Halvard Solness and the paradox of desire

In Henrik Ibsen’s play The Master Builder, Halvard Solness has the unique condition in which he is afraid of that for which he longs. He believes that he only needs to wish for something to happen in order for his “helpers and servers” (which he later refers to as “trolls and devils”) to carry out that task, effectively allowing Solness to will an occurrence to come about. For example, Solness explains to Hilda why he feels responsible for the fire that destroyed Mrs. Solness’s family’s house and killed their two sons when he remarks on page 398, “Who called for the helpers and servers? I did! And so they came and submitted to my will.” In this case, Solness’s “will” was that his wife’s house burn down so that he would have an opportunity to divide up the estate and build more houses, thus setting off his career ascension to a master builder. He feels that because he secretly fantasized about such an event, it ended up occurring after all through the actions of the helpers and servers. This is where Solness’s fear for that which he desires comes from, and he accordingly is reluctant to embrace any of his aspirations, including his wish for his wife’s happiness. He claims to do everything in his power to make his wife happy again by, for example, building a new, exquisite house on the land where the house that burned down used to stand, but in reality he cannot fully commit to fostering Mrs. Solness’s happiness. This is because for Mrs. Solness to truly be content, Halvard Solness would have to reduce his work as a master builder and settle down with his wife. Solness is unwilling to do this because he is paranoid that if he lets up at all, the younger generation, specifically his apprentice Ragnor, will displace him from his position as a renowned master builder. In this way, Solness is reluctant to desire too strongly for his wife’s happiness, as he fears that if the “helpers and servers” work toward this end, his career will be destroyed at the hands of the next generation.

Similarly, though Solness is afraid of the youth (“You’ll see, youth will come here and thunder at the door. Smash their way in to me.” page 382), he also subconsciously longs for the youth. He seems to be reinvigorated by the arrival of Hilda, even though she represents the younger generation that, literally and figuratively, is knocking at Solness’s door. This contradiction of desire and fear is illuminated on page 400 and 401, where Solness admits that he has been longing for the youth that Hilda embodies. After Hilda reminds Solness that he is fearful of the youth by asking “Youth, which you are so afraid of?” Solness replies “And yet which, deep within, I long for so painfully.” This sequence proves that Solness does indeed long for the strength and vitality of the youth, even though these are the exact traits that he fears. It is thus that the paradox is solidified: Solness fears what he desires and yearns for that which he most alarmed by.

Dr. Stockmann: a free man?

Throughout An Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann prides himself on being a free man who acts independently of the opinions and wishes of others. He chooses to pursue the truth in the form of scientific findings instead of following the townspeople’s desire to promote the baths. At one point while arguing with his brother Peter, Dr. Stockmann boldly proclaims “There is only one single thing in the world a free man has no right to do…A free man has no right to soil himself with filth; he has no right to behave in a way that would justify his spitting in his own face,” (pg 275). In this way, Dr. Stockman is suggesting that all free men have a duty to be true to themselves and to follow their own convictions instead of feeling obligated to join with the popular opinion. But a free man can also change his own course of action without trepidation, which is something Dr. Stockman seems incapable of performing. He is so rooted in his views of the danger of the baths that he is, in a sense, trapped by his scientific findings. For example, Dr. Stockmann eventually comes to realize that exposing the flaws of the baths will have ill effects on his family in the form of the entire town turning against his household, but he cannot seem to break away from, or at least modify the presentation of, his controversial ideas. Thus, Dr. Stockmann is a free man in one sense but not the other. He is strong in his convictions and free from the influence of others’ dissuasion, but he is so engaged in his own ideas that he is inseparable from them.

This concept of being independent of the wishes of others and totally inseparable from one’s own ideas is present in other literature as well, specifically Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons. The main character in this play, Sir Thomas More, is eventually executed for refusing to take an oath declaring King Henry VIII the head of the Church of England. Like Dr. Stockmann, Thomas More remains steadfast in his ideals even when there is enormous pressure to do otherwise. It is as if both Thomas More and Dr. Stockmann are unable to part from their prior beliefs, even as the situations surrounding them collapse. The obstinacy of both of these characters directly endangers their families, and each wife makes several unsuccessfully attempts to convince her husband to modify his stance. Thus, the refusal of Thomas More and Dr. Stockmann to part with their convictions, even with the wellbeing of their respective families on the line, illustrates how a man can be free from the influence of others, but not always free from his own thoughts.

Dr. Stockmann and Truth

In Act IV of Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann makes a rather bold statement about the longevity of truth. In his animated speech to the public and his principle adversaries he states, “What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports?” and goes on to answer his own question by saying “They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.” In these comments Dr. Stockmann is suggesting that there are no universal truths that transcend generations and that, instead, each generation must employ its own great thinkers to discover some new region of understanding or to modify what was previously taken as truth. The implications of such an argument are substantial, as to constantly be refining elemental truths could possibly throw a society into disarray. Imagine if, as Dr. Stockmann is proposing, our society suddenly changed its opinion regarding majority rule and instead let a few enlightened elites run the government without public input. A change such as this would totally overthrow our system of democracy. But it is exactly these kinds of dramatic change that Dr. Stockmann wants, as he sees the need for a paradigm shift in the opinions of the masses. Almost the entire town is against him in placing science and public health above politics and economics, and he therefore wishes for a complete revolution in thinking. In a sense, Dr. Stockmann wants not only for the townspeople to accept the fact that the baths are unsanitary, but also for the masses to be more accommodating to the ideas of “the scattered few amongst us, who have absorbed new and vigorous truths.”

Dr. Stockmann’s own sense of truth also changes considerably throughout the play. Specifically, he originally believes in the value of the majority’s support, but later comes to distance himself from the masses and claim that the common people base their judgments on lies. In Act II after speaking with Aslaksen, Dr. Stockmann answers his wife’s question regarding the worth of having the “compact majority” behind him by remarking, “I should think it was a good thing. By jove, it’s a fine thing to feel this bond of brotherhood between oneself and one’s fellow-citizens!” But as public support for his scientific findings wanes, Dr. Stockmann comes to adopt a less positive outlook towards the masses, which culminates in his heated speech at Captain Horster’s house in which Dr. Stockmann claims that “it is the masses, the majority – this infernal compact majority – that poisons the sources of our moral life and infects the ground we stand on.” It is hence that Dr. Stockmann’s impression of the compact majority changes from one of a strong respect to one of absolute disdain as the play progresses. Thus, Dr. Stockmann’s truth regarding the masses is altered as a result of the changing external circumstances that envelope him.

The Relevance of Collections

The concept of collection is a recurring motif in The Biographer’s Tale. Destry-Scholes’ collection of marbles mystifies Nanson and Vera, Fulla reminisces about collecting insects as a child, and even some of the seemingly random lists that Nanson comes across can be interpreted as collections of “things and facts.” Fulla talks to Nanson about her childhood fascination with insect collection on page 246: “Then I got interested in fitting the bugs together. Then into fitting the insect world into the rest of the world. Boxes in boxes.” This comment illustrates that collecting is one of the numerous ways in which humans attempt to construct order out of the world around them. When assembling collections, the collector generally strives to have at least one of each type of whatever they are collecting. For example, Destry-Scholes’ marble collection most likely had at least one marble of every color in addition to marbles with further color variations. The next logical step to making a collection is to group items into different categories according to some attribute. This is essentially what Fulla was doing when she was “fitting the bugs together” – putting, for instance, the flying insects in one category and the crawling insects in another. This act of classifying collections seems to be ingrained in the human mind, and we often perform it without conscious effort. To observe this phenomenon, simply give out packets of Skittles to a class of third grade students during a lesson. It is likely that many students will absentmindedly pour out the candies onto their desks and make neat little groupings according to color. The point is that humans cannot help but to attempt to make order out of everything with which we interact, and collections are but one method in which we go about doing this.

Though collections are commonly associated with children, adults perform the same act, albeit with more advanced methods. Taxonomy, for example, is essentially a more scientific form of making collections, as the taxonomist assembles a large assortment of whatever he/she is studying before grouping the subjects and making judgments on their interrelatedness. Thus, Linnaeus was in a way going through the same process that children go through when he was journeying around Lapland, collecting specimens, putting them into classes, and giving them genus and species names accordingly. Perhaps this is why Destry-Scholes was so interested in Linnaeus, because he saw Linnaeus as someone who was following that fundamentally human desire to collect, classify, and ultimately order that which we do not completely understand.

Ibsen as a scientist

When Nanson first discovers the three documents, he is perplexed as to why Destry-Scholes would include an excerpt of a biography of a dramatist alongside articles about a taxonomist and a statistician. A dramatist whose work relies on creativity and imagination doesn’t belong in the same class as scientists who are concerned with facts and objectivity, Nanson originally believes. On closer inspection, however, both Nanson and the novel’s readers learn that the dramatist, Henrick Ibsen, is of a unique mold and actually goes about his work with the systematic, calculated precision of a scientist. As he is quoted as remarking on page 99, Ibsen has an established process for getting to know the fictional characters about which he writes. His three-step routine for getting to know his characters as acquaintances on a train, then as friends going to the same spa for a month, and finally as intimate friends who hide no secrets bears close resemblance to the scientific method. It is as if the first step is the initial observation and hypothesis, where Ibsen has to make conjectures regarding many of the unknowns of his characters; the second level is the data gathering and initial analysis, where more information is gathered about his characters but coherent interpretation is still lacking; and the third level is the conclusion, where Ibsen has taken into account all of the facts and has accordingly formulated a complete model that penetrates into the very core of his characters. Ibsen also employs scientific objectivity when considering the characters he writes about. As he comments on page 100, “But the human being is in a spiritual sense a long-sighted creature. We see most clearly at a distance; details confuse us; we must get away from what we desire to judge; summer is best described on a winter day.” It thus appears that Ibsen was confronted with a balancing act when becoming acquainted with his characters, as he wished to drill into their innermost nuances while still keeping a measured distance, observing their beating hearts through the lens of a telescope.

With such dedication to owning his characters without getting tangled up in subjectivity and favoritism, it is no wonder that Ibsen’s desire to distance himself from other humans carried over to his personal life. As he states on page 101, “I have a feeling that all I have available in personal relations is a false expression of that which I bear deep within me, and which is really myself; therefore I prefer to keep it locked up inside, and that is why we sometimes seem to stand as if we were observing each other at a distance.” It is as if all of Ibsen’s character analysis has conditioned him to know himself too well, and to recognize that he is incapable of accurately expressing that which is inside him. Perhaps all humans are similarly unable to express what is hidden deep down – we simply do not seriously contemplate this inability because we have less of an understanding of it than did the scientific Ibsen. It could be that Ibsen insisted on distancing himself from friends because he did not want others to see what he observed in his inner nature, which was a haunting portrait of the human framework. It is thus that Ibsen was both a scientist who was able to probe into the human condition as few have been able to, as well as a man who struggled to separate his obsession from his personality.

The idea of "rage" at Key West

Last Thursday we concluded class with a discussion on the importance of the word “rage” in the final stanza of “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Brianna made a great point that Wallace Stevens could very well have employed the term to caution readers that humans’ obsessive search for order can have detrimental effects on that which we are trying to make orderly. For example, our society’s fixation on constructing perfectly laid out subdivisions for families to raise their children has come at the cost of destroying valuable wildlife habitat and important ecosystems, especially here in the western United States. This connects with the idea that to control and to make order out of something wild is to kill it, as our pursuit to develop the land has ultimately led to its destruction. So perhaps Wallace Stevens desired to warn the audience that while humans will always be comforted by finding a sense of higher order, creating order out of our surroundings inevitably leads to the ruin of the fundamental structure of these surroundings.

Such an interpretation of Stevens’ message resides in the reader’s concentration on the negative aspects of the word “rage.” Rage is a potent emotion that can lend itself to senseless destruction. Literature often portrays characters who are blinded by rage and who thus commit offenses that they normally would not, such as Othello’s murder of Desdemona when he becomes inconsolably troubled at allegations that his wife has been unfaithful. With an effect similar to that of a blind rage, the singular quest for order may leave humans ignorant of the havoc that such a narrow-minded pursuit brings.

I, however, had a different interpretation of the term “rage” the first few times that I read Stevens’ poem. I continue to stand by the argument I made in class that deep within the confines of rage there exists a positive quality to take away from an otherwise destructive emotion. There are few human emotions, with the exception of love, that contain the sheer power and intensity that rage possesses. Although in a strict sense this great strength is put to detrimental use when someone is in a rage, it might be possible to channel the force and empowerment of rage into superior objectives. For example, in my career as a competitive runner in high school, I would often draw from the concept of rage to make myself put as much energy and effort as possible into a race. It helped to visualize myself “raging” with my arms and legs pumping wildly during, say, the last lap of a 3200 meter race. I don't think that I would have been able to go as hard in those races if I had focused on euphoria, bewilderment, or any number of other emotions. Another case of rage being portrayed in a positive light comes from Dylan Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle into that good night." The speaker of this poem attempts to convince his dying father to not give into the ease of death and to instead fight to keep living with the refrain "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." In this sense, rage is seen as a quality of the living and as a powerful feeling that can be harnessed to overcome adverse circumstances. With the famous refrain, Thomas asserts that rage is associated with life and is thus a higher emotion than indifference, which will forever be connected with death. Finally, Wallace Stevens' use of the word "blessed" in the first line of the final stanza in"The Idea of Order at Key West" may suggest that he wished to characterize our desperate search for order as not necessarily destructive, but as genuinely human and as sustained by the "maker." Perhaps Stevens was hinting that we are all destined to passionately seek order and that this pursuit is fundamentally connected to our vitality. In summation, I contend that the more positive aspects of rage not be overlooked when interpretting the last stanza of "The Idea of Order at Key West."

Response to Bizz B's post "He's real and solid but we still don't know the guy"

I tried to comment on Bizz's actual blog wall but I wasn't able to. I'll try to play around more and figure out how to do that. In the meantime, here's my response to her post:

I agree with Bizz that Nanson knows little of himself at the beginning of the novel, as he thinks more of concepts than of facts. His switch in emphasis to biography is beneficial, as not only does he begin to see the world in terms of the tangible, but he also begins to act instead of just think. What I mean by this is that Nanson goes out into the world and, in the process of searching for facts about Destry-Scholes, discovers how to be a human being. For instance, he gets a job and begins to interact with women, two aspects that most people would consider to be good indications of a functioning member of society. The root cause of this transformation is Nanson's decision to abandon post-modernist philosophy for biography. So basically, as we have already discussed in class, Nanson's pursuit of facts about Destry-Scholes leads Nanson to discover facts about himself, and by knowing himself he begins to truly live.

Reconciling magic and science

Scholes Destry-Scholes describes both Linnaeus and Galton experiencing supernatural events in the excepts of each man’s biography. Destry-Scholes seems to see a strong connection between magic and science, as on page 53 he comments that “Magic is closely entwined with science; alchemy, the occult sciences, astrology, however strange or to modern man unacceptable their systems of belief or projects, resemble the true sciences in their preoccupation with techniques of studying, and changing, the physical world.” This is quite the statement, as it suggests that science is concerned with not only “studying” the physical world, but also with “changing” the physical world. In other words, science seeks to transform things and facts into something they are not. Magic too is performed with the purpose of transforming and bending reality. The question then arises of which act better portrays a greater meaning, which act is a closer representation of order. The most common response to such a question, if presented to the general population, would probably be that a greater sense of order is derived from science than from magic because science explains observations while magic appears to defy what we see. But it is possible that reality is not what the eye sees and that our observations of the world around us are in some way distorted. If this is in fact the case, it would be inaccurate to base our conceptions of order on simple observations. This would mean that science is a deception of order and that perhaps magic better represents the order that all humans crave to find.

Reading into Destry-Scholes’ remarks this far is possibly overstepping the bounds of what he desired to confer, but it is clear that he wanted his readers to consider the value of magic in gaining a greater understanding of a worldly order. This is further evidenced by the fact that Destry-Scholes embellished the supernatural experiences of Galton and Linnaeus. In both cases there was but a seed of these scientists experiencing something magical or supernatural and Destry-Scholes extended these pieces of information to make up the stories of Linnaeus’ spirit exiting his body in the Lapland and Galton looking into a fire and witnessing a lifelike vision of corpses on a beach. At the very least, this illustrates that Destry-Scholes was deeply interested in the connection between magic and science and that he wished to convey this connection to his readers. And perhaps he realized that a statistician and a taxonomist were ultimately pursuing the same goal as a magician; that is the portrayal of the relationship between a higher order and what we as humans observe in our surroundings.

Finding things and facts from within: comments on The Biographer's Tale

Phineas G. Nanson abandons his study of postmodern literary theory and sets out to write a biography of the great biographer Scholes Destry-Scholes because, as Nanson articulates to one of his professors, “I need a life full of things, full of facts,” (page 7). Nanson begins to find, however, that Destry-Scholes has left few things or facts behind, and the little that is left behind is difficult to understand. Instead, Nanson increasingly derives his facts from himself as the novel becomes more about his interactions with various people and his responses when put in different situations than about his research of Destry-Scholes. Nanson thus discovers that “things and facts” can only come from within, and that his search for knowledge of a concrete nature has ultimately led to his own self. This connects with Rene Descartes often quoted line “I think, therefore I am,” as Nanson finds that the only true knowledge he can acquire is that which regards himself. In the end, this idea is all that Nanson or any human being can count on as true fact. One can attempt to find concrete knowledge of another through biography, but as Destry-Scholes illustrated in his embellishments and falsifications of the adventures of Linnaeus and Galton, everything is tainted by the biographer’s own presuppositions. Nanson comments on the impossibility of removing the writer from the story on page 248, “I now wonder…whether all writing has a tendency to flow like a river towards the writer’s body and the writer’s own experience?” He is correct in his assessment that all writing eventually leads back to oneself, as to write is, at its heart, to attempt to find concrete things or facts, and these things and facts can only be derived from within.

As a part of discovering the things and facts about himself, Nanson finds that the sense of order he seeks is present in science. Specifically, he comes to appreciate nature and its beings as genuine indications of a higher order. He remarks that “the senses of order and wonder, both, that I had once got from literature, I now found more easily and directly in the creatures,” (page 294). Similar to how Linnaeus found order in his classification system of biota, Nanson derives a sense of order from observing the interrelatedness of creatures in the natural world, from the way beetles joust for a mate to his own interactions with Fulla and Vera. Nanson himself, as a human being, is one of these creatures of the natural world, and it is fitting that his exploration and fascination with nature coincides with his discovery of the things and facts within him. As is remarked with regard to Henrik Ibsen in one of Destry-Scholes’ passages, all humans in some way possess the same qualities as creatures in nature. Perhaps by looking at nature Nanson was actually looking inside himself, and as such, establishing another means to achieve “things and facts.”