Lecture 34- The Modern Novel IV

Good morning and welcome back to the lecture series. We are discussing the modern novel. The modern novel encounters reality with novelistic counterpoint. So, we have to understand what novelistic counterpoint is. Novelistic counterpoint is, it involves philosophy and dream as a move away from the reality. The narrative counterpoint happens through freeing the narrative from the grips of too much of reason and the rational. It can happen through an ornery description that gives free reign to both the novelist and the reader's imagination and recourses to dream. I was talking about the modern society up to a point, after a point becoming impossible, becoming intolerable. So, the human is diminished, the agency is nowhere. One has to recourse to dreams, one has to recourse to fantasy. Unless, as in the Kafkaesque situation, one finds that the dream, the private spaces are also being policed, they are also being thwarted. So, human freedom, human will is under threat from different external determinants, but it still tries to break the reign, it still tries to unleash itself. Dream is a great way of taking on the modern way of existence and the modern art through appealing to the unconscious. So, dream is a great way of taking on the modern way of existence and expressing the modern art through appealing to the unconscious. However, Milan Kundera also insists that dreams should not float around the narrative like islands, like isolated entities. They should be interspersed with the core function of the novel, which is chasing the question of existence, chasing the question of the fleeting, ever fleeting question of the human self. So, and this self, this understanding of self, examination of self cannot be adequately done unless we route ourselves also to the reality. It cannot happen decoupled from reality. So, we recourse to dreams only to intersperse these dreams with the core function of the novel, which is discovery, understanding, unravelling of the question of existence and self, and the self also has its roots in the reality. So, dreams coupled with reality enable us to understand the self. We can, the dream and the reality can be juxtaposed and confronted with one another, and that is where we have the, you know, the modernist novels effect of a staccato, a kind of very untraditional, unconventional juxtaposition, where at one moment we are here, and at the next moment we are there. This also speaks to our earlier discussion on stream of consciousness, how we, an individual psyche, an individual psyche can inhabit, you know, two worlds simultaneously. So, novel's agency lies in imagination. Every novel seeks to grasp the meaning of the self. It emphasises individual action, which brings to the fore one's intention. What is the intention of the characters, and thereby what is the intention of the novelist who is creating these characters, who is chasing these characters to their destiny, to their future? So, action can be treated as a mirror or a portrait of oneself. That is the psychological realist novel. Now, the modern novel, which is a step ahead, which revisits this assumption that action can always be the mirror of, or a portrait of the self, goes on to say that self can also become evasive in action. Action is not always, and in fact, it could reveal the self less and less. In action, self can even become evasive, where a certain act opens up, for example, an aspect of one's persona that was previously not known to one's own self, that I am capable of that, a shy person that acts very boldly, for example, in a given situation, that is the kind of, so the self is not a frozen category, it is in a state of flux. According to Milind Kundera, unlike the more old novelists, now rationally accessible motives that give birth to an act always do not organically hold. So, the traditional style of writing novel was greatly driven by and had its onus on reason and rationality. What made the character commit such an act? There has to be a clear cut reason like a mathematical equation. A clear cut causal chain of acts cannot, for example, sufficiently justify an odd act or a misadventure. It could be seen as an adventure or a misadventure, such as suicide. How do we understand suicide or any other adventure or misadventure? Only through a clear cut causal chain of acts. Not all acts are results of mathematical equations and therefore, they do not give in to predictability. Can we give ourselves or others the right reason for our own or others acts always? Milind Kundera explains acting on impulse. As an example, he brings in Anna Karenina's suicide, where how she comes to meet her lover Vronsky, the last woman, but throws herself under the train and she is acting on a sudden impulse here. So, a part of her unconscious is suddenly revealed to the reader, her possibility, what she is capable of is suddenly revealed to the reader, something that the reader was not prepared for. This is also how characters act. This is also how humans act. So, rather than a senseless act, the suicide can be seen as an act that cannot be really comprehended, which does not give in to comprehension through rationally apprehensible causality. So, this comes after this. How do we say what precedes suicide? What does a suicidal person do just before committing the act? There is no clear cut answer. There is always a hidden subterranean order functioning beneath our logical self, which influences our decisions. In fact, Milind Kundera would go on to claim that the irrational drives our acts much more than the structured rational thoughts. So, novel's journey comprises acquiring a greater sophistication in its quest for an understanding of this layered human self. So, going back to the 18th century epistolary novels, where confessions are happening through letters, we are confessing, we are thinking aloud through our confessions in an epistolary form, in the form of writing a letter. They are most certainly very, very simple. They primarily emphasize confession of thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings that are very premeditated, very structured and that are very conscious of the reader's gaze, how they present themselves, how the confession presents itself to the reader. This entire writing is very conscious of the reader's gaze. It is very conscious of how it wants the reader to think. It is very obsessed with controlling the reader's thought process. So, these confessions, thoughts and feelings that we find in 18th century novels, you know, are facets of self that are reflected in letter writing, which can be very, very, you know, predetermined, very, very pre-given. So, the character's confession, the aspect of oneself that emerges through this confession is already frozen, it is ossified, it is decided from beforehand. There is no discovery as such. Balzac models his works, memoirs of the two young wives on this epistolary form, the epistolary novels, such as Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which is the longest English novel and perhaps the first psychological novel, and its French offshoot, Jacques-Jacques Rousseau's Julie or the New Helloers. So, these are all happening in mid-18th century. Little works probe facets of the inner life that do not immediately give way to confessions. Human beings are more difficult than that. The novel becomes aware of its own several inadequacies, limitations. So, it knows that the quest, this quest of self will perpetually end in some way or the other, lead to some sort of dissatisfaction, frustration, if not outright defeat. So, Jim Joyce's microscopic readings of human characters break the inner lives down to an atomic commonality, where all the souls are alive. This once again takes us back to the greatest archetype, when we talk of the archetypal reading of any artwork, the greatest archetype we know is the transcendental self. We are reminded of this transcendental self when Joyce talks of this atomic commonality to which all human self can be broken down, where all souls in the end, deep down are alike. And to just extend this further, all the souls are image of the God. Not all react in the same way to give to us, though all not react to the same way to a given situation, one can still identify with the other's action, one's actions are identifiable to the other. So, one sees that in this situation, I would have reacted in the same way or in a similar fashion. It is one of the possibilities of existence for the reader too. Maybe we have not been subjected to a similar situation or we would have reacted like this character. It keeps happening to the readers. It is very common, you know, thinking when we are reading a novel. So, deep down we are quite the same. When, you know, when further unfurled and further unraveled the human self at the root is quite the same. So, Kundera says that post World War I, we do not live in a localized world. Life is dictated by inescapable external conditions that are all pervasive and universal. As one's individuality is threatened, existential questions are raised. Questions such as who is me? What part of myself is me? Is my appearance me? Is my thinking capacity me? And so forth. So, the self in a post World War I world is in an existential problem. There is a constant existential crisis because it is no longer a congruous and an organic whole. A human character, a human character could have so many internal contradictions that do not get resolved. A human character could be made up of traits that are arbitrary. So, they sit side by side within the same human being. However, they do not gel very well. They do not traditionally go together in a contiguous fashion. And hence, these different aspects within the same human are unstable and they do not complete the human. They do not supplement one another and they do not complete the human. The fragmentation remains, the fragmented identity defines the modern self. The roles of the novel and the novel's author is in trying to understand this fragmented broken condition of being. The novelist is trying to fathom what is going on inside the character's head rather than creating the character a priori. The progression of the plot unfolds the characters and events in such a as cannot be foretold even by their creator, the novelist who is moving along the plot too. So, agency to the reader, we see regarding the agency to the reader, Kundera says that the convention of the psychological novel has been to give away every details about all the events and characters. And this style, this tendency on the part of the novelist is however not indispensable. We can dispense off, we can do away with this style without furnishing too many details. A substantial part of the reading can be completed through the reader's imagination, where significations are not final, but they are left open to the interpretation and they are constantly deferred, meaning is constantly deferred. Kafka's Joseph K does not even have a complete name, the readers could complete the name the way they want. Many names start with K, it could be one of the characters from one of the earlier novels, it could be Kafka, it could be Carolyn. So, it is up to the reader to complete this incomplete information. Now, looking at the question of irrationality, Milan Kundera notes that the priest's robe or this fervour for religiosity, in other words, is replaced in the modern society with the fading influence of church is replaced by the military officers uniform. So, addressing the question of irrationality, Kundera notes that the priest's robe and the fading influence of church is replaced in the modern society by the magistrate or the military officers uniform. And they suggest absolute power, just like the Pope or the priest in the yesterdecade, the military power, the magistrate, the political power suggest absolute control in the modern times. Absolute power and unquestionable vice grip has a stupidity about it. According to Kundera, there is an inanity and a hollowness about it. And this hollowness, this inanity is covered up by a garb of mystery to make it look all the more intimidating, because there is not much at the heart of the culture of papacy, the culture of military rule, it is given that intimidating appearance. So, the commoners, the people, ordinary people cannot question it. They do not question it. And thereby, they do not question why they believe in it. The world has therefore, in the modern times, two ways of acting on the face of such coercion from without social coercion from without, be it in the form of religion, be it in the form of the state. One possibility emerges as Kafka's Joseph K in the trial, where Joseph K is condemned by the court to death for doing nothing. He does not know what he has done, what fault he has committed, and he is too helpless. He is too divested of human agency to even plunge a dagger to his own chest. So, he becomes a victim of the system's joke made of him. He is completely stripped of any form of human agency. The other possibility is Schweik's character in Jaroslav Hasek's satirical dark comedy novel titled The Good Soldier Schweik. So, Schweik has this extravagant sense of conformity, which turns the world into a joke. He perfectly adopts into the reigning world and all its dominant forces, precisely because he sees no reason, no sense in them. So, these are the two ways how this emptiness, this hollowness of overbearing powers make individuals react. Either you are crushed under its force, or you conform to it and make a joke out of it. So, without a satisfaction or content in personal life, a sense of inadequacy and incongruity, a sense of vacuum, where there is no idea of God or country pervades. What one is sacrificing oneself for, why one is attached to a certain loyalty without knowing in details about the ruling force defines the modern condition. Why to be faithful? Who to be faithful to? What one expects of the world? What is expected of oneself by the world? These are some of the questions that lead us to the realm of irrationality in the modern times. When the values, the values that we cherish, we are not sure of these values, when the values contents are lost or confused, one does not know the causality of their own behaviour. And convictions, it could be convictions, could be religious convictions, they could be hyper-nationalistic, you know, hyper-nationalist convictions. They can be very, very empty and vacuous, and thereby all the more furious, they are louder because they are empty within. So, novel is an understanding of this helplessness, this fragmented disjunctured world, where one does not have any direct relationship to one's own causality, why one behaviour happens after the other, why I am behaving in a certain way, I am not sure of. So, because my acts are driven by the larger forces, I am an infinite similarly diminished human. So, Austrian novelist and philosopher Hermann Brock looks at this irrational dimension in human behaviour and the psychological anxiety that is a product of the modern society, the modern times. According to Hermann Brock, the modern era bridges two extreme aspects, something that I have already mentioned in one of my previous lectures. So, two possibilities, one is the reign of the irrational faith full of conviction and entirely, you know, entirely empty, vacuous inside. And the reign of the irrational in a world without faith, reign of the irrational and the other one is the reign of the rational in a world without faith. So, because faith for God, for leaders are lost, one is driven by the irrational, by the, you know, infinite possibilities of the unconscious mind. The novelist's theme should keep coming back through the method of digression and should intersperse with the stories. This is something I was also talking about in my earlier lecture, how the theme is overbearing and continuous. It is the common thread that runs through apparently, you know, different characters and different events. I mean, the theme becomes the common mirror that reflects all these different personalities and the different situations in life. So, we are talking about the characters and events are digressions. And when we go to one character's life, his plight, his, you know, difficulties, it is a way of digressing from the theme. We look at his life, which reinforces this theme better, enables us to understand what is at the core, what is the kernel, what is the crux of this novel. So, digression adds to the rigor and discipline of the novel. We go to different story subplots, we go to different subplots, we digress to different subplots only to discipline ourselves and come back to the central idea, the central problem that the theme poses. The theme is holding on to all these different subplots. And the theme is amplified through these different lives, which are examples, which are illustrations of the theme. So, these characters and events are present in the novel to further illustrate the central theme. Theme of the novel refers to the existential inquiry through certain key words. So, some, in a modern novel, key words keep coming back. For example, unbearable likeness of being, weight, likeness, grand march, kitsch, vertigo are some of the key words, each of which contain the kernel, the grain of the larger theme that the novel is trying to pose. According to Herman Brock, when a casual everyday act of love is raised to an astral plane and made incorruptible, such as we see in Tristan and Isolde, the idyllic love, there is kitsch involved in it. Similarly, empty ornamentalism, empty baroque is a reflection of kitsch. We have to understand what kitsch is. Kitsch has a hallow around it, but there is a hollow at its heart. To be able to escape kitsch, according to Brock, one requires, there ought to be an organic unity between the artist's personality, moral stature and the quality of the work of art. He notes that extremist leadership, any form of extremist government and any extreme form of ideology and the thoughts that the ideologues propagate have a predilection for kitsch. Kitsch that is, once again, like I said, surrounded by a hallow, a glamour around it, but it is eaten off, it is ignored off, it is worn off from within. At the heart of it, there is a kind of emptiness. Yet, a certain amount of kitsch in art is also inevitable. And in fact, it facilitates audience's access to the work of art. Otherwise, it becomes very, very hard to penetrate a work of art. It forces the audience in a way to go with the artist by subjecting itself to specific conditions. So, when we think of melodramatic films, such as Gone with the Wind, it appeals to the emotions and sentimentality of the audience at once. And it does so through catering to the masses needs. And so, such an artwork, informed by kitsch, progresses very smoothly, very continuously with a minimal variation. So, in a novel's plot, exaggerated coincidences are pass and they are in bad taste according to Milan Kundera. They make for farcical excesses. So, improbability, unprecedented happenstances and encounters are not naive or clumsy, but the reader, the skilled reader, the modern reader has to acquire the skill of accommodating them because that is how life works. Like life, the modern life novel is meant to amaze and astonish us and take us unaware. So, when happenstances are seen in Don Quixote, one of the earliest form of, in fact, the earliest novel, these happenstances in Don Quixote are meant to amuse us rather than formally make a realist attempt to simulate reality. It has, I mean, it has already taken off the planes of reality of its immediate real, you know, renaissance society. So, it is through happenstances, through coincidences, it is not even commenting on reality in Don Quixote. Now, from Don Quixote, when we emerge, when we arrive at the 19th century novels, we see there is a controlled way used to make a very similitude of reality, where unlikely coincidences are burdened with specific intentions and meanings. So, they are no longer funny and comical, they are burdened with serious intentions and meanings. Coincidences, they are premeditated devices in the plot. Now, 20th century inherited itself from this tradition, this burden of 19th century. Coincidences lost the innocent fun of Don Quixote, but then it is making a comeback after the 19th century, you know, realist tradition. We see the coincidence making a comeback, if not through the innocence of Don Quixote, then through Burlesque, Fantastic and Parodic. So, Kafka's going away from the realist school tradition is a way of coming a bit closer in a way to Cervantes' comic subversion by recourse into the surreal, the fantastic, the surreal, the fantastic. The modern novel aims at bringing in an extremely grave situation in an extremely light form, that is also symptomatic of the modern writing. It opens up thereby new and yet very old and immediately identifiable dramas of human life, the possibilities of humans as sexual beings and as historical beings. So, William Kundera compares novel with music, where each chapter is a tempo, it has its own pulse, rhythm and beat. The cadence follows the logic of musical composition, where a chapter can act as a moderato at a moderate speed, a presto, which is very fast, an adagio slowly and stately the chapter can unfurl. So, the topic of a chapter determines whether it should be unfolded slowly or too fast. The tempo or pace of each chapter has relation to the chapter's length and the time it encompasses, whether it be one hour, one day or one year. So, shift in tempo signifies emotional contrast too and a shift in emotional atmosphere. And like in any musical composition, through varied pace of each chapter, different shades of emotions, it could be sentimentality, graveness, satire, melancholy, all these shades of emotions are depicted. Variety's craft and originality like that of a skilful music composer lies in juxtaposing two emotions in a way that defies stereotypes. And this creates room for the novel's experimentation and novelty. Rather than a synthetic assemblage, a successful composition or novel refers to this true or organic unity. And here Kundera is talking about, he is comparing novel to Beethoven's music. So, Kundera's style of interspersing lyrical and essayistic materials to his traditional narrative harkens back Brock's handling of the modernist situation through using a multilinear structure and polyvalent writing where there are several facets and multiple values emerging. So, Brock uses the motive of the individual being caught in a tangle between conscious control by social institutions and countering these external determinants with irrational dreams and even nightmares. So, his novel The Sleepwalkers is, for example, an escape from the liminal transitional state of early 20th century existence. Brock notes that human experience cannot be grasped as a whole, only through science and philosophy and therefore, one needs to recourse to literature. And that is where literature comes as a saviour. Only literature enables recognition and understanding of the ethical dimension of one's behaviour. In literature, subjectivity being radically legitimate, a genre like novel aids investigation of larger ethical issues that pervade human existence. So, Brock approaches the First World War resultant degradation of moral values and an unstable self in the face of vacuity, emptiness of values. So, values after the two world wars have really been eroded and that is what novel investigates. Such a self as Northrop Fry looks at it is fraught with alienation, absurdity and a constant sense of anxiety. So, Brock tells us that the world is a product of the intelligible self. Each self has its own set of values that lead to their own world formation. Thereby meaning that the world has no immediacy or absolution and that the world is a mediated product of any given self. And this takes us back to Don Quixote really. So, the world as an empty sign just like Don Quixote treated it. Don Quixote's individuation and his personal significations about the world and that is the point from where the novel as a genre had begun. It chose to break away from epic. So, this is where I would like to stop today and let us discuss more in our on-swing lectures. Thank you.