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.

Uncertainty

Frayn: COPENHAGEN (1998)

Is there such a thing as a reliable history of any event? This is one of the main questions brought up by Copenhagen and a reason for the play’s great appeal. As members of the audience we are the jury and can render a verdict on the characters at the play’s end. What the play makes clear is that history - even to the characters involved - is never clear. To paint an historic event as black and white would be to simplify it and to paint a false picture.
One of Copenhagen’s main questions - directly posed three times in the play itself, to Heisenberg himself - is, “Why did Heisenberg visit Bohr in Copenhagen?” Did he pass valuable information to Bohr, thus sabotaging the German war effort? Or vice-versa?

Even within the realm of “Simultaneity” where there is no passage of time, the three main characters cannot reach a consensus as to what actually happened all those years ago, in 1941. Just like humanity looks back on WWII ever since its end, Heisenberg, Bohr and his wife try to make some sense of that time although nothing they learn will make any difference. This indifference can be taken two ways and is true on two counts: 1) We cannot change the past, and 2) Humans will never learn from their mistakes; they are ruled by their aggression and have a long way to go before they can control it on a universal scale.

Characters in any play can be regarded as over- or underdetermined. Great playwrights create complex characters that bring audiences back for more. Hamlet is an ideal example of such a character. Depending on an actor’s delivery of Hamlet’s lines, his words can intimate different things. As an audience, we can never quite determine Hamlet’s motivations or figure out his ambiguities. The uncertainty principle in this play plays into the scientific and the everyday spheres. There is always uncertainty in understanding human conduct. From the outside perspective, we are all underdetermined. Often from within, people can view themselves this way too. Heisenberg, by the end of the play, can still not say why he went to Copenhagen; what he set out to accomplish by going there; who he wanted to serve by going there, as though here were being thrown about by some external force.
Heisenberg inhabits a nexus of sorts. He is pulled between the outcome of a world war, his friendship and respect for Bohr, German politics, and the worry of unleashing a powerful new weapon on mankind, none of which is a small burden to bear.

Classical physics has done humanity well until the twentieth century, giving us the ability to predict and understand the world with a presumption of certain physical conditions. The “Copenhagen Interpretation” is a truer model of both the actual physical world and of how one can understand human interactions. At the heart of many matters, nothing is certain. The difference between the two outlooks can be likened to groups of stars viewed from earth compared to the reality experienced by those stars: the stars as we seem them from earth appear to move apart in two-dimensional space, but they are really pulled apart in 3 dimensions with ever-changing magnitudes of the forces on them, colossal forces from within and from without.

In hindsight, whatever actually took place at this reunion in Copenhagen (just like the measurement of the position of an electron within an atom) is neither here nor there. Historically, it’s immaterial as nothing can be done to change it. What we can appreciate, though, is that history’s characters and their relationships with each other are more an intricate interlacing of fault lines than a clear and definitive one. Such is the nature of true fault lines, and yet most of us envision them as simple geological structures, for the sake of simplicity.

Science is a wonderful thing. It has enabled humanity to do things that we, as spectators and participants, marvel at. The last century (never mind the last quarter century) has witnessed an acceleration of scientific “progress” that would have stunned our ancestors. I’m sure many of them would think that we’d be better off without most of the knowledge we now possess.
In Copenhagen the late 1920s are portrayed as Bohr and Heisenberg’s scientific salad days when camaraderie, rivalry, brotherly love and respect all comingled at the cutting edge of science, without thought of any consequences. As seen throughout the play, though, it is all about perspective: Margrethe is resentful of the toll that Bohr’s research had on their family, and this comes out (p.57) when Bohr is unable to recall his son’s name.
From those beginnings sprung Heisenberg’s obsession, and eventual madness (p.50-52), with nuclear power as the script was flipped on him: (p.51) Bohr: “You were no longer running that programme, H. The programme was running you.”
Heisenberg: “Two more weeks, two more blocks of uranium and it would have been German physics that achieved the world’s first self-sustaining chain reaction.” Bohr, perhaps because he had no role in the race to build a bomb was and remains more rational than Heisenberg. During the war, Heisenberg, and Bohr to a lesser extent, couldn’t locate their own selves because of the speed at which the war and science were moving.

(p.29) Heisenberg: “Mathematics becomes very odd when you apply it to people. One plus one can add up to so many different sums…”
This quote sums up the complexity of all the characters in this play - and of all humanity. We are such multifaceted beings that we still cannot understand ourselves, what moves us, what drives us to do what we do.

p.69-70 H. “Exactly where you go as you ramble around is of course completely determined by your genes and various physical forces acting on you. But it’s also completely determined by your own entirely inscrutable whims from one moment to the next. So we can’t completely understand your behaviour without seeing it both ways at once, and that’s impossible. Which means that your extraordinary peregrinations are not fully objective aspects of the universe. They exist only partially, through the efforts of me or Margrethe, as our minds shift endlessly back and forth between the two approaches.”
Heisenberg sums up the difficulty of understanding anyone - their intentions, motivations and anything they might be thinking. This is subjective and depends on the person who is interpreting the other. It also poses questions regarding the fields of biography, autobiography as well as history).

Recollections are reorganized, consciously or unconsciously, as time goes by, to fit our changed perceptions of a situation, and no doubt Heisenberg did the same. (p. 118)

Uncertainty, at the end of the day, is what makes life interesting anyway. Interpreting the goings-on of our humanity is “tantalizingly difficult” and an inescapable dimension of life. Let’s hope this verity doesn’t hold back our self-understanding so long so as to let our common sense lose in its race with our scientific advancements.

Would Nietzsche have said that the world came to this heated stage as a result of the absence of the Dionysian in our modern lives?


The Stranger - Camus (1942).

Very candid, very frank with little tact. Autistic-like. Example, p.44, 52-53 - asks if he lovers Marie.
The descriptions, especially at first, are very unemotional and simple - just like his emotional development seems to be. His descriptions are two-dimensional, as though being pasted onto a canvas. Near the end, as he is awakened by the knowledge of his impending death, the language becomes more elaborate.

Meursault can appear cold and uncaring - but why do we view him this way? Not everyone has a deep and meaningful relationship with their mother. Moreover, one could say that he is more grounded than the average person because he remains aware that death is inevitable, inescapable. What is curious, though, is that he thinks of the tiny consequences of wasting time at work, perhaps because the consequences of doing so are immediate and avoidable. This is a sociopathic trait: the subject only thinks of immediate consequences for himself and does not think too far into the future… an argument could be made that Meursault has such leanings.

Meursault can be likened to Rousseau’s “natural man”. He does not “play the game” and is without social conditioning. His biggest crime is his lack of conformity and in not playing into society’s expectations. For this he is condemned. Camus might be saying that such a life is the essence of freedom, but that the surrounding life is absurd.

Reason vs Passion; Dualities in the story abound - but Meursault exists in a Central reality, living his own life.

Is the fact that the killed Arab, his sister and their family are never mentioned an indictment on European and colonialist attitudes? Similar to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (where Africans are portrayed as subhuman) there is a disconnect between the white and the non-white.

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.