Ways of Seeing

One important element needed to create art is the need to cross a line. Art is, if we want to show something about humanity, I think, an expression of metaphor. When Humbert Humbert finds that he must pursue Lolita, he becomes a metaphor for action upon hidden desires. It’s only natural, Humbert explains, and has historical roots, in fact, for a man of advancing age to seek the beauty of a pubescent girl. The real-life argument (or inarguable position) of an adult-child sexual relationship plays little part of the ensuing art. Crossing that line, in the literary context here put, is the pursuit of art, and creating that metaphor through language is the assumption of the ultimate success of that art subject’s validity. In other words, what is not talked about in society is intrinsic for art’s subjectivity: what does happen—what can happen—when someone of an ordinary (or extraordinary) intellect turns off the switch that prevents us from pursuing taboos, and crosses the line established by socio-societal norms?

Vladimir Nabokov’s style, his language, the poetry infused in his sentences to create beauty, sustains that art objective in Lolita. If not dealt with from a literary position—an intellectual framework even—as Humbert Humbert devises, the work completely fails as art. Pornography thus ensues, and in this case of a rather demented nature, by most standards, I should think. Yet the lynchpin in this case, I would argue, is the crossing of that line between “tastefulness,” “propriety,” and “accepted social mores.” Nabokov could not have been the first man to think of a situation like that of Humbert, nor of a character like Lolita, who by the evidence in the novel is completely on to Humbert—and she precociously provokes the situation between them. These are real people who can be found in society, in newspaper accounts, in journals throughout history. Nabokov merely took those notions finally across that line.

That line crossed to create art need not be one of such profound separation between “decency” and “pornography” as many would argue is what happens in Lolita. One need only look at Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, the story of a foundling given an education and sense of virtue. But Tom has a bit of an appetite for good food, strong drink, and women. Fielding places Tom in situations that often create hilarity because of that line between moralism and reality, given the signs of the times in 18th century England, and all those hypocrisies. Morality often is the line that must be crossed in literature, because establishment norms are upheld by people who cannot themselves attain (or long sustain) that lofty station, even when large segments of society hold themselves in such extremity. Hypocrisy always shows itself, because, as artists down the centuries have proved, human beings are filled with contradictions. Humanity is folly, the artist says over and over, and THIS is what it is like to be human.

That line an artist crosses is not necessarily about thumbing a nose at government or society, but an attempt to show the folly of hypocrisy wherever it shines. For example, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary describes a provincial French woman’s boredom with being a country doctor’s wife, and out of complete narcissism travels in and out of sexual liaisons to find happiness. Flaubert had no notions to say to society, “a woman has every right to fuck around if she gets bored, regardless of society’s and the Church’s mores and rules.” In fact, one finds in Flaubert’s letters and diaries that he did not like Emma Bovary; he thought she a typical product of bourgeois society that could not own up to the lofty ideals they espoused in their middle class ranks. Nearly all the characters of the novel show, ultimately, Flaubert’s dislike of the bourgeois class: Dr. Charles Bovary ends up killing a patient out of shear bravura at the thought of making a name for himself (and becoming rich) in the medical field; Homais is a typical blowhard with superficial ideals, exposed through his incessant talk filled with clichés. Even with the success of the novel, Flaubert was put on trial for indecency, yet even that is a separate matter to its status (and gift to we readers) as art. On his deathbed, it has been told, Flaubert expressed his ultimate view of his anti-heroine, by saying “that whore” would live on in art long after he was dead. He was right: out of his low opinion of the French middle class of his time, he created a character that yet speaks universal truths about marriage and society.

Contemporary literature has license to broach any subject. It were the Fieldings, Flauberts, Woolfs, and Nabokovs who blazed the trails. Nothing today lies shielded behind the veil of “propriety.” Thus, subjects of the so-called prurient nature hold little fascination in the literary realm. But that doesn’t mean there are no longer any lines to cross. Writers such as Philip Roth continue to test the relationship between men and women, the love (or its antithesis) that bonds (or destroys) them in such as a work as Sabbath’s Theater. Norman Rush saw through a woman’s eyes (Mating, 1992) an intellectual exploration of love, its acquisition, and long-term bond extraneous to the physical-sexual desire. In Mortals (2003), Rush approached from the male perspective those bonds, and how desire can upset the balance between husband and wife.

Metaphor is no less important or difficult to attain in art today as it was 100 or 150 years ago. Perhaps as there are so many stories in our literary conscience, we demand that writers find new ways to approach the classic dilemmas of life. That forces new lines, other lines, to cross, lines that are nuanced from the architecture of what has already been written. I think this presents opportunity, rather than obstacles, for the literary artists. Any quick look at society, relationships, sexual power, independence, and individuality, yields numerous possibilities for story. As in pool, art is all about angles one sees between the objects on the table; and then of course, you must take the shot.

Tags: Literature, Seeing in Progress //