From German Modernism to Spanish Golden Age

Dickens_DavidCopperfieldI wish just to recall some influences on Kafka’s Amerika. This novel introduces the wanderings of a young boy, Karl who’s thrown out from home due to his “affair” with the maid. Karl arrives to America alone with a small suitcase and nothing else than his wit to survive. He lives one experience after another, each one more curious than the previous, and meets all kind of people who actually decide his new course. Kafka wrote on his diary on October 8, 1918:

“Dicken’s Copperfield. “The Stoker” a sheer imitation of Dickens, the projected novel even more so. The story of the trunk, the boy who delights and charms everyone, the menial labour, his sweetheart in the country house, the dirty houses, et al., but above all the method. It was my intention, as I now see, to write a Dickens novel, but enhanced by the sharper lights I should have taken from the times and the duller ones I should have got from myself”.

In fact, the adventures of Karl remain the reader Dicken’s boys in the Victorian England. Karl solitude to face all his misfortunes are similar to those of English 19th C. novels. However, if Copperfield ascends in wealth and social position, Karl actually descends (as far as we know in the novel; it’s unfinished). The figure of the wandering boy is also linked to this of the Spanish “pícaro”. The latter could actually be seen as a predecessor of those of the realistic period. The poor origin and the longing for ascending are common in both groups, but I think the cunning of the “pícaro” is something missed both in Copperfield and Karl. However the three types find themselves submitted to different authorities until achieving autonomy or more freedom.

Karl is settled in New York, which I find quite properly for the beginning of the 20th C. New York is the new alienated place of modernity where both fortune and misfortune are possible and dependent to the subject’s sagacity. In short, I think Kafka has placed himself also in the Western tradition of the young wandering born in Spain.

A Claim for…

girl-in-front-of-the-lion-cage-1901A Hunger Artist is another of Kafka’s short stories which, I guess, leads no one indifferent, at least the reader become angry in front of such an apparent senseless riddle. A Hunger Artist shows the story of a faster artist who lives in a cage and is visited by the public. The main point of the attraction is the fasting of the artist who feels misunderstood by the walkers. Some people are always trying to find the hiding food in the cage because they don’t trust the artist’s capacity for fasting. However he’s very proud of his fasting and wants to go on with it without interruption. I think the hunger artist thinks to be making a work of art of his own body. That’s not explicitly said in the narration however it can be interpreted due to the lack of understanding between the artist and the public: people is unable to appreciate art. They don’t like the aspect of the starving artist, in fact, it’s not a beautiful expression, but Kafka is constructing a metaphor through which express the problem between art and the public. How can such a subjective expression be understood by everybody? The communication between artist and public fails because of the self-expressivity of the work. Coming back to my old comment on Tolstoy’s theory of art, we see here the opposite point. Tolstoy said a good work of art should be understood by everybody, but Kafka could be expressing a completely different perspective: because art is so personal, it’s impossible to be understood. But there’s a meeting point between the extremes. Tolstoy supports his statement arguing that when the artist is being honest expressing his feelings he can’t fail in doing so, and Kafka could be appealing to the same honesty with the opposite result.

Later on in A Hunger Artist, the artist dies in a cage because no one looks at him, and he’s replaced by a panther which attracts all the attention. Why does the panther success? Maybe it represents another kind of art? Of beauty?  Has it something to do with consciousness? The artist is conscious, not the panther. So for what are people attract? Maybe for some kind of hypnotising appearance instead of  for an intellectual presence? Have society killed art by its indifferent attitude towards life?

“The Awakening”, a feminine metaphor

woman-in-a-mirror-theo-van-rysselbergheThe Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899) has been seen as a novel of adultery, as for example, Madame Bovary, but I don’t really think that the main problem of Edna- The Awakening‘s main character- is a matter of love. Edna is much more than a problem of  satisfactory marriage, she incarnates the history of women in the Western society. Edna is introduced to the reader reflecting a problem of identity, her unhappy marriage is just a parcel of such problem. Edna doesn’t know neither who she is nor where’s her place in the world. At the beginning of the novel, the reader finds Edna as a wife concerned  about her husband, trying to do her best to get a peaceful home. However, something is awoke within herself while listening a piano concert; here music plays a significant role. I’m currently working on this topic in my research, that’s the influence of music in the souls, and especially in the novel of adultery. By now, I’ll go on  with the idea that music, and later, her relation with Robert, make her conscious of herself, of her inward. I’d say the sea plays a role here as well, but that’s another topic for another moment. Thus, adultery is just a tool through which she becomes aware of her whole life, and it’s from this point she decides to change. The next step is painting, so art. She loves painting but she had never before taken it seriously. Painting is the first expression of her awareness. I find it a very interesting point; she becomes more and more herself through her artistic expression, I think that’s another point to analyse: how art is related to self-consciousness. Finally, she becomes independent, she earns her own money and buys an apartment. At this point, her love relations aren’t so important, that’s the reason I think adultery isn’t the main point in the novel. Instead, we can se how Edna acquires consciousness of herself as a woman in society (the title itself refers to an awakening) which corresponds to the history of the independence of women. I guess the important point in such a history isn’t sex or money but consciousness, and through it, inner-freedom.

Tolstoy, a lover of the simplicity

tolstoyLeoTolstoy1Reading Tolstoy nowadays is an encounter with a kind of relief. Simple, clear and with no considerations for the politically correct, Tolstoy just claims for innocence, truth and peace. Lover of the simple life, as we see in Anna Karenina’s character Levin,  and the rural calm, he also has something to say about art. In his long essay What is Art?, Tolstoy upholds the plain character of the classical art in opposition to the new modern and subjective one such as Impressionism or late Romanticism. This new artistic form in his days, says Tolstoy, is due to the Aristocratic corruption whose new thoughts are mainly exported from Europe. Simple people such as the rural worker can’t understand this new art, why?- wonders Tolstoy- because it’s not art, it’s just a decadent self-expression and the manifesto of a perverted upper-class unable to feel the sublime. Is not the worker the guilty of his misunderstanding in modern art, is the artist himself who can’t express what he feels, mainly, because he feels nothing, his art is artificial, not natural, his art is learned in a school of art which, says Tolstoy, is to kill the art itself. Therefore, the upper-class is now educated in order to understand this new art, which means, art is being enclosed in a group of people. So art is not more universal and that’s no art. Art becomes thus a prostitute because the aim of the artist is money, so he makes what can be sold. And in all this lack of artistic honesty, art perverts its consumers, that’s the upper-class, because art has no more value in itself. Then we can see how in The Kreutzer Sonata lessons on art are just an excuse for adultery.

Tolstoy would say, “if you want to know what is art, go and ask the farmer if he enjoy this or that. If he does, then it’s art”.

You can agree or not, but I think it deserves a thought.

Embodied Feelings

kreutzer_sonataAmbiguity is one of the most current terms in literary aesthetics. It plays with our perceptions and it’s said to be settled in a blurred border between the conscious and the unconscious; it says without saying and knows at the same time it doesn’t. It’s part of the real world as well as inhabits in the fantastic. In brief, it’s the paradox of “to be and not to be”. The ambiguous likes to go from our dreams to our daily life and makes us grow in the uncertainty. Uncertainty is, I guess, the favourite concept of Todorov talking about the Uncanny which differs from the Marvellous precisely because of this characteristic. Freud refers to the Uncanny as being familiar and not at the same time which is no more than another ambiguity, and this feeling begins in the thresholds of our mind. Like Scnitzler does in A Dream Story where Florin is startled by doubts of perception, or fears or maybe desires, who knows.

Ambiguity is also the language of  sensuality where to want and not have filled pages of adultery. Ambiguity serves the speechless language where embodied metaphors, images or melodies become read by those who are playing the game. Feelings take form in both The Awakening and The Kreutzer Sonata by means of rhythm. What conscious can’t afford is exposed by aesthetic experiences which, like  dreams, translate darkness into light.

Part of the knowledge about the self finds no expression in words, that’s what art is, Tolstoy would say, the communication of what can’t be said, the universal history of feelings.

Conference: LVIII Annual Conference of the Anglo-Catalan Society

“The Illness of the Environment: Nature, Culture and Human Life in The Time of the Doves”. LVIII Annual Conference of the Anglo-Catalan Society, University of Sheffield. Sheffield, 9-11 November 2012.

I analyse in The Time of the Doves how the experience of the war goes beyond the narrator’s subjective perception and it involves all her surroundings.  First of all, I analyse the relation between war and the destruction of material and espiritual goods. Then, culture will be considered as a whole, that is, englobing both human parts: material and espiritual ones, and its relation to the environment.An important part of this analisys is the symbolic language because through it the author widely achieves the unity between Natàlia’s individual point of view and the universal meaning that simbology allows. Thus, a novel with a unique narrator perspective becomes one of common experience. Through narrator’s language, her personal experience of the war acquires a cosmologycal meaning, and it is through this characteristic that The Time of the Doves becomes  universal.

Schnitzler, “A Dream Story”

200px-ArthurSchnitzler_DreamStoryThe friendship between Freud and Schnitzler is also reflected in their respective works. Freud said of his friend to be doing the same psychoanalytic work in his novels with an especial reference to A Dream Story. In fact what Schnitzler presents in his book is a blurred border between life and dreams. Fridolin, a young doctor, lives quite strange adventures in the time of a whole night which lead him to experience a surrealistic world and  mysterious facts. Moreover, the novel is aesthetically very well constructed and the role of Fridolin’s wife in his marvellous night is quite intriguing. The relationship of the couple where desire and rancour merge is another fact to be explored.

Europe in War

I wouldn’t recommend anyone to read Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger who was not interested in a kind of “war report”. In fact, Jünger wrote his war diary during his four years in the World War I and he gave us a piece of faithful events without space for feelings or emotions. This lack of “humanity” has been the cause of several critics,which, like Walter Benjamin, accused Jünger of complicity with the idea of “cult of the war”. The mere fact of describing war events instead of showing a personal experience or an inner-reaction lead some part of the critics to see in Jünger’s narrative a pure “war for war’s sake”.

But before going on, let us see what’s written about war in female fictions. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway shows some male consequences after being in the World War I. Woolf, as in general all women writers of this period, focuses on the consequences of war on human relations. In fact, the general is unable to react to her wife’s demands with any kind of empathy, he’s completely out of question in his returning to London. The main problem is that he can’t express himself what is going in his inner-self. And that, I guess, is the point: the lack of expressivity of the emotions. Woolf’s general, like Jünger, don’t talk about anything which is not outside themselves. The general becomes mad, but his madness is a kind of frustration because of his past experience and it’s related to the breakdown between war what he feels and what he achieve to say. The reader of Woolf knows the female side of the war and feels the destruction of the relationships between women and men. The female suffering, in contrast with Jünger’s, is narrated by an over-expression.

Therefore, I’d say both narratives are coherent with each other even if being so different in style and form. They complement both views which I find a quite interesting topic to analyse.

Creative Femininity

Girl_Painting_at_an_Easel._Georges_d_Espagnat_French_1870_1950_
Women and art create a new topic in Modernist Literature. Two good examples of it are Viriginia Woolf and Kate Chopin, both belonging to the first part of the 20th C. Together with the born of the New Woman appears the female artist as a key figure of the first feminism. Two works I’d like to turn to are To the Lighthouse (London, 1927) by Woolf and The Awakening (New Orleans, 1899) by Chopin. What these short novels share is the character of the female artist. In the first case, a not-married painter and, in the second case, a not-married musician and Edna, the main character who finds herself divided between marriage and painting. It’s interesting to see how there’s a dilemma between family duties and art which, actually, remains unresolved in both novels, especially in The Awakening where Edna incarnates the opposition. There’s no chance: either art or marriage. However, the interesting point is that of motherhood. It seems to be incarnated in both spheres; the creation of life could be substitute for that of art. In fact, these artists who in both novels remain single don’t live their condition as impoverish, while Edna experiments the two facts as contradictory. The problem of Edna, however, doesn’t consist just in the fact of being mother and artist, it’s also an expression of being trapped in a society of established roles. In such a case, we’re witnessing a difficult born: the woman of the 20th C. The tow facts aren’t in themselves contradictory but they were made so.


Marina Carr, “By the Bog of Cats”

30_by-the-bog-of-cats-with-josie-1998I really recommend this adaptation of Euripides’ Medea by the Irish dramatist Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats. The classical themes of madness, love and despair are greatly put into scene in a totally new setting. The atmosphere represents an in-between of the land of the deaths and the alive; ghosts, witches, snow, gipsies and black swans revive the classical tragedy. Childhood trauma is the modern Freudian incursion in the new tragedy which substitutes Medea’s cold vanity for a traumatic Hester. Irish mythology also finds its place in the work together with some Greek elements. Parricide is displayed in a very different way and is linked to the cause of Hester madness, the abandon of the mother.

The question however remains the same: are children at the mercy of their parents? Could someone justify the murder of an own child?

I find a quite contemporary issue to analyse the position in which children are in relation to their parents or in a family. Until what extent are they used or manipulated by their parents’ emotions and to achieve what goals? Citing Girard, could we say about the children to be the scapegoat of our society or even of their own parents?

Article: 1616: Anuario de la Sociedad Española de Literatura General y Comparada

“La Culpa en Macbeth y La Vida es Sueño” in 1616: Anuario de la Sociedad Española de Literatura General y Comparada”  Vol. 2, 2012.

This article introduces an analysis about the guilt in the characters of Macbeth (Shakespeare, Macbeth) and Basilio (Calderón de la Barca, La Vida es Sueño). The shame, in order to be absolutely assumed, should be the result of free decisions taken by the subject, therefore, in both works should be considered the influence of external elements on the characters, as for example, the witches in Macbeth and the stars in La Vida es Sueño. This also leads to a reflection on responsibility, freedom and consciousness in both characters. The comparative regards the analysis of the external elements and its influence on the events in the works, the two different manners of dealing with guilt, which leads, in one case, to the destruction of the character, and in the other case, to his redemption.

Rougemont and “Love in the Western World”

tristan-egusquiza-lI would say Love in the Western World is not just a book about love, it’s one of the main books to understand a great part of our European culture and a nice beginning for this blog. Rougemont really attempts to find an explanation about romantic love during 2 000 years of Christianity, an attempt which I think he achieves and he doesn’t at the same time.

He bases romantic love on all kind of pagan religions already existing thousands of years ago. Tristan is the model he chooses to identify such a passion, a passion, according to him, contrary to the Christian Agapé. Passion and romanticism, a couple of terms which grew underground during the expansion or imposition of Christianity. Together with passion and love, comes death. Rougemont doesn’t conceive a passion whose final goal isn’t death. Passionate love looks for death as far as it’s feed by the obstacle and the impossibility of completely reaching the beloved. Moreover, suffering is indissoluble of such a love, for which reason Rougemont also sees death as a kind of revenge of the lovers against their own suffering. All this is what Rougemont says is the opposite of Christianity and, to the question of how then romantic love grows in Europe he just affirms it’s due to the pagan world. However, I felt not satisfied which all his account about the causes of romantic love, or love-passion-death. I wonder if Christianity had really nothing to do about that.

If we think on Christianity, we find love, passion and death. Even if such passion is one of suffering injury, it’s there anyway. Christian love understands suffering, moreover, it’s linked to it; which makes me reconsider the bases Rougemont gives to the romantic love. Could another culture accept and empathises which romantic love in such a way as ours? Rougemont himself negates this possibility; and what has been the history of Europe if not centuries of Christianity?