The Gipsy's Baby
It is the title story of the collection. Called The
Gipsy’s Baby it is about Chrissie, one of
the poor Wyatt children, oddly detached both from her family and the rest of
the community, who tells a nasty lie to stop another child from visiting the
manor house, where the narrator and her sisters live.[i] Although the lie, in its essence,
contained a truth: Ivy Tulloch isn’t wanted in the house, for the children do
not like her – they find her too prim and obsequious.
The reaction to his incident is interesting; and partially revealing. The children though shocked are glad of its consequences – no Ivy. Their nursemaid is indignant, while Mrs Tulloch is angry; but whom do they blame? Isabel believes Chrissie’s family circumstances are the cause. Mrs Tulloch is made of sterner stuff: “when a nature’s bad, bad it is.” It is in the genes, and is the fault of the individual, born with original sin. These are the first reactions. For Ivy’s mother, who doesn’t really know Chrissie, they remain the only ones. Not so with Isabel. Later,
The reaction to his incident is interesting; and partially revealing. The children though shocked are glad of its consequences – no Ivy. Their nursemaid is indignant, while Mrs Tulloch is angry; but whom do they blame? Isabel believes Chrissie’s family circumstances are the cause. Mrs Tulloch is made of sterner stuff: “when a nature’s bad, bad it is.” It is in the genes, and is the fault of the individual, born with original sin. These are the first reactions. For Ivy’s mother, who doesn’t really know Chrissie, they remain the only ones. Not so with Isabel. Later,
…[she] stood by our bedroom window, fingering the curtain,
looking out over the garden, arrested in an unfamiliar pose, a quietness that
suggested brooding, almost dejection.
From this window, the chimney of Wyatt’s cottage was just visible
between the poplars. Flat on our
pillows, we watched her. Suddenly
we heard her say quietly: “It was jealousy.” She was speaking to herself. Then: “Poor little beggar.” She heaved a deep sigh, shook
her head. “Ah well, what you can’t cure, you’d best let alone.”
The incident took place not long after Sylvia, the socially
conscious sister, had invited the Wyatt children to tea. During the visit Chrissie had snuggled
up to Isabel, obviously desperate for any kind of affection. It awakened a response in the
nursemaid, who hadn’t wanted the Wyatts in the house. They were poor, and thus disreputable, and so a source of
potential trouble, she believed.
But Isabel is only a servant and has little power; and is defeated by
the guile of Sylvia, the absence of their mother, and the liberal aloofness of
their kind but detached father.
The Wyatts will come to tea! And they do….
Their presence creates, however tenuous, an intimate
connection between Isabel and Chrissie which affects her response to this
incident; a response we see develop in two stages: the first meeting with Mrs
Tulloch, where the women share the same moral indignation; and the later one,
when her initial reaction is transformed completely by confused feelings of
sympathy, and the genuine understanding which such sympathy can engender. If Chrissie had never visited the house,
Isabel’s only response would have been that first dispassionate one; a few
words spoken to confirm the obvious; like saying “that is an oak tree” when
passing one in the field: the phrase merely a label to confirm an immediate
experience. Her words ephemeral
and forgettable; simply part of an insignificant conversation about a trivial
event; the absolute minimum of attention paid to it, relative to its importance
(for even insignificance can be graded; some events not even meriting a
shrug).
In such cases the culprit is treated solely as an object,
the only interest generated by Isabel’s own vague feelings of dislike and
unease, which are often associated with specific events or things; such as
forests with fear and madness with wariness; or in this case unpredictability with the desperately poor; an association the incident appears to confirm; and
absolutely. But later, in that
bedroom, Isabel is overcome by the emotional attachment that now exists between
them, transforming the bad Wyatt children, a symbol for the undeserving poor,
into the specificity of an individual, into Chrissie. Through her emotions the young girl has entered into
Isabel’s being (she swims around inside her!) turning an object into a subject,
a generalised beast into a particular human. And this imaginative sympathy, this absorption of another
person into our senses, is the first precondition for thought, and genuine
understanding.
Immediately the complexities begin.
Humans are porous.
They are adaptable, liable to change and growth, and to the influence of
outside forces. So much can affect
them, as they in turn can affect it: the simple boundaries of an object
vanishes when it is transformed into a living thing; when a Poor Child is
turned into Chrissie Wyatt.
Suddenly she is embedded within Isabel’s being; is part of her local
“environment”, a flower planted inside her mentality, which she will now change
and change again as her influence grows: as the images she generates are absorbed into the
nursemaid’s emotions and thoughts.
The girl’s actions have become entangled with Isabel’s own personality,
binding them both together; so that the meaning of the original incident
becomes unstable. No longer the
simple idea - she is a poor child and this is what poor children do –; there is
now the complex thought expanding deep into Chrissie’s existence; as Isabel
tries to understand her pain, explain its causes, and justify her actions: in
part she is attempting to see the child from the inside (the shutters are up
and she is peering through the windows), but more importantly she is seeing
(feeling is a better word) Chrissie from within her own being (they are
cuddled up together in the same room).
The fluidity of creative thinking has replaced the received idea; and real understanding emerges.
A further connection develops through Isabel’s own loneliness;
so musing on her animal desire to be held and wanted she can feel Chrissie's desperate needs, her wish to belong; for they are what she herself lacks: the
comfort of another person’s emotional warmth.
Chrissie has been transformed into a human being; and the
incident shifts from being a simple morality tale into a complex short story,
involving many concrete variables: her person, her background, the recent tea
party; and Isabel’s own personality – her feelings of loss, of sympathy and of
pity. None of which can be
isolated when Isabel now thinks about what has happened. Before the visit Chrissie was a symbol
of a general idea; and this event would simply have been a confirmation of it.[ii] Such a view has become too simple now
that Isabel has held and comforted her.
There are so many things to think about! It is all so involved, and for a moment such insight
overwhelms Isabel, as we see, I think, above. Her feelings have created an organic whole, fusing
Chrissie’s actions with her Isabel’s own character, and with their lives inside
the community; none of which can be separated out.[iii] Before Isabel was merely a spectator at
the Wyatt drama, now she’s improvising on stage with them, and can both imagine
and feel what Chrissie must be experiencing (she is recognising some of the
child in herself). Immersed in
this feeling suddenly it all comes together, and she recognises a new truth:
“it was jealousy.”[iv] It saddens her. And she cannot articulate precisely
what she feels; and so she returns to an old formula, but one which is richer,
full of individual meaning; for Isabel now has a sense of the particular
reality of this event and the person who did it. So that a second hand idea, a mere truism, which she applies
to Chrissie’s actions, has been turned into real experience, which in turn
replaces mere opinion with knowledge, however poor and inadequate.
The difference between Isabel’s initial reaction to Mrs
Tulloch and her later reflections also suggests something about the nature of
language. No thought seems
to have gone into this conversation; the words are merely reflexive; as if they
have no connection with the thinking mind (seen working later in the children’s
bedroom). In the first scene
Isabel is only talking; and mostly in response to the other person. That is, there appears to be something
about the conversation that exists independently of her cognisant mind. Here the words are more akin to gesture
than thought; like raising a hand to deflect a blow; or screaming when in
pain. It’s as if talk proceeds
without us, once the first impulse is triggered, just like walking: after the
initial decision to go out we no longer think about each individual step. The same sort of process seems to be
happening here: Isabel’s words an instinctive reaction to Mrs Tulloch’s; the
conversation an unthinking reflex to an event which, through habit and custom,
is understood as self-evident: a bad person does bad things, like a hot kettle
scalds. Chrissie’s lie is thus
fitted into a mental pattern that already exists, and which calls up a simple
generalisation that neither woman has to think about. Language, it seems, is a reflex, and in conversation with
other people it reflexively responds to the situation, requiring the absolute
minimum of thought – enough to bring up those habitual mental patterns absorbed
by our previous responses and framed by the linguistic climate in which a
person lives; and which are usually adequate for daily living.[v] But when Isabel is alone something
different happens – she thinks.[vi] In this scene she seems to be groping
at language; her thoughts trying to connect with her feelings, which she then
tries to articulate; a process that gives her words a profundity they had
previously lacked.
If this is an accurate description of this scene the theory
that the essence of language is communication becomes doubtful. For here language is doing two separate
things. In ordinary conversation
it confirms an existing picture, usually instinctively; just as we close a door
because it is open or zip up a coat because it is cold: it is something we are
conditioned to do and we do it reflexively. There is a mental element to the process; but language here
is very much concerned with the external environment; it is about fixing our
place inside it; either physically, by making us comfortable with other humans,
or mentally, by locating us in a fixed, and commonly understood, that is,
shared, mental pattern. This is
the social part of language, and is generally used to adapt ourselves to human
society – to make us fit in.[viii] Fortunately, we don’t have to think too
much about it; these verbal occurrences are almost automatic. This, perhaps, was the truth of
behaviourism: a significant part of our language is excessively influenced by
the surrounding environment; although the discipline’s tests and assumptions
were just a little too crude and ill-conceived: even the social use of language
is richer than simple stimulus and response.
When Isabel is alone the process seems to slow down; her
words articulating thoughts that arise from both her emotions and her
unconscious,[x]and which
are completely outside of her ordinary language use. Rather than simply using language she is now straining to
fit it onto her thoughts. Trying
to say something she intuitively knows but cannot quite elucidate…[xi] It is like matching different colour
combinations of skirt and blouse – she may “feel” when they are right but she
will not be able to precisely articulate that feeling.[xii] At this interface, between the emotions,
the conscious mind, and language, the latter begins to break down, as it tries
both to capture and simplify those evanescent thoughts (arising out of the
senses and the emotions, and the subconscious).[xiii] It is the moment we realise the inadequacy of our sentences and paragraphs; and
when language takes on a different role: that of creator or explorer; a hard
and often unsuccessful task - that final sigh, and the old cliché, at the
end.
Thinking makes us all human. Talking reduces anyone else to objects. And this appears related to a strange
aspect of language that a number of thinkers have noted: every sentence
requires a generalization – except for proper names all nouns and verbs are
universals.[xiv] Our very speech turns the world into
objects; yet thought can return them to their particularity; bring them back to
the natural world.[xv] It is through thought (and physical
contact) that Chrissie can be made into a human being.[xvi] This suggests something else about
language: its tendency to fix things into a static pattern, which may account
for that instinctive retrieval: it is easier to remember facts than explicate
causes; while it is almost impossible to re-experience one’s feelings once they
have gone.[xvii] Communication, which requires the rapid
use of language is, it appears, connected to memory; and its efficient
recall. Which may explain why talk
both confirms the obvious and facilitates the spread of ideas:[xviii] it is recalling an already existing matrix that confirms habit and custom;[xix] thus Mrs Tulloch’s reflexive ability to dismiss what is new and odd. Language is gesture; and like the rest of our senses has to respond
automatically to stimuli – which in this case are mostly other people’s
words. One consequence is that
language can prevent us from thinking; although it helps spread civilisation;
defined as conformity to agreed standards.
Let us return to the scene at Rebecca’s window. What do we think was running through
Isabel’s mind as she stared out into the night at the Wyatt’s cottage?
Is she remembering Chrissie, comfortable on her lap; like
some household pet? Or is she
recalling her own contempt for the Wyatt family? Is there some guilt mixed in amongst these reflections? Perhaps she is thinking of her
employers; about how they put Chrissie into a false position, by inviting the
Wyatt children to their house.
After all, she believes that the classes should be kept apart. By bringing them together her
forebodings have been realised.
Maybe this is what she is thinking: that a situation was created where
something bad had to happen; Sylvia creating the grounds for jealousy, where
previously they didn’t exist.[xxi] They have played with fate, and someone has paid the penalty – the person least
able to afford it. Are these the
thoughts she sees on the window pane….
Yet Chrissie has done exactly what Rebecca and her siblings
desired. Shouldn’t this make us
just a little suspicious? Was it
accident or design? Was it
jealousy purely distilled, or had Chrissie caught a whiff of their dislike, and
took it up and… told Ivy Tulloch the truth that she wasn’t wanted…
Chaotically, the facts
emerged. Stunned, we pieced them
together. They were these. Little Ivy, dressed in her best and feeling
a wee bit shy, bless her, but innocently trusting to be met as arranged by
Isabel at the back door, had come tripping across the fields at the appointed
time. But at the turn of the lane,
who should be lurking in wait, pressed up against a small wooden side door in
our garden wall – who but Chrissie?
And then what happened?
Chrissie Wyatt had the downright demon wickedness to declare to Ivy she
wasn’t wanted inside, that she, Chrissie, had been specially posted there by us
to tell her so; that it was horrible, awful in there anyway, a kind of torture
chamber: nobody was allowed to talk, not even to smile at the tea-table; and Ivy had best run along home
quick before anybody appeared to beckon her within. So what was left for Ivy but to hurry back home to her
Mummy, frightened out of her little wits, sobbing her heart out?
Notice the language.
Rebecca has reconstructed the incident through the words of Ivy and Mrs
Tulloch (and possibly Isabel). The
result is that much of the description is weighted with moral condemnation; we
can even hear it in this somewhat ironical account; which differs from the
narrator’s normal, rather cool and detached, voice.
The later incident with the gypsy’s baby, where Chrissie was
again caught lying, makes us return to this description. How true is it? How much have Ivy, Mrs Tulloch and
Isabel put themselves into it, and so distorted the original scene? Chrissie’s opinion of the dinner is not
that far from Rebecca’s description: at the time the Wyatt children looked very
uncomfortable when in the house.
We could easily imagine them believing the whole experience a kind of
hell. This complicates matters,
for it suggests another motive for Chrissie actions: she may have been trying
to protect Ivy from what she regarded as something unpleasant. Isabel, when she reflects on those
moments of affection, is convinced the cause is jealousy – because it’s her
strongest impression of the day.
But it doesn’t follow that Chrissie shares this view. Along with her brothers and sisters,
and perhaps influenced by them, it is possible she really hated the party and
it is this feeling she remembers above
all else; she may not even connect Isabel with the visit; assuming she
remembers her. This seems more
likely. We have been led astray by
the nursemaid’s egoism – we are only seeing it from her perspective. Was it pure chance that Chrissie was
standing by the gate at this particular time; or did she know that Ivy was
going to be there? The probability
is that she intended to waylay her.
She must have heard the children talking about Ivy. If so, it is inconceivable that she
would not have gathered something of their views. She had experienced a few hours of hell and now another
innocent was going to be put through the same experience… Was Chrissie trying to help Ivy? Was she trying to warn her? Did she think Rebecca and her sisters were malicious
kids who purposively invited guests to mentally torture them? Isn’t this quite possible….
Of course, the outright lie – they posted me here to tell
you to go away - demolishes all of these speculations. It is the most shocking part of the
story. But is that accusation
true? Think about it.
Later we hear that Chrissie’s story of finding a dead baby
at the gypsy’s abandoned site is a lie.
But for a while everyone believed it, indeed Isabel and the nurse wanted
to believe the story was true: at last the neighbourhood has a real horror show
to get excited about. Moreover it
was a story that usefully confirmed old prejudices about an outcast social
group. They could be horrified and
they could exercise their moral condemnation. The best kind of entertainment.
Chrissie’s earlier behaviour also provides the opportunity
for drama and the confirmation of prejudices. Unlike the later one about the gypsies this story is
not completely made up; however, there is something about it that doesn’t ring
true. The tone of the piece, so
different from the rest of the narration, is very arch, making the episode
sound like a classic fairy story about evil and innocence. Why? Is Rebecca trying to distance herself from what
happened? Does she feel guilty
about what Chrissie did?
And how much has Ivy herself made up? Was Chrissie’s description of the party
an excuse for her to quit the manor house? Because in her heart she did not want to go; for she knew the
sisters didn’t like her. And of
course she didn’t like them. She
was right on time. Doesn’t that sound more like an
appointment than a meeting of friends; which of course it was, organised by Mrs
Tulloch and Isabel – trying to force a friendship, where one didn’t exist. Wouldn’t Ivy rather be at home playing
with her pet rabbit? What if
someone gave you an excuse to do just that; and to avoid all that unpleasantness?
All you would need to do is to invent one small detail, “they told me to tell you not to come”, and you have the
perfect reason to return home. It
is the only phrase that will suffice.
Emotionally that is exactly what you’d like them to say; for now Ivy can
tell her mother that it is their fault I didn’t go. Of course, no-one would ever believe Chrissie – you’d expect
someone like that to be nasty.
Also, think about how two children, who hardly know each
other, might interact: there would be some wariness, some bravado, some
kindliness and also some banter; even some verbal aggression, if they don’t
take to each other; as these two probably didn’t. Out of that mix a confused resolution could naturally
emerge, where descriptions about the horridness of the party become accounts of
how horrid the rich sisters actually are; exemplified by their request that I
tell you not to come to their house.
A lie has popped out under pressure of the conversation, but it is a
falsehood that reflects a real truth, both about their own feelings, and the atmosphere
inside the house. That is, when
quoted out of context what Chrissie said is a lie, but when put back within the
texture of their conversation her words becomes true. Is this plausible?
I think it is.
I think it is?
Exactly!
Because Chrissie, like the Gypsies, is an outcast, a blank page on which
any story can be written, providing it accords with current prejudices, people
can believe anything of her; and language, as we have seen, facilitates this;
for it doesn’t need, in fact it hinders, thought. Instead, with the pattern already created, Chrissie is poor
thus bad, the story is simply retailed as self-evident truth. Gossip triumphs, and Chrissie is
condemned, and the facts are left un-investigated; so that even someone like
Isabel who is sympathetic believes the original story. The ugliness of language?
It is the same when the story of the dead baby first
appears. No one has any
doubts that it is true: such inhumanity is common to the Gypsies, who are not
proper humans like us. The
instinctive reaction is to then heighten the effects, the imagination
exaggerating each retelling: never do we simply retail an anecdote, our
excitement is too much for that, it creates when it retells.[xxiii] Very quickly an extraordinary fantasy
has come into existence; the community having constructed a gothic ruin, made
entirely of words, where they can go to enjoy themselves. What this story captures is how
remarkably simple this process is.
Take the following exchange:
“Ah, there’s more in it than
meets the eye.”
“Mark my words,” said
Isabel. “It’s that man. You know the one – the older one with
the nasty expression of face. I
always did think he looked the part.”
“If you ask me,” said the Nurse, “they’re all in it. The shock for that little mite! – I
can’t get her off my mind…”
Notice the clichés, which makes the communication even
easier – absolutely no thought is needed to understand what is being said. And notice how confident they are about
what has happened, their absolute certainty over the details; which they are creating as they converse. Of course the two are linked: such
certainty can exist only in our own minds; bring in actual facts from the real
world and they mess up any self-created picture.
When the truth is revealed the reaction is swift. Chrissie is humiliated by the authorities,
and abused by the whole village.
Her behaviour confirming that is she rotten all the way through.
But exactly what did she do? This is not so clear.
She admits she made the story up, but cannot say why she did so; which
seems right: there are no reasons for many of the things we do; creation itself
is a form of organic growth and has no cause beyond its own natural expansion;
which is often difficult for the layman to understand. Also, have you noticed
how people always want to give reasons for behaviour which often seems
instinctive or unconscious?[xxiv] Always there is a need to label what
others do or say, for we need the
certainty of language; it anchors us to the world. Thought, on the other hand, undermines our security, and
sets our reasoning afloat.
What did Chrissie actually do? Infected by the prevailing opinion of the gypsies she made
up a story to confirm it; like some hack writer writing a
column to expose our enemies as evil.
She is a child and is probably just copying what the adults say;
although embellishing it with one awful detail; of the kind kids love to hear –
most want to be scared by a little bit of horror. When she first went to the quarry pit it is possible
Chrissie thought she saw a baby, and running away in fright elaborated the
story to the other village children.
Or perhaps that baby emerged in conversation between them. Imagine this… You go to the quarry, and you find nothing there; and yet
the Gypsies have only just left.
Now, a little later, your friends ask where you’ve been, and when you
tell them, they expect you to talk about something fantastic and wild; and yet
you saw nothing special. Wouldn’t
there be pressure to make something up, to save face? They might not even believe you if you say you saw nothing…
And thus the story starts.
The fault is really with the parents, for believing the
fairy tale – they should have investigated it first. That is, they should have stopped talking and thought
more. They are too lazy for that!
Chrissie must be punished for the community’s own
prejudices and stupidity, and the guilt these arouse when exposed. When the story is revealed to be a fake all the gossipmongers are made to look foolish and
narrow-minded, and so protect itself
from its own self-knowledge the village must excommunicate the outcast
child. She is poor and alone,
helpless before the majority, and must, therefore, take on all of the
community’s guilt. Only thought
could save her; but society is built on its suppression; for it needs certainty
and security, it needs words that everyone can easily understand; not those
about which it must find and ponder.
[i] The story is told in the first person, and we get to
know the narrator’s name almost by accident – when her father calls her to come
for a walk, with her brother and the dog.
It’s a nice narrative touch.
[ii] Note how that general idea fuses a fact with a moral
value: they cannot be simply poor; it must also be a sign of their own (moral)
failure. There is something about
these value judgements which suggests they are reflexive. We seem do them
automatically, and without conscious thought.
In
order to separate a fact from a value you have to really think about them,
and consciously pull them apart.
One of the interesting characteristics about 20th century
British philosophy was its obsession with the fact/value split: most
philosophers were very careful not to mix what they regarded as these two very
different things. However, the
most obvious and interesting question is not that you can rationally separately
a fact from a value, but why our natural propensity is to couple them
together. For doesn’t this say
something particular about the mind? That this lack of separation in our normal
thinking is evidence that facts are tinged with the mind’s workings,
which tends towards binary responses – the mind
likes or doesn’t like your contention that Lenin was a bad man? And this mental processing is closely related to our
senses, so that both our language and our emotions form part of our conscious
appreciation of a fact; giving it value?
This was surely the basis of Hume’s thinking on morality: fundamentally
it is related to pleasure and pain – it is the judgement of our senses.
Mary
Midgley explores this issue in a brilliant discussion of G.E. Moore and his
influence on professional philosophers in Wisdom,
Information & Wonder. Her argument is that Moore’s
naturalistic fallacy was very useful to a growing profession of technical
experts who wanted to treat philosophy as a scientific discipline, free of all
the mucky and ambiguous stuff of normal human interactions. Thus ethical philosophy became an exercise
of virtuoso rational technique rather than a study of actual morality. She quotes a revealing passage from
C.L. Stevenson (from his book Ethics and Language):
“One
would not expect a book on scientific method to do the work of science itself,
and one must not expect to find here any conclusions about what conduct is
right or wrong. The purpose of the
analytical study, whether of science or ethics, is always indirect. It hopes to send others to their tasks
with clearer heads and less wasteful habits of investigation…. In ethics, any direct enquiry of
this kind might have its dangers.
It might deprive the analysis of its detachment, and distort a
relatively neutral study into a plea for some special code of morals… The
present volume has the limited task of sharpening the tools which others
employ.” (My emphasis)
In
its own way this is brilliant: the professor is scared of directly
getting involved with ethics in case he catches its disease; and infected
actually gives (his own subjective) values to his inquiry. He wants to be a scientist not a human
being.
One
of the curious elements to Bryan Magee’s collection of interviews, Modern
British Philosophy, is the number
of professional philosophers who said that the state of ethical philosophy
was poor. No wonder! Their profession was dealing with a
topic that didn’t exist – they had replaced it by their own “scientific”
method.
And
this tendency, to concentrate on the method, seems have to been widespread in
the humanities, particularly during the middle of the last century: even in
film criticism emphasis tended to be on the methods of production. The major critics arguing that the
essence of the movies was the perspectives produced by the technical functions
unique to the industry – editing or the framing of an image, for example (V.F.
Perkin, Film
as Film)
Curiously,
although these approaches are influenced by science the working scientist appears not to be obsessed by their methodology. They
are more interested in the subject itself, which they explore through
technique, feel and intuition. Chomsky has strongly argued that the practice of
science is a craft; while there is a good discussion of the actual working
methods of the scientist in Peter Medawar’s The
Limits of Science. The social sciences and some of the
humanities seem to have taken one aspect of science, its tidying up
bureaucratic side, and idealised it; replicating it onto their own subject
areas. The reasons for this given by Midgley above; although there is also a
deeper cause: the less creative academics have been overly determined by the
bureaucratic nature of the academy in which they work (for related discussion
see my Russian
Climate).
[iii] The emotions and imaginative sympathy that relies on
feeling can fuse different things together. Reason tends to be analytical – it chops reality up into
separate pieces. For a discussion
about thinking and how it goes beyond simple rationality see footnote ii in my Dusty
Answer.
[iv] This is a brilliant example of David Hume’s theory of
knowledge – any new insight comes from the senses.
[v] This may partly explain why we get angry when a person
disagrees with us about an idea we assume is obvious. Suddenly we have to think about a thing we usually ignore,
and a different part of our mind has to come into operation. Now we have to expend energy and
consciously think about some point to which we would normally pay little
attention. Something simple has
suddenly become a problem. Our
interlocutor has disturbed our habitual comfort, our natural
laziness, and suddenly we have to work. This releases both
energy and resentment… Driving
down the A34 our car has a puncture. How annoying! With a big sigh we get out and try to repair it...
[vi] And notice Lehmann’s very close observation here:
there is something passive about Isabel’s disposition, which, I think, is
related to our deepest thinking: we have to receive it from inside our body,
which means tuning other parts of it down – such as our external senses. (I am currently writing a piece where I
explore this in more detail.)
[vii] Hume’s theory about impressions can help us. When we experience another person their
presence impresses itself upon us, both mentally and physically. Out of that impression, Hume argued,
comes the ideas on which our understanding is based; and which can be used to
construct our theories by employing abstract reason. I think this is true.
I also think the purely physical element to this sense data is greater
than Hume thought: most of that impression is probably purely physical. And through a process we still do not
understand its effects on the body provides us with intuitive knowledge, which
remains unknown until we grope after it with the aid of our language faculty.
Here is Hume:
“All
the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds,
which I shall call IMPRESSONS and IDEAS.
The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and
liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our
thought or consciousness. Those
perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations,
passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and
reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the
present discourse, excepting only, those which arise from the sight and touch,
excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion.” (A
Treatise of Human Nature)
Those
“faint images” suggest we are conscious of these impressions. For many (most?) of them I don’t
believe we are, thus my argument for this process being much more physical,
much more unconscious, than Hume will perhaps allow – there should be no
“exceptions” (of sight, of touch and of pleasure) at all. (For more discussion on Hume and
impressions see my Bashing
Brodsky III)
[viii] We have a general tendency to be comfortable in our
environment. For most people that
will be mean accepting the simple compromises, of work, home and public
space. There are some, though, who
only feel comfortable when they
control their local environment, and thus try to make others fit into the
patterns they create.
[x] Maybe they are the same thing. For my views on Freud see my Energy, particularly footnote viii, and Trauma
(II) In our Fingernails
[xi] Chomsky has forcibly argued that language isn’t
communication. It is simply an
expression of thought. Something else must happen to it, at the interface with
the other cognitive faculties (or “mental organs”), for it to become a means of
communication; the latter residing not in the language faculty itself but the
faculty of external verbalisation, or possibly the interface between them.
See
his On
Language for a relatively early
development of these ideas. In his
later work he seems to be arguing that thought exists in sorts of amorphous
cloud clusters until it is captured (or “merged”) by the language organ; a
process that turns thought into sentences by the simplest, most minimal, of
structural means – his now revised and simplified Universal Grammar. This
closely resembles the double aspect theory of Spinoza, which is fundamental to
Schopenhauer’s work: an empirically unknowable metaphysical world without time,
space or causality that is the other side of the phenomenal world; and is
somehow translated into it. See
Bryan Magee, The
Philosophy of Schopenhauer.
[xii] No phrase will describe the actual physical texture of
the feeling; which can only be evoked by the highly skilled use of words: by
poets and writers who can create powerful analogies which produce the
corresponding emotions. Marcel
Proust’s The
Search for Lost Time is both an
extended treatise and an example of this idea.
[xiii] That layer of semi-conscious thought that seems to
float in the mind, and is separate from our emotions; and out of which
non-articulated thoughts slowly taken on shape and form and come into language
– if we are mentally attuned to them.
[xv] See Antonin Artaud’s extended attack on language in The
Theatre and Its Double. In many ways this is the most extreme
version of the modernist impulse to downgrade language, believed to form part
of the problem of representation; that turning of organic life in simple
intellectual formulas and aesthetic conventions, which rather than elucidating
reality repressed it. Artaud
wanted to bring out the primal beast in man: the natural forces that underlay
his personality; which he believed could be achieved by a theatre of primarily
gesture and dance; drama turned into music. Artaud is an extremely interesting figure for his writing,
at its best, often feels like the creative impulse itself; and this, I am sure,
is the meaning (and lasting power) of his critical work. Himself full of the creative spirit he
wanted the theatre to be an arena of perpetual creation, its natural forces
constantly alive; and not weakened by conventions and other reflexive
habits. An impossibility! However, he recognised the
generalising, uncreative aspect of language and attacked it vigorously as the enemy; advocating a theatre that was both more
particular and more amorphous; something highly stylized yet
indeterminate. It would be a theatre
you would feel rather than think about.
See
Antonin Artaud, The
Complete Works Volume 4. See also The
Theory of the Modern Stage,
edited by Eric Bentley, which puts these ideas in context: Artaud was an
extreme but nevertheless conventional exponent of the received modernist
wisdom; which reacted against the rationalist and commercialist pressures on
art, which preferred the clichés of entertainment to real aesthetic
enlightenment. There is an
extraordinary essay in the book by Arnold Hauser, which puts these ideas in an
essentially Marxist perspective.
Remove the Marxism, and replace the class war with a conflict between
art and commerce, and we begin, I believe, to have an understanding of late 19th century modernism.
[xvi] I have further discussion of this in a forthcoming
post.
[xvii] This is one of the central preoccupations of
Proust. Literature for him offered
a solution: by recreating the past in art, which then generates an analogous
response. Stanislavski appears to
have believed something similar.
Describing the importance of the actor’s imagination, which must call up
a continuous series of images, like a film in the cinema, David Magarschack
summarises his views thus:
“These
visual images create in him a corresponding mood which will influence his
spirit and arouse in him a corresponding inner feeling.” (The Theory of the
Modern Stage)
[xviii] After their initial creation, by a Freud or a Marx,
the ideas tend to be memorized, copied and distributed amongst the acolytes.
They are rarely used as the material for new creation; until another “big
figure” in the movement arrives, an Adler or Lukács, who develops a new theory
consistent with the works of the original genius.
This
may go some way to explaining the fanaticism of followers: their ideas are like
possessions which they try to stop others from stealing. Thus when criticised, rather than engage in open dialogue with their opponents they shout them down,
or try to destroy them (by calling them a class enemy or repressed). They act like a scared householder repulsing a burglar. A creative thinker would use an
opponent’s ideas to develop their own: only rejecting that with which they
disagree or find wrong. In contrast a disciple
hoards what they have got, and denying errors and contradictions will allow no
diminution of the theory's original purity
It
may also account for why there are more disciples than thinkers: the natural
urge is to make the least effort, and thus the preference to copy rather than
create. See my In Pieces for Hume’s reflections on our human propensity to
laziness. Chomsky’s ideas on computational efficiency, the mind will find the
simplest means of performing a function, is suggestive: its implication is that
our actions do indeed gravitate towards minimum effort. However, Chomsky, Hume and Russell do
not argue this is the only tendency in human thought; which clearly it isn’t.
[xix] This wonderfully captured by Carl. L. Becker:
“Very
few people read Newton,” Voltaire explained, “because it is necessary to be
learned to understand him. But
everybody talks about him.”…[for they
wanted a philosophy to confirm their pre-conceptions; one which w]ith eyes
uplifted, contemplating and admiring so excellent a system [they could fulfil
t]he desire to correspond with the general harmony [that] springs perennial to
the human breast.” (The
Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers)
Thought
is turned into language, which confirms a pre-existing pattern of ideas. Effectively this is the thesis of this
famous book; although Becker doesn’t put it like that (he is keen to show just
how much of the old Christianity was carried over into the philosophes’ thinking).
The philosophes were
actually propagandists for the enlightenment; rather than its true originators:
Galileo, Newton, and all the 17th century scientists, together with
Locke, their great systematizer, produced their major ideas for them. Paul Hazard’s important book The
European Mind 1680-1715 argues
that the main intellectual shift had taken place before 1716.
[xx] This may explain the superficiality of so many
intellectuals, who, as Bertrand Russell noted long ago, are little more than
priests: they are not thinkers but talkers. (For much more comment see my Dropout
Boogie. For Russell: Power).
[xxi] We could go deeper: there is her resentment at being
overruled, and anger at the disregard of her superior knowledge – closer to the
world of the Wyatt family, Isabel knows more about them than Sylvia.
Isabel
has superior knowledge? Surely
Sylvia has that… No, there is a
different kind, not articulated via rational intelligence, but embedded in
culture and feeling, something of which is captured in this exchange from
Dostoevsky’s story, White
Nights:
“…’although
I’ve never acted as an adviser before, let alone an intelligent one, I can see
now that if we are to live like this always, that would be a most intelligent
thing to do, and we will give one another lots and lots of intelligent
advice! Now, my pretty Nastenka,
what advice do you need then? Tell
me straight out; I’m in such a good mood, happy, brave, and clever, I’ll have
lots to say.’
‘No,
no!’ Nastenka interposed, laughing.
‘It’s not one bit of sound advice, I need. What I need is warm, human advice as if you had loved me all your life!” (My italics)
The
rational intelligence is a weak and dry affair;
and often wrong when it comes to understanding people – for it abstracts and
generalizes too much (it is too simple); and cannot emotionally grasp how the
other person feels in all their individual complexity. Warm human advice,
on the contrary, captures what cannot be articulated, at least in ordinary
conversation; that is the essence of the person we are with.
[xxiii] The mind also has a tendency to tidy up its material:
it simplifies and gives a more definite form to shapes and ideas. For an excellent discussion see M.D.
Vernon’s The Psychology of Perception (particularly the sections
around the Gestalt psychologists).
[xxiv] It was this position, I think, that Gilbert Ryle was
attacking in his The
Concept of Mind. The idea that every action is
consciously thought out before it takes place. The implication of this kind of
thinking is that there has to be a motive for everything we do. Sometimes there is; but mostly there is
not. Ryle’s mistake was to confuse
this common sense understanding of the mind with its real workings. Able to show the common view wrong he
thought he had got rid of the mind completely. Fortunately it still exists; and is infinitely more
complicated than Ryle could possibly imagine (for further discussion see
footnote ii of Dusty Answer).
[xxv] Another reason why people with different ideas are
often hated: it undermines our own certainty (that is, our sense of security) and it forces us to think; the latter a seemingly
unnatural activity. For more
discussion see my comments on John Locke in Dropout Boogie.
[xxvi] For further comment see my Poor Choices; which deals with the class assumptions of the heroine.
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