own experience of reading to this phenomenological concept, my experience does not fit the idea of ‘‘friendship with the implied author.’’ Even Booth accepts New Criticism’s concept that readers cannot know the author, only the text. Booth’s implied author is the author that the reader imagines from reading the book, as distinguished from the person the reader might come to know if the reader met the author in person. In fact, when I read the works of certain authors – Jane Austen, for example – I recognize in myself a wish that I could have known this person. Since I never can, I actually feel a sense of being deprived of an imagined friendship, the reverse of Booth’s concept. Buddy Glass, an author who narrates J. D. Salinger’s ‘‘Seymour – An Introduction,’’ gives a hilarious send-up of the idea that author and reader can be friends. He begins the novella saying he has been advised ‘‘to keep a steady and sober regard for the amenities’’ in his relationship with ‘‘the general reader.’’ For years, he had a problem doing so: ‘‘The question is, how can a writer observe the amenities if he has no idea what the general reader is like’’ (96). Now, at the age of forty, he’s discovered what ‘‘my general reader’’ is like. You ‘‘may deny it up and down, I fear, but I’m really in no position to take your word for it. You are a great birdlover’’ (96). Buddy continues with lavish detail of how ‘‘you,’’ the reader, loves this trait of certain birds, or that trait. For example, you have many ‘‘thrilling thoughts’’ of how the ‘‘curlew sandpiper, which breeds so far north that only about three people have ever seen its nest, goes to Tasmania for its holidays!’’ (97). That Salinger is ridiculing the idea that

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ETHICAL CRITICISM

447

readers become friends with authors by having his narrator Buddy make such a ludicrously presumptuous assessment of his readers receives support when Buddy pauses, and then says, ‘‘It would be too much of a good thing to hope, of course, that my very own general reader should turn out to be one of the three people who have actually seen the curlew sandpiper’s nest’’ (97). Buddy, none-the-less, claims to ‘‘know him – you – quite well ...’’ (97). While Buddy can’t be saying this straight-facedly, Salinger’s joke is likely designed to illustrate the absurdity of anyone thinking an author can know a reader well enough to be friends with him or her. And of course, the reverse is also impossible. A reader cannot be friends with an author, even an author whom the reader vividly imagines from reading the text. Second, Booth’s idea of friendship seems too commercial to fit the phenomenological model, at least in regard to Schutz’s system. As Michael Barber explains, Schutz insists ‘‘that intersubjectivity involves mutual interaction in freedom’’ (420). Schutz emphasizes the word ‘‘mutual.’’ Typifications operate until further notice, but freedom remains in Schutz’s system because an individual may – and does – change both the typifications and their order in the ranking system. Booth, in saying that all ff some benefit or pleasure or companionship,’’ conliterary works ‘‘offer forms to a theory of interaction by which persons choose each other in analogy to theories of economic exchange (174). In contrast, Schutz’s phenomenological perspective presents, in Barber’s words, ‘‘a more positive, cooperative account of intersubjectivity’’ than the economic model (420). The categories of ‘‘benefit’’ and ‘‘pleasure’’ do not entail mutuality. ‘‘More obviously,’’ says Booth, ‘‘all narratives offer ff with their titles and opening sentences a cry of invitation.’’ Booth imagines a book saying, ‘‘Join me, join me.’’ He believes that ‘‘Many stories announce themselves as offering ff simply one kind or another of pleasure,’’ although some of his examples do not fit a common notion of what kind of communication gives pleasure: ‘‘aggressive practical advice ... moral instruction ... visions of a higher reality ... distressing, even shattering warnings’’ (174). While Booth admits that friendship is ‘‘somehow, too valuable to be reduced to either the utile or the dulce,’’ he presents this as an afterthought and does not employ the insight to modify his system. On the whole Booth’s explanation is not friendly but, rather, is commercial. When a seller offers ff you something, claiming it will be useful or pleasurable to you, and you decide whether or not to accept the offer ff on the basis of whether you agree, then you are deciding whether or not to buy. This is not the image of friendship. In a bookstore, of course, the commercial reality of Booth’s

448

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

metaphor is literally the case, but even if Booth is not being this literal, we decide to spend our time and energy with the book, which would be the metaphorical equivalent of the purchase price. In contrast to Booth, Martha Nussbaum’s T he Fragility of Goodness elucidates a concept of friendship much closer to the mutuality and freedom that underlie Schutz’s phenomenological analysis. While mentioning the categories of utile friendship and dulce friendship found in Aristotle’s analysis, Nussbaum actually valorizes Aristotle’s concept of philos, which Nussbaum says is generally translated as ‘‘friend,’’ although she points out that Aristotle’s use is stronger and something of a cross between ‘‘lover’’ and ‘‘friend’’ in English; philia or friendship ‘‘requires ... mutuality in affection’’; ff in off ffering me utility and/or pleasure, a book is not offering ff me aff ffection, nor expecting it of me. My final objection to Booth’s idea that in reading we make friends of the implied author is that it emphasizes the wrong aspect of the communication transaction. In phenomenology, the emphasis is on the reader side of the transaction rather than on the writer side. To explain, let me present the basic communication transaction in a diagram. Sender – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –| – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –Receiver In the case of a book, we would modify the diagram: Author – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –| – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –Reader Narrative theorists have noticed a further refinement. Real author Implied author Narrator SENDER/AUTHOR Side

K

Narratee Implied reader Real reader RECEIVER/READER Side

The ‘‘real author’’ is the person discoverable from biographical sources. The entire point of the category of implied author derives from the fact, noticed by Booth, that the real reader never gets to know the real author. The reader is in the position of an individual citizen who writes a letter to the editor or to a Member of Congress without ever receiving a reply, a situation noticed by Schutz (Barber 428). When the reader experiences ideas of the author, this is not the actual person, and yet the reader imagines that she or he is interacting with the author. How to explain this? Booth’s ingenious answer is that the ‘‘implied author’’ is the author that the reader constructs from the literary text. This imagined author

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ETHICAL CRITICISM

449

might be as far from the actuality of the real author as Buddy Glass’s imagined birdloving reader is from the reality of real readers such as you or me. The uncertainty is handled in narrative theory, since the point of making the distinction is to bar interpretation of the text by reference to the implied author. If one wishes to use a biographical approach, the interpreter must go to real-author information derived from sources outside the text. For ethical criticism, however, Booth is suggesting a foundation based on being friends with an entity that readers imagine from reading the text. In the narrative situation, the reader finds her desire to communicate with the author always frustrated. The reader’s most immediate contact point is with the narrator. The narrator is the one implicated to be speaking the words of the text. In the case of a first-person narrator, this is obviously different ff from the implied and real author; in the case of a third-person narrator, it might be difficult or impossible to distinguish the narrator from the implied author. Moving to the Receiver/Reader side of the diagram, some works contain an overt ‘‘narratee,’’ a specific person to whom the narrator speaks; in a fable the narratee is a person who believes that foxes and crows can talk. In works where no narratee is named, the person spoken to might still be different ff from the ‘‘implied reader.’’ The ‘‘implied reader’’ is the person that a reader imagines the author expects to be reading the text. In a fable, the implied reader is someone who accepts the stated moral, but it is more complex in a more complex text. For example, if a text contains many literary allusions, the reader might say to himself or herself, ‘‘This author expects her readers to know an awful lot of literature.’’ The identity of the real reader is obvious. It is you or me, or any real person reading the text. The relevance for ethical criticism might be seen in an example drawn from T he F Fables of L a Fontaine. La Fontaine addresses The Dauphin not only in a preface but in the opening poem of his book, saying to ‘‘DAZZLING CHILD OF A PRINCE’’ that ‘‘if I have failed to give you real delight,/My reward must be that I hoped I might.’’ The Dauphin is the narratee, the person which the text names as its reader. However, if we need proof that La Fontaine did not expect the Prince to be his only reader, we need look no farther than to the fact that La Fontaine published the book to the rest of the world. La Fontaine’s warning against flattery is ‘‘The Fox and the Crow,’’ in which the fox flatters the crow’s voice, asking him to sing and so gets the

450

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

bird to open his mouth and drop a cheese. The overtly stated moral defines La Fontaine’s implied reader: The fox pounced on the cheese and remarked, ‘‘My dear sir, Learn that every flatterer Lives at the flattered listener’s cost: A lesson worth more than the cheese that you lost.’’

From reading La Fontaine’s book, we can imagine those for whom this overt moral is ostensibly intended: middle-class children whose parents buy the book and read it to them or, if they are a little older, who read it themselves. The book implies that hearing or reading this fable will promote the ethical development of these children. William Bennett includes a version of ‘‘The Fox and the Crow’’ in his section of readings intended to promote the virtue of self-discipline (66). That the situation is not so simple can be illustrated from a comment made by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Emile. Children, ‘‘While seduced by the fiction,’’ says Rousseau, ‘‘allow the truth to escape them’’ (80). ‘‘In the fable the Crow and the Fox, children despise the crow, but they all form a liking for the fox’’ (81). Children ‘‘always take the part of the most dashing character,’’ explains Rousseau, ‘‘no one likes to be humiliated’’ (81). Rousseau is here imagining real readers, the children. He even implies that the other real readers – the parents – might have a secret secondary agenda. While ostensibly endorsing the overt moral that defines the implied reader, the parents who buy the book might secretly (or perhaps even unknowingly) be regarding the fox as a good model for their children’s future behavior. Without quite admitting it to themselves, Rousseau implies, these parents might be hoping that their children develop into successful flatterers to ‘‘succeed’’ in the bourgeois economy. The situation is even more complex: Rousseau is himself a real reader noticing how other real readers respond. This level of complexity is what Booth misses. Booth, normally a brilliant categorizer, does well with the distinctions on the author side (of which he is one of the originators), but he mysteriously lumps all three elements of the reader side of the transaction together into one category. He often imagines a rather simplistic reader and talks of the reactions of readers to texts as if the situation was a simple, one-to-one, cause-and-effect ff transaction. Booth’s oversimplification occurs despite the fact that his own examples allow more complex interpretations than he gives them. Booth quotes a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses l describing a few moments of thought from Stephen Dedalus. Booth says, ‘‘When as a nineteen-year-old I first

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ETHICAL CRITICISM

451

read the passage ... I felt completely outclassed. ... I can also remember clearly a sense of envy, and awe – not of Joyce but of Stephen’’ (274). In trying to emulate the novel’s character, says Booth, ‘‘I was moved, in however slight a degree, toward the character of a philosophical man’’ (274, Booth’s italics). Incidentally, providing an instance of a reader wanting to be like a character is not good support that the primary transaction is the reader wanting to be friends with the implied author, Booth’s initial proposal. Let me now make good on the claim implied by my sub-title, ‘‘How Literature Affects ff Ethical Development’’ of readers. When a real reader recognizes an implied reader as different ff from herself or himself, and inserts qualities of that implied reader high in the real reader’s typification rating system, and strives to acquire the qualities of the implied reader, the real reader is striving to change himself or herself. When a person embarks on a legitimate effort ff of self-change, this transformative process always entails an ethical dimension. If the implied reader’s qualities are positive, the change in the real reader is positive. Of course, the reverse is also true. Booth, I think, has misunderstood this mechanism; I want to suggest that the mechanism operating here is not one of trying to become a certain type of character but of recognizing what kind of reader the text implies and trying to become that kind of reader. Booth reveals such an attitude without connecting his response to the typology: ‘‘Even if I can’t catch many of the allusions,’’ says Booth, ‘‘I will suspect that many allusions are being made’’ (275). Booth notes several phrases from Joyce’s text and depicts his younger self as asking who and/or what they are. ‘‘Joyce knows,’’ says Booth, ‘‘Stephen knows; there must be readers all over the civilized world who know. If only I knew!’’ (275, Booth’s italics). What Booth is doing, here, is describing the reaction of a particular ‘‘real reader’’ – himself. The response is wanting to become more like the reader for whom the text implied it was written. Supporting this interpretation is Booth’s admission that he aspired ‘‘to become the sort of person, someday, who knows’’ the kinds of things he read in the text, someone who ‘‘doesn’t have to look it up’’ (276, Booth’s italics). Thus, the ethical process that Booth’s own example illustrates is not a process of making friends with the implied author but of recognizing what kind of reader the text implies and deciding to strive to become that kind of reader. What does this have to do with ethical criticism? I would answer by saying that these insights support the idea that judging the ethical impact of a book is a far more complex and subtle process than has recently

452

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

been supposed to be the case. Booth’s belief that the process lies on the ‘‘author’’ side of the transaction has the weakness of assuming an overly ff connection between reading and ethical developsimple cause-and-effect ment. Not only is the situation more complex when real readers are distinguished from those implied in the text, but, also, real readers are freer and more active; people make decisions in the process of reading. Let me illustrate from one of the 1990’s most popularized instances of a judgment on how books influence ethical development of readers: William Bennet’s T he Book of V irtues. The elements that Booth missed are the same ones missed in the approach of William Bennett, whose anthology T he Book of V irtues became a best seller. I find it interesting that Bennett includes ‘‘The Fox and the Crow’’ because there are other aspects of his approach to which Rousseau’s comments might be connected. Bennett says, ‘‘these stories and others like them are fascinating to children’’ (12). This calls to my mind, Rousseau’s comment, above, that children are ‘‘seduced by the fiction’’ (88). While not specifically using the terms ‘‘The Company We Keep,’’ William Bennett bases his book on essentially the same, too-simple foundation – the idea that stories automatically influence in a straightforward manner, without complexity or the intervention of free choice by the responder. Notice that Bennett includes the story of ‘‘George Washington and the Cherry Tree’’ (605–606). The story is not true, but Bennett suggests we read it to children to encourage honesty. I’d like to engage this again through a comment of Rousseau’s: ‘‘Fables may instruct men, but children must be told the truth’’ (80). The situation with ‘‘George Washington and the Cherry Tree’’ worries me because the text presents the anecdote, not as a fable but as the truth. It might be argued that in a fable the presence of talking crows and foxes alert children to the fact that the story is not being presented as true but as a fiction. No moment comes when they realize they have been lied to. This built-in protection does not apply to a story about an historical figure. Bennett admits that the episode ‘‘first appeared in 1806 in the fifth edition of Mason Lock Weems’s imaginative biography of Washington’’ (605). In most contexts ‘‘imaginative’’ is a positive word, yet this book presents untruths while laying claim to an implication of truth implied in the term ‘‘biography.’’ What is Bennett up to when he describes this book as merely ‘‘imaginative’’? In his introduction, Bennett discusses the issue:

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ETHICAL CRITICISM

453

In telling these stories I am interested more in the moral than the historic lesson. In some of the older stories – Horatius at the bridge, William Tell, George Washington and the cherry tree – the line between legend and history has been blurred. But it is the instruction in the moral that matters. Some of the history that is recounted here may not meet the standards of the exacting historian. But we tell these familiar stories as they were told before, in order to preserve their authenticity. (14)

When we try to imagine real readers, we may notice that Bennett does not suggest that parents forthrightly tell children that the cherry-tree incident never happened – i.e., that they transform it from a lie about an historical person to something analogous to a fable. Horatius lived in the sixth century B.C.E., in an era which, if we wish to study it at all, we must deal with stories that blur the line between ‘‘legend and history.’’ No such necessity exists with the colonial and revolutionary period of U.S. history. So lumping Horatius and Washington together begins to appear to have a weaseling quality and to throw dubious light on the claim that Weems’s biography was merely ‘‘imaginative.’’ What about William Tell? The middle ages may occasionally also present us with the choice between not studying an event and accepting a mix of legend and historical fact, a hard choice not faced in the case of studying George Washington. A standard reference work explains: ‘‘Tell probably never existed, and the account is a distortion of the historic events of 1291’’ (Columbia 1075). This would seem to go far beyond merely not meeting the finicky standards of a few pedantic historians, as suggested by Bennett’s statement. Bennett includes his Horatius and Tell episodes in his section on ‘‘Courage.’’ Is he suggesting that – in order to promote the virtue of courage – we tell children these falsehoods as if they were true? What does he imply will happen when the children later discover the nonfactual status of the stories? Perhaps Bennett thinks they, having acquired the virtue of courage, will forgive the untruth like they forgive being told that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny exist? Or does he hope that most of them never will discover the truth? Bennett’s urging us to ‘‘tell these familiar stories as they were told before, in order to preserve their authenticity’’ suggests that he even hopes the parents reading the stories may not know that the stories are not true. This is even more worrysome since ‘‘George Washington and the Cherry Tree’’ is in the section entitled ‘‘Honesty.’’ He implies that if we do not tell the child that the story is untrue, either because we have been lied to ourselves or because we choose to hide the truth from the child, that then this will promote the virtue of honesty in the child. This

454

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

absurdity derives from a flawed, over-simple conception of how literature affects ff ethical development, a conception that does not take the implied reader into account. How might we benefit from an awareness that ethical development occurs as we strive to become the reader implied by texts we admire? First, if readers learn to take full responsibility for the meanings (i.e., interpretations) that they construct from texts, that would seem to be a hopeful basis for ethical development. It places due emphasis on the freedom of the interpreter, but a freedom constrained by rationality. Second, if we can come to understand that the most fundamental cultural battles are not those of censorship, the battle to control distribution of texts, but the battles to control interpretations – and in these battles they can be their own masters – then a good start will have been made. L oras College, Dubuque BIBLIOGRAPHY Barber, Martin. ‘‘Alfred Schutz: Reciprocity, Alterity, and Participative Citizenry.’’ In Phenomenolological Approaches to Moral Philosophy: A Handbook. John J. Drummond and Lester Embree (eds.). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. Bennett, William J. T he Book of V irtues: A T reasury of Great Moral Stories. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Booth, Wayne C. T he Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. T he Columbia V iking Desk Encyclopedia, 3rd Ed., Compiled and edited at Columbia University, Ed.-in-Chief William Bridgewater. New York: Viking, 1968. La Fontaine, Jean de. Fables F (from 1668). In T he Fables F of L a Fontaine, Marianne Moore (trans.). New York: Viking, 1954. Nussbaum, Martha C. T he Fragility of Goodness: L uck and Greek T ragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile (1762). In Rousseau’s Emile or T reatise on Education. William Payne (trans.). New York: D. Appleton, 1914. Schutz, Alfred. Collected Papers. Vol. 2. Studies In Social T heory. Edited by Arvid Brodersen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ff 1964. Schutz, Alfred. Collected Papers. Vol. 4. Edited by Helmut Wagner, George Psathas, and Fred Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

MORAL SENTIMENT AND THE ETHI CS OF REPRESENTATION IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

I. PHENOMENOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION

In the realm of literature and art, the subject-matter of the Holocaust poses problems of and questions about representation or depiction which can be described in phenomenological terms. The first section of this essay outlines, in their phenomenological aspects, some of the questions which arise in regard to representing the Holocaust in imaginative works, as opposed to objective or scientific historiography. In following sections, the aforementioned problems of representation and depiction are distinguished from the literary genre of tragedy, and the imaginative strategies of Holocaust writing are brought into relief with phenomenological attendance to some specific literary works in particular by the novelist Aharon Appelfeld. It is held that the Holocaust cannot, in its totality, be depicted within any given representation; or that it should be represented objectively, eschewing, for moral, political, and historical reasons, the subjective lens of interpretation. In the historiographical debates, and even among survivors, one side would have it that the Holocaust should not be a matter for artists, or even philosophers, but for the historian who attends disinterestedly to objective facts, to evidence and testimony. Objective history would simply represent what actually happened with scientific rigor and straightforwardness. Aside from the debates among historians about the nature of their discipline – whether or not this objectivity is achievable in any absolute sense, or to what degree – creative literature renders history as not only a collection of objective facts, but also those facts seen through the lens and distortions of experience. Yet the renderings of literature need not be regarded as merely imaginative or subjective flourish, for they can be corroborated by phenomenological attendance to historical truth. Phenomenology does not undercut the objectivity of factual reportage, nor does it diminish the possibility of a scientific basis on which to ground evidence and testimony. It is well rehearsed that phenomenology involves studying performances of cognition required to grasp anything as a fact, outlines objectivity and truth 455 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 455–471. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

456

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

on the basis of their relationship to the structures of consciousness. Of course, phenomenology does not set standards for truth, but analyzes and describes what occurs when we grasp something as true. Underlying the historiographical debates, but often untouched by them, are phenomenological problems: how does something come to be understood as true and as factual for those who were not present as witnesses? What does it mean to witness something and to bear witness, insofar as bearing witness exceeds the basic facts of perception and involves a complex relationship of consciousness to what one perceives? In the light of depictions in literature, moreover, phenomenological problems emerge which are beyond the task of the historian altogether: How does extreme victimization shatter ordinary horizons of expectation by which one makes sense of the world? How can this be represented? Phenomenological understanding renders facility in posing questions of representation that, rather than obscuring the immensity of the Holocaust and its resistance to univocal depiction, allow us to examine the structure of its evasiveness: why the Holocaust is so difficult to depict, from the point of view of experience. Lists of objective facts, statistics, documents, photographs, though horrible in their indications, always seem to add up to an incomplete account. The moral and cultural significance of the Holocaust is the subject-matter – but also exceeds the capacities and aims – of ordinary historiography, and is yet continually implied in the representations of literature or art. Some of our inquiries lie outside the realm of historiography because they pertain to notions of self and world, broken or lost by extreme victimization. We can assemble no evidence in the accepted sense of the word for the loss of ‘world,’ because the latter is not a fact, but an understanding, the result of both passive and active performances of consciousness, emotional, practical, and aesthetical, not to mention biological, relations to one’s surrounding environment, and it is all of this, and not only a Kantian moral dictate, that contextualizes our moral outrage at a person’s unjust extinction. The notion of ‘world’ is the reference-point for considering so much – memories, emotional bonds, convictions, accomplishments, ways of being, changes of mind – which was extinguished or precluded by ‘extermination.’ It has been attempted to describe those losses on the level of both individuals and cultures. Problems of representation regarding such description can be laid out phenomenologically, but solved – and then only ever partially – only with aid of the aesthetic imagination, contrary to Adorno’s well-known views of poetry ‘after Auschwitz.’ A world not

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

457

only consists of actualities which can be quantified and which have qualities; it is also a nexus of potentialities: not only what one was, but all one could have been, seen, experienced, felt, done, and known. These losses are implied by objective facts, but cannot, by virtue of their relationship to possibility, be representationally reconstructed in any scientifically positive sense. While phenomenological sensitivity leaves in tact and even supports the tasks of objective history, it also assigns the task of depicting the Holocaust to other kinds of description, that is, to literary and artistic efforts ff to say the truth. Yet to say that writers depict the Holocaust demands qualification, given the moral, experiential, and factual immensity of the subject matter – given that the Holocaust exceeds, for reasons I have indicated if not also many others, totalizing depiction. Thus we find a kind of indirectness in much literary and poetic writing about the Holocaust – Celan’s poetry, that of Miklos Radnoti, Appelfeld’s evasive novels. Holocaust writers have summoned assistance from the imagination in ways that undercut straightforward mimesis. Indeed, writers continually enlist the imagination in presenting, or representing, the horrors of the Holocaust, and they do so – at least in the case of honest writers (and I believe we can speak of honesty in respect to the imagination, excluding merely exploitive representations – although where that line is drawn is the subject of much discussion) – with a very serious purpose. This purpose troubles any attempt to restrict the subject-matter of the Holocaust, as some would argue should be done, to the collection of evidence, and the recordings of straightforward, eyewitness accounts. From Adorno’s condemnation of art after Auschwitz, we might draw the suggestion that to treat the Holocaust and its attendant sufferings, ff its victims as well as its persecutors, with any imaginative flourish, is abhorrent, if not only ethically suspect. But some writers who were also survivors suggest that telling the truth cannot even approach truthfulness without enlisting the imagination. A study of Holocaust literature, then, might shed some light on what might be missing from objective historical accounts. A study of serious literature about the Holocaust seems to suggest that that kind of history stands in need of supplementation. To present the facts is not yet to represent the Holocaust, for facts are not equal to experiences; in experiences, facts are absorbed within a set of perspectival parameters we associate with the terminology of the ‘self,’ in all its physical, social, moral, spiritual, and even aesthetic aspects. These aspects of the self might be called the very ‘conditions of possibility’ for perception of physical sufferff

458

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

ing and pain, sensitivity to degradation and humiliation, feelings of loss and displacement, moral outrage or disbelief, and fear for one’s own and others’ death. This adds up to a vital and then extraordinarily distorted relationship to history, to time and to existence, which is shattered when a self is destroyed, physically or spiritually. Like the notion of a ‘world,’ this relationship might best be depicted by language which does not demand the straightforwardness of scientific communication. When considering representation of the Holocaust, it seems insurmountable by objective history, because its significance is far greater even than the facts, could they be exhaustively gathered, would tell. Interpretation of these facts is one facet of the task of representing the Holocaust, a task which in this case can always only contribute to an unreachable totality; but it is also the circumstance of the self who experiences these facts, the world to which they belong or which they injure, with which the writer has to deal. When it is accessed through the work of literary writers who experienced it, it seems that experience on the part of the individual witness is not only a lens through which to interpret facts, but it is part of those facts themselves. According to Aharon Appelfeld, what happened to the self of the victim is a part of history, too, albeit one evading ordinary strategies of representation, and one about which it is difficult to speak without the legitimation of direct witnessing. But if Holocaust literature serves as an indication of the status of selfhood in extreme victimization, one can say that the very structures and regularities by which experiences are made sense of were radically broken. This situation of the self eludes ordinary testimony, which presumes a self in tact as the basis for perspective. How, then, is a witness to describe a self in extreme crisis? How can phenomenology come to aid our understanding here when phenomenology itself presumes a transcendental consciousness, in tact? Classical phenomenology holds that, should the whole world dissolve into chaos, the structures of transcendental consciousness shall remain, and thus that description of such dissolution should be possible. Husserl was referring to the perceptual world, but perhaps we can speak of moral chaos, the radical betrayal of ordinary expectations that belonged to human social order, to one’s very sense of being human. The betrayal Holocaust survivors describe was so extreme as to shatter the ties between the self and this order, between the self and history, and the experience of this shattering is inextricably tied up with moral sentiment. To this situation, literary writing and art can uniquely attest, beyond phenomenological-structural description.

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

459

II. HOLOCAUST LITERATURE AND THE TRAGIC IMAGINATION

Despite Adorno’s claim about the barbarism of poetry after Auschwitz, many survivors have turned to poetry and fiction as a means – perhaps the only means – of communicating certain truths about that suffering. ff As Berl Lang writes in his recent study, their works concern a ‘‘moral and historical enormity that is not at all immune ... to description or analysis or to the artistic imagination.’’1 While many writers could serve as a basis for study, in this and the next section of this essay I will consider the Holocaust novels of Aharon Appelfeld, an Israeli novelist from Czemowitz, Bukovina, who witnessed his mother’s murder by the Nazis and himself escaped from a concentration camp as a young boy. The subject of many of his works is Holocaust memory; but it is, I would argue, more principally the structures of experience – the collapse and possible recovery of the self – that Appelfeld engages in his writings. At issue in the present section of the essay is a phenomenologically-oriented study of the legitimacy and strategies of the use of imagination in Holocaust writing, and its distinction from the logic of tragedy. Literary works such as Appelfeld’s compel examination of the way the imagination is indeed brought to service the articulations of certain Holocaust experiences despite claims that the Holocaust is unimaginable. Appelfeld articulates not directly the feelings of horror, or direct experiences of victimization, but those of sorrow and loss – of brokenness – in their wake, in short, emotions, which, ‘‘when solid conventions have been destroyed ... come to the fore.’’2 The brokenness of the self in survivors’ memories of the Holocaust brings emotional and moral questions into sharp relief, and literature ultimately rejects the distinction between imagination and truth-telling in approaching these questions. If, as Appelfeld has claimed, ‘‘one cannot look too directly into the sun,’’ some clarity is won in this literature by indirect means, challenging the traditional forms of representation, narrative, and artistic genre. In Appelfeld this indirectness is achieved by deliberate strategies I wish to discuss here, such as the omission of specific and explicit reference to the Holocaust itself, drawing plots that circumnavigate historical events which the reader, in order to make sense of the novels, must presuppose and supply. When I refer in my title to the moral sentiment, I mean not so much explicitly moral feelings about rage, injustice or blame, but rather the implicit moral aspect of suffering: ff how feelings of loss and devastation of self and world are, in the case where there are identifiable perpetrators, themselves inescapably moral situations, caught up in the complexities of good and

460

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

evil. Such feelings are, in the case of Holocaust suffering, ff difficult to represent: Appelfeld claims that ‘‘any emotion, even the clearest, is elusive. You try to touch it, to feel it, and for a moment it seems you have succeeded – but no, it has already slipped away, or, worse, altered.’’3 In the case of Holocaust literature, this elusiveness is extreme, due not only to the extreme character of the lived experience, but to the extreme compromise of the self which experiences and the world which is its context. ‘‘The dread horrors of the Holocaust challenged the existence of the self ... the shattering of the self was one of the deepest forms of damage,’’ he writes.4 It is this damage, and the possibility of restoration, that is at issue in Appelfeld’s writing. There is, however, a need to defend the artistic imagination at work in representing the Holocaust. Appelfeld’s reflections here are worth quoting at length. In defense of art after Auschwitz, Appelfeld claims in one of his lectures: We say the word ‘Holocaust,’ and great concepts immediately occur to us: God, destiny, reward and punishment – the essence of metaphysical speculations. But literature, even if it wishes to shout out and shatter the firmament, must first obey a practical imperative: it must deal with the individual, the individual whose father and mother gave him a name, taught him their language, gave him their love, and endowed him with their faith ... All true art tirelessly teaches that the whole world rests upon the individual. That is its central point, whether it remains caught up with it or sets forth from it towards society or metaphysical space. The individual, with his own face and proper name, will always be the great subject matter of art. When people challenge me and ask what is the place of art in that sphere of death and horror, I reply: who can redeem the fears, the pains, the tortures, and the hidden beliefs from the darkness? What will bring them out of obscurity and given them a little warmth and respect, if not art? Who will take that great mass which everyone simply calls the ‘dreadful horror’ and break it up into those tiny, precious particles? ... art constantly challenges the process by which the individual person is reduced to anonymity.5

Lang has posed important questions about the limits of art in the wake of and about the Holocaust, summarizing the position with which Holocaust writers must deal: ‘‘The constant but unspoken question in these works is, What place can there be for the imagination or even for representation itself ? What space is left for authors who commit themselves to images of a composite event so dense morally and historically as to leave the imagination little room in which to move or act?’’6 Appelfeld’s statements imply, on the contrary, the necessity of art and the imagination in approaching the Holocaust. The usual literary devices will not suffice to represent its density, and so writers often submit to what Michael Bernstein has called the ‘‘anxiety of figuration,’’ worrying

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

461

about the stylization and its appropriateness for depictions of suffering. ff 7 But Appelfeld’s writings, and his theoretical reflections on art, attest to a different ff kind of anxiety: that of leaving more evasive truths untold, and thus being phenomenologically unfaithful to the real. But how is one to represent the shattering of a self, with all its attendant emotional and moral complexities? We might begin to understand the uniqueness of the problem by differentiating ff Holocaust suff ffering from the philosophical and literary category of the tragic,8 which suggests fate and its inevitability, as well as a kind of purity and denial of limit, that is inadequate to render the complexity of Holocaust experience as depicted by survivors. A poetics of totality, of the absolute unsayable, might be indeed the vehicle for expressions of horror and loss, but most Holocaust literature written by survivors includes the suffering ff in the wake of horror: what is left of the self after extreme victimization. Some reference to an infinite suffering ff (such as is made in the context of the tragic, in notions such as the ‘abyssal’ nature of tragic loss) would fail to grasp this situation; for while it is permissible and possibly necessary to think of the Holocaust as an historical absolute, the same cannot be said of the suffering ff of survivors, for it would render them universalized, thus eclipsing the inaccessible points of view of those who did not survive, as well as denying the impossibility of a ‘‘single order of memorable testimony.’’9 More relevant to the present discussion, a poetics of totality could not grasp the emotive and moral complexities of survivorhood, if we heed the following suggestion from Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz: Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.10

Levi’s point is a terrible and fascinating one: there is total loss if one does not survive, but Levi speaks to the impossibility of the experience of total loss. So long as one exists, there is no perfection even in suffering. ff The tragic, wherein, as Holderlin writes in his study of poetic forms, the ‘‘sign=0,’’ presents a categorical absolute that obscures, rather than engages, the moral questions demanded by Holocaust representation. Representation of Holocaust experience requires going beyond the tragic imagination. When we refer to the tragic in literature, we are equipped with certain moral or ethical expectations Aristotle outlined in his Poetics. There is a character and calamitous event which is recognizable, to whom and which we can relate; a situation we can take in whole,

462

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

as if in one revolution of the sun, and therefore comprehend; the error is identifiable; and the suffering ff inevitable and predictable. We can relate to the tragic as to a conceivable possibility, and so we can draw lessons from it. Necessity pervades the whole representation; and because it is natural, analogous to the functioning of an organism, it is, despite paradox, rational and therefore imitable. And despite this aspect of necessity and inevitability, these features render a tragedy fit for a certain kind of moral examination, make tragedy a vehicle for complex moral expressions, Hegel tells us, of the Sittlichkeit of a culture. This is why the catharsis they provide is socially beneficial: the purging of negative emotions is coupled with a moral lesson. But in Holocaust literature, we approach the unrecognizable, the incomprehensible, characters whose experience, unless we are also survivors, does not mirror our own, and from which we receive no purification. The novels under discussion here present experiences which exceed ordinary structures of moral comprehension, due to the radical discontinuity of their suffering ff from a framework of moral expectations. Appelfeld’s novels present worlds which are hermeneutically isolated, irreparably severed from the past and the future, for they have no continuity with a moral past and its traditions, and thus they are cut off from futural expectation, the degree of predictability required for moral judgment. The betrayal Appelfeld’s characters have experienced is so total that the ‘‘normative world and its verities no longer hold true for survivors,’’ as one scholar puts it.11 One of the aims of this paper is to ask whether we can speak, in phenomenological terms, of ‘‘moral sentiment’’ beyond the tragic category, in a literature that both suspends ordinary ethical judgment (not, certainly, about perpetrators, but about the status of the survivor-self ) and refuses pathos, absent of emotional inwardness for characters too torn and fractured to afford ff interiority. In respect to the novels of Appelfeld, an answer, perhaps also useful in understanding other Holocaust literature, can be gleaned from what I will call his strategies of indirection. Appelfeld does not, like Paul Celan, rely upon the invention of words, distortions of language and grammar, jointures between incongruous images, in order to get closer to the unsayable. Rather, Appelfeld aims for a clarity of expression that nevertheless, like Celan’s poetry, suspends ordinary parameters of experience. Accordingly, as one scholar writes, ‘‘once the continuous, the causal, the comprehensible, and the probable no longer are seen to be necessary or sufficient conditions for acceptable narrative, a place can be made for the fantastic ...’’12

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

463

I will briefly point to a few examples from Appelfeld’s writings. For Every Sin is a novel of extreme displacments, physical, cultural, and spiritual, wherein Theo, a refugee from the camps, must relocate himself in a destructured world; he relies upon the memory not only of his family life, but of music, his mother’s own escape into art. The title character of Katarina presents an inverted lens through which to consider displacement, as a gentile who suffers ff indirectly for the persecution of Jews. Badenheim 1939, Appelfeld’s most-discussed novel, portrays the famous spa town visited by bourgeois Jewish families oblivious to their incremental, but ultimately catastrophic, persecution. In each case, Appelfeld does not explicitly refer to the Holocaust itself, rarely to the enemy or the perpetrator, but rather depicts persons witnessing, or before and after their victimization, wandering as around a hollow center. This has been interpreted as a rejection of mimesis, a refusal to represent the core experiences of the Holocaust. I would argue for a different ff terminology, that Appelfeld practices a radical restructuring – by way of deferral – of mimetic reference, in order to break down the atmosphere of moral comprehensibility that constrains the tragic imagination. Like Kafka, Appelfeld creates worlds which both exist and do not exist, a composite sign both with and without referent. This is necessitated by the phenomenological aspects of the destruction as discussed in the first section: the destruction of a self and of a ‘world’ extinguishes not only actualities but the nexus of potentialities which surround and contextualize any realized experience, and so contextualize what we mean by a ‘person.’ When this whole context is severely damaged, the resultant suffering ff is incomprehensible without some rendering of its fantastical character. When Philip Roth asked him why he chose to use fiction rather than memoir as a means to examine his experiences, Appelfeld explains: ‘‘I tried several times to write ‘the story of my life’ in the woods after I ran away from the camp. But all my efforts ff were in vain. I wanted to be faithful to reality and to what really happened. But the chronicle that emerged proved to be a weak scaffolding. ff The result was rather meager, an unconvincing imaginary tale. The things that are most true are easily falsified. ... The reality of the Holocaust surpassed any imagination. If I remained true to the facts, no one would believe me.’’13 It was, indeed, the work of Kafka that helped Appelfeld to forge a path toward a new kind of depiction. Both writers reject the logic of tragedy. Their writings transverse the relationship between the actual and the possible, where we find not collaboration between them (as in tragedy), but antagonism: the actual (acts of murder and persecution) endangers and annihilates possi-

464

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

bility (freedom and the future), with the possible also treacherously invaded by the impossible (the unbelievability of the crimes). One differff ence between Kafka and Appelfeld is that Kafka’s persecutions issue from the pressurized internalization, and Appelfeld’s come directly from the world of others. Whereas ‘‘Kafka emerges from an inner world and tries to get some grip on reality,’’ Appelfeld writes, ‘‘I came from a world of detailed, empirical reality, the camps and the forests. My real world was far beyond the power of imagination. ...’’ This is why Appelfeld declared that his task as an artist ‘‘was not to develop my imagination but to restrain it.’’ Everything about his experience, he writes, ‘‘was so unbelievable that one seemed oneself to be fictional.’’14 With his strategies of indirection, Appelfeld implicitly challenges what Michael Bernstein has called ‘‘one of the most pervasive myths of our era,’’ the ‘‘absolute authority given to first-person testimony,’’ as if truth could be delivered unfettered by the mediation of language and imagery, without the biases inherent in literary stylization.15 While Appelfeld remains critical of artistic and cultural exploitations of Holocaust imagery, for instance, for commercial or superficial aesthetic purposes, the stylization of the literary imagination is essential to his method of witnessing. (Perhaps some exploitive or inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery in art or literature, in popular culture, for instance, might be identified as such by its reliance upon the genre of tragedy). Direct memory and testimony remain essential and primary for Appelfeld, as sources of historical documentation, but he denies the possibility of a single paradigm for presentation of Holocaust experience. Straightforward testimony is inadequate not only for its lack of aesthetic features which would bring experience alive communicatively, but also for the lack of an explicit acknowledgment of the imagination required to grasp the extent of the disaster, and the limits of its grasp. The characters in Appelfeld’s novels cannot, admittedly, be presented as instantiations of the survivor as such; while the characters are flattened out, beyond anger, revenge, indignation, and self-introspection, the issue is often their struggle for re-individuation.16 Unlike the tragic hero, who is at odds with a world to which he or she essentially belongs, Appelfeld’s characters inhabit fractured worlds, where others no longer take their place in the social context according to which the rules are made and broken. The moral complexities of re-individuation involve an attendant alienation from other survivors, for instance in For Every Sin. The hollowed-out character, devoid of pathos, does not weaken the moral urgency one might expect; rather, the moral quality of the novel is asserted by

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

465

the very ‘aesthetic distance’ it creates, for the reader is constrained in his/her empathy, disagreeing with the actions and even attitudes of the character with whom he or she sympathizes. This distance encodes a kind of moral experience that departs from the tragic emotions, eleos and phobos (pity and fear). We cannot draw general moral principles or insights from individual cases, such as we can from Raskalnikov in Crime and Punishment or from Flaubert’s M Madame Bovary. For Appelfeld ‘‘both the general and the particular ... are unsatisfactory’’17 due to the unspoken subject-matter of the work: the Holocaust itself, which de-individualized its victims and yet isolated them in the unspeakability, by direct means, of their horror. We do not draw general principles from the particular, but rather follow the incongruities of the characters’ experiences from our own to draw conclusions about the vast damage that has occurred. In Holocaust literature, the language of communication must be wrested from its usurpation by a private disaster, a collapse of self, where the foundational conditions of possibility of perspective, the phenomenal lenses of time and space, laid out as subjective universals by Kant, no longer serve as a universal foundation for shared experience, and thus no longer serviceable for the most basic hermeneutic background against which an utterance is comprehensible to others. Sheer perceptual reality remains in tact; but it no longer services social and moral, not to say metaphysical, expectations. The reader must fill in the continuity of time and space – or lived, rather than raw perceptual, time and space, that is, history and place – against which the shattered experience of the characters is juxtaposed. From this perspective, to tell it as history in its recognizable cadence and objective tenor would be to deface the individual suffering. ff The suff ffering of the individual is dwarfed by an equally unspoken sense of horror, one which renders the suffering ff unrecognizable in tragic terms. The character – Theo, with his alienation from other refugees in For Every Sin, or Erwin Siegelbaum of T he Iron T racks who obsessively rides the trains of postwar Austria in search of the murderer of his parents – is often unable to feel sorrow, yet this feeling seems intuitively required for his reconstitution as an individual.18 The character often lacks particularizing emotion, is reduced to the elemental. Thus the dislocations between reader and character, between sign and referent, provide space not only for the unsaid source of suffering, ff but also for pathos or sorrow itself in its moral cast, which demands of the reader a supplementation. Rather than tragic empathy, the reader’s experience is an incompleteable but necessary reconfiguration of moral emotion in the wake of its obscene absence.

466

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

III. MORAL SENTIMENT AND THE ETHICS OF REPRESENTATION IN AAHRON APPELFELD’S NOVELS

Any attempt at reconfiguration of the self through art in the wake of Holocaust victimization can be understood only in reference to the moral aspect of sorrow, to the problems of its depiction and the strategies of indirection which attempt to articulate it. In T he Iron T racks, For Every Sin, and Katarina, Appelfeld renders sorrow or mourning indirectly, by presenting a post-disaster landscape which is structured around the problem of the shattered self and the fractured world. The texture of emotive life within the novels can be traced out according to a phenomenology of correspondences, where the external landscapes (the empty vistas and encampments in For Every Sin, the Jewish ruins in Katarina, the tracks which draw a web of villages, and the markets in which the main character seeks out Jewish religious objects in T he Iron T racks) serve a double symbolism, corresponding both to the unnamed historical events, and to the elusive emotions of the characters in their wake, that is, to the specific quality of suffering. ff In For Every Sin, we find the landscape rich with existential and moral implications as if to take place of the vessel of self that cannot contain them: These thoughts held him back but he recovered and advanced. The path was narrow, only a trail. Deserted meadows extended for many miles. Animals were missing from that whole tranquil vista, and that made the silence a lie.

The novel traces Theo’s experiences among fellow refugees, whom he largely avoids, during a mass wandering Westward toward uncertain destinations, since they rightly sense the impossibility of returning home.19 But the journey is marked not only by the difficulties of starvation and exposure; the sense of humanity for these survivors, who have experienced severe degradation at the hands of the Nazis and the local gentile populations of Eastern Europe, undergoes a slow and painful, nearly impossible renewal. This renewal depends not as much on physical recovery and nourishment as is does on restoring attachments to a now shattered human culture, attachments to the old ways of life in shops and homes and cafes which are forever lost and stained with the memories of persecution. Theo’s journey and that of the other refugees is punctuated by rituals, especially the drinking of coffee, ff which serve to renew Theo’s bonds with others20 and with his past.21 Theo’s aversion to his fellow refugees is thawed by these tributes to culture and to a radically reduced, but possibly salvageable, prospect of a future. Yet his avoidance of them

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

467

throughout the novel reflects the impossibility of facing the past head-on, of articulating directly the intensity of his degradation and suffering ff in the camp. Thus we read almost nothing about Theo’s experience there. We read instead about his life as a refugee and, less prominently, about Theo’s former life, the troubles of his family and his mentally ill mother. She, searching for a redemption and purity above the degradation of the physical world and its attendant social persecutions, clings to the music of Bach and Mozart and fills Theo’s childhood with eccentric journeys in its pursuit. Only at the end of the novel do we approach the final destruction of Theo’s past life, his last memory of his mother as she boarded the train, dressed as if going to a concert, and the ‘‘sentence she had uttered at the edge of the abyss.’’22 The novel’s structure is a double helix of incongruous surrealities: the elevated fantasies of Theo’s mother and the destruction they bring to the family is mirrored writ large by the obscene surrealism of the Nazi mythology and the very real, but here indirectly stated, destruction of the Jews. Theo attempts to recover himself from the fantastically horrible extermination camps by seeking the purity of monastic-Christian escapism, and undoubtedly the reader, like Theo’s fellow refugees, cannot entirely sympathize with his desires. The moral complexity of the survivor is preserved by a refusal to resume the processes of ordinary moral judgement; Appelfeld, in Gabriel Josipovici’s words, ‘‘refuses to moralise.’’ The novel succeeds not as a substitute for reality but as explicit program of representation: the reader must complement the incomplete moral message, by virtue of juxtaposition to a hermeneutical ground of interpretation no longer functioning for the character. In contrast to For Every Sin, Katarina presents a converse desire for redemption: Katarina wishes to purify herself of her peasant associations, to become a Jew precisely when ‘‘there are no more Jews left in the world,’’ as she puts it, whereas Theo, a Jew, pursues an interior trajectory of avoidance of all that is Jewish, toward what he regards as the purity of the tones of gentile classical music. Katarina is perhaps the most strategically indirect testament of sorrow, for the title character experiences the Holocaust and the pogroms preceding it from the perspective of a close witness who is not herself a victim. In Katarina the moral tenor is connoted by Appelfeld in yet another strategy of indirection, by presenting as protagonist a witness whose life is directed and even shattered by her alliance with the persecuted Jews in her midst, all of whom are murdered by her own people. The reader senses that the horror of 1930’s and 1940’s in Eastern Europe is too great, its evil too intense, and the suffering ff too extreme, to be able to tell the story from a Jewish perspective.

468

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

The reader follows the events indirectly, and, because of Katarina’s identification with the Jews, they are still almost unbearable despite the askance viewpoint. As if in response to the suffering ff portrayed, Katarina’s philosemitism takes on exceptional proportions, when she not only abandons her peasant Ruthenian-Ukrainian folk in favor of the families for whom she works, but also falls in love with Jewish men, observes kosher, holiday and prayer rituals, learns Yiddish, attempts to raise the children of her murdered employers, and bears the child of a Jew, whom she names Benjamin and has circumcised against the advice of her Jewish acquaintances. While the peasants excuse their own hatred, their stealing, hunting, and murdering of Jews as the Germans approach, by reference to superstitions and to the myth that Jews murdered Jesus, Katarina’s character is transformed when she herself becomes viewed through the eyes of the peasant culture as a ‘curse.’ When a peasant attempting to rape her smashes Benjamin against a wall and kills him, Katarina murders him and cuts him up with a butcher knife. While a murderer can be forgiven, she tells the reader, even return to his village and marry, a murderess is forever hated and hunted down, even after her release from prison at the age of seventy. When she is finally released, having watched with the other prison women the trains carrying Jews to their deaths, she finds it difficult to cope with a world in which everything holy has been extinguished, for she perceives that ‘‘now that the autumn was growing clearer ... I knew that there were no more Jews left in the world.’’ It is a world where, Katarina believes, there are no more victims left, only murderers.23 Again, here the landscape stands in for the historical events and for the sorrow in their wake: For many hours I would wander along the streams. When it rained I would take shelter in the ruins. They were Jewish houses from which everything had been sundered. But to me those ruins were like temples. ... The nakedness was laid bare down to the marrow.’’24

T he Iron T racks is a novel of missed interlocutions, for its plot is reduced to a web of journeys taken by Erwin Siegelbaum on the railway among Austrian towns, ostensibly for the purpose of procuring remnants of Jewish religious ritual for commerce and preservation, but motivated primarily by the protagonist’s attempt to track down, and kill, the murderer of his parents. The novel has no center, no Archimedean point from which to raise the hand of justice; rather, the ritual objects serve, as did the coffee ff and cigarettes in For Every Sin, a sporadic but persistent reminder of purpose, to stand in for the silenced dead. Sorrow here is submerged by the drive for justice, if not revenge, and the protagonist’s

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

469

agony over the continual dwindling of the sparse remnants of Jewish life in that region. A phenomenology of reading, of the unique structures of reference in literary representations, can be useful in understanding the moral sentiment in this literature which exceeds ordinary moral categories and is often bereft of recognizable sorrow. In Appelfeld’s works, memory of life before the camps and the murders is invoked in juxtaposition to current survivorhood, so that the remembered sorrows of the previously intact life stand in for the sorrow which cannot be felt in the present state of brokenness. In this way, the flat and hollowed survivor – not unlike some of Kafka’s characters – is read off a surface of clues which indicate recessed layers of personal reality, now cracked, eroded, and unreadable. Depth is denied the characters, for they have little interiority, but a potential renewal beyond despair is encoded spatially into the scenes they occupy, by reference to landscape, nature, symbolic objects (coffee, ff cigarettes, trains, ruins, religious ritual objects) which map out an inhabitable terrain in a world which has become uninhabitable. The temporal aporia, the ostensible incongruity between present and past, past and future, and that between the current state of survival and the not only historical, but ontological rift which brought it about, is legible according to this hermeneutical supplementation. This supplementation concerns two elements – spatiality and temporality – which are the basic features of the shattered self and world, the phenomena for which I argued, at the outset, that historiography of the Holocaust is inadequate to account. In the novels, spatial horizons, such as landscapes and the criss-crossing of train tracks between cities and towns, not only build up an objective correlative for a lost interiority, but render a temporality in the place of ordinary lived time. These spatiotemporal horizons resonate as such because they correspond to the reader’s own structures of experience, and they are connected by the dual symbolism. Thus the spatial references are often also temporal: the cycle of seasons is repeatedly invoked as a part of the spatial landscape in For Every Sin and Katarina; and the visits to towns and cities by Siegelbaum in T he Iron T racks follows the repetitive train schedule, made cyclical by the character’s incessant coming and going, embarking and returning. Spatiality and temporality are hermeneutical structures which reconstitute a backdrop – in place of interiority and of the lost expectations of the Enlightenment self with which many of his middle-class, secular characters associated in pre-war life, and in place of the world to which they belonged

470

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI

– for moral questions about the characters’ experiences and an atmosphere of their emotional reality. This reconstitution of self and world is part of the act of reading; it must be enacted retrospectively in Appelfeld’s most debated novel, Badenheim 1939, in which the characters experience no self-introspection, no indignation which could guide our moral response. Yet the novels demand this response of the reader in order to fill out the missing aporias – that is, in order that the events, and their significance, are comprehended – leading me to conclude that they are themselves not written for survivors like Appelfeld. Appelfeld’s imaginative projections seem to include that of an intact reader, whose own interiority and temporal reference could stand in for what is distressingly absent from his characters. Phenomenologically traced out, it seems his novels would be incommunicable to readers as broken off from history as are his characters. The unspoken subtext of Appelfeld’s work, the Holocaust, is then coupled by a projection ‘‘beyond despair,’’ and this is perhaps a part of the reindividuation Appelfeld hoped for from his own art. This is perhaps the sense of his claim, contrary to suspicion about the use of the imagination in approaching the Holocaust: that ‘‘only art has the power of redeeming suffering ff from the abyss.’’ 25 Fordham University, Bronx, NY F NOTES 1 Berl Lang, Holocaust Representation: Art W ithin the L imits of History and Ethics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000), p. 5. 2 Aharon Appelfeld, Beyond Despair: T hree L ectures and a Conversation with Philip Roth, Jeffrey ff M. Green (trans.) (New York: Fromm International, 1994), p. 3. 3 Appelfeld, Beyond Despair, p. 3. 4 Ibid., p. 22. 5 Ibid., pp. 22–23. 6 Lang, Holocaust Representation, p. 37. 7 Michael Andre Bernstein, F Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 48. 8 For a further discussion of the philosophical and literary tragic, see Jennifer Anna Gosetti, ‘‘Tragedy and Truth in Heidegger and Jaspers,’’ IInternational Philosophical Quarterly 42:3 (Fall 2002). 9 Bernstein, F Foregone Conclusions, p. 50. 10 Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: T he Nazi Assault on Humanity, Stuart Woolf (trans.) (New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 13. 11 Gila Ramras-Rauch, Aharon Appelfeld: T he Holocaust and Beyond (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 32–33, 38. 12 Ramras-Rauch, Aharon Appelfeld, p. 31.

MORAL SENTIMENT IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

471

13 Appelfeld, Beyond Despair, p. 58. 14 Ibid., p. 64. 15 Bernstein, F Foregone Conclusions, p. 47. 16 Ramras-Rauch, Aharon Appelfeld, pp. 34, 38. 17 Ibid., p. 38. 18 The novels to which I refer in this essay are: Aharon Appelfeld, For Every Sin, Jeffrey ff Green (trans.) (London: Quartet Books, 1995); T he Iron T racks, Jeffrey ff M. Green (trans.) (New York: Schocken Books, 1991); Katarina, Jeffrey ff M. Green (trans.) (New York: Random House, 1992). 19 Appelfeld, For Every Sin, p. 151. 20 Ibid., pp. 21, 163–4. 21 Ibid., pp. 11, 121. 22 Ibid., p. 163. 23 Appelfeld, Katarina, p. 201. 24 Ibid., p. 202. 25 Appelfeld, Beyond Despair, p. xv.

PETER WEIGEL

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

The ending of Sartre’s Nausea N (1938) is surprisingly upbeat. The protagonist, Roquentin, believes creating a work of art, a novel, can justify his otherwise meaningless existence and allow him to remember his past in other than disparaging terms. His decision immediately follows his coming to believe that the male composer and female singer of his favorite jazz record are ‘‘saved’’ from meaninglessness through their own creation. Roquentin’s proposal is quite striking, coming at the end of a novel detailing his growing awareness of the fundamental absurdity of life and the world. Its possible significance has puzzled generations of Sartre’s commentators. Can works of art save, in any meaningful sense? Is the proposal at the end even meant to be taken seriously, or is it yet another subtle piece of irony so pervasive in Sartre’s works? It seems there is indeed a joke involved, if we look closely enough. At the same time I want to suggest why we need to look beyond the irony and paradox Sartre builds into the ending. The young Sartre took the problem of art’s ability to justify seriously enough to make the issues surrounding it integral to the overall philosophical vision of the novel. The ending of Nausea N consciously echoes long-standing debates in Western thought over ‘‘art for art’s sake,’’ whether works of art can and should remain independent of human purposes external to the sheer aesthetical enjoyment of the work. Nausea N presents a literary microcosm of key aesthetical conflicts dividing art, religion, and metaphysics since Plato.1 Sartre’s own approach to art in N Nausea and the problems it raises are better understood when viewed within the broader currents of 19th century European aesthetical philosophy beginning with Immanuel Kant. However, before looking at the aesthetics of Nausea N in this wider context, it will first help to recount a few basic themes surrounding Roquentin’s proposal. I. ART AND EXISTENCE

N Nausea records the protagonist’s growing awareness of a world that is fundamentally disordered and unintelligible beneath the stable and ordered appearances given to it in consciousness. This awareness culmi473 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 473–489. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

474

PETER WEIGEL

nates in Roquentin’s famous ontological epiphany while viewing a chestnut tree in a city park: So I was in the park just now. The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under my bench. I couldn’t remember it was a root any more. The words had vanished and, with them, the significance of things, ... I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty mass, entirely beastly, which frightened me. Then I had this vision. It left me breathless. Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of ‘‘existence’’ ... Existence had suddenly unveiled itself ... It was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence ... This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.2

The vision is of a world shorn of its Aristotelian veneer of stable essences and their identifying properties. Objects lose their distinctive features marking them out to be individual members of natural kinds. Their status as discrete individuals dissolves into a runny pool, revealing a chaotic ‘‘beastly’’ mass of undifferentiated ff existence. The scene confronts Sartre’s readers with a Nietzschean world where our descriptive categories and words prove radically false, and the order of things is seen to come from the mind, not from the way the world actually is. A world so robbed of its identities and regularities is experienced as threatening and anxiety provoking, which produces in Roquentin the feelings of nausea and disorientation giving the work its title. ‘Existence’ designates the world unmasked of the ordered veneer given in consciousness. The dissolution of order and intelligibility at the ontological level lies at the heart of Roquentin experiencing various other orders as merely humanly imposed. The contrast between everyday time and the artificial time in the jazz song underscores the temporal order as structured by our consciousness.3 Roquentin’s abandonment of his book on the life of the Marquis de Rollebon in the face of contradictory and inconclusive biographical data emphasizes the problem of subjectivity and arbitrariness inherent in any historical narrative or explanation.4 The Self-Taught Man’s comic attempt to master everything worth knowing by systematically reading through the titles in the library from A through Z pokes fun at the epistemological pretensions of the French rationalists and in particular Diderot and the encyclopedists. Nausea N satirizes the false order among the social classes, and (after all this is Sartre) there are the obligatory pokes at the self-satisfied fatuousness of the bourgeois town fathers, who cling to their illusory belief that ‘‘they had a right to everything: to life, to work, to wealth to command, to respect, and, finally, to immortality.’’5 The falseness of these orders in large measure derives from a

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

475

philosophical view of the universe as void of order and providential purpose. Commentators go astray in not realizing Nausea N is as much or more a metaphysical essay as it is an ‘‘existential’’ novel of man’s radical freedom, or a moral critique of the French middle class. Alongside the chaotic and amorphous world of ‘‘existence’’ existence Roquentin experiences another world, the imaginary world of art he characterizes in terms of ‘‘being’’ eˆtre. Works of art do not ‘‘exist’’ according to this view, but are instead viewed as objects of the imagination grasped only in aesthetical experience. The work itself is not a physical thing. Sartre distinguishes the art object from the physical media occasioning an aesthetical experience of the art object, which Sartre calls the ‘‘analogue.’’ A painting, for instance, is available by means of the arrangement of the paint on the canvas. The paint and canvas are not the true painting, which is grasped by the artist and the viewer in their imaginative experience. A song is an object given in our imagination by means of the physical record playing on a phonograph, or a written score interpreted by an orchestra. T he Psychology of Imagination (1940) speaks of the work of art as a mental ‘‘image’’ distinct from the material analogue: A painting, for example, cannot be illuminated by a projecting beam of light on the canvas; it is the canvas that is illuminated, not the painting. The fact of the matter is that the painter has not realized his mental image at all; he has simply constituted a material analogue of such a kind that anyone can experiences the image provided he looks at the analogue.6

The object of an aesthetic experience is that toward which the physical artifact intends. As something constituted only in our mental faculties, the object transcends the limitations of concreteness and mere subjective consciousness. Unlike its analogue, the work of art so constituted is not subject to temporal decay and loss, and as something in principle always available to a conscious subject it enjoys a kind of eternity. The concert in the hall will end, the musical score in the archive may rot, and the record or compact disk in my possession will eventually be lost or broken, but the Bach concerto lives on forever as a possible object of any mind’s aesthetic appreciation. The work of art thus possesses a timeless essence which nevertheless can be made manifest to consciousness within time. That any consciousness can experience the object also means that the work is available in intersubjective consciousness. This makes possible the communication of direct, imaginative experience (though the communicative and intersubjective potential of art is something Sartre tended to explore outside of Nausea N ).

476

PETER WEIGEL

Throughout the novel this transcending world of being is evoked for Roquentin by hearing his favorite jazz song played on the phonograph in the cafe he frequents. The song is ‘‘Some of These Days,’’ an early twentieth century American jazz standard about lost love. Its sentimental theme and lowbrow connotations stand out in a philosophical novel making a connection between art and salvation: Now there is this song on the saxophone. And I am ashamed. A glorious little suffering ff has just been born, an exemplary suffering. ff Four notes on the saxophone. They come and go, they seem to say: You must be like us, suffer ff in rhythm. Naturally, I’d like to suff ffer that way, in rhythm, without complacence, without self pity, with an arid purity ... Not even ironic: it spins gaily, completely self-absorbed: ... I am ashamed of myself for what exists in front of it ... It does not exist because it has nothing superfluous: it is all the rest which in relation is superfluous existence. ... I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to dry them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note.7

Elsewhere Roquentin describes his experience of the jazz song as follows: ‘‘There is another happiness: outside there is a band of steel, the narrow duration of the music which traverses our time through and through, rejecting it, tearing at it with its dry little points: there is another time.’’8 The song is a self-contained world of ordered beauty and precision, having ‘‘nothing superfluous.’’ Its well-ordered and predictable temporality contrasts with our own imprecise and confused experience of time. The hard, artificially imposed formal structure characterizing works of art belies the profound lack of structure and meaning characterizing the world of existence. Roquentin experiences the latter world as slimy and repugnant. Throughout the novel the narrator characterizes existence as ‘warm,’ ‘soft,’ ‘wet,’ ‘amorphous,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘filthy,’ ‘alive,’ and as being like ‘lymph’ or ‘warm milk.’ Descriptions of the imaginary world of being, on the other hand, include ‘cold,’ ‘hard,’ ‘dry,’ ‘rigorous,’ ‘sour,’ ‘pure,’ ‘clean,’ and (most interestingly) ‘dead.’9 The close of Nausea N finds Roquentin daydreaming about the woman singing the jazz song and the man who composed it. A breakthrough occurs for him while listening to the song for the last time before he leaves the provincial town for Berlin: I have to go. I get up, but I hesitate an instant. I’d like to hear the Negress sing. For the last time. She sings. So the two of them are saved. The Jew [who wrote the song] and the Negress [who sings it]. Saved. Maybe they thought they were lost irrevocably, drowned in existence ... they have washed themselves of the sin of existing ... can you justify your existence, then? Just a little?10

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

477

At this juncture Roquentin proposes creating his own work of art, a novel, in an attempt to wash himself free of the sin of existence, ‘‘A novel. And there would be people who would read this book and say: ‘‘Antoine R wrote it. A red-haired man who hung around cafes.’’ And they would think about my life as I think about the Negress’: as something legendary and almost precious ... Then, perhaps because of it, I could remember my own life without repugnance.’’11 Sartre’s novel thus ends here with the main character suggesting that the production of a work of art affords ff a kind of secular salvation. A proposed novel, then, becomes Roquentin’s bid to fulfill his wish that, ‘‘And I, too, wanted to be [my emphasis].’’12 But what has just happened? How can a work of art, which does not ‘‘exist,’’ save something which does? What would it involve for Roquentin to be saved? On the face of it, such a proposal in a work otherwise given over to profound nihilism seems out of place and perhaps even ill considered. II. ART AND DESIRE

The ending of Nausea N and the aesthetical views implicit in the body of the work make more sense when viewed against the background of certain 19th century European aesthetical theories, notably those of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. In the nearly contemporaneously written Psychology of the Imagination (1940) Sartre sympathetically refers to both thinkers and develops relevantly similar views on how we experience works of art.13 Common to the aesthetical views of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Sartre (in his earlier writings) is the idea that genuine aesthetical experience is characterized by distinterested pleasure. The pleasure taken in a work of art is not linked to a desire to appropriate the work to an individual purpose extrinsic to the enjoyment of the work for its own sake. Instead, aesthetical experiences remove us from our everyday desires and concerns; the work is not expected to do anything for us, other than simply be. Works of art accomplish this by absorbing our consciousness in the experience of them and stopping our desires by removing our attention from the world and ourselves. Experience raises us to the being of the work instead of the work being brought down to the level of our concern. Kant expresses this in terms of the aesthetic object providing a sensory pleasure devoid of any desire to appropriate the object, ‘‘Taste is the faculty of judging of an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction. The object of such a satisfaction is called

478

PETER WEIGEL

beautiful [Kant’s emphases].’’14 Just as great hunger renders us indiscriminate in our taste in food, referring a work of art to an individual want (such as a bodily desire or even a moral purpose) vitiates any claim to objectivity and universality Kant believes judgments of taste should have. Desire additionally introduces tension into the self by implying a lack of something. Art’s function is to take us away from the self by removing the self from reality; engagement with reality implies concern and concern ties us back to the self and muddles our objectivity.15 Kant, then, makes a conscious break from more traditional aesthetical paradigms where art speaks to our individual longings, for instance, by taking a moral or philosophical stance or by causing in us an inner catharsis. Roquentin dismisses the cathartic model in an offhand remark: To think that there are idiots who get consolation from the fine arts. Like my Aunt Bigeois: ‘‘Chopin’s Preludes were such a help to me when your poor uncle died.’’ ... They imagine the sounds flow into them, sweet, nourishing, and that their sufferings ff become music, like Werther; they think that beauty is compassionate to them. Mugs.16 W

Pure aesthetic experience suspends interested desire (here characterized as the release of emotion); its true consolation is its indifference ff to our inner life from which it properly seeks to rescue us. Schopenhauer similarly wants to separate art from desire. Great art according to him uses sensory media to convey to the audience a profound truth or universal theme, which becomes an object for aesthetic contemplation. Schopenhauer speaks of the experience as akin to a felt perception of a Platonic exemplar, ‘‘The objects of [artistic] genius as such are the eternal Ideas, the persistent, essential forms of the world and all its phenomena; but knowledge of the Idea is necessarily knowledge through perception and not abstract.’’17 Art for him functions as a sensible vessel of a felt insight, and best succeeds when its structure and content occasion in the audience an immediate perception of the Ideas it embodies. However, for Schopenhauer, the aesthetic perception constitutes a willingless perception, one involving the absorption of all our attention in the object and thus occasioning a momentary self-forgetting: [In viewing an object] thus we no longer consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither of things, but simply and solely the what. ... We lose ourselves entirely in this object, to use a pregnant expression; in other words, we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject.18

Schopenhauer’s self is inseparable from a willing self (much celebrated in Nietzsche). The self in his view is rendered perpetually unhappy and

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

479

dissatisfied by its ceaseless desires. Works of art function as a way to remove our consciousness from ourselves and our relentless volition, ‘‘Thus [in aesthetic contemplation] we are no longer to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception.’’19 Despite Schopenhauer’s referral of the art object to the perception of a Platonic exemplar, the real purpose has more to do with the removal of the self from concern by removing conscious attention from the surrounding world (in a manner similar to Kant). The young Sartre also sees beauty as removed from desire and the will: Great beauty in a woman kills our desire for her. In fact we cannot at the same time place ourselves on the plane of the aesthetic when this unreal ‘‘herself ’’ which we admire appears and on the realistic plane of physical possession. To desire her we must forget that she is beautiful, because desire is a plunge into the heart of existence, into what is most contingent and most absurd.20

Viewing something in the aesthetical mode is opposed to interest, in this case sexual interest. Aesthetic satisfaction is opposed to all worldly engagement, which in the end only traps us in absurdity. Roquentin’s experiences of the jazz song are similarly detached from a desire to appropriate the song to worldly concern. His enjoyment of the song is the enjoyment of the ‘‘arid purity’’ of its self-contained formal structure found in the sequencing of the notes and its well-ordered timing. He allows the notes of the song to simply be, just as the object of beauty for Sartre need only be what it is, and not point to anything beyond itself. Art in this view is autonomous from extrinsic purpose. It is successful as art in virtue of being free of having to suggest a meaning or purpose outside of itself. Only as an end in itself can art best satisfy us, by absorbing our attention in the work for its own sake. It is worth briefly noting that this theme of separating aesthetic appreciation from desire and therefore art from extrinsic purpose runs contrary to much of the Western tradition. Contemporary philosopher Karsten Harries points out that historically art has served a variety of purposes that are clearly extrinsic or in addition to the aesthetical satisfaction taken in art.21 Medieval and Renaissance Christian art drew believers closer to God. Its consolation for the pains of life was not to offer ff escape, but to point to a transcendent order able to render our sufferings ff meaningful and even redemptive. The lines of a Gothic cathedral beckon the attention heavenward. Renaissance churches and piazzas display the wealth and power of the individuals, families, and guilds behind their

480

PETER WEIGEL

funding and construction. Greco-Roman architecture is built to convey an aura suggestive of civic virtue and the gravitas of the state. The works of Shakespeare and Chaucer make us aware of the tragic complexities of our human condition, and resemble those of Sophocles in their ability to imbue a moral sensitivity without moralizing. Greek statuary holds out to us an ideal of an inner perfection, while arousing our senses to admire the perfection of the body. Very often it seems art historically has had the express function of arousing and expressing human interests, whether the interests in question are religious, moral, civic, erotic, or merely egoistic. Plato is well known for his opposition to what he considered decadent varieties of art and literature in Republic Books II and III. Such opposition, however, remains rooted in his conviction that works of art have a unique power to inculcate excellence or vice in the human soul by arousing our passions and desires. This is why the intellectual content of what the Muses bring us must be monitored all the more carefully in his ideal society. For Plato, beautiful objects, including works of art, also occasion in the psyche a preconscious and primarily bodily awareness of the pure, intelligible Form of Beauty. Our desire for physically beautiful person and things, says Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, is what initially draws us into the awareness and pursuit of higher manifestations of beauty and goodness found in the love of ideas, or in the love of virtue found in cities and souls. Beauty takes us out of ourselves and absorbs us in something that is other, but the ekstasis in question ultimately aims at leaving behind a more limited self for a higher one. Art and beauty for Plato thus are in the service of love and desire (eros), and our desires are what call us to transcend ourselves in imitation of something greater than this world.22 Of course, the world of the jazz song for Roquentin is not meant to be revelatory of something beyond itself, which would in fact detract from its primary purpose as a purely imaginary world providing him with an escape from his nausea and his willing self. However, notice that art made to separate beauty from interested desire can end in separating itself from beauty.23 A work of art made for us to escape into an absorptive appreciation of its formal structure need not be particularly beautiful to effect ff the experience of escape. A beauty which draws too much attention to itself risks stirring the heart and will to want to possess or appropriate it for some purpose. Art which is primarily about escape cannot afford ff to be about sensory beauty experienced as pleasurable; it must put aside that beauty which pleases too much. (One perhaps sees this in a succession of 20th century movements self-consciously eschewing an art which pleases

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

481

aesthetically for an increasing emphasis on the bare formal structure of a work.) There is the further question whether art and beauty can ever truly be divorced from individual interest. Sartre hints that Roquentin’s experience of the jazz is not as disinterested as it seems, Roquentin after all wants to ‘‘suffer ff in rhythm’’ like the notes of the song. The song suggests to him the possibility that he can simply be.24 But, going any further with these kinds of issues would have to be the substance of another investigation. We now understand enough about the aesthetical background of the novel to return to the problematic cast of its ending. III. JUSTIFICATION POSTPONED?

The ending of Nausea N appears to be happy one, on the surface of things. Believing the Jewish man who wrote the jazz song and the black woman who sang it to be ‘‘saved,’’ Roquentin too wants to be saved and believes he can perhaps justify his own life by composing a novel. Yet, it does seem odd that Sartre allows his main character to walk away from the story whistling a happy tune. Aside from such optimism being out of place with the novel’s major themes, the ending raises obvious philosophical problems, if it is truly intended to be a solution. How can someone be saved by something of his own creation – to raise an obvious problem with reversing the Biblical order of salvation? For Roquentin (and presumably Sartre) the work’s status as an imaginary object allows it to have an ordered perfection things in the real world do not have. However, it is another step entirely to go from the work of art being above the disorder and meaninglessness of existence to saying that it can somehow bring the artist or an audience to that same level, except perhaps by providing an escape of the kind Schopenhauer sees. Works of art do not exist in the aesthetical and metaphysical scheme of Sartre’s novel. Roquentin gives us the unlikely proposal that something that does not even exist can justify what does, and the mode of justification at stake looks highly vicarious and only temporary. It does not look like a justification which would interest or even be within the reach of a majority of individuals, non-artists in particular. One would think Sartre was far too intelligent not to have seen these problems. Iris Murdoch attributes the problematic character of the ending to simple inattention or benign neglect on Sartre’s part.25 The best Roquentin can hope for is ‘‘to achieve a momentary sense of justification by contemplating the formal beauty of his novel and saying to himself very rapidly: ‘I did that’.’’26 If there is any justification for one’s life in

482

PETER WEIGEL

this, it seems barely worth the effort. ff Sartre in her view failed to think through his solution to meaninglessness well enough to see it as a trivial one. Perhaps, she later remarks, we should not identify the views of Roquentin with Sartre’s when he wrote Nausea N . Maybe Roquentin represents a less mature and slightly naı¨ve version of himself.27 In any case, if Sartre is offering ff such aestheticism as a solution to nihilism then I think Murdoch’s assessment proves damaging. However, I think it is highly unlikely Sartre is guilty of the oversight she suggests. Roquentin’s experiences in the novel, particularly his encounters with the townspeople, frequently invite ironic interpretation. Situations in the novel which begin in one particular way quickly change into something entirely different, ff or even change into the opposite of what they first seemed. Sartre fills the novel with veiled, often joking, references to other philosophers and their ideas. In short, Nausea N is brimming with irony and paradox for the delectation of the perceptive reader in on the joke. Given that, it is a stretch to believe that Sartre is unaware of a certain irony in creations being called upon to save their creators, and in a fictional character’s proposal to save himself by writing a novel (which Nausea N itself of course is). This would have us rule out taking the ending at face value. Does this mean Sartre merely ends the novel with one big joke at the expense of the literally minded reader? Probably not. Anthony Manser, who is well attuned to the layers irony running through Sartre’s works, suggests a philosophical point the ending makes.28 He believes the hackneyed proposal of Roquentin’s is Sartre’s way of warning us of the futility of seeking to escape our existence through any means, including art or through Sartre’s own occupation as writer. In the body of the novel Roquentin continually derides the townspeople for their varied attempts to avoid coming to terms with their limited and fundamentally meaningless existence. Thus, Roquentin’s attempt to do exactly the same thing through his writing is a piece of consummate irony. Manser conceives the ending of Nausea N to be an anti-philosophical coda along the lines of David Hume’s famous proposal that sometimes the only solution to the confusion and skepticism wrought by philosophizing is to stop doing philosophy and immerse oneself in the diversions and attitudes of everyday life for the time being.29 Roquentin’s solution and Hume’s ‘‘are alike in that they seek a way out of a philosophical impasse by philosophizing [about philosophizing], Hume temporarily and Roquentin probably permanently.’’30 In Nausea N , Sartre could only go as far as a negative philosophy, i.e., a critique of traditional metaphysics and epistemology and the value systems they justify. But, Manser thinks,

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

483

Sartre at the time was unsure where to go from there in terms of a positive philosophical alternative. His decision was simply to keep writing, because that was what he knew and wanted to do. The novel clearly does end at an impasse for putting forth a positive philosophical outlook. A closer look, however, suggests that the nature of this impasse and the possibility for its resolution go deeper than a provisional admission of defeat for Sartre the philosopher. The paradoxes Sartre builds into the ending suggest something more complicated than the advocacy of a vaguely cheerful skepticism or the quasi-therapeutic insight that philosophical problems are not the real problems of the philosopher. Let us now return to the ending and its layered paradoxes in somewhat greater detail. Roquentin exists, so the problem arises as to how an existing being can be saved by an imaginary one. Or does Roquentin exist? Wait a minute. Roquentin technically does not exist. He is after all only a fictional character in a novel. Upon a kind of second-order reflection about the novel we realize he does not exist and that only we exist.31 Beyond this, Sartre intimates that no Frenchman much like Roquentin likely could exist. The novel refers to him as having red hair and being a head taller than the townspeople. In other words, the novel features a 6∞5∞∞ redheaded Frenchman of uncertain occupation who is able to hang around libraries and cafes all day, while satisfying a whim to write a biography of a very minor historical personage. (The closing pages mention a considerable sum in the bank, presumably from his having been something akin to a soldier of fortune in Indochina.) Not only does a fictional character not exist, Sartre wants to underscore the very absurdity of our believing his character does by creating a character which stretches the imagination. The Jew and the Negress too are characters Sartre is treating with a studied irony we could easily miss. ‘‘Some of These Days’’ is an actual jazz song. However, it was in fact written by Sheldon Brooks, a black man, and sung by Sophie Tucker, a singer of Jewish descent. The song was recorded in San Francisco in 1911, and might not have had anything to do with being written in New York, as Roquentin believes. (In addition to his well-known fondness for American jazz, Sartre was also fond of Sophie Tucker and Negro spirituals.) Sartre has switched around the true situation of the song’s origins. The two characters in Nausea N Roquentin believes are saved turn out to be not very real either, or considered as real world referents of Nausea N they are made the objects of false reverie. The closest thing in that situation to a real or correctly intuited object outside the novel turns out to be the featured work of art (or the recording

484

PETER WEIGEL

thereof ), which is supposed to be the very thing which does not exist in N Nausea’s ontological milieu. Roquentin believes he can be saved, and since he is only a fictional character one might believe that he is saved qua his having the same imaginary ontological status works of art have. Of course on a closer reading he is not saved, not even as a fictional character. Notice the end of the novel depicts his salvation as in the future, when he writes the novel. The salvation does not seem to involve him being remembered and thought of by an audience. After all, the Jew and the Negress are supposedly saved, but Roquentin admits that he might have the details of their lives and identities all wrong (which it turns out he does!). Aside from Roquentin mixing up their ethnic identities, he also explicitly considers that they might not care if someone is thinking of them, or they might even be dead.32 Roquentin does not view salvation as depending upon realizing one is being thought of by an audience. Moreover, he feels that justification can only be of one’s past, ‘‘Then, perhaps because of it, I could remember my own life without repugnance.’’33 Roquentin can at best look forward in some future time to a greater acceptance of his past. Finally, the attentive reader realizes Roquentin’s bid for justification never happened. Nausea N is related in the format of Roquentin’s original diary. The novel opens with the ‘‘editor’s note’’ preceding the diary entries, and informs us the diary ‘‘was found among [Roquentin’s] papers,’’ with the likely implication that their author is already dead.34 In light of all these odd circumstances and the studied paradoxes they involve, Sartre is perhaps telling us that Roquentin’s proposed salvation does not help N tells us it is, then we you or me. If our existence is absurd, as Nausea cannot expect a mere novel to solve our problems. Perhaps, all the writer can hope for is a work which ‘‘will be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.’’35 The artist can be satisfied in the beauty of the completed work, and in Sartre’s case look forward to jarring us out of a complacency with our own absurdity. The ending, then, is trivial and absurd to those who quite literally seek meaning in it. Just as readers of Nausea N will go astray in looking for a solution in a novel which offers ff none, so we too deceive ourselves in trying to find meaning and redemption through anything that exists. To do otherwise only shows what Nietzsche calls our ‘‘ill will against time,’’ i.e., a resentful inability to accept the cold indifference ff of reality to human aspirations. This is not to say that the absurd ending as a metaphor for the absurdity of life exhausts the message of Nausea N .

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

485

IV. NAUSEA IN TRANSITION

Interestingly Sartre himself appears to walk away from the novel whistling a happy tune; he goes on after Nausea N to enjoy a prolific literary and philosophical output. (By many accounts Sartre wrote and spoke compulsively.) The end of Nausea N consequently is as deeply ironic for what happens outside of the text in the case of its author as for happens within the narrative line. Perhaps part of the explanation is that no writer in love with words can actually live the passive and self-paralyzing nihilism of Nausea N , anymore than most of us can in our lives. Writing in his notebooks during the outbreak of the Second World War, Sartre relates how in his student days during the mid to late 1920’s he took very seriously the notion of art as an end in itself, although by the actual writing of Nausea N he appears to have moved beyond the notion that art is able to justify a person’s life.36 In his autobiographical T he Words W , published while he was on the cusp of old age, Sartre assures us that, ‘‘I was Roquentin, I used him to show, without complacency, the texture of my life.’’37 Sartre at some stage did identify with the hopes of Roquentin, if not actually so while writing Nausea N . After the death of his hopes for an aestheticism which could justify his life of writing, it seems Sartre found his own way to move beyond the negative vision of his own making. In these final remarks, I want to offer ff a brief sketch of the way in which Nausea N contains the seeds of another, more positive vision for art and that the development of this vision allows Sartre the philosopher to leave behind him the nihilism of Nausea’s N main character. Here it will help to distinguish between a motive for creating art from what the work itself can or cannot do for its creator. Human activity cannot transform meaninglessness into justification for one’s life. Sartre nevertheless hints at a certain explanation for why such human activity is inevitable. In this regard, Nausea N suggests a very particular view of the self; the self for Roquentin is nothing save for consciousness: Now when I say ‘‘I’’ it seems hollow to me. ... A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness. Antoine Roquentin ... and suddenly the ‘‘I’’ pales, pales, and fades out. Lucid, forlorn, consciousness is walled-up; it perpetuates itself. Nobody lives there anymore. A little while ago somebody said ‘‘me,’’ said my consciousness. Who? ... Consciousness forgotten, forsaken between these walls, under this grey sky.38

We also see in Roquentin’s actions that this consciousness forever strives to turn itself from mere consciousness into becoming an object (e.g., a jazz song or piece of writing). Roquentin wants his emotions and his

486

PETER WEIGEL

suffering ff to become hardened and formalized like the notes of the jazz song. He wants his consciousness of his past to be reconstituted in the form of a novel which can be re-viewed. Throughout the novel Roquentin strives to be what he cannot be, i.e., an object more than or other than mere consciousness. Works of art might only exist in consciousness. However, at the same time they are a concretization of the thoughts and emotions of their creators. The impulse to make oneself an object by turning consciousness into something tangible is an impossible desire. It involves something fundamentally unstable and insubstantial, namely, subjective consciousness, trying to become something tangible and substantial after the fashion of a real object. Yet, it is an impulse we cannot let go of, and it is a drive the later Sartre unambiguously believes we all strive to fulfill in various ways. Being and Nothingness (1943) focuses on the human being as a project seeking to metamorphosize its own Foritself (consciousness) into an In-itself-for-itself (an object). T he Reprieve (1940) features as a character a writer preoccupied with changing his shifting consciousness into something concrete. Thus, in addition to the primarily critical nature of its philosophical content, Nausea N also contains the philosophical anthropology that is the basis for the later Sartre’s positive philosophy of freedom developed at length in other works. In light of this Nausea N becomes a transitional work hinting at something more positive than the negative philosophical assessment of life it explicitly contains. We noted earlier the aesthetic object’s potential for the intersubjective communication of consciousness. By linking the subject’s need to objectify itself to the fact of other consciousnesses, the mature Sartre is able to stop toying with the idea of art as isolated perfection and escape. Instead, he sees its broader possibilities for linking the artist’s self to other selves and also to the world. W hat Is L iterature (1947) holds that literary prose should be a form of engagement, political engagement in Sartre’s own case. Sartre eventually had qualms with art being divorced from the human condition. ‘‘Culture does not save anything or anyone, it doesn’t justify,’’ Sartre muses in connection with philosophical motives for writing near the end of T he W Words, ‘‘But it’s a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers ff him his image.’’39

Washington College, MD W

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

487

NOTES 1 I am particularly indebted to Allen Wood for permission to consider issues stemming from individual and class discussions of the role of art in Nausea N , although the conclusions in this article are my own responsibility. 2 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea N , Lloyd Alexander (trans.) (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 127. All subsequent quotations and references from Nausea N are from this edition. Originally published in French under the title L a Nause N ´e (Paris: Gallimard, 1938). 3 Ibid., p. 21. 4 Ibid., p. 13. 5 Ibid., p. 83. 6 Jean-Paul Sartre, T he Psychology of Imagination, Bernard Frechtman (trans.) (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), p. 249. All subsequent quotations and references are from this edition. Originally published in French under the title L ’Imaginaire: Psychologie phenome´nologique de l’imagination (Paris: Gallimard, 1940). Anglo-American readers of Sartre are often not aware that the French educational system historically has taught aesthetics under the rubric of psychology and not axiology. This throws some light on why Sartre’s aesthetics is primarily descriptive as opposed to evaluative. For a detailed account of Sartre’s phenomenological aesthetics see Eugene Kaelin’s An Existentialist Aesthetic: T he T heories of Sartre and M Merleau-Ponty (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1962). 7 Ibid., pp. 174–175. 8 Ibid., p. 22. 9 Allen Wood pointed out to me these contrasting descriptive terms. 10 Ibid., p. 177. 11 Ibid., p. 178. 12 Ibid., p. 175. 13 See T he Psychology of Imagination, pp. 275–281. 14 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, J. H. Bernard (trans.) (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1951), p. 59. All subsequent quotations are from this edition. Originally published in German under the title Kritik der Urteilskraft (Berlin, 1790). 15 Karsten Harries remarks, ‘‘Kant ties interest to desire, desire to reality. Thus, hunger can be stilled only by real food, moral outrage satisfied only by real change. Aesthetic pleasure, by contrast, asks nothing of reality and lets it be. ... [Disinterested satisfaction] allows us to exist in the present, open to what presents itself. Inseparable from such openness is a sense of plentitude, of being at one with ourselves, that contrasts with our usual cares.’’ in T he Broken Frame: T hree L ectures (Washington, W D.C.: Catholic university of America Press, 1989), pp. 7–8. Some of the basic comparisons among Kant, Schopenhauer, and Plato taken up here are given detailed consideration in the first lecture of T he Broken Frame. 16 Nausea N p. 74. Compare this with the following in Kant, ‘‘Every interest spoils the judgment of taste and takes from it its impartiality ... That taste is always barbaric which needs a mixture of charms and emotions [Kant’s emphases] in order that there may be satisfaction, and still more so if it make these the measure of assent.’’ in Critique of Judgement, p. 58. 17 Arthur Schopenhauer, T he W World as W ill and Representation, 2 Vols., E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (New York: Dover Books, 1969), Vol. 1, p. 186. All subsequent quotations are from this edition. Originally published in German under the title Die Welt als W ille und Vorstellung (Leipzig, 1819). 18 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 178. 19 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 179.

488

PETER WEIGEL

20 T he Psychology of Imagination, p. 253. 21 T he Broken Frame Introduction, p. xiii. Some of the examples here are mentioned by Harries. 22 The speech of Diotima in Plato’s Symposium ties our apprehension of beauty to a desire to possess the beautiful and the good (204d–207a), and Diotima further believes this desire for possession ultimately results in the preconscious desire to create good things that will outlast us (211a–212b). Thus, the creation of art is rooted in a desire for immortality. 23 T he Broken Frame: T hree L ectures, pp. 22–32. 24 Nausea N , pp. 174–175. 25 ‘‘The interest of L a Nausee N does not lie in its conclusion, which is merely sketched in; Sartre has not developed it sufficiently for it even to propose a solution to the problem.’’ in Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (London: Bowes & Bowes Publishers, 1953), p. 16. 26 Ibid., p. 16. 27 Ibid., p. 46. 28 Manser notes, ‘‘Sartre’s irony should never be forgotten in reading any of his works. Many of the errors made by critics in discussing him are due to a failure to notice his irony ...’’ in Sartre: A Philosophic Study (Westport, W CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), pp. 16–17. 29 David Hume, A T reatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, pt. IV, sect. VII. 30 Sartre: A Philosophic Study, pp. 17–18. Marie McGinn similarly sees in Nausea N Sartre’s autobiographical critique of his former aestheticism. Roquentin criticizes bourgeois values as a flight from meaninglessness, but fails to see his love of the jazz song and his desire to write a novel as similarly motivated. She additionally sees Roquentin’s desire to attain unity with aesthetic objects as strongly Oedipal, ‘‘[Roquentin’s aestheticsim] is an expression of his nostalgic desire for a maternal love, which is inextricably linked for him with the beautiful and the aesthetic, that leads him into a life of imagination which defines itself in opposition to the practical values of the bourgeoisie.’’ in ‘‘The Writer and Society: An Interpretation of ‘Nausea,’ ’’ T he British Journal of Aesthetics 37, no. 2 (1997), pp. 118–129, p. 128. While the psycho-autobiographical undercurrents in the novel are no doubt worthy of emphasis, they should not distract us from the larger philosophical vision at the novel’s core. The erasure of an objective ontology and epistemology summed up in Roquentin’s experience with the chestnut tree provides the metaphysical bulwark for much of the novel’s dark commentary on religion, the social order, human relations, and Western views of the self. For instance, the novel’s repudiation of bourgeois notions of individual dignity, equality, and natural rights are rooted in its denial of the very notions of a universal human essence and individual personal identity. Roquentin and the middles classes he criticizes have no right to exist if ultimately there is no self, no ‘I’ constituting who an individual is. Nausea N , p. 170. 31 Allen Wood pointed this out to me. He also noted Roquentin’s having a very improbable description for a Frenchman and the irony in our wondering how a fictional character is saved. 32 Nausea N , pp. 176–177. 33 Ibid., p. 178. 34 Ibid., p. 1. 35 Ibid., p. 178. Allen Wood has suggested the almost self-defeating quality of Roquentin’s hopes. 36 Jean-Paul Sartre, T he War W Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre: November 1939 – March 1940, Quintin Hoare (trans.) (New York: Panteon Books, 1984), pp. 86–88. Originally published in French under the title L es Carnets de la droˆle de guerre: Novembre 1939 – Mars 1940

THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION IN SARTRE’S NAUSEA

489

(Paris: Gallimard, 1983). See also Ronald Hayman’s fine biography Sartre: A L ife (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 75. 37 Jean-Paul Sartre, T he Words W , Bernard Frechtman (trans.) (New York: George Brailler, M (Paris: Gallimard, Inc., 1964), p. 251. Originally published in French under the title L es Mots 1964). All subsequent quotations are from this edition. N , p. 170. The page details Roquentin’s reduction of himself to an anonymous and 38 Nausea disembodied consciousness, and this consciousness amounts to nothing but consciousness of its object. While the basic thrust here is a critique of the Cartesian self, nevertheless we are left with the basic skeleton of the philosophical anthropology Sartre develops at length in other works. 39 T he Words W , p. 254.

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

‘‘WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS’’: A REFLECTION ON SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTION AND PERSONAL IDENTITY IN HISPANO-AMERICAN GOLDEN AGE INT RIGUE COMEDIES

There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple, If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with’t. Shakespeare, T he T empest.

I

The words quoted in the epigraph are told by Miranda to Prospero – her father – in defense of Ferdinand, whom Prospero pretends to accuse of being a traitor. Enraptured by the beauty of the youth, Miranda utters with absolute conviction that he cannot be wicked, although Ferdinand is the first person she meets, for Prospero and she have always lived on an island far away from any other place, so she knows nothing about what a beautiful countenance can conceal. However, her father does: he learned it by being overthrown and banished by his own brother, who is Ferdinand’s father, and whom Prospero entrusted with the government F of his state while he devoted himself to studying the liberal arts and magic; studies which eventually provided him with the means to recover his power. For her part’ unaware of such dangers, Miranda is carried away by the first impression Ferdinand makes on her. Fortunately, he is actually as handsome as he is noble and he deserves the love he inspires. Such a perfect correspondence between countenance and interiority in a person is, notwithstanding, seldom seen, and this is why wrong perceptions about others usually entails terrible consequences for personal life, as most people well know. This common sense truth was, oddly enough, one of the main subjects in 17th century theatre: beyond the different ff national traditions, contemporary plays showed again and again characters who tended to perceive nonexistent qualities under the deception of appearances because of their own ingenuousness (rather stupidity), which misled them even with regard to themselves. In fact, these plays confirm that to perceive the other person rightly is in no way easier than to 491 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 491–516. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

492

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

perceive oneself, since a human being inner identity is hidden by fears and false images. Even worse, what we say about inter-subjective perception could universally apply to any kind of perception: if human interiority is always concealed from our own sight, then the same will happen to all the surrounding objects, no matter how deeply we identify ourselves with someone else or with ourselves. Man lives in the middle of an everlasting flood of appearances that makes him believe he knows what things are in themselves, but the only thing he really knows is what he thinks of them, and even this appears blurred like a dream. Now, the history of philosophy and culture shows that this was a fundamental question in the epoch: during the 17th century the metaphysical frame that had determined human existence was put in doubt, perhaps for the first time since the Church Fathers – especially Saint Augustine – established the Christian conception of reality. That was at the bottom the result of the double crisis that had shaken Europe for more than a century. First, the Reform swept away in a few years the epistemological grounds that mediaeval thought had developed during a period of more than a millennium. In the eyes of Luther and Calvin, Saint Thomas’s absolute confidence in the capabilities of human reason to explain Creation in accordance with the truths of religion was a proof of man’s abominable pride. Second, the foundation of a new image of the universe, due to the ‘‘Copernican Revolution’’, generated a process that had two phases at least:1 first, the ontological unity of man and all other beings, which was so keenly condensed in the idea of the great chain of being2 and which was a touchstone for ancient and mediaeval philosophy, gave way to a mathematical universe (a universe whose supreme formulation lies in Spinoza’s Ethics); second, the idea of a center, which ruled cosmology since Aristotle to the Renaissance, vanished in an infinite universe, wherein earth was no longer an inferior region. These were abyssal changes, whose consequences were not well understood until now, especially those concerning the sense of life and the scope and nature of knowledge. In the 17th century, these changes made up an idea of existence that could be called ‘‘baroque.’’3 The baroque idea of existence is defined by the endeavor of unfolding the contradictions that inhere in every human being, who is simultaneously led by deceitful perceptions and by his need to find certainty. Man wishes to find absolute certainties, but if that it is not possible, he will try to find at least certainties firm enough to let him trust himself and others. The baroque vital conception, far from intending to solve these contradictions, figures

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

493

out all its implications in order to shape the individual’s character by means of the intelligence enlightenment. Of course, such enlightenment does not mean that contradictions could be overcome in themselves. On the contrary, they become more intense as man can identify himself with real and apparent conditions, thanks to his own imagination. This game induces him to mistake desire for perception, as Shakespeare shows in the quoted passage; an error that is paradoxically the source of the most exciting experiences: without it, individuals would wreck in tedium.4 Therefore, the enlightenment we speak about is essentially learning about the confusion that shapes existence and about how to express it without concessions. Whether this is posed tragically or not, the outcome is the same: man is always within an inch of being all adrift, but if he is aware of it, he can avoid its most violent effects ff and become sensible enough to take advantage of reality’s ambiguous nature. With these antecedents, it is not surprising that 17th century theatre created a genre that specifically turned on hazards of incorrect perception, but also on the possibilities of enjoying it: the so-called intrigue play. This genre possibly reached its pinnacle in the Hispano-American Golden Age dramatic tradition. This is the phenomenon we will study in the second section of this paper, after specifying some questions concerning its historical and intellectual frame, as well as its philosophical value. From a literary perspective, intrigue plays are ‘‘[...] dramatic works of love subject, light tone, and matrimonial happy ending, based on the playwright’s wit and capability to join coherently the most diverse courting incidents, including its night scenes, misunderstandings, ladies and gentlemen’s crisscrosses, identities usurpations, confusions, jealousy, duels, etc.’’5 This is to say, intrigue relates on principle to a very dynamic conception of individual existence. Nevertheless, what determines these plays is not precisely love, but everyone’s confusion of identities – including self identity – in the middle of which, all of a sudden, everyone discovers he does not know who he is. Not even selfawareness escapes from the perennial whirl of appearances and illusions, and this is why I believe intrigue should be studied under the light of the problem of perception, which was the result of the already mentioned drastic transformations of Western thought during the 17th century – a time when modern metaphysics was born. Of course, I know that these transformations seem to manifest more properly – according to some standpoints – in philosophical reflection and scientific time theories than in contemporaneous dramatic art. This

494

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

notwithstanding, we should remember that ‘‘[Excepting Greek tragedy, the Hispano-American baroque theatre] is the only form of theatre in the Western culture that really deserves to be named as philosophical, at least until Goethe’s works.’’6 Indeed, the Golden Age theatre was, inside and outside of the Hispano-American Empire, an intellectual experience rather than mere entertainment. The stage was principally used to analyze moral and religious problems, such as predestination, personal dignity and the practice of virtue, but, in all these cases, the discussion always implied some metaphysical frame. Because of that, theatre brought up questions concerning human existence and knowledge. Still more, it could not be otherwise in the specific case of Spain and its domains, taking into account that the Spanish word ‘‘representacio´n’’ means both ‘‘representation’’ and ‘‘performance’’, while ‘‘argumento’’ means ‘‘argument’’ as well as ‘‘plot’’. Beyond the sort of interpretations that are wittier than sound – like those based in word paronymy or plausible etymologies (a wretched consequence of a perfunctory approach to Heidegger) – I just want to underline that these two examples show how the Hispano-American original theatre conception relates to intellectual activity. This is a fact that testifies to the perduring Aristotelian link between poetry and philosophy, as it is exposed in the well-known passage 1451b from the Poetics, where Aristotle says that poetry is more philosophical and serious than history (and theatre, let us remember, was still a poetical genre in the 17th century – if, by any chance, it has ceased to be so). In the case of the Hispano-American dramatic art, identification between dramatic plot and philosophical elucidation implies that ‘‘[...] the playwrights’ principal techniques to construct poetical structures were theatrical adaptations of the lyric poetry typical characteristics, like the use of ideas as poetical subjects, the use of images, and the usage of metatheatre resources and irony.’’7 Thus, it is not accidental that Golden Age theatre became interested in unfolding the meaning of philosophical concepts rather than in drawing personalities of particular characters (by the way, this tendency was also observable in contemporaneous French theatre),8 since lyric poetry was understood as a reflective creation rather than as the exposition of the artist’s feelings and mind states. However, this characteristic has been erroneously interpreted as a proof of the Hispano-American playwright’s incapability to fathom human interiority, or as an additional proof of the flat subordination of every cultural activity to the dogmatic system of religious values in Spain’s domains. Nonetheless, both objections are far from being true. Even the

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

495

most inattentive reading of any of the great Golden Age theatre creations shows a vivid narration of a plot and characters that, although drawn by the circumstances in which they are immersed, posses complete identities; identities that certainly correspond to human archetypes, but they are so perfectly personalized that only a fool would happen to mistake them. This is why Hispano-American Golden Age theatre is astonishing: due to its intellectual roots and determinations, its vivid anecdotes and characters, and because of the society we can see in it.9 Since the same plays were performed first in courts and later in popular theatres, all strata, from aristocrats to plebeians, shared this highest conception of art, which was the common ground of all stages. And although there are good reasons to consider that Hispano-American Golden Age theatre was used as a way of political indoctrination,10 those reasons do not prevent us from wondering how such a powerful cultural movement was carried out. What we have said about the intellectual nature of dramatic poetry (as well as what we will add further on) matches with the five principles that lead our comprehension of Golden Age theatre: 1) Primacy of action in the development of the characters. 2) Subject primacy in the action and, consequently, inapplicability of realistic likelihood. 3) Dramatic unity built by the subject and not by the action. 4) Subordination of the subject to a moral aim, by means of the poetical justice principle (which is exemplified not only by the evildoer’s death). 5) Elucidation of that moral aim by means of the dramatic causality.11

These principles indicate that we need a wider consideration about how dramatic art was understood and enjoyed in that time, for that epoch, in spite of being so close to us, seems to come from an abyssal distance. Since that time, the role of theatre (and that of art in general) has suffered ff radical transformation, due in part to the romantic vindication of the playwright’s free inspiration, and partly because theatre tied to a new form of reality: the baroque reality, whose transcendence was no longer moral, but aesthetic (although both forms of reality were equally metaphysical).12 The 17th century playwright’s aim was, then, to display the whole sense of an action, according to the ideas that determined it; ideas that made it possible to universalize actions that under any other circumstances would have been seen simply as particulars. Such universality was achieved by means of the play subject, which in this way served as the middle term in a syllogism; and syllogism constituted the inner structure

496

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

of those works (remember the double meaning of ‘‘argumento’’: ‘‘argument’’ and ‘‘plot’’). Now, the prevalence of syllogistic reasoning in drama (which is understandable because Aristotelian logic lies at the core of the Scholastic thought that ruled culture) is just half of the issue. The other half is constituted by the intrigue’s vertiginous complications and the characters’ endeavor to come out unscathed from those intrigues. This is a consequence of another philosophical tradition, also deeply rooted in Aristotelian thought: rhetoric, which Aristotle related, in the very beginning of his homonymous work, to the things everyone knows (Rhetoric, 1354a) – things that the dialectic deals with too. In my opinion, the importance that rhetoric had in Aristotle’s eyes was a consequence of his decision to integrate the dynamism of social reality into a rational vision of human nature. This integration – which Plato poses from top to bottom and keeps under the rule of justice (cf. Gorgias, 457a–b) – tallies with the always problematic differences ff that lie between personal standpoints and social values, and between both of them and cosmic order. This is why rhetoric – the science of the things that concern everyone – was an object of the keenest interest for the other cultural movement that contributed to make the Hispano-American Golden Age theatre – specially its intrigue plays – so complex: humanism,13 which always emphasized, due to its historical connection with the problem of personal education, the study of language and rhetoric, which makes language more ductile and elegant. Rhetoric could, on principle, foster the fragmentation of common sense, because of its search for individual expression; but instead of that, it eventually provides rules for a more dynamic coexistence. The terms ‘‘humanism’’ and ‘‘anthropocentrism’’ are not immediately identifiable and they can even contradict each other, since although they refer to the same phenomenon – human life – they do not understand it the same way. If humanism is taken (as it was originally considered) as the study of ancient languages and culture, it will not necessarily affirm the supremacy of human being (for example, Erasmus says that the real humanist is he who takes advantage of the erudition in order to support the ‘‘philosophy of Christ’’14). And the same can be said about ‘‘Renaissance’’, which – as Panofsky has so brilliantly shown – is deeply rooted in mediaeval thought.15 On the other hand, beyond these differences, ff it is undeniable that humanism (remarkably that of 15th century Italy, which exerted a great

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

497

influence on Spain) has been most of the time opposed to any deterministic approach to existence and has defended the absolute value of every single person. Nevertheless, insofar as it conceives man only in a concrete circumstance, humanism needs to show that individuality is not contrary to society. This leads us to questions concerning language and intersubjective perception, which demand a general approach to existence. The foundation of that approach is what we can call ‘‘the humanism philosophy’’.16 This postulates that every man has to decide how to answer the permanent appeal that constitutes the ontological structure of existence, and that his decision cannot be sustained either by the logical correspondence between thought and reality, or by the will of moral determination through law. This philosophy was developed throughout Italy in the 13th and 15th centuries, as a process of actualizing an idea which had always been at the core of ancient rhetoric: that determining what man is implies not a theoretical but a practical conception, which have to take into account the limitations of the real inter-subjective existence. Since individuals do not have by nature a personality of their own, the only possibility they have to be themselves is through others, and such a situation supposes a social interplay unfolded by means of words: [...] In the humanistic tradition, word and language started to occupy the primordial role that history of philosophy had awarded to ontology. Hence, the Copernican shake-up of the modern philosophy did not begin with Descartes, but had already taken place with the humanism. On denying the scientific determination of being, the humanists affirmed the multiplicity of words meanings in each situation of the res. that is: in the here-and-now of human world historicity. These unrepeatable existential necessities provided, then, the verbum with its concrete sense and its true function, as well as with an inseparable relationship to each singular object.17

What distinguishes humanistic philosophy is, therefore, the preeminence it assigns to circumstance above sense and the extraordinary value it concedes to the individual capacity to solve the every-moment arising questions and perspectives. Of course, this philosophy (defined as the unity beyond the differences ff among those who had vindicated it since Dante, in the Italian as well as in the Spanish tradition) moves – historically speaking – far away both from the mediaeval general theoretic frame (which, although giving great importance to the practical problems of the existence, interpreted them according to a transcendent metaphysics) and from modern subjectivity (which implies either relativism or solipsism). As we have said, since humanism does not consider individual awareness

498

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

to be the principle to understand human existence, but thinks that this can be grasped only in the interplay between the individual wills and their circumstances, humanism pays, consequently, great heed to cultivation. And cultivation demands – one more time – an ideal to lead it, in addition to the possibility to develop by means of that singular imaginative power called ‘‘wit.’’ Explaining wit was the main purpose of one of the most relevant books from the Golden Age: T he Mind’s W it & Art by Balthazar Gratian.18 In the very beginning of his book, Gratian says that whereas logic has been cultivated since Antiquity, the art of wit has been completely neglected because wit has not been considered ‘‘the soul’s nourishment.’’ Additionally, it was not thought that whoever strived to create a work needed a set of principles and rules to do it the best possible way, since a person without such principles and rules would not be able to reach his utmost. The art of wit does not intend to fix the valid structures of creation as logic does in respect of reason; instead, it tries to illustrate by means of examples, which are tied to individual inventiveness. These examples simultaneously provide a guide and an incentive for everyone, but they do not indicate how to recreate themselves. Inventiveness is not contrary to regulation. It is certainly a personal gift, but it also has a social sense, without which no one would enjoy the artist’s work. These works demand from their interpreter a wit as keen as that of their creator, who will be admired insofar as the interpreter shows his own skill. Creator and interpreter are the elements of the enterprise of unfolding the work’s meaning, a meaning projected to the infinite by all the others, who will get excited about formulating their own and wittier interpretations (interpretations that would imply the risk of ending up in the most aberrant subtleties, if they were not directed by the seduction of the cunning wit – a wholly obscure expression would entice no one). Now, the basic art structure Gratian presents is conceit, which he defines as ‘‘the act of the mind that expresses the correspondence between objects.’’19 In essence, a conceit is the representation of a witty identity, which springs from the poetical perception of the extremes in a relationship: once wit has reformulated sensory information, it generates a new conceit, whose referent will not be perceivable unless the reader is as witty as the artist is. Wit is, despite its awkwardness, neither arbitrary nor incomprehensible, for the interpreter knows there must be a key to decipher it. This key lies in the traditional stock of figures and ancient anecdotes that was the

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

499

common patrimony of every 17th century learned person (this explains why mythology was so widely used during that period in poetry, painting, and sculpture).20 Creativity matches imitation, exactly as the artist tallies with the interpreter, and the interpreter with the others. To show this, I will transcribe one of the multiple examples Gratian gives; an example of a ‘‘conceit for an extravagant proposal’’:21 ‘‘The greatest good of loving thee / is to love not to love myself, / for if I try to lose thee / I will lose to lose myself ’’. In this quatrain, the witty conceit lies in the opposition between both ideas – to love and to lose – which the poet confronts due to his decision to keep loving his beloved despite her lack of correspondence. That is why he says it is good not to love himself, for that is the only way to avoid losing his own being, which belongs entirely to the lady he loves: if he stopped loving her, he would lose himself. In order to appraise this, we have to remember that until the 17th century poetry was considered as an art in the ancient sense of the word: an activity done masterfully and whereof some rules can be deduced. It is obvious that the poet intends to show, by means of the effort ff required to interpret this quatrain, how awkward is loving when one is not loved; and his decision of being loyal to his love is displayed through the quatrain artistic form. It is not equally worthy to say simply ‘‘I love you’’ as to take the trouble to write an octosyllabic quatrain to say that. Moreover, insofar as the poem poses the contradictions inherent to an unrequited love, it leads the reader to a reflection about this subject, which can relate to other inklings and considerations. The poem is, then, the beginning of a complex intellectual process, which is poetical or creative by itself. Gratian underlines: ‘‘These thoughts are as subtle and fine as metaphysic, and since they usually include an annoying impossibility, they call for a lot of heed to be perceived, and still more to be understood [...]22 This last remark is confirmed again and again all the way through the 62 discourses or chapters that compose Gratian’s book, which includes some practically impenetrable poems and fragments, as well as some others so crafty that they seem to be conundrums. Nonetheless, all these poems and fragments unfold a creative ideal, which is precisely the ground for dramatic intrigue, as we will study it in the following section. This ideal is the configuration of the relationships between wit and reality; a reality that unceasingly appears covered by words’ deceitful senses, poetic images, and thousands of circumstances that defy our capacity to order their relationships. As Gratian reminds us:

500

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

The person that spoke wittily about wit was who named it as finitely infinite. To think of numbering all the forms and the different ff conceits wit has, and trying to comprehend its prolific variety, is just like trying to measure the perenniality of a fountain and intending to count its drops. In this discourse are contained many others kinds of subtleties, always repeating that the subject and the ground of wit are many of the figures of speech; but wit shapes them with the sparkle of the conceit. The first [of these figures] is the crafty distribution that greatly illustrates the style; its artifice lies in sharing out its use, its perfection, its circumstance between two terms, with agreeable alternation.23

Therefore, the contraposition between finitude and infinitude is the touchstone of the expressive capacity that wit provides. This contraposition is the ontological ground of the Hispano-American Golden Age theatre poetical creations and, above all these, of the intrigue plays. Intrigue unfolds – as we will see straightaway – through the fascination engendered by reality, because wit is mighty, but conceit is when one concentrates on it – more astonishing than reality’s metamorphosis. II

The preceding section has made clear that the first condition to understand the philosophical value of dramatic intrigue is noting that it develops a serious contradiction between man’s perception and the necessity of a firm frame for his existence. Nature seems unknowable when intelligence wrecks in a sea of confusions, where appearances are taken for what they are not. At the same time, man seems unable to find how to carry out the orders of a God that hypothetically must be in some way perceptible to the senses. Remember that in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s famous five ways, perception has a definitive role in the linkage between God and man (Summa T heologica, I, 2, 3). Because of this, it is surprising to discover that behind its everlasting misunderstandings, intrigue show – as we have pointed out – the main problem of 17th century philosophical thought: how can truth be known, if the only way we have to penetrate reality is the deceiving activity of the senses (concretely, sight, which is the least reliable one). With regard to this point, I will mention the hallucinating passage of the Second M Meditation in which Descartes describes his perception of a piece of wax, which changes from solid to liquid by the warmth of a candle and which in appearance is not the same before and after being warmed: Let it be attentively considered, and, retrenching all that does not belong to the wax, let us see what remains. There certainly remains nothing, except something extended, flexible, and movable. But what is meant by flexible and movable’? Is it not that I imagine that the piece

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

501

of wax, being round, is capable of becoming square, or of passing from a square into a triangular figure? Assuredly such is not the case, because I conceive that it admits of an infinity of similar changes; and I am, moreover, unable to compass this infinity by imagination [...] I should not conceive [clearly and] according to truth, the wax as it is, if I did not suppose that the piece we are considering admitted even of a wider variety of extension than I ever imagined, I must, therefore, admit that I cannot even comprehend by imagination what the piece of wax is, and that it is the mind alone, which perceives it. I speak of one piece in particular; for as to wax in general, this is still more evident. But what is the piece of wax that can be perceived only by the [understanding or] mind? It is certainly the same which I see, touch, imagine; and, in fine, it is the same which, from the beginning, I believed it to be. But (and this it is of moment to observe) the perception of it is neither an act of sight, of touch, nor of imagination ...24

According to this passage, it is evident that senses (or the imagination, which works with the data provided by them) are not able to show that wax (what it is really in itself ) remains beyond its transformations. That is made out solely by reason. Consequently, we should completely exclude the senses from our cognitive activity if we want to get a truth beyond any doubt. Of course, we ought to interpret the analogy with this Cartesian passage carefully, for the M Metaphysical Meditations is not a Golden Age intrigue play, and neither Tirso de Molina nor Ruiz de Alarcon – two famous contemporary Hispano-American playwrights – are parodies of rationalist philosophers. Nevertheless, I underline that ‘‘in an intrigue play, where confusions between double characters prevail and misunderstandings get into a tangle, the question of truth is fundamental.’’25 Vice versa, it is impossible to separate the Cartesian metaphysical grounds from the theatrical way in which Descartes expounds them. The title itself of the quoted work – the M Meditations – displays an individuality carefully characterized, which is the same one from the Discourse on Method, wherein the first person enunciation has a similar ruling function. So, in the same way that the wax substance will never be sensibly perceived, similarly the identity of the intrigue play characters will not be clearly perceived by the senses, which operate amid a diabolic web of appearances. This web acquires physical presence in the intrigue play stage, since in the baroque times there were two objects that perfectly materialized it: the womanly mantle and the masculine cloak. Precisely, the plot of one of the plays we have mentioned is based on the deceitful condition of the mantle. I refer to Peor esta´ que estaba (It is worse than what it was), a work by Calderon de la Barca.26 The heroine, Lisarda, the daughter of the Spanish governor in an Italian city, uses her mantle to preserve her identity all the way through the extremely complicated incidents that she

502

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

provokes because of her love for Caesar; incidents that, in more than one scene, mislead even herself. For example, in a dialogue between Lisarda and her father,27 after he has surprised her covered with her mantle in the house where Caesar is hidden, the governor does not recognize his daughter, and thinks she is another lady – Flerida – whom he has lodged in his house, and comments on how dishonourable a woman is who is after men. Lisarda, who has not realized that her father has not recognized her, thinks he secretly reproaches her before punishing her, and begs his pardon, which he interprets as a sign of Flerida’s benevolence. Only when Lisarda is within an inch of confessing she loves Caesar does she discover her error and escape by the skin of her teeth. Another example of how one can get confused by a hasty judgement on what one sees is displayed in a scene of T odo es ventura (Everything is Happiness), an amusing play by Ruiz de Alarcon.28 Henry – one of the leads – exchanges his cloak with Tello for a while, so he can go where Henry’s sweetheart is and tell her that Henry waits on the street for her to lean out of the balcony. However, while Henry waits, another lady speaks to him because she thinks he is Tello, whom she has fallen in love with. Henry, for his part, supposes that she has confused him with Duke Albert, who originally owned the cloak that Tello is wearing, so Henry talks to her pretending he is Albert. To make it worse – as if it could get worse – two other characters, who want to get rid of Tello, see Henry wearing the cloak and hurt him, believing they have hurt Tello himself. In this scene – a real tour de force – everyone sees the same object, the cloak, but everybody judges erroneously who it covers: of course there is a completely sound reason for this, since no one knows about the previous cloak exchange between the two characters. But precisely because the cloak was for that time an emblem of personal dignity, the confusion is more terrible. What is at stake is everyone’s identity, an identity that never appears as it is, not even when the object that symbolizes it has been clearly seen. It is important to note that this specific mistake is alluded to by Descartes at the end of his analysis on the perception of the piece of wax, when he confirms his criticism against sensibility and imagination, commenting that it is possible to consider something as a person if it is seen from a window at night, wrapped in a cloak on the street, although it could perfectly be a muffled automaton: ‘‘... and yet what do I see from the window beyond hats and cloaks that might cover artificial machines, whose motions might be determined by springs? But I judge that there are human beings from these appearances ...’’29

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

503

It could be a mere coincidence that Descartes chose the same object that gives name to intrigue plays, which are also known as cloak-anddagger plays. Thereby, I just underline that intrigue springs directly from the unforeseeable difference ff that determinates how an object appears, and what it is; a difference ff that could also be posed like the one between who a person seems to be and who he actually is. When wrapped around another lead, the same cloak appears with a different ff identity, although it still offers ff the same aspect. However, the Cartesian passage and the play scenes allow us to split hairs: they confirm that the question of appearances does not amount, at the bottom, to a simple epistemological problem, but also concerns the affirmation of the individual will. In most of the intrigue plays, to see means to see what one wishes to see. Furthermore, to see is to cast an image onto the perceived object, which violently prevails, even if it carries disastrous consequences (in the Cartesian Meditations M , it would be tantamount to the success of the ‘‘cunning demon’’ or – in another context – to the impossibility of matching will and understanding).30 The perfect example of this sort of projection (rather, this substitution of one object by another) is contained in one of the first scenes from L a verdad sospechosa (T he Suspect T ruth), which is Ruiz de Alarcon’s masterpiece.31 Tristan – the comic character – tries to find the name of the lady whom Garcia – his master – has just fallen in love with. The lady is accompanied by a female-friend, and Tristan, after asking the ladies’ coachman about their names, comes back to his master and says ‘‘Lucretia de Luna / is the name of the most beautiful one’’. The answer given by Garcia shows why the fight between adequate perceptions and personal desires is always at the origin of the intrigue: ‘‘That Lucretia is the most beautiful, / is everything I need to know / for she was who spoke and whom I love.’’ Tristan, on his side, indicates how weak the basis of his master’s judgment is: ‘‘For I think that the most beautiful/is the one who was silent’’. In this way, desire superimposes on sight. Contrary to the previous example, in which an object – the cloak – although correctly perceived, raised different ff judgements (which on principle could be all true, but not with regard to the concrete circumstance shared by the different ff characters), here we find disparities among the opinions of the individuals who judge. Everyone takes into account only a particular factor of his total relation with the lady at issue: Garcia follows the sudden fit of passion, while Tristan cares about an ideal of feminine behaviour, and the coachman judges by the previous treatment he has had with his female-master.

504

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

All this shows that to judge considering just personal opinion distorts perception and leads to intrigue. In fact, the implication of these two elements – opinion and intrigue – is a real standard in the cloak-anddagger plays. This element makes credible the extreme deceit suffered ff by the senses, which confuses the characters even when they are in broad daylight. In any other situation, such an intrigue would seem absurd or even ridiculous. We do not speak here just of an error caused by a wrong first impression, but refer to the impossibility of any form of perception grasping the identities of persons and objects. If sight possibly deceives us when staring at someone, the same will surely happen with the other senses. And that is true especially with regards to touch, which is supposedly the most reliable sense. When the desire to touch something becomes uncontrollable, one can get to a point in which it is not anymore possible to perceive any difference ff when touching something else, because desire blinds men and makes us incapable of perceiving differences. ff In such a situation, one could literally get a chimera. It is because of this that in all the night love scenes (which are so abundant in intrigue plays) the contradiction implied in the fact that a character smitten with someone happens, however, to mistake his beloved one for someone else, is perfectly credible. What the character perceives as his sweetheart’s image is nothing but a projection of his own desire or – as it occurs in extreme cases – a projection of himself. In El vergonzoso en palacio (T he T imid Youth at Court), a play by Tirso de Molina,32 Serafina is rehearsing a dramatic scene dressed as a man. When she looks at her likeness, she falls madly in love with her own image. Anthony, who has been violently rejected by Serafina, seizes the opportunity and says he knows who the gallant whose effigy appears in the likeness is, and he can arrange a meeting between the gallant and her for that night. When the time comes, Anthony pretends to be a fellow called Dennis, and under that name he enjoys the lady, who believes she is with the gallant who is none but herself. That not even the most careful perception enables us to be completely sure about what an object is or who a person is would be – I emphasize – to a great extent implausible, if the violence that desire exerts on sensibility were not an obvious fact for 17th century thought, a fact considered obvious inside and outside the cultural scope of the HispanoAmerican Empire, as well as in Descartes’ and Spinoza’s criticisms against passions.33 Sight deceives us at daylight as hearing or touch does in the middle of the darkest night. Just as Descartes affirms that sight is not

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

505

able to grasp the wax’s permanence beyond its physical transformations, so the intrigue plays reveal that senses do not guarantee to the characters the identities of the person they deal with.34 Hence, the unfathomable distance that separates intrigue plays from any kind of realistic drama and makes credible this sort of incident is an outcome of desire. Moving away from a passive perception of reality, man discovers that he can see all the things that intensify his pleasure, even if the cost of doing so is total loss of balance or insanity. After Serafina’s initial rage when finding out that she was abused by Anthony. the only thing that matters to her (before an inevitable marriage restores her respectability) is to redundantly ask if that likeness was truly hers. After that, she forgives Anthony for the ruse, because he has given her a chance to see herself as what she was not (a man) and vice versa. The likeness is her very image, but – at the height of paradox – it does not stand for her. Nevertheless, the deformation of perception caused by passion is just the beginning of a process of confusing the levels of reality, and especially the most relevant among them: sleep, which was discussed ad nauseam during the 17th century. For example, in the first of his Meditations M , Descartes states that there is not a clear certitude about the difference ff between wakefulness and sleep: ‘‘But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming’’.35 Of course, at the end of the Sixth Meditation, Descartes solves the difficulty he has posed: ‘‘[...] I now find a very marked difference ff between the two states [sleep and waking], in respect that our memory can never connect our dreams with each other and with the course of life, in the way it is in the habit of doing with events that occur when we are awake’’.36 However, the Cartesian solution is valid only because it is supported by God’s absolute veracity, which implies that without the metaphysics unfolded in the Meditations M the problem would remain the same or, perhaps, it could get even worse, as in intrigue plays, in which the unsettling apparent continuity between sleep and wakefulness is posed as the unavoidable confusion between perception and sleep. We have already seen – by analyzing a scene from Alarcon’s L a verdad sospechosa – that desire always distorts perception. Something similar happens to oneiric reality. The scope of different ff interpretations of sleep that arose in

506

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

Hispano-American Golden Age thought was very wide, especially because (contrary to what happens in English and French languages) Spanish has only one single word for ‘‘dream’’ and ‘‘sleep’’: ‘‘suen˜o’’; and this gave raise to ambiguities which were very profitable for the intrigue plays. (In a book of mine – see: note 18, pp. 161–167 – I have listed the principal meanings of ‘‘sleep’’ in Hispano-American Golden Age thought.) Tirso again shows – in another scene from El vergonzoso en palacio – that when we are under the power of some passion we do not correctly distinguish between sleep – or dream – and being awake. Magdalena, who is fed up with Mireno’s bashfulness, pretends to be sleeping when Mireno comes into her chamber and, then, she confesses she is in love with him. Mireno, happy about this, says: ‘‘Is there a more loving dream? / Oh, one thousand times is blissful / who has listened to her and bears it in mind! / Though I believe it is more certain / that I am just dreaming; / since I must not be awake’’ (vv. 538–544). When happiness exceeds his highest hopes, it logically follows that the character believes he is asleep, for the most vivid dreams are those that make wakefulness consistent. Of course, I am aware that Mireno’s expression has a poetical value, and I do not intend to take those words literally. Nevertheless, these indicate that the characters cannot completely trust what they perceive, since all the time they move among appearances and oneiric images, as Mireno suddenly discovers, when the shrewd Magdalena, after pretending to wake up, denies what she has said while she was supposedly asleep. Mireno’s dream of happiness vanishes just when it seemed that its fulfillment was sure: ‘‘How many means the Heaven/uses to guide this love! / With favour and disdain / I am now between two minds. / I will speak never again, / for my unhappiness is caused / by the one who loves me when she is asleep / and scorns me when she is awake. / My soul will conceal my passion, / which will serve to a better end, / and will not believing in dreams anymore, / because dreams are just dreams’’ (vv. 677–688). Let us emphasize that what actually defines the intrigue plays’ everlasting confusion – whereby reality becomes uncertain – is the fact that such confusion is never absolutely negative. Still more, the conflict among perception, imagination, desire and understanding reveals that comprehension is essentially poetical. At every moment objects change their aspect, and those who observe them changing change their mind too. That is why objects as well as persons have to be identified by means of images, whose value hinge on the circumstance and the character’s passions.

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

507

In Serafina’s deception with regard to her likeness, we have seen how dangerous an image can be. Well, that disturbing power gets twice as dreadful when the image is alive, as happens in Don Gil de las calzas verdes (Gilles of the Green Breeches), a very amusing intrigue play by Tirso de Molina, and which is probably the epitome of the genre.37 Jean, who has been betrayed by her fiance Martin, follows him to Madrid, where Martin intends to marry a wealthy lady called Agnes. To keep her presence a secret, Jean dons green breeches and takes the name Gilles. Under this name, Jean becomes Martin’s rival, since Agnes falls in love with her, believing Jean is a gorgeous young nobleman. The intrigue becomes even more complicated, as Clara – Agnes’s female cousin – also falls in love with the supposed Gilles. Furthermore, on top of all this, other gallants (including Martin himself ) try to get rid of Gilles, because they consider him their rival. Throughout this play, characters are moved by Jean’s schemes. Jean changes her identity, according to the circumstances, to punish Martin and to prevent him from marrying Agnes. Later on, Jean rents the house next door to Agnes’s and pretends to be a lady named Elvira. Because of the ‘‘singular’’ resemblance she bears to the false Gilles, Agnes is very fond of her; and when both ladies are alone, Agnes says ‘‘Even I cannot deny that I love you / because you are like the one I worship, / you deserve by yourself to be adored / by an Adonis or a Narcissus, / and even by the sun that shines in your eyes’’ (vv. 1264–69). Jean, whose shrewdness is a perfect example of the wit so carefully explained by Gratian, deceives her rival saying that she – the so-called Elvira – is whom Gilles loves, and she adds that she can arrange a date for her: she can make Martin love Agnes, if Agnes rejects Martin. Agnes accepts this agreement with the greatest pleasure. When Jean is alone she says: ‘‘This foolish walked into the trap. / Sometimes I am a man, some other times, a woman, / I am Gilles, I am Elvira, / but if I love, what would I be not? (vv. 1438–1441). Jean is thus a character who is simultaneously the rival of the gentleman she loves and the rival of the lady he courts, and who – on top of the paradox – comes to turn into her own suitor – the false Gilles – and claims absolute fidelity from Martin while betraying Agnes with her cousin. Jean poses an intrigue so complex that it would be almost incomprehensible if it were not based upon imaginative projection: as we have said, what is at stake here is not metaphysical individuality, but poetical identity, which unceasingly varies and casts everybody into a whirl of passions. Once more, we find that the main interest in this dramatic

508

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

interplay is not epistemological but poetical, for every character’s confusion and fascination have been projected in order to form a witty personality. Private relations remain exempted from the honour code because of the proliferation of appearances. As intrigue plays show, the characters who participate in these confusions and illusions challenge all honour rules, since they are simply conventional symbols to them, not the guiding principles behind their actions. Moreover, this applies even with regard to the most decisive actions: ladies enjoy, in darkness, lovers whom they have not seen, but have keenly imagined; and gallants do the same. In any case, the obedience due to the authority of tradition has eventually broken. As members of societies that postulate (at least as a legal principle) the supremacy of the individual (who is over any social regulation), we have to strive to assimilate the starting point of the intrigue plays: the conflict that rises from the absolute subordination of the interpersonal sphere to an all-embracing socio-moral order, which expresses itself through the supposedly unyielding honour code. An intrigue rises whenever the play leads will to challenge honour, which instead of appearing as an abstract ideal, shows itself as the first and most decisive form of contradiction. Let us see, for example, what happens in Amor es ma´s laberinto38 (Love is more labyrinthine), a play by the great New Spain poetess Sister Jean Agnes of the Cross (with its second act written by John of Guevara). Here, a crafty recreation of Hellenic Antiquity shows, through its unwonted anachronism, the tensions that mine the ideal of honour. When king Minus discovers that his two daughters – princesses Phaedra and Ariadne – love Teseus (who thanks to the help of Ariadne has killed the minotaur and escaped from the ominous Cretan labyrinth), and that both princess are willing to elope with him (he, for his part, loves Phaedra), he orders the execution of the three as traitors: ‘‘One and the same is the insolent guilt / because of which I condemn your life, / and so, the anger I feel / orders you to be dead; / and since you committed the same fault / you will receive the same punishment’’. In this example, the sovereign’s power – which appears identified with paternal authority – runs into love, which has not only caused the princesses to disobey their father, but also to betray their country, for they are in love with a prince whose people killed their brother – the crown prince of Crete. Still more, on becoming rivals, the sisters also destroy the deep meaning of the fraternal link. They are worthy of a triple contempt for breaking natural, political, and familiar laws, whose

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

509

consequences they avoid thanks to a coup de theaˆtre: T Teseus’s subjects burst in while Teseus and the princesses are being carried to the scaffold ff and rescue them. The individual’s permanent risk of failing in his duties is also the plot thread in El vergonzoso en palacio. We have seen how Anthony abuses Serafina by means of her likeness. However, this is not his only fault: he disdains his diplomatic obligations although he knows they are very urgent, and prefers to stay at the village where Serafina dwells, so he can entice her. Anthony justifies himself by alleging bizarre reasons: ‘‘My love forces me to stay here, / whether the king waits for me or not, / because pleasure is my only king / and it calms the grieve that would kill me / if I tried to love her in the distance’’ (vv. 352–355). Another example of the contradiction between socio-moral power and individual will – which in this case appears linked to the conscious deception problem – is offered ff by L a verdad sospechosa, the already mentioned play of Alarcon’s. There, Garcia does his utmost to avoid the marriage that his father proposes to him, without knowing that he precisely wants him to marry the lady whom he loves. Ignoring this, Garcia eventually marry another lady, in order to save his honour. However, since the first scene he has been vying against it because of his habit of lying, a vice that provokes in his father, when he realizes it, a reaction so violent that it could seem exaggerated, if his own blood were not in question: ‘‘[...] If Garcia / [...] were in fact dead / I would not feel so bad / as I feel knowing that lying is his fault. / What a shameful thing! / What contrary to my nature!’’39 The laments of Beltran – Garcia’s father – which he repeats again and again throughout the play, make clear that a gentleman (even more if he is a learned person, as Garcia is) ought not to lie, since the first duty of a nobleman is to be always truthful. Furthermore, a nobleman ought to act in this way by his own conviction and not due to a empty formulism; otherwise, personal awareness would not be identified with the ideals that define the socio-moral relationships. These relationships would run the risk of disintegrating if everyone misrepresented their meaning on purpose or at their convenience, if lying were necessary – as Garcia suggests when he confesses that he lies because he is pleased when defeating other gentlemen’s deeds ‘‘with another deed, so that he turns/empty-handed and dies’’ (vv. 849–851) – then, the fight for being above the others, would lead to a war among the several wills (Hobbes was not far from this idea). Another play wherein intrigue brings to the fore the tensions faced by the honour code is L a dama duende (T he Goblin L ady), by Calderon de

510

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

la Barca.40 There, Angela – a young beautiful widow – lives practically as her two brothers’ prisoner. They compete to be stricter to the heroine, as she says to her maid: ‘‘I live with no liberty / ‘cause I became a widow / but I married two brothers’’ (vv. 390–2). So, when she gets interested in meeting a friend of her elder brother who is lodged in the family house, she has to resort to intrigue, so she can appear in the guest’s room whenever she wants, without arousing suspicion. In this case, male domination has become so rigorous that it collapses. Although Angela insists repeatedly that her life is in danger, for her brothers would kill her if they discovered her intrigues, she makes the most of her opportunities to seduce Emmanuel – her brother’s friend – though at a distance. Fear – even the gravest one – serves to sharpen Angela’s wit. Angela hatches the intrigue assisted by her maid and by Beatrice, a lady whom both Angela’s brothers court, and who behaves in a very carefree manner, for she goes into and comes out of her suitors’ house as she likes. As we see, the women in this play form a team to defeat the limitations that honour imposes. All these examples show the same contradiction between honour as a socio-moral ideal and personal will. Thus, it is not trivial that in the first case the princesses have betrayed their king and father, that in the second Anthony disdains to fulfil his duty, that in the third the son contradicts his father and his condition as a learned person, and that in the fourth a woman evades the masculine surveillance and changes the traditional roles in the seduction process. All these examples show that the ideals that should fix the individual action appear as negative values, which changes its sense only in the play’s ending, when marriage overcomes the opposition between the conflicting extremes. However, such a solution tends more to reconcile the contraries than to eliminate one of them. In all these examples a negative element remains until the end: whether it is the violent death of one of the suitors at the hands of the other (with the aggravation that the victim is a reigning prince, and his death is, therefore, a regicide), or carelessness, or the compulsory acceptance of a unbeloved woman, or the triumph of a gallant at the expense of his own brother’s happiness, in any case, the negativity resists the endeavours to nullify it. If it is true that this endurance does not implicate a criticism against the ideal itself – since it is vindicated even when characters challenge it – it is also true that each play annihilates in its own way the supposed identity between honour and will. This, instead of turning the intrigue plays into a vehicle of explicit socio-moral criticism, shows that, as a dramatic genre, they correspond

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

511

to the omnipresent opposition between the ideal and the real, which turns interpersonal relationships in a battlefield wherein everyone – even the weakest ones – struggle and test their strength. Nonetheless, this was not a quality exclusive of the Hispano-American culture, but was present in 17th century culture as a whole. Let us take into account that: [..] Baroque culture cannot be understood unless one considers it immersed in a basic situation of crisis and conflict, whereby we see how it is established under the pressure of the contention forces, which dominate but do not cancel – at least in a last testimony of their presence – the liberating forces of the individual existence.41

This corroborates what we have said: through intrigue a persistent resistance runs against the honour code, and not because it is simply rejected, but because its perfect fulfilment is possible only if personal will surrenders. There is no mediation between both moments, and that is why marriage instead of actually overcoming the conflict carries it to another level, that for a time has a transcendent sense: since marriage is a sacrament and, simultaneously, a patrimonial institution, once it has been celebrated, there is nothing else to do. This is not only a characteristic of intrigue plays but appears in most of the Golden Age theatre works in which the motif of honour predominates. I think, notwithstanding, we should discern between characters that are carried away by passing blindness or obsession, and those that hatch plots to mock an ideal. Let us remember one of the most famous plays of the time, in which authority is not only challenged, but the person that embodies it is executed: Fuente Ovejuna42 (Sheep’s Well). The knight commander’s brutality has driven peasants to despair; however, it does not make them criticize the order that marks a line of continuity from the loyalty to their sovereign to the absolute respect for honour. Therefore, while Mengo cries out ‘‘Long live the kings / our masters!’’ and ‘‘Down with the tyrant traitors! ‘’, Lorenza (a girl that was raped by the commander) harangues: ‘‘Oh, women of the village! / Come to recover / your honour, all at once!’’ Here, a woman is the first to defend honour, which she identifies with the fidelity to the king. Without her, the rather pusillanimous men would not dare to rebel. The conflict, so, does not confront individual will and ideals. It is, rather, a conflict between a wicked being and the community on which he has made an attempt. The drama completely confirms the majesty of honour. In intrigue plays, dissensions are the outcome of the struggle maintained by the characters to upset the socio-moral archetype. This shows, in my

512

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

opinion, that in this kind of play conflicts do not oppose characters to one another, but it confronts characters with some ideal form of power. Still more, conflict springs from intelligence and will. That is why it is necessary to resort to intrigue: it seems to release us – at least for a moment – from any obligation, and throw the individual to a sphere that on principle belongs only to authority. Although the ruler theoretically exerts his power thanks to the fact that social law is essentially natural (an ancient idea that lasted beyond the criticisms of Machiavelli and other thinkers), the ideal link between the authority and the individual will has been broken – as intrigue plays show – and if it were reestablished, it would demand the kind of violence that defines characters’ action in those plays: a violence that can blast in any moment. Such a possibility shows that the apparent superficiality of intrigue, its diminution to a mere entertainment, omits what actually leads its characters, who move through the interstices of the socio-moral establishment in order to triumph. Their triumph implies a limit to the determinations that overwhelm them, especially those of honour. From this perspective, we note how logical is the interpolation contained in Amor es ma´s laberinto (vv. 480 and ff ff.), which is one of the most disconcerting speeches of Golden Age theatre, and which is worth quoting, since it poses the question we have spoken about: ‘‘[...] Facts were the first thing / to impose domination / in the world; since being all humans equal by birth, / there would have had no other / way to introduce the inequality / we can see among them [...] / Because as man was born / naturally inclined / to command, only being perforce / he accepts to be subject’’. If authority is reluctantly obeyed, it should become flexible enough not to provoke resistance. What matters here is that the limits are imposed by society’s apparently weakest elements: women and heirs, who can take advantage of their subordination if they are shrewd. Knowledge leads to intrigue – the craft of intelligence – and intrigue gives rise to a space of liberty, that although imaginary, is nonetheless desirable. Characters that have hatched so many plots acquire, thus, honourableness; but more because of a lucky strike than because of their behaviour, which seems rather – in the works we have discussed – to lead them to wrack and ruin. That they manage to save honour precisely when everything seems to be lost, is the reason why intrigue plays are, both at once, labyrinthine and amusing, even if the conflict between authority and individual will is not overcome.

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

513

The perception one has about oneself and about others shows that it is impossible to transcend appearances and to grasp essential identities. It also shows that perception is the origin of the conflicting passions and the pleasure that make love relationships precious and transform them – in spite of their unsurpas sable contradictions – into the hope of conciliating oneself with reality and with the person one loves. Perhaps in the initial scene from the third act of L a Dama Duende (T he Goblin L ady), by Calderon de la Barca,43 it is clearer to what extent wit is the common ground of the poetical and the erotic personality in moments of intimacy. As the title expresses, all turns on Angela’s apparitions and disappearances. Angela has been forced by her brothers to hide from Emmanuel, whom they have invited to live in their house, but Angela, falls in love with him anyhow. In the mentioned scene, when Angela comes in, Emmanuel – who thinks she is a goblin and has been waiting alone – recites a long speech, in which, beyond his doubts and fears, he compares her to the sun at daybreak. She answers with another romance, in which, after rejecting a comparison with anything else, she declares her passion for him: ‘‘And so I ignore what I am, / for I only know that I am / neither dawn, nor daybreak, nor sun; / for now I neither shine, nor laugh nor cry. / And so I ask you to say, Emmanuel, / that I am and I was a woman, / who is compelled by you / to the point that you see’’ (vv. 2349–2357). ‘‘And I ignore what I am,’’ Angela says a moment before contradicting herself: ‘‘I am and I was a woman.’’ The lady perfectly knows she is in love and she is not a walking metaphor. Consequently, when the lovers meet, the image loses its incorporeal, purely verbal condition, and gets a body. Nevertheless, this does not mean that appearances have eventually revealed their essential identities, either the one of the character or the one of her lover. On the contrary, when someone believes they are clearly perceiving the other person, this last vanishes in a fugitive appearance: ‘‘Because now I offer ff to be a mystery, / for neither I am what I seem, nor I seem what I am’’ (vv. 23 73–6). Intrigue leads us from a world where the everlasting change of things and persons spreads out, to an imaginative reality where the revelation of objective or personal identity, although stated as an absolute, is just an appearance. Such contradiction between imagination and being gets round when everyone, facing the risk of either madness or contempt, reinforces his passion (although he could all of a sudden abandon it at the utmost). The outcome of this double possibility – either love or oblivion – is a demand of reflection on each character in the intrigue.

514

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

Characters are always able to recognize their own being, except once they have already lost it. Vale. V Meritorious University of Puebla, Mexico M NOTES 1 Franklin L. Baumer, M Modern European T hought: Continuity & Change in Ideas, 1600–1950 (New York: Macmillan, 1977), chapter 1. 2 The classical study on this subject is the homonymous book by Arthur O. Lovejoy, T he Great Chain of Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). Another excellent book on the same subject: E. M. W. Tillyard, T he Elizabethan World Picture (London: Chatto & Windus, 1943). 3 On the particular meaning of the term I use here, see Bolivar Echeverrıa (Comp.), Modernidad, Mestizaje Cultural, Ethos Barroco (Mexico City: UNAM/EI Equilibrista, 1994), M p. 19 and ff. ff 4 According to this, then, ‘‘enlightenment’’ ought to be understood without any reference to the 18th century meaning of the term. 5 Anthony Rey Hazas, ‘‘Introduccion a las Comedias de Enredo’’ in Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Obras Maestras, J. Alcala-Zamora and J. M. Dıez Borque (eds.) (Madrid: Castalia, 2000), p. 333. 6 Octavio Paz, El Arco y la L ira, in Obras Completas, 14 vv. (2nd. ed., Mexico City: FCE, 1994), vol. I, p. 209. 7 Paul Jauralde Pou, ‘‘El Teatro en el Siglo XVII’’, in Historia y Crı´tica de la L iteratura Espan˜ola, 8 vv., comp. Francis Rico (Barcelona: Crıtica, 1983), vol. III, p. 206. 8 Ernst Cassirer, Descartes. Corneille. Christine de Suede, Magdalena Frances and Paul Schrecker (trans.) (Paris: Vrin, 1997), chapter 1. 9 Octavio Paz, op. cit., idem. 10 That is Jose Anthony Maravall’s interpretation. For him, the phenomenon we study were directed more to suffocate ff any possible individual discrepancy with regard to social values than to express the creative power of the Hispano-American society: ‘‘[...] I think that our baroque theatre, although it has been called a ‘national theatre’ and has been understood by some author as a kind of Hispanic ‘paideia’, did not exert in any moment an educative function for the people; but I want to follow this remark with another that completes it: [this theatre] had certainly the function to manipulate the whole people, with the aim of realizing a configurative operation of ideological nature on wide sectors of the population’’ (‘‘Teatro, Fiesta e Ideologia en el Barroco’’, in T eatro y Fiesta en el Barroco. Espan˜a e Iberoamerica, comp. Joseph Mary Dıez Borque (Barcelona: Serbal, 1986), p. 77. Although I recognize Maravall’s great authority on any subject related to the baroque culture, I believe in this case his interpretation does not allow a grasping of the intellectual contributions of Golden Age theatre, which is the subject of this study. 11 Alexander A. Parker, ‘‘Una Interpretacion del Teatro Espanol del Siglo XVII’’, in Francis Rico (comp.), op. cit., pp. 259–60. 12 On this point, I consider fundamental the influence of Goethe’s Faust F , which should be indisputably considered as the beginning of a new approach to theatre, for it contains the grounds of every romantic and post-romantic conceptions of art.

WITH FOOLISH SHADOWS, WITH HOLLOW SIGNS

515

13 My brief commentaries on this subject come from: Alan Bullock, T he Humanist in the West (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985), chapter I: the Renaissance. W 14 L. E. Halkin, E´rasme et l ’Humanisme Chretien (Paris: E´ditions Universitaires, 1969), 2nd part, chapter III. 15 Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960), chapters I and 2. 16 Ernesto Grassi, Einfu¨hrung in philosophische Probleme des Humanismus (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986), chapter VI. 17 Ibid., introduction by Emily Hidalgo-Sema to the Spanish translation (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1993), pp. VIII–IX. 18 Agudeza y Arte de ingenio, ed. Gillesbert Prado Galan, Our Classics 79 (Mexico City: UNAM, 1996). There is a more extensive study on wit in my book L a Sombra Fugitiva (Mexico City: UNAM, 2001), where I analyze Hispano-American humanism as the ground of First Dream, the great metaphysical poem by Sister Jean Agnes of the Cross, the famous New Spain poetess. Another book on wit in the 17th century European culture is L ’idea del barocco. Studi su un problema estetico by Luciano Anceschi, Spanish translation by Rosalıa Torrent (Madrid: Tecnos, 1991). 19 Op. cit., p. 33. 20 On this specific question, see the excellent introduction by Alexander A. Parker to Gongora’s F Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, Letras Hispanicas 171 (Mexico City: REI Mexico, 1987), pp. 23–129. 21 Agudeza y Arte de Ingento, p. 231 and ff. ff 22 Idem. I 23 Ibid., pp. 431–432. In this particular passage, I have strived to reproduce Gratian’s extremely complex prose, one of the most awkward in the Spanish language. 24 Rene´ Descartes, Oeuvres, 12 vv., Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (eds.) (Paris: V /CNRS, 1964–1976), v. VII, pp. 30–1. I cite by John Veitch’s English translation. Vrin 25 Benjamın Garcia-Hernandez, Descartes y Plauto. L a concepcion dramatica del sistema cartesiano (Madrid: Tecnos, 1997), p. 133. This book, which is interesting, although perhaps debatable, is concerned with the relationships between Descartes and the dramatic tradition, especially with the plays of Antiquity. Although it offers ff a coherent interpretation, I would limit somehow the idea that cartesianism was generated, practically as a whole, by the anecdote of an ancient play. I recognize that the similarities that Garcia-Hernandez discovers between Plautus’ Amphitryon and the M Metaphysical Meditations are really suggestive. Furthermore, we ought to take into account that the school where Descartes spent his youth was ruled by Jesuits, a religious order wherein Gratian had professed. 26 Op. cit., pp. 409–440. In this and in the following translations of the Spanish verses, I will change the respective Spanish metre by irregular metrics. 27 Act II, v. 1019 and ff. ff 28 Obras Completas, 3 vv., Augustine Millares Carlo (ed.) (2nd. ed., Mexico City: FCE, 1977), v. I, act II, p. 667 and ff. ff 29 Op. cit., p. 32. 30 Remember that in the F Fourth Meditation, Descartes says that the error is caused by the difference ff between what we understand and what we want (p. 60). 31 Op. cit., v. II, p. 391 and ff. ff 32 Comedias, ed. Jean of Ontano´n, Sepan cuantos 32 (7th. Ed., Mexico City: Porrua, 1977), act III, p. 62 and ff. ff

516

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

33 Of course, these criticisms have to be understood not as a total condemnation but rather like a integration of the passions within an individual existence’s rational paradigm, as Cassirer explains in a very lucid passage of the book we have quoted in note seven: ‘‘The Cartesian theory on passions, the judgment that what the philosopher makes about them, moves away from the classical stoicism. What this last demands, what it raises to the level of an ideal, is contempt for passions. The impassibility, the true ‘ataraxy’, can not originate but from a complete ‘apathy’. But in the eyes of Descartes, this exigency is a chimera, a daydreaming. For he examines passions not just like a moralist, but, above all, with the attitude of a wise man. These are for him simply natural phenomena, which are, therefore, subordinated to laws of mechanical necessity’’ (op. cit., p. 92). 34 I repeat that, instead of developing an arbitrary comparison between a philosopher and some plays, what I intend to show is that both philosophy and theatre, of that time, bring up a problem that belongs to contemporary metaphysics. 35 Op. cit., p. 19. 36 Ibid., p. 89. 37 Tirso de Molina, Don Gilles de las Calzas Verdes, Alonso Zamora Vicente (ed.), Clasicos Castalia 187 (Madrid: Castalia, 1990). 38 Sister Jean Agnes of the Cross, Obras completas, 4 vv., eds. Alfonso Mendez Plancarte and Albert G. Salceda (Mexico City: FCE, 1957), v. IV, act III, vv. 1103–8, p. 345. 39 Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, op. cit., v. II, p. 382, vv. 212–16. 40 Op. cit., p. 363 and ff. ff 41 Jose´ Anthony Maravall, L a cultura del barroco. Analists de una estructura historica, Letras e ideas 7 (Barcelona: Ariel, 1975), p. 91. 42 Felix Lope de Vega Carpio, Obras (Madrid: Majera, a 1984), pp. 29–113. The quoted verses appear in act III, scene 3). 43 See note 40.

GARY BACKHAUS

THE MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS : A STUDY IN PHENOMENOLOGIC AL ANTHROPOLOGY

What interests the philosopher in anthropology is just that it takes man as he is, in his actual situation of life and understanding. The philosopher that it interests is not the one who wants to explain or construct the world, but the one who seeks to deepen our insertion in being. Thus his recommendation could not possibly endanger anthropology, since it is based upon what is most concrete in anthropological method.1 – Maurice Merleau-Ponty

INTRODUCTION: METHODOLOGY AND THEME2

The phenomenologist Alfred Schutz states that a major task of philosophical (phenomenological) anthropology is the description of the various strata of transcendence that surpass the actual Here and Now of spontaneous, immediate experience. An important stratum for cultural studies, the great transcendencies, concerns symbols, which are meanings that surpass the parameters of everyday life and subsequently relate the everyday with other orders of reality.3 The correlative problem for cultural anthropology is the empirical investigation of specific symbolic systems that have been developed by various historical cultures. The following study relies on empirical analyses and descriptions provided by both ethnographers and indigenous voices, but this work makes its specific contribution by providing a bridge to the eidetic structures investigated in the phenomenological anthropology of Schutz. The methodology is not simply the application of eidetics to a particular instantiation. Rather it sustains what Merleau-Ponty calls reciprocal envelopment.4 Research is conducted along a continuum that includes both facts (empirical evidence) and ideas (eide: material apriori principles). To state the MerleauPontian thesis another way, eidetic analysis alone is empty; empirical analysis alone is blind. Philosophy and science not only complement one another; they form an integrated system – a superiorly developed scientia. Our investigation concerns the phenomenon of the vision quest or medicine-dream, which is a spiritual practice of many indigenous peoples of North America, especially those of the Midwest Plains5 Specifically 517 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 517–549. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

518

GARY BACKHAUS

the ethnography, Plenty-coups Chief of the Crows, by Frank B. Linderman, which provides this study with its most important empirical documentary evidence, is examined and explicated according to the eidetic structures of phenomenological anthropology. Linderman transcribed, translated, and edited what can be said to be Plenty-coups’ oral autobiography. The ethnography was first published in 1930, and at the time of the ‘‘interviews’’ Plenty-coups was more than eighty years old. Plenty-coups’ date of birth is circa 1847. Plenty-coups had two visions as a pre-adolescent by which he was given the prophetic task to become chief and to lead his people, the Crows, in such a way that they would keep their sacred lands. Most Indian tribes of the plains were decimated and those that were left were ushered onto reservation sites. Plenty-coups fulfilled his vision-project and the Crows to this day have kept their sacred lands, which are located in Montana. In one of his few interpolations added to the autobiography, Linderman provides a well-formulated description of the medicine-dream. The Indians of the Northwest are great believers in dreams. They starve and torture themselves in preparation for ‘medicine-dreams’ and then repair alone to some difficult spot, generally a high mountain peak. There, without food or water, they spend four days and nights – if necessary, appealing to ‘helpers.’ Their condition, both physical and mental, is unbalanced by weakness brought on by abstaining from food, taking enervating sweatbaths, and continually courting fatigue. Their dreams are weird and often terrifying, though sometimes wonderfully prophetic of the future. In a medicine-dream some animal, or bird, or ‘person’ appears and offers ff ‘help.’ Sometimes these apparitions only give advice or teach the dreamer by parables which are later interpreted by the ‘wise ones’ (medicine-men) of the tribe.6

It must be carefully noted that Linderman presents an outsider’s view, but it is verifiably an accurate ‘‘objective’’ description. Linderman’s ethnographic transcription of Plenty-coups’ autobiography illustrates how the medicine-dream is contextualized over a lifetime, that is, its role in constituting the meaning of a life. The autobiography contributes to showing how the medicine-dream functions within the sociocultural environment wherein there is found ‘‘socially approved systems offering ff answers for our quest for the unknowable transcendencies.’’ 7 Ernst Cassirer writes, ‘‘To mythical and religious feeling nature becomes one great society, the society of life.’’8 Autobiographical evidence best exemplifies the relational matrix of human beings, society, and nature as structured through a lived-symbolization of a particular cultural rite. Otherwise, without contextualizing the medicine-dream in its relation to the paramount reality of everyday life, the analysis would remain an

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

519

abstraction. Since symbolization relates a transcendent order to everyday life by translating the transcendent experience into a meaning-referent, no analysis is adequate that does not show how the medicine-dream functions in light of everyday life (its outer horizons). Other documents are consulted in order to describe the inner horizons of the medicinedream in its experiential and structural details and in order to amplify the significance of the medicine-dream as a rite that brings about transformation and spiritual illumination. THE MEDICINE-DREAM AS A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING

The life-world exhibits a stratified structure comprised of orders of ‘reality’ that are experienced simultaneously in counterpointal fashion and also successively through radical acts of attentional modification resulting in fundamentally different ff modalities of cognition.9 The reason for a particular order to be lived as ‘reality’ at any given experiential duration has a psychological origin. Mental contents apprehended in the immediate spontaneity of conscious awareness are automatically given the ‘accent of reality.’ The content of any experience is taken as ‘real’ and remains so until it is contradicted regardless of its modality. Many times contradiction occurs when consciousness shifts into a different ff order of reality whereby the exchange of cognitive style results in the rejection of the appearance-characteristics of the prior apprehended contents. Each order or sub-world is taken as real until attention turns toward the contents of another sub-world. For example, the child ‘really’ is the mommy of her baby (-doll) in her pretend order of reality or sub-world of make-believe. However, if another child tries to take the babydoll away, the ‘‘mommy of the baby’’ in the fantasy world becomes the ‘‘owner of a toy-doll’’ in the everyday world whose rights have been violated. Schutz treats these orders of reality phenomenologically, and he thus prefers to call them, ‘finite provinces of meaning.’ Finite provinces of meaning are differentiated ff according to their cognitive style rather than according to the character of objects, which is the reason Schutz prefers not to follow William James who calls them ‘subuniverses.’10 Schutz delineates various fantasy provinces, the sleep-dream province, and the meaning province of everyday life. Obviously, there is a great need to expand his work on multiple realities beyond these most general descriptions. Schutz admits that he is primarily interested in the (eidetic) structures of the everyday life-world and the theoretical province of the social and human sciences.

520

GARY BACKHAUS

By conferring the accent of reality upon a province of meaning, e.g., a theatrical play, one takes up a cognitive style with a set finite structure. Transitions from one province to another can be accomplished only by a cognitive ‘‘leap,’’ which means that one cognitive style is exchanged for another. In the natural attitude, these leaps may or may not be noticed, but in any event, if they are noticed, they are not noticed according to their structural characteristics, which phenomenological reflection reveals. From the standpoint of the natural attitude, watching a basketball game and watching a football game are highly differentiated ff activities, even though the cognitive style employed in each does not entail much of a leap. Exchanging the cognitive style of the everyday life-world for the fantasy world of a joke goes quite unnoticed within the natural attitude, even though the difference ff in cognitive styles requires a substantial leap. Moreover, even though the structure of relevance systems remains unthematic within the natural attitude, it is relevance systems that lead to the synthesis of the contents of the various provinces into higher-level meaning-contexts.

COGNITIVE STYLE: THE STRUCTURE OF A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING

a) T he Six Characteristics of Cognitive Style11 The medicine-dream is a finite province of meaning with its own unique cognitive style. A task for this study is to characterize the cognitive style of the medicine-dream, compare it to other provinces, and to relate it to the province of the everyday. The basic characteristics that constitute a specific cognitive style are 1) a specific tension of consciousness, 2) a specific epoche, 3) a prevalent form of spontaneity, 4) a specific form of self-experience, 5) a specific form of sociality, 6) a specific time-perspective. The tension of consciousness is a function of the attention given to life. The highest tension involves the strongest interest in attending to life and the lowest would concern a complete lack of interest. Epoche concerns the types of beliefs or attitudes that are suspended. In the theatre, for example, we suspend belief in everyday identities, e.g., that person ‘‘really’’ is Hamlet. Examples of dominant forms of spontaneity are passivity in daydreaming, abstract thought in scientific work, working or performance in the everyday round of existence. The form of self-experience in the province of fantasy, is for example, such that one is free to imagine oneself with any attributes in any circumstance. As a scientist one experiences

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

521

oneself, not as an individual personality, but as an ideal type, researcher, who uncovers empirical generalizations that hold true regardless of who conducts the experiment. Specific forms of sociality range from solitude to various forms of intersubjectivity. The time perspective of science, for example, is the objectified space/time of natural science. The time perspective in the finite province of a novel may so condense time that ten years may pass in the novel during a twenty-minute reading interval of ‘‘objective’’ clock time. b) T he Everyday Cognitive Style12 It is useful to summarize the cognitive style of the everyday life-world, because it is the paramount reality, the umbrella for the other provinces, and other provinces are better understood when related to it. When the accent of reality is placed on objects and events within the everyday world, the specific tension of consciousness is called, ‘wide-awakeness,’ which originates in a full attention to life. The specific epoche is the suspension of doubt that the objects, events, and style of the everyday life-world are anything other than they appear, for serious forms of doubt would lead to a leap into some other finite province of meaning such as the magical or theoretical. The prevalent form of spontaneity is work. Working, or overt performances of bodily movements, involves actions in the outer world that are based upon a formulated project that is concretized through the work. A specific form of self-experience is the working-self, which is the self that lives in the vivid present as the agent of its projected actions. The working self is a unified self that is experienced as the total self. When the self steps out of the working engagement and reflects (the proto-theoretical province of meaning), it presents itself to itself as a divided self and experiences the ‘‘me’’ as a partial self. The specific form of sociality is the common intersubjective world of communication and social action. The specific time-perspective is standard time, which involves the intersection of internal time consciousness with world-time and social time. C) T he Cognitive Style of the Medicine-dream13 The tension of consciousness that occurs in the medicine-dream is ambiguous and it conflates wide-awakeness, half-awakeness, fantasy images, sleep-dream, and hallucinatory states. Tom Brown, Jr. writes,

522

GARY BACKHAUS

Dreams and nightmares flooded me again, contorting my body in pain, and twisting my mind with hideous creatures. ... I was stiff and sore, angry at myself for giving into sleep again. Disorientation was worse than it had been. ... It already seemed like I had been here for an eternity, and my mind quickly faltered in desperation. All day I slipped in and out of reality, as my mind searched for something to feast upon.14

Eagle Man notes, ‘‘that in the Vision Quest, we start out alert, conscious, watchful, ready to make contact with the Higher Power that is out there, all around us or within.’’15 Leonard Crow Dog remarks, All during the next day I was half awake and half asleep. I didn’t know anymore what was real and what was not. I was real hungry. I wanted water. But then I saw a woodpecker on top of the pine trees. Did I really see it or was I dreaming?16

Douglas Cardinal remarks, The nights were rough. All the sounds at night made you hallucinate. You had all these demons you had to deal with that were just part of your imagination. You couldn’t deviate for one second from holding the sacred pipe and always asking for strength. If you let yourself go and let your mind go, you’d be confronted with some nightmare monster in your head. Every second you’d have to hold on to your spirit to carry you through. The third day was like losing consciousness.17

Cardinal endured an even more intense experience on the fourth night. All of a sudden there was a light around me and I just started pulling out of my body. I looked back and could see myself sitting there like a shell. I was terrified. Terrified because I thought, ‘‘I’m just thinking this, but no I’m not. I’m not thinking this. This hallucination is real. Here I am and here my body is, being surrounded by light.’’ It was painful.18

The very point of putting the body and mind through great duress is to create the conflation and ambiguities in the tension of consciousness. This process of disorientation allows the medicine-dream to infiltrate all forms of cognition such that its significance permeates the quester’s whole being. For example, the ‘‘dreamer’’ may experience the highest tension as if gearing into the external world, but only fantasizing. On the other hand, he may experience tension so low as to be but half-awake while actually gearing into the external world, almost sleep-walking. The specific epoche of the medicine-dream has been labeled ‘severance’ in the Sun Bear literature.19 Severance is required as preparation for the reception of spiritual meaning. Severance involves: ‘‘Separation from the parents, the home, the family, the context of daily life, the world of human responsibility, privileges, and ‘the clock’ – separation from the temporal

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

523

world. The individual is required to leave it all behind, to consider the former life to be at an end.’’20 As a rite of passage the medicine-dream requires space for personal transformation and this space emerges only through an ‘‘emptying,’’ both physical and mental, accomplished by fasting and participating in a sweat lodge, which are purification rituals that promote severance. The common denominator in preparations for all people for the vision quest is purification of body and mind. The purification involves specific observances and abstinences regarding diet, behavior, and prayer. Purifying the body and mind strengthens the spirit. As we purify ourselves, we concentrate our power. The power is already there; we go on a vision quest to realize it and gain communion and assurance from God. Purification also focuses our inner center and sensitizes us for new perceptions.21

The prevalent form of spontaneity involves an intense supplication, crying for a vision, which requires a focused determination. Supplication demands great sacrifices. I knew that our great Crow warriors of other days sacrificed their flesh and blood to dream, and just when the night was leaving to let the morning come, I stopped at a fallen tree, and, laying the first finger of my left hand upon the log, I cut part of it off with my knife. [The end of the left finger on the Chiefs hand is missing]. But no blood came. The stump of my finger was white as the finger of a dead man, and to make it bleed I struck it against a log until the blood flowed freely. Then I began to walk and call for Helpers, hoping that some Person would smell my blood and come to aid me.22

On the other hand, ‘crying’ entails openness to listening to and to obeying a Higher Power, which involves risk and danger. Agency is reversed, so that something other takes over and it controls the quester. The Person who appeared to Douglas Cardinal said, ‘‘You know, you don’t have any control over your life or death, you arrogant creature.’’23 The medicinedream, then, is like a sleep-dream whereby the quester is passive and does not control the happenings. Yet, it is like fantasy in that it is usually experienced in some form of awakeness, and thus requires focused attention. It often is hallucinatory. If you listen and watch closely enough you will discover a secret known by all primitive peoples. Nature is aware of you and seeks to speak to you. You may be sitting, pondering a certain problem in your life one morning, when suddenly a hawk will circle your head three times, or an ant will crawl across your hand in a particular way, or a brilliant stone may suddenly appear at your feet. You experience a connection, a knowing that has been lost to modern civilized life.24

Plenty-coups many times speaks of fright. ‘‘The Man-person beckoned me. ... When I reached his side he began to sink slowly into the ground.

524

GARY BACKHAUS

... He spoke. ‘Follow me,’ he said. But I was afraid. ‘Come,’ he said from the darkness. And I got down into the hole in the ground to follow him’’ [italics mine].25 In another place he states, ‘‘I was frightened f and turned to the Man-Person, who only shook his rattle’’ [italics mine],26 in a passage that emphasizes both severance and this unique prevalent form of spontaneity, First Eagle writes, The human person is not able to immediately switch from being active and open to being passive and focused. So rather than spending valuable time on the hill psychologically adapting to the new setting, one should increasingly pull back from worldly cares at least a full day before the beginning of the vision quest, everyone else should gradually pull back from the seeker as he becomes more and more recollected.27

This form of spontaneity may have features in common with highly creative moments, which requires focus and at the same time receptivity to the creative insight. The experience of self undergoes a transformation during the vision quest. It is noted by philosophers McPherson and Rabb, who comment on Douglas Cardinal’s description of his vision quest, that the whole of the vision quest is the progressive closing of the gap between the quester and the rest of the universe.28 In order to find a parallel in Western experience McPherson and Rabb compare the Indian experience of selfexpansion with what is called ‘‘cosmic consciousness,’’ an identification and fusing with the Whole. ‘‘The participant steps across the threshold into the unknown, armed with symbolic tools of self-birth, and enters a universal order that is sacred and immortal.’’29 Eagle Man maintains that ‘‘an individual can expect a strong Vision Quest, providing, of course, that ego is dispensed with and heartful sincerity is demonstrated.’’30 Tom Brown Jr. instructs, The Vision Quest was held in the highest reverence as the ultimate sacrifice of self. ... The quest was the ultimate self-denial, requiring us to fast from all things familiar, including rational thought. It was a ‘little death’ that sacrificed the self for the wisdom of the grander things of life and spirit.31

Cardinal relates, So I said, ‘‘I’m ready to go. I feel at peace with myself.’’ He said, ‘‘It doesn’t matter whether you’re ready or not, you’re coming anyway. You’re still arrogant, you know.’’ ‘‘Yeah, I know, I’m a human being,’’ I said. So I finally went. It seemed like I was a part of everything, and I felt very, very powerful.32

Thus, the individual ego is released in order to fuse or identify with the ff than I had before. I felt purged of my old self Whole. ‘‘I felt far different and pure. ... I felt expansive, balanced, and part of the whole universe.’’33

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

525

The specific form of sociality is complex. In one sense the vision or medicine-dream, is like a sleep-dream, that is, a necessarily solitary form of experience. ‘‘Only you know what you have hidden away, growing steadily and surely with its magical roots in your subsoil.’’34 However, the motivational context (purpose) is a social, communal one. ‘‘Are you crying for a vision for yourself or for your people? If you cry for yourself alone, the heavens will become impenetrable. Your cry will not extend beyond your mouth. No one who lives on this earth has any right to cry exclusively for himself. We are all linked. Our destiny is common.’’35 Selftransformation, revelation, and development are for the good of the entire society. The vision is central to the moral standards with which Indian men were expected to comply. A Winnebago father encourages his son to prepare for a vision. ‘‘You ought to be of some help to your fellow men and for that reason I counsel you to fast. ... Try to have one of our grandfathers, one of the war chiefs [spirits], pity you [bless you].’’36 This most personal of experiences only has significance in the communal context. This principle must be recognized as eidetic and not merely as an empirical generalization. The significance of the medicine-dream must be contextualized and can only be legitimized within the community setting. This is why the medicine-dream does not translate into the individualistic social settings of the dominant culture (never mind its narcissism). The modern person who goes on a ‘‘vision-quest,’’ unless supported by a subculture, is participating in this ritual only in name. The specific time-perspective might be called ‘‘sacred time.’’ ‘‘All around you are features of eternity. ... Eventually you begin to pay attention to eternity.’’37 But this sense of eternity is prepared by the extreme tax put on the mind and body. Leonard Crow Dog states, ‘‘I stayed in the pit. I lost all sense of time, of feeling. I was like dead. I wanted water but tried not to think of it. I was in a different ff world, in a diff fferent dimension.’’ 38 Tom Brown Jr. recollects, ‘‘I was disoriented, out of touch with time, place, and reality.’’39 Cardinal states, ‘‘All of a sudden I felt all of my life.’’40 As in fantasy, time can be stretched in all sorts of ways. But one characteristic of sacred time seems to entail that the now becomes pregnant with the past, present, and future all at once, or with a sense of eternity (atemporality, the unchanging). PLENTY-COUPS’ TWO MEDICINE-DREAMS

Now that the cognitive style of the medicine-dream has been described in its skeletal structure, the immediate motivational contexts, the contents,

526

GARY BACKHAUS

and the symbolic interpretation of Plenty-coups’ two medicine-dreams must be examined. Plenty-coups remarks, ‘‘When I was nine years old, a happening made me feel that I was a grown-up man, almost in a day.’’41 He received the news that the Sioux had killed his brother. My heart fell to the ground and stayed there. I mourned with my father and mother, and alone. I cut my flesh and bled myself weak. I knew now that I must dream if I hoped to avenge my brother, and I at once began to fast in preparation, first taking a sweat-bath to cleanse my body.42

The immediate motivational context is very clear. The because-motive that led to the formulation of the project is that his brother had been killed. The in-order-to motive is to ready himself to avenge his brother’s death. This motivational context involves a crisis situation. Schutz states that in crisis situations gaps or discontinuities are ‘‘left behind that can in principle be explicated in the relevance structures of the other province of reality. ... The ‘inadequacy’ of the relevance structures of everyday life for the explication ... finds its subjective correlate in feelings of reverence, of alienness, or even of a deprecating lack of understanding.’’43 Knowledge in the everyday life-world usually shows itself to be only relatively opaque. The gaps in knowledge can be closed. In a situation of crisis the gaps are not easily mastered. A crisis motivates a ‘leap’ into non-everyday provinces of reality. From these transcendent provinces the insufficiency of the everyday stock of knowledge can be overcome. ‘‘The world can become a mystery that becomes transparent only by means of knowledge superordinated to everyday reality – knowledge of a religious, philosophical, or scientific kind.’’44 Plenty-coups needs to solve the problem of how to deal with his brother’s death. He recognizes that the everyday meaningprovince is insufficient to reveal what is to be done. Schutz states, For the decisions in which everyday reason fails also mainly concern crises of everyday life and encroachments of other provinces of reality into everyday reality. Faced with such decisions and without convincing reasons for one of the alternatives, the actor can often think of no other solution than to seek clues and signs from other provinces. He interprets dreams and consults oracles.45

Death is the transcendent reality that encroaches into Plenty-coups’ everyday life. This crisis event provides the motivational relevance for Plenty-coups to seek ‘‘Helpers’’ through a vision quest. The many details of the medicine-dream are irrelevant for our purposes but the symbolic message is extremely important.

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

527

We, the Dwarfs, the Little-people, have adopted you and will be your Helpers throughout your life. We have no medicine-bundle to give to you. ... Instead we will offer ff advice. Listen! In you, as in all men are natural powers. You have a will. Learn to use it. Make it work for you. Sharpen your senses as you sharpen your knife. ... We can give you nothing. You already possess everything necessary to become great. Use your powers. Make them work for you, and you will become a Chief.46

After Plenty-coups ‘‘awoke’’ from the vision, he states, ‘‘I became very happy. ... I went back to the village, needing no man to tell me the meaning of my dream. I took a sweat-bath and rested in my father’s lodge. I knew myself now.’’47 The medicine-dream grounds a fundamental orientation: one’s self-identity, role in society, and cosmological belongingness. A distinctive feature of the medicine-dream experience can now be explicated. I do not attend a movie or the theatre with the goal specifically in mind of acquiring transcendent meanings that will solve everyday problems. Furthermore, the problems in the movie do not relate (unless incidentally) to my problems in the everyday round. I do not take up the theoretical province of meaning as a scientist to provide myself with insights into my problems in finding a fundamental significance that situates me as a personage in the everyday world. However, the Plains Indian does go on a vision quest in order to gain insight that will help him solve the ‘‘existential’’ problems of everyday life. The contents within the medicine-dream provide prophetic meanings, which spiritually situates the dreamer in the world/cosmos. Thus, by providing access to the spiritual world, the medicine-dream complements the ‘‘paramount’’ reality of the everyday life-world by a transduction of fundamental significance. The everyday gains its appropriate significance in Native culture only from the spiritual transcendent order. A fundamental characteristic of the medicine-dream is the living of its transcendent significance, which orients one’s everyday life to the transduction of spiritual transcendence. The voice of a council messenger beseeching the young men to go on a vision quest incites Plenty-coups’ decision for a second vision quest. The motivational context concerns his desire to further distinguish himself through his deeds. I sat there in my robe, listening till his voice was far off. ff How I wished to count coup, to wear an eagle’s feather in my hair, to sit in the council with my chiefs, holding an eagle’s wing in my hand.48 In order to concretize the project of many achievements (the actual meaning of his name), Plenty-coups needed to acquire transcendent power.

528

GARY BACKHAUS

But, there were many occurrences in his second dream that Plentycoups could not understand. He would have to seek counsel with the elders. Here is one example of the contents that mystified him: I heard the Four Winds rush past me ... , and then I looked at the destruction they had left behind them. Only one tree, tall and straight, was left standing where the great forest had stood. ... I thought it looked sad. What does this mean?49

However, he did decipher that his medicine was to be the Chickadee. In that tree is the lodge of the Chickadee. He is least in strength but strongest of mind among his kind. He is willing to work for wisdom. The Chickadee-person is a good listener. Nothing escapes his ears, which he has sharpened by constant use. Whenever others are talking of their success or failures, there you will find the Chickadee-person listening. ... He never intrudes, never speaks in strange company, and yet never misses a chance to learn from others.50

When he returned to the village, he states, ‘‘they were all very happy, because they knew I now had Helpers and would use my power to aid my people.’’51 After recovering from the ordeal, Plenty-coups was taken to the lodge of the council of elders. Yellow-bear interpreted the symbolic meaning of the dream. In Plenty-coups’ lifetime the buffalo ff will go away forever and be replaced by the white man’s spotted-buffalo, ff and the white man will take and hold the country. Plenty-coups had been told to become a good listener in order to avoid the disasters experienced by others. ‘‘The meaning of his dream is plain to me. I see its warning. The tribes who have fought the white man have all been beaten, wiped out. By listening as the Chickadee listens, we may escape this and keep our lands.’’52 The Four Winds represent the white man. The forest of trees represents the various tribes. The tree left standing by the Winds symbolizes Plenty-coups’ own people, the Crows. The Voice that told Plenty-coups not to enter the lodge filled with baby clothes meant that Plenty-coups would have no children, because as Chief all of the Crows would be his children. This prophetic vision was at the same time Plenty-coups’ personal discovery, an intersubjectively acknowledged meaning-context, and a political prescription to be lived by the tribe. ENCLAVE

An enclave is a meaning-structure that belongs to two provinces of reality. A problem that arises in a certain province of reality is neutralized when

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

529

the accent of reality is placed on another province of reality. However, the gap left behind in the one province may be explicated in accordance with the second province’s relevance structures. By spanning the two provinces, the explicated theme entails symbolization. For example, the problem that is experienced in the sleep-dream world is neutralized upon waking-up – the monster that was chasing me is no longer a problem. As soon as I question what it means to be dreaming about monsters chasing me, I carry out an interpretation (explication) of the dream (the first province) in terms of the everyday world (the second province). The medicine-dream is interpreted from the standpoint of everyday reality, even though it belongs to the transcendent realm in which it had been experienced. Other enclaves also receive symbolic meaning through an interpretation within the province of the everyday realm. One may read a novel and then from the standpoint of the everyday concern oneself with the meaning of the symbolic message encrypted in the novel that serves to say something about the everyday world. Whatever the message, the reader rarely takes up such a symbolization in a way that he lives that message as his destiny. But, in contrast, the symbolization of the medicine-dream enclave is exactly meant to provide the fundamental meaning-context of a person’s life. ‘‘The only way to communicate the experience is not to talk about the vision, but to live it. ... The true power of the Vision Quest cannot be measured except in terms of the process of reincorporation. Only when the vision is tried by existence in the mortal world is its true worth known.’’53 This living of the symbolization is an eidetic principle of the medicine-dream enclave. Another difference ff concerns the temporal dimension of enclaves. When a loved one dies, one turns to religion or philosophy in order to cope through gaining an understanding of the meaning of the death. But after the crisis is over, the enclavic link dissipates. With the medicine-dream, however, the enclavic link remains. The quester learns to live in two worlds. ... One world is sacred, spiritual, eternal. It is the world you stepped into when you crossed the threshold. The other world is mortal, material and subject to change. It is the world you stepped into when you recrossed the threshold. The first is where your vision is conceived; the second world is where you give birth to your vision. ... When the Vision Quest ends, the vision quest of life begins. The terms of this quest are that one learns to walk in balance between two worlds, that one seeks to conceive and then to give birth to vision.54

Thus, once the enclavic link is made, there is no disconnection from the symbolized reality either because a crisis has dissipated or because once

530

GARY BACKHAUS

the meaning is apprehended the symbolized province no longer serves a function. Thus, another eidetic principle is this: there is no residual meaning outside of the enclavic relation, which means that the enclave must be kept in continual existence. This is a logical consequence of the first eidetic principle that it must be lived, for in order to live it, it must remain manifest. It is in light of this understanding that Plenty-coups criticizes the white man. ‘‘We saw that the white man did not take his religion any more seriously than he did his laws. ... These were not our ways. We kept the laws we made and lived our religion’’ [italics mine].55 RELEVANCE STRUCTURES AND HIGHER-LEVEL MEANING-CONTEXTS

Another task is to show how the medicine-dream functions as a relevance system that constitutes a higher-level meaning synthesis. That the vision functions as the thematic kernel of a higher-level meaning-context is well documented. A Vision Quest is done for the purpose of self-improvement. It is done for a deeper insight into the why of our being here. All purposes in the Lakota ceremonies are for the good of the people, for right living, for the improvement of oneself, or for good health. Now, we seek to have the great powers enlighten all peoples, to have the masses of people begin a spiritual journey and wake up to the wisdom of Mother Earth knowledge so that our planet may live.56

The medicine-dream provides guidance in accordance with each phase of life. However you seek your vision ... , it is certain that you seek an answer to how you will live the next phase of your life. If you are young, your vision will lead you toward the fullest possible expression of your potential as you enter adult life. If you are an adult, your vision will guide you in the changes necessary for the life transition you face, the crisis you must endure, or the problems you must solve. If you are very much older, your vision will prepare you for the ultimate transition.57

More succinctly, ‘‘As you grow, the vision grows. There is no other way.’’58 Thus, the vision directs your life. It must be shown how this function is exhibited in the structures of consciousness. Schutz states that discontinuous syntheses are ‘‘bindings-together of other discrete Acts. The unity formed is an articulated unity and is a unity of a higher order. This higher Act ... is both polythetic and synthetic.’’59 He notes that this transformation from multiplicity to unity is extremely important, because it allows action, the execution of a project,

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

531

to be constituted as a unity. Meaning-contexts consist of meanings already constituted in elementary acts of attention that become constituted in a higher-level synthesis as a unified object of monothetic attention. The Indian woman who tidies the lodge, collects kindling, and digs up tubers to make a broth will look back at these activities and say that she finished her morning work – a monothetic ray of attention that has synthesized the polythetic activites. Since the prevalent form of spontaneity of the everyday world is working, which is the carrying out of actions oriented to the future, life in the everyday realm consists of plan hierarchies. An immediate plan fits into the plan for the day, which in turn fits into habitual and developmental plans that unfold over some months or years, which in turn fit into lifeplans. The plan hierarchies are guided by relevance systems that are based on valuations. Schutz states: There accrue to me relevance structures that are combined together into a plan system that is indeed not homogeneous but which appears to me uniform. ... A plan in the foreground of my consciousness ... is determined by a governing interest. However, it is always surrounded with a horizon of meaning to which I can explicatively advert. If I do so, I will discover that the governing interest is connected with other interests, that a goal that is to be actualized is a partial step toward the actualization of higher goals. ... In daily life, acts are components within a higher-order system of plans: for a specific province within the life-world, for the day, for the year, for work and leisure – which in turn have their place in a more or less determined life-plan.60

But what is the determinant of the life-plan, which provides the condition for the life-plan to determine the plan hierarchy? The medicine-dream provides the fundamental meaning of life such that the emergent relevance systems are guided by its parameters, just as ontogenesis unfolds on the basis of phylogenetic guidance. Plan-hierarchies are arranged in accordance with the medicine-dream’s symbolic meaning, which provides the fundamental evaluative principles. ‘‘The top of the mountain is a metaphor for a place about where one has been, where one is, and where one may go. The mountaintop gives perspective on the purpose of creation, which always has purpose. In this appreciation of creation, there is a search for the reason behind anything in which one participates.’’61 This mountaintop is the medicine-dream from which one’s life is illuminated with meaning; the medicine-dream is the determinant of the life-plan. The life of Plenty-coups offers ff an empirical example of a vision-determined life-plan. Now that the symbolic meaning of Plenty-coups’ medicine-dream and how it functions as the thematic kernel for the highest-

532

GARY BACKHAUS

level meaning-context has been exposed, this study can proceed to how this symbolic meaning guided his life, that is, to how Plenty-coups’ planhierarchies were organized in accordance with the medicine-dream. PHASES OF LIFE AND THE GROWTH OF PERSONALITY

The simultaneity and succession of the orders of reality must be carefully described. Various aspects of the personality are integrated differently ff around the medicine dream at various stages of life. These stages include 1) the lived-experience before the medicine-dream, 2) the conjoining rites of passage that prepare the seeker to have the vision, 3) the rites that are practiced after the medicine-dream, and 4) the life of the person after having had the experience. Plenty-coups becomes familiar to us as a personal ideal-type (characterological type) by the way the medicinedream guided the higher level synthesized meaning-contexts that integrate the various finite provinces of meaning constituted by relevance systems at these various stages in Plenty-coups’ life. The counterpointal structure exhibited in the simultaneity of sub-worlds that are experienced within the horizonal field of experience points to the character of the personality. Some people are predominantly ‘‘dreamers,’’ others are oriented to concrete facts – ‘‘realists,’’ and still others formulate projects of which they concretize with single-minded purpose – ‘‘doers.’’ As various realms of reality are actively lived simultaneously (integrated in counterpointal harmony) various levels of the personality are actively engaged. Leaps to different ff orders of reality function as the exchange of themes and horizons – something within the field of consciousness takes the place of that which had just now been in the immediate kernel of reality. This is generally the case, but the exchange addressed here is the leap into a different ff finite province of meaning. For example, as an Indian hunter actively engages the everyday world of working by stalking the buffalo, ff he may contemplate the symbolic meaning of hunting buffalo ff as when the Buff ffalo Calf Woman appeared to the hunters and taught the Indians (Sioux) the sacred rites. He may also fantasize about providing a huge feast of buffalo ff meat for members of his band, if he is lucky on this particular day. Thus, the relevance system creates a higher-level meaning-context and interconnects the everyday world of working with a symbolic world belonging to the spiritual world and with a fantasy world that could lead to the formulation of a project within the everyday reality. So, there is both a horizontal structure based on the unidirectionality duration that exchanges themes and horizons by leaps and there is a vertical structure based on the

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

533

counterpoint of simultaneously lived-orders in a higher-level meaningcontext that integrates the leaps on the basis of relevance. At the beginning of the ethnography Linderman negotiates with Plentycoups to tell of his life. Coyote-runs encourages Plenty-coups. We trust Sign-talker. ... Begin at the beginning You are sunk in this ground here up to your armpits. You were told in your dream that you would have no children of your own blood, but that the Crows, all, would be your children. Y Your medicine-dream pointed the way of your life, and you have followed it. Begin at the beginning [italics mine].62

Implicit in Coyote-runs prompting is that Plenty-coups’ medicine-dream is guiding him even in this instance of relating his life’s story. The medicine-dream, which, then, guides the objectivation of an oral autobiographical province of meaning, provides the objectivation its for-the-sakeof-which, i.e., its fundamental purpose. There exists an intersubjective context in which dreams are not only shared, but are implicated in a higher social synthesis. The interrelation of dreams and knowledge of others’ dreams provide a contextual basis for intersubjective societal praxis. My grandfather, who had given me my name, had told my mother that I should live to count many coups and be old. His dream had also told him that I should be a chief ‘‘I name him Aleek-cheaahoosh [Many Achievements],’’ he told my mother, ‘‘because in my dream I saw him count many coups.’’ Of course all the people knew this, and even as a boy I felt obliged to excel my companions, to be a leader among those of my own age. I must live up to my name, you see; and now I was beginning to think of dreaming.63

Thus, the medicine-dream is related to his grandfather’s prior sleepdream, which created an intersubjective meaning-context based on transcendent orders of reality. Sleep-dreams are also extremely important in Indian culture and this is why Plenty-coups took his grandfather’s dream very seriously. Children raised in traditional homes, in their early years before attending American-style schools, learn to remember, talk about, sort, interpret, catalogue, and recall specific vivid details of virtually hundreds of dreams.64

After telling Linderman the contents of his first medicine-dream Plentycoups is a bit shaken. Here the old Chief, as though struck with remorse, turned his head aside and whispered, ‘‘O Little-people, you who have been my good Helpers through a long life, forgive me if I have done wrong in telling this to Sign-talker. I believed I was doing right. Be kind. I shall see you very soon and explain all.’’65

534

GARY BACKHAUS

Plenty-coups is showing respect for what should or should not be communicated in the everyday realm about a transcendent experience. Implicit here is the fact that Plenty-coups is telling about his life to Linderman because he truly believes that it will be good for his people. Ultimately, all good for his people is related to the meaning-context of keeping their sacred lands. Keeping the lands is the ‘‘for-the-sake-of-which’’ Plentycoups has Helpers (who had adopted him in his vision) from the spirit world. Thus, what he will explain to his Helpers is that he is divulging sacred happenings because in this instance it is exactly what is necessary to help him to carry out his sacred responsibility. By providing the story of his life, Plenty-coups is once again instantiating the philosophy of the tribe, which is corroborated by Coyote-runs and Plain-bull. [Coyote-runs and Plain-bull] said that the dream of the Chief was well known to all the tribe. ... ‘‘We traveled by that dream,’’ said Coyote-runs. ‘‘The men who sat in that lodge when Plenty-coups told what he had seen and heard knew a heap better than he did that it was time the Crows turned their faces another way. They saw it was best to do something to prove their friendship to white men, and they began to watch for a chance, too.’’66

This philosophy enters into the province of political policy and action. The medicine-dream, then, relates to cross-cultural associations and negotiations. But when I fought with the white man against them it was not because I loved him or because I hated the Sioux and Cheyenne, but because I saw that this was the only way we could keep our lands. Look at our country! It was chosen by my people out of the heart of the most beautiful land on all the world, because we were wise. And it was my dream that taught us the way.67

So, Plenty-coups’ autobiographical conversation with Linderman is an instance of this political policy. Throughout his life objects and events occurring in the everyday province were taken by Plenty-coups as symbols that were prophetic of future events. These events had been foretold in the medicine-dream. Gaps in Plenty-coups’ knowledge, in this case how he would distinguish himself as a young warrior, were filled through these enclavic epiphanies. ‘‘Everything foretold by my great dream has come to pass. All through my life I have seen signs that told me to go ahead, that all would be according to my dream.’’68 Plenty-coups relates that he received his first sign when he was twelve years old. A fog was over the plains and the sun was dim. Looking towards the sun, Plenty-coups saw a war-shield

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

535

bearing two scalps. Plenty-coups asks Yellow-crow, who was with Plentycoups, what he saw. ‘‘ ‘Your shield!’ he said, surprised. ‘And there are two scalps on it!’ I knew then that I should soon take the scalps of two enemies; and I did. ... My first and second were the riders of the white and black horses, counted in the dream-lodge by the Chief of the Dwarfs.’’69 Plenty-coups’ medicine-dream prescribed intersubjective meanings such that symbolization could be verified in everyday communication. Plenty-coups many times in his autobiographical conversations alludes to the potency of his medicine. He attributes his survival and relatively few bodily traumas to the protection of his medicine. One cold day in winter we were packing in buffalo ff meat on a horse not yet broken to ride. He got away from me and let me have both hind feet. They broke my jaw, so that after spitting out most of my teeth on the snow, I was obliged to tie it together to hold it up where it belonged. ... Excepting that scar and a place on my side where a bullet burned me, I have no marks on my body that I did not make myself. I have been lucky. My medicine is very strong.70

He closes his description of a fight with the Sioux by saying, ‘‘My medicine was strong that day. It has always been strong.’’71 He began relating the incident by telling how he addressed his medicine. O Chickadee! ... I saw the Four Winds strike down the great forest. I saw only one tree, when they had finished. The Four Winds did not harm you. Chickadee. You told me to use the powers that Ah-badt-dadt-deah had given me, to listen as you did, and I should succeed. I have tried to follow your advice, shall always follow it. Help me now! The Four Winds are before me, the Four Winds who are the enemies of my people. Help me to strike them! Help me to count coup against them and to carry one of their scalps to my people whom I have promised to see again in two more days. As you stood alone in that great forest against the Four Winds, help me today to stand alone against my enemies.72

In ‘‘prayer’’ Plenty-coups sets up a communicative relation with the spirit world to help with the affairs ff of the everyday world. He reminds the Chickadee-Person that he has been committed to his medicine-dream and is following his destiny. He is beseeching the Chickadee-Person to complement his commitment with spiritual aid (medicine). Episodes in Plenty-coups’ life show that he did develop his rational powers along with a keen sense of perception as he had been advised to do by the Dwarf-Chief in his medicine-dream. An incident of stolen horses illustrates these capacities quite well. One hundred horses were stolen from the tribe one night. Plenty-coups studied the one piece of evidence, a single boot-track in a patch of snow. ‘‘The man had mounted a horse

536

GARY BACKHAUS

just there, on the near side as a white man does, and yet the boot-track did not turn out enough at the toe to make me certain the horse thieves had been white men.’’73 No one agreed with Plenty-coups, so he decided to count on his dreams. He took a sweat-bath, plunged into the icy river, and then slept. ‘‘One of the Little-people came to me in a dream ... ‘My son, you were in the mountains and have come back to gain a good bay horse and a pinto. They shall be yours if you follow the trail of the Sioux who have robbed you’.’’74 After relating how this bore true, Plenty-coups states, ‘‘I had felt certain after seeing the first boot-track, anyway, and my dream had assured me they were Indians.’’75 Plenty-coups uses his natural talents as he was told to do in his medicine-dream. Upon doing this in successful fashion, that is, making the correct judgment, he receives corroboration from the spirit world. Power came to man in dreams or visions. Once it was obtained, it became as much a part of the individual as his physique and his character. Like that of the animals through whom it was bestowed, it was specific and limited to particular areas of achievement. Furthermore, as a trust, it carried grave responsibilities.76

This power was obviously recognized by members of his tribe, but also, through external symbolization, was recognized by enemy tribes. Plenty-coups relates an incident in which his war party won a skirmish through the power of his medicine even though greatly outnumbered by the Sioux warriors. ‘‘Then they split into two parties, riding past us out of range, with many more coming – all doing as they had done, avoiding us altogether. They might easily have ridden us down, but they feared my medicine! It was very strong that day.’’77 Linderman explains, Let an Indian see a Sign, feel in the presence of danger that his own medicine is adequate, and he will stop at nothing. Probably because of his bold attack from the buffalo-wallow, ff which broke their charging line – nine against many – the Sioux in this instance believed that Plenty-coups was invulnerable. His medicine was powerful, they were sure, and therefore they avoided further conflict with him.78

Strong medicine leads Indians to feats beyond which they think themselves naturally capable. In Plenty-coups’ case, this was tempered by sound judgment based upon superior natural abilities of discernment. Plenty-coups interprets that his natural talents were complemented by his medicine given that in fact he used his natural talents in accordance with the significance of his medicine-dream. Plenty-coups and Big-shoulder were crossing a river at night in order to flee from the Sioux Indians. Big-shoulder’s horse gave up and stopped

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

537

swimming. When that happens, the horse will usually drown. Plentycoups had to do something to save his friend. He beseeched the Littlepeople to help his friend. He tossed a rope over the gray horse he had stolen from the Sioux and let him go. He seemed to understand and turned downstream toward Big Shoulder, who caught him. They reached the shore far below, and when I saw them coming out of the angry water, I thanked the Little-people with all my heart. ‘‘Your gray Sioux saved my life,’’ he said. ‘‘Your medicine sent him to me when I needed him. I should not now be alive if he had not come’’79

Plenty-coups’ medicine is efficacious in the aid of Others and thus it is interpreted within the contexts of everyday life as being appropriate for a great Chief. Plenty-coups had visited Mount Vernon and stood beside the tomb of the first white Chief George Washington. ‘‘When people think deeply they are helped, and in the silence there I sent my thoughts to the Great White Chief in that other life. I spoke to him, and I believe he heard me.’’80 ‘‘I, too, have a country to save for my children.’’81 Plenty-coups decided to emulate Washington by leaving his land to his people for a park. ‘‘I have spent my life here. This spot was shown me in my great medicine-dream, and I want my people to possess it forever.’’82 At the end of the autobiography Plenty-coups implores Sign-talker, ‘‘Help my people keep their lands. Help them to hold forever the Pryor and Bighorn mountains. They love them as I do and deserve to have them for the help they have given the white man, who now owns all.’’83 In the context of facing the end of his life, the autobiographical conversation serves as political negotiations and an ethical plea for help that will extend beyond his lifetime. Thus, the meaning-context of his medicine-dream extends into the future, which is to maintain the lands of the Crows as the place specific enclave between the spirit world and the everyday life-world of the Crow people.

BOUNDARIES AND TRANSCENDENCE

Every human experience includes a co-experience of transcendence. Every person runs into the boundaries that surround the multifarious forms of experience. Boundaries disclose transcendence. This disclosure is not the result of inference; transcendence belongs to the fundamental structures of experience. Every person distinguishes her experiences according to whether or not an experience is self-related or Other-directed. Experiences that present themselves as not originating from the Self, then, are distin-

538

GARY BACKHAUS

guished as a transcendent Other-reality. Schutz remarks that this basic distinction between Ego-related and Ego-transcendent experience underlies the knowledge of world-transcendence. This distinction rests on an even more fundamental distinction: the fact that a present kernel of experience always points to something that is not immediately present, but which is co-experienced. These two fundamental structures are the foundation for the consciousness of the boundaries of experiences that constitute the stratifications of the life-world. Schutz describes three levels of transcendence. Little transcendencies are those in which the transcendent content that is indicated is just as presentable as that which is presented here/now. For example, from my current computer station, I cannot see the back-side where the components are wired and plugged. However, if I modify my posture, that profile of the object would be presentified and no longer co-experienced as transcendent to my immediate gaze. Medium transcendencies are those in which the indicated, although presented in mediate fashion, can never be more than indicated. The Other’s subjectivity is indicated by her bodyexpressivity, that is, it will remain as given indirectly in inadequate intuition. The great transcendencies are absolutely not experienceable within the same finite province of meaning. The non-experienceable, Schutz tells us, manifests itself in ciphers and secret languages that we do not know. A medicine-dream is experienced and its happenings can be remembered and straightforwardly described – the sequence of the experienced events that comprise it. This great transcendent event is given symbolic meaning that is transmitted to the everyday from the spirit world. Symbolization is the power of the spirit world permeating the everyday with these specific meanings. Symbolic meaning is the translation of a transcendent experience into the everyday. This point was implicitly illustrated when Linderman implored Plenty-coups to tell him about the planting of the tobacco-seed ceremony, which had originated in an ancient dream. As happened before when I tried to get this ceremony straight in my mind, I could not understand and questioned further. Twice the old man went over the puzzling points, and twice I was obliged to admit my in ability to grasp them. ‘‘Ho!’’ he said, suddenly dropping the whole question. ‘‘There is Something here! Something that does not wish you to understand. Do not try, Sign-talker. Let it alone.’’84

This phenomenon could be labeled the problem of esoteric knowledge. Linderman was only approaching the meaning from a non-symbolic point of view. The symbolic meaning could not have made sense to him unless

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

539

he could become empathic to the great transcendency, which is an impossibility – it is a cipher. ECSTACIES AND CRISES: TWO FORMS OF GREAT TRANSCENDENCIES

Two forms of great transcendencies are of particular interest to us for our description of the vision quest: ecstacies and crises. The common denominator for all ectasies is that the everyday is abandoned in the wide-awake state. Everyday life loses the accent of reality in favor of the ecstatic state. Schutz and Luckmann state, ‘‘After the return to the reality of everyday life, they can be evoked as memories – and ‘translated’ into language – be interpreted as indications, formulated into symbols ... , and processed into systems of special knowledge.’’85 Schutz mentions that there are many occasions for boundary crossings and that there are as many attempts to repress these occasions. Danger is connected with the extraordinary, which can motivate deterrence as well as attraction. ‘‘An urgent case of ‘imposed’ heightening of the tension of consciousness typically performed in leaps, is extreme, helpless anxiety. Something extraordinary that brings mortal danger (for the individual person, everything that endangers life is extraordinary) assaults a person and compels his attention.’’86 Douglas Cardinal remarks of the anxiety endured during his medicine-dream: ‘‘I said. ‘Yes, but I want to live another second!’ I cried and I bargained. And I said, ‘No I want one more second, just one more second longer.’ There was no way. I was being more and more pulled out of my body. I just didn’t want to go.’’87

The crisis that is experienced in the medicine-dream is the very condition for the possibility of its ecstatic vision. Death is the only great transcendency that is crossable only in one direction. However, in a serious crisis, knowledge of one’s death accompanies each conscious thought. ‘‘The thought of death is then imposed upon the thought of one’s own future.’’88 Douglas Cardinal provides testimony of the change in attitude upon facing death in his medicine-dream. ‘‘I’d thought I was going to live forever and I had all these loose ends.’’89 As Schutz says, ‘‘A person can become frantic from fear of dying and either plunge into ecstasy or freeze into a stupor.’’90 In the duress of the vision quest the dreamer is carried along and usually is unable to block the crisis that eventually leads to the ecstatic vision (if the crisis is blocked, then there will be no vision). Douglas Cardinal relates how he was brought back from the spirit world.

540

GARY BACKHAUS

I said to that being, whatever it was, ‘‘Can I go back for a minute and see that day?’’ He said, ‘‘Well, you’re a free spirit, you make your choice.’’ I said, ‘‘I’ll just check in for a minute and come right back.’’ I came back in my body and opened my eyes and saw that day. It was a beautiful, fantastic day. I never had seen a day like that. I’d never really looked. The elder said, ‘‘See what a beautiful day it is and how wonderful it is to be alive?’’ I said, ‘‘Yes, it’s just beautiful.’’91

The very nature of the medicine dream involves putting the mind and body in a crisis situation, which includes very real feelings of vulnerability and mortality. But the ecstatic vision emerging out of crisis is the catalyst for personal transformation. Enduring and surviving the crisis yields the fruits of ecstasy. BOUNDARY CROSSINGS

Indications, marks, signs, and symbols are the means for crossing the boundaries of existence. With the exception of the symbolic appresentation, the three terms of the appresentational relation – the appresenting and the appresented members of the pair and the interpreter – pertain to the same level of reality. ... The symbolic reference, however, is characterized by the fact that it transcends the finite province of meaning of everyday life so that only the appresenting member of the related pair pertains to it, whereas the appresented member has its reality in another finite province of meaning. ... We can, therefore, redefine the symbolic relationship between entities belonging to at least two finite provinces of meaning so that the appresenting symbol is an element of the paramount reality of everyday life.92

Appresentations are active performances that are based on more primitive syntheses of association, pairing. Associative pairing occurs when there is the simultaneous presence of two givens. By contrast, appresentation involves the synthesis of the present and the ‘‘non-present.’’ The synthesis fuses the two such that one perception simultaneously presents and appresents. Symbols are bridges across the great transcendencies, which involves overcoming the partitioning of the sub-worlds. In symbolic relations, that which is appresented is not merely absent; it belongs to a completely different ff finite reality than the vehicle of meaning. When the boundary is crossed there is no need for symbolization, because the other reality, in this case the spirit world that is entered through the medicinedream, is immediately experienced. The memory of the experience indicates the other reality, but the function of the symbols is to anchor the meaning of that other reality. Appresentation is an absence-in-presence. Since the medicine-dream experience is a transcendent experience absent to the presentations of the

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

541

everyday, it remains appresented, unless opened up to vivid memory. But, even in vivid memory, the original experience is appresented. Nevertheless, it is this absence, which functions as the progenitor for meaning, that infuses the present with meaning. Schemata are always on hand to fulfill this function. But there is a peculiar structure manifest in this appresentation. It is not the nature of the present experience that calls forth appropriate appresented contents out of the horizon; it is the appresented contents of the medicine-dream that ubiquitously bestow significance on each present experience. Truth does not lie in the insignificant appearances of the everyday world but in the great cosmic forces which course through this world, in the exemplary events recounted in myth and repeated in ritual, and in all that gives meaning to appearances rather than receiving it from them.93

Life is no longer ruled by the parameters of the everyday, and especially not by so-called ‘‘common-sense,’’ but is ruled by the significance of the medicine-dream. ‘‘There is a fluidity and transparency to their apperceptions of the phenomenal world which permits no absolute line to be drawn, for example, between the worlds of animals, men, or spirits.’’94 The new function of appresentation in this re-structuring in the meaning of life is an eidetic structure constitutive of this style of being. It is evident in Plenty-coups’ actions that he seeks verification within the everyday world from the spirit world and thus the disclosure of truth within the everyday world requires a symbolic relation. Schutz points out that symbols also function to assist the crossing of boundaries to transcendent realities. Symbols are employed during the vision quest in order to promote the vision, which then in turn, is symbolized upon one’s returning to the cognitive style of the everyday round. In the fasting process ‘‘the seeker empties the body so that the spirit may be filled. By eliminating food from the system, you symbolically encourage death, who waits to fill your emptiness. Living thus in the proximity of death, life is enhanced, made brilliant and terrifying.’’95 ‘‘The heaping of stones is an ancient practice, a symbolic act of communication, a mute affirmation. ... The stones then are symbolic of the fragile, precious link that exists between us all. ... The stonepile is a symbol of love.96 ‘‘The process of giving oneself a name is potent medicine. The specific object of self-mythology is to transform, or energize, oneself by giving oneself a name or story.’’97 The circle of stones is symbolically the place ‘‘where you will wait through the last night for death. ... By making yourself ready to die you give birth to yourself. The circle of stones is

542

GARY BACKHAUS

transformed from a grave to a symbolic vaginal opening in the earth. ... When the dying is done, there is birth.’’98 These structures are rightly called symbols in Schutz technical sense, because they fill the gap of knowledge across two provinces of meaning – the sacred and the everyday. MULTIPLE REALITIES: THE GESTALT TYPICALITY OF THE LIVED-CONTEXT

Lived-experience consists of multiple layers of meanings that trace their origins to various finite provinces of reality. Any given meaning-context exhibits the character of counterpoint, which is achieved through the simultaneous and successive combinations of meanings from the various provinces. Life is a multi-verse that is unified in the synthesis of experience. The totality of experiences is the meaning-context, ‘‘my life,’’ but this highest-level meaning-context consists of a tremendously large volume of appresented elements that are organized into hierarchies of meaningcontexts. Plenty-coups’ autobiography is a re-presentation of many elements that constitute the meaning-context, ‘‘my life,’’ and provides evidence that characterizes the typical multi-verse of the Plains Indians, which contrasts with modern Western culture. Descriptions of cultural observers and testimonies of insiders corroborate the cultural patterns that constitute the Plains Indians’ life-world as exemplified in the autobiography of Plenty-coups. In Western culture, the provinces of reality are highly compartmentalized. The everyday province of reality is highly differentiated ff from spirituality, dreams, art, and theoretical worlds. Although much of the everyday world is inundated by the fantasy worlds of entertainment, the everyday round and the intrusion of fantasy are separable from the standpoint of the tenets of the everyday world. Meanings that are not so separable are the ideological meanings inscribed in the everyday world through various media. However, with this high degree of differentiation, ff common sense is also highly differentiated ff as a cognitive hegemony, and its meanings supervene and cancel other meaning forms, e.g., ‘‘superstition’’ – complexes of meaning stigmatized from the standpoint of common sense. The cognitive character of the wide-awakeness in everyday life is dominated by linear, rational control of the everyday strata in accordance with the working embodied agency. There is recognition of other forms of thinking only to the extent that they ultimately serve the linear progression that is measured in the form of positive, measurable results. The objective quality of common sense is extended by theoretical science, which in

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

543

accordance with the notion of an objective world, attempts to ascertain empirical generalizations. Aspects of reality, or finite provinces of meaning, that are somehow connected with ‘‘subjectivity’’ are considered at best less real. These provinces still retain a kernel of the real, because they are seen as being ultimately reducible to the causal objectivity of the world. Any subjective phenomenon is ‘‘really real’’ only to the extent that it receives an objective explanation. Thus the multi-verse, is folded into the tendency toward a reductive naturalism, which, in modern Western culture, is seen as reflecting the fundamental character of the W universe. This cultural paradigm has loosened somewhat, but nevertheless still underlies Western culture’s basic character. This is especially obvious when that culture is compared with so-called ‘primitive cultures.’ The Plains Indians’ multi-verse, as any culture’s life-world must, also obviously consists of the everyday finite province of meaning. This parameter of life is distinguishable, but it is not partitioned. Plains Indian culture, like any culture, by no means lacks the ability to grasp the empirical differences ff of things. But in his conception of nature and life all these differences ff are obliterated by a stronger feeling: the deep conviction of a fundamental and indelible solidarity of life that bridges over the multiplicity and variety of its single forms.99

Unlike modern Western culture, their ‘‘everyday life-world’’ is permeated with symbolic meanings. This point is exhibited by the fact that these cultures do not have something called ‘art.’ ‘‘They do, however, possess a concept of living, which, in Western interpretation, might seem like art.’’100 This living, which is a symbiotic participation in the world, permeates the spatial stratifications of the life-world. The primal mind knows space experientially. This affective ff relationship with space of the primal person, does not limit his experience to pragmatic spatial actions, for he sees space as the sacred theatre of his life and the ritual umbilical cord that forever connects him to his divine parent, the Earth.101

Thus, it is not that the everyday aspect cannot be distinguished, but the everyday receives its significance from provinces that transcend it. Without this symbolic relation, a phenomenon would lose its significance. There is no such thing as the ‘‘pure province’’ of the everyday life-world permeated by common sense, which in the final tally adjudicates matters and holds constitutive hegemony in Western culture. As a fundamental inhibitor to the hegemony of common sense, the medicine-dream serves to interfuse the everyday round and the spirit world.

544

GARY BACKHAUS

The vision experience served in an especially forceful manner to render transparent to the individual some facet of the phenomenal world, revealing aspects of a spiritual world of greater reality underlying this world of appearances. In and through such qualities of experience, consciously or not, those barriers are dissolved that have tended to set apart what is experienced as an ‘‘outer world’’; the vision integrates and interrelates these ‘‘inner’’ and ‘‘outer’’ worlds into one.102

After the medicine-dream the specific content apprehended in the vision is the catalyst for the interfusion that then constitutes the significance of all phenomena. In modern Western cultures the everyday life-world is disconnected from any symbolic relation. However, it is ‘‘natural’’ for human beings to live, or at least entertain, these connections, even if to do so is discouraged rather than encouraged. So, the symbolic relations that would promote an interfusion are considered incidental, accidental, individual, and subjective in modern Western culture. Such meanings are considered ‘‘personal beliefs,’’ which are to be expunged from the intersubjective transactions of the everyday world. For the Plains Indians’ cultures, reality is subjective. ‘‘The visionary mode of thought unique to many primal people, the so-called subjective aspect of consciousness, determines their reality.’’103 ‘‘The Vision Quest was Grandfather’s guiding force, not only in matters of the spirit, but also throughout everyday life’’ [italics mine].104 Symbolic relations are inter-subjective phenomena within the living of the everyday round. ‘‘No one in these societies, it was believed, could have success in any of the activities of culture without the unique spiritual power received through the quest.’’105 The symbolism is lived intersubjectively as the destiny of the tribe. ‘‘Something of this power received by the individual was communicated to the people generally, not only through the special personality of the individual concerned, but the recipient was also required to publicly externalize the experience.’’106 Common sense knowledge, e.g., when to gather firewood, how to fish, only has significance owing to the permeation of symbolism that disallows its functioning in a pure manner – which could be called the pragmatic reduction of knowledge. The vision quest serves to heighten the diminution of common sense. The altered states within the vision quest wholly suspend the workings of rational, linear thinking. The fear experienced during the quest comes from the loss of the capacity for linear thinking and rational control, which allows for the vision to appear. It is not the case that a Plains Indian neither experiences nor uses these capacities. Rather, linear, rational thinking is exorcised through the vision and afterwards it is tempered and suffused ff with a higher form of sense-bestowal.

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

545

In the Vision Quest there is nothing but monotony for the mind. There the mind falters, then sleeps, allowing the real self, the self directed by the heart, to speak. Then and only then, during the sleep of the logical mind, do all the external shoulds that govern our mind slip away. Reality is then pure.107

Here symbolizations interfuse the life-world with layers of meaning, while the everyday world of modern Western culture is monopolized by the common sense version of reality. Primal consciousness is larger than the psychological geography by which the West knows it. It overflows linearity in dreams, imagining, visions, intuitions, and all those quintessential and amorphous experiences that must call upon metaphor in order to surface into Western mentality.108

Only the pure-self experiences pure reality, but the pure-self is a symbiosis. ‘‘Once the thought is pure, the true self is released, and the deepest yearnings and feelings become reality.’’109 But this is not the authenticity of existentialism. The realization of the true self ‘‘prepares the soul for communication and understanding with the spirit world. ... It is then that the quest gives us a Vision, a command from the Creator, and a grand purpose to life.’’110 Everything that would be accomplished from the standpoint of common sense in modern Western culture is still accomplished but from the standpoint of a higher vision and directedness. The trivialities that are so important to common sense are put into perspective as life serves a deeper purpose. CLOSING REMARKS

A few remarks are now possible concerning a characterology of Plentycoups. His leadership depended on his great abilities for rational linear thinking, but this natural talent is informed and permeated by the transcendent connection to the medicine-dream. His rational powers and perceptual perspicuity are used in tandem with his medicine and do not have potency without the medicine. In the description of his exploits, it is obvious that he exhibited great intelligence as a problem-solver, great courage as a warrior, and great diplomacy in political life. All of these aspects of Plenty-coups’ personality are molded in the relevance structure determined by the significance of his medicine-dreams. A worthy avenue of research would be to relate Plenty-coups’ life to other great leaders that have been spiritually guided such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. One would then compare how a transcendent meaning-context

546

GARY BACKHAUS

bestows significance on a specific life, and then one would be able to differentiate ff the characterologies of specific historical personages within the typicality of the particular cultural milieu. However, the medicinedream is not a guide for the leaders of humanity only, it is meant to be a guide for everyone. Each of us can form a connection with the cosmos and experience our true selves and become rooted to a community in a primordial way. The Red-World is the milieu that satisfies the necessary conditions for the fulfillment of a medicine-dream, symbolic reality is its reality. Morgan State University M

NOTES 1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘From Maus to Claude Levi-Strauss,’’ in Signs, Richard C. McCleary (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 123. 2 I express my thanks to Reverend Amy Paul (Blessing Bird) who has encouraged my study of Native American ways. The Native American literature cited in this essay had been accessed at her library, ‘‘The Hungry Mouse Native American Research Library’’ in Havre de Grace, Maryland. 3 I use the word, ‘symbol,’ in a technical sense that is defined within the parameters of Schutz’s theory of multiple realities. A symbol is a meaning that spans two provinces of reality. 4 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘The Philosopher and Sociology,’’ in his Signs, op. cit., pp. 98–113. 5 I will use vision quest and medicine-dream interchangeably. The vision of the vision quest occurs in the medicine-dream. The medicine-dream could be in the form of a hallucination, or an intense ‘‘daydream’’ in half-awakedness, a sleep-dream, or any combination of altered states due to physical stress from fasting and bodily duress fatigue as well as great mental stress. 6 Frank B. Linderman, Plenty-coups, Chief of the Crows (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1930), p. 28. 7 Alfred Schutz, ‘‘Symbol, Reality and Society,’’ in T he Problem of Social Reality: Collected Papers I, Maurice Natanson (ed.) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1962), p. 331. P 8 Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), p. 83. 9 Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, Richard M. Zaner (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 1–15. 10 See William James, ‘‘The Perception of Reality,’’ in T he Principles of Psychology, Volume T wo (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1950), pp. 283–324. 11 See Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, ‘‘Provinces of Reality with Finite MeaningStructure,’’ in T he Structures of the L ife-World. Richard M. Zaner and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 22–34 (This is an opus on which Alfred Schutz worked intensively in the last year of his life, one meant to gather into a connected argument his various writings on the life-world. The work was

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

547

completed by Thomas Luckmann, following Schutz’s outline, detailed references to his published work, and drafts and notes of new analyses.) 12 See Schutz and Luckmann (1973), op. cit., ‘‘Stratifications of the Everyday Life-World,’’ pp. 35–36. 13 The description of the cognitive style of the medicine dream is based on documentary evidence written by Native Americans of their experiences and of the practice of the vision quest. Ed McGaa (Eagle Man) is a contemporary Oglala Sioux. Douglas Cardinal is an Indian who lives in Canada. Leonard Crow Dog is a medicine-man and is a descendent of a long lineage of medicine-men of the Lakota Sioux. Sun Bear is Chippewa and his disciples, Foster and Little, are whites who learned the ‘‘Red Road.’’ John Redtail Freesoul is a Cheyenne-Arapahoe. Black Elk is Oglala Sioux. Jamake Highwater is Blackfeet/Cherokee. Joseph Epes Brown grew up with the Wabanaki Tribe in Maine. Tom Brown Jr. is an expert tracker/hunter/survivalist who is connected with the People of the Thunder Society. Mark St. Pierre and Tilda Soldier are Oglala Sioux. 14 Tom Brown Jr., T he V ision (New York: Berkeley Books, 1988), p. 133. 15 Ed McGaa, Eagle Man, M Mother Earth Spirituality Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1990), p. 75. 16 Leonard Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Crow Dog: Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995), p. 89. 17 Dennis H. McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, ‘‘Dancing with Chaos: An Interview with Douglas Cardinal,’’ in their IIndian from the Inside (Thunder Bay: Centre for Northern Studies, Lakehead University, 1993), p. 71. 18 Ibid., p. 72. 19 The Sun Bear literature is a series of books that have been published by Sun Bear and various of his followers. 20 Steven Foster and Meredith Little, T he Book of the V ision Quest: Personal T ransformation in the W ilderness, A Sun Bear Book (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987), p. 33. 21 John Redtail Freesoul, Breath of the Invisible: T he Way of the Pipe (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1986). p. 37. 22 Lindermann, op. cit., pp. 59–60. 23 McPherson and Rabb, op. cit., p. 72. 24 Foster and Little, op. cit., p. 45. 25 Linderman, op. cit., pp. 61–62. 26 Ibid., p. 64. 27 William Stoltzman SJ (First Eagle), How to T ake Part in L akota Ceremonies (Pine Ridge: Red Cloud Indian School, 1988), p. 45. 28 McPherson and Rabb, ‘‘The Phenomenology of the Vision Quest,’’ in op. cit., p. 62. 29 Foster and Little, op. cit, p. 33. 30 McGaa, op. cit., p. 79. 31 Brown Jr., op. cit., p. 125. 32 McPherson and Rabb, op. cit., p. 73. 33 Brown Jr., op. cit., p. 135. 34 Foster and Little, op. cit., p. 54. 35 Ibid., p. 48. Native North American Spirituality: Sacred Myths, Dreams, 36 Elisabeth Tooker (ed.), N V isions, Speeches, Healing Formulas, Rituals and Ceremonies (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 70–71. 37 Foster and Little, op. cit., p. 41.

548

GARY BACKHAUS

38 Leonard Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, op. cit., p. 88. 39 Brown Jr., op. cit., p. 132. 40 McPherson and Rabb, op. cit., p. 72. 41 Linderman, op. cit., p. 33. 42 Ibid., p. 34. 43 Schutz and Luckmann (1973), op. cit., pp. 127–128. 44 Ibid., p. 171. 45 Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, T he Structures of the L ife-World, Volume II, Richard M. Zaner and David J. Parent (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989), pp. 41–42. See the remark on this work in n. 11 supra. 46 Linderman, op. cit., pp. 42–43. 47 Ibid., p. 44. 48 Ibid., p. 57. 49 Ibid., p. 66. 50 Ibid., pp. 66–67. 51 Ibid., p. 69. 52 Ibid., p. 73. 53 Foster and Little, op. cit., p. 52. 54 Ibid., p. 53. 55 Linderman, op. cit., p. 228. 56 McGaa, op. cit., p. 78. 57 Foster and Little, op. cit., p. 49. 58 Ibid., p. 54. 59 Alfred Schutz, T he Phenomenology of the Social World, George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), p. 68. 60 Schutz and Luckmann (1973), op. cit., p. 19. 61 Gregory Cajete, N Native Science: Natural L aws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), p. 45. 62 Linderman, op. cit., p. 5. 63 Ibid., p. 28. 64 Mark St. Pierre and Tilda Soldier, W Walking in the Sacred Manner (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 105–106. 65 Ibid., p. 47. 66 Ibid., p.75. 67 Ibid., p. 78. 68 Ibid., pp. 82–83. 69 Ibid., p. 83. 70 Ibid., p. 115. 71 Ibid., p. 147. 72 Ibid., p. 143. 73 Ibid., p. 244. 74 Ibid., p. 245. 75 Ibid., p. 248. 76 Royal B. Hassrick, T he Sioux (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), p. 269. 77 Ibid., pp. 274–275. 78 Ibid., p. 276. 79 Ibid., p. 148. 80 Ibid., p. 239.

MEDICINE-DREAMS OF CHIEF PLENTY-COUPS

549

81 Ibid., p. 240. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., p. 308. 84 Ibid., pp. 97–98. 85 Schutz and Luckmann (1989), op. cit., p. 123. 86 Ibid., p. 124. 87 McPherson and Rabb, op. cit., p. 72. 88 Schutz and Luckmann (1989), op. cit., p. 127. 89 McPherson and Rabb, op. cit., p. 72. 90 Schutz and Luckmann (1989), op. cit., p. 127. 91 McPherson and Rabb, op. cit., p. 73. 92 Schutz, ‘‘Symbol, Reality and Society,’’ op. cit., p. 343. 93 Jamake Highwater, T he Primal Mind: V ision and Reality in Indian America (New York: A Meridian Book, 1981), p. 65. 94 Joseph Epes Brown, Animals of the Soul (Rockport: Elements, Inc., 1992), p. 6. 95 Foster and Little, op. cit., p. 42. 96 Ibid., p. 43. 97 Ibid., p. 45. 98 Ibid., pp. 46–47. 99 Highwater, op. cit., p. 69. 100 Ibid., p. 55. 101 Ibid., pp. 131–132. 102 Joseph Epes Brown, T he Spiritual L egacy of the American Indian (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1988), p. 80. 103 Highwater, op. cit., p. 91. 104 Brown Jr. op. cit., p. 126. 105 Brown, op. cit., p. 78. 106 Ibid., p. 80. 107 Brown Jr., op. cit., p. 126. 108 Highwater, op. cit., p. 96. 109 Brown Jr., op. cit., p. 127. 110 Ibid.

˜ ALIRA ASHVO -MUNOZ

SEARCHING MORAL STANDARDS IN A LOVE DIATRIBE

Everything’s got a moral, If only you can find it. Lewis Carroll

Reality is constructed by the sense of our experiences and not by the ontological structure of objects. Moral intentionality, our moral behavior, decisions and judgments are not generated in a vacuum without past experiences. Conscience becomes the central agency of the moral sense. Gabriel Garcıa Ma´rquez’s play, Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado (L ove Diatribe against a seated man) is a tragic-comic play that deals with the inherent conflict between our ordinary consciousness and the empirical, the moral versus immoral forces that Kant discusses in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, between phronesis and ethos, and the conflict which leads moral consciousness astray, thereby enabling it to differentiate ff both aspects of its ethos. One must diff fferentiate between the natural dialectic within practical reason and the watchful conscience that represents the moral life. Fue algo que me hacıa falta para aprovechar mejor lo que me habıas ensen˘ado: que hay que desconfiar, por principio, de las cosas que nos hacen felices. Hay que aprender a reı´rse de ellas; si no, terminaran riendose de nosotros.1 (It was something that I was lacking to best be able to take advantage of what you had taught me: as principle, one has to distrust the things that make us happy. One has to learn to laugh at them, if not they will end up laughing at us)

By presenting a monologue of a woman’s complaint to her absent husband, the seated man in the title for whom this diatribe is intended, the reader is lead to believe that he is the sole receiver of the complaint. The text deals with the dialectic of experience, a female’s experience, and its proper fulfillment not in definitive knowledge but in the openness made possible by the experience itself. This brings forth a commentary on the ‘‘play’’ and ‘‘game’’,2 framing the contemporary hermeneutic situation. The text displays the widespread disillusionment of a woman in her 555 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 555–562. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

556

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO MUN

later years as she presumably presents her case to us. Since here husband is actually absent, this creates a new referential mode, a message in absentia. Actually her monologue serves as an escape-route from pressing questions of morality and her claim for avoiding any serious engagement with the real issues she has confronted throughout her marriage. Worst of all she deprived herself of critical thoughts as the one most useful resource for competence, to be able to morally judge the good and bad judgments which previously had shaped her existence. In a movement of interpretation the plot contextualizes a network of references and hence a referral to ‘the other’ takes place, another male: her son, who is equally uncaring, distant and unengaged, who has even referred to her as nonexistent, dead. (Sube el tono) Bueno. Lo llame al medio dıa y le pregunte por que´ se sentı´a huerfano, y me explico con todas sus letras que se sentıa ı como si tu y yo estuvieramos muertos desde siempre. Ası, de muy buen tono, y sin deseos de ofender. !Sabe Dios que quiso decir!3

It took her twenty five years to realize that she was a non-entity to those she valued most. The value of truth is never contested as we can see from the previous citation, since it conceives that anything is possible in complex family relationships, as in the ethical and epistemological questions that have arisen over the past two centuries in the philosophical post-Kantian tradition. In this text, one finds a non correspondence between cognitive and speculative judgment, and the central character chose neither by claiming: ‘‘God knows what he meant!’’ Throughout her life, Gabriela strictly followed the indispensable protocols of a married lady and by this time sees all critical force as another sophisticated bag of rhetorical tricks, a strategy designed to place a distance between the theoretical and ethical demands that such thinking properly entails. Her response is to retreat to a stance of all-out skeptical indifference, ff a stance that involves a willingness to believe false notions of truth, moral judgments or critical understanding. In a refined version of postmodernist thinking it drives a wedge between judgments of a speculative order and those of cognitive truth-claims. Once more, this kind of denial helps to avoid any serious engagements with real world events, which apparently is her method for coping with marital and parental dysfunctions. In light of all this, there is something comical and a bit absurd in her postulate, not to mention those of the males, her husband and son. Despite and against the difficulties that have risen in her interpersonal relationships, as spouse and mother, she never seems to question the validity of the later. Gabriela even stated that her son is

SEARCHING MORAL STANDARDS IN A LOVE DIATRIBE

557

the only one she totally truly loved; no matter how absurd and ridiculous or mendacious are his pronouncements. In a lyrical metaphorical reference she says: ... que el horror de saber que no existe otro a quien pueda querer como solo he querido a uno en esta vida. ¿Sabes a quien? (Le grita ...) A ti: el pobre Diablo con quien me fugue desnuda desde antes de nacer, al que le vigilaba el aliento mientras dormıa para estar segura de que estaba vivo ...4

Now for the first time, the reader becomes aware of the multiple references for which the diatribe was intended. With a shift of pronominal reference one could appreciate that her disgruntled high-toned pronouncements refer beyond personal status and are being articulated as a reference to the increasing lack of moral standards in today’s (still ) male dominated world. This provides a most appropriate commentary on how society manages to perpetuate the status quo, always keeping women as second class citizens, and how the symptoms of her present malaise assert that in fact things were never well, that fairness towards women has been a chimerical notion, like a mirage, good in the way of belief but not real. Alone and deserted, Gabriela must learn to come to terms with the failure of all those grand concepts society provided for her: fidelity, morality, security, love, and till death do us part. She rationalized everything, adhered to moral standards, tolerated and ignored much, kept appearances normal, but everything that was well established has faded in her world. She is ready to adopt now whatever standards she can rescue for the present hard times. Towards that end, she faces the brutal distortions to which her now defunct moral principles were subjected during twenty years of a so-called happy marriage. Tradition can be parodic, predatory and cynical. Si el matrimonio no puede darme mas que honor y seguridad, a la mierda: ya habra otros modos. Fue solo el final explendido de una farsa bien sostenida durante tantos anos ...5

Gabriela agrees that she ignored the selective coercion that honor, morality and security exercised on her life, following the established set of protocols in society, which however does perpetuate the abuses and deprivations so often practiced against women. One inherits a set of prejudices through acculturation in a primarily passive manner which embeds one within a given tradition. No matter how expertly adjusted she was in her role, there was evidence of conflicts that if she had truly

558

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO MUN

questioned their moral fiber she ought to have exited from these situations. She interiorized the established set of rules and disavowed the specifics in her personal involvements, enabling her to adjudicate the often conflicting demands that the rules of society were making on her. The justification of any moral point of view consists of a plurality of conflicting options and how they can be justified. These issues are part of the question of how to understand modernity and the ideal of moral freedom, a concept which really began at the age of enlightenment as treated in Jurgen Habermas,6 but many have not arrived to a full understanding of its possible consequences and responsibilities. The interruptions of traditions, confusions and pervasive silence toward most of today’s ill-faced experiences can be subsumed into an infinitive process of dialectical recuperation that still exits in female-male interactions. Since this is a play, there are both constative and performative aspects. It is also a strong case for examining the female character within the historical antecedent and is for seeing, on its own professed terms, the challenge to the paradigm of the enlightenment. Nevertheless this pervasive silence is a predilection for the modern widespread failure to think through the problems bequeathed in traditions. It is even more a failing (by Gabriela) to acknowledge the crucial aspects of circumstances, of objectives and selective idealism and her neglect to carefully think through the disabling effects ff of societal doctrines. Gabriela imposed upon herself a kind of self will amnesia, as a therapeutic exercise for coping, since she did not try to achieve a more adequate understanding of those episodes. Reinstating a foundationalist project of transcendental arguments, claims to truth, moral judgments and critique of consensual values is a discourse premised on false ideas of power and theoretical mastery. In Knowledge and Human Interest, Hans-Georg Habermas points to the psychological as therapy designed to overcome distortions but also in the worst cases could be a technique of manipulative reason at the service of a harsh and repressive social order. While Gabriela tries to establish her individuality and sets forth on a quest for a set of moral standards, we are made aware by the use of a background of musical references to Mambos, like a chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy, of the extraordinary precariousness of her present situation. The dependencies and interdependencies that weave her life have to be accounted for in the delineation of her search of her own moral standards under her specific circumstances, as Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote: Yo soy yo y mis circumstancias, si no las salvo a ellas no me salvo yo.

SEARCHING MORAL STANDARDS IN A LOVE DIATRIBE

559

I am myself and my circumstances, and if I do not save them, I cannot save myself. Benefac loco illi quo natus es.7

Gabriela’s choice was a counter-memory, predicating amnesia by exclusions and other devices which allowed her to operate by forgetting what cannot really be controlled; very common indeed! Loss of memory is a destruction of character, because memory is a guarantor of psychological continuity. By varying degrees, one suffers ff a kind of depersonalization and an inability to feel our experiences as our own. This is followed by a subsequent inability to iterate her moral standards and make sense of them, which can be seen in the main character’s approach to life as the play progresses. As a strategy of resistance it serves its purpose but as soon as she valued her circumstances, in Ortega y Gasset’s terms, she was able to determine her vulnerability, psychological and otherwise. She comes to the realization that for years she was a non-entity to those most valuable and dear to her, she was left out and, as a woman, she failed to be recognized for her achievements. Even though she attained all possible credibility as a subject of knowledge, achieving the highest academic standards, the system of meritocracy favored the males. Even though she was more knowledgeable than the others, she had to be content to be considered an appendage to her husband. En esta ciudad donde todo el mundo es doctor, yo soy la unica cuatro veces doctora.8

Of course she blames herself, who else! And says: Que´ va! La culpa es mıa, por supuesto ... sino por no ponerte a ti en tu lugar desde el principio.9

It was her fault of course, she explains, for not setting up the standards out front when the relationship began. Against a background of a philosophical stance, the play presents a critique of contemporary western culture, inquiring about her/our destiny, revitalizing the question of ambiguity and subordinating prejudices to the demand of reason inherent in our cultural configurations, trying to understand what the real moral standards are. Gender differences ff continue, thereby making many malefemale relations unequal since the moral standards applied are different, ff though they are supposed to be the same. Practical reason is historically conditioned and history has not included women as equal partners in its endeavors. Finally the end of this dramatic monologue leaves the

560

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO MUN

reader/spectator the question of the feasibility of the possible and correct, here and now. Because technologies of textuality and interpretation have been stripped of any one literary determination, reading is no longer seen as a singular encounter between the reader and the text, but it is now reconceived as a historically variable mixture of codes, norms, technologies and possibilities, whose configuration at any time remain a topic for detailed examination, not only of the exteriorization of meaning but also the dismantling and replacement of the subjectivity of the textual voices by the subjectivity of the text itself.10 In practice the morally social institutions which implement rules jeopardize self-hood. In the complexity of life dynamics, in its transactional modality the indication of a moral sense is applied by a fair application of a moral judgment. The relation of the self and its validity has to be considered a valuable and necessary propulsion toward interpretation. Early in the play, Gabriela was fore warned by her mother in law: ‘‘Ten cuidado hija, estas confundiendo el orgullo con la dignidad, y eso suele ser funesto en estos asuntos’’.11

This was advice for reflective consciousness but, simply, this alone cannot provide a metaphor or a way towards truth. In any hermeneutic reflection, one must acknowledge its fallibility and own finitude. For a moral critique to be possible, the categorical is the imperative unconditional, which ought to be universal as well as being valid, an element still hard to find in gender based relationships. Such critique, inasmuch as it cast light on recondite sources of determination, facilitates the development of final emancipatory practices, oriented towards free and moral actions. Let us remember that philosophy’s task is to help us understand how and under what conditions we manage to make sense of our experiences. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka clearly explained this process.12 Thus moral values are neither created by the human mind, nor are they autonomous objects that would function as the a priori principle of moral experience, inspiring or directing man to act ‘‘morally’’. They are formed by the mind/intellect being thematized in the synthesis of the varying valuative moments into an objective form. Moral value contains the qualitative residue of the varying valuative instances. Thus the thematicobjective form of the value is transcendental. The text poses the question that the moral standards are products of what we do and speak when we attempt to coexist with others in spite of one another, and forms a

SEARCHING MORAL STANDARDS IN A LOVE DIATRIBE

561

guide when we do not know what to do. The positivistic equations of law, the ethical and moral elements, are regarded by post modernity as synonymous, due to deflated differences ff in favor of simulations. Consequently these differences ff permit many acts to be juxtaposed and tolerated, due not to rampant relativism but by the fact that many do not seem to know the differences. ff The disclosure of truth in the discourse of the female protagonist, Gabriela, evolves into a search for moral standards. Her own personal journey questions social conventions, stereotypes, recent transformations, subversions, resistance and, finally, she questions the iteration of language. While we hope to understand one another, there are signs of alienation, ff These are ironic misunderstandings, silence and continuous sufferings. limitations of possibility, the by products of individual and group interactions, steamming from a current excessive over determination of absence and openness. T emple University NOTES 1 Gabriel Garcıa Ma´rquez, Diatriba de amor contra un horn bre sentado (Barcelona: Grijalbo Mondalori, 1995), p. 59. 2 Hans-Georg Gadamer, T ruth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1989), p. 361. 3 Ibid., p. 66. 4 Ibid., pp. 78–9. 5 Ibid., p. 72. 6 Ibid., p. 69. 7 Jurgen Habermas, T he Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, T welve L ectures (Cambridge: MIT P, 1987), p. 7. 8 Jose´ Ortega y Gasset, M Meditaciones del Quijote, ideas sobre la novela (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1960), p. 18. 9 Gabriel Garcıa Ma´rquez, Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado (Barcelona: Grijalbo Mondalori, 1995), p. 40. 10 Ibid., p. 43. 11 Donald Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology: T he Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Evanston. Ill.: Northwestern UP, 1971), p. 81. 12 Ibid., p. 43. 13 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘The Moral Sense’’, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XV. D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, 1983. REFERENCES Burke, Carolyn, Naomi Schor and Margaret Whitford. Engaging with Irigaray. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

562

˜ OZ ALIRA ASHVO MUN

Dallmayr, Fred R. and Thomas A. McCarthy. U Understanding Social Inquiry. Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 1977. Derrida, Jacques. Positions. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1981. Frecker, Miranda and Jennifer Hornsby. F Feminism and Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000. Garcıa Ma´rquez, Gabriel. Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado. Barcelona: Grijalbo, Mondalori, 1995. Habermas, Jurgen. T ruth and Method. New York: Crossroads, 1989. ——. Autonomy and Solidarity. Edited by Peter Dews. London: Verson, 1986. ——. T he Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: Policy News, 1987. Husserl, Edmund. T he IIdea of Phenomenology. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Jervolino, Domenico. T he Cogito and Hermeneutics, T he Question of the Subject in Ricoeur. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. Klemm, David E. T he Hermeneutical T heory of Paul Ricoeur. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1983. Montefiore, A. Philosophy in France T oday. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Ortega y Gasset, Jose´. M Meditaciones del Quijote, ideas sobre la novela. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 960. Tymienecka, Anna-Teresa, ‘‘The Moral Sense’’. In Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XV. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1983, pp. 5–43.

MARLIES E. KRONEGGER

BIZET’S CARMEN ‘‘L ’amour est un oiseau rebelle ...’’

Bizet Carmen Drama Lyrique Libretto Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy Soprano: Maria Callas Paris; March 3, 1875 For a bourgeois audience Opera-comique Characters: Carmen Don Jose´ Frasquita Micaela – A country maid Morales – An officer Smugglers We shall discuss the following: 1. 2. 3. 4.

What is immoral? What is moral? The ideals of a gypsy girl Esqamillo – a toreador (a bullfighter) The essence of destiny, facing destiny (The Gypsies believe their destiny is in the tarot cards. Carmen has read in the tarot cards that both she and Don Jose will die. All cards say death, and the cards never lie.) 5. ‘‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’’ 6. Lilas pastille – Carmen and the officers go there often Michigan State University BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holden, Amanda, ed. T he Penguin Opera Guide. London: The Penguin Group, 1995. MacMurray, Jessica M., ed. T he Book of 101 Opera L ibrettos. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, New York: 1996.

563 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 563. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS – WALKER PERCY’S L ANCEL OT

In his novel, L ancelot, W Walker Percy presents the immoral Lancelot Lemar, a knight-errant, spiritually dead and isolated in an insane asylum, questing for any possible flicker of purity and faith in life, a wholeness that will set him free. The novel is written in code, a strategy that Walker Percy uses to disclose phenomenological questions regarding good and evil, and the revelation and concealment in the reality of our humanity. Percy’s story of mythic dimensions involves Lancelot Andrewes Lamar, bereft of moral vision, and Percival, his psychiatrist priest friend, who listens to his tale about betrayal and sin and loss. Lance is a man whose life has turned into one of madness. In his cell, from which he can see the Louisiana cemetery, and the women who are washing the tombstones to celebrate All Soul’s Day, he engages his Percival, Harry, the priest psychiatrist, in a journey of the soul through a moral murkiness. The tale is bewildering and obscure as Lance recounts his journey on his quest for sin. He says: It is possible of course that there is no such thing and that a true sin, like the Grail, probably does not exist. Yet I had the feeling I was on to something, perhaps for the first time in my life ... Something was stirring. So Sir Lancelot set out, looking for something rarer than the Grail. A sin.1

Lancelot embodies the 20th century figure, bewildered in a fallen world, a middle class man, a lost soul, contemplating his life in a madhouse. Malcolm Jones, in his article, ‘‘Moralist of the South,’’ claims that Percy, in his novels, asks the question ‘‘WHY does man feel so sad in the 20th century?’’2 Percy tells how he tried to write philosophy and felt that he was unsuccessful so he deliberately wrote elliptical novels of alienation and spiritual questing. A medical doctor himself, Percy feels indebted to Kierkegaard, whose critique of Hegelianism articulated his own doubts about the scientific method; it explained, Percy says, ‘‘everything under the sun but what it is like to be born as an individual, to live and to die.’’3 Technology plays an essential, though comic, role in Lance’s experience. T Actually, Lance has video cameras installed in the motel’s bedrooms so that he can examine the comings and goings of all the major players in his life, including his wife and daughter. This quest for sin, like that of 565 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 565–571. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

566

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

Hawthorne’s Goodman Brown on a search to discover sin, brings about Lance’s own downfall, his murderous actions, and his confinement to the insane asylum. The chapter, ‘‘Friday Afternoon at the Movies,’’ is comedy. Science fails. The pictures are blurred and obscure and funny. Only half of the picture is represented at times. The mind of Lance can only surmise and speculate about what is really happening. He cannot really see sin, and what he sees may be deception in the vision itself. The half truths are also half-falsities. He is an individual bereft of moral vision. His story, as relayed to Percival, engages universal moral questions. First, what about catastrophe? How does the individual deal with the unsolicited and unappreciated phenomena that are destructive? Secondly, what about human relationships that are destructive? How does the lover of life and humanity deal with betrayal and sin, while having an immoral vision in his own mind? Lastly, what about loss? How does the knight on a quest deal with the constant possibility that his world might crumble, that what he considers valuable and precious is really susceptible to destruction and loss. CATASTROPHE

For Lance, sin is the great catastrophe, the dangling possibility that has universal qualities as it is engaged by those around him. Of course, the silent listener, Percival, and the reader, in a dramatic irony present in the novel, can observe Lancelot’s journey into the quagmire of suspicion, judgment, hate and vengeance that will ultimately swallow his soul and drive him into madness and murder, evil and the inscrutable chaos of thunder and lightning, fire and death that literally blows him out of the once beautiful ‘‘Belle Isle.’’ He remembers the headlines in the newspapers. BELLE ISLE BURNS. BODIES OF FILM STARS CHARRED BEYOND RECOGNITION. SCION OF OLD FAMILY CRAZED BY GRIEF AND RAGE. SUFFERS BURNS TRYING TO SAVE WIFE. The turning point in his life is the moment of Lance’s discovery that his daughter, Siobhan, is not his daughter. A simple everyday occurrence, filling the school record for her field trip, was the moment when Lance discovered that the blood type of Siobhan could not possibly have come from him. Catastrophe! Knowledge that something unknown was seriously wrong in his life awakened in him a new quest for sin. How strange it is that a discovery like this, of evil, of a kinsman’s dishonesty, a wife’s infidelity, can shake you up, knock you out of your rut, be the occasion of a new way of looking at things!4

IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS

567

For some time before this discovery, Lance had been drinking too much, squandering money and time, been lounging around aimlessly, and in truth, had been a rather rich bum. Now he had something to live for. Evil was lurking around him. He set out to find the secrets that would free him of his ignorance and his sense of a broken promise and a broken life. Percy creates a 20th century figure of spiritual catastrophe, an individual on a quest for the grail of spiritual wholeness. Lance says, ‘‘Things were split.’’ What he expresses is a condition in his life and in the time and place in which he finds himself, a condition of brokenness, a loss of wholeness that must exist somewhere. Edmund Husserl associates brokenness to the condition of fragmentation an individual experiences on the way to apprehension or recognition.5 Lance is desperately trying to apprehend the spiritual catastrophe he experiences. HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

The catastrophe that Lance Lamar experiences has to do with the women in his life. Percy, in the context of his allegory, names this fallen man Lancelot. Lancelot in the Arthurian legend sinned by seducing Guenevere, King Arthur’s wife. He never was able to see the Holy Grail. Percival is pure and had access to the Grail. In this 20th century reversal of the story, Lance quests for sin, an unholy grail. He wants to SEE his wife, Margot, sinning, committing adultery, but the pictures Elgin has on the video tape are obscure, distorted, and chaotic. Lance never gets the clear picture. He tells Percival of his great love for Margot. Even now, with Margot dead, he says; ‘‘I didn’t know there was such happiness. But there is a dark converse; not having her is not breathing. I’m not kidding; I couldn’t get my breath without her ... Love is infinite happiness. Losing it is infinite unhappiness.’’6

The unhappiness of Lancelot is his own madness. His madness comes from his choice of immoral action. He lives in an insane asylum, and cannot even see the complete sign from outside his window. He can see only half of the letters printed on the sign on an opposite billboard. Percy uses these ‘indicators’ in the terms of Husserl, to reveal the journey of a soul on its quest for recognition, for apprehension of his world and his place in it. Lancelot cannot even know the indicators, the words, much less know what they mean. What do they express? Where exactly is he? In his dialogue with Harry. the listener who he calls his Percival, Lance’s tale of woe is centered on the question of how to deal with

568

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

betrayal and sin, with the utter confusion of being deceived for so long. The sin had been there for some time; Siobhan is 10 years old. When he discovers the sin, his life changes. He becomes alert and wary, like the serpent in the grass, watching the actions of his wife and her lover, the father of his daughter. In his allegory of catastrophe and loss, Percy uses mimesis, as it gives context to his tale. The story within his story is the post modern mimicking of reality. Margot is deeply involved with a group of actors who create and stage phenomena that resemble reality. Jacoby can make thunder and fire. Movie-making can produce a fierce storm in the natural environment, as it can produce the storm in the hearts of the actors. Technology can create the splendid scenes of great disasters. The actors T are placed in specific areas of action. The movie looks and seems to be real. Margot says: Jan’s theory is that by the very nature of the medium, cinema should have nothing to do with ideas. The meaning of a film derives from the narrative itself. Narrative and person are everything.7

This theory of the producer of the story ‘‘cinema should have nothing to do with ideas,’’ intensifies the meaning of the celluloid film, as presenting the narrative apart from any direction. Form finds form. The picture will come from the narrative, not from any inherent idea, and the picture remains a mimetic picture, an artifice. However, there is a storm raging in Louisiana, a hurricane of sorts. The juxtaposition of this reality with the storm in the cinema is rather comic and yet it turns catastrophic. The lives in the cinema, creating their own narrative, resemble the real lives of the actors. The hurricane, the lamps, the beautiful house, Belle Isle, built over an abandoned oil well, all these cause the chaotic explosion that literally blows Lance from the house, where he later regains consciousness sitting against the great oak. He had been blown into the night ‘‘like Lucifer blown out of hell.’’ The house and the actors had been destroyed. And Lance had been the instigator of all the destruction. He had turned on the gas, he had visited the actors in their rooms, and he had even killed Jacoby, the adulterer. He had lit the match that caused the explosion. All these actions were mitigated by the pills that he had taken. In creating Lancelot, Percy cannot hide the fact that he himself is a medical doctor, that he questions the power of science which has the splendid power to heal our humanity and at the same time can be deadly in the hands of the immoral individual.

IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS

569

Lancelot has destroyed the people and home that he had once valued as precious and valuable.

NEW LIFE

Thus Lancelot, the madman, is relegated to the insane asylum. He never tells his story until, after several visits from the psychiatrist, Harry, his old friend, Lance makes a complete confession. Percy, always interested in the power of language, creates a plot in which the figure of Anna, another resident in the asylum, cannot speak. Her room is next to Lancelot’s, and the two individuals create a language by tapping on the wall. Anna had been gang raped, and had slipped out of sanity, to a low level of her own humanity. Both she and Lancelot are at a low point in their spiritual existence. Both have been abandoned, and both adandon beauty, goodness, truth and love. However, the author, as creator, cannot leave these two mortals to rot in their hellish lives. They can communicate! The tapping on the wall is a slow means of building a relationship, but it works. Slowly, using taps for the a-b-cs, these two fallen individuals get to know each other and they establish an innocent and rather pure relationship, filled with hope for a new beginning. As the months pass, they grow in love for each other, and they both grow in some sense of mental stability. The process of redemption is slow, and Percy is no Pollyanna. The novel begins in the insane asylum and ends in the insane asylum. Lancelot still has a lot of problems in his still immoral vision of life. He cannot extricate himself from his identity as a fallen man. He tells Harry about his childhood, when he found that his father had stolen money from his job. He had found the money in his father’s dresser drawer, hidden under the socks. And as a teen he had found that his mother was unfaithful. She had made some secret trips with his uncle, his father’s brother. His entire life had been touched by sin. How can he deal with that? Percival had been no saint, but he had chosen the church for his career. Now Lancelot says You always got it backward: you don’t set out looking for clues to God’s existence, nobody’s ever found anything that way, least of all God. From the beginning you and I were different. ff You were obsessed with God. I was obsessed with – what? Dusky and grey-green money under interwoven argyle socks? Uncle Harry and Lily in the linoleum-cold gas-heat-hot tourist cabin?8

570

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

Lancelot is an everyman, even as a youth, always conscious that there is something not right around him, something imperfect in the lives of those he knows and loves. He has always been bothered by the imperfection that he recognizes, and like Kierkegaard’s figure of defiant despair, Lance is one man in the whole of existence who is the most unjustly treated, to whom it is especially important to have his torment at hand, important that no one should take it from him – for thus he can convince himself that he is in the right.9 Included in the tormenting ‘‘wrongs,’’ the betrayals that Lancelot senses are part of his life, are the misgivings he has about Percival himself. The men have been friends since childhood, and through college. Lance chose law for his profession and Harry had become a priest psychologist. Now, Lance accuses Harry of getting ‘‘it backward.’’ The implication here is that Lance has faced life head-on, has taken on the quest for sin, and Harry has taken a different ff route to find some meaning in his humanity. The reader can sense the irony here, in that one man is the madman and the other is a listener. Lance has chosen to experience the immorality that he names as his quest for sin. In some twisted mental conclusion, toward the end of the novel, Lance vindicates himself. He will leave the hospital ‘‘They’re discharging me. Psychiatrically fit and legally innocent’’ he says ‘‘I can prove I am sane. Can you? Why do you look at me like that? You don’t think they should?’’10 Of course, the author and the reader know Lancelot now as a murderer and a scary and confused individual. We also see him communicating and opening himself to a loving relationship that will be the base of a new life for him. He and Anna will marry and live in Virginia, where Anna has a house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lance’s daughter (who is really not his daughter) will live with them. How can this immoral man begin a new life that is happy and fulfilling? Percy raises questions of human struggle and human judgment, of personal desire for peace and love, and the desire for some sense of content and comfort in life. The ending of the novel is the most enigmatic of all. At the end, the friendly and knowing listener, Harry finally speaks. When Lance asks, do you have anything to say to me, Harry answers ‘‘yes.’’ The reply holds another novel, another moral vision. And the author does not reveal the secret to us. ‘‘Yes’’ is the last word of the book. Percival has something to say. The author does not write a sequel to this book like he does to the Bill Barrett books. He is dealing with the basically moral attributes of human life, good and evil, truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, as these are experienced by the individual.

IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS

571

Walker Percy creates a modern allegory, the reversal of the Arthurian W myth of quest for the Holy Grail, the search for purity that must exist somewhere, because we as humans desire it so much. Actually this novel takes on a comic aspect, a sick man is somewhat healed, a puzzle about a catastrophe is somehow explained, an insane man regains some sanity, a dumb woman can speak, two lonely people fall in love, and will marry and live happily ever after. After all is said and done, we recognize Lancelot. Something about him is familiar in our experience of relationships with others. We recognize his family and his youth; we recognize his desperation and struggles. And we recognize Percival, the individual who sees the same humanity but from the other side of the screen. In one place, Percy includes his own philosophy of healing, for he never forgets that he is a doctor. He has Lancelot tell Harry: I still have the resolve to make a new life, an absolutely new beginning. But I know that one must start from scratch. Begin with a burrow, a small clean well-swept place such as this, with one tiny window on the world and another creature in the next room. That is all you need. In fact, that is all you can stand.11

Marquette University NOTES 1 W Walker Percy, L ancelot (New York: Ivy League Books, published by Ballantine Books, 1977), p. 126. 2 Malcolm Jones, ‘‘Moralist of the South,’’ T he New N York T imes Magazine, March 22, 1987: 42. 3 Ibid., p. 44. 4 Walker. W op. cit., p. 44. 5 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, James S. Churchill and Karl Amenks (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press), p. 290. 6 Walker. W op. cit., p. 118 7 Ibid., p. 158. 8 Ibid., p. 200. 9 Soren Kierkegaard, Quoted in Ralph Wood, T he Comedy of Redemption (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), p. 167. 10 Walker, W op. cit., p. 233. 11 Ibid., p. 96.

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD: FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY AND EROS IN DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER’S ROUGH-HEW N AND T HE BRIMMING CUP

In this article I will discuss some of the ways in which erotic desire manifests itself in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s literary universe. My study will focus on Rough-Hewn (1922) and T he Brimming Cup (1921). These novels are particularly interesting because of the tension they display regarding the morality of erotic life. While it seems as if the implied author/narrator tends to favor a devaluation of erotic desire, the ‘‘lived’’ world of the characters in these novels seems to challenge this devaluation. T he Brimming Cup was written and published before Rough-Hewn as the later novel is a prequel to the former. It is thus possible to read RoughHewn not only as an explanatory framework for the earlier novel, but also as an attempt to thematically appropriate T he Brimming Cup. By adding new information that precedes the first novel, it seems as if Canfield Fisher tried to settle some unresolved anxiety. Here, I am not interested in exploring Canfield Fisher’s intentions or anxieties. However, I will try to elucidate a tension between an overt thematic tendency to interpret sexual desire as meaning/non-meaning and a covert much less pervasive ‘‘tone’’ or ‘‘voice’’ in the texts in which erotic desire is expressed as something altogether disconnected from conceptualized meaning. In both novels, this covert tone appears in an unthematized way. Unlike some puritanical reservations against erotic desire that Canfield Fisher might have had, the distaste for sex that we find expressed in her fiction is not founded on the belief that sexuality should mainly be justified by its ultimate aim: to procreate. Marise, the female central character in both Rough-Hewn and T he Brimming Cup, is rather disgusted by the notion that sexual desire has no other meaning than that of procreation. Marise discards erotic life as non-spiritual and therefore as lacking in depth and meaning. In Rough-Hewn, we find that Marise’s and Neale’s relationship is built on the basis of a silent and implicit agreement that he will not express overt sexual desire for her. We learn that Marise is relieved that Neale silently promises to hold back ‘‘the flame of his passion’’ (RH, 492). To Neale, Marise seems so ‘‘weak’’ and ‘‘defenseless’’ 573 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 573–583. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

574

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

(RH, 493) that he finally decides to ‘‘put aside his passion with a strong hand, resolutely’’ (RH, 493). This supposedly ‘happy’ ending of RoughHewn not only points to a predominant interpretation of sexual desire as negative (as lacking positive meaning). It also underpins a pervasive assumption in these two novels, namely the implicit understanding that male sexual desire is necessarily hurtful and degrading for the female sex. Marise undergoes a crisis regarding the moral or possibly immoral dimensions of erotic experience. Rough-Hewn depicts Marise’s life as a child and young adult in France and America in the early twentieth century. The reader follows the young woman on her journey towards adulthood as she meets her fiance Neale and promises to marry him. In T he Brimming Cup the couple moves back to America and starts a life together in the little village of Ashley, Vermont. Marise and Neale will have three children: Mark, Elly, and Paul. However, in spite of her maturity as a mother, Marise is still confused about the moral dimensions of her role as a female lover/beloved. In this paper I will make use of the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas and Luce Irigaray to elucidate the aforementioned tension between manifestations of erotic desire as meaning or non-meaning, and an unthematized and unrecognized ‘‘voice’’/‘‘tone’’ pointing toward non-conceptualized erotic experience. In doing this, I will show how Irigaray’s furthering of Levinas s phenomenological thought also helps further our understanding of the underlying dynamic of erotic desire in Rough-Hewn and T he Brimming Cup. * * * As Levinas himself points out, his view of the feminine is altered in T otality and Infinity. In T ime and the Other he views the feminine as alterity whereas his later work describes the feminine as beyond the signification of the face.1 Irigaray appropriates and furthers Levinas’s thought by rethinking the phenomenological structure of the erotic encounter. In An Ethics of Sexual DiV iVerence (1993), she adopts Levinas’s phenomenology of ethics as she uncovers a new dimension of his ‘‘Phenomenology of Eros.’’2 By providing an ‘‘other’’ (female) perspective, Irigaray fundamentally alters the structure of not only female subjectivity in relation to erotic experience but also the structure of male subjectivity and therefore of the ethical dimension of the erotic relation as a whole. In the phenomenological movement she thus accomplishes a breakthrough by including female experience not as a complement added to human experience but as an integral part of its fullness.

IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD

575

In T otality and Infinity, Levinas describes the erotic encounter as one in which ‘‘seriousness is totally lacking’’: ‘‘The beloved is opposed to me not as a will struggling with my own or subject to my own, but on the contrary as an irresponsible animality which does not speak true words. The beloved, returned to the stage of infancy without responsibility – this coquettish head, this youth, this pure life ‘a bit silly’ – has quit her status as a person. The face fades, and in its impersonal and inexpressive neutrality is prolonged, in ambiguity, into animality.’’ (T &I, 263)

For Levinas, this encounter is eventually restored to the realm of infinity and ethics through fecundity and the birth of the son. Irigaray critiques Levinas’s phenomenological account of the erotic relationship by maintaining that it inevitably results in an unbridgeable ethical gap between the two people in the relationship – a gap that does not further the ethical relation but rather diminishes it. ‘‘The beloved woman falls back into infancy or beyond, while the male lover rises up to the greatest heights. ... When the male lover loses himself in the depths of the beloved woman’s sensual pleasure, he dwells within her as in an abyss. ... Both of them are lost, each in the other, on the wrong side, or the other side, of transcendence.’’ (ESD, 194) According to Irigaray, this lack of ethical connection precludes the possibility of a more authentic erotic relationship in which both the one and the other bloom and participate in ‘‘mutual fecundation.’’ In this relationship neither the one nor the other will take the initiative of plucking the bloom in order to contemplate it. Both contemplate and bloom. Opening and closing themselves in order to keep giving each other that which they could never have brought to life. Regenerating, renewing each other, in memory and in anticipation of the moment of their mutual fecundation.’’ (ESD, 194).

Irigaray thus delineates a mutual erotic relationship that is more authentic than the ethically flawed and therefore degrading relationship between two beings of which only one expresses the signification of the ‘‘face.’’ Canfield Fisher’s female protagonist experiences feelings of shame and dehumanization in relation to erotic desire. For Marise, these feelings are ‘‘like a smear she could never wipe off ’’ (RH, 82). Marise is nauseated and shamed by the supposed ‘fact’ that the fecundity of procreation would be the only true meaning of the erotic encounter. As she falls in love with Neale Crittenden she also anticipates another source of shame – a subjection of her self to the supposed baseness of erotic desire.

576

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

One night Marise woke up with a start, staring into the darkness, feeling very cold and sick. ... She knew perfectly well what was happening, Neale Crittenden was in love with her. And she was falling in love with him. She wanted him. Oh, this was the way it must always happen. This was the way all women were caught in the trap ... these dizzying moments of joy ... this blind, rapturous rushing forward with outstretched arms to clasp life to your heart ... treacherous deadly life that only sought to debase you. (RH, 406)

In Rough-Hewn, we find that Marise’s struggle to evade debasement and reduction to shameful infancy/animality is contextualized by a childhood experience of encountering a cat in heat. Rather than being scared of the cat itself, Marise (at the age of seven) is frightened by the Basque servants’ ‘‘snickering’’ reaction to the cat’s behavior. Marise understands that there is something shameful about the cat and its ‘‘strange, anxious cry’’ (RH, 81) but she does not understand the source of this shame. She is horrified by the two servant-women’s ‘‘glistening’’ eyes (RH, 82–83) and by the expression on their faces – ‘‘half amused ... half horrid’’ (RH, 81). Her shame is deepened by the servants’ implications that the cat’s strange ways somehow seem to reflect something about her. Then, as she stood there, cold an burning hot ... [the servant-women] had both glanced at her as if something about her also seemed very funny to them. That glance was the worst of all. ... Jeanne said, as they looked at the cat with greedy amusement in their eyes, ‘Oh, she’s not sick. She’s looking for a husband, that’s all.’ Isabelle ... said something to Jeanne in Basque. Marise could not understand a word of this, but her hot, straining eyes, fixed on their two faces ... received a another deep and indelible impression of conscious shamefulness. (RH, 82)

When the two women cunningly make furtive remarks about Marise’s future adult life and her search for a husband, the young girl is filled with nausea and self-disgust. ‘‘She couldn’t go on, living the way she felt now, as though she were dirty inside and couldn’t wash herself clean’’ (RH, 83). When the meaning of the two women’s snickering begins to dawn on her, Marise has ‘‘an instant cold premonition of something evil’’ (RH, 81). Erotic desire is here phenomenalized as animalistic desire, manifested for the young girl as horrid because of its lack of human dimensions. As Marise grows up the memory of the gray cat haunts her by transforming her perceptions of romantic love and desire into feelings of fear and hopelessness. Love! She sickened at the sound. The gray cat ... Jeanne ... Isabelle ... the pictures in one of the hidden books at school ... the passages in her mother’s novels ... her mother ... they

IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD

577

were all looking at her out of the dark, pointing at her, shaming her, exulting over her ‘‘You too ... you have come to it.’’ The gray cat! She was like the gray cat! She began to sob hysterically ... (RH, 406–407)

Marise can see no alternative to the shameful degradation that seems inevitable in love and marriage. Overcome by her fear that falling in love will necessarily involve debasement, humiliation and shame, she decides to run away from Neale and it is not until he finally convinces her that he will hold back his desire that she finally agrees to marry him. From a Husserlian viewpoint Marise’s perception of erotic desire is exclusively phenomenalized as transcendent perception.3 Husserl defined transcendent perception as perception that is never adequate because it measures itself against an objective standard or objective evidence in the natural world. According to Irigaray, this type of measuring that is anchored in objectivity precludes the possibility of mutuality in the erotic relationship. In the mutual erotic relationship, each person is ‘‘moving along the path to some in-finite which trembles in the encounter without closing itself up or making decisions according to the limiting dimensions of some transcendental value to be attained’’ (ESD, 194). For Irigaray, then, mutual erotic experience is conditioned by a liberation from the hegemony of objective thought. For Marise however, there is always already a transcendent negative value judgment necessarily attached to erotic desire. Marise’s romance with Neale will be explicitly conditioned by a refutation of the Basque servants’ (Jeanne and Isabel) uncanny predictions for her. With Neale ‘‘the bruised spot deep under the surface of her life’’ which every reminder of erotic desire touches and hurts (RH, 162) seems to remain untouched. At the end of the novel, Marise is relieved that Neale will not make her be ‘‘like the gray cat’’ (RH, 162). Ironically, T he Brimming Cup stages a shattering of Marise’s negative view of erotic desire. This shattering comes about first and foremost in and as the character of Vincent Marsh. While this novel also ends ‘happily’ – with Marise’s and Neale’s marriage intact, we unquestionably find in it a deep-seated and unresolved ambiguity as regards the ontology of erotic desire. In T he Brimming Cup, Marise will be sexually excited by the cosmopolitan Vincent Marsh in a way that she has never been by Neale. As Marise has formerly felt that erotic desire is shameful, she is now shocked by Vincent who sees no other meaning in life than passion and sexual union. For him, it ‘‘is the only honestly living thing in all our miserable human life, the passion of a man and a woman for each other. It is the only thing that moves us out of our cowardly lethargy of dead-

578

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

and-alive egotism’’ (BC, 226). For Vincent, shame is not a part of erotic desire but in its place we find consummation. It is Vincent’s conviction that nothing but passion gives spiritual depth and meaning to existence that makes his seductive influence so powerful. The intensity of Marise’s response to Vincent reveals her secret doubt in the validity of her former view of erotic desire and its place in a romantic relationship. If the meaning of life resides in the passionate consummation of desire (as Vincent says), her relationship with Neale suddenly appears to confine her in a world without life-meaning – a world that lacks ontological worth. With Vincent, Marise sees herself as ‘‘a crimson rose’’ (BC, 272) whose ‘‘end and aim and fulfillment lay in being plucked and gloriously worn before the coming of the inevitable end!’’ (BC, 272) In her efforts ff to break free from her marriage she desperately wants to have ‘‘the courage to know that ... [t]hus and thus only could one find certainty, before death came, of having lived as deeply as lay in one to live (BC, 272). Vincent’s presence promises an end to anxiety because it promises a fulfilment of presentational selfhood. In a union with him, Marise would be consumed and therefore experience no more anxiety. In this totalizing experience, erotic desire would not be without meaning. Instead it would carry all the meaning of life. In the midst of her crisis, Marise finds herself caught between what seems to be two different ff worlds. She has valued Neale for not expressing passionate sexual feelings for her. Now, however, she is falling in love with Vincent Marsh for telling her that the only thing that makes life worth living is the erotic desire that unites them: ‘‘You know how when our hands touch, every drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a grown woman. You know life as well as I do. You know what this means. ... You are all of mine’’ (BC, 226). Marise’s crisis reveals what seems to be a paradox in the manifestation of erotic desire and meaning in T he Brimming Cup and in Rough-Hewn. At first sight, this paradox seems to be conditioned by the ancient notion of the competing impulses of the reasonable mind and the animalistic body. However, at a closer look we find that the paradox is rather a binary opposition displaying two sides of the same coin. Marise’s view of the absence of erotic desire in her relationship with Neale and of the overwhelming presence of this kind of desire in her relationship with Vincent have one thing in common: a predominant impulse to always understand sexual desire in terms of meaning. Rather than being a struggle between the rational mind (favoring Neale) and the animalistic body (favoring Vincent), this is a struggle between two impulses both of which

IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD

579

are conditioned by conceptualization (mind). Absence of erotic desire is manifested as the meaning of her world with Neale and presence of erotic desire is manifested as the meaning of her world with Vincent. We are led to believe that Marise has resolved the question of which world she belongs to when she at the end of the novel overcomes the temptation of Vincent and returns to Neale. However, Marise does not see – and the reader may also overlook this – that she was never really between worlds. Instead she remained in one world throughout her crisis: one world in which erotic desire is exclusively understood in terms of conceptualized meaning. Erotic desire ultimately has negative meaning in both worlds with both men. With Neale, the negativity of desire is obvious – it has to be avoided. With Vincent erotic desire leads to the consummation not only of the desire itself but also of Marise. For her, this experience resembles death symbolized by the imagery of being plucked – being ‘‘a plucked flower.’’ These binary manifestations of erotic desire are not only revealed here as meaning but also as the two possible consequences of the erotic desire described by Levinas in T otality and Infinity. The difference ff between resisting this kind of desire and giving in to it delineate the difference ff between negation and consummation. In both cases mutuality is not attained but only a lapse into sameness. Indeed, in agreement with Marise’s feelings, the fulfillment of erotic desire or erotic life per se is here phenomenalized as a trap from which there is no escape, no possible recourse. For Levinas, the transcendence of the erotic relation is restored by the birth of the child. Against the grain of his philosophy he uncharacteristically delineates a situation in which ontology precedes the ontic. The individual being (woman) is sacrificed for the sake of the ontological category of fecundity. This movement is unusual in Levinas because it reverses the movement of his claim that metaphysics/ethics is first philosophy. Irigaray’s main contribution to Levinas studies consists of her ability to elucidate the consequences of Levinas’s phenomenology of eros, not only for the female individual who is reduced to inhumanity but also for her male partner. Dana Noelle McDonald points this out in ‘‘Moving Beyond the Face through Eros: Levinas and Irigaray’s Treatment of the Woman as an Alterity’’: Irigaray asserts that Levinas’s description of the male subject as neither approaching the female lover as an other, nor recognizing transcendence within the erotic encounter, necessar-

580

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

ily leads to the subject’s effacement ff of the female lover whereby the subject [also] passes into the unethical. (MBF, 71–75)

* * * Eventually Marise will be able to glimpse a mutual erotic relationship – one that is not conditioned by reduction. This development does not occur on a thematic level but rather on a sub-thematic level of the text. It can be described as a movement towards something affectively ff felt but unthought. Only as something non-conceptualized can erotic desire be manifested as mutual. This happens for Marise in a context which is completely unrelated to both Vincent and Neale (or to any man at all ). It happens as the experience of a flower in bloom. The blooming of the cactus-flower assumes a central place in T he Brimming Cup for many reasons. It is thematized in the text as evidence of rural Vermonters’ sophistication and sense of beauty. Because of this it is crucial in the perpetual debate about the supposed superiority of rural ways of life over urban life in Canfield’s fiction. But the cactusflower does not only make an appearance as an object of beauty or as a representation of the ‘right’ kind of life. It also appears as a rare manifestation of nonconceptualized erotic desire. In and as the night-blooming cereus erotic desire is phenomenalized as unrelated to the concepts of shame and/or consummation. Every year the inhabitants of the little village of Ashley, Vermont, gather at the house of Nelly and Gene’ Powers to partake in a communal viewing/celebration of the night-blooming cereus. This year Marise has brought Vincent Marsh and her children to the gathering. The nightblooming cereus is not a beautiful plant. It is indeed partially ugly but its ugliness is poetic, and its effects ff on Marise as well: ‘‘la mia menta fu percossa da un fulgore’’ – ‘my soul was penetrated by lightning’ (BC, 82). At this very moment of penetration, Marise and the people that are present are not only touched by something, but they are pierced by inner light, the light of revelation. ‘‘All those human souls bowed themselves. Almost a light shone upon them’’ (BC, 82). The divine overtones are obvious. But here I will also maintain that penetration and more specifically welcoming of penetration suggests erotic mutuality. The nightblooming cereus is in fact a manifestation of authentic female sexual experience. The exultancy with which the flower reveals its ‘‘starry heart’’ (BC, 82) is phenomenalized as the very antithesis of female vulnerability, shame, or threatened integrity.

IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD

581

From that moment on, she [Marise] saw nothing, felt nothing but the opening flower, lived only in the incredible leisurely, masterful motion with which the grotesquely shaped protecting petals curled themselves back from the centre. Their motion was so slow that the mind was lost in dreaminess following it. Had the last one moved? No, it stood still, poised breathlessly ... and yet, there before them, revealed, exultant, the starry heart of the great flower shimmered in the lamplight. (BC, 82)

The exultant and seemingly motionless blooming of the cactus flower is phenomenalized as a rare instance of female erotic invulnerability. I have previously argued that the cactus flower is a visual display of idealized and objectified life.4 However, as Luce Irigaray points out, vision – the act of seeing – does not have to create an objectifying distance. For Irigaray, the phenomenology of eros involves a new birth of the subject. Vision is integral to the new birth of the subject in erotic experience. It is the ‘‘sensual pleasure of birth into a world where the look itself remains tactile [non-objectifying] – open to the light. Still carnal. Voluptuous without knowing it’’ (ESD, 185). In this sense, the communal celebration of the cactus flower does not have to be seen as a viewing but can rather be seen as an encounter – as an event in which the subject is disclosed to itself in its opening up to the other. The guests ‘‘gaze their fill at the mysterious splendor of stamen and pistil,’’ (BC, 82) the petals casting a ‘‘clear rosy reflection’’ (BC, 83) on their cheeks ‘‘their lips a little apart as they drew long breaths’’ (BC, 82). Vincent Marsh’s reaction to the nocturnal blooming of the cereus is conditioned by conceptualized negativity. To him, the people at the gathering were merely ‘‘a handful of dull insensitive, primitive beings, hardened and calloused by manual toil and atrophied imaginations’’ (BC, 84). He characteristically reduces their welcoming of the flower to a break from monotony, to a spectacle, an object. They would ‘‘welcome anything, anything at all as a break ... only if they could choose, they would infinitely prefer a two-headed calf or bearded woman to your flower’’ (BC, 84). Vincent’s reaction is conditioned by transcendent perception. For him, everything can be objectified, everything can be reduced to an empty spectacle. His reaction is in Irigaray’s words the reaction of a subject already ‘fixed.’ Not ‘free as the wind.’ A subject that already knows its objects and controls its relations with the world and with others. Already closed to any initiation. Already solipsistic. In charge of a world it knows only through possession. (ESD, 185)

For this subject, erotic mutuality is an impossibility because mutual erotic experience is ‘‘always at the beginning and not based on the origin of a subject that sees, grows old, and dies of losing touch with the enthusiasm

582

ANNIKA LJUNG-BARUTH

and innocence of a perpetual beginning’’ (ESD, 185, emphasis added). Marise does not conceptualize the opening of the flower as meaning. Instead, she feels and welcomes its opening. She ‘‘saw nothing, felt nothing but the opening flower, lived only in the ... leisurely masterful motion with which the grotesquely shaped protecting petals curled themselves back from the center’’ (BC, 82; emphasis added). Indeed Marise’s feelings epitomize Irigaray’s definition of erotic wonder or awe. In erotic mutuality each one experiences ‘‘communion and childlike acceptance of that which is given ... wonder at that which offers ff itself ... before any finished product occurs’’ (ESD, 185; emphasis added). The flower blooms. That which lives cannot offer ff itself as ‘‘finished’’ or as a product – it cannot be reduced to transcendent perception. This manifestation of unconceptualized erotic desire is unthought of by characters and narrator. But here it is, as a trace of joy in the sensual opening of a flower in bloom. University of Vermont U NOTES 1 At the time of ... T ime and the Other, I thought that femininity was ... alterity ... and that sexuality and eroticism were this non-in-difference ff to the other, irreducible to the formal alterity of terms in an ensemble. Today I think that it is necessary to go back even further and that the exposition, the nudity, and the ‘imperative demand’ of the face ... constitute this modality that the feminine already presupposes ...’’ (from Is It Righteous to Be?: Interviews with Emmanuel L evinas by Jill Robbins, Stanford University Press, 2001). 2 Emmanuel Levinas, T otality and Infinity, Section IV (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). 3 Emmanuel Levinas, T he T heory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1995), pp. 22, 26–27. 4 Ljung-Baruth, Annika. ‘‘A Steady Flameless Light: The Phenomenology of Realness in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s T he Brimming Cup, Her Son’s W ife and Rough-Hewn.’’ Ph.D. diss., pp. 49–54.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Canfield Fisher, Dorothy. T he Brimming Cup. New York: Virago, 1987 (‘BC’). ——. Rough-Hewn. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922 (‘RH’). Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual D DV Verence. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993 (first published in French in 1984) (‘ESD’). Levinas, Emmanuel. T he T heory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973, 1995 (first published in 1930). ——. T otality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969 (first published in French in 1961) (‘T&I’).

IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD

583

——. T ime and the Other. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987 (first published in French in 1947). Ljung-Baruth, Annika. ‘‘A Steady Flameless Light: The Phenomenology of Realness in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s T he Brimming Cup, Her Son’s W ife, and Rough-Hewn.’’ Ph.D. diss., Stockholm University: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2002. McDonald, Dana Noelle. ‘‘Moving Beyond the Face Through Eros: Levinas and Irigaray’s Treatment of the Woman as Alterity.’’ Philosophy T oday 42 (1998): 71–75 (‘MBF’).

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

MORALS IN HISTORY. VIOLENCE AND THE IDEAL OF PEACE

To reach peace and harmony is one of the most abiding dreams of humankind. I say dreams, because, in fact, the situation of war, terrorism and violence1 is unfortunately too frequent in one or another part of the world. The problem of searching for a reasonable and moral political project centered on a harmonious and peaceful existence which eliminates violence – especially its most striking collective manifestations, war and terrorism – has always been an important task for many thinkers concerned with the sense of history. Peace and non-violence as moral goals are traditionally rooted in Oriental traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. We have also some examples of Western thinkers who are concerned with the horrible phenomenon of violence and war, mainly after the Renaissance. This is the case, for example, of Erasmus (XVIth century), Hugo Grotius (XVIIth century), l’Abbe de Saint-Pierre et Rousseau (XVIIIth century), etc. In fact they are all the predecessors of Kant. However, universal peace has never been reached in actual history, in spite of the theoretical analyses and the frequent refusal of violence from the moral point of view. This problem leads us to the consideration of the roots of human aggression, so that we can later discuss the possibility of eradication of violence from history. Consequently, in this study we shall first briefly examine the problem of human aggressiveness from two main points of view: the naturalistinnatist hypothesis and the cultural one. Then, we shall analyse some philosophical approaches to the problem of violence in history and the moral goal of peace. For that, Kant and Paul Ricoeur will be our guides. Finally, a brief comparison of their proposals and some personal conclusions will be exposed. At the theoretical and moral levels, most individuals and cultures manifest a desire for understanding, of peace and harmony. Nevertheless, at the practical level we are usually confronted with the opposite: confrontation and violence. Given this situation, the main question arises: Can humans be considered as tender and helpless creatures or, on the contrary, as ‘killer pri587 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 587–601. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

588

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

mates’, who compensate their biological indigence with their cultural inventiveness? An easy question with a very difficult answer, and with two basic kind of approaches, related to the anthropological question of the opposition of instinct/culture. On the one hand, we have the innatist thesis. Authors such as S. Freud, K. Lorenz,2 R. Ardrey,3 D. Morris,4 R. Dart,5 A. Storr,6 N. Tinbergen,7 etc. believe that aggressiveness is innate. This is an assertion which seems neutral in principle. In fact no-one doubts that humans, like every living being, must have some disposition arranged for defending themselves in case of external aggression. However, this first assertion does not imply that we cannot avoid being violent with our fellow men or that we unavoidably tend towards institutionally organized phenomena like war. Some authors go as far as considering that it was the fact of inventing arms that caused the pre-human creatures to become true humans. Others, like Freud, think that it is necessary to recognize a destructive force, T hanatos, which permanently coexists with the positive loving drive, Eros. According to Freud, the spontaneous impulses constitutes a kind of energy accumulated in the organism, which must be periodically discharged. Given that the negative impulse must arise from time to time, humans cannot be, for him, loving creatures; they cannot avoid an important dose of destructiveness. Freud repeats the known formula of Hobbes: homo homini lupus, and tries to base his hypothesis in the facts of human life and of history.8 On the other hand, the culturalist thesis proposes that there is not any specific behaviour genetically determined. According to A. Montagu, humans are initially capable of every kind of behaviour, aggressive or loving; every concrete behaviour is, for him, conditioned by life experiences in interaction with genes, of course, but not determined by them.9 M. Harris also denies the instinctivist hypothesis as the origin of violence and war and presents the human being as the cultural animal par excellence. Violence and war would be, for him, related to cultural factors themselves dependent on ecological and demographic conditions.10 Both approaches, the innatist and the culturalist, intend to discover an acceptable explanation for human violence. The first would have us accept it as something inevitable. The second as dependent on variable factors (culture and learning) which perhaps could be more or less controlled by humans. Nevertheless, neither of them offers ff either a definitive solution or a reasonable guarantee for the end of violence. The ‘naked’ past of historical facts is too evident and pressing. Besides, today’s situation in the world,

MORALS IN HISTORY

589

where some regions are hit by terrible incidents like violence, terrorism and war, ideologically supported and nourished by new outbreaks of nationalism, racism, dogmatism, fundamentalism, etc., leaves us immersed in a situation of perplexity and often in anxiety. This situation demands the reconsideration, once again, of the old question – never definitively solved – of the meaning of history. Simultaneously, we are pressed to consider which human ideals – if there are any – should serve as guidelines in order to reorientate not only the sense of our lives, but also our practical actions. At the collective level, where we are confronted with the conflict between groups, cultures, nations, etc., developed along the whole human history, the main moral task is surely to work in the direction of approaching a reasonable harmonious coexistence, a sense of history which implies peace. Kant, in the XVIIIth century, and Paul Ricoeur nowadays, offer ff us two approaches to this basic human problem. Let us present their reflections on history, with their analysis of violence and war, on the one hand, and their attitude towards the moral ideal of peace, on the other. Kant’s reflection – influenced by the situation of war in Europe at the moment – centers on the meaning of history so that the understanding of violence and war is conditioned by this meaning. Previous to his Eternal Peace (1795), with a clear criticism of war and a firm proposal of a definitive peace as a historical goal, Kant had written several articles concerning the sense of history articles, between 1784 and 1794 (concerning the Enlightenment, the idea of a universal history in a cosmopolitan sense, the beginning of human history, the end of everything, etc.). Some years after T he Eternal Peace he also examines, in 1798, the idea of progress and its possible achievement in history. In fact, Kant recognizes – consequently, with his gnoseological theory – that there is no faculty destined to know rigorously the political and historical phenomena. These are precisely ‘phenomena’ in the Kantian sense, and human history is constituted by a series of phenomena – conditioned and conditioning – which is never given or expressed in its totality. In gnoseological terms, the series is the object of an idea. The scientific knowledge is only possible in the sequences of the series (with their intuitive presentations). Besides, it is possible to deduce regularities when the sequences are repeated. However, in the case of history and of human actions, these regularities cannot be considered as the content of any concept and we cannot deduce natural laws from them. We are in the domain of the ‘supra-sensible’, in the practical-moral realm. Still, Kant assumes that we are able to presuppose that the human species

590

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

directs itself towards progress. How? From the point of view of a ‘prophetical history’, a possible representation a priori of the coming events. Kant adds a very important nuance: an a priori history is only possible if the prophet actively participates in the realization of the facts that he is predicting.11 However, the prophet – and the human being in general – has an important fulcrum to guide his practical action: Kant regards the unity of Nature12 as an unverifiable but useful postulate. History is directed, as is Nature, by a general guideline, by a sort of providence – not necessarily a religious idea – which makes hope possible. In his article of 1784, concerning the ‘Idea of a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Sense’,13 Kant presupposes a regular course when we consider human liberty in a wide sense and not only in its phenomenic manifestations. Humankind as a whole is involved in the development of its original dispositions – the original human nature – something often unimaginable for the individuals or the cultural collectivities who follow their own purposes, often in mutual opposition and conflict. It is precisely Nature which ‘‘desires’’ that humankind reach the full development of its dispositions by itself and in history and not in the individual lives too brief and limited for this immense task. This endeavour consists mainly in the unfolding of reason and of the freedom of will – the ideal human nature. Humans have to obtain everything by themselves and not to acquire it from instinct or from something external.14 Until now everything sounds idyllic. Nevertheless, Kant realizes that the reality is often contrary to this harmonious and autonomous development of reason and progress. His famous article of 1795 concerning the possibility of eternal peace15 constitutes a splendid analysis – still valid today in many respects – of the phenomenon of war and its counterpart, the ideal of peace. Kant’s T he Eternal Peace was written in 1795, when he was 70 years old and had produced his fundamental philosophical works. The preliminary articles, expressed in juridical form, are far from being abstract. They concern practical issues such as: permanent armies must disappear, given that their aim is to be prepared for fighting; the welfare of states should never be at the service of war; no state should interfere, by resorting to force, in the organization and management of other states, etc. These mentioned articles manifest an obvious desire to eliminate any kind of war. However, Kant is also realistic and he exposes his sixth article aimed to ameliorate an inevitable situation of war: in case of war between states, treason, espionage, the breaking of pacts, etc. must be forbidden. The definitive articles try to found, philosophically and morally, the ideals

MORALS IN HISTORY

591

proposed in the preliminary articles, in a clear attempt to establish a bridge between theory and practical action. The first affirmation is round: Peace among humans living together is not a state of nature (status naturalis); on the contrary, the state of nature is, like for Hobbes, the state of war, a state where even if a fight is provisionally stopped, peace is always fragile and the menace of war is constant. Peace – continues Kant – is something to be established in a civil state where law rules. Only in such a state can we reach harmony, peace and concord among humans. Three kinds of juridical institutions guarantee this harmony: the political law for individuals belonging to a people or state (ius civitatis), the laws ruling the mutual relations among states (ius gentium) and the laws concerning all human beings as citizens of a cosmopolitan state (ius cosmopoliticum). When some of these institutions are eliminated or weakened, war immediately becomes a menace.16 This is due to the depraved inclinations of human nature – the factual-historical nature, the actual expression of human beings in their concrete practical mode of existing. Kant expresses his surprise that the notion of ‘law’ has not yet been expelled from politics as something arbitrary and illusory, given the ‘‘perversity of the human nature’’, openly manifested among peoples in the state of nature, and veiled – due to the coercion of the government – in the civil-political state. If the ideal of law is still active and the states render homage to it, at least in theory, this corresponds to another human feature, apparently contradictory with the previous one: the human being manifests ‘‘a very important tendency towards morality’’. It is a tendency which is perhaps not completely active for the moment, but, due to it, the human being aspires to overcome the negative tendency towards evil.17 How does Kant know about this good impulse and why does he suppose that it will overcome the negative one? Because he trusts in the mentioned regular course of nature and of history; In effect, ff one of the more basic Kantian presumptions is the teleological idea that the rationalmoral (ideal) human nature is to be reached at the end of history, at the collective level of the species. Nevertheless, this idea is not at all deterministic: the progressive process of history, advancing towards peace, is far from being automatic. On the contrary, the human will has a fundamental role in this teleological process and we all have to make an effort ff at the individual moral level, in order to approach the ultimate historical ideal, implicit in our own ideal nature and proposed by Nature. Consequently, in order to reach harmony and peace, Kant considers that the most important challenge of humankind is to establish a civil society ruled by a general universal law and to set up a perfect civil

592

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

constitution, inside every state. At the same time, it is necessary to create a legal international order for regulating the relations among states.18 The establishment of perfect constitutions – both internal and external – depends on this secret plan of Nature.19 This is a principle which must be considered not only as theoretically possible, but which also has a propelling effect ff on human practical action20 and for the achievement of the cosmopolitan law. According to Kant, we cannot be absolutely sure of this achievement from the point of view of Pure Reason, but this fundamental socio-political aim is not a mere illusion and from the perspective of Practical Reason it is sufficient to make us work in its direction. We must act ‘‘as if ’’ the teleological project were destined to be fulfilled in the future. Humans have then the responsibility of trying to achieve the moral goal proposed by Nature. In this case, why are there so many wars and so much violence in the world and throughout history? Perhaps we could obliterate them all when all individuals and states decide one day to act ‘as if ’. Nevertheless, this has never happened and, in my opinion, will probably never happen in human history. It will possibly occur at the end of history, but who knows? For the moment, the important issue is that Kant has to explain the presence of violence in history in the context of his general theory of history. He does so in the following terms: antagonism in society is the means by which Nature tries to achieve the historical utopian aim of a perfect society and a peaceful coexistence among humans.21 This antagonism can be understood in terms of ‘sociable unsociability’, an enduring contradiction inherent in the core of human existence. On the one hand, man is a sociable creature – contrary to Rousseau’s point of view;22 he tends to enter society, as he feels that it is in society that his natural dispositions will be developed and thus he will become more strictly human. On the other hand, he tends towards isolation and his unsociability leads him to do what he likes without considering the presence of other humans. The problem is that every individual tries to do the same thing and, while overcoming his inclination towards laziness, he struggles to obtain a good position among his fellow humans and to reach honour, power and goods. Hence, the path from rough nature to culture is started. Kant concludes that without unsociability all human talents would stay silent, in their primitive potential stage. Man desires concord, but Nature prefers discord in order to indirectly reach its goal: a final and definitive peace, in the case of history.23 Consequently, there is a kind of purposiveness, a teleology in Nature. Perpetual peace is not a void or illusory idea, but rather a human mission,

MORALS IN HISTORY

593

a duty which humans have to resolve gradually, which is helped by the gradual creation of a public universal Law. But Kant finds the reason of the persistence of violence in the negative inclinations of human nature – degenerated forms of emotional life – unfolding in history. These are inter-human (social and cultural) passions: of possession, domination and honour, understood from a global point of view which includes a teleological-providential project. Ricoeur takes into account the Kantian approach, centering his own analysis on the emotional human dimension deployed in history, a dimension which is suspicious or even clearly negative for Kant, given that it represents, for him, the animal, passional aspect, destined to be overcome by the true moral human nature. Nevertheless, the French thinker considers the Kantian trilogy – the passions of possession, domination and honour – as morally neutral, at least in principle. Thus, he speaks of the triple pursuit (to possess things, to have some power and to be estimable), as inherent in human existence in its social-historical dimension. The human being cannot deal directly with nature. On the contrary, human relations with nature are necessarily mediated by the aforementioned social-cultural relations: possession, domination and honour. It is true that these relations constantly show their degenerated side in history (passions of ambition, abuse of power and vainglory); however, Ricoeur searches for their original condition, considering them as fundamental dimensions of human desire, which have an essential role in the constitution of individual identity, as well as cultural identity.24 For Ricoeur, every concrete culture is always constructing and reconstructing (often unconsciously) an axiological system, in accordance with a horizon of values which is immersed in the general Life-World; a system which contributes to the general sense of life offered ff to the individuals participating in the culture. However, the axiological world is sometimes shaken (for different ff reasons) in the practical life, provoking a collective crisis. When the consciousness of or the contact with other modes of being human interfere in the situation of crisis, the problem becomes even more complicated and can lead to two basic attitudes: either the reinforcement of one’s own identity – taking one’s own cultural mode of being as ‘‘the true’’ and unique mode of being human – or the renouncement of any possible search for a universally valid model of humankind. At one extreme, the first attitude results in ethnocentrism and dogmatism, as a theoretical perspective which can justify the violence (ideological or practical) against the others, who are denied the right of searching for

594

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

their own identity. The others are in this case considered not only as radically alteri (different ff with regard to ourselves) but also as alieni (strangers with regard to humankind). At the other extreme, the second attitude results in total relativism. One’s culture and mode of existing is merely one ‘‘other’’ among many others. Trying to explore positive values in order to change the facts becomes an illusory task, as there is no way of reaching a point of reference valid for every group. Even more, one’s own identity is seriff ously affected. The problem is that we cannot live permanently without some point of reference. We need unity and some kind of order and we try to find them and to impose them to others, often by force. We pursue conciliation, in order to restore harmony with ourselves. However, in fact, when we identify the truth of a culture with the truth of Humankind, we establish the contrary: conflict, violence and exclusion. Then we have the historical collective conflict, which makes Ricoeur doubt Hegel’s conciliatory hypothesis. Consequently, we face the ‘alarming possibility’ that perhaps history has no meaning, particularly when we see that human passions unleash absurdly, without any apparent reason, and violence and evil invade human relations in history. Paul Ricoeur, like Kant, personally proved the fact that evil and violence often dominate history. He experienced them mainly during the Second World War. For him, it is a moral duty to examine the roots of evil and to propose a new path towards a conciliated existence. Ricoeur first confronts the problem of evil – underlying the main question of violence and peace – through the analysis of the symbols of evil in the second part of his ‘‘Philosophy of Will’’, because he considers that the mere eidetic study of the structures of the will cannot introduce perturbing elements such as evil and guilt (also transcendence). This is the reason why he leaves aside those elements in his work L e volontaire et l’involontaire (1950), in a methodological epoche. However evil and guilt are two fundamental ingredients of human life and are consequently recovered in T he Symbolics of Evil (1960). Meantime, Ricoeur had been reflecting on the power of evil and violence in real history and the proof of it is History and T ruth (Histoire et verite´, 1955). This work analyses the negative role of dogmatism, deceitfulness and totalitarianism in history, often implied in the practice of political power. However, neither politics nor any other human dimension is perverted per se. Politics is a ‘‘neutral’’ human dimension which is unfortunately degenerated in our factual historical existence. Consequently, the subject

MORALS IN HISTORY

595

requires a concrete practical approach. This is the reason why the following analysis will be centred on History and T ruth. In this work, Ricoeur poses the problem of violence not only at the general theoretical level, but also at more practical levels, related to Economics, Technology25 and Politics.26 Here I shall focus my analysis on the political problem. Kant’s reflection on violence and the possibility of an eternal peace was clearly influenced by the political events of his time: the French Revolution and the subsequent wars. So was Paul Ricoeur’s thought. He directly experienced the Second World War: ‘‘Je fus tour a tour civil mobilise, puis combattant vacant, enfin combattant vaincu et officier prisonnier’’.27 But before these events, he was already concerned by the internationalist and pacifist ideals, a problem which was one of his fundamental focuses of attention since he experienced, as a child, the injustices of the First World War. Those historical experiences were at the origin of his article ‘‘L’homme non violent et sa presence dans l’histoire’’ (1949).28 Some years later (1957), he published ‘‘E´tat et violence’’ and ‘‘Le paradoxe politique’’,29 the latter inspired by the events of the invasion of Budapest by the Soviet tanks: L ’eve´nement de Budapest, comme tout eve´nement digne de de ce nom, a une puissance indefinie e d’ebranlement: il nous a touches et remue´s a` plusieurs niveaux de nous-meˆmes: au niveau de la sensibilite historique, mordue par l’inatendu; au niveau du calcul politique a moyen terme; au niveau de la reflexion e durable sur les structures politiques de l’existence humaine. Il faudrait toujours aller et venir de l’une a l’autre de ces puissances de l’eve´nement.30

In fact Ricoeur, along with many intellectuals, was shocked by these events and by the possibilities of tyranny inherent within a socialist economy where it was presupposed that, given the ideal economic conditions, the remaining human problems would be automatically resolved. His reflections on the political phenomenon are now grounded on a cardinal hypothesis: the relative autonomy of politics. This is manifested in two features: first, there is a kind of human relationship not reducible to the economic-social conditions, and, second, there exists a specifically political evil. Concerning the first trait, Ricoeur emphasizes the historical role of politics and of power in general. Humans develop, due to their political dimension, a specific kind of rationality not necessarily dependent on – although it is usually connected to – the economic dialectics. We can encounter a radical change in the economic domain without a fundamental correlative change in the political rationality of the State, in the moral sense.

596

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

The second trait makes us aware of the possibility of a typically political evil, related to the logic of power. Not only can the political abuse persist when the economic exploitation has disappeared, but it is also possible that the political procedures leading to the elimination of the economic alienation can introduce another kind of alienation, and can become a new source of abuse. These two traits imply, for Ricoeur, a paradox inherent to politics,31 a paradox whose elucidation is one of the main tasks of the philosopher, who must avoid the dichotomy between two traditional poles, one emphasizing the intrinsic rationale of politics, the other insisting in the violence and evil inherent to power: Rationalite spe´cifique, mal specifique, telle est la double et paradoxale originalite du politique. La tache de la philosophie politique est, a mon sens, d’expliciter cette originalite et d’en elucider le paradoxe; car le mal politique ne peux pousser que sur la rationalite spe´cifique du politique. Il faut resister a la tentation d’opposer deux styles de reflexion politique, l’un qui majorerait la rationalite du politique, avec Aristote, Rousseau, Hegel, l’autre qui mettrait l’accent sur la violence et le mensonge du ‘tyran’, l’apologie machiavelienne du ‘prince et la critique marxiste de ‘l’alienation politique’. Il faut tenir ce paradoxe, que le plus grand mal adhere a` la plus grande rationalite, qu’il y a une alienation politique parce que le politique est relativement autonome.32

Thus, the problem is in the intrinsic paradox of politics. We cannot avoid living in a social and political structure, but it is more than possible – it is a historical fact – that evil is too often related to politics. Power frequently corrupts human relations.33 This problem appears still more vivid when we consider the intrinsic structure of the state.34 Paradoxically, the political existence of the human being is guaranteed, in its functioning, by an unusual fact, the legitimate violence of the state: avec l’E´tat une certaine violence apparaıˆt, qui a les caracteres de la legitimite´. Que signifie, non seulement pour notre vie d’homme, mais pour notre reflexion morale, pour notre me´ditation philosophique et religieuse, ce fait etrange: l’existence politique de l’homme est gardee et guidee par une violence, la violence etatique, qui a les caracteres d’une violence legitime?35

Ricoeur does not necessarily refer directly to a bad state, to a totalitarian state, but to any kind of state. In totalitarian states violence and iniquity are at the peak of the possibilities of political perversion. But the problem is deeper than this. The possibility of violence – even of necessary violence – is intrinsic to any kind of state, including the most perfect one.

MORALS IN HISTORY

597

First, we have penal violence. The state has the monopoly of physical coercion; it represents the last request, the institution without possibility of appeal.36 In fact, for Ricoeur to say that the state is a power, is synonymous with affirming that it is a power of coercion. There would be no problem at all if the state were perfect, if politics and morality would coincide. For Kant, this will happen when the cosmopolitan law prevails at the end of history. But Ricoeur is dealing with concrete history, and in it, politics is often far from being moral. The state and its organization help to preserve the lives of individuals (except in the case of states where the death penalty is legal), but its pedagogy does not necessarily form them morally. Nevertheless, if the state remains in its punitive function without trespassing the limits of murder (without killing citizens) its task could be compatible with a morality respectful of the life and dignity of citizens. The violence of the magistrate could be compatible with an ethics of means. At this level, we face the second kind of violence related to the state: murder is often at the very core of it; murder is usually at the moment of its inauguration and it is also perpetuated, in case of external or internal attack, for the preservation and subsistence of the state. C’est ici que l’E´tat – states Ricoeur – se decouvre comme une grandeur inquietante qui ne se tient pas et ne s’est jamais tenue dans les limites de l’E´thique des moyens. l’E´tat est cette re´alite qui jusqu’ a pre´sent a toujours inclus le meurtre comme condition de son existence, de sa survie et d’abord de son instauration.37

Sooner or later it is quite probable that the state will become involved in war. Politicians and even normal citizens will probably not consciously identify the phenomenon of war as a series of murders. They would euphemistically speak of war as a fundamental duty for the sake of the nation, as a necessary self-defense, as an important task destined to ‘liberate’ other people or to ‘educate’ them morally or religiously, etc. But the crude fact is that, for one reason or another, some humans ‘legally’ kill other humans and put their own lives at risk for the sake of the state. War is the institutional murder – or suicide – par excellence, the limitsituation: le probleme de la survie physique de l’E´tat, de sa conservation materielle au prix de la vie de mon ennemi, est la monstrueuse enigme devant laquelle l’existence de l’E´tat me place.38

In this case, it seems evident that the alternative for a moral person is to disobey, to become a conscientious objector. But Ricoeur is well aware

598

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

that there are not many ‘clear’ univocal questions in human affairs. ff Individuals must assume the consequences of their acts. In the case of disobedience to the state we must assume that it puts its existence at risk. But let us imagine, if not a perfect state, merely a quite worthy and reasonable one. In this case, we must wonder what would happen if every citizen of this state were to disobey, for example, in case of aggression coming from a wicked state which intends to eliminate all human rights in the conquered states or nations. Indirectly we would be contributing to the expansion of evil throughout history. This implies a profound and disconcerting alternative: in this hypothetical case, we should have to choose between an institutionalized murder and a kind of collective suicide (physical, moral or both). Paradoxically, the non-violent attitude could become not only ineffective, ff but also negative.39 Another important problem related to violence, following Ricoeur’s point of view,40 is how to remain loyal to one’s own identity and values – being rooted in one’s own culture – without excluding other personal and cultural models; how to keep a difficult equilibrium between being oneself and respecting other possibilities of being human. Without this equipoise, intolerance, dogmatism and violence always stalk our existence. Consequently, Ricoeur does not lead us towards a solution, but rather towards personal and cultural dilemmas which we have to confront in our everyday and factual life. In conclusion, Kant and Ricoeur are both dealing, in fact, with the same matters: violence in history and the aforementioned problem of the meaning of history. Each of them explores the role of political power and insists on the personal and ethical responsibility facing the collective phenomena. They also agree on the need to search for a reconciled coexistence of humans beings, on the urgent need for peace in history. However, their perspectives present obvious discrepancies. Ricoeur cannot assume the eighteenth-century belief in progress, which is nowadays considered as too ingenuous and arguable. Nevertheless, the Kantian approach situates us in a position where we can come to terms with a possible utopia which depends, at least in part, on our effort ff and responsibility. For Kant, we have the moral duty of acting ‘as if ’; as if the utopian aim depended on us. In this sense, we could say that we make more probable what is difficult but not impossible – peace. On the contrary, peace would be impossible, first, if we did not know the conditions which make it possible and second, if we did not do anything at all. Ricoeur sees the paradox involved not only in politics and in history, but also in every human task. Human dispositions, dimensions, etc. are,

MORALS IN HISTORY

599

in principle, neutral and there is no absolute security that we are necessarily progressing in our historical course. Nevertheless, Ricoeur is not inevitably pessimistic, precisely because he resorts to human responsibility in order to avoid violence and evil in history; but we have to exercise this responsibility immersed in the paradoxical uncertainty of our concrete existence. Today we cannot rely on the Hegelian ‘astuteness of reason’, or on any Kantian guideline of Nature which, in the long term, makes our negative inclinations work, for the sake of humankind. Finally, there is another fundamental question which is not considered by Kant and only partially referred to by Ricoeur: how so many humans can make accommodations in a world with limited resources without fighting each other for their control. This problem is sometimes the core of anthropological perspectives and situates us at a very practical and realistic level which constitutes perhaps the basis for facing the previous questions: cultural identity, human values and the utopia of peace (utopia in the sense of something not yet achieved and not in the sense of something impossible to reach). University of Seville U Spain NOTES 1 We are often shocked by everyday news of violence in many contexts: physical and psychological abuse in the core of the family – especially against women and children – at school, in the streets, etc. At the same time, several wars exist simultaneously in diverse places of the world, some of them holding the attention of ordinary people because they are the main subject of the mass media, others almost forgotten no matter that they still persist after many years or decades. Terrorism, expanded in the world in the XXth and XXIst centuries, constitutes one of the worst menaces for our everyday life. Unfortunately, it causes distress, anguish and a feeling of helplessness and non-sense so that it deeply disconcerts us. Terrorism has been ‘‘endemic’’ for decades in countries or regions of the world like Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Spain, among others. Only after the terrible attack on the Twin Towers in New York, a few years ago, did the awareness of the real danger of terrorism increase world-wide and become a international phenomenon. Unfortunately, when I was preparing this study, my own country, Spain, was hit by the worst terrorist attack in Europe for the last decades. Fifteen bombs in four trains near Madrid, with two hundred deceased and nearly two thousand injured. It has provoked a general shock and surely important repercussions in the Western World. 2 K. Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966). 3 R. Ardrey, African Genesis (New York: Atheneum, 1961), T he T erritorial Imperative (New York: Atheneum, 1966), T he Social Contract (New York: Atheneum, 1970). 4 D. Morris, T he Naked N Ape (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), T he Human Zoo (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).

600

M. AVELINA CECILIA LAFUENTE

5 R. Dart, Adventures with the Missing L ink (New York: Harper and Row, 1959). 6 A. Storr, Human Aggression (New York: Atheneum, 1968), Human Destructiveness (New York: Basic Books, 1972). 7 ‘‘On War and Peace in Animal and Man’’, Science, vol. 160, 1968, pp. 1411–18. 8 See Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Hogarth Press, 1930) 9 A. Montagu, T he N Nature of Human Aggression (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.), chapter 1. 10 See Our Kind (New York: Harper and Row, Inc.), Cannibals and Kings. T he Origin of Cultures (New York: Ramdom House Inc.), Cows, Pigs, Wars and W itches (New York: Ramdom House Inc.), etc. 11 Cf. article of 1798 about the possibility of progress, point 2. Spanish edition: ‘‘Si el genero humano se halla en progreso constante hacia mejor’’, in Filosofı´a de la Historia (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1978), p. 96. 12 The term ‘nature’ is ambiguous in Kant as it is in Rousseau (a thinker who clearly inspires – positively or negatively – Kant) First, we have ‘Nature’ in the mentioned sense: as Providence. Second, the idea of ‘state of nature’ – a hypothesis inspired in Rousseau, although Kant’s notion is the opposite of Rousseau, as we have seen. Third, ‘original nature’, referred to the human original dispositions, destined to be developed in history. Fourth, the ‘perverted’ human nature such as it is in history. Fifth, the ideal, teleological human nature, the one we have to reach at the end of history. For more details and a comparison between these notions of nature and Rousseau’s and Fichte’s, see Martial Gueroult, ‘‘Nature humaine et e´tat de nature chez Rousseau, Kant et Fichte’’, Cahiers pour l’Analyse, n. 6, Cercle d’E´pistemologie de l’E´cole Normale Superieure (Paris: Seuil, 1969). 13 Spanish Edition, ‘‘Idea de una Historia universal en sentido cosmopolita’’, in Filosofı´a de la Historia, op. cit., pp. 39–65. 14 Ibid., ‘‘Third Principle’’, p. 44. 15 Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf von Inmanuel Kant, Spanish edition: L a paz perpetua (Madrid: Tecnos, 1985) The treatise, edited the same year of the Peace of Basilea, caused an important intellectual impact and the 1,500 copies of the first edition were sold out in a few weeks. 16 Spanish edition, L a paz perpetua, pp. 15–31. 17 T he Eternal Peace, Second definitive article, Spanish Ed., p. 225. 18 See principles 5th–8th of the ‘‘Idea of a Universal history ... ’’, Spanish Edition, Filosofı f´a de la Historia, pp. 48–57. 19 Ibid., 8th principle, pp. 57–61. 20 Ibid., 9th principle, p. 61. 21 These are two important European topics since the Renaissance, as indicates Joel Lefebvre: ‘‘Deux obsessions dominent la pensee et la litterature europe´enes depuis la Renaissance, deux reves ou` s’exprime, a travers tout le continent, une meme insatisfaction devant le cours du monde: le reve d’une societe´ parfaite et celui de la paix entre les nations’’. Introduction to Pour la paix perpetuelle. Projet philosophique (Lyon: Presses Universitairees de Lyon, 1985), p. 7. This work is followed by a selection of texts concerning the theme of peace and war and belonging to several authors. Among them Erasmus, Grotius, Rousseau, Fichte, Marx, Freud, etc. 22 Cf. the first discourses: Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts and Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inegalite parmi les hommes, in Oeuvres Completes (Paris: Seuil, 1971), vol. 2. 23 Kant, 4th principle of the ‘‘Idea of a Universal History ... , Spanish edition, op. cit., pp. 46–48.

MORALS IN HISTORY

601

24 For the analysis of those three human dimensions which often degenerate in negative passions, see L ’homme faillible (Paris: Eds. Aubier Montaigne, 1960), chapter IV, point 3, ‘‘Le thymos: avoir, pouvoir, valoir’’, pp. 122–141. 25 ‘‘Pre´vision economique et choix ethique’’, ‘‘Civilisation universelle et cultures nationales’’, in Histoire et Ve´rite´ (Paris: Seuil, 1964), pp. 286–300 and 301–316. 26 Histoire et ve´rite´, Second part, Section III, ‘‘La question du pouvoir’’. Cf. also L ectures 1. Autour du politique (Paris: Seuil, 1991). 27 Paul Ricoeur, Ree´flexion faite. Autobiographie intellectuelle (Paris: Eds. Esprit, 1995), p. 20. 28 The article was first published in Esprit, in February 1949, then compiled in Histoire et ve´rite´. In his ‘‘Autobiographie intellectuelle’’ (Reflexion e faite) , he alludes to this question of non-violence and its role in history constituted as a ‘‘debat dont l’origine remontait aux decouvertes que j’avais faites comme enfant concernant les injustices et les mensonges de la Premiere Guerre Mondiale’’, Ree´flexion faite, p. 21. 29 ‘‘E´tat et violence’’ was first published in L es Conferences annuelles du Fover, John Knox, Gene`ve, 1957, then also included, as well as ‘‘Le paradoxe politique’’, in Histoire et ve´rite´. 30 Paul Ricoeur, Histoire et ve´rite´, p. 260. 31 For the problem of the political paradox, see, for example, the article of Olivier Mongin, ‘‘Les paradoxes du politique’’, followed by a Ricoeur’s answer; in Calvo Martınez, T. and Avila Crespo, R., P A Paul Ricoeur: los caminos de la interpretacion (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991), pp. 279–306. 32 Histoire et ve´rite´, p. 262. 33 For the problem of power and its relation with the social imagination, see also L ectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), a collections of articles in dialogue with several thinkers: Marx, Saint-Simon, Fourrier, Max Weber, Althusser, Mannheim, Habermas and Geertz. 34 Ricoeur does not take into account other possible political structures which are not necessarily related to the state. The Cultural antropologists describe at least three fundamental models of political organization present in human history: the relatively egalitarian structure of hunting – gathering people, the groups with leaders more or less generous and the societies with states or empires. See, for example, Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology (4th ed., New York: Harper and Row, 1985), chapters 16 and 17. 35 ‘‘E´tat et violence’’, in Histoire et ve´rite´, p. 246. 36 Nevertheless, nowadays we have new circumstances, due to the increasing tendency towards the extension of global models for the whole world. This phenomenon opens the possibility of going beyond the limits of national boundaries. More concretely, we have, in the juridical domain, international courts to which we can appeal. This is the case of the European Community, for example. There are also international courts which have some power to judge crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, etc. 37 ‘‘E´tat et violence’’, in Histoire et ve´rite´, p. 255. 38 Ibid., p. 257. 39 For an analysis of this problem, see ‘‘L’homme non violent et sa presence a` l’histoire’’, in Histoire et ve´rite´, pp. 235–245. 40 See ‘‘Civilisation universelle et cultures nationales’’, in Histoire et ve´rite´, pp. 286–300.

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE IN PAUL AUSTER’S L EV IAT HAN

I

In the span of its lifetime the human being develops a niche or sphere of characteristic activity that nourishes and defines it and from which it derives its sense of reality. In the Sixties people spoke of a ‘‘groove,’’ ‘‘being in one’s groove,’’ conveying a trivial but popular sense of niche. There is more than one such niche, to be sure, including a professional niche and recreational niches. In this regard Alfred Schutz cites the ‘‘subuniverses’’ described by William James, which Schutz renames finite provinces of meaning.1 We cross between them all day when we move from work to watching a film to playing music. Each subuniverse has its own priorities and skill set, internal coherence, in-order-to relations, sense of reality. Such niches imply not only a zone of comfort but of limited mastery: the couch potato is adept with his remote control, the weekend tennis player with her racket. But if you ask the coach potato to repair the remote, he is suddenly confused and beyond his niche; the weekend tennis player would panic and become disoriented if she were somehow inserted into a center court match at Wimbledon. All such niches are of course to be rigorously distinguished from the biological niche or environmental habitat. It is feasible to switch one’s professional niche, to move from campus to industry and vice versa, or relocate from New York to Paris or Tokyo; but we cannot live without water, air and food. Yet the distinction between professional niche and environmental niche, while fundamental, should not be uncritically adopted when we speak of human beings. As some people get older, their professional niche as it were blends or doubles up with their environment. One’s work becomes one’s food and air. We have all heard about men and women who, although seemingly fit, expire weeks or months following their professional retirement. Here it seems to me that we have left the more trivial sense of niche as ‘‘groove’’ and are looking at something portentous, akin to destiny. This kind of niche would be one’s biographically constant and preferred mode of comportment in the world. We need to develop this correlation between niche and destiny, which is based on temporal analysis. 603 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 603–618. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

604

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

Flexible crossing between niches should not be something we take for granted as time goes by. Americans in particular are supposed to be geniuses of self-invention, and there is no end to the promotional hype and publications associated with job hopping and re-tooling. The forces of marketing and commercialism persuade us that niche crossing is something convenient if we use our credit cards to take a few vitamins and a few training seminars. But this tendency trivializes the investment of time, energy and learning, and perhaps instinctual or inherited talent that shapes a career and makes it a vocation or a destiny. In other cultures, such as Japan, this rhetoric of re-tooling has traditionally been rare, even something fantastic or suspect; only recently, in tune with the layoffs ff in industry, has it begun to make an artificial buzz. But a focused vocational profile remains the rule in Japan, multiplicity an exception. A person who makes senko (incense) and whose family has made it for generations does not suddenly start a senbe (rice cracker) shop. The knowledge required consists of craft but also trade lore and secrets of production that cannot be learned in a month or year. In his study of the problem of destiny in the life of Goethe, Ortega y Gasset says that ‘‘Life consists in giving up the state of availability.’’ Youth, he argues, still does not have an irrevocable destiny and is available to take up diverse skills and follow various paths. ‘‘The youth, because he is not yet anything determinate and irrevocable, is everything potentially,’’ says Ortega. ‘‘Herein lies his charm and his insolence. Feeling that he is everything potentially he supposes that he is everything actually ... He lives all lives potentially – he is simultaneously Homer and Alexander, Newton, Kant, Napoleon, Don Juan.’’2 As one matures, however, Ortega argues, one role seems to fit and others seem preposterous. There is no longer time for all of them. Alfred Schutz glimpses this temporal structure of destiny when he speaks of ‘‘the life-plan determined by my finitude.’’ He says, ‘‘The possibility of actualizing a number of plans, of undertaking acts, having experiences, is already very limited by time alone. I can do one thing, perhaps another, but not a third thing in addition all at the same time.’’3 Ortega and Schutz would agree that as one matures and makes choices, one’s character, physical condition, age and niche activity are so interwoven as to become irreversible: crossing niches becomes well nigh impossible, or fatal. It is at this point that one’s niche has become indistinguishable from destiny. At a certain age, say, about fifty, a school teacher would have serious difficulty becoming a professional baseball player. We are always pushing the limits, to be sure, and there are senior citizens who take up sky diving. But they

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

605

do so not for a living, a livelihood, but for a thrill. The commercial hype about longevity and fitness inspires them to take risks hitherto unknown to people in their age group. Some of them do so foolishly and get killed. Their insolence, which belongs to youth, creates a phantom virility that beckons them to injury or death by misadventure. II

A recent novel that dramatizes the dangers of crossing niches and the deceptive atmosphere that encourages such crossing is Robert Stone’s Outerbridge Reach (1992). The narrative focuses on a Vietnam veteran named Owen Brown who has become a middle-aged promotional writer for a yacht company. He has a home in the suburbs with a wife and daughter who, although they love him, seem distant and self-absorbed. It is the nature of promotional writers to make inflated claims about a product. This insincerity haunts Browne, who has always comported himself with the honorable bearing befitting a naval officer. Suspecting himself of aimless mediocrity and feeling an obscure sense of rebellion, he seeks to redeem his life by entering a challenging around-the-world solo sailboat race sponsored by his yacht company. As corny as it sounds (and he strikes people around him as corny), Browne, inspired by a lingering spark of heroic idealism, is seeking to establish the truth about his existence. But to enter the race, he pretends to have much more solo sailing experience than he in fact has had. The grandeur of the race appeals to his thwarted spirit, his unrealized potential. ‘‘Fantasies of solitary voyages occurred to him,’’ Robert Stone tells us.4 So he promotes himself, and his company further promotes him and its racing yacht in the media. The irony here is that in seeking to dispel the insincerity of his life as a promotional writer by entering a real race in the real world, he doubles insincerity by lying about his qualifications. Browne falsifies his destiny to become available at a time in life when, according to Ortega, his maturity and obligations–a family and career–are supposed to render him unavailable. The problem for Browne is that his suburban life does not feel like an authentic destiny. Although this domestic lifestyle is niche-like in its comfortable routines, he has felt an existential insufficiency since his tour in Vietnam, which was an interrupted episode in its own right. Something was not finished in that war; and what follows this incomplete mission is a life that is marked by its indeterminacy. He is haunted by the idea that his life could be occupying the wrong niche, a false destiny to begin with.

606

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

If this is indeed the case, what would another falsification – a mere sailboat race–matter? Once at sea, reality engulfs Owen Browne with its cruel wind and waves. The race is rigorous: to Owen it feels like the first genuine reality test he has experienced since Vietnam. He suffers ff self-doubt from the start, seeming to confirm the gossip spread by his peers that he is indulging in a dangerous fantasy. To be sure, while Browne’s qualifications for such a race remain presumptive and untested, his participation in the sailing race is a phantom relation – a fantasy. As Husserl says, ‘‘In the natural attitude, there is at first (prior to reflection) no predicate ‘real,’ no genus ‘reality.’ ’’5 But Browne’s performance proves competent. It is all the more remarkable, then, that although his skills meet the demands of the situation, he decides to falsify his progress in the race, opting to bay his boat in a remote inlet and give up the chase. He radios in false coordinates as if he is still competing, still winning. And then, after recurrent hallucinatory experiences, he drowns himself at sea. As Robert Stone tells us, near death Browne regrets lying, but it is already too late to undo his deception. The false coordinates of his progress have been transmitted. As soon as his boat is found, the deception will be exposed to the entire world. Why would he bother to deceive everyone when he could have won the race? Realizing that his life had been largely a lie, he decides to showcase the very deception he at first hoped to put behind him. What overwhelms Browne is not the challenging race but the overall commercial episode in which he is cast as a hero. His grandiose role playing now sickens and dizzies him. He wanted to prove to himself that he could do the race, and once he proves this to himself, everything that follows seems pointlessly promotional. The reality test that he passed for himself is eclipsed in magnitude by the relentless hype of his life which the race was supposed to dispel but in fact exaggerates. He will be claimed a hero and his company and the media will again triumph. To halt this process so characteristic of our culture by which something fake becomes real, he cheats and then kills himself to expose the deceptive world to itself, as in a mirror darkly. This exposure of the self-mythologizing process will do more to establish the truth, Browne thinks, then to play along and have his people declare another promotional victory. Browne’s final act of deception explains the hallucinatory atmosphere of the final scene for this would-be world-class sailor. The fictive powers of the mind are no longer constrained by an interior identity or by a new niche, which takes time and experience to develop. The adventure col-

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

607

lapses and backslides into the supposition or fantasy in which his participation was inspired and launched, but this time without the limiting force of a niche. He underestimated the gripping power of the niche he had back in the suburbs. The existential insufficiency from which he suffered ff there, and which the race sought to cure, was not in itself justification to abolish the physical and emotional supports of his environment, so sorely missed in the raging sea. One of his best friends from Vietnam had warned him before the race, ‘‘Value your life. Shitty as it may be. Value your family. The war’s over and you’re alive.’’ He was warning Browne away from the heroic idealism that ends up destroying him. III

Let us now turn to a novel that raises the question of the proper limits of a writer’s niche by staging a series of events in which a writer transgresses his characteristic sphere of activity. This is Paul Auster’s novel, L eviathan (1992). As in Robert Stone’s novel, Auster’s protagonist is annihilated when he ventures beyond his niche. The question we are confronted with in Auster’s novel is more philosophically redolent for us, however, because the protagonist is a serious writer (not merely an advertiser) and because the sphere into which he stumbles and perishes is politics. The writer Benjamin Sachs gets accidentally blown up while perpetrating an act of domestic terrorism, after abandoning his writing vocation, which he judged ineffectual ff and obsolete. This fatal politicization of a writer’s career links Auster’s narrative to the debate begun by Thoreau’s ‘‘On Civil Disobedience,’’ a text with which Sachs is familiar. In fact, Sachs’ behavior is more reminiscent of Thoreau’s powerful endorsement of John Brown the abolitionist, who risks his life at Harper’s Ferry Landing. It can safely be said that the atmosphere of L eviathan as F a whole is haunted by the intellectual polemic of engagement, including Jean Paul Sartre’s notion of engaged literature and its refutation by Georges Bataille. It is a distinguishing feature of Paul Auster’s career that he has consistently demonstrated knowledge of both classic American writers and French thought, and that, as a writer himself, he has gone farther than most American novelists of his generation in describing the writer’s disposition and niche. His novels and nonfiction, due in part to their frequently autobiographical nature, contain nuanced and sensitive portrayals of the writer’s compulsions and habits, the ways writers outfit and inhabit their niches. The best of Auster’s work reminds us of Kafka’s diaries, or of

608

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

more recent lineage, Maurice Blanchot and Thomas Bernhard. The overt European solemnity of Auster’s writing is, however, lightened to some extent by the ironical and happenstance atmosphere that hearkens back to such 19th-century writers as Melville and Twain. That is, chance or contingency seems to complicate any assumptions we make about the apparent weight of destiny that burdens Auster’s haunted and self-conscious figures. In the novel L eviathan, Benjamin Sachs is a formerly successful writer ‘‘who is gradually losing faith in himself ’’ due to a declining readership and a film option in Hollywood that fails to materialize.6 In his heyday in the 1960s Sachs felt connected to and appreciated by his audience, but by the 1980s the political atmosphere of the Reagan era has put radical thought out of favor and made it a diminished thing. In short, Sachs suffers ff acutely from a lack of community, and his work and thought are marked by anachronism. ‘‘Almost imperceptibly, Sachs came to be seen as a throwback, as someone out of step with the spirit of the time. The world had changed around him, and in the present climate of selfishness and intolerance, of moronic chest-pounding Americans, his opinions seemed curiously harsh and moralistic.’’7 Although the narrator, who is himself a writer, says that Sachs was never an overly ambitious or commercial writer, his early success marked him as ‘‘one of the most promising young novelists to have come along in years.’’ When he begins to feel the mounting despair of his anachrony, he begins to question the efficacy and relevance of his vocation. Steeped, as we said earlier, in the politically engaged literature of which Thoreau’s ‘‘On Civil Disobedience’’ was the precursor, Sachs decides to stop writing and communicate his ideas by other means, that is, by action instead of words. ‘‘The idea of writing disgusts me,’’ Sachs says to friend, Peter Aron. ‘‘I want to stand up from my desk and do something. The days of being a shadow are over. I’ve got to step into the real world and do something.’’ (137). This remark begs the question: What is the ‘‘real’’ world to a novelist? Isn’t he inclined by habit and disposition to approach it, as Baudelaire said, as a forest of symbols, a site of materials for mythography? Doesn’t the writer relate to the world in this way even when he stops writing? There is a scene in Auster’s novel, Oracle Night, where a writer, temporarily relinquishing his desk and notebook, walks into a friend’s apartment only to find that ‘‘it seemed to belong as much to the world of fiction as to the world of solid objects and flesh-and-blood human beings.’’8

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

609

Benjamin Sachs feels that American freedom, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, has become merely a stale and empty myth, nothing more, and a mockery of real freedom defined by its responsibilities to upholding the values of democracy. Hence he sets out to blow up the small replicas of the Statue of Liberty that he finds in small towns scattered across the American heartland, to awaken the dormant political unconscious of the American people. In doing so he becomes known in the media as the Phantom of Liberty, a folk hero to some Americans. ‘‘Wake up, America,’’ the Phantom says in phone calls to newspapers, ‘‘It’s time to start practicing what you preach.’’ ‘‘Each person is alone,’’ he says, ‘‘and therefore we have nowhere to turn but to each other.’’ ‘‘Democracy is not a given. It must be fought each day, or else we run the risk of losing it.’’ ‘‘Neglect the children, and we destroy ourselves,’’ Sachs says. ‘‘We exist in the present only to the degree that we put our faith in the future.’’9 There is nothing original being said here. Sachs projects his own loss of audience onto the grand narrative of his generation that community has been lost. In the Sixties, the pursuit of the sacred annulled by nihilism became a search for a new community.10 But this idea as invoked by Sachs is, as we said, not the least original. It is as if the critical intensity honed within his niche has been displaced or evacuated by the bland American landscape of freedom in which he roams. Benjamin Sachs, however formerly brilliant a writer, is now merely espousing slogans of democracy that strike us as generic and rhetorical, like the speeches given by candidates running for public office. He is not deconstructing the American myths but revivifying them. The gradual obsolescence of his writing confronted him with the monstrous indifferff ence of the American public to the ideals of democracy, and he resorts to myth to regain the sense of community that he once felt in the Sixties. Sachs mythologizes himself by becoming the folklorish Phantom of Liberty. Myth is undoubtedly a fundamental form of communalization.11 This means it builds community and a sense of tribal identity. But Ortega would argue that myth and symbol, however important to the effort ff of re-establishing a sense of community, falsify a singular destiny, an individual life, which is based in concrete reality. We see this in the hypocrisy behind Benjamin Sachs’s rhetoric of democratic idealism. In his former niche of the writing life, he had intimate relations with others, which is what his new vision calls for, but his self-mythologizing brings him away from all such intimate relations into a realm of spectacular violence

610

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

(although no one is hurt but himself ). He talks about caring for others while escaping them, of community while absolutely alone. Here Ortega would say that Sachs has fallen prey to his own idealism. He must stop living from f his ideas and once again live from his exclusive destiny as a writer which, however seemingly ineffectual, ff served as a personal compass. It is the ‘‘terrible reality’’ of that destiny from which Sachs escapes. But the freedom that meets him involves so many possibilities that they seem equal in value or relevance. As the narrator says, ‘‘For as long as I had known him, Sachs’s life had revolved around his work, and to see him suddenly without that work made him seem like a man who had no life. He was adrift, floating in a sea of undifferentiated ff days, and as far as I could tell, it was all one to him whether he made it back to land or not’’ (138). ‘‘As in a spiral,’’ the critic Carsten Springer says, Sachs ‘‘moves around in his search for answers but distances himself more and more from his former relatively stable existence. This is why the events of the novel’s second half become increasingly unusual and, for the reader, almost incredible.’’12 Only a focused existence with the burden of its vocation would be able to prioritize these relations. ‘‘Our destiny must determine our ideas, and not vice-versa,’’ Ortega writes. ‘‘Primitive man was lost in the world of things, there in the forest; we are lost in a world of ideas which show us existence as a cupboard full of equivalent possibilities, of things comparatively indifferent, ff of Ziemlichgleichgu¨ltigkeiten’’ (121). IV

The main narrative of L eviathan, briefly summarized here, thus depicts the abandoning of a vocation or else the pursuit of the writing vocation by performative means. Several critics have made the essential connection of Auster’s plot to Don Dellilo’s novel Mao II, in which it is proclaimed that terrorism and its coverage by the new media have robbed the writer of his audience and his concrete rhetorical impact.13 For the popular imagination, the event horizon and its spectacular displays is no longer the realm of novels and poems. For narrative material that will impact and attract an audience, writers are forced out of their moorings into new and formidable circumstances and performances more suitable for film makers, journalists, politicians, and soldiers. We can call this the obsolescence argument. Nevertheless, the narrative construction of Auster’s novel complicates this argument and its context. Reporting the relinquishment of Sach’s

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

611

writing vocation is the narrative voice of his friend, such that the erasure of Sachs’s career is always already replaced by another writing and writer. Indeed, the novel that Benjamin Sachs abandons before becoming a terrorist, titled L eviathan, is resumed by his friend, Peter Aaron, the narrator of Auster’s L eviathan. Peter Aaron writes L eviathan. One writing career gives way to another; the failure of one vocation is the condition for the possibility of another, that of Peter Aaron and of course, Paul Auster. This tiered or multi-phased narrative structure demands our careful scrutiny. It suggests that however singular a writer’s destiny and obligations, it occurs within a community that takes up the writing like a baton and presses ahead with it. There is a continuation of the material but also a profound alteration due to the shifting narrative agency. Writing is at once a subjective activity and a transpersonal one. The writers themselves, each one of them, is extremely important to the process, however much the evolving text transcends their subjective finitude. There is no question, for example, that Benjamin Sachs is a charismatic figure who casts a spell on Peter Aaron not only through his writings but his personhood. Their personal friendship is a precondition of the arduous task that Peter Aaron will be beset with upon news of the death of Sachs. But another element of this precondition is the failure of Sachs as a novelist. The intricacies of narrative doubling with which Paul Auster confronts his readers have become his trademark, and we don’t want to underestimate their significance. However, at the same time we shouldn’t lose sight of the problem of niche transgression at the core of the novel, and the phantom relations that ensue as a consequence. The niche crossing is inescapably linked to the narrative doubling. Benjamin Sachs abandons his niche as a novel writer, but Peter Aaron builds his own niche and inhabits it successfully insofar as he complete the novel L eviathan. That is why one of the most significant moments in the novel is when Peter Aaron says to his friend, ‘‘You need to get back to work. The minute you start writing again, you’ll begin to remember who you are’’ (137). We will have occasion to return to this remark. Perhaps the most provocative structuring element of this novel is the to and fro comparison that goes on between Benjamin Sachs and Peter Aaron in the latter’s mind. It is a detailed accounting of not only their respective writing methods but their lifestyles as writers. Sachs was for years a naturally gifted and productive writer, capable of producing twelve manuscript pages in a sitting. We learn that he nevertheless did not keep

612

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

a regular schedule and seemed free for social activities and the amenities of city life. Peter Aaron is ‘‘astonished’’ and ‘‘awed’’ by his friend’s almost casual productivity, his ‘‘curious talent,’’ all the more so insofar as Sachs ‘‘had little or no interest in pursuing what people refer to as a ‘literary career.’ ’’ The destiny or life-plan (if we may call it that while avoiding the word career) of Sachs evolved as a writer’s life based in literary fiction; yet Sachs does not stick to writing novels but branches out into writing a variety of nonfictional genres including essays, reviews and the like. It seems to be all the same to him just so long as it is writing. In comparison, the narrator Peter Aaron is a plodding, deliberate novelist who can’t take his talent for granted and must maintain a steady focus on the work at hand. He tells us that words do not come easily to him as they seem to come to Sachs, and that writing is a daily struggle to which he must commit himself diligently. We discern an inevitable envy in the narrator’s delivery when he informs us that for Sachs ‘‘the act of writing was remarkably free of pain’’ (55). This envy extends to the narrator’s longstanding admiration for Sachs’ wife. Human nature being what it is, competitive and in search of consolation, the narrator subsequently becomes obsessed with his friend’s failure. In fact, the novel called L eviathan that Peter Aaron finishes is a story about a writer’s failure – his failed writing career and his failed or aborted career as a terrorist. It is indirectly affirmed by the narrator, based on his own success in completing the manuscript that his friend abandoned, that his friend’s failure is the result of leaving his niche, which was the basis of his identity and the precondition for a successful writing life. This is the meaning of the narrator’s remark we cited earlier: ‘‘You need to get back to work. The minute you start writing again, you’ll begin to remember who you are.’’ It will be helpful here to borrow the concept of the niche developed in ecology. The Yale ecologist Paul Colinvaux traces his initial definition of the niche to church architecture, where it means a recess in the wall of a church where a holy or symbolic artifact may be placed. Hence the niche is ‘‘an address, a location, a physical place.’’ This sort of location has traditionally been called a habitat. But the ecologist further develops the dynamics of the niche by arguing that the sort of niche ecology he has in mind is also ‘‘an animal’s (or a plant’s) profession.’’ This is admittedly a peculiar manner of speaking. The habitat, says Paul Colinvaux, is the location or address where a species such as the wolf spider lives, in this case the woodland floor, but ‘‘wolf-spidering’’ is its niche, its profession. Hence niche is defined in terms of the actions that the wolf-spider

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

613

undertakes to ‘‘stay fit’’ in the Darwinian sense of surviving and thriving as a wolf spider. Furthermore, ‘‘to be able to do these things,’’ says Colinvaux, ‘‘it must relate properly to the place where it lives and to the other inhabitants of that place.’’14 If we speak of the niche of a writer in these terms, we mean the act of writing that makes him a writer. The Vermont house which Benjamin Sachs frequents is his habitat, but his niche is writing. When he leaves his Vermont house, he is not abandoning his niche but his habitat; he had already abandoned his niche inside the house when he stopped writing at the desk where he leaves his manuscript (for Peter Aaron to pick up). Those social relations intrinsic to the writer’s niche are likewise sacrificed. If we can extrapolate a bit from the ecologist’s parlance, it is possible to speak of a moral ecology associated with the writer’s niche, insofar as the writer is disposed to attend both to his writing and the social world that he inhabits concretely. The good will of his relations to others as a writer, the hospitality of a writer as one who gives a gift of meaning, is forsaken when his niche is abandoned. The writer’s niche, however seemingly useless or obsolete, is upheld by the narrator for moral reasons that involve staying true to his friendship. Peter Aaron wants to convey the life of Benjamin Sachs in all its failed sovereignty and ambiguity to establish a profile of the writer that stands in contrast to reductive police reports of a terrorist’s self-destruction. The difference ff is between poetry and journalism. The morality of a committed writer like Peter Aaron does not pitch him into action, as we would expect from a committed writer in the Sartrean mold. Rather, he makes an obscure contribution from his niche that is incompatible with the more practical contributions of citizens in society. V

The events that unfold following Sachs’ exodus from his Vermont house, where his book is left unfinished, suggest that he becomes exposed to chance and multiplicity. He begins to assume many roles and is subject to accidents and bizarre events. The foregrounding of chance is familiar narrative material for readers of Paul Auster and in this novel, L eviathan, chance represents the coincidental events that occur to Benjamin Sachs outside of his niche, that is, when he is no longer writing. Let us recall that the development of a profession or niche reduces availability, that is, exposure to chance. As a writer, Sachs seemed to have a carefree lifestyle, but that freedom took its contours from his writing life and the

614

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

people involved in it. The writing life, however seemingly unpopular or unsatisfactory over time, was a form of autarchy and self-discipline. The writer is his own Leviathan, or governing power, and gives himself the measure of freedom and the limits necessary to keep writing. Outside of writing, however, he is subject to another Leviathan, a maelstrom of choices, ‘‘terrible freedom’’ as Sartre would say. He is almost immediately involved in a murder. This is American culture in all its violent heterogeneity: every man for himself; multitasking; unbridled capitalism. Is the Leviathan of Hobbes all that distant? It is ironic that Benjamin Sachs leaves his post of self-determination out of disgust that everyone else is selfishly concerned with their own self-promotion, for he ends up mythologizing himself in unwitting compliance with Andy Warhol’s maxim about ‘‘fifteen minutes of fame.’’ A writer writes. His niche is his sphere of practice. Every novel or story represents a successful inhabitation and deployment of a novelist’s niche if it is defined as a space of imaginative production. If, however, there is a criterion of performance (entertainment value), or a popular readership criterion, or a criterion of political consequence, then the niche has been redefined in terms of its responsibilities and landscape. It may be the case that the fate of Benjamin Sachs is directly related to his failure to adapt to a culture that privileges multitasking. His death may be the result of incompetence, a poorly made bomb, a bad timing device, and so on. To what extent can a writer’s practice be stretched or distorted to such a degree that it is no longer the niche that it was? This is a phenomenological question having to do with the essential parameters of a niche. We have already answered this question in the following tautology: the writer writes. But writing is such a metaphorical concept that the free variation deployed to determine its essence is particularly vexing. For example, Ortega spoke of composing one’s life like a novel, chapter by chapter. Nietzsche too saw his life as a work of literature that he stylized and heroically composed, without ever being seduced by the ideology of action (politics of engagement) that destroys Benjamin Sachs.15 Nietzsche kept writing and only writing until his nervous breakdown. He saw his books as bombs, if you will, and never abandoned books for bombs as Sachs does. It can be suggested that with his niche pre-set by years of literary endeavor, the basic modality of Sachs’s being-in-the-world was that of a writer even when he is not writing. His niche was as it were an illusion engine producing a new work called his post-writing life, and this work ran into technical and/or practical difficulties because he insisted on

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

615

radical engagement. As we said, Sachs makes the mistake that Nietzsche never made of being seduced by political life, by practical idealism. It was true also for Nietzsche that climate and setting were indispensable conditions for his niche behavior, his thinking and writing, and that, however grandiose and multiple his viewpoint, he never abandoned these specific conditions like Owen Browne does in Outerbridge Reach and Benjamin Sachs in L eviathan. It is ironically the case that he invites chance and multiplicity while respecting his niche, while the figures in these novels invite chance by leaving their niches. ‘‘All of us are conscious,’’ Ortega writes, ‘‘that as we realized ourselves in existence, other lives that we might equally well have lived, fell, decimated by destiny, all about us. Fate has selected one from our possible trajectories and has eliminated the rest. My memoirs will recount, along with my actual life, those others that I could have lived, lives truncated before their birth, feeble, humble existences that forever remain stillborn ... errant specters that constitute our multiple lost being.’’16 Duped by a political unconscious itself influenced by a mass media that privileges spectacular displays and niche crossings, Benjamin Sachs moves from the concrete destiny of a writer into such an errant specter, or phantom life, the life of the man of action, or the political radical. Although he leaves his writing behind, his mode of being is still largely symbolical, which means he carries the traces of his niche with him, surely a handicap to a hero. Those of us who are scholars, critics, and intellectuals carry within us such unrealized phantom lives that we don’t have the time or competence to fulfill. In the case of Benjamin Sachs, all of the vivid concrete relations he had established in his life as a writer become increasingly distant and phantasmal as he pursues his terrorist project. He leaves his niche of concretely intimate relations to live a more concrete life, but the exact opposite happens and his life force vanishes in the explosion of a misadventure. George Bataille’s rebuke to Sartre’s politics of engagement rings true in this case. ‘‘I am always astonished by men who, fired up and eager to act, look down upon the pleasure of living,’’ he writes. ‘‘Of all the opiums, action brings the heaviest sleep. The place action occupies makes one think of those trees that hide the forest, that profess to be the forest itself ... Leave the dead to the dead (barring the impossible) and action to those who passionately confuse it with life.’’ Bataille argues that the genuine writer, by renouncing direct action and access to the political power of ‘‘kings,’’ assumes another kind of sovereignty. In this regard his argument pays homage to Nietschean

616

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

thought. ‘‘The modern writer can maintain a relation with productive society only by requiring from that society a protected reserve where, in place of the principle of utility, there reigns openly the denial of ‘signification’ ...’’17 A contemporary and friend of Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, likewise criticizes what he called ‘‘the reign of the public’’ which he says neutralizes the destiny of the writer, changes his destination by casting him outside his niche into a space, ‘‘not close, not distant, not familiar, not strange, it has no center, its is a kind of space that assimilates everything and retains nothing.’’18 The lesson we learn from writers such as Bataille and Blanchot is one that Ortega warned us of, not to falsify our destiny or niche – ‘‘protected reserve’’ – but stay true to it as a sign of our sovereign finitude. Such a lesson is not in sync with a multitasking postmodernity. Nor is this aesthetic-moral lesson we learn from L eviathan the one Paul Auster necessarily wants us to privilege over others, thereby reducing the interpretive possibilities of the novel. Indeed, the consistent ambiguity that characterizes the narrator Peter Aaron’s musings about whether he can know anything true about his friend, Benjamin Sachs, is Auster’s attempt to dissuade us of any conclusions except two. First, that friendship, as Jacques Derrida has evocatively suggested in his Politics of Friendship, is based on illusion and error, a sort of blind spot. What friends don’t know about each other preserves their bond, which is comprised as much of unknowing, of distance and imagination, as intimate understanding.19 And secondly, that when writers are involved with giving an account of events and of each other’s behavior, the ‘‘real’’ story is always yet to come. The attempt of Peter Aaron to keep Sachs’ death to himself, to protect it from police scrutiny, is fraught with ambiguity because he publicizes it while hiding it. In conclusion, how should we place Paul Auster himself in the moral framework we have privileged in which there remains a mandate to protect the writer’s niche? In spite of the ambiguity that pervades L eviathan, Paul Auster’s initials, P.A. are those of Peter Aaron. And like Peter Aaron, Auster keeps close to his craft and his community in New York and continues to write books. There is a telling anecdote in Auster’s autobiography: ‘‘My life would be good if and only if I stuck to my guns and refused to give in. Art was holy, and to follow its call meant making any sacrifice that was demanded of you, maintaining your purity of purpose to the bitter end.’’20 In this remark, Auster pledges himself to the ethos articulated by Ortega and Bataille. He has remained a New York writer who has spent summers writing in Vermont. He continues

PHANTOM RELATIONS AND THE WRITER’S NICHE

617

to write. He has made films and participated in public readings and forums, but without betraying his fundamental orientation as a writer. His brief foray into the political sphere, represented in the plot of the novel L eviathan, is trivial compared to the magnitude of political events reported in the daily news, but he remains unshaken by this state of affairs. ff Nevertheless, the possibility exists that Paul Auster could, precisely because of his highly focused commitment to the writer’s niche and the concrete relations that comprise it, exhaust his material and move on to another genre, another aesthetic sphere in which his own shadow of accomplishment is not so long and intimidating. But that niche will also be imaginatively informed by his writer’s vision and way of knowing. Alas, his youth is behind him, Ortega would say. The question is whether Auster can achieve metamorphosis in this expanding circle of his own design, whose contours evince the inner fatality of a genuine writer, or repeat his work and thereby render his niche an echo-filled tomb. University of Guam U NOTES 1 Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, T he Structures of the L ife-World, Richard M. Zaner and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. (trans.) (Evanston: Northwester UP, 1973), p. 22. 2 Ortega y Gasset, ‘‘In Search of Goethe from Within,’’ in T he W Worlds of Existentialism, Maurice Freedman (ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 121–122. 3 Schutz and Luckmann, op cit., p. 48. 4 Robert Stone, Outerbridge Reach (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 69. 5 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, James S. Churchhill and Karl Ameriks (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973). 6 Paul Auster, L eviathan (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 117. 7 Ibid., p. 116. 8 Paul Auster, Oracle Night (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), p. 29. 9 Auster, op. cit., pp. 243–244. 10 In his T he IInoperative Community, Jean Luc-Nancy writes ‘‘that community itself now occupies the place of the sacred. Community is the sacred, if you will; but the sacred stripped of the sacred.’’ See Jean Luc-Nancy, T he Inoperative I Community, Peter Connor (trans.) (Minnesota: Minnesota UP, 1991), p. 35. 11 Several probing works deal with the issue of myth and community from a phenomenological viewpoint. See Leszek Kolakowski, T he Presence of Myth, Adam Czerniawski (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Also see Jean Luc-Nancy, T he Inoperative I Community (cited above). 12 Carsten Springer, Crises: T he Works of Paul Auster (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 170–1. 13 See Don DeLillo, Mao II (New York: Penguin Books, 1991). For a provocative commentary on DeLillo’s novel and the usurpation of the writer’s role by terrorism, see Frank

618

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe, ff Crimes of Art and T error (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 14 Paul Colinvaux, W hy Big Fierce Animals Are Rare: An Ecologist’s Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 11. 15 See Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: L ife as L iterature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985). 16 Ortega y Gasset cited in Rockwell Gray, ‘‘Ortega y Gasset and the Modern Idea of Destiny,’’ Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry Vol. XV: 2–3 (1977): p. 182. 17 See Georges Bataille, ‘‘Letter to Rene Char on the Incompatibilities of the Writer,’’ in Allan Stoekl, ed., On Bataille, t Yale French Studies no. 78, (1990): p. 42. 18 Maurice Blanchot, ‘‘The Power and the Glory,’’ in T he Station Hill Blanchot Reader,Lydia Davis (trans.) (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1999), p. 453. 19 Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, George Collins (trans.) (London: Verso, 1997), p. 53. 20 Paul Auster, Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), p. 46.

SITANSU RAY

SOME FREEDOM WITHIN A SMALL RANGE: TAGORE ON MORAL STANDARD

The drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character. Duality is there in the depths of existence. The contradiction of free impulse and directive will work upon life and evolves an orderly scheme of things. But, all the orders are temporary, tentative, flexible, elastic, dynamic and after all, transitory, and different ff from place to place and from time to time. Our individual impulses, passions and desires are unruly and rebellious. But our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. That is why despite occasional violence or turbulence the drama of existence is not altogether hopelessly desultory. Despite the possibility of eruption of unruliness, there is also a constant harmony of chance and determination which has been making our dynamic existence eternally new and living. There is in human affairs ff an element of elasticity – ‘‘some freedom within a small range’’,1 which is for the experience and expression of our personality, never rigidly fixed. Even within the superstructure of arrangement, i.e., law and prescribed regulations, one can give spontaneous expression of one’s moulded and refined variations of passion in the forms of newer and newer creations between apparent reality and idealistic, artistic and creative illusions. If we do not cut ourselves adrift from the central law of existence, we can have enjoyable freedom for almost full self-expression within the limits of social norms. Furthermore, if in our conduct we can follow the law of some sort of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. Some sort of uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience. And yet there is also a constant process of reconcilliation, ‘‘the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.’’2 However, is there any fixed universal standard? That is also tentative and just in vogue for the present. When Dilipkumar Ray asks Rabindranath Tagore whether sexual enjoyment between a man and a woman is immoral, Tagore explains to him in a letter3 that the same is not itself immoral. Had it been so, then the sons and daughters would have been outcomes or issues of immoral acts, i.e., sin. But, Tagore asserts that sexual enjoyment must be limited 619 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 619–623. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

620

SITANSU RAY

to husband and wife only as long as the marriage system is in vogue in human society. In one of his congregational addresses,4 Tagore says that one-to-one, devoted, and, trusting relationships between a couple bring forth an ideal moral standard for strengthening the family as well as the entirety of society. On another occasion Tagore says – The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman.5

Once again, while interpreting Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam,6 Tagore says that sheer voluptuous outbreaks must be burnt away with the wrath of Shiva, i.e., the epitome of goodness. When coupled with Parvati or Sati, i.e., the epitome of femininity, the divine issue is Kumara, who defeats the evils. Ku means the evils, mar means to destroy. Mythological characters may or may not be historical ones. Yet, they are outcomes of our ancient cultures always concerned with our passions and desires, our love and affection, ff the problems of evil and powerful ways of solving them. Mythological characters are personifications of the moral and immoral traits of human psychology. Tagore always says that our early life should be based on brahmacharya7 (i.e., practice of moral austerity) so as to enter into ideal conjugal love in youth. A vina should be perfectly tuned so that good music can be played on it. An untuned vina cannot emit music, similarly an unrestrained chaotic life cannot enjoy the bliss of ideal love. This saying is applicable to both men and women. Apart from George Santayana, the author of T he Sense of Beauty,8 many thinkers, poets and artists say that beauty springs from ‘‘the irrational part of our nature’’9 Tagore’s creativity provides ample examples of this truth. Just for an example the song ‘‘He ‘ nirupama’’ may be cited. In this song, Tagore tells the unparalled one to forgive him if his song emits an impatient tune, if his dealings become restless, if his glances surpass the limit of decorum, In his own words – He nirupama, Gane yadi lage bihwala tan kariyo kshama. * * * Chapalata aji yadi ghate tabe kariyo kshama. * * * Ankhi yadi aj kare aparadh kariyo kshama,10 etc.

SOME FREEDOM WITHIN A SMALL RANGE

621

When the whole monsoon nature is turbulant and impatient why shouldn’t the human mind be irrational? This is the poetic justification if any ethical question is raised. In many of his discourses on art, literature and aesthetics Tagore says that preaching of ethical or moral principles must not be the aim of a poet or an artist. Yet, all good poems or pieces of art are always combined with moral goodness. According to the Tagorean ideals the trinity of Truth, Beauty and Goodness is the spirit of any standard Creativity. In search of moral standards, humanity must never shed off love, beauty and various shades of psychical affections. ff These are the precious assets of humanity. Exquisite beauty wins over gross sensuality. This is seen in the poem V ijayini11 (Victress or Victoress or Conqueress). The God of Love Pushpadhanu surrenders all his erotic shafts while he sees the naked beauty of a damsel absorbed in bathing in a lake. Hard penance and austerity at the cost of beauty and affection ff never belong to the Tagorean taste and standard. Among many examples, let me mention Tagore’s drama Prakritir Pratishodh12 (The Revenge of Nature), where affection ff wins over dry austerity. Some cross-references from the West may not be quite out of place. Bertrand Russell says both in his Marriage and Morals13 and T he Conquest of Happiness14 that our natural instincts must not be killed or thwarted, but should be properly trained towards the fulfilment of our lives. T aser Desh15 (The Land of Cards), Tagore’s allegorical drama, portrays freedom of will from the bondage of lifeless norms of moral codes, from the do’s and don’ts of imposed strictures of law and order. Haratani (the Hearts Princess) and Ruitan (the Diamond Prince) fall in love with each other. After facing many hurdles of the hard-core administrative set-up of the card-kingdom, they become brave enough to ignore the royal strictures by virtue of their romantic and adventurous spirit of reciprocal love. In the course of time all the citizens start to disobey the age-old orthodox rules of the Card-Kingdom. The jubilant overseas Prince, as the messenger of emancipation of human will, turns all the card community including the Card-Queen vibrant with the desire for liberation. They sing the song of the victory of will. At the end of the drama, the card-king himself sheds off his arrogance and becomes congenial to the freedom of individual and collective will. The whole card-kingdom gets new life, ‘‘M ‘Manas-Sundari ’’ and ‘‘Jyotsnarate’’, two poems from the poetical works Kalpana and Chitra, depict imaginary scenes of full union between

622

SITANSU RAY

two sexes, semantically, the meaning is erotic; rhetorically, the meaning suggests a lyrico-tonal aesthetic sensuousness. Just two passionate portions: Nagna bakshe baksha diya N Antar rahasya taba shune nii priya.16

[Let me get into the inner mystery of yours by bare-breast embrace with you, o my beloved! Let your heart-beats strike the strings of my heart and create the waves of musical tune.] (my translation). Alingan smriti Ange tarangiya dao, ananter giti bajaye shirar tantre. Phatuk hriday bhumanande byapta hoye yak shunyamay Ganer taner mato.17

[Shiver my person with the memory of your embrace. Let the music of the infinite resonate my veins. Let my heart burst into ecstasy and spread over the sky like tonal flow of music.] (My translation) These are neither obscene nor immoral. The sensuous beauty in both the cases overcast the least grain of sensual imagery. Now, let us refer to Tagore’s novel Prajapatir Nirbandha18 (the destined love-rite) and its dramatised form Chirakumar Sabha19 (the celibate-club). These comedies are but humorous and satirical attacks on the fragile vow of celibacy of the then pseudo followers of the ideal of Swami Vivekananda.20 The moral of the works is that celibacy cannot be congenial to the normal health of society. The members of the celibate-club after all surrender to the normal youthful attraction for love of the fair sex. On Keiserling’s request,21 Tagore wrote the long essay ‘‘‘Bharatbarshiya Bibaha’’22 (The Indian Marriage), had it translated into English and sent it to Keiserling in Germany. Keiserling had it translated into German and compiled it in his anthology on marriage entitled Das Ehe Buch. Tagore’s essay deals with subtle psycho-ethical and social aspects of the place of women and love in the Indian marriage system. The thrust of Tagore’s essay is that human beings always have to balance themselves between the dual forces of natural instinct on one side and the social systems in vogue from time to time and place to place. Marriage is but the most comfortable compromise and conciliation between the two. No marriage system can be marked as perfect. There cannot be any set theory of moral standard.

SOME FREEDOM WITHIN A SMALL RANGE

623

In conclusion, we may say that the Tagorean ideal inherent in his clause ‘‘some freedom within a shall range’’23 is closely concerned to his balanced sense of philosophy of love, aesthetic attitude and creativity, and last but not least, his attribution of divinity in human consciousness. V isva-Bharati (Central University) Santinikatan NOTES 1 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘‘Conversations: Tagore and Einstein’’ (New York: Asia, 1931), reprinted in Sangitchinta, Tagore’s posthumous publication (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Publishing Department, 2nd edition), p. 343. 2 Ibid., p. 347. 3 Desh, Annual Literary Number, 1384 Bengali Era, ‘‘Correspondence: Dilipkumar Ray and Rabindranath Tagore’’, Letter No. 51, Dated July 1930, Calcutta, p. 29. 4 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘‘Bikarshanka ‘ ’’ (fear of perversion), Santiniketan (congregational addresses) – Vol. I (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Publishing Department), pp. 27–30. 5 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘‘The Religion of the Forest’’, Creative Unity (New Delhi: Rupa, 2002), p. 57. 6 Ibid., pp. 52–54. 7 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘‘Saundaryabodh’’ (The sense of beauty), Sahitya (literature), Rabindra-Rachanavali (Collection of Rabindranath Tagore’s works, henceforth abbreviated as RR , followed by the volume number, Birthday centenary edition, Govt. of West Bengal, Calcutta, 1961), Vol. 13, pp. 749–762. 8 George Santayana, T he sense of Beauty (New York: Dover Publications, 1955). 9 Ibid., p. 14. 10 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘‘Prem ‘ ’’ (love-songs) No. 39, Gitabitan (collection of songs), VisvaBharati Publishing Department, Calcutta (1338). I am using 1404 Bengali Era edition, pp. 286–287. 11 RR-1, pp. 520–3. 12 RR-5, pp. 237–273. 13 Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (London: Routledge, 2001). 14 Bertrand Russell, T he Conquest of Happiness (London: Unwin, 1978). impression. 15 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘‘T T aser Desh, RR-6, pp. 1159–1190. 16 ‘‘M ‘Manas sundari ’’ (The beautiful lady-love of imagination), Sonar T ari (The Golden Boat), RR-1, p. 389. 17 ‘‘‘Jyotsnaratre’’ (at the moonlit night), Chitra (the feminine personification of picture), , RR-1, p. 469. 18 RR-8, pp. 385–495. 19 RR-6, pp. 693–806. 20 Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Rabindra-Jiban-Katha (the narration of Rabindranath’s biography) (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Publishing Department, 1967), p. 82. 21 Ibid., p. 194. 22 RR-13, pp. 5–20 (in the work of Samaj (Society), pp. 3–140. For supplementary reading: ‘‘Hindu ‘ Bibaha’’ (Hindu Marriage), ibid., pp. 72–101. 23 Op. cit., ‘‘Conversations: Tagore and Einstein,’’ Sangit Chinta, p. 343.

TSUNG-I DOW

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY: FILIAL PIETY AND ITS CHINESE EXPERIENCE

I

In order to search for a practical universal moral standard, it is necessary to define what morality is first. On anthropomorphic grounds, morality may be defined as the fundamental human behavior that ensures the sustainability, enjoyment and fulfillment of the meaning of life. What life is for a human being is certainly not merely to be alive as it is for most other living things in the world. Therefore, we many venture to say to be human means to be moral. Without it, human beings may not have survived, let alone have attained the development civilizations have achieved. Yet, in spite of the enormous achievements made through human cognition to acquire the most reliable knowledge in science, there is still no absolute explanation of how and why life originated from the Big Bang and how life emerged from the lifeless fundamental particles of quarks and leptons. Neuro science remains uncertain how human consciousness let alone the human conscience arise from the brain’s neural structures and functions. History tells us even scientific knowledge is provisional. Thus, the contention persists that an external creator created this world and that human life on earth came as a redemption. However, putting aside these profound questions such as how human life originated, Mencius (381–289 B.C.), considered the second sage of Confucianism after Confucius, pointed out what it is to be human. For example, as a result of human instinct, if one saw a child about to fall into a well, one would rush to the rescue without considering the danger to oneself or expecting the gratitude of the child’s parents or to become a hero in the community. This instantaneous response, in Mencius’ view, constitutes the essence of human morality. He extends this sense of commiseration to a sense of shame, a sense of propriety, and a sense of right and wrong as attributes to all. Mencius may have been overly optimistic and simplistic in his contention that a sense of morality reflects the ultimate goodness of human nature. But, there seems to be no indication that the process of evolution, either through the survival of the fittest or the busiest, has altered much about what Mencius prescribed. It was 627 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 627–641. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

628

TSUNG-I DOW

reported that Robert Oppenheimer, the chief architect of the nuclear bomb quoted the saying in Sanskrit, ‘‘Am I the destroyer of the world?’’ when he saw the mushroom cloud rising from the first nuclear explosion at the Los Alamos test site in 1945. Countless instances of what Mencius contended have occurred throughout history all over the world, despite the horrors of warfare, genocides, natural and human-made disasters and diseases. For instance, in Palm Beach, Florida, a 70-year-old man recently dashed into the surf to pull a boy from an approaching shark. The greatest surprise of all was this gentleman did not know how to swim and was afraid of the water. He was on his regular mail delivery route when he said, ‘‘I felt like I was looking at my own mother ... , my heart just went out to them.’’ (Sun Sentinel) The manifestations of one’s sense of morality involve the interaction of human relations, which is predicated on the survival of the human species as a whole. The survival of the human species depends on the survival of each individual human being. The survival of an individual human being depends on reproduction, which requires a harmonious interaction between the opposite sexes to produce an offspring. ff The human species’ life process proceeds in a twofold structure of male and female interaction in complementary contradiction. It is difficult to explain why. The very fact is that no individual can reproduce by itself no matter how fit or successful it is. You can clone anyone you like but you cannot clone by yourself. Interdependence in harmonious balance between individuals and among the whole is the first key to survival. Demographic studies show that an imbalance between the male and female population would endanger the survivability of the human species. As an individual, no one likes to die but one cannot avoid it. One must accept the fact that a relative balance has prevailed in the horizontal distribution of the opposite sexes as well as in the vertical succession of life and death cycles as a whole to ensure the survival and longevity in the evolutionary process of the human species. How this blessed balance occurs and benefits the survival of the human species needs further exploration. The principle of harmonious balance seems indispensable to evolution. Taking the illustration one step further, the survival of an individual body depends mainly on a twofold structure of actions, eating and mating. Each of the processes reiterates itself in a twofold structure through a cyclical progression. The feeling of hunger manifests itself in eating and is counterbalanced by fullness, which eliminates the feeling of hunger. Arousal and mating follows a similar satiation and cyclical counterbalanc-

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

629

ing. Yet, merely eating and mating without the feeling of pleasure would make life less meaningful and survival could be in question. Therefore, the enjoyment of life is as fundamental as eating and mating. In the enjoyment of life, emotion plays a significant role. Emotion consists of a twofold structure of love and hate, happiness and sadness, laughter and crying, among others. No one like to hear a baby crying. But can a baby survive without crying? The arguments of Buddhists that life is a process of suffering ff may be one-sided, yet the first sign of life is a baby’s crying. The birth pang is universal, yet few women terminate a pregnancy to avoid it. Similarly, the enjoyment of food is greatly effected ff by our sense of taste and smell. The sense of taste consists of countervailing sensations. The sense of smell follows the same pattern. Both senses display a twofold structure through which we select the tastes and smells we prefer, some of which repel us and some of which attract us. For example, flies are attracted to rotten meat but humans are repulsed. In reality, eating and mating sustain life but do not exclusively constitute life. Human beings work; but why? The question is simple yet too complex and defies scientific explanation. A life of doing nothing is inconceivable. Conversely, if one’s life is only filled with painful work, life may not feel worth living. Thus, the feeling of satisfaction in accomplishing something, whatever it might be, is essential to sustaining life. If the pursuit of happiness is the goal of life, then, happiness derives from the process of working to fulfill the meaning of life. Reason plays a greater role in attaining the purpose of life. It consists of a twofold structure of right and wrong, logic and illogic, induction and deduction, among others. But achievement in life cannot be fulfilled through the reasoning process alone. Without the enthusiasm of working towards a goal, the chance of failure is greater. In fact, as the saying goes, failure is the mother of success. So failure and success appear opposite but are complementary in a twofold process, which fulfills the meaning of life. In the same manner, emotion and reason form a twofold structure with the will to harmonize and mold them in one to act. Precisely how human will arises from the nervous system and whether it is free is unclear. In a sense, one’s will may be what constitutes the self. One can make up one’s mind to do it or not. The sense that the choice is one’s own may be what is meant by free will. In Mencius’ opinion, we all are endowed with the ability to know what is right, to make a choice and have the capacity to act upon it. One’s mind consists of both reason and emotion, a twofold structure. Reason can tame one’s emotion but cannot exclude it. Emotion can foster reasoning to achieve a better understanding but enthusiasm

630

TSUNG-I DOW

alone cannot accomplish the objective in mind. For example, not only one can love but also can hate. Through one’s will not only can one love humanity and but one can hate inhumanity. Each person is free to choose. Similarly, one must eat to live but one can choose between eating to live and living to eat. According to the Buddhist Dammapada, repaying hatred with hatred multiplies hatred; repay hatred with love and hatred ceases. One can make the choice to co-exist in peace. One can live without alcoholic beverages, but human beings never can eliminate the behavior in others. One can choose a course of moderation maintaining a harmonious balance. No significant discovery and invention can be accomplished without determination and perseverance which often can be a painful process. Regarding the invention of the airplane, the Wright brothers were not the first to build an airplane, but their will to fly led them to build a better airplane and to succeed where others failed (Richard P. Hallion). Where there is a will there is a way. Furthermore, sustaining, enjoying and fulfilling the meaning of life evolves in a twofold structure, not only through the harmonization of reason and emotion operating in unity in an individual’s will to act but also in the interaction of self and community. Without the support, admiration, and acceptance of one’s fellows in the community, one may not succeed in reaching life’s goals. The feeling of happiness from success is not entirely self-congratulatory. For instance, Henry Ford was successful in developing the automobile. Yet, he did not develop and assemble every part of the car by himself. If his car did not benefit the masses and receive their support, would Ford have enjoyed fame and established a family dynasty? When enjoyment and fulfillment become out of balance countervailing forces seem to arise. In terms of enjoying eating and mating, few could match the last emperor of the Shang dynasty (1027 B.C.) in China. He was a glutton in both areas and disparaged the notion that his subjects vowed to follow him to death. So their days of enjoyment ended shortly after his suicide. In terms of enjoying personal power, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (221 B.C.) may have exemplified it to the utmost. He thought that he had totally eliminated the opposition and thoroughly enforced a decree that no one was allowed to possess weapons except his soldiers. The dynasty lasted only fourteen years because mutinying masses overpowered the regime using wooden staves instead of metal swords. Most probably the human species can survive without artistic activities such as music, dance, painting, and poetry, among others. Yet, music and dance seem to have appeared at the very time human cultures emerged.

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

631

At present, the entertainment industry nearly shapes cultural development in the most economically advanced societies. The pursuit of artistic expression may be for an individual artist’s own pleasure, but can art survive merely for the sake of art without the acceptance and enjoyment of the community in which the artist is associated? In short, the human life process appears to proceed through a twofold structure, interacting in complementary contradiction, which attains a harmonious balance with one’s will in unity with ones actions. The principle of harmonious balance seems to be the key to survival. Violating it invites disaster. Morality, as the standard behavior for humans, ensures the sustainability, enjoyment and fulfillment of the meaning of life and must conform to it. The advancement of quantum mechanics reaffirms the view that humans constitute a basic part of nature. The focal point is no longer the attempt to conquer it. As far as science can ascertain, a twofold structure, which results in a harmonious balance, accounts for the existence of the world and the changes in it. Human behavior cannot depart from this process of nature. Further illustration is necessary. II

Needless to say, knowledge, as such, is the product of the human mind. All knowledge, including the most reliable one, science, is provisional. We acquire knowledge mainly through direct observation of the world; that is, we see the world with light. What is light? Quantum mechanics disclosed that light consists of photons, which display a twofold structure of particles and waves interacting in unity to provide information about the world. In the meantime, there is the unseen and unknown world whose existence we cannot confirm or deny. Recent discovery of what is known as dark matter and dark energy confirmed that unseen worlds exist. Dark matter emits no light, but from its effects ff scientists deduced it must exist. The extent to which it exists is yet to be determined (David B. Chine, pp. 50–59. The proposal of the existence of a parallel universe was generated from this discovery (Max Tegmark, pp. 40–51). According to the standard model of quantum mechanics, the world exists in matter. Matter exists in atoms. Atoms exist in fundamental particles. All particles come in matched pairs. They can be described as bosons and fermions. Bosons all gather into a single quantum state. Fermions separate into individuals. They interact, pushing and pulling, to attain a harmonious balance, sustaining existence and change in the world. Four fundamental forces act among and between bosons and fermions. They are strong,

632

TSUNG-I DOW

weak, electromagnetism and gravity. Electromagnetism can be combined with a weak force creating one entity that matches the strong force to attract all things except gravity. As a result, when an apple falls from the tree it falls to the ground but is not pulled deep into the earth by gravity. This phenomenon inspired Newton to conceive of gravity. But how do these forces operate and why? The question puzzled scientists until the discovery of dark matter, which seems to counterbalance gravity, allowing us to survive without violating the principle of a twofold structure sustaining existence. Furthermore, the space in which our planet exists is not empty, as it appears to the naked eye. Recently, scientists noticed the air in space, now called interstellar medium, envelops our galaxy and fills the space between the stars. The interstellar medium is a mixture with an extreme diversity of density, temperature and ionization. It is continuously being stirred, heated, cooled, transformed and recycled again and again, much like the water-cycle on earth, precipitation is followed by evaporation ad infinitum. The atmosphere of a planet is what binds its surface into a unified whole. Local phenomena can have global consequences (Ronald J. Reynolds, pp. 34–43). Scientists learned that not only the conditions of the interstellar medium influence stars’ formation but also they are influenced by it. The feedback is both positive and negative. In the Milky Way, in which our solar system is situated, the feedback seems to have reached an equilibrium, allowing the creation of an environment in which humans can live. For a complex life form like ours, this is possible only in a circumstellar habitable zone. The stars and their planetary retinue orbit within a certain range of distance from the center of a galaxy. If they are too far out, the nebula from which the star emerged will lack the heavy elements out of which the planets are made. If they are too close, hazards such as cometary collisions and exploding stars can nip the ecosystem in the bud. The earth’s sun’s position is in a perfect state of harmonious balance (Guillermo Gonzalez, et al., pp. 60–67). Not only does human life derive from such a habitable zone, in a state of harmonious balance, but also the chemical elements for sustaining the world are in such a state. A slight change in the values of the fundamental particles in the universe would make complex life impossible. If protons were two percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons and into unstable atoms. If the electromagnetic forces were four percent weaker, there would be no hydrogen, no water, among others. Black holes were once thought to be merely destructive, now they are identified as regenerative forces, exhibiting a process of change in a twofold structure. All

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

633

fundamental particles constituting matter come in matched pairs. For every kind of particle there is an antiparticle, such as an electrical charge. Recent attempts in particle physics to reconcile the seemingly contradictory state of symmetry and asymmetry in a twofold interacting structure with the state of supersymmetry or super position seems to indicate the ultimacy of the principle of harmonious balance that governs the existence of and the change in the world. The term harmony may be euphemistic. The term balance does not mean precisely equal (H. R. Quinn, et al., pp. 76–80) (Gordon Kane, pp. 68–75) (Supersymmetry: Unveiling the Ultimate L aws of Nature) (Steven Weinberg, Vol. III). It signifies a state of correct proportions that promote and attain the existence of and change in the world. Human bodies, which exist as part of nature, certainly are subject to the governance of the same principle. Breathing air is one simple example illustrates the relevance of these principles. One can remain alive for a certain period of time without food and one can practice abstinence for a lifetime, but the moment one stops breathing death is assured. Breathing consists of a twofold structure, inhale and exhale, inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. Each function appears the opposite yet complementary and sustains breathing. If the action of inhaling and exhaling were precisely equal no breathing would occur. Symmetry and asymmetry operate in harmonious balance to sustain life. The entire human body is a collection of systems organized through twofold structures. The brain has two hemispheres. There are two eyes, ears, arms and legs. Two lungs work in concert with the heart, which has two sides that are also divided in two. These twofold structures appear as two types of symmetry, radial and bilateral. Radial symmetry has the body’s features radiating out from a central point. Bilateral symmetry has features on a right and left side. If the symmetrical parts were precisely equal, it appears they would not be able to function. Asymmetry and the constant undoing of the symmetry of the two interrelated parts is necessary. In order for us to breathe, inhaling must come first. In order for us to walk, on leg must step first and so on. Not only is this twofold structure not exclusive but one aspect contains some element of the other, all of which contribute to a mutually conditioning, mutually generating and mutually restraining process. The term homeostasis best conveys this meaning of harmonious balance. Take as another example the sleep-wake cycle. One counterbalances the other. Total sleep deprivation could lead to death. These sleep-wake states not only operate in complementary contradiction but, interestingly, sleep also consists of a twofold structure.

634

TSUNG-I DOW

Recent studies revealed that sleep is marked by periods of rapid eye movement (REM) which alternates with non-REM sleep. Non-REM sleep, they believe, may give brain cells time to repair themselves, while REM sleep may facilitate the regeneration of features that regulate mood, learning and memory consolidation. In early childhood, sleep may help the brain to develop properly (Jerome M. Siegel, p. 92). Moreover, advancements in molecular biology have expanded our understanding of the body’s structure on a particle level. Human life evolves in basic pairs of DNA and RNA, which interact in harmonious balance to sustain the existence of and change in the body’s processes. Information on these life processes is stored in the twisted ladder of DNA specifically in the chemical bases, A.T.G. and C., paired to form the rungs of the ladder. In the twofold structures DNA makes RNA. RNA makes proteins which perform what is known as biology. Scientists previously dismissed ninety-eight percent of DNA as junk. Now it has been proven that such thinking was ‘‘the greatest mistake in the history of molecular biology’’ (W. Wayt Gibbs, pp. 46–53). RNA helps to regulate a separate epigenetic layer of inheritable information that resides in twenty-three pairs of human chromosomes but outside the DNA sequence. DNA and RNA and its epigenetic machinery all fit into an interlocking, self-regulatory system of primordial pairs. Surprisingly, a twofold structure interacting in harmonious balance to sustain life not only appears in the organization of our body on a molecular level but also, most important of all, manifests itself in the phenomena of the mind and in its conscious self while dealing with the world. No longer can the Sung neo-Confucian, Change Tsai’s (Zhang Cal, 1020–1077) declaration, ‘‘that the mind reflects the universe and the universe resides in one’s mind’’ (Wu xin ji yuzhou; yuzhou ji wu xin) be dismissed as unscientific. Much later on, Andre-Marie Ampere (1775–1836), after whom the electric unit has been named, made a similar statement, questioning how one knows the world because the mind is structured in a way that corresponds directly with the structure of the universe, a pre-existing harmony between the laws of the universe and the reasoning power of the human mind (L. Pearce Williams, p. 97). There is no definite scientific explanation of what the mind is. The brain is the organ of the mind, but it is not the mind. Yet, the mind does not reside outside the body. Thus, the body and the mind seem to constitute a twofold structure interacting in harmonious balance to acquire one’s ability and capacity to know oneself and the world.

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

635

More and more is becoming known about brain function. The brain has two hemispheres, left and right. They are symmetric and yet asymmetric in operation. In an attempt to define complex neural circuits that connect the frontal cortex to other brain structures such as the amygdala, scientists discovered the relative asymmetric activities between two sides of the frontal cortex. The left side associates with positive emotion and the right side with negative emotion. The left is dominant for language and speech, while the right side is dominant for visual-motor tasks, and so forth. Under certain circumstances, functions typically managed on one side can shift to the other (Michael. S. Gazzania, pp. 51–55). Previously, scientists believed that the central nervous system functioned solely as the manifestation of the mind. Now a limbic or ‘‘gut’’ system has been discovered. It co-exists and coordinates with the central nervous system in a twofold conscious-unconscious action. Cognitive activities occur in networks of neurons located at the surface of the brain cortex in cooperation with networks located deep within the brain and traveling throughout the body in a constant convergence and ebb and flow to carry out the functions of the mind. The brain synchronizes its different ff processes in harmony giving rise to a coherence we call consciousness. Through the practical experience of acupuncture, scientists have come to understand that by stimulating nerve endings on the body’s surface, neural networks can be aroused and also somehow blocked. These have been proven to be something other than a placebo effect. ff The twofold structure of the mind in its totality of manifestations may been seen clearly in Rita Carter’s work, M Mapping the Mind. Now, in the information age, human endeavors are enriching living. Computers and the internet are everyday tools. By all indications, the operation of these tools seems to reassert the principle of a twofold structure interacting in harmonious balance to attain a goal. The computer consists of hardware and software. Hardware relies on electricity being switched on and off. ff Software depends on a binary system of 0s and 1s. Recent efforts ff to develop a more efficient computer based on a nanoscale, the same scale as DNA and particle ‘‘spin,’’ will remain a binary system (John H. Holland, pp. 66–72) (David D. Awschalom, et al., pp. 67–73). The operation of an internet system depends on the duality of particles and waves of light. Particles can be separated by great distances yet interact instantly; pushing and pulling, emitting or absorbing, creating or destroying their original identities to maintain their existence or to change. It is through this basis on the covariance of particle entanglement that the information age is able to function. Light in the

636

TSUNG-I DOW

form of photons is the information carrier, while air the transmission medium. Trillions of atoms emit light waves in unison. Billions of pairs of electrons transmit electrical currents in lock-step. All the information can be digitized and store as particles with waves transmitting the digits on signal between them. But a series of digitized signals, such as 0s and 1s, are meaningless without interpretation. It is ultimately the power of the mind with its harmonious capacity to function and reason in deciphering and interpreting these signals, which provides their meaning. As a result, one can reap the benefits of the technological advances of computers and the internet and take advantage of the information age. In a sense, a twofold structure of digital and analogous operation made these technologies useful. Computers accept, store, process, and present information, while the networks move information among them to interact. They are, after all, tools for the human mind. They were created as a result of the mind’s harmonization of the seemingly twofold structure of human knowledge, classical physics and quantum mechanics. Classical physics proceeds in a linear progression with black and white answers. In quantum mechanics, answers can be both yes and no and observations both black and white, following a nonlinear process. The switching on or off of an electric current resides in the realm of classical physics. Particle entanglement is understood from the point of view of quantum mechanics. The knowledge acquired through classical physics is derived from direct observation and experiments, while data gained through quantum mechanics is the result of indirect, inferred processes even though they are gathered via measurements, calculations, laboratory analysis, and computer simulations of virtual reality. Daily affairs ff are best reflected by classical physics. More in depth explorations of the world necessitate quantum mechanics. All people are interconnected through networks. Billions of neutrinos go through our body without any sense of their existence. Claude E. Shannon, considered to be the father of information theory was credited for perceiving the interconnectedness of humans and nature by designing a basic unit of information, represented by 0s and 1s, or the presence and absence of electric current in a wire (‘‘Profile’’ p. 23). Evidence revealed in recent scientific discoveries continues to point to the principle of a twofold structure interacting in harmonious balance to attain the existence of change in the world. If morality can be defined as the standard behavior for humans to ensure the sustainability, enjoyment and fulfillment of the meaning of life, it should meet this universal prin-

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

637

ciple, which appears to be part of nature. The Chinese experience provides one frame of reference for further exploration. III

It may be debatable as to whether or not a standard of morality contributed to the Chinese now representing one-fourth of the human population and having the longest lived civilization. Yet, Chinese morality is crystallized in what is called filial piety, the powerful bond of love and affection ff between parents and children. Reproduction constitutes the nucleus of its practice. New discoveries in biological evolution seem to establish the fact that survival comes first and it is not necessarily due to being the fittest. Producing a single, super-individual in isolation will certainly not promote reproduction. Nor will the development of a uniform population create ideal conditions for evolution. Biological chromosomes cross over one another to generate diversity from which species interact to adapt to one another in life-sustaining progress. Scientists do not know why but seem to be certain that reproduction cells potentially live forever, while most other cells age and die. The discovery of the stem cell, which preserves the identity of the human species, is a case in point (Michael D. West). Etymologically, the Chinese character for filial piety, Xiao, composed of the characters of son and parents, implies a parental relationship. Historically, the Chinese seemed intuitively to recognize the genetic detriments of consanguineous marriages and forbade its practice. They insisted on the innate feeling of a mother’s love as the fountain of morality, from which all proper behaviors emanated. In the opening statement of the Confucian tome, Classic Filial Piety (Xiao Jin), it stated that filial piety was the law of the universe intended to guide human behavior (fe xiao tien zhi jin, di zhi yi, zen zhi xing ye) (Chapter 7, San Cai). In an attempt to search for a universal principle to explain the existence of and change in the world, T he Book of Changes, may be the representative work. It states that the greatest virtue of heaven and earth consists of birth and rebirth in continuity, which is what is meant by change (Tien de zhi da de yue sheng; Sheng sheng bu yi zhi wei yi). Since the idea of an internal and external creator is absent in Confucian ideology, the terms of heaven (tien) and earth (di) should be understood to be the universe and nature, enabling the truest meaning of the terms to be understood. Reproduction and attention to it is the key to filial piety. Confucians not only held its superior goodness as a guide for individuals’ behavior but also as a principle all rulers should

638

TSUNG-I DOW

use to guide the country (Jun wag yi xiao zhi tien xia; Ch. 8, Xiao zhi). In other words, a ruler can be symbolically considered as the parent of his subjects (Min zhi fumo). Similarly, the functions the government performs most reflect parental duties but are extended to the entire population. Confucians may have been overly optimistic in their belief in the educability of human being, as described in Classic Filial Piety. They placed great hope in the internalization of this virtue through government administered education programs. Although reproduction was primary, education was equally important to accomplish the objective. Filial piety was also modified and presented as standards of behavior for five levels of Chinese society that were established according to rank; sovereign, feudal lords, aristocrats, ministers, scholars, and ordinary citizens. Specific behaviors representative of filial piety were assigned to each group. For the emperor: devote love and respect to one’s parents, instill moral education, enforce filial piety with punishment so that the celebration of one’s success will inspire millions to behave accordingly (Ch. 2). For lords and aristocrats: do not abuse one’s privileged status by behaving arrogantly or living lavishly, enabling honor and wealth to be preserved. For the ministers: follow one’s predecessors paths closely in action and expression, thereby avoiding criticism and preserving the privileges accorded ancestor worship, among others (Ch. 4). To scholars and ranking officials: extend the love father to mother and the father to the emperor enabling the practice of filial piety to be transcribed at loyalty to serve the sovereign and preserve one’s status and privileges for ancestor worship, among others (Ch. 5). To ordinary people: utilize natural resources to enrich the lives of all and live frugally enabling one to take proper care of one’s parents (Ch. 6). The book. Classic Filial Piety, was most probably compiled during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) after Emperor Wu Ti (di) (140–87 B.C.) accepted the advice of Confucian, Tung Chungshu (Dong Zhongshu) and proclaimed Confucian ideology as state doctrine. Critics of the work alleged that the compilers drew from various sources but chose only to include selections that would consolidate support for the dynasty and pacify the people. The measures of stratification reflected the feudalistic morality of the time, but afterward the instructions it promoted were detrimental to institutional reform. For example, it stated that loyal ministers ‘‘grew’’ from filial sons. The impact of this classic in molding Chinese morality was indeed profound. It was recorded that emperors, in the time of the Han, often held audience conferences to study its

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

639

teachings. Later on, all educated Chinese were required to commit it to memory, along with the Confucian F Four Books. However, from the same sources on which this book were based along with the pronouncements of Mencius and Confucius on filial piety, conclusive rules of conduct, which reflected the principle of a a twofold structure interacting in reciprocity, seem apparent. What are the rules? Confucius declared that the first one is one must take care of one’s health so that one can carry out one’s duties to one’s parents. Mencius categorically stated there were three acts that were considered nonfilial. The ultimate one was if one did not produce an heir or successor (Bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da). Of course, in Mencius’ time, it meant one must have a son. No government rule or imperial decree punished people for failing to have a son but, in China at that time, a bachelor was treated as an outcast and almost as a criminal. The second rule of filial piety Confucius framed positively. It said one must accomplish something in life for the community, about which one’s parents can be proud, thereby not disgracing them. The third rule was that one must earn a good enough living to support one’s parents and family and to educate one’s offspring. ff Merely feeding one’s parents was also an inadequate fulfillment of filial piety. Confucius said that dogs and horses could do the same. A son’s nonsupport of his parents, in China, was considered a serious crime and a legitimate case for impeachment of an official including the emperor. In view of these rules of filial piety and the primacy of reproduction, their implications to survival are obvious. Reciprocity was fundamental to its practice in twofold relationship based on the fulfillment and enjoyment of the meaning of life. In the five basic categories of human relationships, father and son, parents and children, husband and wife, siblings, friends as well as sovereign and subjects, Confucians contended that reciprocity was paramount. If a father or parent loved the son and children, the son or children would respond likewise. If a husband and wife loved and respected one another harmony would prevail. If an elder brother behaved affectionately ff toward a younger brother, fraternal submission would occur. If friends associated with each other in trust, close cooperation would be possible. If the ruler carried out his duty providing his subjects opportunities for livelihood and educating them, loyalty would be secured. Failing to do so, the ruler would lose his mandate, providing his subjects with the right to change regimes. Filial piety does not mean unconditional submission of a son to a father (Ch. 13, Jian zheng). If a son saw his father misbehave, it was his duty to reprimand the father gently but firmly to protect his father.

640

TSUNG-I DOW

From the Confucian viewpoint unconditional submission commits one to onesidedness, which violates the principle of harmonious balance. Confucius deplored onesidedness as robbing freedom of choice (Zhi yi you ce tao ye). A person who adhered to the principle of harmonious balance, Confucius contended, could love humanity and hate inhumanity, and could rely on those who believed they were right to explore what seemed wrong and to discover some element of what seemed wrong in what was believed to be right. The political identity of China is Zhong Guo, a philosophical rendition of harmonious balance, not its more commonly known appellation Middle Earth. Even the translation of the Confucian primary text, Zhong Y un as T he Doctrine of the Mean inadequately conveys the true meaning of the idea, harmonious balance. It is no surprise that Confucius lamented that most people were unable to follow consistently the principle of harmonious balance, which constituted the ultimate guidance for human behavior (Zhong yun zhi wei de qi zhi ye hu, min xian neg ju ye, Zhong Y un, Ch. 3). Confucius realized that knowledge is the product of the human mind and is provisional. In another text, T he Great L earning, instruction centers on continuous renewal as a method to avoid self-righteousness and arbitrary predetermination. The principle of harmonious balance implies a choice of correct proportions manifested by a twofold structure of one’s actions. In the practice of filial piety, not all features are ideal. It was patriarchal and male-oriented and was also prone to fostering nepotism. In the Classic Filial Piety, the precepts were particularly centered on the importance of following in the steps of one’s predecessors, and to maintain the elaborate rituals of ancestor worship and funeral arrangements, among others. All of these structures, rules and principles must be reexamined and reinterpreted in light of modernization. However, if morality can be defined as a standard for human behavior, which ensures the sustainability, enjoyment and fulfillment of the meaning of life, the Chinese experience in practicing filial piety offers ff a viable frame of reference in the search for a universal standard of human behavior. The love and affection ff seen between parents and their children is universal. The common thread of the existence of twofold structures operating in complementary contradiction to achieve a harmonious balance, not only in human dynamics but on the deeper level of quantum mechanics and in nature, reinforces the significance of the Chinese experience. In the future, it may be appropriate to further examine these commonalities on anthropomorphic grounds. The principle of harmonious balance seems

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY

641

more operative in the realm of the social sciences and social dynamics, and calls into question its omission. Emeritus Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida BIBLIOGRAPHY Awschalom, David D. et al. ‘‘Spintronics.’’ Scientific American, July 2002: 67–73. A Carter, Rita. M Mapping the Mind. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. Chine, David. ‘‘The Split Brain.’’ Scientific American, March 2003: 50–59. Gazzaniga, Michael S. ‘‘The Split Brain Revisited.’’ Scientific American, July 1998: 51–55. Gibbs, W. Wayt. ‘‘The Unseen Genome.’’ Scientific American, November 2003: 46–53. Gonzalez, Guillermo. ‘‘Refuges for Life in a Hostile Universe.’’ Scientific American, October 2001: 60–67. Hallion, Richard P. T aking Flight. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2003. Holland, John H. ‘‘Genetic Algorithm.’’ Scientific American, July 1992: 66–72. Kane, Gordon. ‘‘The Dawn of Physics Beyond the Standard Model.’’ Scientific American, June 2003: 68–75. Quinn, H. R. et al. ‘‘The Asymmetry Between Matter and Anti-matter.’’ Scientflc American, 1998: 76–80. Reynolds, Ronald. ‘‘The Gas Between the Stars.’’ Scientific American, January 2002: 34–43. Siegel, Jerome. ‘‘Why We Sleep.’’ Scientific American, November 2003: 92. Tegmark, Max, ‘‘Parallel Universes.’’ Scientific American, May 2003: 40–51. T Weinberg, Steve. T he Quantum T heory of Fields: Vol. III. Cambridge: Cambridge University W Press, 2000. West, Michael. T he Immortal Cell. New York: Doubleday, 2003. W Williams, L. Pearce. ‘‘Andre-Marie Ampere.’’ Scientific American, January 1989: 97. Classic Filial Piety (Confucian text). Four Books (Confucian text). F T he Book of Changes (Confucian text). T he Doctrine of the Mean (Confucian text). T he Great L earning (Confucian text). T he Sun Sentinel. Fort Lauderdale, FL: November 27, 2003. Supersymmetry: Unveiling the Ultimate L aws of Nature. Helix Books/Perseus Press, 2000.

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

IN FIRST CENTURY ROME: A TEST CASE OF LITERARY INFLUENCE ON ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT

My article, ‘‘The Phenomenology of Ethical Criticism: How Literature Affects ff Ethical Development,’’ states the following: When a real reader recognizes an implied reader as different ff from herself or himself, and inserts qualities of that implied reader high in the real reader’s typification rating system, and strives to acquire the qualities of the implied reader, the real reader is striving to change himself or herself. ... If the implied reader’s qualities are positive, the change in the real reader is positive. Of course, the reverse is also true. (451)

My objective in this article is to test this thesis with an example, and at the same time to answer a puzzling historical question concerning ethical education, one that has several literary connections. In first century Rome, a young single mother marries the emperor. She hopes that the emperor will adopt her young son, Lucius, and name the boy as his successor. In case she succeeds with this hope, she wants to give her son an education that will prepare him to be a wise and good ruler. As background to her educational decisions for her son, she may have been motivated by her personal knowledge of what a bad emperor was like. She herself had suffered ff much from a mad, evil emperor who, though she was from the royal family, had condemned her to slavery; and, for several of her teenage years, she survived as a slave, diving for pearls off the coast of Africa. This young mother was not happy with the tradition by which ex-slaves tutor the boys in the royal house; she felt that these men would not have enough independence to control a prince, not have sufficient stature to discourage him from developing vices. They might even encourage vices and become the facilitators and procurers for the vices. Therefore, she decided that her son’s ethical education should come from the foremost moral philosopher of the age, Seneca. An important voice in Stoic philosophy, Lucius Annaeus Seneca was also possibly the greatest dramatic poet ever to write in Latin. His poem-plays remain, even to this day, among the greatest in any language, so Seneca would be an ideal person to handle Lucius’s literary education, as well. For young Lucius’s military tutor, his mother chose a man named S. Africanus Burris. While this man 643 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 643–654. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

644

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

could teach young Lucius the technical aspects of Roman military knowledge, he could, even more importantly, inculcate in the boy the code of the Roman soldier, an ethical code that, from today’s standpoint, strikes us as surprisingly philosophical. Both men were in exile. Neither had spoken, written, or acted in any way against the emperor. Indeed, had the emperor believed that either had done those things, the emperor would probably have killed him and not merely exiled him. Seneca had been exiled on a charge of adultery with a woman named Julia Livilla. According to Miriam Griffin, the historian Dio ‘‘portrays Seneca as a victim of charges concocted’’ by the Emperor’s wife in order to ‘‘get rid of Livilla, of whom she was envious’’ (60). In his writings Seneca claims innocence, and in one of his letters to the Emperor Claudius, he implies that the Emperor believes he is innocent. Griffin says that facts surrounding the trial imply that ‘‘Seneca’s guilt could not have been manifest’’ (60). Seneca wrote a play, T hyestes that depicts a grotesquely violent dictator whose ‘‘obvious links are with ‘Caligula,’ ’’ according to R. J. Tarrant (48).1 Scholars cannot date any of Seneca’s plays, but if Seneca wrote a play even indirectly condemning Caligula during that emperor’s reign and published it shortly after Caligula’s assassination, Seneca may have seemed much too bold to the men surrounding the new emperor. Therefore, one suspects that the emperor’s advisors had warned him that such a man was too independentminded for the ruler’s safety, that men such as Seneca and Burris should not be allowed anywhere near the seat of power. Possibly, ‘‘independence’’ was the very trait that appealed to Lucius’s mother, and she prevailed upon her Emperor husband to recall Seneca and Burris and install them as Lucius’s tutors. What might these men have taught their pupil in his moral education? Seneca was a Stoic. According to T he Oxford Companion to Philosophy, among the ‘‘main features of early Stoic philosophy’’ is ‘‘an absolutist conception of moral duty’’ (922). ‘‘Stoicism placed ethics in the context of an understanding of the world as a whole,’’ says the same source in another citation, ‘‘with reason being paramount ... in human behavior’’ (852). Seneca saw himself as the conduit and amplifier of the Stoic tradition of philosophy, so the one criticism of him in the Oxford Companion entry on him, that he is sometimes an ‘‘unoriginal philosopher’’ would not weaken him in his role as Lucius’s teacher, while the suggestion in the same entry that Seneca ‘‘writes with a vividness of illustration and persuasive brilliance unrivaled in philosophy’’ would clearly qualify him as an effective ff teacher of his main precepts: ‘‘philosophy is practical

IN FIRST CENTURY ROME

645

goodness; excessive passion is evil; external goods are ultimately valueless; life is infinitely worth while; tragedy can be overcome or endured’’ (821). One of Seneca’s main precepts deals with self-restraint; He that possesses prudence is also self-restrained; he that possesses self-restraint is unwavering; he that is unwavering is unperturbed; he that is unperturbed is free from sadness; he that is free from sadness is happy. Therefore, the prudent man is happy, and prudence is sufficient to constitute the happy life. (Ad L ucilium II, 287)

Seneca presents these syllogisms in the context of his concept that education must teach virtue first. What good is a music teacher to explain the harmonizing of notes or how to stay in tune if the student cannot bring his soul ‘‘into harmony with itself ’’ nor know ‘‘in adversity’’ how ‘‘to keep from uttering a doleful note’’? What good does a mathematics teacher do if his instruction merely enables a student to count his profits and thus ‘‘adapts’’ the student better ‘‘to avarice’’? (353). Among the virtues are courage, which Seneca promotes not only on the basic Stoic view that deems the things which ‘‘provoke cries and groans’’ to be ‘‘unimportant,’’ but also on the common-sense basis that ‘‘more things’’ exist that are ‘‘likely to frighten us than to crush us’’ (Ad L ucilium I, 75). Another virtue is industriousness: ‘‘Work is the sustenance of noble minds’’ (Ad L ucilium I, 225). Seneca sums up with admirable precision: The happy life, therefore, is a life that is in harmony with its own nature, and it can be attained in only one way. First of all, we must have a sound mind and one that is in constant possession of its sanity; second, it must be courageous and energetic, and, too, capable of the noblest fortitude, ready for every emergency, careful of the body and of all that concerns it, but without anxiety; lastly, it must be attentive to all the advantages that adorn life, but with over-much love for none – the user, but not the slave of the gifts of Fortune. (Moral Essays I, 107)

Seneca advocated formal ‘‘evening exercises’’ of self-examination; Michel Foucalt, who finds the spread of this practice to be a highly significant development, cites Seneca as giving the ‘‘most detailed description of this exercise’’ (60–61). The person using Seneca’s method took the relationship toward the day, not so much as a ‘‘judge’’ as of an ‘‘inspector who aims to evaluate a piece of work’’; the person wants ‘‘to see if it is up to the standards set for it’’ (62). Foucault assesses the purpose as being to strengthen ‘‘the rational equipment that ensures wise behavior’’ (62).

646

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

As to what the soldier Burris would have taught Lucius in addition to specific military maneuvers, I refer to an anecdote told by Vice Admiral James Stockdale. When Stockdale was a Lt. Commander, taking courses at Stanford University, a philosophy professor named Phillip Rhinelander told him he wanted to give him ‘‘a book of military ethics ... It was the Enchiridion of the philosopher Epictetus, his manual’ for the Roman field soldier’’ (510). Epictetus is a major Stoic moralist in the era we are discussing, according to the Oxford Companion to Philosophy (238). While Stockdale found the book merely irritating when he read it in Palo Alto, he claims that it saved his life and his sanity when he spent eight years in a North Vietnamese prison, four of them in solitary confinement. Over all was the guiding principle: ‘‘Do not be concerned with things which are beyond your power.’’ Stockdale remembered a specific statement: ‘‘Lameness is an impediment of the body but not the will’’ (510). This was important to him because he wasn’t able to stand on a badly broken leg for the first two years he was in solitary confinement. Stockdale’s memory of Epictetus’s precepts helped him especially to deal with the argument of his captors that if the prisoners were just ‘‘reasonable,’’ they would receive rewards, extra food, extra comfort, even a roommate. Contrary to that, Epictetus had written: ‘‘If you require me to lose my own proper good, that you may gain what is not good, consider how unreasonable and foolish you are’’ (511, emphasis added). Stockdale saw that by being ‘‘reasonable,’’ his captors meant, ‘‘being their informers and their propagandists’’ and that to take on theses roles meant to lose his own ‘‘proper good,’’ which would be unreasonable. Stockdale’s account dramatizes Stoic philosophy’s claim to be thoroughly applicable to life situations and suggests it could well have been an excellent practical ethical guide to an emperor. Foucault links Epictetus with Seneca in the development of the concept of the self, added to the Senecan evening self examination ‘‘is the necessity of a labor of thought with thought itself as the object’’ (62). This is ‘‘more than an exercise done at regular intervals,’’ it is ‘‘a constant attitude one must take toward oneself ’’ (63). Comparing the process to that of a night watchman or tester of coinage, Epictetus urges his readers to test any ‘‘representation’’ before allowing it to enter one’s mind and thus one’s soul. ‘‘This inspection,’’ says Foucault, ‘‘is a test of power and a guarantee of freedom: a way of making sure that one will not become attached to that which does not come under our control’’ (64). Following Epictitus, Burris would have taught Lucius that even a slave is free, in this personal sense, if he or she never becomes attached internally to anything he or

IN FIRST CENTURY ROME

647

she cannot control and that even an emperor is not free if he loses control of his inner self. Could we conceive of a better ethical teaching for a future emperor? Why, then, have we not heard of this wonderfully educated Emperor Lucius? Was he assassinated before he could take office? No, ‘‘he assumed the name Nero on adoption into the Claudian family’’ according to the Oxford Companion to Classical L iterature, and he is known to history by the name Nero! This name has become an actual emblem for evil as in a poem by Edith Sitwell, the first half of which appears below: DIRGE FOR THE NEW SUNRISE (Fifteen minutes past eight o’clock, on the morning of Monday, the 6th of August, 1945) Bound to my heart as Ixion to the wheel, Nailed to my heart as the Thief upon the Cross, I hang between Christ and the gap where the world was lost And watch the phantom Sun in Famine Street – The ghost of the heart of man ... red Cain, And the murderous brain Of Man, still redder Nero that conceived the death Of his mother Earth, and tore Her womb, to know the place where he was conceived. But no eyes grieved – For none were left for tears: They were blinded as the years Since Christ was born. Mother or Murderer, you have given or taken life – Now all is one! (272)

In seeking for images of evil sufficient to express her horror of the human cost of dropping the atomic bomb (the new sunrise), the poet thinks of Ixion, the first murderer of Greek myth and Cain, the first murderer of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but draws upon the reputation of Nero as even worse. That Nero did order the execution of his mother, the woman who picked the teachers in his moral and ethical education, is historical fact; whether or not he did have her womb cut open to see where he was conceived, as one tradition holds, his name has become a literary emblem of evil. He may or may not have set a great fire that destroyed much of Rome, but the tradition of his unconcern for the victims of a destroyed city, as he is supposed to have sang and played an instrument while watching the fire, makes him an appropriate choice for Sitwell to use as her emblem of the unconcern of the world for the first victims of the atomic age.

648

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

Why did such a careful ethical education fail so dramatically? At least two literary authors have looked for answers to this question: Robert Graves does so in his novel Claudius the God, a sequel to his novel I, Claudius. According to the plot of Graves’s second Roman-history novel, the Emperor Claudius knew that Nero would be a bloody and evil monarch. He favored him because Claudius assumed that the rule of a depraved Emperor would provoke revolt and lead to the restoration of the Roman republic. Graves’s Claudius writes: My chief fault: I have been far too benevolent. I repaired the ruin my predecessors spread. I reconciled Rome and the world to monarchy again. Rome is fated to bow to another Caesar. Let him be mad, bloody, capricious, wasteful, lustful. (474)

Graves’s Claudius had judged Nero’s character from his facial expression as a child, saying that Lucius ... resembled my dear brother Germanicus, who was his grandfather, but in this case it was a hateful resemblance. The features were almost identical, but the frank, noble, generous, modest character that beamed from Germanicus’s face was supplanted here by slyness, baseness, meanness, vanity. And yet most people were blinded to this. (425–426)

This Claudius wonders how an aide has made the correct guess of which woman Claudius had chosen to marry because Agrippina ‘‘was the mother of Lucius Domitius, to whom I had taken the most violent dislike’’ (478). Graves’s Claudius actually considered Seneca to be a bad choice for an ethics teacher and selected Seneca to reinforce the vices he sees in Nero’s character. ‘‘You will guess’’ the tutor’s ‘‘name, perhaps,’’ says Claudius: ‘‘Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Stoic – that flashy orator, that shameless flatterer, that dissolute and perverted amorist.’’ In Graves’s version, Lucius’s mother Agrippina (or Agrippinella, the nickname by which he calls her) merely approved Claudius’s choice, rather than initiating the choice herself. She did so because she ‘‘valued his talents as a teacher of rhetoric.’’ Graves accounts for this discrepancy with tradition by having his Claudius say that Agrippinella ‘‘took all the credit’’ for Seneca’s recall, herself (488). Was Seneca really an immoral man? Although Seneca was convicted by the senate of adultery, he may have been innocent. According to Griffin, ‘‘Seneca’s case may well have been just one more example of the use of charges of immorality to dispose of enemies’’ (61). Griffin gives several examples, and Graves’s novels contain several examples; Graves’s

IN FIRST CENTURY ROME

649

Claudius even says, in I, Claudius that Claudius was born in Gaul because his mother always accompanied her husband on campaign to safeguard herself from trumped-up charges of adultery, which might have been brought if she had stayed behind in Rome. If indeed, Graves wanted us to understand that Seneca was a hypocrite, presenting himself as a great moral philosopher while having a dissolute personal life, we could draw from this an interpretation of why Seneca’s moral tutelage failed. However, the account given by Graves’s Claudius of how he educated his own son, Britannicus, suggests that this Claudius distrusted the very subjects that Seneca taught: Claudius picked an ex-slave Sosibius as the tutor to give Britannicus ‘‘an old-fashioned education, allowing him no training in Greek oratory or philosophy’’: Britannicus was accustomed to the plainest foods and lay at night on a plank bed like a soldier. Horsemanship, fencing, military engineering and early Roman history were his chief studies, but he knew the works of Homer and Ennius and Livy as well as or better than I did. In his holidays Sosibius took him to down to my Capua estate, and there he learned about bee-keeping, stock-breeding and farming (487).2

The Claudius of Robert Graves had a plan – Nero’s excesses as emperor would teach the Romans that imperial rule was a mistake and make them want to return to the Republic. They would rise up and kill Nero. Meanwhile Britannicus’s death would be faked, he would hide out under a false name in the court of a British ally, and ‘‘on Nero’s death, he will reveal himself and return as the savior of his country,’’ leading them back to the Republican constitution (505). In the novel, Britannicus refused, scoffing at the idea that Rome could return to the Republic, saying he was not afraid of Nero, and making a request: ‘‘Give me my proper tutors,’’ he begged. ‘‘My present ones are no use to me.’’ He wanted ‘‘to study public speaking,’’ and ‘‘to understand finance and legal procedure.’’ In short, ‘‘I want to learn how to be an Emperor!’’ (506). Claudius dismissed ‘‘Sosibius and the other tutors and appointed new ones’’ as Britannicus wished (507). Shortly after Claudius’s death, Nero was proclaimed Emperor even though Claudius’s will established Britannicus and Nero as joint heirs. Because Britannicus died mysteriously, Graves hints that Agrippina may have poisoned both to clear the way for her son Nero’s rule, but no proof exists. In Claudius the God, Graves is writing the sequel to I, Claudius, which depicts Claudius as an attractive, innocent observer of his family member’s crimes. He survives only because everyone thinks of him as an idiot, and thus no threat. The palace guard makes him Emperor, almost as joke, and forces him upon the Senate, as the

650

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

first book of the pair ends. Graves’s problem was to square this portrait in the sequel with a Claudius who, as emperor, murdered 35 Senators, 221 Knights of Rome, and so many other persons it is ‘‘impossible to keep records’’ as charged in ‘‘The Pumpkinification of Claudius,’’ a savage satire written against Claudius by Seneca after Claudius’s death.3 Graves attributes the crimes early in Claudius’s rule to Claudius’s first wife Messalina; Graves depicts her as deceiving and manipulating Claudius into killing innocent men whom she despised. Graves attributes Claudius’s later crimes to Claudius’s desire to make the Romans disillusioned with the imperium, so that they would desire to return to the Republic some time in the future. Claudius’s recognition of Nero’s future evil rule when Lucius was still a child fits with the farseeing Claudius of the earlier novel better than does his being the dupe of a younger wife. R. J. Tarrant expresses the established historical view of a young Nero as a prodigy of capacity and wisdom, who was joyfully welcomed by all Rome as the new Emperor, and who at first ruled justly and wisely: ‘‘Seneca and Burris shared power with uncommon harmony,’’ says Tarrant. ‘‘The first five years of Nero’s reign ... were later held up as a model of wise and stable administration’’ (5). Graves’s Claudius holds that Nero was always corrupt, even as a child, but was sly enough to ‘‘blind’’ everybody except himself and Britannicus (426). However, it is hard to imagine that two former tutors could ‘‘restrain’’ a monster for that long, so we turn to the theory that Nero changed after his accession to the throne, the theory to which another literary exploration remained truer. Further, to say that Nero was evil from the beginning, even as a child, does not explain why he was evil. So Graves is actually relying on the established historical and literary reputation of Nero as an emblem of evil, not trying to explain how Nero became evil, and if a reader asks that question, the reader comes away from Graves’s books unsatisfied. Another literary investigation tries harder to explain how Nero became evil. Jean Racine’s play Britannicus depicts Nero as an initially positive emperor: Why his every act proclaims a soul well schooled in duty’s laws. For three whole years all he has said or done Promises Rome a perfect emperor. (140)

In this statement of a minor character, we see that Racine understood the basic concept of Stoic ethical education, the training of the soul in virtues. Racine’s Burris says that he never agreed to ‘‘make an emperor

IN FIRST CENTURY ROME

651

fit to obey’’ and tells Agrippina that Nero is ‘‘not your son’’ alone; ‘‘He’s master of the world’’ (145). Racine unveils a scene of court struggle between the ex-tutors Seneca and Burris as well as between them and another court functionary named Narcissus to curry favor with the Emperor. Seneca, as the play opens, has already given up and retired to private life. Narcissus wins the contest for the Emperor’s favor precisely because he divines what the Emperor desires, tells the ruler what Narcissus thinks the Emperor wants to hear, and then acts to assure that the Emperor’s wishes are fulfilled. In Racine’s play, Burris loses the contest to court the Emperor’s favor because he advises him to act in a moral and ethical way. Nero has fallen in love with June, Brittanicus’s beloved. Narcissus had told Nero, ‘‘Command but to be loved, and you’ll be loved’’ (156). In the famous Act II, Scene Three, Nero bids June love him; accustomed to being obeyed in all things, Nero cannot comprehend June’s reply that love cannot be commanded. When Nero demands of Britannicus the ‘‘secret’’ of pleasing June, Britannicus replies ‘‘I let her speak on all that touches me,’’ expressing a thesis that love creates an equality between two people who love each other (181). Unable to grasp that commanding a woman to love him is the one situation where the Emperor’s expectation of being obeyed must fail, Nero orders guards to take Britannicus away, and Britannicus comments to him: ‘‘Nero begins to throw off all constraint’’ (180–181). Burris seeks to convince Nero that he can wean himself from his fixation on June, applying a Stoic strategy – to win free of desire. Although Nero replies that he’d take Burris’s advice in military or political issues that ‘‘decide the nation’s destinies,’’ Nero assures him that ‘‘love is a different ff art,’’ and he would not scruple to compel Burris ‘‘to stoop that far’’ (169). It is thus not merely thwarted lust that motivated Nero’s turn from the path of Stoic virtue, but his inability to accept that there might be a single situation in which the Emperor could command and need not expect obedience – but this explains only a single crime. Racine also suggests why Nero went on committing crimes, after this episode. In Racine’s version, Britannicus dies from poison in a cup directly handed to him by Nero. Then, Agrippina helps June escape to join the Vestal virgins, in a shrine so sacred to the Romans that even Nero dares not violate it. When a frenzied Nero condemns his mother to death, she tells him his murders of a brother whom he loved and of his mother are deeds that will ‘‘rise unendingly to haunt your dreams.’’ Remorse will ‘‘dog your steps’’ and be like ‘‘furies.’’ She predicts that he will ‘‘seek to calm’’ these

652

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

dreams ‘‘by some other crimes,’’ committing, each time, new outrages in a vain attempt to quell his anguished conscience. Thus it might seem that Racine offers ff a complex version of the theory that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. However, not every emperor became a moral monster. Furthermore, we know that Racine was by no means urging France to adopt a democratic form of government, as a way of assuring that no one ever holds too much power. Instead, scholars suggest that Racine actually considered himself a tutor of the young Louis XIV and may have intended his play as a warning to the young king to resist the temptations inherent in seeking absolute authority. Such an interpretation implies that Racine does not hold a position that power always and inevitably corrupts. Rather, it suggests that Racine depicts the possession of power as a dangerous temptation, but one that, like any other temptation, may be resisted. The play does not quite address the issue of why, with the moral education Nero had received, he did not resist. Perhaps some influence countered the influence of all the bracing Stoic moral philosophy that Seneca and Burris must have inculcated in Nero. What else did Nero read as a child and growing youngster? Surely, he would have read the plays of Seneca his tutor. Let us take the play T hyestes as a typical example. Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother Atreus. In revenge, Atreus murdered Thyestes children and fed them to him at a feast. Later, Thyestes had a son with his own daughter; this son, Aegisthus, continued the feud by seducing Clytemnestra, the wife of Atreus’s son Agamemnon, and helped her murder her husband. If scholars such as R. J. Tarrant are correct, Seneca wrote of such horrible doings as a disguised attack on the emperor Caligula. Indeed, some such interpretation is one of the few ways open to explaining how the writer of Seneca’s wonderful moral philosophy could have written plays in which characters positively revel in their grotesque deeds. Notice how the interpretation that Seneca was seeking to covertly depict the Emperor Caligula in his depictions of Atreus and Thyestes depends on an assumption about the implied reader. The interpretation silently assumes a reader capable of recognizing that Seneca might want to criticize Caligula; and this same reader would know that anyone openly criticizing the emperor would be killed. A real reader, Nero as a child or young teenager, might not have the political and literary sophistication to be a match to this ideal implied reader. To the degree that Nero admired and respected his tutor Seneca, Nero might have assumed that the implied reader of Seneca’s plays is someone who enjoys the sort of action that Seneca depicts in his plays,

IN FIRST CENTURY ROME

653

the play T hyestes being a typical example. In striving to make himself match this conception of the implied reader, Nero might have begun a process of moral miseducation that ultimately countered all the good effects ff of the Stoic moral education he received. Perhaps this miseducation left him vulnerable to succumb to the temptation of absolute power. This way of thinking suggests a huge importance being given to the ‘‘right’’ or ‘‘wrong’’ interpretation of literary works, and a person might doubt this, arguing that Nero actually had the author of the plays as a tutor, to guide him to the ‘‘right’’ interpretation. But let us pause. Perhaps the one thing that Seneca could not tell a future emperor was that Seneca had slyly encouraged people to think of an emperor as a monster, especially since the Emperor Caligula was ultimately assassinated. Related both by blood and marriage to Caligula’s family, Nero intended to some day assume the very authority once wielded by Caligula. Seneca may have been blocked from guiding Nero to a true understanding of the implied reader of Seneca’s own works. Division of L anguage and L iterature L oras College Dubuque, IA NOTES 1 Seneca’s T hyestes was performed in a translation by the prominent British playwright Caryl Churchill, at the Royal Court Theater Upstairs, London on June 7, 1994. 2 The name Eunius appears unexpectedly in this context, since the Oxford Companion to Classical L iterature says that his ‘‘works show him tinged with various Greek philosophies and critical of the traditional Roman beliefs’’ (155). He authored tragedies that may have influenced Seneca since the fragments that still exist ‘‘show his gift for the expression of passion and pathos, and for vigorous and poetic dialogue’’ (156). These are words that could accurately describe Seneca as well. 3 Graves prints this satire in an appendix to his novel, despite the fact that it counters his own depiction of Claudius in the main text. Perhaps he wanted to correct the historical record?

REFERENCES Foucault, Michel. T he Care of o the Self,f Volume 3 of T he History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York, Pantheon, 1986. Graves, Robert. Claudius T he God. New York: Vintage, 1989 (1935). Griffin, Miriam T. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976. Honderich, Ted. T he Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

654

RAYMOND J. WILSON III

Racine, Jean. Britannicus. Translated by John Cairncross. Andromache and Other Plays. New York: Penguin, 1965 (1669). 113–210. Seneca. Ad L ucilium: Epistulae Morales, vols, I, II, & III. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. London: Putnam, 1920. Seneca. ‘‘The Pumpkinification of Claudius, A Satire in Prose and Verse.’’ In Claudius the God (1935), Robert Graves. New York: Vintage, 1989, 514–531. Sitwell, Edith. ‘‘Dirge for the New Sunrise.’’ In Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America. Volume I: Poets of Britain. Gerald Sanders, John Nelson and M. L. Rosenthal (eds.). New V York: Macmillan, 1970. Tarrant, R. J. ‘‘Introduction,’’ Seneca’s T heyestes. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985. Wilson, Raymond J. III. ‘‘The Phenomenology of Ethical Criticism: How Literature Affects ff Ethical Development’’ 26th Annual Phenomenology and Literature Conference. Harvard University, May 2003. Reprinted in A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXXV, Dordrecht, Netherlands, Springer: 2005: 445–454.

REBECCA M. PAINTER

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION: A NEW/ANCIENT LOOK AT THE ROOTS OF EVIL

Only a few years into the second millennium, we are appalled more than ever by the shifting, looming horrors of evil. Some forms are all too familiar: poverty and oppression, warfare, political and economic corruption, racism, sexism, basic human heartlessness, cruelty and greed. Other forms are relatively recent. As Lance Morrow writes in Evil: An I Investigation, The nuances of projected evil have changed. We no longer fear a big bang of nuclear extinction ... but rather, seem to discern ... a future of survivable regional apocalypses. September 11, 2001, becomes in our minds a probably modest preview of the previously unthinkable. People have learned to expect such novel evils as dirty radiation bombs, or anthrax in the mail, or smallpox on an epidemic scale. (19)

Morrow tends to agree with Hannah Arendt’s view, modified after public reaction to her term ‘‘the banality of evil,’’ that evil is rather like a fungus – deadly but shallow, ‘‘never radical,’’ with ‘‘no depth’’ and ‘‘nothing demonic about it’’ (Morrow 16). Rather than demonizing people as inherently evil, Morrow believes we should see evil as something opportunistic that passes like an electric current through the world and through people, or ‘‘wandering like an infection that takes up residence in individuals or cultures from time to time’’ (17). He argues rather convincingly that every age and place has its own brand of evil, because evil exploits available resources (18). We should not trouble ourselves with trying to define it, but rather be aware of its ‘‘strategy to shock the nervous system and moral instruments of those who witness it,’’ its ability to bypass reason and language (249). Although there are Hitlers, Stalins, and Pol Pots, Morrow reminds us, as did Arendt, that evil is carried out by the most ordinary folk with the most trivial ambitions (such as the mere career advancement goals of Adolph Eichmann), whose deeds can sometimes organize massive horrors like the Final Solution or pass ‘‘beneath the radar of history’’ (166). In Radical Evil: A Philosophical Investigation, Richard Bernstein asserts that 20th century evils such as totalitarianism and the abuse of technology present us with ‘‘an unprecedented type of evil – radical evil – whereby a systematic attempt is made to make human beings superfluous as human 655 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 655–673. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

656

REBECCA M. PAINTER

beings’’ (225). Thinking about evil, to him, is an on-going, open-ended process, in which we must be prepared to revise and transform our judgments, even if we believe ‘‘that there are no ultimate rational foundations to justify our ‘final vocabularies’ ’’ (226). Both Morrow and Bernstein, representative of other serious thinkers about the contemporary problem of evil, seem to exhort us to be serious about it, but pull the perennial postmodern rug out from under us should we try to understand evil using a ‘‘final vocabulary,’’ say, that of human consciousness or phenomenology. In this paper I propose that the human experience and observation of the play of attention, as portrayed in two exemplary novels by two major women novelists of the late 20th century, sheds light on, if not the nature of evil, at least the conditions in which it either flourishes or is overcome by human concern. The play of attention, as applied to narrative fiction and its effect ff on readers’ moral consciousness, is a rather new critical focus. It should go without saying, however, that the play of attention in individual consciousness is an ancient topic, rooted deeply within the Eastern and Western meditative and metaphysical traditions. As Ivone Gebara writes in Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation, reading a text is the first step of a phenomenological approach to evil. ‘‘It is phenomenology at work, that is, the presence of the subject who gives an interpretation by telling the facts of her existence. It is also the presence of the other one, the one who listens or who reads and tries to understand. To understand is also to interpret’’ (16). I share Gebara’s belief that ‘‘the distance between women’s telling about their experience of evil and the experience itself is not only indispensable but revealing of our human condition. We are beings who are always telling stories, and every time we do, we preserve traces of the past and the light of the present ... The present introduces new means whereby we can understand the past, sometimes enlarging and sometimes narrowing its meaning’’ (17). By focusing on the ancient topic of the quality of human consciousness, in this case how characters and readers direct their attention, and how authors influence our awareness of that play of attention, we may come closer to closing the gap between our bewilderment at massive forms of evils and the process by which individuals identify their roles in resisting or perpetrating harmful thought and action – both as individuals and as members of communities and societies. As the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch explains in Metaphysics M as a Guide to Morals, personal moral considerations require space and light, and fiction is especially able to provide readers with inner space

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

657

from which ‘‘we withdraw ourselves and let other things be’’ (347). The subject of attention itself seems resistant to our consciousness. But once it is recognized, we should acknowledge its authority, as it constitutes the ground of authority itself, including that of ethical responsibility. As psychologist Carl Goldberg states in Speaking with the Devil: A Dialogue with Evil, it is enormously helpful to have the kind of transparency into the souls of others that is made possible by ethically significant works of fiction. By studying narratives such as those to follow, we can probe the membrane between individual suffering ff and societal evil, to perceive how malevolence arises from subtle levels of consciousness to harm our own and others’ potential for goodness. The attention we give to the moral imagination of fiction can enliven and strengthen our personal and cultural ground of consciousness. It is perhaps only from this enlivened consciousness that we can hope to find the agility to cope with the ever changing threats of evil in our midst. ‘‘Ethics and aesthetics,’’ Iris Murdoch stated, ‘‘are not one, but art is the great clue to morals’’ (Existentialists and Mystics 202). I propose that in fiction, the clue lies within the play of consciousness illumined in characters and aroused in readers. Murdoch’s works reveal the value of unrestricted, caring attention: the source, in her view, of love and goodness. A careful attending process establishes an intimate relationship between the work of art, its observers, and the philosopher who would help clarify its significance. Paying attention, thus, has ethical implications. In M Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Murdoch claims that ‘‘To attend is to care, to learn to desire to learn. One may of course learn bad habits as well as good, and that too is a matter of quality of consciousness’’ (179). Concern for the aesthetic awareness of consciousness sparks Murdoch’s critiques of literary theories and quasi-philosophical approaches to writing and literature that ignore or conceal the necessity of applying one’s intellect to the contingent world. She discerns the specter of determinism in concepts which place the process of writing into a separate, virtual reality. To Murdoch writing is harmed by the felt loss of ‘‘ordinary everyday truth, that is of truth.’’ Within the irreducibility of contingent reality ‘‘the life of morality and truth exists’’ (490). Murdoch’s Metaphysics M can be seen as the real-life achievement of the kind of book one of the failed good characters in her novel A Fairly F Honourable Defeat was trying to produce: a neo-Platonic treatise on virtue and goodness. Murdoch’s is a serious comic novel about cosmic interpersonal warfare – a masterfully problematic study of human consciousness. Written in the late 1960s and alluding to the enormous,

658

REBECCA M. PAINTER

lingering evils of the Second World War, it may either pose a healthy challenge to human ingenuity in the face of evil, or a dangerously predetermined vision of human goodness as too passive to outwit the powers of evil. In Defeat, a modern-day Satan destroys the life of a good-hearted weekend philosopher who has just spent eight years completing his magnum opus, a book on love and virtue. Nearly all the basically good characters in this novel have malfunctioning radar when they most need to deal with, let alone recognize, this adversary. The only character who instantly recognizes his evil nature, somehow gets too diverted by doing good elsewhere, and fails to counteract the demon’s machinations. Readers are introduced to Rupert and Hilda Foster, glowingly contented in their 20th year of marriage. An Oxford ‘‘first’’ in philosophy, Rupert is a high-ranking civil servant who has turned down a knighthood but not the luxury of a swimming pool. The Fosters are well-off, ff generous to charitable causes, and perhaps a bit embarrassed at their good fortune in life. Hilda gave up a career to marry Rupert, but keeps busy with volunteer work. She is at least his equal in compassion, moreso in horse sense. Hilda and her younger sister Morgan have a special bond, the latter married to but estranged from the saintly figure Tallis Browne. Other than Tallis, Hilda is the novel’s most substantially good character: warm, witty, shrewd, self-effacing. ff What her husband theorizes about in his treatise on love and virtue, Hilda puts into action. The tale begins as Morgan returns to England from the States, where she ended a two-year affair ff with Julius King, Rupert’s former Oxford classmate, a renowned biochemist who has recently stopped doing research in biological warfare – not for moral reasons but because he’s become bored with it. Julius is suave, debonair, independently wealthy, attractive to both men and women, and a consummate manipulator who succeeds in deceiving, charming, and perverting the consciousness of nearly all the characters except Tallis. Morgan’s betrayed but loyal husband Tallis is a social worker, teacher of adult classes in labor history, and community housing activist whose innumerable acts of goodwill include devoted care of his embittered dying father, whom Murdoch has identified elsewhere as a disillusioned god-the-father figure.1 Unlike the fastidious Julius, Tallis appears unkempt; his house, life, and person disheveled, unorganized, and filled with other people’s problems. A loving, spiritually aware being, Tallis is visited periodically by what appear to be apparitions of his deceased twin sister (208–209, 340), who died at age 14.

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

659

Ironically the most bewildered of Julius’s victims, Morgan has an academic career in ‘‘glossematics,’’ a field resembling what Murdoch in M Metaphysics calls ‘‘linguistic determinism.’’ The term implies the deconstructionist/postmodern avoidance of individual responsibility for selfhood in a contingent world. Morgan the language theorist, tellingly, is seduced and emotionally abandoned by the demonic Julius, and is unwilling to recognize the moral strength and dignity of her husband – qualities acknowledged by the deceiver himself.2 Julius abhors the self-contented goodness of Rupert Foster and the very idea of his philosophical work on love and virtue. His most ingenious efforts ff are calculated to destroy the marital bond between Rupert and Hilda, and especially to crush his old classmate’s personal sense of moral integrity. Julius hints that he would like to have Hilda as his own companion and ‘‘steadfast friend’’ (324). Although he possesses considerable inherited wealth, Julius’s emotional greed and desire to destroy others’ happiness, self-esteem, and dignity seem intertwined with suppressed envy. Julius denigrates Rupert’s idealistic trust in love as the source of all virtue, belittles his lifework, and eventually destroys the sole manuscript of his book. Behind this destructiveness seems to lurk a malicious envy3 of an old friend who is established in a successful career and a long happy marriage with a woman Julius finds appealing. This bitter envy becomes evident in Julius’s spitefully debonair words to Rupert as he pretends to believe the ruse he has himself cunningly devised, that Rupert and Morgan are having an affair: ff You have expected too much of yourself, Rupert. No marriage is as perfect as you have imagined yours to be and no man as upright as you have posed to yourself as being. ... Come, there will be a few smiles at your expense, but why worry? The smilers merely demonstrate their own tawdriness. But human life is tawdry. ... All right, Hilda will stop admiring you. But when have you really merited her admiration? ... All right, Hilda won’t love you quite as she did before. She may feel sorry for you, she may even despise you a little. And you won’t forget what you’ve learnt either, how to pretend, how to lead a double life. It’s natural to you, Rupert, you all do it. ... (382–383)

Though Rupert has a sincere appreciation of goodness and tries to live by it, we can be almost certain that his book would offer ff nary a paragraph, let alone a chapter, on the likes of Julius. And any worthwhile discussion of real life goodness requires a hard-nosed codicil on what threatens it. Rupert, unfortunately, shows no working awareness of the subtlety of evil and the treacherousness of his seeming friend. Such a glaring gap in consciousness puts readers on edge, and seems intended to spur us to fill

660

REBECCA M. PAINTER

it in for ourselves. We feel our own affinity to the idealism of Rupert, and wish we-and he-were not so vulnerable to the snide deprecations of those who think or talk like Julius. Our appreciation of Murdoch’s contrast between malicious and beneficent characters in this novel is piqued when we learn that Tallis, like Julius, has concealed a dreadful trauma from public knowledge. In the same private conversation between Julius and Tallis toward the end of the narrative, in which we learn that Julius spent WW2 in Belsen, Tallis confides that his twin sister did not die from polio as he has led others to believe, but had been raped and killed by a sex maniac. Unlike Julius, rather than envy and denigrate others for apparently not having comparable burdens of shame and suffering, ff Tallis immerses himself to the point of messy self-neglect in a life of thankless good works. ‘‘You just do all these things,’’ Julius accuses him, ‘‘to stop yourself from thinking.’’ Tallis replies, ‘‘Maybe’’ (399). Perhaps Tallis is willing to admit to conscious evasion of unhealed psychic wounds. But maybe he knows something Julius does not: that good works do more than divert the mind from traumatic memories. They offer ff gratification, sometimes that of sparing others from suffering. ff Moral implications to the reader: seeing for ourselves two radically different ff reactions to extreme trauma, two diverging streams of attention. Unfortunately, Murdoch’s contrast of satanic and enlightened beings is not always judiciously balanced. Tallis, it happens, suffers ff from nightly visitations by what at first he takes to be apparitions of his deceased sister. Just as he delivers his wife’s belongings to her new flat, when he needs emotional and mental energy to persuade Morgan to give their marriage another chance, he finds himself ‘‘aching with tiredness’’ and ‘‘sick with emotion’’ (208). The narrator tells us that Tallis first associated these apparitions with the idea of love, but they had never actually benefited him and once had left him unconscious. Tallis is too drained to speculate. Therefore his acuity is sapped when confronted with the evil rumor that his wife is having an affair ff with her sister’s husband. ‘‘That simply cannot be true,’’ he tells Julius, when the instigator conveys to him the news without admitting his role in it. When Julius defends its plausibility, Tallis judiciously responds, ‘‘Oh go to hell’’ (339). Nevertheless, when Tallis decides to take action and see Morgan about all this, he runs out of steam. ‘‘If only I had some energy and could think,’’ he laments (340), but he can’t think of anything but his dying father. Since Murdoch has elsewhere identified Leonard Browne as a symbolic god-the-father figure, we might surmise a possible subtext of a

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

661

morally salvific character made ineffective ff by the impending death of God or of the moral order in general. But Murdoch’s tale should not be so simply encapsulated. Tallis is indeed preoccupied by his ailing father, but he is also under attack and seriously debilitated by demonic forces. About his nightly visions the narrative voice – now seeming to represent Tallis’s own perceptions – claims: ‘‘It was not a protective or a benign presence. ... Here something much greater and more august was watching him. ... Perhaps she was the queen of the other world after all ...’’ (340–341). So just when he needs his clarity and vigor to prevent a disaster among those he cares for most, this highly evolved spiritual being is harassed and enervated by none other than the queen of hell! Tallis feels strongly that he must act, but never manages to seek out Morgan or Rupert in person. The letter he eventually sends to Morgan arrives too late to be effective; ff she tears it up without reading it. Given the knowledge that Tallis is able to see demonic entities for what they are, and is even able to protect Hilda and Rupert’s troubled son from them as he sleeps, readers might like to see such a character given more of a chance to take on adversaries such as Julius and the infernal feminine disguised as his sister, without the authorial contrivance of being too sleep-deprived to function. Whereas Julius and the dark forces tormenting Tallis have a destructive dynamic in this novel, the narrative has a distinctly non-dynamic aspect shared by its more-or-less good characters. This could be termed the pervasive non-apperception of evil by those who should know better, but whose attention is always elsewhere. Like Rupert, the benighted authority on goodness, when faced with a satanic individual in their midst, they do not identify Julius as a threat, and are almost entirely feckless in what amounts to unidentified combat with an unperceived enemy. Hilda and Morgan are the strongest examples of persons sidelining a more than compelling knowledge of Julius’s malevolence. The two sisters are extremely close, but when Julius returns to England, each crumbles in her resolve to deal with him cautiously. At the opening of the novel Hilda tells Rupert that anyone who would engage in research on biological warfare is morally suspect. Yet when said biochemist pays a visit, she is charmed by a few flattering words and drops her guard to the point of permitting a too-trusting relationship to develop – even after she learns that her beloved sister was emotionally devastated by him. Morgan more than anyone should have known better. She had left Julius in the States because ‘‘... it had seemed to her that she had been driven away, even discarded.’’ ‘‘She had perceived an immense coldness

662

REBECCA M. PAINTER

from which she had recoiled shuddering[,] and it was to save herself from the icy contact that she had at last fled ...’’ (150). Despite the intensity of these negative experiences, Morgan remains obsessed with Julius to the point of enduring further humiliations and rejections. Readers are amazed at her imperviousness to the validity of her own insights that had moved her to leave him. As the action progresses, one watches helplessly as otherwise intelligent characters fail to be wary of Julius’s machinations, to say nothing of his influence on their perceptions. T hey aren’t paying attention, we fume! So we must compensate. Morgan’s character, and to a substantial degree nearly all the others, display what the philosopher Bernard Lonergan identifies as the avoidance of insight, a fundamental evil of human consciousness. His major treatise IInsight: A Study of Human Understanding (1952) describes the philosophical importance of insight as a creative, practical, and essential function of intelligence. I suggest that Lonergan’s exploration of this vital aspect of consciousness has much to offer ff those who interpret literature from a moral perspective. It warrants careful attention to the novels under discussion here, because Lonergan’s analysis leads us into the conscious and preconscious suppression of insight, which he identifies as essentially evil:4 Just as insight can be desired, so too it can be unwanted. Besides the love of light, there can be a love of darkness. If prepossessions and prejudices notoriously vitiate theoretical investigations, more easily can elementary passions bias understanding in practical and personal matters. To exclude an insight is also to exclude the further questions that would anise from it and the complementary insights that would carry it towards a rounded and balanced viewpoint. To lack that fuller view results in behaviour that generates misunderstanding both in ourselves and in others. ... Finally, the incomprehension, isolation, and duality rob the development of one’s common sense of some part, greater or less, of the corrections and the assurance that result from learning accurately the tested insights of others and from submitting one’s own insights to the criticism based on others’ experience and development. (191)

Morgan’s passion for Julius not only leads her to suppress feelings of guilt for being unfaithful to her husband, it also causes her to ignore the malice of Julius’s affronts ff to her dignity. She deprives herself of the wise counsel of her older sister, losing the balancing viewpoint and validation of one she trusts above all others. Murdoch’s narrative combines Morgan’s willful non-perception with a calculating use of the knowledge of evil she has acquired from Julius. Disrespecting her own apperception of evil as experienced in Julius’s inhuman coldness, Morgan utilizes this dark knowledge by coldly denying

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

663

her feelings of love for her husband. Rejecting Tallis’s tender overtures of reconciliation, she consciously employs withering cynicism, aware that it is ‘‘the opposite extreme from love: the cynicism of a deliberate contemptuous diminution of another person.’’ Brushing him off, ff she thinks, ‘‘I am seeing him as Julius sees him’’ (154). Readers notice, alas, as Morgan does not, that this is the way Julius sees her, not Tallis, who commands his respect and even his obedience. We must wonder: Julius’s coldness and contempt are the very qualities she could not bear to live with. Why would she want to emulate these traits herself ? The narrative gives no ready answers, but readers are compelled to question this character’s inattentive consciousness. The plot centers upon Julius’s wager that he can break up any relationship, that all human beings are ‘‘essentially finders of substitutes’’ and that there is no relationship ‘‘the breaking of which is a matter of genuine seriousness’’ (233). It is a satanic philosophy that denies the seriousness of human pain and loss, and the irreplaceable quality of individual lives and loves. Coming from the survivor of a death camp who would have witnessed countless broken relationships and the unspeakable pain and horror associated with them, this view bespeaks a deep pathology thinly veneered by cynicism. Julius’s main goal is to destroy the long, happy marriage of Rupert and Hilda. As his plan proceeds, his influence is felt in the deterioration of relationships: avoidance of truth, abuse of trust, and faulty attention. Murdoch’s depiction of the effects ff of evil on the level of consciousness is perhaps nowhere more striking than in the narrator’s comments on the pain of lost communication and the poisoned intimacy of trust between Rupert and Hilda. One passage haunts the reader with evidence – especially in light of Rupert’s eventual death – of how some of life’s most deeply felt goodness can be irreversibly lost: [Hilda] had noticed something ... intensely distressing which she now saw to be this. The deep rapport between herself and her husband was somehow broken. Hilda felt this as physical illness, as pain. In a happy marriage there is a continuous dense magnetic sense of communication. Hilda had enjoyed this with Rupert uninterruptedly for years. ... Looking, touching, the telepathy of speech, ... of silence, the full mystery of trusting married love, she had taken utterly for granted. Now ... something had been altered. Rupert behaved very much though not quite as usual. He was nervy and abstracted and seemed to avoid her eye. ... The big thing was that her channels of communication with Rupert were indubitably blocked. (319–320)

Though we sympathize with Hilda’s pain, we also realize that paramount in the assertion that she had taken this intimate bond of trust for granted

664

REBECCA M. PAINTER

is her quality of consciousness. It suggests that Hilda is not simply a victim: she is responsible for failing to cherish and protect this bond from insidious threats. At the novel’s climax, this failure proves fatal. At the party celebrating the completion of Rupert’s book, she is beside herself because Julius appears to accept as true the rumor of Rupert’s affair ff with Morgan. When Rupert pleads most urgently that he is innocent, Hilda refuses to listen to him. On the momentous occasion when they could have put their minds together and exposed Julius’s treachery, Hilda claims she is ‘‘weary of the whole thing’’ (380). This comes across as not a copout: more like a complete betrayal. When she could have applied her native shrewdness and unraveled the scheme, alleviating her husband’s distress and her sister’s victimization as a traitorous fool, Hilda instead stonewalls them both. She writes to Morgan not to communicate with her anymore, and orders Rupert out of their bedroom (380). Readers may recall ironically that Hilda once told her sister, when asked the purpose of life, that it is ‘‘loving people’’ (56). We now witness an appalling failure to connect her idea of love with the evil of denying it. The act of caring attention is forgotten, or squashed, when her marriage is most endangered – a lucid illustration of the effect ff of rage on one’s denial of insight. Hilda absconds to their vacation cottage in Wales, telling only her honest lago, Julius, of her whereabouts. Meanwhile Rupert drinks heavily, alone. Abandoned by his wife, Rupert commits the sin of despair: ‘‘[H]e knew that he would never persuade her and never persuade himself ever again. There was something which had vanished out of the world forever’’ (384). What Rupert loses hold of, before falling drunk into his pool and drowning, is trust in his own goodness. He forsakes that quality of consciousness that is based upon a steady caring gaze of attention, a fairness and hopefulness toward himself.f The day after the book party debacle, Julius seeks out Tallis to express his concern that things may have gone further than intended, and Tallis instantly sees the evil of his ruse. He commands Julius to call Hilda and explain everything. Julius obeys, but in a Murdochian twist of contingency, Hilda insists that she be the one to call Rupert and Morgan and tell them of Julius’s scheme. In her agitation she drops and breaks her telephone, then her car refuses to start. Missing Hilda’s phone call, Rupert’s drowning that night is perhaps not a suicide, but nonetheless a death largely attributable to malevolent meddling. Later Julius tries to elicit absolution from Tallis for this ghastly outcome, confiding in him as he would to a more highly evolved being: ‘‘Human beings set each other off so. Put three emotional fairly clever people in a fix and instead of

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

665

trying quietly to communicate with each other they’ll dream up some piece of communal violence.’’ Tallis agrees. Julius adds, with malicious irony, ‘‘Hilda, ... of whom one might have hoped better things. Why did she have to run off like that? ... She should have stayed and talked and listened. But the hurt pride of the outraged wife had to be satisfied by some sort of violent gesture’’ (428). Readers have to scoff: Julius now pays tribute to Hilda’s wifely virtue, after he has orchestrated its downfall! Tallis accepts only part of Julius’s rationalizations. When Julius claims that Rupert didn’t really love goodness but died of vanity rather than drowning, Tallis remains silent. By now we have enough perspective to see that Rupert’s anguish was far more for the loss of his wife’s loving trust than for his failing self-respect and destroyed manuscript. We perceive the envious malice of Julius in causing Rupert to doubt his own goodness and inner strength. Our own apperception of this evil contradiction between false accusation and real responsibility increases when we reflect on a point not emphasized in the narrative. It was Rupert’s goodness and strength of character that enables Hilda and Morgan to be reconciled after his death. For in the midst of Julius’s trickery and Morgan’s immoral urging, it was Rupert who had refused to commit adultery. For Hilda this could have been an irreparable breech of trust in her sister’s love and loyalty, which Morgan, not Rupert, had been all too willing to betray. Fairly Honourable Defeat gives us a formidable expose of how inattenAF tion and the denial of insight affect ff our participation in evil. Yet one aspect of Murdoch’s artistic vision remains unsatisfying. In this regard her fiction does not always live up to the standard she states as follows: ‘‘... to invent characters who have a life of their own, who seem to exist, and who ... may be what ordinary people are like in the eyes of God, as it were’’ (Todd 101). Murdoch’s characters in this and many of her other novels seem to have ample faculties of observation, but allow themselves to be victimized in ways that people with lives of their own might not tolerate. So to this reader they do not always seem to exist as would fully capable human beings. Nevertheless, Murdoch challenges us to give due diligence to the stuff of consciousness, to ponder the repercussions of the individual play of attention in contributing to or rejecting evil. Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye portrays evil very differently ff than in Murdoch’s fiction, where male characters carry most of the negative freight. Atwood is distinguished by focusing on the distinctly female capacity for destructive thought and action. Cat’s Eye unfolds through the perspective of Elaine Risley, a middle-aged artist haunted by

666

REBECCA M. PAINTER

crippling memories of ridicule and betrayal by childhood girl companions. The most treacherous and pitiable of these is named Cordelia, after King Lear’s innocent and ill-used daughter. In Simone Weil’s perspective, we might say that this Cordelia differs ff from Shakespeare’s by passing on her humiliation and suffering ff to an equally innocent girl. The story of her childhood cruelty to the protagonist is an exploration of the reciprocal damage of relational evils among girls and the women they become. In the fragility of childhood, this Cordelia is unable to absorb humiliation and derision in passive suffering. ff Younger than Lear’s daughter and less able to understand and forgive her father’s harsh disapproval, she spontaneously reproduces his mockery and acts out his heartless derision, gravely injuring the one friend who might have provided the moral support she needed to survive her family’s ostracism. A terrible price is paid by both persecutor and victim, demonstrating the view of feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, that evil is a ‘‘distorted relationality that destroys both sides of the relationship.’’5 Perhaps because of her ability to express her injured psyche in painting, and finally in the re-membering that comprises this narrative, Elaine survives to tell the tale, to undergo the process of self-healing and to develop awareness of moral responsibility. Elaine’s memory narrative makes the reader her confidant and intimate, drawing one into uncomfortable familiarity with her shame-filled horrors of victimhood, then into vicarious association with her vengeful malice and heartlessness toward Cordelia. Youthfully blunt, Elaine’s confessional style pays keen attention to the quiddity of individual consciousness. Readers first take into account the narrator’s limited awareness of others’ circumstances, then watch her gradually expand this awareness to a fuller compassion and cognizance of her own role as ignorant victim and (subliminally) knowing perpetrator. The novel depicts an organic growth of consciousness and personal apperception of responsibility for evil. Atwood’s fictional embodiment of patient, caring attention to memory aligns her work with the ethical standpoint of Iris Murdoch: that we are accountable for the quality of our consciousness, and that our standard of goodness is set by the calibre of our attention. Nor is Atwood’s art far from the moral philosophical concerns of Bernard Lonergan, for it portrays and seeks to overcome the avoidance of insight that obstructs self-knowledge and contributes to a personal sense of worthlessness and shame. Because her fiction speaks of early childhood trauma, adolescent reactions, and adult relationships which bear the scars of trauma, Alice Miller’s views pertain as well. Nel Noddings’ insights are also reflected,

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

667

as Atwood exposes how the denial of relationship, neglect or abuse of another’s weakness, helplessness, or trust are debilitating human evils and sources of deep psychic pain.6 While Atwood’s experimentation with narrative styles has earned her a postmodern label in some aspects, her ethical approach cannot be characterized as such. When questioned in an interview about cruelty to children, Atwood replied: It all comes back to original sin, doesn’t it? ... It depends on whether you define yourself as intrinsically innocent, ... because in fact you aren’t. ... [B]eing human inevitably involves being guilty, and if you define yourself as innocent ... you will always be the object of that rather than somebody who has any choice or takes responsibility for their life. ... And if you define yourself always as a harmless victim, there’s nothing you can ever do about it. You can simply suffer. ff 7

While Atwood’s characters do suffer, ff she never presents them as harmless victims. Cat’s Eye picks up before Murdoch’s novels with their emphasis on adult demonic characters, by focusing on the problematic formation of consciousness in childhood. In this regard the narrative seems to illustrate key ideas of Swiss psychotherapist Alice Miller, whose work sheds light ff on individuals and society of unacknowledged on the damaging effects cruelty to children. In For Your Y Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in ChildRearing and the Roots of V iolence, Miller states that when one cannot talk about cruelty endured as a child because memories are repressed and/or there is no available supportive and understanding listener, one ‘‘must demonstrate cruelty,’’ either self-destructively or by seeking out victims (242). In Atwood’s novel, both Cordelia and Elaine demonstrate cruelty within a causal framework of repressed trauma and the lack of any supportive and understanding listener. As Miller postulates and Atwood’s fiction illustrates, these subtle forms of demonstration include mockery, humiliation, false piety to justify spitefully harsh discipline, disregard for children’s separate personhood and dignity, and indifference ff to their suffering. ff Once she meets Cordelia and her friends, Elaine’s childhood fills with the unnameable cruelties that girls can inflict upon each other. These humiliations are so subtle that young Elaine – but not the narrative voice of Elaine as a mature adult – feels unable to describe them. At the time she had no one, least of all her parents, to confide in. But now, implicitly, she has us, and her own more reflective consciousness. Atwood’s narrative lucidly illustrates Miller’s insight that the source of emotional illness is not so much the original trauma as it is ‘‘the unconscious, repressed,

668

REBECCA M. PAINTER

hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to what one has suffered ff ... [,] not allowed to show and ... unable to experience feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness.’’ Cordelia’s probable demise toward the novel’s end adds poignancy to Miller’s further comment: ‘‘[M]any people ... commit suicide because life no longer seems worth living if they are totally unable to live out all these strong feelings that are part of their true self ’’ (259). Perhaps due to her art – both her painting and the story she relates – Elaine survives a suicide attempt to tell her tale. Cordelia, denied Elaine’s understanding and friendship, does not survive, except through Elaine’s belated memory. Readers are left with the mystery and conjectural burden of Cordelia’s injuring behavior and injured consciousness. Elaine’s plight emerges as that of the wounded and wounding self. Peering through the scarred lens of Elaine’s consciousness, we come to recognize Cordelia as one who in her muteness speaks for legions of injured individuals who cannot help but pass on their humiliation and rage, becoming agents of further evil. In the novel, Elaine’s moral consciousness develops in roughly three stages. The first identifies Cordelia as the source of her sense of worthlessness, demonizing her lost ‘‘best friend’’ as she recalls her childhood victimization, self-loathing and self-mutilation. Next, her recollections gain awareness of her own rage and desire to do unto others, especially to Cordelia, what Cordelia has done to her. As she matures, gaining power as a popular and successful high school student, we witness her active participation in evil. She armors herself in coldness, verbal meanness and denial of relationship to others – in particular Cordelia, who is now failing to keep up with schoolwork and unsuccessful with boys. Elaine’s vengeful impulse transforms into a third stage, which amounts to a twofold evolution of consciousness. On one hand her perception deepens regarding the causes of Cordelia’s earlier cruelty: the cold, disparaging rejection Cordelia had received as her father’s unappreciated but hopelessly adoring daughter. This realization is closely entwined with Elaine’s gradual apperception of her own accountability for the uncaring choices she has made in response to Cordelia’s implicit cries for help and understanding. The sequence of Elaine’s memories is hardly haphazard as it exposes us to the inner life of her moral awareness. A large point about apperception is made by the lateness with which we are presented with an image of Cordelia’s relationship with her father. It occurs after we learn of Cordelia’s floundering in schoolwork, her gauche behavior on dates, her role as chief victim of Elaine’s adolescent mean mouth. When Elaine

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

669

recalls a dinner with Cordelia’s family, readers finally get a description of Cordelia’s father. He is King Lear as a wealthy, imperious businessman, an autocrat whose wife and two other daughters assiduously aim to please. Elaine observes that he ‘‘sits at the head of the table, with his craggy eyebrows, his wolvish look, and bends upon me the full force of his ponderous, ironic, terrifying charm. He can make you feel that what he thinks of you matters ... but that what you think of him is of no importance’’ (267). Elaine notes that whatever she says amuses him, he admires her success at school; whereas Cordelia is not doing well in her studies and never wins his approval. ‘‘I’ve seen it many times, her dithering, fumble-footed efforts ff to appease him. But nothing she can do or say will ever be enough, because she is somehow the wrong person’’ (268). At the time Elaine felt no pity, and wanted to kick her for being so abject. On a power trip of indifference, ff Elaine is blinded by unacknowledged rage from having been the recipient of Cordelia’s compulsive reenactment of her father’s humiliating torments and rejections. What we see now however, is that Elaine’s vision has changed to allow for compassion, for honesty about her own intolerance. Subtly, inexorably, the novel draws us into a fictional space wherein we begin to make out two intertwining strands of causality that lead to relational failure. Readers are gradually apprised of Cordelia’s victimization and weakness, her desperate need to reach out to Elaine for understanding and saving compassion. At the same time we perceive that Elaine’s suppressed rage and desire for vengeance prevent her from giving Cordelia the moral support that might have saved her life. Bernard Lonergan might attribute this stalemate to what he terms the ‘‘social surd,’’8 a societally evolved form of evil resulting from an accumulation of multiple sources of injustice, willed blindness and ethical irresponsibility. It is long after her sheepish retreat from the high school drop-out Cordelia that Elaine’s compassion for her partially emerges. She wonders why Cordelia’s parents gave her that Shakespearean name, why they hung ‘‘that weight around her neck. ... The third sister, the only honest one. The stubborn one, the rejected one, the one who was not heard’’ (285). Still later, after Elaine has achieved notoriety in a group show of women artists, Cordelia calls her from a ‘‘discreet private loony bin’’ for members of wealthy families, and begs Elaine to get her out. Elaine dissembles, struggles with inexpressible fury, rationalizes to herself about Cordelia’s past history of a drug overdose, and says she can’t. Cordelia immediately corrects this to mean she won’t, and says, ‘‘forlornly: ‘I guess

670

REBECCA M. PAINTER

you’ve always hated me’ ’’ (381). Months later, Elaine sends Cordelia a half-mocking note suggesting another visit, but it is returned with ‘‘Addressee Unknown’’ scrawled across by hand. Elaine aptly wonders if the handwriting is Cordelia’s. They lose contact with one another permanently. As Elaine presents herself in the narrative, readers are able to discern a continuing avoidance of insight, a denial of relationship held within a secret bottle of hate that affects ff Elaine’s overall negative opinion of her entire sex. When she joins a group of women artists, some of whom are lesbians, she admits her lack of desire for women, but also her terror of getting close to them: ‘‘Women collect grievances, hold grudges and change shape. They pass hard, legitimate judgments, unlike the purblind guesses of men. ... Women know too much, they can neither be deceived nor trusted. I can understand why men are afraid of women, as they are frequently accused of being’’ (400–401). Yet readers might ask, Are women the culprits here? Is any state of consciousness to be trusted in which rage – even in response to trauma – has grown into pervasive hatred? Should men be afraid of women, or should one fear any person who refuses to forgive? Being deceived and passing legitimate judgments seem to be gender neutral. Alice Miller claims that forgiveness is ill-used when it is demanded of victims who do not yet understand the extent of the abuse they have received. Without this understanding, Miller believes, forgiveness does not heal wounds but rather conceals and leaves them festering. Healing, Miller insists, takes place only after one has expressed one’s rage, realized the wrongness of the abuse, and grieved first for oneself as victim, then for the abuser. Elaine, we can see, did not fully understand the damage done by Cordelia the girl when Cordelia as a young woman was pleading for compassionate help. Only Elaine’s conscience knew enough to feel guilty about her cruel indifference ff to this friend in need. As the novel reaches its end, Elaine’s grieving process gradually reaches out to Cordelia as she revisits the scene of a humiliating early childhood trauma. This time Elaine perceives things differently: ff ‘‘There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness, the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia’s; as they always were.’’ At last she becomes aware of Cordelia as the original victim, realizing that she is the stronger one, the less damaged, and probably the one still alive. Inspired with benevolence, Elaine thinks, ‘‘If she stays here any longer ... she will be left behind, in

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

671

the wrong time. It’s almost too late. I reach my arms out to her, bend down, hands open to show I have no weapon. It’s all right, I say to her. You can go home now’’ (443). As Elaine becomes Cordelia’s angel of mercy, her imaginary rescuer, the narrative achieves a moment of artistic catharsis and partial triumph. It may leave us, though, with a deeper evil to ponder. How much has Elaine suffered, ff ultimately, for leaving her friend behind, denying her own singular ability to help her, clinging to foul memories that obscured her debt of compassion? We have been taken into the psyche of this narrator so convincingly that we are uneasy about the degree of moral consciousness Elaine achieves at the end. One might ask, in Elaine’s position, if awareness of one’s own need for forgiveness should not be part of an imagined farewell to someone who has died without the healing effect ff of our compassion. But then, perhaps the entire narrative builds readers’ own awareness of the pain of failing to extend healing compassion to those who, hurting themselves, most hurt us. These are questions for anyone considering forms of evil such as the denial of relationship, the avoidance of insight, and even the passing of one’s suffering ff along to others. Lance Morrow ends his investigation of evil with the remarkable statement that to him the opposite of evil is not goodness, but hope. ‘‘Hope ... is goodness in a tight spot, and ambitious to improve things.’’ Goodness to him seems ‘‘blandly undramatic, a sort of Unitarian vanilla’’ (266). I hope that this paper has offered ff some qualifications to the ambitions of hope, some qualities of consciousness without which wellmeaning hope would be lost. Novelists such as Murdoch and Atwood, thinkers such as Lonergan, Weil, Miller, Murdoch, and Noddings, lead us to appreciate the role of awareness, the vital play of attention that can reach such a degree of keenness that any blandness attributed to goodness is exposed as wildly inaccurate. Whereas the dangers of denial of relationship and avoidance of insight can be seen as the very medium in which evil is allowed to flourish. Such works of thought and imagination give us more reason to hope, to become more aware of the attention that matters in a tight spot. Marymount Manhattan College NOTES 1 Richard Todd, ed., Encounters with Iris Murdoch: Proceedings of an Informal Symposium on Iris Murdoch’s Work Held at the Free University, Amsterdam, on 20 and 21 October 1986

672

REBECCA M. PAINTER

(Amsterdam: Free UP, 1988), 97. Murdoch makes this comment, reminding her audience that Leonard Browne constantly makes the remark, ‘‘It all went wrong from the start.’’ She also explains that Julius King represents the devil, and that Tallis Browne is not exactly a Christ figure but a spiritual being that ‘‘in the East would be called a ‘high incarnation’ ’’ (96). I refer to Tallis as a Christ figure because he is given Christ-like symbolic gestures and figurative stigmata, so the author’s symbolism appears to contradict her stated narrative intention. 2 His name suggest Julius Caesar, or the biblical ‘‘king of this world.’’ In the narrative Julius mentions that his surname was originally Kahn, but his parents changed it to King when they converted from Judaism to Christianity, at which point he broke off communication with them (429–430). Morgan’s name connotes Morgan la Fey of Arthurian legend, perhaps indicating a trouble-making but not too grounded spiritual nature, susceptible to the powerful destructive magnetism of a more high-powered demonic entity like Julius. 3 Re malicious envy, see Joseph H. Berke, T he T yranny of Malice: Exploring the Dark Side of Character and Culture (New York: Summit Books, 1988). 4 Lonergan was also a Jesuit; no doubt his theory of insight was developed in cognizance of Thomas Aquinas’s point in De Malo [On Evil] that willed ignorance is sinful. 5 Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘‘Dualism and the nature of Evil in Feminist Theology’’ (unpublished paper, 1991), 18, quoted in Sarah S. Forth, ‘‘Women’s Responses to Evil: A Literary and Theological Study,’’ diss., Northwestern University (1994), 15. 6 See Noddings, W Women and Evil (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989) and Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education (Berkeley: U of California P, 1984). 7 Graeme Gibson, ‘‘Dissecting the Way a Writer Works,’’ 14–15, in Earl G. Ingersoll, ed., Margaret Atwood: Conversations (Princeton, NJ: Ontaria Rev. Press, 1990), 3–19. 8 Insight I , 229–230. Lonergan borrows this term from the mathematical surd, an irrational and irreducible number, such as the square root of 2.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Atwood, Margaret. Cat’s Eye. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. Berke, Joseph H. T he T yranny of Malice: Exploring the Dark Side of Character and Culture. New York: Summit Books, 1988. Bernstein, Richard J. Radical Evil. A Philosophical Interrogation. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2002. Gebara, Ivone. Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation. Translated by Ann Patrick Ware. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002 [1999]. Ingersoll, Earl G., ed. Margaret Atwood: Conversations. Princeton, NJ: Ontario Rev. Press, 1990. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. IInsight: A Study of Human Understanding. New York: Harper & Row, 1978 [1958]. Miller, Alice. For Y Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of V iolence. Translated by Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987. Morrow, Lance. Evil: An Investigation. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Murdoch, Iris. A Fairly F Honourable Defeat. London: Penguin Books, 1972. ——. M Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ——. Existentialists and Mystics: W ritings on Philosophy and L iterature. Edited by Peter Conradi, foreword by George Steiner. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.

LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION

673

Noddings, Nel. W Women and Evil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. ——. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Todd, Richard, ed. Encounters with Iris Murdoch: Proceedings of an Informal Symposium on Iris Murdoch’s Work Held at the Free University, Amsterdam, on 20 and 21 October 1986. Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1988.

PETER WEIGEL

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF E VIL

Dostoyevsky in T he Brothers Karamazov offers ff perhaps the most gripping and memorable portrayal of the problem of evil in world literature. In a chapter of the novel aptly titled, ‘‘Rebellion,’’ the character Ivan examines the ancient question as to why God allows innocent suffering. ff Well over a century after its composition, Ivan’s monologue retains a profound ability to engage the thoughts and sentiments of the modern reader. References to Ivan’s rebellion remain a staple of technical works of philosophy and theology on the problem. Ivan begins by describing instances in which children and infants ff and even death at the hands of their adult undergo terrible suffering tormentors. The chapter concludes with Ivan’s famous decision to opt out of any divine plan for human salvation wherein God permits such events; instead, he will ‘‘most respectfully return the ticket’’ to the Kingdom of God rather than countenance an omnipotent God permitting evil and suffering ff for the sake of some greater good.1 Ivan’s descriptions ff are heart-rending and succeed in arousing horror of innocent suffering and indignation even in normally indifferent ff readers. His rejection of the divine plan appears nobly principled and is backed by a willingness to renounce an eternity of riches. Yet, for all the brilliance of his speech in presenting the case against Y traditional theism, Ivan’s views surprisingly remain far from Dostoyevsky’s own studied conclusions. Large sections of the rest of the novel are crafted in response to Ivan’s atheistic stance, and when all is said and done T he Brothers Karamazov remains a classic in the genre of Christian theodicy going back to Saint Augustine and the Church Fathers. Unfortunately Dostoyevsky’s response in the novel, primarily in the long speeches of Fr. Zosima, is far more subtle and diffuse ff than the compact statement of Ivan’s challenge, tempting generations of commentators to read Ivan’s assault on divine providence in isolation from its wider significance within the surrounding framework of Dostoyevsky’s reply. The purpose here is to try to understand the distinctive character of Ivan’s rebellion and then capture the major threads of Dostoyevsky’s own assessment of the problem of evil. Dostoyevsky’s insights emerge as both powerful and somewhat unique, particularly when juxtaposed with some traditional approaches to the problem. The analysis offered ff is 675 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 675–699. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

676

PETER WEIGEL

primarily philosophical in hue, but will try not to presuppose a technical background. One should also keep in view that a literary masterpiece is not written to the same purpose as a specialist work of philosophy or theology. It will help to begin by sketching the basic points of Ivan’s rebellion (Section I). Some general, primarily philosophical considerations about the problem of evil are brought in for contrast (Section II). Finally, the focus will turn to uncovering and commenting upon the main themes constituting Dostoyevsky’s perspective on evil (Section III).2 I

Ivan’s rebellion occurs roughly a third of the way through the novel when his younger brother Alyosha finds him eating a meal in a tavern. Apart from what gets spoken during the encounter, the setting and characterization involved warrant attention. As a novice in training to become a monk in the local monastery, Alyosha throughout the novel consistently displays an attitude of profound Christian love and acceptance toward the other characters. His faith in the fundamental goodness (if not the good judgment) of others often strikes more worldly characters in the novel as comically naı¨ve. Ivan, on the other hand, embodies the combined rationalism and profound cynicism Dostoyevsky views as characteristic of the modern atheistic intellectual. (Dostoyevsky is careful to portray Ivan as exercising these traits with the depth and profundity worthy of the Russian soul.) Ivan is continually frustrated in his drive to have things make sense on his own terms, his self-proclaimed ‘‘pathetic, earthly, Euclidean mind’’ is impatient with anything smacking of mystery or transcendence.3 His world-view gives the appearance of favoring a scientific materialist metaphysics topped with utilitarian social and ethical arrangements, although Ivan is in places ambivalent about committing to any one comprehensive outlook or paradigm. Ivan’s personality features the extremes of cynicism and abject despair seen on a lesser scale in other characters. Self-alienated and forever at odds with what he really feels, he speaks and acts through ‘‘doubles’’ and alter egos such as the servant Smerdyakov, the Grand Inquisitor, or the author of an ironically composed theological article. Outwardly charming and civilized, he regards most of the other characters with a mix of superior contempt and indifference. ff His habitual aloofness is often punctuated by displays of barely provoked rage.4 His occasional declarations of love for humanity seem belied by the lack of dignity he accords individuals. His Grand Inquisitor’s estimation of human beings puts them down

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

677

as too inherently depraved for either genuine Christianity or even limited self-governance. Dostoyevsky views the atheism of Ivan’s bitter and conflicted psyche as emblematic of a Russian society being poisoned by a creeping nihilism Dostoyevsky associates with modernity and the European Enlightenment. It is thus noteworthy that Dostoyevsky chooses just such a personality as the prism through which this perennial, though in many ways quintessentially modern, theological conundrum receives forceful articulation. The major counterpoints to Ivan’s speech are raised by the elder Fr. Zosima and to a lesser extent by Zosima’s student and Ivan’s brother Alyosha. The characterological background of their refutation is an almost suprahuman piety seldom encountered in this world. Ivan’s challenge to the traditional theistic belief in providence takes place in a tavern, where Alyosha has gone in hope of finding Ivan and his other brother Dmitri. Instead, he finds Ivan eating a meal alone and the discussion between Ivan and Alyosha turns to matters of faith in God. Ivan begins to relate his reasons why he cannot accept a divine providence which allows for all the evil and suffering ff Ivan sees in this world. Ivan’s critique of a God who would permit evil and suffering ff keenly focuses on the sufferings ff of young children. He argues that the relative innocence of children puts them in a separate category from adults. Adults already participate in all manner of sin, so their suffering ff is conceivably deserved. Children, however, seem to Ivan a different ff matter: I meant to talk about the suffering ff of mankind in general, but better let us dwell only on the suffering ff of children ... First, one can love children even up close, even dirty or homely children ... Second, I will not speak of grown-ups because, apart from the fact that they are disgusting and do not deserve love, they also have retribution: they ate the apple, and knew good and evil, and became ‘as gods.’5

Children might be born with the mark of original sin, but it is adults who fully and actively participate in their unholy inheritance. Ivan recounts a number of newspaper stories he has collected involving terrible sufferings ff undergone by children directly at the hands of cruel adults. Sadistic parents beat a little girl and lock her in an outhouse overnight for wetting her bed; in agony from her wounds and the freezing temperatures she cries out for ‘‘Dear God’’ to release her from torment. Ivan recounts a contemporaneous war in the Balkans during which an occupying army has been nailing women and children to fences by their ears. Soldiers throw babies in the air and catch them on the ends of their bayonets. In another story, a child is abandoned by his parents to a

678

PETER WEIGEL

group of neglectful shepherds who use him as slave labor without a care in the world for his basic needs. One cannot but react to these stories with anything less than horror and a desire for vigorous redress. It is, however, worth noting that Ivan’s view of childhood innocence assuredly is not Dostoyevsky’s own uncomplicated stance. Aside from the cruel and unwarranted treatment of the children by adults in these examples, Dostoyevsky makes clear in other sections of the novel that children can be far from innocent. A central scene in the novel has Alyosha come upon a gang of very young schoolboys pelting a classmate with rocks. The boy being stoned had stuck another boy with a penknife in school that day. The young novice’s attempt to make peace results in the little boy being attacked throwing a rock and hitting Alyosha. Elsewhere in the novel a young girl, Lise, describes intentionally slamming her hand in a door because she takes a perverse delight in her own agony. Other children in the novel play cruel practical jokes, on animals or on each other, or are otherwise indifferent ff to the harm and hurt feelings their actions cause. Dostoyevsky’s, Diary of a W riter, a serial publication of his own running commentary on current society and events, similarly observes various real incidents involving amoral (or often pre-moral ) behavior in children and adolescents. Children for Dostoyevsky are at best relatively innocent when compared with adults. In T he Brothers Karamazov, children serve to exemplify on a simplified level some of the basic conflicts, drives, and tendencies adults possess in a more complicated and less perspicuous fashion.6 Aside from all this, the cruelties visited upon children bring home the point that there is in this world a preponderance of pain and injustice falling on those most vulnerable and undeserving. The theme of the death of children is a pervasive theme in the novel and is classically one of the thorniest of issues for theodicy.7 Ivan’s example of the babies massacred by the soldiers raises the ancient and notoriously intractable version of the problem of evil known as the problem of infant suffering. ff St. Matthew’s Gospel records Herod’s massacre of the innocents, and Christian writers ever since have had to consider how a merciful and all-powerful God permits this most patently innocent and helpless class of human beings to undergo situations involving extreme suffering ff and death. Dostoyevsky thus allows the opposition to divine providence its strongest suit, and he knows how it is to be played for maximal effect. ff Dostoyevsky is no armchair theorist on the problem of infant suffering. ff Dostoyevsky’s own son Alexei died at the age of two, and an early scene in the novel has Fr.

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

679

Zosima console a mother insane with grief over the loss of her son of the same age and name as Dostoyevsky’s little boy.8 Posing the problem of evil in terms of the sufferings ff of innocent and helpless children is also not without a distinctive psychological resonance in the adult characters of the novel, particularly in the case of Ivan and the other two brothers. All three brothers at a young age suffered ff the death of their mother followed by their father’s abandonment of their proper upbringing. The examples of innocent children suffering ff the depraved actions of adults can also serve as a concentrated metaphor for the helplessness adults feel in their inability to escape the ravages of time, fate, and death. In this, Dostoyevsky is possibly suggesting that the problem of evil acquires much of its impetus from peoples’ own psychological investment in personal suffering ff which seems to them pointless and undeserved. (Correct or not, the insight is seldom given consideration in academic literature on the problem.) The adult’s psychological (and perhaps largely preconscious) identification with the underserved suffering ff of the innocent child is clearly discernible in Ivan. Ivan’s focus on children allows him, on the surface, to present the problem of evil with a combined immediacy and detachment apparently unclouded by his own interests. However, his own subjective investment in challenging the divine order eventually shows itself when he asks, ‘‘Is it possible that I’ve suffered ff [emphasis added] so that I, together with my evil deeds and sufferings, ff should be manure for someone else’s future harmony?’’9 Ivan’s rebellion stems, at least in part, from an intense desire for answers to his own suffering; ff his outrage at what happens to children is fueled by frustration over his own experiences with neglect and ill treatment, albeit ones which are less dramatic than the incidents he recounts. Underlying the formal consideration of why a good God would permit terrible things to happen stands an intensely subjective and emotional interest for Ivan, and it seems likely Dostoyevsky counts on the modern reader identifying with some of Ivan’s outrage at his own fate. After listing the above series of horrific incidents involving the suffering ff of children, Ivan then raises his initial points against God permitting suffering: ff can you understand why this nonsense was created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on this earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to ‘Dear God.’10

The passage appears to refer to a common historical justification for evil which argues that the knowledge of what is good can only be known by

680

PETER WEIGEL

way of contrast with things which are bad or deficient. It is sometimes called the ‘‘argument from contrasts.’’ Ivan here declares that the end is not worth the means, and the basic position articulated is common enough in disputes involving theodicy. If this were all Ivan were saying, his rebellion would not be premised on anything sounding particularly original. The centerpiece of his rebellion arrives with Ivan’s recounting the story of the malicious landowner who murders a child of one of his serfs, and here his conclusions take an interesting turn. Ivan relates how a serf boy causes a minor injury to one of the landowner’s favorite hunting dogs. The owner has the boy bound and locked away for the night. In the morning the serfs and groomsmen, along with the boy’s mother, are gathered at dawn to witness the boy’s punishment. The boy is unbound and forced to start running. ‘Drive him!’ the general commands. The huntsmen shout, ‘Run, run!’ the boy runs ... ‘Sic him!’ screams the general and looses the whole pack of wolfhounds on him. He hunted him down before the mother’s eyes, and the dogs tore the child to pieces ... !11

After this last and perhaps most vivid example of innocent suffering, ff Ivan initially repeats his original challenge as to how suffering ff could be warranted as God’s chosen means to some future harmony or good for all of creation, ‘‘It’s quite incomprehensible why [children] should have to suffer, ff and why they should buy harmony with their suffering.’’ ff 12 After this restatement of his original position, however, Ivan approaches the problem in a different ff light. He issues the demand that, for there to be a true ‘‘harmony’’ at the end of time, the sufferings ff of innocent people ‘‘must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony.’’13 He offers ff little elaboration on what either the harmony or the redemption might involve, although he hints that the harmony would involve the reconciliation of sinners and their victims, and would be accompanied by a universal understanding of what all the suffering ff and evil in the world was ever for: ‘‘I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion, and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly finds out what it was all for.’’14 Ivan does initially propose two possible ways the redemption of innocent suffering ff could occur – the terrible deed might either be avenged or forgiven. Yet, he dismisses both possibilities. Vengence against the oppressor gains nothing for the victim (particularly once the latter is dead): ‘‘Can [the tears of the innocent] be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

681

in hell ... if these ones have already been tormented?’’15 It is beside the point what happens to the tormentors once the deed has been done. Besides, Ivan asks, ‘‘Where is the harmony, if there is hell?’’16 Ivan also makes the highly implausible demand that the retribution occur in this life, ‘‘I need retribution, otherwise I will destroy myself. And retribution not somewhere or sometime in infinity, but here and now, on earth, so that I see it myself.’’17 For evil not to have the last word, in this view, the redress must occur in the here and now, and in the end even the tormentors are redeemed. Innocent suffering ff at the hands of a tormentor cannot be requited by anything done to the tormentor. What about the possibility of redemption through forgiveness? Forgiveness of the tormentors, the second option Ivan considers as a means for redemption, is deemed unacceptable: I do not, finally, want the mother to embrace the tormenter who let his dogs tear her son to pieces! She dare not forgive him! ... she has no right to forgive the suffering ff of her child who was torn to pieces, she dare not forgive the tormentor, even if the child himself were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, then where is the harmony? Is there in the whole world one who could and would have the right to forgive?18

Ivan, then, first demands that redemption is required for genuine harmony, and he initially thinks this requires that the evildoer suffer ff retribution or be forgiven. Retribution, however, is futile once the harm to the victims occurs and forgiveness of the evildoer is something Ivan thinks is unacceptable. After Ivan has finished his speech, Alyosha interjects that Christ ‘‘can forgive everything, forgive all and for all, because he himself gave his innocent blood for all and for everything.’’19 It is significant that Ivan does not directly comment upon this proposal, but instead begins relating his poem ‘‘The Grand Inquisitor,’’ which at least on the surface criticizes Christian love and virtue as too much to expect from the vast majority of persons. In any event, Ivan is committed to a resolution that is of this world, although at the conclusion of his speech he briefly considers a resolution that is otherworldly. He imagines a hypothetical resurrection scene in which all is revealed as to how the end justifies the means. He considers the possibility that God’s permitting evil is at the end of time shown to make perfect sense: I do understand how the universe will tremble when all in heaven and under the earth merge in one voice of praise, and all that lives and has lived cries out: ‘Just art thou, O Lord, for thy ways are revealed!’ ... then of course the crown of knowledge will have come and everything will be explained.20

682

PETER WEIGEL

This final point allows a rare concession to the theistic view of providence in a speech otherwise set on shouting it down. Ivan allows that the view from this life is limited, and there could well be a justification for evil which is intellectually compelling and which would be revealed to all persons, who end up united in some future harmony. Ivan’s reaction to this possibility is quite stunning; it involves his wish to guard against participating in and accepting this resolution: But there is the hitch: that is what I cannot accept. And while I am on earth, I hasten to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha ... I myself will perhaps cry out with all the rest ... but I do not want to cry out with them.

At the conclusion of his monologue a few lines later he insists: I don’t want harmony ... I’d rather remain with my unrequited suffering ff and my unquenched indignation even if I am wrong [his emphasis] ... Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony. ... It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket. ‘‘That is rebellion,’’ Alyosha said softly, dropping his eyes.21

Indeed it is. Ivan’s basic contention, then, is that evil somehow must be redeemed in this world, and a compellingly just and satisfying resolution in eternity remains unacceptable, even if the latter is deemed such by all those involved. Ivan’s wish to return his ticket ahead of time, on the grounds that divine providence might emerge in eternity as on the side of reason, makes his decision seem more like a stubborn act of will than a matter of what is reasonable or not. Yet, on a closer look his decision proves more complex than it might seem here, and it will be shown that his choice is not without reasons. Before looking any further at Ivan’s rejection, it will help to glance at some general historical considerations about the problem of evil in traditional theism. It is instructive to see how the novel’s attempt to understand and deal with the problem compares with this larger scheme. II

The problem of evil is usually posed as a dilemma calling into question the existence of a perfect God: 1. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good (omnibenevolent) 2. Evil exists 3. God’s existence is incompatible with evil [given 1] Conclusion: God does not exist [given 2 and 3]

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

683

Philosophers and theologians generally divide evil in to two kinds: moral evil and natural evil. People culpably behave in ways which diminish themselves and compromise the good of those affected. ff It also is the case that a great deal of pain and suffering ff occurs naturally. People get cancer, die in car accidents or natural disasters, or suffer ff the debilitating effects ff of old age. There are individuals or systems of thought denying that evil is real, as some popular versions of Buddhism apparently regard evil as an illusion born of the limited human perspective (or as unimportant in the long view).22 Other people claim evil is a made up concept and is therefore purely relative to human definition. Certainly the standards for what makes something ‘‘bad’’ can admit of varying perspectives. But one wonders how long an absolute relativism in this regard would last in the dentist’s chair, or on the oncology ward. Possibly some ways of denying #2, that evil exists, trade on confusion over what it means for evil to exist or not. One might say that suffering ff is ‘‘not real’’ and really mean to say that pain or dissatisfaction is an experience unworthy of serious consideration in some grand scheme of things. However, to call suffering ff illusory or relative, and mean this in the sense that it literally does not happen, seems extremely counterintuitive (if not irrational) to most people. For one thing, experiences of pain and suffering ff have a self-confirming quality about them. As the contemporary philosopher Peter Geach puts it, ‘‘If my ‘mortal mind’ thinks that I am miserable, then I am miserable, and it is not an illusion it is.’’23 Particularly in view of the horrors of the previous century – hundreds of millions killed or brought low through war, starvation, plague, political upheaval, natural disaster, and so on – Western theists, agnostics, and atheists generally agree that evil flourishes in abundance. It is ‘‘sufficient onto the day’’ in the words of the Psalmist. If there is a weak link in this argument, philosophers and theologians seldom look for it in premise #2. In any event, the unreality of evil is never a serious consideration for the characters in T he Brothers Karamazov. Premise #1 establishes the problem as primarily concerning the God of classical theism, i.e., the transcendent creator of Judaism and Christianity who is believed to enjoy unlimited perfection and take an interest in human beings. God is thought to be intimately concerned about each individual and his or her affairs. ff (This is not to confuse God with literally being a person in the way one might imagine God as a disembodied human personality which happens to be extremely powerful.)24 God particularly cares about the spiritual and moral (if not mate-

684

PETER WEIGEL

rial) well-being of persons and how their actions and dispositions in these areas affect ff their eternal destiny. God transcends the universe He creates and sustains out of nothing. (The ‘‘universe’’ here includes all that exists apart from God.) God knows all things, having perfect insight into Himself as well as all that is in the past, present, and future. Philosophers and theologians have long debated whether being all-powerful encompasses even logically contradictory endeavors such as squaring a circle, or whether it encompasses actions which seem contrary to the nature of being divine. It is hard to imagine God becoming someone’s left shoe or God joining a rebellion of the angles against Himself. Yet, barring those abilities which are on the margins of plausibility, it is generally agreed there are awfully many things the God of classical theism can do. Thus, one way philosophers and theologians have historically tried to mitigate the problem of evil is by allowing for a God to be something less than the perfect being described in #1. A God who is deficient in foreknowing the bad things which will happen, or who is deficient in the power to do something about these things, cannot well be blamed for the messes of this world.25 Perhaps, God made the world but (as Deism holds) God is only an impersonal first cause operating at a complete remove from human affairs, ff with no care at all for what people do or what happens to them. Taking things a step further, it might even be too much to ask that God is the transcendent maker of all things. Maybe the highest being is no more than a kind of immanent world-soul or a spiritualization of the world’s dynamic processes unfolding in time. Common all to these different ff ways of adjusting the classical concept of God is the denial of a God who could both be expected to care about evil and be in any position to do much about it. These options help underscore how remarkable a being is required for the problem of evil to acquire its usual gravity. Far less mitigation or redress for the pains of this world might be expected of even a slightly less gifted or involved God than what classical theism supports. Theists argue amongst themselves over the kind and degree of modification permitted the classical concept of God. A point is reached in the downgrade of perfection where one effectively ff concedes that it is no longer the God of traditional monotheism, but some other being presiding over things. One can always leave off classical theism and go with a presider over the universe more to one’s liking. Yet, this has the effect ff of leaving off all interest in the problem of evil as a challenge to belief in the JudeoChristian God of Scripture and worship. Thus, putting a non-traditional, weakened God on the playing field greatly reduces the bulk of the

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

685

audience’s interest in the original contest. Ivan’s challenge, in any case, concerns the God of Orthodox Christianity. Most philosophers and theologians see the main issue as involving the apparent incompatibility between God’s goodness and God’s permitting evil (premise #3). It seems to many that an all-good God who is supremely just, loving, and compassionate would want to provide for a world without evil. An all-powerful and supremely knowledgeable God should well be able to get the job done. At the very least, some argue, God seems in an ideal position to mitigate untold suffering ff in this world without much effort ff on His part or without upsetting the world’s basic laws and natural constitution. The 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume speculates that millions in the Roman Republic could have been spared disaster had a single wave at the right moment been just high enough to swamp Caesar’s boat.26 Similarly one can imagine God having allowed Hitler or Stalin as an infant to inhale a single microbe leading to a fatal childhood illness, sparing the world and themselves untold ruin. It is not just that there is evil, it is also a question as to why there is so much of it. Believers in God have found various ways to attempt a justification for God permitting evil without comprising the relevant divine perfections – omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence. A common strategy particularly relevant to the Brothers Karamazov involves showing how the existence of some evil is necessary as a means to a greater good or end. (Ivan, as noted, keenly focuses on the terrible ‘‘price’’ individuals must pay for a ‘‘higher harmony.’’) First, moral evil can be understood as an unhappy but more or less inevitable consequence of human actions being freely chosen. Theists argue that real dignity and meaning for human actions presupposes free will. For an action to be free, there has to be the genuine possibility of choosing badly, often grievously so.27 Sometimes known as the ‘‘free will’’ defense, the idea is that human beings are much better off enjoying areas of freedom in their actions than not; freedom is bound up with the very notion of being a moral agent who can be responsible for his or her actions and receive moral praise or blame. Should anyone be surprised that an autonomous will often goes astray? The freedom that permits saints and heroes to attain great virtue also permits criminals and tyrants to act as they do. That is the price of actions being meaningful at all insofar as they are truly predicated of a moral agent. The alternative is for human beings to be not agents but automatons always determined to particular courses of action. Human beings who could not do otherwise

686

PETER WEIGEL

than chose the ‘‘right’’ actions would bear little resemblance to full persons. Of course, theists are aware that moral evil contributes to only a part of what ails the human condition, perhaps even the lesser part. However, natural evil too can be seen as indispensable to what it is to be a person. Growth and development as persons require facing some adversity in life. Development through adversity, with the necessary implication of sufferff ing, begins with being hungry enough to cry for nourishment at the breast. It is necessary for the early formation of an identity as a self distinct from the world. Adversity pervades our development as persons and stretches all the way to the realization that this bodily existence is not forever and that we, as Plato says, belong not to ourselves but to the gods. There is a way in which the complete absence of suffering ff would condemn us to an infantile state, or at least to a kind of shallowness one could barely imagine. Aside from achieving one’s basic identity as a self, the experience of pain and adversity seems integral to achieving all the higher human excellences such as compassion, courage, fortitude, forgiveness, wisdom, and so forth. Thus, while moral and natural evil are not necessarily good things in themselves, their removal from human affairs ff would lead to a sort of life one could hardly call human. Evil is not only a part of developing as human beings, some philosophers and theologians want to argue that wrong choices and painful experiences form the raw material for achieving salvation. Painful experiences are the stuff of ‘‘soul building’’ in making oneself fit to live forever in the presence of God.28 The primary aim the God of Judaism and Christianity has for persons is to bring them to salvation, and a certain amount of adversity is required to forge characters and souls worthy of this. According to this theory, detractors mistakenly assume that the purpose of this life is to optimize one’s contentment, but such was never the case in traditional ideas about providence. At best, worldly happiness is only a means to God, and it can even be a grave distraction from one’s true goal. Thus, the freedom to act immorally, along with the natural adversities of life, are part and parcel to achieving souls fit for life with God. Furthermore, some theists observe, the complete absence of suffering ff would require a world so different ff as to be almost unimaginable. Abolishing natural evil would require the almost constant suspension of the laws of nature. In fact, the very physical constitution of this world would have to be radically different ff from what it now is.29 What would a universe without pain or struggle involve? The concrete rubble of a

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

687

tumbling building would instantly turn into a giant pile of soft cushions. Bullets would bounce harmlessly off of people, bombs would explode in harmless bursts. Empty bank accounts would magically refill. Money or anything recognizable as paid labor would likely be unnecessary. People could commute to work, cross continents, or otherwise go about their business through a kind of instant telepathy. Perhaps all human motion would be absent, insofar as it involves effort ff or overcoming space. One gets the general idea here – a world without some adversity would have to be structured and governed so as to be almost incoherent to the imagination. Critics reply along the lines of Hume: even if some adversity is necessary, it is not hard to imagine that God could fulfill the divine plan while permitting a great deal less of it. The point here is not to assess these defenses of theism and the possible objections to them; rather, it is to get an overview of the kinds of considerations which are commonly brought into play when the problem of evil gets discussed by philosophers and theologians. Ivan’s rejection of God’s plan of salvation, and Dostoyevsky’s attempt to respond to his rebellion, will look notably different. ff

III

Ivan similarly views God’s goodness as incompatible with permitting suffering, ff but the substance of his rebellion diff ffers remarkably from some of the theistic and atheistic approaches just seen. An important difference ff already mentioned is that, contrary to the usual atheistic stance, it is not God’s existence Ivan rejects or rules out as a reasonable possibility. It is the traditional, mainly Christian, view of divine providence Ivan rejects. It is not that the justification for evil along the lines of ‘‘soul building’’ might not be true of the divine intents, but that it is not acceptable to him as a means to a greater good.30 In this way, Dostoyevsky has Ivan frame the problem of evil as involving something other than a clear-cut dilemma focused on the theoretical question of theism vs. atheism. The point of Ivan’s rebellion is in keeping with what Dostoyevsky views as the dominant face of atheism in the Russia of his day. T he Brothers Karamazov originally was published as a series of installments in a magazine (Russian Messenger) and in a letter to his editor Dostoyevsky notes that Ivan’s rejection of God’s governance of the world mirrors that of some modern political movements:

688

PETER WEIGEL

The body of [Ivan’s] beliefs is precisely what I recognize as the Synthesis of today’s Russian anarchism. It is the denial, not of God, but of the significance of his creation. Socialism as a whole originated in and began with the denial of the concept of historical reality and has become a program of destruction and anarchy. ... My hero chooses an argument that, in my opinion, is irrefutable – the senselessness of children’s suffering ff – and from it reaches the conclusion that all historical reality is an absurdity.31

After offering ff the striking assessment that the basis of Ivan’s reasoning is ‘‘irrefutable,’’ he then oddly assures the editor several lines later that, ‘‘The blasphemy of my hero will be solemnly refuted in the next chapter ... and I am on it now in fear, awe, and reverence, since my task (the crushing of anarchism) is a civic duty.’’ He dispels the apparent contradiction in a letter written nine days later to K. P. Pobedonostsev, tutor to Crown Prince Alexander. In this subsequent note he first repeats his characterization of the atheism of contemporary socialist political movements and then is careful to reassure Pobedonostsev that Ivan will not have the last word, but that, ‘‘The refutation (not a direct one, i.e., not in a face to face argument) will come as the last words of the dying elder [Fr. Zosima].’’32 Thus, when he calls Ivan’s speech irrefutable he means that it is not something he believes can be answered by another character going point for point against Ivan in a direct, logically constructed rebuttal. How he envisions this indirect but nevertheless successful refutation will be shown in a moment. Part of what makes Ivan’s rebellion formidable is that it initially appears to be Christian principled. His deep love of his fellow man and his compassion for the suffering ff of innocents leads him to reject the utilitarian calculus he sees as implicit in the notion of suffering ff and evil as a necessary means to a greater good.33 So great is his conviction of each individual as an inviolable end in himself that Ivan would sacrifice his own salvation and return his ticket. From a certain way of looking at it, his offer ff surpasses that of the saints. He renounces his eternal inheritance in support of his convictions; believers at most give up this life in hopes of retaining their place in the Kingdom. Christianity is implicitly portrayed as caught in a moral contradiction involving its basic tenets. It holds persons to be of unconditional dignity and value, while divine justice asks people, in Ivan’s estimation, to look the other way on hell and innocent suffering ff as the cost of doing business. Despite the principled and not unreasonable basis of his decision, Ivan is nevertheless clear that his convictions ultimately are not about reasons. Even if a compelling justification for evil were to come within his purview, he wishes ahead of time to guard against accepting this state of affairs: ff

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

689

‘‘While there’s still time, I hasten to defend myself against it and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony.’’34 A future revelation establishing the reasonableness and justice of the divine plan is dismissed as not only beside the point, it is a transforming spiritual experience one nevertheless should actively avoid. While theoretical atheism looks to reason to present the case for unbelief, Ivan’s atheism is characterized as an existential stance undertaken by the whole person. This is to say that Dostoyevsky locates issues of belief and unbelief not in reason, but in the arena where matters such as the will, affects, ff and the vagaries of individual experience predominate. Ivan’s rebellion appears open to the existence of a God and motivated by Christian love of his fellow man. In the long view of the novel, it is neither. Atheism for Dostoyevsky is less a matter of propositional belief or unbelief in God than it is a practical orientation involving a collection of attitudes and choices which deny the authentic self as one freely given over to the love of God. Each character is handed a fundamental existential option for the working out of his or her eternal destiny. Their choices unfold against the background of what Dostoyevsky views as the real ‘‘crime’’ of interest in the novel, namely, the European West’s murder of its own religious tradition and its spiritual conscience, which is metaphorically exemplified in the Oedipal murder of the father and his authority. True to the pattern of any great murder mystery, Dostoyevsky is interested in the detection of motives – those of the characters, the formerly Christian West, and by extension those of the reader. This turn toward motives W brings the thematic controversies of the novel out of the realm of abstract reasoning and into the world of the psychological and spiritual as well as existential positioning of the characters and their actions. Ideas for Dostoyevsky are never divorced from an individual personality and will; ideas only exist and exert an influence as embedded in the entire mental life of the individual where they are interwoven with the affects, ff dispositions, and preconscious conceptions forming the raw material of a person’s psychology and overall character.35 Reasoned argument on matters of faith or unbelief loses to abstraction those factors Dostoyevsky sees as far more decisive of the individual’s fate. Attempting to steer a middle course according to what is or seems reasonable by human standards misses both the spiritual heights and preconscious depths of the human person. It is in these areas apart from reason where Dostoyevsky thinks the real battles are waged – those pitting grace and free will against sin, salvation and hope against despair.

690

PETER WEIGEL

Belief or unbelief in God in the novel each takes the form of a collection of related attitudes forming an individual’s world-view.36 Theism and atheism as metaphysical propositions emerge as intellectualized expressions of these two opposed sets of attitudes. The theistic world view is best represented, of course, by Fr. Zosima in his speeches in Book Six, ‘‘The Russian Monk.’’ Before composing this section of the novel, Dostoyevsky in another letter to the tutor Pobedonostsev expresses serious doubts about ‘‘whether it will be an adequate answer’’ to Ivan, particularly since ‘‘the answer is itself not a direct one’’ but is a matter of presenting a picture of ‘‘a world view that stands in direct opposition to the one that was previously presented.’’37 Thus, Dostoyevsky understands the refutation of Ivan as having to be distinctively non-linear, it is to be a portrait of a believing personality (Zosima) bearing a particular world-orientation identified by characteristic attitudes. Theism according to Dostoyevsky is, for instance, embodied in a deep love of the physicality of the earth. After dreaming about meeting his beloved mentor Fr. Zosima in heaven, Alyosha rushes outside to embrace the ground and water the earth with his tears.38 Fr. Zosima enjoins those around him shortly before his death to ‘‘fall down on the earth and kiss it and water it with your tears, and the earth will bring forth fruit from your tears ...’’39 Love of God is here expressed as the love of the creation God made. Such an attitude and orientation toward the world can culminate, says Fr. Zosima, in ecstatic moments of perceiving God’s presence, ‘‘Water the earth with tears of your joy, and love those tears. Do not be ashamed of this ecstasy, treasure it, for it is a gift from God, a great gift, and not given to many, but to those who are chosen.’’40 Theism is expressed on the interpersonal level in the active love of one’s neighbor, as Fr. Zosima emphasizes in his dying advice to those around him: One may stand perplexed before some thought, especially seeing men’s sin, asking oneself: ‘‘Shall I take it by force, or by humble love?’’ Always resolve to take it by humble love. If you so resolve once and for all, you will be able to over come the whole world.41

Elsewhere, Zosima converses with a woman who is tempted to lose her faith and he first consoles her by noting that, ‘‘One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.’’ He then explains how faith can be sustained: By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. ... This has been tested. It is certain.42

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

691

The novel takes a decidedly fideistic outlook. One should not seek proofs or tangible evidence of God’s existence. The storyline makes clear that the heavens are absent any signs. The miracle expected to follow Fr. Zosima’s death never arrives, his corpse rots and smells, to the derision of his enemies. (Instead, his death occasions the natural miracle of transforming other characters.) Justice fails Dmitri and he is wrongly convicted. Prayers do not spare Ilyusha’s young life. Faith should not seek evidence, but Fr. Zosima nevertheless assures the woman with doubts that ‘‘it is certain’’ one can become convinced by first reorienting one’s life. The active love of neighbor here is not to be confused with sentimentality, but is understood in this context to be an authentic Christian love called for in the New Testament.43 The individual soul acknowledges God’s love flowing into it and it receives the grace actively to pursue the well being of others for their own sake. A confusion of this true love with mere feeling brings about disappointment (when the sentiment disappears) and then turns into hatred. Genuine love is the ‘‘humble love’’ leading to the theistic attitude of recognizing the spiritual dignity and intrinsic value of others as children of God; one is able to view others as ends in themselves apart from their utility to those around them. The acceptance of oneself as loved by God allows individuals to will the good of others for their own sake. The love of self and neighbor leads to the characteristically theistic attitude of being able to forgive others their transgressions. In its extreme expression, the willingness to forgive leads to a radical willingness to take responsibility for others and their actions. Fr. Zosima quotes his older brother Markel, after the latter’s conversion while dying of tuberculosis, as saying that ‘‘each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything.’’44 Dostoyevsky intends this not as involving a perverted, overweening sense of guilt. Here he is making a point about individual responsibility for the world around oneself. Instead of judging others, it is far better to realize how one’s own actions and demeanor shape the persons that others become, and in realizing this one is able to share in the responsibility for others’ moral and spiritual choices. Finally, taking responsibility for one’s own spiritual destiny and that of others includes appreciating that suffering ff can be made expiatory for sin. The guilt plagued murderer Mikhail tells the young Zosima that in order to free his conscience ‘‘I want to suffer. ff I will embrace suff ffering and begin to live.’’45 Dmitri at points considers that the terrible suffering ff wrought by his conviction and prison sentence will nevertheless break his deadly self-willfulness and elevate his soul to a higher level of being.

692

PETER WEIGEL

Agreeing to suffer ff for God yields great holiness, next to which Dostoyevsky considers the pains and loses of this life no less terrible, but negligible in eternity.46 Atheism, by contrast, involves a set of attitudes clustering around the sin of pride and its implicit rejection of the dynamic of love just described. Pride, according to Fr. Zosima, begins with the illusion of self-sufficiency and a corresponding rejection of the spiritual order: Look at the worldly and the whole world that exalts itself above the people of God: Are the images of God and his truth not distorted in it? They have science ... But the spiritual order, the higher half of man’s being, is altogether rejected, banished with asort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed freedom ... but what do we see in this freedom of theirs: only slavery and suicide! ... For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but they have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs.47

On the level of individuals, the dream of self-sufficiency involves turning not to the divine love, but to an imagined self-ideal apart from God. This false self-ideal is linked to an inability to accept things about the self. Different ff characters in the novel struggle with emotions and appetites they would rather not see themselves as having, and there is a desire to be a different ff self from what they are. The result is an odd combination of shame and pride leading to dire consequences. The elderly and misanthropic Fr. Ferapont exercises a ruthless asceticism. A deep satisfaction with his own self-control and bodily self-denial leads to a dangerous spiritual pride in which he sets himself up in judgment of the deceased Fr. Zosima’s character and fate.48 Grushenka is terrified of her profound need for a man’s love, which has led to past disappointment and humiliation. Her fear and shame over this lead her to play coquettish games indirectly causing the murder of Fyodor and the conviction of Dmitri. Fr. Zosima locates Fyodor Karamazov’s fall into depraved sensuality and incessant clowning as rooted in Fyodor’s pre-conscious sense of shame for who he is and what he feels. The priest admonishes him for his erratic behavior at the monastery by remarking, ‘‘Be at ease and be completely at home. And above all do not be ashamed of yourself, for that is the cause of everything.’’49 Shame at one’s desires leads to a desire for suffering ff and abasement. However, instead of expiatory suffering ff motivated by repentance and a desire for spiritual progress, the wish to suffer ff that comes from being ashamed of one’s desires is masochistic and self-degrading in its psychological dynamic. Fyodor’s self-loathing leads to the buffoonery ff at the monastery calculated to increase peoples’ hatred

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

693

and distaste. Dmitri’s obsessive and embarrassing sensual attraction to Grushenka gets expressed in a preoccupation with her feet and a desire to clean her galoshes. Ivan cannot fully come to terms with his own ferocious resentment toward his father for abandoning him as a child. His being in denial about his wish to see his father dead leads Ivan unconsciously to abet the murder of his father. He promises the murderer, Smerdyakov, to be away from the house in order for the crime to take place.50 Pride and the inability to accept oneself foster self-hatred leading to depravity. Dostoyevsky suggests that this inner unhappiness within oneself is then outwardly expressed as an inability to love others and an inability to be at peace with the order of creation as it is. In this characteristically existential view of belief and unbelief, the problem of evil is less a theoretical problem to be argued than it is an expression of a complex dynamic of interrelated attitudes to be met by insight into its impetus within the individual personality and spiritual disposition. Dostoyevsky holds that the rejection of a God or a providential order will always look eminently reasonable from the point of view of this world. Even the best of reasons on the side of belief will not convince persons whose minds are set by a collection of psychological and spiritual choices that are made over time and often beneath the threshold of awareness. Suffering ff calls for a response from the whole person, a response involving a love that is self-emptying and is the abandonment of the will to be one’s own God. Unbelief by its very nature cannot be argued away directly and point for point, but it nevertheless has an antidote in the virtues of humility and charity expressed in active, serving love. Dostoyevsky also believes that terrible events can occasion a profound transformation in individuals and that such transformation retains its power by remaining safeguarded in the form of joyous memory.51 Particular characters in the novel undergo trials in which their weaknesses and self-isolation are broken down and they emerge from the trial spiritually transformed. The good in a person’s response to trial and adversity is then preserved in memory, where Dostoyevsky believes it can prove decisive in someone’s spiritual path at a later time. Fr. Zosima’s religious conversion as a young man is occasioned by a memory of his brother Markel’s joyous conversion during Markel’s final illness.52 Zosima also remembers every day the strength of the murderer Mikhail, ‘‘the longsuffering ff servant of God,’’ who had the courage to publicly repent and confess.53

694

PETER WEIGEL

A particularly striking example of the redemptive power of memory comes at the end of the novel and involves the death of the little boy Ilyusha. Ilyusha at the beginning of the novel is bitterly at odds with his classmates and Alyosha over the humiliation of his father by Dmitri. It is only after he becomes mortally ill later on in the novel that he and the other boys are reconciled and form a close group of friends. Alyosha notes this in his speech to the young boys at Ilyusha’s favorite stone after the boy’s funeral: Let us agree here, by Ilyusha’s stone, that we will never forget, that we will never forget – first Ilyushechka, and second, one another ... let us remember how we buried the poor boy whom we once threw stones at ... and whom afterwards we all came to love so much.54

The terrible event of the boy’s illness occasions the children ‘‘to love so much’’ and come together out of genuine concern for his misery. Alyosha then emphasizes the need to remember this experience of love and reconciliation as a guard against future trials: Let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, for the time that we loved the poor boy, perhaps better than we actually were.55

Alyosha makes clear that such memories of being elevated to a higher spiritual plain can have the power to transform their lives for the better: If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.56

Such memories, then, recall people to their higher selves and occasion choices and attitudes in accordance with it. The concluding paragraphs of the novel see Alyosha affirm that faithfulness to these spiritual memories also mean that suffering ff and death will not have the last word, ‘‘ ‘Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been,’ Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ecstasy.’’ The novel thus concludes in a eulogy for an innocent, where great suffering ff becomes the occasion for ecstatic, transformative joy. Dostoyevsky sees looking for the meaning or explanation of whence evil as far less important than the necessity of responding to evil with good and with a hope in the divine promise for better things. (Dostoyevsky himself was to die within months of completing the proofs for these closing pages of the novel.) Memory allows such responses to

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

695

be carried in our hearts and recalled in times of spiritual doubt. Thus, it is what one does in one’s heart with the events and experiences of this world which should be the real focus of attention. Ivan in his period of rebellion shows the reader one chosen path, Alyosha and Zosima another. Washington College, MD W NOTES 1 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T he Brothers Karamazov, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (trans.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), Part II. Book 5. Chapter 4, p. 245. All subsequent references to the novel are from this translation. 2 For the sake of brevity, the focus here is limited to Dostoyevsky’s last and most thoroughgoing attempt at a theodicy in T he Brothers Karamazov (1880). He died in January of 1881 only months after completing the proofs. My interest in the problem of evil in Dostoyevsky originated in individual and class discussions with the philosopher Allen Wood at Yale several years ago. The interpretation of theistic and atheistic belief in Dostoyevsky developed in Section III of this article is strongly indebted to him. Parallel to my committing the ideas here for publication, and after presenting them in various courses, I had the pleasure of advising an undergraduate thesis on this topic by Laura Henderson, ‘‘The Problem of Evil in Dostoyevsky’s T he Brothers Karamazov’’ (Senior thesis, Washington College, 2004). I found particularly helpful her perceptive remarks on Dostoyevsky’s use of the personalities of his characters in getting important themes across to the reader. 3 BK, II.5.4, p. 245. 4 A savage and preconscious ambivalence toward his father, for example, emerges in BK, II.5.7, pp. 275–281. Note also his unconcealed rage at Smerdyakov in the previous chapter, with whose parricidal impulses Ivan unconsciously identifies. The chapter featuring Ivan’s rebellion begins with Ivan revealingly admitting, ‘‘It’s still possible to love one’s neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close.’’ BK, II.5.4, p. 237. His observation is in keeping with his tendency to dabble in ideas about progressive social arrangements while putting individuals at arm’s length. 5 BK, II.5.4, p. 237. 6 Dostoyevsky’s use of children to mirror adult situations is ably discussed by Laura Henderson, ‘‘The Problem of Evil in Dostoyevsky’s T he Brothers Karamazov’’ (Senior thesis, Washington College, 2004), pp. 16–20. W 7 Fr. Zosima comforts a woman over the death of her son at age two in BK, I.2.3, pp. 48–49. The servant Grigory and his wife Marfa are reported in the novel as having lost a child in BK, I.3.1, p. 95. Ivan’s monologue relates the story of Turkish soldiers killing babies and also that of the sadistic landowner having his serf boy being torn apart by dogs, BK, II.5.4, p. 238 and pp. 242–243. Fr. Zosima as a child loses his brother Markel to tuberculosis in BK, II.6.2, pp. 287–290. There is a poignant reference to the biblical figure Job concerning the death of his children in BK, II.6.2, p. 292. The novel concludes with the funeral of the child Ilyusha in BK, Epilogue 3, pp. 768–776. 8 BK, I.2.3, pp. 48–49. 9 BK, II.5.4, p. 244. 10 Ibid., p. 242.

696

PETER WEIGEL

11 Ibid., p. 243. 12 Ibid., p. 244. 13 Ibid., p. 245. Ivan’s demand for some form of redemption is well noted in Alexander Gibson’s T he Religion of Dostoyevsky (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), pp. 179–181. 14 BK, II.5.4, p. 244. 15 Ibid., p. 245. 16 Ibid., p. 245. Fr. Zosima, who often speaks for Dostoyevsky’s own version of Christianity, is skeptical that there exists a literal hell-fire, but he appears to hold that some people do wind up in a state of unending spiritual torment, in BK I.6.3, p. 323. 17 BK, II.5.4, p. 244. 18 Ibid., p. 245. 19 Ibid., p. 246. 20 Ibid., p. 244. 21 Ibid., p. 245. 22 Buddhism denies the existence of a transcendent maker of the universe, so the dilemma posed is regarded as moot on both ends. 23 Peter Geach, L ogic Matters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), p. 305. 24 Fr. Brian Davies suggests that a popular misconception that the divine nature is a person gives the problem of evil much of its modern impetus. If God is thought to be a person much like a human being, then, Davies notes, it is an easy step to assuming God is subject to the same moral standards as mortal persons. Thus, God can be called to account for permitting evil, just as persons are held responsible for terrible events they reasonably could have prevented. Davies argues that it is simply a mistake to assume God is a person and therefore that God is subject to human standards of justice. God is the standard of what ought to be, not a being subject to an external set of rules the way moral agents are. Putting the deity on trial for what should and should not be rests on a category mistake. Fr. Davies develops this critique of the problem of evil in Chapter 3 of his An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 1982). The seeds of this defense, that God is not accountable to human standards of justice, are implicit in the concluding chapters of T he Book of Job when God speaks from the tempest. 25 The belief that God has complete foreknowledge of events is a staple of classical theism. A recent article in the W Washington Post reports on a small, embattled group of Evangelical Christian theologians who reject divine foreknowledge in order to mitigate the problem of evil. Bill Broadway, ‘‘Redefining Omniscience,’’ W Washington Post, 8 November 2003, sec. B. 26 Hume proposes: ‘‘A being, therefore, who knows the secret springs of the universe might easily ... render the whole world happy, without discovering himself in any operation. ... Some small touches to Caligula’s brain in his infancy might have converted him into a Trajan. One wave, a little higher than all the rest, by burying Caesar and his fortune in the bottom of the ocean, might have restored liberty to a considerable part of mankind.’’ in Part IX of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. R. Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980), p. 70. 27 The ‘‘free will defense’’ as an argument for why God permits moral evil states that it is impossible for God to create free creatures and guarantee they will not do evil. It is found in thinkers as early as Saint Augustine, particularly in Book 3 of his De libero arbitrio (On Free Choice of the W ill). Additionally, the free will defense has enjoyed a renaissance among present day analytic philosophers of religion courtesy of authors such as John Hick, Alvin Plantinga, and Richard Swindburne. See Hick’s Evil and the God of L ove, revised edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), Plantinga’s God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

697

and Row, 1974), and Chapter 11 of Swindburne’s T he Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). Nicholas Wolterstorff, ff a key figure behind the flourishing of analytic philosophy of religion in recent decades, provides a very notable contrast to those trying to answer the problem of evil in the philosophical literature. His L ament for a Son (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. Ederdmans, 1987) is a marvelously sensitive and thought provoking meditation on the loss of his son in a mountain climbing accident. Wolterstorff rejects the search for reasons from God in the case of suffering ff and tragedy. 28 A combination of using the free will defense to explain moral evil and the appeal to ‘‘soul building’’ to explain natural evil is found in John Hick’s Evil and the God of L ove, revised (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). Hick argues that God creates human beings with free will in order for human choices to be meaningful. The purpose of life is to reach salvation, and becoming full and virtuous human beings requires struggling against temptation and adversity. The possibility of freely chosen spiritual development, according to Hick, thus seems to require that God permit both natural evil and moral evil. A critique of Hick’s line of reasoning appears in Edward Madden and Peter Hare’s Evil and the Concept of God (Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas, 1968), pp. 83–90, 102–103. 29 This is well articulated by C. S. Lewis in Chapter 2 of his T he Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey ff Bless, 1940). 30 Alexander Gibson notes that Dostoyevsky probably adopts this point of view from his sometime intellectual mentor and older friend, V. I. Belinsky. Belinsky was a Russian critic and political theorist influential in the progressive circles Dostoyevsky frequented as a young man. In the context of speaking about collectivist social arrangements (not theology), Belinsky rejects a universal harmony obtained at the expense of the happiness of some individuals. Critiquing the absolute idealism of Hegel, Belinsky writes: ‘‘I will not have happiness if you give it to me gratis unless I feel assured of every one of my blood brothers, the bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Disharmony is said to be the condition of harmony: that may be profitable and pleasant for megalomaniacs, but certainly not for those whose fates are destined to express the idea of disharmony.’’ Letter to V. P. Botkin, 1 March 1841, in Belinsky’s Selected Philosophical Works, English trans. (Moscow, 1948), p. 150, quoted in Alexander Gibson, T he Religion of Dostoyevsky (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), p. 11, note 10. 31 Letter to N. A. Lyubimov, 10 May 1879, Selected L etters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, James Frank and David Goldstein (ed.), Andrew MacAndrew (trans.) (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), pp. 464–465. 32 The relevant passage reads: ‘‘The thing is, the book in question [Book Five], called ‘‘Pro and Contra,’’ is the culminating point of my novel, and the theme of that book is blasphemy and the refutation of blasphemy. ... I have come to grips with the blasphemy ... precisely as it manifests itself now in Russia among (almost) our entire upper crust, and principally among the younger generation, i.e., the scientific and philosophical refutation of the existence of God having been already discarded, the present day serious socialists no longer bother with it (as they used to throughout the last century and the first half of the present one). Instead, they vehemently deny God’s creation, God’s world and its significance. It is only this that contemporary civilization finds nonsensical. ... The refutation (not a direct one, i.e., not in a face-to-face argument) will come as the last words of the dying elder.’’ Letter to K. P. Pobedonostsev, 19 May 1879, Selected L etters, p. 467. 33 Ivan’s surface appeal to Christian precepts is a point underscored by Alexander Gibson, T he Religion of Dostoyevsky (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), p. 179. 34 BK, II.6.3, p. 245.

698

PETER WEIGEL

35 Richard Pevear notes Dostoyevsky’s preference for interconnecting ideas and personalities in the Preface to his translation of Dostoyevsky’s Demons, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (trans.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), pp. xiii–xix. 36 The main features of these two opposed sets of attitudes were pointed out to me by Allen Wood. Alexander Gibson offers ff a somewhat similar reading of theism and atheism in T he Brothers Karamazov in Chapter 7 of T he Religion of Dostoyevsky (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973). 37 The relevant passage reads: ‘‘Your opinion of what you have read of T he Karamazovs (about the force and vigor of the writing) flatters me greatly, but then, you raise the absolutely essential question: That thus far I don’t seem to have the answer to all these atheistic arguments, and an answer is indispensable. ... For I attempt, as a matter of fact, to give the answer to this whole negative side in Book Six, ‘‘A Russian Monk,’’ which will be coming out on August 31. And that’s why I am trembling over it, wondering whether it will be an adequate answer. What makes it even more difficult is that the answer itself is not a direct one, not really a point-by-point refutation of the ideas formulated earlier ... but only an indirect one. What is offered ff here is a world view that stands in direct opposition to the one that was previously presented, but again the opposition is not made point by point but, so to speak, in the form of an artistic picture.’’ Letter to K. P. Pobedonostsev, 6 September 1879, Selected L etters, pp. 485–487. 38 BK, III.7.4, p. 362. 39 BK, II.6.3, p. 321. Elsewhere Fr. Zosima enjoins, ‘‘Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing.’’ BK, II.6.3, p. 319. 40 BK, II.6.3, p. 322. 41 Ibid., p. 319. 42 Ibid., p. 56. 43 Note particularly I John 4:7–21. 44 BK, II.6.2, p. 289. Elsewhere Zosima advises his brother monks, ‘‘Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone. For there can be no judge of a criminal on earth until the judge knows that he, too, is a criminal. ... For if I myself were righteous, perhaps there would be no criminal standing before me right now.’’ BK, II.6.3, pp. 320–321. William Edelglas explores similar views on Dostoyevsky’s ethic of responsibility and suffering ff in his ‘‘Asymmetry and Normativity: Levinas and Dostoyevsky on Desire, Responsibility, and Suffering’’ ff in this volume. 45 BK, II.6.2, p. 308. 46 Fr. Zosima tells the mother who has lost her young son to ‘‘know that your infant, too, surely now stands before the throne of the Lord, rejoicing and being glad, and praying to God for you. Weep, then, but also rejoice.’’ BK, I.2.3, p. 49. 47 BK, II.6.3, p. 313. 48 BK, III.7.1, pp. 334–337. 49 BK, I.2.2, p. 43. The important role shame plays in the psychology of the characters was pointed out to me by Allen Wood. 50 BK, I.5.6, pp. 270–274. In a letter to a reader Dostoyevsky holds Ivan responsible for the murder to the extent that Ivan ‘‘refrained (deliberately) from talking Smerdyakov out of it during their conversation’’ and refrained ‘‘from expressing clearly and categorically his disapproval of the contemplated crime (which Iv. F___ch clearly visualized and foresaw); thus he, as it were, permitted Smerdyakov to perpetrate it.’’ Letter to Y. N. Lebedeva, 8 November 1879, Selected L etters, pp. 488–490.

DOSTOYEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

699

51 The theme of transforming memory in the novel was suggested by Allen Wood, and is noted by other commentators, although the conclusions here are my own. It is possible to view memory in Dostoyevsky along Nietzschean lines, where memory creatively reinterprets sorrowful events into moments of Dionysian joy. The interpretation of memory in Dostoyevsky offered ff here is closer to the tradition of Augustine. Memory is the storehouse of grace-filled moments to be recalled as a source of strength in times of trial and doubt. 52 BK, III.7.3, pp. 344–345. 53 BK, II.6.2, p. 312. 54 BK, Epilogue, Chapter 3, p. 774. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid.

TONY E. AFEJUKU

POETRY IN THE CEREBR AL CORTEX, THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THE DIGESTIVE TRACTS: A STUDY OF ROMANUS EGUDU’S MORAL POETRY

Romanus Nnagbo Egudu or simply Romanus Egudu or R. N. Egudu is a notably erudite Nigerian scholar, a Professor of English, a man of prodigious intelligence, a shrewd and sensitive thinker and critic. A reading of his numerous works, which include T he Calabash of W isdom and Other Igbo Stories (1973), F Four Modern West African Poets (1977), Modern M African Poetry and the African Predicament (1978) and T he Study of Poetry (1979) induces this remark, and an examination of his recent book of poetry called Prayer of the Powerless (2002) reinforces it. Indeed, a study of this new book of poetry reveals it as the work of an educated mind, a scholar, a psychologist and philosopher, rich in wisdom garnered from felt and observable experiences faithfully digested and assimilated to make a critical statement challenging the moral values and codes of his society and time, which this essay tries to focus on. In response to a question I posed to him concerning his morality as a poet (and artist), Egudu remarked as follows: Let me quote P. B. Shelley: ‘‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’’ As my title poem, ‘‘Prayer of the Powerless’’ makes clear, poets are the mouthpieces of the voiceless. I do believe that the experiences behind most of the poems tend towards ugliness rather than beauty. As T. S. Eliot says with reference to Dante, the world of ugliness rather than beauty tends to inspire poets. Some Romantics may be exceptions – Keats and Wordsworth. These Romantic poets who write about nature and its beauty are exceptions. Many of the poems in my book of poetry initially struck me as phrases. In them, I am mainly concerned with art, with artistry. In them, I am merely playing with words but words are not empty vessels. (Unpublished Interview)

At least two inferences can be drawn from Egudu’s statement. One is that the poet is a socially-conscious artist who is morally validated. He is not blind to social maladies, to social ‘‘experiences [that] tend towards ugliness.’’ The second inference is that the poet is an artist who reconstructs his experiences till they conform to his moral credit and artistic pleasure, hence the poet shall employ phrases and words of beauty that are, however, not ‘‘empty vessels’’ when relating or capturing ‘‘experiences [that] tend towards ugliness.’’ What this implies, if we desire to 701 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 701–708. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

702

TONY E. AFEJUKU

stretch the point further, is that the credible or realist poet marries successfully themes and strategies even though, as some poets for example, Dante, would want us to understand it, it is the ‘‘world of ugliness’’ rather than the beauty of words and their combination that tend to ‘‘inspire poets,’’ to quote Egudu once again. Thus to endure, the poet needs to relate his imagination and design to the world of observable experience in which we see his hopes, sighs and fears, and by implication his morality. To say this is to disagree with John Keats who once wrote that the character of the poet is to possess no self: it is everything and nothing ... it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen ... A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence, because he has no identity – he is continually informing and filling some other body. (Qtd. in Rene Wellek and Austin Warren 90) W

To agree with Keats is to deny that the poet has an identity, a personality, a self, an experience, an attitude to life or a moral standard that people who read him may model their lives on. To agree with Keats, to put it another way, is to deny that the poet inevitably has a total conception of life that contributes to make him the unacknowledged legislator of the world, as Shelley, one of Egudu’s literary ancestors, whom he refers to above, famously said. Now what may emerge from the inferences above is that Egudu is a poet who is influenced by social reality. He is a quintessential photographer, so to say, of his society, which he also tries to influence and shape, at least morally. His theory of poetry is to awaken society to its imperfections. It is for this reason that his poems generally focus on the conditions of his society where, it seems, no life of high value is possible. The first section of Egudu’s book is called ‘‘Guardians;’’ it is my primary focus because of its essentially public goal. His concern in this section is with how the guardians, that is, those who rule and preside over the land, over the commonwealth of Nigeria can give the greatest value to the individual. He says that those who govern, soldiers or civilians, are those who have the least refined views on values, those whose impulses are trivial, whose states of mind encourage graft, waste, exploitation, starvation, deceit, conflict and activities that create restriction and chaos instead of peace. In the poem called ‘‘Editors,’’ for instance, Egudu says thus: Through the spectacles of growling guns or howling gowns

POETRY IN THE CEREBRAL CORTEX

703

they perched and edited the pages of our life supplanting cheer with chain laughter with tears bloom with gloom and garri with grief. They disagreed on how best to couch greed but firmly agreed it be not expunged. They deleted peace from every page. (3)

This is a typical Egudu poem, which presents the ugly realities of his society and time. The ‘‘editors’’ referred to in the poem are Nigeria’s rulers, both soldiers (symbolically called ‘‘growling guns’’) and politicians (symbolically called ‘‘howling gowns’’). Of course, editors are experts, for instance, in book production and publishing. They are expected to use their skill and knowledge to make a book worth reading, worth knowing and worth having. But the rulers, the supposed guardians of law and order and public morality, whom the poet referred to as ‘‘editors,’’ are, ironically, lacking in the art of ‘‘editing,’’ that is, of governing their country and people. Instead of governing (‘‘editing’’) rightly the country and making it a place of valuable experience worth living in, they make it a ‘‘weeping wild’’ (‘‘Age Grades’’ 4) difficult to survive in. The ‘‘editors’ ’’ codes are self-seeking ones, which the poet detests. The poem thrives on irony and symbols, but the meaning is clear, the language elegant and simple. In it, as in his other poems, we see the poet’s fidelity to thought and feeling. But why, it may be asked, does the poet not use ‘‘ugly’’ words or inelegant phrases and sentences to depict the unpleasant reality that he has depicted? The answer is obvious: elegance or attractiveness of style is ‘‘one of the qualities of a good work of literary art’’ (David Daiches 61). And the moral poet seeks to improve the quality of life, thought and knowledge of the reader. As a moral poet, Egudu is interested in the arousing of emotion for psychological effect. ff He writes to move the reader to accept his moral example. In poem after poem he enlists passion against absurd behaviour and illogical precepts. In ‘‘Bold Song,’’ for example, he writes thus: The melodious choir was called uncreative and marked down by the jury

704

TONY E. AFEJUKU because it boldly sang aloud of deeds people whispered with fear: ‘A chief snatched the orphan’s house but warmly gave him a room in it for the normal rent. ‘There was a boss that loved a girl and to prove his love made her sign a bond to wed his house boy. ‘ ‘And with our heads bowed to earth, between our legs we saw a notice across the sky saying a labourer should pay for working hard.’ (9)

The passionate lucidity of this poem cannot escape the reader’s notice. Egudu’s language is pure and simple and devoid of artificiality; this style induces the poem’s music and its variety of thought and feeling. And if a good poem is distinguished by a marked moral intensity, there is no doubt that this is a good poem. The poet condemns deviousness in such a way that enables him, on the one hand, to transmute his idea into a feeling of revulsion for the devious persons and, on the other hand, into a sensation of sympathy for the victims of the devious act and behaviour. ‘‘And with our heads/bowed to earth/between our legs ...’’ The poet (and we) feel for these despondent victims of deviousness displayed by the supposed guardians of the ‘‘Common well’’ (7) of Nigeria. The victims’ misery is offensive ff to the tender sensibility of the poet. In this poem, aesthetic sensibility cannot be separated from moral sensibility. Another poem which treats a similar theme is ‘‘Mad Questions:’’ A shepherd hounded with fury the sheep he took to pasture and a mad man asked: is the shepherd a leopard? A hungry hen swooped in on the chickens it gathered to roost and the mad man asked: is the hen a hawk?

POETRY IN THE CEREBRAL CORTEX

705

A crowned chief seized the only key to his clan’s bank and the mad man asked: is the chief a thief ? A public dog ate the bone it agreed to guard for all and the mad man asked: is the dog a human? (115)

This is a morally philosophical poem deliberately written in the manner of African (Igbo) folk literature. Its emphasis is on the relationship between man and his society, between a leader and his people. The series of questions and analogies accentuate the severity of the implication of betrayal of trust and faith in human, family, social or political relationships. The consequence of this for man and society is grave indeed. In an interestingly thoughtful essay, which he called ‘‘Igbo Traditional Poetry and Family Relationships,’’ Egudu says: In traditional Igbo society, literature is always generally a purposeful affair, ff in the sense that it is not meant merely to satisfy some aesthetic craving or to engender intellectual appeal. The purpose ranges from ritual, through demonstration of accepted values, to simple moral or ethical education. In these dimensions of the purpose, emphasis is consistently placed on the relationship between man and man, which, if it is healthy, becomes instrumental to the growth of harmonious society. This social relationship indeed implies both positive and negative attitudes, which include likes and dislikes, admiration and aversion, assistance and hindrance, and so on. For in society, the good and accepted norms of behaviour – virtues in general – are loved and admired, while social disvalues are hated and decried. And those individuals in the society who represent these groups of opposing traits are liked or disliked as the case may be. (36)

We can rightly say that what Egudu says here gives further clue to his identity as a socially-committed poet and scholar. And we can twin this quotation with his statement, which I quoted at the outset of this essay. At any rate, the characters about whom questions are asked in the poem under investigation are those we dislike because they have negative attitudes which the poet, the reader and even the mad man have aversion for! But more importantly: as a moral poet, Egudu in the poem gives us a picture of a mad man whose world leads those who view it to shun vice and follow virtue. Of course, the world of the mad man is a poetic otherworld which has been turned into a higher reality in which aesthetic sensibility cannot be separated from moral responsibility.

706

TONY E. AFEJUKU

Egudu consistently stands his ground as a committed poet whose desire is to foster a public cause and morality as he enunciates very well in ‘‘Prayer of the Powerless,’’ the poem which gives his book its name: O god of governance, disarm for us those who blind voting rights with hardened cash or who plan public budgets for private pockets, or who regard barrack guns as golden geese, or who turn contract awards into wayward gains, or who crucify services on civil crosses, or who inter the truth in technical graves, or who impregnate banks with bastard wads, or who constipate young minds with chronic notes. We also pray you to empower for us only those who act counter to all the above. (39)

Egudu’s attitude in this title poem is consistent with his quest for a moral ideal, for a moral standard, which he is committed to and which he wants his readers and every member, the ruler and the ruled of his society, to be equally committed to. What Egudu is doing in this poem amounts to providing through prayer and protest ‘‘alternative social ethos which could form the basis of an ordered and just society rid of its vices and corrupt public life-pattern,’’ to borrow Samuel O. Asein’s words (102). The poem is explicit and direct enough, but prayer becomes a figurative armour the poet, the spokesman of the voiceless, and voice of vision, provides for the emancipation of the community from the opportunist and formidable leaders who can only be removed by the ‘‘god of governance.’’ Is the poem thus a subtle call to arms to change the corrupt government? Is this an ingeniously apocalyptic verse prophesying a bad change for those ‘‘who constipate young minds/with chronic notes’’? The poet’s silence in this regard is the ingenious silence of a gifted artist. And as Serge Dubrovsky says, what literature says ‘‘achieves full meaning

POETRY IN THE CEREBRAL CORTEX

707

through what it does not say, and that is precisely what it means’’ (Qtd. in Jeremy Hawthorn 27). In some poems, Egudu uses the cryptic mode, a quality which marks the poet as a sage who speaks moral truths in parables and riddles – which the poet’s own safety as a ‘‘gad-fly’’ may depend on. The poem called ‘‘Moon and Sun’’ is a good example: How can we reach the sky to untangle the fatal grips on each other of the moon and the sun, or to calm the nerves of the oil-bean pods shelling with fury from such a height? The flood of tears gushing laments aloud not the celestial battle above but the pain of earthly want below. (12)

This is a highly symbolical and cryptic poem. In it, Egudu seems to advance the idea that the moral poet does not display an attitude of aesthetic detachment from the ordinary philosophical and ethical concern of his society (or humanity). And the ethical and philosophical preoccupation of the poet here pertains to the ‘‘pain of earthly want below.’’ When there is disorder in the abode of the supernatural where the moon and the sun engage in ‘‘fatal grips,’’ the effect ff on earth, that is, on humanity (or society) is very grave indeed. But the ‘‘moon and the sun’’ can also refer to the powerful opposite forces in the society. They engage in a ceaseless supremacy battle, which has dire consequences for the people who are mere pawns in the struggle for power. Thus the problems of our society (or of the world) arise out of political failings. In my reading of this poem, I am struggling with indistinctness. But this is not to suggest that the poet is uncharitable to his readers. If any thing, his own level of perception and creative resourcefulness endear him to the reader. This leads us, inevitably, to the conclusion that Egudu is an intellectual poet and craftsman who successfully combines artistic appeal and social relevance. In his clarity of expression and cryptic style, in his power to stimulate the intellect, the mind and the emotions at one and the same time, Egudu affirms that the poetry he offers ff is that kind of poetry that

708

TONY E. AFEJUKU

stimulates the ‘‘cerebral cortex, the nervous system and the digestive tracts,’’ to borrow T.S. Eliot’s words (310). University of Benin U Benin City, Nigeria BIBLIOGRAPHY Afejuku, Tony E. ‘‘An Interview with Romanus Egudu.’’ Benin City, 12 December 2003. Unpublished. Asein, Samuel O. ‘‘Literature As History: Crisis, Violence, and Strategies of Commitment in Nigerian Writing.’’ In L iterature and Modern West African Culture. Edited by D. I. Nwoga. Benin City: Ethiope Publishing Corporation, 1978. 97–116. Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to L iterature. London: Longman, 1981. Egudu, Romanus. ‘‘Igbo Traditional Poetry and Family Relationships.’’ L iterature and Modern West African Culture. Edited by D. I. Nwoga. Benin City: Ethiope Publishing, M Corporation, 1978. 35–47. ——. Prayer of the Powerless. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishing Co. Ltd., 2002. Eliot, T. S. ‘‘The Metaphysical Poets.’’ English Critical T exts. Edited by D. J. Enright and Ernst De Chickera. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962. 302–10. Hawthorn, Jeremy. U Unlocking the T ext. London: Arnold, 1988. Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. T heory of L iterature. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949. W

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY: LEVINAS READING DOSTOYEVSKY ON DESIRE , RESPONSIBILITY, AND SUFFERING

I. EQUALITY AND ASYMMETRY

In deontology and utilitarianism, the dominant traditions of modern Western moral philosophy, ethics is primarily concerned with the question W of determining right moral conduct. For Kant, Mill, and the thinkers they inspire, the understanding of right moral conduct is achieved through principles grounded in the equality of the moral agent and others. This equality is perhaps most evident in Kant’s ‘‘Categorical Imperative’’: to act in such a way that the maxim of your action can become a universal rule. In utilitarianism the foundational insight of equality appears in its commitment to act in such a way that my own suffering ff and pleasure is not privileged over others’. From the metaphysical understanding of equality, then, modern Western ethics derives principles of morality and applies normative rules of conduct to concrete situations, thereby achieving moral standards. The work of Emmanuel Levinas, widely considered the most important twentieth-century Continental philosopher of ethics, appears to be wholly outside the search for moral standards.1 For Levinas, ethics is essentially asymmetrical, which necessarily precludes moral standards based on reciprocity and universal obligation. On the rare occasions when Levinas articulates an ethical norm, he cites Biblical injunctions to respond compassionately to the other who is needy and suffering: ff the hungry (‘to give bread from my own mouth’), the thirsty (‘to give drink’), the naked (‘to give the clothes from my own back’), the homeless (‘to open not just my wallet but my home’), and the vulnerable (‘thou shall not kill’).2 But Levinas claims that these prescriptions are not intended as universal moral rules to which all are equally obligated; indeed, Levinas’s emphasis on asymmetry undermines their very status as prescriptions for others.3 Levinas himself insists that he is not ‘constructing ethics’; his goal instead is ‘‘to find its meaning,’’4 what in analytic terms could be considered a purely metaethical project.5 According to Levinas, the meaning of ethics is not derived from universal, rational considerations and expressed in normative rules of conduct, but rather, is found in the proximity of 709 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 709–726. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

710

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

the human other who is vulnerable and transcendent. This proximity, a contact, as Levinas describes it, is a disquietude, a disturbance of subjectivity, a putting the self in question. It is the orientation towards the other that disorients the self. It is the other who is mortal, the other who is vulnerable, the other who suffers, ff who puts me into question and makes me uneasy, who demands my attention. In Levinas’s ethics there is no good conscience, no self-satisfaction, because the more just I am, the more attentive I am to the needs of the other, and the more I recognize that there is always more to give. Levinas’s descriptions of the meaning of ethics are not motivated by a concern to derive prescriptions from a metaethical account; his project is not a search for moral standards, and a fortiori f , he makes no attempt in his philosophical writings to apply his ethics to particular contexts. Levinas notes that it is not clear what relationship his ethics bears to the moral choices of concrete reality. In response to a question following his 1972 presentation of ‘‘Ideology and Idealism,’’ Levinas says, ‘‘Is my discourse deficient in concern with concrete reality? Does all this metaphysics of mine have the ability to solve actual ethical problems? I have no ambition to be a preacher. I am neither a preacher nor the son of a preacher, and it is not my purpose to moralize or to improve the conduct ff Levinas argues that compasof our generation.’’6 In ‘‘Useless Suffering’’ sionate suffering ff for the suff ffering other is the highest ethical principle.7 Nevertheless, he insists, compassion ‘‘cannot give itself out as an example, or be narrated in an edifying discourse. It cannot, without being perverted, be made into a preachment’’ (US99). While I am called upon to suffer ff for the other, I cannot be a moral exemplar to inspire the sacrifice of others, or persuade an other to suffer, ff for this would be the justification of the other’s suffering ff that Levinas characterizes as the ‘source of immorality.’8 Thus, I am morally responsible to suffer ff for the other, but to demand suffering ff from the other for the sake of others, the demand of universality, Levinas writes in Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence, ‘‘would be to preach human sacrifice.’’9 Levinas’s emphasis on the fundamentally asymmetrical character of ethics seems to necessarily undermine any search for generally applicable moral standards. Levinas’s emphasis on the asymmetrical character of ethics is accompanied by an understanding that I am never in an exclusively ethical relation. For, Levinas argues, the third is always there: ‘‘One is always three, never two as with Buber;’’10 ‘‘The others concern me from the first’’ (OB157). ‘‘I would even say,’’ Levinas declares in a 1982 interview, ‘‘there is an insistence toward the end of Otherwise T han Being on the fact that there cannot be [moral] existence as a couple a` deux. There is not existence

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

711

as a couple [because] existents are numerous [more than two] and the whole theme of multiplicity, of plurality, is very much present in T otality and Infinity’’ (IEL1O6). The third is a necessary interruption of the asymmetry of ethics (OB150, OB160). ‘‘In the end,’’ Levinas emphasizes, ‘‘we live in a world where we compare things, where we think, where we posit general things, where there is justice’’ (IEL113). Though Levinas is known primarily for his insistence on the irreducible asymmetry of the relation with the other, he repeatedly affirms that the universal rules of justice are always already given.11 Thus, Levinas regards the asymmetry of ethics as the grounding, not the contestation, of normativity and moral standards (OB128). He does not deny the importance of cultivating virtues, performing economic calculations of cost and benefit for the welfare of people, and respecting moral laws. But it is the asymmetrical ethical relation that commands us to organize society according to the most just and equitable distribution of goods, ethics demands the universality of philosophy and justice.12 It is precisely the asymmetry of the ethical relation, Levinas insists, that saves justice from the domination of an oppressive law. II. LEVINAS AND DOSTOYEVSKY

Levinas’s insistence that ethics demands the normativity of justice and moral standards leads him to argue that it is in fact possible to ground a constructive ethics in his philosophy. ‘‘One can without doubt construct an ethics in function of what I have ... said,’’ Levinas claims, ‘‘but this is not my theme’’ (EI90). Where are we to find such a theme, moral norms grounded in asymmetrical ethics? What would such an ethics look like? Levinas suggests that we ought to look to the inspired discourse of sacred literature, that is, the Bible and the tradition of Talmudic commentary, and the great national literatures, (IEL113) both of which provide moral norms consistent with his ethics. Addressing the question of ‘‘the concrete morals that I ought to derive from an ethics,’’13 Levinas turns to Dostoyevsky’s texts, where he finds concrete moral life inspired by asymmetrical ethics. Levinas describes the asymmetrical relationship in Dostoyevsky as his ‘‘point of departure’’ (IR72). Indeed, regarding the asymmetrical character of ethics, the heart of his thought, Levinas says, ‘‘I didn’t discover that, Dostoyevsky did. It is his great truth’’ (IR133). Dostoyevsky was not the only poet to influence Levinas’s thought.14 Levinas’s philosophical texts are marked by the work of a variety of poets and novelists.15 Levinas frequently cites the influence of the European national literatures on the development of his thinking. He mentions

712

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

Hamlet, King L ear, and Macbeth M , and remarks in T ime and the Other, that ‘‘it sometimes seems ... that the whole of philosophy is only a meditation on Shakespeare.’’16 In a number of interviews Levinas says that it was Russian literature that originally occasioned his philosophical activity.17 At the end of his career Levinas insists that ‘‘in spite of everything dazzling in [his] Western life,’’ the great Russian writers have retained all their significance in his mind (IR24). He generally cites Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Turgenev, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. But, as Levinas observes in a 1986 interview with Franc¸ois Poirie, it was ‘‘above all Dostoyevsky’’ who deeply informed his thought (IR28). References to Dostoyevsky already appeared in Levinas’s philosophical texts during the 1940’s.18 By the 1960’s, Levinas associated two of his most important ideas with Dostoyevsky: metaphysical desire for the other and the asymmetrical relation of responsibility. These two associations indicate a correlation between the texts of Levinas and Dostoyevsky, particularly with regard to the asymmetrical, ethical character of the interhuman relationship. As Jill Robbins notes, ‘‘so great is the affinity between the texts of Dostoyevsky and Levinas that Dostoyevsky would seem to be the one writer to whom Levinasian ethics ... could be ‘applied’ ’’ (AR149).19 Levinas drew inspiration from images and narratives of asymmetrical ethical relations in many poetic texts. But in the concrete, lived reality of Dostoyevsky’s characters Levinas recognizes the figuration of his own ethics. Dostoyevsky’s novels are populated with a diversity of figures, including some who exhibit a purity of goodness – a willingness to suffer ff for others, and to love without recompense – that resonates with Levinas’s ethics of offering ff and responsibility. Dostoyevsky’s meek characters, Darya Shatova in T he Devils, Sofiya Andreevna in A Raw Youth, and Sonia Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment, seem particularly to embody the passivity, the generosity, and the capacity to suffer ff for others that constitutes Levinasian ethical subjectivity. The novels are also inhabited by characters who illustrate the violence of regarding the other as an entity in one’s own world. Raskolnikov’s murder and robbery, Ivan Karamazov’s ‘all is permitted’ that finds fruition in Smerdyakov’s patricide, provide examples for Levinas of the violence of totalizing thought that subsumes the other into the interests of the self.20 III. ETHICS AS METAPHYSICAL DESIRE: SONIA’S ‘INSATIABLE COMPASSION’

On two occasions in the 1960’s Levinas cites Sonia Marmeladova’s ‘insatiable compassion.’ Raskolnikov has come to Sonia’s room for the

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

713

first time, where she lives with a sickly couple and their seven sickly children. He sees her miserable dwelling, observes her thin, transparent hand, with fingers he compares to ‘‘a dead woman’s.’’21 Raskolnikov’s cruel remarks, especially concerning her mad, resentful, and recently widowed stepmother Katerina Ivanovna, distress Sonia. Despite her difficulties with Katerina, who in her outbursts would beat her, Sonia declares her love for the mad woman, saying to Raskolnikov, If only you knew! She is really just like a child ... I suppose she has really lost her reason ... from grief. But how clever she used to be ... how generous ... how good! You know nothing, nothing at all ... Sonia said this almost despairingly, wringing her hands in excitement and distress. Her pale cheeks had flushed again, and her eyes looked full of anguish. She was plainly deeply moved, and longing to speak, to plead, to find expression for something. An almost insatiable compassion, if one can use the expression, was depicted in every feature of her face. Beat me! What makes you say that? ... And even if she had, what of that? What of it? You know nothing, nothing at all ... She is so unhappy, oh, so unhappy! ... And she is ill (CP304–305).

In ‘‘The Trace of the Other’’ (1963), Levinas cites this passage in a discussion of the distinction between need and metaphysical desire. Levinas writes, Is the desire for another an appetite or a generosity? The desirable does not fill up my desire but hollows it out, nourishing me as it were with new hungers. Desire is revealed to be goodness. There is a scene in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment where, apropos of Sonia Marmeladova who looks at Raskolnikov in his despair, Dostoyevsky speaks of ‘insatiable compassion.’ He does not say ‘inexhaustible compassion.’ It is as though the compassion that goes from Sonia to Raskolnikov were a hunger which the presence of Raskolnikov nourished beyond all saturation, increasing this hunger ad infinitum.22

In the only book-length Levinasian study of Dostoyevsky, Jacques Rolland associates Sonia ‘‘with other victims of violence, with the insulted and the injured,’’ with ‘‘the figure of the disinherited, the stranger, the poor one, in short what Levinas calls the other.’’23 According to Rolland, Sonia is ‘‘pure face.’’24 Sonia’s vulnerability justifies the characterization of ‘pure face,’ of the embodiment of the Levinasian other.25 But the emphasis on Sonia as the disinherited, the vulnerable, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, loses sight of another aspect of Sonia: the way she also embodies a Levinasian ethical orientation towards the other.26 As much as Sonia is ‘pure face,’ her compassion without condescension, her sacrifice to feed, clothe, and house her family, her love and care for a murderer, could with equal justification be characterized as a morality

714

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

grounded in Levinasian ethics. Sonia’s generosity without hope of recompense, outside the economy of exchange, provides an image of what a constructive Levinasian ethics might look like.27 Thus, it is not as the vulnerable other, but as an image of the ethical that Levinas cites Sonia in the two passages from the 1960’s. When Levinas compares Sonia’s compassion to an unappeasable hunger that increases with its own nourishment, he is characterizing her compassion as metaphysical desire. In T otality and Infinity Levinas distinguishes metaphysical desire from need. This distinction is based on the prior distinction between two types of otherness: the other human as the absolutely other, and the other whose meaning is intentionally constituted by the self. The later lends itself to assimilation by the subject; the former is beyond the constituting and appropriating power of consciousness. Levinas argues that we approach the other human, the other (Autrui), through desire, but we approach the other (autre), through need.28 Though my needs make me dependent on the world, on others, yet my needs are also in my power to satisfy. In labor, my needs convert the other into the same, absorbing and assimilating it (TI117). I engage the elements of my world through intentional activity, perception and intellection, and utilitarian operations, using things. I enjoy this engagement, which is what sustains me and nourishes my life. The other, then, is what satisfies me, such as food, or a dwelling, or an object of contemplation, that I can absorb into my own identity (TI33). The other, which can be absorbed, cannot be irreducibly other. We have a need for this other which is not absolutely other, for this other which nourishes and sustains our life, for the other which we enjoy.29 With need the self returns to itself, for itself, and with the assimilation of the other achieves identity. Need, according to Levinas, ‘even when sublime, as the need for salvation’ is a ‘nostalgia,’ a ‘homesickness,’ a return to the self, an ‘anxiety of an ego for itself, the original form of identification’ which Levinas terms ‘egoism’ (Tr350).30 Levinas’s descriptions of enjoyment in T ime and the Other and ‘‘Interiority and Economy,’’ Section II of T otality and Infinity, show the initial pre-reflective process of self-identification of the ego that arises with the satisfaction of need. Levinas recognizes that the other person can be a source of happiness, a beautiful object of delight, or the source of our sympathetic joy. Our sympathy recognizes the other as an alter ego, another me, who can be categorized and conceptualized in multiple ways by my thinking, and also understood through Einfu¨hlung. Levinas does not reject the refined phenomenological analyses of intersubjectivity contributed by Max

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

715

Scheler, Edith Stein, and Edmund Husserl, for he acknowledges that the other person can be objectified and assimilated into the Same, that empathy provides access to the other. The other appears as every other object, its meaning produced and ordered in historical, psychological, and cultural systems. Beneath the customs of daily life, veiled by the decency of social exchange, there is, Levinas insists, a second otherness, a meaning that arrives from the other, an alterity exterior to thought and beyond comprehension (TO82–3). There is no view from nowhere that could synthesize the I and the other in a relationship of reversibility. Levinas calls this alterity the ‘absolutely other,’ the other for whom no conception is adequate (TI33). The absolute other is not constituted in a mutually exclusive pair that can be ordered in a system at a higher genus. Nor does it depend on a quality or a characteristic, differences ff recognized against a foundation of similarity. Irreducible to the differences ff of physiology, psychology, history, culture, or character is a difference ff that escapes any relation of equality or reciprocity. The absolute other is absolutely other. The absolutely other beyond the realm of ontology is not Heideggerian or Sartrean nothingness, or a lack of being. Alterity for Levinas is positive; it does not ‘nihilate’ being, as Sartre contends,31 but commands being. It is this alterity, the other, whom we desire. The absolutely other is not capable of satisfying a need; it is the object of desire, a ‘metaphysical desire’ for what is beyond being (EI92). For this reason Levinas opposes desire to the need of Heideggerian Dasein for whom its own existence is its primary issue, who cares for itself (Tr350, BPW51). Levinasian desire contrasts with the Hegelian desire that negates and assimilates the object of desire.32 Levinas’s desire also contrasts with Kantian desire, a psychological event situated outside the moral. Levinas’s emphasis on the ethical function of desire is an attempt to liberate volition from the universality of Kantian pure practical reason. And Levinasian desire is also quite distinct from the Aristotelian moral desire for one’s own human flourishing. Levinasian desire is a desire for the other, an interest in the other. Levinasian desire is an acknowledgment of the other qua other, beyond my comprehension. There is no subtle access to the other, no mode of possession, therefore metaphysical desire is an insatiable hunger, a hunger for the other who cannot be grasped. Metaphysical desire feeds on its own hunger, is augmented by its nourishment, and thus can never be satisfied: ‘‘The metaphysical desire has another intention; it desires beyond everything that can simply complete it. It is like goodness – the desired does not fulfill it, but deepens it’’ (T134).33 It is this metaphysical desire

716

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

which can never be satisfied that is the very approach to the absolute other, to the infinite that is beyond the measure of thought, inaccessible to the adequation of a concept (TI34). Thus the meaning of the other that is given in metaphysical desire, its alterity, is at once its form and content. It is transcendent to every horizon and every idea, it is an alterity unmediated by a third term. It is transcendence. It is transcendence because there is an I that is ever identifying itself, and the other who is ever exceeding identity. Desire for the transcendent other, desire for goodness beyond the grasp of understanding constitutes our sociality. It is in desire, Levinas argues, that the sovereign identification of the self is compromised. In the movement towards the other that is desire, instead of nostalgically returning to myself, completing myself, I am put into question, emptied, called beyond egoism. It is the disquietude of ethics. Levinas is interested in Sonia Marmeladova precisely because her radical giving transcends the egoism of natural need and presents an image of metaphysical desire. The name ‘Sonia’ is derived from the Greek ‘Sofia,’ and indeed, Sonia figures a Dostoevskian wisdom. In Sonia Levinas also sees an image of wisdom, what he calls the ‘wisdom of love.’ In his 1987 preface to the German edition of T otality and Infinity, Levinas asks whether ‘‘knowledge beloved of and expected from philosophers was not, beyond the wisdom of such knowledge, the wisdom of love, or wisdom in the guise of love. Philosophy as love of love. A wisdom taught by the face of the other man.’’34 The relation to the other as metaphysical desire contests the dominant approach to the other as a relationship of knowledge. Associating Sonia, Dostoyevsky’s incarnation of wisdom, with the wisdom of metaphysical desire, then, Levinas is not emphasizing her status as the other, as ‘pure face,’ but recognizing his own ethical aspiration in Dostoyevsky’s character. Sonia provides an example of Levinasian goodness. IV. ASYMMETRICAL RESPONSIBILITY

The citations of Sonia’s insatiable compassion were followed in later years by Levinas’s frequent reference to Dostoyevsky’s expression of the asymmetrical relation with the other in T he Brothers Karamazov. For Dostoyevsky this is especially an expression of asymmetrical guilt and responsibility: ‘‘We are all guilty of all and before all, and I more than the others,’’ and ‘‘We are all responsible to all and for all, and I more than all the others.’’ These lines from Dostoyevsky occur often in Levinas’s interviews and texts, where they refer to the responsibility of a subject

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

717

for the other, a responsibility even for the responsibility of the other.35 Levinas understands these words as expressions of the structure of subjectivity as accusative not nominative, elected by a responsibility for the other prior to my own natural needs and projects.36 Thus, as Levinas himself says, ‘‘I always come back to my phrase from Dostoyevsky’’ (R56). What Levinas refers to as ‘‘the profound truth of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov,’’37 will be elaborated in Otherwise T han Being as subjectivity as substitution.38 In T he Brothers Karamazov we first encounter asymmetrical responsibility in the Elder Zossima’s life story as recorded by his young attendant, and the novel’s hero, Alyosha Karamazov. It was Zossima’s older brother Markel, laid out on his deathbed, who first says, ‘‘everyone of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any.’’39 His mother, smiling through her tears, responds quite reasonably, indeed philosophically, asking, ‘‘Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?’’ (BK344). The sick Markel, full of love and tenderness for all around him, replies, ‘‘Mother, little heart of mine ... believe me, every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything’’ (BK344). He knows that she cannot understand the reason for this, and indeed, he can offer ff no reason: ‘‘I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even’’ (BK344). The insight that we are all responsible for all is deeply, joyously, painfully, and, to borrow a term from Levinas, anarchically experienced by Markel. Though Markel, (and many interpreters presume Dostoyevsky as well40) can provide no rational explanation for why he is responsible for all, and more responsible than all, this insight exerts enormous force in T he Brothers Karamazov. When Zossima opens himself to transformation, it is the words of his brother that come to his mind. The night before his conversion the enraged Zossima strikes his servant, Afanasy, with all his might. The servant’s face is covered in blood, but he obediently keeps his arms at his side, not evading or blocking the blows of his master. What justifies my violence against another human, Zossima wonders, and why should another man serve me? Full of remorse, he remembers Markel’s words, and thinks, ‘‘In truth, perhaps, I am more than all others responsible for all, a greater sinner than all men in the world’’ (BK356). Following his conversion Zossima prostrates to his confused servant, and asks forgiveness. When Zossima resigns his military commission and resolves to join a monastic community he becomes a minor celebrity in the

718

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

provincial bourgeois social scene, where he shares his insight into responsibility. And though he is much liked, and even respected, his words are met with an uncomprehending, bemused response. ‘‘ ‘But how can I possibly be responsible for all?’ every one would laugh in my face. ‘Can I, for instance, be responsible for you?’ ’’ (BK359). It is only the murderer, Mihail, who concurs with Zossima, who recognizes the truth of asymmetrical responsibility (BK362). As Levinas notes, the expression of asymmetrical responsibility is ‘‘a central sentence in T he Brothers Karamazov’’ (IR56), articulated by Markel, Zossima, and Alyosha, and perhaps more importantly, figured in the narrative itself (AR147–148). Levinas emphasizes that the iterated expression of asymmetrical responsibility is not a maxim that can be legislated as a universal law of pure practical reason. According to Levinas, Dostoyevsky ‘‘does not mean that every ‘I’ is more responsible than all the others, for that would be to generalize the law for everyone else – to demand as much from the other as I do from myself ’’.41 But to generalize and make demands of the other, is precisely outside the realm of Levinasian ethics. Thus, he adds, ‘‘This essential asymmetry is the very basis of ethics: not only am I more responsible than the other but I am even responsible for everyone else’s responsibility.’’42 What Levinas repeatedly emphasizes in his discussions of responsibility in Dostoyevsky is the ‘‘ ‘I more than all the others’ is the important thing here, even if that means in a certain sense to be an idiot’’ (IR133). Levinas, like Markel, recognizes the apparent absurdity that aroused the laughter of Markel’s mother and Zossima’s friends. The suffering ff for the other that constitutes Levinasian subjectivity is anarchical; it cannot be rationally justified. The painful responsibility of subjectivity is nonsensical because it overflows my comprehending reason. It is a traumatism to thought, Levinas writes, ‘‘a suffering ff for his suff ffering without light, that is, without measure’’ (OB18). The assignation that elects me as unique and responsible would be declinable, Levinas notes, if it were measured to my own capacities, calculable, and an object of choice. But responsibility for what the other does and suffers ff always exceeds my capacities. The task of Otherwise T han Being is to present in a philosophical context, the truth of a Dostoevskian subject who is responsible for all, and more than all. According to Levinas, to be a subject is to stand accused, responsible for the action and suffering ff of the other. To be a subject, Levinas argues, is to substitute oneself for the other, to bear the weight, the fault, and even the persecution by the other. The Levinasian subject is contrasted with the sovereign, synthesizing, legislating, totalizing subject who is

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

719

situated at the center of the world. Instead, the Levinasian subject is decentered, humble, offering, ff burdened by an excessive weight, and selfsacrificing. Levinasian subjectivity is figured in Zossima kneeling down before his servant, accepting the first bullet but refusing to shoot at his opponent in the duel, loving the other human. V. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUFFERING

Levinas’s emphasis on self-sacrifice, on suffering ff for the other, indicates the deepest correlation with Dostoyevsky. Both writers ground their work in the centrality of suffering. ff In the notebooks Dostoyevsky wrote for Crime and Punishment he presents an overview of his book titled ‘‘The idea of the Novel,’’ which includes the points that ‘‘There is no happiness in comfort. Happiness is purchased by suffering.’’ ff And, ‘‘Man is not born for happiness. Man earns his happiness, and always by suffering.’’ ff 43 This notion reappears in the epigraph preceding T he Brothers Karamazov, from John 12:24: ‘‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’’ That the egoistic self must be broken to enable spiritual transformation is dramatized in the lives of the book’s characters, presenting their transformation through suffering ff and the emptying of the self.44 As George Sefler writes of ‘the world of Dostoyevsky’, ‘‘Suffering ff softens the heart of man and teaches it to love this harsh existence. And, the reward for this love and unselfish activity is nothing other than the loving activity itself.’’45 Indeed, Dostoyevsky’s understanding that significant transformation and moral development is possible only through suffering ff provides a key to his texts.46 Suffering ff in Dostoyevsky is not simply justified through transformation and spiritual development. In his famous critique of ‘the idea of God’ lvan Karamazov cites stories of the suffering ff of innocents, stories that Dostoyevsky himself had read in the newspapers. Ivan refuses to accept that suffering ff can be (1) a just punishment for the ‘sins of the fathers,’ (2) justified by the future punishment of the perpetrators, (3) an appropriate cost for the knowledge of good and evil, or (4) alleviated through the knowledge that in some future time all suffering ff will be overcome in a Divinely orchestrated harmony.47 This concern for the suffering ff of innocents motivates the argument of Ivan’s ‘deputy prosecutor,’ the Grand Inquisitor, in what is perhaps the most famous chapter of T he Brothers Karamazov.48 Ivan is eventually tormented by a brain fever, and the novel as a whole is often understood as a counter-argument to the Grand

720

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

Inquisitor.49 But this counter argument does not defend any of the various theodicies Ivan critiques. Indeed, Dostoyevsky’s asymmetrical relation with others makes any justification of the suffering ff of the other immoral.50 Even if Raskolnikov were to have achieved some form of greatness, it would never have justified his murder of the old, miserly pawnbroker. In Dostoyevsky it is only the ‘I’ who is responsible, guilty, and justified to suffer. ff In his 1982 ‘‘Useless Suffering’’ ff Levinas echoes Ivan’s critique of theodicy. The history of theodicy is the history of attempts to bring even the most extreme and destructive forms of suffering ff into a synthetic totality of meaning. Leibniz coined the term theodicy to refer to the idea that if the Divine is good and omnipotent, suffering, ff and therefore evil itself must also be good from a Divine, or at least philosophical, perspective. ff According to Levinas, theodicy includes any justification of suffering, including those based on social utility and political teleology as well as traditional monotheistic accounts of an omnipotent God who in His infinite Goodness redeems suffering. ff It is the intention of Levinas’s phenomenology of suffering ff to refute all theodicies. Suffering, ff according to Levinas’s phenomenology, is essentially unassumable, passive, and useless. One can phenomenologically describe suffering ff because it is a content of consciousness, and thus bears some similarity to sensations of color, sound, or contact. And yet, Levinas argues, the ‘content’ of suffering ff is precisely its inability to be grasped, it is ‘‘unassumable’’ (US91). Suffering ff is a given content of consciousness that by its very essence is beyond the apperceptive synthesizing capacity of the Kantian ‘I think.’ In suffering ff the subject is no longer capable of ex-stasis, of making plans, of projecting. In severe suffering ff our only wish is to be free of our suffering, ff to escape our enchainment. But even this hope is sometimes beyond our capacity. Passivity then is both the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of suffering. ff Suff ffering is thus an undergoing without initiative, a bearing of the world. In suffering, ff Levinas argues, ‘‘passivity – that is, a modality – signifies as a quiddity’’ (US92). Because it cannot be ordered or synthesized by a subject, even suffering ff that is chosen cannot be systematized within a coherent, meaningful whole. Suffering ff as such cannot be justified, Levinas argues, it is essentially useless. It is this phenomenological character of uselessness that inspires Levinas’s critique of theodicy. Like Dostoyevsky, Levinas interprets suffering ff according to an asymmetrical structure: suffering ff of the other is unjustifiable and meaningless, while I myself am elected to suffer ff for the other. To justify the suffering ff

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

721

of the other is the source of violence, the corollary of theodicies. But the alterity of the other that appears in her suffering ff transcends rational systematization. The other’s suffering, ff Levinas argues, is the opening of the ethical in the world of ontology.51 Suffering ff is the epiphany of the alterity of the other and I am elected as a singular subject to respond compassionately to the other. Thus, Levinas claims in ‘‘Useless Suffering,’’ ff that compassionate suffering ff for the suff ffering other ‘‘can be affirmed as the very nexus of human subjectivity, to the point of being raised to the level of supreme ethical principle’’ (US94). The highest principle of Levinasian ethics is the demand on me, not on the other, for compassionate self-sacrifice.52 The search for moral norms is precisely antithetical to the asymmetrical ethics presented in Levinas’s texts. For this reason the Levinasian project marks a departure from much Western moral philosophy characterized by its search for universal principles and normative prescriptions. Levinasian ethics begins not with the foundation of principles but with the epiphany of the other who suffers, ff whose suff ffering is unjustifiable and demands medication. Gerard Bailhache argues that for Levinas the implicit critique of the neglect of suffering ff in the philosophical tradition is more important than the well known critique of totalizing thought.53 It is in Dostoyevsky that Levinas finds an attention to suffering ff that escapes rational systems of morality. Indeed, the priority of suffering ff in Dostoyevsky’s texts leads to the asymmetrical responsibility for the other that is philosophically developed by Levinas. The characters in Dostoyevsky’s texts figure the anarchical ‘idiocy’ of asymmetry that undermines universal normativity. And yet, for Levinas, it is precisely in their asymmetry that they present a kind of moral standard, the only Levinasian moral standard. For the self-sacrifice of asymmetrical, compassionate responsibility is perhaps the single moral standard of Levinasian ethics. As Levinas writes in ‘‘Enigma and Phenomena,’’ ‘‘I approach the infinite by sacrificing myself. Sacrifice is the norm and the criterion of the approach.’’54 According to Levinas, the suffering ff of the other does not call for justification, explanation, or any kind of theorizing, but demands a non-theoretical, compassionate response.55 Levinas did not search for normative moral standards that could be prescribed to others. Sacrifice is the only moral norm, and it cannot be generalized, the asymmetry of sacrifice eludes the universality of the Categorical Imperative and the Golden Rule. It is not clear that Levinas ever intended his radical ethics of sacrifice be practiced in the world of ontology. He acknowledges that concrete situations demand a concern for the self, a limiting of responsibil-

722

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

ity for the other, and a justice of equality (EI99, OB128). Indeed, it is hard to know what a Levinasian ethics would look like in the world of experience. Crime and Punishment and T he Brothers Karamazov are significant for Levinas precisely because they provide one possible image of asymmetrical ethics, enacting Levinasian responsibility in concrete reality. Colby College Waterville, ME, USA W NOTES 1 For a discussion of the distinction between Levinas’s ethics and traditional conceptions of normative ethics see Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Ethics of Suspicion,’’ Research in Phenomenology, 20 (1990): 3–18. 2 Levinas is especially fond of citing Isaiah, 58:9. According to Isaiah, God’s commandment is ‘‘to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh.’’ T he New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 895. For a discussion of these prescriptions, see Jill Robbins, Altered Reading: L evinas and L iterature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. xxiii. Hereafter cited in the text as AR, followed by the page number. 3 Because Levinas’s ethics cannot be understood as straightforward moral philosophy much Levinas scholarship is concerned with understanding the status of Levinas’s propositions as prescriptions of moral obligation, descriptions of moral phenomena, or some other speech act. See for example Jean-Franccois Lyotard, ‘‘Levinas’ Logic,’’ in F Face to Face W ith L evinas, Richard A. Cohen (ed.) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 117–158; David Michael Levin, ‘‘Tracework: Myself and Others in the Moral Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas,’’ IInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies, 6:3 (1998): 345–392; Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Violence of the Face: Peace and Language in the Thought of Levinas,’’ Philosophy and Social Criticism, 23:6 (1997): 81–93; D. H. Brody, ‘‘Emmanuel Levinas: The Logic of Ethical Ambiguity in Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence,’’ Research in Phenomenology, 25 (1995): 177–205; Peter Atterton, ‘‘Levinas and the Language of Peace: A Response to Derrida,’’ Philosophy T oday, 36:1 (1992): 59–70; Krzysztof Ziarek, ‘‘Semantics of Proximity: Language and the Other in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,’’ Research in Phenomenology, 19 (1989): 213–247; Peter Kemp, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 23:6 (1997): 5–28; and Tina Chanter, ‘‘The Betrayal of Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas’s Otherwise T han Being,’’ Philosophy and Social Criticism, 3:6 (1997): 65–79. 4 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, Richard A. Cohen (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), p. 90. Hereafter cited in the text as EI, followed by the page number. 5 Contemporary analytic philosophers typically distinguish three fields of ethics: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics is the study of the source and nature of moral principles. Grounded in metaethical accounts, normative ethics seeks to distinguish between moral and immoral conduct, demonstrating the moral value of particular virtues, duties, or consequences. Applied ethics employs the results of metaethics and normative

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

723

ethics to particular areas of ethical concern, including the environment, poverty, war, etc. If Levinasian ethics were to be situated against this analytic template it would be characterized as metaethics. As Derrida writes in ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ Levinasian ethics is an ‘‘Ethics of Ethics.’’ Moreover, Derrida adds, ‘‘this Ethics of Ethics can occasion neither a determined ethics nor determined laws without negating and forgetting itself.’’ Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ in W riting and DiiVerence, Alan Bass (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 111. 6 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Ideology and Idealism,’’ in T he L evinas Reader, Sanford Ames and Arthur Lesley (trans.), Sean Hand (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 247. Levinas was dubious of programs of moral improvement generally, and added, ‘‘It is likely, in any case, that sermons have no power to raise the level of morals.’’ 7 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Useless Suffering,’’ ff in Entre Nous, Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 94. Hereafter cited in the text as US, followed by the page number. 8 See Robert Gibbs’s discussion of this passage in ‘‘Unjustifiable Suffering,’’ ff in SuV uVering Religion, Robert Gibbs and Elliot R. Wolfson (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 26. 9 Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence, Alphonso Lingis (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p. 94. Hereafter cited in the text as OB, followed by the page number. 10 Edith Wyshogrod, ‘‘Interview with Emmanuel Levinas: December 31st, 1982,’’ Philosophy and T heology, 4 (1989): 110. Hereafter cited in the text as IEL, followed by the page number. 11 Some of Levinas’s critics, such as Paul Ricoeur, argue that in ethics normativity arises with sociality. Levinas does not deny normativity, but identifies a sociality that precedes normativity, an asymmetrical sociality of ethical responsibility. See Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another, and Richard Cohen’s response to Ricoeur’s critique, ‘‘Moral Selfhood: A Levinasian Response to Ricoeur on Levinas,’’ in Ricoeur as Another: T he Ethics of Subjectivity, Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (eds.) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 27–160. 12 See Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Philosophy, Justice, and Love,’’ in Entre Nous, pp. 103–121. 13 Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous T o Be? Interviews W ith Emmanuel L evinas, Jill Robbins (ed.) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 161. Hereafter cited in the text as IR, followed by the page number. 14 For the most systematic and subtle discussion of Levinas’s complex relationship to literature, see Robbins, Altered Reading. See also Sean Hand, ‘‘Shadowing Ethics: Levinas’s View of Art and Aesthetics,’’ in F Facing the Other: T he Ethics of Emmanuel L evinas, Sea´n Hand (ed.) (Surrey: Curzon, 1996), pp. 63–89; Sean Hand, ‘‘The Other Voice: Ethics and Expression in Emmanuel Levinas,’’ History of the Human Sciences, 10:3 (1997): 56–68; Nadine Chapman, ‘‘Poetry and the Ethical Moment,’’ Bridges, 6:3/4 (1999): 135–145; and Travis Anderson, ‘‘Drawing upon Levinas to Sketch out a Heterotopic Poetics of Art and Tragedy,’’ Research in Phenomenology 24 (1994): 69–96. 15 See for example Levinas’s essays collected in Proper Names, Michael B. Smith (trans.) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); and Outside the Subject, Michael B. Smith (trans.) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 16 Emmanuel Levinas, T ime and the Other, Richard A. Cohen (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 72. Hereafter cited in the text as TO, followed by the page number. 17 See for example EI22, and IR28, IR89, and IR158. In addition to literature, it was also the Bible, Levinas recounts, that inspired his philosophical inquiry.

724

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

18 See for example Levinas’s 1948 essay, ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow,’’ in Collected Philosophical Papers, Alphonso Lingis (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), pp. 1–13. 19 See Jacques Rolland, Dostoı¨evski: L a Question de l’Autre (Paris: Verdier, 1983). 20 See for example Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘A Conversation with Andre Dalmas,’’ in Proper N Names, p. 154. 21 Feodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, George Gibian (ed.), Jessie Coulson (trans.) (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1964), p. 303. Hereafter cited in the text as CP, followed by the page number. 22 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘The Trace of the Other,’’ in Deconstruction in Context, Mark C. Taylor (ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 351. Hereafter cited in the text as Tr, followed by the page number. The following year, in ‘‘Meaning and Sense’’ (1964), Levinas employs this same passage, virtually word for word, again in the context of a discussion of metaphysical desire. See Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Meaning and Sense,’’ in Basic Philosophical W ritings, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (eds.) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 52. It appears that Levinas did not carefully attend to the details of Dostoyevsky’s text, for in Levinas’s account Sonia’s ‘insatiable compassion’ is oriented towards Raskolnikov. But in the particular scene where Dostoyevsky employs the term ‘insatiable compassion,’ it seems to be a compassion for Sonia’s stepmother, Katerina Ivanovna. [In her discussion of this passage Jill Robbins follows Levinas’s misreading, and mistakenly identifies the scene as the confession scene of the following day. Admittedly, the confession scene manifests the more remarkable compassion on Sonia’s part, but it is not the scene in which Dostoyevsky employs the term ‘insatiable compassion’ (AR148).] The next day, when Raskolnikov returns to Sonia’s room to confess his murder she is indeed compassionate. After his confession she throws her arms around his neck, crying, ‘‘What have you done, what have you done to yourself ?’’ (CP394). ‘‘There is no one, she adds, ‘‘no one unhappier than you in the whole world’’ (CP394–395). Perhaps Levinas confused the two scenes, the first, when Dostoyevsky describes Sonia’s compassion as ‘insatiable,’ and the second, when Sonia feels compassion for Raskolnikov. The confusion between the two scenes, however, does not diminish Levinas’s point, that Sonia exhibits an insatiable compassion, an exemplification of metaphysical desire for the other. 23 Robbins, Altered Reading, p. 149. 24 Ibid. 25 See Ernest J. Simmon’s discussion of Sonia in ‘‘The Art of Crime and Punishment,’’ in Dostoyevsky, op. cit. Simmons characterizes Sonia as ‘‘a kind of living universal symbol of crushed and suffering ff humanity that bears within itself the undying seed of joyous humanity’’ (CP569). 26 Rolland is especially interested in the weakness of the other. See the discussion of weakness, the meek, and the pathetic in Dostoyevsky’s novels, in Rolland, op. cit., pp. 53–66. 27 It is important to emphasize that while Sonia provides an image of a ‘constructive’ ethics, Levinas himself rejects any attempt to make an image of the ethical as such. For Levinas’s critique of the image see ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow,’’ and ‘‘Expression and Image’’ in T otality and Infinity, Alphonso Lingis (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pp. 297–298. Hereafter cited in the text as TI, followed by the page number. 28 Levinas employs the French word A ‘ utrui ’ to refer to the you, the singular, human other, the ‘Other.’ The general term ‘autre’ refers to others in general, the ‘other’ (TI24).

ASYMMETRY AND NORMATIVITY

725

29 This need can be interpreted as a lack, a hunger or thirst that food and drink will diminish. But against those who claim that need is simply caused by a deficiency Levinas argues that ‘‘the human being thrives on his needs; he is happy for his needs’’ (TI114). With needs, their satisfaction, the enjoyment of bread, music, and landscapes, there is a contentment, a happiness, a self-satisfied return to the ego. According to Levinas need is the ff This is the activity of prelapsarian innocence, prior to guilt, responsibility, or suffering. natural life Levinas describes in ‘‘Separation as Life’’ (TI109–21). 30 The egoistic self, according to Levinas, is precisely ‘for itself.’ Motivated by a logic that situates itself at the center of the world, Levinas writes, it is ‘‘capable of killing for a crust of bread, is for itself ’’ (TI118). 31 Sartre employs the term ‘nihilation’ (ne: antir) to refer to the way in which consciousness intends an object in the world by distinguishing it from all other objects and itself. Thus, nihilation is not annihilation or nihilism, but the tearing of the continuum of being in which an object is embedded when it is intended as an object of consciousness. 32 Derrida, op. cit., p. 92. 33 Levinas also describes metaphysical desire as goodness, ‘‘the goodness whose meaning death cannot efface,’’ ff which ‘‘has its center outside of itself ’’ (TI236). 34 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘T otality and Infinity. Preface to the German Edition,’’ in Entre N Nous, p. 200. 35 See for example the interviews with Francois Poirie, Myriam Anissimov, Salomon Malka, Emmanuel Hirsch, Florian Rotzer, Christian Descamps, R. Fornetand and A. Gomez, and Augusto Ponzio collected in Is It Righteous T o Be?; with Philippe Nemo in Ethics and Infinity; with Richard Kearney, ‘‘Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas,’’ in F Face to Face W ith L evinas, pp. 13–33; and with Edith Wyshogrod, ‘‘Interview with Emmanuel F Levinas.’’ See also Levinas’s ‘‘The Truth of Disclosure and the Truth of Testimony,’’ ‘‘God and Philosophy,’’ ‘‘Apropos of Buber: Some Notes,’’ and Otherwise T han Being or Beyond Essence. 36 See Rolland’s discussion of responsibility and guilt in his Levinasian reading of Dostoyevsky, in Rolland, op. cit., 75–89. 37 Levinas, ‘‘Apropos of Buber: Some Notes,’’ in Outside the Subject, p. 44. 38 In ‘‘Subjectivity and Infinity,’’ the penultimate chapter of Otherwise T han Being, Levinas cites Dostoyevsky’s T he Brothers Karamazov as an example of subjectivity as substitution, subjectivity in the accusative, elected to a responsibility it did not choose (OB146). 39 Feodor Dostoyevsky, T he Brothers Karamazov, Constance Gamett (trans.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), p. 344. Hereafter cited in the text as BK, followed by the page number. 40 See Robert V. Wharton, ‘‘Evil in an Earthly Paradise: Ivan Karamazov’s ‘Dialectic’ Against God and Zossima’s ‘Euclidean’ Response,’’ T homist, 41 (1977): 567–584, especially 567–569. 41 Levinas, ‘‘Dialogue,’’ in F Face to Face W ith L evinas, p. 31. 42 Ibid. 43 Feodor Dostoyevsky, ‘‘Dostoyevsky’s Notebooks,’’ in Crime and Punlshment, p. 536. 44 See Joyce Carol Oates ‘‘The Double Vision of the Brothers Karamazov,’’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 7 (1968): 203–13, especially 204. Oates argues that Dostoyevsky’s creativity undermines the narrative structure of the novel that supports his understanding of Orthodox spirituality, suffering, ff and transformation. 45 George F. Sefler, ‘‘Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky on the Meaning of Suffering,’’ ff Religious Humanism, 4 (1970): 150. 46 Ibid., p. 150.

726

WILLIAM EDELGLASS

47 For a discussion of Ivan’s criticism of these four types of theodicy, and a Dostoevskian response, see Wharton op. cit., especially pp. 570–571. 48 For a review of this literature see Wharton, op. cit., pp. 567–569. For an interpretation that problematizes the traditional understanding of T he Brothers Karamazov, see Oates, op. cit. 49 For a discussion of whether Dostoyevsky’s theodicy is rational or antirational see Wharton, op. cit. 50 Ibid., p. 571. 51 As Y. A. Kang observes of Levinas, ‘‘suffering ff is not one of several themes which could be approached from an ethical perspective. Suffering ff is precisely the opening of the ethical perspective.’’ Young Ahn Kang, ‘‘Levinas on Suffering ff and Solidarity,’’ T ijdshrift voor Filosofie, 59 (1997): 498. 52 See Richard A. Cohen, ‘‘What Good is the Holocaust? On Suffering ff and Evil,’’ Philosophy T oday, 43:2 (1999): 176–183. 53 Bailhache writes ‘‘suffering ff cannot be forgotten, and this is no doubt the greater reproach, never truly formulated, that Levinas addresses to his predecessors. It cannot be forgotten, and it is even primary; it indicates an original and singular position before being and one that will mark the entry into being. The indelible trace inscribed by suffering ff ‘creates’ a bottomless passivity that cannot be assumed by some sort of activity.’’ Gerard Bailhache, ‘‘Excess: Toward the Outside, or Humanity,’’ in L evinas’s Contribution to Contemporary Philosophy, Bettina Bergo (trans.), p. 130. 54 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Enigma and Phenomenon,’’ in Basic Philosophical W ritings, p. 76.

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

THE REDEMPTIVE GESTURES OF THE POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

In her book, After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the L egacy of the Holocaust, Eva Hoffman ff gives an account of her visit to Majdanek outside of the Polish city of Lublin. She learns there of a short verse written by a nine-year-old girl. The little manuscript, which the child carried in the sole of her shoe, gives directions on how the verse is to be sung. In reflecting upon this fragment, Hoffman ff writes: ‘‘Poetry existed in Aushchwitz as well as Majdanek, and was written in the Warsaw Ghetto; and for some, it was almost as important as bread and water.’’1 Hoffman ff describes the experience as the single most piercingly sad verse she has ever heard. Why do we turn to poetry in extremity, often deriving more than solace from it, often sensing within its context some glimmer of redemption? Perhaps it is that the language of poetry, even in this very short verse by a child, gestures toward a more intense iteration of something intimately human that connects us to the wider, deeper history of humanness. It reasserts, in other words, a longstanding context in which the value of the individual human being is foregrounded against the backdrop of history and is, thereby, acknowledged and recognized. ‘‘Recognition,’’ writes Hoffman, ff ‘‘is the salutary balm most needed by those who have been targets of brutality and injustice.’’ And further that ‘‘full and exact acknowledgment ... can act as a form of affective, ff symbolic justice.’’ 2 The poetic gesture toward redemption inclines precisely in this direction. Within the intimacy of its own private customs and history, poetic language establishes a context of special knowledge in which the single human being steps forward to be recognized – acknowledged vindicated, safeguarded – against the often violent and inhuman landscapes of history. This essay examines the notion of gesture in poetic language generally and in the poetry of the Polish poet, Wisława Szymborska in particular, arguing that gestures of a certain kind, which appear repeatedly in her poetry, are crucial to an understanding of Szymborska’s poetic endeavor and of the moral imperative implicit in her work. The paper takes the position that the intimate intensity of poetic knowledge – tacit, secreted, unreadable – speaks itself not by speaking but by virtue of the gestures that the poem makes, both gestures within the poem as well as the overall 729 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 729–748. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

730

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

gesture of the poem as a whole. The desire inherent in this knowledge impels the poem to engage not only word but also world, to ‘‘take part’’ as Szymborska writes, especially as this act of participation pertains to the fragile, transitory nature of a single being. I would like to suggest, then, that the presence of this tacit knowledge, what Louis Dupre suggests is ‘‘some prelinguistic implicit intuition’’ beyond language that ‘‘accompanies and activates the quest for ultimacy,’’3 is called into being and set into an autonomous motion by the performative power of poetic language as gesture, existing in what R. P. Blackmur calls ‘‘the orbit’’ of the gesture.4 What is meant here by the term ‘‘gesture’’? I am not referring to gestural signs or signals that can be translated or even interpreted. Rather, the concept here is closer to the definition that David McNeill uses in his book Hand and Mind. McNeill’s study focuses upon those gestures that arise separately, inadvertently and spontaneously alongside language as we speak, that themselves cannot be translated into speech, but that, nonetheless, are an integrated and intrinsic aspect of thought and discourse.5 Blackmur, earlier, had already brought the idea of gesture into the matter of language: ‘‘Words are made of motion, made of action or response and gesture is made of language – made of the language beneath or beyond or alongside of the language of words’’; and further: ‘‘When the language of words most succeeds it becomes gesture ...’’6 The argument of this essay regards poetic language as a gesture of this kind in its most intense form, what R. P. Blackmur calls ‘‘the mystery of gesture in the art of poetry.’’7 The poem gestures toward its own deepest source of meaning, a reality that comes into being beside the language of the poem yet remaining at a distance from it. (As Szymborska puts it ‘‘Beyond the reach / of our presence ... / Somewhere else. / Somewhere else.)8 This distance, however, only increases our desire for meaning and even for an absolute, becoming charged, as George Steiner suggests, ‘‘with the pressures of a nearness out of reach, of a remembrance torn at the edges. It is this absent ‘thereness,’ in the death-camps, in the laying waste of a grimed planet, which is articulate in the master-texts of our age.’’9 Steiner, of course, links meaning in a text with the question of God and the problematic nature of textual meaning with what he refers to as ‘‘the density of God’s absence.’’ For the poem’s moment, the poetic gesture bends with linguistic desires of its own under the weight of this absence, circumscribing it, adorning it, marking its borders with inordinate beauties not unlike the fingerprint of Thetis upon the ankle of her son, Achilles, or the immortal shield that Hephaestos provides for him later. Thetis inscribes, inadvertently, by her own hand, indelibly, the region of his

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

731

mortality. She may redeem him from the River Styx, but she has no power to redeem his distant, inaccessible, intangible otherness. By way of illustration, here is an example from Louis Dupre.10 Within his discussion of the rich symbolic complexes and spiritual nature of the body’s expressiveness, Dupre recounts a gestural moment from James Joyce’s short story, ‘‘The Dead.’’ At the close of a dinner party, the main character, Gabriel Conroy, notices his wife, Gretta, upon the dark staircase landing as she listens to distant music from above. Conroy, fascinated and silenced by her form, wishes to appropriate it, to render its meaning transparent to himself by transcribing it into words, but he cannot. Meanwhile, she listens to a tenor singing in a room above as Conroy watches her listening, never knowing precisely what it means, sensing that it means everything. ‘‘Here,’’ writes Dupre, ‘‘a single gesture succeeds in expressing the entire depth and interiority of a person’’ and ‘‘the body appears what it has always been, a manifestation of spirit.’’ According to Dupre, what Conroy desires, through linguistic appropriation, is to discover in the transience of this sudden gesture of his wife something permanent, to perceive in the particularity of it, something universal. For ‘‘only when the mind grasps in the individual instance the reference to all others’’ writes Dupre, ‘‘does it feel that it has reached the essence of the real.’’ Conroy cannot appropriate the meaning of his wife’s gesture, however, because, as Dupre points out, although symbols articulate a certain meaning, ‘‘they do so within a totality of meaningfulness that transcends them and to which they defer.’’11 The magnitude of his wife’s fragile uniqueness eludes him, yet the moment of her gesture turns his attention to it and provides for him an oblique though vital access to the depths of her, and to her (and his own) authentic transitory humanity, preserved for the moment against vanishing. Nor is this awareness confined to them both; it constitutes, as Dupre suggests, a version of humanity that refers ‘‘to all others.’’ Joyce suggests this, too, when he has Conroy imagine a community of spirits of the soon-to-be-dead at the close of the story, a community that includes Conroy himself. Dupre’s example from Joyce is consistent with David McNeill’s definition and discussion of the fullness of gestural meaning.12 The word itself, ‘‘gesture,’’ as McNeill points out, has undergone a diminishment of meaning over time. In modern usage, it most often expresses that which is unfulfilled, incomplete, trivial, a ‘‘gesture’’ or pretense of action as opposed to the action itself, an intention, which lacks true desire, substance, and consequence. But the etymology of the word implies a different ff meaning. The word ‘‘gesture’’ suggests creation and gestation, from the Latin gerere

732

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

which means ‘‘to carry’’ or ‘‘to bear.’’ Gadamer speaks of gesture as bearing inherent meaning. ‘‘What a gesture expresses is ‘there’ in the gesture itself ’’ and ‘‘reveals no inner meaning behind itself. The whole being of the gesture lies in what it says.’’13 According to Gadamer, the gesture carries ‘‘substance’’ that reflects knowledge or belief which supports us but does not necessarily make its way to the light of reflective consciousness. Blackmur, writing specifically of the poetic word as gesture, says this: ‘‘Transformed into gesture,’’ poetic words ‘‘carry the load, wield the load, lighten the load, and leap beyond the load of meaning.’’14 McNeill, then, examines those spontaneous unreadable motions of the body, which embody a magnitude of their own and which arise inadvertently alongside speech, motions that may not be translated into language or even interpreted. Conroy, for example, wishes to make something intelligible of his wife’s gesture, yet he remains stymied by the solemn symbolic mystery of it, which defies translation and interpretation. Unexpectedly, beside the ongoing narrative, the gesture appears, separate and autonomous, both disrupting the narrative and epitomizing it. Even so, the gesture itself remains inscrutable, and the moment would be meaningless outside the context of the narrative. Further, as McNeill points out, this type of gesture is markedly different ff from those to which one might refer as ‘‘body language,’’ a communication system of bodily signals. McNeill’s study focuses upon gestures that display unspoken thoughts in body imagery, focusing on those movements, which seem to give image to thought and thereby to render emerging thought visible though unreadable.15 What follows, then, in this essay rests upon two important assumptions about the phenomenology of the gesture: first, that gestures are thus linked not only to thought itself, but to the sources of thought in the mind and to the very threshold where there takes place what McNeill calls ‘‘a single integrated process of utterance formation’’16 or ‘‘underlying starting place’’ or ‘‘growth point’’ wherein the genesis of what will eventually become spoken language is activated.17 Each new gesture,’’ he writes, ‘‘is the breaking edge of an inner discourse that we but partially express to the world.’’18 Part is revealed in the gesture itself, part remains forever inscrutable in the privacy of thought and in the mute complicity of the body from which that thought arose. As such, the boundary at which gestural meaning plays itself out is also the boundary between the idiosyncratic nature of the individual human being – body and mind – and the social spaces. This gestural boundary amounts to a juncture between the inner workings of thought and the external workings of language, that

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

733

is, between the freedom of the gesture and ‘‘the socially regulated aspects that come from the conventions of language.’’19 It marks, in other words, the impasse between the interior person and the world. Greta’s gesture defies translation because the interiority of its meaning, linked as it is to the intimacy of her particular humanity, will not allow itself to be brought fully to light. This region of inchoate, inexpressible meaning is that to which gestures refer and from which they arise, a region behind or below language before it is formed into words, a realm in which language exists in a fullness of silence, haunted by its own origins and, as such, by the very origins of humanness, where language thus seems indistinguishable from the unspoken intimacies of personhood. The second assumption is that we might think of the gesture of poetic language as a performing body in this same way. The poetic word as a gesture of this kind thus conveys meaning differently ff from everyday language, the motion of gesture having more mobility and a closer kinship with the idiosyncrasies of the human due to its affinity with symbolic figuration. As McNeill writes, ‘‘The gesture supplies the idiosyncratic, the personal, and the context-specific aspects of thought.’’20 As such, gestures are part of a language system, but they cannot operate as a system on their own. This aspect, however, actually enhances the autonomy of the gesture: ‘‘Precisely because gestures are not constrained by the requirements of a code or language, they are free to incorporate only the salient and relevant aspects of the context.’’21 In other words, the gesture behaves much the way a poetic symbol operates within the context of the form and language of the poem. Merleau-Ponty, speaking of dreams, myths and poetic imagery, writes that they ‘‘are not linked to their meaning by a relation of sign to significance.’’22 The meaning contained there ‘‘is not a notational meaning, but a direction of our existence.’’ In other words, by virtue of their affinity to gesture, poetic images are connected to meaning through their motion as gesture, embodying a tendency, a sense of where or of that towards which desire moves. I would like to argue that the gesture inherent in poetic language always tends in the direction of the fragile intimacies of personhood, in the silent fullness of their unspoken, unspeakable inwardness. Conroy watches Gretta’s pose on the stair as she looks away listening to distant music. He leans in her direction and listens for her listening. This is the gesture of poetic language, this leaning, and, in the end, isn’t this how we ourselves read poetry? We often cannot say what poems ‘‘mean,’’ but we listen for the poem’s listening as though what it hears is at the heart of the matter of our humanness. This act in itself, this posture of listening, often consoles us.

734

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

But it is not only that, not merely the listening: in poetic language we humans are implicated, not only through our faculties of thought, but through the body as well. The gesture is, by nature, corporeal,23 requiring the linguistic gesture to mimic the body and its own unique forms of expression, riddled with the body’s peculiar density of secrets. Vico even goes so far as to suggest that language originated with gestures and that, subsequently, all poetic figures originated with the human body, transfiguring the body into symbolic expression.24 There is a striking connection here with McNeill. Indeed, speaking not of poetic figure but of gesture, McNeill writes, for example, that as the hand gestures, ‘‘the hand is not the hand,’’ but a symbol of something taking place, presenting thought in action; just as Dupre suggests above, speaking of Greta, in gesture the body becomes something other than itself, expressing in this case ‘‘depth and interiority,’’ and even ‘‘a manifestation of spirit.’’ Likewise, the gesture of poetic language signifies the performative nature of the language of the poem in which the word is not merely the word, but a symbolic body of words ‘‘taking place,’’ taking its place as the only place that matters. Although he writes that ‘‘what a gesture expresses is ‘there’ in the gesture itself,’’ as I have said above, Gadamer also makes the point that the gesture is both ‘‘wholly corporeal and wholly spiritual’’ and that ‘‘like language, the gesture always reflects a world of meaning to which it belongs.’’25 The symbol always activates a synecdoche in poetry, that fragment which suggests the completion of itself, or that wholeness which suggests inclusion of a missing part. The word ‘‘symbol’’ derived from the Ancient Greek, ‘‘sumbolon’’ or ‘‘symbolon’’ – mark, sign, contract, covenant – was, according to Gadamer, a technical term in ancient Greek for a token of remembrance, the tessera, a clay disk broken unevenly in two and kept by a guest as a sign of welcome. In this way, a host might recognize one whom he already knows.26 The symbol, like the tessera, mimics the body, reaching for that which it holds dear, harboring within its recesses the contours of its missing piece, emphasizing incompleteness while implying and promising wholeness. ‘‘In the case of the symbol,’’ writes Gadamer, ‘‘the particular represents itself as a fragment of being that promises to complete and make whole whatever corresponds to it.’’27 It is always, in some way, the mortally human that corresponds to the promise of poetic language. In ordinary reality, the life of a single human being may seem fragmentary and isolated in its interiority and alterity, but when accounted for in the poetic gesture as symbol, within the specialized poetic ‘‘orbit,’’ it too becomes part of a welcoming, sheltering wholeness. ‘‘Today,’’ writes Derrida in his essay eulogizing Emmanuel

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

735

Levinas, ‘‘... our infinite sadness must shy away from everything in mourning that would turn toward nothingness ...’’28 Likewise, the poem’s tendency, its direction, its turning as symbol, is not toward nothingness but in the direction of significance. By virtue of the gesture, the language of the poem counters death, creating another orbit or context with a ‘‘law’’ of its own, asserting above all that there is something, something of substance, both in language and in the human being interdependently, that bespeaks welcome. Above all other aspects, the symbolic poetic gesture is precisely this, an unspoken, tacitly understood linguistic welcome to meaning. Thereby, the welcome is extended to all things human and to their relations and connections in the world, spun together in all their complexity, diversity and confusion into a pattern of standing hospitality, by virtue of the habit of custom inherent in poetic language, and by virtue of the desire of that gesture to offer ff shelter, however temporary, to the insignificant stranger who, by virtue of the gestural context, is not insignificant and no longer a stranger. In so doing, the gesture asserts the poem’s version of ‘‘the law,’’ in direct opposition to what Heidegger calls ‘‘death’s law,’’ setting into motion its desirous attempts to set down an account of the particularities, of traces, of those ordinary things which express the magnitude of the human being, one who might otherwise disappear alone in an unremarkable silence. In other words, the poetic gesture is a humane disruption, an intrusively generous effort ff to participate in what Dupre calls the ‘‘essence of the real,’’ and to redeem it through the symbolic power of the language of poetry to take notice and to take into account. I would like to argue, then, that this very act constitutes the primary linguistic gesture of the poetic event in general and of the poetry of Wisława Szymborska in particular. Szymborska, in her effort ff to participate in the real, turns our attention to the transient even ephemeral fragments of being, while leaning in the direction of permanence and of common human experience. Most interesting, for the purpose of this paper, is the way in which her poetry is infused with gestures that are not cultural or historical but simply human. In this way, Szymborska activates her own version of what Charity Scribner calls ‘‘the work of mourning’’ in which, through symbolization, the poet does not seek to transcend grief but rather ‘‘respectfully encircles the voids revealed by intractable loss,’’29 the kind of loss that transcends racial, national and historical categories. Like Thetis, Szymborska circumscribes with her poetic imprint the openness, the white space, the mute silence, the region of mortality, wherein we may regard that magnitude of a single life whose

736

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

extraordinary absence is configured and signified in the ordinary parts, in the symbolic fragments, in the ‘‘tesserae’’ that the poem collects, an absence toward whom the language of the poem tends. Let us begin with Szymborska’s ‘‘Conversation with a Stone,’’ an attempt to engage a stone in conversation with blind faith in the possibility of welcome, an optimism so characteristic of her poetic style. Heidegger writes that ‘‘a stone is worldless.’’30 The very idea of bringing together these two – conversation and stone – represents an idealistic attempt to discover or to forge an impossible alliance between human and nonhuman, between world and worldlessness. Of conversation Heidegger writes elsewhere that ‘‘it is only as conversation that language is essential,’’ allowing us to ‘‘hear from one another’’ and manifesting that on which we humans agree and ‘‘on the basis of which we are united and so are essentially ourselves.’’ This conversation is always a ‘‘single conversation’’ in which the conversation itself and historical existence become one and the same thing.31 The gesture of speaking in this way, to engage the nonworld of the stone in conversation, signifies the most idealistic of gestures, that is, to welcome not only nature but also the mute material substance of the world into the context of this singular dialogue of the human. The speaker in ‘‘Conversation ..’’ wishes to investigate the interior of the stone, she claims, to satisfy her curiosity, ‘‘to have a look around,’’ to say she was there, nothing very serious – she is not unhappy or homeless, she does not ‘‘seek refuge for eternity.’’ Yet like so many before her, she initiates in the poem a meditative, systematic search for some empirical knowledge, true and essential, about the core of things and the reality of the physical world, which includes not only the stone, but a drop of water, a leaf, a hair from her own head. If one may discover something about the essence of the physical world, one may uncover something about the mysteries of the body and its powers, its relation to soul, its inevitable disintegration. In his essay on the poetry of Aleksander Wat, Baranczak writes that ‘‘evil, suffering ff and disintegration permeate the world in its every aspect, from history to nature’’ making the point that, in Wat’s poetry, there is no chance of finding refuge in the realm of nature even as he attempts to escape into the world of stones.32 Baranczak likens Wat’s mention of stones to Szymborska’s poem and to Zbigniew Herbert’s W ‘‘Pebble,’’ all written at about the same time, and he points out that in Wat, the eff W ffort to find refuge leads to disillusionment. Szymborska’s speaker, on the contrary, keeps a lighthearted tone throughout, but will not be turned away even as she grows impatient. ‘‘I haven’t got two thousand centuries,’’ she says; in fact, her gesture is so

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

737

insistent and relentless that it carries the day and precludes even doubts about the reciprocity of this ‘‘conversation,’’ which, as gesture, has activated a generative power of its own. As we have considered above, the gesture as symbol harbors a fitting response within its contours, not unlike a question that suggests its corresponding answer. The gesture to converse is like the offer ff of a gift in that respect. If one off ffers another a gift, that offer ff structures the interactive space between them. Any response – acceptance, rejection, indifference ff – will subsequently be perceived as a response to the offering ff of the gift. In this way, the gesture to converse makes a formal call, a demand, configuring the space between the speaker and the one to whom speech is directed, harboring, within the demand for meditative questioning, a fitting meditative response. Szymborska uses this power to her advantage in the poem, willfully blinding herself to what Heidegger calls the stone’s ‘‘worldlessness.’’ The speaker begins simply: ‘‘It’s only me, let me come in.’’ Likewise, the stone responds simply: ‘‘Go away.’’ The request is thus rejected the first time around, the second, the third; yet the speaker, who does not seem even to hear the stone’s responses throughout the poem continues to repeat the demand insistently in precisely the same words. Curiously, although the stone responds directly to the speaker’s statements, the speaker never responds to the expressions of the stone who makes various provocative and insightful remarks. Like the onion without ‘‘innards’’ in Szymborska’s well known, ‘‘The Onion,’’ the stone has no interior space, is all surface, is no different ff from a leaf, a drop of water, or even a human hair. Oddly, the mention of mortality brings up the matter of laughter, and although it must keep a straight face and lacks even the muscles to laugh, the stone is ‘‘bursting’’ with ‘‘vast’’ laughter and is, in other words, pure deflection through and through.33 Most philosophically engaging is the stone’s assertion that the speaker lacks ‘‘the sense of taking part.’’ And nothing will compensate for this lack: ‘‘Even sight heightened to become all-seeing / will do you no good without a sense of taking part,’’ says the stone. What do we make of these remarks? Can we even say that a conversation takes place if, in fact, one of the speakers does not even seem to hear the other? Should this poem not be titled, ‘‘Monologue of the Stone’’? And it seems as though the entire matter turns on this allimportant ‘‘sense of taking part’’. If we consider this interchange in light of what we have said of gesture, an interesting possibility presents itself. In response to the call of speech (the gesture of the speaker to engage the stone in conversation), the stone responds, with a rejection, yes, but in careful, thoughtful assertions sub-

738

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

stantiated by coherent argument directly related to what the speaker has said. The gesture of her speech has somehow called forth these speeches from the stone, but she cannot seem to hear its statements since she never responds to any of them directly. As a response to the gestural demand, however, the possibility presents itself that the stone’s responses are already embedded in the very configuration of the speaker’s demand for this conversation. Indeed, she cannot seem to ‘‘hear’’ them, although she herself has spoken symbolically, by her very questions, what the stone has said. The stone, of course, cannot gesture. Szymborska writes elsewhere of mother earth, a reference reminiscent of the Ancient Greek figure of Ananke, that ‘‘the Great Mother’’ has no face, no feet, barely a pair of arms. The only impulse is ‘‘to endure.’’34 In short, the Great Mother lacks a gesturing body thereby lacking the body knowledge necessary for any act beyond mute endurance. Likewise, the stone, lacking the dimension of spirit within the human body, lacks the ability to initiate conversation. Therefore, the stone’s speeches remain outside itself embedded in the symbolic nature of the speaker’s gestural demand, silent and unspoken except insofar as they are revealed within the context of the gesturing poem. Heidegger may shed light on the matter: when writing of his and Holderlin’s notion of the single conversation, he makes clear that this conversation consists of language, which transforms the world, which brings the gods into existence. He writes, ‘‘to the extent that it is precisely in the naming of the gods, and in the transmutation of the world into word, that the real conversation, which we ourselves are, consists. But the gods can acquire a name only by addressing and, as it were, claiming us.’’ In other words, the gods address us because we have named them and claim us because our language has called them to do so by calling them into conversation with us. However, like the speaker in Szymborska’s poem, we ourselves are the conversation. Serious questions arise here in which there is much at stake. Is the stone, then, like the gods – pure exteriority on one hand, pure interiority on the other – their participation in our lives or our participation in theirs wholly dependent upon the linguistic gestures we make in their direction? When we listen for the fullness of their silences, both of the stones and of the gods, are we listening merely for the silence embedded in our own linguistic desire for meaningful response? And what of speaking to another human being? Are we then also inventing half of the dialogue by the symbolic nature of our speech and the protean forms it may evoke? Heidegger writes that ‘‘we are a conversation – and that means: we can hear from one another.’’

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

739

But is it, then, that we only think that we hear the other when in reality we are hearing merely the silences of our own loneliness speaking itself ? If so, this would explain why the speaker in Szymborska’s poem does not hear the stone. She hears only her own persistent questions, not their implicit responses. Like word from the gods, the stone’s speech remains embedded in the silences of the speaker’s humanness and the deep desire therein for access to the world of being as well as egress from her own interior solitude. In order for a true conversation to take place, there must be a hearing on both sides. With stones, with something all surface, even when broken into fragments, there is not even the possibility of a hollow, echoing emptiness that might seem like a response as it does in Wordsworth’s romantic poem, ‘‘There Was a Boy,’’ about a young child whose call echoes through the valley, mingling his own voice with the sounds of nature.35 In Szymborska’s stone there remains a dull, dead, dense muteness just beneath the surface of its responses. The speaker’s words are deflected back to the speaker herself like messages undelivered; and for all her pleading, she encounters absolute failure at the close of the poem since the stone announces that it has no door, not a single point of entry. Nevertheless, since she cannot seem to hear even this, we have no reason to doubt that she will persist in her knocking and her demands. The poem is hopeful in this respect. The speaker wants a reciprocal conversation, a real conversation, not an invented one; thus, she does not take note of these solipsistic silences. We suspect that the curious dialogue will continue beyond the poem, transforming the gesture of conversation into various forms of questioning and of differing ff perspectives in the effort ff to develop what the stone calls ‘‘a sense of taking part.’’ We might say, then, that the symbolic gesture of speaking initiates an active inclination toward the other that comes about in tandem with the words as they are spoken. Szymborska writes more humorously elsewhere that in the context of her poetic ‘‘book,’’ ‘‘Even a simple, ‘Hi there,’ / when traded with a fish, / makes both the fish and you / feel quite extraordinary.’’36 The gesture itself, as we have said, carries its own meaning, its own hospitality, its own invitation, its own power to make of the ordinary moment one that is ‘‘quite extraordinary.’’ In ‘‘Conversation with a Stone,’’ this power is brought to bear upon the philosophical problem of our relation to the physical world. The question of mortality, although vital, is not central to this poem. In other poems, however, when speaking to and of the mortal human being directly, to the one who personifies defenselessness in its exposure to suffering ff and death, the issue becomes an ethical one and an urgent matter of real

740

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

speaking, turning the conversation more intensely focused in its intimacy of question, response, and responsibility. By the same token, the human silences and absences turn intensely problematic because they signify actual voices that, though silent and absent, are both autonomous and inaccessible – certainly suggested, like the conversation with the stone, within the contours of the speaking gesture, but not merely that. Levinas writes, ‘‘Every gesture of the Other was a sign addressed to me.’’37 Unlike the merely symbolic reciprocity of the stone, the existence of the Other gestures autonomously in a real response that amounts to the call of the Other’s nakedness in the face of extinction, and this question of death, writes Levinas, is also a response, but is in no sense a dialogue of the soul with itself.’’38 Unlike the stone, the Other speaks, with his own voice, in his own essential vocabulary, even in silence. He speaks in his very resistance to speaking by being what Goran Simic calls the inaccessible face that resists his pencil, which is ‘‘incapable of inventing the vocabulary of sorrow.’’39 The face of the Other, even in death, speaks by not speaking, a form of speaking that must always be reciprocal. Szymborska writes often of these deep and populous silences of otherness, keeping her conversational style yet sometimes foregoing the lighthearted touch characteristic of her poetry, as her tone becomes deeply serious, as the stakes become impossibly high. In the poem, ‘‘Starvation Camp Near Jaslo,’’ for example, the framework is again a conversation, but this time it is not with but about the silence. The two speak about the horrific occurrence with such reverence and intimacy regarding the dead that it is as though they wish to conjure the missing ones back into their midst by their very speech. The tone is almost biblical and unwaveringly intense and serious, echoing Book of Revelation: Write it down. Write it. With ordinary ink W on ordinary paper: they weren’t given food, they all died of hunger. All. How many? It’s ’ a large meadow. How much grass per head? W Write down: I don’t know.40

‘‘Write it down’’ echoes the injunction to John: ‘‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’’41 However, unlike the Book of Revelation, the symbolic number is irrelevant. Even the answer to the question ‘‘how many’’ matters only insofar as the actual number is not known. Within the scope of the gesture of this poem, in the context of value within which the conversation unfolds, human lives matter only individually, singly, as ‘‘the one,’’ each having an incalculable, inordinate

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

741

worth. The poem makes this point as it goes on to explain how history ‘‘rounds off skeletons’’ whereby ‘‘a thousand and one is still only a thousand’’ and the one, who became flesh, who occupied a cradle, who laughed and cried, who bounded down the stairs to play in the garden, now occupies no space ‘‘in the ranks’’ of the historical account. The poem’s conversing voices take note of the singularity of these beings, unprecedented and irreplaceable, in a dialogue that prayerfully imagines the experience and recounts the probable sufferings ff of those who died. The dead may not be gathered back, yet the poem remains firmly rooted in the ground of its own resolve to take notice and to take them into account. As Levinas insists, the question of death in the face of the other makes a call, a personal call that says, ‘‘You shall not commit murder.’’42 In response, we find awakened in us an ‘‘unlimited’’ responsibility and an assent to that responsibility in the form of an ‘‘unconditional yes,’’ one that bespeaks an ‘‘original fidelity to an indissoluble alliance.’’43 Levinas would undoubtedly reject the aesthetic context within which this call takes place as an ineffectual ff mediation or mitigation of responsibility. Yet he could not deny the power of what has traditionally been the sole purpose of poetic language, that is, to memorialize. Memory is embedded in the very style and sound of poetic language, inspired as it is by the muses, daughters of Mnemosyne. The poet may not ‘‘take back’’ those who have been lost, but she may take responsibility for them and assent to that responsibility by memorializing them in their silence. Indeed the poem ends with this exchange: ‘‘Write how quiet it is. / Y Yes.’’ Unlike the dense, mute, deflected ‘‘speaking’’ of the stone, here is a busy, autonomous quiet, harking from the fullness of missing presences, activating the gestural meaning of speech by not speaking. Szymborska responds in this way, giving her assent, time after time, in the poetry, in her unique conversational style. In this particular poem, her assent takes this form: the gesture to converse transfigures into the desire to gather, that is, to create a context, ‘‘with ordinary ink / on ordinary paper,’’ in which the dead are assembled though nameless, and their plight remembered. It is not unlike the gathering of shades in Homer’s Odyssey, or the imagined gathering of the dead at the close of Joyce’s story. Like Gretta’s moment on the staircase, the gestural context illuminates the ‘‘depth and interiority’’ of those persons who died, circumscribing a region where they may be gathered, remembered and mourned. Yet, in numerous poems, Szymborska draws attention to the singularity Y of the individual, to the scope of her vision that will admit only one

742

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

person at a time, to the necessity of gathering and remembering persons in a regrettably random fashion as they pass by in time and space. She apologizes to the numerous ones that slip by without notice, due to the limitations of her ability or her vision or of writing itself, due to the relentless advance of time and history. In ‘‘A Large Number,’’ she writes that although there are four billion people on earth, her imagination is bad with such large numbers, being still taken by particularity, settling on random faces in the dark, letting the rest go by without being taken into account. ‘‘I can’t tell you,’’ she writes, ‘‘how much I pass over in silence.’’ Even in her dreams, when a long-dead friend may stop by, ‘‘a single hand turns the knob.’’ She reiterates the unabashedly reductive orientation of her vision in one poem after another as though a procession of human beings and the particulars of their lives, their bodies and their effects ff are passing before her in an incessant stream, one by one, she missing most of them. Like Odysseus, she may speak to the dead only one at a time. These fragments that signify the ‘‘particulars’’ passing her by serve an interesting purpose with regard to gestural meaning. They take on the vitality of the synecdoche, a part signifying that which completes it, a wholeness creating a context wherein the part becomes significant in itself. Steiner writes that ‘‘context is at all times dialectical,’’44 and this is true of the gestural context. We begin to see that, if we consider them as gestures, all poems are a form of conversation. The context of the poem initiates a dialectic between the fragmented, seemingly isolated gestures within the poem and the overall motion of the poem itself as a textual ‘‘body’’ gesturing. The single hand turning the knob above provides a good example. That sudden gesture signifies the desire to converse with that one lost friend while drawing attention to the wider gestural orbit of the poem as a whole, which implies hospitality to the dead indiscriminately. There are many examples like this one in Szymborska’s poems: an infant’s fingernail signifying the ‘‘silence in all languages’’;45 a child’s solemn threading of a needle signifying the curious, unpredictable, prayerful nature of human occupation and preoccupation;46 lips molding ‘‘the speech’s meaning’’ demonstrating the link between the style and meaning, between body and speech;47 a sign of ‘‘salutation and farewell’’ in ‘‘a single glance’’; ‘‘for surplus and absence alike ... a single motion of the neck.’’48 There is the merciful act of ‘‘the heart’’ as it ‘‘plucks’’ the sleeping speaker ‘‘out of the whole’’ signifying the poem’s effort ff to delineate between the distinctiveness of the one and the earth-like sameness of the many.49 There is the knocking on the surface of the stone, as we have

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

743

seen, or tugging at life ‘‘by its leaf hem,’’ once again seeking entry into the ‘‘inside’’ of earthy substance.50 In addition to these, and perhaps most importantly, there are those gestures of disruption that intrude and become central to the overall framework of the poem: the possibility of ‘‘some mishap’’ that might ‘‘form a zigzag over essence,’’51 a doe that lifts her head and bounds independently about the poem like silence, unpredictable and free, complicit with the ‘‘revenge of the mortal hand,’’52 the ghostly yet tenacious ‘‘little soul’’ that freely roams the inhospitable landscape of history, left to its own devices in the otherwise tormented and suffocating ff confinement of the poem ‘‘Tortures.’’ 53 These individual, random, sudden gestures create in the poem a region of interconnectedness whereby the singularity of vision may be regarded in its relation to a vision of the whole – in a relation of ‘‘holiness,’’ Levinas might have said. Further, it indicates some permanent, perhaps universal, sense that by the effort ff to ‘‘take part,’’ poetically, one has created the very sort of connectedness necessary to reach what Dupre calls ‘‘the essence of the real.’’ In order to consider this final point, let us dwell on the poem ‘‘Tortures,’’ its gestures and its meaning. As in ‘‘Conversation with a Stone,’’ the poem begins with an insistent statement, repeated at the opening of each stanza: ‘‘Nothing has changed.’’ This kind of insistence, transforms simple repetition into poetic gesture. ‘‘Insistence moves us,’’ writes the poet Wallace Stevens in his book of essays, N Necessary Angel,54 and indeed we are moved because we recognize that insistence is impelled by a desire that is fresh, real, and to a certain degree, involuntary. Roberto Calasso recalls Iphimedeia, who performs a repeated gesture of love by the sea to Poseidon. There is something ‘‘blissful and timeless’’ about this gesture, he writes.55 It is the motion of substance toward the other, ‘‘motion that cannot be satisfied, satisfied only in its unfailing repetition.’’ Because it is unfailing and moved by desire, Iphimedeia’s insistent gesturing body fully expects that Poseidon will come to her, the question implicit in her longing already implying the only acceptable way of answering itself. I suppose that every poet hopes, as Wallace Stevens surely did, that the object of the poem’s desire will suddenly rise one day from the sea of words like Poseidon, who did come and who wrapped himself around the gesturing Iphimedeia like a perfection of thought. Szymborska’s poem about torture is a knowing, gesturing, linguistic ‘‘body’ of this kind. It begins with a similar intensity of insistent desire, uncharacteristically gesturing toward the collectivity of the suffering ff bodies much as Iphimedeia gestures toward the sea. The body, after all,

744

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

provides the most obvious region of commonality for humans. More than any other aspect of our humanness, and especially in suffering, ff it ushers us out of the usual delineations of nationality or race or historical moment and into a realm of the physical wherein our singular personhood merges into the many, unremarkable and undistinguished. Only when the body expresses the person, the personality of the person, the ‘‘heart’’ of the person, by virtue of its gestural idiosyncrasies, does its inward separateness appear, as it does in Gretta on the staircase. However, in ‘‘Tortures,’’ even the gestures seem to be occurring by nameless, undifferentiated, ff suffering ff beings. The nameless ‘‘body’’ becomes a ‘‘reservoir of pain’’ that eats, breathes and sleeps, that gestures as it has throughout history when under siege: it trembles, the hands shield the head, it ‘‘writhes, jerks, and tugs,’’ falls to the ground and ‘‘pulls up its knees.’’ The sameness of these things, the responses of any body to outward physical torment, invokes the realm of the mythical wherein the human enters a fold of collectivity, illuminating to the archetype, destructive to the individual. ‘‘Poetry and myth,’’ as Grossman writes, ‘‘are contradictory phenomena.’’ Myth establishes a cultural ground upon which individuation becomes lost in collectivity, forming itself around a preference for the prototype. Poetry, on the other hand, displaces the mythical by inscribing upon that ground the singular countenance. Consequently, the poem must seek to establish what Grossman calls ‘‘a program ... for obtaining access to myth without loss of self in the lethal complexities of the collectivity.’’56 The contradiction between myth and poetry, if a certain delicate balance of tension is maintained, results in a productive and urgent struggle between primordial totality and the infinite horizon of significance of the singular other toward whom the poem’s desire moves. This struggle produces in the poem, against a backdrop of mythic integration, one who will not be integrated, who resists the pencil, vocabulary and inscription, who will not receive the poem’s touch yet remains present and sheltered within the boundaries of the poem’s imprint. The performative meaning of ‘‘Tortures’’ takes place on the threshold between poetry and myth, at the space of tension between the archetype and the individual, in the form of gesture, ‘‘wholly corporeal, wholly spiritual,’’ to use Gadamer’s phrase. Indeed, the moment seems suspended in mythical time by virtue of the repetition, the poem turning back upon itself in cyclical fashion, the circularity punctuated only by the repeated phrase ‘‘nothing has changed,’’ insistent, unwavering. ‘‘To achieve meaning, one must punctuate,’’ writes Steiner, and indeed this punctuating phrase is critical to the emergence of the meaning in that it begs to be

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

745

interrupted. Punctuation, in this case, creates formal boundaries (boundaries in the form), not unlike musical measures, wherein a disruption might take place, a momentary stop, a transgressive syncopation, a cadenza. Space is prepared for a manifestation of the spontaneous, uncategorized and substantial ‘‘real,’’ arising suddenly in this rarified and specialized context, the poem summons a disruption to its topography from the ‘‘sea’’ of bodies in the form of a singular ‘‘little soul,’’ liberated, wandering freely about so inhospitable a landscape as these bodies have become: The little soul roams among those landscapes, disappears, returns, draws near, moves away, evasive and a stranger to itself, now sure, now uncertain of its own existence whereas the body is and is and is and has nowhere to go.57

Responding to the call of the poem, this ‘‘little soul’’ disrupts the mythic continuity, interrupts the circularity, draws attention to itself, innocently and unintentionally, by the unpredictability and freedom of its movements, by the particularity and fragility of its elusive, uncertain, yet inviolable nature – a spirit presence of the ‘‘real’’ moving in the vicinity of that substance which merely ‘‘is and is and is’’ and to which it belongs in a relation of tenderness. This figure does indeed express, as Dupre suggests of the passage from Joyce, ‘‘the entire depth and interiority of a person’’ whose body appears as ‘‘a manifestation of spirit.’’ That spirit interposes its erratic and precarious nature forth into the poem even as it undermines the suffocating ff regularity and predictability of bodily suffering. ff The body ‘‘is and is and is’’ while, by contrast, the soul comes and goes, is uncertain of its existence, is a stranger even to itself, harboring within the recesses of silence its own originary secret: the palpable nearness of the event of its own absence. It ‘‘speaks’’ to us from the quiet of this intolerable possibility within the web of connections and relations created for it by the customary gestures of hospitality of this poem. More than that, it speaks to that possibility in us, creating for us the same connections, the same hospitality. In responding to the poem’s gesture to take part in its existence, it responds by participating in ours, wholly and without reserve, from the echoing depths of its interior strangeness. The spirit addresses us, but not as Heidegger claims the gods address us, that is, through our naming of them. The ‘‘little soul’’ speaks to us from the autonomy of its position just outside language, on the crux of

746

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

transition whereby language is still too wholly corporeal to be translated. Thus liberated into a terrible freedom where it will not succumb to territorial and confining linguistic, cultural or historical definitions – of race, of culture, of gender, of ethnicity – the soul speaks to us from its own position, leaning toward us from the singularity of its own magnitude, positing its own sudden version of ‘‘ultimacy.’’ As it does so, we become implicated into a simple and irreducible knowledge, an awareness of an absolute, namely, the absolute singularity and uniqueness of the nature of this soul, who wanders, like us, through the various inhospitable landscapes of human history. Understood in this way, the poem creates a moral imperative that predisposes the reader to create a place of welcome, of courtesy, of shelter for the particular soul, the one in the poem and the one in the reader. Thus, it establishes what Steiner calls ‘‘the intimate complementarities’’ between the act of reading, the taking of responsibility or ‘‘the motion of answerability’’ on one hand, and our own inevitable disappearance, the ‘‘wholly personal hospitality we owe our own death’’ on the other.58 As Steiner says of the readers of a Wallace Stevens poem: ‘‘We bend closer to the speaker as to a guest or traveler whose voice tires.’’59 Szymborska’s ‘‘little soul’’ gestures to us, outside culture and history, from within a newly fabricated web of distinction that is the poem, as though from the very source of the ‘‘essence of the real.’’ We gesture in response, knowing suddenly the difficulty of distinguishing which one of us is the guest and which the host. T he Sage Colleges T roy, N New York

NOTES 1 Eva Hoffman, ff After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the L egacy of the Holocaust (New York: Public Affairs, ff 2004), p. 152 2 Ibid., p. 57. 3 Louis Dupre, M Metaphysics and Culture (Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1994), p. 38. 4 R. P. Blackmur, ‘‘Language as Gesture,’’ L anguage as Gesture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1952), p. 5. 5 David McNeill, Hand and Mind: W hat Gestures Reveal about T hought (Chicago U of Chicago P, 1992). From here on, when I refer to ‘‘gesture,’’ I will be referring to the type defined by McNeill and considered in this book. 6 Blackmur, p. 3. 7 Ibid., p. 6.

POETRY OF WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

747

8 Wisława Szymborska, The Railroad Station,’’ W isława Szymborska: Poems New and Collected, Stanisław Baranczak and Clare Cavanaugh (trans.) (New York: Harcourt. 1998). All poems referred to in this essay are taken from this text. Only the titles of the poems will be listed from this point on. 9 George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: U of Chicago P. 1989), p. 230. 10 Dupre, op. cit., pp. 8–9. 11 Ibid., p. 11. 12 McNeill, op. cit., p. 5. 13 ‘‘Hans Georg Gadamer, Relevance of the Beautiful, Nicholas Walker (trans.) (New York: Cambridge UP, 1991), p. 79. 14 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 2. 15 MeNeill, op. cit., p. 12. 16 Ibid., p. 35. 17 Ibid., p. 219. 18 Ibid., p. 2. 19 Ibid., p. 2. 20 Ibid., p. 2. 21 Ibid., p. 41. 22 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith (trans.) (New York: Routledge, 1962), p. 285. 23 Gadamer writes that ‘‘every gesture is human, but not every gesture is exclusively the gesture of a human being.’’ From the essay ‘‘Image and Gesture’’ in Relevance of the Beautiful, p. 79. 24 Giambattista Vico, T he N New Science of Giambattista V ico, Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (trans.) (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), pp. 129–130. 25 Gadamer. p. 79. 26 Ibid., p. 31. 27 Ibid., p. 32. Work of Mourning, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (eds.), Pascale28 Derrida, T he W Anne Brault and Michael Naas (trans.) (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2001), p. 204. 29 Charity Scribner, ‘‘Parting with a View: Wisława Szymborska and the Work of Mourning,’’ T he Polish Review, 44:3 (1999): 311–28. 30 Martin Heidegger, ‘‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’’ in Poetry, L anguage, T hought, Albert Hofstadter (trans.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 45. 31 Martin Heidegger, ‘‘Holderlin and the Essence of Poetry,’’ in Existence and Being, Werner Broch (ed.) (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1967). W 32 Baranczak, ‘‘The Late Poetry of Aleksander Wat,’’ Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 33:2 (1989). 33 A Polish friend tells me that the words Szymborska uses here to indicate muscles for laughing (‘‘Nie mam miees´ni smiechu’’) suggest muscles of the stomach as opposed to muscles of the face. This brings to mind Bruno Snell’s assertions in his book T he Discovery of Mind about the soul or mind or heart ( phren or thymos) in Homer as a motion of the organs of the diaphragm or stomach. 34 Szymborska, ‘‘A Palaeolithic Fertility Fetish,’’ p. 102. 35 William Wordsworth, English Romantic W riters, David Perkins (ed.) (New York: Harcourt Brace. 1995). 36 Szymborska, ‘‘I’m Working on the World,’’ p. 3.

748

KRISTINE S. SANTILLI

37 From Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents (Cited by Derrida in Adieu, PascaleAnne Brault and Michael Naas (trans.) [Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999]), p. 7. 38 See Derrida, Adieu, note 49, p. 134. 39 Goran Simic, ‘‘The Face of Sorrow,’’ Salmagundi, 100 (Fall 1993): 99. 40 Szymborska, ‘‘Starvation Camp Near Jaslo,’’ p. 42. 41 ‘‘Revelation,’’ XXI.5, T he Cambridge Annotated Study Bible: NRS Version, Howard Clark Kee (ed.) (New York: Cambridge UP, 1989). 42 Emmanuel Levinas, T otality and Infinte: An Essay on Exteriority, Alphonso Lingis (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969), p. 199. 43 Derrida, Adieu, p. 3. 44 Steiner, op. cit., p. 163. 45 Szymborska, ‘‘Classifieds,’’ p. 5. 46 Szymborska, ‘‘Maybe All This,’’ p. 248. 47 Szymborska, ‘‘A Moment in Troy,’’ p. 31. 48 Szymborska, ‘‘Travel Elegy,’’ p. 38. 49 Szymborska, ‘‘To My Heart, on Sunday,’’ p. 100. 50 Szymborska, ‘‘Allegro Ma Non Troppo,’’ p. 132. 51 Szymborska, ‘‘A Palaeolithic Fertility Fetish,’’ p. 102. 52 Szymborska, ‘‘The Joy of Writing,’’ p. 67. 53 Szymborska, ‘‘Tortures,’’ p. 202. 54 W Wallace Stevens, T he N Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), p. 5. 55 Roberto Calasso, T he M Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Tim Parks (trans.) (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 67. 56 Allen Grossman, T he Sighted Singer: T wo Works on Poetry for Readers and W riters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992), pp. 322–23. 57 Szymborska, ‘‘Tortures,’’ p. 202. 58 Steiner, p. 50. 59 Ibid., p. 162.

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O) D: A CRITICISM OF WISDOM AND THE FOUNDATION OF A POETIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE BASED ON GOETHE’S FAUST

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be: And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All place shall be hell that is not heaven. Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, scene VI

Proem. There are two and just two ways of reflecting upon an intellectual or artistic work: the first one is to figure out its inner structure, the second, to bring to light the theoretical or practical problems that it entails. The first reflection is the reader’s, the second is the thinker’s, and it seeks to explain an idea more than a dramatic framework or a previous content, which is why it deserves to be considered philosophic stricto sensu. Such a reading will be developed thereinafter through the opposition between wisdom and sensibleness, which are the respective grounds of what will be called the metaphysical and the poetical conceptions of man’s nature and life. Briefly, a metaphysical conception of man claims that the end of life is the fusion of him with the transcendent ground of reality, which has been traditionally identified with God (reason whereby that conception is finally akin to religiosity); instead, the poetical conception states that whichever end in life is determined by the immanent condition of man’s being, that is to say, finitude. According to the general orientation of these lines, the originality of Goethe’s Faust F lies in its having fathomed the implications of the poetical conception in order to assume a new attitude towards finitude, which is why the work is a milliary stone both for the history of Western literature and for the philosophical conceptions of man. I

Why has been wisdom traditionally identified with imperviousness and why the wise man has stood for someone alien to the stirs inherent to a 749 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 749–785. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

750

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

very keen life? Is it because man has somehow felt that his having broken with animality – in the triple meaning of this term: immediacy, stupidity and brutality – is a transgression that has to be infinitely made up for the sacrifice of the primitive drives that he forwent when he turned his back on his being simply another member of nature? Perhaps because he is conscious that if he let passions take over he would be destroyed by their own strength? It is likely. If it were so, it would be understandable why the wise man has been imagined both in Western and Eastern traditions as an old person with the empty sight characteristic of whom is permanently engrossed in a contemplation potent enough to do without pupils, which reminds moreover that, notwithstanding his age, the wise man is not weak at all: on the contrary, whether he is as meagre as the Indian ascetic or as fat as the Japanese Buddha or as desperate as the Jewish prophet, he stares a reality unattainable for the simple mortals, who are carried away even by their most fleeting whims, whereas the wise man concentrates his strength in what he stares. This evinces what is no doubt the most important feature of the wise man’s image: its bind with transcendence. Insofar as he is free from the passional blindness of youth as well as from the worries concerning immanency (which are sparked off by the impossibility of providing for every eventuality), the wise man is devoted to meditate upon the would-be ontological ground that makes feasible the unity of reality in spite of the multiplicity of phenomena, whether its existence can be conceivable by itself or through the becoming of the whole (which are the two fundamental meanings of ‘‘transcendence’’). And precisely because he participates of the transcendent unity of everything, the wise man is not carried away by any singularity; instead of giving himself over to the passions that always lie after appearances, as the others do, he is absorbed in an inexhaustible vision. His only passion (if the term is still applicable to a movement that leads to a reality beyond time and space) is the ‘‘love for wisdom’’, which has been canonized in the famous myth of the den wherewith the book VII of the Republic begins. When the wise man has ascended to the region where everything appears under the light of intelligence, and once he has returned – by some reason that Plato never explicates clearly – to the den wherein the unwise men live among shadows, he cannot share anymore the way of living of these ones because he knows that it does not tally with real things, which is why he seems thenceforth to be out of his wits: And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

751

before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice [...] (516d).1

Now, although the so-called ‘‘love for wisdom’’ has to be considered the most powerful passion, and although it demands a series of contradictory states of mind inasmuch as it is experienced in the middle of an existence that has to be lived together with the others, it is not explainable by the violent simultaneity of passion, whose insurmountable contradiction lies in the fact that it requires an absolute satisfaction by means of a relative object: whichever passion, indeed, mistakes what is singular for a universal, which is why it is quenched as soon as it has got its object and why its disappearance leaves an emptiness a lot more hurtful than the previous want (which provokes, more often than not, that it changes into its contrary). Instead, the passion or, rather, the love for wisdom is supposedly felt as a personal plenitude throughout because it does not spring from a particular but from a universal object and withal it does not unfold in time but beyond it, however much its psychological process must be set off by comparison with the rave of passion. Thus, love for wisdom, which is wisdom itself as it causes an inexhaustible pleasure, is identical to imperviousness insofar as it is always fulfilled beforehand by definition. This ontological plenitude that the wise man embodies is just half of the question: the other half is that it has been idealized in such a way from Plato onwards that it has become the paradigm for human existence as such, which is evident in what is surely the utmost carrying out of it: the image of Socrates in his last moments, according to the narration in the final sections of the Phaedo (115b and ff ff.): after having spent his last day analysing with his disciples and some other youths the soundness of four proofs of the immortality of the soul, Socrates, obeying the unfair sentence pronounced against him by the ignorance and the zealotry of the Athenians, drinks the hemlock and dies serenely, utterly convinced that death is just a step to the eternal blessedness. His confidence is above all notorious in his last words, when he reminds his friend Crito that they owe Asclepius a cock, which suggests that death is for him the cure of that unbearable ill called life: ‘‘Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend; concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time that I have known, he was the wisest, and justest and best’’ (118c).2 Dwelling upon this with a little of that irony whereby Socrates himself was famous among his fellow townsmen, it is not hard to project the singular imperviousness that Plato praised so much not only through his

752

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

master’s last day but trough his entire life, for Socrates always had the sublime countenance of someone who has overcome the stirs of common men. In accordance with the axial passages of the Phaedo, the Symposium and the Phaedrus (which could be considered on the whole as the kernel of the Platonic characterization of wisdom), the state of imperviousness is not incidental but decisive for the wise man, who enjoys it from the onset: as a matter of fact, imperviousness is the unique aim of the vital development when this is ordained by philosophy. From this slant, it is remarkable the passage where Alcibiades narrates his unsuccessful enticement of Socrates (Symposium, 216c and ff ff.): when he says how Socrates remained impervious while he caressed and kissed him, one realizes that Plato intends to canonize his master’s attitude as the archetype for whomsoever yearning after a life alien both to the sudden bursts of emotions and to the elemental manifestations of sensibility and sensuality. Now, notwithstanding its indubitable stateliness, the image of Socrates, specially in the quoted fragment, reveals unexpectedly some odd features that lead to wonder if the identification of wisdom and the lack of passion is not a mystification at bottom, by the by the most sinister of culture. For what is not clear at all is why the wise man’s pupil has to be ever fixed distant from the others, the inebriated and passionate ones who live groping for vital plenitude. In fact, why the face of whom has contemplated truth must remains completely expressionless? Should it be not the contrary? For after his having rejoiced in the vision of reality in itself and having kept alive its memory through life in a way that the vulgar individual never gets, the wise man should be permanently enthusiastic and his face should be as expressive as possible, instead of being, literally, the face of a dead one. In other words, there is in the Platonic image of the wise man a contradiction between enthusiasm and imperviousness that is by no means understandable: for if the vision of transcendence is the most disturbing pleasure that anyone can experience, it should carry away whoever enjoys it, in such a way that he, more than being simply excited, should be immerse in a raving hardly differentiable ff from sheer madness, which was noticed by Plato himself, who in the beginning of the central speech by Socrates in the Phaedrus (244a and ff ff.) equals wisdom to madness, which, however, was not figured out in the rest of the Platonic corpus, which is rather determined by the image of imperviousness and total disdain for passion. Whether this odd contradiction of spirituality and imperviousness stands for a philosophical depth that Plato really tried to understand or

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

753

it is merely an incidental reference with no major weight in the development of his thought is a matter utterly beyond our present interests. What is important now is to consider that someone sceptical enough must ask for the meaning of such a contradiction after a prolonged contemplation of the traditional image of the wise man, specially because the contradiction does not entail only exaltation but, concretely, the kind of passion that is perceptible in whom is deep in thought. Of course, average vision is not up to the question, for it blurs when it is fixed on something for more than a moment; nevertheless, when one endures the image for some time, one discovers the absolute dissimilitude of that imperturbability with the exaltation of a thinking man. No enthusiastic person has an impervious face, let alone the one that exults after having fathomed life, for whomsoever has grasped something by himself – above all, the complexity of life – knows that the mental concentration implies a facial and a corporeal transformation: man frowns, closes his eyes or at least looks down when he is really thinking, but never adopts such a majestic (should I say petrified?) countenance. Thereat, the Socratic image does not match the real human way of kenning, which is, on the contrary, visible by unmistakable gestures. It is as plain as a pikestaff then that the wise man’s traditional image has nothing to do with spirituality neither by its false stillness nor by its aberrant imperviousness. The question is whose image is it; and the answer is obvious: it is God’s, not man’s. Only God could think without being unsettled by the strength of ideas, inasmuch as thinking is the same as being for Him. Beyond time and body, there is no difference ff between ideas and reality (an intuition that is the base of rationalism, concretely Spinoza’s) and, instead of bewilderment and unsettledness, God enjoys an ontological identity completely alien to man, which is also sound for the hard, almost unattainable harmony between life and understanding. In sooth, the most important feature in wisdom traditional image is that life is comparable to the gradual embodiment of a noble aspiration that culminates in an ineffable ff union with Truth, with Good, with God Himself, man’s only worthwhile goal. And although a sudden contraction is always feasible (specially when someone has gone farther in the way of illumination, for then the danger of total blindness is more close at hand than ever), it will hardly happen when man is entirely determined by wisdom, for this is not an abstract representation but a living potency that spreads through all his being and pierces his heart: insofar as he lets it take over him, he will supposedly find consolation for all his sorrows

754

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

and the multiple spheres of his life will be concentred on a perfect selfconsciousness. In accordance with this, the wise man’s image reveals that its imperviousness springs from having being mistaken for a human achievement what actually is a theological mystification: at bottom, its stands for the want to be omnipotent as God. What matters now is if there is an image of wisdom up to tally with man: the only being whose existence is totally determined by time, whose intelligence lives on prejudices and absentmindedness, and whose desire is fanned by an original split that metaphysics has categorized by the dualism between soul and body. Considering this, there should not be any. Nevertheless, since man lacks a definite form, he either adopts whichever he can or strives to create a new one, no matter how monstrous it can seem in front of God’s absolute glory or of the regulated potency of Nature. Whatever his choice is, it will stand for his personal conception of wisdom. Of these alternatives, the Western tradition has followed the first one from the Hellenes onwards, and humanism is its utmost achievement. An excellent example of it is precisely the image of Socrates that was slowly unfolded by Plato throughout the Dialogues: a man that has pledged himself from the onset to seek truth and justice at any cost, however much he must get rid of his most intimate drives, thanks to which he gets the imperviousness that is nothing but the other face of his stillness: a demigod or a demon, which is almost the same, inasmuch as both figures bind transcendence with immanency. Thus, this image matches the ancient idea of man as a microcosm, which was with no doubt the very core of metaphysical humanism from the Hellenes to the Renaissance. Instead, the second possibility, which lies in creating a vital plenitude totally different ff from divine stateliness or animal impulsivity, was not even conceivable before modern thought denounced the theological mystification and strove to outline an image of man that were not a mere imitation or, rather, a creation of God. As far as I know, this enterprise of literal profanation of the image of the wise man was the main goal of most of the eighteen century culture (above all, of Enlightenment), whose diversity and inner dynamics cannot be figured out here, which is not necessary moreover, since for us they are simply the background of the work wherewith we shall deal: Goethe’s Faust F . II

The general assumption of the following lines is that the Faust F sets out a conception of life that seeks to get rid of whichever metaphysical

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

755

mystification and to assume a critical ken of man’s vital projection, not beyond time but through it, which entails the substitution of ‘‘wisdom’’ by ‘‘sensibleness’’. Whereas wisdom stems from a theological framework that presupposes an absolute existential ground, sensibleness springs from a consideration of the poetic vital possibilities furnished by the multiplicity of desire and want; it is not after the literal transubstantiation of life that turns man into a kind of demigod or divine creature, who lives independently of his body and his circumstances, but after a transfiguration of immanency that opens the way to that infinite becoming called history. Thereby, sensibleness aims to that communion of man and time that is the very essence of spirituality instead of aiming to elevate the human being to a perfection that never makes up for the sacrifice of the so-called worldly life, that metaphysics belittles on behalf of an ideal eternity:3 I sped through the World that’s there: Gripped by the hair every appetite, And let go those that failed to delight, Let those fly that quite escaped me. I’ve desired, achieved my course, Desired again, and so, with force, Stormed through life: first powerfully, But wisely now: and thoughtfully. Earth’s sphere’s familiar enough to me, The view beyond is barred eternally: The fool who sets his sights up there, Creates his own likeness in the air! Let him stand, and look around him well: This world means something to the capable.4

This revaluation of immanent life is the bond between the two parts of the Faust F , whose dramatic development covers the interior, the individual and the socio-historical plains of human existence by the protagonist’s yearning to get an absolute comprehension of nature that is not so much an intellectual representation of a would-be cosmic finality or of empirical determination as the principle of the vital fusion of man and the sheer energy that sustains every reality, which means that Faust, far from seeking a rational knowledge of nature, wishes to participate in the unfolding of it or, rather, to provide it with a way of being that goes beyond the cyclical recurrence of the organic processes but participates at any rate of the deepest potency that is manifest by an odd regularity: for example, disasters and epidemics are so constant that they seem to be as regular as the alternation of seasons. Therefore, in accordance with

756

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

our general slant, the aim of Faust as character is to show that nature, the ground of life that matches sensibleness, is not the eternal reiteration of an original principle but the everlasting manifestation of a genetic potency, which is not definable independently of human struggles precisely because it is neither an absolute nor a formal framework, but the synchrony of order and irruption, which implies that however much it is devastating and irreducible to a rational determination, it keeps a bond with every sensible man. Thus, nature is not the final object of rational knowledge, let alone the universal stock of raw materials: it is the allembracing aim of human desire, and sensibleness is simultaneously the ground and the fulfilment of that desire: Ah, that no wing from earth can lift Me, closer and closer to it, striving! I’d see, in eternal evening’s light, The silent Earth beneath my feet, forever, The heights on fire, each valley quiet While silver streams flow to a golden river.5

Anyhow, in spite of its relevance in the Faust F , this aperture to a conception of nature as a creative potency wherewith man identifies himself is not the main feature of the tragedy, inasmuch as that conception is an outlook shared by a lot of contemporary works, both literary, poetic and philosophic, to the point that it might be considered as the touchstone of Goethe’s time, which goes from the Enlightenment search for a rational natural science to the romantic search for universal vitality. Rather, the work’s kernel is the inkling that the transfiguration of reality wherein nature lies – for nature is nothing but the formative potency of reality – is a process that man experiences through the diversity of his own sensibility whose conscious orientation is sensibleness. In other words, and making the most of the common root existing in the English language for ‘‘sensibility’’, ‘‘sensitivity’’ and ‘‘sensibleness’’, there shall not be a deep understanding of life unless it is got by the own feelings, considering that nature reveals by means of them an infinitude of variations that are invisible for the vulgar ken: Yes, there’s no good for me in lethargy. Y A shudder’s the truest sign of humanity: Though the world is such we may not feel it, Once seized by it, we feel Immensity deeply.6

Thereby, the sensible man is not who establishes final ends for his

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

757

existence according to an objective conception of nature, and let alone who intends to possess superhuman wisdom (who are respectively the modern and the ancient embodiments of metaphysics and of a dogmatic archetype of life), but who gives himself over to the passional framework of life, which has nothing to do with the perfunctoriness of the man carried away by his whims and wants at every moment, since passion, far from being a sort of distraction, is always the supreme form of concentration, provided that it is after the achievement of an ideal action and not after the reduction of the plurality to an image of leisure that the individual uses as he pleases. For (contrariwise to what both metaphysical tradition and common sense state), being a passionate person is totally beyond the reach of most people. Average man is not passionate, is rather nonchalant, and that is why he is up to bear the imperviousness that wisdom entails, which proves that, in spite of its proclaimed tendency to the spiritual elevation, the metaphysical paradigm of life matches the lack of potency that characterizes the vulgar visions of life: I’ve often had strange moments, I know, But I’ve never felt yearnings quite like those: The joys of woods and fields soon fade I wouldn’t ask the birds for wings: indeed, How differently ff the mind’s raptures lead Us on, from book to book, and page to page!7

Still more, the agreement between wisdom and nonchalance that the metaphysical tradition conceals behind the glow of the theological ideal, is not properly aimed to keep everyone’s vitality in its minimum level; at bottom, it is aimed to check, to destroy it, and that is why sensibleness and wisdom are utterly contrary one each other. As a matter of fact, the main end of sensibleness is foster the imaginative development of feelings in order to create possibilities that transcend the natural conditions of human existence, both as species and as individual; therefore, the action that it is after is neither mistakable for the steps the utilitarian rationality requires, nor for the sacrifices that wisdom imposes; it does not tally with the want of distraction or false sublimation, and it demands, on the contrary, the everlasting overcoming of oneself, since instead of multiplying individuality through the sundry spheres of life, it seeks to identify man with the multiplicity of nature, to show him how to change himself into one of the original potencies that beget everything (reason whereby these potencies deserve to be called ‘‘the mothers’’ of reality):

758

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS Unwillingly! There’s a greater mystery, I say, Goddesses, enthroned on high, and solitary. No space round them, not even time: only To speak of them embarrasses me. They are The Mothers!8

Thus, after having set out the general meaning of the guiding concept of our exegesis, let us analyse its development in the Faust F , which was, as far as I know, the first work to use it as the ground of a poetic conception of life, which is evident in the protagonist’s monologue wherewith the tragedy begins: Ah! Now I’ve done Philosophy, I’ve finished Law and Medicine, And sadly even Theology: Taken fierce pains, from end to end. Now here I am, a fool for sure! No wiser than I was before: Master, Doctor’s what they call me, And I’ve been ten years, already, Crosswise, arcing, to and fro, Leading my students by the nose, And see that we can know – nothing! It almost sets my heart burning. I’m cleverer than all these teachers, Doctors, Masters, scribes, preachers: I’m not plagued by doubt or scruple, Scared by neither Hell nor Devil – Instead all Joy is snatched away, What’s worth knowing, I can’t say, I can’t say what I should teach To make men better or convert each. And then I’ve neither goods nor gold, No worldly honour, or splendour hold: Not even a dog would play this part!9

In this monologue, which synthesizes both the protagonist’s psychological conflict and the philosophical problem unfolded throughout the work, there is a triple defenestration: epistemological, socio-historical and aesthetical, and the key to understand it as a whole lies in noticing how Faust turns the criticism against the metaphysical conception of knowledge wherewith modern thought began into a vindication of sensibility and a denouncement of the dire harm inflicted to it by transcendent ideals. Indeed, as we have said some lines above, the most pernicious effect ff of these ideals is not the prejudice but the annihilation of desire

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

759

and the further unsettledness that it brings about; from this outlook, the criticism against metaphysics is also for evincing how despicable is the ‘‘spirituality’’ that it provides according to the traditional image of the wise man as someone rejoicing in the contemplation of the utmost truth: Faust is neither serene nor satisfied although he should be so at least by his age and although he has devoted all his strength to get the vital balance that metaphysics promises in exchange for the barrenness of its study; on the contrary, he is halfway between spite and perfunctoriness. With regard to this, it is useful to heed the peculiar identity that the work establishes between its historic setting and the intellectual question at stake. At first sight, the dramatic action tallies with the last decades of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, because that period comprises the biographic coordinates of George or John Faust, the legendary necromancer, quack and alchemist whose vicissitudes through Germany furnished Goethe with the basic outline for his character; nevertheless, and although the author certainly took into account the legend, it is evident that this one was a mere starting point for him, since his creation has a complexity that goes far beyond the rather common features of the historic figure, who is not relevant, moreover, to grasp the artistic and much less the philosophical meaning of the Faust F , inasmuch as what is axial in the work is that the time wherein the action takes place matches the beginning of the crisis of the scholastic system of knowledge that subordinated philosophy to theology, or natural to supernatural science; crisis that led to a resurgence of scepticism as virulent as it has not been experienced since the end of Antiquity, when the rationality developed from the Presocratics to the Stoics collapsed together with the corresponding fabric of knowledge and vital archetypes, destroying at the same time the barrier that prevented Christianity from spreading over a culture whose confidence in the comprehensibility of reality had been ravaged.10 Thus, what matters here is not precisely the presentation of a character that has been deceived by metaphysics in general; the approach of Faust is a lot more specific, and concerns whoever had tried to fulfil the theological ideal of the wise man as an embodiment of the divine plenitude, which, on the other hand, was the final end of the medieval Christian attempt to fuse an emotional experience of religion with the knowledge of God that is supposedly provided by contemplating the universe, and which gets its most sublime expression in the intuition of God in the middle of the Paradise wherewith Dante’s Divine Comedy ends. As far as I know, this medieval attempt was completely original with regard to

760

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

whichever previous religiosity, for neither the Hellenic mythology nor the rituality of the Eastern cults (including the monotheism of Judaism and Mohammedanism) intended to develop a natural science assuming that its principles stemmed from the religious conception of an all-embracing Creator whose will were also the ground of the existence of each and every man. Thereby, the protagonist’s negative emphasis on the futility of theology is tantamount in essence to the denouncement of the ideal of wisdom and of its most worrying consequence: the simultaneous loss of self-satisfaction and the lack of any feeling of community with nature. For independently of the harm against the personal sensibleness, the influence of theology is perceptible in the incapacity to recognize the creative strength that nature sparks off, ff which leads to the conclusion that the complex identity of man and organic or natural vitality is utterly marred by it. Now, this must not be considered either incidental or accidental: the theological mystification is per force contrary to vitality, and its influence on philosophy must be not interpreted simply from a theoretical standpoint (which is what Bacon and Descartes did), but from the field of the drives that prop the interplay of the human beings; drives that are carried away, instead, by the aspiration to an absolute blessedness that theology fosters. As a matter of fact, man stands perfectly the major theoretical aberrations without his troubling at all; instead, he cannot bear any coercion upon his imaginative identity with life without suffering ff an awful unsettlement, which is precisely what theology provokes when it defines God as the transcendent ground of reality, for although it is true that theology states categorically that God exerts a permanent action upon reality (which is what the idea of providence means), nature and life in general lose automatically their sense because they are reduced to the ambiguous domain of appearance: the authentic reality is beyond, in the unattainable glory where God exists; therefore, the theological conception of life evinces that human life is not worthwhile by itself, which is why Faust deplores having been devoted to a kind of thought that has just annihilate his original love for knowledge; although it is just the half of the question, since it must also be reminded that theology springs from an ontological framework that pertains exclusively to Christianity. Without the idea of God that Christianity upholds (that is to say, a principle of every being that is the only end of every human existence), theology would not have been conceivable at all. Indeed, as it was developed during the Middle Ages, the epoch of its greatest splendour, theology would have been completely incomprehensible for the Greco-

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

761

Latin philosophy, however much there were anticipations of it in the Platonic and Aristotelian ideas concerning the necessity of a universal reason that were at the same time personal and universal, and it could have a place solely in the medieval variegated fabric of dogmas begotten by the multiplicity of ontological spheres to which it was necessary to appeal in order to justify the incommensurable difference ff between the sovereign intellect of God and the weak understanding of man. Thereby, if theology is defined as the core of the Christian conception of God and reality, as it must be in accordance not only with history but also with the meaning of God’s ontological transcendence that Christianity upholds, it is blatant that the rejection of it by someone that deplores having wasted his life studying its twaddle, implicates the rejection of Christianity itself as a religion or, rather, as a pseudo-religion that prevents man from experiencing his unity with natural life. Thus, when Faust underlines the corrosive action of theology upon his vitality and his deepest wish to know, his assertion must be understood within the broader subject of Christianity’s questionable possibilities to provide the ground for a real, i.e., a sensitive life. Of course, it could be debated, on the one hand, if this identification of theology and Christianity is sound and, on the other, if it tallies with the content of Faust’s monologue. With respect to the first point, it is undeniable that ‘‘theology’’ and ‘‘Christianity’’ are not identical, since every religion implies a minimum set of principles to explain the bond of God and man, which can be defined as its particular theology; for its part, Christianity has historically known a lot of manifestations that are miles away from the peculiar link with philosophy and science in a broader sense, which were instead axial for the medieval experience of knowledge and the corresponding religiosity (think, for example, in mysticism and in some forms of protestant reflection as Kierkegaard’s); notwithstanding this, it is true that theology is inseparable from Christianity and vice versa, because whichever Christian dogma entails the final identification between mortal life and the beyond. Now, although it is not immediately evident that Faust’s criticism against theology implicates that Christianity is at the stake, the way his dejection turns into abasement and perfunctoriness shows that whatever aspiration to a vital transcendence (which is completely different ff from theological transcendence insofar as it tallies with sensibleness and not with wisdom) has been uprooted both by the poisonous sophisms that Faust has learned and by a more determinant reason: because what he has been after never has been at bottom the knowledge of God but the

762

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

experience of the multiplicity of human wises of being, as he clearly states in a further scene, precisely when he celebrates the diabolical pact with Mephistopheles: It’s not joy we’re about: you heard it. I’ll take the frenzy, pain-filled elation, Loving hatred, enlivening frustration. Cured of its urge to know, my mind In future, will not hide from any pain, And what is shared by all mankind, In my innermost self, I’ll contain.11

If theses words are read together with those quoted at the onset of this section, it will be seen that this exegesis stands independently of the literality of the passages, because it grasps the deepest reason of the bitterness that the character feels, which must be shared by whomsoever had believed that it is possible to fathom the identity between nature and man by assimilating both of them into the Christian conception of divine providence. For if one intends to have an intense, practically poetic experience of life, then the theological or rather Christian framework of the question is not merely reductive but utterly unacceptable. Because of all this, the other face of the havoc that the theological way of thinking plays with the joy of living is the reduction of nature to a potency hostile to man, an inkling that has two fundamental variants: first, nature is the valley of tears where everyone must suffer ff to expiate sins whose origin dates back to birth: inasmuch as man sins even before the first manifestation of his will (which is what the dogma of the original sin states), there is no way to overcome natural evil except by the sacrifice of life itself more for fleeing the unceasing unsettledness than for the sake of a transcendent blissfulness. Now, once the individual has fallen into the trap of guilt and rue, his organic drives turn for him into ominous forces that must be permanently checked, which requires him to get rid of his own vitality, which is why Christianity is inseparable from asceticism; the negation of natural tendencies, in fact, is the hidden end of whichever conception that postulates the absolute perfection as the archetype of human existence, and that is why, instead of fostering serenity and happiness, Christianity ends up bringing about sullenness and grudge. Thus, the symbiosis of theology and Christianity changes into the symbiosis of asceticism and upset. Furthermore, the contempt for life entails the reduction of the multiplicity of desire to the abstract unity of a moral order that tallies with the

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

763

prescriptions and commandments that sustains Judaeo-Christianity, whether they are interpreted according to the Mosaic Law or to the evangelic charity, whose common ground is the idea of Providence: since God has created man, He knows what is best for His creature and this one must obey wholeheartedly the will of his Lord, no matter how contrary it seems to his deepest drives. Still more, accepting this must be an oblation, because it implies suffering ff and dejection in view of the fact that man has corrupted nature with his sin. From this slant, the opposition between nature and man becomes total, for everyone must obey the law that God Himself has engraved in the human heart, instead of satisfying his own drives; and that law should not be hard to follow in principle, as God observes: ‘‘For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off ’’ (Dt XXX, 11).12 Nevertheless, notwithstanding this remark, the unceasing complaints of God throughout the Bible confirm that there is a abyss between His will and the man’s passionate nature, and not by what is commonly argued, that religious moral represses sensuality, for the question for Faust is not to indulge in lewdness but plunge into life to the point that whichever particularity is carried away and just remains a becoming whole, as the first sentence of the latest passage evinces, when Faust reminds that he slights sensual pleasure and only is after the diversity of human; diversity that projects to ways of being unconceivable for whom follows an alien will, even if it God’s. This makes clear that the joy that Faust misses is by no means the passion of youth, which is so linked to sexuality and corporeal stirringups; no, what he sighs for is the desire to fuse with everything, whether sublime or vile, and, still more, to discover what originality means for man beyond the theological assumptions concerning an all-embracing will that is at the same time principle, mean and end of Its work. Thus, the search for sensibleness demands at bottom the plump rejection of the Christian dogma of providence and of the morals inherent to it in order to make room for experiencing the indetermination that compels to realize that life deserves to be called poetic solely when its carrying-out is more important than its achievements, and not because life lies in the mere experience, which would be tantamount to identify it with the abstract course of time wherein even the most thrilling happenings are reduced to meaningless memories, but because when life unfolds it demands per force a universal framework that integrates intimacy, social coexistence and projection into time, whether physical (reproduction) or symbolical (creation). In other words, the ideal life, which is what Faust is after, is

764

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

worthwhile because it uncovers that finitude and indetermination are nod symbols of death and sorrow but of potency and joy. We shall retake this hereinbelow; now, and in order to conclude this section, we shall underline Faust’s criticism against the academics that boast of being the masters of the youth and the depositaries of tradition and culture. Although it is true that there is a great difference ff between the theological archetype of the wise man and these would-be leading lights whose erudition and discursive dexterities are not enough to make up for their shallowness, the fact is that both the wise and the learned man is utterly incapable to deal with life and nature abrupt regularity, and this is due to similar reasons: his trust in transcendent ideals, whether they are metaphysical for the wise man (the world of beyond) or academic for the learned ones (the value of culture), a similarity that uncovers that however much tradition is sublime, when it turns into an aim by itself, regardless of its formative function, it ends up being an abstraction identical at bottom with theology’s. Withal, inasmuch as the academic believes wrongly that culture is synonymous of refinement and that spirituality is comparable to asceticism (for, according to him, it demands to leave aside whatever is not sanctioned by canon), he devotes to prune the shoots of creativity that he perceives in his pupils, simply because he is not up to the originality of thought or sensibility; young people, for their part, after an thwarted endeavour to preserve their passion for cultural and vital diversity (if they had it, which is not common either), accept to carry on the social enterprise of self-delusion and feigning at the lee whereof every member of the cultural or educational establishment is for himself the incarnation of wisdom, sensibility and taste, which begets a kind of hybrid incapable of integrate with the others and even with himself. Thereat, the learned man is in essence an upholder of solipsism, a barbarian that disparages the vital function of knowledge, which is with no doubt more monstrous than the savagery of people without culture, for at least these ones preserve to a certain extent their capacity to learn, whereas the luminaries are convinced that they have the right to measure what is and what is not according to what they call their acuteness, which is mere pedantry. These people stand so for the most degenerate human type, who gives himself over either to dogmatism or to scepticism, which are the two faces of a more general socio-historical phenomenon: nihilism, which is almost imperceptible because it hides under the mask of the free expression of one own feelings and outlooks. The nihilist discerns perhaps the orders of thought and transmits it to others clearly and accurately; he

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

765

can be even sensitive enough to enjoy art and share it with others; anyhow, since he has forgone his innermost wants and drives, which are the only unshakeable ground of spiritual life, he is sloppy when he intends to be passionate, and witty at most when he wants to be profound. Without the crutches of book learning, he would be nothing. It is maybe odd that this ignominious figure is simultaneously identified with the wise man and with the nihilist, although a more careful reflection shows that, since these ones despair of the multitudinous manifestations of life, what they just want is a regularity that saves them from the unforeseeable, which is the very substance of life. Thus, the nihilist is not so far from the wise man that gropes in the immanency as if he were lost in the Platonic den. Nevertheless, that is not the heart of the matter: what is worst is that the academic takes charge of the education of the youth; his influence is not circumscribed to himself but sprawls over society as a whole, which entails that the harm that theology brings about against individual sensibility is generalised, getting a monstrous diversity of forms that are embodied by whom after having had a perfunctory approach to culture thinks that sensibility is the mere expression of his internal chaos: This is youth’s noblest profession! The world was nothing before my creation: I drew the Sun out of the sea: The Moon began her changeful course with me: The daylight decked my path to greet me, The Earth flowered, grew green, to meet me [...] I, quite free, as my spirit cites, Happily following my inner light, And speeding on, in delight, Darkness behind: and all before me, bright.13

III

The precedent remarks lead to the final line of Faust’s monologue: ‘‘Not even a dog would play this part!’’ For the dog is doubtlessly the only animal that belongs to human world in its own right, it is also disturbing that it has surrendered unreservedly to the human will: it is lost without a master however much it is physically powerful, and one of the most shameful spectacles is to see a mastiff that could smash a stalwart man with one bite crying like a forsaken baby when its master moves away two or three steps from it. The dog embodies the great triumph of human mastery on nature, yes, but because it is a thrall, a being genetically

766

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

doomed to lick the soles that kick it, which explicates why although it is so stupidly praised as the ‘‘best friend to man’’, it is in sooth the symbol of the maximum opprobrium: branding someone a cur means to consider him even worse than a dog, since a man deserves such an insult solely when he grovels before everyone, whereas the animal, at least, is weak just before its master. The cur has lost whichever capacity to vindicate his dignity, above all before himself. Thus, when Faust concludes his diatribe against the degrading influence of the theological dogmas on life and acknowledges that he is beneath the dog, his words bring to light the abjection that man suffers ff due to the prejudice of the absolute ideals, in such a way that they uncovers a vision of knowledge and life harmful to humanity, which compels to set out this problem in philosophical terms. This monologue is not the outburst of a wretched man; it is a radical criticism that cannot be solved theoretically because of its own strain: Faust lacks vitality, not reasons to justify life. Contrariwise to Descartes, who in the first part of the Discourse on Method made a similar denouncement of the theological fabric of superstitions and platitudes that were considered ‘‘knowledge’’, which he solved appealing to a new metaphysics and a new science, Faust was determined to recover a lost sensitiveness by means of a poetic transgression of the natural order, which can mean two different ff aspects of the same question: first, to give himself over to the plethora of feelings and passions that makes enjoyable the individual existence beyond moral standards or social conventions, even if it entails the risk of being unfair or spoiling someone else, for although the own life were immoral, it would be worthwhile anyhow if it had been potent enough to challenge the eternal damnation; second, the synthesis of the sundry epochs that constitute as a whole the universal drama of man, concretely in the terms of the Western Civilization from Hellenes onwards, which, in spite of the heterogeneity perceptible at first sight, props the idea of a continuous spiritualization of man through history. The common ground of this double plane is the absence of God and of the morals inherent to a religious conception of life, which undermines the Christian subjection of man to a Supreme Ruler whose omniscience is the touchstone to justify whichever wretchedness. For Christianity, man’s stints, rather, his impotence, which is symbolised by mortality and by the dangers he must face at any moment (specially when he seems to be in a perfect balance), makes unconceivable the idea of a total accomplishment of life, which means that the existence of every creature has to be metaphysically identified with a God’s providential design; but what

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

767

happens when the very idea of providence falls all of a sudden by the abrupt revelation of the absolute indetermination of life, which rests upon the inexhaustible bitterness and angriness felt by the sensitive man? What if man’s finitude, ignorance and above all proclivity become potencies up to generate an existence that does not stem from an eternal destination but from a temporal drive that does without whichever aim because it is linked to the inexhaustible power of nature? Would not this show the danger and the horror entailed in the abyssal experience of freedom, considering, withal, that such an experience is not within the reach of an average man? The problem here is that man’s deeds do not uncover a divine creature beneath the vulgarity and the weakness of individuality; on the contrary, they lead to wonder why Christianity has upheld the thesis of the consubstantiality of God and man when both ontological finitude and empirical mediocrity belie it: whichever analysis of existence corroborates the utter barrenness of the providential assumption. Thereby, the inescapable answer is that this thesis is the outcome of the mystifications of theology, the worst whereof is that there is an absolute opposition between finitude and transcendence in the immanent life, when the fact is that those extremes match perfectly when they are related to a third element: the freedom of will. This factor mediates so between finitude, which is paradoxically expressed in infinite wishes, and transcendence, which is not less paradoxically reduced to the terms of the individual life. For what has prevented men’s potencies from being properly understood is that theology has mistaken them for the omnipotence of God when the fact is that they stand for the finite framework of life. At bottom, finitude has been identified without further ado with mortality and this with total annihilation of the own being. But if the active sense of finitude is brought to light by a radical reconsideration of how time defines human existence beyond the metaphysical reduction of the vital drives to individuality, there will be no way to deny or blur the transcendence inherent to it, which will match the human equivalent of eternity: history, both personal and common. In other words, the individual existence will evince that it is transcendent insofar as it participates by principle in the conformation of a socio-historical coexistence. Now, this has a triple dimension that has to be set out in order to lay the foundations of a really worldly conception of man: first, activity is the essence of human being; second, it entails a transvalorization of morals and the necessity to integrate life beyond the metaphysical oppositions between good and evil, virtue and vice or happiness and misfortune;

768

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

third, the temporality that makes understandable all processes overflows the narrow chronological limits of the individuality and sprawls over a becoming with no definite aim: history. Thus, action, transvalorization and history are the triple and irreducible ground of human existence that makes unnecessary to appeal to God’s absolute transcendence. A life that has done without the guarantee of an all-embracing providence is by no means a safer or an easier one: however, that makes it more exciting than ever. Let us see this triple plane separately. 1. The principle of a poetical conception of human activity that has nothing to do with theological dogmas or common sense prejudices is the final identity of human faculties in spite of the differences ff that everyone can discover through introspection between, for example, will and understanding, which are nonchalantly considered as self-subsistent entities, a kind of things-in-themselves. It is needless to say that introspection is useful to determine how one perceives his own being unfolding, but the multiplicity of faculties and states of mind, when judged as the representation of an irreducible difference, ff is irrelevant to explain the admirable unity that man exhibits whenever he faces reality. Far from the fragmentation of the practice that the vulgar approach to the subject stresses so much, what reflection evinces is that whichever activity demands, at least by principle, is the conscious unification of the own being. Indeed, man always acts carried away by a drive that cannot be decomposed although it manifests a sensitive multiplicity. This iron unity, whose potency overflows the original intentions or the mental representation of its author, shows that activity is the essence of man and the condition sine qua non for self-recognition, to the extent that activity is perfectly identifiable with humanity and vice versa: Then let joy, and distress, Frustration, and success, Follow each other, as well they can: Restless activity proves the man!14

The problem here is to mistake activity for creativity in the theological, rather Christian sense of the term, which is tantamount to the creation ex nihilo. It is blatant that man cannot act by himself, if acting means that he projects the material condition of reality, for, in spite of the strength of his will, he hinges completely upon circumstances and

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

769

resources; however, this subjection to external factors does not prevent him from metamorphose and integrate in a superior reality what hinders or restricts him, which means that he is completely free to act simply because he never is after mere facts but after the organization of everything in accordance with an image of his own, image that reveals, on the other hand, that the unity of his being embraces per force the whole of nature. Man cannot be conceived as an empire inside nature, and his existence has to be figured out in accordance with the rest of the livings, a fact that has been absurdly passed over by metaphysical tradition, which has upheld a concept of a man that defines him outside reality, as pure thought or as the master of nature, which has culminated in the Cartesian myth of the thinking substance. Contrariwise, the archetype of human activity embodied by Faust is inspired in the creativity of nature that man shares through the pleasure furnished by the organic processes that foster life. Consequently, he is not ruled by the theological ideal of an omnipotent creator but rather by the idea of a natural drive that cannot be deviated from its aim however much it is checked, and that because what man wants is to discover – even in the theoretical sense or the word – an everlasting vitality more than to recover a lost rise (which would be instead the goal of the romanticism). This means that human activity possesses a creative aspect that makes unnecessary to be violent with nature, which instead inspires man by the flowering and growth of the sundry organisms; thus, whichever action entailing the unity between man and nature is halfway between magic, poetry and even technique, considering that neither imagination nor eagerness are enough to ken (to the extent that this is within the reach of man) how nature complex energy works and, still more, how it vivifies man: How then can I grasp you endless Nature? Where are your breasts that pour out Life entire, To which the Earth and Heavens cling so, Where withered hearts would drink? You flow You nourish, yet I languish so, in vain desire.15

That is why the sensible man does not confine himself to the contemplation of nature but devotes himself to its transformation, which is the only way to tally with the bounty of it: Sublime spirit, you gave me all, all, I asked for. Not in vain have you

770

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS Revealed your face to me in flame. You gave me Nature’s realm of splendour, With the power to feel it, and enjoy. Not merely as a cold, awed stranger, But allowing me to look deep inside, Like seeing into the heart of a friend.16

In the view of this dynamic harmony, the biblical image of nature as the valley of tears where man must pay for an original sin evinces all its shallowness. The assumption that life must make up for the disobedience provoked by the natural drive to know and to enjoy (drive that for the Hellenes was, instead, man’s most laudable – and worrisome – feature) reflects indeed the contempt of Judaeo-Christianity for the passionate and sensitive ground of life, which is withal unavoidable for a religion that proclaims simultaneously the ex nihilo creation of reality, the divine assistance for each and every man and the existence of a life beyond the present one. In the light of this triple determination, which as a whole opposes Christianity to any further religion, life is unworthy because God, its rise, ground and end, is always above nature and human accomplishments. For Judaeo-Christianity, life is not only hard or terrible but also evil, and its only value is, at bottom, to be an ordeal that must be endured to flee proclivity and be saved, which demands that everyone in principle can share post mortem the glory of God. Now, the postulation of individual immortality as the fruit of the self-sacrifice of the incarnate God, which as far as I understand is what really differentiates ff Christianity from Judaism (and even from any other religion), although apparently solves the contradiction that stems from the reduction of life to a kind of appearance or mere passing whose only substantiality is its being a punishment for the original disobedience, sets out other problem not less thorny: the eternal damnation for most of men. Thus, however much Christianity upholds the Good News of the human liberation from the thraldom to law, the fact is that it leads to a paradoxical vision of life that none can overcome by himself: life is hideous because it stands for lewdness and haughtiness that are not compatible with the humility required to worship God; the more a man stands out, the more he suffers ff this contradiction, which turns life into a permanent fall in evil, in such a way that the most radical and perhaps the only coherent version of Christianity, the Calvinist theory of predestination, rebuffs ff from the beginning that man has any participation in his eternal destiny and abandons him to God’s unfathomable mercy, which is not a solution either, unless one has been redeemed from eternity,

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

771

which begets an anguish so terrible (except for a few individuals, the saints, whose own oddity prevents them from being the paradigm for someone else) that ends up leading to the almost inescapable conclusion of Christianity: nihilism, the ominous mixture of atheism and scepticism that sparks off that desperation and disgust with life that unfold throughout Faust’s monologue. Because of this, in order to observe how an everlasting activity is the very ground of existence and how it frees man from sin and death, it is necessary to distinguish it both from the theological archetype of the allembracing creator and from the socio-economical hybrid that is the symbol of the modern productivity, that is to say, the self-made individual, which, in spite of his profane character, is at bottom a secularisation of the theological archetype. Far from both extremes, especially from the second one, the ideal of activity that Faust upholds fuses four figures that contradict one another according to tradition: the artist, the scientific, the ruler and the worker, who match the final unity of sensibility, knowledge, equanimity and laboriousness. Consequently, and taking into account the fourfold determination that the ideal integrates, there is neither a method to carry it out nor an exact content for its fulfilment. Rather, the ideal is a pure form to be actualised by an intuition that is universal, although each one expresses it in accordance with his sensibility and circumstances, which will tally with each other solely after he has overcome the Christian contempt for life, for which he needs to turn the dogma of the consubstantiality of God and man into a poetical discovery of the infinite possibilities of the human being’s active nature: It’s written here: ‘In the Beginning was the Word!’ Here I stick already! Who can help me? It’s absurd, Impossible, for me to rate the word so highly I must try to say it differently ff If I’m truly inspired by the Spirit. I find I’ve written here: ‘In the Beginning was the Mind’. Let me consider that first sentence, So my pen won’t run on in advance! Is it Mind that works and creates what’s ours? It should say: ‘In the beginning was the Power!’ Yet even while I write the words down, I’m warned: I’m no closer with these I’ve found. The Spirit helps me! I have it now, intact. And firmly write: ‘In the Beginning was the Act!’17

The core of Christianity is the dogma of the Incarnation of the Word and its canonical exposition is the onset of John’s Gospel, which is retaken

772

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

here not in order to trace a line of continuity between Christianity and the poetic conception of life, as the context could suggest, but to state outright that everyone’s destiny is determined by an original action, not by an original sin, and that no word, sense or power surpasses man’s endeavour to transform himself through reality and vice versa. So to speak, man is human because he acts, not because he thinks (which is what metaphysical tradition postulates), and that is why he can do without Providence and challenge the fear to beyond: no redemption is required when life is no more a punishment or a sentence to death. For contrary to the superstitious individual that mocks at Christian dogmas just to be tantalised on the spot by his blusters, the sensible man passes over them because he has previously built up a world according to him, which does not mean either a world of comfort, consume and tyranny over nature. Again, the humanization process does no lean on theoretical breakthroughs or socio-economic success; it unfolds throughout carried by the vital drives that the defenestration of theology has released. Thus, the exegesis of the Incarnation as an exposure of the ontological function of activity in existence begets a Promethean image of man in the light whereof God is nothing except the bound that everyone must span to fulfil the infinite potency of his being. 2. After man has defenestrated God, it is impossible for existence total configuration to hold still, a fact that goes unnoticed for the vulgar vision of the matter, which instead of dealing with the necessity of defining new values and aims for life, confines itself to proclaim man’s freedom while it maintains the theological framework of existence: it substitutes man for God and nothing more, which means that finitude is negative anyhow, insofar as life is abandoned in the plane of immanency to the unsettledness or the boredom of the average individuality and, in the plane of transcendence, mortality demands as always a redemption that is a lot more absurd precisely when there is none to carry it out: who would redeem himself if his unsteadiness shows that he lives tantalised by the pass of time and death? Thus, what is perhaps the most questionable feature of the wise man’s image, the progressive ascension to a vital plenitude that announces the eternal bliss, turns into the vulgar vision of an almost automatic satisfaction of whichever desire, which is the most worrisome consequence of the secularisation of theology or, in other words, of the substitution of God with man. Whether men are conscious of this or not, it is not enough to replace the content if the conception framework remains untouched; a thrall is a

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

773

thrall although he has been freed, if he feels in spite of himself the compulsion to grovel before a master, since, as it has been emphasised so far, dignity is just the formal ground of individuality and it does not prevent someone from being a cur if he happens to enjoy to be humiliated; as long as his emotions tally with a thrall’s, he will be that and nothing more. Therefore, in order to break up the theological way of thinking that turns around absolute values, man should seek the abrupt multiplicity of time that delivers an image of mortality beyond the consolation of an eternal happiness or even of a hell with no end (which at least offers ff security for whom had been squashed by nihilism): he should love unreservedly those sudden turns of life that are grievous or at least bewildering; withal, this should shape his attitude to immediacy: he should disdain the would-be sublimation of emotions that the wise man considers instead the utmost achievement for anyone, and should give himself over to the plethora of emotional possibilities, a lot whereof are evil and dangerous, yes, but only to the extent that they are thrilling and up to transform life, which is precisely what sensibleness is after as a general conception of life, inasmuch as it, far from proposing the extinction of desire, furthers its endless intensification: whereas wisdom warns that the more potent sensibility is, the more it carries man away from self-control, sensibleness urges an unrestricted desire so that man fulfils his real inner strength: will he be up to enjoy a life of his own, or will he be palsied by it? Will he be farsighted after a devouring passion has ended, or will he be marred and embittered by it? Above all, will he accept with no regret the passage of time or will he curse ageing and death? This immersion in desire and mortality is the condition sine qua non to get self-knowledge and equanimity to share others’ weakness and oddness, because it spreads out the gamut of feelings and attitudes whereby the relations with any other human being and with life in general is so exciting despite whichever disappointment or suffering. ff Now, this knowledge, which is sensibleness as such, by no means matches the vulgar image of sublimation of the plethora of drives, because it aims to get the permanent exaltation of them, even at the cost of developing some that could be branded evil from a moral standpoint. This feature, more than anything else, shows why the Faust F is misunderstood when it is read without considering the opposition between wisdom and sensibleness traced through it, since the protagonist instead of starting from a moral conception of life, curse his devotion to wisdom and demands to experience man’s greatness and horrors by himself, without his blenching not even in front of cruelty, crime and eternal damnation, for he does not

774

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

want to be morally good, let alone happy or tempered, but to be all what man can be in the summit of his strength and decision, which demands for its part that the whole universe is cursed so as to throw himself into a path with no other return that the absolute assumption of mortality: Curse the sweet juice of the grape! Curse the highest favours Love lets fall! Cursed be Hope! Cursed be Faith, And cursed be Patience most of all!18

This series of curses wherewith Faust destroys his original confidence in transcendent values and stakes on the possibility to enjoy in an instant the absoluteness of life, including above all pain, evil and death, is the landmark that cleaves his memory from his boldness and sparks off a process of literal incarnation that reproduces and contradicts Christ’s insofar as it is not the fulfilment of whatever promise of redemption but a somersault upon a void of future and desire that no reason can span. Carried away by its own drive, Faust has no ideal at hand and acts as an inebriated or mad man whose only purpose where taking advantage of everything and everyone without heeding the devastation that he leaves after him, whereby he would be identical to the selfish individual if he were not pledged to his actions with an adamant determination. Neither psychology nor common sense nor, above all, morals can make this understandable, for all of them turn around the metaphysical transcendence of the good and the concomitant opposition of justice and injustice, which is nevertheless unimportant both for Faust and for the successive characters who appear in the work, whereof the most determinant is blatantly Gretchen. Now, the fact that her enticement brings about so much misery for her and that after having being an innocent and really pious girl she becomes matricide, filicide and the cause of his brother’s death without her loathing Faust (to whom she loves even in the dungeon darkness), shows that in spite of the brutality of his actions, the man that has challenge his ideals deserve to be himself the ideal for anyone else: what Gretchen loves in Faust is the potency of life that surpasses his perfidy; it is not the abstract value of wantonness or debauchery, but the drive that he arouses by his simple presence, which, although has destroyed her, evinces that in spite of their meanness and enmity, sensible man participates of such an extraordinary community of being and feeling that it overflows whatever concept and only can be set out by means of a myth, which anticipates a universal fusion that does not need to wait until the consummation of time to be fulfilled (like the

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

775

Christian promise of redemption), since it is carried out permanently by whom that knows that, in order to be human, everyone must give himself over wholeheartedly to evil and desperation that are trends as sound as willingness and stillness to be absorbed in the finitude of life: Such obstinacy and opposition Diminishes the noblest position, Until in endless pain, one must Grow deeply weary of being just.19

This myth of an inexhaustible vitality that embraces man and nature in a socio-cultural becoming alien to morals and redemption is the very core of sensibleness that the Faust F unfolds throughout, the ground thanks to which the dramatic development tallies with the philosophical structure of the work: from the protagonist’s desperation in the opening scene to the final vision of glory where God is the great absent, the work reminds that life is potent enough to make up for evil, unfairness and the sorrow of our own mortality, which is worthwhile because to be mortal is not to be crushed by the consciousness that life is finite, is, on the contrary, to overcome keenly the moral abstract consolations, the worst whereof lies in the inkling that the only aim for every life is the union with a Good that rules human destiny from eternity. Contrariwise to this conception (whose pretensions go hand in hand with its shallowness), mortality stirs up an endless search of critic values and ideals to share the relativity of existence: for man, to be mortal is to go ahead with his finitude without forlornness or anguish, which is awkward because it is more often than not mistaken for the nihilist outlook that everything is equally meaningless before the adamant course of time. Nevertheless, mortality, far from leading to the cynic permissiveness where the average individual takes refuge after having lost hope in transcendent redemption, compels to assume finitude and death as natural phenomena: If I could banish Sorcery from my track, Unlearn the magic-spells that draw me back, And stand before you, Nature, as mere Man, It would be worth the pain of being Human.20

This has a far-reaching consequence for existence psychological framework: instead of aiming to a progressive depuration of negative trends that end up changing man into a kind of incarnated spirit (which is the archetype for wisdom), life is tantamount to an irreducible rise of drives and passions that manifests either beauty or brutality. Sensible man does

776

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

not want to get rid of his dark tendencies; on the contrary, he wants to enhance them even though that entails to run the risk of spoiling the everyday order, which is the most desirable achievement for the average man, as well as the inner stillness that is virtue in itself for the wise one; therefore, the sensible individual can be equally farsightedness and bewildering, bounteous and greedy, profound and nonchalant; his deeds are scandalous when they are assessed from respectability, which is why he is almost inevitably branded a corruptor, an agitator, a blasphemer, faults that are singularly shared by Faust and Christ, who appears with such a violence in most of the scenes of the Gospels that he would be the parallel of Goethe’s protagonist outside the fiction plane if He were not the Word, whereas Faust forgets his very identity and flings himself at the everlasting dizziness of time whose name is history. 3. When the metaphysical ground of life collapses, it also drags down it the temporal framework of existence, so that the vital course stops being justifiable in the light of transcendent ideals and must be set out according to the individual’s active drives, which implies, firstly, that existence is based on the potency of each one and not on an objective determination; secondly, that everyone will have the life that he creates and that if he fails (whether by lack of strength or slovenliness), he will be worse than nothing; and thirdly, that existence cannot rely anymore neither on God’s providence nor on the everlasting recurrence of nature that each to its own safeguarded the dignity even of the most despicable existence regardless of whichever individual capacity or gift: someone could be vile and this would not affect ff his human nature as such, for this did not hinge upon his character or attitude towards life inasmuch as it stood for an indestructible essence. Instead, if life is worthwhile only when it matches the poetic strength of an individual, the weak ones’ existence, for instance, will be hardly considerable human for it will want the drive required to be a creator’s, which compels to conclude that the average life (that tends to be marred by dullness, unsteadiness or ignorance) will simply be worthless because it will not be comparable to what someone as rash as Faust has lived, for none except who has forgone hope and fear would stake his life just to know the utmost intensity that man can experience. On the other hand, this problematic link of potency and vital sense leaves aside the absolute difference ff that the vital archetypes based on wisdom established between eternity and time or, to say it with the proper terms, between being and becoming, for the identification or rather the substitution of nature by will as the ontological ground of life implies

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

777

that the vital reality unfolds only in immanency and that it does not have nothing to do with the metaphysical transcendence, whether this one is set out mythically, religiously or philosophically (think of the similarities of the heathen Elysian fields, the Christian glory and the Platonic king of forms). In other words, life does not span the abyss that according to metaphysics exists between the plenitude of being that tallies with God and the temporal, deceiving and grievous becoming that tallies with man; therefore, the life of whom has relinquished the pseudo consolations of the beyond, is defined rigorously in terms of finitude, which (although is usually interpreted in a negative way, that is to say, as the burden of mortality) offers, ff nevertheless, the condition sine qua non to enjoy a really human existence wherein all and sundry moment can be the axis of the whole; as a matter of fact, when transcendence is defined rigorously in temporal terms (which means at bottom that it is only imaginative or, rather, symbolical), life must be taken on with the absolute awareness of its finitude, i.e., of the possibilities of becoming that it offers ff in spite of mortality. For such a conception, the main problem of life does not lie then in the fulfilment of a sense determined beforehand by the nature of the individual as it happens with the dire fate of the tragic hero or the providential mission of the Christian faithful one, for in both cases the sense or essence (which is the same here) stems from the metaphysical subordination of man to an all-embracing deity that does not play part whatever for the poetical approach that Faust upholds, whose sense lies instead in the creation of an original and really personal identification with time, identification whose name is precisely history. For history is neither the mere recension of past, nor the analysis of it in order to understand present (which can be called respectively the chronological and the technical conception of history), but the temporal framework of an existence that lacks a metaphysical ground and makes up for it with an everlasting struggle against the corrosive burden of time itself that goes on without noticing man’s wants and desires. Blind and sovereign drive that seems to spring from an unfathomable darkness or from an original chaos whereto it eternally comes back, time ravages the greatest exploits and withal the very ideality of human life, for no existence is worthwhile facing the final insignificance of everything. Thus, history tallies with a groundless time that tries out man’s capacity to overcome the own insignificance, before which death itself is irrelevant, for however much it is determinant all the time, it is alien to life at any rate: stricto sensu, none is responsible for his death, whereas everyone is for his life,

778

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

all the more when this one is not supported by the providence of an omniscient creator or by a metaphysical nature. In a word, the absolute freedom inherent to an existence determined by history, is a long way from being the fulfilment of happiness even for whom gets a superior sensibleness, for he is more aware than anyone else of the insignificance of life. Still more, this awareness can be so potent that it can turn into that sullen indifference ff wherewith the sensible man stares the everyday concerns and even the supreme aims of an ideal existence, which is what happens when history uncovers the relativity of everything and its submission to the terrible power of oblivion and misunderstanding. The worst enemy of the sensible man is then his own historical consciousness, which can have two contrary effects: ff on the one hand, and the same as the dejection caused by the pernicious influence of the metaphysical mystifications (whereof we have spoken in extenso on commenting Faust’s monologue), it smothers vitality and self-confidence; on the other hand, and contrary to this, it sparks off a plethora of devastating emotions that are in the end as harmful as dejection of even worse, for an depressed individual at least keeps his self-consciousness, whereas a frantic one losses it at once and falls without his knowing how in that kind of brutality that always leads to evil. For evil is nothing more than the consciousness of the insignificance of whichever existence, whether it is experienced through dejection or frenzy: I am the spirit, ever, that denies! And rightly so: since everything created, In turn deserves to be annihilated: Better if nothing came to be. So all that you call Sin, you see, Destruction, in short, what you’ve meant By Evil is my true element.21

This axial link of history and evil – that every myth has shown in its own way through time – is the bond of the two parts wherein the dramatic development of the Faust F is divided, which would be totally cloven otherwise: in the first one, the defenestration of the metaphysical ideals and the consequent assumption of evil possibilities that hurtles the protagonist to the giddiness of pleasure where innocence and goodness are shattered; in the second one, the synthesis of the cultural becoming of mankind as a whole that beyond the chronological terms of the own existence, allows the sensible man to beget the only kind of immortality

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

779

within reach of a finite being: the cultural transcendence, whose final aim is not the fusion with God but the symbolical embodiment of everything that man has been through time, including the most hideous abominations, which explains why the very notion of humanity must be assumed critically by an individual that will be simultaneously unsettled, pushed and vivified by the clash and the dash of the several ideals, above all by the ones that come from the heathen integration of man and fate, which contradict point by point the Christian dogma of the divine creation and providence. That is to say, the sensible man’s existence will be carried away by the history stream, yes, but in such a way that instead of being drowned by it, he will guide it, for, after all, it is nothing but the imaginative projection of his own strength: indeed, in the same way that history universalises the groundlessness of life, so will subjects the historical determination to the wants of the individual, which means that everyone can reconstitute his past and future through the potency of imagination, which on the other hand leads to the consideration that the link of history and evil is not finally negative because the consciousness that everything is dispensable or rather disposable, including the memories thanks to which one defines the sense of the own life, allows desire to unfold however much it is at the expense of morals: when one is up to overcome what one has been and forget straightaway the worst wrongdoings effortff lessly (which is the very kernel of sensibleness), one leave aside whichever responsibility in such a way the only standard of the own life will lie in the questionable capacity to keep the vital strength free from the burden of guilt, which on the other hand is beyond reach of average man, who is by principle negatively subjected to morals; thus, the behaviour of the sensible man, which judged from a moral standpoint could seem abominable, will reveal at the end an odd greatness that will preserve him from all the evil that he had been able to do, which, nevertheless, does not solve the problem of how regulate the behaviour of a being that is literally beyond good (but, oddly enough, not beyond evil ). This corroborates that history is the temporal dimension in accordance wherewith finitude is assumed with no false consolation, which entails the substitution of the metaphysical dogma that everyone has to fulfil a sense or a function that vouchsafes him an unlosable dignity for the critical idea that everyone must unfold the inner potency that stands for his individual nature by an active participation in a socio-cultural world wherein the most atrocious cruelty as well as the limitless bounty have place because man is a protean being. Thus, culture, the counterpart of history, is the field wherein whichever possibility of creating and being is

780

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

carried-out, which means furthermore that it cannot be reduced to the transmission of knowledge and vital archetypes that only the learned or the spiritual ones understand, which turns it into the opening of creative possibilities whereof everyone can make the most provided that he is up to give himself over to finitude with so adamant a drive that he lives whichever instant fully aware of its being the very axis of his life, for it uncovers a material indetermination that must be overcome by the iron desire for going on in spite of whichever reason against. For inasmuch as the best existence leaves a lot to be desired, there always be plenty of reasons to relinquish the own struggle at any moment, which explicates why a poetical conception of life must heed the instantaneous framework of the vital development, which destroys both the idea of a fatidic destination and of an absolute concordance of aptitudes and accomplishments gained by oneself: contrary to any of these two solutions, that each to its own hinges upon a temporal continuity that binds all the moments of life around a substantial identity, the poetical conception of existence unfolded in the Faust F upholds that vital time is not a metaphysical continuous but an instantaneous synthesis of the infinite potencies of everyone. Thereby, history is neither an absolute causality nor the unfolding of an original sense, it is the problematic identification of sociocultural and individual creative possibilities that is carried-out by an instant drive. This is why the formula wherewith Faust seals the diabolical pact emphasises the instantaneous character of the poetic fulfilment and of life in general; as a matter of fact, all the scene when he sells his soul spins around the issue, which is set out through the incommensurability of desire and satisfaction that is unbearable until one realizes that both extremes can be identified but only instantaneously and symbolically. Therefore, the instant is the very framework of a poetic existence, that is to say, of an existence wherein individual and mankind are the same: When, to the Moment then, I say: ‘‘Ah, stay a while! You are so lovely!’ Then you can grasp me: then you may, Then, to my ruin, I’ll go gladly! Then they can ring the passing bell, Then from your service you are free, The clocks may halt, the hands be still, And time be past and done, for me!22

What this formula means is then no other thing that the unequivocal resolution to go on whether there are reasons for that or not: man will

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

781

deserve to live as far as he loves life as if it had been the best possible, which implies that no wretchedness is up to defeat someone that has pledged himself to keep alive regardless his existence is crushing or shameful, which seems to be easy at first sight but is almost unattainable because human desire hardly rises to infinite and more often than not crumbles beneath the weight of immediacy. Thus, when Faust stakes his eternal life on experiencing limitlessly everything man can be, he shows that no life is worthwhile if it has not been risked so as to man knows and accepts wholeheartedly his finite condition. For what is far-reaching here is that the aspiration to immortality is expressed throughout in temporal terms, which means that Faust yearns for having a fully human existence, not for enjoying God’s unimaginable perfection, which is a lot more blatant in the further development of the work, above all in the second part of it, where the journey through the various epochs and planes of culture allows the character to fulfil his desire beyond the chronological and desiderative stints of individuality but not of reality, which is why at the end he is again an old man: inasmuch as human immortality is not comparable to the divine eternity, the pinnacle of life has to match a temporal determination, the instant as such, and not in a transcendent spirituality whereof man has no experience whatever. In other words, the only glory that the sensible man attains lies in participating in the opening of a historical world wherein all the cultures are identified by everyone’s self-formation: such a life should be universal by antonomasia and it should neither require making up post mortem for the grieves and grievances that life inflicts unceasingly nor for the wickedness of the own individual that is manifest to the end in spite of his ideals and exploits, which is with no doubt the most startling feature of Faust as dramatic character, which has been commented more than once through these lines: instead of having been appeased by old age or by the plethora of experiences that he has had, he remains anyhow passionate and violent in the very instant when he contemplates the work of all his life, the kingdom that he has set up and enhanced in order to supply his subjects with the greatest possible happiness. Although unintentional, his final crime, the murder of Baucis and Philemon that Mephistopheles carries out, is the most blatant sign that he is still as violent as he was at the very beginning of the work, which does not entail at all that the vital experience had been useless to overcome the original unsettledness of each one but rather that however much someone’s life is admirable, it is irremissibly subjected to the finitude of human nature wherefrom

782

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

whichever individual greatness springs together with unfathomable horrors: A swamp lies there below the hill, Infecting everything I’ve done: My last and greatest act of will Succeeds when that foul pool is gone. Let me make room for many a million, Not wholly secure, but free to work on. Green fertile fields, where men and herds May gain swift comfort from the new-made earth. Quickly settled in those hills’ embrace, Piled high by a brave, industrious race. And in the centre here, a Paradise, Whose boundaries hold back the raging tide, And though it gnaws to enter in by force, The common urge unites to halt its course. Yes, I’ve surrendered to this thought’s insistence, Y The last word Wisdom ever has to say: He only earns his Freedom and Existence, Who’s forced to win them freshly every day. Childhood, manhood, age’s vigorous years, Surrounded by dangers, they’ll spend here. I wish to gaze again on such a land, Free earth: where a free race, in freedom, stand. Then, to the Moment I’d dare say: ‘Stay a while! You are so lovely!’ Through aeons, then, never to fade away This path of mine through all that’s earthly. – Anticipating, here, its deep enjoyment, Now I savour it, that highest moment.23

Thereat, life can get its fulfilment at any moment and man can bid farewell to it with no regret or anguish although he lacks whichever certainty regarding the beyond or although he has committed the worst crimes, which leaves unsolved the moral contradictions that it entails, yes, but supplies instead a vital unity that is beyond reach of the transcendent notion of good. For life does not lead to the revelation of absoluteness but to the voluntary immersion in finitude, the final good lies in the vision of a historical concordance of man with nature and with himself. Coda. After having got our main purpose, to do the groundwork of a poetical conception of life in the light of Goethe’s Faust F , it only remains for us to dwell briefly upon the great absent of the work and of the conception at issue: God or, rather, the identity of Him with the absolute

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

783

Good that sustained the metaphysical tradition for more than two millennia from Plato onwards and practically until the irruption of a categorical distinction of morals and religiosity or, more concretely, of morals and Christianity, which as far as I know was an intellectual enterprise prepared by the Enlightenment and carried out by Kant, above all in the Critique of Practical Reason, in the M Metaphysics of Morals and, from another slant, in the Religion W ithin the L imits of Reason Alone, three masterworks of thought whose extraordinary complexity (so as not to speak of the whole development of the question before and after Kant), compels us to leave aside its elucidation and just heed how the subject is set forth in the F Faust , considering that the work begins with an odd, almost blaspheme scene that has place in the heaven, where a stolid deity accepts to toss up for the eternal destiny of Faust with Mephistopheles, who is a lot more shrewd than the Creator and up to fathom the cause of the human unhappiness, reason: The little god of Earth sticks to the same old way, And is as strange as on that very first day. He might appreciate life a little more: he might, If you hadn’t lent him a gleam of Heavenly light: He calls it Reason, but only uses it To be more a beast than any beast as yet.24

It is needless to say that this criticism against reason does not stem from epistemology but from the outright rejection of whichever approach to existence that starts from the identity of theoretical reason with vital fulfilment, for it is at bottom based on the metaphysical and theological aspiration to transcendence that Faust forwent from the onset because of the unhappiness and dejection that it sparks off, ff which, of course, does not entail that reason as such must be rejected but means, rather, that its inner complexity must be brought to light so as to evince that the mistake of the metaphysical tradition is having taken for granted, firstly, the absolute unity of reason and, secondly, its orientation to transcendence, which led to the wrong conclusion that it had nothing to do with the abrupt drive of passions and, still more, with vitality, in the most immediate sense of this word. However, and thanks above all to the farreaching Kantian demonstration that, on the one hand, there is a dialectic inherent to the pure reason that makes impossible both the transcendent unity of it and the scientific knowledge of God and, on the other hand, that there is no manifestation of reason alien to sensibility, not even in the moral field (which for Kant is based on the feeling of respect), it was

784

VICTOR GERALD RIVAS

feasible the understanding of the apparently contradictory function that it plays to overcome the stints wherewith man must live, which are not reminders of his insurmountable proclivity but possibilities for becoming a plural being up to span the abyssal opposition that according to metaphysics existed between him and nature. Thus, the words of Mephistopheles must be explained as a criticism against whichever abstract conception of reason but also of God’s dogmatic purity, which although seems to vouchsafe Him the greatest sanctity, ends up making for Him impossible to be an active force in the configuration of life: absolute transcendence beyond a nature that cannot be explained in a teleological way anymore, God withdraws from a life ruled by the tautness of will, desire and time, which instead of slinging man to desperation, leads him to a richest appraisal of existence. This is a lot more blatant in the final scene of the work, that takes place in a very odd vision of glory where God is substituted by the Virgin, who confines herself to invite Gretchen to soar so as to Faust goes after her to the highest spheres, which reproduces clearly the finite and temporal framework of life in accordance wherewith there is no a final identification of fusion with the divinity because the becoming of the individual goes on even beyond death, which is only a transfiguration, not a transubstantiation and much less an annihilation: All of the transient, Is parable, only: The insufficient, Here, grows to reality: The indescribable, Here, is done: Woman, eternal, Beckons us on.25

Instead of returning to his principle and fulfilling the designs of his Creator expressed by nature, man is released from whichever metaphysical dependence on God and can fulfil what is the innermost desire of his heart: simply feeling alive, being carried away by a drive that is in harmony with his reason in order to build up a world wherein all and sundry being is simultaneously principle and end and whose only law is the everlasting unfolding of a sovereign potency. V Vale. Meritorious University of Puebla, Mexico. M

A LIFE BEYOND GO (O)D

785

NOTES 1 Translated by Benjamin Jowett. The text appears in the following address: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-ixew?id=PlaRepu&images= images/mondeg&data=lv1. 2 Translated by Benjamin Jowett. The text appears in the following address: http://www.theologywebsite.com/etext/plato_phaedo.shtml (.) 3 All quotations of the work will come from the English translation by A. S. Kline, which can be found at http://www.tonykline.co.uk/Browspages/Germany/Fausthome.htm (.) The italics are by the translator, unless specific mention to the contrary (the Roman numbers and the end of each quotation will indicate respectively the part, the act – only for the second part – and the scene, while the Arabic figures will indicate the verses quoted). 4 II, V, V, 11433–11446. 5 I, II, 1074–1079. 6 II, I, V, 6271–6274. 7 I, II, 1100–1105. 8 II, I, V, 6212–6216. 9 I, I, 354–376. 10 Emile Brehier, Histoire de la Philosophie, 2 vv. (Paris: PUF, 1931 and 1938), v. I, chapter VIII, passim. 11 I, IV, 1765–1771. 12 English translation of the King James Bible. 13 II, II, I, 6773–6778 and 6803–6806. 14 I, VI, 1756–1759. 15 I, I, 455–459. 16 I, XIV, 3217–3224. 17 I, III, 1224–1237. 18 I, IV, 1603–1606. 19 II, V, III, 11269–11272. 20 II, V, V, 11403–11407. 21 I, III, 1338–1344. 22 I, IV, 1699–1706. 23 II, V, V, 11559–11586. 24 Prologue in Heaven, 281–286. 25 II, V, VII, 12105–12111.

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

ANTIGONE’S ( RE ) TURN: THE E9 T HOS OF THE ‘‘COMING COMMUNITY’’

Ce n’est pas nous qui, par quelque decret, faisons d’Antigone un point tournant en notre matiere, celle de l’ethique. Il y a bien longtemps que cela se sait, et meme ceux qui ne l’ont pas remarque´ ne sont pas sans savoir que cela existe quelque part, dans la discussion des doctes. Jacques Lacan, L e se´minaire V II1 La coppia categoriale fondamentale della politica occidentale non e quella amico-nemico, ma quella nuda vita-esistenza politica, zoe: -bios, esclusione-inclusione. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer2

Western philosophical ethics, whether furthering or reforming common W morality, needs standards, e´tandards, or ‘‘rallying points’’ around which the kaloi-kagathoi, spoudaioi, or honneˆtes hommes, the good or noble, can unite in their opposition to the kakoi, the base or evil ones; in other words, act on behalf of philoi or friends and against ekhthroi or enemies. The philos / ekhthros opposition – an opposition between, on the one hand, friends, family, allies, all those who are loved, and, on the other hand, enemies both personal and political – may be considered the most basic one in ancient Greek ethics, in which the ties of loyalty known as philia predominantly determine the rules of moral behavior.3 This is clear from Plato’s Republic, where the moral obligation to help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies is presented as the intuitively indisputable basis of justice, and from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, a substantial portion of which is devoted to the analysis of philia.4 Sophocles’ Antigone seems to be structured around such an opposition as well. It is there from the very first words of Antigone to her sister Ismene in the Prologue, and it is upheld by Creon till the end, even, he says, beyond the grave. It is also upheld by the majority of interpreters of the play, most famously by Hegel.5 Yet Antigone herself ultimately breaks the dialectic of friends and enemies – which is also, especially for this play, a dialectic of polis and oikos, of human and divine law – when in the middle of the play she declares, ‘‘My nature is to join in love, not hate’’ (outoi sunekhthein alla sumphilein ephun).6 When Hegel proclaims Antigone the most wonderful 787 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 787–811. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

788

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

and resplendent figure of all, perhaps he is thinking of this passage. But if so, Hegel’s dialectic is unable to justify his judgment. It needs to preserve a balance between Antigone’s and Creon’s claims, which are to be sublated (aufgehoben) and reconciled. As a result, Sophocles’ play ceases to correspond to Hegel’s schema, so much so that Jean Anouilh, a reader of Hegel, felt obliged to rewrite the play, to reinforce Creon’s position and to weaken that of Antigone, and especially to erase any implication of an (un-Hegelian) rejection of particular standards or, to put it differently, ff an affirmation of an absolute standard. How philosophical is Antigone? Aristotle, for whom tragic poetry is more philosophical than history,7 mentions this tragedy only once in passing.8 It is only in modern times that Sophocles’ Antigone is considered a philosophical tragedy par excellence. Just like her father (and brother) Oedipus, Antigone is a disturbing mythical and literary figure that has passed to the realm of the philosophical. She belongs to ‘‘the tribe that asks questions’’ (Anouilh), and she certainly has provoked theoretical reflection on the principles of ethics at least since Hegel; indeed, for many scholars she has exemplified the very notion of morality (Sittlichkeit), or at least one aspect of it.9 Yet in what sense can we take Antigone – the tragedy of Antigone, the myth of Antigone, the figure of Antigone – as the turning point in the ethical thinking of our time? How can the ethical thinking of the community, in particular, a thinking that has traditionally required first of all the specification of who may be included in and who will be excluded from f the community, be constructed around a character and a myth that constitute the major threat to the community, namely the threat of anarchy? Hegel, after all, seems to override his praise of Antigone with a denunciation of her one-sidedness10 and he is suspicious of Antigone’s martyrdom, a suspicion that still reverberates in Jacques Lacan’s discussion of Antigone in his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis: ‘‘Il n’y a que les martyrs pour eˆtre sans pitie´ ni crainte. Croyezmoi, le jour du triomphe des martyrs, c’est l’incedie universel.’’11 We shall argue that – in spite of all the attempts to enframe Antigone (the tragedy, the myth, the figure) in the oppositional structures of polis/oikos, public/private, masculine/feminine, and more fundamentally, friend/ enemy – she might nevertheless be read as an embodiment of the ethical value of the community: not, to be sure, the community of Creon, of Hegel, or of the modern ‘‘doctes,’’ but rather the ‘‘coming community,’’ la comunita che viene, as envisaged by the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben.12 Indeed, such a community not only tolerates but

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

789

requires the kind of being that grounds Antigone’s strangely generous declaration13 – ‘‘whatever being,’’ qualunque essere, quodlibet ens.

I Comme Hegel, nous avons ete´ fascines par Antigone, par cet incroyable rapport, cette puissante liaison sans desir, cet immense desir impossible qui ne pouvait pas vivre, capable seulement de renverser, paralyser ou exceder un systeme et une histoire, d’interrompre la vie du concept, de lui couper le souffle ou bien, ce qui revient au meme, de le supporter depuis le dehors ou le dessous d’une crypte. Jacques Derrida, Glas14

Antigone defies Creon. After the death of the two sons of Oedipus, the new king, brother of Jocasta, gives a state burial to Eteocles and throws the body of Polyneices to the dogs and the birds. He issues an edict prohibiting the burial of the one he considers a traitor to the city. We – the spectators, the readers of Antigone – know all this from the initial exchange between the two daughters of Oedipus, Antigone and Ismene. Antigone solicits Ismene’s help in burying Polyneices in defiance of Creon’s order, but she will not insist after Ismene’s refusal, and announces her intention to perform the rite of burial alone. The girls meet outside the palace, outside the house or oikos. The place of this initial dialogue between the sisters is the most natural setting for the Greek theater, yet it might take on an additional signification in the context of this play, especially in view of its Hegelian interpretation as the staging of the conflict between family and state, between oikos and polis, between female and male.15 It is indeed this latter distinction that Ismene emphasizes in justifying her refusal to join Antigone in the impossible task: ‘‘we must remember that we are women, who cannot fight against men.’’16 And she immediately locates this gender difference ff within the established power structure, that is, the power structure of the city – the polis (‘‘... we are ruled by those whose power is greater, so that we must consent to this and to other things even more painful’’).17 Ismene explicitly inscribes her very nature ( phusis) as a woman within the limits of the polis: ‘‘to act in defiance of the citizenry (to polito: n), my nature does not give me means for that (ephun ame: khanos).’’ 18 Thus, not only does she accept the oppositional structure emphasized by Hegel – a structure crucial to Creon’s rule of the city, as we can already see in his fundamental distinction between the two brothers – but also her own

790

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

and Antigone’s position within this structure. She characterizes Antigone’s resistance, as Creon will later, as to ame: khanon, something out of the ordinary, inconceivable, impossible: ‘‘you are in love with the impossible (ame: khano: n erais).’’19 And she proclaims that ‘‘it is better not to hunt the impossible at all.’’20 The oppositions invoked in this opening scene are equated with and reinforce one another: to accept or refuse the proclamation (friend/enemy) is to accept or refuse the power structure (command/ obedience), its gendered nature (male/female), and its rules about proper placement ( polis/oikos, public/private). The emphasis on such oppositions, on the fundamental nature of oppositional structures in general, is thus present in Sophocles’ play from the very beginning. Hence Creon’s famous eulogy of the city-state ( polis) and of himself as its representative comes as no surprise. In glorifying the city, Creon powerfully reaffirms such oppositions, in a way that is specifically oriented toward the community: his understanding of the relationship between citizen and polis requires that one’s duty to self or family be subordinated to one’s duty to the polis. One of his claims for the greatness of the city is in fact its power to take over and sustain all private ties, brought together under the notion of philia: ... I know that she [polis] it is which gives us our security. If she sails upright and we sail on her, friends will be ours for the making.21

Contrary to the Homeric heroes, Creon does not think of his personal achievement (kleos) as the ultimate goal of his being, but rather makes his merit depend on the glory of the city that he promises to foster: ‘‘In the light of rules like these, I will make her [the city – polis] greater still.’’22 Significantly, he denies women the same means of achieving glory. Several times in the course of the play he will deny Antigone as a woman any right to intervene in the government of the polis (‘‘I swear I am no man and she the man if she can win this and not pay for it’’; ‘‘But while I live a woman shall not rule’’).23 However, through this act of exclusion, the sphere of the feminine, the oikos, the private, is not completely suppressed either, but rather inscribed within the masculine, the public, and the power structure of the city; indeed, it must remain in its stable and subordinate position in order for the city to maintain its orderly existence. It thus has its (subordinate) place in the rhetoric of Creon as well as that of the other protagonists of the play. It is not just Creon and Ismene who support such an oppositional structure, however. Antigone herself seems to accept it right from the

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

791

beginning when she asks Ismene to choose her side against Creon’s: ‘‘... have you failed to notice the evils from our enemies (to: n ekhthro: n) as they come against our friends ( pros tous philous)?’’ (Antigone, 9–10). And at the end of the scene, when Ismene tries to dissuade Antigone from burying her brother and points to the madness of such a plan, Antigone threatens to count her sister too among her enemies: If you will talk like this I will loathe you (ekhthare: men ex emou), And you will be adjudged an enemy (ekhthra) – Justly – by the dead’s decision. (Antigone, 109–10)

Antigone’s invocation of the philos / ekhthros distinction here is, if anything, more personal than her sister’s; it is not just a set of standards to believe in but, it would seem, the very foundation of her most pressing concerns and of her imminent action against Creon’s proclamation. It is also, she implies, a distinction that continues even after death, a notion that will be significant for the interpretation of her later confrontation with Creon. The importance of the philos / ekhthros distinction is upheld by the Western philosophical tradition. Contrary to Plato, for whom philia is W always subordinated to a form of goodness worthy of being loved (to philon), Aristotle returns an archaic value to philia as friendship, especially friendship as a social bond necessary to the survival of any community.24 For Aristotle, as for Creon, philia is the foundation of any social order and the conditio sine qua non of all other relationships: this bond, he writes, ‘‘would seem to hold cities together, and legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than about justice. For concord would seem to be similar to philia and they aim at concord above all, while they try above all to expel civil conflict, which is enmity.’’25 Philia is the basis of the law itself, as there are different ff rules of justice for friends or kin and for strangers: ‘‘what is just is not the same for a friend towards a friend as towards a stranger.’’26 Hence it is not surprising that, in his list of the most tragic themes, Aristotle emphasizes most prominently the rupture of the family ties of philia. And the resolution of tragedy (catharsis) attempts to rationalize the incredible family stories of mythology, especially through the idea of partial responsibility for any act with dire consequences (for example in the form of hamartia). Aristotle’s tragic theory, with its emphasis on the transformation of the tragic hero through recognition and reversal, would make Creon the likely hero of Antigone, explaining its contradictions in terms of a misunderstanding of philia on

792

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

Creon’s part, his consequent downfall, and his final recognition of his mistake. But it is Hegel’s notions of Verso V ¨hnung (reconciliation) and Auf hebung (‘‘canceling’’ and ‘‘overcoming,’’ on the one hand, and ‘‘preserving,’’ on the other, joined in an indivisible dialectical movement), rather than Aristotle’s notion of the poetic transformation of myth into plot (muthos), that epitomize the philosophical appropriation of tragedy and myth for the majority of modern thinkers, few of whom have attempted to argue exclusively for Creon’s side in the play. It was, indeed, Hegel who, through his theory of tragic conflict or collision (Kollision), marked most readings of Antigone as a model tragedy (Exempel der T rago¨die). In the Hegelian view, tragedy does not chart the progression, or rather fall, of a noble hero from a happy state to affliction through a great although not necessarily ‘‘moral’’ mistake (hamartia), but a collision, a clash between two equally valid moral claims. In Sophocles’ Antigone, ... familial love, the holy, the inward, intimate feelings – hence known also as the law of the nether gods – collides (kommt in Kollision) with the right of the state (Recht des Staats).27

Creon is not on this reading either a hero or a vulgar tyrant, but a representative of an ethical principle (eine sittliche Macht). He defends the law of the city-state and the authority of the legitimate government.28 His claim is valid if one-sided, but so is Antigone’s. Justice (Gerechtigkeit) contravenes against the one-sidedness (Einseitigkeit) of both claims. To be sure, the protagonists do not see this collision as such. Both Antigone and Creon believe in the superiority, even exclusivity, of their respective claims. For Creon, reconciliation can only take place within the order of the city-state. For Antigone, any compromise with state power is unthinkable. But a clear separation between the political order of the city and the order of kinship is not easy to maintain. After all, the latter is the source of Creon’s political authority – he is a legitimate ruler because of his blood relation to the king Oedipus and his sons. Antigone, on the other hand, can only perform her act of resistance (which is, at least in part, a speech act) within the public (manly) sphere.29 Even on a Hegelian reading, though, the basic opposition between philos and ekhthros informs much of the debate within the play and appears unquestioned there. The tragedy and its characters seem firmly entrenched in the friend/enemy dialectic, and it is this that has been the principle of most recent interpretations within the realm of classical studies.30 Given that so much of Antigone seems to assume the validity

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

793

of the philos / ekhthros distinction, it is hardly surprising that many readers subscribe to this basic oppositional structure. Yet the play itself refuses to grant stability to that structure; oppositions are always on the verge of collapse into anarchy here.’’31 Consider, for instance, the invocation of friends and enemies by Antigone in the opening scene. On the one hand, she seems to speak from a position that privileges philia, in particular a philia that emphasizes kinship over the obligations to friends and fellow-citizens that form the basis of Creon’s philia. Even the overdetermined opening line of the play, in which Antigone refers to Ismene as koinon autadelphon Isme: ne: s kara – a notoriously untranslatable epithet that means something like ‘‘selfsame sister of the same parents’’ (‘‘my dear sister, / whose father was my father,’’ in Grene’s translation) – suggests the heavy weight Antigone gives to the claims of familial philia. Yet she assigns her own sister – for whom she ought to have as much love as she has for her brother – to the side of the ekhthroi when it becomes clear that Ismene will not help her with the burial. Thus, apparently, Antigone must violate her own laws of philia insofar as she upholds them. How are we to understand this paradox? II Antigone selbst ist das Gedicht des Heimischwerdens im Unheimischsein. Antigone ist das Gedicht des hochsten und eigentlichen Unheimischseins. Heidegger, Ho¨lderlins Hymne ‘‘Der Ister’’32

If, at the beginning of the play, Antigone speaks of her duty towards her brother in terms of the familial obligations of philia, it increasingly appears to seem as if her obligation and love are directed only at Polyneices. The circle of her loved ones narrows and narrows as the play develops: she progressively excludes all the other members of her family that one would think are equally entitled to her philia. The heroine is aware of her isolation and of the terrible nature of her defiance when she tells Ismene: ‘‘Let me alone and my folly with me, to endure this terror ( pathein to deinon touto)’’ (Antigone, 111–12). To suffer ff the terror of uncanniness (to deinon) means not only to be placed outside the city-state ( polis), but to be placed outside of the human itself. Indeed, human essence can only be thought of as communal: anthro: pos as politikon zo: ion. To live outside of a community one must be a beast or a god; Sophocles was aware of this long before Aristotle formulated the theory of the social nature of human being in his Politics. However, for Sophocles, this thought was

794

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

far from being theoretically and practically untroubled; its tragic questioning is certainly at the center of Antigone. When Ismene characterizes her sister’s act as ‘‘anti-polis’’ – defying ‘‘the authority of the citizens’’ (to de biai polito: n dran – Antigone 78–9), she is already hinting at this terrible state of apolis that the choral ‘‘Ode to Man (anthro: pos)’’ will spell out later in the play. If Antigone follows the dictates of the philoi / ekhthroi distinction, she does so in the most radical way possible, excluding herself from any circle of philoi beyond her brother and thus, seemingly, from any community. Antigone’s rejection of and exclusion from the morality of human standards is of course accepted by traditional readings of the play which oppose human law to divine law. It is difficult, however, to affirm that such morality lacks standards in general. Divine law, indeed, provides more than human standards. The distinction Antigone makes at the beginning of her confrontation with Creon between human laws (temporary and contingent) and the laws of the gods (eternal and absolute) is the basis of this interpretation, linking the human with Creon’s arbitrary and misguided proclamations, and making Antigone’s separation from the human a sign of her superiority, her connection to the gods, and thus her own morality: I did not believe your proclamation had such power to enable one who will someday die to override God’s ordinances, unwritten and secure. They are not of today and yesterday; they live forever ... (450ff.) ff

The same text could be, however, the basis for an interpretation that departs from the traditional reading that is, in terms of two conflicting moral standards. Segal, for example, reads Antigone’s description of herself as autonomos (Antigone 821) attempt to go beyond the divine/human distinction, noting that her ‘‘unqualified declaration for absolute values’’ seems to demand the redefinition of all ordinary moral categories: ‘‘[s]he is ‘a law unto herself,’ autonomos.’’33 Antigone seems to claim here that she alone occupies an ethical space – an e: thos – the moral ‘‘high ground.’’ Does not such an autonomous law imply a rejection of all external standards? It all depends on the nature of the e: thos in which Antigone dwells. But is not the problem of ethics-as-dwelling-place one of hospitality? In the Homeric Greek world, xeinia34 assured an extraordinary protection to those who were ‘‘out of place,’’ that is, outside of the ordinary laws of their household (oikos). And apparently, the identity of the stranger/guest (xenos) was not important, since hospitality was due before the revelation

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

795

of his/her name.35 In this sense, the moral standards governing the institution of xeinia seem absolute. But even archaic xeinia has its limits, which are often the limits of the civilized world. Jacques Derrida analyzes this institution and its limits in Of Hospitality,36 arguing that xeinia is in fact governed by a familial model in which the father as ‘‘master of the house’’ lays out moral standards,37 and enforces them with violence when necessary.38 This is surely what Creon does in denying the final ‘‘hospitality’’ of burial to Polyneices. Indeed, xenia (in Derrida’s reading) is closely linked to the ethics of philoi/ekhthroi: not least because the right to hospitality, like the right to be called philos, is not ( just) personal; it extends down (generation to generation) and out (to the extended family), linking people in an expanding web of reciprocal obligation, and is necessarily mediated by the state, the community, the public sphere. This limited, regulated sort of hospitality, as Derrida notes, is inscribed within the entire Western philosophical and legal tradition. In a sense, Antigone scholarship, just like the rule of Creon in the play, relies ultimately upon the standards imposed by the philos / ekhthros distinction. Yet Derrida suggests that there is another sort of hospitality, what he calls an ‘‘absolute or unconditional hospitality’’39 that is not just opposed to this limited hospitality, but ‘‘strangely heterogeneous’’ to it,40 breaking with it so completely that there is no simple or dialectical opposition possible, but rather an ‘‘insoluble ... nondialecticizable antinomy’’ between the two.41 This absolute hospitality is a radical openness that, contrary to xenia, offers ff itself to ‘‘just anyone’’ (to ‘‘the absolute, unknown, anonymous other’’).42 It does not withhold itself until the stranger’s name and provenance are established, but rather says ‘‘yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification.’’43 If we understand Creon’s proclamation as in a sense a law of circumscribed hospitality based necessarily upon exclusion and violence, then perhaps Antigone’s appeal to divine law would be, in contrast, an appeal to this absolute law of hospitality, which refuses to distinguish a philos-brother from an ekhthros-brother but gives a ‘‘home in the earth’’ to each, to all, to any who requires it. But if we read Antigone’s position in this way, then we cannot understand her as merely opposing one law to another. The absolute law of hospitality, insofar as it is heterogeneous to ordinary hospitality, is, as Derrida argues, itself outside of the law (nomos anomos).44 It is not just another, higher law but one that, like Antigone herself, transgresses radically and threatens with destruction the ‘‘law and order’’ of the polis. Antigone’s invocation of the unchanging laws of the gods would not,

796

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

then, merely redefine ethics, as Segal suggests; it would threaten to do away with ethical standards and ordinary laws altogether. It is in this sense that we must read the declaration with which, at the climax of the play, at the end of the central ago: n with Creon, Antigone seems to abandon the principle of hostile opposition between friends and enemies. To Creon’s claim that the friend/enemy dialectic continues even in death, she replies: My nature is to join in love (sumphilein). not hate (sunekhein).45

The verb she uses to characterize her sentiment and moral stance, sumphilein, is both unusual (it is a hapax legomenon, the only recorded instance of the word) and potentially ambiguous: the prefix sun can refer either to the subject of the verb (‘‘to love along with someone else’’) or to its object (‘‘to love [more than one person] together’’). If we read it to mean the latter in a radical way,46 then this seems like a strange statement for Antigone, who in the first part of the play seems to inscribe herself in the philos / ekhthros structure as much as anyone else does, and indeed, many classical scholars have gone to some lengths to integrate what she says here with her earlier position. Chodkowski, for instance, argues that Antigone expresses her duty as a sister, a duty which is the same toward both of her brothers no matter what enmity might remain between them; he paraphrases (and interprets) the line in question as ‘‘Schließlich habe ich als Schwester nicht die Pflicht, den Haß zu teilen, sondern die Pflicht, beide Bru¨der zu lieben.’’47 Blundell similarly argues that Antigone ‘‘excludes herself from the hatred that divides [her brothers] and abides by the claims of kinship-philia towards both,’’48 implying that Antigone’s statement here remains governed by the rules of philia. Indeed, the notion of sisterly duty as the basis for Antigone’s action and her statement would still inscribe her within the dominant tradition of Western, in this case modern rather than ancient (Aristotelian) ethics. Such a reading remains problematic on at least two accounts. On the one hand, it leaves unresolved the question of how Antigone can feel a sisterly obligation to some but not all of her siblings (since her ambiguous attitude toward Ismene remains unexplained); on the other hand, it introduces elements not explicit in the line itself (since Antigone does not say her nature is to join her brothers in love, but to ‘‘join in love,’’ sumphilein, absolutely). Antigone’s attitude is at once more and less inclusive than such a reading allows. We would thus suggest rather that the seeming contradictions in her character – between her use of the rhetoric

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

797

of philos / ekhthros and the potentially limitless philia she offers ff at this climactic moment, and between her honoring of her brother and her disavowal of her sister – can best be understood in terms of a refusal to make distinctions altogether, a refusal which threatens traditional moral standards but at the same time founds a different ff kind of ethics. ‘‘To join in love’’ here would then mean: to love without exception, but not in the simple sense of unconditional love; it would mean to love without taking sides, to love without ‘‘seeing’’ sides, while at the same time loving in the face of absolute difference, ff recognizing the unique character of the singular being as the object of her care. For the radical generosity of Antigone’s statement is something of an entirely different ff order from ordinary definitions of generosity like the primarily economic one of Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, a definition still concerned with standards of appropriate behavior: the generous person, says Aristotle, ‘‘will give to the right people, the right amounts, at the right time.’’49 Antigone’s generosity, on the other hand, is an unconditional one that does not distinguish the right amounts, the right time, and especially ‘‘the right people.’’ If Antigone’s circle of philoi narrows as the play goes on, how are we to read the sudden appearance of this astonishing line? What is it that allows the heroine of Sophocles to present this challenge to traditional standards of ethics? Heidegger’s reading of this play rejects all traditional interpretations caught up in the structure of the ekhthros / philos opposition. For Heidegger, ‘‘the counterplay (Gegenspiel) of this tragedy is not played out in the opposition between the ‘state’ on the one hand and ‘religion’ on the other’’50 – or, we might generalize, between ‘‘friends’’ and ‘‘enemies’’ – but rather in what he calls the ‘‘counterturning’’ of the homely and the unhomely which for him characterizes human beings as those who are ‘‘initially, and for a long time, and sometimes forever, not at home.’’51 This state of homelessness is expressed in the second choral ode (first stasimon) of Antigone by the ambiguous word deinos,52 which Heidegger translates as unheimlich or uncanny, a word that he links to the more specific adjective unheimisch or unhomely. The common root of the two oppositions, (un)heimlich and (un)heimisch – indeed, their near-identity – points to a connection that goes well beyond etymology. The central truth of the ode, says Heidegger, is that uncanniness is essential to human beings,53 expressing their infinite potential for both ‘‘good and evil’’ (tote men kakon, allot’ ep’ esthlon herpei), for unlimited domination of the world coupled with an inability to dominate their own Dasein, their own essence, the state that being not at home epitomizes.

798

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

However, it is not homelessness alone, but its continuing relation to home, that constitutes the essence of Dasein, of which Antigone is the model. In this essential interrelation, the unhomely is figured as, in some sense, the longing for a homeliness that is not known, that from which we are exiled, but toward which we are always attempting to return in a perpetual nostos. Yet this return is often impeded by a failure to have proper knowledge of the homely; the hearth, the center of the homely, rejects those who do not have this knowledge, as the last lines of the choral ode make clear. Yet Heidegger also argues that only the one who has real knowledge ( phrono: n) of the homely to begin with can become unhomely: ‘‘only from out of this knowing can the deinon be recognized as deinon at all’’ (107). This raises the question of Antigone’s relationship to the homely, of whether she, too, is to be expelled from the hearth. When Ismene exhorts Antigone not to pursue tame: khana (which Heidegger calls ‘‘that against which nothing – essentially nothing – is of avail’’), Antigone does just that: taking upon herself the pursuit of impossible things, of ‘‘das ... wogegen auszurichten nichts’’ (102). Heidegger declares that this is precisely the definition of the uncanny (103), since pursuing tame: khana is at the same time a means of defending the home and of endangering it. Antigone thus takes upon herself the essence of the human; she is ‘‘the supreme uncanny (das ho¨chste Unheimliche)’’ (Ister 104, 129) – the one whom the expulsion from the hearth must ‘‘concern ... in the first instance’’ (104), and hence the paradigm of humanity. Heidegger’s notion of human being as unheimlich, and Antigone as das U Unheimlichste , profoundly complicates the distinction between philoi and ekhthroi. Neither a simple oppositional structure nor Hegelian dialectic is able to give an adequate account of it. Antigone, as the most unheimlich being of all, is necessarily expelled from the hearth, from her philoi and her community; she is isolated in her action. And yet, at the same time, it is precisely this isolation that makes her the most human, the most authentic (eigentlich) member of the community. Antigone exemplifies the waywardness, exile, and loneliness that, paradoxically, are what all human beings have in common. On this view, the distinction is no longer, as Creon would have it, between the individual and the polis, between political and familial concerns, between action on behalf of philoi and on behalf of ekhthroi. The ‘‘counterturning’’ (das Gegenwendige), as Heidegger calls it, is rather located within human Dasein as such. This view of Antigone as unheimlich should not be limited to Heidegger’s reading of the term. Freud’s notion of the Unheimliche U , as that strange and frightening thing located in the heart of the familiar,54

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

799

might perhaps explain the threat Creon feels from Antigone: a threat located within his family, within the polis, a threat of a different ff order from the one posed by foreign armies. As long as that threatening element can be contained, that is, subsumed within the dominant discourse; as long as the possible threat of anarchy, for example that posed by feminine interference in the political, can be reduced to a subordinate term within the dialectic governed by the masculine, order is maintained. Creon’s fear is that such terms will not remain stable, will not be contained but will erupt into the order of the city and thereby destroy it. In fact the threat of this eruption may be found within the notion of kinship itself, in the uncanniness and indetermination of incest – a notion that challenges the basis of any structure of kinship, and hence in the most radical psychoanalytic theory, any structure of power, and ultimately any framework of intelligibility. Indeed, the taboo of incest is considered to be the principle and beginning (arkhe: ) of all cultural (Levi-Strauss) or symbolic (Lacan) order. In T he Elementary Structures of Kinship, Claude Le´vi-Strauss makes it clear that the incest taboo is not biologically conditioned and hence belongs to the order of culture; nevertheless, it seems to have a universal character, since there has never been an example of a society without the incest taboo.55 Every community develops its social structure out of the stable distinctions of kinship secured precisely by the incest taboo. Thus the latter – non-natural yet universal law – provides, as it were, a non-variable condition for any cultural system. In another theory of the origins of social systems, that of Jacques Lacan, the structures of kinship and particularly the position of the father constitute the beginning of the so-called symbolic order, which governs language itself and provides the conditions of all intelligibility. Any violation of the incest taboo is therefore tantamount to introducing a germ of radical anarchy and, eventually, unintelligibility. In this context, doubt about Antigone’s place in the structure of kinship has far-reaching consequences for her position in relation to Creon in Sophocles’ play (and, for that matter, for the idea that she represents the ‘‘side’’ of kinship). She is after all, a product of the violation of the incest taboo as Oedipus’s and Jocasta’s daughter. Ismene, one might object, is their daughter as well, and yet her position has nothing disturbing in it. But this is because, by accepting Creon’s law, Ismene adheres to a new differential ff system that is able to replace the original system of kinship based on the incest taboo. This radical difference ff between Antigone and Ismene, in spite of their common ‘‘biological’’ status, suggests the fundamentally ideological (cultural) character of basic (and seemingly natural )

800

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

distinctions. What makes of Antigone, contrary to Ismene and even Oedipus, a rebel par excellence, is her refusal to maintain accepted kinship relations, and all the other relations that follow. Indeed, in a famous and often discussed argument, Antigone singles out her brother from the rest of the family: Had I been a mother/ of children, and my husband been dead and rotten,/ I would not have taken this weary task upon me/ against the will of the city. What law backs me/ when I say this? I will tell you:/ If my husband were dead, I might have had another,/ and child from another man, if I lost the first./ But when father and mother both were hidden in death/ no brother’s life would bloom for me again./ That is the law under which I gave you precedence,/ my dearest brother. Antigone 961–71; Grene’s translation

The intricacy and apparent fallacy of Antigone’s argument here point to the strangeness of her position.56 What is it that defines Antigone’s particular relationship to her brother? Love, certainly, but what is the nature of this love she feels almost exclusively for him, above any other family members? We have already noted that Antigone’s philia seems to narrow until it focuses only on Polyneices, yet one might also make a distinction here between philia in a strict sense and the erotic love which the chorus evokes later in the play (781ff.). ff Is not Antigone’s love for Polyneices rather of the latter kind? Indeed, while philia is linked to the orderly functioning of the family and the city, Eros, as Simon Goldhill puts it, presents ‘‘a possible irrational and overwhelming force, a principle that threatens the principles of law and order.’’57 It is this kind of destructive feeling that Derrida certainly has in mind when he speaks of ‘‘cet immense desir impossible qui ne pouvait pas vivre, capable seulement de renverser, paralyser ou exceder un systeme et une histoire.’’58 This is a kind of love that breaks apart the orderly structures of the city rather than supporting them (as Creon’s philia does). On the other hand, is it possible to equate this idea of Antigone’s disorderly love with an incestuous desire for Polyneices, as Lacan and, more recently, Judith Butler suggest?59 To be sure, the feelings Antigone expresses here clearly go beyond the state of brotherly love, and they do question the very order that the incest taboo is purported to uphold, the order of kinship. But this is not necessarily a sign of incestuous love, so much as it is a sign that Antigone’s feelings for Polyneices are of a kind contrary to the ones approved by the established order. Antigone’s love is rather a sign, we would suggest, of her acceptance of what Giorgio Agamben has recently

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

801

analyzed as ‘‘whatever being,’’ a notion that will perhaps allow us, finally, to confront the enigma of her generous declaration. IV In ultima istanza, lo Stato puo riconoscere qualsiasi rivendicazione di identita [...] ma che delle singolarita facciano comunita senza rivendicare un’identita, che degli uomini coappartengano senza una rappresentabile condizione di appartenenza [...], ecco cio che lo Stato non puo o` in alcun caso tollerare. Giorgio Agamben, M Mezzi senza fine60

For indeed, Polyneices’ body, torn apart by the dogs and birds,61 seems to have all the characteristics, or rather the lack of any characteristic,62 that Agamben ascribes to what he calls qualunque essere or ‘‘whatever being.’’ It is in fact its original Latin designation that reveals best the ‘‘nature’’ of ‘‘whatever being’’: quodlibet ens. Quod-libet marks the indifferff ence to any characteristic of the being it describes, but expresses the very opposite of indifference ff as such. It is not anybody who happens by, but on the contrary ‘‘being such that it always matters.’’63 In other words quodlibet is what is loved irrespectively of any generic property, the lovable in an absolute sense: ‘‘... whatever singularity (the Lovable) is never the intelligence of some thing, of this or that quality or essence, but only the intelligence of an intelligibility.’’64 This means that the whatever being does not belong to ‘‘this or that set, to this or that class’’ – a husband, a son, even a brother, as in Antigone’s confusing and confused speech.65 If there is anything that is clear in this speech, it is her desire to single out Polyneices as a special, unique being – as a ‘‘whatever singularity.’’66 And the metaphysical status of the Vogelfrei V Polyneices, (‘‘offered ff up to the birds’’),67 or homo sacer, confirms this view of Antigone, for he has no protection outside of Antigone’s love. How to reconcile the absolute singularity of this love with the apparent universality of Antigone’s declaration? In Agamben’s view, it is universality that seems to be sacrificed to singularity. Love does not overlook specific properties ‘‘in favor of an insipid generality (universal love),’’68 and indeed, we have seen the problems that inhere in any attempt to read this line in universal terms. We must instead consider it from the perspective of a kind of love that is directed towards ‘‘being, such that it always matters’’ (quodlibet ens). Antigone refuses to love anyone as a member of a category – not only as husband, but as philos (opposed to ekhthros), even as brother. To do what she does for Polyneices out of a

802

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

sense of her obligation to him as philos and adelphos would be to subscribe to the same set of binary structures that govern Creon’s system of values and have governed so many readings of Sophocles’ play. Antigone’s love for her brother is a love for his absolute singularity – even beyond the fact of their sibling bond, which Polyneices shares with Eteocles and Ismene – a love for his ‘‘being-such, for belonging itself.’’69 Belonging, indeed, is the term that traditionally underlies the oppositional forms of logic, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. It appears as a prerequisite for coherent thought and viable communal life. Strictly to determine the conditions of belonging is the major task of logicians, politicians, and moral philosophers. It is difficult to imagine a science or a community without any form of universality, from which the notion of belonging is indissociable. Thus, the ethics founded not on universality but on singularity, which we ascribe to Antigone, may seem to be impossible. Agamben himself resolves this problem through a notion of the example that transcends the polarity of particularity and generality. The example, in his view, is a ‘‘singular object that presents itself as such, that shows its singularity,’’ but at the same time stands for all the others called by the same name. It is precisely the fact of this ‘‘being called’’ (l’esser detto) that, for Agamben, distinguishes the example from an individual entity belonging to a category. If we transpose the status of the example from the domain of logic to that of ethics, we might say that the example refers to all those whose place (e: thos) calls for the same attitude, the same sacrifice beyond the limits of traditional ethical standards. Polyneices is an example of whatever being, which he can be called because of his lack of belonging to any established category beyond the fact of being called. The example is defined not by being something (brother, sister, philos) but by being called something, by the very fact of its being named, in other words, its existing within language, its linguistic being (l’essere linguistico), its human being. This is both that which makes any belonging possible and that which always brings belonging into question. It is, says Agamben, ‘‘the Most Common that cuts off any real community.’’70 Antigone refuses the kind of love or friendship that would demand inscription within categories of belonging; this is why she must turn against Ismene despite her sisterly claim. But in her love for Polyneices, she opens up the possibility of a generosity that refuses to categorize or generalize, and thus is truly, if potentially, an absolute generosity that, like Derrida’s notion of ‘‘absolute hospitality,’’ refuses to distinguish but is offered ff equally to all. For the ‘‘whatever being’’ is at once unique and, in Agamben’s word, ‘‘indifferent,’’ ff that is, cannot be differentiated: ff

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

803

‘‘[i]ndifference ff with respect to properties is what individuates and disseminates singularities, makes them lovable (quodlibetable),’’ and ‘‘what belongs to common nature and what is proper are absolutely indifferent,’’ ff that is, one cannot locate the division between them. Not a clear dividing line, but a line of alternation, on which generality and singularity constantly exchange roles, opens the space of ethics: ‘‘The being that is engendered on this line is whatever being, and the manner in which it passes from the common to the proper and from the proper to the common is called usage – or rather, e: thos.’’71 In a more radical way, Agamben seems even to situate, as Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Artaud before him, the origin of all traditional ethics in the revelation of the ‘‘evil of indifferentiation’’ ff preceding the violent imposition of proper moral standards. He writes that ethics ‘‘begins only when the good is revealed to consist in nothing other than a grasping of evil and when the authentic and the proper have no other content than the inauthentic and the improper.’’72 If we are to talk about standards in Antigone, it would only be in the sense of an ab-solute standard.73 Not in the sense of distinguishing between ethical categories, rallying around the same ‘‘flag’’ or e´tandard, but in the sense of the solution – dissolving – of ordinary standards of belonging, that is, in Agamben’s sense of ‘‘in-difference’’ ff between categories. In this light, Antigone herself can, perhaps must, also be seen as a ‘‘whatever singularity,’’ ‘‘whatever being.’’ It is certainly not insignificant that the two times when Antigone attempts explicitly to ‘‘define’’ her nature ( phusis, ephun) she places herself outside of the order of kinship,74 outside of the oikos or home, and outside of the ordinary moral standards of opposition between friends and enemies.75 Thus it is the transgression of the taboo of incest that extracts Antigone from the hierarchy of kinship and hence becomes the basis of her exemplary, ‘‘whatever’’ generosity. Since she places herself outside of the order of kinship as well as the ‘‘political’’ order of the city-state, her arkhe: – the origin and the principle of ordinary intelligibility – becomes problematic. In fact, Creon does not grant her a representative function of the order of blood; rather, he places her beyond any order – in the non-place of anarchy (anarkhia, 672). And Antigone herself seems to agree with Creon’s assessment of her position. Antigone’s rebellion appears solitary ( poleo: s apiste: sasa ek pase: s mone: – Antigone, 656), and precisely for the reason of her homelessness, her ‘‘uncanniness’’ (to deinon, Unheimlichkeit).76 Antigone does not belong to the community of her dead kin any more than she belongs to that of the living city. In the poetic amoibon of farewell with the chorus, she appa-

804

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

rently deplores her exclusion from the community: ‘‘Pity me. Neither among the living nor the dead do I have a home in common [brotois / oute nekros nekroisin / metoikos] – neither with the living nor the dead’’ (Antigone, 850–53).77 Antigone’s loneliness results from this state and this attitude of homelessness or ‘‘original anarchy.’’ She does not belong to any world, to any order, and she no longer needs to pretend that she does. Her affirmation of the divine order made during the initial confrontation with Creon – in a text that constitutes the basis of most traditional interpretations – appears now to be a mere rhetorical argument. Antigone’s singular position keeps her as distant from the order of the gods as from that of humans. And it is this distance and this loneliness that allow Antigone to exchange ordinary loyalty to the political order and the order of the family for loyalty to an indeterminate being, and to affirm the principle of love against the principle of hate. We might now read the designation autonomos as the expression of Antigone’s ‘‘whatever being’’ – that is, read it not as self-affirmation or autonomy in the traditional sense, but as her second nature, her habitus or e: thos, that results not from submission to proper standards but from her professed impropriety. And for Agamben, this is precisely the place (e: thos) of moral autonomy: ‘‘T hat manner is ethical that does not befall us and does not found us but engenders us.’’78 And it is thus this exemplary impropriety that is perfectly common, which as a second nature challenges the traditional standards of ethics and politics considered to be ‘‘natural.’’ This suggests the threat that Antigone’s kind of generosity poses to the traditional, orderly polis so important to Creon. The politics to come, Agamben argues, will emerge from the clash between the State and humanity as whatever singularities, which have no identity, no shared belonging to classifiable or representable categories. Since the State relies upon such identities, such representations, whatever singularity is ‘‘the principle enemy of the State.’’79 If Antigone’s generosity poses a threat to Creon’s polarized polis, it inaugurates at the same time the ‘‘coming community,’’ a space without exclusion, one of ‘‘irrevocable hospitality,’’80 in which all whatever singularities will be welcomed – which might come into existence if, as Agamben says, ‘‘humans were to succeed in belonging to [...] impropriety as such.’’81 The paradoxical formula of ‘‘belonging to an impropriety’’ is here not just a play on words but an indication of the effort ff necessary to question the apparently ‘‘natural’’ inclination to value belonging, and on the contrary of the perpetual advent (che viene) of such a community. The ‘‘coming community’’ is not a chronological determination, not a community of the future (Zukunftsgemeinschaft), but

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

805

a notion of a community that is perpetually arriving. Antigone’s plight is not the result of an exceptional hero’s exceptional fate, but the exemplary plight of the ‘‘originator’’ of the coming community. We might now reconsider the question of the philosophical character of Antigone, which is also the question of the long history of philosophy’s (attempted) appropriation of this play (and of tragedy in general ).82 Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, (tragic) poetry has been considered by philosophy to be the greatest threat to its professed rationality. Aristotle’s notion of catharsis was introduced precisely in order to insure the belief in the logical character of the universe. And it is not accidental that when in modern times the supreme effort ff of constructing a rational system was made by Hegel, he referred to both the Oresteia and Antigone as examples of Auf hebung. In other words, after a short period of ‘‘philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks,’’ analyzed by Nietzsche in his unpublished book, philosophy has been seen in opposition to tragedy, not so much banishing it in Plato’s ambiguous manner, but trying to include it within itself. However, this effort ff has never been completely successful, since tragedy, imprisoned within the philosophical system, has only reinforced the tragic aspect that is always already present within theoretical thought, and that constantly dislocates philosophy from within itself. If the tragic is that which freezes and suspends philosophy, including ethics, from within, then the latter perhaps appropriates the tragic only in order to be undone by it, so that the tragic becomes that always-improper thing that causes philosophy to collapse.83 There is no tragedy that brings about this suspension in a more radical way than Antigone, no tragedy that resists better Aristotelian appropriation. Catharsis – which on most traditional readings of Greek tragedy should secure the continuation between different ff realms of reality, different ff laws – cannot be applied to Antigone. Essentially improper, unheimlich, the heroine of Sophocles interrupts any effort ff to bring her home, to make her part of a differential ff system of ethics, to adhere to a precise set of moral standards.84 The absolute ethical standard founded by Antigone’s love, a love directed not toward philoi but toward the lovable as the ‘‘quodlibetable,’’ whatever singularity, reveals this tendency of philosophy to work against itself, while at the same time offering ff the possibility of an ethics transcending the order of belonging. We should certainly agree with Hegel’s glorification of Antigone as the most wonderful and splendid (herrlichste) figure ever to have appeared on earth,85 but only if we hear this epithet in Greek: deinos. Indeed, Antigone is at the same time wonderful and terrible – amazing. Not only

806

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

does she ‘‘belong’’ to a ‘‘tribe that asks questions’’, she provokes these questions by her very being – a tragic being that challenges the principles of established order and opens a perspective on the (non)place (e: thos) of radical resistance to the traditional ethics of the standards of belonging – a place of absolute generosity, ‘‘irrevocable hospitality,’’ from which an absolute moral standard can be reclaimed. Comparative L iterature University of W isconsin-Madison U NOTES 1 Jacques Lacan, L e Seminaire V II: L ’ethique de la psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1986), p. 285; English translation by Dennis Porter, T he Seminar of Jacques L acan, V II: T he Ethics of Psychoanalysis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), p. 243: ‘‘I am not one who has decreed that Antigone is to be a turning point in the field that interests us, namely ethics. People have been aware of that for a long time. And even those who haven’t realized this are not unaware of the fact that there are scholarly debates on the topic.’’ 2 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Torino: Einaudi, 1995), p. 11; English translation by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare L ife (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 8: ‘‘The fundamental categorial pair of Western politics is not that of friend / enemy but that of naked life / political existence, zoe: / W bios, exclusion / inclusion’’ (translation modified). 3 Given their wide range of connotations, we will leave the terms philos and ekhthros untranslated whenever possible; when we do refer, for instance, to friendship, kinship, or love, the fact that a single Greek word (wilia) lies behind these English terms should be borne in mind. For an extensive discussion of the semantic range of the terms philos and ekhthros, and of their fundamental importance to Greek ethics both in general and in the context of Sophocles’ plays, see especially Mary Whitlock Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 4 Plato, Republic 332a–e; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics books 8 and 9; see the discussion of Simon Goldhill in Reading Greek T ragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 82–83 et passim. 5 Hegel’s model continues to be essential for classical scholarship; Goldhill, for instance, writes: ‘‘[s]ince Hegel’s reading of the play, it has been difficult not to consider the text of the Antigone in terms of dialectic and opposition’’ (Reading Greek T ragedy, p. 88); Charles Segal similarly notes that Hegel’s reading is ‘‘the most influential interpretation of the Antigone – and one of the most influential interpretations of any Greek tragedy’’ – IInterpreting Greek T ragedy: Myth, Poetry, T ext (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 137; Segal is nevertheless critical of Hegel when he writes that what happens in Antigone is ‘‘something both infinitely simpler and infinitely more complex, something that is antecedent to and more basic than’’ the Hegelian model (p. 139). 6 Sophocles, Antigone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), line 523; English translation by David Grene, in David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds., Greek T ragedies, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 201.

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

807

7 Aristotle, Poetics, 9, 1451 b 5–6. 8 Ibid., 14, 1454 a 1. 9 The chapter ‘‘The Ethical Life’’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is devoted mainly to the analysis of Sophocles’ tragedy and to the figure of Antigone; ‘‘Ethical disposition consists just in sticking steadfastly to what is right,’’ comments Hegel on Antigone’s stance. 10 See note 27 below. 11 Lacan, L e Seminaire, p. 311. ‘‘Only the martyrs know neither pity nor fear. Believe me, the day when the martyrs are victorious will be the day of universal conflagration’’ – T he Seminar V II, p. 267. 12 Giorgio Agamben, L a comunita` che viene (Turin: Einaudi, 1990); English translation by Michael Hardt, T he Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 13 Jacques Lacan, L e Se´minaire V II, p. 305; T he Seminar V II, p. 261. 14 Jaques Derrida, Glas (Paris: Galilee, 1974), p. 187; English translation by John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand, Glas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1986), p. 166: ‘‘Like Hegel, we have been fascinated by Antigone, by this incredible relationship, this powerful liaison without desire, this immense impossible desire that was unable to live, able only to reverse, to paralyze or exceed a system and the history, to interrupt the life of the concept, to take its breath away or, which is the same thing, to support it from the outside or from the underside of a crypt’’ (translation modified). 15 For the argument in favor of the transgressive significance of the girls’ position at the beginning of the play, see Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘‘Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone’’ – J Journal of Hellenic Studies cix (1989): 134–148; for the argument against such a reading, see Mary Lefkowitz, ‘‘Influential Women,’’ in Cameron Averil and Kuhrt A. London, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983). 16 Hugh Lloyd-Jones’ translation of Sophocles, Antigone, 61–62: a˙ll’ e˙nnoei˜n xrg` tou˜ to me` n cunai˜x’ o˛ti / e˚umen, v˝z pro` z a˚ndraz ou˙ maxoume´ na. 17 Ibid., 63–64: e˚peita d’ ou˛nek’ a˙rxo´ mesh’ e˙k kreisso´ nvn / kai tau˜ t’ a˙kou´ ein ka˚ti tv˜ nd’ a˙lciona. 18 David Grene’s translation of Antigone, 78–79: e˙cv` me` n ou˙k a˚tima a˚tma poiou˜ mai, to` de / bı´a˛ politvn dran e˚Qun a˙mg´ xanoz. 19 Antigone, 90. 20 David Grene’s translation of Antigone, 92: a˙rxg` n de hgran ou˙ prg´ pei ta˙mg´ xana. ˛ d’ e˙sti`n g˝ sv 21 Ibid., 188–191: tou˜ to cicnv´ skvn o˛ti / g ˛´ fousa kai tau´ tgz e˚pi / pl´ e´ ontez o˙rhgz tou` z Qi´louz poioumeha; on the other hand, Goldhill, while echoing Creon’s view of the interconnection between the state and Qilia, argues that the polis is not just the basis for Qilia, but is itself founded on the extension of the bonds of family and friendship: ‘‘the constitution of the city itself depends on the extension of ties of Qilia beyond the family or clan groupings, as well as on the laws’’ (Reading Greek T ragedy, p. 97). 22 Antigone, 192 (Grene’s translation). 23 Ibid., 484–85 and 525 (Grene’s translation). 24 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. J. Bywater (1894; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); English translation by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985). 25 Ibid., 1155a25. 26 Ibid., 1162a30. 27 G. W. F. Hegel, L ectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Part II, 3.ab. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson, translated by R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson and J. M. Steward with the assistance of J. P. Fitzer and H. S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 1087.

808

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

28 The fact that it is Creon’s relation of kinship with Oedipus and his sons that constitutes the source of his legitimacy does not invalidate Hegel’s claim; it is the ratification of his position that counts here. 29 Judith Butler notes that even the act of burial is always mediated by speech acts, and argues that Antigone’s public announcement of her deed and use of political rhetoric contaminate any ‘‘pure’’ claim she might have to the sphere of the private, kinship, or the feminine; see Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between L ife and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 200), p. 4ff.; ff Hegel himself notes the difficulty of separating Antigone’s and Creon’s positions: ‘‘we find immanent in the life of both that which each respectively combats, and they are seized and broken by that very bond which is rooted in the compass of their own social existence’’ – G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art; English translation by F. P. B. Osmaston (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1920). 30 See for example D. A. Hester, ‘‘Sophocles the Unphilosophical,’’ in Mnemosyne M 24 (1971), p. 46; cf. J. C. Hogan, ‘‘The Protagonists of the Antigone,’’ in Arethusa 5 (1972); Karl Reinhardt, Sophokles (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1947); Herbert Musurillo, T he L ight and the Darkness: Studies in the Dramatic Poetry of Sophocles (Leiden: Brill, 1967); Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek T ragedy; Charles Segal, T ragedy and Civilisation: An IInterpretation of Sophocles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981) and Interpreting I Greek T ragedy: Myth, Poetry, T ext (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986). 31 The difficulties of strictly following a Hegelian model are noted by both Segal (Interpreting Greek T ragedy, p. 137) and Goldhill: ‘‘the tragic text resists the stability of such oppositions’’ (Reading Greek T ragedy, p. 105). 32 Martin Heidegger, Ho¨lderlins Hymne ‘‘Der Ister’’ (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984), p. 151; English translation by William McNeil and Julia Davis, Ho¨lderlin’s Hymn ‘‘T he Ister’’ (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 121: ‘‘Antigone herself is the poem of becoming homely in being unhomely. Antigone is the poem of being unhomely in the proper and supreme sense.’’ 33 Segal, IInterpreting Greek T ragedy, p. 140. 34 Xeinia and xeinos are the archaic forms of the classical Greek xenia and xenos. 35 See, for example, the paradigmatic behavior of Telemachus, Nestor, Menelaus, and Alcinous in Homer’s Odyssey. 36 Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, De l’hospitalite (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1997); English translation by Rachel Bowlby, Of Hospitality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 37 Ibid., p. 149. 38 Ibid., p. 55. 39 Ibid., p. 25. 40 Ibid., p. 27. 41 Ibid., p. 77. 42 Ibid., p. 25. 43 Ibid., p. 77. 44 Ibid., p. 79. 45 Scholarly discussion of this line has been divided first of all between those who see a broad significance in the line, taking it for example as the expression of an ideal of love for humanity, and those who insist on its limitation to the specific context of the scene; for the latter position and a review of some of the debate around this line see, e.g., Robert R. Chodkowski, ‘‘Zur Interpretation von Sophokles’ ‘Antigone’ 523’’ (Eos LXXVI, 1988: pp. 21–37).

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

809

46 Chodkowski argues that the ‘‘subjective’’ reference of sumphilein would not make any sense in this context, and that Antigone means to join the two objects of her feeling, namely, to love her brothers, both of them, together, a position supported by Blundell (Helping Friends and Harming Enemies, p. 113); cf. Jebb’s interpretation of the line: ‘‘Even if my brothers hate each other still, my nature prompts me, not to join Eteocles in hating Polyneices, but to love each brother as he loves me.’’ Sir Richard Jebb, Sophocles: T he Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part III: T he Antigone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900). 47 ‘‘As a sister I do not have, in the end, the duty to share in hate, but the duty to love both brothers.’’ 48 Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies, p. 113. 49 Nicomachean Ethics, 1120a25. 50 Heidegger, Ho¨lderlin’s Hymn ‘‘T he Ister,’’ p. 118; ‘‘Von hier aus wird deutlich, daß das Gegenspiel dieser T rago¨die nicht spielt in dem Gegensatz zwischen ‘Staat’ auf der einen und ‘‘Religion’ auf der anderen Seite’’ – Ho¨lderlins Hymne ‘‘Der Ister,’’ p. 147. 51 Ibid., p. 49. 52 Standard translations of deinos (the adjective of which to deinon and ta deina are the singular and plural noun forms, respectively) include ‘‘terrible, fearful, in a milder sense awful; mighty, powerful; wondrous, marvellous, strange; able, clever, skilful’’ (Liddell & Scott); Heidegger argues that the translation of deinos should incorporate, in a single word, all of these senses, ‘‘the originary unity of the fearful, the powerful, and the inhabitual’’ (Ho¨lderlin’s Hymn ‘‘T he Ister,’’ p. 64). H 53 Ho¨lderlin’s Hymn ‘‘T he Ister,’’ p. 68. 54 Sigmund Freud, ‘‘The Uncanny,’’ in T he Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1952–1974). W 55 Claude Levi-Strauss, L es Structures elementaires de la parente (Paris: Mouton, 1967), ff T he Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell and John Richard Von p. 28ff.; Sturmer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 24ff. ff 56 The strangeness of this passage is such that there has been much scholarly debate about its appropriateness and even its authenticity; see, e.g., a survey of the debate in Hester, ‘‘Sophocles the Unphilosophical’’; for the argument that this passage is entirely in keeping with Antigone’s rejection of cultural institutions and excessive privileging of kinship, see Sheila Murnaghan, ‘‘A ‘ ntigone 904–920 and the Institution of Marriage’’ – AJP 107 (1986): 192–207; Murnaghan does not, however, consider the possibility of an incestuous love between Antigone and her brother. 57 Goldhill, Reading Greek T ragedy, p. 102. 58 Derrida, Glas; cf. note 14 above. 59 Lacan, L e Seminaire V I; Butler, Antigone’s Claim; Steiner discusses the historical background of such readings, noting in particular that the Romantic tendency to exalt the uniqueness and intensity of the bond between brother and sister often but not always led, during the 18th century, to readings of the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices as, implicitly or explicitly, incestuous; see George Steiner, Antigones (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 12–14. 60 Giorgio Agamben, M Mezzi senza fine: Note sulla politica (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996) p. 71; English translation by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino, M Means W ithout End: Notes on Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) p. 87: ‘‘In the final analysis, the state can recognize any claim for identity [...] But what the state cannot tolerate

810

MAX STATKIEWICZ and VALERIE REED

in any way is that singularities form a community without claiming an identity, that human beings co-belong without a representable condition of belonging.’’ 61 Antigone 1017–18. 62 Jean Anouilh develops this idea in his version of the play when Creon tells Antigone that her brothers’ bodies are indistinguishable: ‘‘Ils etaient en bouillie, Antigone, meconnaissables. J’ai fait ramasser un des corps, le moins abıˆme´ des deux, pour mes funerailles nationales, et j’ai donne l’ordre de laisser pourrir l’autre ou il etait. Je ne sais meme pas lequel. Et je t’assure que cela m’est egal’’ – Jean Anouilh, Antigone (Paris, La Table Ronde, 1946), p. 89; English translation by Lewis Galantiere, Antigone (New York: Random House, 1946), p. 40: ‘‘They were mashed to a pulp, Antigone, unrecognizable. I had one of the bodies, the less mangled of the two, brought in and gave it a State funeral; and I left the other to rot. I don’t know which was which. And I assure you, I don’t care’’ (translation modified). 63 Agamben, T he Coming Community, p. 1. 64 Ibid., p. 2. 65 Murnaghan notes the fundamental economy of interchangeability that governs the marital relations Antigone rejects: the hypothetical husband she rejects is defined ‘‘not as the unchanging identity of a specific individual but as an abstract role that could be played by several different ff men’’; social institutions, including marriage, ‘‘characteristically establish principles of substitution and replacement whereby entities that are not identical can be treated as interchangeable’’ (‘‘Antigone 904–920,’’ pp. 198–99); we return here to the theory of Levi-Strauss, who argues that it is this essentially economic structure that allows society to exist, built upon the foundations of the inter-familial exchange of women required by – again – the incest taboo. 66 Judith Butler argues that the attempt to single out Polyneices is in fact impossible: ‘‘... there is nothing in the nomenclature of kinship that can successfully restrict its scope of referentiality to the single person, Polyneices ... but [Antigone] continues to insist on the singularity and non-reproducibility of this term of kinship,’’ yet she ‘‘is unable to capture the radical singularity of her brother through a term that, by definition, must be transposable and reproducible in order to signify at all’’ (Antigone’s Claim, p. 77). 67 Ulrike Oudee Dunkelsbuhler, Kritik der Rahmen-Vernunft: Parergon-Versionen nach Kant und Derrida (Munchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1991), p. 141; English translation by Max Statkiewicz, Reframing the Frame of Reason: ‘‘T rans-L ation’’ In and Beyond Kant and Derrida (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2002), p. 185. 68 Agamben, T he Coming Community, p. 2. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., p. 10. 71 Ibid., pp. 19–20. 72 Ibid., p. 13. 73 Goldhill supports the first part of this argument, although he does not suggest an alternative to the ethics of standards that is undone in the play: ‘‘the Antigone works through the logic of the conventional moralities of the terms to the point of destruction. The secure conclusion of a Hegelian synthesis or Auf hebung at the end of this ‘labour of the negative’ seems notably absent. The questioning of the morality and obligations surrounding the terms of relations and relationships remains unresolved’’ (Reading Greek T ragedy, p. 106). 74 Antigone, 866. 75 Antigone, 523; cf. Seth Benardete, Sacred T ransgressions: A Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), p. 112.

ANTIGONE’S ( RE )TURN

811

76 See Martin Heidegger, Einfu¨hrung in die Metaphysik (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1987) IV, p. 3; English translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, IIntroduction to M Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) IV, p. 3. 77 Jean Anouilh will bring this feeling of loneliness to its extreme when he deprives his Antigone of the comfort of faith in the existence of the gods (a comfort given back in Lewis Galantiere’s adaptation). 78 T he Coming Community, p. 29. 79 Ibid., pp. 86–87. 80 Ibid., p. 24; cf. Derrida’s notion of absolute hospitality discussed above. 81 Ibid., p. 65. 82 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, for example, analyzes the relationship between tragedy and philosophy in terms of the suspension or caesura of philosophy (what he calls the speculative), that necessarily takes place within the tragic; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, T ypography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 208–235. 83 And which, as Lacoue-Labarthe says, ‘‘provokes its ‘spasm’ ’’ (T ypography, p. 227). 84 This is why she constitutes, in Lacoue-Labarthe’s words, ‘‘a kind of pivot, we might say, which is impossible to center – around which gravitate, though with difficulty, constantly impeded or thwarted in their movement ... repeated attempts at theorization’’ – T ypography, pp. 219–20. 85 ‘‘So sehen wir die himmlische Antigone, die herrlichste Gestalt, die je auf Erden erschienen.’’ G. W. F. Hegel, V Vorlesungen u¨ber die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Frommanns Verlag, 1959), p. 114.

R. KENNETH KIRBY

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’: THE GOVERNESS’S FAILURES OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN T HE T URN OF T HE SCREW

In Wayne Booth’s 1995 reader response essay on T he T urn of the Screw, he sums up the critical history of the story with three terms: readers have held ‘‘straight’’ and ‘‘ironic’’ views, with the recent trend being that of a ‘‘mazed’’ perspective (169). Before this recent era, when commentary moved largely from criticism of the story to criticism of the criticism, the two main schools of thought held interconnected views of both the ghosts and the morality of the governess’s behavior. Those who were struck by the reality of the ghosts (Booth’s ‘‘straight’’ readers) tended to see the governess as perceptive and admirable in her efforts ff to protect the children, even though she is overwhelmed by forces beyond her control and ultimately fails. Those who were struck principally by the governess’s state of mind (Booth’s ‘‘ironic’’ readers) became the psychoanalytical school, seeing the ghosts as projections of the governess’s hysterical mind and seeing the governess as culpable in, or even responsible for, the fate of the children. Because of sexual frustration or failure to recognize her own selfish motives and – less discussed by critics, failure to recognize the children’s need for guidance and love – her actions to protect them against the ‘‘ghosts’’ and what they represent are misguided and actually harmful. This failure to reach a consensus on the reality of the ghosts was a principal factor in bringing many modern readers to the conclusion that no clear meaning could be found in the story, and critical attention turned to hermeneutical and epistemological questions (Booth’s ‘‘mazed’’ view) and to some degree away from discussion of theme and meaning. Since, as Booth remarks, we can’t even agree on what sort of story we are reading (165), critics felt that perhaps we can benefit from examining why there has been such a variety of interpretations. Yet if one accepts the issue of ‘‘consciousness as morality’’ to be central to all of James’s fiction, and especially the later fiction, T he T urn of the Screw addresses this issue and asks readers to confront many of the same aspects of human awareness and behavior as other later works. My thesis in this paper is that, by applying some principles of phenomenology, readers can see that the 813 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 813–829. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

814

R. KENNETH KIRBY

reality or unreality of the ghosts is less important than the governess’s consciousness of her motives and of the children’s needs. One can in fact abandon altogether the question of whether the ghosts are real or psychological projections and still make a judgment about the governess’s behavior. Borrowing F. O. Matthiessen’s notion of a ‘‘religion of consciousness’’ in James’s work (146), there is ample evidence that the governess is a ‘‘sinner’’ in that religion, regardless of whether the ghosts are real or merely projections of her mind. Central to the position presented here is the view that James, especially in the later fiction, ‘‘associates the ultimate morality with depth of vision’’ (Donadio 107) and awareness. Conscious awareness of self and others – of one’s own needs and desires, strengths and weaknesses of character, and of the needs, desires, strengths, and weaknesses of others – is of such value to James that it rises to the level of a religion. Paul Armstrong, in the first phenomenological study of James, also asserts that for James ‘‘the epistemological and the moral are a single concern’’ (4). Armstrong describes James as ‘‘an epistemological novelist tireless in his wonder at the workings of consciousness,’’ a novelist with an ‘‘abiding concern with the process of knowing.’’ ‘‘James’s understanding of the ‘impression’ is the key to his understanding of experience as a whole. Its way of knowing leads him to develop a phenomenological theory of representation as well as an existential aesthetic of value’’ (37). According to Armstrong, ‘‘For James, questions of morality can only be decided – to the extent they are answerable at all – by consulting the structure of experience and studying the basic constituents of human activity. Descending beneath the contingency of conventions and the abstractions of ethical debate, his moral vision probes the concrete immediacy of human experience [...].’’ (6). Richard Hocks echoes these sentiments, commenting that ‘‘for James the nature of an ‘adventure’ transposes more and more into the drama of consciousness’’ (37). Gadamer’s concept of the ‘‘effective-historical ff consciousness’’ will be important in determining the morality of the governess’s consciousness. Because of the shifting nature of our present and historical horizons, the truly ‘experienced’ person is undogmatic and open to having new experiences and learning from them, having learned human finitude from previous experiences. The governess, however, lacks experience, and doesn’t even take advantage of the experience that is available to her. Her failure to address the children’s past closes her off to valuable truths; she lacks what Gadamer calls ‘‘a fundamental sort of openness.’’ Contrasting the

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

815

effective-historical ff consciousness with the historical consciousness of the 19th century, Gadamer writes Someone who is open in this way to tradition sees that the historical consciousness is not really open at all, but rather, if it reads its texts ‘historically’ has always thoroughly smoothed them out beforehand, so that the criteria of our own knowledge can never be put in question by tradition. [...] In contrast to that, the effective-historical ff consciousness rises above this naive comparing and assimilating by letting itself experience tradition and by keeping itself open to the claim to truth encountered in it. The hermeneutical consciousness has its fulfillment, not in its methodological sureness of itself, but in the same readiness for experience that distinguishes the experienced man by comparison with the man captivated by dogma. (325)

Much T urn of the Screw criticism to this point has focused on the psychosexual or other reasons why the governess lacks this necessary openness, why she doesn’t ask the right questions, why she smoothes out the children’s past until it is too late; this study will bracket those reasons and examine the structure of her life-world and her intentionality. A phenomenological examination of the structure of the governess’s experience will reveal that, despite some good intentions and obvious courage, there are enough flaws in her perceptions to demonstrate that her behavior can be considered immoral by the standards that consistently appear in James’s works, regardless of how we interpret the ghosts. The historical discussion of whether or not the ghosts are ‘‘real’’ at the literal level of the story has produced some fascinating debate and valuable insight into James and his thought and methods, but it may have also produced unnecessary ‘‘mazing’’ of interpretations. The ghosts in T he T urn of the Screw may be actual beings, existing as a result of evil in the will of Quint and Jessel; or they may be imaginary entities, having their origin in the mind of the governess. In either case they exist as phenomena and can only be dealt with as such. The ‘‘horrors gathered behind’’ them, however, and ultimately the moral values James asks us to consider, can be understood at least in part by the objective intending consciousness of the unbiased reader. My approach to the story, then, begins by bracketing our assumptions about the reality behind the phenomena of the ghosts and bracketing, to whatever degree possible, Freudian, feminist, Marxist, and other assumptions about the governess’s life and times. As objectively as possible, let us examine the consciousness of the governess as she experiences her world. What is her depth of vision concerning herself and the children under her care? The story that the governess has written presents overwhelming evidence that her vision, her impression of life at Bly, isn’t as

816

R. KENNETH KIRBY

deep as she thinks it is. Whether this lack of understanding is forgivable or not must not concern us for the moment. She assumes that the ghosts want to ‘‘get hold’’ of the children ‘‘‘[f ]or the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put into them’’’ (James 47). In very important ways this is, either figuratively or literally, true: Quint and Jessel certainly do haunt the children, either as present evil beings or as ongoing influences from the past. The children’s past haunts the governess, who is in her first position as governess and finds herself in the frightening situation of being responsible for children whose experiences and needs are outside the ordinary. Concerning the widely discussed issue of frustrated sexuality, Tessa Hadley comments that ‘‘Peter Quint and Miss Jessel provide the T ugly realism that haunts the governess’s idealizing fantasy of her master; they are the parodistic enactment of the impossible romance’’ (61). Regardless of whether the ghosts are conscious entities or hallucinations, their presence and influence in the lives of Miles, Flora, and the governess is real. But does the governess recognize clearly just what that influence is and how it is working? Phenomenology asserts that consciousness is always directed toward the object, is always consciousness of something. But where is the governess’s intentionality directed, and how does she interpret the experiences she has? The governess prides herself on her consciousness of what is going on around her. Yet she provides all kinds of evidence of her failure to perceive and may not even be aware of some of her failures as she looks back on her experience and tells her story. Her confident ‘‘They know – it’s too monstrous: they know, they know!’’ (29) is an exaggeration and provides a great teaching opportunity, since both ‘‘they’’ and ‘‘know’’ are based on assumptions; she has only her imaginative impression that Flora ‘‘sees’’ and no evidence at all that Miles does. In the scenes where Flora looks out the window late at night (Ch. X), on the first night the governess is certain that Flora is being friendly with Miss Jessel, though she has no real evidence; on the second night the governess admits that she was previously wrong but is certain that now Flora is looking at Miss Jessel; when she finds out that Flora is looking at Miles rather than at Miss Jessel, she then assumes that Miles is looking at Quint on the tower, when he is probably looking at Flora in the room above her. Robert Pippin rightly questions the morality of such leaps to judgment. ‘‘[I]t is not so much what she claims to see that raises questions of credibility about the governess; it is what she so rapidly assumes it all means [...]. She makes several, ultimately quite damaging inferences with breathtaking leaps of imagination, and I think we are to have some

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

817

sympathy with poor Mrs. Grose’s gasps at each of them, her obvious concern with whether the governess is being fair to the children’’ (119). Time and again the governess pats herself on the back for the astuteness of her perceptions, only to discover they are wrong and then not be too terribly concerned about her errors. Consider the governess’s initial impression of Miles. With no knowledge of him at all, she takes one look at him and decides that his dismissal from school, on what she had assumed to be grounds of ‘‘wickedness,’’ is absurd. Alfred Schutz cautions that ‘‘we can only interpret lived experiences belonging to other people in terms of our own lived experiences of them’’ (109). Yet the governess jumps to these conclusions with no experience of Miles and Flora at all; it is her first week on the job. ‘‘A second way in which I come to know a contemporary,’’ Schutz says, ‘‘is to construct a picture of him from the past direct experience of someone with whom I am now speaking’’ (182), someone who knows the contemporary. This would be Mrs. Grose. A few commentators question Mrs. Grose’s reliability, but even under the best of circumstances such knowledge is limited, having passed through another subjectivity. And we must remember that the governess jumps to conclusions first, then questions Mrs. Grose. Also, her questions are as much in her own interest as in the interest of the children; even the illiterate Mrs. Grose is aware of this when she responds ‘‘Are you afraid he’ll corrupt you?’’ to one of the governess’s questions (12). Kathryn Miles uses a phenomenological perspective to describe the governess’s errors of perception and to show the value James places on consciousness: ‘‘Ideally, individuals must discover the means with which to evaluate or judge both their perceptions and their resulting ideas. They must also maintain a delicate balance between experiential data and internal response. It is this balance that is the real essence of James’s [epistemological] theory. Experience and abstract ideas must be weighed against one another, as each dictates how one perceives the world. [...] Should abstraction begin to rule a subject’s cognitive process, the subject will inadvertently jettison his or her ability to evaluate ideas in the light of experience, thereby causing a fantastical (and often misguided) perception of the world’’ (195). As the governess experiences the world at Bly, she may indeed be seeing real ghosts; she has no evidence beyond her own abstractions, however, that Miles and Flora see them. Once she persuades herself that the children ‘‘meet’’ secretly with the ghosts, she becomes even less attentive to the pain Miles and Flora must have suffered ff since the death of their parents.

818

R. KENNETH KIRBY

To be objective, however, we must examine what the governess understands about the children in relation to what she can reasonably be expected to understand. Phenomenology cautions us that we can only know so much of the consciousness and experience of others. Armstrong describes this as follows: ‘‘We have access to the Other’s world through our understanding of his expressions – not only his speech but also his bodily gestures – and through a usually dim awareness that the horizons of our world shade off into more or less distant possibilities that can belong to him if not to us. [...] We can never know the Other’s world as he or she knows it, inasmuch as we can never understand the Other’s experience except from the position of our own experience’’ (16). One of the governess’s errors may be to hope for a greater intimacy with the children than she has a right to expect, especially in the early going, her own experience being so alien to that of the children. But despite these limitations, whatever the governess can know of the children has to include both the present and the past, and the past is what she refuses to face. Twice deprived of parental guardians and essentially abandoned by their uncle, Miles and Flora need stability and most of all loving care. Yet the governess’s gaze is turned as much inward as it is outward. She has taken this job at least in part because of her attraction for the Harley Street uncle and the hope that, since she fancies herself to be ‘‘in short a remarkable young woman,’’ she ‘‘took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly appear’’ (15). She sees Flora as ‘‘a creature too charming not to make it a great fortune [for herself ] to have to do with her’’ and quickly concludes that ‘‘To watch, teach, ‘form’ little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life’’ for her (6–7). Flora may have been too young and too adaptable to be seriously damaged by the losses and changes she has been forced to endure, but Miles, being older, is already showing signs of being troubled. Yet when the governess gets word that he has been expelled from school, she takes one look at him, declares the whole charge against him to be ‘‘grotesque,’’ senses in him an ‘‘air of knowing nothing in the world but love,’’ and ‘‘wonderfully’’ dismisses the whole matter (13). She should realize that a boy who has been orphaned twice and now kicked out of school has a past that needs to be looked into and a present frame of mind that needs understanding and that can be understood in a meaningful way. According to Schutz, despite the fact that people’s experiences are hidden from others in each individual’s consciousness, he asserts ‘‘neither that your lived experiences remain in principle inaccessible to me nor that they are meaningless to me. Rather, the point is that the meaning I give

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

819

to your experiences cannot be precisely the same as the meaning you give to them when you proceed to interpret them’’ (99) – not precisely the same, but close enough for meaningful interaction. One could almost argue that Miles and Flora are more perceptive of the governess than she is of them. Hadley remarks that, because of their past, Miles and Flora are in fact accustomed to ‘‘adult motivations obscure but dangerous; and behind the innocent-seeming codes of adult surfaces, to hidden realities which children are not allowed to name. (Miles is presumably expelled from school for transgressing – too innocently, ironically enough – this interdict.) They are indeed haunted, they have presumably been through all this with Miss Jessel before; they know about demented governesses and indifferent ff men’’ (56). The governess, through her questioning of Mrs. Grose, is able to reconstruct some of this and should be able to see that she needs to remain open to a variety of possibilities about the children’s state of mind. Yet she formulates and then clings to her theory that the children are eager to be haunted by Quint and Jessel, possibly because she is jealous of the children’s emotional attachment to them. For good or evil, these persons were the children’s caretakers and role models, and Miles and Flora had to have developed attachments to them that the governess unconsciously envies but should be consciously aware of. Hadley observes correctly that the governess may also be jealous of Quint’s ‘‘crude sexual maleness’’ and of Jessel’s access to that maleness (56). However, critics may have seen the dynamics here too exclusively in sexual terms. Terry Heller addresses other factors that may be at work: ‘‘That the children never speak of Quint and Jessel may point to their own repression of a painful relationship or at least of the loss of more parents. Their unnatural goodness may derive from their desire to attach the governess to them as part of recreating their family’’ (108). Heller, more than most critics, rightfully points out the real need for each other that the governess and children have, though he is perhaps too charitable with the governess’s failure to recognize the children’s need to be loved. ‘‘If we judge her reading [of the children’s needs] as either correct or incorrect, we fail to love her by excluding part of her perspective. These failures are unconscious and unintentional’’ (139). But are they necessarily so? Peter C. Beidler says they are not, and I concur. ‘‘Some readers will want to condemn the governess for not seeing beyond the appearance of the ghosts. It may be, indeed, that her inability to see the truth is really her refusal to see it. It may be that she does not ask the headmaster of Miles’s school why Miles was expelled because she does not really want

820

R. KENNETH KIRBY

to know the worst about her little angel. It may be that she is so caught up with her own need to secure the love of the Harley Street uncle that she does not fully sense the prior need of his niece and nephew for that same love’’ (217). No one should find fault with the governess for having the need to be loved and accepted; James, however, does ask his readers to question the morality of characters who focus on their own needs without clearly examining and recognizing the needs of others. The governess’s sins of consciousness closely parallel the appearances of the ghosts; usually the ghosts appear to her, reminding her of their presence in the children’s lives, when she has obviously failed to recognize her own selfishness or the needs of the children. If the ghosts serve to remind reader and governess alike of the mysteries of the children’s past, as readers we must consider their appearance thematically. David Haliburton describes this as being part of the process of understanding the intentionality within the work, a question ‘‘of going back, within the sphere of the work, from the objective elements systematically arranged, to a certain power of organization, inherent in the work itself as if the latter showed itself to be an intentional consciousness determining its arrangements and solving its problems’’ (29). This connection between the governess’s consciousness and the appearance of the ghosts helps us clarify the question that the text asks us (Gadamer 333 and passim) – does the governess’s vision, does her impression of her experience qualify as ‘‘moral’’? Stanley Renner gives a common perspective when he says that the first chapters’ ‘‘emphasis on the governess’s susceptibility to romantic emotions is an important feature of the buildup to the first apparition’’ (224). Even though it is natural for a young unmarried woman to fantasize about a wealthy, handsome man meeting her alone and approving of her, she may be too focused on this fantasy and on the children’s presumed innocence. Before Quint appears the second time, she has admitted that she ‘‘perfectly knew’’ she was ‘‘under the spell’’ (19) of the children’s beauty and of her opportunities, and that she gave herself up to it as an ‘‘antidote to pain,’’ still showing no awareness of anything but the children’s beauty and innocence. A number of critics have drawn connections between this self-focused attitude and the specter of Quint, who appears as if to say ‘‘I’m the one you should be paying attention to.’’ A significant change occurs, however, in the governess’s consciousness before the first appearance of Miss Jessel. Here we see the governess’s continuing self-focus but also her first significant awareness of the children’s plight:

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

821

I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen – oh in the right quarter! – that I could succeed where many another girl might have failed. It was an immense help to me – I confess I rather applaud myself as I look back! – that I saw my response so strongly and so simply. I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep constant ache of one’s own engaged affection. ff (27)

Unfortunately, despite her awareness of the children’s bereavement and need for love, which has just now become ‘‘explicit’’ to her consciousness, and despite her view of her own role as protector, this awareness is still tied closely to her own ‘‘engaged affection’’ ff and is a long way from full awareness of their actual needs. As Heller observes, ‘‘Like Quint, Jessel first turns up in the context of the governess thinking too well of herself and wishing for the impossible’’ (77) as well as the context of her failure to fully intend the children’s past. The governess remarks that there was ‘‘nothing to lead up or prepare’’ for the third appearance of Quint and the appearance of Miss Jessel on the stair. Yet she had recently reflected upon her ‘‘unnatural composure on the subject of another school for Miles’’ (37), a composure arising not from wisdom but rather from her failure to examine and understand the importance of the subject. This could be another failure that triggers an appearance of the ghosts. But one of the most significant of these episodes occurs on the walk to church when Miles asks when he is going back to school (Ch. XIV–XV), a passage that has been somewhat neglected by most critics of T he T urn of the Screw. In this scene the governess for the first time truly faces her failures and feels so trapped and humiliated that she resolves to quit. Colin Meissner describes a state of mind that is common in James’s work; surely it applies to the governess at this point in the story: ‘‘For [James], experience is rather something one lives through or suffers. ff [He finds] it useful to think of this process dialectically as a movement of bewilderment and enlightenment, where experience is something one acquires, but chiefly through loss or failure or the breakdown of things. [...] Throughout his writings James consistently exposes nativist conventions and conscious or unconscious transfigurations of reality as constructs whose aim is to allow the interpreting or experiencing subject to exert some measure of control over external circumstances’’ (2). In this case the governess is enlightened but chooses to exercise no

822

R. KENNETH KIRBY

control; rather, knowing that she has been wrong, she shamelessly resolves to quit. On the walk to church, when Miles asks if his uncle knows ‘‘the way I’m going on’’ (i.e., ‘‘haunted,’’ dismissed) and suggests that he will make him care by getting him to come down and do something about it, it finally hits the governess that she has been remiss in her duty. What I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of me and that the gage of it for him would be just this awkward collapse. He had got out of me that there was something I was much afraid of, and that he should probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from school, since that was really but the question of the horrors gathered behind. (55)

‘‘The intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from school,’’ which she should have addressed with the headmaster immediately upon receiving the letter of dismissal, is the question of Miles’ behavior as a result of the ongoing effect ff of his corruption by Quint and Jessel. For the governess, the horrors gathered behind are more complex. Whatever the evil influence was and continues to be, she is unable to face it except in her unproven assumption that the children willingly surrender to the evil in the ghosts. She may unconsciously fear that as long as Quint and Jessel are in the children’s souls, she will never be first in their lives. Yet Quint and Jessel are there – whether emotionally or demonically no one knows – and the only way to ‘‘exorcize’’ them is to love the children, not be suspicious of them; to help them face and overcome the pain of their bereavement; and to address directly the loss of innocence that they have so unfairly had to experience. Schutz writes of ‘‘the tension between living experience within the flow of duration and reflection on the experience thus lived through, in other words, the tension between life and thought’’ (70). The governess reflects in a fashion, but dogmatically and without openness, having already made up her mind what the situation is. Gadamer asserts that The truth of experience always contains an orientation towards new experience. That is why a person who is called ‘experienced’ has become such not only through experiences, but is also open to new experiences. The perfection of his experience, the perfect form of what we call ‘experienced,’ does not consist in the fact that someone already knows everything and knows better than anyone else. Rather, the experienced person proves to be, on the contrary, someone who is radically undogmatic; who, because of the many experiences he has had and the knowledge he has drawn from them is particularly well equipped to have new experiences and to learn from them. The dialectic of experience has

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

823

its own fulfillment not in definitive knowledge, but in that openness to experience that is encouraged by experience itself. (319)

The governess now, more clearly than before, sees her errors and Miles’s needs; she realizes that he is ‘‘immensely in the right’’ (56), yet her response is not to repent, rectify her mistake, and learn from the experience, but rather to run away from the very child that she supposedly has such a desire to protect. ‘‘I reflected that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair.’’ She fears she has no chance now to be first with him, so she will just quit. ‘‘For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from him. [...] I might easily put an end to my ordeal by getting away altogether,’’ she says (emphasis added), with little or no concern for Mile’s ongoing ordeal. And as a result of this miserable failure, when she arrives at Bly to pack, the ghost of Miss Jessel again appears to haunt her and remind her of things she is unwilling to face. The governess at this point changes her mind and resolves to stay; how much should we admire her for this? Critics have suggested that she stays because of her jealousy of Jessel as much as any other reason. Yet she clearly overcomes things that are working against her: despite having lost face with Miles, she resolves to continue the efforts ff that seem best to her to protect the children under her care. She certainly has an opportunity to ‘‘have new experiences and to learn from them,’’ to begin constructing a life-world that gets behind her incorrect leaps to judgment and establishes a give and take of love and understanding with the children. The governess has had a breakthrough in understanding both of Miles and of what her behavior toward him should be. To whatever degree she has previously lived purely and unreflectively, or with ineffective ff reflection, within the stream of duration, now is her time to stop and reflect and put some meaning in her experience. Unfortunately, rather than learning from this mistake and beginning to build that world, she only goes from bad to worse. Now granted, the governess, continuing to exhibit the right throbs and the wrong, probably speaks sincerely when she visits Miles’s room one night and says that his countenance ‘‘made him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children’s hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure him’’ (61). Y Yet when Miles won’t do what she needs for him to do – when he won’t say ‘‘I hate Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and love only you!’’ but rather shrieks in frustration (63) at her failure to understand him – it

824

R. KENNETH KIRBY

isn’t long before she is thinking the worst of both children again. And after she has scared Flora off and she and Miles are alone in the house at the end of the story, she has ‘‘a perverse horror of what she is doing’’ (80) to Miles – forcing him to face and admit, all at once, the shame of his corruption by Quint – yet can’t resist the temptation to do it. If the walk to church has received perhaps the least critical commentary, the remarkable ending of T he T urn of the Screw surely has received the most. The discussions have focused mainly on sexuality and the occult; also crucial to this discussion, however, is the governess’s consciousness of Miles’s state of mind and needs. The final appearances and disappearances of Quint follow remarkably well the ebb and flow of the morality of her behavior toward Miles. When the governess and Miles find themselves alone in the house after the departure of Mrs. Grose and Flora, the governess thinks she is gaining control of Miles, despite her failure with Flora: Steadying myself with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the boy’s embarrassed back – none other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was positively he who was. [...] Wasn’t he looking through the haunted pane for something he couldn’t see? – and wasn’t it the first time in the whole business that he had know such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent. (79)

We see the irony of her remark concerning things she is ‘‘barred’’ from, since it is her own failures that bar her from real intimacy with the children and prevent her from helping them with their real problem. She egotistically believes her protecting presence has somehow scared off the ghost of Peter Quint; nevertheless, ‘‘the possibilities of a beautiful intercourse’’ which she has always envisioned for herself and the children are clearly present. When she tells him she has stayed over just for his company, ‘‘the expression of his face [...] struck [her] as the most beautiful [she] had ever found in it’’ (80). His countenance brightens possibly because he hopes that she truly loves him and is perhaps coming to understand him. Still, he knows she wants answers from him, and when she begins to press in that direction, his expression changes, giving her that ‘‘perverse horror’’ at what she is doing. He promises to tell her if she gives him just a little more time, and when she ignores his plea and presses on with the question of whether he took the letter, immediately the haunting presence of Quint appears to her in the window.

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

825

Even though she has shown no mercy and little understanding toward him, Miles somehow manages to respond as she wants him to, and his ‘‘Yes – I took it. [...] I opened it’’ banishes the ghost of Quint. Miles shows her, with a maturity that perhaps exceeds hers, that he is willing to leave the influence of Quint, both good and bad, behind him and embrace her efforts, ff however inconsistent and misguided, to care for him. This acceptance from Miles banishes her jealousy of Quint and hence banishes his ghost. This is the second breakthrough, and again she doesn’t gain from the experience. After a brief tender moment when she kisses his perspiring forehead, she resumes her inquisitional posture and presses on by asking if larceny were the reason he was expelled. When he says ‘‘no’’ she describes her response as follows: ‘‘My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands – but it was for pure tenderness – shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment’’ (83). Here it is hard not to lose patience with the governess and be sarcastic. He condemns her to months of torment? She is the adult and he is the child – any miscommunication is primarily her fault, yet she shakes him in anger for the inconvenience it has caused her and then tries to rationalize it away as ‘‘pure tenderness.’’ She is no less self-focused now than she was upon her arrival at Bly, her questioning being as much for her own benefit as it is for the benefit of Miles. And yet, intoxicated with success at this breakthrough, she presses on, making her worst mistake of all. Gadamer again offers ff a perspective on what goes wrong in the governess’s questioning of Miles. ‘‘However much a person seeking understanding may leave open the truth of what is said, however much he may turn away from the immediate meaning of the object and consider, rather, its deeper significance, and take the latter not as true, but merely as meaningful, so that the possibility of its truth remains unsettled, this is the real and basic nature of a question, namely to make things indeterminate. Questions always bring out the undetermined possibilities of a thing’’ (338). Rather than be content with taking the first steps toward a new relationship between her and Miles and toward the beginnings of healing for Miles, she wants to get this business over with now. Of course, she is still persuaded that she understands the children’s relation with Quint and Jessel – i.e., their willingness to be possessed by Quint and Jessel’s evil – and she wants to exorcize the spirit of Quint as soon as possible. But as we have seen, she has only her unproven impression that he in fact is possessed. So in one sense she is not open to the experience she is currently having as Miles finally discusses his past with her, and she is

826

R. KENNETH KIRBY

certainly not interested in bringing out ‘‘the undetermined possibilities’’ of that past. In another sense, however, she has access to enough information to realize that progress has been made, and that she is beginning to establish an intimacy with Miles that she has wanted all along. Tragically, she has impossible expectations of what this intimacy can be or how fast it can happen. Having made real progress and having become aware of Miles’s humiliation and embarrassment, the governess at least has enough wisdom to know that she should let it go for now, but she just cannot do it: ‘‘He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated – I was blind with victory’’ (83) she says, comfortably rationalizing away her actions that soon lead to Miles’s death. The reader also winces at the idea of her thinking this a ‘‘victory,’’ because when he tells her that he was expelled because he ‘‘said things’’ to those he liked, the governess ‘‘seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to [her] out of [her] very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent.’’ ‘‘It was for the instant confounding and bottomless,’’ she continues, ‘‘for if he were innocent what then on earth was I?’’ (83). And yet she still presses on, and precipitates the final catastrophe – and the reader should remember that ALL these questions come after she has told him ‘‘I know everything’’: ‘‘Oh, yes,’’ he nevertheless replied – ‘‘they must have repeated them. To those they liked,’’ he added. There was somehow less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. ‘‘And these things came round –?’’ ‘‘To the masters? Oh yes!’’ he answered very simply. ‘‘But I didn’t know they’d tell.’’ ‘‘The masters? They didn’t – they’ve never told. That’s why I ask you.’’ He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. ‘‘Yes, it was too bad.’’ ‘‘Too bad?’’ ‘‘What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.’’ I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instance I heard myself throw off with homely force: ‘‘Stuff and nonsense!’’ But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough. ‘‘What were these things?’’ My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner [...]. (84)

Her inability to be patient and sympathetic with him despite his willingness to open up to her reveals her failure to understand, and Quint, who isn’t vanquished after all, reappears. Symbolically he returns to haunt her because nothing Miles gives her will be enough to persuade her that he

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

827

cares for her more than he cares for Quint, even though he has given her more than enough for her to begin understanding the reasons behind his dismissal from school. Pippin observes that James writes of situations ‘‘about being able to understand the dimensions and implications of my own and others’ intentions well enough to promise, expect, blame, and especially trust, to fulfill the minimum conditions of any social world. As we have seen, sometimes this incomprehension is a result of stupidity or a self-serving refusal to comprehend. [...] [S]ometimes it also results from an inability or a refusal to understand the threat itself, an attempt to rely on means of resolution and determination no longer available. In T he T urn of the Screw, a kind of rage to understand takes over in the face of this threat, demanding to the point of insanity and death that questions be resolved’’ (89). Ned Lukacher echoes this, arguing that ‘‘[the governess] comes to believe too vehemently in her own constructions of an event that remains rigorously unknowable’’ (117). The governess has had more than enough information to allay her fears that Miles enjoys being haunted by Peter Quint; however, she cannot bear the idea of there being any undetermined possibilities. She may fear that she doesn’t have enough information to outmaneuver Quint and Jessel in the struggle for the children’s love, or she may merely have a prurient interest in the details of the events at school. But despite all he has surrendered to her, when Miles finally dies of terror his heart is very likely ‘‘dispossessed’’ of any hope that she can really love and understand him. For the governess, Quint disappears either in victory or because it no longer matters who Miles cared for the most. After observing the governess’s intentionality and interpretation of experience in a few key scenes, what, ultimately, can we say about the morality of the governess’s perceptions and the things she does while acting on those perceptions? Gadamer gives some guidelines, affirming that ‘‘the way that we experience one another, the way that we experience historical traditions, the way that we experience the natural givenness of our existence and of our world, constitutes a truly hermeneutic universe, in which we are not imprisoned, as if behind insurmountable barriers, but to which we are opened’’ (xiv). The governess, however, is imprisoned by her failure to intend the children’s real needs; she is no interpreter of life or of children because she doesn’t know how to stay open to the possibilities of her experience. All of the mistakes in judgment the governess makes as she experiences her world may be mitigated to some degree by the issues raised by critics from Freudian, feminist, and other perspec-

828

R. KENNETH KIRBY

tives. The intentionality that exists in the text may allow us to temper our judgment of her because of those issues. The ghosts exist to us as readers of the story, just as they do to the governess; yet if we readers suspend our judgment about the ghost’s ‘‘reality,’’ can we not see the plight of the children reflected in them? If we suspend judgment about all but the governess’s words and actions, can we not see real failure to attend to the most critical issues affecting ff the lives of the children? Taken together, these factors suggest that the governess’s consciousness falls far short of what could be called moral, giving readers ample reason to consider her a sinner in the religion of consciousness. Department of English Samford University

BIBLIOGRAPHY Armstrong, Paul B. T he Phenomenology of Henry James. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Beidler, Peter C. Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: T he T urn of the Screw at the T urn of the Century. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989. Booth, Wayne C. ‘‘ ‘He began to read to our hushed little circle’: Are We Blessed or Cursed by Our Life with T he T urn of the Screw?’’ T he T urn of the Screw. Edited by Peter G. Beidler. Boston: Bedford, 1995. Donadio, Stephen. Nietzsche, Henry James, and the Artistic W ill. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. T ruth and Method. Edited by Garrett Barden and John Cumming. New York: Seabury Press, 1975. Hadley, Tessa. Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Haliburton, David. Edgar Allan Poe: A Phenomenological V iew. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Heller, Terry. T he T urn of the Screw: Bewildered V ision. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Hocks, Richard A. Henry James: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990. James, Henry. T he T urn of the Screw, 2nd edition. Edited by Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren. New York: Norton, 1999. W Lukacher, Ned. Primal Scenes: L iterature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Matthiessen, F. O. Henry James: T he Major Phase. New York: Oxford University Press, 1944. Meissner, Colin. Henry James and the L anguage of Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Miles, Kathryn. ‘‘What Maisie Knew and the Governess Muddled: Cognitive Development in James’s Post-dramatic Fiction.’’ Colby Quarterly 36 (2000): 193–208. Pippin, Robert B. Henry James and the Modern Moral L ife. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’

829

Renner, Stanley. ‘‘ ‘Red hair, very red, close curling’: Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the ‘Ghosts’ in T he T urn of the Screw.’’ T he T urn of the Screw. Edited by Peter G. Beidler. Boston: Bedford, 1992, pp. 223–241. Schutz, Alfred. T he Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967.

MICHAEL DANIELS

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE LOGIC OF DISCOURSE

TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY AS A PHILOSOPHY OF SUBJECTIVITY

Husserl’s T he Crisis of European Sciences and T ranscendental Phenomenology is a cultural criticism of modernity. Western civilization is experiencing a crisis, epitomized by the widespread phenomenon of human alienation. Husserl attributes this crisis to ‘‘physicalistic objectivism,’’ together with ‘‘the mathematization of the world’’ (Husserl, 1970, p. 67). By this Husserl means that nature itself is subjected to the mathematical methodology of measurement and calculation. He blames physicalistic objectivism for reducing humans to sheer physical entities. In other words, this process of mathematization, though essential to the entelechy of modern Western humanity, has gone awry. The task of phenomenology as the ultimate form of transcendental philosophy is to remedy this human alienation and to overcome the problem of reification (T atsachenmenschen, in Husserl’s terminology). Husserl regards naturalism as the root cause of our abandonment of an authentic ego. This argument might sound like a typical protest against scientism, but its philosophical implications are much more radical. Physicalistic objectivism, originated by Galileo, systematized by Newton, and legitimized by Descartes, has exerted an unsurpassable influence on the ‘‘cognitive mapping’’ (Jameson, 1991, p. 45) of Western thought. it is a truism that modern philosophy, which is based on epistemology, can be construed as a sophisticated justification for modern natural science. It is, therefore, easy to understand why Descartes, with his emphatic affirmation of clear and distinct ideas as certain and true, is deservedly called the father of modern philosophy. While Descartes’s firm belief in the power of the cogito is an undaunted expression of modernity, the idea involving an intertwinement of the concepts of physicalistic objectivism and the rational subject gave rise to the difficult issue of how to salvage the substantive ego’s freedom amidst the strictly lawgoverned natural world. It has been a mind-boggling dilemma in modern Western philosophy since Descartes juxtaposed the mind as ‘‘thinking W substance’’ (res cogitans) and the body as ‘‘material substance’’ (res extensa). 831 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 831–843. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

832

MICHAEL DANIELS

Hume attempts to deconstruct the principle of induction and ends up with reducing even mental substance to ‘‘a bundle of perceptions,’’ thereby bringing about ‘‘a bankruptcy of the 18th-century rationality’’ (Russell, 1945, p. 672). Later, Kant, too, perpetuated the Cartesian dualistic bent by creating noumena on the one hand and phenomena on the other in his attempt to synthesize empiricism, rationalism, and modern natural science. The post-Kantian history of German idealism could be read as a continuing effort ff to overcome this dualism; indeed, Hegelian speculative philosophy aiming at a grandiose ‘‘reconciliation’’ (Verso¨hnung) is one of the most systematic attempts. By contrast, transcendental phenomenology, as a ‘‘rigorous science,’’ tries to bridge the gap between appearance and reality by introducing the notion of consciousness as intentionality. In this theory, the world is tantamount to the ‘‘intentionalized’’ sum of existence. The transcendental subject is said to be an origin of the world structured as the unity of noesis and noema. Even though much of Husserl’s theoretical philosophy has been subjected to serious criticism, his effort ff to ease the traditional tension between physicalism and a rational subject is valid. We can achieve transcendence only by overthrowing the reign of physicalistic naturalism. Thus, Husserl’s phenomenology can be interpreted as a cultural criticism of modernity. At the same time, in a certain sense, Husserl’s theory consummates the philosophy of subjectivity. FROM SUBJECTIVITY TO INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Husserlian transcendental phenomenology reveals a dual aspect. It shows an insight into the paradigm of intersubjectivity while simultaneously standing at the vertex of subjectivist philosophy. His fifth cartesian meditation is significant here, since it states that transcendental subjectivity is already intersubjectivity. This assertion is, however, plagued by an inherent internal tension in Husserl’s own system. This tension is the orientational conflict between transcendental phenomenology and life-world phenomenology. According to Husserl, we can leap from the natural attitude through epoche and achieve a self-reliant consciousness as an apodictic starting point. This pure consciousness is, by definition, not an isolated monad: ‘‘On the contrary, an Ego-community, which includes me, becomes constituted (in my sphere of ownness, naturally) as a community of Egos existing with each other and for each other – ultimately a community of

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

833

monads ...’’ (Husserl, 1982, p. 107). The constitution of the world is said to presuppose harmony among monads. Interestingly enough, Husserl acknowledges the importance of the body and its concrete perception in relation to the theme of intersubjectivity (Husserl, 1982, p. 113). In this sense, Merleau-Ponty’s ‘‘philosophy of ambiguity,’’ which maintains that ‘‘obscurity spreads to the perceived world in its ‘‘entirety’’ in relation to ‘‘the body as expression,’’ could be regarded as the legitimate heir to the later life-world phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 198). It appears to me, however, that Husserl’s apprehension of intersubjectivity remains at a rather programmatic level. The core of transcendental phenomenology obviously hampered his further investigation of the theme of intersubjectivity. The ultimate pure consciousness, which provides us with the apodictic starting point for science as well as with the foundation of the meaningful world, tends to be strongly self-sufficient and selffulfilled. That the idea of the lifeworld does not go easily hand in hand with a notion of transcendental ego is the cause of an internal rupture within Husserl’s perspective. A simple claim of similarity between transcendental subjectivity and transcendental intersubjectivity falls short of offering ff a satisfactory model for practical philosophy. Arguing from the perspective of life-world phenomenology, Schutz attempts to solve this problem and explicate the nature of genuine intersubjective understanding (Schutz, 1967). Husserl’s ultimate failure testifies to the dilemma of a philosophy of subjectivity. This dilemma becomes more acute in the domain of practical philosophy. It is instructive to review the case of German idealism, which exemplified the philosophy of subjectivity at its highest level. Reflection on the classical confrontation between morality and ethical life (Sittlichkeit) in connection with discursive ethics will mitigate the destiny of the paradigm of subjectivity. Most importantly, it will emphasize the urgent need for a paradigm-shift from subjectivity to intersubjectivity in the realm of political philosophy. DISCOURSE ETHICS AS A DIALECTAL SYNTHESIS OF MORALITY AND ETHICAL LIFE

In his second Critique, Kant makes a systematic effort ff to explicate the nature of practical reason. From the premise of the moral law given as self-evident ‘‘facts of reason’’ (Facktum der Vernunft), he finally arrives at the first principle of the ‘‘categorical imperative’’ (Kant, 1929, p. 36). It must be pointed out, though, that Kant’s concept of the so-called facts

834

MICHAEL DANIELS

of reason is not acceptable, since the concept is based on an inexplicable subjectivistic intuition. Apart from this, we need to take a more careful stance towards the idea of the categorical imperative itself. Prescriptions of practical reason attempt to establish the legitimacy of the categorical imperative without taking into consideration its practical applicability. Ironically, Kant himself obscures its true nature by giving actual instances which depart from universalizable laws (Kant, 1965, pp. 47–50). Although the attempted establishment of legitimacy is an effort ff to link categorical imperatives to the maxim of actions under concrete circumstances, making such an attempt is to miss the point. Hegel praises Kant for elucidating ‘‘the meaning of duty’’ and dealing judiciously with practical philosophy (Hegel, Werke W 7, pp. 250–251). The Kantian philosophy of morality succeeds in capturing the spirit of modern subjectivity symbolized by the French Revolution. This initial appreciation, however, gives way to Hegel’s refutation of the Kantian formalism (Hegel, Werke W 7, pp. 253–254), on the grounds that the latter’s stipulation of ‘‘the duty for the sake of duty’’ falls far short of the sufficient condition for practical philosophy. In other words, the idea of morality is directly related to the attempt to construct a normative basis for action, with the result that the Kantian articulation of moral principles in his second Critique is stripped of practical applicability and lacks historical contexts. His third Critique partly rectifies this flaw by defining reflective judgment ‘‘as the faculty to find the universal once the particular is given’’ (Kant, 1983, p. 251). Reflective judgment deserves our attention, since it is supposed to mediate abstract moral principles with the historically concrete. Hegel’s critique of Kantianism can be summed up in two fundamental ways. First, Kantian formalistic, abstract universalism gives birth to an inevitable dualism between the Ought and the Is, reason and sensibility, to the effect ff of a futile tautology and practical inapplicability. Whether this denunciation is wholly justifiable is still debatable. Rawls’s investigation into the ‘‘procedural’’ interpretation of the categorical imperative appears to be quite interesting (Rawls, 1971, p. 251). Hegel’s second criticism is extremely significant, pointing out the possibility for those with political power to absolutize their moral judgment through the idea of the categorical imperative and thereby destroy political opponents. Hegel’s interpretation of the Reign of Terror as an inescapable deterioration of the French Revolution in the essay ‘‘Absolute Freedom and Terror’’ in Phenomenology of Spirit. shows a keen sensitivity

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

835

to the mechanism by which subjective good will invalidly regard itself as the incarnation of general will. Once this happens and the ‘‘subjective will’s labor is regarded as the universal labor,’’ death will be treated ‘‘with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or a swallowing a mouthful of water’’ (Hegel, Werke W 3, p. 436). This observation is brilliantly reminiscent of Rousseau’s dilemma as a political thinker. Although Rousseau fancies himself a perfect advocate of ‘‘popular sovereignty,’’ his scheme paves the way for totalitarianism by failing to identify who, or what social group, will execute the general will in practical terms (Rousseau, 1967, p. 3 1). The second Hegelian critique constitutes an imperative to overcome the paradigm of subjectivity and move to a paradigm of intersubjectivity. The Hegelian concept of the ethical life is by definition an intersubjective space where numberless subjects’ wills are under constant scrutiny through incessant dialogues and check-ups. To put it differently, ff the ethical life points to the intersubjective dimension of practical philosophy, whereas the idea of morality holds monadic implications. Thus it is not a coincidence that, now that state socialism has fallen, Hegel’s political philosophy is attracting widespread public attention in connection with the renaissance of civil society theory (Cohen and Arato, 1992, pp. 91–116). Turning our attention to discourse ethics, we may ask whether it really provides a dialectical synthesis between morality and ethical life. Habermas, as a proponent of discourse ethics, aims at incorporating the universalistic, law-abiding aspect of morality in life while simultaneously situating it in a concrete historical context. Thus he maintains that the title ‘‘theory with a practical intent’’ holds for his paradigm. In his theories of universal pragmatics and communicative action, Habermas develops an intersubjective model of rationality which he believes justifies the normative basis of critical theory. In these projects he wants to build a foundation upon which rational organization of everyday life is conceivable. The starting point of his argument is that a form of life free from domination is inherent in every act of communication. By using the method of what he calls ‘‘rational reconstruction’’ of the conditions of possible communications, he hopes to identify the necessarily presupposed elements in the successful speech situation and thereby to uncover the universal validity basis of speech. According to Habermas, anyone acting communicatively must, in the performing of a speech act, raise universal validity claims (Geltungsanspru¨che) and suppose that they

836

MICHAEL DANIELS

can be vindicated. Language-use of undistorted communication is the case in which speakers can defend all four validity claims – where what is said can be shown to be comprehensible, true, sincere, and right. This theory provides the means for the construction of an ‘‘ideal speech situation in which interlocutors can freely redeem disputed validity claims and aspire for reciprocal understanding. As Habermas admits, an ideal speech situation is an ‘‘idealization.’’ This ideality is rarely approximated in actual speech situations. However, the ideal can serve as a standard for the critique of systematically distorted communication and represents, in Habermas’s view, a linguistic formulation of ideas traditionally known as truth, freedom, and justice. Habermas is sure that this is a convincing refutation of decisionism because it shows that human existence as such carries with it certain obligations that are not subject to arbitrary choice. The minimum conditions for human existence entail participation in a normatively structured community. A fundamental commitment to intersubjective rationality is independent of any decision to reason. Habermas adds that such a commitment must accompany communicative action in every social milieu. The recently paired concepts of ‘‘system and life-world’’ are useful in connecting these theoretical enterprises to the societal analysis of modernity and the modernization process as a whole. The life-world, as the ‘‘background of implicit knowledge which enters a tergo into [the] cooperative process of interpretation’’ (Habermas, 1984, p. 335), contributes to the maintenance of individual and social identity by organizing action around shared values so as to reach voluntary agreement over redeemable validity claims. The system integrates diverse activities in accordance with the adaptive goals of economic and political utility by regulating the purposive rational action through market or bureaucratic mechanisms. Drawing on the insights of Husserl and Schutz, Habermas defines lifeworld as a shared life-context comprising the totality of interpretations which are presupposed as background knowledge by members of society. However, Habermas tries to overcome a narrow culturalistic reading of the life-world. He introduces the concept of everyday practice (Alltagspraxis), by means of which distinct life-world spheres and their mode of reproduction can be reflexively put to the test. On this theoretical basis, Habermas constructs his political philosophy of intersubjectivity. To put it more concretely, he represents his philosophy as a battle against the ‘‘colonization of lifeworld’’ (Habermas, 1981, p. 293), since ‘‘battle lines between lifeworld and system thereby acquire

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

837

a new relevance’’ for contemporary industrialized societies (Habermas, 1986a, p. 112). Further examination of the dispute between morality and the ethical life will help clarify Habermas’s virtues and vices. He makes an important claim that the Hegelian critique of Kantianism is not relevant to his own project (Habermas, 1986b, pp. 24–30). Habermas has a threefold argument for discourse ethics: first, he argues that the Kantian categorical distinction between noumenon and phenomenon is abandoned in discourse ethics; such a distinction transforms itself into a mitigated tension stemming from factual influences exercised by counter-factual ideals. That is to say, the universal formalism of discourse ethics does not lack substantial content. Secondly, he argues that discourse ethics as a model paradigm of intersubjectivity surpasses the monologic limitation of Kant’s subjective philosophy. When we reflect on both these points, a third emerges: namely, that in their conjunction we have an important clue to the problem of the normative grounding (Begru¨ndung) of morality, a problem to which Kant was never able to give a satisfactory answer. By the same token, Habermas claims that discourse ethics evades the charge of idealism, since it continuously orients itself toward a dynamic process of concrete practices. The philosophical category of intersubjectivity, according to him, can meet ethical (sittlich) demands of reconciling the Ought with the Is through encouraging every subject to participate in collective socio-political activities. In short, Habermas holds the view that morality and ethical life can be mediated through the paradigm of intersubjectivity aiming at mutual understanding and consent. Intersubjective rationality frees us from the deadlock of having to choose between Kant and Hegel. As Habermas (1992, p. 142) puts it, ‘‘Communicative reason is neither incorporeal, like the spontaneity of subjectivity that is world-constituting yet itself without a world, nor does it twist history into a circular teleology for the sake of the absolute selfmediation of a historicized spirit.’’ Undeniably, Habermas makes some progress in synthesizing the Kantian aspiration of grounding a universalizable normative foundation with the Hegelian project of historizing ethical demands. Thus it becomes necessary to revise the generally accepted view that discourse ethics is much more sympathetic to Kant than to Hegel. It is common knowledge that discourse ethics can be effectively ff utilizable in various pluralistic social settings (Forester, 1985), although the theory itself is quite abstract. Specifically, many contemporary treatises on civil society are heavily

838

MICHAEL DANIELS

indebted to the Habermasian investigation into the political philosophy of intersubjectivity.

DISCOURSE THEORY AS A NEW LOGIC OF EMANCIPATION

Despite their merits, I am unconvinced that theories of universal pragmatics and communicative action achieve a complete departure from subjectivist philosophy. Although Habermas insists that his argument effectively ff dethrones subjectivist philosophy, it appears to be haunted by the phantom of subjectivity. Critics of Habermas make a number of telling points, but I will not dwell on them in detail. One important gap in Habermas’s system is his relative silence regarding how a finite subject can acquire autonomy amidst the incessant fluxes and vortexes of power-knowledge networks. Because he fails to answer this critical question, Habermas can be accused of simply replacing a thinking ego with a speaking subject, to the effect ff that his argument retains a strong residue of modern subjectivist philosophy. Transcendentalism of this kind lingers on the thesis that there are principles necessarily ascertained by any rational beings in communicative action. It follows that Habermas is not refuting the paradigm of subjective philosophy, but reformulating it in disguise. Focusing too much on the ‘‘procedural rationality’’ through which individual subjects arrive at universal moral norms, Habermas relapses into a modified subjectivism. Thus it is not easy for him to justify the core point of T he Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, which claims to succeed in overcoming subjective philosophy once and for all (Habermas, 1987). As we have seen, the critical power of reflection still occupies a central position in Habermas’s project and constitutes the main force for breaking the reign of ideology and systematically distorted communication. In particular, his conception of an emancipatory interest inherent in reflection refers to something of the order of an autonomous subject who is able, in principle, to destroy the sense of false consciousness and to achieve enlightenment and emancipation. A subject can develop this potential power of reflection only in the context of intersubjective interaction with other subjects. The very idea of communicative rationality assumes that interlocutors are rational agents who can behave in principle in a responsible way. By the same token, validity claims can be tested only when interlocutors behave in a rational manner. This clearly suggests,

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

839

therefore, that the Habermasian paradigm of intersubjectivity is an extension, rather than an exclusion, of subjective philosophy. It is imperative at this juncture to distance ourselves as far as possible from all sorts of subjectivism or intersubjectivism with a humanistic face, in order to explore a new logic of emancipation. Briefly put, we are in need of a discursive turn. Thus, in effect, ff even the category of intersubjectivity as an extension of subjectivity has to meet a serious challenge from discourse theory. What has to be worked out is a revolutionary paradigm shift which will make possible ‘‘a materialist theory of the subject for which the subject is an object to be explained’’ (Lemert and Gillan, 1982, p. 101). Without doubt, Foucauldian discourse theory is one of the most promising candidates for a catalyst for this paradigm shift. In addition, we need to remember that the critique of the autonomous subject and his or her reason is an integral part of the poststructuralist deconstructive method, which casts radical suspicion on Western modernity. This idea is one of the most sensitive issues concerning the conflict of modernity and postmodernity. It is precisely the notion of a rational subject which Foucault attempts to deconstruct in his genealogy. In other words, he tries to decenter the rational subjectivity that causes the subject’s illusion of being master of his or her own fate. From Foucault’s perspective, a specific power/knowledge nexus in relation to discourse formation gave rise to the theory of Man as consciousness, not vice versa. What Foucault wants to emphasize is that the subject cannot originate the foundation that would make rationality the inherent telos in human history. This refutation symbolizes Foucault’s decisive break with the idealism that puts the subject before everything else. In T he Discourse on L anguage, Foucault presents the thesis which says that formations of discourse and knowledge in every society are intimately tied to the workings of power. This thesis is most explicit in Discipline and Punish and in the introductory volume of T he History of Sexuality, though his ideas about the power/knowledge nexus can be traced back to M Madness and Civilization. What is common to all of these works is the insight that the complex linkages between discursive and non-discursive practices are anonymous embodiments of a will to truth. Social discourse, Foucault believes, serves to exclude and distort ideas and issues, which a society wants to repress. The opposition between true and false, assimilating a prohibition and a division or rejection, is the most important type of exclusion, an idea which can be dated back to

840

MICHAEL DANIELS

Plato (Foucault, 1972, p. 216). Later, Foucault examines discourse in such various aspects of social life as politics, social institutions, and economics with the thesis that it forms the ego and produces the knowledge concerning subjectivity. We must use the conception of discourse to explicate the interaction between concrete social reality and linguistic activities. Discourse refers to an ensemble of discursive practices, structured and conditioned inside socio-historical settings. As a result, discourse for Foucault is not an abstract linguistic phenomenon, but the ground on which fierce ideological warfare is incessantly waged. Foucault’s T he Order of T hings (1973) is a brilliant explication of the dynamics of discursive formation. This work is the outcome of a unique French intellectual atmosphere in which science, literature, the arts, and philosophy are so closely intermingled as to render narrow scholarly compartmentalization a rarity. It might be possible for us to extrapolate an ontology called transcendental discourse theory, based on hints from T he Archaeology of Knowledge and T he Order of T hings, though such a task is beyond the scope of my discussion here. In general, what is significant for Foucault is the investigation of ‘‘how effects ff of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false’’ (Foucault, 1984, p. 60). In so doing, Foucault succeeds in illuminating a rich materiality in which each discourse is inseparably entangled with power. Discourse analysis, thus conceived, has immense potential for contributing to political philosophy as a normative project. A critique of ideology through Foucauldian discursive analysis would be an integral part of any critical theory of society. His deliberate abstention from evaluative utterances concerning the workings of disciplinary power, the division between reason and unreason, the power/knowledge nexus, and the formation of subjectivity has led many of his critics to charge that the ultimate objective of Foucault’s genealogical studies is dubious. Put differently, ff critics argue that a normative vantage point is never clearly articulated in Foucault’s writings. The lesson we can learn from Habermas is that communicative rationality in discursive practices provides a normative ground from which we can challenge domination in political, sexual, economic, and institutional relationships. If Foucault had examined more systematically the basis of his genealogy, he might have felt the need to clarify more precisely his epistemological foundation. His reference to ‘‘the practice of freedom’’ is

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

841

a step in this direction, but his abrupt death prevented him from pursuing this idea any further (Yoon, 1989, p. 170). In opposition to Foucault, Althusser is quick to admit his political commitment to Marxism, although he holds a view quite similar to Foucault’s discourse theory. We can sum up the central contention of IIdeology and Ideological State Apparatuses by citing the famous phrase that ‘‘ideology hails or interpellates individuals as subjects’’ (Althusser, 1971, p. 175). The claim that ‘‘ideology has no outside’’ later gave Althusser serious difficulty in identifying the exact status of a theoretical practice, which Althusser as a Spinozist claims, is the philosopher’s job. It is advisable to limit our discussion to the materiality of ideology stressed by Althusser. Such post-Marxists as Laclau and Mouffe ff have recently made illuminating efforts ff to develop an anti-subjective discursive epistemology along the lines of Foucault and Althusser (Laclau and Mouffe, ff 1985). A fierce dispute concerning the legitimacy of their project has not yet been settled. What remains to be seen is whether a paradigm of intersubjectivity and that of discourse are antithetical or complementary. CONCLUDING REMARKS

Peter Laslett’s announcement that ‘‘political philosophy is dead’’ was not news to scholars of 1956, when logical positivism prevailed (Laslett, 1956, Introduction, vii). The predominance of positivism and instrumental rationality had been detrimental to the development of political philosophy, which aims at restoring the normative explication of a desirable way of life. In this vein, today’s renaissance of political philosophy can be construed as a token that philosophers’ primary concern is shifting to practical domains. This revival is accompanied by increasing uncertainties and inconsistencies surrounding the issues of theoretical presupposition and practical resolution. This paper has concentrated on elucidating the categories of intersubjectivity and discourse at the metatheoretical level. Intersubjectivity theory has not entirely freed itself from residues of traditional humanism, whereas discourse theory, due to its radical anti-subjectivism, suffers ff from lack of a normative vantage point. Here we see the necessity of searching for a more comprehensive alternative, although the issue is still murky. One thing is clear, however: unmediated eclecticism must be avoided. In terms of practical application, the categories of intersubjectivity and discourse might fill the critical vacuum created by the fall of traditional

842

MICHAEL DANIELS

Marxism’s ‘‘infra- and super-structure’’ metaphor and the relative autonomy of the superstructure thesis, especially in the areas of cultural reproduction and everyday life. These two categories have a strong potential to consolidate the foundation for a reconstructed civil society. Contrary to the prophesy of ideologues like Francis Fukuyama, the fall of authoritative state socialism appears to go hand in hand with a steady structural disintegration of welfare liberalism. Interestingly enough, the topic of civil society has been vigorously revived with the ongoing crisis of two representative systems of modern political philosophy, socialism, and liberalism. As a result, the pursuit of post-socialism and post-liberalism is tantamount to the quest for a postmodern paradigm of political philosophy. At the ontological level, socialism and liberalism were heirs of the modern Western world view, succinctly symbolized by the Cartesian subject of W the isolated cogito. Rousseau’s ambiguous position as a political thinker, and the dispute over whether he was a liberal or a totalitarian, testifies to this inherent dilemma. Therefore, postmodern political philosophy has to rely on the paradigms of intersubjectivity and discourse, whatever they might look like. The ‘‘liberalism vs. communitarianism dispute’’ itself is the result of Anglo-American practical philosophers’ appreciation of this fact. The emphasis on the free, autonomous individual as an Archimedean point in modern Western tradition has exercised a dramatic effect ff on human history. On the one hand, substantial progress has been made in terms of universal history, and march of this progress is irreversible. On the other, however, this progress has come at the heavy price of shattered solidarity and lost intersubjectivity. Thus, the question remains of how to restore the existential condition of ‘‘M ‘ itmenschen’’ without relapsing into excessive reliance on such humanistic residue as intentionality and subjectivity, while keeping in mind the increasingly complex and differentiated ff landscape of post-industrial society. My intention here has been to identify a theoretical basis for intersubjective and discursive social practices in order to overcome the ontological pitfalls of the modern philosophy of subjectivity. Such a basis emphasizes the importance of paradigms of discourse and intersubjectivity to political philosophy. The introduction of a full and authentic participatory democracy will be the actualization of this philosophical speculation.

THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

843

BIBLIOGRAPHY Althusser, L. L enin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books, 1971. Cohen, J. and Arato, A. Civil Society and Political T heory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Forester, J. (ed.). Critical T heory and Public L ife. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. Foucault, M. M Madness and Civilization. Translated by R. Howard. New York: Vintage Books, 1965. ——. T he Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. S. Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. ——. T he Order of T hings. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. ——. Discipline and Punish. Translated by A. Smith. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. ——. T he History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Translated by R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. ——. The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom. Philosophy and Social Criticism 12, 1987. Habermas, J. T heorie des Kommunikativen Handelns. Vol. 2. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981. ——. T he T heory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Translated by T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. ——. Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Habermas. London: Verso, 1986a. ——. Moralitat und Sittlichkeit. In W. Kuhlmann (Ed.), Moralita M ¨t und Sittiichkeit: Des Problem flegels umid die Diskursethik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986b. ——. T he Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Translated by F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. ——. Postmetaphysical T hinking. Translated by W. M. Hogengarten. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Hegel, G. W. F. Werke W , 20 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969. Husserl, E. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ff 1982. Husserl, E. T he Crisis of European Science and T ranscendental Phenomenology. Translated by D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Jameson, F. Posimodernism, or, the Cultural L ogic of L ate Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. Kant, I. Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft. Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1929. ——. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1965. ——. Werke W . Vol. 8, Kritik der Urteilskraft. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, ff C. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: T oward a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985. Laslett, P. (Ed.). Philosophy, Politics and Society. New York: Macmillan, 1956. Lemert, C. and Gillan, G. Michel Foucault: Social T heory as T ransgression. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by C. Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. Rawls, J. A T heory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Rousseau, J.-J. In L. G. Crocker (Ed.), T he Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin of I Inequality. New York: Pocket Books, 1967. Russell, B. A Hisory of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945. Schutz, A. T he Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by G. Walsh and F. Lehnert. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967. Yoon, P.-J. Rationality and Social Criticism: Habermas, Foucault, and Beyond. Chuncheon, Korea: Kangweon National University Press, 1989.

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE: BUILDING MORAL COMMUNITIES THROUGH LITERARY STUDY

I. INTRODUCTION

The current ‘‘war on terrorism’’ is only one of many challenges – environmental, political, economic, medical, etc. – facing our contemporary communities. These challenges are enormous and exceedingly complex, so much so that many see the modern world as in an endemic state of crisis. To resolve these complex issues, we must balance values against values. Our communities need individuals and groups capable of recognizing and handling the moral complexity (among the other complexities) of these issues. How do we form such moral agents? In this paper we propose an answer to this question, choosing as the context for our discussion literary instruction in secondary education. Literature provides a laboratory in which the ethical and moral dimensions of human actions can be readily perceived and thought about. Unlike most other areas of study, which claim to be ‘‘values-neutral,’’ literary study has values at its very heart. Yet the potential of literature to develop moral character is often unrealized. This could be because the connection between literature and moral life goes unrecognized, or because it is oversimplified. Those who don’t recognize the connection may value literature as a way to promote either ‘‘cultural literacy’’ (Hirsch, 1987) or purely aesthetic appreciation. And of course there are those who don’t value literature at all. Those who do recognize the moral dimension of literature – educators, censors, politicians – often oversimplify the relationship between literature and the moral life, viewing literature either as an unambiguous codification of the community’s moral ideals (‘‘Read good books, and you will become a good person’’), or as an appealing invitation to reject society’s norms (‘‘Read bad books, and you will become a bad person’’). William Bennett’s Book of V irtues (1993), subtitled ‘‘A Treasury of Great Moral Stories,’’ and the multitude of similar books and articles published in the last decade show the continuing strength of this simplified view of the relation between literature and the moral life. 845 A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana L XXXV, 845–863. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

846

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI II. MORALITY – SOME REFLECTIONS

Though neither of us is a moral philosopher, we would like to begin with a few reflections on the moral life. We offer ff our observations both to lay out our own starting points and to prompt further discussion of how our view of literature might relate to various other ethical theories and visions of human life. For us, moral reasoning, which everyone acknowledges has practical consequences, has an affective ff as well as a cognitive dimension (see Hume, 1966).1 Literature is potentially powerful in moral development at least in part because it mobilizes an affective ff response as well as a cognitive one; indeed the emotional power of literature is one of the reasons that some, from Plato on, have found literature dangerous to the moral life.2 Along with Andrew Auge, we have strong reservations about a certain approach to the moral life, an approach which Auge characterizes as ‘‘the belief that praiseworthy moral character must be harmonious, stable, and uniform – the result of living in accordance with a single, internally consistent system of moral rules’’ (1989, p. 11). As Auge points out, ‘‘We are often taught to believe that living well means adhering to an established framework of moral rules and precepts that can encompass whatever situation arises and thereby protect us from dangerous and damaging conflicts’’ (p. 14). According to this view, interpreting each new situation in terms of an already harmonized set of precepts would prevent or eliminate potentially disruptive tension in an individual’s moral life. While the attempt to reduce tension and immunize from conflicts may indeed aptly characterize much of moral life, we believe that another principle is also at work. In his Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud (1961) found that the Pleasure Principle, the drive to reduce tension, had to be complemented by another principle – Eros, or the drive to make things more complicated, to build rather than to reduce, to generate something new rather than to return to the familiar. Similarly, we would suggest that a reductive morality or moral vision must be complemented by a generative moral vision. Like Eros, a generative morality opens out to the new, rather than seeking to map the present experience onto the previously experienced. Humans are social beings. We believe that many of our most important decisions must be made in common with others, and that morality is a function of communities as well as of individuals. A moral community is formed by personal appropriation, by personal commitment, by something like a ‘‘conversion’’ or transformation of the individuals who come

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

847

to make up the community. Rosemary Haughton, in T he T ransformation of Man (1967), explores the situation of those who are born into the community without having personally appropriated it. These children can be formed by the adult members of the community, they can learn and adhere to all the codes of the community, yet the formation they receive is not enough. It is only when they personally appropriate the community’s values and codes, usually in an experience of crisis, when all that they have so far ‘‘taken for granted’’ is put at risk, that they become the equals of the community’s original members, having passed beyond formation, having gone through a trans-forming experience. But appropriation is not conformity; in the transformative experience Eros is at play as well as the Pleasure Principle. Perhaps it is more usual that we go through a sequence of modestly transformative experiences rather than a single peak experience that dramatically changes our lives. We suggest later that literature can contribute to these transformative experiences. III. LITERATURE’S CONTRIBUTION TO MORAL AGENCY

A. ‘‘L iterature’’ and ‘‘Narrative’’ – tentative (and stipulative) definitions ‘‘Literature’’ as our culture currently conceives of it, Tzvetan Todorov points out, is a relatively new concept, going back only to the end of the eighteenth century. It arose in the distinction between useful or utilitarian uses of language, and a use of language that had no end or justification outside of itself (Todorov, 1987, pp. 4–6). Those texts that counted as ‘‘literature’’ – from the ancient to the contemporary – were their own justification; if a literary work gave pleasure, the pleasure was ‘‘aesthetic,’’ more like contemplation than the gratification of a desire or the satisfaction of a need. Archibald MacLeish expresses an extreme form of this view in his famous lines, ‘‘A poem should not mean / But be’’ (MacLeish, 1979, p. 441). Nevertheless, there has been and continues to be a tendency to try to take literature out of this category of the ‘‘useless’’ and to find some use for it, as there had been for the older concepts of poetry or poesy. Plato had found poetry useful in wrong ways: it aroused emotions, and, doubly removed from the truth as it was, it encouraged people to be satisfied with an imitation of an imitation. Writers as diverse as Horace, Philip Sidney, and Matthew Arnold found a tension between usefulness and enjoyment, and often arrived at variations on Horace’s formula, ‘‘He who

848

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

combines the useful and the pleasing wins out by both instructing and delighting the reader’’ (Horace, 1970, p. 56; see Auge, 1989; Sidney, 1970; Arnold, 1970). In modern times, educational institutions, and American education in particular, influenced by Puritan asceticism, generally subordinated the pleasing to the useful, with aesthetic pleasure the sugar coating for an implicit or explicit utilitarian purpose.3 We will suggest our own variation on this theme later. For the sake of our present discussion, we suggest that literature comes from the larger domain of non-utilitarian language, or language without a direct referential or truth claim. But within this domain, what sets ‘‘literature’’ apart from ‘‘non-literature’’ is the level of imaginative complexity or subtlety that distinguishes, say, a Margaret Atwood novel from a Harlequin Romance, or a parable or Zen koan from a nursery rhyme. Furthermore, in this paper, we will tend to focus particularly on narrative, not on all literature, though much of what we say will apply to nonnarrative literature as well.4 Our focus on narrative follows from our sense that the human world is a constructed world (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Berger, 1969; Ricoeur, 1984–88; Bruner, 1986).5 In literary narratives we ‘‘practice’’ making human worlds, we ‘‘play’’ at giving a human shape to experience. As with much of our play, the product may be imaginary, but the skills and competencies that are called into play are the same that we use in our ‘‘serious’’ work of constructing ourselves and our world. The narrativizing of experience is one of the more important aspects of world-building. Ricoeur asserts that ‘‘time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence’’ (1984–88:1, p. 52). In this view, story or narrative is not just something we say or listen to, but something we do or experience. Narrativizing experience means coming to apprehend or perceive our individual or collective lives as having a shape like a narrative’s, a meaningful temporal order or pattern. And for this pattern or shape to be humanly meaningful, it must ‘‘connect’’ with human concerns. Since literary narratives are analogous to the narrativizing of experience, developing our skills in moral reasoning using literary narratives should have some carry-over to our other uses of narrative. We should point out that since we consider narrative as the temporal shaping of human experience, for us the narrative forms of literature would include drama as well as fiction.

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

849

Narrative is concerned with ‘‘intention and its vicissitudes,’’ which according to Jerome Bruner constitute ‘‘a primary category system in terms of which experience is organized’’ (1986, pp. 18–19). The moral life is also concerned with ‘‘intention and its vicissitudes,’’ with human action and with human possibilities within the world of action (never forgetting that action cannot be divorced from thought and affect). ff Narrative literature, then, will provide an especially apt laboratory for questioning, examining, testing, and learning about the moral dimension of human life. In fact, Paul Ricoeur, Martha Nussbaum, and others see as one of the oldest functions of literary art ‘‘that it constitutes an ethical laboratory where the artist pursues, through the mode of fiction, experimentation with values’’ (Ricoeur, 1984–88:1, p. 59; see also Nussbaum, 1986, esp. Chap. 3, on Sophocles’ Antigone). Using literature, author and readers can run ‘‘thought experiments’’ about the factors that condition human actions and about the various consequences of those actions. Ultimately, we agree with William James that ‘‘all human thinking is essentially of two kinds – reasoning on the one hand, and narrative, descriptive, contemplative thinking on the other’’ (quoted in Bruner, 1986, p. xii). We think that development of the capacity for narrative thinking is itself a positive contribution to our moral lives. In light of research that suggests narratives are a basic category of moral thinking (Tappan and Brown, 1991), we make our own the observation of Jerome Bruner: Insofar as we account for our own actions and for the human events that occur around us principally in terms of narrative, story, drama, it is conceivable that our sensitivity to narrative provides the major link between our own sense of self and our sense of others in the social world around us. The common coin may be provided by the forms of narrative ff us. (Bruner, 1986, p. 69) that the culture offers

Accordingly, a moral education would use literature not to inculcate values, not to impress a specific moral code, but to facilitate both the construction of values and a sympathetic engagement with the experience of others. In this construction and engagement, the reader is not a spectator but a co-constructor of the meaning of the work, including its moral meaning. B. T he work of reading Literature, and narratives in particular, participate in the more general artistic function of constructing a world or a model of a world (Goodman, 1976, 1978; Ricoeur, 1984–88). And we participate in the work of literature

850

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

through reading. Using a variety of cues in the literary text, we mobilize our imaginative, cognitive, and affective ff resources to ‘‘subjunctivize’’ reality, to co-construct a ‘‘subjunctive’’ world (Bruner, 1986, p. 26) or imaginary world. ‘‘To be in the subjunctive mode,’’ says Bruner, is ‘‘to be trafficking in human possibilities rather than in settled certainties’’ (p. 26). Literature’s freedom from the constraints of the ‘‘real’’ world, and perhaps especially from the constraint to act, catalyzes this trafficking in human possibilities. In this co-constructing or subjunctivizing process, our cognitive/ sympathetic identification is elicited on two levels. We are invited to identify sympathetically with one or more characters, or at least with their plight; and we are invited to identify with the author, to adopt his or her values and vision as these shape the world of the story, its characters, and its action. Wayne Booth, in his detailed analyses of the rhetorical structure of fiction and of fiction’s ethical effects, ff argues that we identify with the implied author (those aspects of the author we can know in and through the text) and that the ‘‘self ’ that we become in this process is a partial self we can call the implied reader (Booth, 1961; 1988). But for practical purposes in the classroom, we can collapse the real author and implied author into one, and do the same with the real and implied reader. In fact, in T he Company We Keep, Booth himself tends to collapse together the implied reader and the real reader (Booth, 1988). Sometimes character and author seem to share the same values and vision, but sometimes the values can be quite distinct (Huck Finn’s position on slavery, for example, is quite different ff from Mark Twain’s). And of course, on either level values and norms can be in conflict among themselves – in fact, such conflict may be at the heart of the story. (See, for example, the internal conflict experienced by Huck Finn over how he should respond to the runaway slave Jim.) There are ways of reading that avoid sympathetic identifications with author or character, ways that Louise Rosenblatt calls ‘‘efferent’’ ff (1994). In an efferent ff reading, we read in order to bring something away from the text – reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for instance, to learn about the characteristic social interactions in small rural communities in mid-nineteenth-century America, or reading S. E. Hinton’s T he Outsiders to learn more about informal gangs in modern cities. Efferent ff readings yield information, but not formation, and certainly not transformation. For these, a reading that takes the text on its own terms is necessary, what Rosenblatt calls an ‘‘aesthetic’’ reading, one that cooperates in the co-constructing of the world of the text and enters sympathetically into

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

851

it. Paradoxically, for Rosenblatt an aesthetic reading requires involvement with the text instead of distance from it. Some recent research suggests that even within the category of aesthetic reading, there are several characteristic reading styles. Dillon (1982) finds three basic styles of reading narratives. One is the Character-ActionMoral (CAM) style, in which ‘‘readers treat the world of the text as an extension or portion of the real world, [and] the characters as real persons, so that we will recognize the experience of characters as being like our own experience’’ (pp. 80–81). Another basic reading style is the Digger for Secrets style. For Diggers, ‘‘the story enwraps secrets,’’ hidden there by the narrator or by the author, ‘‘and the reader must uncover them’’ (p. 83). This approach might focus on characters’ unconscious motivations, or on the symbolic significance of various details of the story. A story like Shirley Jackson’s ‘‘The Lottery’’ would be much easier to read in this style than in the CAM style. The third basic reading style is the Anthropologist style. Anthropologists are interested in identifying the cultural norms and values that explain what characters ... do and say. Like Diggers for Secrets, these readers go beneath the surface and state things that are implicit and not said, though what they bring out is not a secret, but the general principles and values which the story illustrates as an example. (p. 85)

Thus, the Anthropological reader would be interested in exploring, for example, not Huck Finn’s conscious or unconscious moral conflicts in his relations with the runaway slave Jim, but the way that the conflicting voices in Huck’s conscience reflect or represent various strains of the larger community’s public stands on slavery and on moral responsibility. In view of this multiplicity of levels of sympathetic identification and of reading styles, we think that the best reader is the Nimble Reader – one who can move around among styles of reading and levels of sympathetic identification, without withdrawing to the safety and relative sterility of an efferent ff reading. For literature does have power. As least sometimes, we find ourselves greatly moved, and perhaps permanently changed, through our experience of a particular literary work. In a stimulating analysis of the moral power of literature, Auge (1989) uses as paradigm the difference ff between fables and parables. A fable like Aesop’s ‘‘The Goose with the Golden Eggs’’ has a simple, obvious moral. Fables present moral lessons ‘‘that are clearly delineated, easily extractable, and conveniently distilled from established moral doctrine’’ (p. 8). They then transmit the conventional moral code, in the form of ‘‘ready-

852

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

made rules and formulas’’ (p. 8) that present a simple schema of moral action. Parables do something quite different. ff Auge uses as his main example the parable of the Good Samaritan. For its original hearers, this parable had a shocking effect ff – because, according to John Dominic Crossan (1975, pp. 104–108), Samaritans had about the same standing among the Jews of Jesus’ day that drug addicts infected with AIDS have among middle-class Americans today. Auge states: By reversing our expectations, the parable forces us to reconsider our familiar notions of good and evil, to rethink the customary standards we use to make moral judgments. In contrast to fables, parables, such as ‘‘The Good Samaritan,’’ present concrete human situations that are too complex to be subsumed under fixed moral formulas. (Auge, 1989, p. 9)

Auge then argues that works of literature are more like parables than like fables: ‘‘the moral significance of great literature resides less in its confirmation of received rules and precepts than in its subversion of conventional expectations, its dismantling of settled opinions, its opening of previously closed questions’’ (p. 10). In this regard, parables would be on the side of Eros and fables on the side of the Pleasure Principle. The intention of the parable is to provoke a sort of crisis similar to the transformative crisis described by Haughton. Fables, then, transmit the values endorsed by the community, while parables call such values or their accepted applications into question. We agree with Auge that great literature often has a parabolic effect, ff but we see the fable-effect ff and the parable-eff ffect as two ends of a continuum. Furthermore, and most disconcertingly, a literary work does not simply fall somewhere on the continuum. Literature of any complexity usually partly supports and partly challenges the conventional moral vision and conventional moral codes.6 One might also say the same for schools. John Dewey distinguished between two opposing visions of schooling: ‘‘education as a function of society’’ and ‘‘society as a function of education’’ (quoted in Lentricchia, 1983, p. 1, and in Tappan and Brown, 1991, p. 188). In the first view, schools reproduce the present society, particularly its values, in the next generation; in the second view, schools renovate society by making sure the next generation will be different ff from the present one. In practice, schools both reproduce and renovate, in varying degrees – partly maintaining, partly undermining the status quo. Schools too have both a

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

853

fabular and a parabolic effect, ff and nowhere more, perhaps, than in the literature class. Studying literature in school is likely to provoke a lot of parable-effects. ff There will often be competing, contrasting, even clashing values and moral norms, partly as a function of the complexity of the work: within the constructed (literary) world and among its characters (and even within a single character); between the literary world and the reader’s world; and between the literary character(s) and the reader’s character. Becoming a Nimble Reader, learning to recognize and being able to discuss the various clashes of values and the consequent moral complexity in the world of the text, and being able to discuss the various clashes of values between worlds of text and reader, can help students ‘‘read’’ similar clashes, similar complexities in themselves and in their own worlds, and among the various groups that solicit their allegiance. If from their reading students take away models, paradigmatic stories, by which to make sense of their own lives and the lives of others, then a sensitivity to the parabolic as well as the fabular dimension of literature would be an important contribution to their moral development.

C. So, is literature ‘‘useful’’? Those who say that literature is irrelevant to moral formation are taking the traditional position that literature is ‘‘useless’’ rather than ‘‘useful’’ discourse. And we agree that to talk about ‘‘literature’’ working for moral development, which seems to value literature only for its usefulness in some other endeavor, is paradoxical. It is paradoxical because, for literature to play any part in moral development, it must be taken seriously on its own terms, as a complex imaginative experience with cognitive and affective ff dimensions. It is aesthetic reading that makes possible the imaginative engagement that catalyzes a moral response. ‘‘Good books’’ cannot produce ‘‘good people.’’ But what reading literature can do is broaden and deepen the sense of all that must be taken into account in order to form complex moral judgments. Reading literature might also give us practice in choosing eros over pleasure. Whether through the mode of literature or in other ways, we all need to deepen this sense and practice such choosing if we are to respond adequately to the challenges posed by the clashing values of the various religious, political, and economic groups of our diverse and increasingly interconnected world.

854

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI IV. SOME PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Literary studies in schools can cultivate competency in forming complex moral judgments, but only if the pedagogy is appropriate. We propose that teachers can best establish the proper conditions for opening out the moral dimension of literature when they emphasize both individual reader responses and group processes that model and foster community. By creating a classroom environment in which diverse voices can be heard and brought into dialogue with one another, teachers can guide students toward ever more complex reflection about values. Most of the specific examples in the discussion that follows focus on literary instruction in secondary schools, but the principles apply at other levels as well.

A. Focusing on individual responses Response to literature by individual readers is a useful starting point for a moral pedagogy of reading. In the first place, construction of a more complex moral perspective depends on the ability to recognize and to go beyond previously unexamined assumptions that limit the imagining of possible worlds. Readers need to attend to these assumptions as they consider a work and compare its story world to their own worlds. A focus on response is also useful because the construction of moral meanings requires the involvement of emotion as well as reason. Literary study that acknowledges the moral dimension of works must also validate the reader’s affective ff response. In order to enable the enlargement of sympathies and sympathetic understanding we have discussed, readers must become aware of how they feel about what they read. They must also recognize the link between their feelings and their own particular life experiences as well as between their feelings and the features of the text. The kind of teaching that would take into account the view of literature we have developed would emphasize Rosenblatt’s ‘‘aesthetic’’ stance toward works of literature (Rosenblatt, 1994). The reader’s own experience of the story’s world can be a jumping-off point for both the close analysis of the text and the discussion of moral dilemmas posed therein. The many techniques for helping readers focus attention on their own experiences in relation to their reading of particular texts, such as those described by Bleich (1975), Purves, Rogers, and Soter (1990), and others7 can help them contrast their own (constructed) world with the constructed world of the text. Keeping reading logs or response journals, creating

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

855

semantic maps, or dramatizing works are all classroom activities that can promote this purpose. One potentially powerful way to promote readers’ sense of how the narratives they read apply to the world they live in is by having them write narratives of their own experiences. Tappan and Brown (1991) describe a narrative approach to moral education in which children and adolescents tell stories about their moral decisions. This approach, they argue, allows students to develop authorship and authority, a sense that they are the makers of their own narratives. Surely such an approach could enhance, and be enhanced by, the reading and reconstructing of other people’s stories. B. Promoting Cognitive Complexity The teacher of literature who wants to heighten students’ awareness of moral dilemmas and of how to deal with them must require multilevel thinking and reasoning. Students ought to be encouraged to move back and forth mentally among the various levels (of reader, character, and author) in the transaction of reading, and among styles of reading (Character-Action-Moral, Digger of Secrets, and Archaeologist). In other words, the teacher must help each student become a Nimble Reader. There are a number of generic prompts that a teacher can use to guide students toward a better understanding of a work and its complexity. A teacher might ask students to try to infer what the author thinks from what the characters say and do, and to compare or contrast what the characters say to the students’ inferred impression of the author. The teacher might ask students what they think of what the author thinks. The reader must be ever more nimble in order to engage imaginatively in dialogue with the author and infer what the author thinks the reader must be thinking. A more sophisticated version of the elementary main idea comprehension task would lead readers through individual response to the Archaeologist style of reading, in order to infer why the author wanted things the way they are in the story. In other words, the reader would use the historical, cultural, or other knowledge that is part of the reader’s personal perspective to go beyond that perspective and form an interpretation of the work as a whole (Scholes, 1985). Stating the goal of literary studies this way helps to clarify the kind of growth in understanding we seek for students of literature: ever more inclusive and sophisticated constructions of reality by students.

856

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

Furthermore, as Scholes (1985) urges, students could move from a sympathetic reading first to an interpretation and then to a critical response to the author’s vision. (See also Nelms, 1988, for a discussion of a similar progression.) Recognizing and assessing this growth in literary understanding would require careful attention to how students talk about works and how they relate elements of texts they are reading to their own experience. Students’ achievement in literary studies must be judged by much more than the number of facts and plot details they can remember. One of the main ways teachers influence how students respond to literature is through their selection of what to read. This is not to say that mere exposure to certain works can have salutary effects ff in and of itself. Nevertheless, in conjunction with proper study materials and teacher guidance which would encourage an aesthetic reading and a critical response to that reading, the works chosen can set the stage for growth in students’ moral understanding. The list of the most commonly taught book-length works in U.S. public and private secondary schools suggests that teachers already have moral purposes in mind when selecting what to teach (see Applebee, 1993, p. 65; Applebee also includes lists of the most frequently anthologized short fiction and poems). Titles among the top ten, such as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth M , Huckleberry Finn, T o Kill a Mockingbird, T he Scarlet L etter, Of Mice and Men, and L ord of the Flies, are full of the kind of conflicting values and moral complexity that we have been discussing – they seem more parabolic than fabular in their relationship to the values of the dominant culture.8 C. Focusing on group process and formation of community To facilitate growth in moral understanding, the study of literature should be done in a supportive context in which the teacher deliberately strives to model how moral discourse takes place within a community of readers. Students’ real communities are those in which they live, and the ‘‘literate communities’’ that form in the classroom discussion of literature are artificial. Nevertheless, the classroom community can overcome or at least diminish its artificiality through the careful cultivation of discussion and dialogue. Discussion, long a favorite tool of English teachers, contains a potential to promote the ‘‘subjunctivization’’ which Bruner describes that more individualistic techniques cannot match (cf. Wolf, 1988). By bringing together many viewpoints, discussion increases the likelihood that stu-

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

857

dents will see beyond their typically idiosyncratic perspectives (D. C. Griffey, ff personal communication, November 28, 1994). Discussion also allows students to make public affirmations about their own values. Through discussion, students become more aware of how the world and its values might be different. ff Participants in a discussion can see how various kinds of sympathies can be expressed. Furthermore, discussions of the moral dilemmas in literature acknowledge that each individual’s reading is socially and culturally mediated. In discussions, students of literature can practice tolerance and apply reason just as they might do as members of their own communities talking about decisions. Noddings (1991) suggests that a new paradigm of interpersonal reasoning guided by an ethic of caring is emerging as a basis for morality. If this is true, then the confluence of feeling, thinking, and personality that we have been describing is particularly apt for this new paradigm.9 Students collectively constructing the meaning of a work are modeling the same kinds of processes which are at work in everyday morality. Of course, teachers must insure that an atmosphere of trust and caring exists in class before any of this can happen. Some small-group formats for talking about literature, such as the book clubs described by Raphael et al. (1992), can be more helpful in opening students to ranges of possibility than more traditional approaches. Student-led, small-group discussions facilitate the reading of a greater variety of texts as well as greater participation in discussion of them. With multiple-text strategies, perhaps incorporating neglected works from other cultures, teachers can widen the scope of moral discussion still further.10 Do teachers really have any influence over how students respond to literature? Purves (1981) has demonstrated that students’ responses to literature are indeed shaped by their schooling. In the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (lEA) studies he conducted, students in each country responded to stories in a characteristic national style, which was the way they were taught in school. Therefore, collectively and cumulatively, teachers do have a significant effect ff on the kinds of reasoning their students develop. We infer from Purves’s findings that teachers can help students use literature to develop the moral dimension of their thinking. It then becomes a matter of teachers’ defining their proper role in guiding students’ moral reasoning. We do not think it is particularly helpful for teachers to ‘‘keep their distance,’’ as extreme proponents of reader-response would recommend, to avoid pre-empting students’ indivi-

858

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

dual responses. The pristine encounters with texts implied by this view do not really take place. On the other hand, since teachers are authority figures in the classroom (with the power of the gradebook), they must be careful not to present their own view as the only acceptable one, nor to pre-empt students’ responses. Teachers should make the moral issues of literature a part of the instruction without preaching or otherwise imposing their views (in fact, the resentful responses of students to multicultural literature presented in too heavy-handed a way show the danger of such imposition). They can do this by helping their students to sharpen their own sense of what is at stake morally in the story world, or by helping them to contrast the world of the book with their own world. They might also occasionally relate to their students their own changing responses to a literary work being studied. The process of teaching, reading, and learning needs to be reflective and interactive. V. CONCLUSION

We do not claim that the approach to literary study outlined here will produce moral individuals. But it can help form one kind of proficiency needed by morally mature adults in a complex world. The classroom cannot force transformation either of the individual or of societies, but it can promote a formation that provides the ‘‘felicity conditions’’ that make transformation more probable. The moral communities facilitated by this kind of literary study might rather more resemble families who discuss and argue – and also listen – than choirs in which everyone sings the same tune. These communities may not reach an easy consensus, but they will be capable of responding on the moral level to the complicated situations they – we – face. University of W isconsin-W hitewater U NOTES 1 Our discussion of ‘‘moral reasoning’’ is strongly influenced by the developmental psychology of Jerome Bruner, who insists that emotions, cognitions, and actions do not exist separately from one another, ‘‘each in isolation, but [are] aspects of a larger whole that achieves its integration only within a cultural system’’ (Bruner, 1986, p. 117). That larger whole, in which thoughts, feelings, and acts are structurally interdependent (p. 118), is the mental life of the individual, and it has inescapably a moral dimension. 2 Applebee (1974) documents the long-standing suspicion of fiction and drama in U.S. schools as threats to morals. He mentions, for example, one Boston teacher who was fired in

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

859

1828 for teaching Shakespeare. Horace Mann, one of the greatest influences on the American common school tradition, argued against teaching novels because they appealed to emotion rather than reason. Applebee attributes the eventual acceptance of literature by teachers in part to their appropriation of Matthew Arnold’s theory of classical literature as a bulwark against the decline of Western civilization and its values. 3 The history of English studies in U.S. schools, for Applebee (1974), is a series of attempts to sidestep or co-opt the imaginative power of narrative forms in the pursuit of other purposes. First among these purposes was the teaching of reading. The McGu M uVey’s Eclectic Reader series, which long dominated elementary education, used exemplary stories simultaneously to teach children to read and to inculcate the Protestant ethic. At American universities in the nineteenth century, literary works were used as material for declamation, or as illustrations of the history of the English language and culture. Harvard’s entrance requirements of 1873–74 set the tone for high-school uses of literature for years to come: ‘‘literature was to be studied, not for itself or even for philology, but as a subject for composition’’ (Applebee, 1974, p. 30). With the advent of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century came still more rationales for literature, now to promote social reform and child development. Tchudi and Mitchell (1989) describe several attempts to break with the tradition imposed by the university entrance requirements of the previous century. Objectives for the study of literature from An Experience Curriculum in English, a characteristic text of that era, included ‘‘To observe man’s industrial expansion’’ and ‘‘To observe the effects ff of widening trade horizons on our daily lives’’ (reproduced in Tchudi and Mitchell, p. 15). An extreme progressivist manifestation, the Life Adjustment movement, prompted attempts to ‘‘correlate’’ literature thematically with more useful school subjects under rubrics of ‘‘Family Relationships,’’ ‘‘Consumer Problems,’’ and the like (Applebee, 1974, p. 143). Applebee points out that the ‘‘life adjustment’’ emphasis in secondary literary study that grew out of these efforts ff in the early 1950’s managed to include discussion of adolescent problems without touching much upon morality. World War II, the Cold War, and Sputnik eventually reversed the pendulum and by the 1960’s, literary study in school once again emphasized knowledge of language and communication. Nell (1988) discusses these same utilitarian and anti-aesthetic tendencies in the Englishspeaking world at large, tracing their origins as Applebee (1974) does to Puritan asceticism. The treatment of literature in schools that Nell describes is surely also related to the transformation of industrial labor described by Rodgers (1974) and the concomitant attempt to make students avoid literary pleasure and learn to value the monotonous toil of factory employment. Today, the functionalizing of literature can still be seen in both the Academic tradition, whenever literature is used to promote ‘‘cultural literacy’’ (Hirsch, 1987), and the Progressive tradition, as in attempts to use Steinbeck and Shakespeare within a ‘‘tech-prep’’ curriculum. 4 For a discussion of the truth-value of fiction, see Searle (1975) and Ricoeur (1984–88; 1979a). 5 Peter Berger points out that ‘‘Man’s world is imperfectly programmed by his own constitution [instincts]. It is an open world. That is, it is a world that must be fashioned by man’s own activity’’ (1969, p. 5). Through social practice, perhaps especially the social practice of language, humans produce a world and in doing so ‘‘finish’’ themselves; they produce themselves in a world. Furthermore, ‘‘the socially constructed world is, above all, an ordering of experience. A meaningful order, or nomos, is imposed upon the discrete experiences and meanings of individuals’’ (Berger, 1969, 19). For a human being, experience is essentially

860

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

temporal; therefore the nomos will be especially an ordering of the temporal. And among the forms of discourse, narrative is the language form that most directly reflects in its very structure as well as in its content the temporal shape of human experience as it moves through time (Collins, 1988; Ricoeur, 1979b; 1984–1988). 6 Fables typically come from an ‘‘insider,’’ someone who is comfortable with the culture and with whom the culture is comfortable: Aesop, La Fontaine. Parables, on the other hand, typically originate in an ‘‘outsider,’’ someone critical of the culture, whom the culture either rejects or remains suspicious of: Nathan (who rebuked King David by means of a parable), Jesus. The artist or writer in our culture has an ambiguous status. Partly celebrated, partly suspected, the writer is partly inside and partly outside conventional culture. An important reason for this ambiguous status, we suggest, is that the literature produced by these artists partakes of the fable as well as the parable, the parable as well as the fable. 7 See Karolides (1992) for several more examples. 8 Materials promoting a sensitive reading of many of these works are available – for example, the detailed activities for Of Mice and Men prepared by the English Centre of the Inner London Education Authority (English Centre, 1980). Consider a sample exam-type essay question included in the packet: ‘‘Do you think George would have shot Lennie if Curley had not been involved? What other options would have been open to him?’’ (p. 32). By including the conditional clause, the question requires students to attend to a detail relevant to moral choice that they might otherwise have missed. Elsewhere in the packet, readers are encouraged to read closely passages describing Curley’s wife and Crooks, a character in the story who is black. By doing so and then writing letters to the characters or writing imaginary scenes in which they develop the characters more fully, students can begin to empathize with the characters, to recognize how they might be being treated unjustly, and to think deeply about the contingencies that have shaped them. Similar teaching techniques can be applied to other ‘‘classic’’ works. Students can debate who was the most guilty party in T he Scarlet L etter, or discuss Romeo and Juliet’s motives, or imagine – before they start to read – how they themselves might behave if left alone on an island paradise without any adult authorities. They can construct a dialogue between a character and the author (between Huck Finn and Mark Twain, for example), or between characters in different ff stories. 9 We are concerned that this emerging paradigm with its ethic of caring is currently being undermined by some aspects of the current ‘‘war on terrorism.’’ 10 For example, just as with T he Scarlet L etter, students could consider what it would be like to live in a severe 17th century town, so they might consider with T hings Fall Apart what it might be like to be colonized, to have one’s most fundamental beliefs challenged and one’s way of life profoundly changed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Achebe, C. T hings Fall Apart. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1959. Applebee, A. N. L iterature in the secondary school: Studies of curriculum and instruction in the United States. Research report no. 25. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of U English, 1993. ——. T radition and Reform in the T eaching of English: A History. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1974.

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

861

Arnold, M. ‘‘The function of criticism at the present time.’’ In Criticism: T he Major T exts, W. J. Bate (ed.) (Enlarged edition). New York: Harcourt, 1970, pp. 452–466. (Original work published 1864.) Auge, A. ‘‘Literature and the moral life.’’ L oras Faculty Review, 1.1 (1989): 5–18. Bennett, W. J. T he Book of V irtues: A T reasury of Great Moral Stories. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1993. Berger, P. T he Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological T heory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1966. Berger, P. and Luckman, T. T he Social Construction of Reality: A T reatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1966. Bleich, D. Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1975. Booth, W. C. T he Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. ——. T he Company we Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Bruner, J. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Collins, J. C. Narratives and time (Doctoral Dissertation, University of WisconsinMilwaukee, 1988). Dissertation Abstracts International. 50, 4. 942A. (University Microfilms No. 89–13276). Crossan, J. D. T he Dark Interval: I T owards a T heology of Story. Niles, IL: Argus, 1975. Dillon, G. L. ‘‘Styles of reading.’’ Poetics T oday, 3.2 (1982): 77–88. English Centre. Of Mice and Men. London: Inner London Education Authority, 1980. Freud, S. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, J. Strachey (ed. and trans.). New York: Norton, 1961. (Original work published 1922.) Golding, W. L ord of the Flies. New York: Coward-McCann, 1962. (Original work published 1954.) Goodman, N. L anguages of Art. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976. ——. W Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. Haughton, R. T he T ransformation of Man: A Study of Conversion and Community. Paramus, NJ: Paulist Press Deus Books, 1967. Hawthorne, N. T he Scarlet L etter. New York: Bantam Classics, 1981. (Original work published 1850.) Hinton, S. E. T he Outsiders. New York: Dell Laurel Leaf, 1967. Hirsch, E. D. Cultural L iteracy: W hat Every American Needs to Know. Boston, MA: Houghton Muffin, 1987. Horace. Art of Poetry. In Criticism: T he Major T exts, W. J. Bate (ed.) (enlarged edition). New York: Harcourt, 1970, pp. 51–58. Hume, D. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1966. Reprint from the edition of 1777. Jackson, S. ‘‘The lottery.’’ In Story and Structure, L. Perrine (ed.) (3rd edition). New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1970, pp. 235–242. (Original work published 1948.) Karolides, N. J. (Ed.). Reader Response in the Classroom: Evoking and Interpreting Meaning in L iterature. New York: Longman, 1992. Lee, H. T o Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Warner Books, 1993. (Original work published 1960.) Lentricchia, F. Criticism and Social Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. MacLeish, A. ‘‘Ars poetica.’’ In U United States in L iterature (Medallion edition), J. E. Miller, C. C. Dwyer, R. de Hayden, R. Hogan, and K. M. Wood (Eds.). Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1979.

862

JERRE COLLINS and JOHN ZBIKOWSKI

McGuuVey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader (1879 ed.). With a foreword by H. S. Commager. New York: M Signet Classics, 1962. Nell, V. L ost in a Book: T he Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Nelms, B. F. ‘‘Sowing the dragon’s teeth: An introduction in the first person.’’ In L iterature in the Classroom: Readers, T exts, and Contexts, B. F. Nelms (Ed.). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1988. Noddings, N. ‘‘Stories in dialogue: Caring and interpersonal reasoning.’’ In Stories L ives T ell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education, C. Witherell and N. Noddings (Eds.). New York: Teachers College Press, 1991, pp. 157–170. T Nussbaum, M. C. T he Fragility of Goodness: L uck and Ethics in Greek T ragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato. Republic [selections]. In Criticism: T he Major T exts, W. J. Bate (Ed.) (Enlarged edition). New York: Harcourt, 1970, pp. 43–49. Purves, A. C. Reading and L iterature: American Achievement in International Perspective. NCTE Research Report no. 20. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1981. Purves, A. C., Rogers, T., and Soter, A. O. How Porcupines Make L ove II: T eaching a Response-centered L iterature Curriculum. NY: Longman, 1990. Raphael, T., McMahon, S., Goatley, V., Bentley, J., Boyd, F., Pardo, L., and Woodman, D. ‘‘Literature and discussion in the reading program.’’ L anguage Arts 69 (1992): 54–61. Ricoeur, Paul. ‘‘The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality.’’ Man and World 12 (1979a): 123–141. ——. ‘‘The Human Experience of Time and Narrative.’’ Research in Phenomenology 9 (1979b): 17–34. ——. T ime and Narrative. 3 vols. Kathleen McLaughlin [Blamey] and David Pellauer (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984–1988. Rodgers, D. T. T he W Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Rosenblatt, L. M. T he Reader, the T ext, the Poem: T he T ransactional T heory of the L iterary Work. W ith a new preface and epilogue. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University W Press, 1994. Scholes, R. T extual Power: L iterary T heory and the T eaching of English. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Searle, J. R. ‘‘The logical status of fictional discourse.’’ New L iterary History 6 (1975): 319–332. Shakespeare, W. Macbeth M . In T he Complete Works, A. Harbage (Ed.). Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1969, pp. 1107–1135. Shakespeare, W. Romeo and Juliet. In T he Complete Works, A. Harbage (Ed.). Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1969, pp. 855–894. Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apology for Poetry. In Criticism: T he Major T exts, W. J. Bate (Ed.). New York: Harcourt, 1970, pp. 82–107. (Original work published 1595.) Steinbeck, J. Of Mice and Men. New York: Bantam Classics, 1983. (Original work published 1937.) Tappan, M. B. and Brown, L. M. ‘‘Stories told and lessons learned: Toward a narrative approach to moral development and moral education.’’ In Stories L ives T ell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education, C. Witherell and N. Noddings (Eds.). New York: Teachers College Press, 1991, pp. 171–192.

LITERATURE AS THE LABORATORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

863

Tchudi, S., and Mitchell, D. Explorations in the T eaching of English (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins, 1990. Todorov, T. L iterature and Its T heorists: A Personal V iew of T wentieth-century Criticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Twain, M. T he Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Bantam, 1965. (Original work published 1884.) Wolf, D. P. Reading Reconsidered: L iterature and L iteracy in High School. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1988.

APPENDIX CONFERENCE PROGRAMS

APPENDIX INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND LITERATURE 27th ANNUAL CONFERENCE THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL The Moral Sentiment in Literature Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA May 14 and 15, 2003 PROGRAM Wednesday, May 14, 2003 W REGISTRATION, 8:30 – 9:00 a.m.; Room: Andover A 9:00 a.m.

INAUGURAL LECTURE

THE MORAL SOURCE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, President of the World Phenomenology Institute 9:20 a.m.

SESSION I THE MORAL SENTIMENT Presided by: Jorge Garcia-Gomez, Southampton College

QUESTION OF INTEREST? BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL IN CARLOS FUENTES’S INST INT O DE INES Alira Ashvo-Munoz A (Temple University) BEING’S WOUND: EVIL AND EXPLANATION IN T HE KIL L ER IINSIDE ME Dorothy G. Clark (California State Univ., Northridge) A PARADOX P OF LOVE: THE MANIFESTATION OF LIFE AND THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER’S HER SON’S W IFE Annika Ljung-Baruth (University of Vermont) LEVINAS, LITERATURE, AND MORAL SENTIMENT William Edelglass (Emory University) 867

868

APPENDIX

SESSION II RECOGNIZING GOOD AND EVIL Presided by: Bernadette Prochaska (Marquette University) SY MPAT HY FOR T HE DEV IL ?: A HISTORICAL TOUR OF LITERATURE AND CULTURAL REPRESENTATION Rebecca M. Painter (Marymount Manhattan College) KIERKEGAARD’S FEAR AND T REMBL ING: ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF RECOGNIZING EVIL Andrew Jones-Cathcart (Point Verda Beach, Florida) A PHENOMENOLOGICAL READING OF EVIL AS THE DISAVOWAL OF OTHERNESS IN HEART OF DARKNESS Lew Livesay (Saint Peter’s College) COLLABORATING WITH GOD: EVIL AND THEODICY IN THE L EFT BEHIND SERIES Kevin O’Neill (University of Redlands) BARTLEBY’S EXISTENTIAL REDUCTION AND ITS IMPACT ON OTHERS Richard Findler (Slippery Rock University) DANCING CRANES AND EMPTY MIND: THE FUSION OF WU-CHI AND T’AI-CHI IN ANCIENT CHINESE MOUNTAIN POETRY Bruce Ross (Bangor, Maine) 1:00 p.m.

Banquet at the Harvard Faculty Club

2:00–7:00 p.m.

SESSION III THE INTUITION OF GOOD AND EVIL Presided by: Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University

THE INTUITION OF GOOD/EVIL IN MARCEL PROUST’S A L A RECHERCHE DU T EMPS PERDU: FROM THE AXIS OF TIME TO THE AXIS OF DESIRE Michel Dion (Universite de Sherbrooke) THE CHANGING LANDSCAPES OF GOOD AND EVIL IN THE MORAL WORLD OF HUCKL EBERRY FINN Bernadette Prochaska (Marquette University)

APPENDIX

869

UNDERSTANDING NATURE: ANA MARIA ORTESE’S ETHICS Rosaria Trovato (Monza, Italy) THE INTERPLAY OF VIRTUE AND ROMANTICIST ETHICS IN CHANG-RAE LEE’S, A GEST URE L IFE Megan Laverty (Montclair State University) CAMUS’ MEURSAULT AND SATRIAN IRRESPONSIBILITY Michael D. Daniels (Trinity University) Thursday, May 15, 2003 9:00 a.m.; Room: Andover A

SESSION IV VIOLENCE AND THE MORAL SENTIMENT Presided by: William Smith, Bridgewater State College

DEATH, TRUTH, SIN IN RAMON DEL VALLE-INCLAN’S COMEDIAS BARBARAS Jorge Garcia-Gomez (Southampton College) THE POETIC REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE IN HOMER, DANTE, AND BAUDELAIRE Dennis E. Skocz (Independent Scholar, Arlington, Virginia) ACCUSATION, BETRAYAL AND MURDER IN LITERATURE Tony E. Afejuku (University of Benin, Nigeria) AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EVIL IN KURT H. WOLFF’S EXISTENTIAL SOCIOLOGY Gary Backhaus (Morgan State University) POE’S CONCEPTION OF LOVE AND HORROR Victor Gerald Rivas (University of Puebla) 1:00 p.m.

Lunch together in the Cronkhite Cafeteria

2:00–7:00 p.m. SESSION V THE EXISTENTIAL DIMENSION OF ETHICS Presided by: William Edelglass, Emory University LANGUAGE AND ETHICS: GADAMER, RICOEUR, TYMIENIECKA Jadwiga Smith (Bridgewater State College)

870

APPENDIX

BACK TO THE UNDERWORLD: DOSTOEVSKY ON FREEDOM, SUFFERING AND EVIL Predrag Cicovacki (College of the Holy Cross) READING ACHILLE MIZZI: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS OF THE CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE Bernard Micallef (Malta) GILLES DELEUZE AND LITERATURE: LANGUAGE, LIFE AND THE DOCTRINE OF JUDGMENT Alain Beaulieu (University of Montreal ) SESSION VI MORAL SENTIMENT AND LITERATURE Presided by: Patricia Trutty-Coohill (Siena College) THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ETHICAL CRITICISM: HOW LITERATURE AFFECTS ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT Raymond J. Wilson III (Loras College) MORAL EMOTIONS AND THE ETHICS OF REPRESENTATION IN HOLOCAUST LITERATURE Jennifer Anna Gosetti (University of Maine) THE AESTHETICS OF SALVATION A IN NAUSEA: METAMORPHOSIS POSTPONED? Peter Weigel (Washington College) PROBLEMS OF THE TRUTH, GOOD AND BEAUTY IN RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE Konstantin M. Dolgov (Russian Aesthetical Association) THINKING AND REALITY Jane Bonner (New York) 6:30–8:30 p.m.

A reception given by the World Phenomenology Institute W

APPENDIX INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND LITERATURE 28th ANNUAL CONFERENCE LITERATURE IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA May 12 and 13, 2004 PROGRAM W Wednesday, May 12, 2004 REGISTRATION, 8:30 – 9:00 a.m.; Room: Andover 9:00 a.m.

INAUGURAL LECTURE

MORAL SENTIMENTS Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, President of the World Phenomenology Institute 9:20 a.m. SESSION I Presided by: M. Avelina Cecilia Lafuente, University of Seville, Spain MELVILLE’S BIL LY BUD, SAIL OR: WHETHER EVIL CAN BE THE CAUSE OF GOOD? Sherlyn Abdoo, Saint Peter’s College SEARCHING MORAL STANDARDS IN A LOVE DIATRIBE Alira Ashvo-Munoz, Temple University BIZET’S CARMEN L ’AMOUR EST UN OISEAU REBEL L E Marlies Kronegger, Michigan State University IN SEARCH OF MORAL STANDARDS – WALKER PERCYS L ANCEL OT Bernadette Prochaska, Marquette University IN SEARCH OF A MORAL EROTIC STANDARD: FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY AND EROS IN DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER’S ROUGH-HEW N AND T HE BRIMMING M CUP Annika Ljung-Baruth, University of Vermont 871

872

APPENDIX

1:00 p.m.

Banquet at the Harvard Faculty Club

2:00–7:00 p.m.

SESSION II

Presided by: William Smith, Bridgewater State College CULTURE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MORAL LIFE: THE TRUE, THE GOOD, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE SACRED Lawrence Kimmel, Trinity University DREAM’S SHADOWS (SOMBRAS DE SUENO) M. Avelina Cecilia Lafuente, University of Seville, Spain PHANTOM RELATIONS: FRIENDSHIP AND POLITICS IN PAUL AUSTER’S L EV IIAT P T HAN Christopher Schreiner, Fukouka Women’s University TOPIC TO BE ANNOUNCED Jadwiga Smith, Bridgewater State College ABOUT IMAGINATION Nancy Mardas, Saint Joseph College FATE AND FATELESSNESS: A COMPARISON OF IMRE KERTSZ’S HOLOCAUST FICTION AND VIOLET DASUE DE CRISTOFORO’S JAPANESE AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMP HAIKU Sitansu Ray, Visva-Bharati University, India Thursday, May 13, 2004 9:00 a.m.; Room: Braun

SESSION III

Presided by: Bernadette Prochaska, Marquette University

THE SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MORALITY: FILIAL PIETY AND ITS CHINESE EXPERIENCE Tsung-I Dow, Boca Raton, Florida IN FIRST CENTURY ROME: A TEST CASE OF LITERARY INFLUENCE ON MORAL DEVELOPMENT Raymond J. Wilson III, Loras College LITERATURE AND THE PLAY OF ATTENTION: A NEW/ W ANCIENT LOOK AT THE ROOTS OF EVIL Rebecca M. Painter, Marymount Manhattan College

APPENDIX

873

DOSTOEVSKY ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL Peter Weigel, Washington College POETRY IN THE CEREBRAL CORTEX, THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THE DIGESTIVE TRACTS: A STUDY OF ROMANUS EGUDU’S MORAL POETRY Tony E. Afejuku, University of Benin, Nigeria ON SUFFERING AND THE MEANING OF MORALITY William Edelglass, Emory University 1:00 p.m.

Lunch together in the Cronkhite Cafeteria

2:00–7:00 p.m. SESSION IV Presided by: Lawrence Kimmel, Trinity University THE REDEMPTIVE GESTURES OF WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA Kristine S. Santilli, Russell Sage College A LIFE BEYOND GO(O)D IN THE FAUST BY GOETHE Victor Gerald Rivas, University of Puebla, Mexico ANTIGONE’S RETURN: THE ET HOS OF THE ‘‘COMING COMMUNITY’’ Max Statkiewicz, University of Wisconsin – Madison ‘‘I KNOW EVERYTHING’’: THE GOVERNESS’S INEFFECTIVEHISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN T HE T URN OF T HE SCREW R. Kenneth Kirby, Samford University THE POLITICS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE LOGIC OF DISCOURSE Michael D. Daniels, Trinity University

INDEX OF NAMES Achebe, C.: 92, 100, 104, 276 Adorno, T.: 424, 457, 459 Agamben, G.: 787, 788, 800, 801–4 Agnon, S. J.: 52 Alarcon, J Ruiz de: 501–5, 509 Alexander: 604 Alfandary, I.: 420 Alonso, A.: 233 Althusser, L.: 841 Ampere, A-M.: 634 Anderson, T.: 53 Anouilh, J.: 788 Appelfeld, A.: 457–67, 469, 470 Applebee,: 856 Aquinas, Saint Thomas: 8, 67–9, 73, 74, 500 Arato, A.: 835 Ardrey, R.: 588 Arendt, H.: 27, 74, 655 Aristotle: 55, 194, 195, 200, 202, 331, 337, 373, 375, 437, 448, 461, 492, 494, 496, 596, 787, 788, 791, 792, 797, 805 Armstrong, K.: 67 Armstrong, P.: 814 Arnold, M.: 847, 848 Artaud, A.: 419, 421, 427–30, 803 Asein, S. O.: 706 Assoun, P-L.: 111, 112 Atwood, M.: 665–7, 671, 848 Auge, A.: 846, 848, 851, 852 Augustine, St.: 285, 288, 317, 319, 331–6, 346, 350, 376, 400, 492, 675 Aurelius, M.: 275 Austen, J.: 446 Auster, P.: 603, 607, 608, 610, 611, 613, 616, 617 Austin, J. L.: 57 Awschalom, D. D.: 635 A Bacon, F.: 435, 760 Bailhache, G.: 721 Baranczak,: 736 Barber, M.: 447, 448

Barca, C. de la: 501, 510, 513 Barthes, R.: 401, 406 Bataille, G.: 607, 615, 616 Baudelaire, C. P.: 608 Beckett, S.: 289, 419, 421, 422 Beidler, P. C.: 819 Bene, C.: 419 Benhabib, S.: 198 Bennett, W.: 450, 452, 453 Bennett, W.: 845 Bentham, J.: 371 Berger, P.: 848 Bergson, H.: 155 Berlioz, H.: 7, 11 Bernhard, T.: 608 Bernstein, M.: 27, 460, 464 Bernstein, R.: 111, 655, 656 Blackmur, R. P.: 730, 732 Blake, W.: 183 Blanchot, M.: 27, 52, 53, 608, 616 Bleich, D.: 854 Blundell, M. W.: 796 Bolt, R.: 276, 279 Booth, W.: 445–52, 813, 850 Borges, J. L.: 5, 9, 12 Bourdieu, P.: 424 Bouveresse, J.: 426 Brantlinger, P.: 92, 93 Brisset, R.: 419 Broch, H.: 292 Brody, D. H.: 57 Brooks, P.: 96, 106 Brown, L. M.: 849, 852, 855 Bruner, J.: 848–50, 856 Buber, M.: 191, 196, 367, 376, 388, 710 Burke, E.: 112 Busch, T. W.: 120 Butler, J.: 55, 800 Calasso, R.: 743 Calvin, J.: 492 Camus, A.: 207, 209–11, 215, 216, 274, 362

875

876

INDEX OF NAMES

Canfield Fisher, D.: 29, 31, 32, 573, 575, 580 Carroll, L.: 419, 555 Carroll, N.: 309 Carter, R.: 635 Cassirer, E.: 518 Celan, P.: 47, 52, 53, 457, 462 Cervantes, S.: 13 Chaucer, G: 480 Chesterton, G. K.: 71 Child, A.: 294 Chine, D. P.: 631 Chodkowski, R. R.: 796 Cocteau, J.: 7 Cohen, J.: 835 Coleridge, S.: 91, 197 Colinvaux, P.: 612, 613 Conrad, J.: 91, 93, 104, 108, 113 Cordner, C.: 191, 196–8 Couto, M.: 315 Critchley, S.: 111, 112 Crossan, J. D.: 852 Daiches, D.: 273, 703 Dante (Alighieri): 497, 701, 702, 759 Dart, R.: 588 de Boer, T.: 57 de Gaynesford, M.: 431 De Quincey, T.: 277 Deleuze, G.: 417–31 DeLillo, D.: 610 Derrida, J.: 12, 19, 27, 31, 51, 57, 58, 86, 100, 425, 616, 734, 789, 795, 800, 802 Descartes, R.: 142, 359, 372, 394, 436, 497, 500–5, 760, 766, 831 Devlin, K.: 103 Dewey, J.: 852 Dews, P.: 27 Dickens, C.: 390 Dickinson, E.: 183 Diderot, D.: 474 Dillon, G. L.: 851 Dio Casseus: 644 Donadio, S.: 814 Dostoevsky, F.: 141, 368–90, 392–5, 675–9, 687, 689, 690–4, 709, 711–13, 716–22, 803 Downing, D.: 74

Dubrovsky, S.: 706 Dumas, A.: 7 Dupre, L.: 730, 731, 734, 735, 743, 745 Durkheim,: 285 Duval, J. F.: 423 Eaglestone, R.: 95 Eco, U.: 370, 372 Edwards, J.: 131 Egudu, R. N.: 701–7 Eliade, M.: 403, 411 Eliot, George: 273 Eliot, T. S.: 100, 276, 368, 403, 701, 708 Emerson, R. W.: 75 Engler, B.: 409 Ennius, Q.: 649 Erasmus, D.: 496, 587 Evans, M. A.: 273 Faulkner, W.: 403 Feuerbach, L. A.: 371 Fichte, J. G.: 371 Fingarette, H.: 213, 214 Fish, S.: 65, 66 Fitzgerald, F. Scott: 419 Flaubert, G.: 465 Forester, J.: 837 Foucault, M.: 430, 645, 646, 839–41 Fourier, C.: 371, 376 Franck, S.: 417 Freud, S.: 105, 109, 111, 369, 600, 798, 846 Fuentes, C.: 5–12, 14 Gadamer, H. G.: 399–401, 406, 407, 409, 414, 732, 734, 744, 814, 815, 820, 822, 825 Gaita, R.: 191, 196–8 Galileo: 831 Gandhi, M.: 545 Garcıa ı Marque´z, G.: 14, 555 Gazzania, M. S.: 635 Geach, P.: 683 Gebara, I.: 656 Gibson, A.: 110, 111 Gide, A. P. G.: 403 Gillan, G.: 839 Giraudoux, J: 403

INDEX OF NAMES Goethe, J. W. von: 7, 66, 69, 70, 202, 494, 604, 749, 754, 756, 759, 776, 782 Gogol, N. V.: 712 Goldberg, C.: 657 Goldhill, S.: 800 Gombrich, E. H. J.: 438 Gonzalez, G.: 632 Goodchild, P.: 423 Goodman, N.: 849 Graff, ff G.: 169 Gratian, B.: 498, 499, 507 Graves, R.: 648–50 Greene, G.: 309–12, 314 Grene, D.: 800 Griffin, M.: 644, 648 Grossman, A.: 744 Grotius, H.: 587 Guattari, F.: 417, 418, 420, 421, 423, 425–7, 429 Holderlin, J. C. F.: 461, 738 Habermas, H-G.: 558 Habermas, J.: 558, 835–8, 840 Hadley, T.: 816, 819 Haliburton, D.: 820 Hallion, R. P.: 630 Hand, S.: 54 Hannay, A.: 78, 80–2, 84, 85, 87 Harries, K.: 479 Harris, M.: 588 Haughton, R.: 847, 852 Hawthorn, J.: 707 Hawthorne, N.: 566 Hegel, G. W. F.: 112, 358, 371, 462, 594, 596, 787–9, 792, 805, 834, 835, 837 Heidegger, M.: 11, 30, 56, 155, 358, 362, 418–27, 430, 441, 494, 735–8, 745, 793, 797, 798 Heller, T.: 819, 821 Henry, M.: 29–32 Herbert, Z.: 736 Highsmith, P.: 74, 75 Hillis Miller, J.: 106 Hinton, S. E.: 850 Hirsch, E. D.: 845 Hitler, A.: 72, 73, 75, 76, 387, 655, 685 Hobbes, T.: 510, 588, 591, 614

877

Hocks, R.: 81 Hoffman, ff E.: 729 Holland, J. H.: 635 Homer: 210, 358, 604, 649, 741 Horace, Q. H. F.: 847, 848 Hugo, V.: 5, 9 Hume, D.: 47, 55, 57, 482, 685, 687, 832, 846 Husserl, E.: 11, 30, 32, 93, 100, 120, 121, 427–30, 434, 458, 567, 577, 606, 714, 831–3, 836 Hutcheson, F.: 55 Huxley, A. L.: 390 Irigaray, L.: 574, 575, 577, 579, 581, 582 Iser, W.: 163, 165, 168 Jabes, E.: 52, 53 Jackson, S.: 851 James, H.: 813–17, 820, 821, 827 James, W.: 47, 48, 433, 437, 519, 603, 849 Jameson, F.: 831 Jarry, A.: 422 John of Guevara: 508 Jones, M.: 565 Josipovici, G.: 467 Joubert, J.: 421 Joyce, J.: 403, 450, 451, 731, 741, 745 Kafka, F.: 403, 419, 421, 422, 424, 427, 463, 464, 469, 607 Kalidasa: 620 Kane, G.: 633 Kant, I.: 9, 20, 53, 85, 112, 319–21, 343, 344, 359, 371, 373, 385, 434–6, 440, 465, 473, 477–9, 555, 587, 589–95, 597–9, 604, 709, 783, 832–4, 837 Karl, F.: 104 Keats, J.: 95, 182, 701, 702 Keiserling,: 622 Kenan, S. R.: 19 Kernan, A.: 71 Kierkegaard, S.: 77, 78, 81–7, 338, 387, 565, 570, 761 Kirillov,: 387 Kivy, P.: 309 Kofman, S.: 425 Kosky, J. L.: 31

878

INDEX OF NAMES

Le´vi-Strauss, C.: 799 La Fontaine, J. de: 449, 450 La Rochefoucauld, F.: 56, 75 l’Abbe de Saint-Pierre et Rousseau: 587 Lacan, J.: 111, 787, 788, 799, 800 Laclau, E.: 841 Lang, B.: 459, 460 Laslett, P.: 841 Lawrence, T. E.: 419, 427 Leavis, F. R.: 92, 93, 100 Lee, C-r: 191 Leibniz, G. W.: 720 Leiris, M.: 52, 53 Lemert, C.: 839 Lentricchia, F.: 852 Leopardi, G.: 175 Lermontov, M. Y.: 712 Levi, P.: 461 Levin, D. M.: 55–9 Levinas, E.: 30–2, 48–59, 92–5, 100, 101, 109–12, 114–16, 574, 575, 579, 709–22, 735, 740, 741, 743 Lewis, C. S.: 71–3 Linderman, F. B.: 518, 533, 534, 536, 538 Lingis, A.: 54 Livy, T.: 649 Lock Weem, M.: 452, 453 Lonergan, B.: 662, 666, 669, 671 Lorenz, K.: 588 Luca, G.: 419, 421, 422 Luckman, T.: 539, 848 Lukacher, N.: 827 Luther, M.: 71, 492 Lyotard, J-F.: 57 Machiavelli, N.: 512 MacLeish, A.: 847 Mandelstam, O.: 419 Mann, T.: 403 Mannheim, K.: 287 Manser, A.: 482, 483 Marias, J.: 231 Martin, J.: 165 Marx, K.: 371 Matthiessen, F. O.: 814 McDonald, D. N.: 579 McNeill, D.: 730–4

McPherson, D. H.: 524 Meissner, C.: 821 Melville, H.: 91, 119, 419, 421, 608 Merleau-Ponty, M.: 418, 517, 733, 833 Messadie, G.: 66–9 Michaux, H.: 419 Michelangelo: 402 Miles, K.: 817 Miller, Alice: 666–8, 670, 671 Miller, Arthur: 276, Miller, R. H.: 312, 315 Mill, J. S.: 709 Milton, J.: 69 Mini,: 405 Mizzi, A.: 399, 401, 402, 405–7, 409–13 Mohanty, J. N.: 32 Molina, T. de: 501, 504, 507 Montagu, A.: 588 More, T.: 71, 279, 280 Morris, D.: 588 Morrow, L.: 655, 656, 671 Mouffe, ff C.: 841 Murdoch, I.: 191, 196, 197, 203, 481, 656–63, 665–7, 671 Neiman, S.: 17, 18 Nelms, B. F.: 856 Newton, I.: 337, 604, 632, 831 Nietzsche, F.: 55, 142, 148, 153, 351, 355, 357, 361, 384, 425, 427, 478, 484, 614, 615, 803, 805 Noddings, N.: 666, 671, 857 Nussbaum, M. C.: 448, 849 O’Brien, C. C.: 210, 211, 215 Okediran, W.: 278, 279 Okpewho, I.: 273 Ortega y Gasset, J.: 558, 559, 604, 605, 609, 610, 614–17 Ortese, A. M.: 171–8, 180–3, 185–7 Panofsky, E.: 496 Parnet, C.: 421, 424 Parry, B.: 92, 93, 100, 104 Pascal, B.: 75, 387 Pearce Williams, L.: 634 Pecora, V.: 96, 105 Percy, W.: 565, 567–71

INDEX OF NAMES Picard, M.: 59 Pippin, R.: 816, 827 Plato: 11, 13, 177, 196, 281, 309, 337, 359, 367–9, 371–3, 375, 391, 393, 424, 425, 440, 473, 480, 496, 686, 750–2, 754, 783, 787, 791, 805, 840, 846 Poe, E. A.: 340, 342, 344–7, 350 Polito, R.: 18 Pound, E.: 403 Priestley, J.: 131 Proust, M.: 52, 141–51, 153–60, 417, 419 Purves, A. C.: 854, 857 Pushkin, A. S.: 712 Quinn, H. R.: 633 Rabb, J. D.: 524 Racine, J.: 650–2 Radford Ruether, R.: 666 Radnoti, M.: 457 Ranciere, J.: 417 Raphael, T.: 857 Rawls, J. A.: 835 Renner, S.: 820 Reynolds, R. J.: 632 Ricoeur, P.: 27, 400, 406, 407, 587, 589, 593–9, 848, 849 Robbe-Grillet, A.: 422 Robbins, J.: 93, 100, 712 Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of: 273 Rogers, T.: 854 Rolland, J.: 713 Rosenbaum, R.: 75, 76 Rosenblatt, L.: 850, 851, 854 Roth, P.: 463 Rothstein, E.: 65, 66 Rousseau, J-J.: 47, 55, 371, 376, 450, 452, 592, 596, 835, 842 Roussel, R.: 419, 422 Ruskin, J.: 186 Russell, B.: 621, 832 Saint-Simon, L.: 371 Salinas, P.: 230, 262 Salinger, J. D.: 446, 447 Samson-Akpan, S.: 276 Santayana, G.: 620 Santi, R.: 177, 178

879

Sartre, J-P.: 119–23, 207–9, 212–14, 216, 218, 362, 473–5, 477, 479, 481–6, 607, 614, 615, 715 Scherer, R.: 418 Scheler, M.: 47, 231, 714 Schelling, F. W. J. von: 153, 371 Schiller, F. C. S.: 153 Scholes, R.: 855, 856 Schopenhauer, A.: 55, 56, 142, 153, 158, 160, 477–9, 481 Schutz, A.: 445, 447, 448, 517, 519, 526, 530, 531, 538, 539, 541, 542, 603, 604, 817, 818, 822, 833, 836 Scribner, C.: 735 Sefler, G.: 719 Segal, C.: 794 Seneca, L. A.: 643–6, 648–53 Shakespeare, W.: 95, 196, 276, 369, 399, 480, 491, 493, 666, 712 Shannon, C. E.: 636 Shattuck, R.: 75 Shelley, P. B.: 701, 702 Sidney, P.: 847, 848 Siegel, J. M.: 634 Simic, G.: 740 Simmel: 285 Sister Jean Agnes of the Cross: 508 Sitwell, E.: 647 Smith, A.: 47, 55, 114 Smith, J.: 104 Socrates: 193, 348, 371, 374, 375, 435, 440, 751, 752, 754 Solomon, E.: 164 Solomon, R. C.: 210, 211 Solzenitzyn, A.: 77 Sophocles: 369, 480, 787, 788, 790, 792, 793, 799, 801, 805, 849 Soter, A. O.: 854 Spinoza, B.: 159, 492, 504, 753 Springer, C.: 610 St. John: 719, 740, 771 St. Matthew: 678 Stein, E.: 714 Steiner, G.: 730, 742, 744, 746 Stekel, W.: 239 Stevens, W.: 743, 746 Stone, R.: 605–7 Storr, A.: 588 Szymborska, W.: 729, 730, 735–43, 746

880

INDEX OF NAMES

Tagore, R.: 619–22 Tappan, M. B.: 849, 852, 855 Tarrant, R. J.: 644, 650, 652 Taylor, M. C.: 94 Tegmark, M.: 631 T Thomas, B.: 104 Thompson, J.: 17, 18, 25 Thoreau, H. D.: 607, 608 Tinbergen, N.: 588 Todorov, T.: 847 Tolstoy, L.: 196, 369, 371, 379, 712 Towson,: 114 Tsvetaeva, M.: 368, 393 Turgenev, I. S.: 712 Twain, M.: 163–70, 608, 850 Tymieniecka, A-T.: 48, 283, 284, 296, 299–306, 560

Wall, T. C.: 94,111 W Warren, A.: 702 W Wat, A.: 736 W Watt, I.: 104 W Wayt Gibbs, W.: 634 W Weber: 285 W Weil, S.: 191, 196, 197, 666, 671 W Weinberg, S.: 633 W Wellek, R.: 702 W West, M. D.: 637 W Williams, B.: 200 Wittgenstein, L. J. J.: 426, 427 Wolf, D. P.: 856 Wolff, ff K. H.: 283, 284, 287–306 Wolfson, L.: 419, 421, 422 Woolf, V.: 7 Wordsworth, W.: 183, 701, 739

Valle-Inclan, R del: 227–33, 240, 242, 245, 251, 253, 254, 256–61, 265 Vicente, Z.: 229, 232 Vico, G. B.: 734 Victor, G.: 72, 73 Voltaire, F. M. A. de

Yeats, W. B.: 18, 403 Y Yoon, P-J.: 841 Zhang Cal,: 634 Ziarek, K.: 57, 112

Analecta Husserliana The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Editor-in-Chief

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka T he W World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and L earning, Belmont, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 1.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), V Volume 1 of Analecta Husserliana. 1971 ISBN 90-277-0171-7

2.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he L ater Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology. Idealism – Realism, Historicity and Nature. 1972 ISBN 90-277-0223-3

3.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Phenomenological Realism of the Possible Worlds. The ‘‘A Priori’, Activity and Passivity of Consciousness, Phenomenology and Nature. 1974 ISBN 90-277-0426-0

4.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Ingardeniana. I A Spectrum of Specialised Studies Establishing the Field of Research. 1976 ISBN 90-277-0628-X

5.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Crisis of Culture. Steps to Reopen the Phenomenological Investigation of Man. 1976 ISBN 90-277-0632-8

6.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Self and the Other. The Irreducible Element in Man, Part I. 1977 ISBN 90-277-0759-6

7.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Human Being in Action. The Irreducible Element in Man, Part II. 1978 ISBN 90-277-0884-3

8.

Nitta, Y. and Hirotaka Tatematsu (eds.), J Japanese Phenomenology. Phenomenology as the Trans-cultural Philosophical Approach. 1979 ISBN 90-277-0924-6

9.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he T eleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology. The Irreducible Element in Man, Part III. 1979 ISBN 90-277-0981-5

10.

Wojtyła, K., T he Acting Person. Translated from Polish by A. Potocki. 1979 ISBN Hb 90-277-0969-6; Pb 90-277-0985-8

11.

Ales Bello, A. (ed.), T he Great Chain of Being and IItalian Phenomenology. 1981 ISBN 90-277-1071-6

12.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Philosophical Reflection of Man in L iterature. Selected Papers from Several Conferences held by the International Society for Phenomenology and Literature in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Includes the essay by A-T. Tymieniecka, Poetica Nova. 1982 ISBN 90-277-1312-X

13.

Kaelin, E. F., T he U Unhappy Consciousness. The Poetic Plight of Samuel Beckett. An Inquiry at the Intersection of Phenomenology and literature. 1981 ISBN 90-277-1313-8

14.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition. Individualisation of Nature and the Human Being. (Part I:) Plotting the Territory for Interdisciplinary Communication. 1983 Part II see below under Volume 21. ISBN 90-277-1447-9

Analecta Husserliana 15.

Tymieniecka, A-T. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), Foundations of Morality, Human Rights, and the Human Sciences. Phenomenology in a Foundational Dialogue with Human Sciences. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1453-3

16.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Soul and Body in Husserlian Phenomenology. Man and Nature. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1518-1

17.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Phenomenology of L ife in a Dialogue Between Chinese and Occidental Philosophy. 1984 ISBN 90-277-1620-X

18.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition: Poetic – Epic – T ragic. The Literary Genre. 1984 ISBN 90-277-1702-8

19.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition. (Part 1:) The Sea. From Elemental Stirrings to Symbolic Inspiration, Language, and Life-Significance in Literary Interpretation and Theory. 1985 For Part 2 and 3 see below under Volumes 23 and 28. ISBN 90-277-1906-3

20.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he M Moral Sense in the Communal Significance of L ife. Investigations in Phenomenological Praxeology: Psychiatric Therapeutics, Medical Ethics and Social Praxis within the Life- and Communal World. 1986 ISBN 90-277-2085-1

21.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition. Part II: The Meeting Point Between Occidental and Oriental Philosophies. 1986 ISBN 90-277-2185-8

22.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), M Morality within the L ife- and Social World. Interdisciplinary Phenomenology of the Authentic Life in the ‘‘Moral Sense’. 1987 Sequel to Volumes 15 and 20. ISBN 90-277-2411-3

23.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition. Part 2: The Airy Elements in Poetic Imagination. Breath, Breeze, Wind, Tempest, Thunder, Snow, Flame, Fire, Volcano ... 1988 ISBN 90-277-2569-1

24.

Tymieniecka, A-T., L ogos and L ife. Book I: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason. 1988 ISBN Hb 90-277-2539-X; Pb 90-277-2540-3

25.

Tymieniecka, A-T., L ogos and L ife. Book II: The Three Movements of the Soul. 1988 ISBN Hb 90-277-2556-X; Pb 90-277-2557-8

26.

Kaelin, E. F. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), American Phenomenology. Origins and Developments. 1989 ISBN 90-277-2690-6

27.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Man within his L ife-World. Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe. 1989 ISBN 90-277-2767-8

28.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Elemental Passions of the Soul. Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition, Part 3. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0180-3

29.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), M Man’s Self-Interpretation-in-Existence. Phenomenology and Philosophy of Life. – Introducing the Spanish Perspective. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0324-5

30.

Rudnick, H. H. (ed.), IIngardeniana II. New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden. With a New International Ingarden Bibliography. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0627-9

Analecta Husserliana 31.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T heMoral Sense and Its Foundational Significance: Self, Person, Historicity, Community. Phenomenological Praxeology and Psychiatry. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0678-3

32.

Kronegger, M. (ed.), Phenomenology and Aesthetics. Approaches to Comparative Literature and Other Arts. Homages to A-T. Tymieniecka. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-0738-0

33.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), IIngardeniana III. Roman Ingarden’s Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: The Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature. 1991 Sequel to Volumes 4 and 30 ISBN 0-7923-1014-4

34.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he T urning Points of the New Phenomenological Era. Husserl Research – Drawing upon the Full Extent of His Development. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1134-5

35.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Husserlian Phenomenology in a New Key. Intersubjectivity, Ethos, the Societal Sphere, Human Encounter, Pathos. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1146-9

36.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Husserl’s L egacy in Phenomenological Philosophies. New Approaches to Reason, Language, Hermeneutics, the Human Condition. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1178-7

37.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), New Queries in Aesthetics and Metaphysics. Time, Historicity, Art, Culture, Metaphysics, the Transnatural. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1195-7

38.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), T he Elemental Dialectic of L ight and Darkness. The Passions of the Soul in the Onto-Poiesis of Life. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1601-0

39.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Reason, L ife, Culture, Part I. Phenomenology in the Baltics. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-1902-8

40.

Manifestations of Reason: L ife, Historicity, Culture. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), M Reason, Life, Culture, Part II. Phenomenology in the Adriatic Countries. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2215-0

41.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Allegory Revisited. Ideals of Mankind. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2312-2

42.

Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.), Allegory Old and New. In Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre, and Its Continuity in Culture. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2348-3

43.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): From the Sacred to the Divine. A New Phenomenological Approach. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2690-3

44.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Elemental Passion for Place in the Ontopoiesis of L ife. Passions of the Soul in the Imaginatio Creatrix. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-2749-7

45.

Zhai, Z.: T he Radical Choice and Moral T heory. Through Communicative Argumentation to Phenomenological Subjectivity. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2891-4

46.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he L ogic of the L iving Present. Experience, Ordering, ISBN 0-7923-2930-9 Onto-Poiesis of Culture. 1995

Analecta Husserliana 47.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Heaven, Earth, and In-Between in the Harmony of L ife. Phenomenology in the Continuing Oriental/Occidental Dialogue. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3373-X

48.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): L ife i . In I the Glory of its Radiating Manifestations. 25th Anniversary Publication. Book I. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3825-1

49.

Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): L iife. T he Human Quest for an Ideal. 25th Anniversary Publication. Book II. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3826-X

50.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): L iife. Phenomenology of L ife as the Starting Point of Philosophy. 25th Anniversary Publication. Book III. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4126-0

51.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): P Passion for Place. Part II. Between the Vital Spacing and the Creative Horizons of Fulfilment. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4146-5

52.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Phenomenology of L ife and the Human Creative Condition. Laying Down the Cornerstones of the Field. Book I. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4445-6

53.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outburst in Creative V irtualities. Harmonisations and Attunement in Cognition, the Fine Arts, Literature. Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. Book II. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4461-8

54.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Ontopoietic Expansion in Human Self-Interpretation-inExistence. The I and the Other in their Creative Spacing of the Societal Circuits of Life. Phenomenology of Life and the Creative Condition. Book III. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4462-6

55.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Creative V irtualities in Human Self-Interpretation-inCulture. Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. Book IV. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4545-2

56.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Enjoyment. From Laughter to Delight in Philosophy, Literature, the Fine Arts and Aesthetics. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4677-7

57.

Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): L ife. DiV iVerentiation and Harmony ... V Vegetal, Animal, Human. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4887-7

58.

Tymieniecka, A-T. and Matsuba, S. (eds.): Immersing in the Concrete. Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the Japanese Perspective. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5093-6

59.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): L if ife – Scientific Philosophy/Phenomenology of L ife and the Sciences of L ife. Ontopoiesis of Life and the Human Creative Condition. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5141-X

60.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): L if ife – T he Outburst of L ife in the Human Sphere. Scientific Philosophy/Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life. Book II. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5142-8

61.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Aesthetic Discourse of the Arts. Breaking the Barriers. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6006-0

62.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Creative Mimesis of Emotion. From Sorrow to Elation; Elegiac Virtuosity in Literature. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6007-9

Analecta Husserliana 63.

Kronegger, M. (ed).: T he Orchestration of T he Arts – A Creative Symbiosis of Existential Powers. The Vibrating Interplay of Sound, Color, Image, Gesture, Movement, Rhythm, Fragrance, Word, Touch. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6008-7

64.

Tymieniecka, A-T. and Z. Zalewski (eds.): L ife i – T he Human Being Between L ife and Death. A Dialogue Between Medicine and Philosophy, Recurrent Issues and New Approaches. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-5962-3

65.

Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): T he Aesthetics of Enchantment in the Fine Arts. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6183-0

66.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Origins of L ife, Volume I: T he Primogenital Matrix of L ife and Its Context. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6246-2; Set ISBN 0-7923-6446-5

67.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Origins of L ife, Volume II: T he Origins of the Existential Sharing-in-L ife. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6276-4; Set ISBN 0-7923-6446-5

68.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): PAIDEIA. Philosophy/Phenomenology of Life Inspiring Education of our Times. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6319-1

69.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Poetry of L ife in L iterature. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6408-2

70.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Impetus and Equipoise in the L ife-Strategies of Reason. Logos and Life, volume 4. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6731-6; HB 0-7923-6730-8

71.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): P Passions of the Earth in Human Existence, Creativity, and L iterature. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-6675-1

72.

Tymieniecka, A-T. and E. Agazzi (eds.): L iiffe – Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition. Medicine and Philosophy in a Dialogue. 2001 ISBN Hb 0-7923-6983-1; Pb 0-7923-6984-X

73.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): L iiffe – T he Play of L ife on the Stage of the World in Fine ISBN 0-7923-7032-5 Arts, Stage-Play, and L iterature. 2001

74.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): L if ife-Energies, Forces and the Shaping of L ife: V ital, Existential. Book I. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0627-6

75.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he V isible and the Invisible in the Interplay between Philosophy, L iterature and Reality. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0070-7

76.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): L ife i – T ruth in its Various Perspectives. Cognition, SelfKnowledge, Creativity, Scientific Research, Sharing-in-Life, Economics ...... 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0071-5

77.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Creative Matrix of the Origins. Dynamisms, Forces and the Shaping of Life. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-0789-2

78.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Gardens and the Passion for the Infinite. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-0858-9

79.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Does the World exist? Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1517-8

Analecta Husserliana 80.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Phenomenology World-W ide. Foundations – Expanding Dynamics – Life-engagements. A Guide for Research and Study. 2002

81.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Metamorphosis. M Creative Imagination in Fine Arts, Life-Projects and Human Aesthetic Aspirations. 2004 ISBN 1-4020-1709-X

82.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): M Mystery in its Passions. Literary Explorations. 2004

ISBN 1-4020-0066-9

ISBN 1-4020-1705-7 83.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Imaginatio Creatrix. The Pivotal Force of the Genesis/Ontopoiesis of Human Life and Reality. 2004. ISBN 1-4020-2244-1

84.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Phenomenology of L ife. Meeting the Challenges of the ISBN 1-4020-2463-0 Present-Day World. 2005.

85.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): T he Enigma of Good and Evil: T he Moral Sentiment in L iterature. 2005. ISBN 1-4020-3575-6

Springer