Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello & Poetics
In one of those moments of coincidence (which will not strike those who are avid readers as odd), I continued reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello last night and found him to be grappling with the same issues I had been raising in relation to Williamson's distinction between Rhetoric and Story (see my last post). Life does, at times, seem to imitate art.
I was struck by two passages in particular, which resonate with what I was trying to say in my last post (albeit much less elegantly than Coetzee).
The first speaks to what I was trying to say about the public outpouring of grief for Brock and Irwin. Coetzee's writer protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, contemplating old age and death, is said to "like to think that the gods [note: to whom she attributes the invention of death] admire, however, grudgingly, our energy, the endless ingenuity with which we try to elude our fate. Fascinating creatures, she would like to think they remark to each other over their ambrosia; so like us in so many respects; their eyes in particular so expressive; what a pity they lack that je ne sais quoi without which they can never ascend to sit beside us!"
The second raises the way that poetics might shape what we understand about our emotions and how we learn to 'feel' and act. In this wonderfully metaphysical scene, Elizabeth makes application to a panel of judges, which will determine whether she is allowed to pass through the Gate to the 'other side'. Elizabeth is interrogated about her beliefs, and the judges begin to hone in on her claim that, as an author, she is a "secretary of the invisible" ( a phrase she has taken from Milosz). Elizabeth is asked, "the old Tasmanians, the ones who were exterminated. Do you have any special opinions about them?" Finding her answer - "beliefs are not the only ethical supports we have. We can rely on our hearts as well"-unsatisfactory, the judge continues. "But as a writer? You present yourself today not in your own person but as a special case, a special destiny, a writer who has written not just entertainments but books exploring the complexities of human conduct. In those books you make one judgement upon another, it must be so. What guides you in these judgements? Do you persist in saying it is all just a matter of heart? Have you no beliefs as a writer? If a writer is just a human being with a human heart, what is so special about your case?"
Fatigue beat me last night and I could read no further. But I am very much looking forward to seeing how Coetzee deals with this question through Elizabeth. I am not blind to the authoritarian impulse in the image of these superior distant figures interrogating Elizabeth as to her beliefs (and the way it refers back to other famous trial scenes in literature: Dostoyevsky, Kafka...). But the issues they raise are compelling. Elizabeth herself acknowledges this when the judge finishes, "No fool.... For the first time this day she feels tested."
These last words are, for me, an eloquent expression of the place of theory in the study of literature. To want to test beliefs is NOT the same as having no beliefs at all. It is the desire to want to live an examined life, something the ancients urged us to do. It is about tradition, not anarchy.
I was struck by two passages in particular, which resonate with what I was trying to say in my last post (albeit much less elegantly than Coetzee).
The first speaks to what I was trying to say about the public outpouring of grief for Brock and Irwin. Coetzee's writer protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, contemplating old age and death, is said to "like to think that the gods [note: to whom she attributes the invention of death] admire, however, grudgingly, our energy, the endless ingenuity with which we try to elude our fate. Fascinating creatures, she would like to think they remark to each other over their ambrosia; so like us in so many respects; their eyes in particular so expressive; what a pity they lack that je ne sais quoi without which they can never ascend to sit beside us!"
The second raises the way that poetics might shape what we understand about our emotions and how we learn to 'feel' and act. In this wonderfully metaphysical scene, Elizabeth makes application to a panel of judges, which will determine whether she is allowed to pass through the Gate to the 'other side'. Elizabeth is interrogated about her beliefs, and the judges begin to hone in on her claim that, as an author, she is a "secretary of the invisible" ( a phrase she has taken from Milosz). Elizabeth is asked, "the old Tasmanians, the ones who were exterminated. Do you have any special opinions about them?" Finding her answer - "beliefs are not the only ethical supports we have. We can rely on our hearts as well"-unsatisfactory, the judge continues. "But as a writer? You present yourself today not in your own person but as a special case, a special destiny, a writer who has written not just entertainments but books exploring the complexities of human conduct. In those books you make one judgement upon another, it must be so. What guides you in these judgements? Do you persist in saying it is all just a matter of heart? Have you no beliefs as a writer? If a writer is just a human being with a human heart, what is so special about your case?"
Fatigue beat me last night and I could read no further. But I am very much looking forward to seeing how Coetzee deals with this question through Elizabeth. I am not blind to the authoritarian impulse in the image of these superior distant figures interrogating Elizabeth as to her beliefs (and the way it refers back to other famous trial scenes in literature: Dostoyevsky, Kafka...). But the issues they raise are compelling. Elizabeth herself acknowledges this when the judge finishes, "No fool.... For the first time this day she feels tested."
These last words are, for me, an eloquent expression of the place of theory in the study of literature. To want to test beliefs is NOT the same as having no beliefs at all. It is the desire to want to live an examined life, something the ancients urged us to do. It is about tradition, not anarchy.
# posted by Mark H @ 7:08 am 
