Some quick ideas on "Portrait", mostly for Amy and Colleen. When Stephen is discussing his "aesthetic philosophy" with Cranly, Stephen develops a connection between art/beauty and truth/perception that allows his philosophy to influence not just his art but his life. Relationships between art and truth in his argument hinge on a rejection of the objective as the vehicle for truth, and rely on the relationship between beauty and perception to establish a framework for understanding what is true.
Look at it like we've set up our binary lists in the past:
art/beauty
truth/perception
Wittgenstein maintained in his argument in "Lecture on Ethics" that such a thing as objective observation exists and that it can accurately describe the state of reality and therefore can be a vehicle for propositions that are true. If an observation is taken to mean an act of perception, Stephen seems to be rejecting this idea (rejecting, even though this book was published before Wittgenstein's time) by questioning this sort of analogy: perception is to truth as beauty is to art. The analogy is challenged when Stephen considers art as a way of understanding perception and beauty as a way of understanding truth. I don't have time right now to work with this any more right now because I have to go to a wedding. Hopefully it will be beautiful. Any thoughts?
2 comments:
I'm not sure that this is a direct response to Layne's post but I have noticed the binaries in Atonement as well. However, McEwan seems to favor the space in between the binaries as subjects for inspection as well as ideas on how we should view the world. First off, I will consider beauty. Characters are either given attention for their beauty or they are not. However, I'm not sure that anyone is especially called out for their lack of beauty. Cecilia has an odd face but often that is referred to as the factor that makes her stand out and is treated as a positive trait. Lola is simply gorgeous. Briony is not the subject of physical traits but rather her mind [remember the passage in which she considers that she should start worrying about makeup like Lola but decides she'd rather write (“She thought how she should take more care of her appearance, like Lola. It was childish not to. But what an effort it was. The silence hissed in her ears and her vision was faintly distorted” (33)].
I keep coming back to the statement "beauty, she had discovered, occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, had infinite variation" (7). At first, I loved this. I ate it up and appreciated its implications. However, after further contemplation, I have to disagree, and it seems that other parts of the text do as well. I think that beauty comes in infinitely many "bands." I think that perhaps neatness comes in few bands- one can only organize her bedroom in a certain number of ways to retain its tidiness, but I think that beauty comes in as many forms as ugliness. Perhaps this statement is a reflection of Briony's young age and naivity. That is, maybe McEwan presents us with this statement to show the silly thoughts of persons with limited perceptions of the world. Later, in the third part of the book, Briony reveres her sister for her unique features; features that in themselves are not stereotypically beautiful. So it seems that beauty does, in fact, come in multiple shades. The binaries that McEwan sets up are constantly crushed by the text. Briony has a Huck Finn-esque response to Lola's desire to play Arabella on page 14: "Briony knew her only reasonable choice then would be to run away, to live under hedges, eat berries, and speak to no one, and be found by a bearded woodsman one winter's dawn, curled up at the base of a giant oak, beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with the pink ribbon straps..."
Then she continues with her life. Cecilia has a similar mindset about staying. While Briony "must" leave, Cecilia knows in the first part that she must not. "Lingering here, bored and comfortable, was a form of self-punishment tinged with pleasure, or the expectation of it; if she went away something bad might happen, or worse, something good, something she could not afford to miss” (21).
Perception is also a huge deal in this text, and helps McEwan break down binaries. With only limited perspectives, we can only see things as in one state or another. However, as we gain insight to characters' perspectives, we add new possibilities to existing binaries. For instance, while things are either neat or tidy to Briony, Cecilia's dressing scene does not give us a messy scene but rather one in which possessions are tidy in accordance to her own needs. She has nothing to wear and disposing of her gowns on the floor become not part of a larger mess but reminders of a time in the past, and the clothes simply change their position, from closet to floor rather than from in place to out of place.
Another binary to examine would be inside vs. outside, particularly with one's mind. As Mike noted, McEwan is particularly concerned with the thoughts that exist just on the edge of our brains- what we can't quite grasp but know is there. I notice McEwan literally alluding to the inside and outside of things throughout the book. But, I will allow someone else to comment on this, or perhaps I will just make another post later. Please leave me feedback and expand on some of this stuff- I kind of just started writing without thinking or even typing it out on Word so none of this stuff is actually developed. Alas, as Forrester says, "No thinking; that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!" (Finding Forrester- the movie) although "The heart is a muscle" (from a book called Tolstoy Lied that I'm reading... it's by no means literary greatness but I still find my contradiction of quotes here ridiculous). Okay so this is getting out of hand. Good luck interpretting anything that I just said.
Hope this blog works well! Crossing my fingers and clicking "publish"...
I want to comment on Layne's post and then, sometime soon, comment on Julie's comment.
First, we might begin by noting that Layne is in the wrong field. Anyone who can write complex sentences as clearly as he does should not be spending his days thinking about how much pressure a beam can withstand at a certain point. Layne, I'm afraid you've missed your calling.
Next, let's take note of Layne's juxtaposition of Joyce and Wittgenstein (remembering, as we do, that juxtaposition is a favorite tactics of modernist artists). As Layne points out, they seem to provide a perfect binary: whereas Wittgenstein needs "objectivity" to function as the guarantor or standard of truth (note the Derridean language), Joyce need "subjectivity" to perform the exact same function.
When one is comparing two writers, it's great to get to a point like this one. It takes some close reading and careful argumentation to articulate such a nexus as clearly as Layne does. The next step is to see where the dichotomy breaks down. I'll recall our discussion of Wittgenstein to suggest one way it happens in his argument, and I'll leave it to others to suggest how the inverse may or may not occur in Joyce.
I really wish I had been using the easel from the beginning of the semester, as it would really help right now to look at pictures of our Wittgenstein discussion!
“I said that so far as facts and propositions are concerned there is only relative value and relative good, right, etc. [. . .] Now let us see what we could possibly mean by the expression, “the absolutely right road.” I think it would be the road which everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for not going. And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about. And I want to say that such a state of affairs is a chimera. No state of affairs has, in itself, what I would like to call the coercive power of an absolute judge.”
Recall that, at this moment in the argument, Wittgenstein has already concluded that “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water and if I were to pour out a gallon over it.” So, in other words, he’s already concluded that language is incapable of expressing propositions of absolute value – ethical propositions, that is – and yet in the passage above he can’t seem to quite let go of the point.
What he does is nicely encapsulate his argument: there are two types of value, relative and absolute; relative statements of value are merely disguised statements of fact (and thus no statements of value at all); absolute statements of value cannot be expressed in language, which gains its meaning from the facts; therefore absolute statements of value are nonsense. Wittgenstein then speculates as to how one could have a non-nonsensical absolute statement of value. For his argument to hang together, such a statement of absolute value would have to be wedded to a factual state of affairs, to something that actually exists. So, first and foremost, an absolute statement of value would need to reflect an actual (and factual) state of affairs.
But, more than that, such a statement would have to have, not just objectivity, but necessity. That’s a strong claim. And, of course, necessity, for Wittgenstein, is something that only obtains to objective states of affairs. One can’t say of another’s emotional response, for example, that it has the force of logical necessity. If a loved one dies, it is highly probable that one will be sad, but it is by no means necessary, in a logical sense, that one feel that way.
But, of course, that’s just what Wittgenstein goes on to speculate: an absolute statement of value would have to carry the force of necessity into the realm of the emotional or subjective: “would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about.” The idea of “feeling” (guilty or sad or giddy or in love) is not a quality that one associates with logical necessity, but here Wittgenstein yokes the two.
And yet, at the same time, he divorces them. For notices that such a statement of absolute value, such a state of affairs, would have to bring about this feeling of guild “independent of [one’s] tastes and inclinations.” In other words, it has to be objective. And subjective. And then objective again.
Here, then, is an example of how a binary begins to break down, and in very instructive ways. Notice that the point of my analysis was not to point out a contradiction or slippage in Wittgenstein’s argument and then to resolve that contradiction. Rather than resolution one attempts elucidation. That is, one wants to show why, given its structure, Wittgenstein’s argument requires such slippage between objective and subjective and then objective again.
In the particular context of W.’s “Lecture on Ethics,” one can now point out that Wittgenstein’s argument, after pronouncing such a state of affairs an illusion (“a chimera”) goes on to attempt to use language to describe the feeling that leads him to look for such a state of affairs in the first place. If one can elucidate the contradiction that we have just pointed to, then one can really go on to give a smart and insightful analysis of Wittgenstein’s attempts – almost in spite of himself – to articulate a feeling of absolute value.
So, it’s hard work to recognize and articulate parallels like Layne did, but once one does, then the moments when those parallels cross (and thus become perpendicular) or when those binaries break down become very fruitful ones for close reading and analysis – and ultimately for elucidation.
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