I have here what appears to be a fragment of a longer conversation; I
found it at an unexpected place (and there might be more to follow, for I am
still digging). Curiously, it must have been handed down to us through
several stages: what I'm giving below is a translation into English from
French; however, the French text itself is scattered with notes in the margins
that list Latin terms (originals, presumably, for the French ones in the
text). But then, it seems not plausible that this was Latin in the first
place, with Socrates, Achilles, and Hector as its protagonists. If it was a
Greek dialogue, though, it now is lost, and the author long forgotten: for
the style and wording do match none that's known to us.
Socrates, Achilles
Achilles: What is it that we hear about our
friend then, Socrates?
Socrates: There's been some recent news
indeed: it seems that he has been afflicted by that sickness which is
sometimes called the 'wave of passions'.
Achilles: Oh, that's a beautiful turn of
phrase.
Socrates: Yes, it is that. We must not let
ourselves be guided just by the niceness of a formulation, though. Is it not
so that beautifully speaking of a thing can make it look a good deal nicer
than it actually is? Is not the elegance and lightness of a phrase at
times deceptive? But there is still some way to go from something beautifully
said to something that is beautiful itself. What do you think?
Achilles: I'm not quite sure. You said that
beautifully, too. How can one know then where the difference is between
these cases?
Socrates: You mean, where is the difference
between, on the one hand, a poetic description of a state, where the
description appears shiny but the state itself carries danger and puts the
one who is in it at risk, and, on the other hand, a formulation of an insight
that gives us the good feeling of a point well made, but where that feeling
originates rather from the truth and beauty of that insight?
Achilles: That is exactly what I mean,
Socrates. You're making that distinction very sharply.
Socrates: It is a good question, and a
challenge. But let's not take it up here. For we have started exchanging
news of our friend, and interesting as it may be to immerse ourselves in
philosophy right away, our first concern should be those we care about,
don't you agree?
Achilles: I think you're right, though I admit
I'm very curious about that other point. Perhaps we'll follow up on it?
Socrates: Oh yes, I shall be more than willing
later on, Achilles.
Achilles: That's pleasant to hear. So what, then,
is the form that the affliction takes in our friend? — The one that you
described so drastically as a 'wave of passion'.
Socrates: It seems that he has seen a woman
who unites the charms of the ideal person his imagination has been ever
dreaming of, and by a strange anomaly, the beloved image shows itself
continuously associated with a musical idea — an idea in which he
finds a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility
and shyness which he credits to the object of his love. And this melodic
image (and its model) haunt him ceaselessly like a double idée
fixe.
Achilles: I recognize the feeling. It befits
our friend's artistic soul to cast it into music just like that. But
Socrates, do you not think he should control all those emotions a little
better?
Socrates: Well, I concur. And yet, that might
be nigh impossible, at least for him ... and in this case: he's never let
himself into a loss of his own self like this before. This time it's
special.
Achilles: How so?
Socrates: Presumably it has to do with this
perceived perfection.
Achilles: The charms of an ideal person.
Socrates: Right. And when you think about it,
that's what romantic lovers see in those who, for whatever reason, they
have fallen for. It justifies an unconditional affection.
Achilles: I don't think I can relate to
that. How can affection be unconditional? Is it not a give-and-take?
And, more importantly, is not affection based on honor, excellence, and worth?
They'd have to earn it, how can it not depend on some conditions?
Socrates: Well spoken, Achilles. Just as I
would have expected from an upright person as yourself. But let me ask you:
if you're unwilling to give romantic love this unconditionality, why did you
say you recognized the feeling?
There was once a man who lived in a house just up the hill. Over the day,
he was doing business in town, but in the evening he returned to his house;
to get there, he had to climb the path up the hill, and that was a somewhat
steep path.
One day, our man had a great business opportunity — but to make the
deal, it was important to keep a few little things secret from the customer.
Minor details, of course. Just a few things that were not so important.
Really no harm done, ... and a lot of money to earn! So the man was silent
about these details, and he made the deal. Then he went home. When he walked
up the path to his house, it seemed to him a little that the path had become
steeper. (Of course, he thought to himself, I'm just imagining that. Paths
don't become steeper overnight.)
From time to time his best friend would come and visit him in the evening,
for a game of chess. This evening, however, his friend called him and excused
himself. He said: "Look, I couldn't get up the path to your house today. It
must have become steeper." So there was no game of chess that day.
A couple of weeks later, our man had another great opportunity — he
was invited to an interview on television. And again, the catch was that he
had to be silent about a few little things, so that the TV company wouldn't
refuse to tell the world about him. Minor details, of course. Just a few
things that were not so important. Really no harm done, ... and he would be
on TV! So the man was silent about the details, and he made the interview.
When he walked up the path to his house, it seemed to him quite decidedly
that the path had become steeper. (Of course, he thought to himself, I'm
just imagining that. Paths don't become steeper overnight.)
Normally, when he arrived at his house, his wife was already there. This
time she wasn't. After a while, when our man had already started wondering,
she called him on the phone and said: "Look, I couldn't get up the path to
our house today. It must have become steeper." And the man remained alone.
The next day, he went to a wise man, and asked him for advice. The wise man
looked him in the eye and said: "Well, have you been lying recently?"
The man looked back and said: "No." So the wise man replied: "Ah. Then you'll
be fine. Just go home and see. Everything will be back to normal." The man
went home and stood at the path. And now it seemed to him, far from being as
normal, that the path was much steeper now. In fact, when he tried to go up,
he couldn't. He was continuously sliding back. However much he tried, there
was no way getting up to his house.
I've put a new article on my papers page: Unreality and Prefiguration of Death (in
Venice). This paper combines some of my postings on Thomas Mann's
Der Tod in Venedig; I have re-arranged the overall argument, changed
several details in the argument, and I now quote from the critical edition
(GKFA).
Primarily I've tried to make the line of thought in my interpretation of
the novella clearer; at the same time, I have started to make the connections
to my reflections on
unreality more explicit.
A beautiful young woman came into a tavern. In a corner sat an artist. He
offered to draw a portrait of her. She agreed, and he took out his pencil
and made the portrait. The woman looked at it, laughed happily, and thanked
him. A little later she showed the picture to a friend. "You look very
beautiful." the friend told her. The woman went back to the artist and looked
at him. He glanced up to her and asked: "Another portrait?" She nodded, and
he took out his pencil again. When the picture was finished, the woman looked
at it and got angry. "What have you done to me?" she cried. Her hair was flat
and ashen, the eyes were cold, her mouth had become a cruel thin line, and
her arms and hands looked pale and almost like the bones of a skeleton. "This
is what you look like on the other side of the mountain." the artist said.
She shot a fiery look at him. "You see, you live on this side, where the sun
shines and it's always warm and pleasant. On the other side, however, there's
a cold wind blowing steadily, and everything's in eternal shade. This is what
you look like on the other side of the mountain." The woman said nothing,
flung the pictures at him and turned away.
That summer, a stranger arrived in the village. He was a good-looking man,
and seemed of a pleasant nature. He had seen the world, worked hard for his
sizeable income, and his handsome face was weathered from many a storm he'd
seen. He was introduced to the beautiful young woman; he helped out here and
there, gave her nice presents, and when she was with him, she was always in
a good mood, and laughing. A while later he asked her to come with him and
be his wife. "Where do you live?" she asked him. "I live on the other side
of the mountain."
So the woman was married and went to live on the other side of the mountain
with her husband. Their life was happy at first. As time went by, however, she
noticed that strangely her husband was losing his interest in her. He became
distant, and immersed himself in melancholic musings. Sometimes he went off
for longer periods, not telling her where he spent his time, or when he
would return. The woman began to feel irritated and sad every so often. And
then again, she thought by herself that there had to be a way to revive those
happy feelings she could still remember from their earlier time together. Yet
everything she tried was failing her: she couldn't spark that flame again;
and even on those very few occasions where she managed to kindle a little
warmth and glow, it was quickly blown out by the wind, or faded away in the
shadows, and the dark and cold returned in her life.
One day, she stepped onto the street, and saw the artist who'd portrayed
her a long time ago. She greeted him and asked: "Would you draw a picture of
me?" The artist shook his head and said: "I've already drawn your portrait.
There's nothing to add."
I'm currently reviewing my postings about Thomas Mann's Death in
Venice and my interpretation of some strands in the text, with respect
to the ideas of beauty and unreality. The goal is to bring them into a
more structured and coherent form, and perhaps make an essay out of them.
I had based my reading on a somewhat older paperback edition; knowing,
of course, that I had to consult a critical edition should I want to follow
up more seriously on my ideas. Sometimes in such a case the differences
are minor, sometimes they are grave; at the beginning, I didn't know how
deeply this would interest me, so I took my chances. Unfortunately, I lost
that gamble. The paperback edition I used contained the text of one of the
earliest editions of the novella (from the Munich Hyperionverlag in
1912); however, it turns out that at the time when it was published Mann had
already revised the text for what has to be considered a more authoritative
and mature version. And several of the text passages I'd quoted and used
for my argument are in fact different in comparison with the critical
edition. So this means: back to the drawing board... (or at least I'm
going to have some substantial reviewing and reworking to do).
I have already written a bit about the title of Thomas Mann's Der
Tod in Venedig; I've just become aware of yet another, more ludicrous
way of reading it: if we take 'Der Tod' to be the name of a character (and
not a reference to the process of dying), we can understand it in analogy to
such titles as Julius Caesar in Egypt and Iphigeneia in Tauris.
Typically, the title of such works indicates a focus on an episode of a
protagonist's life which is tied to a certain geographic location. Of course,
we'd have to take Death as the main character then, and not Aschenbach. But
there is an ocean of research literature which has identified the strange
figures of the wanderer, the gondolier and the Venetian musician as Death
incarnated, and even Tadzio, the Polish boy, has been viewed as death
messenger (mostly guided by Aschenbach's dying thought which refers to
him as 'der liebliche und bleiche Psychagog', that is, the hermes
psychopompos of ancient mythology). Far-fetched it may be, but there is
undeniably an infernal sort of fun in symbolistic speculation.
Aschenbach, we are told, was born with talent, but a weak constitution, a
constellation that characterizes many of his family; "[er] hatte doch zeitig
erkennen müssen, daß er einem Geschlecht angehörte, in dem
nicht das Talent, wohl aber die physische Basis eine Seltenheit war, deren
das Talent zu seiner Erfüllung bedarf, — einem Geschlechte, das
früh sein Bestes zu geben pflegt und in dem das Können es selten
zu Jahren bringt" (193) — an oblique reference to either early death
or quick capitulation before the task of creation, both of them preventing
great gift from coming to fruition.
Admirable will and determination, however, have in his own case enabled
Aschenbach to produce the works he's gained a reputation for. Working on
them has also shaped his life philosophy, in which all achievement is one
of having overcome obstacles and resistance, where "beinahe alles Große,
was dasteht, als ein Trotzdem dasteh[t], trotz Kummer und Qual, Armut,
Verlassenheit, Körperschwäche, Laster, Leidenschaft und tausend
Hemmnissen zustande gekommen [ist]. [... D]as war [...] eine Erfahrung, war
geradezu die Formel seines Lebens und Ruhmes, der Schlüssel zu seinem
Werk" (195).
It's not at all accidental that his life and work are mentioned in the
same breath here: it can't be overstated how important it is to see
Aschenbach's way of leading his life and the particular character of his
literary work as intertwined. The idea I've just quoted isn't just his
guiding thought in life but also what shapes all the characters in his
writings. He's formed them after his image, both their inner worlds and
their outward actions: "was Wunder also, wenn es auch der sittliche
Charakter, die äußere Gebärde seiner eigentümlichsten
Figuren war?" (ibd.) And in a sense, the deepest goals (or shall we say: the
deepest purpose, for as a fictional character, your ultimate goal is something
assigned to you by a creator) of both Aschenbach himself and his characters
are identical: Aschenbach's is to produce works of art, and that of his
figures is to be works of art. Thus, just as Aschenbach's maxim is to
persist and produce faultless beauty, whatever outstanding things mark his
characters (good things achieved or bad things committed) has come to
existence by their persisting and prevailing over resistance and obstacles
to finally become something improbable, something one wouldn't have expected
them to become, and moreover something shining, where the efforts
and struggles of the path towards it don't show through any more.
"Blickte man hinein in diese erzählte Welt, sah man die elegante
Selbstbeherrschung, die bis zum letzten Augenblick eine innere
Unterhöhlung, den biologischen Verfall vor den Augen der Welt
verbirgt; die gelbe, sinnlich benachteiligte Häßlichkeit,
die es vermag, ihre schwelende Brust zur reinen Flamme zu entfachen, ja,
sich zur Herrschaft im Reiche der Schönheit aufzuschwingen; die
bleiche Ohnmacht, welche aus den glühenden Tiefen des Geistes die
Kraft holt, ein ganzes übermütiges Volk zu Füßen
des Kreuzes, zu ihren Füßen niederzuwerfen; die
liebenswürdige Haltung im leeren und strengen Dienste der Form;
das falsche, gefährliche Leben, die rasch entnervende Sehnsucht
und Kunst des gebornen Betrügers" (195).
(I hasten to throw in a word of caution already here: that we can see
both admirable and repulsive traits being transformed into something
shimmering is not an accident, and not only is there no unconditional
approval here from the narrator, but also, as we will see, it's precisely
the dangers of making this transformation into one's central task which will
drive the fatal developments in Aschenbach's late life.)
The flip side of bringing something shining into existence is that
something else has to be concealed, even suppressed, and there is a common
thread of references to concealment and suppression that runs through what
we learn about Aschenbach. At the very beginning of the story there is a
mention of a growing fatique the effects of which he thinks must be hidden
at all cost: "dieser wachsenden Müdigkeit, von der niemand wissen und
die das Produkt auf keine Weise, durch kein Anzeichen des Versagens und der
Laßheit verraten durfte" (190). The second chapter reveals that this
is in general a deep-seated and long-standing urge in Aschenbach's creative
process: in his work, any weakness and imperfection is always welded out,
to the point of being fully hidden. "Es war verzeihlich, ja, es bedeutete
recht eigentlich den Sieg seiner Moralität, wenn Unkundige die Maja-Welt
oder die epischen Massen, in denen sich Friedrichs Heldenleben entrollte,
für das Erzeugnis gedrungener Kraft und eines langen Atems hielten,
während sie vielmehr in kleinen Tagwerken aus hundert Einzelinspirationen
zur Größe emporgeschichtet [waren]" (194). We find the same
attitude in the description of the kind of hero that he typically creates in
his literary works (in the already quoted passage on 195): the same constant
element of not just aiming at success in whatever they do, but also of
concealing and suppressing any trace of what had to be overcome to make that
success possible, the hiding away of all struggle against resistance and
obstruction from the visible results and perceivable outcomes of their lives
and actions. And it is emphasized that this is itself by no means a small
achievement: "Denn Haltung im Schicksal, Anmut in der Qual bedeutet nicht
nur ein Dulden; sie ist eine aktive Leistung, ein positiver Triumph" (195).
And yet built into this excellence (for an excellence it is without doubt)
are the seeds of his later getting adrift, precisely in the form of that
element of concealment which is an indispensable ingredient within it, and
which grows more dominant in the later stages of his life that make up the
rest of the story. That it is an ambivalent ingredient is already clear from
the fake youth episode. Not being too far down the path of decline yet, he
strongly disapproves of the old man's attempt to make himself seem young
and belonging to that group of youths he's traveling with. (Although it's not
clear whether Aschenbach's disapproval would be quite as vehement had the
concealment be done more competently, i.e. had the deception which the fake
youth intended been more total, and successful.) But then, of course, a short
time later he does the exact same thing which had triggered his disgust
earlier, and certainly there is a continuity between the impulse to suppress
any signs of imperfection in his artistic creation and the corresponding
desire to be attractive and retouch the outward signs of his age away from
his physical appearance.
I have noted earlier that the encounter with the prefiguration figures is
frequently accompanied by a feeling of a drift into unreality on Aschenbach's
part. From the above, the function of this feeling in the novella becomes
now clear: it identifies an element in his personality that has been there
always, employed in his artistic perfectionism, but which has started now to
grow disproportionately strong and inappropriate. Along with the forward-
pointing reference to his eventual death, the narration identifies the
driving force behind the events, both the protagonist's mental decline and
the chain of actions and interactions in the plot, in his continuous habit
of producing unreality in creating instances of beauty by concealing weakness.
When the world around him sinks into inexplicable strangeness (202, 204) after
the encounter with an anticipation of his own later self, the story connects
the foolish efforts of the fake youth, the vain exertions of the later
Aschenbach, and his general and primary drive to exclude ugly reality from
his aesthetic vision. It's just that now a process over which he used to have
control has taken over, and has thereby made a plaything of its former
master (if only for a short moment, at least at this stage of the story).
(More on into Death in Venice: this is a second line of thought
leading to the same perspective on the interpretation of the second chapter
as my previous post.)
When we admire the performance of a musician, say, part of what appeals
to us is the apparent ease and facility of their doing something which we
know is hard and requires an enormous amount of practice and self-control.
What applies to artistic performance seems to apply to natural beauty also
(think of the proverbial lightness and grace of a gazelle, or the elegance
of a black kite's flight). Perhaps, then, a certain careful concealment is
a necessary ingredient in the generation of beauty.
This might look at first a pleasing thought; for we all like the pleasure
we can take in beauty, preferably without being reminded of the pains that
had to be taken to produce it. At the same time, however, this means turning
a blind eye to the excellences needed to withstand those pains, ignoring,
that is, personal qualities such as patience and sensibility, thoroughness
and will in those who bring instances of beauty into our lives. There is an
element of injustice in our admiration of beauty; a deflection of
appreciation from qualities of a person towards the attractions of what is a
rather impersonal presence in our world (i.e., instances of beauty).
Sometimes injustice of that kind is taken even further when attention is
not just averted from an artist's personal qualities to the aesthetic
attributes of his own work, but moved from respecting worthy people to
admiring much less deserving, but aesthetically more appealing personalities,
in an attitude such as that attributed to both Aschenbach in particular and
artistic-minded people in general: "Fast jedem Künstlernaturell ist ein
üppiger und verräterischer Hang eingeboren, Schönheit
schaffende Ungerechtigkeit anzuerkennen und aristokratischer Bevorzugung
Teilnahme und Huldigung entgegenzubringen." (212) The injustice expressed in
this stance is precisely this: that considerations of personal respect and
fair dealing are of second importance when it comes to producing a bit of
beauty. And although it hides behind worship for an abstract and universal
ideal (that of beauty), it is in essence a selfish and mean attitude. In the
passage quoted above, it's employed to account for Aschenbach's approval of
privileging, even spoiling a beautiful child ("ein verzärteltes
Vorzugskind, von parteilicher und launischer Liebe getragen", ibd.); it's
much more marked and appalling when he decides to keep his knowledge about
the cholera outbreak for himself in order not to risk departure of Tadzio's
family (thereby severely endangering the life and health of someone whom,
curiously, he professes to love). The narrator draws immediately a strong
parallel between that secrecy and crime, indeed: "'Man soll schweigen!'
dachte Aschenbach erregt [...] 'Man soll das verschweigen!' [...] Denn der
Leidenschaft ist, wie dem Verbrechen, die gesicherte Ordnung und Wohlfahrt
des Alltags nicht gemäß, und [...] jede Verwirrung und Heimsuchung
der Welt muß ihr willkommen sein." He welcomes "dieses schlimme
Geheimnis der Stadt, das mit seinem eigenen Geheimnis verschmolz, und an
dessen Bewahrung auch ihm so sehr gelegen war. Denn der Verliebte besorgte
nichts, als daß Tadzio abreisen könnte" (242). This self-serving
participation in a dangerous cover-up is repeatedly mentioned, e.g. on 246,
and again, paralleling the exact wording of the earlier passage, on 256-257.
There, Aschenbach has just heard confirmation of the ugly truth about the
disease's outbreak and received a strong recommendation of immediate
departure from the English clerk; he even for a second considers warning
Tadzio's mother; yet then he once more gets carried away by his fateful
passion: "'Man soll schweigen!' flüsterte er heftig. Und: 'Ich werde
schweigen!' Das Bewußtsein seiner Mitwisserschaft, seiner Mitschuld
berauschte ihn" (257).
Irresponsible secrecy in the name of a passion which burns him up is
something only found during the final stages of decline in Aschenbach.
However, a tendency to conceal and (if necessary) suppress, even unjustly,
whatever needs to be blanketed and hidden in the name of art and beauty
— that tendency was present with him for all his life. It's not
(to begin answering a question I have repeatedly posed) merely a mental
decline we're witnessing here, not just the weakness of an aging spirit.
Here we have something that's been latent in him, in his life and work, all
along. The second chapter, with its almost academic account of Aschenbach's
character and his artistic profile, serves proof and confirmation for this,
giving insight in his background and thus bringing out those propensities
which sharpen into visible decline during the later chapters of the
novella.
(I'm continuing my explorations into Death in Venice from my
earlier posts.)
There is another level of fictionality in the novella which we haven't
considered yet: Aschenbach is a writer of fictional works, and thus in
addition to the fictional world of the story, we have the respective worlds
of those fictions-within-fiction.
When we theorize about the relationship between fiction and reality, what
we have in mind is usually that between what belongs to the story and what
belongs to the real world: for instance, there is Venice, with its
characteristic layout, its canals and gondolas, in both worlds, but there's
a famous author named Aschenbach only in the fictional world of the novel,
not in the real world; a string of encounters with death-symbolizing figures
which drive a life towards its end can occur in fiction, but not in reality;
there's typically a strong sense of purpose and meaning in every single
episode that happens in the fictional world (because the author's put it
there expressly to fulfill a purpose in his narrative, and to have meaning
in his overall artistic plan) — but when we attempt to find something
even closely as coherent, single-stranded and interconnected in what goes
on in our own world, it's always only partial, and generally feels as if
we're reading it into what's happening, not out of it.
A parallel distinction can be made, however, between the fictional world
of the novella and the fictional worlds inside it, that is, between
Aschenbach's world and the worlds of his own literary works. When we read
reflections in Aschenbach's voice, or from his point of view, it's
that relationship about which they are, not the relationship between
his world and ours.
And to be very strict and precise here: the interaction between reality
and fiction does not necessarily have to be the same on all levels. A
different set of laws and rules and characteristics may hold with respect to
the relationship between the real world and a fictional world on the one hand
compared to the relationship between that same fictional world and the world
of a fiction within that fiction. Thus, when Aschenbach reflects about the
nature of art, about reality and unreality, the contrast he is looking
at can only be the contrast between his world (the fictional world of the
story) and the worlds of his works, such as the world of the Maya in which
one of his main works is set.
It's much more difficult to decide what to make of reflections of the
same sort when they're made by the narrator of the story: are they provided
by the author, Thomas Mann, to guide (or detract) our interpretation, or are
they made as if from the point of view of Aschenbach, illuminating the
innermost thoughts and motives of that character, which are nonetheless
constituted and formed by the world of that character? In other words, when
we read reflections about the relationship of art and life, or reality and
unreality, do they refer to the contrast between our world and that of
Death in Venice, or to the contrast between the latter and the fictions
it contains? (And it's not at all clear that the author wants us to be able
to decide: he may be keeping it systematically ambiguous; perhaps the
narrator's views are even intended to connect both contrasts,
suggesting that they're really one and the same.)
When Aschenbach thinks about his own motives and decisions, he uses pieces
of aesthetical theory, allusions to literature and philosophy, just as we
would expect from an educated and intellectually-minded person of his stature.
At the same time, however, we're given clear signals from the narration that
his thoughts are self-deceptive (sometimes ironically: "[s]o dachte der
Enthusiasmierte; so vermochte er zu empfinden", 232; or more direct: "[s]o
war des Betörten Denkweise bestimmt, so suchte er sich zu stützen,
seine Würde zu wahren", 246). Can we take Aschenbach's reflections at
face value then, as clues towards an understanding of what's going on in him
during that final stage of his life? Or are we to read them as expressions
of his dangerous drift away from everything that's grounded in reality,
his unstoppable slide into unreality?
Not all invocations of theoretical background and the psychology of the
artist as such are given directly in the voice of Aschenbach; some are
comments on on the artist's state of mind, made by the narrator: "Fast jedem
Künstlernaturell ist ein üppiger und verräterischer Hang
eingeboren, Schönheit schaffende Ungerechtigkeit anzuerkennen und
aristokratischer Bevorzugung Teilnahme und Huldigung entgegenzubringen" (212);
"es war wohl an dem, daß der Alternde [i.e. Aschenbach] die
Ernüchterung nicht wollte, daß der Rausch ihm zu teuer war. Wer
enträtselt Wesen und Gepräge des Künstlertums! Wer begreift
die tiefe Instinktverschmelzung von Zucht und Zügellosigkeit, worin es
beruht! Denn heilsame Ernüchterung nicht wollen zu können, ist
Zügellosigkeit." (235) Especially the almost journalistic-sounding
second chapter is clearly detached and distanced from any immediate closeness
with Aschenbach's psychological interior; it's written in biographical style,
almost, in parts, as if it were an anticipation of his obituary. Some of
these literate comments from the narrator are consistent and continous with
the views later expressed by Aschenbach; others, however, clearly display
a general tendency in Aschenbach to both tolerate and seek a certain sort of
deception (and self-deception). Most revealingly, it is a tendency which is
presented not only as a pecularity in the aging Aschenbach who travels
to Venice — the biographical sketch makes it quite clear that it had
been a characteristic of all his life and work.
To understand the deeper sources of his collapse, which both connect his
last episode with the whole of his life and motivate both the integral,
psychological forces and the external, plot-mechanical elements (such as
the prefiguration characters), we must get to terms with this tendency.
Here's a thought experiment. You're in the job market. After a
bit of searching, you find a company that seems a perfect fit, just what
you've been dreaming about. Let's call them 'CoolTec'. The more research you
do, the better it looks to you, so you send in your resume, and you actually
get invited to a job interview. After the interview, which went well (although
you have a tiny little nagging doubt somewhere inside your head), you're
eagerly awaiting any news. And indeed — you get a job offer! When you
drop by their offices for the next time, to sort out the remaining details
and sign your contract, however, they tell you that, actually, you weren't
exactly the person they'd been looking for: they were interested in someone
with a different profile. They even had two candidates fitting that profile,
but they both declined, so they're giving you a chance. What are you
going to do?
I think the right thing to do here is to politely say 'No, thanks.' (We're
civilized people, so there's no point in making a scene. But they deserve
to be told clearly that a self-respecting person wouldn't be interested
any more after having received news like that.)
It would have been a different thing if they'd told you that they were
initially looking for someone with a different profile, but that
their interest had been awakened by what you said in the interview, and
now they've loosened their requirements because they realized you also had
something attractive to offer. As it is, though, the only possible conclusion
is that they don't deserve you. (The only possible conclusion, that is, which
is compatible with self-respect.) You were told that you are merely a fallback
solution, not chosen for your own merits, but just for lack of other options.
There's nowhere to go together from that place.
Self-respect can very dominantly guide actions, like in this example,
or it can remain more a background influence on our behavior. It can be more
or less strongly developed, and actually lose out in the battle against other
attitudes: for instance, the job applicant in the thought experiment may
be fearful of not getting any job at all, and so be glad to accept. He
could decide that the offered salary was so good he just had to
take it. (In both cases, that choice would in the end only express a higher
valuation put on things like money or a lack of self-confidence resulting in
thinking badly of one's chances for getting another good job.)
A different consideration that might seem to trump self-respect here is
this: why not take the job and show them, convince them, that you're actually
the better candidate? Wouldn't it mean to give way too quickly if you drop out
at the mere sight of adversity, at a simple mention that you're not welcomed
with widely open doors? You may have to fight a little, but in the end you'll
be able to show them that you're worth more than they thought. And perhaps
there is something in this line of thought: especially in longer-lasting
relationships (such as an employment would hopefully be) an estimation can
be built up over time, and it really should be something which didn't come
from a quick glance at a resume, but rather from a trust and valuation that
came into existence over time during joint pursuit of the companie's
vision. Sometimes, personal pride shouldn't destroy the prospects of a
mutually beneficial future.
However, any relationship (including, again, work relationships) requires
respect for others in all dealings, and how would you be able to maintain
respect generally if entry was bought with sacrificing self-respect, which
is the most basic and most fundamental form of all respect? Can something
that started off with foul compromise on the most important personal level
develop into something so beneficial that it can repay and repair that
damage? (And remember: how would it do that? Even the greatest job satisfaction
and whatever material compensation CoolTec may have to offer seems to have
little weight compared to your being at ease with yourself.) This is a start
determinedly in the wrong direction, and every further step in that direction
will only get you further away from, not closer to, what's good for you. If
there's an appropriate stance, then it's to decline that offer. (Perhaps it's
also, in the end, the better outcome for the company, although that certainly
is a shaky parallel, for companies in general aren't persons, and work on
different principles and with different goals.)
(In the CoolTec example, the case is relatively clear-cut. Next, I'm going
to compare this with Josef K.'s attitude throughout The Trial, which
looks superficially similar. There is a fine line, however, here to draw
between self-respect, in the sense discussed, and pride, which can be a
character fault in certain cases. Someone who thinks so highly of himself
that he expects to be recognized without having to demonstrate his abilities,
or making his case, may be trapped in a delusion.)
I'm starting from an observation made by John Austin, in chapter VII of his
Sense and Sensibilia, where he discusses the use of the term 'real'.
According to Austin, we use 'real' only when we assume (normally implicitly)
that there is a way for something to be otherwise (i.e. it could be fictional,
or imaginary, or fake). We also assume, when we use the word, that there is
some chance that what we refer to isn't real — if the chance that it is
fake (or more generally: unreal in some sense) was only negligible, we wouldn't
use the term. We need it only for emphasizing that X might not be real,
but in fact is real. In other words, those situations in language use
where the use of 'real' is appropriate are those where a possibility of
unreality is in play.
In this way, our use of 'real' implies a capacity to distinguish between
the real and the unreal. This capacity is not a generic one: we have ways to
differentiate between fake items and real items, and we have other ways to
differentiate between imaginary ones and real ones; again, there are certain
ways to find out whether something or someone is fictional (as opposed to
real), or merely possible (as opposed to actual). There is no common structure
to these abilities (or at least not an obvious one) — they just have a
weak negative point in common. (Neither has there to be a single unified
capacity attached to each class of 'non-reality', of course. There isn't just
a single capacity to distinguish fake from real, or one single way to tell
fictional from real. There are always several, situation-dependent ways to do
that.)
In his
article about existence in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Barry Miller mentions that 'real' is sometimes considered an excluder
predicate: to say about something that it is real expresses just the
claim that it is not fictional, not imaginary, etc. (Miller then goes on to
argue that 'existence' must mean more than that, i.e. to say of something that
it exists is to say something more than just saying that it is real.) This
point again is in agreement with Austin's discussion. (Although Miller's
terminology seems more useful to me than Austin's.)
I find that a very natural way of talking about 'real'. In an earlier post I have
approached it on a rather similar route. (I think I've also done Nozick some
injustice in that post by confusing the distinction between 'being real' and
'existing'; I've got to make some corrections there, but I leave that to a
future post.) In part it feels natural because we have normally a good sense
for what is real and what isn't, in a broad range of cases. And that's not
because of some mysterious cognitive capacity: it's just because we have some
common ways of telling unreality from reality. The most simple of these is of
course where we have ourselves imagined or otherwise brought about the unreality
in question — that is, we have just told a story, or a lie, or
dreamed something. In these cases, we can tell what's unreal from the rest
because we've just made it up ourselves. In other cases, we haven't produced
the fictional or imaginary things ourselves, but we have pretty good evidence
still that they are fictional or imaginary (e.g. when we've just read them in
a novel, or seen them in a movie). Sometimes we really don't have any other
evidence than just a certain distrust of the source (an in these cases we are
probably more often mistaken than in the others listed before).
Obviously, we can be mistaken, and think of something as real which actually
is an elaborate or sophisticated lie; there are also some extreme cases of
fiction mistaken for reality (as H.G. Wells' War of the worlds in
the 1938
radio adaptation). Yet that doesn't show that there is no way in principle
to distinguish between reality and unreality. It only shows that even though
we have this ability, it might fail us in some scenarios.
This takes up the
discussion that ended my last post on Der Tod in Venedig. I
wrote that the developments in the story cannot be explained as driven by
external events alone, without reference to their connection with
Aschenbach's inner condition and personal history; but equally, that
looking at psychological forces won't suffice either, for that wouldn't do
justice to how the text is crafted.
What follows from this is that we cannot read the story as a psychogram,
as a report on events that merely show the decay of a strong personality;
much less can we view it as a drama where external forces drive the
protagonist into disaster. None of these readings does justice to the setup.
The mistake in both of them would be to assume that the events that make up
Death in Venice happen in the real world, or at least in a world that
is sufficiently like the real world. But that's not so: the development of
the novella doesn't follow the logic of the real world. It follows the logic
of its fictional world, and that logic is different.
Just in what respects is it different? No dark magic is going on (none of
the prefiguration characters has supernatural powers, nor does anything
happen in the plot that cannot be fully rationally accounted for), and
there are no obvious artificial coincidences (such as di ex machina).
Still, the world of the novella is very different from the real world. It
has a consistently restricted focus on the main character (nothing happens,
or at least we learn about nothing which happens, without significance for
Aschenbach), nothing is accidental, it is almost as if all developments
were following a pre-determined scheme. And of course, that's not
accidentally so.
Crafting a fictional world provides the author with the opportunity to
arrange external events so that they exhibit a relationship to the inner
goings-on in their protagonists. Such relationships between the external and
the internal can be of many kinds: the external events can be specially
arranged so as to expose the psychological setup (i.e. the author
deliberately puts a protagonist in a situation in which aspects of her
psyche become clearly visible, are expressed in her views and actions, and
so on); the external might be arranged so as to express moods and
emotions (for instance, when the protagonist is sad and in generally
depressed moods, his surroundings are depicted in a corresponding way, it is
dark, cold and it's raining, tree leaves are falling down, birdsong is dying
away, etc.); or finally the external can symbolize elements of the
internal (such as a house that starts showing cracks and paint peeling off
in correspondence with the decay of the relationships in the family that
lives in it).
In short, the setup of the external (i.e. external with respect to the
people in the story, the protagonists) environment and events is far from
accidental, it has a function in the story. That accounts for the
selectiveness in literary texts: the author doesn't just describe
any elements of the surroundings of their protagonists, but only those
which matter, i.e. which fulfill one of the tasks I have listed above. It
also explains the focus on the main person, and generally the
directedness, that is, the impression that we gain that in this
fictional world everything follows a scheme, that the plot rolls into a
pre-determined direction.
So much for the relationship between the inner and the outer; this goes
some way in the direction of answering the first of the two questions I listed earlier; what
about the second, which had to do with the underlying valuation?
And since we are on the
topic of translating titles: what is it with this morbid fascination that
death exerts on the translators of James Bond movie titles from English into
German?
It all started in 1981 with "In tödlicher Mission" (On a deadly
mission) — not an obvious translation, one might say, of "For your
eyes only". After the untranslatable "Octopussy", next was "A view to a kill"
in 1985, which was rendered "Im Angesicht des Todes" (In the face of death)
... at least a little closer to the original (and with a nice little word
play that makes use of the allusion to visual vocabulary: 'Angesicht' has a
common root with the German word for sight, so there is after all a certain
connection to the term 'view' in the original title). But have you noticed
that again 'death' (Tod) makes an appearance in the German title where there
is no direct counterpart of it in the English? That's two; three makes a
pattern, so let's see how it continues.
In 1987, Timothy Dalton's first movie was "The living daylights". Not a
chance to get death into that, wouldn't you say? Well, there's no
limits to creativity: the German translation was "Der Hauch des Todes" (The
breath of death). Damned if I see the connection, but they managed to get
death into it all right.
Shall I go on and mention that the next one was "License to kill" (1989),
with the obvious (and very precise), but consequently death-laden translation
"Lizenz zum Töten"? After that, beginning with "Goldeneye", death has
interestingly withdrawn from the German titles. That's a pity: it was good
fun to watch it sneaking in one time after the other.
The title of Thomas Mann's famous novella is usually translated into
English as Death in Venice (compare also the Italian title of Luchino
Visconti's film adaptation: Morte a Venezia); however, this somewhat
obscures that the original German title carries a definite article:
Der Tod in Venedig. So what the tale is about isn't just
something generic about dying in Venice (of which, one might think then, the
particular death of Aschenbach, Mann's protagonist, is just one instance).
It really is about an individual death — the culmination of a
specific life characterized by unique determination, discipline and
success on the one hand and on the other an incapacity to withstand, against
all better judgment, the weakening influence of a certain constellation of
circumstances. (Perhaps it's not merely an incapacity to resist them, but
also an element of actively seeking and following them that is in play here.)
It's also, crucially, an artist's life that is portrayed, but then
again a life originating in a family tradition centered around a sense of
duty, an adherence to discipline and austerity. There are, in other words,
not so many people who could die such a death (in Venice or elsewhere) as
Aschenbach's; and it's the individual end of such a life that Mann portrays
— an aspect that is obscured by the imprecise translation.
I think I was wrong when I wrote that Aschenbach, in Thomas Mann's
novella Der Tod in Venedig, is led into his eventual death by
'following an instance of beauty wherever it leads, and whatever the
consequences may be' (in one of my earlier
posts on the subject of prefiguration in that text). It's true of course
that Aschenbach's all-overriding infatuation with the boy Tadzio is
the dominant factor in his losing touch with reality (as I've argued in the
post quoted above). But this influence only sets in after he arrives
in Venice, and thus cannot be what sets off the development in the first
place. Furthermore, what does get Aschenbach astray is, even though
triggered externally, something in his own psychological condition: his
desire to escape the tough work regime he has imposed on himself
("Fluchtdrang war sie, daß er es sich eingestand, diese Sehnsucht ins
Ferne und Neue, diese Begierde nach Befreiung, Entbürdung und Vergessen,
— der Drang hinweg vom Werke, von der Alltagsstätte eines starren,
kalten und leidenschaftlichen Dienstes", 190); his longing for the exotic
and magical (which lets him end up in Venice, of all places; most expressly
at 200); and perhaps a certain morbid relaxation in the face of death
allusions (think of his contemplation of death mysticism at the Munich
cemetery, 187, and his willingness to give in to the coffinesque comfort of
the Venetian gondola, 206 and 208).
So the question isn't just, as I wrote, why Aschenbach's realization that
his attempted synthesis between discipline, hard work, and dedication on the
one hand and the service of beauty on the other fails — it's also why
the drives that set off the development which exposes that failure start
earlier (and why, indeed, they start at all). They're not triggered by
the lure of beauty and the force of eros. Once the development has started,
however, these aesthetic elements provide the most powerful of all imaginable
amplifiers. Is therefore the trap into which Aschenbach falls a multi-staged
one? Is it only after fertile ground has been prepared by fatigue and escape
fantasies that corrosive aestheticism can complete its destructive work?
But if that's so, then why is there an external trigger (in all those
prefiguration characters) every time to bring these psychological states
to the front and enable them to control Aschenbach's decisions? Mann's whole
carefully crafted framework of symbols and allusions, parallels and
consequences, seems to have the singular purpose of producing a strongly
coherent, compulsively unwinding plot which at closer examination leaves
not the minutest detail to chance — everything's in the scheme, so
to speak. (And that's what primarily constitutes the high literary quality
and artistic value of the novella, after all.) The function of the
prefiguration characters is to drive Aschenbach towards the fateful setup
in Venice. And thus, psychological state alone can't account for what sets
the events of the story in motion.
Since I've been asked (actually multiple times) what the term
'perceptacle' in the title of my earlier post about Poe and perception means:
it's a word play; the more obvious components are the title of Poe's story
('The spectacles') and the notion of perception, which is an important
ingredient in my discussion. In addition, there is a metaphysical concept
originating in Plato's late work, namely, the 'receptacle' (hypodoché
in Greek). Plus, the notion of the spectacular might have played a role,
too.
The most interesting association here, of course, is with the receptacle.
I guess a fascinating road of interpretation would be to compare the role
perception plays in our daily life, and its relations to valuations, with
the metaphysical idea of a receptacle and specific qualities that impress
on it.
