The Dissolution of Being in the Narcissus Myth

“Being” tends to be an extremely problematic term especially in twenty-first century philosophical and academic discourse. But in the artistic frame of the Narcissus myth, at least, the topic of ontology is chiefly explored through the characters of Echo and Narcissus. They are, in fact, presented at first sight as two distinct and antithetical beings, but they have foundationally similar, unconscious desires. Echo’s desire for union with Narcissus and Narcissus’ desire for union with his own reflection express their deeper, unconscious desires for a unified, complete Self; the failure to achieve such a union results in the dissolution of their beings. The psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan will help us understand the complex relationship (or lack thereof) between the two characters and that which they have with their own Selves.

Lacan provides us with three major theories on the ego, the relationship between the Self and the Other, and desire. Lacan’s fundamental notion on the ego is the ego’s illusory nature. D’Alleva explains that “for Lacan, the ego – the sense of self as coherent, rational actor expressed in the word ‘I’ – is nothing but an illusion of the unconscious”[1]. Moreover, Lacan theorises that the unconscious is structured like language: it is composed of an arbitrary chain of signifiers and signifieds. For Lacan, then, “the process of becoming a ‘self’ is the process of trying to stabilize the chain of signifiers so that meaning – including the meaning of ‘I’ – becomes possible”[2]. With the arbitrary processes of the unconscious in motion, the individual is thus left with the illusion of the “I”, the ego.

The subject’s sense of the Other, according to Lacan, is created when the subject, as an infant, realises that it is separate primarily from its mother, then eventually from the rest of the people around it. The individual’s sense of Self, following the stage of sensing the Other, is brought about in the “Mirror Stage”, a stage wherein a baby sees itself in the mirror, and, seeing its own reflection, creates a concept of its own Self. Such a perceived concept is what Lacan calls a méconnaisance, a misrecognition; for the Self identified in the mirror is only an ontological illusion of the unconscious. The mirror image is what Lacan calls the “Ideal-I”, the ideal sense of Self with which the subject attempts to reconcile the reality of its own self-perception.

Lacan also theorises about the inherent sense of absence in the unconscious. Richter explains that “the sense of absence can take the form of mere lack (manque) or need (besoin), which force the psyche to make demands, or it can take the higher form of desire (désir)”[3]. The solution for the individual’s sense of absence is language: “Lacan says that language is always about loss or absence; you only need words when the object you want is gone”[4]. Language is an attempt to retrieve what is unconsciously absent – it is the bridge that connects the Desiring to the Desired. If language, then, is the noumenal link between the desiring subject to the desired object, the performative and phenomenal expression for desire is the Gaze[5]. D’Alleva says that “according to Lacan, we try to give structure and stability to our illusions, our fantasies of Self and Other, via the Gaze”[6]. The Gaze is, in other words, the medial point between the subject’s self-perception and its Ideal-I wherein the subject’s desire may be apprehended.

Lacan’s theories come into a strong interplay upon contact with the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Our route to unfold the discoveries from the interplay is to examine the stories individually but comparatively, with the overall context of the myth as a guide, and the direct and indirect implications of Lacan’s theories as instruments for insight.

In the myth of Echo and Narcissus, Echo is presented as a personification of her name. She is described in the myth as “a strange-voiced nymph…who must speak / Unless another speak”[7]. Her curse seals her fate as an echoing character: “All she can do is double each last word, / And echo back again the voice she’s heard”[8]. Echo is accordingly a “subject” in Žižek’s sense of the term. Žižek posits that “the subject’s elementary, founding, gesture is to subject itself. . . The subject’s activity is, at its most fundamental, the activity of submitting oneself to the inevitable”[9]. Echo’s curse, in line with a Žižekian perspective, is a curse of eternal verbal passivity. And cursed to be an echoing subject, she is subsequently deprived of a complete sense of Self. What she becomes is a mere signifier, devoid of the meaning and essence that the signified Other, whom she echoes, embodies.

With the absence of a complete sense of self, Echo consequently desires the Other. According to Richter, “it is in the true desire –  for an object that is itself conscious and can desire us in return – that higher forms of self-consciousness arise”[10]. In Echo’s desire for the Other there is thus an underlying, ontological desire to complete her Being. If Echo is a Žižekian subject, then Narcissus, in Echo’s perspective, is her corresponding object: “that which moves, annoys, disturbs, traumatizes”[11]. His presence moves Echo into desire. Narcissus is a threefold object: he is Echo’s desired object inasmuch as he is the object with which Echo may achieve the completion of her sense of Being. He is, however – and more importantly – the Lacanian objet petit a, the unattainable object of desire, the object that thus “disturbs”, if not “traumatizes”, Echo.

Narcissus’ rejection and mockery of Echo leads to the literal dissolution of her Being. The myth recounts that “shamed and rejected. . .Her body shrivels. . .Only her voice and bones are left; at last / Only her voice”[12]. Echo’s relationship with Narcissus is a case of the Other responding to the subject with rejection. Echo fails in her to achieve a union the Other, a union which would otherwise have completed her Being, attaching a meaningful Signified to her empty identity as a Signifier. Echo’s body eventually disintegrates, and what is left is only her voice, a signifier of her identity. What is thus most tragic about Echo’s dissolution is that ultimately her story emphasises the ironic and profound emptiness of her character as a Signifier: not only is she deprived of a Signified to give her meaning, but what remains in the end is only a signifier of her Being-as-Signifier[13].

Narcissus, in turn, represents – to borrow a Lacanian term – a “fragmented body”[14] – or, in other words, a fragmented self. In the myth, he is introduced with a question from his mother to Tiresias: “Would he long years and ripe old age enjoy?” to which Tiresias replies, “If he shall himself know”[15]. The prophecy is eventually followed up with a curse granted by Nemesis: “So may he love – and never win his love!”[16] The curse marks Narcissus’ unconscious sense of absence; what he lacks is the perfect self, the Ideal-I. The existence of Narcissus as a character is fated with the curse of an elusive Self, the desire for the illusory Ideal-I. His desire is manifested through his Gaze, as indeed D’Alleva suggests about the action: “we reveal what we desire through the Gaze”[17]. Narcissus is doomed to spend his living moments gazing at his own reflection, desiring a theoretically impossible union with the Ideal-I. Thus, in a Lacanian point-of-view, the character of Narcissus is essentially fixated in the Mirror Stage.

Narcissus’ curse and eternal struggle in the Mirror Stage is brought about by an encounter with an Other, a “scorned youth”[18]. Squillace clarifies Narcissus’ situation for us: “The curse of self-love alights on Narcissus, in fact, from the mouth of a rejected male suitor, by the addition of whom to the traditional story Ovid suggests that what the youth spurns is not Echo per se . . .but any contact outside the circle of himself”[19]. In other words, Narcissus’ futile chase for the Ideal-I is brought about by his rejection of the Other. The concept of the Ideal-I is what Žižek calls the “transcendental I”, a “purely formal function which is neither noumenal nor phenomenal – it is empty, no phenomenal intuition corresponds to it”. Indeed, for Narcissus the Ideal-I is a transcendental illusion manifested in his own reflection. Narcissus, it is said in the myth, “could not clasp himself”[20]. He fails to realise the futility of his actions, and the narrator of the myth notes the dramatic irony: “You simple boy, why strive in vain to catch / A fleeting image? What you see is nowhere; / And what you love – but turn away – you lose! / You see a phantom of a mirrored shape; / Nothing itself”[21]. The curse upon Narcissus works psychologically and ontologically; a theoretically unified Self might have been achieved by him through a union with the Other, but in his rejection thereof he is left with a phantom image with whom union is impossible. What Narcissus consequently experiences is the dissolution of his Being. The myth marks that he is “by love wasted”, until eventually there is “but no body anywhere; / And in its stead they found a flower – behold, / White petals clustered round a cup of gold!”[22] As in the case of Echo, we see a dissolution of the body in Narcissus’ story. What remains is a flower, a signifier of Narcissus’ character. It is an ultimate dissolution of Being: the Signified ceases to exist, and even its signifier is transformed into a symbol, a thing so far removed from the Real in the mimetic order of things. The essence of Narcissus has been dissolved, and what remains of him no longer bears any semblance to his essence.

The two intricately related stories of Echo and Narcissus contain tragic accounts of the unbridgeable boundary between inherent absence and unreciprocated desire. Both characters seek a union that would give them a complete sense of Self and Being, but their failure to do so proves devastating. Echo and Narcissus seem at first to be antinomic characters, and such a perspective may justify the reason for their isolated deaths wherein they dissolve ununified with the other. But even in binary oppositions, theses and antitheses, a synthesis may be produced – unfortunately for the two characters no such synthesis is yielded.

[1] p. 96, Anne D’Alleva, Methods & Theories of Art History (Laurence King Publishing, 2012), 96-105.

[2] D’Alleva ,96.

[3] p.1112, Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter (Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007), 1111-1128.

[4] D’Alleva, 97.

[5] The Gaze, capitalised, is “the process of looking” (D’Alleva, 104).

[6] 104.

[7] Lines 425-427, Ovid, Metamorphoses in The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature, eds. Peter E. Knox and J.C. McKeown (Oxford University Press 2013), 274-188.

[8] Ovid, 441-442.

[9] p. 17, Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006).

[10] Richter, 1112.

[11] Žižek, 17.

[12] Ovid, 467-473.

[13] I have capitalised the words Signifier and Signified when they directly refer to the characters in the myth; lower cases implicate everything else.

[14] Lacan, 1126.

[15] Ovid, 416-417.

[16] Ovid, 479.

[17] D’Alleva 104-105.

[18] Ovid, 478.

[19] xxiii in Ovid, The Metamorphoses edited by Robert Squillace (Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005).

[20] Ovid, 505.

[21] Ovid, 508-512.

[22] Ovid, 573, 595-597.

WRITING AND EXISTENCE IN MARTIN AMIS’ MONEY

Martin Amis opens Money with the following inscription: “This is a suicide note. By the time you lay it aside…John Self will no longer exist. Or at any rate that’s the idea. You can never tell, though, with suicide notes, can you?” With such a statement, Amis immediately puts into perspective the idea of death – but it is an idea that is subsequently superimposed with doubt. “Will John Self die?” the reader may ask. Or to be more specific: “Will John Self cease to exist?” In a novel that contains John Self’s past-tense narrative of what to him is his ever-dynamic present, his neverending “now”, these are questions that the readers are supposed to keep in mind upon reading the beginning all the way to the novel’s ending. Indeed, Money, as a suicide note, depicts John Self’s retrospective attempt to establish, through the reader, an existence that will survive his future inexistence. The novel, in this light, captures the totality of John Self’s essence as he writes and narrates events of his life to the readers. Jean-Paul Sartre’s work, Why Write?, and Peter Brooks’ work on Freud’s Masterplot will help us further understand and explain John Self’s search for such an existence.

Brooks states that “ultimately…the passion that animates us as readers of narrative is the passion for (of) meaning”, which passion “appears to be finally a desire for the end” (1162). This end, for Brooks as it was for Freud, is death. It is the final stroke of death that gives completion and meaning to the life that precedes it. “All narration is obituary in that life acquires definable meaning only at, and through, death”, says Brooks, connecting literary narratives with life and death (1163). As such, literary narratives are rendered incomplete, fragmentary, and meaningless without their appointed endings. Brooks points out that beginnings “presuppose the end” (1163),  and readers, upon reading a narrative’s beginning, assume a desire for its end. Amis taps on this expectation of death and endings, and the meaning which these bear with them, when he marks Money as a suicide note and announces, however ambiguously, John Self’s future inexistence.

Money thus becomes what Sartre would call an “appeal” by the writer to his/ her readers. In the preface to Why Write, Richter explains: “We who know that the physical world we animate with our perceptions will go on darkly after we are gone must write to make something that will survive us” (660). According to Sartre, the process of writing stems from a writer’s need to remain essential in a future wherein he no longer exists. In writing, the writer “meets everywhere only his knowledge, his will, his plans, in short, himself” (Sartre 663). The writer leaves an implant of his/her essence in the written word – a legacy that survives the writer even when he/she is gone. Ultimately, Sartre explains: “Since the creation [the written work] can find its fulfillment only in reading, since the artist must entrust to another the job of carrying out what he has begun, since it is only through the consciousness of the reader that he can regard himself as essential to his work, all literary work is an appeal” (665). “To write”, Sartre concludes, “is to have recourse to the consciousness of others in order to make one’s self be recognized as essential to the totality of being; it is to wish to live this essentiality by means of interposed persons” (670). Thus, in writing –a process that appeals to the reader’s sense of freedom to read –  the writer relays his/her being through the reader and the reader’s process of reading, and with this process of reading, the existence of the writer lives on.

 

The writer in the artistic frame of Money is John Self. The novel is an account of John Self’s experiences, conversations, and other such interactions that help readers construct a view of his character. Self’s is the main authoritative voice in the novel, and it is primarily through his own recapitulation of his own actions and conversations where we may form opinions about him. There is very little informative self-reflection and there are only very few instances where Martin Amis breaks the artistic frame to explain the dramatic ironies that concern John Self. What we have, then, is a first- person past-tense narration of Self’s experiences. In this perspective, moreover, John Self may be seen as writing in retrospect, with an end in mind even from the beginning of the novel.

The end of the novel contains the narrative of Self’s near-death experience, and the end of John Self’s narrative expresses the extra-narrative note of Martin Amis whereby “John Self will no longer exist”. Such an ending affects the overall tone of Self’s narrative. His narration thus ceases to be a mere retelling of events in his life, but, with the threat of inexistence and nothingness in the novel’s Beyond looming over his existence as a charcter, becomes an appeal. The narrative becomes Self’s appeal for a connection with the readers through his writing. In fact, Amis notes: “To whom is the note addressed? To Martina, to Fielding, to Vera, to Alec, to Selina, to Barry – to John Self? No. It is meant for you out there, the dear, the gentle”. Self’s writing, in turn, becomes a space wherein he can write out the essence of his character, so that he no longer remains simply as a voice, but becomes a being whose essence and experiences are imprinted in what he writes. The novel itself, the “note”, becomes John Self. Amis states that “usually the note is the thing. You complete it, and then resume your time travel. It is the note and not the life that is cancelled out. Or the other way round. Or death. You never can tell, though, can you, with suicide notes”. In our case for the novel, the note is not canelled out: the note becomes the life.

 

As he comes closer to disappearance in the novel, John Self begins to exist not in the past, but in the present, a time between the past and what Richter calls the “as-yet-nonexistent future” (659), the future that will be John Self’s void of inexistence. Self tells the readers: “You know, during that time of pills and booze, during that time of suicide, my entire future flashed through my head. And guess what. It was all a drag! My past at least was – what? It was…rich. And now my life has lost its form. Now my life is only present, more present, continuous present” (392). Here, Self’s present becomes in tune with that of his readers – supposing that they have read his story thus far –  marking the fulfillment of their unity through reading, an achievement which in turn grants security in Self’s existence. With the survival of his existence secured through the process of writing and reading, John Self accordingly “signs off” (392). He says further, “I’m closer to you, I hope, than he’ll ever be” (392). Though the answer to whom “he” might be remains vague, it may be postulated that he is the Self of the past. The Self of the present indeed is closer to the reader than the Self living in the past.

John Self is a memorable character – though not necessarily the most likeable one. But it is also his unique character that draws the reader along through the novel. In this way, his carnivalesque character helps him in his case to find essentiality in his future inexistence by making the readers at least interested enough to see him through the narrative’s end, and, having such an end, give meaning and completion to the life retold in the novel. The novel is John Self’s life, and in the act of opening the book and reading its contents, the readers in their freedom breathe life into its words and pages, giving John Self a voice, a character, and ,ultimately, an existence.

 

 

 

WORKS CITED:

 

Amis, Martin. Money. Vintage, 2005

 

Brooks, Peters. Freud’s Masterplot. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary                   Trends, ed. David H. Richter, 1161-1171. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Why Write? The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends,               ed. David H. Richter, 659-672. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DUSK AND THE UNCANNY IN CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS

The dichotomy of Light and Darkness is noticeably prevalent and all-encompassing in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so much so that the symbolisms and meanings of this antithetical pair may seem at times to fall into ambiguity or to get muddled into complicated significations. Yet the novel remains comfortable with such a situation. Its themes thrive on ambivalence and a tone of seeming uncertainty. What at first glance appears to be a scene of incertitude for characters can turn out to be, after an uncovering of many complex layers, a moment of revelation, self-awareness, or existential understanding. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the gulf between Light and Darkness – the gulf that harbours the uncanny, the gulf that represents Dusk – is depicted as a zone wherein Marlow experiences self-realisation and enlightenment.

There is in Heart of Darkness a gap in the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This gap is magnified and made observable by the distinct contrast in the representative figures of Light and Darkness, and indeed they are portrayed to be almost archetypal. Kurtz is said to be “claimed” by “powers of darkness” (1989). The darkness embodied in Kurtz is universalised as Marlow describes the last moments of his life: “The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea…and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time” (2003). The juxtaposition of these sentences parallels Kurtz’s heart with the “heart of darkness” that is found everywhere from the centre of the wilderness to which the phrase alludes, to the River Thames which it threatens to encompass. Kurtz’s position as a figure that embodies darkness is further solidified when he is described in his deathbed as not being able to see the “light…within a foot of his eyes” (2004). Indeed, his stare “could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness” (2005). The irony of this description is in Kurtz’s inability to see light no matter how wide or universal his stare is. All he is able to see is darkness, and that darkness resides within him.

Inasmuch as Kurtz is unable to see the light, the Intended is ignorant of – if not unable to comprehend – the darkness in Kurtz. She is portrayed as an archetype of light and of what is beautiful, pure, and innocent. Marlow describes her thus: “She struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features” (2007). She has “a pale head”, “fair hair”, a “pale visage”, and a “pure brow” (2007). All these fair and beautiful external features set her up in contrast with the darkness within Kurtz. However, her innocence, her “unextinguishable light of belief and love” (2008), is thought by Marlow to be incapable of understanding or bearing the reality of Kurtz’s darkness. He says that, for her, it would be “too dark altogether” (2010). He thus implies that there is a necessary separation between the dealings of Light and Darkness.

Following Marlow’s logic for separation, it would seem that the Darkness and Light that Kurtz and his Intended signify respectively have between them an unbridgeable gulf. And yet the novel complicates this distinction. Dusk, a time that rests between the bright and dark hours of the day, is depicted in the beginning of the novel with poignancy: “And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men” (1955). It is in the light of this setting sun where the Nellie’s crew go through a contemplative and aesthetic experience: “We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories” (1955). It is also in the climate of this setting wherein Marlow’s narrative is unfolded: not in the brilliance of midday nor in the darkness of midnight, but in the dying light of dusk.

Dusk is the gulf between Light and Darkness, and this gulf may be equated to the realm of the uncanny, the realm of Freud’s Unheimlich. Indeed, insofar as Freud’s concept of the Unheimlich breaks down the binary boundaries between its own essence and that of the Heimlich, so does the concept and imagery of dusk break down the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This area of the uncanny in the novel breaks down oppositions in such a way that there is certainty to be found in uncertainty and realisation in ambiguity. The gulf of the uncanny, the gap symbolised by dusk, is a dialectical realm wherein the ethos of Marlow’s character attains an understanding of its existence and that of the world and people around him. The culmination of Marlow’s experience, being a character situated symbolically in such a realm, is described by himself as such: “It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light” (1958). In his experiences are fragments of self-realisation, revelations, and understandings, not least of which is his understanding of Kurtz’s darkness and his Intended’s sparkle of sublimity. Marlow also explains to his fellow seamen that “it seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence” (1973). His contemplations and philosophies, unclear to himself at first, are constantly deconstructed and reconstructed in the course of his journey and his narrative.

Marlow is subsequently elevated into a state of enlightenment. He becomes representative of the individual who beholds the Truth and escapes the Platonic Cave, but who also consequently becomes alienated from his company. By the end of the novel he is said to have “ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha” (2010). And indeed he has already recognised his isolation in the artistic frame when he states, “We live, as we dream—alone” (1973). Yet this alienation, this dream-like uncanny state of retrospection, allows Marlow to observe and understand the universal darkness while remaining apart from it. He thereby becomes the didactic Individual, a signifier of the Particular marked especially by his contrast with the nameless Others, his fellow seafarers, to whom he shares his profound reflections on Truth and the human soul. In this perspective he is not alone. His life, as in his dream-like narration, is recounted with company. Together, they journey through the river of experience and past memories, with the threat of the looming darkness making their quiet solidarity all the more poignant.

 

Bibliography:

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, ed.by K. J.H. Dettmar, Pearson Education, 2010. pp.1949-2010.

DUALITY AS A TRAGIC MOTIF IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH

Russ McDonald’s statement that “Shakespearean tragedy depends on a paradox” could not be better suited to any other play than in Macbeth[1]. The actions and the structure of the play hinge on the paradoxes found in accepted truths, language, and signifiers. The theme of duality, in particular, comes into special significance in Macbeth. Shakespeare utilizes duality as a tragic motif in Macbeth; that is, it is used to contextualize and procure Macbeth’s hamartia, and also to lead the hero eventually to his downfall and death. Theories from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” and Sigmund Freud’s “The ‘Uncanny’” would help us further understand the significance of duality in Shakespeare’s play.

The theme of duality is uncannily pervasive in Macbeth,[2] as is depicted in the diction of the characters. The witches “speak in paradoxes: ‘When the battle’s lost and won,’ ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (1.1.4,11),”[3] “Double, double, toil and trouble” (4.1.10). The human characters themselves speak at times through duality if not in paradoxes: “All our service / In every point twice done, and then done double” (1.6.15), “Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell” (2.1.64-65). Macduff, moreover, makes note of “such welcome and unwelcome things at once / ‘Tis hard to reconcile” (4.3.139-140). This extensive use of duality and paradox serves to reflect the play’s consciousness of and emphasis on the arbitrariness of language and words as signifiers.

Indeed, Nietzsche describes words as having “arbitrary assignments…beyond the canon of uncertainty” and “arbitrary differentiations”, explaining that “we believe we know something of the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors of things, which do not at all agree with the original entities.”[4] The human being’s “arrogance associated with knowing and feeling,”[5] as Nietzsche terms it, is tested in Macbeth, where Hecate remarks that “security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy” (3.5.32). To be secure in the stability of language in Macbeth is to forget that “truths are illusions that have become worn out and sensuously powerless.”[6] Macbeth, who, in the beginning of the play, is “sensitive and aware”[7] of the arbitrariness of language—for in fact he notes that “two truths are told (1.3.128) which “cannot be ill, cannot be good” (1.3.132)—in the end forgets the instability of words and signifiers, that they “speak metaphorically or metonymically to a single aspect of the signified; they cannot convey its essence.”[8] Macbeth perceives the admonitions of the apparitions only in their literal sense, and confidently declares that they “will never be” (4.1.94). He forgets Banquo’s warning that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence” (1.3.123-126). This situation William Scott explains thus: “In becoming a part of the self-deluding show and undoing some literalisms to confirm another, he [Macbeth] skews the boundaries of literal and figurative and of perceiver and perceived, with paradoxical results.”[9] As much as Macbeth, in self-delusion, “skews the boundaries of literal and figurative”, the witches do so as well, if not better, using Macbeth’s ambition-driven over-assurance in language to deceive him who so readily would be deceived. Accordingly, the witches’ use of seemingly impossible predictions and “hopeful messages”[10] effects the dissolution of Macbeth’s awareness of the arbitrariness of language: he who, being unprepared, thus becomes a servant to defect[11]. Hence Macbeth declares ironically that “damned [be] all those that trust them” (4.1.139), not realizing that he himself belongs with the damned.

Macbeth’s defective action, then—his hamartia,[12]—is precisely that he blindly disregards the existence of dualities in the realm of the play. This gives him a false and unhealthy sense of security as, after saying, “I cannot taint with fear…. / The mind I sway by and the heart I bear / Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear” (5.3.3,9-10), Macbeth, in response to the servant’s entry, and in what is consequently an expression of his paranoia, says “The devil damn thee black, though cream-faced loon! / Where got’st thou that goose look?” (5.3.11-12). This sense of security is, in turn, haunted by the duality that Macbeth overlooks, and such effects Macbeth’s tragic recognition and reversal.

Informing and qualifying the notion of this haunting duality in Macbeth is Freud’s concept of the “double”[13]. In Macbeth there can be found characters whom Freud would identify as the “doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self.”[14] In fact, two stages of Freud’s “double” are represented in the play: that which “was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death,’”[15] and that which, “from having been an assurance of immortality…becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.”[16] The titular character of the play possesses three of these “doubles” in the figures of Lady Macbeth, the witches, and Macduff—and these figures offer Macbeth unique stages of his own recognition and reversal..

Lady Macbeth, as one of Macbeth’s “doubles,” figuratively completes him, exhibiting characteristics and performing actions that are either opposite or almost like his. In Act 1 Scene 5, she calls on the spirits (l. 40) to “take [her] milk for gall” (l. 48), since her husband is “too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” (l. 17). Her apostrophe to night beginning in line 50 of the same scene, resembling that of Juliet’s in Romeo and Juliet[17], is echoed by Macbeth in Act 3 Scene 2 when he calls on, “Come, seeling night” (l. 49). They both find themselves reluctant before the execution of their murderous actions, yet Lady Macbeth’s power over Macbeth’s identity earlier on in the play is such that he attempts to affirm his masculinity through Lady Macbeth so much so that “he sins to win her approbation.”[18] She inevitably corrupts his masculine identity by using it against him during his times of hesitation. Eventually Macbeth becomes “in blood / Stepped in so far that, should [he] wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3.4.137-139). Lady Macbeth realises only too late that “What’s done cannot be undone” (5.1.68). When it becomes her turn to regret the actions of herself and her husband, telling him “You must leave this” (3.2.39), Macbeth only informs her of a forthcoming plan for her to “applaud the deed” (3.2.49). Such has become of the situation of Macbeth’s identity as it relates to Lady Macbeth, that his actions have become mere performances, “deeds”, that need the applause of his one audience, his wife. Her death consequently triggers his speech in Act 5 Scene 5 wherein life is but “a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more” (ll. 24-26) –  a description of life that is very much pertinent to his own.

Realising such a fact, Macbeth “turns unsuccessfully to the witches for the power he needs to make him author of himself.”[19] The witches, who are characteristically duplicitous, symbolise Macbeth’s “double” that is supposed to assure him of immortality. They are beings who may be figuratively associated with Macbeth. Macbeth’s first words “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38) echo the witches’ last ones in Act 1 Scene 1 where they say “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.11) Cheung observes this of the witches’ interaction with Macbeth:

Significantly, it is not a surprise encounter but a meeting that is to take place. Already there is a hint of intercourse between the witches and Macbeth, so what seems to be an external temptation also can be interpreted, as many critics have done, as a psychological projection.[20]

The witches not only embody the external “multiplying villainies of nature / [that] Do swarm upon him” (1.2.11), but also they symbolize the internal, “black and deep desires” (1.4.51) already present in Macbeth’s character. Viewing their relationship thus makes it easier to relate such a relationship with Freud’s idea of the double where “the one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other.”[21] Indeed, the witches prove to be effective because, according to Scott, “they seemed to have access to the frightening secrets of his heart.”[22] The power in the duality of their nature, being representative of both the external and internal forces of evil that besiege Macbeth, makes it highly difficult for Macbeth to resist the temptation of accessing and utilizing the murderous ambition that their prophecies leave as a readily-available option for him. However, it is exactly this duality in nature that opens up and leads Macbeth to his downfall. He recognises that he has fallen into this pitfall, but only too late: “And be these juggling fiends no more believed / That palter with us in a double sense, / That keep the word of promise to our ear / And break it to our hope” (5.8.19-22).

In the face of this realisation, Macbeth finds himself pitted against Macduff, the “double” who is the “uncanny harbinger of death” for Macbeth. For, being what Campbell terms as a “figure of the tyrant-monster”[23], Macbeth’s presence inevitably calls for “the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence will liberate the land.”[24] And Scotland must needs be liberated from Macbeth, as it is described by Lennox as a “suffering country / Under a hand accursed” (3.6.49-50). Indeed, Macduff becomes for Macbeth “a thing of terror,”[25] who tells him: “Despair thy charm, / And let the angel whom thou still hast served / Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (5.8.13-16)[26]. Hence is Macduff qualified to be the nemesis of Macbeth, whereby he is also portrayed as a figure that is the direct opposite of Macbeth, a figure of “the self-creating and invulnerable masculinity that Macbeth cannot fashion for himself.”[27] Macduff’s character moreover serves to haunt Macbeth with the duality that the tragic character forgets persists in the play’s dramatic universe. The very fact of Macduff’s birth and existence, the circumstances of which Macbeth deems impossible, shakes Macbeth out of his self-inflicted tragic delusion and reverses his expectation of the witches’ equivocal prophecy. His death in the hands of Macduff symbolises the taking-over of the “double”: the former, suffering self, represented in Macbeth, is replaced by the projected and more perfect – though not entirely unscathed[28] –  self in the person of Macduff[29].

This ending for Macbeth is not to be restricted with a tragic affect. “Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms,”[30] writes Joseph Campbell. Macbeth, in this light, is at once tragic and liberating. The titular character is tragic because he, blinded by ambition, undermines if not forgets about the existence of duplicity and the prevalence thereof in the world he lives – but on the same note, this selfsame duplicity allows for the liberation of the imprisoned and corrupted self in Macbeth and transfigures it into the more complete, more heroically-realised self in Macduff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] R. McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2001), 86.

[2] All quotations from Macbeth are taken from D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare (The University of Chicago: 2013), 710-747.

[3] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare, 712.

[4] F. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 454.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 455.

[7] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakepeare,711.

[8] D. H. Richter, The Critical Tradition, 438.

[9] W. Scott, “Macbeth’s—And Our—Self-Equivocations” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1986), 160-174.

[10] Ibid, 171.

[11] I am referring here to 2.1.17-18: “Being unprepared, / Our will became the servant to defect”.

[12] Russ McDonald reminds us that hamartia would be “a term more properly understood as an error in action rather than as fatal weakness of character”. The Bedford Companion, 88.

[13] Quotes from Freud are collectively taken from “The ‘Uncanny’” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 514-532.

[14]Ibid, 522.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 523

[17] See Juliet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in The Necessary Shakespeare ed. D. Bevington (The University of Chicago: 2013), 3.2.5

[18] D. Bevington, 712.

[19] Ibid, 713.

[20] K.K. Cheung, “’Dread’ in Macbeth” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1984), 431.

[21] S. Freud, 522.

[22] W. Scott, 170.

[23] The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell Foundation: 2008), 11

[24] Ibid.

[25] S. Freud, 523.

[26] Macbeth is certainly made terrified by this statement, saying “it hath cowed my better part of man” (5.8.18).

[27] D. Bevington, 713

[28] For Macduff has also suffered loss: the death of his wife and children.

[29] Not coincidentally, Macbeth uncannily tries to refuse killing Macduff: “Of all men else I have avoided thee” (5.8.5). He sees a vision of a more perfect and unsullied self in Macduff – to him, there is something of the uncanny in Macduff, something, according to Freud in p. 526, “familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” This more perfect and now-alienated self that Macbeth finds in Macduff he has repressed in his murderous drive towards kingship.

[30] The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 21.

OLD ENGLISH ELEGIAC LOSS AND SELF-IDENTITY IN “THE WANDERER” AND “THE SEAFARER”

In this essay I argue that the Old English elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” demonstrate the instability and fragility of Anglo-Saxon society. The reason for such instability is that the members of the un-Christian Anglo-Saxon society have no knowledge of God nor subsequently could they have any relationship with him. My analogies are based primarily on Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” from Book 7 of The Republic, and shall be furthermore expounded upon with Plotinus’ writing “On the Intellectual Beauty”. After discussing the essential content of Plato’s myth and the relationship thereof with Plotinus’ work, I shall apply them both as filters for my interpretation first to “The Wanderer”, and then to “The Seafarer”.

Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” demonstrates an individual’s release from ignorance into a profound experience upon seeing the very image of  God, whom he calls the True, Good, and Beautiful, and whom Plotinus, in his work, calls the “One”. This encounter with God allows the individual to receive enlightenment, where, being thus released from ignorance, he is given the opportunity to contemplate God as he is (Plato 280). And being enlightened by such an experience, he can no longer see the “shadows which he formerly saw”, but rather only the realities of the world outside the cave (Plato 280). It also gives the individual a “perfect self-identity”, as he “forms a multiple unity with the God silently present” (117). This enlightenment causes an individual’s separation[1] from society, as it “upholds some beings, and they see; the lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun” (Plotinus 117). Moreover, it causes the individual to reflect upon his alienation and the state of his fellow-prisoners who are left in the cave, pitying therefore their condition as members of an unenlightened society (Plato 281). Plato explains as well that “those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell” (282). It is this beatific vision that is the profound experience – the conversion point – of the individuals exemplified in Plato’s and Plotinus’ works.

The individual’s conversion point prompts the individual to a journey to reach what Plotinus terms as “the Beauty There” (117), the place of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in Plato’s universe, the residence of God, which is heaven. The journey is, however, not only a spiritual undertaking towards the ideal paradise, but it is, more importantly for the individual, a quest for ultimate self-identity. Plotinus implies that nearness to God allows an individual to see an image of himself in the light of a “better beauty” (Plotinus 117). The individual then would exhibit a desire to set upon a journey to reconcile his image of a better beauty with the reality upon which it is based, a reality which is in the same realm as God, which is the Beauty There. This reconciliation allows the “two [to] become one”, a unity which, in Christian terms, brings together the individual’s soul and God’s own being (Plotinus 117). This, following Plato’s and Plotinus’ works, is thus the objective of the Christian journey, a journey which, upon completion, gives the individual a perfect form of self-identity to be found only in his union with God.

The foundation built upon an individual’s union with God and the journey for such a unity are precisely what concern(s) the author(s) of both “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”. According to Crossley-Holland, both poems are chiefly concerned with the topic of loss (46). It is through the loss of the essential elements of their Anglo-Saxon societies that the speakers in the poems mark their alienation from their comitatus. This loss and alienation of the speakers evolves in the poems into a loss of their identity. Sharma suggests that “identity is always correlative to a cultural world” (611). Removing the individual from his society would thus be taking away his identity. The poems present this problem of identity and attempt to show the solution by having the speakers base the foundation of their identities not on their society but entirely on God.

In “The Wanderer” there is a longing to find a “ground for a self threatened by fragmentation and an abject loss of coherence on account of cultural upheaval” (Sharma 612). The cultural upheaval is experienced by the speaker of the poem through the “death of kinsmen” (line 7), his removal from his homeland (20), and his deprivation of the essential elements that make up his Anglo-Saxon heroic society, elements such as a hall and “a lord of rings” (25). All of these aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture that are specified in the poem point out to the speaker’s identity as an archetypal warrior of his society. And so his “loss of heroic culture”, as Sharma puts it, results in a loss of heroic identity (612). Indeed, the speaker laments over the complete ruin of his heroic society. He contemplates on “how the time has passed / …as if it never was” (95-96), how “that happy time is no more” (36), and, in lines 92-95, voices out his nostalgia for an atmosphere reflective of his heroic society; for ultimately the speaker stands as the last man of the Heroic Age, being placed in the poem in a “‘fiction’ of the apocalypse” (Green 502) as the Anglo-Saxons would have imagined it. Therefore such is the threat to the speaker’s self-identity that, due to the decline of the Anglo-Saxon heroic world, he experiences an “anxiety of meaninglessness”[2], an anxiety that makes him yearn for a sense stability for his identity.

This sense of stability he cannot find in his society but in God. In a world where kinsmen “fade on their way” (54), where the “middle-earth / from day to day dwindles and fails” (62-63), a world where “all is wretchedness in the realm of earth” (104), and almost everything is fleeting (108-109), the speaker turns to God for relief (1-2). It is in Him where “eal seo fæstnung stondeð” (115). In finding God, the speaker, as Plotinus explains it, “sinks into a perfect self-identity” (117). Through such a kind of self-awareness, the speaker “will learn how to achieve disillusionment, to move from destructive grief to healthy negativity” which is a kind of “melancholy logic” (Champion 195). This healthy negativity manifests itself in the form of the poem, the elegy recited by the speaker, which becomes the remedy, the bote (line 113) of the “good man” (112) for his grief. Where the “memories of kinsmen” (51) fail to bring him consolation, God offers the speaker the experience he needs to attain wisdom, for “no one is wise without his share of winters” (64). It is wisdom that allows the speaker in “The Wanderer”, being a figure representative of the released prisoners in Plato’s Cave, to reflect on his enlightened state and compare it to the state of those still left to “observe the passing shadows” (Plato 281).  Thus, being identified in the last segment of the poem as “snottor on mode”, he is consequently described as one who is “sundor æt rune” (111). The speaker, sundered in his stage of wisdom, and given a perspective through which he can contrast his condition with that of his foregone heroic comitatus, mourns the fleetingness and passing-away of their heroic society through a series of repetitions of “hwær” (92-93), “eala” (94-95), and “læne” (108-109). His final remark in the poem serves to emphasise his “frofre” (115) in the steadfastness of God that is in stark contrast with the venerating lamentation that makes up most of his speech.

In “The Seafarer” there is a more apparent sense of immediacy expressed by the speaker to undertake a journey towards the “Beauty There”. He states his dissatisfaction with earthly life, saying, “Forþon me hatran sind / dryhtnes dreamas þonne þis deade lif, / læne on londe” (64-66). He is described by Greenfield as “an aspiring peregrinus, a voluntary exile who will relinquish earthly pleasures for the greater joys of Heaven” (15). At first, the speaker perceives his journey in the sea to be “a time of hardship” (3), a “wræccan lastum” (15), and furthermore describes himself to have “harboured bitter sorrow” (4), being a “sea-weary man” (12) who is “careworn and cut off from [his] kinsmen” (14). But his perspective on his sea-voyages changes beginning on line 33, marked by the word “nu” and a subsequent change of tense from the past to the present, where he is forthwith “stirred” (34) by his “heart’s longings / …to undertake a journey” (36-37). It is a “journey”, Calder explains, “to find the heavenly land” (272). Which journey is prompted by the speaker’s attempt to “locate [his life] in a meaningless present” (Green 506).

Indeed, the speaker is attempting to find a sense of belonging in a world where the “days of great glory / …are gone forever” (81-82) and “his former friends, / the sons of princes, have been placed in the earth” (93-94). And, as the speaker in “The Wanderer”, the speaker in “The Seafarer” endeavors to find his “perfect self-identity” in God. The chief catalyst that threatens to trap permanently the speaker in a meaningless present is the loss of his lord, whereupon there will no longer be a “protector-kinsman for his wretched spirit to travel toward” (Empric 25). His reaction to the threat, as exhibited in the word-play on the word “dryhten” in lines 41 and 43, is to shift his focus from earthly to spiritual pursuits (Greenfield 19-20). No longer does he need to rely on an earthly dryhten to give him a sense of self-identity; he realizes that “the splendours of this earth will [not] survive for ever” (66-67). Instead he looks to God and His “ecan eadignesse” (120) for permanent stability.

Upon thus being able to contemplate and unify their identity with God – the Sun in Plato’s myth – the speakers of both poems shift their speech from something that reflects the personal to something that ponders on the universal[3]. Their unification with God elevates the speakers to a place of greater vision and enlightenment, the place outside Plato’s Cave, whereupon they may contemplate not only their own condition, but also, in a new light, that of their un-Christianised comitatus. It is with this transcendent understanding that they gain the wisdom to talk about the instability of their society that is deprived of the knowledge of God. And it is also with such an understanding that they share in the poems the final mutual advice that invites their audience to find their perfect self-identification in God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Primary sources:

 

Plato. Book VII, The Republic. Plato: Selected Dialogues. Trans. Benjamin Jowett.           Pennsylvania: The Franklin Centre, 1983. 279-282. Print.

 

Plotinus. “On the Intellectual Beauty”. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and                Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007. 111      -119. Print.

 

“The Wanderer”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt.      W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 107-110. Print.

 

“The Wanderer”. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Ed.            Anne L. Klinck. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992.       75-78. Print.

 

“The Seafarer”. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Ed. Anne    L. Klinck. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. 79   -83. Print.

 

 

 

 

Secondary sources:

 

Beaston, Lawrence. “The Wanderer’s Courage”. Neophilologus, 2005. Vol. 89: 119-          137. Online.

 

Calder, Daniel G. “Setting and Mode in ‘The Seafarer’ and ‘The Wanderer’.                      Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 1971. Vol. 72 No. 2: 264-275. Online.

 

Champion, Margaret Gunnarsdóttir. “From Plaint to Praise: Language as Cure in ‘The       Wanderer’”. Studia Neophilologica, 2008. Vol. 69 No. 2: 187-202. Online.

 

Empric, Julienne H. “’The Seafarer’: An Experience in Displacement”. Notre Dame           English Journal. University of Notre Dame, 1972. Vol. 7 No. 2: 23-33. Online.

 

Green, Martin. “Man, Time, and Apocalypse in ‘The Wanderer’, ‘The Seafarer’, and          ‘Beowulf’”. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. University of        Illinois Press, 1975. Vol. 74 No. 4: 502-518. Online.

 

Greenfield, Stanley B. “Attitudes and Values in ‘The Seafarer’. Studies in Philology.         University of North Carolina Press, 1954. Vol. 51 No. 1: 15-20. Online.

 

“The Seafarer”. The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Ed. Kevin Crossley-Holland.        Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2009. 53-56. Print.

Sharma, Manish. “Heroic Subject and Cultural Substance in The Wanderer”.                      Neophilologus, 2012. Vol 96: 611-629. Online.

[1] Perhaps elevation would be a better term. An individual’s enlightenment causes him to see himself in a better state than that of the prisoners in the cave (Plato 281).

[2] ‘The anxiety of meaninglessness…is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings’ (Beaston 126)

[3] See Sharma 621, Champion 197, and Empric 23.

Night Gale

Dark is the night sky, a canvas

written upon with graceful strokes by poetic eve:

The stars, the glittering tears of its observing author,

thereat fashioned wanderers of never-ending space,

shed light upon us in our distant present,

Present unattainable with their ancient souls that

look and watch

from far upon their extant, undying

Past.

Ever do their spirits watch,

themselves long passed

away into the fading memory of old Universe. And yet.

Fixed into the tenderly woven sheet of  night,

gingerly they sparkle,

careful to keep peace

and leave us in wonder

to stand in awe.

We watch them, and they, us.

Deeds and lives echoed into their mysterious place,

beyond all knowledge.

And, when our lives be long passed,

there live on ourselves, in time, again —

all of earth, in the realm of stars,

all but memories that light the celestial way.

Mundane deeds, written upon the stellar nothingness,

lost perhaps to the present, but never forgotten

by the old souls that bear tales in starlight.