On Othello 5: the Character and Death of Othello.

Othello clearly has issues.

It's not just critical thinking skills Othello lacks; some sausages are missing from Othello's barbeque. And he dies strangely content with the memory of a cruel act of justice he once dealt to a Turk, a non-Christian like he once was. Does Othello recognize his karma coming back as a tragedy from that act of rough "justice"? I think so.

Where Desdemona's death is the shock of the play, Othello's is a relief. I burst into tears reading Desdemona's last lines; how could I have read this play four or five times as a teenager and NOT wept, I wonder? Nothing could underline the difference in kind and degree between the teenager and the adult than the fact that only the adult who is experienced in the extremities of suffering can be adequate to comprehend the astonishing moral victory of Desdemona's last words. Desdemona reveals herself a warrior; by forgiving, she defeats Othello.

Coming back to Othello: Othello seems to recognise that his brutal nature is the true man at the end, but does that mean that the noble and sophisticated Othello of act 1 to 3 is fake? This is clearly false, but not an easy charge to avoid.

Othello of act 1 to 3 IS the real deal, but so is the completely different Othello of act 5. The intervening tormented Othello (act 4) is merely the alembic of Iago's alchemical psychiatry, not a man but a patient, a case study. What are we to make of these two different Othello's? And what are we to make of the transformations of youth and adulthood, whereby the same individual can become as different in himself as night from day?

The key lies in Iago's silence.

Is Iago the first psychiatrist? Undoubtedly.

I can't feel anything other than genuine satisfaction in Iago's total silence. Iago is complete, having returned to that avenging Element from which he arose; we feel the human aspect of the man was merely for show, and that in his silence the real man at last is revealed. We feel relieved, not of his speech, but to know him as he really is; Iago is not a human agent, and by his silence shows this is so.

Iago's silence illuminates the character of Othello as a product of primordial darkness and ignorance. Recognising the aboriginal depth of Othello in ourselves, we are humbled. How can we be sure we are just and wise? We can't, unless we become intimate with that darkness which we foolishly disown as evil in ourselves. Othello signifies that intimacy with our blackness, and the terrible cost of becoming estranged from our soul.

The Great Writer as Adolescent: Re-reading Andre Gide's Journals

Re-reading Gide's journals tonight, I am struck by how he obsessed over his image, over how others saw him. It is a little jejune for Gide to fret over what impressions his ideas and books make on others AFTER he has won public notoriety with his sex life. And how could it have been otherwise - I admit he was in a sore spot with Corydon and his autobiography - but still the overall impression of the journals is of adolescent angst.

Gide's introduction to Montaigne is a case in point. Andre Gide thinks he adds sharpness to Michel de Montaigne when all he is adding to Montaigne is Gide. Gide's Montaigne is 'risky' and 'impudent' because Gide has failed to discern his good taste from his ego.

Then there are Gide's assays into fields he is ignorant of. Three specific great writers he mentions in his journals he has signally failed to come to grips with.

First there is Marx. Gide's flirtation with communism is embarrassing because it reveals his adolescent-level political consciousness, limited (as politics should be with adolescents) to a passing enthusiasm.

Then William James. He thinks James' 'Psychology' is boring after a few pages, because he cannot understand the way James has reinvented the human soul along scientific lines without any loss of humanity or grandeur.

Finally in Freud he can see only the value of Freud as a de-mystifyer of sexual matters. About Freud's compulsive prose and striking insight into inner realities, not a word. He likes Freud because he is 'impudent'.

Gide consistently gets these great writers in a nutshell but misses the nut. And it's not simply a failure of his time or place, but a failure of imagination. Gide is too busy being 'impudent' to read these serious writers for adults.

I love Gide's work and personality, but the truth is he is basically an adolescent playing at being an adult much of the time. And it is a bitter pleasure to have outgrown his tutelage, and seen his limitations for what they are. Andre Gide is no less a great writer for the truth about him being less than complimentary. In fact, the pleasure of seeing the truth about him has inspired me to read his novels again.

Why Read Proust?

Why Read Proust?

There are many good reasons not to read Marcel Proust’s great novel A la Rechere du Temps Perdu.

It is uneventful. It can be boring. The narrator is a bitchy snob. It has too many outright lies in it to be autobiography, and too much tiresome bickering to be considered a novel. And it is too long.

It is cynical: all human relationships except close family are false, fake; naked unconscious self-interest and vanity drive all social interactions; childhood habits once broken can never be recovered; insomnia, poor health, jealousy, sadomasochistic urges, ungovernable impulses – all of these completely overrule and overdetermine the individual’s sense of reason.

It is capricious: a huge cast of mostly irrelevant characters caper about uttering strange irrelevancies, whose total sum is some kind of mysterious calculus of snobbery cloaking intense animalistic urges, which Proust seldom deigns to explain to readers living in a less uptight culture. Cruelty is commonplace between characters that are considered friends, and sexual compulsions bind everyone together invisibly and inseparably.

It is disorganised: the tone changes from page to page, from book to book, without warning, guidance, or apparent reason. The paragraph divisions are completely useless, presenting the book messily. The chapter headings are either hopelessly irrelevant or simply nonexistent; the reader is left to impose his own structure on the book if he is to make sense of it.

So why read Proust? If the good is the enemy of the great, surely Proust’s book is its own worst enemy? But if you read merely good books, then you are condemned to mediocrity. And since Marcel Proust’s book is both bad AND great, it provides the most uniquely vulgar amusements in the midst of the most sublime art. I don’t dispute its greatness; its goodness I sincerely doubt.

So why read it? I can tell you must read Marcel Proust. I can tell you it is great. But I cannot tell you why. Harold Bloom blathers on about identity and memory; I don’t know about that. I can only tell you that I do, you must, it’s worth it – that is all I can say.

Addendum: Okay, okay, so Proust is funny, charming, insightful, sweet. His language is beautiful, delicate, tough, and sinewy. His ideas on love are shocking and wise in equal measure. And the badness of Proust’s book makes the great qualities all the more astonishing. It is as if it were discovered that Thomas Aquinas has been, in addition to writing his Summa Theologica, the author of some pornography – I kid you not: Proust is THAT shocking.