Reciprocity

Week 3: Reciprocity

Atwood: Payback (2008)
Aristophanes: Wealth (388 BCE)
Shakespeare: Timon of Athens (during Shakespeare’s play-writing years; c. 1607?)

“Almost every human interaction carries with it a metaphorical balance sheet, an implied burden of obligation and reward. Debt, understood this way, is inseparable from the business of life.”

Working full-time and reading so much leaves me with less free time than I’d like (not that I’m complaining). ‘Listening to Atwood’s Massey lectures might save some time,’ I thought. ‘This will help me resolve the sleep debt I accumulated over the holidays’ (yes, it’s still with me). Well. I realized after the first few minutes of the first lecture that it wouldn’t be worth the aggravation of listening to Atwood speak. A ‘refined form of torture’ is what it was to listen to the first minute alone. However, reading Payback turned out to be pleasurable and far less irritating.

In Payback Atwood analyses the idea of debt from different angles. After my first reading of it, despite the steady theme of debt, I thought the ideas scattered and without cohesion. I just didn’t get the point of what she was trying to say. Like all of her books, this one is very well-researched. In it, she delves into the history of debt and describes how it has shape-shifted through the ages and in different cultures. I was naively expecting tips on how we can turn around the economic crisis we are in, as Massey lectures seem to offer solutions to the troubles that our country and world face. The lectures by John Ralston Saul and Ronald Wright gave us food for thought as did Doris Lessing’s and Stephen Lewis’s, complete with suggestions as to how we can change the world and make it a better place, for you and for me… But really, no one has the answers that can fill the gaping hole of debt around which we all live. Precarious position we’re in, indeed.

After some reflection, I came to regard the work as an extensive exploration on the topic of debt. “Debt” encompasses such a vast range of subject matter that touches our lives and history that the book itself couldn’t have a “point” or a bottom line. What the book can do is generate discussion about our past and present economic state through different lenses, those of anthropology, mythology, literature and religion. Debt and the notions of payback and reciprocity are far more complex than what can fit on a nominal ledger.

Wealth, money and its offshoots can be likened to a virus and its symptoms. The age of a species can be estimated by the number of viruses able to infect it, since over time viruses mutate and find new hosts. When one considers how wealth and debt and their consequences are deeply engrained in our cultural, mythological and religious spheres (as articulated by Atwood) one can see that this virus has been with us quite a while. (p.11) “…I’m assuming that the older a recognizable pattern of behaviour is - the longer it’s demonstrably been with us - the more integral it must be to our humanness and the more cultural variations on it will be in evidence.”

Today, in our society bereft of myth and substance, we seem to have lost whatever social mechanisms we developed to stay on the middle path. (p.28) “Even in shamanistic hunter-gatherer societies there was a right way, and failure to follow it would upset the balance of the natural world and result in famine: if you did not treat the animals you killed with respect, not killing to many of them… the goddess of the animals would withhold those animals from you.” If such devotion and appreciation for what nature offers us today were shown - even if it’s available in abundance - would we be in the mess we’re in? Did the shamanistic hunter-gatherer societies instinctively know of the physical limits to growth and the law of diminishing returns? Could it be - as we’ve seen so often in other domains - that our ancient “uncivilized” ancestors actually had it right, and what we’ve called “progress” has turned on us?

It is an evolutionary force within us to be greedy and, as Atwood put it, to “snatch the low-hanging fruit and gobble down as much of it as we can, without thinking ahead to the fruitless days that may then lie ahead of us. ‘Grab it now’ may be a variant of a behaviour selected for in hunter-gatherer days, long before anyone ever thought about saving up for their retirement.” This instinctive need to grab what’s available makes perfect sense in the jungle but in civil life it’s a perversion. Chremylos sums it up (p.217, Wealth): “All crafts, and every kind of human skill, have been devised with only you [Wealth] in mind.” We are like our father, Prometheus, who strove to improve our lot. Now we strive to improve ourselves but the force we put into it seems to be blown back at us in a way that undoes whatever advances we’ve made.

And if we are to consider what is more “natural”, poverty represents our natural state. As stated in Wealth by Poverty herself: (p.232) “I produce far better men than Wealth does, in intellect and body too. With him it’s gout they suffer, and bloated bellies, fat legs too - yes, rank obesity. With me they’re lean, with wasp-trim waists.” I can’t help but think here on the different diets between rich and poor countries and their associated diseases.



















Atwood’s idea of the “game of debt” as a stimulus is really interesting. (p.83/86) Scientists have seen that rats deprived of toys will subject themselves to painful shocks. The parallel to humans drawn by Atwood is that being in debt can have a certain entertainment value. Like the rats and their self-induced electric shocks, we would rather have something painful happening to us than to feel nothing and be bored. The roller coaster of seeking, spending and then suffering is more exciting than the monotony of saving. This reminded me of Lessing’s comments of people enjoying the “game” of war, and Merton’s statement that one’s activity level is in direct proportion to one’s distance from oneself. Such a one’s reason for existence is to fill his emptiness with something even if that something is painful or meaningless after a pithy moment of stimulation.

That the concept of “balance” was deified in ancient cultures was perhaps for the sole reason that once balance and order were established, civil life flourished and great advances were made. Clearly, there must have been a god overseeing this and imposing an orderly plan. (p.27) In ancient Egypt the goddess Ma’at represented not only order and balance, but many qualities necessary to the establishment of balance: “truth, justice, the governing principles of nature and the universe, the stately progression of time - days, months, seasons, years, the proper comportment of individuals toward others…” It is no surprise that such a system of weights were at play on judgment day, when the gods were to determine our everlasting fate. In Wealth, when economic imbalance corrupts society and the agreed-upon rituals that make an orderly society are moot, the gods, their shrines and their human servants are disrespected. Society begins to crumble.
The value of honouring equilibrium in life, and avoiding extremes, are articulated by Apemantus (Timon of Athens) (Act IV, sc. Iii, line 341) “The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends. When thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity. In thy rags thou know’st none, but art despised for the contrary…” One might argue that he is at least delusional, if not “mad”, while rich. But it is appropriate that Timon is reduced to madness at either extreme because his fellow Greeks had basically defined “madness” as the consequence of imbalance or excess.

And so if someone is mad, in the most extreme sense of the word, and their actions are egregiously out of order; what should be done? Does that person owe a debt to society? This sounds strange to me, somehow, but I’m not sure why. Yes, society has given us a lot, but that’s just the way it is. It’s not as if it exists in this way for us. Just like we had no choice in being born into this world (which makes me think it unfair for every human being to be indebted to god), we have no choice but to live in the social world into which we were born. Of course, the argument changes if we’d been asked to be born into something - then we would be in debt. When I think of murderers and “the debt” they must pay in blood… I wonder: In what way does society benefit from the execution of a criminal? Should it make any difference to us whether Clifford Olsen remains isolated in prison, gets executed or is put into the general prison population to be gang raped (or murdered) by other inmates? Would we be happy for this? And if we would be, what does this say about us?

The end of the final chapter of Payback, entitled “Payback”, ties into the first question posed in the first lecture. “Are we in debt to anyone or anything for the bare fact of our existence? If so, what do we owe and to whom or to what? And how should we pay?” We are living in a time where *Responsibility* is thrown around like a hot potato, where the shouldering of responsibility is only done when commanded by the courts. But I was born into this system, why should it be up to me to change it and to fix what previous generations have done…?

Similar to the fact that money and gold as objects are completely useless (one cannot wear it or eat it… and gold is only ascribed value by convention), Nature has no real use for us, and although we have a use for her health, Nature doesn’t care what we do… the environment has no feeling either way. “Nature doesn't recognize good and evil. Nature only recognizes balance and imbalance.”
We need nature to exist in tact so that we can maintain our economic structure and quality of life… I can only hope that its destruction soon starts to hurt the pockets of the men who wield the big money; only then will there be BIG change.

As far as the world not caring what we do, many of us, beings of nature that we are, are equally unfeeling on the topic of the environment. An ESL teacher I know recently taught a classroom of Brazilian students. He thought a debate on “the environment” would get his students into a passionate discussion. Indeed it did. Contrary to his expectations, his students - people from a part of he world where the rainforests are being cleared - couldn’t have cared less about the environment even though they were all aware of the consequences of a damaged earth. They were passionate about why they did not care and flaunted it. Granted, they were only 17 years old and are probably full of hormonal angst. It makes me doubt all of the promised optimism that the next generation is ‘supposed’ to bring the world. What we’ve done to the earth seems beyond repair and most aren’t willing to change their lifestyles. After all, (sarcasm), “what kind of difference can one person make?”

“Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis … Sometimes whether we like it or not, Nature demands compensation.” (p.180) Monsanto comes to mind. The way crops are grown in North America is really not sustainable. The nutrients in the soil cannot keep up with the agricultural output and the soil’s quality and quantity is diminishing rapidly. It’s well documented and the sickness of the industry is no secret to those who have seen the provocative movie Food Inc. or have read The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
All of this we know. The frightening information is out there. Every year, in one way or another, Massey lecturers bring up the idea that humans are deer caught in the headlights. “It is vain to continue an institution which experience shows to be ineffectual. We have now imprisoned one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen.” (p.127).

Is there a lesson to be learned here: “Kill the creditors remains an available though morally repugnant way of cancelling your debts”? (p.147) Learning a lesson from the past is not in the interest of the powerful, in this case. (How much does the US owe China, anyway?)

One really interesting point that came up in seminar this week was that Margaret Hatcher sold “Council Housing” (government-owned subsidized housing) to the tenants, thereby breaking the unions. People with mortgage payments cannot easily go on strike. Her government convinced everyone that they must own property. The adoption of this idea was a force toward individualism and the power, and the greater good and the protection of the unions was diminished.
The same idea applies to how one sees the environment. I’m sure many people’s attitude is, “if it’s not my piece of land, to hell with it!”
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. (Rousseau, from Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754)).

When the natives of North America met Europeans, they could not fathom the concept of land ownership. The whole enterprise and its derivatives make Rousseau’s seemingly provocative statement appear quite reasonable.
Tent cities in Arizona / California… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmeHiFZUWtE

Tragedy

Week 2: Tragedy
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (c. 450 BCE +/- 30 years)
Nietzsche: The Birth Of Tragedy (1872)

Prometheus Bound
“No good deed goes unpunished”

Aeschylus and Nietzsche are paired this week to explore the nature of Tragedy. Our last topic, Hubris, had a complicated definition in Ancient Greece compared to the meaning we ascribe to that word today. The same can be said of “Tragedy”. As far as Prometheus, tragedy lies in his being wrongly punished for a series of good acts he commits towards humans. His personal will was in conflict with his duty as a god and this is his tragic flaw. In his suffering, he arouses pity in the spectators of the play who feel a sense of kinship toward him. As spectators, we also know that his bad fortune will change (as prescribed by Fate) and we learn that even the gods must endure long ordeals but must remain hopeful of a happy ending. In adopting such an attitude, we humans approach a more divine status. Some of these features are (may be) prerequisites of tragedy... like I said, it's rather complicated.

Again, one theme that dominates this week is that of balance, of moderation. Avoid pride and excess in all things. Know your natural place and experience that sphere fully without stepping beyond its boundaries (to do that would be unnatural). These dualities and their limits must be understood to keep one on the central path and to keep one confined to what is “natural”. Middle ground between God (divinity, enlightenment) and Titan (brute, animalistic strength); balance between nature and humanity. I wonder if all tragedies play on this idea, and whether in one way or another they are the result of deviating too far to one extreme.

But let’s focus here on tyranny and friendship for a moment. These themes were most engrossing to me as I read Prometheus Bound because I was giving it an “anthropological” reading. My interest was piqued at the idea that the changing of the godly guard (from the Titanomachy to the Olympian) in Prometheus Bound is a mythical echo of the shift from nomadic life to that of civilized, walled-city life - not dissimilar to the Enuma Elish and other ancient myths. During this shift (which spanned millennia) the relationship between the people and their rulers must have changed as well as that between the people themselves. So do the notions of tyranny and friendship change in this play and if they do, why? Must “tragedy” necessarily occur at major transition points in our evolution, at least when enacted and revealed in our mythology?

Zeus punishes Prometheus for being kind to the very humans he planned on destroying. Prometheus gave humans not only fire (stolen from Zeus) but knowledge and other intangible principles like justice, cunning and the love of freedom. He had faith in Man’s development while Zeus was set on destroying humanity and all of its imperfections. Zeus imposes a severe penalty on Prometheus even though they were friends and even though Prometheus played a significant role in putting Zeus in the seat of power (Prometheus helped the Olympians defeat the brutish Titans). Zeus is thus behaving like the tyrannical Titans he just deposed. (He is new to power, wields it frivolously, and believes that he will hold on to it for all eternity). It’s not surprising, then, to note that none of Zeus’s minions sympathize with him, except perhaps Strength and Violence. They all fear him for the tyrant he is. Certainly none speak of him as a friend. He is a supreme ruler, oppressive from every angle and possesses none of the sensitivity possessed by Prometheus. He has neither love for those who do his dirty work nor any for those who placed him in the seat of power. Excessive! This is the tragic situation Prometheus is faced with for having faith in humans.

The role of the chorus in a Greek tragedy is to uphold the moral standard and this they do, but the chorus in Prometheus Bound wavers on some moral issues and its inconsistency is significant. For example, at one point they claim that one should be prudent and not help others who cannot help in return. However, at the end of the play, through loyalty and friendship, and to their own harm, they stand by Prometheus as Zeus’s lightening strike. In so doing, they mirror Prometheus’ own behaviour towards humans. He had nothing to gain from helping them, he just believed in them. Somehow, there is a moral shift in the chorus, in the moral standard. What does this shift represent in the story of humanity?

Historically, when did altruism make an appearance? I suspect it has been with us for quite some time given that evolutionary theory supports the idea (i.e. by being altruistic one’s fitness in nature (and the chance of one’s genes being passed on) increases. Altruism has also been linked to consciousness because one can imagine oneself as the other and can therefore empathize.

Hephaestus makes a point of commenting on his relationship to Prometheus, (p.21) “The ties of birth and comradeship are strangely strong.” In saying this, he justifies sympathizing with Prometheus - something that Zeus might condemn. In contrast to this attitude and relationship, he rubs salt into Prometheus’ wounds by reminding him, “Your kindness to the human race earned you this.” Is this a comment on giving for the sake of giving, without expecting anything in return (as Prometheus does to humans?) It seems to me that Prometheus represents the “new man” who is able to do act truly altruistically while the old school (characterized by Strength, Hephaestus and Oceanus) cannot act this way. Oceanus, p.29: “Being related to you, I suppose, makes me sympathetic with you.” There is reluctance in his saying this. He is speaking out of fear and does not want to anger Zeus. “Being related to you I suppose makes me sympathetic…” as if he’d otherwise be unwilling to show empathy.

By the end, the Chorus goes against such thinking and stands firm by Prometheus even though they have little to gain by doing so (p.52) “Would you have me practice cowardice? I will stay with Prometheus, come what must. I was taught to hate those who desert their friends; And there is no infamy I more despise.”

If nothing else, this last statement is a criticism of Zeus who basically backstabbed Prometheus, an old friend. Zeus now sees everyone, even his peons as beneath him. P.27 “To look on all friends with suspicion - this disease would seem to be inherent in a tyrant’s soul.”

There are hints, though, that such oppressive regimes are only temporary:
p.27 “My mother, Earth, had many times foretold to me, that not brute strength, not violence, but cunning must give victory to the rulers of the future.”
Prometheus to Hermes: “You and all your crew are young; so is our power; and you imagine that you hold an unassailable citadel.”

Not only does this play mythologically depict a shift in how our ancestors were governed, (or does it?) it also portrays a change in their development as supernatural beings, beings that possess gifts beyond what the rest of the natural world possesses.
p.28, “I caused men no longer to foresee their death.” “What cure did you discover for their misery?” “I planted firmly in their hearts blind hopefulness.” “Your gift brought them great blessing.” “I did more than that; I gave them fire.” “What? Men, whose life is but a day, possess already the hot radiance of fire?”
In so doing, did Prometheus bring us Hell as well? Prometheus has sinned in making humans more god-like, more immortal for causing us to no longer foresee our deaths.

Even though we broke free from the shackles of nature when we were ruled by the law of Necessity and had no choice but to live and behave as natural beasts, we are now burdened by the ramifications of veering too far from what is “natural”. Prometheus seems to believe that beings have a place. To Oceanus he cries: (p.32) “Be what you are!” The chorus seems to agree: p.36 “Did you not note the helpless infirmity, feeble as a dream, which fetters the blind tribes of men? For human purposes shall never trespass outside the harmony of Zeus’s government.” Humans have a place from which they should never leave. (p.47) “When marriage is with an equal for me it holds no fear or danger. But may the love of the greater gods never cast on me its irresistible glance.” (p.46) “That the best rule by far is to marry in your own rank; That a man who works with his hands should never crave to marry either a woman pampered by wealth or one who prides herself on her noble family…”

Friendship, loyalty, power struggles… to this day, in our relatively stable world, relationships unfold amidst the give and take of power dynamics, to put it coldly. It makes me wonder what people thought of friends, strangers and mere acquaintances in Ancient Athens and in the centuries and millennia before. Are feelings more heartfelt now that we live securely in established and peaceful communities?

And finally, did a tortoise dropped from the claws of an eagle really result in Aeschylus’ death? (The bird somehow knew that Aeschylus gave its species a bad name for how it plagued Prometheus). He never did reach his 30th year; Tragedy.




(<-- Nietzsche as a young man)


Nietzsche: The Birth Of Tragedy (1872)

People! Dear multitude of readers... I cannot keep this up. Nietzsche has done me in. Until now I’ve always tried to write down whatever attention-grabbing thoughts came to mind while reading, but Nietzsche has left me both rather lost and with a whole host of thoughts and ideas that I could not possibly articulate in one blog (and it wouldn’t be worthwhile reading anyway). Something has to change. Future blogs will be (will have to be) more focused. (Alas, for all I know, everything I say about Nietzsche is way, way off).

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche critiques modernity by elucidating the death of Tragedy the result of an overpowering of the Dionysian (God of wine and revelry) by the Apollonian (God of civilization and intellectual pursuits, among other things). Those guilty of removing Dionysius from the Tragic stage (thereby killing Tragedy) are Euripides, with his rearrangement of traditional tragic drama, and Socrates, who put the nail in the coffin with his morality and rationality.

The worm at the core of Nietzsche’s world is Science. For him, science is problematic: (p.18) “…for the problem of science cannot be recognized in the context of science” in the same way that to criticize Reason, one has to apply methods at odds with Reason, and therefore must argue from outside of the paradigm within which everyone thinks (that being the paradigm of Reason).
Basically, Nietzsche’s main argument seeks to answer the question he poses early on: (p.21) “Could it be possible that, in spite of all “modern ideas” and the prejudices of a democratic taste, the triumph of optimism, the gradual prevalence of rationality, practical and theoretical utilitarianism, no less than democracy itself which developed at the same time, might all have been symptoms of a decline of strength, of impending old age and of physiological weariness? These and not pessimism? Was Epicurus an optimist - precisely because he was afflicted? “Disease was the most basic ground/of my creative urge and stress;/creating, I could convalesce,/creating, I again grew sound.”” Nietzsche is prescribing his own remedy for the woes of the world and that very remedy is in the art experienced by humankind and the creation of art by humanity.

Nietzsche looked up to Schopenhauer in his early days even though they had very different reactions to tragedy - (p.24) Schopenhauer on tragedy: “That which bestows on everything tragic its peculiar elevating force is the discovery that the world, that life, can never give real satisfaction and hence is not worthy of our affection: this constitutes the tragic spirit - it leads to resignation.” In contrast, tragedy uplifted Nietzsche; it strengthened and reaffirmed his humanness.

Nietzsche predicted my skepticism: (p.31) “But perhaps such readers will find it offensive that an aesthetic problem should be taken so seriously… I am convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life.” At first, (knowing that I had understood a mere fraction of what he is trying to get at in The Birth of Tragedy), I wondered at the usefulness of this essay. Who cares if the Dionysian and the Apollonian are not in equilibrium on the dramatic stage? I’m happy and lead a satisfying life. However, he later argues that cultures without myths, without a set of beliefs that lift them from the monotonous existence of their lives, are sad and uninteresting cultures indeed. He also extrapolates this imbalance to all aspects of human life. (p.59) “Art saves him, and through art - life.” In this light I think I would agree with him. Everything we do beyond eating, sleeping, procreating and other activities that animals do, is within the realm of our ability to create, create everything from art to the atomic bomb.

Nietzsche starts his dissertation with an explanation of the Apollonian and the Dionysian duality (p.33) and the fact that they are as intertwined “as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations.” Put simply, science has removed the Dionysian not only from the Tragic stage but also from the artistic and human stages as a whole. The result: we can only see one side of ourselves. (p.34) “Philosophical men even have a presentiment that the reality in which we live and have our being is also more appearance, and that another, quite different reality lies beneath it.” We live mostly through Apollo, the god of appearances and illusions; this is Nietzsche’s definition of naivety.
By ignoring the Dionysian, we are ignoring our primal selves and denying the full expression of ourselves. Within this sublime state is also a feeling of terror, not dissimilar from the sublime: (p.36) … “the tremendous terror which seizes man when he is suddenly dumbfounded by the cognitive form of phenomena because the principle of sufficient reason … seems to suffer an exception.” One might liken this loss of self to that that Wollstonecraft and Frankenstein experienced through nature, their means of tapping into the Dionysian. “These Dionysian emotions awake, and as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness”.

Nature has this effect on us - through the Dionysian - because first and foremost we are natural beings. We’ve become caught up in our scientific, rational thinking and are on Pentheus’ trajectory. Living within the realm of rationality and science, we cannot see beyond appearances.
Nietzsche speaks of “healthy-mindedness” in a way that reminds one of Pentheus and our own blindness as modern men: (p.37) “but of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called “healthy-mindedness” looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them. … Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated hostile or subjugated celebrates once more her reconciliation with her lost son, man.”
(p.40) “…In the Dionysian, man is incited to the greatest exaltation of all his symbolic faculties; The essence of nature is now to be expressed symbolically” (through art).

“Nature, as yet unchanged by knowledge, with the bolts of culture still unbroken – that is what the Greek saw in his satyr who nevertheless was not a mere ape. On the contrary, the satyr was the archetype of man, the embodiment of his highest and most intense emotions.” (p. 61) The special, sacred holiness of nature is something contemplated at length last semester. Nature is where we come from – no matter how detached we might feel from it as a result of our (overly-) rational thinking. Such thinking lead to Pentheus’ whole family’s downfall in The Bacchae and such thinking can also instill anomie and nihilism. A “complete” man must somehow commune with Nature through his archetypal self, the satyr. The Greeks did this in the form of tragic drama and Nietzsche presents a way for Germany to follow this tradition.

To Nietzsche, the essence of nature, to be expressed symbolically, is done in the form of music. Nietzsche was very critical of music in his day, especially Romantic music: (p.25) “a first-rate poison for the nerves, doubly dangerous among a people who love drink and who honour lack of clarity as a virtue, for it has the double quality of a narcotic that both intoxicate and spreads a fog.” I can’t help but wonder what kind of music Nietzsche himself listened to. Did he enjoy Beethoven's genius at all? Did he actually think his own compositions were superior? Most of Nietzsche’s music is only listened to out of curiosity (and probably only once, at most) by those who have an interest in his philosophy, not his music.

From what I gather, Nietzsche might have visualized music in the ether that fills the void between universal Forms and what actually is. (Man, at least that’s what I think he’s saying!) Music accesses "symbolic intuition", something that Socrates ignored. Socrates, in contrast, acted on reason, not intuition, and hence went against the Dionysian.

When it comes to opera Nietzsche has novel ideas and I - (frustrated as I was reading some of these complex and convoluted thoughts!) - I couldn't help but think that he is trying hard to make a name for himself in the academic world. In reading his criticism of opera, I was tempted to conclude that he’s simply imposing his own agenda on this form of art. Maybe another ingenious and clever thinker could argue that opera, in fact, represents the rebirth of the proper Greek Tragic Form! This is not to say that Nietzsche doesn’t support his argument very well: everything he says in the preceding 18 chapters supports his thinking. However, I suspect that if he were alive today he might change his tune upon experiencing some hip-hopera , and recognize the deep tragedy therein.

p.60 “Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action …” In complete contrast to the modern man, who is lacking in the Dionysian, I read this as Hamlet being conquered by the Dionysian without the Apollonian filter required to shelter him from the terror that can result from being exposed to the “pure Dionysianness”.

Now what about the Apollonian takeover that Nietzsche’s so pissed off about? This “Greek cheerfulness” brought on by Euripides (and then Socrates) “…it is the cheerfulness of the slave who has nothing of consequence to be responsible for, nothing great to strive for, and who does not value anything in the past or future higher than the present.” (p.78). This made me think of the modern-day precept, “live in the present and contentment will come.” But Nietzsche is thinking beyond the single moment, beyond the present, and beyond any specific point of an individual’s path in life. He is saying, here, that the archetypal man must fully encompass and embody the past, along with his (and all of humanity’s) whole evolutionary journey – past, present and future – and recognize and represent his boundless greatness despite all the chaos that surrounds him. Confront that Reality and understand it. Embrace it like a polar bear swimmer on New Year’s Day.

Hubris

LS801: Week 1: HUBRIS

Euripides: The Bacchae (407 BCE)

Marlow: Doctor Faustus (1604)

Einstein: letter to F.D. Roosevelt
(1939)

Oppenheimer: 'Now I am become Death'
(1945)

When I was young, and attended church, I recall hearing the statement “God created man in his own image”. Today, I find more and more truth in this statement as I see first-hand just how irrational, egotistical and needy we humans can be. Maybe it would be more accurate to say “Man created God in his own image”. Nevertheless, the God Dionysius in The Bacchae, rather than leaving Thebes to exist in peace, feels insulted that he is not being worshipped, and so he proceeds to infect the female Thebian population with his reckless and passionate festivities. Dionysius also has Pentheus, the King of Thebes, mutilated for his insolence because of his denial of Dionysius’ status as a god. This entirely superficial view of the play may portray Dionysius as egomaniacal and in desperate need of being praised by the very humans he considers far beneath him. However, there is much more at play in this play. Both Euripides’ The Bacchae and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus were written at a time when questions about the gods, in terms of their usefulness and their existence, were being raised. The Enlightenment of Marlowe’s time was in many ways similar to the Sophist movement of Euripides’. Here I will freely (i.e. without much structure) contrast the two protagonists of these plays, Pentheus and Faustus. (Are you ready?)

Thebes is ruled by Pentheus, a suppressive leader who, from his first lines, seems on edge and in need of a little wine and dance. From the get-go, his interaction with the gentle and compliant foreigner Dionysius (a God in disguise) is hostile - something that might have been the expected xenophobic reaction of a Greek to a barbarian. (Was this Euripides’ foresight into the outcome of the 25-year-long Peloponnesian War which was to end in 404 BCE, two years after his death? Might Pentheus, and perhaps the people of Athens, not have been better off to embrace the foreigner?) Still superficially, although at a deeper level, Pentheus characterizes the rational (Apollonian) and sceptical side of our human nature while Dionysius represents our primal drive to experience our animalistic nature, which we need in order to escape the inevitable despair and meaninglessness that comes from overly-rational thinking. Just like Dr Faustus, Pentheus’ interests lie in earthly powers and he cannot (or does not) see beyond the veil of Dionysius’ disguise. Myopic and unappreciative of the full extent of their spiritual humanity, Pentheus and Faustus - archetypes of our cerebral and analytical nature - glimpse at nothing beyond what their own crude physical senses show them.

Looking at these two compartments within each of us, one cognitive the other affective, our ability to experience the numinous is compartmentalized within our Dionysian (affective) side but it can be effaced by our cognitive gifts. That this experience stems from our primitive origins may be why it gives a sense of completeness and unity with nature.

These plays are an appeal for moderation in all things, and a cry against excess, prudery and Puritanism. What is called for is balance and respect for our humanity which encompasses our physical, spiritual as well as mental faculties. To provide one telling comparison: Faustus indulges his senses to the fullest for 24 years and for this he is considered weak, is dismembered, and spends an eternity in hell. Pentheus’ outright refusal to behave in such a way results in his limbs being torn from his torso as well. If you sit at either extreme, your detachment from nature manifests itself physically.

Despite both being fixated on the senses, Faustus and Pentheus are blind to their own salvation. Each is given ample warning and evidence that they are on the skids: p.47, (668) Dionysius warns Pentheus: “My friend, it is still possible to put this right”, and the Good Angel and Mephistopheles himself warn Faustus that he should cease his dealings with the devil. Faustus ignores whatever advice comes his way and assaults his senses to escape thinking about his fate - the best example of this is when, within a day of being dragged to hell by Lucifer, he spends the night with Helen of Troy, “Come, Helen, come give me my soul again. Here will I dwell for heaven is in these lips and all is dross that is not Helena.” For 24 years he follows Isaiah 22:13 to a tee: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die”, but to call him devout would be a stretch. Beyond this short line quoted from Isaiah there is a more complete story, a message. Chances are, that message does not endorse Faustus’ behaviour. Passages of the Bible that Faustus himself quotes show that he sees only what he wants to see: (the parts in italics are not quoted by Faustus; they are conveniently left out: (p.5) “The wages of sin is death. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.” “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

In Euripides’ Medea, Creon’s blindness and arrogance lead us to believe that he was justly punished (at least we do not feel that the world will miss him very much). But consider Pentheus in The Bacchae: to be torn limb from limb merely for disbelieving. People! Is this not going a bit too far? What about Cadmus? His only “crime” was that of passing the kingship to his son, and for this he is ruined. What does this say about justice and morality of the gods and of the times The Bacchae was written? The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta produced doubt in the existence of gods that often behaved haphazardly. I wonder if the war-wearied people began hearing stories about the injustices of war - wars mandated by the gods - and had had enough.

There must be a causal relationship between the so-called Age of Pericles’ and the Golden Age of Athens. Indeed, these eras are synonymous with one another. Pericles was a rationalist and tolerant of Sophists. His friend Protagoras, at some point, was exiled because he tried to present a scientific account for some heavenly bodies. Most Sophists were agnostic or atheists, believed in natural rather than divine causation, and flocked to Athens because they felt welcome there. I wonder: Was this a threat to those in power and the reason for the Sophists’ persecution? Were they so dangerous because they questioned the existence of gods, gods that men in authority relied on to instil fear in the population? If gods could really see everything that was happening on earth, then surely politicians would not dare swindle us by being dishonest, for if they do, they will get their just desserts by being torn to shreds at the gods’ hands! The messenger (p.71) speaks like a pawn and cries against freedom and individualism: “The best thing is to know one’s place and revere the divine; I think that is also the wisest path for mortals to take.” If the community thinks as one, then no one will be harmed, whereas the price of freedom in all its forms can be severe: even the innocent (like Cadmus) can be harmed.

Politics today, as before, suffers from human nature, only on a larger scale. If anthropomorphized, governments show all the traits of a confused and emotionally undeveloped adolescent who has access to liquor and the car keys. Governments know themselves, as bodies, as little as said adolescent, and they are just as irrational and hormonally-driven. Precisely like Pentheus, governments work under the illusion of practising Logic but have a strong attraction for the “other, dark side”. Without accepting this fact and praising the Dionysian side, one gets torn apart from the inside when one comes face to face with it. (You know what happens to Pentheus…) “The policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash." (King Lear - paraphrased by Christopher Hitchens.)

Euripides’ play must be, on some level, a prediction of the outcome of the Peloponnesian War. Similar to the play, the outcome of the war was the imposition of barbarian influence upon the Greeks. I like to think that Euripides in his old age came to see war as the waste of life that it is and saw promise in accepting outsiders and their ways. P. 27 (390) …“DIONYSIUS: One who speaks wisdom will seem foolish to the ignorant. PENTHEUS: Is this the first place you have brought your god? DIONYSIUS: All of Persia now dances in these mysteries. PENTHEUS: Because they have far less sense than the Greeks! DIONYSIUS: No, they are right in this. Customs differ.”

Sometimes one must break from tradition and come face-to-face with something new (foreigners, the “Dionysian”) in order to see one’s divine nature and to progress. To stagnate within one extreme is to fester and die. This dilemma speaks to the perennial schism between physis (unchanging nature) and nomos (manmade law or convention). Is it a result of human custom that we isolate ourselves from neighbours that we view as different? Is it natural for the gods to hold power over us? These questions the Sophists brought to the stage, as did Euripides.

In creating a world where physis is altered to the point of introducing gods as characters, Marlowe and Euripides push the boundaries of what had been acceptable. They go against tradition, personified by Tiresias, who says (p.13, 168) “We do not hold intellectual debates on the gods. No logic will overthrow the traditions we have received from our fathers, traditions as old as time, no matter what clever arguments are thought up by the greatest minds…” However, dear Tiresias, when a god says, “Yes [I dismembered your family member and ruined your lives, exiling you from your hometown], for your behaviour towards me was terrible, When my name was without honour in Thebes”, it is time to have an intellectual debate. (Sounds like the god I grew up with).

The chorus speaks in support of the gods in this play. It acts as a barrier enclosing the “Dionysian” from the “rationally-minded” crowd. The chorus - acting as a filter between the stage and reality - are speaking directly to the open hearts of the spectators who are infected by the Dionysian and “the sublime”. Euripides is appealing to their sense of what is right and what is decent and human: Athens is near defeat, fighting Sparta. Accept the chorus’s message!

The Parodos (the first chorus entry) is a joyful song in praise of Dionysius followed by a choral ode that criticizes Pentheus for his denial of the god. The chorus certainly leans in favour of that which is touched by the divine and not wholly human. Similarly, both Faustus and the wholly human (depending on your beliefs) representative of God, the Pope, are in want of human and earthly pleasures. No doubt that the Pope sings a different tune on his pulpit, though. His reaction to anything that his rational mind cannot explain is one of surprise, fear and anger, implying that his Dionysian side is neglected.

The Dionysian is an escape from our everyday routine and humdrum lives. Poor Pentheus is positioned on the outside of the Bacchic party, looking in. Only when fully infected by Dionysian’s energy does he jump into the revelry and have a grand time (albeit too short a time, if you were to ask him). The Dionysian allows us this chance to live out our dreams and fantasies to and to indulge in what we might consider a religious experience. There is something very (pre-) Freudian in the idea that Pentheus’ internalization and repression of his Dionysian urges results in his ruin. I am probably way off, but I can’t help but wonder whether Marlowe had a similar idea in mind when he had Faustus speaking of himself in the third person: Is this because Faustus is so internally divided, so lost and removed from himself and his own reality, or was speaking this way common in the 1500s? P.67, “What art though, Faustus, but a man condemned to die?” Is he speaking to the other half of himself that he has neglected and allowed to wither? Ignore the Dionysian at your peril, Faustus!

Just as the transcendent Dionysian experience has roots in our primal past, so does the Christian God have its roots in the ancient Greek world. Similarities go as far back as the belief systems’ Creation stories and although there are many differences between the two, the irrationality of the gods stays constant. One should be careful, though, not to be rational in reading and in thinking about these stories as their beauty is stripped away and can be easily mocked in so doing. Think of these religious stories as poetry – if we take them too literally, they can appear a mere jumble of words, but analyzed correctly through a Bacchian lens, their beauty can shine through.

Faustus is a representative of the Renaissance. The diminishing power of the Catholic Church due to Protestantism and the rise of individualism in Marlowe’s day had an effect on Faustus. He paints himself as the centre of universe (p.19) “What boots it to think on God or Heaven? Away with such vain fancies and despair. … The god thou servest is thine own appetite.”) p.25 [2.1] (133) “I think hell’s a fable.” No doubt this is what many at the time were thinking (if not speaking aloud). This trend helped science advance and some may say that it lead to an equally explosive growth in humanity’s hubris and caused a release of forces that it had no “right” to unleash. Remember Frankenstein? His hubris was his own downfall, and only a handful of people suffered as a consequence of his doings; [Oppenheimer link]. The hell doctrine promoted in the 1500s may be a fable, but a new version of hell has been made real by scientific advances along with the threats they impose on us all. Thinking on this, along with today’s environmental disasters (natural and man-made), climate change, religious fanaticism and wars, there is something very “Biblical” about the times we live in.

Weeks 12 + 13: Kollwitz, Rilke and Dinesen (Blixen)...

...And in this week's blog, more Passion than Reason:


Käthe Kollwitz: Prints and Drawings (1898-1835)

Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke (1903-1908)


Babette's Feast - Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) (1958)

KATHE KOLLWTIZ
Kollwitz’s art is suffused with examples of agony, suffering and tension. Her art is that of the soul, a soul in such sorrow that it’s seeking to escape the boundaries that keep it body-bound. As such, nothing from the “outside” can comfort the soul. Think of this as a consequence of living in a material world where two souls can never meet, only pass each other by. This speaks to our alienation from each other. Rilke describes Love, the most intimate, personal and perfect Love, as consisting of “two solitudes [that] protect and border and greet each other.” (p.78). Like two separate worlds in orbit around each other, they can never truly meet and be one.

Kollwitz’s art shows the solitude inherent in experiencing deep grief. One can feel the hollowness of the person in pain and how she is stripped of all that once mattered to her. In the face of such despair, she is utterly alone and has only herself to depend on. In such instances, to seek lasting comfort from an exterior source would bring further disappointment. Personally faced with this, the reality of the exterior world is exposed as the illusion it is.

Kollwitz’s art is a study of how emotional grief is carried by the body. Although the source and the weight come from within the subject, the physical burden of the pain is palpable to the observer. The statue version of “The Parents”, below, shows the differences in how the mother and the father carry their grief. The father, closed off with arms crossed, holds his sadness to himself. He is determined not to show what he’s feeling, as some might expect a “typical man” to do. His chin’s to chest as though he is trying hard to keep from bawling, while the mother shows that the void in her chest may cause her to keel over.

Now here are two versions of a woodcut version of “The Parents”. Although the message in each is similar, the feeling I get from one is different from the other. I prefer the first (below) because of its harder lines, especially those on the mother’s back, over her heart. These particular lines (more than in the other version) seem to express her heartbrokenness, and her weight is more palpably supported by her husband’s hand; he is supporting her weight more completely than in the second version, as you might expect the statue version of the father to do. In the second woodcut, the parents seem to be more melded together. The harder lines in the first indicate that even though they are so close together, they are entirely separate and alone. Kollwitz’s move from lithography to woodcuts is understandable since the definition of the lines in wood etchings stress the outer edges of individuals. For instance, compare the woodcut “Mothers” here, http://www.greatwar.nl/kollwitz/kollwitzmothers.html to her other drawings. One can see that even in groups, these women are, like us all, now and in the end, alone.






Mother and Dead Child. http://www.artnet.com/artwork/184746/421/woman-with-dead-child.html What is the first thing that strikes you about this? Yes, the mother is nude, everything else stripped away. Through her grief, she is brought to the essence of herself, to the most fundamental and most basic feeling she has ever had to endure. At least that’s what I felt. From her bearing and the direction of her pining, I also felt as though she is trying with all her might to pass her own life on to her child. This is a birth and death engraving.

The other noticeable, if not disturbing, aspect is that we cannot make out her face. What we are able to see doesn’t appear human. Would you want to see her face, though? Can such grief even be shared between two individuals? Such intense, irreparable anguish cannot be soothed from anything external. It can hardly be expressed in words, never mind be comforted. I heard this on CBC radio once and thought that this haunting music came close to expressing such pain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymuF7uG6wis&feature=related

Anyway, on the flip side of the same note, it is the gazes of some of Kollwitz’s subjects that are most evocative of all. Here are examples of some very expressive faces:

- Killed in action: http://picasaweb.google.com/revswain/KollwitzKathe#5414547910363434770

- Germany’s children are starving: http://picasaweb.google.com/revswain/KollwitzKathe#5328356347882879874

- Bread: http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?View=LRG&IRN=645&PICTAUS=TRUE
- Prisoners listening to music: http://www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/2748

- Death seizes a woman: http://picasaweb.google.com/revswain/KollwitzKathe#5292443231439985938


Perhaps Kollwitz saw her subjects’ suffering as beautiful because any emotion that is so pure is beautiful in its authenticity. The feelings she captured and tried to replicate in her art are not at all veiled by convention. This is precisely what Rilke was trying to capture in himself. He needed solitude to tap into his pure, authentic self. Indisputably, the depth of grief her works portray is on a fundamentally individual – not collective – level. Witnessing its manifest veracity is beautiful.

RAINER MARIA RILKE
Let’s quickly compare Rilke (1905) to Oscar Wilde (1890). Although Letters to a Young Poet and The Portrait of Dorian Gray were written within fifteen years of each other, the philosophies on which they are based could not be more divergent. “The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim” (preface, Dorian Gray). Rilke would have agreed that the artist creates beauty but I think he would have argued that the artist himself is so personally and emotionally involved with his art that it would be impossible for him to conceal himself even if he wanted to. As he says, “…you will see in [your poems] as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity” (p.9). To create beauty just for the sake of beauty (Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy) doesn’t necessarily arise out of necessity. Think of what Babette said at the end of Babette’s Feast (read below…): “Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart to the artist: ‘Give me leave to do my utmost!’” Sometimes it’s necessary, one way or another, to practice one’s art. Do you think Picasso could have done anything but paint?

Rilke is more concerned with feelings as opposed to the superficial 19th century aesthetic movement that Wilde was a part of. To give only two examples, Rilke feels the emotion of some poems that Mr Kappus sends him without being able to describe it. Only after Mr Kappus more fully expresses himself in the letter (presumably describing something about his life) is Rilke able to understand and articulate the source of what he was feeling… (p.5 “Your kind letter, which accompanied them, managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically"). The other example, (p.105), where Rilke considers the news of Mr Kappus: At first it “seems to be good news and the longer I thought it over, the more I felt that it was very good news indeed”. It’s as if his decisions came about by a grand synthesis where he weighed both his gut feeling and his reason.

I sometimes wonder whether anyone can live without Google at their fingertips. It gives people the best of both worlds: isolation and the internet. However, there is no possibility for growth in such a set-up because one is still dialed-in to social networking and “the entire world” at all times. There is no space or opportunity to look within. Rilke might have commented on how sad it is that instead of looking within, we seek affirmation and acceptance from everyone and everything except ourselves. He’d see this as the “easy way” and therefore not worth doing: “almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious.” (p.35).

Rilke’s philosophy on living plainly and clearly is reminiscent of Marcus Aurelius’, especially in that Rilke uses Nature as an example: As he sees plants and animals: “patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery…” (p.37). All beings bow to necessities, difficult as these necessities may be, as though Nature’s natural unfolding is Art itself.

Like the sublime workings of Nature, when art is striven for and attained, a grand sublimation of emotion takes place. Since emotion is beyond words, it makes sense: Look at Kollwitz’s work - it’s incommunicable; Rilke is looking for the same emotion in the form of poetry. I’m again reminded of Gaston Bachelard’s quote of what poetry is - “The great function of poetry is to give the situation of our dreams.” Bachlard philosophizes about tender memories from the home he grew up in. Rilke would have agreed with him: The spaces in which one spends one’s childhood are sacred, and the external symbols “are internalized and thereby re-created into something existing both within and without. The environment is then a visible consciousness that parallels the inner consciousness”.

He cherishes his childhood memories and takes a maternal approach to his own creative process. I remember something I once saw written on a bar wall, and its beauty stuck with me ever since. I found the line so beautiful because it recognized that one can fashion one’s own fantasies into memories, and can reconcile not achieving all of the many childhood dreams one had:
“The dreams of my youth have become memories”.
Depending on your attitude, this can be beautifully melancholy or depressingly so.

BABETTE’S FEAST
Babette’s Feast is beautifully melancholic. Of all the books this term, this short story has to be one of my favourites. I wonder where the discussion for this book will take us in class. Its themes parallel those considered in other works this semester, for example those of appearances, social mores, authenticity, spirituality, blindness, Nature, illusions, authority, vanity…
The setting of the story is “at the foot of the mountains [in a] small town of Berlevaag [that] looks like a child’s toy-town…” (p.23), as though “bastilled” by Nature, to use Wollstonecraft’s expression of a Norwegian town she once observed. In this town, Babette herself lives a life of solitude, never once mentioning her being an artist. At the end of the book, she tells her friends, (p.67) “…I shall never be poor… I am a great artist. A great artist, Mesdames, is never poor. We have something, Mesdames, of which other people know nothing” a space within that nobody can touch. “Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart to the artist: ‘Give me leave to do my utmost!’” (p.68)

It seems that those who understand or at least recognize this depth within, this source of creativity, are able to live more deeply without, in all meanings of that word. They can live without want, and can see the exterior world as it is: overrun with mere trivialities. Moreover, they can truly experience the outside world (the world without) without getting caught up in its pettiness. They see beyond the superficial, beyond what is an inch from their eyes, and can look deep.
Young Lorens, upon seeing Martine (p.26): “There rose before his eyes a sudden and mighty vision of a higher and purer life…” This is his gut reaction to this woman but he feels unworthy of her, possibly because he has no love for himself. As Rilke might have said, Lorens had dirty, undefined edges at the boundaries of his solitude, his being. “He loathed and despised the figure which he himself cut in her nearness. Tender words stuck in his throat as he looked in the maiden’s face…” (p.27). There is often difficulty and resistance to being completely honest and open with someone and to look them directly in the eyes. Perhaps this difficulty arises from the fear of what will be revealed of ourselves: In being intimate with others, we see a mirror of ourselves with all our faults and potentials. This can be terrifying.
However, Lorens “pulls himself together” (p. 27) [p.57 “For how is a man to behave when he cannot trust his senses? It is better to be drunk than mad.”] and becomes the man that Ivan Ilych was. Decades later, Lorens makes the sad realization that “all is vanity!” (p.52), “in what had been profited? Somewhere something had been lost.” (p.53)

“He would let the youth prove to him once and for all, that thirty-one years ago he had made the right choice.” This line reminds me of my grandmother who moved from Slovenia in the 1960s. To this day, she insists that life is (now) better in Canada and that she made the right decision. (Many Slovenian relatives of mine disagree given that she laboured physically for decades in Canada and left a relatively comfortable life in Ljubljana…) Now, whenever she has any visitors from Slovenia, she seeks confirmation that she made the right choice. Recently, less than a week after a relative of mine visited, one of the first questions my grandmother asked her was, “Where is life better, in Slovenia or in Canada?(!)”


Clearly something very special starts to happen during the course of Babette’s feast: “They only knew that the rooms had been filled with a heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance. Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity.” (p.61). I’m sure the diners did not want the evening to end and I, as a reader, felt the same way.

What touched me most was the idyllic scene Dinesen paints in setting up the dinner itself. She is setting up what could be considered the diners’ highlight of their twilight years. The outside December scene is fantastically Christmassy. p.54 -“Large snowflakes fell densely; behind the sledge the tracks were wiped out quickly. General Loewenhielm sat immovable by the side of his aunt, his chin sunk in the high fur collar of his coat.” Babette’s feast is a Biblical affair, complete with twelve guests. This writing and the ending of this story was reminiscent of Joyce’s moving and final paragraph in his short story The Dead:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Reflections: Weeks 10 + 11

Reflections: Week 10 + 11

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Death of Ivan Ilych - [(Spoiler alert: He dies)] - Leo Tolstoy

Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

“If our sciences are vain in the objects they have in view, they are even more dangerous in the effects they produce.” (Rousseau)

While reading Frankenstein, I was reminded of the first choral ode in Antigone which states that "[Man] lacks resources for nothing the future can bring / Only from death can he devise no escape". In a way, Frankenstein's life-creating discovery is an important step towards devising such an escape. The quote is just one of countless snippets from this course’s readings that could be applied to Frankenstein. Take your pick, this book touches upon issues ranging from "the crapshoot of having kids" to "the folly of science". This book's beginnings are a bit of a soap opera. Most people know that Mary Shelley started this book in Switzerland as a result of a friendly writing competition between friends. Lord Byron hosted the gathering in Diodati where gloomy weather kept everyone indoors. Without Facebook, they were forced to apply themselves toward something creative and constructive. What is not so well known is how they all came to assemble there. Apparently, Lord Byron (a playboy) invited Mary and Percy only because Claire (Mary's half-sister who wanted to spend more time with Lord Byron), promised to bring Mary and Percy if she could visit him in Diodati. Had Claire not promised to bring the daughter of the famous Mary Wollstonecraft, Claire probably would not have been invited because Byron had grown tired of her.

The magnificent views from the villa in Diodati were inspiring to Shelley, and Frankenstein is full of the effects that nature can have on one's psyche. The philosophy of the Sublime was a popular theme of the day and describes nature as a mixture of "horror and harmony". I imagine that for many at the time, the immense vistas they experienced in nature were new to them. They didn’t have the huge-screen cinemas that assault, toy with and therefore dull our senses. In leaving the cities and hiking in the Swiss Alps, for example, the immense depths and distances perceived, the contrasts in perspective must have been so new to their sight that the vast panoramas might easily have been terrifying. That the Sublime includes the an element of horror reminds me of feelings that one can be overcome with when standing near a cliff's edge... the horror combined with the sense of freedom. What if I jump? What if I lose all sense of reason for one split second and hurl myself off the edge?
p. 97 “The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing cares of life.”

One obvious theme is that of man's hubris in exploring science without consideration of its consequences. Knowing too much too fast can be dangerous, and maybe there are things we should not know or be exposed to. (Manhattan Project comes to mind). Forget about the impact of scientific endeavours for a second, but what about their utility? Should we spend billions of dollars at CERN while people are still dying of cholera, polio, malaria, AIDS…?

It can be fascinating to watch life unfold before you in a petri plate, but remember Candide: “Legs were obviously instituted in order to wear breeches, and hence we have breeches…” Just because some species of Malayan kumquats native to a section of land "x" near the coast of "y" produces antioxidant "z" doesn't mean that thousands upon thousands of dollars should be invested towards their study (although if I were a scientist employed as a result of this I might think differently).

Frankenstein’s obsession with Science opened the door to his downfall:
p.56 “…a human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility... if this rule were observed…Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed…” “…I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade…the energy of my purpose alone sustained me…” Science has taken him over! Not only is science being criticized here, but also the way it is being pursued.

Frankenstein, from his youth, judges based on appearances: Mr Krempe: “…was a little squat man, with a scruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits.”

Some of language really got to me, too; I loved the way Shelley described certain scenes (they were very reminscent of her mother's descriptions of nature and emotions):

p.136 COLD nature - “The cold stares shone in mockery and the bare trees waved their branches above me…”
p. 138 - “…in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair.” … “I lighted the dry branch of a tree, and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched.” To me this conjured the idea of some pagan rite performed by someone very close to Nature.
p. 146 - Image very much like that of Rousseau’s natural man: “We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human.” From Discourse on the Origins of Inequality: (p.40) - (of man in his natural state): “I see him satisfying his hunger under and oak tree, quenching his thirst at the first stream, finding his bed at the foot of the same tree that supplied his meal; and thus all his needs are satisfied.”
p. 139 - “Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind.” Is Shelley talking to her father, here? What did Freud make of this book?
p. 168 - “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

No matter which of myriad themes in Frankenstein you choose to consider, they all converge on the perennial questions asked by the monster (p.128), “My person was hideous, and my stature gigantic: what did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?" I’ll have the answers to these in the next blog.

TOLSTOY
We've considered many books that prescribe ways to live, but not ways to die. This frightening short story (which I enjoyed very much) would be a good place to start.
Rousseau mentioned that the older we get the more steadfastly we cling to life, perhaps for the simple reason that we grow more attached to life and that living is all we know. Tolstoy, when still young, willingly went to war knowing that he may die, but in his later years he met with an existential crisis that changed his entire outlook. The crisis centered on the horror of death and its aftermath and one comes to terms with them.

All creatures die, but unlike animals we have a keen awareness of our eventual end and this alone can fill us with terror. At such times we take account of our lives. How did I live? Can I die comfortably remembering my past?

The symbolism of Ivan Ilych's illness itself runs deep: It cannot be diagnosed: His kidney is floating, (it is displaced just like his "heart" is). Another diagnosis is that there's something wrong with his appendix, (a vestigial organ). At one point he mentions that his heart is in his appendix; at the point of his death, his heart had become as vestigial as his heart.
Ivan Ilych lives a very inhuman life until he learns that he is going to die; only then does he begin to taste reality and to have revelations that he comes to wish he had had earlier in life.

The first line of the second chapter sums up the life of the average person who believes the same illusions as Ilych: “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible". One classmate’s Russian friend summed up the message of the book in saying that one should not focus on the routines of life; these are illusions, meaningless, useless and fake.

What I found so interesting was that the doctors in the book perpetuate these illusions in their patient. That his doctor will not tell him the truth is very telling of his culture (although, apparently such was the case in North America until relatively recently, the 1960s!)

Basically, Ivan wanted to be pitied: he wanted assurance that he would be missed, that life wouldn’t be exactly the same with him gone. He was looking for affirmation that his life actually mattered and wanted to be consoled like a child. This, in stark contrast to him as a VIP in society.

Only two people, Ivan’s son and the peasant helper Gerasim, show compassion for the dying man… and while approaching death, Ivan realizes that he has not shown compassion to others in his lifetime.
Gerasim movements around Ilych are angelic. He appears as if from the sky (the converse of this being Ivan’s very “world-and-society-bound” widow: “A short fat woman who, despite every effort to the contrary, had continued a steady sidewise expansion from top to bottom.”) and he tiptoes gracefully around Ivan and comforts him more than anyone else.

At the time of the book’s writing, some philosophized that society should “learn from the peasants.” Tolstoy agreed with this philosophy and here it is applied in the down-to-earth character, Gerasim.


Much like Mary Shelley and her mother Mary's prose got to me, so did many lines from The Death Of Ivan Ilych. Most lines were memorable for their power of expression:
The "heaviest" examples of the power of the language:
p. 27 - sail out on a sea of veiled enmity that was expressed in their alienation from each other.
p.51 - …stay at home twenty-four hours of which every single one was raw torture.
p. 59 - He hated from the depths of his soul whenever she kissed him like that and it took an effort not to shove her away.
p.64 …look at It, look It right in the face look at It and, without doing a thing, suffer inexpressible torment.
p.77 It was all the same. A flicker of hope drowned by a raging sea of despair.
p. 80 - He loathes her with all the power of his heart, and at her touch he is smacked by a gush of surging hatred. The doctor smiled with a condescending tenderness that seemed to say, Well, you know, these people - these sick people - they sometimes think up little absurdities like that; but we must forgive them.
p.82 And Ivan began to moan; he was given an injection, and he was forgotten about.…and again it was all the same; and again the night was encroaching.
p. 87 Until three in the morning he lay in a tormented oblivion.
p.93 “What is this? Don’t I know this is death? An inner voice answered: Yes, you know it.”
p.95 “In inverse proportion to the distance from death squared. And this image of a stone plummeting and picking up speed sunk deep into his heart. Life, that series of increasing torments, flies faster and faster as it nears its end, the most terrifying suffering of all. I’m flying… he shuddered…”

And other favorite fragments, chapter by chapter:
CHAPTER I
p. 11 - “Pyotr heard her ask in great detail about various cemetery plots…” (AT the funeral!)“…It was intolerable. I do not even understand how I withstood it. You could hear him three doors down. Oh, what I’ve been through!” (!)
p. 13 Pyotr asked by Ivan’s wife how she can increase his pension… “She sighed loudly and began obviously working to get rid of him…”

CHAPTER II
p. 18 - “…but from the youngest age he had been drawn, as a bird to the air, toward people in the upper echelons of society, adopting their affect and view of life, and maintaining friendships with many of them. All the preoccupations of childhood and youth dissipated from him without leaving a trace.”
p. 24 - naïve conception of marriage; his wife and her pregnancy interfered with his ordered life…p.25 - Ivan could not understand the birth of his child just as no one could understand his needs in dying.p.27 - delves into and hides in his work.

CHAPTER III
p. 30 - Existential boredom. Looks for a job of 5000 rubles (doesn’t matter where or what… 5000 rubles non-negotiable!)
p. 34 (after the accident) - “I feel that fifteen years have been taken off my head!” How true!
p.37 - (of work) …”it was better than sitting around alone or with his wife.”
p.39 - last line of chapter: “…it was all going terribly well.”

CHAPTER IV
p.43 - Ivan sees first-hand how it feels to be condescended to, the same show he put on in court. …”The doctor said: “This-and-that and such-and-such indicate an et-cetera-and-so-forth inside you; but if my investigations don’t confirm blah-blah-blah and you-get-the-idea, we’ll have to assume so on and so forth. …the doctor ignored his mislaid curiosity…” (again, all appearances!)
p.47 - blaming his ill health on exterior factors (much like today we look for cures from the extior, rather than looking within).
p.48 - “He couldn’t fool himself: something terrifying, new, and more significant than anything else that had ever happened in his life was happening within him.”

VII Enter Gerasim, a peasant.

CHAPTER VIII
p.79 Self-delusion: “…Ivan is persuaded by it, just as he used to be persuaded by the arguments of lawyers whom he knew perfectly well were lying, and whose reasons for lying were no secret.”
p.82 - describes his surroundings; all the old decorations that he spent so much time perfecting… And Ivan began to moan; he was given an injection, and he was forgotten about.
p.83 - "and death disrupting her happiness” (his daughter’s)
“blue circles under his [his son’s] eyes whose significance Ivan knew all too well” - crying. No one else seems to cry for the misery Ivan is going through.
“Except for Gerasim, it seemed to Ivan that Vasya was the only one who understood and felt sorry for him.” Rousseau and pity. It is in young Vasya, but he has not yet been tainted by aristocratic society.

CHAPTER IX
p. 88- Ivan is unable to express his feelings in front of anyone, not even Gerasim… “HE cried for his helplessness, his terrible solitude, for the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, for God’s absence. What have you done this for? Why have you brought me to this? For what, for what are you torturing me so horribly?”
p. 89 - Reminiscing about his past… “…now turned to something meager, even disgusting.”
p. 90 “Maybe I didn’t live as I should’ve? The thought leapt to his mind. But how could that be, when I did everything I was supposed to? (Appearances! - Recall what Rousseau said about an old man’s only thing to do… (how to die)).

CHAPTER X
p.93 “What is this? Don’t I know this is death? An inner voice answered: Yes, you know it.”
p.95 “In inverse proportion to the distance from death squared. And this image of a stone plummeting and picking up speed sunk deep into his heart. Life, that series of increasing torments, flies faster and faster as it nears its end, the most terrifying suffering of all. I’m flying… he shuddered…”
p.96 - “If only I could understand what this is all for! But that is impossible too. I could explain it all if I hadn’t lived as meticulously as I should have. But there is no way of comprehending this, he said to himself, thinking of all the rules, proprieties, and decencies of his life. There’s really no way to admit to that, he said, drawing his lips into a smile as though anyone might see him and be deceived. There’s no explanation! Torture, death . . . for what?”

CHAPTER XI
p.97 - “She did not manage to finish what she had started saying: such was the rage articulated in his glare, and directed precisely at her. “For Christ’s sake, let me die in peace,” he said.
p.99 - “It occurred to him that those scarcely detected impulses to struggle against what the people of highest social rank considered good, those feeble tendencies that he barely noticed and immediately suppressed, might in fact be what was real, and everything else what was false.”
… “all of it a monstrous and immense deceit foreclosing both life and death.”
p.105 - “Anyhow, what’s the point of talking, one must act.”
His final lesson.