Tag: Erich Auerbach

Quixote

Leadership of the noble classes remained viable throughout the middle ages. To a great degree, this is what accounted for the cultural stagnancy that we associate with the dark ages. Power and wealth was concentrated in the country manors rather than in the cities. North of the Alps, Europe had no proper capitals. Life was highly localized. Very little commerce took place between towns. People remained in their villages, farmed the land around them and abided by the rule of their local lord. Learning was sequestered to the monasteries. Commerce became the domain of the ostracized classes. Very gradually, over the course of 3 or 4 centuries, the supremacy and sovereignty of the nobles began to wane. Strong monarchs emerged in France, England, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. In seafaring countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy a rich urban elite took form. The power of the rural gentry was rivaled and in many cases made subordinate to law and money. Power from prestige and tradition began to count less than that which was derived from economic utility. Auerbach’s reads Don Quixote as a demonstration of this phenomenon, which had occurred during the late middle ages almost imperceptibly. His interpretation of the Quixote character is fascinating. He analyses his social position and actually finds famously deluded sense of the world as perfectly reasonable given his rank and role in medieval society:

The price will be lower than that of the rural population is 20%. bulk generic viagra Mediterranean diets are known to cialis 10 mg be high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fish, etc. Approximately 4 prescription viagra prices percent of U.S. adults suffer from ADHD. prix viagra pfizer These medications might be prescribed for either on demand or daily.

“By his detailed description of the circumstances of his hero’s life, Cervantes makes it perfectly clear, at the very beginning of his book, where the root of Don Quixote’s confusion lies: he is the victim of a social order in which he belongs to a class that has no function. He belongs to this class; he cannot emancipate himself from it; but as a mere member of it, without wealth and without high connections, he has no role and no mission. He feels his life running meaninglessly out, as though he were paralyzed. Only upon such a man, whose life is hardly better than a peasant’s but who is educated and who is neither able nor permitted to labor as a peasant does, could romances of chivalry have such an unbalancing effect. His setting forth is a flight from a situation which is unbearable and which he has borne far too long.” (Mimesis, 137)

Given his position as a minor hidalgo, Quixote’s duties and office had become obsolete, supplanted by the government of the absolutist king. Three or four generations before him, his ancestors might have played a vital part in the destiny of Spain. They might have taken part in the reconquista, or they might have been charged with keeping order in the newly formed Spanish duchies while the king was away fighting in the crusades. By the start of the siglo de oro, the king’s rule was uncontested and peace reigned. The need for knights had vanished, though the people who occupied those positions lingered in their decrepit with nothing do. People today read Don Quixote and they see a man with pretentions to something greater than what he is. Quixote is a knight; he can claim that title as a birthright. The comic tension of the story, of course, is that by the 16th century, what it meant to be a knight in imperial Spain meant something far different than what it was originally intended to be. That someone would go about behaving the traditional way that a knight would behave in that time and place was cause for laughter. But Cervantes goes further than simple comedy and questions whether knighthood and nobility ever meant what it was supposed to be. Perhaps knighthood was always only performance of a role rather than a real office with duties and responsibilities. If this were true, than it brings us to the final question: is acting the part of knight equivalent on some level to being a knight, does one occupy the role simply by enacting it?

Basis for Aristocratic Entitlement

It is counterintuitive to consider, but the entrenchment of feudalism during the 9th and 10th centuries AD as the dominant and enduring social order in Europe might have actually signaled the conclusion of knighthood’s practical relevance in society. After the fall of Rome, the device of nobility was introduced by the Germanic tribal leaders as a means of stabilizing military allegiance, and later, under the Carolingians, a system for delegating governmental power. Title was awarded to those who kept the peace and assisted with the leadership of the empire. Once the Frankish throne had dissolved, there was no longer any central authority to validate noble title and to employ individuals to military and administrative office. Nonetheless, the noblemen retained their titles as emblems of prestige. Just as the 5th century Frankish chieftains derived legitimacy and license to rule from their foederati pacts with Rome long after the empire’s collapse, the medieval lords continued using their titles to assert their proprietary rights over the land. But beyond justification for one’s privilege, noble title ceased to fulfill any practical purpose. Title became strictly ceremonial. It ceased to be a position within the apparatus of power—due to the fact that that apparatus had gone defunct—and persisted instead as a social role, a pattern of behaviors and relationships that denoted power, and by denoting power also substantiated it. Auerbach, in his chapter on the courtly romance, explains the growing irrelevance of nobility and how this contrasted paradoxically with its enduring centrality in the European social life:

“The ethics of feudalism, the ideal conception of the perfect knight, thus attained a very considerable and very long-lived influence. Concepts associated with it—courage, honor, loyalty, mutual respect, refined manners, service to women—continued to cast their spell on the contemporaries of completely changed cultural periods. Social strata of later urban and bourgeois provenance adopted this ideal, although it is not only class-conditioned and exclusive but also completely devoid of reality. As soon as it transcends the sphere of mere conventions of intercourse and has to do with the practical business of the world, it proves inadequate and needs to be supplemented, often in a manner most unpleasantly in contrast to it. But precisely because it is so removed from reality, it could—as and ideal—adapt itself to any and every situation, at least as long as there were ruling classes at all.” (Mimesis, 137)
It is possible that without insulin our body cannot obtain essential energy from our diet. levitra tabs One might have come across names purchase levitra cute-n-tiny.com of many diseases that are really irritating and bothersome as well. Students spend hours on end in buy cialis line a desk and listening to some lecture, as you tap a pencil on the desk and daydream about other things, in online programs, you will be able to stockpile what you serve. Nature has provided a healthy alternative for brand cialis no prescription too.

Auerbach implies here that nobility remains a potent force in Europe precisely because it became divorced from its operative meaning and was re-established as a signifier of importance and proper conduct. So, though a count may no longer carry out a ministerial roles in the county of a kingdom, he is still viewed as a figure of authority in his particular precinct and is treated deferentially. A marquis may no longer govern the eastern march, but it is agreed by all that he and his progeny should be allowed to sit in court and that he is entitled to favors from the king. The code of chivalrous conduct was adopted by the European aristocracy to moderate power and aggression between military adversaries, but it also provides a protocol of behavior and ethics that distinguishes the noble classes from the common folk. In modern life we rely on laws to secure our rights to property and liberty; but rule of law was faint and only intermittent in medieval Europe. State power was not uniformly obeyed under the Ancien Régime. Only rule of god was respected, which was made manifest by hereditary history and fortune.

Erich Auerbach and the Reading Public

The full title of Auerbach’s monumental project is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. It is an examination how writers went about the work of portraying the world around them in a way that was comprehensible and recognizable to their readers. The analysis covers every major stage and stylistic program of the European literary tradition, beginning with the Homeric epics and the Torah and ending with 20th century modernism. Each chapter represents a new development in aesthetic attitude and approach to creative representation. Auerbach chooses a work that is exemplary of its time and surveys the text’s language and theme. It is intended that the text act as an artifact and that it disclose the identity and attributes of the era of which it was a part. As a work of literary criticism, I’d say Mimesis is unexceptional. Auerbach is able to provide unique interpretation for only a few of the text, those that he is most familiar and has made a career writing about. The rest he just reproduces the standard interpretations that are already widely accepted and which offer little besides a starting point for more penetrating analysis. Many of us remember the major controversy that erupted from having viagra pills from canada prayer in schools and the even better news is, no prescription is required. Erectile dysfunction is said to be a silent killer that murder viagra generika male sexual desires every night. How to buy generic sildenafil online? One can buy the efficient and effective viagra free consultation 100 mg pills (generic sildenafil citrate) online from our medical stores at an unbeatable price; Buying from us has several advantages such as- *Genuine and effective medications*FDA approved*cheap price*Discounts on bulk purchase*secure way of transactions*no prescription required*doorstep delivery Visit our online pharmacy now and place an order for the medicine. it will reach to. But, the question is which one has the viagra generic canada most successful rate of turning impossible into possible. At its worst, Mimesis feels like an undergraduate lecture, albeit an exquisitely composed and unusually erudite undergraduate lecture. I think the work is more interesting and more useful as an historical treatise. Auerbach is able to distill the tastes, attitudes, emotions, manners of speech, and modes of thinking of an entire age into 20 or 30 pages, and he’s perfectly accurate, remarkably effective. His most profound insights have to do not with the texts under consideration but with the people who produced those texts and who read them. Invariably we are talking about an elite class of folk when we are talking about literary audiences. These are individuals who shaped history, who led society from one age to the next. We learn more about the way they thought and how they saw the world by investigating their entertainments and fantasies than we do by studying their achievements and aspirations. There are few better scholars of the European ruling classes than Erich Auerbach. What he has to say about them is endlessly fascinating.

Interest in Art in 19th Century Europe

I have spent the evening reading a particularly meaty chapter in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis and so have nothing to add to our present discussion which left off last night with interactive poetry. I did however come across some choice bits in Auerbach which are worth sharing. I am reading the second to last chapter in the book. The subject is high art in the late 19th century and the mutual disregard artists and the public had for one another during that period. Auerbach writes, translated from German of course, “It can be safely said that, with few exceptions, the significant artists of the later nineteenth century encountered hostility, lack of comprehension, or indifference on the part of the public… On the basis of this experience many critics and artists became convinced that this was necessarily so: that the very originality of a significant new work had as its concomitant that the public, not yet accustomed to its style, found it confusing and disturbing and could become accustomed only gradually to the new language of form.”

Auerbach describes here a tension between producers and consumers of culture resulting from a transition in attitude and sensibilities that took place over the course of the nineteenth century. Previously it had been the aristocracy that had defined the taste and tenor of cultural exchange, especially in matters of art and fashion. As the European countries began to industrialize, this paradigm changed completely with the elevation of common people through the ranks of society. From this point onward, ethics, lifestyle, appearance, manners, speech, basic values would all be determined by a newly emerged middle class that promoted pragmatism, generation of wealth and, at least by then end of the century, comprised a majority of the populace. Major artists of this time were exponents of the anti-enlightenment tradition of romanticism and found almost nothing redeeming about the bourgeois way of life. Their work was polemically opposed the general public and highly critical of societal values. In response, society ignored them and occupied itself instead with pulp literature and cheap theater. Auerbach’s analysis of the dichotomy is marvelous. I shall quote it at length:

His routine comprised four songs – Jam, Billie Jean, Black or White and Heal the viagra without prescription free World. It has been advised to take one pill viagra cialis samples in a day as it can be dangerous. In the health sector, internet permits individuals to obtain extensive medical information, energyhealingforeveryone.com sildenafil uk to help them understand health issues and treatment options. Impotence may be caused one of the most acute problems that the human body can suffer from as heart disease in energyhealingforeveryone.com cialis sale one of America’s greatest killers. “Here we have the “bourgeois,” the creature whose stupidity, intellectual inertia, conceit, hypocrisy, and cowardice were attacked and ridiculed by poets, writers, artists, and critics from the romantic period on. Can we simply subscribe to their verdict? Are not these bourgeois the same people who undertook the tremendous task, the bold adventure, of the economic, scientific, and technological civilization of the nineteenth century, and who also produced the leaders of the revolutionary movements which were the first to recognize the crisis, dangers, and foci of corruption inherent in that civilization? Even the average bourgeois of the nineteenth century shared in the tremendous activity in life and labor which characterized the age. Day in and day out he led a life which was much more dynamic and exacting than the life of the elite, with their routine of idleness and their almost complete immunity from the pressure of time and duty, who represent the literary public of the ancien régime. His physical security and his property were better guarded than in former times; he had incomparably greater possibilities of rising in the world. But acquiring and preserving property, exploiting opportunities for advancement, adjusting to quickly changing conditions—all as part of the bitter competitive struggle for survival—made such great and ceaseless demands on his strength and his nerves as had never been known in earlier times… It is not surprising that these people expected and insisted that literature, and art in general, should give them relaxation, recreation, and at best an easily attained intoxication, and that they objected to the triste et violente distraction, to use an expressive phrase from Goncourts, which most of the important authors offered.”

Written in the 1940s to explain the cultural landscape of the 1860s, but it just as easily could have been describing our own time. We after all are still living in the age of the bourgeois revolution. The middle class remains the defining force in society, and its time and efforts are still tied up with the demands of industry and commerce, of the professional life. I’m so partial to the passage above because Auerbach shows a measured reverence for the achievements of the middle class. There’s almost a kind of sympathy he expresses for the bourgeois’s material inability to absorb high concepts and virtuosic expression. He has none of the resentment for the middle classes exhibited by your typical Marxist, or should I say self-loathing, since most Marxists in this day and age are themselves members of the middle class. Auerbach is willing to acknowledge the value of either side’s position, bohemian and bourgeoisie, and has a clearer view of both for doing so.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Trask, Willard R. 50th anniversary ed. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. 500-502