Notearama

The Inferno: Introducing Canto I

noreply@blogger.com (Stacy Esch) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:32:37 PST

Painting by Suloni Robertson

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The dark forest—selva oscura—in which Dante finds himself at the beginning of the poem (Inf. 1.2) is described in vague terms, perhaps as an indication of the protagonist's own disorientation. The precise nature of this disorientation—spiritual, physical, psychological, moral, political—is itself difficult to determine at this point and thus underscores two very important ideas for reading this poem: first, we are encouraged to identify with Dante (the character) and understand knowledge to be a learning process; second, the poem is carefully structured so that we must sometimes read "backwards" from later events to gain a fuller understanding of what happened earlier.

Characteristic of Dante's way of working, this "dark wood" is a product of the poet's imagination likely based on ideas from various traditions. These include the medieval Platonic image of chaotic matter—unformed, unnamed—as a type of primordial wood (silva); the forest at the entrance to the classical underworld (Hades) as described by Virgil (Aeneid 6.179); Augustine's association of spiritual error (sin) with a "region of unlikeness" (Confessions 7.10); and the dangerous forests from which the wandering knights of medieval Romances must extricate themselves. In an earlier work (Convivio 4.24.12), Dante imagines the bewildering period of adolescence—in which one needs guidance to keep from losing the "good way"—as a sort of "meandering forest" (erronea selva).

From Danteworlds
The University of Texas at Austin

According to Dante, Canto I serves as an introduction to the whole Divine Comedy.

Dante is the central character in the work. It's about "our life's journey" (we're all invited to read ourselves into the story allegorically), but it's essentially, especially about one man, Dante himself.

We seem to know very little about him, but we know more than we think, if we do a really careful, close reading, as we will. He'll become very recognizable, I think—all we have to do is put ourselves in his shoes and look around and there's a lot we can relate to. How did we get here? What does it feel like? Where are we going? How will we get there? Fundamental questions all.

Canto I brings us up close to one man who has to go on a "journey." It's a journey that's a kind of a rescue mission. Our character is "lost" in "dark wood." At the end of the Canto he's "found" (by Virgil) and ready to undertake a journey through an "eternal realm." He's stepping out of time into eternal time. (That sounds familiar to us, I hope.) Who is Dante as he starts out? Who will he be by the time he's finished? Will he grow and change as a result of this journey? What will he learn?

The Inferno is a book about the problem of evil, the nature of "sin" and its punishment; it's a kind of a moral map and compass. Dante has a lot to learn about the nature of evil, about the nature of divine justice. It's based on a system of rewards and punishments; the justice in Hell is eternal punishment. Canto I puts Dante in the "valley of evil-where corruption is the rule and where people suffer wrongly and needlessly. Treachery, fraud, violence, chaos is everywhere, infecting everything. Is this valley of evil our Hell on Earth, the world outside of the Garden? It seems that the wood is our world, and Dante wakes up to an awareness of it. It's a dark wood, a dark labyrinth, a "moral maze" to get lost in-and we may wander in the same maze today, coerced by propaganda, advertising, materialism.

In the beginning, we'll see, he's lost, confused, almost in a kind of stupor, a little "stupid." In the early Cantos he has to struggle with the pity he feels for the suffering he sees (the sinners who are being punished). He has to learn not to misplace his sympathy, and to trust in the divine justice he's experiencing.

His journey in the Inferno is going to take him through nine circles of Hell, where the punishments gradually get more and more severe as the sins become more and more "evil." Divine retribution functions according to a system he gets to observe, a system of "contrapasso"-the punishments are ingeniously suited to the sins, sometimes mirroring them. This isn't the wilderness, the savage maze of man's imperfect justice, but God's perfect justice, and it takes a little getting used to, as we'll see.

Canto I, The Dark Wood

1. What is the "dark wood"? How did Dante get there?

The dark wood is vague and not clearly defined; it's really open to our interpretation. As an image it seems hugely archetypal-a wild place, fearful and dangerous. It's a place we might get lost in, confused, or a place where we might end up when we've become lost or become confused. Dante says that he lost the straight path and must have wandered there somehow, though he doesn't remember exactly how or why.

The interesting thing is that by the time you finish reading the Inferno, you'll have a pretty strong notion of the nature of this place. Hindsight.

But for now this dark wood seems like an intentionally vague place. The character who wakes and "finds himself" there is as disoriented as we are. He seems to be thinking, where am I? I'm lost, this is terrifying! How do I get out of here??

Although this dark wood is Dante's image, and it will always be associated with him, he may have had several sources in mind as he invented it. Guy P. Raffa (Danteworlds) suggests that he might have been thinking of Plato's vague, primordial "chaotic matter." Dante calls it a wild, savage, untamed place-the image of a "jungle" comes to mind, and even Joseph Conrad's (and Francis Ford Coppola's) "heart of darkness." The dark wood may represent our primordial human condition, perhaps, our earthly home away from home, out of the Garden and into the Dark Wood. Perhaps, in the Ptolemaic scheme, the dark wood is our earthly home, imperfect, savage, corrupt. Raffa goes on to suggest that Dante may be borrowing Virgil's image from the Aeneid-because there's a forest before the entrance to Hades-and because Dante borrows images from Virgil's underworld throughout the Inferno. Then again, he suggests, it could be an Augustinian wood, a dark place to mirror the darkness in our souls when we sin; so perhaps Dante wanders here because this is where all sinners wander, all bad choices and irresponsibility lead to this dark wood. There are plenty of dangerous, dark woods in the medieval romances of the period, and Raffa offers this suggestion as well. He tells us, too, that Dante wrote in the Convivio about adolescence as a time when it was possible to "lose the good way" and wind up in a "meandering forest."

It's possible that the dark wood is ambiguous and not completely knowable because the journey we are taking involves a learning process, and understanding the dark wood represents knowledge we don't have yet, but will get soon.

I think it is all these things. And more.

It might also be personally, for Dante, the dark wood of exile, of a kind of homelessness (though he was never destitute). It's a dark wood of isolation, alienation: the sense that you are "THEM" in an "US and THEM" world.

It might be personally, for Dante, the dark wood of intellectual error. It might be the error of mistaking human reason for the agent of salvation, which is not reason but love.. Philosophy is a consolation, but ultimately it is only that and no more. It can set you on a straight and level path, but it can't climb the stair. It won't get you to St. Peter's Gate. In fact, in a worst case scenario, it might even lead you astray. The problem is that philosophy cannot account for the problem of evil, the problem of pure evil in the world-because philosophy is rational and pure evil is irrational, savage.

2. What's the significance of Dante "waking up" HALFWAY through the course of his life? He says he was so "full of sleep" that he can't even tell when he began to lose his way….why does he wake up HALFWAY through?

A time when you've had a chance to make lots of choices, and you've made a lot of bad ones
A time when you've begun to realize your mortality, which is scary
A time when you may panic: "I've got to change my life!"

That halfway point = mid-life… Mid-life is that time when you've already had lots of time to make a lot of choices in your life, a lot of important decisions. Why would that make a difference? Because if you've had a chance to make choices, there's a good chance you have made some pretty bad ones. The syllogism goes something like this:

[Major premise] If humans have free will,
[Minor premise] And free will implies choices, some of which will necessarily be bad,
It follows that humans make bad choices.
Most people will agree with that conclusion. Then what follows:
If humans make bad choices,
And Dante is human,
Then it follows that Dante by mid-life, will have made some bad choices…taken some wrong turns, lost his way.

There are a lot of significant premises up there, the most important one being right at the top: humans have free will. Mid-life would not be a time to be aware of bad choices if we did not have those choices to begin with. The reality and the consequences of our human free will, which we saw so deftly and so eloquently depicted in Genesis, is going to be a major theme of this work. As one of the commentators in the video explained, Dante insists that we are moral agents acting on our free choices.

We take this so for granted that it almost seems to go without saying, but it was not exactly taken for granted in the middle ages. The classical view of the universe, as well as the view of things from a biblical perspective, is that God, the divine presence, in whatever form, is here with us, acting upon us, acting through us. If something happens, it happens because God willed it to happen that way, not because people had that power. Gradually the concrete presence of the divine recedes, until, in the Renaissance, the human subject becomes absolutely central. But here, in this work, just a little ahead of its time, human consciousness, human behavior is already front and center, and free will is front and center. The further we get from the actual presence of God and the direct knowledge of "God's will," the freer we become, until, in Dante's poem, the human subject is something completely, and terrifyingly, free. That is the terror that Dante feels in Canto I. The terror of becoming unmoored. The terrifying understanding that we're all free to make a complete mess of things. It's not the same message as Genesis, which we looked at earlier in the term; in that story, human beings are disobedient—but they know God's will.

The result could be anarchy, existential anarchy-meaninglessness. Nihilism. A savagely dark wood from which there is no escape. But Dante does escape, and The Divine Comedy is an attempt to bring order to the moral and social chaos of free will and bad choices. Because your bad choices don't affect you alone; they affect the whole social fabric.

3. What was the sleeping state Dante was in before?

That would seem to be "youth"—innocence, ignorance, youth.

Youth, that sense of invincibility. Immortality.
Youth: the future is full of promise. Dreamy.
Youth: you have dreams. Illusions, fantasies.

All of these things are mainly positive, and we'd like to keep them forever, but sadly we can't. Eventually we fall into an awareness of mortality, like Adam and Eve; we reach the peak of that crest and we start looking back instead of forward; our dreams have faded. Once you get the knowledge of good and evil, you have to leave the Garden, and the imperfect world you enter may feel (by comparison) like being "lost" in a "dark wood."

Do all adults "wake up"? Is this something that happens to everyone? Or just to Dante?

Some people stay asleep, in good ways and bad.

On the positive side, don't you think there are lots of people who even when they're 95 are able to "think young," retain their dreams, or dream new dreams when old ones fade? One of my comp students wrote a paper recently about her 78 year old grandmother who went to college for the first time and got her degree at age 83. That's thinking young! Some people never lose that sense of promise when they think about the future, and we would call this good, I think. There's a kind of innocence associated with people like that, and I don't think you'll find any of them in the Inferno. They may have found salvation by another path. Or maybe they just aren't in need of it.

But there are other adults who "stay asleep" in a less positive, more negative way. Dante characterizes these folks as the "Neutrals," and we meet them in Canto III. These are the comfortably numb-the complacent, the endlessly distracted, the ones who know what's right but never act on what they know. On the more painful side, these are the nihilists who see the world as it is in all its imperfection and seeming absurdity, and declare everything to be meaningless, purposeless.

Dante, then, can consider himself lucky he wakes up. He might have stayed asleep and been one of those Neutrals, or worse.

4. Let's stay with this image of waking up in a strange, dark, savage, tangled, rough place—a place you don't entirely recognize and which you can't remember getting to. It sounds like someone on a bender, doesn't it? A kind of hangover from drunkenness? What's that feeling, and why is there at the beginning of the Inferno? When you imagine yourself in those shoes, what state do you realize Dante is in as the poem opens?

A state of confusion!!
Shame
Loss of control
Can't undo what he's already done; he's here and he can't "put the toothpaste back in the tube"-he doesn't even fully remember what he's done
Stupor
Despite his confusion, he's stuck dealing with the consequences: he's lost

The consequences have arrived whether he was aware he was headed towards them or not. Consequences, if you are walking blindly, eventually you may walk into a pole, or off a cliff. If you choose blindness over sight, ignorance over understanding, neglect over responsibility, you're going to meet the consequences, and it may be unpleasant.

Consequences. Suddenly you wake up and you're in the middle of them. Maybe you wake up and find you've graduated from college an alcoholic; or maybe you were raped, maybe you got pregnant. Maybe you hurt someone; maybe you can't find your way back to reality, you've lost all ambition like Keats' knight in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"; maybe you'll become willing to do anything for another fix; maybe you have lost all tender feelings and become hardened and cold inside; maybe you made people so mad at you that you are exiled, excommunicated, sentenced to be burned at the stake.

Consequences: everything is changed. It's a long, tough road out of the woods. And it's a long road out for Dante in this poem, as he has to arrive at a more complete understanding; he has to put the whole world back in order before he can save himself. You'll notice that he has to choose to make that journey. Virgil has to persuade him. There's always that choice. You might be thinking, with all the divine help on his side, the three women in Canto II, he'd be pretty stupid not to do it, right? But still, he has to choose. People have been known to make the stupid choice now and then, but Dante the Pilgrim makes the "right" one this time.

Approaching The Divine Comedy

noreply@blogger.com (Stacy Esch) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:29:49 PST

The Divine Comedy is an architectural masterpiece-the representative work of the middle ages, the masterpiece of medieval aesthetics, cosmology, politics, theology, psychology, philosophy, and even science, with a little bit of the world's first "science fiction" tossed in (at the end of the Inferno).

AESTHETICS: The Divine Comedy right up there at the top for its allegorical magnificence; it is meaningful in more than one dimension. Dante explained it in a letter to Can Grande della Scalla: "the sense of this work is not simple, rather it may be called polysemantic, that is, of many senses. The first sense is that which comes from the letter, the second is that of that which is signified by the letter. The first is called the literal, the second allegorical or moral or anagogical." In other words, if we can take Dante at his word, the work is rich in its layer upon layer of meaning. There is the literal level-Dante's travels through the difficult, harrowing, graphically concrete landscape of Hell; the allegorical level-the soul's journey to salvation; etc. It's a rich work with layers of meaning.

COSMOLOGY: The Divine Comedy reflects the medieval view of the Ptolemaic universe, a cosmology that originated with Aristotle and was refined by the 2nd century astronomer, Ptolemy. Aquinas added an overlay of Christian theology, and Dante refines it even further. The Ptolemaic universe is a geocentric universe with Earth at the center, surrounded by nine concentric spheres (inverted downwards in the circle layout of the Inferno). In this worldview, the Earth is central and static, while the universe spins all around it. Although it never really worked scientifically, it was extremely compelling philosophically and artistically. It was believed that everything below the moon was corrupted by the fall of man (Genesis) but that the heavens were perfect and unchanging, immutable, incorruptible. That perfection of the heavens was idealized as a kind of music, the "music of the spheres"-the sound of the heavens in motion-the harmony that's the essence of all creation. Unfortunately, we lost our ability to hear this music when we were tossed out of the Garden. Oh, well. We can at least try to imagine it, though.

The Divine Comedy is a full-scale, technicolor production of this only slightly outdated vision of the universe, with its orderly circles reaching not only out into the heavens, but funneling down into the very center of the earth, which is the very bottom of Hell, the point at which Dante gives the world its image of Lucifer halfway submerged in the icy lake beating his big, grotesque wings, causing the frozen wind that seals this last region of Hell in a blanket of ice.

POLITICS: This is perhaps the most striking, and maybe the most confusing thing about The Divine Comedy. The vicious personal attacks. The local names and faces that Dante uses to populate the whole work. He's "keeping it real." We get the low down dirty picture of the all the dirty politics of the day. The power struggles, the egos, the bitter battles. The feuds. The winners and the losers. The corruption. For such a timeless, "eternal" work about the universal journey of the soul from sin to salvation, it's a very specific poem that insists on naming names. It is the thing that sets this work apart in its day, the individuality of its vivid characters. Their so, so vivid human weaknesses.

THEOLOGY: Christian salvation, front and center. Grace, love, sin, punishment. Reward. And most of all, as we'll see, the belief in FREE WILL. But, lo and behold, interestingly enough, there is no God present in the work at all. They are alluded to, of course, but they are never named outright, nor are they active participants in the action. The trinity is present everywhere in the symbolism of the number three, but it is Beatrice who takes action and saves Dante from the dark wood, Beatrice who sends Virgil to persuade Dante to follow. The central characters in the work are Dante, Virgil, Beatrice, and the many sinners and saints. The human actor on the stage is front and center.

PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY: But since the first two are so very complicated, let's save them for another time and focus on psychology: specifically, the medieval notions of the self that have emerged from the earlier classical notions of the self. As a kind of herald of the Renaissance to come, with its insistent focus on the individuality of its characters, its very life-sized human hero, The Divine Comedy is a kind of fulcrum in the literary history of the West, in which the medieval is slowly but surely inching its way towards the modern. One of the more modern things about this work is its psychology.

Let's think back to that Ptolemaic model of the universe. Another aspect of that worldview was the idea of the Great Chain of Being, introduced by Aquinas.

In this great chain, which extended from stones all the way up to God, humanity finds itself sandwiched between beasts and angels. It was widely believed that we shared characteristics with both, which makes us a kind of mongrel beast-angel. Why exactly this is preferable to Darwin's theory of evolution, I'm not entirely sure, but we'll leave that for now!

Here's humanity: part beast, part angel. How did this affect our notion of the self?

In this worldview, humans find themselves in a constant struggle to overcome the animal part of their nature-it's the animal in us that's responsible for all of our messy, troublesome drives, appetites, emotional extravagances. The angelic side is our intellect, our reason, our rationality, which puts everything in order, assigns everything its proper place. Let's put it this way: in this worldview, it's not our inner animal that's getting to heaven. Only reason gets us there. The Inferno, Virgil tells us in Canto III, is littered with "the wretched souls who have lost the good of the intellect." Those, in other words, who have circumvented, tuned out, or completely corrupted their inner angel, their inner voice of reason.

Why is reason so important? In the Inferno (and in Purgatorio) reason is everything.

Reason is at the heart of our ability to be independent moral agents, capable of making choices, acting on our own free will. In Dante's world, and maybe ours too, it is the power we have to save ourselves from ourselves.

Dr. Gary Gutchess explains it so well in his online essay, "Dante and the Medieval Invention of the Self." The classical notion of the self (it's not even a word in the classical era, but we'll use it anyway) is passive. In important divine matters, the self is acted upon, not an agent of action. "The lightning bolt hit me, and I was possessed." Think of those colorful stories in Ovid that we read. "I was changed into a deer!" "I was changed into a bird!" "I was changed into a flower!" The self is an object acted upon, a vessel to be possessed, a puppet (in some cases) of the Divine Will. This is Oedipus, who suffers his fate because it is his fate, and he cannot change it. (Though Sophocles is such a great artist that and such a keen observer of human nature that he can problematize this view without seeming heretical.) The Renaissance, or modern view is that the self is active, a subject rather than an object. The Gods are removed, far away in the farthest heavenly sphere; people are front and center on the stage, taking action. They are agents of their own Free Will. "I see the light!" "I'm going towards the light!" (Or, Descartes, "I think therefore I am!") If the self is an actor on the stage and not just an object to be acted upon, then that implies the need for notions of "responsibility"—you make good choices or live with the consequences—"morality"—you have to recognize the difference between right and wrong choices—and "individuality"—your choices reveal your particular individual character. You have a unique personality that's all yours based on your own choices. And this is the aspect that Dante most insists on throughout the Inferno. You have free will, you have choices, you are an independent moral agent. You can neglect your responsibilities to yourself, to society, but you do it at a great risk of suffering the punishment for doing so.

So although The Divine Comedy is visionary, a long strange trip in the burgeoning tradition of religious mysticism that was characteristic of the late medieval period, it's also paradoxically, ultimately, a very down-to-earth human work. Most people who read it remember it vividly for the human portraits it presents more so than its theology. The humanity overwhelms the theology. Not God, but Dante the individual is the real focus of the work; no poem better illustrates the "self-centeredness" of this amazing period.

Relating to Dante's Inferno

noreply@blogger.com (Stacy Esch) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:28:19 PST

Illustration by Gustave Dore

For the math enthusiasts among you, the good news is that it's possible to read the Inferno with an eye for numbers. The number "three" is especially significant and practically everywhere. But there are other significant numbers like ten, seven, and four. You can have observing the numbers and making all the intricate allegorical equations balance neatly, because they do balance-they balance in many dimensions, according to Dante himself, forming a structure that's at least four-dimensional. These three books totaling one hundred cantos of intricate terza rima verse do certainly represent an engineering feat as far as epic structures go. The Divine Comedy richly deserves its reputation as the ultimate voice, the masterpiece, of medieval aesthetics, cosmology, politics, and theology. As perfectly as it seems to sum up the late middle ages, it is also a herald of the Renaissance to come. A truly amazing work.

I'm afraid, however, it would be possible to notice these things, to attempt to understand and appreciate them, but to never feel the heat, so to speak, of Dante's achievement. You can make reading The Divine Comedy too intellectual an experience and lose the immediacy of the emotion. If we get too pedantic in our academic discourse about this or that neatly structured allegory, this or that philosophical nuance, on our first reading we may lose sight of the poem's infinitely great humanity. Even inside the vivid torture chambers of the Inferno, it's possible to tune out the meanness of the personal attacks, our hero's battle against pity, the closely observed personalities of all the sinners historical and literary, the sheer audacity of the plot and the individuals who people it-we can miss all of this by erecting instead a spectacular but ultimately static "cathedral of images" (my husband's phrase) that walls out the relevance of the work's meaning for us here and now, today.

I don't want to do that, not on our first reading. Later, if you decide you want to study The Divine Comedy in further depth, and I hope you do some day, you can pursue a deeper appreciation of its allegorical, philosophical, and spiritual magnificence. You will find that this is a giant of a book, that it IS the apotheosis of medieval art and philosophy and literature, and literary history, but for now, we want to bring it down to earth, back to its human roots, its ability to move and touch us on a personal level. We want to know what's happening and how we feel about what's happening. How does it touch us? This need not be a textbookish poem. It's a poem written for people, in the language of the people, to communicate with people. Dante deliberately wrote this book, not in Latin, so that only the educated would be able to read it, but in the vernacular-in the Tucson dialect of his hometown, Florence-in other words, in the Italian that people would immediately understand. That was just not done, but Dante did it. And here's the power of literature: the Tucson dialect eventually became THE language for all of Italy, thanks in great part to this poem.

To be sure, we can't overlook that Dante was an extremely well read man-a self-educated man. At a certain point, he deliberately set out to acquire what learning was appropriate for his day. Aside from the Bible, which was a major influence, two sources absolutely essential to an appreciation of Dante's learning would be Virgil and St. Thomas Aquinas. The way I understand it, Dante was not satisfied until he managed to make something of all that learning, not just to "show off" but to create a new synthesis, something new and amazing. Virgil was a pagan of the old Roman empire, but he was still recognized as Italy's greatest poet. How to integrate him into the Christian fold? Thomas Aquinas wrote brilliant philosophy that brought Aristotle to the medieval world in a big way, but he was writing in the rational, unemotional language of logical reasoning. Brilliant, but philosophy tills an arid soil. A poet in the courtly love tradition, who'd made a name for himself with an exquisite book of love poems to Beatrice, La Vita Nuova, Dante brings the fresh air and cool rain and makes Aquinas bloom. It's no small achievement that Dante is able to synthesize Virgil and Aquinas. But to read the Comedy as nothing BUT those influences is to lose sight of how it can appeal to us purely on its own terms.

It's possible to relate to Dante on a more personal level. For me the appeal of his great work is the bare essence of the thing, the fact that here is a man who's writing to save his soul. And to save your soul in the bargain would be fine, would make the poem useful, as Horace instructed. (Dulce et utile: pleasure and beauty.) But primarily, the main character, who is called Dante, and who is often referred to as "Dante the Pilgrim," is on a journey to save his soul-meaning, whatever you will. Dante is writing, it seems to me, to rescue hope, to rescue belief in a meaningful order that seems to be disintegrating. For the author Dante, the world and his place in it must have seemed to be slipping away, losing meaning. His life has literally been turned upside down, inside out. Here he is, one day a man of fame and fortune, successful poet and politician, and the next, on the losing side of a political power play, he's wandering around in exile, dependent on the good will of others, eternally ascending "another man's stairs." Corruption, dirty politics, double-crossing Popes and deadly serious, bloody family feuds akin to war have run him out of his beloved town, separated him from his wife and children. If he returns to Florence, he's dead. Sentenced to burn alive at the stake. It doesn't get any more despairing than that, does it?

You can't forget (and you never do forget, reading the Inferno) that Dante must have come very close to becoming an embittered man, a lost, hardened soul pickling in the withering brine of sour grapes. Yes there was Philosophy, a certain consolation in the life of the mind-and Dante turned to that for a while-but there could be nothing, no consolation, for losing your home, your land, your family. And philosophy must seem a dry mistress, compared to love. You can feel throughout the poem how the fight against bitterness must have been a tough struggle for Dante. How to keep hold of one's humanity, one's dignity, in the face of utter political defeat? (I've asked myself the same question ever since last November.) How to keep from descending into an overwhelming bitterness or despair? You might think one solution would be: don't get mad get even! But it's really not that simple. Dante the Pilgrim is never bloodthirsty, never vengeful. On the contrary, he's depicted as a sensitive, caring individual, fainting away at least twice in the first several cantos as gets his first glimpses of the sufferers in Hell, many of them acquaintances of his. Was this disingenuous of Dante, depicting the Pilgrim this way on the one hand while inflicting (in his vision) horrendous tortures upon his enemies on the other? I don't think so. Although there's plenty of room for differing opinions here, I don't think this is a man sadistically reveling in revenge fantasies.

But some readers and critics are turned off by Dante; they accuse him of "justifying torture." It's a complicated, sensitive point. We should understand, however, that punishment of the body (for sins of the body) is deeply embedded in the morality and the "criminal justice" system of the middle ages. If anything, I think Dante reconsiders it rather than indiscriminately adopting it. In the beginning the Pilgrim is terrified of the violence he witnesses in the name of justice. He is moved to pity, and several times he faints (the "strife of pity" theme that runs through poem). The "righteousness" of this kind of justice is something he has to learn-for the salvation of his very soul. Keep in mind that throughout The Divine Comedy, and especially the Inferno and Purgatorio, it's God's not Humanity's justice we're witnessing. If it's terrible, it's because God wants it to be terrible, not Dante-not us.

As children of the Enlightenment, and of Romantic notions which affirm the basic goodness of humanity as opposed to its basic depravity, we may very well reject the morality of the Middle Ages. In fact we do. We claim to believe in a different kind of justice-one that's in favor of tolerance and one that reflects a belief in rehabilitation. But let's face it, that belief is sometimes only lip service and not real conviction; our "rejection" of "punishment of the body," our abhorrence of "cruel and unusual punishment" is sustained by only a hair. Revenge fantasy breaks out everywhere (does anyone remember Rambo?-just to name one very influential popular fantasy that probably inspired the first Gulf War). We split hairs to justify torture, today, at the highest level of our government, even in our highest courts. In the trial of two prison guards accused of torturing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, their defense attorney argued that the images shown in the photographs-naked prisoners tethered to leashes; naked, hooded prisoners piled in a pyramid-represented legitimate methods of controlling detainees and did not amount to abuse. Now that seems to me a clearer justification of torture than anything Dante, with his fainting pity, provides, as does this statement by the defense: "Don't cheerleaders form pyramids all over the country?" And then he noted that parents sometimes use leases to keep track of their toddlers. "You've probably been at airports or shopping malls and seen children on tethers. They are not being abused." No, but with those kinds of justifications of torture, we are.

Nevertheless, some readers detect a certain sadistic cruelty in Dante's graphic depiction of the torturous punishments throughout the Inferno. (I wonder how much that "sadistic" quality has to do with the translation one happens to be reading!) The concrete, graphic nature of the Inferno can't be denied, however-and we wouldn't want to deny it. That is the essence of the book-and no doubt a great part of its appeal. The violence is probably a big draw for some people. But the way I relate to what Dante is doing is with violence is that what he's reaching for is an order to things, a reasonable, rational order. Law and order. Crime and punishment. (Is Dante Nixon or Dostoyevsky in a previous incarnation?) If we understand the sin, we understand its punishment, which is "rationally" suited to the sin. Understanding is the key. Understanding has to occur through reason. Dante the Pilgrim struggles to understand what he sees, just as we do-but we have Virgil, the voice of Reason, to guide us. If we can understand, instead of becoming bitter, maybe we can put the universe, the moral universe, back in order. But what is it that he's supposed to understand?

Dante the Pilgrim, as he tours Hell, learns a number of things that he needed to learn for the salvation of his soul. First, even though he's midway through his life, in his mid-thirties somewhere, he still doesn't have a clear understanding about the nature of evil, in himself or in others. In his trip through Hell, he has to learn the real nature of sin and the various ways it is divinely, poetically, and justly punished. The case is laid out before his eyes (and ours). Here are the sinners, and here is their place in hell. But what is not so easy, what he has to strive to put together and what Virgil has to work to teach him, is that despite his heart's natural tendency, the sinners he sees being painfully punished do NOT deserve his pity.

In the second canto, Dante the Poet, the narrator, tells us that getting ready for the journey means stealing himself for a "double war"-for the harshness of the journey itself, down into the pit, but also for the battle against pity. Why does he have to battle pity? Is it because the punishments are so harsh that the natural thing to do would be to feel sorry for all the people suffering in Hell? Yet that's what Hell is all about, right? If you really want punishment-not rehabilitation but punishment-then you have to steal your heart against pity. These souls in Hell are the ones who are completely damned (in Christian theology); they are souls beyond Jesus' helping hand. Which is a pretty hard place to be, considering all they needed to do (when alive) was to simply ask for that hand, to truly regret and repent their sinning ways. But they didn't do that, they never fell out of love with their sin, and here they are in Hell. They are beyond redemption, beyond Christ's reach so to speak, so to pity them would be to say that you have a bigger heart than Jesus, which of course you couldn't possibly. EVEN SO, our natural human tendency is to feel pity for those we see suffering. So how does this battle with pity resolve itself? Read and discover!

The Inferno would be a little boring, a little pedantic, a little too didactic if it just dealt with all of these issues abstractly. It's anything but. It's scary to think what kind of movie this would make with the CGI capabilities we have now. Terrifying. The goriness. There's nothing abstract about this poem, and that is a big part of its enduring appeal, I'm sure. There's nothing indefinite about the punishments inflicted in this vision of Hell. This is a torture chamber, make no mistake about it. "ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE." Abandon all hope…God is not messing around. No rehabilitation, remember. Pure punishment. The great majority may not agree philosophically with that approach in 2005 (as opposed to 1320), but there's no denying that pure revenge has always been and still is out there as the alternative to rehabilitative punishment: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Let the punishment reflect the crime. Dante pours so much of his creativity into bringing this (to some repulsive) idea to life. The word for it in the Inferno is "contrapasso." Sinners are punished in a way that somehow reflects what they did wrong on earth while they were living. Sometimes the punishment is very much like the crime, and sometimes it's a kind of mirror image.

The Inferno, and The Divine Comedy as a whole, is a torching vision, a tour de force of the imagination. In its sweeping affirmation and faith in divine love and divine justice, it's an attempt to hold onto-or recreate (or create)-whatever meaning still exists-or used to exist-or might exist-in the world. It's a battle cry in the name of faith, a sword to the gut of corruption. The Inferno represents a vision in which divine justice exists, sheds meaning, and will ultimately prevail in the face of rampant, unpunished human depravity, dissolution, perversion, and amorality. Even if you disagree with him, I think it's possible to admire how Dante writes to recover meaning, to preserve it, to convince himself (and us) that it (meaning) is still out there-there IS an order to the universe; love matters. There IS such a thing as divine justice, even if man's justice is hopelessly weak and corrupt.

Superficially the Inferno is about an imagined afterlife. But more subtlely, it's about our what we have to do to save ourselves, our souls (or be saved, depending on your personal theology) in THIS life. Dante the Pilgrim is alive in his tour through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise (as we're constantly reminded). This is not a poem about being dead, but about being alive. Even the dead souls that people the Inferno are filled with a kind of inalienable life. While there's time, Dante the Pilgrim can still recover from the confusion that has led him to become lost in the "dark wood of error." Yes, the poem makes the muscular assertion that there's a paradise, and a horrible place for the world's countless evil people to go. But the more important point, it asserts again and again, is that there are consequences for your actions while you're alive. So don't think for a minute that your life is meaningless, that your actions should be relativist, that this is all just a pleasant little hedonistic stopover on your way to oblivion. There's no such THING as oblivion! God exists. Love exists. Justice exists. Forget oblivion-that most certainly does NOT exist, though you may wish it did.

Everything you do in this life MATTERS; it matters crucially, deeply. Whether you have a good heart or a hard one, whether you do good deeds or evil deeds, whether you admit or deny your mistakes, weaknesses, shortcomings, and especially your ugliest sins all MATTER. In Dante's audacious moral world, there is punishment waiting, divine, poetic justice for those who walk the earth arrogantly, violently, negligently. But there is also purgation, and finally, for the worthy, for the graced, for the saved, there's paradise.

What was Neoclassicism in literature?

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 06:58:01 PST

Here's a handy, clear summary of the Neoclassical period in European art and literature from Imaginative Literature II: from Cervantes to Dostoevsky, a Supplement to Encyclopedia Brittanica's Great Books of the Western World set, by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain:

Neoclassicism, which arose in France in the seventeenth century, aimed to imitate the clarity and simplicity of the ancient Greek and Latin classics. It sought a literature in which decorum and correctness according to fixed rules prevailed. Inspired by the rationalism of the new science and philosophy of the age (Newton, Descartes, etc.), it emphasized intellectual perfection -- the witty thought pefectly expressed in an elegant phrase -- rather than imaginative color or feeling. In form, Neoclassicism fostered formally correct, elegant, urbane expression. In thought, it emphasized an unsentimental realism, which viewed certain characteristics of human nature as permanent and univeral, and did not consider the individual variations important or interesting. (The French Neoclassical tragedians put the ancient Greeks into seventeenth-century French clothing.)

The great Neoclassical literature was that of the French writers of the seventeenth century -- Moliere, Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, etc. -- and their influence extended to the latter half of the eighteenth century and was represented by Alexander Pope, Addison and Steele, Samuel Johnson, and other writers of the so-called Augustan Age of English letters. It was in England that the reaction against Neoclassicism, called Romanticism, originated among such poets as James Thomson, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, Robert Burns, and William Blake. From England the revolt spread to France, Germany, and Italy. The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau was the greatest single intellectual influence on the Romantic movement. (106-107)

Adler and Cain are equally lucid at portraying the shift from Neoclassical to Romantic:

The Romantics espoused imagination, feeling, passion, vitality, nature, and individuality, as against the decorum, rules and universality, of the Neoclassicists. The Romantics emphasized the inner depths of the human soul and the immensities of the natural world, the expression of intimate personal experience, of joy, and especially of melancholy and suffering. For the Neoclassicists the dominating attitude was rational detachment; for the Romantics it was sensitive inolvement. The Neoclassicists stressed the values and forms of European civilization and urban, advanced, Western society. The Romantics stressed the natural, the primitive, the medieval, the oriental, the ancient, and remote. (107)

While fundamental periodization of this kind is unstable, slippery, and far from absolute, such provisional distinctions are practical, sensible ways to grasp the intellectual impulses happening in the 18th century.

Analyzing poetry - key terms

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:08:46 PST

Before you analyze a poem, you must experience it. Poetry, said the British romantic poet William Wordsworth, is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. It is about emotional effects, imaginative expression, the passion, and the creative energy pulsing through words. You should read a poem aloud, read it in silence, then read it aloud again, playing with its sound, exploring different ways to express the words on the page.

Only after you have let the poem speak through you should you sit down to study it. Poems often do not express meaning in a literal fashion; they tend to be allusive, suggestive, associative, impressionistic, and sometimes symbolic. When it comes time to analyze a poem, the following terms should help you make more sense, find more meaning, and discover the powerful, evocative connection between a poem’s form and its content.

Word Choice (aka. Diction) – Start with the words themselves. Part of what gives poetry its unique power is its preoccupation with word choice. Every word counts in a poem. Poets make precise word choices to convey accurate images. "The right word" (in French the term is “le mot juste”) can make an average poem great. Effective word choice can add literary ambiguity to a poem; it can "open out" multiple layers of meaning. When you read poems, pay close attention to the actual words used in the poem. Ask yourself, why did the poet choose these words and not others?

Syntax - Syntax means the word order. How do the poem’s words run sequentially? Is the syntax direct and streamlined, jagged, gnarled, knotty, tortured, plodding, finely woven, intricate, halting? And how does the poem use punctuation? Does it violate normal grammatical rules? Why? Is there a lot of punctuation, a little? How does the punctuation affect the sense and sound of the poem when read?

Imagery – Poets, through their word choices, appeal to your senses – sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. They do this through concrete, descriptive language – word choices that a1re vivid, imagistic, and sensual. Descriptive language can be combined with more abstract language in poems to achieve interesting affects. What kinds of images does the poet use in the poem? Are there observable patterns of imagery? How is the poet making use of those patterns? When you can “see” what the poet is talking about quite vividly, this is a sure sign that the poet is making use of good imagery.

Tone – The attitude, mood or feelings expressed by the poem. How does the poem’s voice modulate to express particular moods and feelings? Ask yourself, what adjectives would I use to describe the tone, and what other formal aspects of the poem contribute to creating this tone?

Theme – What the poem says or suggests about its subject matter. Look for motifs, ideas, and deep thoughts.

Speaker (aka. persona) – The voice speaking in the poem. The speaker is to a poem as a narrator is to a story. Often in poetry, the speaker is the poet herself, but it doesn't have to be that way. Poems can have characters in them, just like stories. When analyzing personas in poems, approach them as characters with personality. See if you can figure out who this character is, what he or she is feeling, where he's from, where he's going.

Situation – Generally, the imaginary position established by the poem. At the literal level, what is happening in the poem? Who is the speaker? Who is she speaking to? What forces are driving the forward motion of the poem? It is important to establish these matters in your first readings of the poem, because knowing the situation is a prerequisite to deeper levels of interpretation.

Setting – As in fiction, the setting is the time and place of the poem, the where and when of the poem’s action. Sometimes the setting is a dominant force in the poem, i.e. a poem may be primarily about a place or time, and its themes are closely allied with the setting.

Metaphor and Simile – Figurative language that makes a comparison between two unlike objects, suggesting a hidden connection between them. Metaphors are implicit comparisons, similes explicit (using "like" or "as"). All figurative language tends to work by describing one thing in terms of another. Metaphors help us visualize abstract ideas, make new and interesting connections, and convey feelings with freshness and insight.

Metonymy – a figure of speech where in a word or image “represents,” “substitutes,” or “stands for” something to which it is closely related (e.g. “We pay tribute to the crown.”). One type of metonymy is called “synecdoche,” in which the figure is that of a part representing the whole (e.g. “all hands on deck”) or whole for part.

Symbol – Something (an image, a word) that stands for or represents something besides its literal meaning. A symbol does not have to look like the thing it represents. Symbolic language transcends the denotative meanings of words, jumping to a new level of meaning. Usually, readers must interpret these symbols for themselves, and performing a symbolic reading will rely on your understanding of the poem's situation.

Sound effects – Poetry often uses the sounds of words to convey theme and tone with more precision and impact. The sound of poetry makes a direct appeal to your senses. By reading poems aloud, you will become more aware of these sensual effects. For instance, we can speak of a poem’s timbre (or tone color), which would describe its distinctive vocal qualities, along with its pitch (high, low, midrange) and intensity (muted, high intensity, emotive, rapturous, bloated, etc.) Rhyme is a common sonic effect. Where words with similar endings are placed, often at the ends of lines, to create sonic and semantic echo effects. A rhyme scheme exists when those rhymes follow a set pattern. A pararhyme is sometimes called off-rhyme or near-rhyme, where the words almost rhyme exactly, but not quite. Readers and listeners take pleasure in effective rhyme schemes, it is a way of expressing different ideas and keeping them sonically unified at the same time. Assonance (words sharing common vowel sounds) is another. Alliteration (words sharing common consonants) is another. A poem’s texture is its “feel” or how the poem weaves its sounds into perceptible patterns, e.g. sharp consonants, softer/sibilant sounds, alliteration, and assonance, etc.

Rhythm and meter - Rhythms can be jerky, jumpy, smooth and languid, "singsongy", meandering, dramatic, steady, jarring, and so forth. We might also speak of a poem’s pace (fast, slow, lumbering, galloping). Many poems make use of enjambement, which is a running together of sound and sense from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. If the end of the line doesn’t cue you to pause as you’re reading it by means of a punctuation mark, see if the poem reads more fluidly and sensibly by running it right it into the next line. Using enjambement, poets can build variety into otherwise regimented meters. When we speak of a poem’s meter, we are looking at its regular patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. These patterns combine into units called metrical feet, e.g. iambs, trochees, anapests, dactyls, spondees, etc. The difference between rhythm and meter is that rhythm is less formalized and more irregular, swaying and flowing the music of the lines and the sweep of the poem. Meter is a more regular pattern of syllables. A poet can create interesting effects by playing new rhythms within the more strict metrical patterns.

Words and music – Some poetry is written to be sung along with music. Such poems strictly follow a set meter (rhythm). While song lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, they are best read in context, while listening along with the music, so describing and relating musical effects to poetic effects is appropriate.

Poetic Structure – the formal construction of a poem. How is it set up to express its subject matter and theme? What rhetorical patterns does it follow? It is useful to trace a poem's "argument" through the course of the poem. Is the poem set up as a narrative (story)? Does it present more of a dramatic situation like a play? Or is the presentation more thematic – as in a theme and variations, an argument and proof, an itemized list or catalog of ideas/descriptions? Your cues to discerning structure are the stanza form of the poem, its use of rhyme, meter, and syntax. Some poems follow established forms like the sonnet, ballad, blank verse, and sestina, which often have complementary rhetorical structures. Begin by summarizing the poem’s “train of thought” and marking off points in the poem where you see a change in tone, attitude, perspective, time/place, shifts in argument, etc.

Stanza form – traditional patterns of lines, meter, and rhyme schemes used by poets to achieve special effects. When studying stanza form, analyze how many lines are used per stanza. Is there a rhyme scheme being employed? Scan the meter (the rhythmic pulse of stressed and unstressed syllables). See if you can identify a traditional stanza form being used such as the haiku, sonnet, terza rima, villanelle, sestina, blank verse, alexandrines, traditional ballad stanza, 12 bar blues, etc. Does the writer follow all the traditional rules within that form? Does he break the rules? Why? How does the poem's form help to determine its rhetorical structure, tone, theme, and musicality?

Open form (free verse): free verse does not follow rigid rules for meter and rhyme. The form is open. This does not mean that you can’t analyze a free verse for rhythmic patterns, sound effects, and other patterns. They will be there; it is just that a free verse poem doesn’t follow a fixed format: it makes up its rules for the occasion of that poem.

Irony – a contradiction or disparity between the appearance or expectation and reality. Irony can exist in many forms: as verbal irony (a contradiction between what someone says and means, what someone says and does, what appears to be true and is actually true); dramatic irony (the gap between what a character knows and the audience/reader knows), situational irony (discrepancies within situations and events themselves), and structural irony (wherein an aspect of the work's structure creates discrepancies that operate throughout the work, e.g. an unreliable narrator).

Literature as art

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 09:32:03 PST

by Stacy Esch

What’s the purpose for creating a literary work? Is it to “entertain” us? Maybe, but entertainments are so temporary and disposable. We forget about them so quickly. We can exchange one for the other so readily because they’re all basically the same. The really great entertainers, the ones who rise above the crowd and are remembered past their moment in time usually take on the status of “artist.” Is this just a matter of semantics, of playing around with words and labels? Or is there a real difference between entertainment and art? It’s something to think about. Entertainments seem very temporary and comforting; they make us feel good while we pass the time, but we won’t remember them too well or too long. On the other hand, a work of art has a kind of permanence (the greater the work, the greater the permanence), which amounts almost to immortality. Some will succeed better than others.

I defined imaginative literature in “Fundamental Questions About Literature” as “verbal art.” As a work of art it’s a construct, a structure, a thing. It has a material being, even though it’s just words. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it, because what are words, what is language, but a system of abstract representation? Sometimes it can get really abstract, such as when we’re trying to find the word to describe a feeling, an idea—something completely invisible. As an art whose material is language, this is exactly what literature attempts to do. To give substance to the invisible world of feeling, to create a permanent record of our innermost, and most invisible, experiences. The artist captures this invisible stuff and creates a material experience of it for the rest of us.

There are so many ways to approach an understanding of what the art of literature has to offer. Here are some further ideas, in no particular order of precedence:

Creates an experience for readers to participate in. We can never experience too much. We’re always looking for more and more experiences… and literature offers a unique kind of experience, a depth experience, an inside view of things. These characters we meet aren’t casual acquaintances, and we’re not overhearing idle chit-chat. We’re usually going straight to the core, and that is not something every day life gives us an opportunity to do with everyone we meet!
Connects us to one another. Wouldn’t we rather be connected to one another instead of feeling cut-off, isolated, alienated, or invisible? Sometimes literature connects us to other people we might not otherwise connect with; sometimes it connects us to aspects of ourselves we might not otherwise get a chance to connect with.
Helps us escape from reality, which can be limited, oppressive, or dull. Literature creates an imaginary world sometimes very like or real world and sometimes radically different. It imagines things for us that we might not be able to imagine ourselves. And how free we are when our imaginations come to life. Imaginary worlds are free of limitations; we shed them effortlessly. Nietzsche said famously that “we have art in order not to die of the truth.” Is he saying we need art to escape from realities that might crush us? Or maybe he means that art is a kind of artificial sweetener that makes the bitter truth more palatable, more digestible? Or maybe he means that the artist is a kind of canary in the mine, testing realities imagined rather than lived in order to save us from potential dangers? What do you think Nietzsche would say about the function of entertainment? Same as art?
Challenges us, stimulates us, provokes us, shakes things up internally, which all create the conditions necessary for our growth, progression. Entertainment never really shocks us awake, never challenges our deeply held assumptions, our sometimes completely unexamined ideas and feelings, but great art often does. Franz Kafka believed we “ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
Give us “equipment for living.” This is a concept from Kenneth Burke, a noted academic who wrote literary theory as well as poetry. According to Burke, the study of literature equips individuals with attitudes for dealing with recurring situations, probably because he sees the body of literature available to us as a kind of repository, holding all the wisdom of the ages, of truths we can use. In this view, literature has something to teach us; we can use the lessons it provides as “equipment for living.” Of course, what that “something” is may vary from reader to reader…
Shows us not only what is, but what can be. Mark Edmundson, in a great little book called Why Read? explores this idea that literature is unique among the humanities for its ability to powerfully reveal to us our potential, good and bad.
Slows us down, affording us a depth experience not available in our speeded up, day-to-day lives. Sven Birkerts explores this idea in his book The Gutenberg Elegies.
Offers us a lasting experience of beauty. The poet John Keats in “Ode on A Grecian Urn” explores the idea that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” A work of art is beautiful because it tells us the truth. Truth is always beautiful. There are other ways of defining beauty, of course, and an entire branch of philosophy—the study of “aesthetics”—is devoted to that, but this is one famous statement made by a poet from the Romantic era.

One recurring idea is that art and truth are very wrapped up together. A work of art is engaging as long as it strikes us as true in some way. Think for a minute how paradoxical this actually is. We are arriving at truth by making up fictions? We are inhabiting imaginary worlds in order to understand our real world? This is a paradox, but it’s accurate. Literature brings us in touch with a deeper, more internal, often invisible kind of truth: the truth about our emotional lives. Our spiritual lives. Even our intellectual lives. We don’t wear these in public all the time. We may keep them hidden and private; they are personal. We may not even acknowledge that these inner worlds exist. But literature acknowledges them, and makes them visible.

Here’s what fiction writer William Faulkner said when he accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950:

      I feel this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.
      Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
      Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

On the enchantment of beauty

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 09:23:28 PST

If beauty is not a gateway out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among green leaves.

- W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight

Eurozine - "Proust is important for everyone" - Gilles Lipovetsky, Mario Vargas Llosa

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 05:41:59 PST

Eurozine - "Proust is important for everyone" - Gilles Lipovetsky, Mario Vargas Llosa

Debate on the denigration of high culture and the merits/demerits of entertainment culture.

World as stage

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 11:10:24 PST

All the world, of course, is not a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn't are not easy to specify.

- Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

The use of theory

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 07:27:54 PST

If when a theory is bad it narrows our capacity for observation and makes all appreciation vicarious and formal, when it is good it reacts favourably upon our powers, guides the attention to what is really capable of affording entertainment, and increases, by force of new analogies, the range of our interests.

- George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty

Notes on "Axolotl" by Julio Cortázar

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:24:26 PST

by Stacy Esch

What’s the difference between a modern short story and the “tale” or especially the mythic tales?
Both the tale and the short story are forms of narrative, but the modern short story features:

• A fuller plot based on a causal sequence; human conflict acts as the catalyst, the cause of things happening
• Intricately developed, psychologically complex characters and character motivation
• An identifiable setting—a particular time and place that lends meaning to the characters and actions
• The expectation of an open-ended theme inviting each reader’s vision and interpretation
How does the theme of transformation and change that we observed in the mythic tales, and in the Ovid tales, express itself in this short story?

• The narrator maintains that he’s changed places with the axolotl; that he has become the axolotl by the end of the story—he has metamorphised into an axolotl in some way
Which of these terms would you say describes the boy in “Axolotl”—fascination, obsession, empathy, compassion, or sympathy?

Look up the precise meanings of those words before you make your decision. Here are a few definitions to get you started.

Fascination (Dictionary)
The state of being intensely interested (as by awe or terror)
• archaic (esp. of a snake) deprive (a person or animal) of the ability to resist or escape by the power of a look or gaze : the serpent fascinates its prey.

Obsession (Dictionary)
an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind

1: an irrational motive for performing trivial or repetitive actions against your will [syn: compulsion] 2: an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with something or someone [syn: fixation]

Empathy (Dictionary)
The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. (ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from Greek empatheia (from em- ‘in’ + pathos ‘feeling’ ) translating German Einfühlung.)

Compassion (Dictionary)
Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. (ORIGIN Middle English : via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin compassio(n-), from compati ‘suffer with.’)

Sympathy
1 feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune; formal expression of such feelings; condolences. 2 understanding between people; common feeling; support in the form of shared feelings or opinions; agreement with or approval of an opinion or aim; a favorable attitude; ( in sympathy) relating harmoniously to something else; in keeping; the state or fact of responding in a way similar or corresponding to an action elsewhere (ORIGIN late 16th cent. (sense 2) : via Latin from Greek sumpatheia, from sumpathēs, from sun- ‘with’ + pathos ‘feeling.’)

How does the boy become fascinated by the axolotl in the first place?
He's alone, on his bike, looking for something to do…friendless? It seems so, since we never see him with a friend
Out of boredom? Loneliness?
Our of dissatisfaction with his ordinary routine—he's usually attracted to the more popular animals, the lions and the panthers (see the Rilke poem, "The Panther") but this day they are disappointing. The lions are "sad and ugly" and the panther is "asleep." So he goes into the "dark, humid aquarium" and "unexpectedly" he "hits it off" with the axolotls.
What is the boy's initial reaction to the axolotls?

They seem to capture his imagination, fascinate him. He reads the card, and later he goes to the library to find out even more about them, but ultimately it's not information from a book that he's seeking. These factual details aren't exactly what interest him. If you look at those details, they're the normal kinds of things that you'd find in an encyclopedia or dictionary about a particular animal: They're a species of Mexican salamander (but he already knows this from looking at their "little pink Aztec faces"); they can live on land or water; they're edible; their oil was used like cod—liver oil. But the problem with these facts is that they really tell him next to nothing about what it's like to be an axolotl. They treat these animals, these living, breathing creatures that have captured the boy's imagination, like inanimate objects. Empathy tells him they are far from inanimate. When we turn a human being into an object to be exploited, we call that "dehumanization." What do we call it when we turn animals into objects? But we find it acceptable (for the most part) to turn animals into objects, unless they are our pets, forgetting that they are living, breathing creatures like us. This boy isn't looking for facts; he's looking for an experience. And he gets it.

What do these little details tell you about this particular boy?
He's sensitive; he's open to new experiences. He's imaginative. He's independent.
He may be lonely but even if he is, he makes very rich use of his solitude.
What's the nature of his fascination?

His fascination leads to a growing empathy, which leads to feelings of guilt (for the creature's imprisonment, it seems). At first, watching them sit there motionless, he thought he understood "their secret will, to abolish space and time with an indifferent immobility." But the boy later realizes that there is no romantic "secret will" and that their immobility has nothing to do with abolishing space and time; he realizes that captivity is a horrible burden, an oppressive nightmare; they want to be free like any creature, swimming freely, not sitting immobile in a cage.

Early on and throughout he associates the axolotl with Aztecs, the native Mexicans who were vanquished by the Europeans, the Spanish… the axolotls have "eyes of gold" (Aztec gold); they are "silent and immobile" like ancient statues that serve as reminders of the civilization and the people who were brutally conquered. These eyes, like the eyes of statues may "lack any life, but they are looking"—they see into us and we try to see into them. He directly likens the axolotl to a "statuette corroded by time" (425). He explains that it's the eyes which fascinate ("obsess") him the most. They represent "another way of seeing" that is now a mystery he wants to penetrate. "The golden eyes continued burning with their soft, terrible light; they continued looking at me from an unfathomable depth which made me dizzy" (426).

He begins to identify with the axolotls. He knows they look nothing like human beings, like monkeys do, but he sees the "humanity" in them nevertheless." When he claims the axolotl's were "not animals" (426) what do you think he's driving at?

Once he takes the step of recognizing their "humanity" (we don't have a word for what he wants to describe!) he begins to imagine them aware as a human being is aware. He imagines they are conscious of their condition, as we are. The plaintive cry he imagines is "Save us, save us." It doesn't get more empathetic than that. On another level, the axolotls may be "Aztecs" (who were also considered subhuman "savages") and who also might still be "saved." Once he hears this plea, he begins to feel ashamed, ignoble. Something is taking shape from the larval stage (axolotls never leave their larval stage) that he fears. Some retribution for the cruelty of this imprisonment maybe? He ends up imprisoned along with them in the end. His empathy is so complete that he can't entirely leave them even when he stops visiting.

His conscience goes on overdrive: they are "devouring me slowly with their eyes, in a cannibalism of gold" (427). Just thinking of them places him beside the cage. The eyes never close; they are always with him. He can't escape his feelings of empathy.

Finally he acknowledges that the axolotls are suffering, that they are "lying in wait for something, a remote dominion destroyed, an age of liberty when the world had been that of the axolotls" (427). They are lying in wait for their freedom, and meanwhile they are in "liquid hell." This realization is what allows him to penetrate finally into their world, because it is the "truth." (How do we know it's the truth? We can only empathize.)

From that point on, the identity of the boy is confused; is he now an axolotl or a boy? Does empathy always involve a kind of split, a kind of fracturing of identity? Double vision? He feels "trapped." In what way is empathy a kind of painful trap? Should we avoid it? (Not everyone has it or wants to have it.) Do you think the story warns against empathy or encourages it?
What does the story "mean"?

We can justify thematic statements like:

Empathy is painful.
It's possible for humans and animals to experience a "meeting of the minds."
Like the axolotl imprisoned in its cage, the soul is trapped inside the body.
But those kinds of summary meanings, while they may be justified, seem so inadequate.

Let's leave that question open and answer it with a quote from commentator Susan Nayel: "The nightmare of being trapped inside the body of a beast is the human's experience, and the panic of being abandoned by the man is the axolotl's final cry. The only hope, as noted by the axolotl, is the creation of art where the writer can become another and communicate on behalf of all creatures—expressing the feelings of all creatures so that none may fee the terror of isolation and imprisonment."

Compare this story to Rainer Marie Rilke's poem "The Panther." In "The Panther" by German poet Rainer Marie Rilke, you have a powerful example of extended personification, a very close observation which readers can interpret as the writer’s empathy with his subject. Where does the subject end and the object begin? As in “Axolotl,” they seem melted together. Throughout the poem, the panther is invested with human feeling, just as in “Axolotl” the salamander is invested with human consciousness. In both works, you could ask whether it is that the speaker, observing the caged animal, identifies with the pain of his imprisonment, or whether he is in fact projecting his own pain upon what he the object of his observation. Whichever way that river flows, “The Panther” and “Axolotl” are both powerful testaments to the wonder and pain of empathy.

Reading this poem, we might ask: is it that the panther is able to communicate his pain, breaking across the boundaries that separate our species, and the speaker is sensitive to the panther’s pain? As the poem opens, the speaker tells us that the panther’s vision has “grown so weary” and that his eyes seem blank, they “can’t hold anything else.” But does the speaker really know what the panther sees or if he’s weary? He takes further liberties in the third line, announcing that “It seems to him there are a thousand bars;/ and behind the bars, no world.” Does the speaker really know what the panther is thinking here? Empathy seems to have given him the liberty to assume that this is what the panther is thinking. The empathy he feels is projected upon the panther; he “identifies” with it. Once we accept that projection, once we suspend our disbelief, a powerful story emerges. From within that cruel cage—which might represent any sort of loss of freedom—the world disappears; any normal vision, normal behavior, is suspended and actions are mere motions, with no force of will behind them. Life becomes “going through the motions.” Free will (my favorite topic this semester) is paralyzed—there’s no action but empty ritual. What happens next is almost too sad, too difficult to contemplate. That unasked for but inevitable glimpse of freedom appears momentarily, that whisper of possibility as the “curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly—.” It’s not a real possibility of freedom because the bars haven’t disappeared. The bars are still there. But the “image enters in.” It’s almost too painful to imagine! That momentary glimpse of freedom tears through every muscle, plunging into the heart, knife-like, leaving the poor creature (the panther, the speaker, both?) to suffer.

Even if you read the poem literally and aren’t interested in pursuing other levels of meaning (what might the panther symbolize, and so on), it’s an incredibly sad portrait. It’s precisely the reason why I can’t have a good time visiting zoos. I know they do a lot of good work. But the sight of all those caged creatures!!! My reaction is always very much like the boy’s in “Axolotl.” If I allow my fascination to draw me in I become guilt-ridden and horrified; it’s as if I’m trapped in there with them. I’ll never forget a certain grizzly bear at the St. Louis Zoo in Forest Park (I used to live across the street from it, and went there often when my daughter was stroller-bound)…I still remember the disturbing way it used to pace endlessly in that “ritual dance around a center,” which Rilke describes so brilliantly, unable to go anywhere or do anything which would make it feel like a real bear with real purpose and a real will. It was so obviously in misery, like this panther. On the other hand, the polar bears a few hundred feet away were pretty cheerful, usually playing with their big red rubber ball, splashing in their pool, rolling around. If you wanted to leave in anything like a good mood, you would check in on them and walk very quickly past the grizzly bear, trying not to look.

Notes on Ibsen's Doll's House

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:21:26 PST

Much of this discussion (especially the Act/Scene analysis) derives from Brian Johnston’s criticism, found on his website: ibsen-voyages.com.

Ibsen is the first great master of modern drama. In his plays he depicts realistic social problems concerning marriage, gender inequality, the clash between middle class values, materialism, and individual freedom. He does this in a decidedly non-romantic, non-idealized manner. Some of the main themes in the play include

the clash between love and honor (reputation),
the hypocrisy of middle class values,
the moral and physical degeneracy underpinning middle class society
the “woman question” (should women be equals in marriage, should they have equal rights in general?),
the meaning of marriage and its redefinition in modern times

Ibsen exposes these themes by generating dramatic tension and conflict among his characters. Some of the main oppositions can be found in the tensions between

secrecy / openness

honesty / deceit

appearance / reality

the role playing, dependent self / free thinking, independent individual

Middle class values. The play questions conventional middle class values. What values are at issue?

Work hard, play by the rules

Be thrifty with your money
Maintain a respectable public image of honesty and integrity

Believe in the pursuit of wealth; money and things are worth striving for and are markers of social status

Those who follow their enlightened self interest and achieve are entitled to the spoils

Those who don’t succeed are morally degenerate.

Men are natural born rulers of their households.

Wives should obey their husbands and take care of the children. Husbands and children come first.

For Torvald Helmer, men are naturally superior to women. They are the rightful kings of their castles. Their wives are playthings. Objects of affection and entertainment. They are in a diminutive position in relation to the husband/master.

Torvald is the standard bearer for these bourgeois values. He is a man who lives an upright life and feels like he deserves the finer things. He is a man who enjoys pleasures fairly earned and scorns hypocrisy, crime, dishonesty, and those without scruples.

Nora is also a champion of these values to the extent that she “plays along” with Torvald's games. She plays the role of Torvald's doll wife, the plaything, the little girl, the flirt, the songbird. She believes her husband is good and strong, even heroic. She has violated the law only to save his life, so she puts her love for her husband above social convention, but realizes that this violation must be kept secret, hidden at all costs. Appearances are far too important.

Middle class morality, when followed as strictly as Torvald follows it, devalues or represses much that is of potential importance: individuality, authenticity, the unorthodox, compassion, equality between the sexes, equal opportunity and social justice, and freedom.

For three days, Nora fights hard to keep her violations of the social order well hidden so the doll house will stay intact, but by the end of the play, a dramatic change in her character will unfold, as the secret of her forgery is revealed and she is forced to confront the reality of her deception and Torvald's cowardly selfishness.

Well before the climax, we see signs of Nora's rebelliousness and strong will. She has dared to forge her father's signature to secure a loan from Krogstad, a loan illegally obtained without her husband's permission. She does this out of devotion to her husband, in order to save his life, to finance a trip to Italy, because she knows Torvald would never accede to her wishes. She defies him, but she is too timid to confront him honestly. She hides it, just as she hides her macaroons. She is also resourceful in her means of playing upon Torvald, indulging his fancy, whether by flirtation, practicing the Tarantella, begging for money, begging Torvald to reinstate Krogstad, and playing upon Doctor Rank’s affections.

By the end of the play, those middle class values will be overturned, even shattered. The play exposes a seething clash of values: on one side is the importance of social convention, keeping up the appearance of honesty and respectability, fearing public opinion – and the means for maintaining and stabilizing these appearances: infantilized relationships, a world of fakery and pretense, of money grubbing and ruthless social climbing. Pitted against these forces are an unorthodox morality (Nora’s justifiable “crimes”, Krogstad’s ad hoc ethics, a liberated individualism, the importance of honesty, passion, realism, dignity, and equality in human relationships.

The play also exposes the uncertainty of middle class bourgeois life, the constant economic pressures of paying bills, getting ahead, buying the right stuff. Fortunes can change in a day. Reputations can be tarnished. Torvald compromises his individuality and humanity for the sake of his position at the bank. Remember, he fires a man on Christmas eve, essentially so he can make himself look more authoritative and respectable. These are the lengths one goes to in modern life to preserve one’s status and self image. Nora, however, will change: she will arrive at a point where she must revolt against her assigned role and claim her individuality. It takes her three acts to get there, but get there she does.

Materialism v. People. Another central theme of this play is the importance placed on materialism rather than people. This is particularly important for Torvald, whose sense of manhood depends on his independence. In fact, he was an unsuccessful barrister because he refused to take "unsavory cases". As a result, he switched to the bank, where he primarily deals with money. In other words, money and materialism can be seen as a way to avoid the muddiness of personal contact. He is disgusted by his former friend Krogstad. He is embarrassed to be around him, and he wants him out of his sight because Krogstad doesn’t pay him the proper respect. Torvald, to put it mildly, is very status conscious. He is so busy upholding his duty as middle class standard bearer and dominant husband that he’s forgotten that above all that, he’s a human being.

Women, men, and gender inequality. The play focuses on the way that women are seen in bourgeois society, especially in the context of marriage and motherhood. Torvald, in particular, has a very narrow definition of a woman's role. He believes that it is the sacred duty of a woman to be a good wife and mother. Moreover, he tells Nora that women are responsible for the morality of their children. In essence, he sees women as both child-like, helpless creatures detached from reality and influential moral forces responsible for the purity of the world through their influence in the home.

Nora, as a symbol of woman, is called a number of names by Torvald throughout the play. These include "little songbird", "squirrel", "lark", "little featherhead", "little skylark", "little person", and "little woman". Torvald is extremely consistent about using the modifier "little" before the names he calls Nora. These are all usually followed by the possessive "my", signaling Torvald's belief that Nora is his. Torvald's chosen names for Nora reveal that he does not see her as an equal by any means; rather, Nora is at times predictable and silly doll and at times a captivating and exotic pet or animal, all created for Torvald.

The perception of manliness is also dramatized, though in a much more subtle way. Torvald's conception of manliness is based on the value of total independence. He abhors the idea of financial or moral dependence on anyone. His desire for independence leads to the question of whether he is out of touch with reality. He doesn't realize how dependent he really is on his wife, on the unscrupulous and inferior Krogstad, and society at large. With Torvald, be on the look out for dramatic irony. He is very blind to what’s really going on in his household. Blind to the loan, blind to Dr. Rank’s affections, blind to Nora’s motivations.

Nora believes in the lie that her husband is heroic, a defender of her honor, who will sacrifice his own reputation to cover her shame. This is a key motivation for her action. She really believes in the romantic love ideal. Torvald will be her Tristan. He will be her knight in shining armor. He will sacrifice his honor for love. But we know better than that. And she learns that harsh lesson in act III. Torvald will never be able to live outside his predestined social role. Honor means too much for him to sacrifice it for a mere woman.

Dramatic Reversals. Comparing the husband and wife reveals significant differences. Where Torvald is conventional, Nora has an independent streak. Where Torvald seeks to save the surface appearance (the doll house fiction) at all costs (by saving face), Nora learns to face the reality that their life has been built on pretense, on a foundation of sand.

Nora begins as a deceiver/concealer and ends as a revealer. She begins as a student child and ends as a the authority, the teacher of her husband. From plaything to serious adult. From cheerful trophy wife to clear thinking individual. She is assisted in this transformation by the actions of Krogstad and Linde, who act as foils to Torvald and Nora.

Krogstad begins as villain and ends as hero (savior). Torvald moves from heroic savior to cowardly lion.

Kristine and Krogstad progress from delinquent, desperate loneliness to practical companionship.

As a couple, Nora and Torvald progress from fake to real, from doll fantasy to human reality.

Unfortunately, this progression also results in the dissolution of their marriage, which has no basis for continuing.

I think Ibsen is implying here that they are better off being honest with themselves, living separate lives as individuals, than they are living in the fantasy world of deception and lies. There is some hope that they will learn to grow up, maybe. And yet, society IS stacked against Nora. Her road will not be easy from here. She will be reviled, seen as a pariah. As a woman in this society, she has no power, no means of support.

Analysis of Acts

Act One

Setting: The first Act takes place on Christmas Eve. However, though there is a great deal of talk about morality throughout the play, Christmas is never presented as a religious holiday, and religion as a concept is later questioned by Nora in the third Act. In fact, it is discussed primarily as a material experience. This emphasis is similar to the general theme of the centrality of material goods over personal connection. Christmas is also the time of death (beginning of winter) and rebirth (or the promise of rebirth).

Note how Nora's first line is “Hide the tree, well, Helene.” From the beginning she is deceiving, concealing. It is a pattern. She hides the tree, the gifts, her secrets.

Act One explores the world of materialism and social reality in the play. We have the happy prospect of Torvald's promotion. Financial well being is within sight. “A wonderful thing” is about to happen. Nora will finally be able to pay off the loan, escape the shadow of Krogstad's secret. Happy days are here again. Not that they ever weren’t happy, for the Helmers are one of those families that always seems to be doing just fine.

Note how Nora plays upon her husband. She plays the part of the little squirrel, the baby doll, the charmer. She cajoles him into giving her money. This has become a bad habit. She has accepted a prefabricated social role as the spendthrift woman who uses her charms to wheedle her husband and get her way. Torvald thinks she is irresponsible, fragile, weak, flighty, playful, and beautiful. His role is that of the dominant male: protector, provider, lawgiver, patriarch, upholder of moral standards and clarity.

Helmer is the standard bearer for middle class bourgeois values: never borrow, never get into debt, be frugal, but also climb the ladder, get the promotion, get ahead in life. The problem though is that by insisting on these values, he would have, had his wife not intervened to save his life ten years ago, be dead of illness because he was too stubborn to go to Italy. He’s also a hypocrite of sorts, not because of the loan, which he doesn’t know about anyway, but because of his behavior towards Krogstad. He has no pity, no empathy; he doesn’t see how much like Krogstad he is, or is capable of being. Instead, he just cares about himself.

After a few pages of exposition which establishes the type of marriage relationship they have, we have the beginning of rising action. Until this point we the audience are unaware that Nora is concealing anything from anybody, but the secrecy theme is already there. Ibsen has carefully planted it.

Note the triple repetition of “wonderful” which cues Mrs. Linde's entrance. Kristine comes in to beg for a job. And also to complicate the plot.

Kristine is a dramatic foil to Nora. When they converse, they expose character traits that compare and contrast nicely. Kristine is a widow, Nora is married. Kristine didn’t love her husband, Nora (apparently) does. Kristine is childless, Nora has three kids. Kristine is financially need, Torvald's been promoted and the Helmers are poised to succeed. Kristine’s parents have died, so have Nora’s. Kristine’s been forced to work, Nora apparently doesn’t, though secretly she has been working quite hard to repay the loan. You could almost see it this way: Kristine in Nora, when viewed by outward appearances, are quite different. But remember that Nora’s identity has a fault line running through it. There is her private self that she conceals from Torvald. At this inner level, she has more in common, is more comparable to Kristine.

Here is where situational irony enters the picture. Krogstad is getting fired, and Linde is going to replace him. Ironic. Doubly ironic is the revelation that Krogstad the forger has lent money to Nora, who forged a signature to get the money, and whose husband is the man firing him, which will destroy the public reputation he has been striving to reclaim. Krogstad's livelihood is at stake, so he puts the screws to Nora, insisting that she get his job back, or else he'll reveal the loan to Torvald. He has also figured out, being a forger himself, that Nora has forged her father's signature. Then there is the dramatic irony with Torvald's ignorance of the forgery. Once it is revealed to the audience, Torvald's blindness to the truth is heightened.

The theme of poison, moral corruption and decay is introduced through Helmer and Rank. This house is diseased, the disease of conceit and deception.

Act One is all about defining human identity in social terms -- how you look, your reputation is paramount. Torvald thinks he can protect his family from social disgrace, the kind of moral corruption Rank speaks of. They are above it, they think. Krogstad comes from the outside (as does Linde) to threaten Nora with social disgrace. This is a direct threat to her and Torvald's identity. But it is the identity of social appearances which is at stake.

ACT II

Setting: The Christmas tree has been stripped bare and the candles are burnt down. Symbolic? You bet.

Act II is the rising action phase of the plot showing Nora’s desperate attempts to escape her predicament. Tensions mount.

The play’s thematic accent shifts from the social façade of Act I to the psychological level. Characters begin to strip away their outer layers and reveal their interior motivations. But until we get to ACT III, we won’t get authentic revelations. In Act II, the psychological insight remains blind. Nora and Torvald have perpetuated myths about themselves, about their identities. They don’t truly understand who they are and what motivates them. Torvald professes his heroism, that he would do anything to defend his family and wife. He sees himself as the gallant knight in shining armor. Nora considers the “wonderful thing” that Torvald would do for her (namely, take the fall for the forgery), and she sees herself in melodramatic terms, as someone who will have to resort to, namely suicide to save her husband the shame and infamy of stigmatization. It is a faux heroic gesture, because she is not capable of suicide. It is important to note that she is contemplating it, and by Act III is on the brink of it. She is thinking of how Torvald and the children would get on without her.

Torvald and Nora continue living in the illusion world. They aren't just deceiving each other, they're deceiving themselves.

In Act II we also learn more about Krogstad’s motivations and Dr. Rank’s terminal condition and his true feelings for Nora.

She begs Torvald to rehire Krogstad. He refuses. As she grows more desperate you can begin to detect a stronger will in Nora, which is preparing the audience for her breakout scene in Act III. She begins standing up to Torvald. It does not have a good effect. In fact it worsens the situation. Torvald sends his letter of dismissal promptly, ironically accelerating the doom that is approaching both of them.

Nora appeals for help to Dr. Rank. Rank is more than willing to do anything for her, but he makes the mistake of confessing his love for her, another psychological revelation. This one happens to be not a myth but reality. Why does Nora refuse to ask for the money from him or ask him to influence Torvald’s decision? It seems this would have solved many of her problems. She can't take money from him now, because it would be a betrayal, it would almost be like adultery. She is still concerned about keeping up appearances. She's still acting the role of the doll wife. Wouldn’t she seem to be prostituting herself for these favors? One can only guess. But maybe even more importantly, Dr. Rank has violated the social decorum, the pretend game that everyone has been playing. He has good reason to violate it because he is running out of time. He must confess his true feelings. But importantly, at this stage in the game, Nora can’t handle the truth. She cannot deal with too much reality. She isn’t used to real feelings. So she evades Dr. Rank’s offer, shuns it, and turns to something she knows better: deceit and pretense. She dances her tarantella with wild abandon, to show Torvald how much instruction she still needs. This is all fakery done to stall the action.

Dr. Rank. The juxtaposition of their entrances at the beginning of the play (they enter together) suggests that there is something similar about the two. In fact, given both the theatrical standards of the time and the expectations of women, it is easy to see that they might be considered moral forces within the play. In fact, Dr. Rank represents the male moral figure that had been common to plays at the time that Ibsen was writing. Dr. Rank's character usually provided moral standards on which the other, more confused characters of the play could depend. However, Dr. Rank subverts this role. He is both physically and morally tainted. He is dying from a disease begotten from his father's early sexual indiscretions, the son’s body rotting, suffering for the sins of the father. Additionally, though he presents himself as a great friend to the Helmers, his motives are far from pure, for he is in love with Nora. He is playing games too. His views on moral decay are bitter and probably self-reflective.

Dr. Rank becomes a force for honesty in the play; his terminal disease is a reminder of the death looming for all. His body is dying and in Act II he seizes one of his last opportunities to be honest with Nora about his love for her. His existential confrontation with death has made him realize that one has only so many opportunities in life to be true. It should be added, however, the Dr. Rank is not entirely free of social role playing. He is going to secretly hide himself away to die so no one has to deal with death. In a way he is keeping up appearances too. He certainly is not honest with Torvald. His presence is more subversive. He is not a wise older man dispensing sage advice. He is a “rank”, decaying, diseased individual who learns to accept his terminal fate.

Mrs. Linde, similarly, represents the hollowness of the role of wife and mother. Left destitute and unhappy by an unloving marriage, she has derived her livelihood from being useful to others. However, when she is left alone, she only feels empty. Her life has been based upon appeasing material wants for herself and for others and has had little to do with personal growth. Now that she is alone, she is terribly unhappy and in despair. She needs a companion. She needs to adopt the role of wife and mother again. There is something good and bad about this, I suppose. The good is that when she ultimately reunites with Krogstad, we get a sense that her life will improve. There will be more meaning to her life, more of a sense of purpose. The bad side is that she is so dependent on the roles of wife and mother that there is no other way for her to be happy. One would hope she could have the option of being an individual on her own.

Both Dr. Rank and Mrs. Linde enter the play as influences on Nora and Torvald. Dr. Rank is a foil for Torvald's unyielding sense of morality. Rank is the underbelly of Torvald’s incessant moralizing. Mrs. Linde is a foil for Nora's belief in the importance of motherhood and marriage. Mrs. Linde’s circumstance also foreshadows where Nora may be headed. A life of lonely wandering, working for herself.

The Tarantella. A tarantella is a folk dance from southern Italy that accelerates from its already quick tempo and alternates between major and minor keys. In its constant fluctuation, it is like Nora's character. In this Act, it serves as Nora's last chance to be Torvald's doll, to dance and amuse him. Also, the tarantella is commonly (and falsely) known as a dance that is supposed to rid the dancer of the bite of the tarantula. Applied to the play, its use suggests that Nora is trying to rid herself of the deadly poison of an outside force, however fruitlessly. Rather than alleviating the bite, though, the music and her life only continue to accelerate and spin out of control.

ACT III

This is where the major revelations all come out. The climax of the play and the denouement. We turn from the sham public/social persona of Act One, and the false psychological myths of Act Two, to the realities of the existential self. No more time for games. We’re down to business for real.

For Linde and Krogstad, the existential news is good – faced with personal despair and economic ruin, they turn to each other with honesty and love, and they “do the right thing.” They reveal their true feelings for one another. They see that being together might be the best way for them to realize their potential. It is the one positive outcome in the play.

Mrs. Linde realizes that the truth needs to come out for the good of Nora and Torvald, and Krogstad realizes that he must send the IOU (the bond) back as a gesture of compassion and good will. They “get it”. So what is being set up here? Torvald will learn of Nora’s deception, her forgery, and the jeopardy to his status and reputation. But Krogstad’s good deed will be to remove the threat by returning the bond. Without that, there is no blackmail.

The existential forecast is not so bright for Nora and Torvald. Reality crushes in on them. The tarantella dance ends. Nora’s desperate attempt to stave off reality is coming to an end. The party’s over. Dr. Rank exits their lives to go and die. There is no more time for dancing, play acting, or sexual fantasy. The false pretenses occluding their lives keep getting interrupted, first by Kristine’s presence, then by Rank.

In their moment of crisis, when Torvald finally reads the letter, both characters fail to be what they thought they were in Act II. Nora fails to sacrifice herself through suicide, and Torvald proves himself to be an insensitive, judgmental, cowardly fool. He doesn't do the wonderful thing Nora was expecting. He isn’t even close to wonderful.

Faced with the real truth, Nora rebels against her pre-determined roles as wife and mother after rejecting another choice forced upon her – to commit suicide. Why does she want to commit suicide? To save Torvald from the shame of having to stand up for her and risk his reputation by defying Krogstad, which she is certain he will do. Only after she realizes that she is incapable of self-sacrifice (another fantasy) and only after she sees Torvald's failure to be heroic under pressure, his fear and his cowardice at the very moment when heroism was demanded, does she choose to abandon her husband and her children.

Why does she confront Torvald then leave him? She needs to discover her own identity. “Who am I?” She needs to develop her own self consciousness, a mature sensibility, free of male oversight.

A major epiphany ensues. Nora puts on that dark dress. No more costumes. What does she know for the first time? That her husband is a stranger, that she is a stranger to him. That they don't have a serious marriage. That her father and husband have prevented her from discovering who she is as person. That she doesn't really know for herself the first thing about religion, morality, love, motherhood. She knows just how ignorant she is. And she realizes that it is up to her to find these things out for herself. This is her primary duty, the duty to yourself. It is your duty, Ibsen in telling us, too. It's your duty as an individual in modern middle class society to figure out who you are. Don't just accept the values you're given. Test them against your own experience. Discover who you are, what you love. Learn about the world. This doesn’t mean you need to be a selfish egoist. It means that before you can be there for somebody, before you even know who you want to be with in a marriage, you need to discover and develop your own life.

All that was familiar has been made strange. But what would be the “most wonderful thing” of all, the miracle discussed at the end of the play? What could save both Torvald and Nora? Nothing less than Self-transformation and true marriage, which means a total redefinition of marriage. First you have to transform yourself into an authentic human being, and then you can come together with another true human being as equals.

This implies a radical reordering or reform of society, I think. Society must be dematerialized. Economic priorities need to be deemphasized in favor of humane values. Everybody deserves equal rights, equal opportunity, education, and complete liberty. You can imagine what a bombshell this was in society when Nora slammed that door shut at the end of the play. It reverberated throughout Europe.

Conclusion

Ibsen has structured his play with intricate dramatic linkages, situational and dramatic ironies, dramatic foils, clearly drawn character motivations, and smart stagecraft welded to theme. Here we experience an art form that exposes the fraudulent face of social convention.

It exposes the clash of individual against middle class society, freedom vs. convention, independence vs. conformity, honesty vs. deception, truth and lies, the private, authentic self buried by the public persona.

The play strips the middle class of everything they thought they valued. It questions the traditional basis for marriage. It shows us the materialistic demands forced upon people and spotlights the desperate measures they will take to regain a reputation or save one. And even though women have come a long way (baby) since Nora slammed that door at the end of Act III, the play continues to unsettle audiences.

Why? We're still preoccupied with middle class virtues, we still have plenty of stocks and securities held in the advantages of law and authority, in keeping up appearances and saving reputations, in getting ahead, in the ideal trophy wife at the side of the buff rich man with the bronze tan, in the righteousness of money, the productive grace of the protestant work ethic, in the defense of a man's honor and the right to be kings of the castle (or as Bernard Shaw called them, suburban Kings Arthur).

Ibsen's social problem play feels all too realistic. The pressures points are still there. A bit of progress in women's rights doesn't keep it from cutting to the bone, for ultimately this is not a play about women only, but about all humanity. To reduce A Doll's House to feminist agit prop is to do it an injustice. The play champions the cause of women, and feminists are right to sing its praises. There is nothing trivial about that. But the play’s reach extends beyond women’s rights. Ibsen is defending the rights of individual self determination. You (man or woman) have the right, even the obligation, to figure out who you are, what's important to you, to exercise your freedom and independence, to educate yourself, learn from experience, and only then will you be prepared to accept someone else into your life, in what Nora calls a true marriage. That would be "the most wonderful thing" of Act Three.

What makes the play socially dangerous is the realization that even the socially powerful, the Torvalds who are in charge, the rich and famous and respected, are no more self-realized than the powerless. Torvald by play's end, is a mess. Mr. Middle Class has been cut to size. He has been found wanting and is left in shambles. He is not the man he thought he was. He's been pretending, and he's been blinded by his own platitudes and attitudes. His middle class virtues haven't made him truly happy. As Nora puts it near the end of the play, she has never been happy in this marriage, only cheerful. There's a huge difference between cheerfulness and happiness. Middle class wealth might bring good cheer, champagne and Cuban cigars, but it won't get you any nearer to the truth of yourself. The middle class emperor has no clothes.

I don't think audiences have really come to grips with the suggestiveness of this play's themes. For if bourgeois values are nothing more than false fronts, the moral equivalent of a Hollywood backlot, then a different kind of society is needed to foster true freedom for individuals. Ibsen doesn't hint at a clear answer to the question of what such a society would look like. He's too good an artist to proscribe a solution. It's not the job of an artist to proscribe solutions. I would suggest it'd have to be the kind of society where people were free from the necessity of money grubbing, where they weren't living in constant fear of financial ruin, where all had equal rights under the law and equal access to education, and where everyone who wanted to work, could. A society founded on basic human dignity, that valued common humanity above almighty profit and social status.

A Doll's House is not an exhilarating nor a liberating play. It is a gut wrencher. It is, arguably a kind of tragedy, depending on how you interpret the ending. Nora abandons her family for a future that can't lead to much good, at least by middle class standards. Nora, however, IS free. And that for Ibsen is preferable and a necessary prerequisite. On the ruins of the Helmer's marriage, something better could be born. The seeds of that birth are in the play itself, in the relationship between Krogstad and Linde, and in the possibilities raised in Nora’s exit scene. Krogstad and Linde are imperfect creatures. They're not perfect. Far from it. But they are capable of self-redemption and forgiveness. They are shipwrecked sailors joining hands to save themselves. Theirs will be a marriage of equals, freely chosen, not for the sake of reputation or looks, but for love and the desire to live for someone else, although it must be added that there is certainly an element of economic dependence that comes to play here as well. Ibsen shows us through Krogstad and Linde that he is not an enemy of marriage at all. Rather, he's struggling to redefine marriage on equal terms. As for Nora, her instructive discussion with Torvald at the end of the play diagnoses what is so wrong with so many marriages, even today. Her prescribed path for achieving a true marriage of individuals with equal rights is certainly a road less traveled.

Discussing "The Judgment" by Franz Kafka

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 06:03:22 PST

Some preliminary discussion points on a classic Kafka short story...

A book must be like an axe to the frozen sea within us, says Kafka in a famous quote, which speaks to his belief that literature can transform a person by opening them up to the depths within. It is important for readers to break through the clutter and walls that enclose them. Kafka thought it would take a certain kind of art to cut through the ice, namely a violent, disturbing, unsettling art -- art to make you uncomfortable, art that grabs you and won’t let go.

"The Judgment" is that kind of art. Kafka himself thought of it as breakthrough story in his own artistic development. He wrote it during a long September evening, and afterward expressed satisfaction in his achievement. Clearly the story has biographical overtones. It is a story of deep resentment between father and son, ending with the father’s sentencing Georg to death by drowning, an act which he promptly, impulsively, and dutifully performs to somehow prove his love of his parents.

What begins as a mild mannered almost sleepy story of Georg’s letter writing and decision to announce his engagement to his distant friend in St. Petersburg, takes a sudden and awful turn when he discusses the letter and friend with his father. “Am I covered up yet?” the father asks. “No!” he shouts, throwing off the blankets, standing on the bed, whereupon he mocks, shames, and brutally takes apart his son. It happens so suddenly that we as readers, like George the protagonist, are thrown off balance, horrified.

The story plays out like a nightmare. Reeling from this relentless guilt trip, Georg is squashed by the domineering parent. It is easy to see Freudian echoes here: the deep Oedipal conflict between father and son: the father who feels threatened and challenged by the younger generation, who feels he is being displaced and ultimately replaced, who doesn’t feel respected or properly cared for; and the son who has been gaining in power and influence, is about to marry (and play the role of father himself), and is ready to assume a parental role towards the old man. At the same time he has been neglecting or ignoring his father (remember he has not visited Dad's room in a long time).

Another angle worth pursuing is to compare the characters of Georg and his friend. Georg is the man of society, engaged, a success in business, who has stayed at home to care for the family and business, while his friend is in another country, friendless, single, struggling to make it on his own. Are these two characters symbolically two sides of the same person? Some critics have asserted that Georg and his friend represent two sides of Kafka: the stay-at-home dutiful (yet resentful) son and the more authentic, single artist pursuing his life’s work for better or worse.

No matter what interpretation we lay over this story, we may get the sense that we can’t quite point exactly to a particular meaning. The story resists any reductive reading. What can’t be resisted is the gravitational pull of the tense energy produced by the maelstrom of family tensions between father and son. Just as Georg was compelled to meet his death by drowning, so we are drawn into Kafka’s fictional world, where he breaks down the walls of realism , sending us down into deeper psychological meanings where emotional pain and dislocated identities take over. Kafka’s fiction follows a kind of surreal dream logic where we sense that we’ve arrived at something important and fitting, even though we can’t exactly delineate a coherent representation of something other than the story itself.

Notes on The Death of Ivan Ilych

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:38:04 PST

This novella by Leo Tolstoy, is one of the great summits of existential literature. It tackles some of the most essential themes faced by human beings: what is the right way to live? Why do we see the artificial life and forego a life of more authenticity? What does the awareness of mortality do to us? Why is it a necessity that we face death head-on, and how does this confrontation bring meaning to life? What are the merits of a life lived on behalf of the body versus the soul?

Yeah, it's that big.

Below are chapter summaries with interspersed commentary. Page references come from the Dover Thrift Edition.

Chapter 1
We open with the news that Ivan has died. An account in the newspaper. The setting is the law courts. Among the men gathered, Peter Ivanovich sees the obituary in the paper. The first thing they think about is not Ivan's life and the sense of loss (although he was "well liked") but what this will do to advance their own careers. Who will be promoted? What changes will occur now that Ivan is gone?
The second reaction produced among the men of the court is the "complacent feeling that it is he who is dead and not I" (16). Tolstoy's narrator is revealing the insensitivity of death. It doesn't really affect you unless it happens to you or to one very close to you. Going to the funeral then becomes a burden for others. It is an obligation. One must go, but it intrudes on your comfortable routine. Peter Ivanonich drives to Ivan's house to express his condolences to the family. He's not certain exactly how to behave (17). Why? Perhaps because most people prefer to keep death at a distance. They don't like to think about it. They arrange their lives to avoid its contemplation. They are not living an existentially authentic life, which means that they are not in touch with the truly important things in life. What are the important things that give life meaning? We don't know yet, but by the end of the story we'll have a better idea.

In the first chapter note the brief appearance of the butler's assistant Gerasim, whom the narrator tells us Ivan was particularly fond of. Gerasim will prove to be a vital character in the story.

We then see Ivan's dead body through the eyes of Peter Ivanovich: it has a quiet dignity that Ivan didn't have in life. There is also the suggestion that the dead man's face is signalling a warning to the living. What is the warning? Tolstoy is arousing our curiosity. This will be a story about mortality, and what an awareness of death can teach us.

Ivanovich's friend Schwartz is waiting for him in the other room. He makes it clear that the funeral will not intrude on their planned card game later that day. At this point we see Ivan's widow Praskovya Fedorovna, who invites them into the service. We get the sense that the scene is operating on two tracks: the "official pretense" of mourning that is proper for a funeral, and the undercurrent of impatience and insensitivity. In conversation with Ivanovich, Praskovya Fedorovna speaks of Ivan's terrible suffering at the end and she says she can't understand how SHE bore it, which indicates I think, I kind of selfishness on her part, focusing on her suffering, not Ivan's. Anyway, the conversation strikes Peter Ivanovich with horror, how his old mate could have suffered so. It makes him afraid of his own death; however, he beats back the fear by reassuring himself that this happened to Ivan; it couldn't happen to him. And why give into depressing thoughts like that?

Praskovya Fedorovna turns the conversation towards matters of practicality: how to get a government grant after her husband's death. How much of a pension is she entitled to? We see that even Ivan's widow is thinking beyond the funeral towards the business of life. Another suggestion of insensitivity.

We are then introduced to the priest, Ivan's daughter and her fiance, and his schoolboy son. During the service, Peter avoids looking at the dead man. He is avoiding the confrontation with death. He is one of the first to exit after the service. He has no time for death. Note Gerasim's prescient words to him as he leaves: "We shall all come to it some day," he says (21). Gerasim gets it. His point of view contrasts with the others, as we will discover later in the story. Peter Ivanoich escapes the confining atmosphere of the funeral and arrives at a friend's house where he enters into the card game.

In this first chapter, Tolstoy has shuffled the normal order of the story. The plot (sujet) begins at the end of the story (fabula): Ivan's death is announced and we go to the funeral. The omniscient narrator views the action through one of the supporting characters, Peter Ivanonich, a friend and colleague of Ivan, a man of society who wants to avoid thinking about death. We have been introduced to several of the major characters already, and Tolstoy has introduced one of his major themes: the confrontation with mortality, and the unavoidable reality of death, despite our efforts to ignore and avoid it.

Chapter 2
Tolstoy's narrator starts with brutal honesty: "Ivan Ilych's lief had been most simple and most ordinary and therfor most terrible" (22). Ivan is just like you and me and everyone else. He is an "everyman". There is nothing extraordinary about him. But strangely, the narrator concludes that this means his life was terrible. What could be terrible about an ordinary, normal life? Ahh, that is what we will find out.

The plot now jumps to the beginning of the story: the life of Ivan Ilych. He died at age 45. He was a member of the court of justice. His father was a government official in St. Petersburg. Ivan was the second of three sons. The youngest son was the failure, the black sheep of the family. He had one sister. Ivan was known as the phoenix of the family (22), a description that will become thematically relevant later in the story, because Ivan's spirit will rise like the mythological phoenix, from the ashes of his decaying self, his body in death. Ivan is a likeable person: he is smart, refined, pleasant, easy to get along with, sociable. He went to law school. Ivan was drawn to people of high standing in life. The narrator tells us that as he matured from childhood to adulthood "he succumbed to sensuality, to vanity, and latterly among the highest classes to liberalism, but always within limits which his instinct unfailingly indicated to him as correct" (23).

After graduating from law school, he fitted himself for civil service and a career of social climbing. He bought new clothes, wore a medallion around his watch chain with the inscription "respice finem" (think of the end) on it. This, like the phoenix, is thematically important. As a young man, he fit into society well. He had an affair, occassionally went to the brothels, sowed some wild oats, but did so in the "proper" way. He did not overdo these indiscretions, and there was nothing about his habits that could be considered out of character for a man of his social position.

Ivan was a civil servant for five years then was promoted to the position of Examining Magistrate. He lived a decourous and proper life. He gained in social power and status. He never abused his power, but he felt important. He made new connections, new friends. He settled in a new town. He lived for two years there and met his wife, Praskovya Fedorovna. He was a good dancer. He and and his wife made a good match. His marriage was the appropriate thing to do at his age. His wife met with social approval and gave him personal satisfaction, but the narrator hesitates to admit that he married her out of pure love. It was the thing to do, so he did it.

When his wife got pregnant, Ivan's marraige became disagreeable. He felt like his marital obligations were disturbing his normal pleasures and the "propriety" of his life. His wife got jealous, demanded his uncompromised attention, picked at him and caused fights. He became henpecked. And he realized that married life was "not always conducive to the pleasures and amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed both comfort and propriety, and that he must herefore entrench himself against such infringement" (27). He started liberating himself by means of his work duties. He now thought of his married life solely as a means for satisfying basic conveniences: meals and domestic comforts, and the appearance of social normality demanded by public opinion.

Three years later, Ivan is promoted to Assistant Public Prosecutor. His devotion to work has paid off with increasing social status and power. His wife has more children and becomes more disagreeable, but Ivan has in effect innoculated himself from his homelife troubles. He can always escape into his work. After seven years of service, he is transferred to a new province. He gets a raise, but the cost of living is higher. Two of his children die. The hostilties between he and his wife increase, and their moments of affection are briefer and more distantly spaced. They becoome more aloof. The sad thing is that Ivan doesn't do anything about this widening gulf; he thinks it is "normal". He spends less time with his family, disengaging and escaping further into his official life. This life continues for another 16 years. Another child dies, his daughter reaches the age of 16, and there is one scholboy son left.

In this chapter, Tolstoy begins the chronological sequence of Ivan's life. Notice the rapidity with which he is telling the tale. After the concentrated scene of chapter one (the funeral day), we cover the first 43 years of his life, from 1837 to 1880 in the space of one chapter. That is a lot of territory to cover. We breeze through his youth, his years in law school, his years of upward mobility and the first 17 years of marriage. What are the priorities in Ivan's life? Honor, duty, status, respect, power, the appearance of normality, propriety. Social acceptance, doing what is expected. In the outward view, Ivan's made a pretty good life of it so far. His marriage is far from ideal, but then again, isn't that normal?

Chapter 3
Now some wrinkles appear on the face of Ivan's life. He is passed over for a promotion he was counting on, and he takes offense. He is passed over again after expressing his irritation. In 1880, the hardest year of his life, his salary is not keeping pace with the cost of living. Nobody seems to care, either. His father won't help. He feels abandoned. His wife nags him for money. That summer, they go to the country on a leave of absence to save money. He experiences ennui (boredom: a disheartened weariness with life) for the first time in his life. And depression. He takes action. He rushes to St. Petersburg to get a new, higher paying position. Unexpectedly, he receives an appointment in his former ministry, two levels above his former coworkers, plus a 5000 ruble salary and moving expenses. He comes back to the country in a good mood. Life is good again. They move into a delightful new house in the city. They make preparations to decorate and furnish the house with nice things. He gets involved in the decorating, and one day, while rehanging curtains, he slips and knocks his side against the knob of a window frame. This bruise will be the seed of his doom. It is as if death has been at his side all along, waiting for an opportunity to strike. He shrugs off the injury initially. Things go well for the family at first. Life is becoming more fulfilling. "[O]n the whole, his life ran its course as he believed life should do: easily, pleasantly, and decorously" (32). Ivan gets involved in his official duties and leads a kind of double life: one being the side of official relations, the other his real life. The two don't mix much. Life, however, is basically normal. "Everything was as it should be" (33). The family hosts a dance, which goes off relatively well, despite an nasty quarrel with his wife. Ivan has been enjoying the life of ambition and vanity (excessive pride in one's appearance, accomplishments, and status), and he passes his idle time playing bridge.

Tolstoy has introduced the suggestion that Ivan's life may not be very fulfilling in the existential sense: this is the source of ennui and depression, but there is a temporary reprieve, as Ivan is able to get a better position, and the family distracts itself with moving in to a nicer home and adapting to society. But the fatal accident happens in this chapter. It is as if amid the plenty and success, the normal flourishing of life, death lies in wait to destroy people.

Chapter 4
Ominous physical symptoms present themselves. Discomfort in his left side, and a bad taste in his mouth. It gets worse. He fights with his wife more. He loses his temper. The wife begins to wish Ivan were dead. Finally she insists he see a doctor. The doctor treats him "officially" in the prescribed way. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ivan wants to know whether his case is serious, but the doctor wouldn't treat the question in those terms. He looked at it as a medical diagnosis, a scientific or technical problem, not a matter of life and death, which it was to Ivan. The doctor, in short, is indifferent to him and Ivan feels self pity. Ivan follows the doctor's orders, takes his medicine, but there is an uncertainty about the proper diagnosis. The pain persists, but Ivan tries to convince himself that he is getting better. He is no longer good at suffering unpleasantness with his wife or at work. Now he gets upset easily and thrown into despair. He gets annoyed at the slightest infringement of his peace. He keeps consulting with doctors and condition continues to get worse. His doubts increase. Different doctors give different diagnoses; do any of them really know? He is confused. He even considers miracle cures, then reproaches himself for being irrational. His breath gets smellier, and he loses his appetite. Everyone around him does'nt understand and life goes on as if nothing terrible is taking place. His wife and daughter get annoyed by his impatience and suffering, as if his illness is his fault. He is not taking his medicine consistently, the wife says. She blames him for his sickness. Even at work, it seems that people are treating him differently. They are starting to imagine that one day he will no longer be there, and his position will be vacant. His friends tease him for being in such low spirits. His illness becomes the butt of their jokes and light-heartedness. All of this is quite alienating. He doesn't even enjoy playing bridge anymore. None of it matters. He is bringing down everyone at the card game with his suffering. His life is poisoned and he is poisoning the lives of others. Knowing all this, and feeling such pain in his side, he has trouble sleeping. "And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him" (40).

This chapter shows the increasing alienation of Ivan as the illness takes over his body. He is steadily being divorced from his former "normal" life. He is increasingly alone with his suffering. Nobody from the doctors to his family to his coworkers and friends really understands or empathizes with him.

Chapter 5
Months pass. When his brother-in-law comes to visit, Ivan immediately sees that his appearance shocks the man. The change is obvious. He looks at himself in the mirror and he senses the enormous changes. Ivan sees his friend Peter Ivanovich about seeing another doctor, who says the problem is his vermiform appendix, which might come out right in the end. Ivan is sleeping, symbolically I might add, alone in his study -- has been since the onset of illness. He tries to convince himself that night that his appendix is getting better, but the old familiar pain returns. He realizes this night that this has less to do with his appendix or kidney and everything to do with his life and death. "Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it" (42). He faces the terror of his death. He admits to himself that he is indeed dying. Nobody else is willing or able to admit it, and nobody else cares, he tells himself. There is no pity for him. He is angry, miserable, as in other parts of the house, a party is going on. His wife checks in on him and kisses him. He hates her "from the bottom of his soul" (43).

The reality of death has thundered upon Ivan. He is terrified by the thought of dying. He wants to cling to life. He resents that noone understands or cares. At this point, the novel enters into Ivan's mind directly. We see his interior thoughts. Death has forced him to finally have an interior life.

Chapter 6
Now that he knows he is dying, Ivan is thrown into despair. He knows with his rational mind that all men die, but he cannot grasp that this truth could apply to him. Surely not to me, Ivan, could death come. I am not abstract. I am real. It is too terrible to think that this individual person, not an abstract man, could actually die. He is thinking morbid thoughts. He strives to return to his old ways of thinking, which had ignored or screened him from death. He wants to devote himself to his duties again. But while at work, the pain gnaws at him. He can't ignore it; he can't imagine it away or distract himself from its presence. He wonders whether death alone is the only truth. He makes mistakes at work, loses focus. IT (death) is drawing his attention not to deliver him from IT, but simply to confront it and suffer for it. He seeks new screens to hide himself from death, but nothing will accomplish such an impossible feat.

Ivan cannot escape his fate. He denies death, he attempts to distract himself, but this intractable impersonal force will not leave his side. It will not leave him alone. The reality of his death is forcing itself upon him, and he must confront the reality of his life.

Chapter 7
The third month of Ivan's illness. Everyone is aware that he soon will die and it is only a matter of time. It is as if everyone is waiting for him to leave them in peace. He is increasingly doped on opium and morphine; it is only temporarily helpful. He loses his taste for foods. He has to be cared for with respect to his bowel movements too. The peasant Gerasim, the butler's assistant, is the man for the job. He cleans up after Ivan. Ivan is embarrassed about making him clean up after him, but Gerasim, a strong, healthy youth, takes the chore in stride, saying "what's a little trouble? It's a case of illness with you, sir" (47). Gerasim lifts him, supports him, and carries him to the sofa. This makes a powerful impression on Ivan. Finally, someone has supported him. Gerasim holds up his legs, which brings some comfort to Ivan. He doesn't feel the pain, and Gerasim is glad to be of assistance. This becomes a new routine, the good natured Gerasim holding Ivan's legs, bringing comfort. Gerasim's innocent strength is soothing to Ivan. Gerasim is not a phony. Ivan resents the lie going about that he is merely ill and not dying. Death is teaching him to value the truth over the deceptions of life. He realizes that nobody really cares about him. Nobody feels pity. No one has empathy. Except Gerasim. Gerasim doesn't lie. He very simply feels sorry for his master. He says directly: "We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble" (49). An ethical principle is being espoused here: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He does not begrudge helping a dying man, because he would want someone to do the same for him when it came time for him to die. Ivan just wants someone to feel sorry for him, to care for him, pet him, as one would do to a child. But instead, he has to pretend that he is still a man of high status. He must keep up appearances. He must prop up his pretender soul, as Saul Bellow would put it in his novella Seize the Day. This falsity embitters him.

This chapter gravitates around the theme of empathy as embodied in the character of Gerasim. Gerasim is a foil to the upscale society of Ivan's friends, coworkers and family. Gerasim is genuine, honest, and sympathetic. Simple values that Tolstoy's narrator is contrasting against the insincere, deceptive, and ignorant others, who happen to be the "normal and respectable" people of society. By implication, something is wrong with a society like this.

Chapter 8
The days lose their meaning for Ivan. His constant pain makes him lose consciousness of time. The only reality is death. In this chapter we learn that the far greater pain is his "mental anguish". The spiritual sickness is far worse than the bodily sickness, as bad as that is. Ivan vacillates between hope (the hope he will recover) and despair (the certainty that he won't). The doctor arrives. He puts on an act for Ivan. Ivan sees through his deceptions. Death is teaching him to have acute vision, like a moral xray vision. He can sense falsity, deception, lack of authenticity when it comes in the room, whether it is the doctor, his wife, his friends, his daughter. He realizes that the lawyers he used to work with are just as fake as the doctors. They all lie. He hates his wife. In her attitude, she blames him for making HER suffer. The narrator judges her quite harshly on page 52. Next, a specialist arrives. Ivan is seeking some hope from this man, but the feeling fades out very quickly. Then his wife and family go off to the theater without him. Life is going to go on without him, and nothing will stand in the way of them getting to see the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt. Ivan notices the frightful look of pity on his little boy Vasya's face. Vasya is the only other one besides Gerasim who has genuine pity for him. (54). In the bedroom as the family chit chats, Ivan's eyes are staring with silent indignation (54). Again, he is seeing through the charade here. Death is teaching him to "think of the end" and what is really important. And NONE of this is important in the grand scheme of things.

Chapter 9
The wife returns. In the middle of the night, Ivan is in a "stupified misery". He thinks of himself and his pain as being thrust inside a black sack. The black sack is a symbol of death. He is being pushed into the sack, but he can't be pushed all the way to the bottom. (55) He is afraid of being pushed in, but at the same time, he wants to fall through the sack, so he both struggles and cooperates with the feeling. He breaks through, falls through the sack and wakes up. He sends Gerasim away, then weeps uncontrollably. He is alone, he curses the cruelty of man and God. Why me? He is saying. Then on page 56 he enters fully into his interior consciousness. This is a kind of interior monologue, rendered as a dialogue between Ivan and his soul. He tells the soul he wants to live and not suffer. He wants to live as her used to live: well and pleasantly. And as he remembers these so called pleasant moments in his past, they no longer seem very happy, with the exception of his childhood memories. His adulthood strikes him as trivial, meaningless, nasty, and dare we say "terrible". He is taking account of his life. Surveying, evalauating, and rendering judgment. Life now seems to him worthless, senseless, and he is bitter because he is suffering in terrible agony for such a meaningless existence. Finally, on page 57 he shows evidence of learning something: "maybe I did not live as I ought to have done?" he asks. But how could this be? He followed the rules. He played the game. He lived a normal life. He did everything properly, the way it was supposed to be done. And this is what it came to anyway? But he is still struggling with the answer. He is not satisfied with it. HE struggles against it. We end the chapter with a repudiation of his self-judgment, and he dismisses the whole episode as a strange abberation. He still wants his old life back.

Chapter 10
Two more weeks pass. Ivan is confined to the sofa. Narrative space has shrunk to this isolated and lonely place. The suffering continues. It is so pointless. The altnerating feelings of despair and hope are giving way to fatalism. He is lonely as he lay on the sofa, and in that lonely despair he thinks of his past again, especially his happy childhood memories. The farther back he goes, the more life is there, the happier he was. The illness has taken all that away. He senses that it is impossible to resist death, and he seeks understanding. But he cannot give up the conviction that he lived a proper, good life, and so he can't admit that he didn't live the right kind of life. You should be wondering by now what the right kind of life is. Note how Tolstoy has established a narrative tension. You already know the outcome (Ivan dies), but you read on because you need to know what discoveries dying produces in Ivan.

Chapter 11
Well, it's all getting very bleak now. Another 2 weeks pass, and we learn that Ivan's daughter is getting married. And he now utters the honest truth to his wife. "Let me die in peace" he tells his wife. He tells the doctor to leave him alone. The narrator reminds us (60) that it is his mental suffering that is far worse than the physical suffering. And here is part one of Ivan's epiphany. As he looks at Gerasim, he says "What if my whole life has really been wrong?" It might actually be the truth. What had been considered good by most people wasn't good. HIs impulses to resist which he suppressed was the wrong thing to do. That was real. That is what mattered. All his social climbing, official duties, and inauthentic relations with his family: all wrong. So he now finally begins to accept the truth. That former life has not prepared him in any way to deal with death. He lived a shallow life. He didn't swim in the deep end of life. HE asks 'can I fix it?' Is there still time to get on the right side of life? This is what the end of the book is about. Now he lays back and rescans his life from this new perspective. His entire life has been a deception. A lie. And this awareness brings more physical suffering to him. HIs wife urges him to take communion from the priest, who hears his confession.

Chapter 12
The last 3 days of Ivan's life. He screams for three straight days. The suffering is immense. Time doesn't exist anymore for him. He thinks again of the black sack. He struggles against it. He is being drawn nearer to what terrifies him. Now another way to think of the black sack is to see it as symbolic not just of death, but as the struggles of Ivan in the womb of his rebirth. He is going to be the phoenix rising from the ashes of his old life at the end here. On page 62 he falls through the hole. And what is at the bottom? Not blackness and nothingness, but light. Then Tolstoy offers up an incredible simile, the feeling you get on a train when you think you're going backwards when really you're going forwards. Dying is like that. And now, on the third day (and I feel this has strong religious overtones, referring to Christ's three days in the tomb), Ivan will have part two of his epiphany. Two hours befor dying, he is screaming, and his hand falls upon the head of his son. The boy catches his hand, presses it to his lips, and cries.

Then and there, Ivan falls through, sees the light, and all is revealed. There is still a chance to get on the right side of life. It isn't too late. What is the right thing to do? He asks. He looks at his son kissing his hand. And he FEELS SORRY FOR HIM. Ivan feels empathy. He even FEELS SORRY FOR HIS WIFE. No more grudges, no more bitterness, no more self-pity. Just the realiziation that his suffering is making them suffer, and that it will be better if he lets go of life to leave THEM in peace. He doesn't have the strength to utter these truths to his family, he can only act. He looks at them and says, take him away, sorry for him and you. And with that small gesture, the asking for forgiveness, the thinking for others, the burden lifts from him. This is the spiritual burden, mind you. The physical pain is as bad as ever, but in Tolstoy's view, the body is far less important than the soul. By releasing them, Ivan frees himself from suffering too. What a good and simple message! With that, his fear of death dissipates. Can't find it anywhere. O Death, where is thy sting? IN the place of death, the black sack, there is light. "So that's what it is!" he says. "What joy!" It all happens in an instant, a flash. For two hours, his body goes through the death throes, and at the end, someone calls "It is finished" (another echo of Jesus Christ on the cross), and Ivan's understanding of that sentence is not that his life is finished, but that death is finished. Death is what dies in the end, as his body dies with it. What lives on? His spiritual awakening, his spiritual rebirth. He learned the meaning of life before it was too late.

Now you can interpret the ending religiously if you want. You might talk of near death experiences and what science has or hasn't learned about that. You might take a more philosophical, secular appraoch and say that even though Ivan dies, he died in joy, because he realized the errors of his ways, and he perceived the truth, and he acted upon that truth at the end. He let go. He accepted the reality of death. And he realized that it is only your capacity to love others, to have feeling for them, to express understanding, that life has any value whatsoveer. None of the other stuff means anything when your day of reckoning comes. So in the end, Ivan Ilych is "saved". The phoenix rises again.

As we now reconsider the beginning of the story, the funeral scene, we can reinterpret it. The people at the funeral, with the exception of Gerasim and maybe Vasya (who is still young and innocent), do not "get it". They are blind to the truth. They haven't reconciled themselves with their own death. They are avoiding coming to terms with it. We also learn that Ivan, although he had a personal epiphany at the very end of his life, learned his lesson to late for him to have any lasting impact on anyone else. His life will be rather quickly forgotten by those close to him. He didn't leave an impression. By not living rightly, he failed to show empathy for others, and thus, no one is going to miss him all that much. It is Tolstoy's way of cautioning us. How much better it would be for everyone, if we learned what Ivan learned earlier in life, so we wouldn't waste those precious years of life, so that we would spend them by valuing the truth, love, and compassion for others.

Notes on Tolstoy's narrative technique
The narrator is omniscient third person, directed primarily into the mind of Ivan.

Tolstoy compresses the time sequence to focus acutely on what matters most in Ivan's life.

Chapter 1: the funeral day, establishes the setting and themes
Chapter 2: 40 years of Ivan's life, an accelerated pace thorugh the meaningless years that amount to nothing in existential terms
Chapter 3 and 4: the last year and a half of his life.
Chapters 5 thru 8: the last months
Chapters 9 thru 12: the last 4 weeks

He spends more and more textual space on smaller and smaller time frames.

A parallel development is the contraction of space in the novel. In Chapter 2, Ivan moves from place to place. In Chapter 3, he settles in the house where his accident occurs. In 5-8, he is confined to his study. In 9 - 12 his sofa. This increases the focus on Ivan in his alienation, isolation, loneliness, and his inevitable confrontation with the ultimate reality: the moment of death.

Please do yourself a favor and read (or reread) this book. It matters.

Reading drama

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:54:14 PDT

A really quick one-page introduction for the short attention-spanned...

Drama is the most social of all literary genres because plays are written and produced for live audiences. Whereas reading modern fiction tends to be a solitary affair with a text, and reading a poem is generally a personal experience of that poem, dramas continue to be primarily social experiences of literature.

A play truly cannot be experienced in all its glory unless one sees it acted on the stage. Anyone who has ever viewed or acted in a play should understand the special chemistry that can occur between players and audience during a theatrical production. Each performance is unique, each audience is unique. The meaning of a play thus depends in large measure on the interpretive decisions on the part of the director and actors and stagehands, and on the collective meaning produced in the minds of the audience, which can generally be assumed to share certain cultural assumptions.

The challenge of reading a play is to use your imagination to visualize the play as it might be directed for an audience.

Like fiction, most conventional drama tells a story. It relies heavily on strong characterization (flat and round), conflict, and plot. The means drama uses to deliver narrative are much more limited than what you will find in fiction, however. Plays are limited by physical factors such as the size and configuration of the theater and stage. Setting is limited to what can be fabricated for that space (backdrops, limited props, costumes, lighting). The story must be propelled by means of dialogue, stagecraft, and acting (characters speaking to one another or to themselves). Plays are also limited with respect to time. Stories must be told in a matter of minutes or at most a few hours, so you will find a more economical mode of storytelling than you would find in a long story or novel.

Traditionally, drama has been classified into two types: comedy and tragedy. To put it crudely, comedies are stories with happy endings (marriage, reconciliation, success, etc.). The characters in comedies are fallible; they make mistakes, they misunderstand, yet everything turns out alright in the end. Tragedies are stories with unfortunate and sad outcomes. Characters meet unfortunate fates like death, suicide, destruction, loss of love, despair. Frequently these characters participate in their own downfall; sometimes they are subject to fate or suffer at the hands of their antagonists. In the best tragedies, the unfortunate characters retain some level of dignity or nobility by way of their suffering, and we feel sorry (pity) for them. This contrasts with comedy, which tends to view people as more undignified, foolhardy, vainglorious (after all, they are being made fun of). So there is an interesting blend of contrary motives within each type of drama. The comedic view takes a satirical or low view of people, but lets them off the hook at the end. The tragic view sees the more noble and even heroic side of humankind as they suffer their way down. Melodrama is another type of drama that combines elements of tragedy, high conflict, and suspense, but usually ends happily (the hero reigns victorious). Most Hollywood films have melodramatic, not tragic plots. Tragicomedy is a hybrid genre. In tragicomedy, elements of comedy lighten up an otherwise bleak and sad story. One of the more famous tragicomedies is Beckett's Waiting for Godot, an absurdist drama about two bleak tramps stuck in limbo waiting to meet a man named Godot who never comes. Although the situation is quite tragic (and symbolic of the human condition), the play is also quite funny. That's tragicomedy.

When you read drama, you should focus your attention on the characters, conflicts, and the major stages in the plot. Try to think like an actor, a director, and the audience.

How would you play this role?

How would you express these lines?

What motivates this character? What do they need, want, desire, crave?

What are their intentions in any given scene of the play?

It is perfectly appropriate to probe the psychological depths of dramatic characters, to feel what they feel. The more you connect with those characters, the further “inside” the play you will get, and you will understand more of the inner logic of the play itself.

Pygmalion assignment ideas

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:10:56 PDT

Here are some ideas for discussion or writing topics on Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

- Research the influence Ibsen had on George Bernard Shaw. Is Eliza Doolittle comparable to Nora in any interesting ways? If so, write an essay that explains how one can see Ibsen's influence working its way into Shaw's Pygmalion.

- Research the myth of Pygmalion as represented in Ovid's poem The Metamorphoses. Summarize the myth and show how has Shaw updated the myth for modern audiences. How has he refashioned the raw material and turned it into his own artistic statement?

- One theme prevalent in Pygmalion is the theme of self re-invention. One might argue that this has direct relevance to modern society. Consider the popularity of "makeovers", for instance, as well as the American myth of the "self-made" person, the rugged individual, etc. Explore how one might use the play as a tool to understand and critique these idea of self-invention. What is Shaw saying, and how does that help us understand the phenomenon differently?

- A related theme in Pygmalion is "class mobility." England is notorious for having a well defined and rigid class system. You might analyze Pygmalion as a satire of that system. See if you can identify the major characters as representatives of different British classes (this may require a little bit of research to establish the layers of the British class system). Discuss how Eliza's social mobility generates comedic effects in the play. What exactly is Shaw satirizing? Then select a class system from your native country (for many it will be the United States, but it can be any country). Describe its levels briefly, then discuss the theme of social mobility in that country. What qualities mark a person as a member of a particular social class? Are they the same markers as presented in the play? Would it be easier/harder for an Eliza Doolittle to move up to a higher social class? What factors impact a person's ability to move socially?

Plot analysis of Gottfried's Tristan

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 11:13:52 PDT

Note: chapter divisions are based on the Penguin classics edition.

We can subdivide the plot into four structural sequences, each filled with many episodes.

Part One (Chaps. 1-7) the prehistory. The birth and education of Tristan

Part Two (Chaps. 8 - 16) Tristan in Ireland, falling in love

Part Three (Chaps. 17 - 28) Tristan and Isolde in Cornwall

Part Four (Chaps. 29 - 40) Isolde of the White Hands, the death of the lovers

PART ONE

Chapter 1. Rivalin attacks Morgan. They conclude a one year truce. Rivalin travels to Cornwall for pleasure and fame. He wants to polish his manners, learn the ways of chivalry. At a springtime festival, he meets and falls in love with Blancheflor. Most of this chapter exquisitely describes the experience of attraction, confusion, and lovesickness. Pages 51-54 merit close attention. Rivalin is severely wounded in battle. Blancheflor's nurse gains admittance for Blancheflor to Rivalin's side. She restores him to life through her kisses and lovemaking. She conceives a child. Word comes that Morgan has gathered forces against Rivalin's country. Rivalin and Blancheflor elope. They marry. Rivalin is slain in battle. Blancheflor dies of a broken heart after giving birth to Tristan. Already in Chapter 1 we have clear indications that being in love is very closely allied with pain and death. The episode with Rivalin in Blancheflor is parallel with Tristan and Isolde and could be seen as a foreshadowing of events to come; however, be on the lookout for important differences between the pairs of lovers.

Chapter 2. Rual and Floraete adopt Tristan. He is sent to be schooled in the ways of books, music, horsemanship, athletics and hunting. In short, he becomes a civilized, artistic, manly youth of 14 years.

Chapter 3. Tristan is abducted by Norwegian pirates. He is abandoned in Cornwall.

Chapter 4. Tristan demonstrates his skill at hunting and dressing game. He impresses King Mark who takes him into his kingdom. He is made chief-huntsman.

Chapter 5. Tristan demonstrates his musical skill. Mark is again very impressed and wishes to learn the courtly arts from him. He is brought in as a courtier.

Chapter 6. Rual arrives in Cornwall after searching high and low for Tristan. Rual reveals Tristan's true identity to Tristan and Mark.

Chapter 7. Tristan is knighted. Gottfried goes off on a curious literary digression.

PART TWO

Chapter 8. Tristan begs Mark for release so he can go back with Rual to Parmenie to fight Morgan. He kills Morgan (gets his revenge). Tristan decides to return to Cornwall, and cedes his claim on lands to Rual, keeping only his title.

Chapter 9. Morold. Morold is an Irish warrior and the brother of Queen Isolde. He comes from Ireland to Cornwall to demand tribute, namely to take away young boys to serve in Ireland. Tristan persuades King Mark that they should challenge Morold, which he does. Tristan bravely faces Morold in combat and kills him. (page 135), but not before Morold wounds Tristan with a sword dipped in poison, which was concocted by Queen Isolde who is the only one with the remedy. A piece of Tristan’s sword is left in Morold’s skull. This piece is pulled out and saved by the Queen when the body returns to Ireland.

Chapter 10. Tristan resolves to go to Ireland. He brings his harp alone. Why? He will woo them with his musical talent. He adopts a disguise: the poorest clothes they can find. He assumes a new identity: Tantris, the court musician who worked for a merchant. While at sea, their ship was overtaken by pirates and he was abandoned, sent to drift alone. He floats into Dublin bay and is picked up. His music is so impressive that a priest who had tutored Isolde notices and recommend him to the court.

Tristan first meets Isolde on page 145. The Queen makes a deal: you tutor my daughter and I’ll restore your health. So we have more irony: the queen is healing her brother’s killer. Pages 146 and 147 are worth reading closely, as this shows Tristan tutoring Isolde in the fine arts and the art of good manners. He is refining her. She is becoming more of an individual, improving herself, becoming all that she was meant to be. Tristan help her to realize her potential: all this before they ever fall in love. This goes on for six months. On page 148 we see the results of this instruction: Isolde has become so beautiful and talented that she casts a spell on all who listen to her. Tristan by this point deceives again; he needs to get out of Ireland before somebody recognizes him as Morold’s killer, so he pretends to have a wife and begs that he be allowed to return to Cornwall. His wish is granted.

Chapter 11. The Wooing Expedition. When Tristan returns to Cornwall he raves to Mark about the beautiful Isolde (page 150), perhaps a sign that he is falling in love, although to this point he is blind to his feelings. Meanwhile the barons in Cornwall are envious of Tristan: jealous of his status, his fame, and the favoritism that Mark pays to him. They advise Mark to marry. Why? Essentially to deprive Tristan of an opportunity at succeeding Mark as king. They even recommend Tristan to go on a mission back to Ireland to win the hand of Isolde for Mark. Tristan does his duty gladly, but insists that the barons come with him! So off they sail for Ireland. Tristan devises a new scheme. He dons a cloak, pretends he is a shipwrecked merchant from Normandy. He bribes the Irish Marshall into protecting him.

Chapter 12. The Dragon. In this episode, a dragon has been creating havoc in Ireland. Here’s a monster no unlike the Sphinx in Thebes. It is terrorizing the kingdom and he needs to be gotten rid of. The King Gurmun swears that he will hand over his daughter in marriage to the brave one who slays the dragon. Here we have a nice conflict setup between a foolish Irish steward and Tristan. Tristan manages to slay the dragon. He cuts out the dragon’s tongue and hides it in his coat. The tongue leaves him a stupor and he collapses in a pond. The steward meanwhile comes across the dragon and cuts off its head and returns to Dublin intent on winning the hand of Isolde. Isolde on page 163 wants nothing to do with this, and is willing to take her own life in resistance. The Queen then sees in a dream vision that someone else killed the dragon. She and Isolde go searching for the real killer. They discover Tristan in the pool, and resuscitate him. They see the tongue and realize he is the true dragon slayer. Then on page 166 Isolde recognizes him. It is Tantris! Tristan lies to them, telling them that he killed the dragon merely so the Irish would protect him more willingly. On page 167, the Queen swears an oath to protect him no matter what. This will become significant shortly. Then the Irish court assembles to hear the case of the dragon. There is a dispute over who really killed the dragon, and in three days time, judicial combat will determine the matter.

Chapter 13. The Splinter. So we have a lull in the action. At this crucial point, we find Tristan taking a bath. On page 173, we have an important scene where Isolde is gazing at him. And her heart tells her that this is no ordinary man. He is noble, has a noble heart. He is special. On page 174, her eyes turns to his equipment. She sees his sword. She sees the missing piece. She matches it to the fragment from Morold’s skull. She lifts the sword in hatred and levels it at Tristan. Tristan tries to talk her out of it, saying you’ll lose your honor forever if you do this deed. Then the Queen steps in and stays her. Why? She has made an oath to protect him, and it would not be honorable to go back on her word. Isolde, on page 176, can’t bring herself to do the deed anyway. Why? Is she falling in love?

Tristan promises to make things right if they will only let him live. The Queen and Isolde, after deliberation, make their peace with him. And finally, on page 180, Tristan levels with them and tells the truth. King Gurmun is informed of the matter and renounces the feud.

Chapter 14. Now that this matter is settled, we can get back to the action. We have a scene that in some respects is parallel to Chapter 1, with the entrance of Rivalin and Blancheflor. Here, we have Tristan walking into the gallery, then Isolde. Both are described in exquisite detail. These two are worthy. They are special. They have noble hearts. They are ready to fall in love. The chapter concludes with the steward’s fraud being exposed. And Tristan wins the dispute.

Chapter 15. The Love Potion. Tristan states his intentions: he wasn't to take Isolde back to Cornwall so she can marry the King. Gurmun accepts. And they set sail for Cornwall. We need to closely read pages 192 to 197, because this is the critical love potion business. The queen has prepared a love potion, to be drunk on the wedding night. She has entrusted it to Brangane. As the voyage proceeds, Tristan does his best to console Isolde. We can see them becoming closer, more intimate. But she is still conflicted, bitter, angry at him for killing her uncle and taking her away from home. She has no idea what the future holds for her. They make a rest stop on the coast, and while everyone else is ashore, Tristan and Isolde drink the potion, thinking it is wine. Page 195. The effect is immediate. When Brangane sees what has happened, she flings the vial into the sea. “You have drunk your death!” she screams. Why? What is going to be tragic about this? They are destined now to be hopelessly in love, but they will never be free to express that love. Tristan is already struggling between honor and love. And by the end of the chapter, it is love that is winning them over.

Now what is the purpose of the love potion? You might realize that it provides an alibi for Tristan and Isolde. IT gives them license to cheat on King Mark. The potion made them do it. I think it also has clear symbolic value.

Chapter 16. We’re off to sea again. And the two are thinking a lot. Their thoughts are converging. On page 199, they get closer and closer, and on page 200 they kiss. On page 201, they let Brangane know of their love for one another. Brangane agrees to let them enjoy themselves. ON page 202 the narrator goes off on a tangent, discussing how the enemy of love is surveillance. During this voyage they have the luxury of isolation, privacy, and in that, they can experience the ecstasy of love, free from prying eyes. But there is a problem here. The voyage has to end. They have to set foot on land. Isolde must be handed over to Mark. And there’s another problem. Isolde is no longer a virgin.

PART THREE

Chapter 17. Enter Brangane to the rescue. On page 206, Tristan makes a very important point about love and death. Brangane explains the business of the love potion, and Tristan says, if this is what death means. I accept it. If this even means everlasting death. I accept that too. What a powerful statement of love!

To be in Love in the sense of Amour, is to put yourself at odds with the social order. It means pain and death. When the young couple accidentally drinks the potion, they have no idea what happened to them. Are we sea sick or is this what we call love (she puns on the French word la mer l'amour). They are at this moment experiencing the joy and the pain of being alive. This is what love is about: the emotional effect in full force. Here it comes. Brangane is appalled and says to Tristan you have drunk your death. Tristan says I don't know what you mean, if by death you mean the pain of my love for her, that is my life, if by death you mean the punishment of society, I accept that, if by death you mean eternal damnation in hell, I accept that. The individual experience of love invalidates the whole system that has been erected to contain and regulate love.

Much of the remainder of the story of Tristan and Isolde is about the tension between the social order imposed on the individual and the individual effort to live life freely in love. They do not go together.

So Isolde is handed over to Mark. But what to do on the wedding night? Substitute Brangane for Isolde. This happens on p. 207. It is important to note here something that might strike us as very very odd. How could Mark not notice it wasn’t Isolde? (He’s insensitive. He doesn’t have the cultivated, worthy, civilized, sensitive nature that it would take. To him, his love for Isolde is more at the erotic/ lusty level.). It is impersonal. He can’t tell the difference!

Then in a brutal scene, Isolde commands some men to slay Brangane so she will be unable to betray them. Brangane’s life is spared, because she has proved faithful. After this, all is made well.

Chapter 18. Gandin. Gandin the rote player hoodwinks Mark into handing over Isolde. Tristan comes to the rescue and double-crosses Gandin, thus saving Isolde.

Chapter 19. Marjodoc. Marjodoc is the steward-in-chief. He is a friend of Tristan’s, but he has turned jealous and suspicious. He discovers something going on between Tristan and Isolde, and is torn as to whether to tell the king. He tells him that there are “rumors” of something going on. Suspicions are aroused. What Gottfried previously told us about love’s enemy, suspicion, is about to kick into high gear. The conflict between suspicion/surveillance and love is important in the text, and it forces love into deception and secrecy.

Chapter 20. Plot and counterplot. Mark plays cat and mouse with Isolde, who successfully dodges his trap, with a little help from Brangane.

Chapter 21. We are introduced to Melot. A dwarf, Melot is a friend of the King. He conspires with Marjodoc to catch Tristan and Isolde in a trap.

Chapter 22. Melot runs to Mark and says he’s discovered the adulterous lovers. They are going to spy on them in the woods. It’s a close call, but the lovers evade detection.

Chapter 23. The Ordeal. Suspicions will not cease. Melot devises a new plan to catch the lovers. He spreads flour around the bed. Tristan successfully leaps into the bed so as not to leave footprints, but he accidentally bleeds on the sheets. Mark is racked with doubt. He decides to make Isolde swear a public oath that she has been faithful. Before a council she must swear then grasp a red hot iron rod. If she does not burn she is telling the truth. She and Tristan again outwit them. Tristan disguises himself as a beggar, and when carrying Isolde from ship to shore he “accidentally” falls on top of her, which gives Isolde the cover she needs to technically tell the truth. One thinks of the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky scandal here. Remember how Clinton parsed his words carefully and was able to survive impeachment? In this analogy, Ken Starr would be like the jealous barons.

Chapter 24. This is an interesting little episode involving a magic dog Pettircrieu that Tristan wins on behalf of his lady while visiting Wales. The dog has a magic bell that soothes the soul when rung. But when Isolde receives the gift, she removes the bell, realizing that she can’t pretend to be happy when her lover is still out there suffering apart from her. She doesn’t want to be happy without Tristan by her side.

Chapter 25. Finally, Mark has had enough with the suspicion. ON pages 258 and 259 he banishes them.

Chapter 26. The Cave of Lovers. A very important chapter! First of all, it is important to note that this cave is out there in nature, in the wild woods, away from civilization, courts, society, and suspicious, jealous eyes. They are free out here. They have secrecy and privacy. Here love can flourish. Second, they are nourished by love and love only. All they need is love to keep them alive. They feed off their love. When two people are truly in love, they can survive, Gottfried says. Then on page 264 we get into an amazing allegory. Each facet of the cave of lovers has a symbolic meaning.

Let’s examine the allegory in detail:

grotto description / symbolism

roundness / Love’s simplicity. (no corners)

Broad / Power: Love is strong

High ceiling / Aspiration: Love aims high, nothing is too high for it

Finely keyed vault, jewel-encrusted crown / Crown of virtues. Love aspires to these marvelous spiritual perfections

White walls / Love’s integrity is pure

Green, firm marble floor / Love’s constancy: always fresh and green as the grass, always smooth and gleaming like glass

The crystalline bed in the center of the grotto / Love’s transparency and translucency

The door latch / The latch has no lock and key. why? Any device used to unlock it bespeaks treachery, deceit, force. You must be admitted willing from within.

Bronze door / Strong, can’t be forced, resists violence against it

The bar of cedar / The discretion and understanding of love

The bar of ivory / Purity and honesty of love

Spindle of tin from the outside / The firm intent of love

Gold latch / Success in love (loving with true intent will lead to success) “My Aim is True”

Overhead windows / Kindness, Humility, Breeding

The radiant light / Honor lights up the cave of earthly bliss

Secluded location / Love is hard to find. It is a wild solitude

In short, they have found their bliss. They are free to love without suspicion. They spend their time in happiness and ecstasy. It is paradise on earth, a new Garden of Eden if you will.

Chapter 27. This is also one of the most important chapters in the book. It is where the lovers are discovered by King Mark. The clamor of hunting horns is heard in the distance. Tristan hatches a new plan, in case they are detected. See page 270. Tristan places his naked sword between himself and Isolde. They lie on the bed apart.

Mark peeks through the window. Pay close attention to his reaction on page 272. He is pleased and pained to see them. He is inspired with desire for Isolde. Love overcomes doubt. He wants her back.

The placing of the sword between them has grave consequences for Tristan and Isolde. It is directly responsible for the end of their earthly bliss and it is totally symbolic. The sword is really a metonym for what swords are closely associated with: honor, chivalry, duty, loyalty to one’s king. Tristan literally puts his honor between he and his love. Love is split in two. He has violated the basic principle that brings lovers together: unity. Honor and love don’t mix well. He will pay for this mistake. They will never again be as happy as they are right now.

Chapter 28. They head back to Cornwall. Page 274 tells us they never again were free and open. Mark enjoys Isolde’s company on a lustful level, even though he is well aware she doesn’t really love him. He is willfully blind. The suspicions and doubts and rumors swirl once again, just as they had before. To make a long story short, Mark finally discovers them embracing. He sees the proof with his own two eyes. It is undeniable. Tristan sees him leaving the scene and knows. He has to run away. Isolde asks him to promise that he’ll never let another woman come between them. She gives him a ring. (Remember the ring in “Simple Twist of Fate”?) Her parting speech to him is touching and worthy of close examination. Page 280. “Parting is such sweet sorrow...”

PART FOUR

Chapter 29. Isolde of the White Hands. Tristan sails for Normandy. Soon thereafter he sojourns to Germany and fights some battles. We see Isolde suffering dearly. She is poisoned by love and loss, caught between death and life. She tries to live on without him. Tristan returns to Parmenie to find out that Rual and Floreate have passed away. He then sojourns to the land of Arundel, where he links up with Duke Jovelin, his son Kaedin and daughter Isolde of the White Hands. Kaedin and Tristan become close friends. They go off to war. Tristan, as usual earns great honor and praise for his deeds.

Tristan comes into contact with Isolde White Hands on page 290. She is noble, intelligent, and beautiful. And Tristan is smitten with her. Her beauty reminds him of his true love, and she even has the same name! On page 291 he gets hung up, obsessed with the name, and he commits a violation of the code of love: he confuses the name with the person. His passion is re-awoken. He is attracted to the new Isolde. Isolde is attracted to him too. Tristan on page 292 and 293 reproaches himself for this desire. He knows it is wrong to love another. He masters it and seems now intent on remaining faithful to Isolde the fair. But Isolde of the White Hands is inflamed with desire, and she interprets Tristan’s tender courtesies and signs of love. He sings to her. She swoons. By page 294, she is physically coming on to him and he weakens again. The question is raised on 294, does Tristan want her? What do you think?

Tristan feels pity for Isolde of the White Hands. He sympathizes with her, I think. He is in a bind, well described on page 295.

On page 296 he devises an interesting theory, namely that he’ll be able to alleviate his suffering if he divvies up his love between the two women. Maybe he’ll be able to channel it and control it better. What do you think? Feasible idea or is he rationalizing here? He reminds himself that Isolde the Fair at least has Mark to keep her company. What about me, he says? Don’t I deserve some company too?

Chapter 30. And so Gottfried’s Tristan breaks off. We finish the story with Thomas of Britain’s version of events. Tristan’s deliberations and anxieties continue in great detail. He’s going through a lot of mental contortions in here, such as claiming that marrying Isolde of the White Hands would be the best way to forget the old Isolde, and it would be the most honorable way to live a life of pleasure (think lust) instead of being devoted to love.

On page 306 he marries Isolde of the White Hands. The ring is pulled off his finger. He ponders. He can’t consummate this marriage. Love for Isolde the Fair is too strong. He struggles mightily, but finally tells Isolde White Hands that he has an injury and is unable to exert himself in bed. Maybe another time....

Chapter 31. Tristan goes off on another military exploit that we don’t need to worry too much about at this point. Back in Cornwall, Isolde has heard nothing of Tristan for awhile until a haughty suitor by the name of Cariado informs her that Tristan has married another. For delivering this bad news, she treats him savagely and says you’ll never have a chance with me.

Chapter 32. The Hall of Statues. In this curious chapter Tristan has builders construct a hall with statues of Isolde and Brangane. He has built idols to his love, and even kisses them, talks to them. Odd. At the end of this chapter on pages 316 - 318, we have a wonderful analysis by Thomas on the question: which of the four lovers is suffering the most?

Chapter 33. The Bold Water. One day Isolde White Hands is riding horseback and splashes in some muddy water which sprays her thigh. She jokes to her brother that the water is fresher than her husband.

Chapter 34. Kaedin confronts Tristan over this issue and he divulges what has really been going on. He leads Kaedin to the hall of statues. Caedin thinks they’re real and asks for Brangane’s hand. He demands that they go to the real place to check these girls out. They do encounter the queen and Brangane, and Queen Isolde talks Brangane into sleeping with Caedin.

Chapter 35. Cariado and his friends chase after Tristan and Caedin’s pages, thinking they are Tristan and Caedin. They run away like cowards, which spurs Brangane to anger. She and Isolde have a knock-down-drag-out cat fight. Brangane feels like she has been deceived and mislead into sleeping with an unworthy knight. Brangane speaks to King Mark who gives her the power to oversee her every move. It’s quite a confusing chapter, but it’s clear that by the end, everyone is pretty miserable.

Chapter 36. Tristan adopts another disguise. He pretends to be a leper begging for alms. Brangane spies him. Tristan sulks away to an old palace where he pines and suffers. Isolde pleads with Brangane to go console him, which she ultimately does. Tristan and Isolde have one more tryst, before he leaves again.

Chapter 37. Yet another return to Cornwall to visit Isolde. In this scene Kaedin kills their foe Cariado in a joust. Tristan and Kaedin flee the country.

Chapter 38. The Poisoned Spear. Tristan goes off on another adventure to assist Dwarf Tristram whose lady has been abducted. Tristan is wounded in the loins with a poisoned lance. He knows the only cure is Isolde the fair.

Chapter 39. Tristan asks for Kaedin to send a message to Isolde to come and save his life. He takes their ring, the secret token of their love. On page 344 Tristan has an important speech citing all his sufferings and his belief that Isolde should and will come to his aid. He tells Kaedin to take two sails with him on the ship, a black one and a white one. If Isolde refuses to come, hoist the black sail. If she’s on the way to rescue him, hoist the white one. Meanwhile, guess who has been eavesdropping on the conversation? Isolde of the White Hands. She is filled with jealous rage. Now she knows why Tristan won’t have sex with her. She will have her revenge. Isolde of course gets the message and readily decides to come save Tristan.

Chapter 40. Tristan is in bed dying. The ship makes sail for Arundel. A five day storm sets in and they are stranded at sea. When the storm abates, the wind dies and they can’t move. They can see land, but they can’t reach it. It looks like nature has prevented the lovers from reuniting. Kaedin hoists the white sail. It will be a sign that help is on the way. Tristan asks his wife Isolde of the White Hands what color the sail is. “Black” she lies. And at this, on page 352, Tristan loses his will to live. Just then the wind returns. The ship lands. Isolde rushes to the scene. Tristan has died. And so she loses her will to live, and kissing his corpse, dies too (page 353).

So ends the tragic love of Tristan and Isolde. They had true love. Their love was a union of body and soul. But they found no peace.

Place names in Gottfried's Tristan

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 10:59:08 PDT

Although the geography in Gottfried's Tristan is inaccurate and semi-mythical, we can establish some approximate locations for the story's setting.

King Mark's kingdom is in Cornwall at the southwest tip of England.

Isolde comes from Ireland.

Tristan's home is more difficult to locate, but it is probably somewhere in the region around Brittany and Normandy on the French side of the English channel.

Major place names in the book:

Arundel

Canoel

Dublin

Gales

Karke

Lohnois (Lyoness)

Parmenie (Armenie, Ermenie)

Swales

Cast of characters in Gottfried's Tristan

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 10:56:45 PDT

Blancheflor: King Mark's sister. Elopes with Rivalin. Wife of Rivalin and Mother of Tristan.

Brangane (Brangvein): companion, confidant, and caretaker of Isolde the fair.

Cariado: one of the barons in King Mark's court. Jealous enemy of Tristan and Isolde.

Curvenal: confidant and sidekick of Tristan

Floraete: Foster mother of Tristan and wife of Rual

Gurmun: King of Ireland, husband of Isolde the elder and father of Isolde the fair

Isolde the Elder: Queen of Ireland and mother of Isolde the Fair. Sister of Morold. Skilled in medicine (magic potions).

Isolde the Fair. Lover of Tristan. Queen of Cornwall, wife of King Mark. Niece of Morold.

Isolde of the White Hands: Daughter of Duke Jovelin, sister of Kaedin, wife of Tristan

Jovelin: Duke of Arundel

Kaedin (Caerdin): Son of Jovelin, brother of Isolde of the White Hands, friend of Tristan

Marjodoc: steward to King Mark, eventual enemy of Tristan and Isolde

Mark: King of Cornwall, brother of Blancheflor, maternal uncle of Tristan. Husband of Isolde the Fair.

Melot: spy for Mark and Marjodoc against Tristan and Isolde

Morgan: A Breton duke and overlord of Rivalin for a separate fief. Overcomes Rivalin in battle, then is killed by Tristan

Morold: Irish duke, brother of Isolde the Elder, uncle of Isolde the Fair. Collector of Gurmun's tribute. Killed by Tristan

Petticrieu: A fairy dog from Avalon.

Rivalin: Lord of Paremenie. Lover and husband of Blancheflor, father of Tristan. Rivalin is a noble knight, lacking qualities in only one area. He is prone to over-indulgence. He does as he pleases. This is largely a consequence of his youth. His enemy is Morgan.

Rual li Foitenant: Foster-father of Tristan. Husband of Floraete, Marshall of Rivalin, who oversees his lands while Rivalin is in Cornwall.

Tristan: son of Rivalin and Blancheflor, foster-son of Rual and Floraete. Nephew of King Mark. Killer of Morgan, Morold. Illicit lover of Isolde the Fair. Husband of Isolde of the White Hands.

FAMILY TREES

CORNWALL

King Mark is brother of Blancheflor who is married to Rivalin, parents of Tristan

IRELAND

Morold is brother of Isolde the Elder who is married to King Gurmun, parents of Isolde the Fair, who is married to King Mark

Rual is married to Floreate, adoptive parents of Tristan

Textual history of Tristan

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 15:55:09 PDT

The story of Tristan and Isolde comes from Celtic legend. We are not exactly sure what part of Celtic Britain it comes from. Possibilities range from Scotland to Wales to Cornwall. These regions (including Ireland and the Isle of Man) retained a relative degree of independence in the face of various invasions during the course of British history: ranging from the Romans, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, to the Norman conquest of 1066. Celtic culture remained lively and proved to be influential on peoples who came into contact with it. Later, in the 12th century, romancers picked up the archetypal story of Tristan and enhanced it. The Tristan legend was wildly popular by the mid 12th century, as many Tristan romances were in circulation. We will discuss three of the most important ones.

The great French romancer Chrétien de Troyes wrote an early version of the Tristan myth, but it has been lost. We also have fragments of versions by two Anglo-Norman poets: Thomas and Beroul. Thomas's Tristan was probably the oldest, circa 1157 - 1160.

The German poet Gottfried von Strassburg based his 1215 version of the story on Thomas's Tristan. Gottfried never completed his version of the poem, so the Penguin classics edition finishes the tale with extant fragments from Thomas’s version (chapters 30 to 40). Because Gottfried preferred Thomas as his source text, we can assume he would have stuck fairly closely to the plot as Thomas arranges it, although you will detect clear stylistic variations between the two writers, even in translation.

Many critics regard Gottfried's version as the greatest of all Tristan stories. Why? First, Gottfried is a master of style and arrangement, and the text is artfully written. Second, Gottfried seems to have an innate understanding of what this story with all its twists and turns, is about at a deep thematic level. It is, when you come down to it, about love, the psychology of love, the experience of falling in love, of what it is like to be in love, of all the tensions problems and conflicts that can erupt when two people rapturously fall for one another. It is about the conflict between love and honor, love and duty, love and family, love and loyalty. Literature, remember, specializes in emotional effects, and this work sinks deeply into the murky and thrilling emotions of love and desire, some of our most powerful.

The Courtly Love Tradition

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 15:50:33 PDT

some preliminary notes...

The courtly and chivalrous romance derives from a new wave in literature that had been bubbling up from the Provence region in southern France. The poems and songs of the Provencal troubadours in the early 12th century spread to the courts of northern France and east to Germany and other parts of Europe. In Germany, such poets were called minnesingers. In northern France they were called trouvères. The troubadours were known for their beautiful and clever lyric poems of love and devotion to ladies, usually inaccessible women of the court who were already married. In the standard courtly love lyric, the poet sings of his love and longing for the lady, and he seeks by means of his art and by means of passing or enduring trials and tests his lady puts him through, to receive what the troubadours called "merci". Perhaps the lady would allow the man to kiss her on the cheek once a year. Eventually, she might allow an embrace, or something even more intimate.

There is embedded within the courtly love tradition a conflict between true love and conventional marriage. That is to say, for the troubadours true love can exist outside of marriage. It is by definition adulterous. The love of two people with noble hearts cannot be contained by the confines of law and custom. In fact, love outside of marriage is somehow truer, because it is the unrestricted, genuine love between two individuals with noble hearts. Gerault de Bornelh sums this idea up nicely in one of his poems:

So through the eyes love attains the heart:

For the eyes are the scouts of the heart,

And the eyes go reconnoitering

For what it would please the heart to possess.

And when they are in full accord

And firm, all three, in one resolve,

At that time, perfect love is born

From what the eyes have made welcome to the heart.

Not otherwise can love either be born or have commencement

Than by this birth and commencement moved by inclination.

By the grace and by command

Of these three, and from their pleasure,

Love is born, who its fair hope

Goes comforting her friends.

For as all true lovers

Know, love is perfect kindness,

Which is born - there is no doubt - from the heart and eyes.

The eyes make it blossom; the heart matures it:

Love, which is the fruit of their very seed.

What we have in courtly love is an idealized, romantic love (amour) between man and lady, conducted in secret, filled with heaps of unrequited longing and the hope for mercy. It is important to keep in mind that amour is much more than mere lust. It is more than the sex. And it is also not purely a Platonic or spiritual affection. It certainly is not impersonal Christian love (agape, or charity, the love of your neighbor). Amour is an admixture of erotic love and spiritual love. It is the romance of attraction (coming at your through the eyes) and the spiritual connection meeting in the heart. And this love is so meaningful that every other concern in your life pales in comparison. It becomes what the philosopher Kierkegaard called “the defining commitment” of your life. Amour is love of an individual’s body and soul meeting in the heart.

But is it possible to give all to love? Don’t responsibility, duty, honor, fame, and fortune come into to steal our attention and time away from love? Thus is born the conflict between honor and love. In the courtly love tradition, the ultimate sacrifice for winning a noble heart is the sacrifice of honor for love. Troubadours went through wild absurdities to win the woman's regard. It is vital that the lady must assure herself that the lover's heart is gentle, noble, that he is not just a horny man looking for sex, so there is a tradition of delay, testing and trial. If the man is good with sword, you send him out to guard a bridge or slay a monster. If he’s an artist, you'd have him write good poems in coded language meant only for you. Once she is assured of the lover's true intentions, she grants him merci. The lady who accepts service without expressing conviction and merci or rejection is called sauvage (savage).

The great Medieval romance Tristan and Isolde is essentially about the conflict between honor and love, a conflict that sometimes involves comedy, more often, tragedy.

The Medieval Romance and individuality

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 10:29:09 PDT

Some background notes...

The word romance comes from the French word "romans," which refers to the Old French language and a kind of poem written in it. Romances were written in the vernacular, not Latin. A romance dealt with "history", but we should use the term history loosely, for in the Middle Ages, historical accuracy and documentary evidence were far from reliable. A better term for the romance's subject matter might be "legend." These were entertaining poems, stories of legendary kings, knights and ladies. They were tales of adventure, love, and chivalry.

The romance genre flowered from the mid 12th century to the mid 13th (circa 1150 to 1250 AD). Many early romances dealt with the history of King Charlemagne as well as the legendary British King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Some romances emphasized war and feats of strength. Others added new elements: courtesy, gentility, loyal service, and the sacrifice of self. In these so- called chivalrous romances, the knights undergo trials and adventures, in the service of a lady whom they love and idealize.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell (whose book and series Transformations of Myth through Time has been influential throughout these notes ) sees this flowering of romance in Western Europe as the rise of a uniquely Western conception of the individual among society. In the West, the accent or emphasis is on the life of the individual: your life, your career, your soul. He opposes the West European concept of individuality to a more Eastern emphasis on society, rules, hierarchy, and laws: the individual in these cultures is seen more as an organism in a greater organism. The whole body is what really counts; it is paramount.

Where does the West’s concept of individualism come from? Many sources, really. Partly from the classical Greco-Roman tradition of individuality, of free citizens, etc. Athenian democracy was government organized around the principle of individuals meeting in assembly and casting individual votes. We already see powerful individuals in the characters of Greek drama and epic poetry: think of Oedipus, Achilles, Odysseus. We also see an emphasis on individual salvation in the life of Jesus and the teachings of St. Paul. This accent on individualism comes into flower in the 12th century with the romances. In so many of these tales, the message (as Joseph Campbell interprets it) is that you must choose your own path. You can get clues and guidance from others who have gone before, but ultimately it is you who must carom off those influences and make up your own rules. If you try to follow the letter of the law, or live your life the way someone else insists you must live it, you’re doomed. The goal of the romance is the fulfillment of one’s own potentialities. You discover what you were meant to do with your life, your calling or vocation, you discover who you were always meant to be with (your love), and you go there. And the journey is always an adventure, even when the outcome becomes tragic.

Discussing "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 11:51:09 PDT

Here are a few discussion questions for considering Flannery O'Connor's classic story "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

In literature we often say that character is destiny. How does the Grandmother engineer her own destruction?

Who is the protagonist? Does the story have a hero? An anti-hero? Dig into the contradictions.

Religion – what is the role of Christianity in this story?

Salvation. Is anyone saved? How to explain the Grandmother’s smile in death?

Who is the most thoughtful character in the story? The most deliberative? The most philosophical? Who is struggling the most with issues of life, death, and salvation? Who has the most insight into their own character, their own nature?

Quick notes on Crimes and Misdemeanors

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 09:40:57 PDT

Some sketchy thoughts on Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors

Main characters:

Judah Rosenthal - co-protagonist, center of the film's moral dilemmas.

Jack Rosenthal - Judah's brother, the heavy who does Judah's dirty work

Clifford Stern: Protagonist of the film's subplot. Idealist filmmaker and romantic. He likes escaping into afternoon movies with his niece and friend Halley. Seeks to right wrongs with his documentaries.

Dolores: Judah's mistress. Passionate, demanding, needy.

Lester: The sellout TV director.

Ben: The blind rabbi. A moral visionary.

Halley: A magnet for male desire!

Levy: A serious intellectual with a deep, life affirming philosophy. Ironically kills himself.

Barbara (Cliff's sister): looking for love in all the wrong places.

Motifs:

Sight and blindness: the eye doctor, the rabbi going blind, the filmmaker with his camera eye, God as the all-seeing eye.

Conscience – can it be killed? Is conscience like an illness you get well from?

Idealism vs. Reality / Morality vs. Nihilism: the unbearable lightness of being. Whether you believe in God determines your relationship to moral behavior. If there is no God watching, you CAN get away with murder, bend the rules, break them, satisfy your cravings, chew people up and spit them out, live a double life, and smooth over problems. There are no existential consequences, assuming you can overcome your moral conscience. Howver if there is a higher power, a moral reality, a basis for the LAW, then virtues such as honesty, integrity, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion, are demanded of us. Woody Allen audaciously reminds us that the amoral vision is REAL. The moral vision is IDEAL. The real world of Jack is the one where money can buy anything: love, death, happiness, pleasure, cruelty. The ideal world is the imaginary world of religion and art (as expressed in the film through movies). The realists in the film are Jack and Lester. The idealists are Cliff and Ben. Judah is smack in the middle, tipping into amoral relativism and realism. Who is seeing things for real and who is blinding themselves to reality?

Love's fidelity/infidelity: Judah and Dolores living the double life of secrecy and lies. Dolores seeks openness and honesty; this kills her. Cliff seeks romance from Halley to escape his dying marriage. His failure to realize the affair...? Barabara seeks love from the personal ads and is deceived by a swinging pervert.

Formal, structural properties

Allen intercuts memory with the present (Judah at the banquet, in the car, Dolores in her apartment, Judah at the dinner party. Memory is also juxtaposed within scenes, as when Ben converses with Judah during the thunderstorm, when he converses with his father and family at the dinner table. It is a simple theatrical device that works marvelously to externalize Judah's inner moral conflicts.

He also intercuts parallel dramatic situations in the world of art (film) with reality. The juxtaposition shows how art fantasizes reality and yet imagines what is capable of being real, reality imitating art.

He uses Beethoven's late quartets, some of the master's most probative and emotionally powerful work, to accompany the murder and coverup sequence. It's an odd juxtaposition of beauty and moral ambiguity. Jazz is used to lighten the mood, as is the theme of Clifford and Lester's subplot.

Allen subverts the traditional movie melodrama plot by not making Judah pay for his actions. He isn't punished. He gets over the moral disease, the conseuqnces of his actions fade into obscurity and memory. Allen is trying to say through the medium of film (art): “this is the real world, folks. People get away with murder all the time. People commit horrible acts and rationalize them or forget about them. This is an amoral universe we live in.” However he does offer us a counterweight: the world of art (Cliff) and religion (Ben), both of which are looking for structure and meaningfulness in the universe.

Also what to make of the philosopher committing suicide?

Ideas for writing or discussion:

Is it possible to get away with murder, to free one's conscience? To “get over” the sins in your life without being caught and punished? Use the film as a starting point and bring in real world examples to support your points.

Upon what moral or ethical principle does Judah makes his decision to go ahead with the murder? (cf. thunderstorm scene)

I hope you will add your questions and comments on this great film.

Brief notes on "Araby"

noreply@blogger.com (James Esch) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 06:03:52 PDT

James Joyce's "Araby" is a tale told by a man or young man looking back on his childhood, we assume. What lessons do you think this man has learned from the experience he tells of in this story?

Is he bitter? Is he disappointed? Is he sad? Is he angry? What or whom is he angry at? What or whom is he anguished about?

I see a two part answer:

1. He is anguished about his world, the community around him. In what ways has his community (family, friends, society) let him down? It throws up every obstacle in his path to prevent him from achieving his desires. A useful exercise is to examine the text for examples. You will find that Dublin is not a world conducive to romance.

2. He is also angry and anguished at himself. Why? For being duped by fantasy, by his illusions of heroism, his ideals of romantic love. He's been seduced by adoration and veneration for a girl who hardly knows him. He's seduced by the musty books left by the dead priest who used to occupy his house, by associating erotic love with religion. He realizes, that there is nothing exotic about Araby. There is no magic there. There will be no realizing of his dream. He has been deluding himself.

What kind of a man makes these conclusions later in life when looking back on his childhood? What sort of character do you think this man is now, at the time he tells the story? The narrator has become one of the Dubliners, one of the drab, pointless figures portrayed in these stories. The spark he once had as a child, the spark of love and hope and anticipation has been snuffed out. And he's bitter about it. He's angry. He's lost hope.

How do we know this? We don't with certainty. But ask yourself, why would an adult write about his experience in this way, come to that conclusion? Does he have to be so hard on himself, so hard on his fellow city dwellers? He could look back on this experience and laugh it off as a charming little childhood experience. If he were an optimistic, "never say die" sort, he wouldn't have let this setback stop him at all. But no, the sense of place here, the environment seems dead set against him, and judging from his conclusion, the environment won the battle and the war.

This brings up the notion of conflict in fiction. Much great literature is about conflict, struggle. Literature can be better appreciated and understood as dramas arising from conflicts.

The conflict in a story, poem, or drama can take many forms:

person vs. person
person vs. environment: (place, community, gods, fate, destiny, society)
person vs. self (struggling against interior forces)

Out of that struggle, we see characters winning, losing, coping, enduring, etc. A wide range of human responses to these struggles. That's what the stories are about. An ambiguous work of literature will be rich in implications as to how the characters deal with these conflicts.

In "Araby" our protagonist comes out on the losing side of his battle with the environment. He learns an important life lesson, yet maybe he has lost more than he found. At least, this is an arguable point.

At what price do we gain bitter wisdom about the real world?