CIS: Chapter 7

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."