21. Objective or Subjective? Flaubert believed that literature should be impersonal, that literature shouldn’t be a vehicle for the author’s feelings and experiences. This was a widespread view in the late nineteenth century; it was a reaction against Romanticism, against the Romantic tendency to write in a personal, subjective way. Since Flaubert’s time, the view that literature should be objective has been embraced by many writers and critics.
In support of the objective theory of literature, one could argue that some of the best literary works are objective; Homer’s works, for example, don’t express their author’s feelings, or describe their author’s experiences. In opposition to the objective theory of literature, one could argue that some of the best literary works are personal and subjective. Most of the outstanding Western writers since the Middle Ages have been subjective. Ibsen, for example, was subjective; Ibsen said, “If you want objectivity, then go to the objects. Read me so as to get to know me!”(10) Great literature can be objective or subjective, just as great literature can be realistic or unrealistic.
22. Dostoyevsky wrote in a subjective way; many of his characters are based on facets of his own personality. The main characters in The Brothers Karamazov, for example, are based on facets of Dostoyevsky’s own personality: Dmitri is a losing gambler (like Dostoyevsky), Ivan a journalist tormented by religious doubts (like Dostoyevsky), Smerdyakov an epileptic (like Dostoyevsky), etc.(11) Many of Dostoyevsky’s characters possess the sadistic and masochistic tendencies that Dostoyevsky himself possessed. The protagonist of “A Gentle Creature,” for example, says, “I tormented myself and everybody else.”
Masochism leads many of Dostoyevsky’s male characters to love crippled women. The severe super-ego of these characters prevents them from loving normal women. Masochism also leads many of Dostoyevsky’s characters to be buffoons, to make fools of themselves; such characters derive a certain pleasure from publicly humiliating themselves. One can compare Dostoyevsky with Johnson’s biographer, Boswell: both had tyrannical fathers, both developed defective super-ego’s, both experienced bouts of masochistic severity toward themselves, and both had tendencies to make fools of themselves.(12)
Dostoyevsky’s greatest fault is that he carries his psychological analysis to an excessive and morbid point. This fault is particularly evident when Dostoyevsky is compared with Tolstoy. Tolstoy has Dostoyevsky’s profundity and keen insight and, in addition, Tolstoy has a simplicity and serenity that Dostoyevsky lacks.
23. Tolstoy While Dostoyevsky is famous for his psychological insights, Tolstoy’s greatness as a psychologist is sometimes overlooked. Dostoyevsky could understand others because he probed his own complex, neurotic personality. Tolstoy was less neurotic than Dostoyevsky, but he lived with exceptional intensity, energy and animal vitality. Tolstoy experienced many things, and was familiar with his own rich personality, hence Tolstoy understood others as few people ever have. Understanding of others comes from understanding of oneself; psychological insight comes from self-consciousness.
If one compares Tolstoy’s observations on human nature with Freud’s, one finds a striking agreement between them. Tolstoy said, “[Levin’s] conception of [his mother] was for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.” Likewise, Freud said, “A man…looks for someone who can represent his picture of his mother, as it has dominated his mind from his earliest childhood.”(13)
Tolstoy spoke of “the vindictive fury which can only exist where a man loves,” and Tolstoy said, “where love ends, hate begins.” Likewise, Freud said, “Love is with unexpected regularity accompanied by hate [and] in a number of circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate.”(14)
In his case history of Dora, Freud said, “the usual sexual attraction had drawn together the father and daughter on the one side and the mother and son on the other.” Tolstoy discusses this “usual sexual attraction” in the following passage: “The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly [and] embraced him….’Good morning’, he said, smiling to the boy….He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a smile to his father’s chilly smile.”(15)
Great thinkers often reach the same conclusions independently of each other. A thinker’s ideas usually come from his own experiences, or from his observations of other people. Since human nature remains much the same in different times and places, the experiences and observations of different thinkers are often similar. Truth agrees with itself and confirms itself.
Just as great thinkers often agree with each other, so too one’s own experience often agrees with the observations of great thinkers. Here again, truth agrees with itself and confirms itself. An idea drawn from experience is confirmed when one finds the same idea in a book. Likewise, the ideas in a book are confirmed when one finds that they agree with one’s own experience.
24. Joyce While the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky express ideas and reflect their authors’ struggles for spiritual peace, the novels of Joyce have a different purpose. Joyce said, “Ulysses is fundamentally a humorous work,” and Joyce said that Finnegans Wake was “meant to make you laugh.”(16) Ulysses andFinnegans Wake belong in the comic tradition of Petronius, Rabelais and Sterne. Joyce’s short stories, on the other hand, remind one, by their simplicity and by their realism, of Chekhov’s short stories.
Joyce had no interest in politics and little interest in philosophy. He disliked Shaw’s plays, which set forth ideas. When World War II was breaking out, and his brother asked him what he thought about the political situation, Joyce said, “I’m not interested in politics. The only thing that interests me is style.”(17)
Like many imaginative writers, including Ibsen, Tolstoy and Proust, Joyce observed and wrote about parapsychological phenomena. In A Portrait of the Artist, for example, Stephen Dedalus is lying in bed, thinking of his girlfriend, and he wonders what his girlfriend is doing: “Might it be, in the mysterious ways of spiritual life, that her soul at those same moments had been conscious of his homage?….Conscious of his desire she was waking from odorous sleep.” Joyce’s interest in parapsychology sets him apart from Kafka; Kafka never discusses parapsychology or aesthetics or religion. Kafka stays in the world of fantasy, and never leaves it for a moment.
Sound is as important in Joyce’s prose as it is in the work of modern poets. It isn’t surprising that Joyce himself wrote poetry. Joyce erased, or at least blurred, the distinction between poetry and prose. Just as poetry is impossible to translate, so too Joyce’s prose is impossible to translate. Just as poetry can be read over and over, so too Joyce’s prose can be read over and over.
While Proust reminds one of a painter (he called one of his chapters, “a seascape”), Joyce reminds one of a musician. Joyce often alludes to other writers and to his own work, just as musical compositions often allude to earlier motifs. Joyce is like ancient poets, who often alluded to earlier poets, and to earlier lines in their own work.
25. Proust One might describe Kafka as humorous, Joyce as comic, and Proust as nostalgic. Kafka’s humor conceals suffering and seriousness; one cannot imagine Kafka telling the bawdy jokes that Joyce tells. Joyce’s comic sense expresses not suffering but joy; Joyce said that literature “should express the ‘holy spirit of joy’.”(18)
Proust’s nostalgia has two sources: his detachment from the present, and his attachment to his mother. Proust wrote his magnum opus while he was entombed in his cork-lined Paris apartment, isolated from the world. Such a detachment from the present has the effect of awakening memories of the past. Proust had an unusually strong attachment to his mother. After his mother had died, Proust told his maid that, “if I were sure to meet my mother again, in the Valley of Jehosaphat or anywhere else, I would want to die at once.”(19) Proust’s attachment to his mother, and his detachment from the present, combined to form the nostalgic tone of his work.
One prominent theme in Proust’s work is idealism, that is, the notion that the world is one’s idea of the world. Proust isn’t as concerned with depicting Balbec and the Duchesse de Guermantes as he is with depicting how the narrator perceives Balbec and the Duchesse de Guermantes. Proust’s main subject is the narrator’s mind, the narrator’s thoughts and feelings. Thus, he’s akin to Cervantes, whose main subject was not the world as it is, but the world as it is perceived by Don Quixote.
But while Don Quixote is always the same, Proust’s narrator changes over time. The narrator’s attitude toward Albertine, for example, changes over time; though the narrator is obsessed with Albertine, and is crushed by Albertine’s flight, he eventually puts Albertine out of his mind and becomes indifferent to her. Proust depicts how time changes one’s idea of the world, and also how time changes the world itself.
Proust’s work contains much character analysis and little plot. His narrative ambles along at a leisurely pace, and often stands still; it reminds one of two people who go for a walk, and then become so involved in their conversation that they come to a stop.
Proust’s peculiar style is related to his peculiar personality; the style marks the man. Proust’s prose is precious, convoluted and obscure.
Of all imaginative writers, Proust is one of the most religious. Proust created his own personal religion, a religion based on literature and art. Like all religions, Proust’s religion justifies life, makes it possible to accept death, and holds out the hope of life after death, of immortality.
Proust is a profound thinker, and can teach one much about life, about the passage of time, and about death. Proust’s work contains more philosophical wisdom than the work of any twentieth-century philosopher. But Proust isn’t the sort of thinker that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were, and his work doesn’t contain discussions about the existence of God. Proust’s thinking isn’t speculative, like a philosopher’s thinking; Proust’s thinking is based on sensation and feeling.
26. The Desire to Die Tragedy depicts suffering, suffering that drives the tragic hero to desire death. Why do we derive pleasure from tragedy? Why do we derive pleasure from the depiction of suffering?
Suffering is a universal human experience; it is impossible to live without suffering. When suffering reaches a certain degree, one wants to die, one wants to commit suicide. Almost everyone, at one time or another, has thought of committing suicide. Suffering, and longing for death, deepen and strengthen one’s character. “No man is educated,” said William James, “who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.” If one never suffered, and never longed for death, one would never attain maturity or strength of character, and one couldn’t accomplish anything. As the result of suffering and of longing for death, one resolves to act decisively. Suffering and the desire to die make one fearless, and this fearlessness translates into decisive action. As Johnson said, “after a man has taken the resolution to kill himself…he has nothing to fear.”
One decisive action that is often preceded by suffering and by the desire to die is a religious conversion. Tolstoy’s religious conversion, for example, was preceded by suffering and by the desire to die; Tolstoy described his pre-conversion state thus: “Behold me…hiding the rope in order not to hang myself.”(20)
Crime is another decisive action that is often preceded by suffering and by the desire to die. The criminal often resolves to commit a crime after suffering has driven him to ask, ‘what have I got to lose? Since I no longer want to live, why don’t I fulfill my criminal desire at the same time as I end my life?’ Mass murderers often end their killing sprees by killing themselves. When Stendhal was contemplating suicide, he thought of assassinating Louis XVIII, in order to “make something of your misery,” instead of dying to no purpose.
Sex is a third decisive action that is preceded by suffering and by the desire to die. Sex is closely related to death; people often fear sex, just as people often fear death. Lower animals, such as insects, often die during the sexual act. Orgasm is sometimes called, “a little death.” Rank said, “the compulsive neurotic…abstains from sexual intercourse in order not to die.”(21) According to the Book of Genesis, sex brought death into the world. If one never suffered, and never longed for death, one wouldn’t have the courage and the strength of character that are needed for sex. In addition to religious conversion, crime and sex, many other decisive actions are preceded by suffering and by the desire to die. Suffering makes one fearless, and thus prompts one to act decisively.
Tragedy depicts suffering, suffering that drives the tragic hero to desire death. The tragic hero’s suffering and his desire to die instill in him courage for decisive action. The spectator, empathizing with the tragic hero, vicariously suffers and desires to die. The spectator’s suffering and desire to die, though they are vicarious, instill in him courage for decisive action, and an appetite for living.
27. Flabby Just as suffering strengthens the moral fiber of an individual, so too suffering, war and poverty strengthen the moral fiber of a nation. The moral fiber of modern man has become flabby through comfort, peace and prosperity.
28. Heroes There is a close kinship between tragic drama and epic poetry. Tragic drama and epic poetry both depict characters who are superior to real people. The author of an epic poem or a tragic drama must have an ideal man, a hero, in his imagination. Modern imaginative writers don’t have a high conception of man, hence they don’t write in a tragic or epic vein. They tend to write in a morbid or comic vein, and to depict people in a disparaging way. While modern literature shuns the heroic for the morbid and the comic, modern visual art shuns the heroic for the nihilistic, and modern music shuns the heroic for the hedonistic.
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