Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

“Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It’s very tiny - very tiny, content.”
- Willem De Kooning, in an interview

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
- Oscar Wilde, in a letter



1

The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. (Cf. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality.

It is at this point that the peculiar question of the value of art arose. For the mimetic theory, by its very terms, challenges art to justify itself.

Plato, who proposed the theory, seems to have done so in order to rule that the value of art is dubious. Since he considered ordinary material things as themselves mimetic objects, imitations of transcendent forms or structures, even the best painting of a bed would be only an “imitation of an imitation.” For Plato, art is neither particularly useful (the painting of a bed is no good to sleep on), nor, in the strict sense, true. And Aristotle’s arguments in defense of art do not really challenge Plato’s view that all art is an elaborate trompe l’oeil, and therefore a lie. But he does dispute Plato’s idea that art is useless. Lie or no, art has a certain value according to Aristotle because it is a form of therapy. Art is useful, after all, Aristotle counters, medicinally useful in that it arouses and purges dangerous emotions.

In Plato and Aristotle, the mimetic theory of art goes hand in hand with the assumption that art is always figurative. But advocates of the mimetic theory need not close their eyes to decorative and abstract art. The fallacy that art is necessarily a “realism” can be modified or scrapped without ever moving outside the problems delimited by the mimetic theory.

The fact is, all Western consciousness of and reflection upon art have remained within the confines staked out by the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation. It is through this theory that art as such - above and beyond given works of art - becomes problematic, in need of defense. And it is the defense of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learned to call “form” is separated off from something we have learned to call “content,” and to the well-intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory.

Even in modern times, when most artists and critics have discarded the theory of art as representation of an outer reality in favor of the theory of art as subjective expression, the main feature of the mimetic theory persists. Whether we conceive of the work of art on the model of a picture (art as a picture of reality) or on the model of a statement (art as the statement of the artist), content still comes first. The content may have changed. It may now be less figurative, less lucidly realistic. But it is still assumed that a work of art is its content. Or, as it’s usually put today, that a work of art by definition says something. (“What X is saying is . . . ,” “What X is trying to say is . . .,” “What X said is . . .” etc., etc.)


2

None of us can ever retrieve that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew (or thought one knew) what it did. From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art. We can only quarrel with one or another means of defense. Indeed, we have an obligation to overthrow any means of defending and justifying art which becomes particularly obtuse or onerous or insensitive to contemporary needs and practice.

This is the case, today, with the very idea of content itself. Whatever it may have been in the past, the idea of content is today mainly a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism.

Though the actual developments in many arts may seem to be leading us away from the idea that a work of art is primarily its content, the idea still exerts an extraordinary hegemony. I want to suggest that this is because the idea is now perpetuated in the guise of a certain way of encountering works of art thoroughly ingrained among most people who take any of the arts seriously. What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation. And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art.


3

Of course, I don’t mean interpretation in the broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain “rules” of interpretation.

Directed to art, interpretation means plucking a set of elements (the X, the Y, the Z, and so forth) from the whole work. The task of interpretation is virtually one of translation. The interpreter says, Look, don’t you see that X is really - or, really means - A? That Y is really B? That Z is really C?

What situation could prompt this curious project for transforming a text? History gives us the materials for an answer. Interpretation first appears in the culture of late classical antiquity, when the power and credibility of myth had been broken by the “realistic” view of the world introduced by scientific enlightenment. Once the question that haunts post-mythic consciousness - that of the seemliness of religious symbols - had been asked, the ancient texts were, in their pristine form, no longer acceptable. Then interpretation was summoned, to reconcile the ancient texts to “modern” demands. Thus, the Stoics, to accord with their view that the gods had to be moral, allegorized away the rude features of Zeus and his boisterous clan in Homer’s epics. What Homer really designated by the adultery of Zeus with Leto, they explained, was the union between power and wisdom. In the same vein, Philo of Alexandria interpreted the literal historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible as spiritual paradigms. The story of the exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the desert for forty years, and the entry into the promised land, said Philo, was really an allegory of the individual soul’s emancipation, tribulations, and final deliverance. Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning. However far the interpreters alter the text (another notorious example is the Rabbinic and Christian “spiritual” interpretations of the clearly erotic Song of Songs), they must claim to be reading off a sense that is already there.

Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the contemporary zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances. The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one. The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud, actually amount to elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious theories of interpretation. All observable phenomena are bracketed, in Freud’s phrase, as manifest content. This manifest content must be probed and pushed aside to find the true meaning - the latent content - beneath. For Marx, social events like revolutions and wars; for Freud, the events of individual lives (like neurotic symptoms and slips of the tongue) as well as texts (like a dream or a work of art) - all are treated as occasions for interpretation. According to Marx and Freud, these events only seem to be intelligible. Actually, they have no meaning without interpretation. To understand is to interpret. And to interpret is to restate the phenomenon, in effect to find an equivalent for it.

Thus, interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.


4

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. (“This world”! As if there were any other.)

The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have.


5

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.

This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job.

The work of Kafka, for example, has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters. Those who read Kafka as a social allegory see case studies of the frustrations and insanity of modern bureaucracy and its ultimate issuance in the totalitarian state. Those who read Kafka as a psychoanalytic allegory see desperate revelations of Kafka’s fear of his father, his castration anxieties, his sense of his own impotence, his thralldom to his dreams. Those who read Kafka as a religious allegory explain that K. in The Castle is trying to gain access to heaven, that Joseph K. in The Trial is being judged by the inexorable and mysterious justice of God. . . . Another oeuvre that has attracted interpreters like leeches is that of Samuel Beckett. Beckett’s delicate dramas of the withdrawn consciousness - pared down to essentials, cut off, often represented as physically immobilized - are read as a statement about modern man’s alienation from meaning or from God, or as an allegory of psychopathology.

Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Rilke, Lawrence, Gide . . . one could go on citing author after author; the list is endless of those around whom thick encrustations of interpretation have taken hold. But it should be noted that interpretation is not simply the compliment that mediocrity pays to genius. It is, indeed, the modern way of understanding something, and is applied to works of every quality. Thus, in the notes that Elia Kazan published on his production of A Streetcar Named Desire, it becomes clear that, in order to direct the play, Kazan had to discover that Stanley Kowalski represented the sensual and vengeful barbarism that was engulfing our culture, while Blanche Du Bois was Western civilization, poetry, delicate apparel, dim lighting, refined feelings and all, though a little the worse for wear to be sure. Tennessee Williams’ forceful psychological melodrama now became intelligible: it was about something, about the decline of Western civilization. Apparently, were it to go on being a play about a handsome brute named Stanley Kowalski and a faded mangy belle named Blanche Du Bois, it would not be manageable.


6

It doesn’t matter whether artists intend, or don’t intend, for their works to be interpreted. Perhaps Tennessee Williams thinks Streetcar is about what Kazan thinks it to be about. It may be that Cocteau in The Blood of a Poet and in Orpheus wanted the elaborate readings which have been given these films, in terms of Freudian symbolism and social critique. But the merit of these works certainly lies elsewhere than in their “meanings.” Indeed, it is precisely to the extent that Williams’ plays and Cocteau’s films do suggest these portentous meanings that they are defective, false, contrived, lacking in conviction.

From interviews, it appears that Resnais and Robbe-Grillet consciously designed Last Year at Marienbad to accommodate a multiplicity of equally plausible interpretations. But the temptation to interpret Marienbad should be resisted. What matters in Marienbad is the pure, untranslatable, sensuous immediacy of some of its images, and its rigorous if narrow solutions to certain problems of cinematic form.

Again, Ingmar Bergman may have meant the tank rumbling down the empty night street in The Silence as a phallic symbol. But if he did, it was a foolish thought. (“Never trust the teller, trust the tale,” said Lawrence.) Taken as a brute object, as an immediate sensory equivalent for the mysterious abrupt armored happenings going on inside the hotel, that sequence with the tank is the most striking moment in the film. Those who reach for a Freudian interpretation of the tank are only expressing their lack of response to what is there on the screen.

It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates a dissatisfaction (conscious or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else.

Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.


7

Interpretation does not, of course, always prevail. In fact, a great deal of today’s art may be understood as motivated by a flight from interpretation. To avoid interpretation, art may become parody. Or it may become abstract. Or it may become (“merely”) decorative. Or it may become non-art.

The flight from interpretation seems particularly a feature of modern painting. Abstract painting is the attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; since there is no content, there can be no interpretation. Pop Art works by the opposite means to the same result; using a content so blatant, so “what it is,” it, too, ends by being uninterpretable.

A great deal of modern poetry as well, starting from the great experiments of French poetry (including the movement that is misleadingly called Symbolism) to put silence into poems and to reinstate the magic of the word, has escaped from the rough grip of interpretation. The most recent revolution in contemporary taste in poetry - the revolution that has deposed Eliot and elevated Pound - represents a turning away from content in poetry in the old sense, an impatience with what made modern poetry prey to the zeal of interpreters.

I am speaking mainly of the situation in America, of course. Interpretation runs rampant here in those arts with a feeble and negligible avant-garde: fiction and the drama. Most American novelists and playwrights are really either journalists or gentlemen sociologists and psychologists. They are writing the literary equivalent of program music. And so rudimentary, uninspired, and stagnant has been the sense of what might be done with form in fiction and drama that even when the content isn’t simply information, news, it is still peculiarly visible, handier, more exposed. To the extent that novels and plays (in America), unlike poetry and painting and music, don’t reflect any interesting concern with changes in their form, these arts remain prone to assault by interpretation.

But programmatic avant-gardism - which has meant, mostly, experiments with form at the expense of content - is not the only defense against the infestation of art by interpretations. At least, I hope not. For this would be to commit art to being perpetually on the run. (It also perpetuates the very distinction between form and content which is, ultimately, an illusion.) Ideally, it is possible to elude the interpreters in another way, by making works of art whose surface is so unified and clean, whose momentum is so rapid, whose address is so direct that the work can be . . . just what it is. Is this possible now? It does happen in films, I believe. This is why cinema is the most alive, the most exciting, the most important of all art forms right now. Perhaps the way one tells how alive a particular art form is, is by the latitude it gives for making mistakes in it, and still being good. For example, a few of the films of Bergman - though crammed with lame messages about the modern spirit, thereby inviting interpretations - still triumph over the pretentious intentions of their director. In Winter Light and The Silence, the beauty and visual sophistication of the images subvert before our eyes the callow pseudo-intellectuality of the story and some of the dialogue. (The most remarkable instance of this sort of discrepancy is the work of D. W. Griffith.) In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret. Many old Hollywood films, like those of Cukor, Walsh, Hawks, and countless other directors, have this liberating anti-symbolic quality, no less than the best work of the new European directors, like Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim, Godard’s Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, and Olmi’s The Fiancés.

The fact that films have not been overrun by interpreters is in part due simply to the newness of cinema as an art. It also owes to the happy accident that films for such a long time were just movies; in other words, that they were understood to be part of mass, as opposed to high, culture, and were left alone by most people with minds. Then, too, there is always something other than content in the cinema to grab hold of, for those who want to analyze. For the cinema, unlike the novel, possesses a vocabulary of forms - the explicit, complex, and discussable technology of camera movements, cutting, and composition of the frame that goes into the making of a film.


8

What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For I am not saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased. They can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its place?

What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary - a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary - for forms.[1] The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form. On film, drama, and painting respectively, I can think of Erwin Panofsky’s essay, “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures,” Northrop Frye’s essay “A Conspectus of Dramatic Genres,” Pierre Francastel’s essay “The Destruction of a Plastic Space.” Roland Barthes’ book On Racine and his two essays on Robbe-Grillet are examples of formal analysis applied to the work of a single author. (The best essays in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, like “The Scar of Odysseus,” are also of this type.) An example of formal analysis applied simultaneously to genre and author is Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Story Teller: Reflections on the Works of Nicolai Leskov.”

Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art. This seems even harder to do than formal analysis. Some of Manny Farber’s film criticism, Dorothy Van Ghent’s essay “The Dickens World: A View from Todgers’,” Randall Jarrell’s essay on Walt Whitman are among the rare examples of what I mean. These are essays which reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.


9

Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are. This is the greatness of, for example, the films of Bresson and Ozu and Renoir’s The Rules of the Game.

Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels. Now it is not. It reinforces the principle of redundancy that is the principal affliction of modern life.

Once upon a time (a time when high art was scarce), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to interpret works of art. Now it is not. What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture.

Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed.

What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.


10

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.


[1964]

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[1] “One of the difficulties is that our idea of form is spatial (the Greek metaphors for form are all derived from notions of space). This is why we have a more ready vocabulary of forms for the spatial than for the temporal arts. The exception among the temporal arts, of course, is the drama; perhaps this is because the drama is a narrative (i.e., temporal) form that extends itself visually and pictorially, upon a stage. . . . What we don’t have yet is a poetics of the novel, any clear notion of the forms of narration. Perhaps film criticism will be the occasion of a breakthrough here, since films are primarily a visual form, yet they are also a subdivision of literature. o deplete the world — in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. (“This world”! As if there were any other.) The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have.”

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McCarthy and the freedom of the will

In this thread I want to discuss the work of Cormac McCarthy and the degree in which it is concerned with the freedom of the will. My claim, such as it is, is that his work is an extended examination of the extent to which a man (for it is always a man) is free in this world or if his life is mapped out for him and he ultimately has no choice but to follow his path wherever it takes him and eventually ends for him.

I had intended to work on a much longer piece but not everyone has read McCarthy. I therefore decided to leave his other works, particularly Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy, until later; to begin with, I will look at No Country For Old Men because there is a good chance that those who have not read the book might have seen the recent film by the Coen brothers, which gives an excellent insight into the character Anton Chigurh, who - in my opinion - is played by the incomparable Javier Bardem as one of the truly mesmeric and unforgetable villains of cinematic history, although to call Chigurh a villain is a mistake as we will hopefully see.

Briefly, in No Country For Old Men a man named Llewelyn Moss comes upon a drug deal gone wrong and is faced with a dilemma; namely, whether or not to take a suitcase full of money from the scene. No one is around (those involved in the deal are all dead, bar one) so he goes ahead. The sole survivor is a dying man who asks Moss for water, which he refuses because he has none. However, later that evening Moss returns because he feels guilty about not giving the man water (this is the decision that places him on his final path), and when he gets there the owners of the money have come looking and find him and chase him, and so he is pursued for a long time throughout the book. Anton Chigurh is hired to find the money and he follows both Moss and those looking for him, killing a variety of people along the way in a strangely detached fashion.

There are three main scenes in which Chigurh talks to potential or actual victims, and these are where we find the most philosophical discussion. The first occurs when Chigurh visits a petrol/gas station and meets the owner, who quickly decides that he does not like the look or sound of Chigurh and tries to get him to leave. Chigurh asks him what is the most he has ever seen lost on a coin toss; he then tosses a coin and invites the owner to call it. The owner is reluctant because he says he has not bet anything but Chigurh tells him he has been always been betting; he just did not realise it. Eventually, he calls heads and is correct. Chigurh gives him the coin and suggest he keep it as a charm. When the man fails to understand, he says the following:

No Country For Old Men

Anything can be an instrument, Chigurh said. Small things. Things you wouldnt even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People dont pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It's just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it's just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it?

In the second scene, Chigurh has captured Carson Wells, another assassin who has been attempting to find the money but also find and kill Chigurh. Facing Wells with a gun pointed at him, Chigurh asks: "If the rule you followed led you to this of what use was the rule?" Wells refuses to look away from the gun and challenges Chigurh to just get on with it and kill him, but Chigurh will not and clearly wants Wells to look away, to accept and resign himself to what is about to happen. Again, Chigurh brings up the sequence of events that leads people to their current situation - to an accounting:

No Country For Old Men

It's not the same, Chigurh said. You've been giving up things for years to get here. I dont think I even understood that. How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life? We're in the same line of work. Up to a point. Did you hold me in such contempt? Why would you do that? How did you let yourself get into this situation?

What Chigurh cannot understand is why Wells - or anyone - can hate him for being the instrument of his accounting. The choices we make lead us to where we are and at the end of our lives, whenever that should occur, the responsibility lies with these choices and not with the instrument. They talk some more and finally Wells tells Chigurh to just do it and looks away, whereupon Chigurh kills him.

The third scene involves Moss's wife. Earlier in the story, Chirgurh talks to Moss on the telephone and tells him that it is too late to save himself but that if he gives himself up then Chirgurh will not harm his family. Moss refuses and so Chigurh finds himself much later sitting with Moss's wife, again with gun in hand, explaining that due to Moss's earlier decision he has no choice but to kill her. It is almost as though Chigurh is to kill her on principle, because he gave his word to Moss. Here is part of their conversation:

No Country For Old Men

Chigurh smiled. It's a hard thing to understand, he said. I see people struggle with it. The look they get. They always say the same thing.
What do they say.
They say: You dont have to do this.
You dont.
It's not any help though, is it?
No.
So why do you say it?
I aint never said it before.
Any of you.
There's just me here, she said. There aint nobody else.
Yes. Of course.
She looked at the gun. She turned away. She sat with her head down, her shoulders shaking. Oh Mama, she said.
None of this was your fault.
She shook her head, sobbing.
You didnt do anything. It was bad luck.
She nodded.
He watched her, his chin in his hand. All right, he said. This is the best I can do.
He straightened out his leg and reached into his pocket and drew out a few coins and took one and held it up. He turned it. For her to see the justice of it. He held it between his thumb and forefinger and weighed it and then flipped it spinning in the air and caught it and slapped it down on his wrist. Call it, he said.

For Chigurh, "the justice of it" is important because again the decisions that various people have taken throughout their lives have led to the point at which he sits with Moss's wife. He tells her: "For things at a common destination there is a common path. Not always easy to see. But there." She loses the coin toss but, like Wells, she resists his argument and he does not yet act. He tries to explain further and she finally resigns and accepts her fate, like Wells:

No Country For Old Men

I had no say in the matter. Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person's path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning.

[...]

When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?
Yes, she said, sobbing. I do. I truly do.
Good, he said. That's good. Then he shot her.

For Chigurh, the key is not to understand him as a coldblooded murderer but as the means by which the world undertakes its accounting. He does not kill because he enjoys it or because he refuses to let people live as they might; instead, he kills precisely because the world is such that we make decisions and they eventually lead us to the end of the paths we have chosen, which always involves death. Our mistake is in assuming that death can come early or unfairly when in fact whether we are killed by someone like Chigurh or die in our sleep it remains the case that our decisions have led us inevitably and irrevocably to that point.

Chigurh is the embodiment of the argument that we cannot truly reconcile in ourselves the freedom of the will with the fact that our choices determine our destiny. We think we are free to choose our paths but when we arrive at the end of them we deny that we are there and try to continue, even though if our choices really were free then we can have no complaint. The force of this is carried in the book via the character of Chigurh and he is an assassin because the same argument would hold little strength were he a saint. The people he kills must resign themselves to the inevitability of it because he confronts them with the incompatibility of their beliefs, that they can choose freely and yet try to avoid the consequences. We see this every time we try to shirk responsibility or deny that some event is our fault, but because Chigurh brings death instead of an unpleasant or uncomfortable situation the problem is placed in such stark relief. Hence "if the rule you followed led you to this of what use was the rule?" The freedom of the will is a nice idea but when confronted with the argument taken to its conclusion we deny it.

All of the above is not necessarily what I believe to be true but how I prefer to read the book and what I take McCarthy to be exploring through it. In his other works he looks at this in more detail, even though No Country For Old Men is more recent, so I think Chigurh might represent the embodiment of what he had earlier hinted at but now chose to confront his readers with. In this sense, The Road is the aftermath. I will return to this thread and these other titles in due course but for now I am interested to see what others make of it and of No Country For Old Men. [source: http://academy.galilean-library.org

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Philosophy and the Meaning of Life

Philosophy and the Meaning of Life
Julian Baggini
Pub Date: September 2004
ISBN: 1862076618
Format: Hardback
Extent: 256 pages


Having reviewed many books of popular philosophy, I have come to form a fairly low opinion of the genre. Some specimens are clearly aimed at injecting "depth" into dinner-party conversation; others offer self-help maxims in the guise of profound wisdom. Philosophy is presented as a form of cultural capital, a means of impressing or seducing. We are invited to share the secrets of the enlightened few - and wow the ignorant many.

All the more pleasant to come across a work of popular philosophy that is simple, serious and devoid of ostentation. The question of "the meaning of life" has long been a byword for pretentious rambling. It takes some nerve to tackle it in a brisk and no-nonsense fashion. Julian Baggini describes his work as "deflationary", because it "reduces the mythical, single and mysterious question of 'the meaning of life' to a series of smaller and utterly unmysterious questions about various meanings in life". This sounds like a worthy undertaking. Nevertheless - and here I reveal myself as one of the pretentious ramblers - I think there is more to the original question than Baggini's paraphrase captures.

Baggini's inquiry is, in his own words, secular and rational. It accepts the Darwinian story as the most plausible on offer, and draws the familiar conclusion that human life has no ultimate purpose. Baggini invokes a famous simile of Jean-Paul Sartre. We are not like paperknives, designed to fulfil a determinate function. We are more like bits of flint found on the beach, which can be put to many uses without being essentially "for" anything. Meaning, in other words, is not something that belongs to life as such; it is something that we give it, through our own free will. To pretend otherwise is what Sartre called "bad faith". Those who live in bad faith shirk responsibility for the creation of meaning, taking refuge in the illusory security of faith, tradition or social status.

The discovery that human life has no meaning outside itself filled the original existentialists with an emotion sometimes likened to vertigo: a heady mixture of terror and euphoria. Camus described life as "absurd"; Sartre spoke of "anguish, abandonment and despair". This is not Baggini's style. From his "deflationary" perspective, all that angst is just an exaggerated reaction to the disappointment of equally exaggerated hopes. We denizens of the floating world no longer expect life to have any transcendent purpose, and so we are quite happy to accept that it has none. In any case, why should a meaning we make up for ourselves be less valid than one that is "built-in"? Post-it notes have an undeniable use, even though their original inventor had no idea what it might be. Baggini's existentialism is what you might call existentialism-lite. The philosophy of Sartre has outgrown its adolescent hysterics and settled comfortably into middle age.

Yet existentialism-lite has its darker side, as Baggini sometimes seems to admit. We may be free to give our life any meaning we choose, but this meaning is "valid" only in so far as it is recognised by others. Not for us the insouciance of Bunyan's pilgrim, who, secure in his love of God, could afford to "care not what men say". We care desperately what men - and women - say, because there is no longer any higher court of appeal. Failure in this world is absolute. The checkout girl is just a checkout girl, the tramp just a tramp. Modern capitalism has given bite to Sartre's hard doctrine that "man is nothing else . . . but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is". The terrors of hell have been replaced by the terrors of social and sexual failure.

Baggini quite rightly wants to distinguish "true" or "inner" success from its outward validation, and bemoans the endless jockeying for status that dominates our culture. But do his own naturalistic premises entitle him to this lofty stance? What measure of true success does he have to offer, other than the collective judgement of society? At one point, Baggini equates true success with "becoming who we want to be". Remove the transcendental perspective, however, and why should anyone want to be anything other than what society deems valuable? If value is not cosmic, then it is social. The alternative to God is not a world of self-creating Nietzschean supermen, but universal conformity.

In any case, the idea that we create meaning for ourselves has never had much currency outside the fantasies of admen, self-help gurus and existentialist philosophers. I imagine that most people are like each other, going through life with the perturbing feeling that its meaning lies just beyond their grasp. If a sense of meaning does occasionally come our way, it is usually experienced as something unsolicited, unexpected and hard to put into words. Anyone who can tell you the meaning of his or her life - let alone claim to have created it - is a humbug.

Baggini is scornful of mysticism, seeing in it nothing more than the glamorisation of ignorance. This is why he wants to replace the big, mysterious question concerning the meaning of life with a series of smaller, unmysterious questions concerning various meanings in life. These are supposed to exhaust the big question, or at least that part of it which has any sense. This kind of "deflation" has long been a favourite technique of positivist-minded philosophers. Bertrand Russell argued in a similar vein that we cannot legitimately ask for the cause of the universe as a whole, but only of particular objects within it. However, even if it is in principle impossible to answer such "global" questions, it does not follow that it is impossible to ask them. We do not get rid of metaphysical puzzlement by declaring it logically out of bounds. The question of the "meaning of life" is of this kind. It cannot be answered, at least not in any ordinary sense, nor can it be dissolved into a series of more mundane questions. And yet it retains its power to disarm and perplex.

What's It All About? does as much as a secular, rational inquiry can do to elucidate the meaning of life. And, in the process, it reveals how little this is. [sartre.org]

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Historical Origins of The Surrealist Art Movemen

Sometimes through history, something comes along that changes everything as it has been known thus far. In the 1920’s, such an art movement came around that changed the way art was defined. The Surrealist art movement combined elements of its predecessors, Dada and cubism, to create something unknown to the art world. The movement was first rejected, but its eccentric ideas and unique techniques paved the way for a new form of art.

The Surrealist art movement stemmed from the earlier Dada movement. Dada was a movement in which artists stated their disgust with the war and with life in general. These artists showed that European culture had lost meaning to them by creating pieces of “anti-art” or “nonart.” The idea was to go against traditional art and all for which it stood. “Dada” became the movement’s name as a baby-talk term to show their feeling of nonsense toward the art world (de la Croix 705). Art from this movement was often violent and had an attitude of combat or protest. One historian stated that, “Dada was born from what is hated” (de la Croix 706). Though the movement was started to emphasize nonconformity, Picabia declared Dada to be dead in 1922, saying that it had become too organized a movement (Leslie 58). Despite the fact that it was declared dead, the Dada movement planted the seeds of another, more organized movement.

The Surrealist movement started in Europe in the 1920’s, after World War I with its nucleus in Paris. Its roots were found in Dada, but it was less violent and more artistically based. Surrealism was first the work of poets and writers (Diehl 131). The French poet, André Brenton, is known as the “Pope of Surrealism.” Brenton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto to describe how he wanted to combine the conscious and subconscious into a new “absolute reality” (de la Croix 708). He first used the word surrealism to describe work found to be a “fusion of elements of fantasy with elements of the modern world to form a kind of superior reality.” He also described it as “spontaneous writing” (Surrealism 4166-67). The first exhibition of surrealist painting was held in 1925, but its ideas were rejected in Europe (Diehl 131). Brenton set up an International Exhibition of Surrealism in New York, which then took the place of Paris as the center of the Surrealist movement (Pierre i). Soon surrealist ideas were given new life and became an influence over young artists in the United Sates and Mexico. The ideas of Surrealism were bold and new to the art world.

Surrealism is defined as “Psychic automatism in its pure state by which we propose to express- verbally, in writing, or in any other manner- the real process of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason and outside any aesthetic or moral concerns” (Leslie 59). In other words, the general idea of Surrealism is nonconformity. This nonconformity was not as extreme as that of Dada since surrealism was still considered to be art. Brenton said that “pure psychic automatism” was the most important principle of Surrealism. He believed that true surrealists had no real talent; they just spoke their thoughts as they happened (Leslie 61-63). Surrealism used techniques that had never been used in the art world before.

Surrealists believed in the innocent eye, that art was created in the unconscious mind (Mak 1). Most Surrealists worked with psychology and fantastic visual techniques, basing their art on memories, feelings, and dreams (Scholastic 3). They often used hypnotism and drugs to venture into the dream world, where they looked for unconscious images that were not available in the conscious world. These images were seen as pure art (Mak 2). Such ventures into the unconscious mind lead Brenton to believe that surrealists equaled scientists and could “lead the exploration into new areas and methods of investigation” (Leslie 61).

Surrealists strongly embraced the ideas of Sigmund Freud. His method of psychoanalytic interpretation could be used to bring forth and illuminate the unconscious (Surrealism 4167). Freud once said, “A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not opened,” and Surrealists adapted this idea into their artwork (Sanchez 4). Although Surrealists strongly supported the ideas of Freud, Brenton visited him in 1921 and left without his support (Leslie 61).

Freud inspired many Surrealists, but two different interpretations of his ideas lead to two different types of Surrealists, Automatists and Veristic Surrealists. Automatists focused their work more on feeling and were less investigative. They believed automatism to be “the automatic way in which the images of the subconscious reach the conscious” (Sanchez 2). However they did not think the images had a meaning or should try to be interpreted. Automatists thought that abstract art was the only way to convey images of the subconscious, and that a lack of form was a way to rebel against traditional art. In this way they were much like Dadaists. On the other side Veristic Surrealists believed subconscious images did have meaning. They felt that these images were a metaphor that, if studied, could enable the world to be understood. Veristic Surrealists also believed that the language of the subconscious world was in the form of image. While their work may look similar, Automatists only see art where Veristic Surrealists see meaning (Sanchez 2-5).

Surrealism drew elements from Cubism and Expressionism, and used some of the same techniques from the Dada movement (Leslie 4). Nonetheless there were certain techniques and devices that were characteristic to Surrealist art. Some devices including levitation, changing an object’s scale, transparency, and repetition are used to create a “typical” surrealist look (Scholastic 4). A very common Surrealist technique is the juxtaposition of objects that would typically not be together in a certain situation or together at all. This has been described as “beautiful as the encounter of an umbrella and a sewing-machine on a dissecting table” (de la Croix 710). Juxtaposition can be used to show a metaphor or to convey a certain message. Many surrealist artists painted very realistically but had one displaced object that changed the painting entirely. Another technique called “objective chance” used images found in nature that could not be created by an artist. Stencils and rubbings were used to utilize these images (Leslie 71). An additional characteristic of Surrealist art is the fact that many pieces have very obvious or simple titles stating the subject matter simply (de la Croix 709). These techniques are typical of most Surrealist art but it would not be correct to describe Surrealism as “typical.” Some of the most famous Surrealist artists used these techniques to make masterpieces.

René Magritte, a Surrealist artist, used traditional techniques to paint very realistic images. As a poster and wallpaper designer, he learned to paint realistically. His art frequently depicted images of everyday life; however, he creatively changed some aspects to give his work certain meaning. Magritte was able to turn dull images into extraordinary ones. Magritte’s own image, dressed in a dark suit and bowler hat, frequently appeared in his work. Many of his paintings had sinister and violent meanings, and the importance of surroundings was often stressed (Scholastic 2-7).

Although many Surrealist painters studied traditional art, Max Ernst was a self-taught painter. He felt that true subconscious art was the images in the minds of those thought to be insane. He studied philosophy and psychiatry and even visited an asylum to experience those images first hand (Leslie 69). His paintings repeatedly used the vegetable, the animal, the mineral, and the human kingdoms (Diehl 132). In 1925 he began to use frottage to express his feelings of fantasy and of the bizarre. Frottage is a rubbing technique in which the texture of an object is rubbed onto a piece of paper. These rubbings were then arranged into collages (Mak 1). [source: www.arthistoryarchive.com]

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Nihilism and Modernist Literature

The Arts reflect the spirit of the age and literature is no exception. Nihilism, a worldview that rejects ultimate meaning and purpose in life, heavily influenced the literature of the early 20th century, in which this philosophy was illustrated and addressed. The influence of nihilism is particularly evident in The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, and “The Wasteland”.

The early 20th century was ripe for the advent of nihilism. Indeed, its arrival had been predicted by one of the most influential philosophers of the previous century, Friedrich Nietzsche. “What I am now going to relate is the history of the next two centuries,” he wrote in his notes which would be published in The Will to Power, “I shall describe what will happen, what must necessarily happen: the triumph of nihilism.” The nihilism that Nietzsche viewed upon the horizon was the inevitable consequence of the undermining of traditional Western thought that was underway in his own day.

Darwinian evolution, the psychoanalytical theories of Freud, the First World War, and the consequent decline of the Christian faith in the Western world were the primary contributors to 20th century nihilism. Darwin’s theory left mankind bereft of his own unique status in the natural order. Freud transformed man into a psychological marionette whose invisible puppeteers were the various neuroses that he had developed from repressing (largely sexual) desires. World War I with its incredible death toll and socio/political upheaval left the modern world wondering what had happened to the utopian vision inspired by the industrial revolution. And looming over everything like a great, gray thundercloud was the solemn declaration of Nietzsche, “God is dead”.

Nietzsche’s declaration seems to capture the spirit of the age better than any other. When the ultimate Absolute is stripped away, where does humanity get its existential bearings? What remains for man when objective beauty, truth, morality, and immortality have vanished? To quote Nietzsche once again:

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?” (The Parable of the Madman)

While these questions occupied the minds of many philosophers in the early twentieth century, the First World War was the catalyst that caused their consideration outside of the ivory tower of academia. The horrible events that took place between 1914 and 1918 shattered the illusion that the civilized world was morally progressing as millions of men were slaughtered in a mechanized massacre that proved to be more pointless with each death. Western civilization was stripped of its ideological finery and compelled to grope its way through the “infinite nothing” that had been predicted by Nietzsche’s madman. How could this have happened? What will become of mankind? These were the questions that modernist authors attempted to address in the years that followed the war.

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source: http://quadri.wordpress.com

also read part 2, part 3, and part 4

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Surrealism and expressionism

What is the difference between surrealism and expressionism?

Surrealism=art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention

Expressionism=a general term for a mode of literary or visual art which, in extreme reaction against realism or naturalism, presents a world violently distorted under the pressure of intense personal moods, ideas, and emotions: image and language thus express feeling and imagination rather than represent external reality.

Surrealism is an expression of imagination and expressionism is a mood, idea or emotion convayed about subject matter.

Source(s):
http://www.artbymackburoker.com

Expressionism in Wikipedia
Surrealism in Wikipedia

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Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Spanish dramatist, poet, and author wrote Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615).


The life of this extraordinary man, whom for the space of two centuries civilized Europe has admired above every other Spanish writer, has been so frequently related, that a brief abstract of his biography, derived from the most authentic sources, will be sufficient for the purpose of this history.

It is a singular fact, that the contemporaries of this celebrated man, whom every town, not merely in Spain, but throughout the world, would be proud to have pro­duced, should have neglected to record his native place. After long investigations and warm disputes, which, call to mind the contests of the seven Greek towns for the honour of having given birth to Homer, it is at length agreed that, according to the most probable supposition, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born at Alcala de Henáres in the year 1547. His parents, who were not rich, were merely enabled to give him a moderate, but at the same time a literary education.

They sent him to the school of Madrid, where he acquired some knowledge of classical learning. At Madrid, he had an opportunity of witnessing the dramas, which the ingenious Lope de Rueda represented on his rudely constructed stage. Juan Lopez, the tutor of Cer­vantes was an indefatigable writer of poetry, particularly of romances, and he sought every means of cherishing his pupil's taste for poetic composition. Some verses by Cervantes were introduced in a description of the funeral of a Spanish princess, which Lopez published in 1569.

But young Cervantes, who had now attained his twenty-second year, seems to have had no certain means of gain­ing subsistence. He wrote numerous romances and sonnets; and it was probably about this period that he composed a pastoral romance, entitled Filena, which, if we may give credit to his own testimony, was very generally read. It appears that he thought he could better his con­dition by travelling; and he resolved to proceed to Italy. Here commences the period of his adventures. In Rome, cardinal Acquaviva for a short time became his patron and protector. But, impelled either by necessity or choice, he entered into the military profession. He enlisted under the banners of his sovereign, to serve in the wars against the Turks and the African corsairs, who at that time disturbed the tranquillity of Spain and Italy. During the war he proved himself to be wholly devoted to his new profession; and being engaged in the great battle of Lepanto, in 1572, he received a wound, which deprived him of his left hand together with a part of the arm. This honourable mutilation, to which he proudly alludes in his latter writings, obliged him to return to Spain. The ship, however, in which he had embarked was captured by an Algerine corsair and Cervantes was conveyed to Algiers and sold for a slave. His captivity, which lasted for nearly eight years, must have been of the most romantic description, if the fact be, as has frequently been conjectured, that Cer­vantes described his own adventures in the novel of the Captive. He was at length ransomed, and in the year 1581 he returned to his native country.

The third period of the life of Cervantes was exclusively devoted to literature. He had now attained his thirty-second year, and with a matured understanding, joined to considerable practical knowledge of the world, and an ardent passion for literature, he resolved to with­draw from the busy scene of life. In his retirement he wrote his second pastoral romance, entitled Galatea, which has so eclipsed Filena, that the latter is quite neglected and forgotten. He shortly afterwards married, and it would appear that he lived for some time on his wife's dowry. At length he began to write for the stage; but the dramas, which he composed at this period of his life, though amounting to about thirty in number, are nearly all lost. About this time arose the rivalry between Cervantes and Lope de Vega, whose dramas were so much admired that they bore away the palm of public favour. Mortified, as it would appear, by the ill success of his dramatic efforts, Cervantes laid aside his pen for a considerable period. It is conjectured, that in the meanwhile he obtained a post in Seville, the emoluments of which enabled to subsist. He did not again appear in the literary world until the death of Philip II in the year 1598.

It can scarcely be doubted, though no Spanish writer has advanced the conjecture, that the death of Philip II had a favourable influence on the genius of Cervantes. After the accession of the indolent Philip III, every man in Spain felt that he might then have more freedom than he had dared to take during the gloomy intolerance of the preceding reign. The Spaniards now ventured to sport with the chains, which they had not the power to break, and delicate satire was soon freely employed. Cervantes quickly found a subject to ridicule, in a furious contest, which arose in Seville between the spiritual and municipal authorities, concerning the funeral obsequies of the de­ceased monarch. There is reason to believe that he com­posed, about the same period, some of the instructive novels (Novelas Exemplares), which he subsequently published. What accident gave rise to the idea of his Don Quixote is unknown; for his having, while travelling through the province of La Mancha, become engaged in disputes with some of the inhabitants, and his being, on that account, for a short time imprisoned, can, at most, be only supposed to have suggested the idea of making that province the scene of the first part of his romance. Some fortunate circumstance, which cannot be traced, seems to have impressed Cervantes, who was then in his fiftieth year, with the consciousness of the true bent of his genius. The commencement of Don Quixote was first published at Madrid, in 1606; but the enthusiastic reception which this original romance experienced from the Spanish public, produced very little change in the author's fortune; for the folly which felt itself disturbed in its security, united with envy in seeking to trace in the work allusions of an offensive kind. Cervantes accordingly continued poor, and had now to contend with exasperated enemies. Those enemies imagined they had completely defeated him, when an unknown writer of their own party, under the name of Avellaneda, published a continuation of Don Quixote, full of invective against the original author. Precisely at the period when this continuation appeared, Cervantes published the sequel of his instructive novels, which he dedicated to the count of Lemos. In that nobleman he found a protector who never withdrew his favour, and who, as it appears, afforded him support in various ways. Pecuniary necessity seems, however, to have urged him, as a last resource, to write for the stage.

The latest works of Cervantes were the genuine con­tinuation and completion of Don Quixote, the Journey to Parnassus, which was first published in 1614, and finally the romance of Persiles and Sigismuinda, for which a few days previous to his death, he he wrote a dedicataon to the count of Lemos. From various passages in the prefaces and introductions to these last works, it is obvious how highly Cervantes prized that celebrity which after many abortive efforts, he had at length obtained in his old age. But even where his vanity is not disguised, it is easy, from the candid tone in which he speaks of himself, to recognise the man of firm and upright spirit, the declared enemy of every sort of affectation, and the honest and liberal judge of himself and of others. He died in poverty, though not in extreme want, at Madrid, in 1616, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was buried privately, without any kind of distinction, and not even a common tombstone marks the spot where the ashes of Cervantes repose.

Were we to arange the works of Cervantes according to their merits, the first place must be assigned to Don Quixote, which is moreover entitled to the supremacy, inasmuch as it is single in its kind.

To enter into a description of the contents of this uni­versally known masterpiece, or to give a circumstantial analysis of its plan, would be equally superfluous. A few words, however, on the happy and original idea, which forms the foundation of the whole work, may here be introduced. It has often been said, though the opinion has, perhaps, not been fully weighed, nor even expressed with sufficient precision, that the venerable knight of La Mancha, is the immortal representative of all men of exalted imagination, who carry the noblest enthusiasm to a pitch of folly; because, with understanding in other respects sound, they are unable to resist the fascinating power of a self deception, by which they are induced to regard themselves as beings of a superior order. None but an experienced observer of mankind, endowed with profound judgment, and a genius to whose penetrating glance one of the most interesting recesses of the human heart had been newly disclosed, could have seized the idea of such a romance with energetic precision. None but a poet and a man of wit could have thrown so much poetic interest into the execution of that idea; and none but an author who had at his disposal all the richness and variety of one of the finest languages in the world, could have diffused over such a work that classical perfection of expression which gives the stamp of excellence to the whole. The originality of the idea of Don Quixote is not only historically demon­strated by no romance so a similar kind haying previously existed—for pictures of ingenious roguery, in the style of Lazarillo de Tormes, belong to a totally different species of comic romance—but it is also psychologically certain, that a creative fancy, which was only capable of continuing to invent where another had stopped, could not, with the boldness of Cervantes, have combined traits, apparentlyheterogeneous, in order thereby to exhaust to the utmost the idea by which he was inspired. Those who are ac­quainted with Don Quixote only through the medium of the common translations will not certainly be inclined to regard it as a work of inspiration, in the highest sense of the word. But it is impossible to form a more mistaken notion of this work, than to consider it merely as a satire intended by the author to ridicule the absurd passion for reading old romances of chivalry. Doubtless this is one of the objects which Cervantes bad in view; for among the romances which the Spanish public indefatigably perused, few were tolerable, and only one or two possessed first-rate merit. We must not, however, attribute to him the absurd conceit of wishing to prove the prejudicial in­fluence which the reading of bad romances produced on the taste of the Spanish nation, by exhibiting the indi­vidual folly of an enthusiast, who would have been just as likely to have lost his senses by the study of Plato or Aristotle, as by the reading of romances of chivalry. The merit and the richness of the idea of a man of elevated character, excited by heroic and enthusiastic feelings to the extravagant degree of wishing to restore the age of chivalry, must be regarded as the seed of inspiration whence the whole work originated. As a poet, Cervantes was aware of the resources, which this idea furnished; and he must also have been satisfied with his power to pro­secute it, as he has proved in the execution what he was capable of accomplishing. In the invention of a series of comic situations of the most burlesque kind, he found full scope for the exercise of his fancy. The painting of these situations afforded opportunities for the free and energetic development of his poetic talent. Finally, he knew how to combine the knowledge of human nature he had acquired during a life of' fifty years, with the most delicate satire, so as to render his comic romance also a book of moral in­struction, to which no parallel existed. These brief re­marks on the idea forming the foundation of the romance of Don Quixote, must be allowed to supply the place of a detailed analysis of the manner in which that celebrated work as composed. Other critics have sufficiently proved that the composition is by no means faultless. In the preface to the second part, Cervantes has himself pointed out some inadvertencies, which produce incongruities in the history, but he disdained to correct them, because he con­ceived that they had been too severely condemned.

The character of the execution of this comic romance is no less original than the invention. Character in the strictest sense of the term is here meant. The superficial sketches of a sportive fancy, for which the Spaniards in the age of Cervantes entertained so high predilection, had not sufficient interest for him. He felt a passion for the vivid painting of character, as his successful works prove. Under the influence of this feeling, he drew the natural and striking portrait of his heroic Don Quixote, so truly noble-minded, and so enthusiastic an admirer of every thing good and great, yet having all those fine qualities, accidentally blended with a relative kind of madness; and he likewise portrayed with no less fidelity, the opposite character of Sancho Panza, a compound of grossness and simplicity, whose low selfishness leads him to place blind confidence in all the extravagant hopes and promises of his master... The subordinate characters of the great picture exhibit equal truth and decision; but the characteristic tone of the whole is still more remarkable. A translator cannot commit a more serious injury to Don Quixote, than to dress that work in a light, anecdotical style. A style perfectly unostentatious and free from affectation, but at the same time solemn, and penetrated, as it were, with the character of the hero, diffuses over this comic romance an imposing air, which, were it not so ap­propriate, would seem to belong exclusively to serious works and which is certainly difficult to be seized in a translation. But it is precisely this solemnity of language, which imparts a characteristic relief to the comic scenes. It is the genuine style of the old romances of chivalry, im­proved and applied in a totally original way; and only where the dialogue style occurs is each person found to speak as he might be expected to do, and in his own pe­culiar manner. But wherever Don Quixote himself harangues the language re-assumes the venerable tone of the romantic style; and various uncommon expressions of which the hero avails himself serve to complete the delusion of his covetous squire, to whom they are only half intelligible. This characteristic tone diffuses over the whole a poetic colouring, which distinguishes Don Quixote from all comic romances on the ordinary style; and that poetic colouring is moreover heightened by the judicious choice of episodes. The essential connexion of these episodes with the whole has sometimes escaped the observation of critics, who have regarded as merely parenthetical those parts in which Cervantes has most decidedly manifested the poetic spirit of his work. The novel of El Curioso Impertinente cannot indeed be ranked among the number of these essential episodes but the charming story of the shepherdess Marcella, the history of Dorothea, and the history of the rich Camacho and the poor Basilio, are un­questionably connected with the interest of the whole. These serious romantic parts, which are not, it is true, es­sential to the narrative connexion, but strictly belong to the characteristic dignity of the whole picture, also prove how far Cervantes was from the idea usually attributed to him of writing a book merely to excite laughter. The pas­sages, which common readers feel inclined to pass over, are, in general, precisely those in which Cervantes is most decidedly a poet, and for which he has manifested an evident predilection. On such occasions, he also introduces among his prose, episodical verses, for the most part excellent in their kind and no translator can omit them without doing violence to the spirit of the original.

Were it not for the happy art with which Cervantes has contrived to preserve an intermediate tone between pure poetry and prose, Don Quixote would not deserve to be cited as the first classic model of the modern romance or novel. It is, however, fully entitled to that distinction. Cervantes was the first writer who formed the genuine romance of modern times on the model of the original chivalrous romance that equivocal creation of the genius and the barbarous taste of the middle ages. The result has proved that modern taste, however readily it may in other respects conform to the rules of the antique, never­theless requires, in the narration of fictitious events, a cer­tain union of poetry with prose, which was unknown to the Greeks and Romans in their best literary ages. It was only necessary to seize on the right tone, but that was a point of delicacy, which the inventors of romances of chi­valry were not able to comprehend. Diego de Mendoza, in his Lazarillo de Tormes, departed too far from poetry. Cervantes, in his Don Quixote restored to the poetic art the place it was entitled to hold in this class of writing; and he must not be blamed if cultivated nations have sub­sequently mistaken the true spirit of this work, because their own novelists had led them to regard common prose as the style peculiarly suited to romance composition. Don Quixote is, moreover, the undoubted prototype of the comic novel. The humorous situations are, it is true, al­most all burlesque, which was certainly not necessary, but the satire is frequently so delicate, that it escapes rather than obtrudes on unpractised attention; as for example, in the whole picture of the administration of Sancho Panza in his imaginary island. The language, even in the description of the most burlesque situations, never degene­rates into vulgarity; it is on the contrary, throughout the whole work, so noble, correct and highly polished, that it would not disgrace even an ancient classic of the first rank. This explanation of a part of the merits of a work, which has been so often wrongly judged, may perhaps seem belong rather to the eulogist than the calm and impartial historian. Let those who may he inclined to form this opinion study Don Quixote in the original language, and study it rightly, for it is not a book to be judged by a su­perficial perusal. But care must be taken lest the inter­vention of many subordinate traits, which were intended to have only a transient national interest, should produce an error in the estimate of the whole.

It would be scarcely possible to arrange the other works of Cervantes according to a critical judgment of their im­portance; for the merits of some consist in the admirable finish of the whole, while others exhibit the impress of genius in the invention, or some other individual feature. A distinguished place must, however, be assigned to the Novelas Exemplares (Moral or Instructive Tales). They are unequal in merit as well as in character. Cervantes doubtless intended that they should be to the Spaniards nearly what the novels of Boccacio were to the Italians, some are mere anecdotes, some are romances in miniature, some are serious, some comic, and all are written in a light, smooth, conversational style. With regard to the practical knowledge, which these novels are intended to convey to the reader, Cervantes has affected more than Boecacio; and at all events he extended the literature of his country by their publication, for no similar composi­tions had previously existed in the Spanish language. In the Novelas Exemplares Cervantes has again proved himself the experienced judge of mankind, and has given, with admirable success, truly genuine and judicious, representa­tions of nature, in the various situations of real life. The reader must naturally feel inclined to pardon the want of plan which this little collection of novels occasionally ex­hibits, when he finds that the author, through the medium of his characters, relates and describes all that he had him­self seen and experienced under similar circumstances, particularly during his abode, in Italy and Africa. The history of the Licenciado Vidriera, which is the fifth in the collection, is totally destitute of plan, and is re­lated in simple prose like a common anecdote. But the novel of La Gritanilla, the Gipsey Girl is ingeniously conceived and poetically coloured; and the same may be said of some others. The story of Rinconete y Cortadilla, or Lurker and Cutter, as the names with reference to their etymology may be translated, is a comic romance in miniature.

Galatea, the pastoral romance, which Cervantes wrote in his youth, is a happy imitation of the Diana of Montemayor, but exhibiting a still closer resemblance to Gil Polo's continuation of that poem. Next to Don Quixote and the Novelas Exemplares, his pastoral romance is particularly worthy of attention, as it manifests in a striking way the poetic direction in which the genius of Cervantes moved even at an early period of life, and from which he never entirely departed in his subsequent writings. As, however, the Galatea possesses but little originality, it constantly excites the recollection of its models, and particularly of the Diana of Gil Polo. Of the invention of the fable, likewise, but little can be said, for though the story is continued through six books, it is still incomplete. In composing this pastoral romance, Cervantes seems to have had no other object than to clothe in the popular garb of a tale, a rich collection of poems in the old, Spanish and Italian styles, which he could not have presented to the public under a more agreeable form. The story is merely the thread, which holds the beautiful garland together; for the poems are the portion of the work most particularly deserving attention. They are as numerous as they are various: and should the title of Cervantes to rank among the most eminent poets, whether in reference to verse or to prose, or should his originality in versified composition be called in question, an attentive perusal of the romance of Galatea must vanish every doubt of these points. It was remarked by the contemporaries of Cervantes that he was incapable of writing poetry, and that he could compose only beautiful prose; but that observation referred solely to his dramatic works. Every critic sufficiently acquainted with his lyrical compositions has rendered justice to their merit. From the romance of Galatea, it is obvious that Cervantes composed in all the various kinds of syllabic measure, which were used in his time. He even occasionally adopted the old dactylic stanza. He appears to have experienced some difficulty in the metrical form of the sonnet, and his essays in that style are by no means numerous; but his poems in Italian octaves display the utmost facility; and among the number, the song of Caliope, in the last book of the Galatea, is remarkable for graceful ease of versification. In the same manner as Gil Polo in his Diana makes the river Turia pronounce the praises of the celebrated Valencians, the poetic fancy of Cervantes summoned the muse Calliope before the shepherds and shepherdesses, to render solemn homage to those contemporaries whom he esteemed worthy of distinction as poets. But the critic can scarcely venture to place reliance on praises dealt out with such profuse liberality. The most beautiful poems in the Galatea are a few in the cancion style, some of which are iambics, and some in trochaic or Old Spanish verse. Cervantes has here and there indulged in those antiquated and fantastic plays pf wit, which at a subsequent period he him­self ridiculed. The prose of the Galatea, which is in other respects so beautiful, is also occasionally overloaded with epithet.

Cervantes displays a totally different kind of poetic talent in the Viage al Parnaso (Journey to Parnassus), a work which cannot properly be ranked in any particular class of literary composition, but which, next to Don Quixote, is the most exquisite production of its extraordinary author. The chief object of the poem is to satirize the false pre­tenders to the honours of the Spanish. Parnassus, who lived in the age of the writer. But this satire is of a pe­culiar character: it is a most happy effusion of sportive humour, and yet it remains a matter of doubt whether Cervantes intended to praise or to ridicule the individuals whom he points out as being particularly worthy of the favour of Apollo. He himself says -"Those whose names do not appear in this list may be just as well pleased as those who are mentioned in it." To characterise true poetry according to his own poetic feelings, to manifest in a decided way his enthusiasm for the art even in his old age, and to hold up a mirror for the conviction of those who were only capable of making rhymes and inventing extravagances, seem to have been the objects which Cer­vantes had principally in view when he composed this satirical poem. Concealed satire, open jesting, and ardent enthusiasm for the beautiful, are the boldly combined elements of this noble work. It is divided into eight chap­ters, and the versification is in tercets. The composition is half comic and half serious. After many humorous in­cidents, Mercury appears to Cervantes, who is represented as travelling to Parnassus in the most miserable condition; and the god salutes him with the title of the "Adam of poets." Mercury, after addressing to him many flattering compliments, conducts him to a ship entirely built of dif­ferent kinds of verse, and which is intended to convey a cargo of Spanish poets to the kingdom of Apollo. The description of the ship is an admirable comic allegory. Mercury shows him a list of the poets with whom Apollo wishes to become acquainted and this list, owing to the problematic nature of its half ironical and half serious praises, has proved a stumbling block to commentators. In the midst of the reading, Cervantes suddenly drops the list. The poets are now described as crowding on board the ship in numbers as countless as drops of rain in a shower, or grains of sand on the seacoast; and such a tumult ensues, that, to save the ship from sinking by their pressure, the sirens raise a furious storm. The flights of imagination become more wild as the story advances. Thy storm subsides, and is succeeded by a shower of poets, that is to say poets fall from the clouds. One of the first who descends on the ship is Lope de Vega, on whom Cer­vantes seizes this opportunity of pronouncing an emphatic eulogium. The remainder of the poem, a complete ana­lysis of which would occupy too much space, proceeds in the same spirit. One of the most beautiful pieces of verse ever written by Cervantes, is his description of the goddess Poesy, whom he sees in all her glory in the kingdom of Apollo. To this fine picture the portrait of the goddess Vain-Glory, who afterwards appears to the author in a dream, forms an excellent companion. Among the passages, which for burlesque humour vie with Don Quixote is the description of a second storm, in which Neptune vainly endeavours to plunge the poetasters to the bottom of the deep. Venus prevents them from sinking, by changing them into gourds and leather flasks. At length a formal battle is fought between the real poets and some of the poetasters. The poem is throughout interspersed with singularly witty and beautiful ideas; and only a very few passages can be charged with feebleness or languor. It has never been equalled, far less surpassed by any similar work, and it had no prototype. The language is classical throughout; and it is only to be regretted that Cervantes has added to the poem a comic supplement in prose, in which he indulges a little too freely in self-praise.

The dramatic compositions of Cervantes, were they all extant, would be the most voluminous, though certainly not the best portion of his works. Possibly those which are now lost may yet be recovered; for a fortunate accident brought to light two dramas which had remained concealed in manuscript till near the end of the eighteenth century. Cervantes includes some of his dramas among those productions with which he was himself most satisfied; and he seems to have regarded them with the greater self-complacency in proportion as they experienced the neglect of the public. This conduct has sometimes been attri­buted to a spirit of contradiction, and sometimes to vanity. The editor of the eight plays (chiefly heroic) and eight interludes, which were the last dramatic productions of the author, has adopted the absurd notion that Cervantes, in writing these pieces, intended to parody and ridicule the style of Lope de Vega; which is merely saying that he attacked the whole literary public of Spain in the most discourteous way. No traces of parody appear in any of those dramas. They are, however, with the exception of a few successful scenes, so dull and tedious, that one might be inclined to regard them as counterfeit productions by another author, were it not that their authenticity seems to be sufficiently proved. The little interludes alone ex­hibit burlesque humour and dramatic spirit. That the penetrating and profound Cervantes should have so mis­taken the limits of his dramatic talent, would not be suffi­ciently accounted for, had he not unquestionably proved by his tragedy of Numantia how pardonable was the self-deception of which he could not divest himself. Cervantes was entitled to consider himself endowed with a genius for dramatic poetry; but he could not preserve his inde­pendence in the conflict he had to maintain with the con­ditions required by the Spanish public in dramatic composition; and when he sacrificed his independence, and submitted to rules imposed by others, his invention and language were reduced to the level of a poet of inferior talent. The intrigues, adventures and surprises, which in that age characterized the Spanish drama, were ill suited to the genius of Cervantes. His natural style was too profound and precise to be reconciled to fantastical ideas, expressed in irregular verse. But he was Spaniard enough to be gratified with dramas, which, as a poet, he could not imitate; and he imagined himself capable of imitating them, because he would have shone in another species of dramatic composition, had the public taste accommodated itself to his genius.

With all its imperfections and faults, Cervantes' tragedy of Numantia is a noble production, and, like Don Quixote it is unparalleled in the class of literature to which it belongs. It proves that under different circumstances, the author of Don Quixote might have been the Aeschylus of Spain. The conception is in the style of the boldest pathos, and the execution, at least taken as a whole, is vigorous and dignified. The ancient Roman History from which Cer­vantes selected the story of the destruction of Numantia, afforded but few positive facts of which he could avail himself. He therefore invented along with the subject of his piece a peculiar style of tragic composition, in doing which he did not pay much regard to the theory of Aristotle. His object was to produce a piece full of tragic situations, combined with the charm of the marvellous. The tragedy is written in conformity with no rules save those which the author prescribed to himself; for he felt no inclination to imitate the Greek forms. The play is divided into four acts, (jornadas,) and no chorus is introduced. The dialogue is sometimes in tercets and some­times in redondillas, and for the most part in octaves without any regard to rule. The diction does not main­tain equal dignity throughout; but it is in no instance affected or bombastic. Cervantes has evinced admirable skill in gradually heightening the tragic interest to the close of the piece. The commencement is, however, some­what cold and tedious. Scipio appears with his generals in the Roman camp before Numantia. In a speech, which might have been improved by abridgment, he reprimands his troops, whose spirit has begun to be superseded by effeminacy. The soldiers are re-inspired with courage. Numantian ambassadors enter with proposals for peace, which are rejected. It is here that the tragedy properly begins. Spain appears, an allegorical character, and she summons the river Duero, or Durius, on whose banks Numantia stands. The old river god appears, attended by a retinue of the deities of the smaller rivers of the surrounding country. These ideal characters consult the book of fate, and discover that Numantia cannot be saved. What may be said against the bold idea of endeavour­ing to augment the tragic pathos by means of allegorical characters, it must be acknowledged that in this case the result of the experiment is not altogether unsuccessful, and Cervantes justly prides himself in the novelty of the idea. The scene is now transferred to Numantia. The senate is assembled to deliberate on the affairs of the city, and among the members the character of Theagenes shines with conspicuous lustre. Bold resolutions are adopted by the senate. The transition into light redondillas for the purpose of interweaving with the serious business of the fable, the loves of a young Numantian, named Morandro, and his mistress, is certainly a fault in the composition of the tragedy. But to this fault we are indebted for some of the finest scenes in the following act. A solemn sacri­fice is prepared; but amidst the ceremony an evil spirit appears, seizes the victim, and extinguishes the fire. The confusion in the town increases. A dead man is resuscitated by magic, and the scene in which this incident occurs has a most imposing effect. All hope has now vanished. After the return of a second unsuccessful embassy, the Numantians, by the advice of Theagenes, resolve to burn all their valuable property, then to put their wives and children to death, and lastly, to throw themselves into the flames, lest any of the inhabitants of the town should become the slaves of the Romans. Scenes of the most heartrending domestic misery, and the noblest traits of patriotism, then ensue. Famine rages in Numantia. Morandro, accompanied by one of his friends, ventures to enter the Roman camp. He returns with a piece of bread smeared with blood, and, presenting it to his mistress, falls at her feet mortally wounded. The action proceeds with unabated interest to the end. An allegorical character of Fame enters at the end of the piece, and announces the future glory of Spain.

Allegorical characters, for instance, Necessity and Opportunity, likewise appear in Cervantes' comedy, El Trato de Argel (Life in Algiers, or Manners in Algiers). But their introduction amongst scenes of common life injures the story, which is besides by no means ingenious, and imparts a cold and whimsical character to the piece. This comedy, however, which is divided into five acts, is not destitute of interest and spirit.

The romance of Persiles and Sigismunda, which Cervantes finished shortly before his death, must be regarded as an interesting appendix to his other works. The language and the whole composition of the story exhibit the purest simplicity, combined with singular precision and polish. The idea of this romance was not new, and scarcely deserved to be reproduced in a new manner. But it appears that Cervantes, at the close of his glorious career, took a fancy to imitate Heliodorus. He has maintained the interest of the situations, but the whole work is merely a romantic description of travels, rich enough in fearful adventures, both by sea and land. Real and fabulous geography and history are mixed together in an absurd and monstrous manner; and the second half of the romance, in which the scene is transferred to Spain and Italy, does not exactly harmonize with the spirit of the first half.

If we cast a glance on the collected works of Cervantes, in order to ascertain what their author was entitled to claim as his original property, independently of his contemporaries and predecessors, we shall find that the genius of that poet, who is in general only partially estimated, shines with the finer lustre the longer it is contemplated. That kind of criticism that is to be learned, contributed but little to the development and formation of his genius. A critical tact, which is a truer guide than any rule, but which abandons genius when it forgets itself, secured the fancy of Cervantes against the aberrations of common minds, and his sportive wit was always subject to the control of solid judgement. The vanity, which occasionally made him mistake the true bent of his talent, must be confessed to have been pardonable, considering how little he was known to his contemporaries. He did not even know himself, though he felt the consciousness of his genius. From the mental height to which he had raised himself, he might, without too highly rating his own abilities, look down on all the writers of his age. More than one poet of great, of immortal genius, might be placed beside him in his own country; but of all the Spanish poets, Cervantes alone belongs to the whole world.

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Salon's Book Review: The best fiction of 2009

"The Children's Book" by A.S. Byatt
This ravishing epic of the Edwardian era traces the lives of several interlocking families, at the center of which is Olive Wellwood, who is based on the great children's novelist E. Nesbit. The novel begins with an idyllic amateur production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the English countryside and winds through a series of often disturbing revelations about the participants. Their shared obsessions include fairy tales, the Arts and Crafts movement, social utopias and sex, but perhaps the most striking of all Byatt's themes is the drive to create and how it shapes (some would say distorts) the personalities of those possessed by it; nobody writes better about this than she does. This a classic Byatt fusion of fact and uncannily luscious imagery, mixed in the ideal proportions: not too hot, not too cold -- just right.

"Await Your Reply: A Novel" by Dan Chaon
This elegant page-turner begins with three seemingly disconnected characters -- a man in search of his long-lost twin, a high school girl getting the hell out of Pompey, Ohio, and a college student succumbing to the criminality he believes is in his blood -- all fleeing across forgotten stretches of the American heartland. Its theme is identity and the theft thereof, but also our national dream of jettisoning our old selves and becoming someone new. Chaon is that rare novelist who can combine intricate, suspenseful plotting with fully realized characters and unfussily lovely prose, but his great achievement here is the tenderness with which he explores the enigma at the center of the novel: What does it really mean to have a self, and what do you have left if you're foolish enough to throw it away?

"Chronic City" by Jonathan Lethem
A great New York novel should aim for the universal by way of the parochial. The Manhattanites in Lethem's near-future/alternative-now metropolis experience all the crises and travails of 21st-century life in a slightly more concentrated form. (It takes a novelist of exceptional talent and nerve to make you believe that matters of moment can hang on the outcome of an eBay auction.) A former child star coasting on his fading fame, a brilliant but terminally eccentric rock critic, a sarcastic ghostwriter and an activist turned municipal bureaucrat stumble through a city riddled with unreliable rumors, insufficiently explained disasters, dilettante millionaires, imperious celebrities and other signs and wonders. What they -- what all of us -- yearn for in a world full of engineered appearances and emotions is the truly beautiful and the truly moving. Can they find it, and will they even recognize it when they do? On this you can count: "Chronic City" is the real thing.

"Love in Infant Monkeys: Stories" by Lydia Millet
This collection begins with a short story about Madonna going on a grouse hunt, which might sound like an inauspicious start for a book whose theme is loss on an epochal scale. Guess again: With immense confidence, Millet takes a motley assortment of famous or pseudo-famous figures -- Thomas Edison, David Hasselhoff, the zoologist from "Born Free," a Sharon Stone impersonator -- and gives each a transformative encounter with an (often imperiled) animal. The result, a cumulative effect formed by all the stories in the collection, draws illuminating connections and comparisons between the trivial and the eternal. Millet's vision is startling, as often tragic as it is hilarious (and she can be very, very funny), but always shot through with the mystery of existence, a gift we can barely manage to appreciate even as we carelessly steal it from the rest of the earth's denizens. "Love in Infant Monkeys" is a slyly and unsentimentally profound exploration of what human beings can (but very seldom do) learn from our fellow creatures.

"The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters
Waters takes one of narrative literature's most venerable genres -- the ghost story -- into fresh territory. Haunted houses usually stand as metaphors for misbegotten psychosexual situations. In "The Little Stranger," Waters masterfully redeploys the gothic tale to address the great theme of the British novel: class. During the lean years after World War II, a rural physician ingratiates himself into the remnants of a local "old family" as they rattle around their decrepit but still beautiful mansion. In time, eerie manifestations of some indistinct yet malevolent force begin to torment the house's aristocratic residents. What -- or, rather, who -- is causing the strange noises and mysterious stains? At once innovative and genuinely creepy, "The Little Stranger" is an astonishing performance, right down to its devastating final sentence.


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