Get Out the Geiger!

A house without windows, every wall a mirror; a strange, unnerving space. Delighted to be shown around, we are relieved when the tour ends; glad of no protracted stay. What things we’ve seen! A mad place, where ordinary human qualities, the workday emotions, are discarded like dirty boots; they must not blemish this crazy piece of artifice. How lucky to leave at any time. Not so Guido’s hapless family, whose sad history fills Italo Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno. When wife and kids are invisible to father and husband.

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The sterile artist. What happens to artists if they don’t create? A wasteland grows around them. Guido promises much but produces nothing, and lives, like a parasite, on the assets - monetary, emotional, intellectual - of others. Rejecting the career of musician as unbecoming a gentleman, he is useless for anything else. Unfitted for work, this chap can only enjoy himself, shooting, hunting, and playing; playing with the violin, with Carmen, with his ‘business’. Business! What a fellow! The business but an idea, on which he expatiates for hours. As if money could be spun out of talk. Talk. It’s all this man can do.

You get the picture?

An irresponsible hero, who beguiles us. He makes the grand gesture, charms his coterie,  talks like a prophet or a saint; alas, this man only cares about himself. Ada jolts my elbow. She tells me Guido is subtle, intelligent; he is an artist, and artists, by definition, are sensitive…. I hold up my hand. Ok, I’ll grant you this: Guido is as sensitive and intelligent as those fingers when they play Bach on the violin. Ada looks at me puzzled. That’s right Ada; you, Carmen, Luciano, even Zeno, are the instruments on which he performs for his own entertainment.

A dangerous chap. What sort of character pretends suicide to extract money from his wife? Money that he’ll throw away on the Bourse. The Bourse. One more dream in a life drowning in dreams. Never to wake up, always to lie sleepily between silk sheets, while others do the work of his survival. Incapable of business - he is a cretin of utility - he dreams of the quick fix; the clouds to part, the wealth elevator to descend to his doorstep. But go out and earn the cash…Guido hasn't the will for such boring stuff. So passive. He prefers talking; as if treasure to appear on the tip of his tongue. Talk! Guido’s great love is to have endless discussions with Zeno about the ideal deal…chat chat chat. But real deals? Come on, that’s for dull people.

An innocent. Encouraged by the patter of a cynical stockbroker, Guido has a vision of riches flying on angels' wings towards him. In talk any fantasy is plausible. It’s why he’s a naif. He gambles. There is some success; but little gains are not Guido’s line: he wants the big one. He therefore loses (almost) everything. How deal with such a failure? To fake another suicide, to extract yet more money out of Ada. Guido would bankrupt his family to save…no not his life - too much the coward for that - but his honour. You gasp. Knowing him too well I shake a sad sardonic smile. Always the idea. Ideas are what counts, and these must reflect back his own image, of the noble knight, the misunderstood genius, a hero out of time. The great idea of Guido is what has to be protected; the reason his honour - that daily reflection in the glass - trumps the material existence of Ada and the children; her comfort, their feelings, are nothing before the preservation of that glorious portrait. This artist only draws himself.

What an egotist! The windows were bricked in long ago, they’re only mirrors now. But mirrors show the flaws of age, the pockmarks of time, the landslides of decades; all of us to be reduced to rocks crumbling at cliff’s beach. 

So if each wall is a…. 

Ada, Ada, you have forgotten what I’ve said. How did I describe Guido’s world? Again she looks at me puzzled. Crazy? Mad? Our heroine turns pale. That’s right Ada, a character like Guido believes these mirrors windows. To always look out at the image of himself as the great hero; the marvellous musician; the wealthy stockbroker who makes deals like kings countries.

He’s entertaining, good to have around, at party or picnic. We like a performer. All to be alright if he lived alone. They never do. This the tragedy. Chaps like Guido empty out the lives of those close to them. Normal people, who put ideas in their proper place, on the bookshelf where they belong, cannot live with those who believe life a novel, they its main character. Do you expect Tolstoy’s Pierre or Gulley Jimson to step out of a chapter and make you rich and famous? Ada shakes her head. But this is the madness of Guido, who has only strength enough to turn each page. Ada is shaking her curls. He has talent, Ada, but as you know, his will is weak, and so cannot transform his talents into things. And if you don’t plough a fertile field it falls into wild meadow.1

That magnetic gaze. Such is his hold on the imagination he traps his family inside his illusions; even after his death, Ada, whose love had dried up years before, is wracked with his loss. Ada listen to me, you were not responsible for his failure. Guido was an artist, but unable to make music he turned his life into a composition; and, because of his talent - he is a virtuoso - his performances convinced you of their reality. So yes, his magic was powerful, but, alas for us all - for you, for the kids, for Zeno, for Guido - they were also empty. Behind the actor’s mask there is nothing.

A chap with no judgement. Like all artists he goes too far. But as life is the stage such overreach has fatal consequences. Faking suicide for the second time he takes too much veronal, and loses out to the contingencies of the weather and the medical profession.

He’s a fool, you say? You are closer to the truth than his wife. We should not confuse art with living. Dedicate your life to art. Use life to enrich your art. Even spend all the time in the studio, the home an abstract canvas by Francis Bacon…for sure, for sure. But never prance around your family believing them a stage. Sooner or later the curtain comes down; the money runs out, the creditors are at the door; and if smart the kids’ll rebel, the wife leave…and there you stand, naked before an empty auditorium, the audience having left long ago. 

A bastard then? Yes, but don’t tell Ada.

There were good times. He is an entertainer. But keep in mind this fact: we exist only to add harmony to the rhythm of his whims. Fine for an afternoon out or a matinee performance. Fine for Ada if he actually did something worthwhile. Fine for us all if there was content to his productions; many willingly to sacrifice their energy, even their lives, for a purpose; though that is only for fanatics. Guido believes in nothing but himself. Fine if we want to enjoy ourselves; it is to be stimulated, excited, taken out of our cell-like self; but only for a while: transcendence a holiday not permanent exile. We return to Ada. There is food to get, bills to pay, emotional succour to provide…. At end of shift the artist must take the lift down from their metaphysical penthouse; or else they must live alone or with other mad artists.

We are to blame. We expect too much of characters like Guido, who always disappoint. An artist, once off instrument, canvas, page, is a passive creature, the world their spectacle or plaything. Nothing serious to be done, no matter how much he convinces himself and others to the contrary. Always the illusion of some great work in the future. The future! It is the disappointed disciples who’ll arrive at that dust beaten shack in the desert. While Guido…the future always on the tip of that tongue. 

Though a bastard, I should feel sorry for him; this a ruined life. I suspect he never did sleep with the beautiful Carmen: too busy admiring his own reflection. Then love is hard work. Love complicates our lives. It requires compromises; a surrender of significant parts of the self. Guido entangled in the vines of another’s emotions? Think of it this way. The ordinary feelings of love are like 9 to 5 at the office; those petty concerns, the gossip. the trivial household tasks. Wagner to wipe cornflakes off the breakfast bar? Come on! Emotions have to be titanic. MONUMENTAL. Only an opera will do for Guido. Although there’s no space left for others in the opera house of his mind; though it takes lovers, wife, friends, a long time to realise this truth. It is distance, from people, from society, from his own emotions, his own truth, that accounts for his ruin (also why it takes so long to arrive). Guido is not close enough to things-as-they-are to properly understand them; and without such understanding he cannot use them to best advantage. Learning requires adapting.2 Without such adaptation we cannot succeed for society is too strong for us to wrestle it to the ground. Exceptions, of course. The extremely talented can, if they prosper at a precocious age, dominate their chosen profession: think of dons and classical superstars. But this is rare. Did Guido have enough talent to conquer his territory? He never took the risk. He preferred the easy way, living off the capital of this talents. Lacking will, and with no discipline, he chose to dazzle everyone with his brilliance, while doing nought. Work? That’s a joke! Drifting through life, he relies on his charm and grace to get him through; always some schmuck to believe in him. But one day the capital runs out.

Strangely, we are not sorry for this man. It is because we see his history through Zeno’s eyes. Absorbed with his own obsessions, Zeno cannot think deeply on his friend; while he is also in love with Ada; this love feeding our sympathies which instinctively flow toward Guido’s wife and family, as we watch the life sucked out of their lives.

Zeno. What’s his view? Our impression: he doesn’t like Guido. From the beginning he is jealous of his talents, looks and charm, and his attractiveness to Ada, the most beautiful of the Malfenti sisters. Nevertheless they become friends. Yet our doubts remain. Though he rightly dismisses the psychoanalyst (a conceptual bumpkin) Zeno overlooks - or sidetracks us from -  his cult’s core insight: we create fantasies to escape the truth of ourselves. His non-attendance at Guido’s funeral surely a Freudian slip that reveals something he has long repressed. Oh, he’s got a good reason, he’s trying to recover Guido’s fortune on the Bourse and thereby save his reputation. But at the cost of missing the graveside ritual? Do we believe him? Let’s look closely at this Bourse work. Peering through the window, we see…a man sitting at a desk praying the numbers to go his way. What! Stockbroker astrology! Laughing like an hysteric we throw the book to the floor. Zeno, you’re fooling yourself. Guido’s detachment, his insouciance, that easy charm, that brilliance, has kept you at a distance. Then look at yourself! Happy to play Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote? I doubt it. And Mr Envy, has he ever gone away? Tell the truth Zeno. No no no, this is nonsense. Ada is right - you hated her husband. 

To escape such thoughts Zeno behaves like a mad man. He risks his family’s fortune to save (dead) Guido’s honour; the honour of a fake…. Poor Zeno, for all his attacks on psychoanalysis he confirms its central insight: hysteria results when we suppress the mind’s reality. That need to feel virtuous. To believe ourselves good. To think ourselves nice, well-meaning, so respectable: it is to look into a shop window to see how wonderful we are. Bad or hateful ideas? Not our fault! But what if…if our blouse has a blot, the skirt torn? Buy that pretty dress! Zeno, aesthete and intellectual, who is always thinking about himself, is especially prone to such mad shopping trips; for spending most of his time inside his mind it has to be made comfortable.3 Most accept that we don’t like Mavis Junkey or hate Reginald Upfinger; our feelings just that: feelings. Not so the intellectual. All feelings must go through the mill of thought; good reasons found for abusing the villain, some mad idea ground out to prettify them. There’ll be no stains in my conceptual home! Always getting the bleach or wallet out.

The intellectual handles radioactive material. Their ideas tend towards moral absolutism - think of Socrates, think of Plato - which requires the most careful decontamination to be made safe in polite society. Intellectuals, insouciant with ideas, too keen on their own righteousness, are ignorant of this truth; but that’s another story.4

Poor Zeno, unable to find any good reasons for disliking Guido - so charming, talented, so clever - is left with bad ones: his own envy, guilt, his own lacklustre talents. Thus the mask, which even these confessions cannot remove; though the careful reader, unlike the dull psychoanalyst, can excavate coal from this unconscious mine. If only Zeno wasn’t so self-absorbed! He’d see Guido for what he is, and find good reasons for hating him. To hate with a good conscience! But for that, he’d have to spend more time in the world.

He is saved by the war. Through the demands of wartime, the contingencies of a societal emergency, Zeno is forced to live outside himself, and must act. He loses himself to business, and is happy! Only war to blast him out of the bunker of his mind. War the means to solve the problem of affluence, the inertia of the leisure class. It sobers up the idea-drunk intellect of the intellectual. Zeno ends his confessions with this thought: life is a disease, our mistake to seek a cure. Very true. In this oblique way, Zeno is perhaps recognising the ‘big truth’ about himself; that in seeking his own ruin he was salving his own conscience. Maybe. But this insight is so bleak, so bound up with the war, that our doubts are as insistent as the enemy’s gunfire.

How self-aware is a character like Zeno?

Here is a puzzle we leave for another time: is Guido our hero’s double? The passivity, the dreams, the self-deception, aren’t these also Zeno’s traits? His need to stay with Guido, be friends with Guido, isn’t this someone seeking their own self in somebody else? The narcissist seeks out those in whom he can admire his own reflection. Thus the urge to blow himself up in the Bourse: Zeno wasn’t trying to reclaim the memory of his friend but dissolve himself in the other’s disastrous fate; vanish into apocalyptic oblivion. The sterile artist, once he gives up canvas or keyboard, can only project himself onto other people, through whom he performs. A precarious enterprise, for they are sure to let you down.5 At least in the theatre, at curtain call, you go home. But if home is the stage, family the auditorium - Guido! But why not Zeno! Let’s put it this way. Intellectual and sterile artist: there is nothing to choose between them. 

Review: Confessions of Zeno

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1. Another great character study is Stanislaus Joyce of his father, in My Brother’s Keeper. The contrast is with the self-will and discipline of the artist, his brother James. Here’s a literary-critical question: how much did Joyce see his father in Svevo’s masterpiece, the reason he praised it so highly?

2. W.B. Yeats, in My Brother’s Keeper.

3. Unlike the academic the artist can only see the world through his own feelings; all ideas, art, thought, are not independent realities but expressions of his own being. One reason why we must never trust an artist when they talk about society.

4. I’ve just finished a book on these nuclear reactors.

5. There are strange resemblances to May Sinclair’s The Life and Death of Harriett Frean, written in the same era. Though Harriett comes from a vaguely artistic and intellectual family  - it is the professional bourgeoisie - it is the image of respectability that stops the flow of natural affection, and ends up hollowing out her life, whose illusions disintegrate with diminishing capacities.