Transformation

TRANSFORMATION

Andre Breton: Manifestos of Surrealism (1924, 1929); Nadja (1928)

Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1915)

Manifestos of Surrealism (1924, 1929); Nadja (1928)

"It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."

(Breton)

"To me it seems one of the rarest distinctions that a man can accord to himself if he takes one of my books into his hands..."

(Nietzsche) [But I’m sure Breton would have said the same thing].

Surrealism

It always seemed to me that the Surrealist movement, like its art, can be loosely interpreted based on the observer’s perspective. I don’t think that description of Surrealism is far off the mark. One of its goals is to express the unconscious activity of the mind and this is sometimes done in art by juxtaposing very different images or ideas, thus shocking the mind into thinking beyond its banal and routine ways. The idea is to unhinge the mind so as to open doors into the subconscious. New artistic techniques were developed during this time to unleash the unconscious, a surge of artistic Freudism so to speak. “Frottage” (in art) and other “automatic” techniques (like automatic writing) were very much on the cutting edge of the movement at this time.

The whole concept of human nature became destabilized after the First World War and Surrealism was a reaction to the Enlightenment and the Science that were, in the view of the movement, a buildup to the Great War.

This destabilization of categories and the collapse of ideas onto themselves is made visual in Surrealist Art. Most Surrealist images are surreal, believe it or not, and often to the point of being grotesque.

For example, I’ve noticed that the landscapes of the Surrealist painters (dreamscapes, they may be called) seem to be unnatural, as if such landscapes could have been caused only by Man, the implication being that Man has perverted Nature, despite the Logic and Rationality that he has held to be divine for so long.

(MOS) p.9 “We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.”

Similar to the division and modern imbalance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, there is an asymmetry with respect to dreams and consciousness.

p.11 “I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. … Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding.”

The juxtaposition of ideas in the art and literature of surrealists may seem far “out there”, but this can be likened to haiku poetry which brings together two very different ideas in a context that makes sense.

p.36 “surrealist images come to him despotically… it does not seem possible to bring together voluntarily what he calls “two distant realities”. The position is made or not made, and that is the long and short of it… I refuse to believe that [examples given] reveal the slightest degree of premeditation…”

Not only does the art tap into the subconscious and stimulate the imagination, but it authenticates individuals by reminding them of a time when they were free from stifling mores of society, not to mention a time of innocence.

p.39 “The mind which plunges into Surrealism relives with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood…To relive those best moments [of childhood] is to experiment once again with the ability to detach oneself from the world as we know it and to find in oneself the freedom to place that given world at a distance Genuine thought goes beyond the limits of a narrow "reality," and that is also why, once its wealth has been rediscovered, there is a risk that it will no longer consent to be mutilated.”

Surrealists tried to meld opposing states, like the conscious and the unconscious, so as to (to use the hackneyed phrase from Jerry Maguire) “complete” humanity.

p.14 “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”

p.123 “Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. …one will never find any other motivating force in the activities of the Surrealists than the hope of finding and fixing this point.”

p.136 “Let us not lose sight of the fact that the idea of Surrealism aims quite simply at the total recovery of our psychic force by a means which is nothing other than the dizzying descent into ourselves, the systematic illumination of hidden places and the progressive darkening of other places, the perpetual excursion into the midst of forbidden territory…”

Nadja

The works Breton - especially the Manifestos - are great examples of the importance of editing one’s work. Breton might have said that he was tapping into his unconscious and writing through some stream-of-thought stream although he later admitted that there was more thought put into his work than just automatic writing… I questioned Breton from the very beginning of his first Manifesto when he dismisses Crime and Punishment…

p.7 “And the descriptions! There is nothing to which their vacuity can be compared; they are nothing but so many superimposed images taken from some stock catalogue…”

I think Dostoevsky wins the test of time. At least I don’t think Nadja has made it to Oprah’s book club.

When I finally received my second-hand copy of Nadja in the mail, I was rather pissed off to see all the pen markings within it. However, these marks highlighted and annotated important parts allowing me to bypass and cut through Breton’s conceited drivel.

More than a couple of times my inner thoughts spoke directly to Andre and they said, “Get over yourself!”, “Oh, look at you, what a bad boy; you’re such a rebel!”

p.60 “There is no use being alive if one must work.”

p.152/153 “…tried to cover my eyes with her hands in the oblivion of an interminable kiss, desiring to extinguish us, doubtless forever, so that we should collide at full speed with the splendid trees along the road. What a test of life indeed! Unnecessary to add that I did not yield to this desire … I feel less and less capable of resisting such a temptation in every case. I can do no less than offer thanks in this last recollection, to the woman who has made me understand its virtual necessity. In imagination, at least, I often find myself, eyes blindfolded, back at the wheel of that wild car. …as regards love, the only question that exists for me is to resume under all the requisite conditions, that nocturnal ride.” (Whatever.)

p.64 “I took a better look at her. What was so extraordinary about what was happening in those eyes? What was it they reflected - some obscure distress and at the same time some luminous pride? And also the riddle set by the beginning of a confession which, without asking me anything further, with a confidence which could (or which could not?) be misplaced, she made me…” (Enough already)

Much of Breton’s expressed defiance toward authority resembles mere adolescent angst. This is lost on him, though, and he goes so far as to claim a haughty superiority over the rest of society.

p.68 of the common, “unenlightened” people, I suppose: “Naturally they are thinking about what they have left behind until tomorrow, only until tomorrow, and also of what is waiting for them this evening, which either relaxes or else makes them still more anxious.”

What is most annoying is that he rambles on even when he claims that he won’t or that he shouldn’t:

p.50 “I had unusual difficulty shaking off a rather squalid dream which I feel no need to transcribe here…” and yet he does. (His initial reaction was right).

“Life is other than what one writes” … and yet is this not exactly what Breton is doing in Nadja?

p.135 “I virtually fled her presence hoping to find her.” The paradox and complexity of this love story (please make it end)

p.23 “I shall discuss these things without pre-established order, and according to the moment which lets whatever survives survive.”

OK, so now this is close to a definition of Surrealism and as a result of the style’s attempt to cause a convergence of worlds - the conscious with the subconscious, for example - and a unity of all existence, dualities are sometimes seen as fused.

p.136 “I do not suppose there can be much difference for Nadja between the inside of a sanitarium and the outside. There must unfortunately be a difference all the same… on account of the wretched view of the garden, the cheek of the people who question you when you want to be left alone…”

p.142 “…everything leads me to believe that she would have recovered from her wretched state. But Nadja was poor, which in our time is enough to condemn her once she decided not to behave entirely according to the imbecile code of good sense and good manners. She was also alone…”

Kafka: Metamorphosis

The Surrealist society (aside from Breton, the tyrant) might have welcomed Kafka as an adherent and supporter. Although Franz’s world was very small, he always conformed to what society at large - and particularly his own family - asked of him.

His family’s demands were turning Gregor (aka Franz Kafka) into someone, something else (although it might be argued that he always lived his life as a bug. Indeed, is it not his own fault that he is crushed by his bullying father? He’s (literally) spineless.)

Work, modern world - sometimes family, in this case - dehumanizes people, making it very easy to kill them. The German word that Kafka uses to describes what he’s changed into (not a “bug” or a “cockroach”) is similar to “vermin”, but apparently can also be translated as useless, even as a sacrifice (or something to that effect). How the German’s know how to make words. From what little I know about language, my guess is that German is the ideal Surrealist language; it’s a kind of “Lego-language” where very different words can be brought together to (maybe?) set two contrasting images side by side to create a colourful effect.

The fantastic stories of childhood which had us believing in different dimensions were real to us. Gregor awakes from “troubled dreams”. This echoes Atwood’s idea of “unhinged” moments in Payback. Was it during the night that a door between worlds was opened to Gregor, at which point he was transformed into a bug? Was there some alternate reality that he tapped into? Enchantment and the charms of childhood are elicited in this idea and result from this “unhinged moment” making this a surrealist text. (Maybe). What is more, Gregor represents everything that the Surrealists loathed: He is unimaginative, limp-wristed and sycophantic… such people were not part of “Breton’s revolution”).

Why did Kafka chose an apple as the cause of Gregor’s final festering wound? That’s a good question. Please leave comments. (Actually, don’t: I’ve heard from a number of people that they’ve tried to leave comments before but their posts never made it onto the blog page.)

Repression

Week 5:

Repression

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1899)

Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud (1930)

This week’s pairing of Heart of Darkness with a book by the founder of psychoanalysis gave me a whole new outlook on Conrad’s nebulous novel. Last week our professor intimated that Freud’s work illuminated the darker areas of the human heart, and this got me in the mindset of reading Heart of Darkness as a novel set both in the Congo and deep within the protagonist, Marlow. I could be way off, but it did make the reading more enjoyable than the first time I read the book over a decade ago. At that time I didn’t appreciate the language that described the Congo in an obscure haze, where nothing is as it appears and where not even the characters themselves know what they are doing, why they are doing it or where they are going. (Very much a metaphor for the human race, no?)

The mystery of Kurtz, his plans, his history and his legend are never fully explained, and I viewed this as the ego within that never dies and never accepts the inevitable truth that it will one day no longer be. This pit within all of us makes us believe that we’re somehow different from others, that we are special and immortal. As we age and grow from experience, this element within grows stronger, as does the denial of our impending death. (Remember Rousseau’s statement that one clings to life all the more emphatically when one is in old age?)

(p.100) “‘At this moment I heard Kurtz’s deep voice behind the curtain, “Save me! - save the ivory, you mean. Don’t tell me. Save me! Why, I’ve had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I’ll carry my ideas out yet - I will return. I’ll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions - you are interfering with me. I will return. I…”

This reads like the inner voice of a dying man who has yet to submit to his fate. Is this the wishful thinking of an “Ivan Illych”?

The racism in the book is quite strong. Conrad had less than admirable things to say of Africans, and I will only cite a few examples here:

p.62-64 “No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being human. …the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.” “…he was an improved specimen.”

“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 inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity -- like yours -- the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you -- you so remote from the night of first ages -- could comprehend.”

Moreover, Marlow always refers to black people as “fellows” or “chaps” not “men”. p.35 “Two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up.”

Despite all of this, he does seem to recognize the suffering inflicted on the African “fellows” by Europeans:

p.20 “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”

(From Achebe’s essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”: “Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray -- a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate.”)

The words suggest the atmosphere of murkiness and confusion of Marlowe’s enterprise; they are quite image and mood provoking:

p.44 “And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”

p.59 “…the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver.” “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.”

The story juxtaposes the old world – England, and civilization – with the “new, barbaric world” of Africa. In a sense, this new world discovery corresponds to the same journey that Freud took started for humanity. Ironically, this world is not so “new,” but taps into our most primitive drives.

p.60 “When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, reality - reality, I tell you - fades. The inner truth is hidden - luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks…”

At a fundamental level, each of us is composed of multiple forces, facets of ourselves that, looked at closely enough, make us appear as different people to ourselves. p.82 “These little things [police, European civilization…] make all the difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness.”

The language in this book is as dense as the jungle it so often describes. The story itself is not complex although the ideas within it are, and for this reason it is open to interpretation - as open to interpretation as one’s dark heart desires. I just might find out how malleable this book is if it becomes one that I use in writing the essay this term. It seems to be one of those books that one can use to support any possible argument! I’m sure a feminist, a Communist or a Capitalist could shape the ideas of this book into supporting his (or her) cause. However, perhaps to Conrad’s displeasure, it would be hard for a racist to justify racism given how brutally Africans are both described and treated in Heart of Darkness.

Civilization and Its Discontents -

Notes and thoughts:

The theory that Freud was replete with his own neurotic issues and was intelligent enough to rationalize and explain his neuroses is supported in his footnote: “It is remarkable too how regularly analytic findings testify to the link between ambition, fire and urinal eroticism.” (p.35)

I “Ego is originally all-inclusive, but later separates from the external world” - a means of protecting the self against unpleasurable experiences… in the words of Andre Breton, someone who greatly admired Freud, childhood is a time when the imagination is given free reign and is not restricted and minimized by the forces of civilization. When imagination dominates and enchants reality.

p.10 “The origin of the religious temperament can be traced in clear outline to the child’s feeling of helplessness.” And, ironically, depends upon the childish ability to believe in the unbelievable.

II “What we call happiness … arises from the fairly sudden satisfaction of pent-up needs.”

p.15 …another way of stating that *balance* is the key to happiness. Both pleasure and pain need to be experienced to have this appreciation. Talk of excess and the punishment it can bring…

p.17 “One can therefore hope to free oneself of part of one’s suffering by influencing these instinctual impulses.” Aurelius would have agreed! “peace and quiet”

p.22 “Religion interferes with this play of selection and adaptation by forcing everyone indiscriminately its own path to the attainment of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in reducing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world by means of delusion; and this presupposes the intimidation of the intelligence.”

p.23 “No other technique for the conduct of life binds the individual so firmly to reality as an emphasis on work, which at least gives him a secure place in one area of reality, the human community. … The great majority work only because they have to, and this aversion to work is the source of the most difficult social problems.” (which must include that of “relations between people” causing stress, grief, frustration…).

III

p.26 Thoughts on technology and how it has not, really, brought pleasure to humanity… “If there were no railway to overcome distances, my child would never have left his home town, and I should not need a telephone in order to hear his voice.” Science: We’ve been given fire and now we’ve run away with it, forgetting where the “tool” came from…

p.32 “The replacement of the power of the individual by that of the community is the decisive step towards civilization.” …but recall Doris Lessing’s critique/warning of “mob mentality.”

“Individual liberty is not an asset of civ.” And Kurtz was trying to start his very own civilization in Africa.

V

Civilization is continually threatened with disintegration because of an inclination to aggression. It invests great energy in restraining these instincts. The law has tried to refine itself to the point of regulating most forms of aggression, but it still fails to prevent it.