Art, Woolf, and Freud

Art, Woolf, and Freud

-- Does the present writer intend on responding to the topic with a formal academic essay?

No!

-- How will the writer respond to the topic?

In a manner suggested by the seventeenth chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. (Woolf thought that  Joyce wrote for a clique. The present writer is a member of that clique in good standing.)

-- Did Woolf  read Freud’s writings?

The Woolfs owned the Hogarth Press which published translations of Freud’s papers. Woolf wrote to a friend,  “...we are publishing all Dr Freud, and I glance at the proof and read how Mr. A.B. threw a bottle of red ink in the sheets of his marriage bed to excuse his impotence to the housemaid, but threw it in the wrong place, which unhinged his wife’s mind, - and to this day she pours claret on the dinner table. We could all go on like that for hours; and yet these Germans think it proves something - besides their own gull-like imbecility.”

-- On what occasions did Virgina Woolf meet Sigmund Freud

Once, on January 28, 1939. Freud gave her a narcissus.

--  Her impression?

“A screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes, paralyzed spasmodic movements, inarticulate: but alert...Difficult talk. … an old fire now flickering...”

Woolf did not read Freud seriously until after meeting him.

-- Did Freud deliver lectures on the value of Art?

Yes.

"Art as Unrepressed Wish-Fulfillment" - -

“In phantasy,  man can continue to enjoy a freedom from the grip of the external world, (a freedom) which he has long relinquished in actuality. The meager satisfaction that (man) can extract from reality leaves him starving … There is, in fact, a path from phantasy back again to reality, and that is—art.”

-- What value does Freud think Art has for society?

The repressed desires of the artist are sublimated into an artistic product that fulfills the unconscious wishes of the spectators. Art transforms common neuroses into fantasies that are then shared by the culture.

-- In Civilization and it’s Discontents did Freud explain the necessity of Art?

“Life, as we find it, it too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointment, and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures”.

-- What is a “palliative measure?

A measure for relieving pain or alleviating a problem without dealing with the underlying cause such as giving a person who has a broken leg an aspirin.

-- What proofs does Woolf’s  biographical evidence offer that Art was a palliative measure for relieving her suffering?

Woolf created more than twenty work of fiction, autobiography, and criticism that are still read, admired, and have great influence today.

As a child Woolf took great pleasure in trying to find the perfect pen for writing on paper.

From the age of 13 and for the next 46 years of  her life she suffered periods of severe depression, attempting suicide four times.

For a summer, Woolf believed that the birds were chirping in Greek and King Edward VII was uttering curses from behind nearby shrubbery.

-- At what point in her life did “Art” cease to be palliative for the underlying causes of her suffering?

On 28 March 1941, she put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home, and drowned herself.

Her  body was not found until 18 April 1941.

-- Number of days from Saturday, January 28, 1939 to Friday, March 28, 1941?

790

-- Number of years?

2 years, 2 months, 1 day

-- On what important philosophical or psychological point did Woolf and Freud disagree?

On the perception of a harmony with the universe.

-- What perceptions of harmony does Mrs. Ramsey experience in To the Lighthouse?

At dinner she seats a group of acquaintances who have demonstrated their conflicts and alienation through many chapters. For the period of the meal, all come together in harmony with themselves and each other, an experience which, although transitory, binds them.

-- Does Freud affirm a personal experience of harmony with the universe?

“I cannot discover this 'oceanic' feeling in myself. that is to say, ... a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole.  It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings. From my own experience I could not convince myself of the primary nature of such a feeling.”

"But this gives me no right to deny that it does in fact occur in other people."_______________________________________
References

The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Volume One. P. 92.

"Mr. Virginia Woolf". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 8 September 2008.

"Art as Unrepressed Wish-Fulfillment" by Sigmund Freud

In a balloon over Paris

The brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier were scientists interested in exploring manned flight. On 19 September 1783, they launched  a hot air balloon attached to a large basket containing: a sheep, a duck and a rooster. The sheep was selected because its anatomy somewhat resembled that of a human. The duck because it could fly and the rooster because it could not. The flight lasted eight minutes, the passengers traveled eleven miles and landed safely. The brothers Montgolfier concluded that their balloon could safely carry human passengers. 

On September 24, 1860 the details of this experiment were explained to Charles Darwin as he climbed into the basket of a Montgolfier and prepared for a balloon tour of Paris.  He had been invited on this tour by Baron Haussmann, the chief city planner of Paris. It was Haussman who had redesigned the city, tearing down much of the medieval city, building wide boulevards that could not be barricaded by revolutionaries, and creating a transit system that for the first time caused the rich, the middle class, and the poor to pass by each other daily.

A third passenger, the poet Charles Baudelaire, arrived late. Darwin observed that in England this man would be called a “dandy.” He reeked of alcohol and opium smoke. He seemed to be in a permanent dark mood - a spleen. As the balloon floated over the city, the sullen Baudelaire commented on the location of each “maison close” and pointed out every opium den they passed over. His tone, his gestures were permeated with aggression, and an animal lust.   

Darwin thought to himself, "Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin,” and continued his conversation with Haussmann, who had read Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

Darwin explained, “The main conclusion I arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organized form.”

Haussmann was about to comment when Baudelaire interjected, "There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be 'two'. The man of genius wants to be 'one'... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls 'the need to love'."

Darwin continued,”We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey the same laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail.”

Baudelaire pointed out a favorite “maison close” and said, "The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes... Only the brute is good at coupling, copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another–and the artist never emerges from himself."

Trying to ignore the drunken poet, Haussmann asked Darwin if his book had not encountered violent criticism from the church. Before Darwin could answer, Baudelaire turned a contorted face toward them and shouted, "Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. But what matters an eternity of damnation to one who has found an infinity of joy in a single second?"

Darwin responded, “A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals.”

For a moment Baudelaire seemed almost sober, his face reflective, he responded, “The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof -- if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature -- of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.”

“There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet.” continued Baudelaire. “ To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable..."

“The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.” Darwin responded. “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.”

Think of it this way

Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

Chromebooks

I'm writing this on a Samsung Chromebook.

I've had lots of experience with the Chrome browser, so the operating system is comfortable. The hardware is going to require a period of adjustment. The computer is light, only two and a half pounds, comfortable to hold on my lap. So far the keyboard is as comfortable a my MacBook Pro. The screen is a matte finish. Some people prefer matte to glossy. They even pay a lot of money to Apple for the opinion. I miss the depth of color.

Wow! This keyboard is really nice. Best feature of the machine.

I bought my first Chromebook yesterday, an Acer with a fast Intel processor and four gigs of memory. It was thick, heavy, unbalanced and uncomfortable to hold -- basically an Acer netbook running Chrome OS. Only four hours or less of battery life. It was however very fast! Much faster than this Samsung. After less than ninety minutes of typing the spacebar and the M key stopped working. You really don't know how important the spacebar is until you don't have one. James Joyce and E.E. Cumming might get by without the spacebar for a while, but not me.

I repeat, this keyboard is really nice. I'm hoping it holds up more than ninety minutes.

Although it may seem unlikely,

Although it may seem unlikely, even extraordinary, it happened that in 1785 at 3:32 pm on August 12th while on his daily walk Immanuel Kant encountered a copy of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary lying on the sidewalk directly in his path.  Kant was famous for setting out to walk at precisely the same time each day. His neighbors said that they could set their clocks by observing the time at which he passed their houses. One could conjecture Kant’s incredible precision in passing through the same space at exactly the same  time repeatedly may have accounted in some way for an object from the future falling directly into his path. For indeed, the copy of Madame Bovary that Kant picked up was in fact dropped by a university student mirroring Kant’s path on August 12, 2013 at precisely 3:32 pm. His name was Johannes Friedenberg. He disliked the book and was glad to be rid of it when it mysteriously disappeared. During the evening of  August 12th, 1785 Kant sat in his favorite chair and read the time-traveled copy of Madame Bovary.

During the year before this occurrence, 1784, Kant had thought a great deal about historical progress. In his writings he had expressed hope that with the passage of time the society he lived in would become more mature, more enlightened. 

In an essay that year - Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" he wrote:

                                                  

As history progressed “man's (natural) inclination and vocation to think freely (would) influence(s) the principles of governments, which find that they can themselves profit by treating man, who is more than a machine, in a manner appropriate to his dignity.”

As always, Kant was interested in finding Universal principles. Progress, he thought, was an attribute of Nature itself.  In “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” Kant expressed his optimism about the future as follows:

FIRST THESIS

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end.
SECOND THESIS 

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

EIGHTH THESIS 

The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end.

As he read Madame Bovary,  Kant tested each thesis against the development of events in the novel.

Flaubert presents his characters in a specific time and place that exists decades ahead of Kant’s reading. They use inventions and act within the manners of their period that are different from Kant’s time but obviously a natural evolution from his period, thus supporting Thesis One.

Flaubert’s intention was to portray his characters realistically, ruthlessly. His goal was to write his cast of characters into full existence by describing them in the clearest, most resonant images possible.  Kant was amazed by the writer’s craft but concluded that none of Flaubert’s characters in any way have their author’s sympathy. Flaubert had left any feelings of pity, compassion, or disgust to his readers discretion. This disturbed Kant he, like young Johannes centuries later, greatly disliked the book. He frankly wished that he had never encountered any of these people. However, the book was, without question, supporting evidence for Thesis Two.

On the morning of August 13th, at 1:32 am, Immanuel Kant was awakened from his sleep either by a cramp in his foot or by a mildly unpleasant dream. It began with the scratching of his pen as he wrote Thesis Eight slowly word-by-word, and then images of each of Flaubert’s country citizens flashed briefly before him. How could these people be anything but a barrier to Nature’s goal? They seem to be committed to ignoring the capacity for reason with which Nature had endowed them! Unpleasant as these French folk may be, Kant remained committed to Thesis Eight, remembering that he had written as proof of the thesis:

                                

“The only question is: Does Nature reveal anything of a path to this end? And I say: She reveals something, but very little. This great revolution seems to require so long for its completion...”

                                

Comforted by his thoughts, Kant brewed a cup of camomile tea for himself, massaged his aching foot, rinsed his cup, put it on the shelf and went back to bed.

Kant,"What is Enlightenment?"(1784) 

Kant, Idea for a Universal History (1784) 

Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)     

                                

                   

Kant & Rousseau

I understand Kant. I’ve always been comfortable with him. Kant recognized man’s ignoble, lazy, cowardly, savage nature and urged education, discipline, logic, and long and careful thought before action. He was mildly optimistic. Only a few would “Dare to be wise.” But under the right conditions – a wise prince who allowed freedom of thought and speech, but at the same time insist that the law be obeyed – the number of the enlightened might gradually increase. A system of government based on reason could emerge. The first criteria would be:
                         
“To test whether any particular measure can be agreed upon as a law for a people, we need only ask whether a people could well impose such a law upon itself.”                                  
- An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?"
   
Kant was cautious. The Prince who allowed freedom of thought and speech would also require a strong army to slow down the pace of change. “Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey!” Eventually, enlightenment and reason would grow and the population would be truly free.
       
I’ve never been comfortable with Rousseau. He lamented the loss of an innocent savage that never existed. We’ve discovered too many million-year-old skulls smashed in by  rocks to believe that one. He admitted that civilization must be endured, but raged against its complexity, longed for simpler, more honest days. Rousseau’s repeated claims that all was better in the cities of the past rings false to anyone who has read the Iliad or watched a BBC historical drama. We are what we are and always have been - an ape with a big brain.

Emotional, restless, never wholly satisfied with his present condition, he wandered through Europe and through life, conversing with Europe’s best minds, and then breaking  with them over trifles.  Rousseau recognized that something beneath the surface of the mind, something of great value is somehow injured by civilization.  If he could not heal his wounds, perhaps he could expose them with a brutal honesty, refusing to deny that they are there. Honesty that could only be approached by letting the passionate forces that lie beneath escape unrestrained. Manners, politeness, even the formalities required for the arts and for science all led to corruption and deceit. He advised communion with nature and a return to simple life practicing useful skills as a path to virtue. Advice he didn’t himself take.

Think about this – What if you could  spend an hour with a genius who influenced the course of intellectual and political history? Personally, I’d like to spend that hour with Kant. It would be an amiable time well spent. I would share with him that during my thirty-two years as a middle school teacher his imperative that we treat every person as an end in his or her self and no one as a means to an end appeared on my board at least a hundred times, and that do we determine a universal law was often the theme of my lessons.

I wouldn’t want to spent five minutes with Rousseau. Rousseau’s arguments against philosophers, painters, and poets sound petty and whining to my ears. The passage below in which he identifies himself as a common man seems particularly paradoxical. Denying his role as a philosopher and international figure of renown, he gives advice about not taking advice:


As for us, common men to whom heaven has not allotted such great talents and destined for so much glory, let us remain in our obscurity. … What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves? Let us leave to others the care of instructing people about their duties, and limit ourselves to carrying out our own well. We do not need to know any more than this.
- Discourse on the Arts and Sciences


I was an English teacher for thirty-two years. The history of education was influenced very positively by Rousseau’s Emile. I love many parts of the book. You could argue that childhood is far less brutal because of Rousseau’s book. But I wouldn’t want to discuss Emile with him or even share its historical influence. Instead I would want to know why he dropped off five of his babies at the local founding house where only one in three infants survived the first weeks after their arrival. His answer might even inspire me to mention that his thoughts about the social contract may have inspired some of the nastier parts of the the French Revolution and also were used to justify the horrors of Totalitarianism and Fascism in the 20th century.

No you Kant!

Rousseau longed for an innocence savage that never existed.
Kant recognized the savage and urged his education.