This review by Michael W. Clune (in The Point) of Céline’s novel War (the first English translation, by Charlotte Mandell, has just appeared) makes it sound like a book any Céline fan (me, for example) should investigate (“In War, he sets these elements swirling around each other, each interacting on each, to produce in the reader—me, at least—an absolute convulsion of hippopotamic laughter without any parallel in my experience, and which caused my wife and daughter to literally recoil in shock and disgust as I sat there in the corner reading”), but what brings me to post it here is this passage of literary analysis:
Perhaps the most original aspect of War—when compared both with Céline’s classic published novels of the 1930s, Death on the Installment Plan and Journey, as well as with most other great examples of dark comedy—is its liberation from the Quixotic model. Of course Don Quixote’s influence as the greatest and arguably the first Western novel extends far beyond dark comedy. But Céline’s example sensitized us to a special branch of Cervantes’s progeny—call it dark comic quixotism. Quixote provides the template for virtually all literary dark comedy that succeeded it, ranging from Gogol’s Dead Souls to Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust to George Schuyler’s Black No More to Nabokov’s Lolita to Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote.
Central to all these works is what I will call the Unidirectional Downward Comparison (UDC). Cervantes’s novel is organized around the comparison between the idealized images of chivalric romance and the quotidian images of daily life. Don Quixote sees windmills as giants, roadside taverns as castles. This constant comparison between the real and ideal takes a form so strange and even perverse in its logic that it’s very difficult to find analogues for it outside Don Quixote and its progeny. To explain it, I often draw on a photograph that a friend drew my attention to 25 years ago.
The photograph shows the rappers Big Pun and Fat Joe standing next to each other in a space without other visible objects. I think they were in an alley, with walls to either side of them. Perhaps the photo can still be found somewhere on the internet. At any rate, the feature that my friend pointed out to me was that, in setting up a comparison between Fat Joe and Big Pun, each made the other one look thinner. […]
The point is that this photograph is an example of a Unidirectional Downward Comparison, a comparison in which both terms travel in the same direction. Stop for a moment and reflect how contrary this dynamic is to our usual experience. Our thin friend will make us look fat, while we will accentuate their slenderness. Or our fat friend will make us look thin, while we will enhance observers’ sense of their girth.
Like the Big Pun/Fat Joe photo, the Don Quixote comparison pushes each term in the same direction: down. Each becomes lesser in the presence of the other. Each term of the comparison—the ideal and reality—makes the other one look worse. The idealized images, gestures and phraseology of the chivalric romance make the images, gestures and speech patterns of contemporary Spain look like crap. No, that’s not a palace, it’s a shitty inn. No, that’s not a princess, it’s a prostitute.
Yet, at the same time, reality makes the fantasy look bad. Chivalric romance appears delusional, idiotic. Sometimes the capacity to see the world through the lens of the ideal seems like selfish, willful escapism, leading directly to material harm for the unfortunates whose paths cross Don Quixote’s. Sometimes it simply seems insane.
The fictional world established by the UDC—a world structured by a real/ideal opposition which makes each term look worse, and where each shift between the real and the ideal deepens the worseness of both, as they sail, to borrow a phrase from Beckett, “worstward ho”—this kind of fiction is incompatible with satire. Because satire depends on some actual or implied term of comparison which is not degraded, corrupt, insane or vile. […]
Perhaps my all-time favorite example of the UDC is the moment in Dead Souls when the landowner Manilov drifts into a reverie, imagining that he and Chichikov—a man about whom he knows almost nothing—become such close friends that the tsar gives them a special award. The puerile insanity of this flight of idealism is brought into focus when one considers Chichikov’s identity as a low-level conman, on a mad quest to be recognized as a landowner by buying up the deeds of deceased serfs. Manilov’s gentle dream highlights the impossible degradation of the actual world, even as reality exposes in him a cluelessness amounting almost to a new kind of depravity. Like Céline’s thirties novels, Dead Souls constantly stages the confrontation between ideal and real to accelerate the degradation of both terms. […]
Journey and Death both feature Ferdinand’s attitude—the aspect of the novels that perhaps exerted the greatest influence on the initial wave of English-speaking Céline imitators—like Philip Roth or Kurt Vonnegut. But there’s no parallel in Céline’s previously published fiction to the proximity between this attitude and the surreal intensities of the vision of War. Between the delirium and the attitude, the published novels insert the ideal, which from the perspective of War now feels like a buffer, an avoidance mechanism. In Céline’s new novel, his attitude performs its dance steps and pickpocketing on the very verge of the abyss.
I’m just sorry jamessal isn’t here to appreciate the use of Big Pun and Fat Joe as touchstones.
this kind of fiction is incompatible with satire. Because satire depends on some actual or implied term of comparison which is not degraded, corrupt, insane or vile
I think he’s trying too hard here. Juvenal, whom it would be bizarre not to call a satirist, despises everyone, high and low. And I would certainly call Evelyn Waugh a satirist too.*
“Implied term of comparison” can be stretched to include anyone who ever suggests that anything might be at all suboptimal. The implication is just less obvious with some writers than with others. It doesn’t need to be made explicit to most of the audience likely to be receptive to the satire. They can join the dots themselves.
And Cervantes may have started out with the intention of writing an “everything is shit” parody, but Don Quixote ran away with him. That‘s why it’s something which transcends “satire.” Anyone who misses that doesn’t understand the book at all. Quixote may insane, but he’s not corruptv vile or degraded.
* In one of his letters, Waugh talks about a time he was accosted by two Swedish fangirls with “Mr Wog, you are a very great satyr.”
What a strange failure of the imagination.
Speaking of failures of imagination, why does Clune use “idealism” to mean “egoistic wish-fulfillment”?
I haven’t read Dead Souls, but it seems reasonable. One of M-W’s senses of “idealism” is
1
b: something that is idealized
and it defines “idealize” as
“1
a: to attribute ideal characteristics to
tended to idealize her teachers
b: to give an ideal form or value to
2: to treat idealistically
portraitists who idealize their subjects
Manilov is idealizing himself, Chichikov (as he knows him), and maybe the Tsar. Loosely, I’d compare another sense of “idealism”:
3: literary or artistic theory or practice that affirms the preeminent value of imagination as compared with faithful copying of nature
He may be insane, but
https://xkcd.com/556/
Yes, that’s a standard use of ideal, although Clune does seem to be equivocating as to which sense of ideal he means. Whether this actually undercuts his argument in any way, I’m not sure. I agree, though, that he certainly has an absurdly narrow view of what makes satire.
I wonder whether and how Lazarillo de Tormes, Quevedo’s El Buscón and other picaresque novels fit within these proclamations.
@David Eddyshaw:
A quick search suggests I may have strangely refrained from quoting before — and in any case I’m happy to quote again — our daily Borges.
Parábola de Cervantes y de Quijote
As translated by Andrew Hurley:
Parable of Cervantes and the Quijote
Happy Thanksgiving to all Hatters who give thanks.
I think he’s trying too hard here.
Well, sure, it’s that kind of essay — not the staid “on the one hand… but on the other…” kind.
Happy Thanksgiving to all Hatters who give thanks.
And the same right backatcha! We had a good turkey dinner at the sis-in-law’s, with plenty of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and wine, and now we’re back home recovering.
…huh. The canonical German version is Ritter von der traurigen Gestalt, which is pretty close to “sad sack”.
Norw. ridderen av den bedrøvelige skikkelse. That looks like it would be the same in Danish.
In English he can also have a Dolorous or Woeful Countenance, and probably others—yes, some discussion here.
I find Hurley’s addition of “of Mournful Countenance” odd. I don’t see a problem with “…the lean figure of the knight would be no less poetic…”
Thanks for sharing this essay, Hat—I love the idea of the UDC and was enthralled even before Clune got to Gogol.
Satire can mean a dozen things, but surely there’s a tradition of reading Juvenal as exactly the kind of satirist Clune is talking about, one who critiques life as it is for not living up to the one way life should be. I remember reading an early-twentieth-century British educator half-lamenting that his (or his students’?) generation didn’t like Juvenal as much as past generations, because they had lost their sense of and longing for the one strict moral way.
And I think there’s something in it. Satire 2 is a series of vicious attacks on one type after another, but they are constantly being compared to examples of virtue they fall short of (but hypocritically liken themselves to). You don’t have to look far to find an explicit “term of comparison which is not degraded, corrupt, insane or vile.”
Esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna
Cocytum et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras,
atque una transire vadum tot milia cumba
nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.
sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sentit et ambo
Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli,
quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuventus,
tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos
umbra venit? cuperent lustrari, si qua darentur
sulpura cum taedis et si foret umida laurus,
illic heu miseri traducimur.
That ghosts exist at all, or the realms of the Underworld,
Cocytus, and the whirl of black frogs in the Styx,
Or all those thousands crossing the flood in one boat,
Not even children believe, unless wet behind the ears.
But suppose it were true: what would the shade of Curius feel,
What of the shades of the Scipios, of Fabricius or Camillus?
What of the legion at Cremera, the young men ruined at Cannae,
The dead of all those wars, what would they feel when a ghost
Descended from here? They’d desire purification, if they had
There, the sulphur, the flaming torches, and the moist laurel.
Down there, alas, we’d be paraded in shame.
(translation by A. S. Kline)
An excellent example.
Seems to me Waugh, in his early works anyway, is also implicitly comparing everyone to an ideal that everyone falls short of, which is why the reader enjoys the satire. The narrator in a novel like „Handful of Dust” or „Scoop” is omnisciently superior to all the stupid venal characters, and the reader identifies with the narrator. „Everyone but me is an idiot” may verge on facile satire but it can still be satire.
“Doleful” is an adjective I have perhaps never seen other than attached to Don Quixote’s Countenance.
@Trond, almost: Ridderen af den bedrøvelige Skikkelse. Your v gives you away.
In El Caballero de la Triste Figura, as Jerry’s link says, it’s a bit hard to say exactly what de Saavedra meant. I modern Danish, han gør en bedrøvelig skikkelse is a near equivalent of ‘he makes a sorry figure’, not really fit for the task attempted — the turn of phrase may well be borrowed from there, or vice versa, but as a description of /dånkesjot/, it’s not current intellectual property. My mom (b. 1935) didn’t recall anything on those lines, but when I found it in the Danish version of geflügelte Worte (according to which it’s something that Sancho Panza calls his master), she did remember that it was a thing
Maybe I should start reading some Borges in the original.
>translation by A.S. Kline
The sexual politics is jarring, but “acquit the ravens, bring censure on the doves” is a line I’ll repeat in these times of the Matt Gaetz AG nomination, even if it wasn’t carried to term.
Since little is known of Juvenal the person, some used to try to reverse engineer an autobiography from Juvenal the satirist. Up to and including Gilbert Highet about seventy years ago. What modern interpreters like Susanna Morton Braund, since Anderson clarified the idea of persona, call the “biographical fallacy.”
From this one can decide, that since Juvenal was against everything, that he must have been a very strong moralist, and therefore a proto-Christian or maybe even aware of / influenced by Christianity. Macleane did note this, even as he called it “absurd,” though he didn’t name any names. The Church Fathers were, of course, fond of cherry-picking Juvenal against pagan immorality.
Highet was also on the wrong side of history (maybe not the losing side, given recent trends) when he refused to present a lecture on Vergil because the forum had invited someone from the Mattachine Society. Highet’s reasoning was that impressionable undergraduate minds ought not to be exposed to the temptation of such ideas. (Macleane, on that same page above, was sure that even the wicked of his day had none of the vice of the Second and Ninth Satires. He also cut the good parts out of Horace and Juvenal for schoolboys, pretending the MSS were obscure.)
All that said, The Classical Tradition and Juvenal the Satirist do have interesting coverage of the influence of Juvenal over the years, from a mid-century middle-brow point-of-view.
Still, I don’t think Highet is whom Erik M. had in mind, as I don’t think he anywhere reached that conclusion. He is also a bit later. Housman would be more early-twentieth-century, but he seemed even less concerned with that.
Oops. Messed up the italics and gateway timed out before getting back a cookie for editing.
Fixed!
@Jerry Friedman
Thanks for that linked essay. I had wrongly assumed that Jarvas or Smollett were coiners of “mournful countenance”, but it came much, much later.
source: https://franklycurious.com/wp/don-quixote-english/
a real Gloomy Gus.
Where is everybody ? It doesn’t take long to light that first Advent candle. I spent more time today watching The Whale and tracking down the fact that “vanity” occurs 38 times in Kohelet.
Back to commenting !
“Doleful” is an adjective I have perhaps never seen other than attached to Don Quixote’s Countenance.
Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda
Bleak House:
The bell that rings at nine o’clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power …
Great Expectations:
We had a doleful parting,
“vanity” occurs 38 times in Kohelet
Pa’an la yɛl ye, Li ka’ gbinnɛ! Li ka’ gbinnɛ! Asida si’el wʋsa ka’ gbinnɛ!
“The teacher says: It has no bottom! It has no bottom! Truly, everything has no bottom!”
Rocky Horror beibl.net has
Mae’n ddiystyr! – meddai’r Athro – Dydy e’n gwneud dim sens! Mae’r cwbl yn hollol absẃrd!
“It’s meaningless! – says the Teacher – It makes no sense! It’s all completely absurd!”
which seems to be overdoing it a bit, if you ask me. It lacks the simple dignity of the original Kusaal.
It has no bottom!
Was the teacher an old man ? To my dismay, with age comes a certain gluteal sarcopenia that precludes sitting anywhere you want. Here I call it Arschschwund, perhaps “booty fail” would be acceptable in American English. It’s still in the vainsaying spirit of hevel.
Indeed, the concepts show a definite affinity. I believe that Lakoff has dealt with the matter in prolapso.
An orientational metaphor ! “His power is on the decline.” That’s the Schwund part, put more sweetly.
Not yet stage 4: “prolapsus in cloacae foramen crus fregi“.
Obligatory.
This may be the immediate source of the beibl.net version.
Or perhaps via Llolgath.
In fairness to the (various) translators, it’s actually quite difficult to come up with modern renderings that convey the meaning clearly but don’t come over as merely petulant, as if Qoheleth was just having a bad hair day. The original avoids this by being all poetic and all.
(Perhaps, for the honour of the Kusaal Bible translators, I ought to say that the metaphorical use of gbin “base, bottom” for “meaning” is entirely usual and idiomatic.)
Many years ago (when my wife was still only my girlfriend) I attended a whole series of sermons by an earnest young American preacher on Ecclesiastes. At the time, I thought that he’d bitten off more than he could chew in selecting such an unforgiving text, but the fact that I can still remember quite a bit of the content some decades later suggests that I may have underestimated him. (He was a Congregationalist, like Oliver Cromwell. They are without fear.)
[Incidentally, I just discovered that Oliver was actually related, albeit distantly, to Thomas, as in Hilary Mantel, and that he was really a Williams from Glamorgan. Probably just as well that Dr Fagan did not know that.]
@DM: Holy Mother of Mary. Did someone actually take, what, a year? To compose this silliness?
What, you think cats are unworthy of hearing the Good News?
[On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.]
“Someone” seems to be a whole lot of people collectively (there was a forum discussing how best to translate difficult passages – and I don’t mean from English); and if you don’t think the following from the same page is sublime, I can’t help you.
(Too lazy to do the superscript today.)
Moar smartz, moar greefz
They always present that as a fact, but it’s only a threat – the smarter you think you are, the more grief we’re going to give you. My father once said to me that I read too many books. That was his explanation for why I was flipping out.
https://imgur.com/gallery/yes-i-will-be-working-on-that-osnCoGL
@stu
y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el celebro de manera que vino a perder el juicio
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.
Clearly not sleeping is also a conditioning factor. I suspect also that the content and style of the reading material could be important. Your father might not entertain these reasonable objections and might prefer you to engage in other pursuits.
Ah, Ecclesiastes. Few too many Es for my liking…
A lipogrammatic inicipit.
Eek! Heresy.
@PP: se le secó el celebro
I was going to protest that I’ve never been a celebrity susceptible to desiccation. But the RAE tells me that is an obsolete version of cerebro.
Maybe you could become a celebrity for cerebrity.
@stu
I got this text from an official site (Cervantes Institute?), so I decided it was probably not a typo 😊.
Regular dissimilation, undone by cerebral innerlectuals.
@Stu, i was lying fallow due to a virus of some sort. I may have something to say on the subject of the Preacher (as the guy is known in the Danish Bible; Prædikerens Bog. Note that we are not uptight enough to pronounce the second syllable. Unlike the Swedes).
Also I bought an LED countdown candle that changes the date automatically, If we can find it again next year, it will probably save a few grams of CO2. But the reduction in indoor particles should be immediate.
innerlekshuals, surely?
“Holy Mother of Mary…”
That would be St. Anne.