The Mosaic Sadness, Part 2

[cont'd from previous post]

The Mosaic Sadness is the emotional condition of our mortality. When we realize failure is our destiny—incompletion, disappointment—it is the inevitable response. At the end of life, we may, however, get a chance to look back at all our successes and our failures and realize how puny they all are. And, if we are as fortunate as Moses, we may catch a glimpse of the Promised Land on Canaan's side, to wit: what fulfillment, satisfaction, liberation, community, and success might look like. What the future might hold.

Franz Kafka was exquisitely aware of this condition. It marks much of his best, most enigmatic, writing. And it plagues his later diaries.

"Of all writers Kafka was possibly the most cunning: he, at least, was never had! To start with, unlike many modern writers, he wanted to be a writer. He realised that literature, which was what he wanted, denied him the satisfaction he expected, but he never stopped writing. We cannot even say that literature disappointed him. It did not disappoint him – not, at any rate, in comparison with other possible goals. For him, literature was what the promised land was for Moses. ‘The fact that he was not to see the Promised Land until just before his death is incredible,’ Kafka wrote about Moses in his diary. ‘The sole significance of this last view is to show how imperfect an instant human life is – imperfect, because this aspect of life (the expectation of the Promised Land) could last indefinitely without ever appearing to be more than an instant. Moses did not fail to reach Canaan because his life was too short, but because his was a human life.’ This is no longer a mere denunciation of the vanity of one ‘aspect of life’, but of the vanity of all endeavours, which are equally senseless: an endeavour is always as hopeless in time as a fish in water. It is a mere point in the movement of the universe, for we are dealing with a human life." G. Bataille, "Should Kafka Be Burnt?" in Literature and Evil @ 152.

On Kafka's view, per Batille, this Mosaic sadness is our existential situation: the water in which we qua fish swim. An ironic, violent, trickster god denies us our heart's desire despite our faithfulness to this god's calling, and only because of our finite humanity—a finitude into which this selfsame god has capriciously flung us (out of, I might add, pique). It is a profoundly religious point of view: nothing we can do can or even should move the great god. And that's probably as it should be.

Though it should not be a call for self-pity. If this life were the paradise of the Promised Land, there would be no need to strive to better ourselves or our condition. Aspiration would be irrelevant, rendered moot by perfection.

This is entirely in keeping with the theory of literature I've put forth on this blog under the Label Ur-story. Dealing with this existential situation of Mosaic sadness—the recognition and acknowledgement of our mortality—is the substance of literature, and I've attempted to show how a number writers have adressed it.

In the notion of Mosaic sadness, we find the convergence of both theology and literature. It is at the root of what it means to be human, and at the same time it implies our limitation.

We do not live forever. We will not live forever. Some god has decreed it. We can, however, imagine what it might mean to have eternal life, to reach the Promised Land. However, if we are true to ourselves and our situation, we must acknowledge and learn to cope with the foundational sadness that is our essence.

Religious traditions have tried to provide a salve, a consolation, in the form of a Heaven or a Paradise in an afterlife. Look beyond this cruel situation: hope lies in the great beyond. This is their ultimate interpretation of the existential quandary.

Literature details the varied responses of flawed human beings within the finitude of this life to this situation. Get angry. Go to war. Take intriguing journeys. Suffer and moan. Laugh. Love. Seek clues to solve great mysteries. Imagine an alternate reality. Dream the future.

But what if Canaan isn't all it's promised to be?

The Kafka diary entry quoted by Bataille is dated October 19, 1921. Not three weeks later, Kafka sinks even further into existential despair. On second thought, what if the Promised Land is not all it it's cracked up to be? And the wilderness is still Wilderness? In his diary entry of January 28, 1922, he writes:

"...I am already a citizen in this other world, which is related to the ordinary world as the wilderness is to cultivated land (I have been forty years wandering from Canaan), look back as a foreigner, am of course also in that other world—that I have brought along as paternal inheritance—the smallest and the most anxious one and am only capable of living there because of the special organization there, according to which even for the lowliest ones there are exaltations that come like lightning, of course also millenial shatterings that crush like the weight of the sea. Should I not be thankful in spite of everything? Would I have had to find my way here? Could I have not been crushed at the border through 'banishment' there, combined with refusal here. Was not because of my father's power the expulsion so strong that nothing could withstand it (not me)? Of course, it is like a reversed wandering in the wilderness and with childish hopes (especially with regard to women): 'I shall nevertheless perhaps remain in Canaan' and meanwhile I have been in the wilderness for a long time, and there are only visions of despair, especially in those times when even there I am the most miserable one of all, and Canaan must represent itself as the only land of hope, for there is no third land for human beings."

Kafka's sadness is double: "Canaan requires conformity, and the desert, which may provide refuge from the misery of Canaan, cannot protect against despair and illusory hopes." B. Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses: Heine, Kafka, Freud, and Schoenberg in a European Wilderness @ 63-64.

Moses at least had hope—for his people, if not for himself.

Poor, deluded Moses.

(to be continued)


[Yay! The YouTubes!]

TELEVISION
"Marquee Moon"

(Verlaine)

I remember
how the darkness doubled
I recall
lightning struck itself.
I was listening
listening to the rain
I was hearing
hearing something else.

Life in the hive puckered up my night,
the kiss of death, the embrace of life.
There I stand neath the Marquee Moon Just waiting,
Hesitating...
I ain't waiting

I spoke to a man
down at the tracks.
I asked him
how he don't go mad.
He said "Look here junior, don't you be so happy.
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad."

Well a Cadillac
it pulled out of the graveyard.
Pulled up to me
all they said get in.
Then the Cadillac
it puttered back into the graveyard.
And me,
I got out again.

The Mosaic Sadness, Part 1

"This is the land I vowed to Abram, Isaac, and Jacob," Yahweh said to him. "'To your seed I will give it,' were my words. It is revealed to your eyes, though your body cannot follow." Moses, servant of Yahweh, died there, in Moab's land, following Yahweh's word. Now he buried him there, in the clay of Moab's land, in a gorge facing Beth-peor: no man has ever seen his grave, to this day. (The Book of J @ 178 (trans. David Rosenberg)

[Moshe was 120 years old when he died, with eyes undimmed and vigor undiminished." (Deuteronomy @ 34:7 CJV]

This passage depicts the death of one of the truly great world-historical (or mytho-historical, or both, depending on your point of view) figures of the ancient Near East. A reluctant, ironic leader, at least three of the world's great religions venerate him as the founder of monotheism—Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten excepted. According to the Bible, he negotiated, organized, and led the great exodus of a loosely knit band of Semitic tribes from Pharoanic slavery and, in exile in the wilderness, forged their identity as a nation in thrall to the great god Yahweh. Shepherd, fabulist, magician, miracle worker, liberator, prophet, law-giver, judge, political leader, murderer, warrior/general: these titles have survived five thousand years attached to this man we know as Moses.

In the passage here, Yahweh leads Moses to the top of Mt. Nebo and shows him the proverbial Promised Land—the lands of the Covenant that Yahweh had promised to the Israelites' racial progenitors, Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, in antiquity. Yet, He tells Moses he may not enter this country. The Book of J does not specify why, but later redactors, editors, and commentators allow it is because Moses disobeyed Yahweh in some petty, self-serving manner. There, looking out over the Jordan River, Moses died alone and unremarked in some anonymous ditch.

Moses, whose eyes were unclouded, could see the Promised Land, and even though he was still active, Yahweh refused to let him enter. A congenital stutterer, Moses had mustered all his persuasive powers to negotiate the liberation of the people and serve as their leader, all in service to Yahweh and in reliance on His promise. He remained true to his calling, even though at times his temper and ego got the better of him, and led the people to the very cusp of Canaan.

It's been said there's nothing worse than to die sad and alone. The sadness Moses must've felt there at the end of his life as he looked out over the Promised Land—allegedly 120 years old—knowing he could not go in; the deep disappointment Moses must've felt when he realized Yahweh had no intention of keeping His promise vis-à-vis Moses despite his lifetime of dedicated service; the overwhelming grief that must've consumed Moses in his loneliness as he tumbled into a gorge and died: this is what I shall call 'The Mosaic Sadness.'

(to be continued)

Kafka's A Country Doctor Anime (Japanese w/ Subtitles)

Marvelous.

The Trove

Per The Guardian:

"Franz Kafka wanted all his manuscripts to be burned after his death, but his friend Max Brod disregarded the request, seeding a complex legal battle over thousands of manuscripts that has the literary world agog. That legal tussle takes a new twist today as four safety deposit boxes in a Zurich bank containing the manuscripts are opened.

The boxes are believed to contain thousands of manuscripts by Kafka and Brod, including letters, journals, sketches and drawings, some of which have never been published and could provide literary detetectives an insight into one of the 20th century's greatest writers."

But don't get your hopes up:

"Four desposit boxes were prised open. Inside were manuscripts, drawings and letters from the Czech writer that had been locked away for more than 50 years, as Kafka experts around the world waited with baited breath. But the expectant Kafka enthusiasts, historians and critics will have to wait longer, after two Israeli sisters who insist they own the papers by inheritance from their mother banned all reporting of the boxes' contents."

Ur-story: Death of a Salesman

In our take on Beckett's Malone Dies, we examined his uncompromising look at the ultimate isolation of the soul in its long, lonely, bleak struggle towards death: there is no escape even in storytelling. In our next text, we see this Ur-story theme played out in fantastical form.

Okay, see if you recognize this story: a traveling salesman returns home from many a long night on the road. His life on the road is deeply unsatisfying, consisting of meetings and meals full of false, forced bonhomie. He gets no real, human connection from his work relations with clients and co-workers. His bosses at the job where he works (apparently to pay off a debt incurred earlier by his father) are dedicated company men, rigid time-servers who have no real concern for him other than his value as a functionary, a producer. He is never at home on the road. What's more, the product he peddles is just some irrelevant commercial merchandise of no real, existential significance.

Figured it out yet? Read on.

More: Once home—where he rarely stays—between trips, he realizes he doesn't really belong there either. He is unmarried. His travels have provided a good, modest, middle-class living for his parents and his teenaged sister. They have a nice, three-bedroom apartment (similar to the one in The Death of Ivan Ilych) in a decent part of town. The problem, however, is they hardly know him. He is gone so much, they don't know who he really is. Oh, they recognize him as their son and brother; but, beyond that, the closer he tries to get to them, the more repulsed they are by him. He seems like a sincere chap and wants to (re-)insert himself into the family's activities. He continually approaches them, but, it seems, they would prefer him to be out earning on the road. They would prefer not to have to deal with him. This injures him physically as well as emotionally. Ultimately, his sense of his own humanity unreinforced in the world and fading from him, he dies of his wounds and inflicts his hideousness upon them no longer. The family decides they will be able to get by just fine without him and agree to take a smaller apartment.

Sad. Ironic. Pathetic.

Recognize it yet?

What if I quoted you the first sentence—truly one of the greatest, most famous first sentences in all of Western literature: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." (Muir translation)

Of course, it's The Metamorphosis, or The Transformation by Franz Kafka (1915). For good measure, here's the new Corngold translation: "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."



Elias Canetti said: "In The Metamorphosis Kafka reached the height of his mastery: he wrote something which he could never surpass, because there is nothing which The Metamorphosis could be surpassed by—one of the few great, perfect poetic works of this century."

Vladimir Nabokov opens his lecture on this, Kafka's "greatest work", thus:

"Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. 'To take upon us the mystery of things'—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's 'The Greatcoat,' or correctly 'The Carrick'): another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis')—so what? There is no rational answer to 'so what.' We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers." (251)

Kafka's story, like so many of its Ur-story peers, is about the impact of the awareness of our own mortality—our humanity—on the way we live our day-to-day lives. The monstrous beetle Samsa turns into is an obvious metaphor. Its meaning is infinitely debatable, and that's what makes it so powerful. But, what Kafka does, originally and profoundly, is to literalize the metaphor: the metaphor becomes the reality and sets the story into motion. This is a technique used to great, Nobel-winning effect by the Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago in Blindness, The Double, etc. As readers, we accede to the reality of these texts which just is the reality created by the writers and "experienced" by the characters—the willing suspension of disbelief.

Without attempting to gauge its meaning per se, we can look at the parameters of the metaphor in the only context in which it matters: the story. Gregor wakes up one morning from a troubled dream and discovers he has turned into a giant insect. That no panic or abject disbelief intrudes should clue us in to that fact that Kafka is unconcerned about reality or realism or verisimilitude here. Gregor accepts the fact that this is who he is now—this is his reality now—and attempts to deal with it. He is isolated in his bedroom. He is the only one this has ever happened to as far as he or anyone else knows. This insect is his essential self actualized, materialized, physicalized. Really, this is all we need to know.

The first section of the book, the family's discovery of and coming to grips with Gregor's new situation, has moments of pure comedy, ending in a bit of near-Vaudevillian slapstick. The second section involves Gregor's prolonged, pathetic struggle to retain or recapture any semblance of the humanity he has lost, ending in what turns out to be a mortal wounding by his father. The last section witnesses Gregor's tragic, lonely death soon after he hears his sister, Grete, playing violin for the family's boarders. It proves to be a relief for the rest of the family who've had to hire a charwoman to 'handle' Gregor: the family is able to normalize its life once again without the insect intrusions of their strange son.

Gregor, though hideous to those around him, seems to be a selfless, beautiful soul. He tries to cling to his humanity to the end. He is unsuccessful in one sense. In another, though, he achieves the tragic insight we must all reach: no matter how much we reach out, no matter how much we try to connect with our friends, co-workers, and family, we are fated to die isolated in our own individual carapaces, ultimately alone, ultimately misunderstood. This, of course, is nothing other than the essence of great literature, the Ur-story, told in a startling, unique, original form.



As for the realism issue: we know no one actually turns into a bug in real life. Kafka's story is unrealistic in that sense. But, in a manner we brought up in relation to Tom McCarthy's Remainder, there is an aspect of ur-realism in Kafka's story: at some fundamental level, each of us struggles each day, individually, with the real world of beds, sofas, desks, chairs, tables, doors, food and water, light and dark, gravity, relatives, co-workers etc. in and through and within the mechanism of our isolated, ungainly bodies. Human relations are tenuous, fragile. No one ever really fits in. And, in an uncaring world, it is all too easy to lose our own humanity.

Interestingly, and often quite unnoticed, the story ends with yet another transformation after Gregor's death: that of Grete:

"The greatest immediate improvement in their condition would of course arise from moving to another house; they wanted to take a smaller and cheaper but also better situated and more easily run apartment than the one they had, which Gregor had selected. While they were thus conversing, it struck both Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the same moment, as they became aware of their daughter's increasing vivacity, that in spite of all the sorrow of recent times, which had made her cheeks pale, she had bloomed into a pretty girl with a good figure. They grew quieter and half unconsciously exchanged glances of complete agreement, having come to the conclusion that it would soon be time to find a good husband for her. And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and excellent intentions that at the end of their journey their daughter sprang to her feet first and stretched her young body."

[Anyone notice we managed to get through the entire post without using the word 'alienation'?']