Discussion: Frankenstein

We began this discussion by, as usual, speaking a little bit about the background of the person as well as what was going on in the world (usually Europe) at the time. In this case, Mary Shelley's backstory was as interesting or even more so than the text we are reading of hers. There were several significant people in her life, most notably her father William Godwin and her lover (later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley. As well, in the background, there is her deceased mother, early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose writings Mary Godwin Shelley would have read.


Mary Godwin would also have been exposed to many many intellectuals during her childhood: writers, philosophers, scientists, politicians etc. Percy Shelley was a fan of Mary Wollstonecraft and of William Godwin and falls in love with Mary Godwin when she is about 17. They elope (illegally as PB Shelley is still married to Harriet Westbrook) to the continent, accompanied by Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont (who later becomes Lord Byron's lover). After a couple of years of moving around on the Continent and in Britain, the Shelleys head back to Europe, again accompanied by Claire. Byron has been ejected from England due to accusations of incest among other things and the Shelleys find themselves his neighbours in Switzerland. Claire becomes pregnant with Byron's child - her daughter Allegra was born in 1817. Prior to the summer of 1816 when she began Frankenstein, Mary Shelley bears two children, a daughter who dies a few days after birth and later a son, William. That Fall (1816), both Harriet and Mary's older half-sister, Fanny, commit suicide. Mary completes Frankenstein the following spring, 1817.

Frankenstein was conceived during a summer spent in Switzerland with PB Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Byron. The Shelleys had had to travel through France in 1814, just after Waterloo which had devastated France. Mary would have had a close connection to France given her mother's interest and presence in Paris during the French Revolution. There had been a volcanic eruption and the weather that summer was very bad and they had to amuse themselves indoors, reading gothic novels and German ghost stories and eventually challenging each other to write their own ghost story. Mary struggled to find a worthy idea and an image comes to her in a nightmare one night. Shelley continued to work on Frankenstein upon their return to England in the Fall, with PBS' encouragement and support. It is published in January 1818.


We discussed several of the noted themes in this novel: alienation, intellectual hubris and good science/knowledge vs bad science/knowledge. One area of discussion was about the difference between 'being' and 'appearing', a Rousseauian concept and which we see in the alienation and rejection of the creature based solely on his appearance.


Stephen also mentioned the recurrence of the word 'sympathy', here meaning a sympathy of minds. Captain Walton is looking for this and feels he had found it in Victor Frankenstein; the creature is desperate for this and never finds this, and this drives his actions his entire life.


Stephen's notes for this discussion include some "plots to follow": Walton’s Journey to find the “power that attracts the needle” – Walton is the one who “learns”, who has a chance to reform himself; those seeking glory via the pursuit of knowledge “secret of life”, becoming isolated from society; the Creature’s transition from benevolent “child of nature” to violent predator due to alienation and injustice.


There were also various themes: Nature vs Nurture – The Individual and Society; Dangerous Knowledge (including the failure of science to take responsibility for its creations which in the 20th century became a metaphor for issues around nuclear power); Parenting (and the issue of men trying to take over women's role as the carrier and nurturer of the child - women were particularly weak in this novel which is interesting considering the author is a woman) and the novel was also affected by the proximity of the French Revolution (power of reason, the innate human capacity for reason and benevolence and justice).


BYRON gave us some background on the Prometheus myth, important since Shelley's novel has the subtitle "The Modern Prometheus". Her husband, PB Shelley also considered himself a Prometheus. Prometheus was originally a trilogy (Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and just the title of the 3rd, lost, play, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer). He was a titan and his name is thought to mean foresight (though one theory translates it as thief of fire). Prometheus helped Zeus but later interfered in Zeus' plans. He is seen as a trickster figure. In Hesiod's Theogeny, the use of fire was already known to humans but Zeus takes it away as punishment for a trick. Prometheus smuggles fire back to the humans in a giant fennel stalk. In Aeschylus' play, in addition to giving mankind fire, Prometheus is also thought to have taught them several arts of civilization such as science, medicine, agriculture as well as mathematics and writing He helped Zeus but then he intervened in Zeus' creation of man by giving humans fire. He became a figure who represented rebellion but who also represented human striving, especially after scientific knowledge. I don't know whether prior to Frankenstein Prometheus symbolized the risk of overreaching, hubris and unintended consequences.


Byron asked about Alienation: "the monster is victim to extreme alienation. Do we relate to this today? Some types of alienation include alienation from his creator, alienation form friends, alienation from himself. But, is the monster actually alienated from himself? Or are we today more separated from ourselves than the monster was? (On 131 the monster asks himself questions most people wouldn’t dare. He tries to understand himself.) Oddly, regarding alienation, we can perhaps see the monster and Frankenstein as aspects of one being separated from itself...could this be an outcome of what happens when we 'knowers' don't really know ourselves? Is this our warning?" Stephen noted that Frankenstein and his creature are never seen together and asked whether this could position them as 2 facets of a human being. Similarly, Frankenstein's friend Henry Clerval could be seen as an amalgam of various missing aspects of Frankenstein's being: lightness, gaiety, creativity, passion and compassion, conscience etc.

Byron had a lot to say about what Frankenstein tells about Beauty. "Our society is filthy. Our understanding of beauty is delusional and off target. We have people injecting botulin into their faces. We have people cutting the fat out of their bodies without making any more significant life changes. We have lineups at the makeup store where people pay plenty of money to paint over their skin. We have people putting silicone into their chests to look bustier. We have people eating liquid diets. People starving themselves to look thinner. People spending hours a day at the gym. And to what end? Is this end beauty? It is more likely that the hideous monster is a better example of what beauty ought to be? Most of us can’t accept ourselves in our own skins, so who are we to judge beauty? Are our imperfections what make us ‘ugly’? Or is it more likely our imperfections are what make us beautiful and we cannot see this?"


"Arguably, the monster’s biggest problem is that he is too human. In fact, he is more human and humane than people not created by Frankenstein. What does this say about our fellow creatures and the level of humanity with which we treat each other? How good have we gotten at being terrible human beings since the time this book was written? Would a present-day retelling look much different? Or is this really just a warning of our ambitions as human beings striving to be what we think better human beings would be? Victor says it himself: "seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition" (220)."


Abilio also presented some aspects of the novel. He spoke about the danger not just of science but of knowledge, citing Facebook and do we want one site where everyone, from childhood friends to employers to people you met travelling etc, can find out masses of information about you. It made me think about data mining and the gigabytes of information companies and governments are collecting about us, to the point that analysis of our emails, Facebook posts, spending habits etc can tell a stranger what our age and gender is, religion, sexual orientation, whether a woman is pregnant and when she is due (being done currently by Walmart to allow for targeted marketing of customers so they can send them ads for baby stuff).


I'm still amazed at how relevant many of these texts are. We often read them thinking that we have to remember the context in which they were written or make allowances for customs and norms of the time yet so often the insights, the conflicts, the questions they are grappling with are ones we still are grappling with today. Wondering about the danger of knowledge takes us right back to where we started in September with Genesis and Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. And here we are with Mary Shelley in 1817 worried about the dangers of untempered intellectual curiosity and here we are today still unable to come to any consensus as we play around with DNA, with weapons of mass destruction and with super computers and the Higgs Boson.

Shelley: Frankenstein

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus; Penguin Classics, London, 2003

Mary Shelley grew up in a household composed of her father, noted rationalist philosopher and writer William Godwin, her step-sister Fanny (who was the 1st daughter of Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft and her American lover, financier Gilbert Imlay) as well as Godwin's 2nd wife and her children.  Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had died 10 days after Mary's birth, due to complications from the birth.  According to Maurice Hindle's introduction, Mary grew up with a father who espoused the view that a "new system, based on 'universal benevolence', could create a just and virtuous society," maintaining that this virtue "would naturally emerge from the exercise of reason and free will, as developed in an 'enlightened' society."  Hindle quotes Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and writes "knowledge, and the enlargement  of intellect, are poor, when unmixed with sentiments of benevolence and sympathy...and science and abstraction will soon become cold, unless they derive new attractions from ideas of society."

Hindle mentions the Gothic imagery popular at the time Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and the use of monster imagery to demonize anything challenging the status quo.  Hindle notes that this style even permeated the writing of conservative political philosophers such as Edmund Burke, and in his introduction he includes a passage from Burke commenting on the French Revolution where he wrote that "vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change in its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigour of a juvenile activity.  It walks abroad; it continues its ravages..."  Godwin himself was commonly described as a monster.  Walpole described him as 'one of the greatest monsters exhibited by history' and Burke called Godwin's opinions "pure defecated atheism...the brood of that putrid carcase the French Revolution."

Hindle ends his introduction by quoting physicist Brian Easlea in Fathering the Unthinkable who raises the issue of "Mary Shelley's indictment of masculine ambition" and her exposure of "the compulsive character of masculine science."  Hindle tells us that in her last novel, Shelley ends by having the hero say "This...is Power! Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart, ferocious and daring; but to be kind, compassionate and soft." In Frankenstein, Shelley certainly seems to want to highlight the hubris and the danger of the purely intellectual approach to science, something that still resonates today when the newspapers are full of reports of people trying to manipulate DNA to create new, "better" beings, implanting uteruii into women so that they can bear children, manipulating our environment on a scale that is truly earth-shattering and then proposing to mine the solar system for our short term benefit...  The awareness that today these reckless experiments in the name of 'science' are being driven by greed rather than by the intellectual thrill of discovery, or by a thirst for power via domination over nature, just makes mankind's hubris that much more unbearable.

The original frontispiece for Frankenstein, contains a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost.  This poem has been referenced in so many texts we've read the last couple of months that I am going to have to finally read it.  Echoes of this poem come up again and again in this text.

pg 96 "Alas...when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?"

Shelley writes alot about nature.  "When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations.  A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy." [pg 71].  The nature in Switzerland, where she and P.B. Shelley were living when she conceived of and wrote Frankenstein, contributes an enormous amount to the Gothic - as well as the elemental - feel of the book.  I couldn't help but compare her descriptions of the area around Geneva with her mother's descriptions of Denmark, Norway and Sweden when she travelled through those countries in the 1790s.  I find her writing particularly her choices of adjectives (imperial, vast, glorious, immutable and especially the overused adjective 'sublime') overwrought but I did appreciate the scenery she evokes, and the sense of place.

The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial Nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands.  These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation ...  [pg 99]

...Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and it's tremendous dome overlooked the valley. [...] The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal nature bade me weep no more.  [pg 98] 

Shelley was particularly affected by her hikes around the Mer de Glace near Chamonix.

The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses.  Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds.  My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed - 'Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.'

I can't help but contrast this paean to the joys of life with the perspective Shelley offered some 25 pages earlier.   Frankenstein's youngest brother William is murdered by Frankenstein's nameless monstrous creation. Frankenstein's friend Henry, in an excess of exclamation points and overblown sentiment, tries to console him:

Dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! To die so miserably; the feel the murderer's grasp!  How much more a murderer, that could destroy such radiant innocence!  Poor little fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep but he is at rest.  The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end forever.  A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain.  He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors.

Truly a bleak outlook on life.  I'm not sure that I would have found Henry's words comforting in the face of the loss of a child.  This is always something I have never understood about many religions: the Christian religions which preach about living your life in such a way that you may ascend to heaven but regardless you will have to spend time in purgatory (and as Dante showed us in his Inferno, there was no section except the outermost part of the circles of Hell where you would want to spend even one second); the Vedic texts and Buddhist philosophy which counsel people to aim for the almost unattainable Nirvana; the Greeks describing an unattainable perfection of forms; to the Islamic texts with their promises of the companionship of pure ones in paradise.  Why should there be any sorrow or resistance to death if what comes later is what you are supposed to be aiming for, if life is just something to be endured and suffered through.  I can understand that, if day-to-day life is hard, people would dream of something better after they die but in that case, why fear it or grieve its coming?

Frankenstein is a Gothic story.  Shelley describes the scientist's dark arts; and the original concept for the story came to her in a dream when she saw the image of the pale creator bent over his awful creation.  She describes his research:

Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm... I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. [pg 52-53]

Even the 'monster' says that "Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it." [pg 102] - though he had far more reason than Frankenstein himself to find life unbearable.  "So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men." [pg 168]

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.  I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.  Make me happy [he says to Frankenstein] and I shall again be virtuous. [pg 103]

The monster pleads a good case for the torment of his misery and, aside from his quickness to wreak revenge, he seemed to have the possibility of goodness as well as baseness within him - just as mankind does.  Yet Frankenstein, despite his initial agreement to create a companion for the monster, deems him "a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated [Frankenstein's] heart." [pg 170] I don't find the monster, other than his physical abilities, to be any more malignant, evil, depraved, barbarous etc than mankind.  The media and history books are full of people far more evil, depraved and ill-intentioned than Frankenstein's monster.  To this day.  So far civilization does not seem to have extracted or cured any of these tendencies from human nature.

At the end of the story the monster laments:

Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment.  Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.  pg 223

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind has sinned against me?  pg 224 

Society still judges people by appearance, forgiving the beautiful and engaging and condemning the ugly, the odd, the different.

Frankenstein is a good example of reason gone bad.  His scientific curiosity and his hubris took him into dangerous territory and like the scientists today who push the envelope either to see if they can or because of greed, he didn't engage his intellect to consider what the results of his actions might be, nor his humanity to care about the consequences.  Shelley seemed to want to offer a warning about the dangers of actions untempered by humanity or by those human feelings which we tend to think are desirable (compassion, fellow feeling, mercy, unselfishness, affection etc).  She has Frankenstein say:

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.  I do not think that the  pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.  If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. pg 56

He goes on to say that had this rule been observed Greece would not have been enslaved and the Americas would have been discovered more gradually and the existing empires (Mexico and Peru are the examples given) not destroyed.  In Frankenstein's case he allowed his reason to be a slave to his passion (which Hume has said is how it always has to be).  The consequences of reason being the slave of dark passions (greed, jealousy, hate, envy) often seem to be the most terrible.  The narrator [pg 29] notes that Frankenstein "appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion"but here he is just speaking about allowing his equanimity to be affected by despair or grief.  In the rest of the book however, Frankenstein reminds me of Werther in his self-absorption and lamentations about how his feelings are affecting him.  Page after page about his anguish, shame, guilt, despair, wretchedness, suffering, melancholy etc etc etc. Ah poor me!!

After moping around for years, worrying and depressing everyone around him, Frankenstein has the gall to say to Elizabeth, his patiently-waiting childhood companion, on their long-delayed wedding day:

You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! if you knew what I have suffered, and what I may yet endure you would endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy. [pg 197]

The self-absorbed, whiny, arrogant man! His sufferings?!?  He caused the death of his youngest brother and allowed the execution of an innocent young family servant unjustly blamed for the murder.  He's kept his family and especially Elizabeth waiting and in the dark about how he is doing - and WHAT he is doing - for almost his entire adult life.  He has unleashed a monster and treated it in such a way that its only aim is to wreak revenge on Frankenstein by taking away anyone he loves (as Frankenstein has prevented the monster from having any loving companion in his life) - and he doesn't warn any of his 'loved' ones of the danger they are in because he is too afraid to own to the enormity and the consequences of his actions.  And he then has the audacity to chastise Elizabeth for being melancholy on their wedding day.

Towards the end, Frankenstein speaks to Captain Walton about reason and passion.  He asks him to "undertake [Frankenstein's] unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue. [...] I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion.

Shelley also has the monster suffer the effects of passion:

I knew that I was preparing myself for a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey.  pg 222

Both Frankenstein and his monster allowed their passions to take over their lives and this weakness consumed their lives and laid waste to the lives of everyone around them.

At the end, Shelley imbues the monster with all the mixtures of qualities we find in mankind.

My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change, without torture such as you cannot even imagine.  [pg 222]

Shelley wrote these words in 1816 yet today we are still trying to figure it all out.  There was an article in the newspaper today reporting the results of some experiments into humans behaving in mean or bullying ways. Situations were set up with research subjects where they were told or induced to ostracize or gang up on or to make things difficult for a few other participants.  When they assessed the feelings of the people who had been bullied and compared it to the people who had done the bullying behaviours, they found that it was psychologically more traumatic for the person acting badly or meanly than for the victimized or oppressed person.

I didn't like Shelley's overwrought writing style but the situation she imagined and the themes she wove into her work still hold resonance today - and her imagery has endured and kept a firm place in people's imaginations and in our roster of bogeymen.

Discussion: DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover

This text is being read in the section called Politics & The Body, along with The Communist Manifesto, Freud, Thoreau and Frankenstein.  Professor Thomas Grieve led the class this time, a specialist in literature from the modern period (1910-1930)

Grieve listed some of the themes in the book:

• Loss of pastoral world
• Class system
• War

He quoted from Wordsworth

"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"

          The world is too much with us; late and soon,

          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

          Little we see in Nature that is ours;

          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

          The winds that will be howling at all hours,

          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be

          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Mellors represented the world that is being lost.  He is scornful of upper classes so he retreats to dialect, Lady Chatterly has to meet Mellors on his terms, in his world: in the woods (nature), having him speak in dialect to her though he can speak the same "King's English" that she speaks.  His virility is linked to nature and in many ways he is portrayed as the "Noble Savage".

We discussed why Connie chose or connected with Mellors.  It began with compassion, when Mellors saw her as vulnerable and as compassionate.  They each saw each other as distinct human beings - he saw the "woman" in her, not just the person.

Lady Chatterly's Lover is emphatically a post WWI war novel.  They had just experienced a horrendous war; one which made civilization realize that it had not advanced as far as they had been thinking.  This aspect of a damaged generation comes up several times.  At Mellors and Connie's 1st sex encounter, she is crying with all the anguish of her generation's forlornness pg 125
Going back to the 1st lines of the book, Lawrence begins with the "tragic age"

Ours is essentially a tragic age..We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

We discussed how Mellors is an early "angry young man", a manifestation we are not one with yet, though the youth are getting angrier and the abilities to demonstrate or act on their anger are much more global.  The situation in many European countries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain, with 60-70% unemployment for men in their 20s, as well as the lack of possibilities for many immigrants in countries such as France, are leading to a build up of rage and despair.

Grieve provided us with some background to the writing of the novel.  How does this match DHL's life? He came from lower classes in mining town; ran off with married woman, an aristocrat; at the time he was writing LCL he was impotent because of his TB, his wife Frieda was sexually voracious and taking lovers, and making sure he knew it.  For Lawrence, depressed because of the state of the world, tender-hearted fucking is what will save us.  His hero, Mellors holds the power.  Lawrence has been accused of being misogynistic and we found this hard to assess just from one novel.  He writes ostensibly from a woman's point of view yet his writing is very much a man's perspective with its emphasis on the phallus.  It's the man who liberates the woman.  He educates her, guides her, he is the teacher, the wise experienced one, who frees and awakens her sexually.  For me it was quite paternalistic.  I don't know if I would call Lawrence misogynistic or whether he is just, unavoidably, male in outlook and focus.

Lawrence sees sex as a preventative or as protection against the decay of the world: against mechanization, industrialization, the weakening of men.  Some of his concerns are right on the money: the blight of industrialization, the lure and destruction of both Mammon and the bitch-goddess (much as I don't buy into the female characterization of this) of Success.

Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morality

Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Genealogy of Morality, Tr. Maudemarie Clark & Alan J Swensen, Hackett Publishing Co, Indianapolis, 1998

This book was first published in 1887.  My 1st instinct when reading the introduction to this book was resistance.  As I read that Nietzsche was going to be arguing against the validity or commonly held high valuation about "good" moral values such as "honesty, compassion, fairness" etc my defences went up and I wanted to immediately repudiate his 'immoralism'.  Recognizing this automatic reaction, I knew I had to keep an open mind about his premise and I was quite excited to read this text.

In his preamble, Nietzsche argues that if we just accept that these "good values" are universally of higher value, we risk accepting values that may hinder man's progress, that perhaps "the present were living at the expense of the future" and "that precisely morality would be to blame if a highest power and splendour of the human type - in itself possible - were never attained."

I found this concept very intriguing but when I started to read Nietzsche's words I was enormously irritated.  Diving into this book with no background in his previous work (which he says is necessary to understand this text) and with only a superficial knowledge of the evolution of Western thinking to the 19th century, I was really floundering trying to make sense of Nietzsche's arguments.  He keeps talking about the nobles at the beginning of this all, choosing the "good" moral values in order to self-glorify and to differentiate themselves from the "common herd".  But who were these nobles?  I don't see mankind as starting out with "nobles" nor do I see mankind as having held off from having values until some social stratification had occurred.  Nietzsche writes about (43.8-10)

the diseased softening and moralization by virtue of which the creature "man" finally learns to be ashamed of all his instincts 

I also have trouble with all Nietzsche's talk about Aryans, the blond beasts, about noble races, about Germanic peoples vs Teutons, Goths and Vandals.  I don't understand the context in which he would be discussing "blond beasts" and a "race of conquerors (58.13)  Where does this leave all the older civilizations: African, Asian, Middle Eastern - and their development of values?  I don't understand his discussion in his 1st section of "the Noble" and "the Jews" as being in opposition to the 'aristocratic value equation (16.31) and when he writes about Jesus as the "Redeemer bringing blessedness" and being "the seduction and detour to precisely those Jewish values and reshapings of the ideal" (17.31) I don't understand how this is going to the root of morals.  I'm pretty sure that many cultures pre-dating the years when Jesus lived among the Jews, Romans and the various tribes in the current Middle East, valued morals similar to ones ascribed to Christianity.

I can understand his suggestion that Christianity and/or Christian morals could have been a reaction, a push back against a ruling class, so that values such as humbleness, patience, obedience, forgiveness became elevated but I don't know that I would agree that honesty, fairness, generosity, compassion etc are not intrinsically 'high value' morals and ones which would have been universally considered estimable from mankind's earliest evolution.

Nietzsche considers that the basis for current morality, the estimation of "good values" was the slave revolt of the Jewish priestly class against the Roman noble class; and that the Reformation, Restoration, and even the French Revolution, were subsequent slave-revolts against the classical ideal, the noble class.

36.24-29

If[...] we place ourselves at the end of the enormous process, where the tree finally produces its fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally brings to light that to which  it was only the means: then we will find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, the individual resembling only himself, free again from the morality of custom, autonomous and supermoral (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually exclusive).

37.13-18

The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over oneself and fate, has sunk into his lowest depth and has become instinct, the dominant instinct - what will he call it, this dominant instinct, assuming that he feels the need to have a word for it? But there is no doubt: this sovereign human being calls it his conscience...

As I was reading Nietzsche's 2nd treatise: Guilt, Bad Conscience and Related Matters, where he writes about the basic, primitive instinct for revenge, for punishment, for making the person who has caused injury suffer, and how this instinct in a powerful, secure community or society can be sublimated or satisfied by 'the law', and where crime becomes a crime against the state rather than between individuals.   I wondered about aboriginal healing circles and restorative justice processes where the perpetrator and the victim come together with the community to sort out retribution with a focus on how to heal the community, compensate the victim for injury and help the perpetrator heal and reintegrate back into the community.

In this section, Nietzsche writes about the true will of life:

50.11-22

One must even admit to oneself something still more problematic: that, from the highest biological standpoint, conditions of justice can never be anything but exceptional conditions, as partial restrictions of the true will of life - which is out after power - and subordinating themselves as individual means to its overall end: that is, as means for creating greater units of power.  A legal system conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the battle of power complexes, but rather as means against all battle generally, say in accordance with Durhings's communist cliche that every will must accept every other will as equal, would be a principle hostile to life , a destroyer and dissolver of man, an attempt to kill the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret pathway to nothingness - 

Niezsche speaks about how with punishment, the criminal is held back from feeling the wrongness of his deed by the fact that 'justice' employed similar actions (lying, bribery, spying, entrapment - and, in the case of countries like China, Iran, the USA...even capital punishment, state-sanctioned killing). 55.4-5

all of these thus actions his judges in no way reject and condemn in themselves

57.10-14

Generally what can be achieved among humans and animals through punishment is an increase of fear, a sharpening of prudence, mastery of the appetites: punishment thus tames man, but it does not make him "better" - one might with greater justification maintain the opposite. 

His section on pg 51 stating that the usefulness of something (whether physiological or institutional) has nothing to do with what caused its genesis or 'coming into being' was interesting to read, especially as we'll be reading Darwin's Origin of Species in a few weeks and also considering the debate over "form follows function" vs "function follows form."

Nietzsche writes about "the suffering of man from man, from himself - as the consequence of a forceful separation from his animal past." 57.23-24
I'm not sure I'm convinced by Nietzsche of mankind's innate desire to cause pain, to receive pleasure from suffering, from causing or observing suffering, whether to others or to him/herself.  His description 63.36-37 of mankind's "will to erect an ideal - that of the "holy God" - in order, in the face of the same, to be tangibly certain of his absolute unworthiness" was an interesting observation.  He counts that as an example of mankind's will to self-punish, to self-torture, towards guilt and "bad conscience."

It is frustrating in all these male writers to have to read their gender-biased ideas and opinions.  Nietzsche, in his 3rd treatise "The Aesthetic Ideal" writes about what these mean to different groups.  What are his examples of different groups which might each have a common viewpoint, distinct from other groups?

• artists
• philosophers
• scholars
• priests
• saints
• women

So women are all lumped together by their sex, not by their interests, education, employment.  And what might 'women' mean by aesthetic ideals? 67.4-5 "at best, one more charming trait of seduction, a little morbidezza on beautiful flesh, the angelicalness of a pretty, fat animal"

We've read so few women writers and their voices over the centuries have been so constricted, so unrecorded - it's very disheartening.

Nietzsche, in his treatise on the ascetic ideal, writes that (80.11-15):

Hubris is our entire stance toward nature today, our violation of nature with the help of machines and the so thoughtless inventiveness of technicians and engineers; hubris is our stance toward God, that is to say toward some alleged spider of purpose and morality behind the great snare-web of causality...

He calls modern-day mankind "nutcrackers of souls" for our propensity to dissect ourselves. Nietzsche states that in mankind's early days what are currently considered vices were virtues (cruelty, dissimulation, revenge, denial of reason, madness was considered divinity) and what are now considered virtues were considered vices back then (well-being, desire for knowledge, peace, compassion, being pitied and work were considered disgraceful, change was immoral). pg 81
He writes about contemplation - initially viewed with fear and distrust as unwarriorlike.  He discusses the example of the Brahmins saying the ascetics had to use self-castigation to win power.  The early philosophers came from these contemplative people, beginning as priest, soothsayer, magician and often assumed an aloof stance from life, even hostile to life, de-sensualized.  Nietzsche says the early philosophers had to hide within these roles, hide within self-segregation from everyday life to survive and function, to think.  83.19-28

The idea we are fighting about here is the valuation of our life on the part of the ascetic priest. [...] The ascetic treats life as a wrong path that one must finally retrace back to the point where it begins; or as an error one refutes through deeds - should refute: for he demands that one go along with him...

 This speaks to me - I've always had a problem with the idea that our life on earth (and I don't know whether this is all there is - my inclination is to this view) is just a stepping point to a better life, that our entire focus and goal should be towards attaining some other existence, to the point of completely devaluing our lives on earth.  Nietzsche says this devaluation is one of the longest & broadest 'facts' there is in mankind's history.

While I can't agree that mankind takes pleasure, perhaps our only pleasure, in causing pain, I do agree that I don't understand why we don't pursue pleasure exclusively nor why we have impulses of self-denial, of self-punishment or self-sabotage - or altruism for that matter.  I'd always assumed, in myself, that these were culturally-learned behaviours (possibly even somewhat but not exclusively gender based) or psychological pathologies.  The presence of the 'ascetic priest' in every age, every race, every culture, suggests that this is a necessary quality, a necessary human tendency, according to Nietzsche.  H extends this ascetic tendency to self-injury to a denial or a derision of reason, excluding reason from the "realm of truth and being" (85.1)

The ascetic ideal [...] is exactly the opposite of what its venerators suppose - in it and through it life is wrestling with death and against death [...] That this ideal has been able to rule and achieve power over humans to the extent that history teaches us it has, in particular wherever the civilization and taming of man has been successfully carried out, expresses a great fact: the diseasedness of the previous type of human, at least of the human made tame, the physiological struggle of man with death (more precisely: with satiety with life, with tiredness, with the wish for the "end")  (86.9-18)

Nietzsche considers that this negating one  represents a deeply sick, diseased mankind, that "the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life that seeks with every means to hold its ground and is fighting for its existence."  86.4-6 .

"The diseased are man's greatest danger: not the evil, not the 'beasts of prey [...]  The weakest are the ones who most undermine life among humans, who most dangerously poison and call into question our confidence in life, in man, in ourselves." 87.26-29

The Dostoyevsky text that we read this week, Notes from the Underground, gave us a frightening, depressing example of just such a human, a self-loathing man who lived almost entirely in his own head.

All this makes sense when you think about the negative qualities of religion, of convention: the hypocrites, the intolerant pious people, the people resentful of the happy, the light-hearted, the joyful - we've seen these rigid, sour, destructive characters over and over in literature.  Nietzsche is very scathing about the "moral onanist and 'self-gratifier'" 88.29  He then goes on to once again rail against womenkind:

The sick woman in particular: no one excels her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannizing. Furthermore the sick woman does not spare anything living, anything dead; she digs the most buried of things up again (the Bogos say: 'woman is a hyena')"  88.32-35

These miserable diseased people are also a danger because they wish to shove "their own misery, all misery generally into the conscience of the happy: so that the happy would one day be ashamed of their happiness"  (89.15-17)

Not sure about the mention of "moral boom-boom"  pg 89.8  (Eugen Duhring) - something I'll have to read about.

The sick aesthetic priest wages war, a war of the spirit, of cunning, against the beasts of prey.  Their biggest internal danger (of the sick herd) is resentment/revenge, what Nietzsche calls "ressentiment".  The priest does this by changing the direction of the ressentiment.  According to Nietzsche the resentment is turned towards the self and leads to concepts such as "sin", "corruption", "damnation", "guilt".  III 15-16

 Nietzsche focuses somewhat on Christianity (as the prevalent European religion) but feels other religions are just as false.  Many of them include a desire for a state beyond the senses, for anaesthetizing, hypnotizing oneself.  The Vedanta says "good and evil he shakes from himself, as a wise man; his realm no longer suffers through any deed; over good and evil, over both he passed beyond."  This state is sought after in both the brahministic and buddhistic religions.  This state of redemption is not attainable through virtue.  Nietzsche considers this desire to isolate oneself form feelings and desires is a form of hibernation, of deep sleep and a denial of life.  He feels the Eastern valuation for nirvana is the same as the esteem of the Epicurean, "the hypnotic feeling of nothingess"pg 97.

Discussion: Jane Eyre

We had a guest professor for this session, Jane Sturrock from the English department - her specialty is 19th century literature.  It was a good session with lots of discussion.

She spoke about various elements in the novel:

• English chauvinism
• Racism
• Treatment of aristocracy (Blanche Ingram) is flawed, shallow
• Coincidences (wanders moor and meets cousins)
• England's imperial role

She mentioned the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - which highlighted the sexual woman -
The Mad Woman in the Attic - suppressed anger, suppressed sexuality - women's writing.
I read this years ago and don't remember being impressed by it but I'll put it on my ever-expanding list of books to read "when I have time."

Jane Eyre was published in 1847, near the end of the "Hungry 40s" - famines of 1840s
Written in the 1st person, by a woman - adventurous - a woman who insists on her own voice; also childhood was important in this novel which was different for the times.
Liberating and threatening for the period when 1st published
2 years later Dickens started to publish novel in form of autobiography, child (David Copperfield)
Jane Eyre contained a character whose adult role was built on childhood experiences, the suffering child - this device was also seen later in Great Expectations.

We also spoke a bit about the themes of power (adult figures, Mrs Reed, Brocklehurst, Rochester, monied classes), love, money, voice (female, child, poor etc), biblical references.

The Discourse of the novel - we spent a few minutes on Sturrock's opinion on how she reads a novel.  I've never taken any english courses beyond 1st year english so I have no experience of how to "read" a novel.

Martha Nussbaum's name was brought up [again] - and her writings on philosophy, law, literature
"novels direct us to pay attention to the concrete ... moral choice"
Ethical decisions made from actual human situations, relationships

Robert Moyes (UVIC) - novel imagines social realities, Kant's ethical suppositions, Jane Eyre
Doesn't imagine more hypothetical situations than Kant but difference is in quality of imagining

The dreamwork that a novel does: something you recognize from your own hidden life "forlorn child, homeless wanderer on moors, impossible love, later fulfilled"

Some background on the Brontes:
6 children, mother has died then 2 eldest die so Charlotte left as eldest - didn't want that position - they are poor for their middle class
Live in isolation, brilliant children
Reading and writing passionately - reading romantic writers: Scott, Coleridge, Byron, Wordsworth (the child is the father of the man)
Use non-realist, non-rational (dreams, hallucinations, altered states) human experiences
2 imaginary kingdoms (Angria (Charlotte and Branwell), Gondole (Emily & Anne)
Byronic hero - NB for Charlotte
Gothic elements -
2 modes of narrative (realism - burnt porridge, servants) and (gothic - moors, halls, Bertha, Rochester's secrets)
Gothic novels written in 1790s and later - trope: young pure virginal heroine goes to huge dark mansion and threatened by older powerful male (how often has this been repeated ??!?)
Much of power of Jane Eyre comes from combination of realistic elements and gothic
Importance of dreams - sometimes wakes from dream to find an even more dream-like reality.
She dreams of children and trouble.

Fairy Tales - Cinderella?  Bluebeard?
Supernatural world  - 1st meeting - on the road, Rochester riding, Eyre on stile - she hears approach of horse, man and dog and thinks of a supernatural dog
"Mustard seed" Midsummer Nights dream and also parable in bible (mustard seed grows to large plant = kingdom of heaven) - this isn't familiar to me.  Something I'll have to check into.
Also mystical aspect of Eyre and Rochester hearing each other voices when they were far apart.

Many elements of the natural world - speaks to action and character as well - twilight, the moon at various key times (Moon mother figure) - She goddess figure

These worlds intensify the sense that Jane's inner world is NB
Power imbalance - Jane says no to Rochester initially as not the relationship she wants and somewhat going against mores of the time

Sadomasochistic relationships - Rochester and his stunt as the gypsy, how he leads Blanche Ingram along.

Power and gender roles - confrontations Jane has with aggressively male characters
Masculine power, even St John has role of absolute power (or assumption of absolute power)
Charlotte had a relationship and correspondence with a man she called "My Master" - at boarding school
Also Branwell suffered from an adulterous affair with wife of his employer and was tossed out

Love in Jane's life - unloved child, drives her out to seek another life - love of Helen and Miss Temple at school - then Rochester

Power/Priviledge
Jane sees herself as revolting slave when living with Reids but also uses same language later with Rochester.  Rochester wants relationship of equals but as soon as he is sure of her and engaged he starts to treat her as an inferior - starts to direct her and ignore her wishes - put "diamond chain around your neck myself" - shopping trip.
Also image of the harem, seraglio (Chap 24)
Use of language of fetters, charters, harems, depots, colonial language

Rochester is manipulative and playing games (gypsy, pretending to woo Blanche Ingram) - thinks of jealousy as a tool to get what he wants
In Chap 24 Rochester analyzes the power equations of their relationship

Women in 1840s - no rights, little education, little means of earning money
Married Woman's Property Act didn't come into force until 1872

Chap 27 - power imbalance - Rochester furious at being defied by Jane
Women as "frail and indomitable" - striking especially at the time (1840s)

Adrienne Rich wrote on Jane Eyre.

When they finally marry they are more equal - physically Rochester reduced (loss of sight and hand - biblical punishment for adultery) and Jane also now is financially independent and has family (Diana & Mary, St John)

R: Who will care for you?
J: I will, I will care for myself.

Voice -
Truth NB to Jane and for Charlotte Bronte
To Mrs Reid "I dare because it is the truth" - also declares the need for love
To Rochester - similar claims - do you think I can stay to become nothing to you (when thinks will marry Blanche Ingram) etc etc

I'm poor, plain, a woman but I matter
Addresses reader in Chap 12 about women (can 1/2 of humanity survive without a role)

Bible - used throughout - used to give a personal depth to narrative - also refers to Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress; scene in orchard is Adam & Eve; storm and lightening blast
Allusions deepen the text
When finds out about Rochester
Psalm 69 "the waters have closed over me"

By Grand Central Station also uses Psalms; Oscar Wilde's Dei Profundis "out of the depths I speak to you oh god" relationshp with Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading gaol

The ending - moves away from J & R and finishes with St John dying as missionary in India
Ends with words from end of bible
"Imperialist evangelism'

Novels often end by moving themselves out

BYRON's question - power relationships  - Jane only ended up marrying Rochester after she was in the ascendancy (and in sections regarding St. John she does speak about being in the ascendancy so this is a consideration for her).

Kirstin - hero's journey

Discussion about why Rochester had to suffer such deprivations before he and Jane could be happy together - was this symbolic (loss of eyes and hands as biblical punishment for his prior sins) - or was this what was necessary for Jane's equality to Rochester - he was brought down physically as well as through wealth

I felt that Rochester's misfortunes happened as a way to make them equal - Jane could never rise to Rochester's heights because of the class structure and his wealth so by bringing him down physically and through loss of his estate they can approach some equality.

Nature vs Nurture
Can Bertha help her madness?

Rochester at one point tells Jane if she doesn't listen to him he will use violence.
At one point Rochester tells Jane to put her hand in his because as long as he can touch and see her, he will be content - of course later he loses his sight and his right hand.

Both Jane and Rochester speak the language of reason - they connect through their language and thoughts.

Chris asked why Jane Eyre is considered a feminist novel and what does it say about the role of Women in Victorian society?

Abilio asked about the main elements that determined Jane's final independence: Family and Money.

Jane being locked up in red room as child and Bertha being locked up by Rochester in attic rooms - which she later sets fire to. Parallels.

Jane is a very passionate person and at school she learns to temper this with reason, education.

1st person format was very important as this is a journey of growth and self-discovery.  Makes us empathize with Jane who could be a very drab, minor secondary character (poor dependent, student at foundling school, governess, plain person, poor).

Laura asked about whether Jane's education and learnedness gave her any advantages?

Discussion: Anatole France "The Gods Will Have Blood"

Stephen started the discussion off by mentioning his experience during the 60s at SFU where the revolutionary/Berkeley spirit was strong and students believed they would overthrow the old guard and change the world.  A friend of his told him that come the revolution they would have to shoot Stephen because he wouldn't be able to go as far as the extremists.  Anatole France's book "The Gods Will Have Blood" and especially the character Brotteaux spoke to Stephen and this very thrilling time in his life.

Bruce led the discussion and disagreed with Davies' suggestion that Gamelin was a modern-day terrorist.  He felt that Gamelin was an idealist, a fanatic and extremist but not someone who just wants to destroy, rather someone who believes in a new order to the exclusion of any other considerations.

Anatole France was known as a left-wing writer and he was unusual in attacking the French Revolution from the left.  Bruce spoke a little about the Dreyfus affair and France's support of Dreyfus.  He circulated the famous 'J'accuse' article by Emile Zola - an article in L'Aurore newspaper.
The Zionist movement arose from Jewish feelings about the Dreyfus affair.

Gamelin's unfinished painting of Orestes and his sister Electra was an important theme in the book and this led to a discussion about the myth, about Orestes as a symbol of a person forced to commit a sin in order to obey another duty.

Brotteaux and Longuemare, as well as Athenais, were like a Greek chorus - the voice of consience.  They don't fit in with the world of the revolution and so they are all doomed. They had a love for humanity whereas Gamelin loved France and the ideal of the Revolution but he didn't have  a love for humanity.

The rational abstracted from the real world can be dangerous - if a person (especially one with power) focuses in on theory and a structure, on laws and regulations and ignores the humanity, real evil can result.

Anatole France referred often to Rousseau in the novel - Rousseau probably represented the brutal, raw nature.  We discussed the country interlude - which was an odd break in the novel.  This was likely a bit of  critique of Rousseau who wrote about the healing effects of Nature.  France felt that you can't just go into Nature and have it change anything.  The odd character of Tronche could represent the peasantry of France and how it is used and abused by the aristocrats/intellectuals etc.

I would like to read a bit more about this time period and try to get a better understanding of the various people and the events.  It was such a dramatic upheaval in centuries of class structure and led to important changes that we are still dealing with today.

Bronte's Jane Eyre

Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre; Broadview Editions, Peterborough, 2004

I enjoyed re-reading this book.  I had read it a few times as a child/teenager and I mainly remembered the scenes in the orphanage and the mad wife in the attic.  I also have very vivid memories of the 1st scene when she is hiding in the library in the window, reading, and her unjust treatment at the hands of her relatives.  Reading it from a perspective decades later and with much experience under my belt, in my profession as well as the culture around me, it was amazing how much commentary on society was packed into this book.  I still very much liked the character of Jane Eyre.  Bronte had a knack of describing Jane such that we could see why those around her were bothered by her but we were totally on her side.  Her integrity was what sold it for me, her strength of character especially when so very young and disadvantaged.

There were some great lines again that I want to remember:

pg 82 "I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste."

"If you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime." (to Hannah)

"Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this.” - when rejecting running away to France

There was so much social commentary in this novel:

pg 178

"Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.  Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts just as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.  It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

pg 207; Chap XIV

The Nurture vs Nature Debate:

During one of their 1st conversations, Rochester admires Jane Eyre's frank manner, freedom from affectation and her strong statement on the rights of the free-born individual.  He tells her: 

"Not three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have just done.  But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it."

Jane Eyre contains characters that range from very bad (John Reed, Mrs. Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst) to the very good (Helen, Mrs. Temple, Diana and Mary Rivers), with many characters of mixed qualities in between.  If human nature is in fact Nature (meaning what we are born with), then how much blame or admiration should we give to people for qualities innate to them whether this be musical ability, athletic ability, intelligence?  Qualities such as compassion, honesty, industriousness, integrity are often considered to be much affected by the 3 Es: environment, education and experience but how much of these are innate? Jane Eyre was raised under very adverse conditions and grew up to be a woman with many admirable qualities.  Is she to be praised for this or is this just the nature she was born with?  Rochester considers that he is basically a good man, and he blamed the sinful life he had led on adverse events that happened to him.  Are we justified in condemning John Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst or Blanche Ingram for their faults or were they constrained by their natures?

pg 236
It is interesting to read how much Bronte inserts about reason in her story.

"Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night - of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way, a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real and rabidly devoured the ideal; "

pg 282
Jane Eyre seems to sit firmly on the reason over passion debate.  Passion isn't bad but if it's a battle between reason and passion then reason should be the decider.

"Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her [Jane Eyre] to wild chasms.  The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are ; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.  Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I [Jane Eyre] shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience."

St John is a very rigid, self-righteous character.  He seems the epitome of what you do not want in a missionary.

"Reason, and not feeling is my guide: my ambition is unlimited; my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable.  I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends, and mount to lofty eminence."

When he describes himself to Jane, he has many conflicting statements.  He says he is a follower of Jesus and has adopted his "pure, his merciful, his benignant doctrines." Yet he goes on to describe his "due sense of Divine justice" and he is nothing if not ambitious.  He was an interesting character for Bronte to insert into her novel and he made me wonder who might have been in Bronte's life that influenced this character.

I thought the characters were interesting, they were not necessarily realistic but they all contained components of interest, qualities or failings that we see in the people around us but sometimes magnified to great effect.

Anouilh: ANTIGONE

Anouilh, Jean: Antigone; tr. Barbara Bray, Methuen, London,  1987

Jean Anouilh 1910-1987
Born in Bordeaux. His father was a tailor and his mother a violinist (at a nearby resort). The family moves to Paris when he is 8. Begins Law at the Sorbonne but quits to become a dramatist. He was quite influenced by the work of Pirandello, which surfaced in Paris in the 1920s.  Marries the actress Monelle Valentin when he is 22. Prisoner of war (briefly) in 1940. Antigone begins her 1st run (500 performances) in 1944, with Monelle Valentin in the lead role.  Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh perform in  Antigone at the London Old Vic in 1949. Lives near Lausanne for the last 30 years of his life. Anouilh increasingly disillusioned by French society, and has a particular antipathy to De Gaulle but also the far left militants.

Anouilh describes to Paul Vandromme what the theatre meant to him "Thanks to those spring evenings [at the theatre] in 1928 I was able to escape a little from the long night of my existence."

The Methuen edition describes some differences between Anouilh's Antigone and Sophocles'. Anouilh omits Tiresias, the blind seer.  In Anouilh's version, Creon (Antigone's uncle and now King of Thebes due to the deaths of both her brothers, Oedipus' sons) does not experience the growth and change we saw in Sophocles' version.  In the original, Creon has a conversation with both Tiresias and with his own son Haemon and both these men urge him not to carry out the death penalty Antigone received when she disobeyed Creon's edict and buried her brother Polyneices.  Creon spurns their advice initially, determined to be a strong impartial ruler but he eventually repents and realizes that by holding to his decision, he is dishonouring the gods.  In Anouilh's version, Creon is a more sympathetic man who has given up the life he enjoyed in order to become King of Thebes when both of Oedipus' sons kill each other.  His growth seems to have taken place prior to the events of the play.  Anouilh also omits much of the power and reason of Haemon's speeches.

It's interesting reading this Antigone after having read Elizabeth Smart's "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept." (I've been reading a bit out of sync over the break). Both are young passionate women who are very judgmental and intolerant (as is Werther) of age and its apparent compromises. All three are very idealistic and uncompromising.

It's not an original observation that passion and youth go together but the 3 books I've just read in the last week have really pummelled me with this dogmatic pairing.  All 3 texts, 2 fictional, one poetically autobiographical, have main characters that are young, subsumed by passion and intolerant of age, reason, compromise, survival.  All 3 see age or even maturity as, literally, a fate worth than death.  I'm still coming to grips with this uncompromising view of passion and with the prospect that passion, real passion, is - possibly, likely, sadly - only attainable in the young.  I'm not quite ready to give up on the possibility of passion but I also don't see life in such uncompromising, black and white, all-or-nothing, terms.

Laura was speaking the other day about having watched Baz Luhrman's "Romeo & Juliet" in another class.  She'd 1st seen the film as a teen or young adult and had found it very moving and enthralling, very powerful.  She said watching it in class made her realize the generational difference between herself and some younger classmates - who found the film dated and laughable.  I saw the film as an adult, probably in my 30s and I wasn't emotionally affected by it but thought it was a worthy update of the famous play.  It's interesting how age so affects perception.  I'm finding that about books I'm re-reading that I read as a teen or young adult.  I may get more context, more perspective, more substance out of them now but I don't know if they will affect me emotionally or chromatically the same way certain books did when I was young.

I enjoyed reading a different version of Antigone - for the same reason I enjoy (usually) seeing repeated versions of various of Shakespeare's plays - you get something different out each time.  I did very firmly have in my head, the whole time I was reading it, the fact that it was written in Paris during the 2nd world war.  Images from Casablanca and other WWII films and books would flit around in my head as I read through the play.

Discussion: Goethe's Faust

Last class of the term and of LS800.  It's been an intense 3 months - yet despite the heavy reading load, most books made me want to delve deeper and read more about the period, about the issue, by the author etc.  Some much history and so many things I have a glancing awareness of but no knowledge.

GOETHE background - 'last' Renaissance man
1749-1832, born in Frankfurt, died in Weimar
Contemporary of Wollstonecraft
Born in the Holy Roman Empire, prior to unification of Germany (1871). HRE dissolved during his lifetime
At age 27, went to live in Weimar, died there (though in Italy for a period)
French soldiers invaded Weimar while he was living there, entered his house and his mistress convinced the soldiers to leave the house.  They married the following day
The Age of Enlightenment - away from Religion, towards Romanticism and emotions/passions/sensibility
Writer, poet, philosopher, natural scientist, critic, director, actor, painter, lawyer, government minister/advisor
Heigl, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert

Opposed French Revolution, opposed Romantic tradition (critical of emotional excesses)
In Italy during a period of renaissance of neo-classical influences
Like a German Shakespeare vis a vis language (as Dante was for Italy)
Accused by scientists of trying to import romanticism into science (i.e.: work with colours) - more appreciated in 21st c.  Hard science doesn't give us all the answers.


FAUST
Part 1 more about Faust, Part 2 more about society.
Goethe finished Faust Part 2 just before his death
Goethe wrote the work over an extended period 1773-1831
Original idea was a simple legend about a magician who makes a deal with devil.

QUESTIONS
1. Compare Adam and Eve myth with Faust & Mephistopheles myth: searching for knowledge, Fall from Grace, serpent

Faust wants all knowledge and Mephisto tells him he can't have god's understanding of universe, meaning of universe.  Offers him alternatives.
Mephisto tempts people but they have a choice.

Jung was very influenced by Goethe and Faust and relation of myth with collective unconsciousness.
Science vs intuition
Germany began to divide learning into departments: science vs philosophy etc
The beginnings of the concept of dangerous knowledge.

2. Is Faust a victim of a pact made by forces more powerful than himself, or a self-centred individual who leads an innocent young girl to her ruin?

Faust wanting to know and unify everything.
Mephisto couldn't tempt Gretchen as too pure but Faust could ensnare her with love.

3.  In the Prologue, Mephisto argues that "man's life would be easier without Reason - for he uses it only for bestial pursuits." Is this a fair assessment?
Goethe would agree with Hume that we are using Reason to serve passions.


Movement in Germany that assigns naziism and Holocaust to Reason - as a very rational approach to a goal and how to accomplish it.  It's a frightening thought, but this is probably the only approach that would enable people to commit such atrocities - remove the emotion, the empathy, the reactions from it.
WWI was a tremendous blow to reason - such a big change - got even worse with WWII and after.

Passion is pushing us to do things but reason separated from morals can be horrifying and terribly destructive.  See Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Goethe sees the start of the industrial revolution: destruction of cities, families, rise of importance of individuals, science, production and innovation - and foresees the dangers of where mankind was heading.

Goethe seemed to support man's striving - for the best of something.  We will read another of his texts in the new year and I'm curious to see how it compares to Faust.

This is it until 2013!