Hooked On Literature - Part 9

 Having won them over with my lectures on Racine, reading with them the first great novel of French literature, La Princesse de Clèves by Mme de La Fayette, was a very non-confrontational experience. It was necessary first of all, however, to address several objections they made.  The first had to do with what they considered the author’s pernicious use of hyperbole to describe the French court. Why is it, they asked, that every aristocrat is supremely handsome or beautiful? Why is the court of King Henri II viewed as the most glitteringly attractive?

The second objection bore upon the many secondary narratives that, according to my students, did absolutely nothing to advance the main story. Why didn’t the novelist simply do away with them? That way, the tragedy involving the three principal characters would have been much tighter and moved along much more swiftly. My reaction to their first criticism was to agree in part with them.

Certainly, Mme de La Fayette is indulging in gross exaggeration; certainly, the court of Louis XIV that she transposed onto that of Henri II a century earlier was never as uniformly dazzling as she asserted. But her purpose was to stress the fact that these noblemen, like the heroes of Racine’s plays, were liberated from the material contingencies in which ordinary mortals get bogged down, and so could concentrate exclusively on their two vital interests: love and power, the two often inseparably linked.

As for the secondary stories, granted, they do nothing to advance the main one, but in their various ways, they adumbrate the terrible emotional conflicts that will rend the hearts of the three principal characters. They all orchestrate on different registers the very same theme of the suffering passion inflicts on its victims. And once the principal story acquires its momentum, the secondary ones just fall by the wayside.For those who have never read La Princesse de Clèves or who have only vague recollections of the novel, a résumé will be useful to better understand the very animated discussions I had with my students.

The heroine, a 17 years old girl of noble blood, is the most dazzlingly beautiful creature in the whole French court. The Prince of Clèves, every bit her aristocratic equal, falls madly in love with her. The young lady is touched by his ardent passion without feeling any excitement herself when she finds herself in his presence. Indeed, she seems to be totally insensitive to passion and, consequently, sincerely believes she is incapable of experiencing it. Their marriage is for her an affectionate friendship; for her husband it becomes a source of frustration since she appears incapable of returning the burning love he feels for her.

Hooked on Literature - Part 8

In Phèdre, as my students didn’t fail to notice, the fatality seems even more internalized. The heroine tightens the trap into which she has fallen with every word she utters and with every act she commits. From the moment she confesses her forbidden love to her confidant, Oenone, Phèdre sets herself on an irreversible course of self-destruction. When she approaches her stepson, Hippolyte, it is not her intention to declare her passion for him.

The declaration pours out against her conscious will. By the time she becomes aware of the fact that she is stripping herself bare before her horrified stepson, it is too late to stop. To save her sullied honour, she allows Oenone to slander Hippolyte. Then, overcome with guilt over this ghastly decision, she is on the verge of denouncing herself to her husband, Thésée. However, just when Phèdre is about to regain control of herself, recover her dignity, and confess her wrongdoing, she learns from the very man she was ready to cuckold that his son is in love with another woman.

Devoured now by jealousy, her noble intention is nullified. Blaming the gods and her loyal servant, Oenone, for the terrible crisis into which she has sunk, she allows herself to be submerged by the idea of her cruel fate instead of rushing forward to save Hippolyte from his father’s fury. All that is left for her to do, then, is to poison herself in a final act of self-loathing and admit to her husband in her dying breath that his son was innocent.

The pessimism expressed in this play appears utterly despairing and implacable. Nevertheless, as I emphasized to my class, the subtext, if one deciphers it attentively, reveals something very different and quite exalting. Phèdre often deplores her helplessness in coping with her guilty passion. She accuses the gods of having programmed her to commit the irreparable. Yet simultaneously she judges herself mercilessly and condemns her transgressions, thereby implying that she does indeed possess the free will necessary to combat her apparent predestination. If she were really the slave of her erotic lusts and powerless to resist them, the notion of freedom to choose one’s course of action would be meaningless.

The tragedy, then, places us at a crucial crossroads. On the one hand, man seems condemned by a cruel fate to commit actions of which he is ashamed. On the other hand, he possesses the necessary energy and lucidity to fight it if only he is willing to make use of these resources. How many modern pop artists or rappers, I asked my students, could present the contradictions of our human condition in such a stunning light?  After several months of classes with me, they were ready to agree.   

Hooked On Literature - Part 7

Other examples of the evocative power of mythology abound in this play, and I did not fail to bring them to my students’ attention. The two I emphasized most were the sun god, Apollo, and the labyrinth. Phèdre invokes him in the first act where she cowers in fear and shame at the idea of appearing in broad daylight. She is terrified that the dazzling light of her ancestor, the Sun, will expose the secret she would like to conceal even from herself. In the fourth act, overcome by self-loathing, she imagines the sky opening up and revealing Apollo as well as her other ancestors accusing her of having condemned an innocent man.

The presence of these gods can be interpreted as a metaphor for her moral conscience that multiplies the infinite feelings of guilt. As for the labyrinth, I told my students it could be viewed in two ways. It could be seen as the metaphor for the intricacies of sexuality into which Phèdre longs to initiate her chaste stepson. In a near-delirium of passion in the second act, she imagines herself replacing her sister, Ariane, and Hippolyte replacing his father to relive the episode of the slaying of the minotaur in the labyrinth. It is Hippolyte’s scandalized reaction that brings her forcibly back to reality. We can also read into the labyrinth the secret place into which Phèdre yearns to escape with Hippolyte in order to avoid scrutiny by both men and gods.

Given the erotic passions intensified by references to Greek mythology that explode within Phèdre and Andromaque, my students came to the conclusion, with a bit of prodding from me, that the rule of the three unities was perfectly suitable for Racine’s conception of tragedy and, consequently, really made sense. According to this rule, the action must take place within a maximum time of twelve hours; it must unfold in one place; it must not have any secondary plots grafted onto it.

For audiences living in the 21st century and attuned to the marvellous techniques available in the cinema and television for manipulating time and space, the three unities appear completely arbitrary and suffocating. But as I demonstrated to my students, Racine’s tragedies are crises clamouring for a swift resolution. If the rule of the three unities hadn’t existed before his time, Racine would have invented it. In Andromaque and Phèdre, I explained, time is what happens before the curtain rises. In the first play, Pyrrhus has been shuttling between his captive, Andromaque, and his betrothed, Hermione, for an indefinite period, unable to make up his mind between marrying the disdainful Trojan woman of whom he is enamoured or committing himself to an adoring adolescent who leaves him indifferent. In the second play, Phèdre is languishing away from a mysterious illness caused by her repressed passion for her stepson. She has longed for him from a distance since her marriage to the young man’s father, Thésée, several years earlier. As we learn at the beginning of the play, she has persecuted him in a desperate and futile attempt to exorcize this forbidden love.

Consequently, as I pointed out to my students, the dramatic situation resembles a package of dynamite. All that is needed is a spark to make it blow up. The spark is provided by an incident that takes place in the first act. In Andromaque, Oreste appears in Pyrrhus’ court as the Greek ambassador. He demands on behalf of the Greeks that the king hand over Andromaque’s son to be assassinated. This provides Pyrrhus with the pretext he needs to blackmail the woman he craves: agree to marry me, he insists, or I will send your son to his death. Andromaque’s reactions, as she fluctuates between defiance and maternal compassion, simply aggravate an already very tense situation and eventually provoke a catastrophe.

In Phèdre, the false news of her husband’s death encourages Phèdre to confess her love for her stepson. When this news proves to be unfounded and Thésée reappears, her shame so dominates her that she allows her servant, Oenone to slander the young man’s reputation. In her state of depression and exhaustion, she does not stop Oenone from accusing Hippolyte of trying to rape his stepmother during his father’s absence. Once the tragic machine is set in motion, it crushes all its victims, either physically or emotionally, with an inexorable swiftness.

Having accepted the parameters within which the two tragedies unfold, my students found it easy to relate to their contents. They readily agreed when I told them that for me Racine’s works are at least as relevant to our times as they were to his, since they conjure up the inhuman or sub-human forces that erupt within man/woman, opening up an abyss of madness and cruelty into which he/she gets swallowed up. Racine’s tragedies are perhaps even more relevant now inasmuch as our 20th and, alas, the first ten years of our 21st centuries have witnessed the worst explosions of hatred in the whole history of mankind. In the past, I said, we could delude ourselves into thinking that these manifestations of evil were localized. Now we know they are universal.

What makes them even more frightening in Racine’s tragedies is that they are touched off by an emotion we normally hope will bring uplifting joy and fulfilment to those who experience it: love. This is why, perhaps, Racine has been referred to as “le tendre Racine.” But as my students soon found out for themselves, Racine is not tender; he is ferocious in his depiction of love. In his tragedies, love serves as the catalyst for the unleashing of the most violent, destructive reactions known to man. Love certainly exists here, but my students discovered that in most cases it was of a very degrading variety.

In Andromaque, the protagonists are all riveted to the same infernal psychological chain. They are condemned to love the very person who is either indifferent to their needs or considers their presence thoroughly repulsive. As my students noticed with impressive perceptiveness, according to whether Andromaque seems willing or unwilling to accept Pyrrhus’ marriage proposal, the others experience either joy or fury. When she is inclined to look favourably upon her captor, her rival, Hermione, is consumed with jealous rage, and Hermione’s unsuccessful suitor, Oreste as well as the man who disdains her, Pyrrhus, are jubilant. When Andromaque appears to reject Pyrrhus’ passion, Hermione swings from despair to rapture, but Pyrrhus and Oreste seethe with anger.

What is especially frightening in these relationships is that all of these tormented characters have flashes of lucidity during which they realize that they are entertaining delusions. Yet their reason is powerless to neutralize their passions. They walk like somnambulists into the abyss.

Hooked on Literature - Part 6

With regard to Racine’s other tragedy, Phèdre, I observed that the playwright uses Greek mythology as sumptuous metaphors to evoke complex states of consciousness or profound emotional turmoil. The heroine, Phèdre, is torn between her moral integrity and her lusting for her husband’s son, Hippolyte, by a previous marriage. Racine conjures up this inner torment by drawing upon the myth of Minos and Pasiphaë.

According to Greek legend, Minos was the incorruptible ruler of the kingdom of Crete, and became the judge of all mortals in the underworld after their deaths. His wife, Pasiphaë, punished by the gods, was overcome by a monstrous passion for a bull. The result of this union was the minotaur, half-human and half-animal with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. To hide their shame, Minos had an inextricable labyrinth built for this creature. Every year, the city of Athens had to send 40 adolescents to serve as nourishment for the monster.

Thesée, the young Athenian hero was sent by his city to slay the Minotaur. With the help of Arianne, Phèdre’s older sister who led him through the labyrinth, he confronted and killed the sanguinary creature, after which, being fickle-hearted, he abandoned her on the island of Naxos.

Thus Phèdre’s terrible drama of passion is conveyed through constant references to her ancestors, they being the tangible manifestations of her genetic endowment. Her father, Minos, represents her moral conscience that impels her to condemn herself with ruthless lucidity. Pasiphaë on the other hand depicts the irrational and seemingly irresistible erotic cravings within her nature that are condemning her to covet her step-son.

Even the Alexandrine verse that the disdainful Hippolyte uses to describe Phèdre resumes grippingly the contradictory forces that are tearing her apart. Incidentally, this is how I managed to sneak in a very laudatory remark about Racine’s greatness as a poet, and coming as it did at such an opportune moment, my students listened attentively. Here is the verse, one of the most famous in French literature:

La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë

The first half of this verse with its flowing, dignified rhythm suggests Phèdre’s father, the imperturbably serene judge; the second half, however, with its syllables rushing headlong and crashing into the open “a,” followed, after a hiatus, by the disquieting sound “ë,” depicts the demonic erotic energy of Phèdre’s mother. Thus Phèdre’s conflict, the result of the two opposing tendencies within her genetic endowment, is rendered with admirable concision and power within the twelve syllables of this alexandrine.

Hooked on Literature - Part 5

In fact, Dorine, the maid in the service of Orgon’s family for many years and an astute observer of human nature makes a remark in the first act that legitimizes such a view. She states that her master feels for the religious hypocrite the kind of passion that a man would normally express for a beloved mistress. Citing Planchon as an example of imaginative literary criticism, I, therefore, encouraged my students to be personal as long as they could base their arguments on a sharp and loyal analysis of the text. And what is reading well if not creating to the second degree?

Racine’s Andromaque and Phèdre were the next works on the program. Teaching them, I felt, would be much more problematic. In the first place, the protagonists function in a rarefied social atmosphere. They are aristocrats or rulers. Some are not only of royal blood, they come enveloped in an aura of legend. Once I explained the milieu in which Tartuffe unfolded, namely, a rich upper-middle-class family in the throes of a frightening dilemma, my students could easily identify with it. But how could I make Racine’s remote, larger-than-life characters believable to young adults of the 21st century? Then there was the issue of Greek mythology.

The public school systems rarely teach it nowadays. And unless university students have taken courses in Greek or Latin literature, they will in all probability have only the faintest notion of what these ancient stories contain. Finally, in Racine’s tragedies, the protagonists are constantly “bumping into” one another, since their relationships unfold as well as unravel in a very narrow, fixed physical space. How could I make young adults used to the fluidity of movie narratives accept the rule of the three unities that make this physical space necessary? Of course, Molière, too, observes the rule of the three unities, but students can connect much more readily with the characters and so tend to forget that the action is limited essentially to one place.

I pre-empted my students’ objections by stressing that what they considered liabilities to their appreciation of Racine’s tragedies were actually assets. Yes, the protagonists are of royal lineage or have a mythological origin. Their social and poetic stature enables them to move in spheres that would be impossible for ordinary mortals. But in literature, this is a distinct advantage. Most of the time our lives are either failed comedies or incomplete tragedies. We are subjected to routines, habits, and obstacles that prevent us from realizing our potential, either for good or evil.

Racine’s noble characters do not suffer from these material constraints. Since they are liberated from all the daily burdens and contingencies that plague us, they can abandon themselves totally to their passions and, in the process, show us to what extent we could go ourselves if we enjoyed such freedom. In short, they hold up an aggrandizing mirror in which we can view our own tendencies magnified way beyond the limits of ordinary existence.

(The rule of the three unities was adhered to scrupulously by French dramatists of the 17th century. According to this rule, a play had to unfold within a period of 24 hours maximum, in the same place, and its action had to be simple.)

The mythological issue was, surprisingly enough, relatively easy to justify in my students’ eyes. I informed them that whether they were aware of it or not, they, too, were enthralled by myths, if one defines the term as imaginary narratives with fabulous dimensions that give tangible forms to deep-seated yearnings, dreams, and questions about the meaning of our human condition. The wild success of cinema epics like Star Wars and literary series such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter exemplify this tendency. Racine, I emphasized, has recourse to ancient Greek mythology in order to enhance his tragedies.

As I pointed out, in Andromaque the Trojan War provides the fabulous setting against which the action unfolds. In fact, the protagonists’ deepest emotions, and their attraction-repulsion relationships to one another can be traced back to that catastrophic event. Andromaque, widow of the Trojan hero, Hector slain in battle, and now captive of the Greek king, Pyrrhus is haunted by an un-erasable traumatic experience. She witnessed the bloody capture of her city, Troy by the enemy forces, and their barbaric cruelty towards her fellow citizens during the course of a night that seemed endless. Pyrrhus appeared to her for the first time against this nocturnal backdrop of savagery. How could she, then, ever respond to her captor’s entreaties that she return the desperate love he feels for her?

Pyrrhus in turn is convinced that even in death Andromaque’s dead husband, Hector, is casting his shadow over their relationship. He senses he will never be able to compete against the Trojan warrior whose memory she worships. Hermione, the young Greek princess betrothed to Pyrrhus is furious that she cannot unleash the passions her mother, Helen did.

It was the latter, after all, whose amorous philandering touched off the war in the first place. Oreste, the lover Hermione treats with contempt, comes from a family cursed by a cruel fate. His father, the Greek king Agamemnon, a combatant in the Trojan War, sacrificed a daughter to the gods in order to curry their favour. This act led to a chain of tragedies: his wife, Clytemnestra avenged what she considered a horrible deed by murdering him in his bath, whereupon Oreste, her son, slaughtered her and her paramour. 

Now, tormented by guilt over the murder of his mother, he has a premonition of the madness that will overwhelm him at the end of the tragedy. Thus, as I remarked to my students, although Andromaque unfolds in a very limited physical space, the Trojan War and its ramifications constitute the omnipresent dimension of the dramatic action.

Hooked on Literature - Part 4

My students were more than willing to accept the play’s action/narrative until the dénouement. Then they balked. They felt the King of France’s intervention in extremis through the intermediary of his Exempt de Police was completely implausible.

Those who are familiar with the play will recall that just as Orgon and his family are about to be despoiled and Orgon apprehended as an enemy of the state, Louis XIV, acting through his Police Inspector, unmasks Tartuffe as a dangerous criminal, orders him seized and thrown into prison, and restores Orgon’s wealth and honour. I could understand my students’ reaction. In fact, I was expecting it. The conclusion of the play is too good to be true since the king intervenes as a deus ex machina to save the family from a dreadful fate and to punish an obnoxious evil-doer.

But, as I told my students, this is the point Molière wants to make and he makes it with this artificial ending. Through this fairy-tale conclusion, the playwright implies that in real life Virtue and justice would not necessarily have triumphed, and crime would not necessarily have been punished. We have been witnessing a comedy, and so the ending had to be a happy one. If Molière had conceived his play as a serious drama, however, the action could have ended in a very different way. I added that although Molière wanted his audiences to laugh at our human foibles, he also wanted them to think of the dreadful consequences resulting from stupid behaviour. And my students agreed with me that he did succeed brilliantly.  

During the course of our discussions, my students noticed that there were among themselves differences of interpretation of the play as well as of the characters. And they were struck by the fact that their views did not always or necessarily coincide with mine. I told them not to worry about it. Great literature, I assured them, is characterized by its polyvalence of expression. A text like Tartuffe explores a region of the human condition so complex and ambivalent that there cannot be one single, definitive assessment of it. And thank goodness for that, otherwise what would be the point of reading works written several hundred years ago?

It is perfectly legitimate, I told them, to extend a given text provided one does not reach conclusions that contradict it. I then referred to the French director, Roger Planchon’s famous setting of Molière’s play. He imagines Tartuffe and his adulator, Orgon, in a homosexual relationship. Granted, there is nothing in the play that explicitly corroborates this angle. On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing in the text that contradicts it.

Hooked On Literature - Part 3

This discussion I had with my class—and it was a very animated one—provided me with a very simple, elegant, and organic transition to another aspect of the play: its structure. In general, children of the digital age loathe talking about such matters because they seem so arcane, so divorced from their practical realities. But once I convinced them that Orgon was the more dangerous of the two, it was easy to make them understand why the structure of a literary text is so important.  Here the action revolves around the family’s endeavour to destroy Tartuffe in order to save the head of the household from himself and, consequently, to save itself from his religious lunacy.

As I emphasized to my students, the first two acts of the play dwell on the nefarious influence the religious hypocrite exerts over the credulous fool who believes in him unconditionally. We don’t see Tartuffe himself until the third act. This enables Molière to evoke a frightening albeit comic paradox. Tartuffe wields total power over his benefactor, Orgon and, by extension, over the latter’s family. Yet it is Orgon’s naïveté that sustains this power. If Orgon’s judgment were not poisoned by his fanatical belief in his fraudulent hero, he and his family would never be threatened and Tartuffe would have to find another gullible victim to prey on. I then pointed out that in the third and fourth acts Elmire, Orgon’s lovely wife will lead the attack against the religious hypocrite.

She knows that Tartuffe secretly covets her. She will use his obsession with her flesh as leverage against him. She requests a meeting with him in order to get him to agree not to marry Marianne, Orgon’s daughter from a previous marriage. This was one of Orgon’s hair-brained ideas. Naturally, in the presence of the woman he lusts after, his ardent libido breaks through his mask of piety. He ends up confessing his erotic passion for her.

Elmire could have used this confession as blackmail against him. Unfortunately, Orgon’s son, Damis, overhears their conversation and denounces Tartuffe to his father. Far from feeling gratitude towards his son for unmasking the fraud, Orgon is convinced his family is determined to sully the virtue of a holy man. Not only does he refuse to believe the accusations against Tartuffe, he disinherits his son and designates the hypocrite as his sole heir.

Now, as I stressed to my students, Elmire must have recourse to draconian measures. She must set up a sexual ambush for Tartuffe and have her husband witness his idol’s attempt to seduce her. Only a visual experience will save Orgon from his terminal intellectual and moral blindness. The strategy works because Tartuffe’s sensual cravings make him fall into the trap. Outraged, Orgon orders him out of his home. The play could have ended there.

However, as I reminded my students, Orgon had bequeathed all of his possessions to Tartuffe, and so it is the religious hypocrite who orders his benefactor to leave. Moreover, in his incredible naïveté Orgon had entrusted to the care of his false idol incriminating documents that, if uncovered by the government of France, would provide sufficient evidence to condemn him as a traitor to his country. These unexpected plot complications justify a fifth act where Molière adroitly keeps us in suspense until all the issues are resolved in the final scene.

So far so good.

Hooked On Literature - Part 2

I used it to lay down the parameters within which we would work and to establish the rapports de force in our relationship. “I demand that you listen to me with utmost attention when I talk, and I promise I’ll do the same for you,” so I concluded my impromptu moral lecture within the lecture. From then on the first class and all the others unfolded without any problems. In fact, the committed students expressed their gratitude to me for having neutralized the compulsive talkers. Apparently, the same zappers had made a colleague’s life miserable in the first semester.

I gained, then, the class’ respect, but in turn, I had to deliver the goods. Fortunately, Molière’s comedy, Tartuffe was the first work on the program. I could not have chosen a more appropriate text to illustrate the extraordinary relevance of the literature I was teaching. To make my students realize this, however, I had to connect Molière’s play to the 21st century. The frightening rise in religious fundamentalism accompanied by the self-righteous bigotry, hypocrisy and violence associated with it provided me with the perfect context.

Those familiar with the comedy will remember that two characters dominate it: Tartuffe, a religious hypocrite, and his gullible dupe, Orgon. Tartuffe is a totally cynical, lecherous adventurer. He skillfully uses the Christian faith to satisfy his craving for money, power, and sex. While imposing his brand of puritanical tyranny on Orgon’s family, he is trying hard to seduce his benefactor’s wife, Elmire. So the question I asked of the class was the following: of the two, which one do you consider the most dangerous? For many, it was unequivocally Tartuffe.

He is the cancer within Orgon’s mind and heart. He is responsible for the increasingly violent antagonism between the head of the family and his children. He persuades Orgon to disinherit his own son in the name of lofty principles, and when finally unmasked by Elmire, nearly makes good on his threat to have them dispossessed and thrown out on the street. How, then, could anyone doubt that Tartuffe was the principal villain and a ruthless one at that?

But a minority in the class, myself included, maintained that the most dangerous of the two by far was Orgon. Tartuffe may well be a repulsive hypocrite, but you can always negotiate with a hypocrite. Every hypocrite has his price. If you are willing to pay the price, you can neutralize him. Orgon, on the contrary, is a fanatic. He sincerely believes that what he is doing is absolutely right. Far from being a virtue, his sincerity constitutes the ugliest of vices. He invokes religion to justify giving vent to all of his latent sadism without feeling monstrous about it. He can torture his family and feel good about it. In fact, the power Tartuffe wields over Orgon and Orgon’s family is based exclusively on the latter’s gullibility. If Orgon had been as lucid as the other members of his household, Tartuffe’s power would have collapsed within seconds.   

 

Hooked On Literature - Part 1

 Several years after retiring, I received a panic-stricken call from my former department. There was no specialist available to teach the upper-level seventeenth-century literature course, indispensable for the honours program in French literature at Brock University. Would I come to the rescue? Feeling loyalty to my colleagues and being a glutton for punishment as well, I agreed. Within five minutes after entering the classroom I could sense that something was wrong.

Although a dozen or so of the thirty-odd students making up the group seemed very attentive and eager to learn, the majority were children of the digital age. Or, to put it less charitably, their attention span appeared rather limited. They viewed their professor and his lecture the same way they would a television show. If it didn’t catch their attention within the first few seconds, they would zap it. And this is what they proceeded to do with me. Since they couldn’t literally turn me off, they began talking with their fellow-students.

Armed with a more than forty-years experience as a teacher, I knew I had to do something very dramatic right then and there, otherwise I would lose them for the rest of the session. I stopped dead in the middle of a sentence—or was it in the middle of a syllable—and, addressing them in a cool, imperious tone of voice, said, “O.K., you guys, let’s get a few things straight right at the outset. I’m not a lowly part-time lecturer or tenure-track assistant professor. I don’t have to suck up to you to get good evaluations. I couldn’t care less whether you love or hate me. As Professor Emeritus, I’m at the top of the heap. Nothing you say, think or do will make the slightest difference to my career. The only thing that interests me is proving to you that these great French writers who lived over three hundred years ago are capable of speaking to you more eloquently about your hang-ups, your fears, your hopes, your aspirations and your dreams than just about any rock stars or rappers who live far closer to you in time and space. I don’t believe in democracy in the classroom and I’m not going to change. You will have to change if you want to remain here. I will not tolerate overgrown bedwetters in my classroom.”

There was a moment of utter stupor. The class was obviously not used to being addressed so bluntly...

The French View on Love and Sex

Of all the countries in the Western World, France is probably the one that North Americans love to love or hate the most. One of the reasons for this ambivalence is the attitude of the French themselves towards romantic relationships and sex. The citizens of France find passion fascinating. Indeed, as their literature, art and films emphasize, it is the most exhilarating of experiences. However, while being committed to romance, they insist on remaining realistic about its ability to survive the vicissitudes of time and circumstances.

This insistence on being realistic can often be construed by non-French as flippancy and cynicism. When a North American overhears a sardonically lucid comment on the short-lived nature of passion, he/she is likely to remark: “Oh, that’s a typically French reaction!” Often the French will go overboard in mocking the self-righteous seriousness associated with so many conceptions of love. I’ll never forget the pungent line in the movie La Cage aux folles, the French version, of course. One of the partners in a homosexual couple seeks out his former wife with whom he has had a child. Their son is a young adult now and engaged to a lovely girl. The girl’s parents, however, are up-tight, middle-class puritans. It is important that they swallow the illusion that the young man’s father, an openly gay man, is married to a decent, virtuous woman. So the father entreats his former wife to agree to play the role of a respectable, loving mother and preside over a dinner in honour of their son’s future in-laws. To convince her, he invokes the passion they once felt for each other, and ends by saying “You whom I loved for fifteen long minutes.”

Now I will hasten to add that the French people I know are capable of loving as deeply as any of us in North America. Their marriages could even serve as models. But they understand the weaknesses inherent in our human nature and refuse to condemn sexual attraction as being intrinsically wrong or sinful. On the contrary: they view it as being an integral part of life and something to be enjoyed to the full. No neuroses of guilt and repression for them! This is why my colleagues and friends in Perpignan, France, were absolutely aghast when a Canadian professor back in the 80s was crucified for having had an affair with one of his female students. The student in question was a hysterical virgin of 28. She was pursuing the man energetically, determined to harpoon him. In fact, she thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being initiated by him into the labyrinth of sex. She turned on him only when he gave her a B grade for the course. She probably felt that she deserved an A+ for her extra-curricular activities!

My French friends were astounded by what they viewed as Canadian self-righteous, neurotic, sex-obsessed Puritanism. One lady in the town who was a feminist before the word was invented—she ran her own driving school—said to me: “If he deflowered her at 28 she should have thanked him for it!” Another friend in Paris had a similar reaction. Although an orthodox Jew, he still had the wicked French sense of humour. “He deflowered her at 28,” he exclaimed? “The poor man, he probably had to blast through her with dynamite.”

I think we in North America could use a good dose of the lady and gentleman’s realism and sense of humour. We can work ourselves up into paroxysms of self-righteous indignation over the sexual misdemeanours of stars like Tiger Woods, yet we tend to forget that the pornographic industry here is worth billions of dollars. A little more common sense and much less hypocrisy would be most welcome.   

The Confession of an Opera-Addict

I am a self-confessed opera addict. Although I know my attitude is totally wrong, in my secret heart of hearts I would probably consign all other art forms to hell. My addiction began when I was six years old. My father always tuned into the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. I could barely understand what was going on, but even then the music, voices, and drama made a visceral impact on me. Even the primal screaming seemed so melodious!

As I matured, I figured out why this art exerted such a pull on me. Instead of expressing conflicts in words, it evokes them through singing. It uses the throbbing urgency of the human voice, rising on a sumptuous carpet of orchestral sound, to convey to us dramas with an immediacy and intensity that mere words simply cannot muster. I realize that most opera scripts would fall flat if produced as straight plays. They have to be elementary in order to give the music space to breath.

It is the music, therefore, and the compelling power of great voices soaring through an auditorium without microphones that give us stunning insights into our emotions. Opera goes straight into the very sanctuary of our hearts where our deepest, most elemental feelings well up, and so arouse us in a way that words almost never can. I think Julia Roberts in the film Pretty Woman made one of the funniest and most appropriate comments on how this art can rev us up. At the end of a performance of Verdi’s masterpiece, La traviata, a bejewelled old dowager sitting in the box next to her asked her what her impressions were. In a burst of spontaneous enthusiasm, Julia replied: “Gee, I was so excited I nearly pissed in my pants!”

This was exactly my reaction when we attended two performances of Bizet’s Carmen, the first in Toronto at the Canadian Opera Company, the second beamed from the Metropolitan Opera in New York onto a giant movie screen. I was struck again by the powerful depiction of human relations Carmen affords us. This is the tragedy of two individuals who should never have met, because they hold incompatible views of what love is all about. Carmen, the Gypsy, embodies the craving for total freedom. Don José, a soldier, represents a need for total possession of the person loved. The moment they cast eyes on one another they were on a collision course. For Carmen, love signifies an adventure or an exciting “fling.” Once it’s over, you simply move on to the next one. For Don José, an erotic monomaniac tormented nevertheless by a need for order, the beloved must accept being under her lover’s control. Needless to say, the violent clash between these diametrically opposite attitudes could only end in tragedy.

And thanks to the compelling music, the two protagonists become larger-than-life embodiments of sexual anarchy on the one hand and neurotic Puritanism on the other. A great play treating the subject might go into more subtle psychological details. But the composer’s marvellous score makes us feel the drama in our very flesh. I would strongly recommend the opera Carmen for anyone wanting to get acquainted with this art form. When performed by great singing actors, it will indeed touch off a physiological reaction in the spectator. Hopefully, he/she will be able to reach a washroom quickly before an intimate disaster occurs.     

Electronic Books vs. Traditional Books

A recent visitor to my website commented that all I ever seem to talk about on my Blog is sex. I think this judgment is somewhat unfair since I always place the subject within the larger context of human relations. But to prove to her that I am not fixated on it, I would like to present my thoughts on a topic that is very dear to my heart: books.

As a former university professor and now full-time author, I have spent my life surrounded by books. They are infinitely more for me than just instruments of knowledge or sources of information. They are friends who have enriched my life more than I could ever measure quantitatively. I can’t imagine living without them.

My special relationship with books has been borne out this past year. When my first novel, Getting Enough, appeared in print, there were launches at various bookstores within the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Perhaps the most memorable was the celebration that took place on June 11 of last year and coincided with my 71st birthday. It was probably the most beautiful bookstore I have ever been privileged to enter: The McNally Robinson Book Dealers flagship store in Toronto. The management gave me service beyond the call of duty by ordering a sumptuous birthday cake in my honour and providing a reception following the book signing.

This two-story enterprise was extremely spacious, yet gave an impression of intimacy. Readers could browse at leisure, settle into a decadently comfortable armchair to examine a given book, and consult one of the well-informed and gracious staff members if they needed advice or information. The personnel was always available, yet went about their business with the utmost discretion. If you needed them, they would come to your rescue at once; otherwise, they would leave you alone. If a potential buyer needed a snack, lunch, dinner, or just liquid refreshment, there was a lovely restaurant attached to the store where he/she could revive himself/herself.

You can imagine, then, how heartbroken I was when I learned that this store had filed for bankruptcy protection seven months after my launch. Whenever a place like McNally Robinson folds, it is as though a close friend has passed away and one feels a sense of irreparable loss.

Why did it happen? According to the management, more and more readers are ordering their books online or downloading them electronically. Even though McNally Robinson did everything right, the competition from these electronic book dealers was just too much. Now I realize that people who are holding down responsible positions simply don’t have the time to frequent bookstores; ordering them online makes more sense. Also, downloading a book within 60 seconds electronically is an ideal solution for very busy people. More importantly, the price is right. My novel in its traditional book form costs $26.50; on Amazon Kindle, it is only $11.99, less than half-price!

Still, for a genuine book lover, the joy of leafing through one volume after another in the congenial atmosphere of a bookstore is irreplaceable. And although downloading a text on an electronic reading device like Kindle makes sense economically speaking, for me it is not the same thing. A beautifully produced book is a companion, almost a person you can relate to. When you cherish a work of literature, you want to have it in a tangible form so that you can relate to it again and again.

I can only hope that a majority of readers agree with me. I would like to believe that books in the traditional sense will always be around, but I am, unfortunately, more and more convinced that there will be fewer of them in the future. What do you think?  

Sexual Fulfillment Is Not The End-All

Over three decades ago, I was in a gift shop looking for a birthday card—or was it an anniversary card—for my wife. I quickly gave up on the idea of selecting a serious one because they were all so nauseatingly syrupy. So I moved to the humorous section where the cards at least had some bite in them. After perusing through a number of really funny samples, my eyes caught sight of an especially provocative one. It went as follows: “Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex! That’s all you ever talk about …you charming little conversationalist!”

The anonymous writer of these lines was absolutely right from his particular perspective. Sex can be a marvellous celebration of the life force that sustains the whole universe. It glorifies the human body, a splendid example of Nature’s creative power. But is it enough in itself to sustain a relationship? Frankly, I doubt it.

However enjoyable and even thrilling the experience may be at the moment that it takes place, sexual attraction is the first component of a relationship to lose its lustre unless there are other elements to reinforce it. If rubbing epidermises is fun with one person, why shouldn’t it be fun with other people, indeed, many other people? In which case, why bother staying for long in any given relationship? It might be far more gratifying to roam around like a bee through the whole huge garden of delights, culling erotic nectar from every human flower that one finds titillating.

For a relationship between two individuals to deepen and expand through time, they must feel empathy, esteem, admiration, and tenderness towards one another. Within such a context, sex can indeed be their apotheosis. If this context is absent, they might just as well take their pleasure wherever they can find it.

This was the fate in store for Rhonda, a young woman practicing free-wheeling sex whom her very prudish Aunt Vera called “Whore Rhonda,” in order to emphasize that this niece of hers was a piece of trash/ass. Rhonda ditched her husband, and took up with a butcher whose sexual activity she found much more energetic and incisive. The thrill didn’t last long, however. How could it? Since the butcher lacked any other qualities of heart and mind to keep her interested, Rhonda eventually sought out greener sexual pastures elsewhere. After all, familiarity breeds contempt, doesn’t it? So she took up with a handsome Italian lover, Angelo, with whom she enjoyed a steamy romance…that is, until she got bored with him.

Vera, on the other hand, through a heroic effort of self-examination and reconstruction, freed herself from the Puritanism that had been warping her personality since childhood. She came to love the husband whom she had branded a sexual failure, once she began admiring him for his courage. Then the miracle occurred. The minute she started to genuinely love him, he was able to perform in bed handsomely. In the end, Vera was far ahead of her so-called “sexually enlightened” niece, because she had both love and sex.

If you are interested in learning all the details about this story, I invite you to read my novel, Getting Enough. Many people have told me they found it hilarious and touching at the same time. Happy reading!       

The Dangers of Stereotyping People

 Vera and Sidney Rose, a middle-aged couple, were mired in a disastrous marriage for 26 years. They reached the stage where they almost literally could no longer stand to be in each other’s presence. It seemed that whenever they were together they would spew psychic hatred at one another. Naturally, each one blamed the other for the acrimonious, hate-ridden relationship in which they had gotten themselves bogged down. In their monumental self-righteousness, they refused to entertain the notion that they both shared the responsibility for the mess in which they were floundering.

Without being conscious of it, Vera and Sidney had succumbed to the dangerous temptation of stereotyping one another. Not that this stereotyping was entirely unjustified: both partners had glaring flaws that deserved being severely criticized. Although she was an ardently sensual woman, Vera was trapped in a straitjacket of puritanical morality that had turned her into a neurotic virago. She refused her husband sex yet got outraged when she caught him in an affair with a younger woman.  She condemned in the most vehement terms anyone who was having sex outside of marriage, yet she secretly coveted her niece’s very mature, virile husband.

Sidney was at the opposite end of the spectrum. He loved sex and craved it. His erotic motor would get revved up simply by being near Vera or other attractive women. His problem, however, was that he never bothered learning anything about the art of making love. For him, sex was simply making a grab for what he wanted and plundering it. It never occurred to him to wonder what his partner was feeling. Since he was fulfilled physically, Sidney took it for granted that she was, too. And this is precisely what infuriated Vera. She viewed him as a pig wallowing in its trough. The morning after their honeymoon night, Sidney exclaimed delightedly: “Well, baby, we had a ball last night, didn’t we?” Vera retorted with sullen anger: “How would I know? Does a urinal react emotionally when a man pisses in it?”

From that moment on, Vera and Sidney began stereotyping one another.  For her, he was a gross, sex-obsessed creep. For him, she was a frigid, self-righteous bitch. The more each one typecasted the other, the more the other reinforced that stereotype. It took a tsunami-like crisis for the two of them to come to their senses, look beyond the stereotyping, and view one another as vulnerable human beings in desperate need of understanding and tenderness. Once Vera and Sidney reached this new awareness, they were able to move towards a loving reconciliation.

Vera and Sidney are not real people. They are the two main characters in my novel titled Getting Enough. They were inspired, however, by people I know. And many readers have assured me that Vera and Sidney seem so vivid they fairly jump off the pages of my text. Why not read the book? I think you’ll find the conclusion very heart-warming. When you have finished it, I would love to hear your comments and have a discussion with you.  

Sex and the Ancient Roman Town of Pompeii

I learned about the destruction of Pompeii back in Grade 10 in 1954 when I was translating the ancient Latin text by the writer, Pliny, about the eruption of the volcanic mountain, Vesuvius, and the subsequent burial of the town. The devastation unleashed was the equivalent of a nuclear holocaust. From that time forward, Pompeii became embedded in my imagination and acquired the dimension of a legend.

In September of this year, my wife and I had the privilege of visiting this place when on a trip to the Amalfi Coast of Southern Italy. Needles to say, I was overcome by emotion at the thought of walking in the very places that I had imagined for the past 55 years (now you know my age!) Everything I saw fascinated me, but one spot in particular caught my attention: the street of the brothels. Our guide invited us to enter one of them, and pointed out paintings on one of the walls done by a local Roman artist back in 70 A.D or earlier. They depicted the various sexual positions customers could demand after paying the appropriate fee. I had a strange feeling of déjà vu. It was like going into Macdonald’s or Burger King and ordering a Big Mac, a Quarter Pounder, a Whopper or a Cheese Burger with or without the mayonnaise. The very graphic images also illustrated the American expression about fast-food sex devoid of any commitment: “Slam, bam, thankee, M’am.”

This is why my heart sank. In its simplest expression, sex can be a celebration of the elemental life force. In its more complex forms, it represents a vital bridge linking two individuals. This bridge will carry as much or as little as the two people involved bring with them. When they feel passion or even just tenderness for one another, their sexual activity will reflect their commitment. As a result, their beings will be enhanced. On the other hand, if there is nothing between them except the desire for genital gratification, their experience will be woefully inadequate as far as quality is concerned.

Now I realize that bodily needs have to be satisfied and that repressing them can have dangerous consequences. We need only remember how sexually frustrated priests have satisfied their cravings with vulnerable adolescents.  But how much more fruitful and fulfilling the sexual relationship would be if only those in need of sexual relief could view one another as human beings to be loved rather than as devices for relieving bodily pressures. This is what the paintings at Pompeii brought home to me again with renewed force. Some of the clients frequenting that brothel may have entered with a desperate yearning for tenderness. Most of them probably came just to satisfy their carnal appetites.

 

I doubt whether anything has changed in the almost 2000 years since these brothels ceased operating on that fatal day when the volcano erupted.

In Praise of Marriage

Marriages are going down the drain at an alarming rate. Many of those that seem to be surviving are fraught with terrible tensions and anxieties. Thus, it seems foolhardy on my part to sing the praises of what some people refer to contemptuously as “an institution.” Yet, despite all this damning evidence, I still believe that the marital relationship can be the most profoundly satisfying of all. And there are more than a few happy couples who would agree with me.

Marriage can be the most beautiful friendship imaginable, embracing two human beings in their totality, i.e., in both body and spirit, a friendship that expands and deepens through time. An enduring relationship can, of course, begin with a powerful sensual attraction, and it often does. As my late mother once said when referring to a cousin of mine in his thirties who married a girl of seventeen: “It might have been sex that attracted them to one another. Some people go for it, you know.” However, a marriage founded primarily on sexual gratification will rarely last. It will burn swiftly and brightly like a fire of straw, and then burn itself out. To attain longevity it must involve the heart and mind far more than the body, and the first two must dominate, as they do in any authentic friendship. They will provide a solid undergirding for the relationship. They will enable the two partners to create an enduring commitment to one another. And, as strange as it may seem, it is this commitment that will always recharge the couple’s erotic batteries.

 

At this point, a skeptic might ask: “What about problems, conflicts, clashes of wills, even crises between the two individuals?” There may be lots of these, as is almost inevitable in any long-term relationship. My late mother-in-law once said that every marriage worth its salt has a few really good fights. But I maintain, however paradoxical this may sound, that all of these hardships that can bedevil a marriage can also strengthen it immeasurably. The couple should see in conflicts the opportunity to pool their resources in order to re-establish the harmony between them. Facing daunting obstacles and overcoming them together is part of the adventure of life. The more they succeed, the deeper their relationship becomes, and, consequently, the stronger the love they will feel for each other. Marriage is a work in progress; the more you contribute to it, the more beautiful it becomes. Or, to use another comparison, love can be a magnificent bonfire, but it is a bonfire that has to be fed constantly, otherwise it will peter out.

Naturally, the couple will change during the course of their marriage, just as all of us change during our lives. The important thing, though, is for both partners to remain flexible enough to accommodate these changes in each other’s personality. In a sense, the two people involved in a marriage have to choose each other again and again during the time that they live with one another. But there is nothing to fear from this kind of change. Renewing their commitment to one another will revitalize it.

    

Now please understand. I am not minimizing the dangers that any marriage can face, nor am I denying that some relationships become so distended and debilitated that they simply cannot go on. The important thing, however, is to give your marriage your best shot. If you have chosen well to begin with and agreed to fight hard for what you believe in, there is every reason to hope you will be amply rewarded.

 

I look forward to chatting with you again within the next few weeks.

Why So Many Marriages Fail

Posted by leonardrosmarin on October 8, 2009 at 2:44 PM

comments (2)

I promised you my thoughts on marriage, and now I shall deliver the goods. It is not necessary to be a keen observer of the social scene to realize that the marital relationship as we know it is floundering and, in many cases, sinking. The divorce rate is astronomical and shows no sign of slowing down. Intelligent and experienced people rush into matrimony with the loftiest expectations only to file for a divorce less than a year after pronouncing vows of fidelity. I know of one lovely young couple that seemed to have everything going for them: sharpness of intellect, warmth of heart, willingness to make a commitment, and even idealism. Yet hardly had they settled into their life together when the husband wanted out. “It’s not what I expected,” he declared. Unfortunately, his reaction is not the exception that proves the rule. It has occurred again, and again, and again.

 

            What is wrong with all these people? Part of the problem may be the fierce individualism, even selfishness that our society has instilled in the younger generations. (Being 71 years old, I cannot claim to belong to them.) The minute there is a conflict, the reaction is often: “I don’t have to take your crap any more. I’ll be better off alone.”Young adults are no longer restrained by the stigma of divorce. Divorce is now so common that it has become a fact of life. In the past, married couples plagued with all kinds of unresolved tensions would simply sweep them under thecarpet and continue making do. Now people just close the door behind them, seek out new partners, and often go through the same cycle again, having learned nothing.

 

            Another reason for the divorce rate, I believe, is exaggerated expectations. My children’s generation has grown up with frozen food, a boon to harried homemakers but hardly the epitome of haute cuisine. When in a hurry, you just pull out a ready-made dinner from the freezer, shove it into the oven at the designated temperature, and in less tha nan hour you have a ready-to-eat meal. Unfortunately, too many young adults tend to view human relations in this way. If an experience does not provide them with instant gratification, then it is unsatisfactory. They will view their marriage as a failure. It rarely occurs to them that dealing with another individual implies all kinds of complex issues. Life simply can’t be reduced to the size of a dinner gulped down in front of a TV screen. Building human relations takes time and effort. If you are unwilling to invest your energy into them, you will ultimately be left with nothing but disappointments.

 

            But even when newly married couples try sincerely to see beyond the mirage of instant gratification, they can fall victims to another deadly illusion: the belief that two unhappy solitudes will constitute one plenitude. A commentator on the Discomfort Zone website said it in another way: “My observation of most marriages (or inseparable couples in general): two people stubbornly believing in the mathematical formula that two minus give one plus.” Too many young adults believe that simply by linking their destiny with another human being to whom they may feel attracted will automatically bring them fulfilment. Obviously, their multiple hang-ups will not be dissolved magically through marriage. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that their problems will be compounded. Many characters in my novel, Getting Enough, are bogged down in this dilemma and, of course, their relationships go down the drain. Their illusions about being married are their blind spot and, not being able to foresee what is in store for them, they head right into a wall.

 

            So what is the solution? I’ll attempt to offer one in my next entry.

Human Relations and French Literature

Dear Visitor:

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you will find this blog entertaining. I also hope we can start a dialogue and, as a result, get to know one another a little better. Perhaps in time, we can even become friends.

This is a new experience for me. I have never blogged before, so I ask for your indulgence. My marketing advisor and very dear friend, Kelly Wallace, has encouraged me to start one because it is an excellent way for an author to keep in touch with his/her readers. I certainly agree with Kelly, but there may be some rather awkward passages over the next few months until I reach my cruising speed and have a better idea of the direction in which I'd like to go.

For the indefinite future, my blog will deal mainly with the issue of human relations. This is not at all surprising since I am Professor Emeritus of French literature. French writers throughout the ages have practiced a very introspective kind of writing. They have provided us with stunning insights into the complexity of our human nature, and they have excelled in analyzing the permutations and combinations that take place when individuals form relationships. I sensed this as an undergraduate. My impression was confirmed when I did my Ph.D. at Yale in the literature of France and decided to concentrate on the Classical Period, i.e., the 17th century.

The great writers of that time like Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine made statements about the way people interact with one another which are as meaningful for us living in the 21st century as they were for their contemporaries over three hundred years ago. In fact, they combined depth of perception with elegance of expression to such an extent that they became an artistic gold standard for me. I eventually moved on to many other research areas, but the lessons of truth and artistic beauty they taught me have remained with me to this day.

Believe it or not, my first novel, Getting Enough, has been profoundly influenced by these 17th-century masters. For one thing, the action concentrates on a crisis and, specifically, a marital crisis. Secondly, my text probes into the hidden, often unconfessable motives of my main characters. Their emotional clashes move the plot forward. Thirdly, as the great Franco-Swiss writer, M. Michel Goeldlin, was kind enough to observe, I have striven to tell this story in a pure, sober style, despite the more than occasional use of coarse language.

In my next posting, I will explore the attraction-repulsion relationship that marriage can imply, using my novel as an illustration of this. I look forward to welcoming you back to my website.

Until next time, my friend...