Multiple Reading Personalities

 “That is nothing, nothing beside your agony”

I started this first reading of the Iliad assuming I knew ”the story”. As it turns out, I didn’t, at least not exactly: the narrow scope of the tale (really just a few weeks, with a few days of combat making up the bulk of the text) surprised me. Most notably, I expected the death of Achilles, the ruse of the horse and the fall of Troy to be told, and was proven wrong.

At any rate, I am intrigued by the choice made here, and by its effect on the perception of the war. That a poem over 15,000 lines would only cover a few days in a ten-year span makes my head spin with the enormity of the war. This is reinforced by the bloodiness of Homer’s account, which I have mentioned in earlier posts: if that happened in just a few weeks, how can the full extent of the war even be envisioned? There’s something dizziyingly modern about handling such a major conflict by an extreme close-up on a turning point.

These few weeks Homer (I’m going to assume a Homer) focusses on are of course extremely significant: they begin with a fight between Achilles (the Acheans’ star warrior) and Agamemnon (their leader). Achilles knows that to win glory under the walls of Troy is to accept death in this foreign country; he has chosen honor, and goes ballistic when he feels that Agamemnon is humiliating him by taking away his captive Briseis. What is the point of his sacrifice if his statute is not safe? Through this incident, Achilles and Agamemnon both come across as violent, haughty, selfish and spiteful; it crossed my mind that maybe the nine years of siege and the constant immersion into a testoterone-fuelled environment were getting on their nerves… But the gods also prove quite worthy of these unflattering adjectives, the blood-thirsty gods of Homer, barely self-aware, driven by their instincts and emotions, modeled by their culture of honor.

Achilles avenge himself by praying to the gods to turn against his allies, that they might feel how great their need for him is; and the gods (especially Zeus, who loves him) consent. The tides of war turn in favor of the Trojans, at least until Achilles’ friend Patroclus is killed by Hector. Achilles’ fury explodes in awful massacres, culminating in the slaughter of Hector and the outrages inflicted to his body. The Iliad finally concludes with two burials, first that of Patroclus and then, after the gods have taken pity on Priam and commanded Achilles to give him Hector’s body back, that of the Trojan prince. The symetry of pain on both sides is prolonged by the now-unavoidable events the reader know must happen: because Hector is dead, Achille’s fate is to perish; because Hector is dead, because its most worthy defender has failed, Troy must fall.

After reading the Iliad over the course of a full month, there are two things that really stand out for me: one is the fury of battle, the halting rythm of the text then… yet all fights blend together, all names lie in a common grave. The other is a duo of quieter scenes that gave much of its emotional power to the epic.

The first of these two scenes is that of Hector’s last visit to his family in Troy, the tenderness and love he shows for his country and family, the sense of doom that is hanging over his head, and his choice to die trying to defend what he loves. Hector in battle is no more sensitive than any other man, driven by blood-fury and a burning desire for victory; but Hector in his hour of peace is the reason to feel that what is happening is a tragedy, not the Greek equivalent of a slasher movie with the gods in the role of the chainsaw. This scene is the reason I cried when Hector finally died.

The other scene is that of the dialogue between Priam and Achilles, when Priam leaves Troy to meet Achilles and ransom Hector’s body. The father and the killer of his son spend the night in close proximity, each brooding over their own loss, each responsible for the other’s, yet united in pain and perhaps in a sense of fate. Fear and anger will return, but this night is a truce, a lull in the violence of war, with both accepting the humanity of the ennemy at their side. I can’t quite articulate what moved me so much in this scene, but I visualized it more vividly than anything that preceded, without so much as trying, and it made me envision Achilles as a human being (instead of as a force of nature) for a few minutes. I don’t think this is indicative of his true nature, but it gave me a way to relate to him a little, and that’s quite a prowess.

“Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean anything; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged.”

Fenêtre sur mur (Gimli_36/ flickr)

I recently wrote of starting a Jane Austen book full of questions, only to end up oblivious to anything but the story one third of the way into the book. With Bartleby, it was the opposite: questions started to overwhelm me at the end.

The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed Lawyer, a man of experience who professes to look for tranquility foremost in life. His stated intent is curiously at odd with reality: out of three clerks in his employ, one (Turkey) is irate every morning, the second (Nippers) incensed in the afternoon, and the third (Ginger Nut) a rather distracted young boy. The situation and the way the Lawyer describes it make it clear that behind pompous manners and an appearance of respectable bourgeois greed lies a generous heart kept in check just enough to fit in the Wall Street society, with an innate sympathy for his misfit employees. The Lawyer keeps finding reasons to “excuse” his not firing his employees, a behavior the reader could see as either weakness or kindness; because of the story of a few charitable acts, I decided for the second, but reading comments on amazon.com, I might be in the minority.

Yet I was touched by the decency of the character, and not surprised that when he needed to hire a fourth clerk and Bartleby presented himself looking “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” – he should be engaged on the spot. But where the other clerks regularly erupt (against their copyist lives?) and move on, Bartleby soon starts resisting fulltime. He starts by refusing to read aloud his work, debuting the famous phrase – “I would prefer not to” – which soon will come to characterize his entire behavior, including the most basic of his work duty, copying. The man also settles at the Lawyer’s office. The occupation is discrete but firm; the Lawyer is refused entrance when he stops by out of business hours.

After some struggle, the Lawyer comes to accept Bartleby’s unexplainable conduct, and probably would have let him stay forever in his chambers where every window opens on a wall, were it not for social pressure. His patience for lunacy threatens his reputation, maybe ultimately his business, and the Lawyer is not foolish (or strong enough) to dismiss the concern. He tries to dismiss Bartleby, but when the later resists; his reserves of “fight” exhausted, the Lawyer decides to flee to new offices, leaving Bartleby behind.

Even then, the Lawyer doesn’t really desert Bartleby: when the office’s new occupant has him arrested and sent to the Tombs, the Lawyer traces him and attempts to make his life there more comfortable, notably by buying Bartleby food privileges. But ever refusing, Bartleby has ceased to eat whatsoever. He dies, probably of starvation, eyes wide open on another wall.

My confusion (mostly at Bartleby’s behavior) was not allayed by a “potential explanation” the Lawyer offers (that Bartleby had been a clerk in the office of the Letter of the Deads, opening for the administration the last missives of the now-defunct, and that this dreadful occupation might have damaged him in some way). Some further reading however helped. Two interpretations in particular seemed illuminating, “Bartleby as criticism of the then-emerging office life”, and “Bartleby as a mirror of Melville’s depression at the time of writing”. It seems to me that the presence of other angry clerks and of a judgmental society of lawyers might give credence to the first. The second, richer interpretation is based on the fact that when Melville wrote Bartleby, he was at a difficult time professionally. After a number of successful adventure books, he was encountering harsh criticism and low sales for books dearer to him (including Moby Dick). Bartleby represents the temptation to curl up in a corner and just stop –stop writing first, then stop living. The Lawyer would be another aspect of the writer – the well-educated, well-adjusted man with an unexplainable sympathy for the quirks of mankind, the one whose tolerance might (or not)have enabled Bartleby’s refusals. The absurdity of the story might reflect the one Melville would have felt in his own life; in that sense, the story would be interesting to confront to Kafka’s work.

“I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware!” (the monster)
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.“ (Frankenstein)

Illustration by Abigail Larson

I needed two quotes instead of one for what I liked in Frankenstein – its saving grace – was its duality. Is Victor Frankenstein a victim and his creation purely a “fiend” – or might Victor not be the real monster, and his creation the martyr?

Brought up in a loving Swiss family, Victor is an imaginative teen with a passionate intellect vulnerable to the wildest scientific theories. Despite his reclusive nature, Victor prepares to leave family to study at the university of Ingolstadt when he suffers his first misfortune: the death of his mother. Another shock waits for him in Germany, where he learns that the philosophers and naturalists he has been studying passionately (alchemists and mystics such as Paracelsus) are widely discredited. He decides to study physics and chemistry, quickly mastering these two disciplines.

In his studies, Victor stumbles upon “the secret of life” – and of course decides to test it. Assembling a semblance of a human being in his laboratory, he finally imparts it with life after months of grueling labor, only to feel a disgust of his creation so overwhelming he flees it in blind terror. When he finally returns to his laboratory, the creature is nowhere to be seen. Victor falls into a long delirious illness, nursed by his childhood friend Clerval.

From there, the tale descends into horror: Victor only finds his strength back to lose it again and again. He recovers from his illness to return home and find his youngest brother murdered and a family protégée falsely accused. Victor knows the real culprit is his monster, but cannot prove it. The creature seeks him out, eager to tell him the story from his point view, the rejection by all men including his creator, the accident that led to the murder of Victor’s brother, his solitude and his thirst for company. The monster offers a deal: if Victor creates him a companion, he will disappear forever. Victor accepts, and travels to England to seek out some scientists who can help him build his second creation (apparently, he forgot the trick). A fit of thinking however makes him realize that he’s putting the rest of humanity at risk by unleashing a second fiend upon it, and he destroys his labor. In revenge, the creature kills Clerval, and promises to destroy all that remains of Victor’s happiness on the night of his wedding.

Unable to imagine that this would be a threat against his fiancée, Victor decides to marry her as fast as possible, so he can once more confront – and maybe even this time fight – his monster. Alas! The fiend kills Elizabeth and Victor’s father, ravaged by grief, soon follows into the tomb. Creator and creature then start a chase that will lead them to the North Pole, where Victor dies without having been able to undo his deed. At his deathbed, the creature expresses his remorse, and departs to immolate himself in the wilderness, therefore erasing all his traces.

There are weaknesses aplenty in the book, and they are difficult to overlook: gaping plot holes, characters displaying limited mental abilities (despite his unparalleled brilliance, Victor rarely thinks ahead, and when he does his nerves betray him, or the book would end up much sooner), unrealistic exposition devices (someone writing in a letter: “you know that…” and then proceeding to explain in details what his correspondent knows) and an exaltation sometimes bordering on silliness… Yet this was the work of an author barely 18-year old! Her vivid imagination and enthusiasm are not the last of the charms of the book.

The main interest, however, is the mystery of the monster: are we to believe its account of itself, and feel the cruelty of its fate, or are we to embrace the point of view of the main narrator, Frankenstein, and feel his instinctive hatred for his creation? Perhaps from the weakness of the narration, I could not like Victor at all – found him to be a self-absorbed, timorous prick – and therefore had to side entirely with the monster. I had to share Mary Shelley’s reservations about human nature and its destructiveness, though I would not espouse her view of nature as the healer of it.

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

I was extraordinarily confused, when discussing Orwell and Huxley with my husband a few weeks ago, to realize that I had somehow mentally concatenated 1984 and Brave New World into a single horrendous story. This is the reason why keeping this blog is so important: my memory, much as that of the 1984 characters, appears to be very flexible – though I do not require a Ministry of Truth and doublethink to achieve that suppleness.

1984, then: a world divided between three warring powers (Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia) and a society split between the vast masses of the proletariat (“the proles”) and the ruling bureaucracy of the Party. The hapless party members are under constant surveillance, every deviancy ruthlessly punished, none harder than mind crimes. Under Big Brother, the ultimate transgression is independent thought.

An employee of the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith is part of the huge administration in charge of constantly readjusting any documentation of the past to obliterate any Party failings. All day, he rewrites newspapers that are then reprinted to replace the originals. While he enjoys the minutiae of his job, revolt is growing in his heart, but he is too terrified to act on it… And where to begin when even your sleep is being watched?

Winston starts with a diary – a transgression made possible by a suspicious find (the paper diary, found in a prole shop) and a suspiciously favorable disposition of his apartment (which has an alcove hidden from the eye of the telescreen). From there conspiracy reaches out to him: first a colleague, Julia, initiates an affair with him, and then the Underground (the mythical resistance, which existence remains a question) reaches out to him via O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party. There are touching moments of a man waking back up to himself as long-forgotten memories of his family come back to him, as his body’s constant soreness fades – but of course, as Winston always knew, his escapade soon ends in the caves of the Ministry of Love. There, he is “re-educated”: physically and psychologically tortured until his broken spirit comes to accept the Party’s doctrine as true.

Re-reading 1984, I was just as awed as I remembered being at first read by the completeness of Orwell’s vision. The precision of it, the well-chosen details give it utter reality, and the philosophical erudition of the writer supplies intellectual conviction. Yet, much like Winston before his conversion, I couldn’t help but feel that the Party could not forever endure, no matter how sophisticated the sophisms defending it. Orwell convincingly warns of the dangers of totalitarian collectivism if it was ever cut from its humanitarian roots – dangers we have seen realized in the former USSR (and some manifestations of which we have come to see realized in our very own vision of a “meritocratic” democracy); he is slightly less convincing in his belief than perfect cynicism would somehow be less soluble in human nature than perfect idealism. Yet the danger is here, in our economic life if not in political bureaucracy. I can think of a dozen examples in my own corporate experience of doublethink, of Inner Party corruption and taste for power/ money, of minor vexations, of disgruntled employees enjoying the tasks if not the goals, and ignoring the later to focus on the firsts, of rewriting the past without seeming to notice. In fact, as I type this, I become more and more troubled by the analogies.

I wonder if and how Orwell would write this book today.

“So much for human fortune. When all is well/ a mere shadow can turn it upside down/ in the face of calamity, the slightest blow destroys/ like a wet sponge blotting out a drawing./ I do not pity myself, I pity mankind.” (Cassandra, in Agamemnon)

In what is likely to be a common complaint here, writing this entry was terribly difficult, not so much as was the case for Beowulf for all the uncertainties associated (though they are, if anything, more numerous), but because of the fascination I have with all myths, legends, interpretations and characters peripheral to the story. I have spent hours reading through Wikipedia and other sources, have started re-reading modern adaptations (including from Giraudoux), and I just cannot get enough.

The Oresteia is a trilogy relating the final episodes of the malediction on the House of Atreus (which, strangely enough, starts with Tantalus, Atreus’s grand-father). The early episodes of the House’s history are not part of the Oresteia. Child cannibalism and murder run through it (I checked out infantivore, but it doesn’t seem to be a word… yet): Tantalus fed his own son, Pelops, to the Gods, in a sort of deranged test to see if they would notice. They did, and that landed him in Hell, where he was made to endure the aptly-named Torment of Tantalus. The Gods also put Pelops back together, including a piece of ivory to replace the shoulder eaten by a distracted Demeter – and in good ancient Greece logic, proceeded to curse him and his descendants for the sin of his father. Pelops made matters worse by assassinating his future wife’s father: to gain the hand of Hippodamia, he needed to beat her father King Myrtilus in a chariot race. He ensured his victory by having his opponent’s chariot sabotaged, killing Myrtilus in the process.

Pelops’s two sons, in turn, had a troubled relation, which much treason, adultery and stealing the throne from one another repeatedly (with the help of meddling Gods). Suffice to say that, as a result, illegitimate children were fed to their father Thyeste by their uncle Atreus. Aegisthus was then procreated by Thyesthe (through incest, of course), expressly to avenge his father. Atreus meanwhile had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who lived in good intelligence, each reigning over a different city. The brothers married half-sisters Clytemnestra and Helen, daughters of Leda. When the Trojan War started, Agamemnon went to support his brother, sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to get favorable winds.

The first play of the Oresteia – Agamemnon – starts with the return of the victorious king to his city of Argos. He is triumphant, bearing treasure and a new concubine (Cassandra) as the reward of his toils, but the celebration will be short: Clytemnestra leads him into his house with disproportionate honors, and immediately murders him with all the ritual pomp of a sacrifice to the Gods. Cassandra, who predicted the murder as well as her own death, faces her fate soon after. The play ends with the triumph of Clytemnestra and her lover. He appears decidedly weak and arrogant in the play – letting her commit the act (which makes it more dishonorable to Agamemnon), bragging about his new position when she calls for peace now that her daughter has been avenged. The play ends with the threat of Orestes’s revenge.

The next play, The Libation Bearers, is the story of that revenge. Orestes, back from exile, tricks his mother into granting him an audition with Aegisthus and herself, and kills them both. I read (from a source I can no longer locate) that the tragedy marks a symbolic transition from a world where males and females where equally valued to a dominance of the masculine. This could be confirmed by the fact that Electra, Orestes’s sister, takes up the cause of her brother and father: she is deaf to the appeal of her mother in the name of her sister Iphigenia. The Furies, a remnant of the old order (they equally pursue patricides and matricides) then appear to persecute Orestes.

The third play tells of the resolution of the curse: Orestes flees first to Apollo, who ordered the murder of his mother, but the God cannot convince the Furies to leave his protege alone. He is then sent on to Athena’s temple: she arranges for him to be tried by 12 (male) judges, who are split equally between forgiveness and revenge. She settles the matter by casting her vote in favor of acquittal, making it a principle that pardon should be preferred to revenge when in doubt. She also renames the Furies to the Eumenides (the Kindly Ones), given them the new, much more feminine role of making the fortune of worthy humans. This settlement ushers more changes: the switch to a mortal justice and the abandon of vendetta as the preferred mode of conflict resolution.

The theme of the place of women is always one I am very sensitive to, so it certainly struck me strongly during my reading – especially as I was not expecting it there. Another dimension I was not expecting in tragedy was the surprising humor that permeates the play. Witticisms (“your speech was like my absence, too long“) and sarcasms (Cassandra, on being praised for her courage: “the fortunate never hear praise like that”) are certainly far from laugh-out-loud jokes, but they help a text otherwise impressive by its directness and darkness keep a very theatrical elegance.