I just got back from London. It's the same filthy city it was when I left it, but somehow, that was exactly what I needed. I needed the soil of exhaust pipes and kebab shops after months of clean sea air and fresh fruit every day. Bring on the soot, grime and crime of London.
This is something quite fundamental to literature, I think. Desiring evil. Oscar Wilde was famous for saying clever things about how evil is a projection of one's hidden desires. I left this little village on Friday, tired of its cleanliness and simplicity. I wanted the grimy, filthy streets of London, precisely because they're scummy.
So is that what we should be concerned with in this blog? The idea that there is something fundamental to literature in desiring what is bad for you, that is. I ask the question in all sincerity, given that I don't think we set out with a particular goal. We're sort of grappling around in the dark in the hope of finding one, but that - hopefully - doesn't make it any the worse.
Isn't this the same darkness which envelops Radhika? The snow of words which, flake by flake, leads you into the sombre exploration of literature. I'm only guessing, because I don't consider myself a writer. With every book you read, you sink deeper in your understanding of literature. But what does that mean?
I think literature is a
catabasis. A journey into the underworld. A good novel should not only carry you out of your seat and into a new and fascinating world (a
novel world) but also teach you something about the iceberg of our subconscious which we don't dare explore in our normal waking hours. We read Baudelaire's
Les Fleurs du Mal because we can discover something fascinating about our own desires, about that which isn't said in everyday language. Like Odysseus, we meet the protagonists of mythology in an underworld both painful and attractive.
In
The Odyssey, Odysseus ventures into the underworld and meets Ajax, Hector, and all the heroes of
The Iliad in their equivalent of hell. He ventures there out of a singular curiosity, and is changed by the voyage. Improved by it. His attitude in the rest of the poem is far more mature, developed, and even wise. He becomes more than a boorish 'sacker of cities', because he has heard of the afterlife from the very voices of his ancestors.
Georges Bataille wrote of the concept of evil (le mal) in 20th century fiction, and how it has shaped our understanding of literature. He expands on the example of Charlotte Bronte's
Wuthering Heights, where Heathcliffe is a symbol of the attractiveness of evil. He is desirable not in spite of his cruelty, but precisely because of it. This is, according to Bataille, what we seek when we read novels. We are interested in tragedy not because we like to see people die, but because we are curiously attracted to evil.
I would see his idea in a slightly different way. Coming back to Odysseus'
catabasis (literally - descent into the underworld), I think that we read literature in order to know ourselves better. We empathise with Homer's characters and follow their adventures not out of an interest in Greek seamen (almost a Freudian slip there...) but because they reveal something about ourselves. By seeing the evil in a character, we are attracted to our own evil feelings; we are putting into words the emotions which our subconscious has censored, and passing them off as somebody else's.
The literature which has marked me most is the sort which 'corrupts', the controversial literature which well-meaning parents and journalists would like to ban. I relished
The Picture of Dorian Gray, and still love teaching it, because it is about transgression. Dorian is realising the boundaries of his own psyche, and gradually crossing each one, without having to pay the price for it. Of course there is always a price. But that doesn't make the journey any the less worthwhile. From Victor Hugo to Paul Auster, the books which have kept me awake at night are those which explore things you don't hear on daytime TV. My favourite films are also those which are disturbing and show us what we don't like to see about ourselves. Kubrick, David Lynch, Lars Von Triers... I think that the films which have enlightened me are precisely the darkest ones. Light through darkness.
The closure of Radhika's poem is almost as if the darkness is an ending, a return to a foetal state of unrest. The woman in the bubble is somehow protected from the snow outside, but at the same time is threatened by it, and prefers the oppression of silence. A
catabasis of nothingness.
Perhaps I might need to spend some more time in London after all.
D
