Chapter 7: The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty
10 Key Concepts:
1. “The
books which help us become less cruel can be roughly divided into (1) books
which help us see the effects of social practices and institutions on others
and (2) those which help us see the effects of our private idiosyncrasies on
others.” – P. 141
2. “Books
relevant to the avoidance of either social or individual cruelty are often
contrasted – as books with a ‘moral message’ – with books whose aims are,
instead, ‘aesthetic.’” – P. 141-2
3. “It
is hardly evident that ‘pure art and
pure science’ matter more than absence of suffering, nor even that there is a
point in asking which matters more – as if we could somehow rise above both and
adjudicate their claims from a neutral standpoint.” – P. 148
4. “Truths
are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses – to
cause tingles – has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the
scales are rubbed off a butterfly’s wing, you have transparency, but not beauty
– formal structure without sensuous content.” – P. 152
5. “Being
impelled or inspired by and image is not the same as knowing a world. We do not
need to postulate a world beyond time which is the home of such images in order
to account for their occurrence, or for their effects on conduct.” – P. 154
6. “[Nabokov’s]
books are reflections on the possibility that there can be sensitive killers,
cruel aesthetics, pitiless poets – masters of imagery who are content to turn
the live of other human beings into images on a screen, while simply not
noticing that these other people are suffering.” – P. 157
7. “If
curiosity and tenderness are the marks of the artist, if both are inseparable
from ecstasy – so that where they are absent no bliss is possible – then there
is, after all, no distinction between the aesthetic and the moral.” – P. 159
8. “The
curious, sensitive artist will be the paradigm of morality because he is the
only one who always notices everything.” – P. 159
9. “Only
what is relevant to our sense of what we should do with ourselves, or for other
is aesthetically useful.” – P. 167
10. “Further,
literary interest will always be parasitic on moral interest. In particular,
you cannot create a memorable character without thereby making a suggestion
about how your reader should act.” – P. 167
Twenty Unfamiliar Terms
1. Idiosyncratic
2. Presuppose
3. Enmeshed
4. Factitious
5. Antithetical
6. Miasma
7. Uncongenial
8. Apologia
9. Flux
10. Eikasia
11. Altruism
12. Atemporalism
13. Iridescence
14. Lucidly
15. Semblable
16. Literalized
17. Gallant
18. Corollary
19. Impetus
20. Kasbeam
Summary
Rorty distinguishes books that
help us find our autonomy from books that help us "become less
cruel." Rorty would categorize the search for autonomy in the
Private realm. In the Public realm we can find two categories of books
that help us become less cruel. The first kind focuses on injustices to
be found in the practices of social institutions such as books on slavery or
government corruption. The second book focuses on injustices in the
practices between kinds of people as we found in books like Bleak House, which
Rorty explicitly mentions. Mrs. Jellyby has an idea of a humanitarian
goal that she defines herself by. Due to her dedication to finding her autonomy
in abstract ideals, Mrs. Jellyby becomes unbalanced in the degree to which she
is detached from the people and events of her life. Rorty calls this a
"dramatiz[ation] of the conflict between duties to self and duties to
others. Here we are seeing that being too transcendent can create a
pathway to unintentional cruelty. However, it would seem that the
opposite extreme of transcendence- being too concerned with the visual, social
facticity- may lead to an opposite set of problems such as racism and type-casting.
However I'm sure Rorty would say that bringing the details and facticity to the
surface would bring the reality of racism and type-casting to the service along
with an unsettling feeling that may inspire social critique.
Rorty talks about morality/conscience
and aesthetics/taste with respect to the traditional division of the self into
a "cognitive quest for true belief" and a "moral quest for right
action." If we are to analyze a book by these categories,
Rorty says we may end up arguing over the truth of our opinions of the
book. Is its purpose to get at cognitive truth? Or moral truth? Or moral
beauty? Or beautiful truths? For Rorty, these are the autonomous, Private
realm questions. Rorty suggests it may be better to throw the analysis
out the window and instead ask the more socially effective questions of
"What purposes does this book serve?" This makes Rorty seem
like the anti-philosopher and more of a historian/journalist to his critics.
Rorty then divides this second
group of books that seek to help us become less cruel by identifying how kinds
of people treat each other into 2 categories: Those that seek to update the
private Final Vocabulary and those that seek to update the public Final
Vocabulary. Perhaps Kinkaid seeks to change the first, and Bleak House
aims at the latter in terms of influencing public Final Vocabulary such as
worker's rights and minimum wage.
Rorty accuses the liberal
metaphysician of only reducing the moral impact of fiction to a merely
inspirational one. But I wonder how Rorty would classify
existentialists such as Sartre and Camus who made their philosophical points
through literature, as they were reluctant to misrepresent their view that
theory grows out of facticity or in other words- existence precedes essence.
Rorty brings Nabokov as he
explains his view that there are problems with aestheticism. In a
nutshell, the issue is that aestheticism is a cognitive, intellectual or
abstracted appreciation of beauty in its forms/ beauty in literature as well.
How can we create a science of beauty and determine how to judge one piece of
art over another? Rorty writes "There is no reason to believe that
everybody who writes a book should have the same aims or be measured by the
same standards."
Nabokov did not think very
highly of Orwell's work, calling it "topical trash," however, Rorty
suggests that they both succeed in getting us "inside of
cruelty." Rorty focuses on connecting three of Nabokov’s qualities;
"aestheticism, concern with cruelty and belief in immortality."
Rorty focuses in on Nabokov's
reading of Bleak House and criticizes his aesthetic priorities over the matter
of fact statement out of Dickens; "And dying around us every
day." Nabokov says this is all style and not successful at ushering up
emotions. Rorty says this is a false dichotomy and you don't need the
"tingles" to induce participative emotion. Nabokov did not find
an emotionally powerful and refined aesthetics that doesn't waver in Dickens
despite whatever accomplishments were influenced by the work. Rorty
passionately criticizes his perspective. He says " It is hardly evident
that "pure art and pure science' matter more than absence of
suffering." Nabokov finds the best art to have the ability to creep
up on us and give us chills in its efforts to make us aware of cruelty.
Nabokov wants to shine the line in an artful and subtle way and finds writers
like Orwell's blatant in your face detailed and matter of fact descriptions to
be vulgar and disposable. Rorty once again sees both Orwell AND Nabokov
as being successful at getting inside cruelty- he just wants to kick Nabokov
off his aesthetic high horse where there are means to judge and into
contingency with him. Nabokov did see Dickens as being
particularly effective in his descriptive imagery like of the London
Fog. He does accuse Dickens of being too effective at it in saying
the Fog is too obtrusive.
Nabokov had a preoccupation with
metaphysical and literary immortality and was trying to understand what it was
about a writer that made him immortal- the closest he could come was the
writers ability to produce "tingles" in the reader- He thought that
pure art and science were the best at accomplishing this. Nabokov just
could not prove in any way that personal immortality is linked in any way to
literary immortality. The only way the two can be fused is in the sense
of the "'real and concrete'...sense of solidarity with a 'few thousand'
others who share his gifts." This is a pretty straightforward point
that one can live on only in the sense that his work is important to society in
some way.
Rorty is critical of Nabokov’s
point that pure art and pure science create the "tingles" that makes
on a great writer. He compares it to Platonism who seeks to define
the "good" by knowing the good by grasping a pure idea of it, rather
than as Rorty says, knowing the good through what other people’s image of the
good is and how they describe their feeling of it. He may be unfairly
summarizing Plato on this point because any knowledge of the good came after
the dialogue which attacked the "good" from many different angles of
alternating abstractness and practicality. In the end Plato had no
answer, but a reflection based on the world we know. There is the problem
though that society's conception of the good is also contingent so how can we
know if this "good" is better or worse that other "good",
what is tempering our judgment then?
Rorty warns against being like a
Skimpole who is only concerned with himself and derives his good with respect
to himself for then we are no longer listening to others. This is also a
point found in Nabokov’s Lolita such that the point of listening is not to take
note and follow another rule, but the point is to listen when people are trying
to tell you they're suffering.
Rorty ends the chapter by saying that Nabokov’s best
novels are the ones that highlight the contradictions in his believes-
"his inability to believe his own ideas."
