Discussion: Werther and Antigone

We had our 1st discussion since we broke at the end of the Fall term.  It was great to see everyone again and plunge back in to our progression through the philosophy and literature of the last 4000 years.  Stephen reviewed the texts we'll be covering this term.  They are grouped into themes, and not arranged as chronologically as LS800.  The 1st set deal with overwhelming passion: The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Jean Anouilh's version of Antigone, written in Paris during WWII.  Next week Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes. Then Anatole France's The Gods Will Have Blood (about fanaticism during the French Revolution) and after that Jane Eyre (reason making an appearance).  We then move into the next series, mainly concerned with reason/unreason: Doestoevesky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Kierkegaard; then 3 big texts: Darwin's Origin of the Species, Marx's Communist Manifesto and Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents as well as our 3rd version of Antigone, also written during WWII but by Bertold Brecht.  We end the Politics and the Body series with Lady Chatterly's Lover and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
The final series are 5 more modern texts that examine much of what we have been reading and discuss where that leaves us: Adam Phillips 'Darwin's Worms', Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own', Antonio Damasio's 'Descartes Error' and Elaine Scarry's 'On Beauty'; finishing April 13 with Jacques Derrida's 'The Animal that Therefore I Am'.

We started with Goethe's Werther, which he wrote as a young man after suffering through unrequited love.  He used the writing of Werther as catharsis for his feelings.  It is considered one of the 1st novels of the Romantic period, where the focus moved to the individual, with the appearance of modern self-consciousness and sensibility (the importance of personal feelings).  Werther was an alienated artist and didn't really have a firm place in any of the worlds he entered: too wealthy and intellectual for the rural Waldheim but too low-born for the aristocracy and court life (though had he been happy to be a clerk toiling away in the background, he would have been fine at court).

Stephen sent out some material about Werther which included a quote by Goethe about Werther.  I always wondered about one term he uses, "true penetration of mind," which I have read in various 19th century books.
“I portray a young person who, endowed with profound, pure feeling and true penetration of mind, loses himself in rhapsodic dreams, undermines himself by speculation until he finally, ravaged by the additional effect of unhappy passions and in particular by an infinite love, shoots himself in the head.”
What does the speaker mean when they use this phrase?  Is it sympathy of mind with the speaker or something more objective?

Lorraine led the discussion.  She brought 2 quotes, applicable to passion, from a book she was reading over the break called Adult Literacy.

[Fear] has no logic.  It destroys confidence and common sense: my actions and my works were sometimes inappropriate to the situation at hand. (Helfield, 1997)  Lorraine proposed that this sentence would apply equally to passion.

Our humanity is most evident in our feelings, yet it is this affective aspect of our nature that is so often ignored. (Goleman, 1995)

Lorraine notes Goethe/Werther's use of "I", very brave to use 1st person.  She felt Werther was arrogant.  He was certainly self-absorbed and I think he was condescending in some regards (to some of the people he met: the rural people, the aristocrats at court and the ambassador he worked for).  He was probably arrogant about his own abilities but what mainly came through for me was his absorption in his own feelings.  For me he would have been a tiresome penpal.

Lorraine mentioned a similar book about unrequited love: Yentl by Isaac Bashevis Singer

The epistolatory style used in Werther was very popular for awhile in the 18th and 19th centuries but is not used as much any more.  I have a fondness for it -  that feeling that you are peeking into someone else's life as it unfolds.  I still remember reading and rereading "Daddy-Long-Legs".  I'm not sure it would count as great literature but I did enjoy it when I was young. The limitation of a book advanced only via letters (usually just one person's letters as is the case in Werther) is you only see things from the letter writer's viewpoint.  We don't know much of Lotte or Albert, or even Wilhelm's viewpoint.

Werther is not only about love and passion and pain but also commentary about the society of the time that locked people into very limited roles and options.  Lotte had no choice but to marry the man her parents had betrothed her to, Albert was busy working his way up the minor functionary pathway.  Werther himself was not part of the labouring classes nor completely accepted by the aristocracy but his options to move in and out of these strata was curtailed.  The farmhand was in love with his mistress, who needed labourers to manage the farm she was left yet they were not allowed to have a legitimate relationship though this would likely have been an ideal outcome for both of them.

The novel is set at a time when we are seeing the beginning of the change towards valuing the individual and also the inroads against the predominance and unassailability of the aristocracy.  Europe's resistance to this change is what soon will result in the French Revolution.

ANTIGONE
Does the metatheatre aspect, with the Prologue/Chorus announcing right from the beginning what was going to happen in the play, add or take away from the impact or enjoyment of the play.  Most people felt that it helped, made them concentrate more on the characters and what they said rather than wondering what was going to happen.  It also put entire audience on the same footing knowing what was going to happen.
Lauren mentioned that a friend of hers had just come back from London and saw quite a few plays and in every single one actors would come out for 30-60 minutes before the play started and put on their makeup on the stage, chatting with the audience.  The new trend it seems.

How did the anachronistic elements work?   For most people it either supported the play or at least didn't detract from it.  The stylistic choice to start with breaking the 4th wall already tears us away from the Greek version of the play and from our expectations.  Having 20th century garb, motor vehicles and manners of speaking was not jarring (to read - I'm not sure how it would be seeing the play itself).  I do remember really disliking and being bothered by reading the "hillbilly accents" given to the Spartans in the version of Lysistrata I read.

In Sophocles' version of Antigone, Creon experiences enormous personal growth (through tragedy) during the play. Does Anouilh's Creon experience any growth or change?  I didn't think he did.  In Anouilh's version, Creon was an urbane city dweller when he was suddenly faced with having to give up his desired life and assume the duties of King of Thebes.  In the play he notes that he did this out of a strong sense of duty.  This Creon is much more nuanced and kinder than Sophocles ruler but he experienced his growth before the start of the play.  He does suffer change (the death of son and wife an his role in Antigone's death) but we don't know how this may have altered him.

In Sophocles' Antigone, her reasons for defying Creon and burying her brother would have been supported by the audience as she was obeying the death rituals required of family in order to honour them and to honour the gods.  In Anouilh's version, Antigone just seems to be stubbornly set on dying because she can't face the inevitable compromises of maturity and age.  She is certainly a figure that is true to her feelings, her passions but her passions are passions for her feelings not passions for anyone else so she is a very self-absorbed character and not as sympathetic because of this.

Lauren asked whether Anouilh was misogynistic in his treatment of his female characters?  None if the 4 female characters were particularly well-rounded or compelling.  Some liked Ismene (Abilio preferred Sophocles' Ismene), some felt the nurse provided a warm glimpse into what the 2 girls childhoods and homelifes would have been.  I'm not sure I would have called him misogynistic.  Creon was the most interesting character but aside from him and the young idealistic passionate Antigone, all the other characters, male or female, were quite superficially sketched.

I found both these books interesting.  Both from the perspective of temperament and of age, I can't identify with either Werther or Antigone but I do feel that being able to respond with emotion, being able and willing to react emotionally to the world around you, are what add the joy to life.  I just can't give myself up to this and ignore all other considerations.  Neither Werther nor Antigone would have approved of me.