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Liubava MOREVA
REFLECTIONS ON ABSURDITY
The space in which the
nowadays man finds himself with no surprise, is being described by him as desperately catastrophic. The paradox of the
�final situation� in which the modern man presumably finds himself, requests
from him certain �fatality strategies�. The peculiarity of situation
about which we are speaking is that the man is essentially pushed out of the
space of life into the zone of signs. In this zone overladeness
with informational flows makes absolutely indistinguishable reality of event
from quasi-reality, here is the virtual reality of mass-media makes equality
significant/insignificant any of its messages.
The industry
of death of the XX century, with its machines of extermina�tion of human material,
made the imperturbable reflection exclaim some�times: �All the culture after Oswenzim is rubbish� (Adorno) and
even �Phi�losophy as a Strict Science � is
a past dream� (Husserl). Today the industry of death
is hidden under a certain cultivation of �rubbish� production � ready made, casual cheap commercial standards of life,
love and death. Intensity of replacements of the possibility of deep existential
states with their sign peel, turn the man into a certain case/envelope, the
carrier of artificially put in it bits of information which made it into an
individual variable in the algorith-mical space of
social existence. Occasional breaks down in this system are repealed as often as necessary by psychoanalytic,
psychedelic or other means. Common result is a feeling of growing internal
emptiness.
A recapitulation of the postmodern
philosophy could be outlined as fol�lows:
The total simulacrisation of culture and life, impossibility to
distinguish authentic from inauthentic, existential devastation, all this is
more or less evident symptoms of the failure awaiting us. We carefully keep
signs of cul�ture, intensify communication, and at that we are more and more
losing the sense of our own existence. To revive the past values is to revive
old illu�sions. Behind us there is no more anticipations which would not get realized. We
prefer total actuality: the memory disappears, and so does anticipation.
All what was
based on mystery and truth has also disappeared. Evolution which takes place is
oriented towards exterminating everything that is tradi�tional. Man is left
with the space of play, imitation and aesthesis (and this brings its own transcendence) � here is the place
of destroying any tradition. No symptoms of
renaissance is visible so far. But we are not at all in a diffi�cult but
just rather in an unique situation. Probably, one
should go to the end, no one knows how it will turn out and this is interesting.
Such is the law of system, the more
it is perfect, the more catastrophes and incoincidences
it produces. The system starts working according to oc�casional character of
metastases. The theme of plot, identity and all related to them are impossible.
We enter the sphere which is totally probabilistic, in a situation where there
is no end for activity. The internal sate of system which contradicts itself is
irony. Irony turns into events, into things them�selves. It is in the center of
catastrophe. All strategies turn upside down: the world starts playing with
them. Irony gets the only form of reconciliation for us in the catastrophic
space of hyper-ir-reality.
Probably, the man of today faces
serious shifts in the paradigm system of coordinates of value ontological
orientations. Notwithstanding the flexibility of this system, one should watch
out in order to keep its vital force which consists in essential difference of
ways of descending and ascending. Any aloofness
to of this difference, unsensitiveness to it , any
forms of ethical and ontological indifference lead the man to
orientation crisis, to a total losing sense of his own existence, to
existential devastation, eventually attracting him to the Abyss of Absurdity
and Chaos (since indifference is its own onto-logical
principle). An extremely attentive and sensitive relation to Tradition is needed
in order to avert the danger of the happened paradigm shift in the topos of Being.
It is evident
that the problematisation of Sense and Absurdity is
essentially different
in philosophical, literary, and religious discourses. The objective of the
paper is to trace the above differences in light of semantic analysis of communicative strategies of the following works
of art: on the one hand, Dostoevsky�s Dream of the Ridiculous Man; Kafka�s Caslte, and on the other hand, Ionesko�s
The Bald Singer. All these literary works are considered different points of
meeting the Absurdity of life.
The fact that the human being does
not only live through his life, as if running
some distance between the date of birth and that of death, but also searches
for some meaning of his own stay in this world, is almost a com�monplace in
terms of his differentia � in the definition of his species. In this search a human being undertakes a task similar to
that of a fairytale character: �go I don�t know where, bring I don�t know
what�, � he goes, without know�ing where, making his way for his life in the
semantic field of unpredictable possibilities. The questions forming the
pattern of rhythm of going this way are not
anymore from a fairy-tale: �Who are we? � Where have we come from in
this world? � Where are we going to?� Those are
variations on the classi�cal questions of
gnosis: �where do we strive? where �to escape from? what is birth? what is
rebirth?� (Valentine, II, Clem. Exc. Theod. 68.2). This is echo�ing in the
Christian Gnostic calling to know �what you are born for; to whose image?
what is your essence? who
governs you? what is your relation to God?� (Clement
of
However, what
is actually sought by human being, when he seeks what he calls �sense�? Maybe, to
live is to enliven the absurd, as Camus put it? And then, affirmation of the absurdity of the world
is the summit of metaphysical happiness? (Albert Camus,
L�Essai sur l�absurd) However, non-metaphysical experience
witnesses to the contrary: absurdity frightens, oppresses, kills, alienates the
human being from himself and the world; drives him into the impasse of despair, weakness, endless grief.
Those are the surface of the exis�tential experience of the absurd. But
absurdity is also a semantic limit, border, verge, in excess of which
all possible senses, acquired, understood, suffered for, kept by human being and keeping him suddenly lose their strength,
dissi�pate, fall apart into dust. So, the experience of the absurd
challenges the hu�man being with an impossible world. The latter initiates the
human being, measures his strength and weakness, his humanity and his
anti-humanity, shows whether he qualifies for patience or rebellion; for love
or hatred, for spite or compassion. The absurd, properly speaking, questions
the sense-creating potential of the human
being in the world. In search his for the mean�ing of life, does not
human being search for what cannot be found and, thus, is he not doomed to the impossible? He must know �for what� he lives,
his, so to speak, ontological �niche�. It is known that "meaning " can never be thor�oughly described or
defined. The discovery of meaning is by no means the same as its possession
since meaning is impossible "to possess" in principle although it
shows man the way to "being". The only form of the existence of
"meaning" is its generation, its emergence in the space of intersubjec-tive relations. "Meaning" is an atom
of comprehension, embracing the universe of human communication. According to M.Bakhtin "meaning" is personal in principle: it
always contains a question, address and the antici�pation of a reply. "Meaning" presupposes the presence of two
persons as in adialogue. The mode of human
being's existence in the word proper consists in searching, finding and giving
meaning to everything, including his own life.
It is quite another matter that man, who always represents just the possi�bility
of meaning generation, not infrequently finds himself on the verge of oblivion,
of renouncing his own abilities. It often happens that a hard road of strivings
full of agonising spiritual doubts is replaced by a
peaceful valley of self-assurance, the destructive self-sufficiency of a man
overpowered by the inertia of impersonal
and universally significant forces. The fading of personally tense meaning
spaces is by expansion superseded by the smoulder�ing
of indifferent significations: "meaning" as an atom of communication
and comprehension freedom presupposed by the personality is annihilated
in the indifference to the necessity of
submission to what is imposed from the outside and equally well known to
everybody. This spontaneous narrowing of the sphere of communication, in
effect, turns man into some "individual variable": the unique courses
of life (usually very thorny in history) are replaced by "beaten"
tracks. Man is replaced by "the human factor" (with total
control and relative independence) with common indivisible destiny vigilantly
safeguarding anyone against all kinds of probable mistakes and deviations,
against the danger of any "falling out". In the end man begins to
feel "confident, rich and at ease" whereas he, actually, has ceased to
exist because everything is motivated by
"immanent necessity�.
Human being, as well as culture, is
always on the verge of word and si�lence, action and inaction, wakefulness and
sleep. The threshold, borderlike frames of mind in which human being acquires the deep experience of silence and inaction, lead him to some words of
revelation and hope, most difficult to follow. In the experience of the
absurd, the human being stands a chance to break
through to new aspects of the Sense of Being, or to die in a cold indif�ference
toward everything.
How should one understand �the absurd. The absurd is what is incompre�hensible. However,
the stem meaning of the word: ab-surdus (�stemming from deafness�) shows a richer stock of
connotations, compared to the reduc�tion of �absurd� to nonsense,
stupidity, and lack of meaning. The absurd is full with some hidden sense which
annihilates the senses upon which the human being has depended. The absurd
shakes the ground under foot. It is clear
to the everyday consciousness that when this happens, one should either fall
or fly, tertium non datur. However, some can dance in this situation� as did
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Shestov, etc.
Let us consider Lev Shestov�s (1866-1938) experience. He was surely one of the most penetrating Russian thinkers of the
beginning of the century, who undertook the task of taming the Absurd.
The tradition of working with the Absurd is quite rich and varied.
Philosophical and literary works in this field are rooted in proper logical and
theological studies and meditations. Tertullian�s
formula �believe, since absurd�, developed in his treatise �On Christ�s Body�, is concerned with the meaning of
the mystical secret: �He has been buried and has resurrected: it is
certain, since impossible�. Here a law such as logic�s reductio
ad absurdum is inapplicable. The experience of faith � that is to say, the
experience of Abraham�s, Isaak�s, or Job�s lives� is
beyond the laws of logic. Such thinkers as Pascal, Kiekegaard,
Nietzsche, together with Lev Shestov, clearly understood this and built their critique
of Reason by taking it to the verge of the Absurd of faith.
In his basic work � �Apotheosis of
Groundlessness� (1905) � having touched in his inner experience the �frontier
areas of Being�, where neither logic nor compassion assist, Lev Shestov discovered for himself that in this world, one
stands no chance to represent �clearly and distinctly� what is go�ing on. One
should willy-nilly �acknowledge unintelligibility as the main predicate of Being�. There is nothing more disgusting and repulsive than somebody who fancies that he has understood
everything and can answer any question. For Shestov,
everything related to �logical�, �provable�, everything that is directed toward
putting the world in order, describing it in the language of
cause-effect relations, is a synonym of inertia, chaining human fantasy,
closing it in the frame of everyday experience. Any confidence in the immu�tability of the existing order can suddenly
create a feeling of nonsense and the absurdity of life. For a thinker,
the experience of the absurd is first of all a sign of dogmatic thinking.
On the one hand, the
human ability to get accustomed to everything and on the other hand, the seemingly continuous and gradual changes in the
world are the premises of �the natural� or
habit. And , the philosopher notes that even if
�everything suddenly changed, and oranges, pineapples, calves, and even
rhinoceroses appeared from beet seeds, we would be very much sur�prised, out of lack of habit; but we could not
raise any objection to it, and we could only register the new order of
things.� (Lev Shestov, Self-evident Truths, in:
Though and Word, Philosophical Yearly. Ed. by G. Shpet,
The well-known formula: to know in
order to be able; to be able in order to act; to act in order to live more
fully was turned by Shestov into quite a different one: to know means to restrict; to
restrict means to take away oppor�tunities; to take away opportunities
means to kill freedom...�We lament that we
do not know where we came from, where we are heading to, what was and what
will be, what to do and what to avoid, etc., being confident in advance that if we knew, it would be better. However,
maybe, it would be worse rather than better: knowledge would chain and
restrict us. And since we do not know, nothing restricts us.� (Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, Paris,
YMKA-Press, 1951, p. 253). Shestov is
confident that any epistemology, confined within the borders of the �natural�
only, leaves unattended the supra-rational spheres of other strata of Being. A metaphysics of knowledge
striving to overcome such kinds of epistemological limitedness, should first of
all ac�knowledge that the �natural� is the human superficiality in essence. The
ex�perience of absurdity, understood by the philosopher first of all as that of
tragedy, overcomes the rigid borders of logical obligations. One can have a
true cognition only after being freed from utilitarian goals, from intentions
toward accommodation (typical for the everyday consciousness), from thought
oriented toward action.
The absurd
leads to the limits of human thought. Either madness or revela�tion lies further. In
the world � where everything is set and nothing is ex�plained, where the �man of absurdity� with his deep disbelief in the
rational meaning of things indifferently walks, where life appears as an
alphabet of death � the concept of value itself lacks meaning. The sense of
hierarchy is lost, and the coldness of
indifference penetrates the human soul.
The metamorphoses of the human
inner world, touched by the �feel�ing of the absurd�, were well known to the
literary classics. One can, as an example, remember �Dream of a Ridiculous Man�
by Dostoevsky In this story the main character consistently goes the way of the
�logic of absurd�, starting with the conviction that �everything is all the
same in the world� through the feeling that
�it is equal to me whether the world would exist or whether there would
not be anything anywhere�, and, then to the confidence that it is all the same
to the world �whether I exist or not�. This logic almost inevitably leads to suicide. A dream bursting
into this inevitability , shows to the
character the truth: human beings can be beautiful and happy without losing the
ability to live on Earth: �the main thing is to love others as one�self.�.
Constant unity with the whole cosmos � feeling the fullness of life� is the experience of the dream which is far from
idyllic. The happy earthlings �have learned to lie; when they became capable of
crimes, they invented justice and prescribed for themselves whole codes...and
for enforcement of the latter they established the guillotine.� (Dostoevsky, F.M., Short Stories, Moscow: 1985, p.376). The
reflective and confessional intonation of the narration permits the character
in the story to include an emotional-ethical criterion in his experience of
opposition to the absurd: �if I am a human be�ing, and not yet a zero, and have
not yet turned into zero, then I live, there�fore, I can suffer get angry, and
feel shame for my deeds.� (Ibid., p. 367) The conclusion Dostoevsky arrives at
is a revision of the traditional European conviction that �knowledge is above
feeling; consciousness of life is above life�.
The author�s character concludes instead: �knowledge about the laws of
happiness is above happiness; this is what one has to struggle with!�.
The specific
absurdity of the world itself, which is built and structured ac�cording to the rigid
logic of hierarchical knowledge (and which turns the human being into a
one-dimensional appendix to the system functioning ac�cording to its own laws),
perhaps best depicted by Franz Kafka. His Castle is a developed metaphor for
man�s searching for his place, his role, his calling, for himself, in the space
where one is always alien and superfluous. Camus
calls this Kafka�s novel �theology in action�: �This is a description of a hu�man
soul wandering in search of salvation, which tries to extract from the things
in the world their highest truth...� (A. Camus,
Hope and Absurd in Creative Work of Franz Kafka, Moscow, 1989, p. 398).
The literary
classics vary in terms of their representation of man�s meeting with the absurd, usually
supporting the hope for escape from the absurd in the characters. The absurd
had its own limits, its own territory; as if it ac�knowledges human being�s
right to a dignified exit.
Twentieth century literature has
sharply perceived the connection of the absurd with the excesses of logic and
the surplus of ideologically pre�formatted senses of ideal social order, all
simplified and empty. Parody and buffoonery, such as that found in works like
�Bald Singer� and �Rhinocer�oses� by Eugene Ionesco,
or �Elisabeth Bam� by Daniel Harms, added the experience
of the total absurdity of quasi-meaningful communication to litera�ture.
A syllogism is quite appropriate here: �All cats are mortal. Socrates is
mortal. Therefore, he is a cat�. Nothing can be more natural here than a kind
of �rhinocerosation�, since �all is logical; to
understand is to justify�, but �realities also vary�, choose for yourself the
best one for you. (Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros.
Daniel Harms� literary experience,
together with that of the whole OBERIUT �division of the leftist art� as they
called themselves (Unions of Real Art: Literature � Figurative Art � Cinema �
Theatre) did unique work with the absurd. This work was unique for its gaiety, ardour and, at the same time, its ruthlessness and
aggressive, severe and almost cruel character. The group included Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky,
Boris Levin, and Daniel Harms. Having claimed to be not only creators of a new
poetic lan�guage, but a new perception of life and its contents in a
Declaration in 1928, almost all of them died in prisons and concentration camps
by the 40s. How�ever, the intensive
character of their creative work witnessed the truth of their declaration: �Our
will to creative work is universal: it exceeds all kinds of art and
bursts into life, encompassing it from all sides.�
The artistic
experience, created by members of OBERIUT, and called the method of �tcisfinit� {phonetic transcription} by Harms, is the �logic
of the infinite non-being�, and undertook
the task of �deincantation of the uncon�scious�.
�This �logic� cut all chains and threads of the perceived order, like scissors.
The objective world goes asunder. Its parts, and all causes and ef�fects of ordinary logic fly away into the Cosmos,
like supremist constructions by Malevich � (�Bath of Archimedes�,
Alexander Vvedensky�s
(1904-1941) �Some Quantity of Talks (or �Top�ics Thoroughly Redone�) is a
numbered list of talks and retorts, where char�acters are numbers as well: the
First, the Second, the Third, etc. �Three were in a
chariot. They exchanged ideas.� (Bath of Archimedes, p.317)
The topics of talks is random:
1. Talk about a madhouse
2. Talk about the absence
of poetry
3. Talk about remembering
events
4. Talk about cards
5. Talks about fleeing from
a room
6. Talk
about immediate succession
7. Talk about various acts 8 Talk of merchants with a bath-servant
9.
The
next to last talk with the title �one man and the war�
10. The last talk
�Respect the circumstances of
place. Respect what happens. But nothing happens. Respect the poverty of� language. Respect
poorest thought.� (ibid., 372) � this is the author�s remark which works like a
tuning fork for the ear and makes it overcome the deafness of absurdity. This
is a world of almost peaceful nonsense, which is at the same time solemn since
it is mighty. I will cite �Some Quantity� of these wonderful talks;
�3. Talk
about remembering events
The First. And then I said: �But
you were sitting at the A�s place, while I was standing here, at B�s place�.
Then you said:� No, not at all, you did not sit here at A�s
place, while I was not standing at B�s place�. To improve on the strength of my proof, to make it very mighty,
I simultaneously felt melan�choly, and gaiety, and wept, and I said: �There were two of us here yesterday, at the same
time, on these close points, on the point A and on the B,� can�t you see?�
The Second: �You said it very, very
convincingly � I answered, � but I forgot
for a while that you exist, and all my witnesses keep silent. Maybe, that is
why I represent nothing. I doubt even the existence of these witnesses.� Then you said that you feel the death of your
senses, and nevertheless, never�theless (and this was already quite
feeble), it still seems to you that you were at my place. And I went silent too
and said that nevertheless, it seems to me that
it seems that you still were not at my place. But it was not the case.�
The numbered
characters of the Talks think of �their conditionally stable existence�, �of
the representations of death and of its extravagances�, �of the feeling of life�. They
go, run, understand nothing, only to �finish as soon
as possible�. The poetic rhythm, the lyrical intonation make the world of �infi�nite non-being� verge on the human being, who
accepts the kinship of absurd with his being with no surprise.
It has been
noted that Vvedensky created the essence without
appearance, while
Harms the appearance without essence. One can add that each one worked out the unique theme of the absurd in his
own way, enriching it with shades of meaning.
Harms� Cases are like
absurd units of a gloomy and unintelligible whole. They turn absurdity into almost a joke, though dreary rather than
joyful.
There are plenty of examples. I will give some
�Cases�.
(Daniel Harms,
Flight in Heaven, Leningrad, 1991)
(1)
There was one fair man
lacking eyes and ears. He lacked hair too, so he was called fair only
conditionally.
Nor could he speak, for he lacked a mouth. Neither did he have a nose.
He
did not have even arms and legs. Nor belly, nor back, nor any
entrails. Nothing! So, one does not know whom we are talking about.
We would do better not to speak about him any more.(p.353)
(1937)
(3) Falling Old Women
One old woman fell from
a window out of excessive curiosity, fell and smashed herself
to death.
Another
one looked out from a window and looked down at the dead one, and out of her excessive
curiosity she also fell out of the window and also died.
Then a third one fell out, then a fourth and a
fifth.
When a sixth one fell
out, I got bored looking at them and went to the Maltsev
market, where, they said, a blind one was presented with a woven shawl.
(19) A Meeting
Once somebody
was going to work, but met another on his way, who, hav�ing bought a Polish bread, headed home.
That is that, in fact.
Here is lacking the �time of
understanding�, the �moment of conclusion� (to put it in Lacan�s
terms). One cannot restore the continuity of a subject�s motivations, while the
discourse itself does not ascribe any meaning to the individual actions. Nevertheless, the concreteness of this discourse
shows the �trans-individual reality of the subject�, his actuality, which is
the actuality of the history. Truth appears here in the real, in the
reality of the absurd. Here the artist tries to answer the world from his
position as �being in the world�, rejecting
the world to give sense to experience and just occasionally maintain�ing a
hypothetical possibility so this sense can show itself.
P.S.
�However empty a
discourse might seems, it is such only on the surface: let us remember those
words of Mallarme, comparing everyday use of lan�guage with use of a coin, whose coinage is worn
out on both sides, and which goes through hands in silence�. This
metaphor is enough to remind us that the
word, even one completely worn out, retains value as a tesser . Even with nothing
to communicate, the discourse demonstrates the existence of commu�nication;
even denying the obvious, it affirms that words construct the truth. Even with
a lie in mind, it plays on the faith in the witness.�
Jacques
Lacan
�Nonsense is only the
other side of spiritualism, affirming the independ�ence of the writer from
intellectual standards and trite definitions.�
Chesterton