I'm going to avoid the Palin saga. If you're reading this blog regularly, you can probably predict my reaction anyway...besides, one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, has it covered (link on the right).
After all, this blog purports to be interested in politics AND literature, and I haven't posted anything about the latter at all.
I was reading Melville's Mardi today, the novel he wrote just before Moby Dick. Mardi is kind of a warm-up for Melville--not a great novel, but you can definitely see his talent ripening, before it finally comes to fruition in 1850.
A passage like this is typical of Melville's later style, which is built upon occasional interruptions of the plot to allow his narrator to soliloquize. This kind of interruption--which is a kind of editorializing--is left behind in the twentieth century novel (and poetry) when the idea that showing is superior to telling, becomes the aesthetic norm. Yet, I can't help but appreciate passages like these:
"But how fleeting our joys. Storms follow bright dawnings.--Long memories of short-lived scenes, sad thoughts of joyous hours--how common are ye to all mankind. When happy, do we pause and say--'Lo, thy felicity, my soul?' No: happiness seldom seems happiness, except when looked back upon from woes. A flowery landscape, you must come out of, to behold."
This passage speaks to my own introspection. Being someone (writing a diss) who is forced to spend a lot of time with his thoughts, I sometimes think back upon times when I've been most happy. I think this passage has it right: true happiness is rarely a conscious state of mind. You only realize happiness long after the fact. This must be true in some respects, since to focus in on your own happiness would automatically mean that you're less attuned to the moment that's actually making you happy.
I can think of some exceptions though. I'm consciously happy when I spend time with Ada. Another example: after I returned from my honeymoon with Michele, I knew that I had just spent one of the happiest weeks in my life. So maybe the above passage isn't universal, even though I think it's generally true.
When I look back upon the time Michele and I spent in Tennessee, for example, we had some difficult times that I wouldn't qualify as "happy." We were constantly broke, we had just gotten married and moved to a place far, far away from home. There were challenges to overcome. But when I look back upon that time as a whole, I do regard it as a "happy" time for us. Though we struggled, we were living in the moment and growing stronger and more mature together. I think these are the types of moments, or extended moments, Melville is writing about here--the kind that need some time to ferment before thier true significance can be enjoyed.
Part of me also responds to this passage on an academic level. Happiness, like most abstract ideas, has a cultural history. The word "happy" derives from the Old English word "hap," which is closer to the idea of having good fortune. The way Melville uses the word, and how we conceive of "happiness" now, can be dated back to the mid 16th-century, but it really only becomes culturally commonplace until the 19th (the OED, of course, is my source for this info).
This more contemporary inflection of "happiness" is a human invention, and if one were in a cynical mood, one might suggest it's over-pursued in our contemporary culture. Actually, one need not be cynical to at least conjecture that our culture purports to know the source of happiness (if not, why the centrality of the self-help craze?), not realizing that its offering up golden calves.
The thing I love about literature is that passages like these are relatable on a personal level; but they can also be dissected beyond the self.
This next passage contemplates, not happiness, but mourning, and different types of sadness. Once again, one can see how emotionally astute Melville has become at this point in his career, and how lyrical. Its theme of sadness contrasts nicely with the passage above:
"Misery became a memory. The keen pang a deep vibration. The remembrance seemed the thing remembered; though bowed with sadness. There are thoughts that lie and glitter deep: tearful pearls beneath life's sea, that surges still, and rolls sunlit, whatever it may hide. Common woes, like fluids, mix all round. Not so with that other grief. Some mourners load the air with lamentations; but the loudest notes are struck from hollows. Their tears flow fast: but the deep spring only wells."
Melville compares two types of sadness--the common kind, which eventually dissipate into the swirl of life and memory, and the deeper kind--the kinds that we don't as readily forget. One could conceive of all types of metaphors for this difference. But Melville chooses to draw upon the image of a pearl swirling around at the bottom of an ocean. It's a perfect image. The pearl is small amid the ocean, but its made of strong material and persists. It's hidden, but it's also distinct. It's buried, but it endures amid lesser sadness. Most importantly, the pearl is a beautiful object, one to seek after and cherish. Not all mourning should be dismissed or forgotten. When placed alongside happiness, in the cycle of human emotions, the two play off, counteract, and ultimately compliment one another.
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2 comments:
I have given much thought to this notion of happiness too...as if it is something to be discovered. Our actions suggest the belief that if my circumstances improve, then my happiness levels will increase. So we move, change jobs, divorce and remarry, etc. I also think there's an (American?) entitlement aspect too, aka - I "deserve" to be happy. This must be a modern notion - centuries ago, happiness was not a pursuit like it is today, but a sometimes by-product. It is so interesting to me how different cultures and eras view human emotion. We tend to shun and bury sadness, rejecting it and trying to escape it. I wonder if those who experience deep and profound loss and trauma on a daily basis (war zones, third world poverty,etc.) concern themselves with examining the intracacies of their sadness - it is instead a horific and inevitable part of life. Psychologically speaking, we are so "self-actualized" that we perhaps cross the line into self-absorption and entitlement. Well anyway, good way to the start the day with a little Melville and a little thought.
Most of the time I'm fine with being "content." I wonder if this is what some people mean when they say "happiness." Moments of euphoria and profound sadness (depression) are unsustainable I think, emotionally and physically. I've never understood the advice to "live every day as if its your last." That would be a very hard way to live. It would seem to require the kind of frenzied pursuit of happiness that creates unreasonable expectations for one's life.
I think you're right about people faced with trauma and those just fighting to survive. Their sadness probably never devolves into self-pity--a luxury of those who do not have to struggle to survive.
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