The real world of fiction

When I read Bizz’s blog before attending our last class, my first response was something like this: well, of course he’s not real. This is a fiction book, isn’t it? None of it is real. After reading all of Bizz’s blog, I realized that the real question is whether or not the poet is not real in the novel’s reality. I think. Either way, I think many readers always feel a little jipped when we find out that fictional characters don’t really exist in the novel. It’s like the author isn’t playing the game of pretend right. We are thrown back into our own reality where the book is a work of fiction, and it is unexpected. We don’t like leaving the lies behind on someone else’s terms.

Late relection on Ibsen and Wilson lecture

In class, we discussed how comedy deals with repetition of events until it reaches absurdity. Why is mankind programmed to laugh at the absurd? Why does man finds repetitive things absurd? I was reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin remarks on how odd it is that the human response to what we cannot understand is to laugh:

Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?
Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
Calvin: (after a long pause) I can't tell if that's funny or really scary.

Maybe we have evolved to appreciate absurdity as a way of coping with our lack of understanding. In his lecture, E.O. Wilson discussed how all of man’s troubles arise from not understanding and the special importance biology holds in the borderline between humanities and science. Man uses science and humanities to better his understanding (and by extension to lessen his troubles?) with science employed as collective of the knowledge man can test and show to be true. As a system of transparent procedures, science is a method where conclusions are drawn from a body of evidence and the conclusions supported by evidence are accepted to be true. As scientific knowledge increases, religious belief to explain phenomena present in the real world shrinks.

However, that doesn’t necessarily imply that we have left behind fantasy or methods of pretend. As Sarah discussed in her blog, Wilson states that we are a nation of Tinkerbells and Peter Pans. Toeing the borderline between belief and knowledge, we choose to live in a fantasy world. Just as Ibsen maintains that we choose to believe that our attics are forests, so it seems that the essence of sane living is to live a life of perpetual pretend and endless layers of masks. The three main questions posed during Wilson’s lecture (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) along with the sentiment that humanity is searching through creative arts to find the meaning of existence brings new light to Ibsen’s “new mythology” (Steiner’s “Death of Tragedy” essay 567) and method of exploring archetypes to derive truths that transcend merely his own generation and allow his work the status of myth.

How do we play “let’s pretend?” in order to alter (or perhaps mask) the real? How do you discard the illusions and deal with the real? But this is impossibility…Why are the illusions important to us? “I don’t know if it actually happened, but it ought to have happened”  Dr. Stockman’s obsession with the moral right…perhaps illusions are the dreams we inhabit, the unreachable “ideal” that nonetheless needs to exist in order for our existence to be happy and fulfilling.

Ibsen becomes the ideal scientific observer through his detachment, his lack of empathy, yet this very lack is only gained through supreme empathy and understanding the characters that populate his work. How is this possible? In George Steiner’s “The Death of Tragedy”, he states that the foremost achievement of Ibsen’s genius was that “he created a new mythology” (567).  Ibsen is not talking about stereotypes but archetypes; the wired in human instincts that do not operate according to social institutions but our own intrinsic make up (founded in dreams, myths, fantasies)

Is this is how we determine “great” art? The creative art that hits closest to our internal blueprint…does this provide us with the greatest sense of understanding? Because it is reminding us of what we already know, but needed to be reminded that we knew…because truth is the process of unforgetting.

Yet we demand our art not to merely stay in the realm of dreams, but to replicate reality. (but is this also true of our dreams?) Audience demands Ibsen’s (and any) play to work on a realistic level while simultaneously existing in the myth. Just as Hedda can communicate with her duller peers in straightforward language, the metaphoric presence in her speech is always waiting for recognition from characters more comfortable dealing with the literal. Fairytales bridge the gap between mythological and naturalistic…perhaps this harmony and bridge is the most fulfilling to us—scratches the human psyche in the right places—to unite both ideal and real world in a satisfying interplay of the dream and the material…to give the most fulfilling illusion that doesn’t feel baseless to the observer: a castle with a foundation.

In conjunction with humor, humanity seems to deal with the absurd by deriving comfort from the repetitive process of ordering the (random?) materials presented to us from the universe. In Hedda Gabler, Thea exclaims “Oh, God—It’s going to be so difficult to find the order in all of this” “But it must be done. There’s simply no other choice. And finding the order in other people’s papers—that’s precisely what I’m meant for” (353).  Perhaps on some level, this statement rings true for all of us. Is creative expression simply reordering the chaos presented? Are we enacting poesis? Or mimesis?

I am once again reminded of the suffering artist, and the stereotypical sacrifice and guilt of not attending to the duties his evolution requires. Wilson states that as a species, we have evolved to be extremely groupist. Man cannot exist unless he feels related to a group—Wilson states that religion developed as a result of this need. The stereotype of the suffering artist cannot attend to his groupist duties of people and relationships perhaps because creation (or the closest form of true creation) is poesis in essence—an individual act. What does this say about creation?

Wilson states that all forms of memory developed the capacity to link memory in temporal sequence: otherwise known as stories. Stories are conceptions of the future where the mind is free to rehearse stories in which the self is the player in the game, able to draw upon memory to become conscious.

Laugh at evil in order to disempower…perhaps all of these methods of coping with our lack of understanding (the evolutionary instinct to laugh at what we cannot understand, the need for order, the need for pretend) are just our way of disempowering the evil of the unknown.

Obviously? None of it is obvious.

What is obvious about Pale Fire?

The commentator is obsessed with John Shade.

The commentator displays trollish qualities.

The commentator is religious. “I could distinguish the expression of passionate interest, rapture and reverence, with which he followed the images wording themselves in his mind, and I knew that whatever my agnostic friend might say in denial, at that moment Our Lord was with him” (89).

The commentator envies Shade’s relationship with his wife.

The commentator wishes Shade to incorporate “the Zemblan theme” into his work: “Not only did I understand then that Shade regularly read to Sybil cumulative parts of his poem but it also dawns upon me now that, just as regularly, she made him down or remove from his Fair Copy everything connected with the magnificent Zemblan theme with which I kept furnishing him and which, without knowing much about the growing work, I fondly believed would become the main rich thread in its weave.” (91)

The commentator does not seem to be fond of youthful characteristics?: “I must confess that their pert pictures irritated me to such an extent that finally I gathered them one by one and dumped them all in a closet under the gallows row of their cellophane-shrouded winter clothes.” (83) “All (the black cat) got from me was milk and sardines; it was a likeable little creature but after a while its movements began to grate on my nerves…” (84)

Some not obvious things worth looking into: tessellations, mirrors, nymphs, Heliotropes and butterflies…hmmm.

Heterotopias?

“Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language…they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to ‘hold together’. This is why utopias permit fables and discourse: they run with the very grain of language and are part of the fundamental dimension of the fibula; heterotopias…desiccate speech, stop words in the tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences” (Preface xviii)

I find this quote interesting.

I don’t understand it. But I did find an intriguing essay online that defines heterotopia as the space outside of the society that produced it that carries a relation to all other remaining “external” spaces. The difference between a utopia and a heterotopia is that the latter possess corporeal reality, material reality. If the reflection in the mirror is a utopia, then the mirror as a medium object is a heterotopia.

If you would like to read the rest of the essay: http://www.knutasdam.net/Texts/HeterotopiaKAsdam.pdf

Life-lies

Life-lie: saving lie. “That’s right, I said the life-lie. Because the life-lie is the vitalizing principle, you see” (275)

“What the devil does it mean, to be demonic? That was just some nonsense I thought up to let him go on living. If I hadn’t, the poor, harmless swine would have broken down in self-contempt and despair many years ago” (275). To be convinced of demonic nature as treatment…the doctor is in practice of telling people lies to fix them, to keep them content in living their life-lie. Is it better to live a life of truth? Or a less painful life of delusion? Only emotion we’re allowed to feel is fun….When confronted with the choice between a life of truth or illusion (or lies) I chose truth. I realize intellectually the futility of my overly simplistic conception of “truth”. I realize that this is an inaccessible concept based on my own illusions of what constitutes reality and experience. It is based in illusion, and so baseless. Non-existent, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can intellectually wonder if I have built my reality on lies, a non-existent foundation less substantial than air. But of course I don’t really believe what I’m typing here. I still believe in truth. I still believe that I can (mostly) trust my perceptions of the world, and can recognize and correct my viewpoint when life brings attention to an illusion I believed to be truth. I accept this because my sanity (or what I believe to be some semblance of sanity) requires it in order for me to exist functionally in reality (or what I judge to be functionally or perceive to be reality…but I’ll stop this. This cyclical state of constant doubt is exhausting to maintain).

This reminds me of conversations I’ve had with my friend Erin (the one adventuring with Shanely the rock in Ireland). I wonder if the only perception of ourselves is discovered through feedback with our environment—that we cannot truly perceive ourselves because we can never observe as an outsider. We are always already within. We rely on our environment to give feedback we can perceive as truth, but similar to the “forgotten” conversation we’ve had in class (you know everything already, you’ve just forgotten it) the outside stimuli is the “nudger” to access what was already within and knowable. The nudge is not truth. Your interpretation of the stimuli is the truth (to your perception). So when a friend has to sit you down and have a “tough talk”, you squirm and feel uncomfortable because a lot of the time the perceptions closest to the “truth” are the ones you knew, but had to be reminded that you knew, often to correct whatever path based in illusion you’ve been intent on blindly pursuing to reach a dream or unreachable ideal.

There’s a quote that states that the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know, but never knew you knew. Perhaps it was stated more eloquently than that. Books and teachers …maybe the ones most important to us are the ones that hit closest to that internal blueprint that we all carry, the one that maps our dreams, fantasies and myths—the archetypes we discuss in class that Ibsen seems to be so fond of exploring. Are the archetypes truth in essence? Or are they an escape from truth/reality? How is the escape fulfilling to us? More so than actual reality? Reminds me of Sarah and Bizz’s blogs…

I agree with Sarah and Bizz—it is impossible to peel truth from lies. The two are too interwoven. Bizz’s idea about dreams functioning as lies in (dreams as the ideal) is really intriguing. She writes that perhaps reality only becomes real after we challenge and recreate it into fiction (lies). Is this process the sole form of ownership we maintain over “reality”? To order what is naturalistic for the purpose of mirroring that internal blueprint of our human instinct, the ingrained dreams we all share?

Once again, I’m reminded of our class discussion of the Master Builder. As the tower constructed of wooden blocks and Legos  got higher and higher and the material lessened, the tower became less substantial. In order to build the highest tower, there had to be increasing gaps in the corporeal material of which it was constructed and more air towards the top. But this was acceptable because of the firm foundation. And well...shoot. I'm not sure where I was going with this.