Zusammenfassung
Sehen wir die tragische Betrachtungsweise und das tragische Wissen als ein Aushalten und Verstehen der Konflikthaftigkeit des Seelischen, so kann das Wissen um inneren Konflikt auch eine ganz andere Gestalt als die einer Tragödie oder einer Erzählung vom Bösen annehmen. Doch auch dann stehen wir auf vertrautem Grund, sowohl klinisch wie literarisch. Vielleicht kann man zutiefst auch dieses als eine Art des tragischen Wissens ansehen: das Wissen um die Abgründigkeit und Doppelsinnigkeit der Wirklichkeit, ein Wissen und Erleben, das die Menschheitsgeschichte seit eh und je begleitet hat: „Fern ist der Grund der Dinge und tief, gar tief; wer will ihn finden?“1 — doch ein tragisches Wissen, das sich in der Kunstform des Romans, in den diesem eigensten Stilmitteln darstellt. Dabei geht es um die Einsicht und die Darstellung inneren Konfliktes in der Form des „Doppelwissens“, also des Ironischen. Auch ist es nicht der Konflikt zwischen Absolutem und Maß, der als Rahmen gilt, sondern zwischen Vordergründigem und Abgründigem — zwischen dem Gewohnten und dem Dämonisch-Tiefen. Der Unterschied zum Vorangegangenen ist nicht radikal. Der Akzent verschiebt sich, in bezug auf jene Dreiheit, lediglich von dem der Absolutsetzung zu dem der „Spaltung“. Das heißt aber: die zunehmende Verinnerlichung auch der Konfliktdarstellung.
„Dào chōng, ér yòng zhi zāi bù yíng. Yüān xī si wàn wù zhi zōng.“ (Das Dao ist leer wie ein Becher, und doch, wird es gebraucht, kann es nicht voll werden. Welch Abgrund ist es! Es scheint der Urahne zu sein der unzähligen Dinge.) (Lao Tse, Tao Te King, Kap. 4; nach den englischen Übersetzungen von T. C. Gibbs und Wing-Tsit Chan)
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Referenzen
„Rachoq ma-shehaja we’amoq, amoq mi jimza’ennu?“ (Prediger, 7,24).
„Hidden impostume“ — dies ist die angemessenere Übersetzung der Hamletschen Metapher.
„For the last ten years it has seemed to us that Mr. Dickens has been unmistakably forcing himself. Bleak house was forced; Little Dorrit was laboured; the present work [Our mutual friend] is dug out as with a spade and pick axe“ (S.429).
„... was there ever such wickedness as that of the Lammles and Mr. Fledgeby? Not that people have not been as mischievous as they; but was any one ever mischievous in that singular fashion? Did a couple of elegant swindlers ever take such particular pains to be aggressively inhuman?... What a world were this world if the world of Our mutual friend were an honest reflection of it!“ (S. 432).
„Such scenes as this are useful in fixing the limits of Mr. Dickens’ insight. Insight is, perhaps, too strong a word; for we are convinced that it is one of the chief conditions of his genius not to see beneath the surface of things. If we might hazard a definition of his literary character, we should, accordingly, call him the greatest of superficial novelists... It were, in our opinion, an offense against humanity to place Mr. Dickens among the greatest novelists. For... he has created nothing but figure. He has added nothing to our understanding of human character. He is master of but two alternatives: he reconciles us to what is commonplace, and he reconciles us to what is odd. The value of the former service is questionable; and the manner in which Mr. Dickens performs it sometimes conveys a certain impression of charlatanism. The value of the latter is incontestable, and here Mr. Dickens is an honest, an admirable artist“ (S.434).
„One way of describing Freud’s conception of the mind is to say that it is based upon the primacy of the will, and that the organization of the internal life is in the form, often fantastically parodie, of a criminal process in which the mind is at once the criminal, the victim, the police, the judge, and the executioner. And this is a fair description of Dickens’ own view of the mind, as having received the social impress, it becomes in turn the matrix of society“ (S. 55).
„Yet the emphasis on the internal life and on personal responsibility is very strong in Little Dorrit“ (S. 55).
„To be recognized, deferred to, and served — this is their master passion. Money is of course of great consequence in the exercise of this passion, yet in Little Dorrit the desire for money is subordinated to the desire for deference... It is to be noted of all these people that they justify their insensate demand for status by some version of Blandois’ pathos; they are confirmed in their lives by self-pity, they rely on the great modern strategy of being the insulted and injured“ (S. 58).
„His dismissal of himself [was] remarkable. He never said, I discovered this adaptation or invented that combination; but showed the whole thing as if the Divine artificer had made it, and he happened to find it. So modest was he about it, such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly convinced was he that it was established on irrefragable laws“ (S. 64).
„... the whole energy of the imagination of Little Dorrit is directed to the transcending of the personal will, to the search for the Will in which shall be our peace“ (S. 64).
„Even the physical littleness of this grown woman, an attribute which is insisted on and which seems likely to repel us, does not do so, for we perceive it to be the sign that she is not only the Child of the Marshalsea, as she is called, but also the Child of the Parable, the negation of the social will“ (S. 65).
Dickens schrieb 1859 der ihm persönlich unbekannten Autorin mit der für ihn so charakteristischen Großzügigkeit: „... if you should ever have the freedom and inclination to be a fellow labourer with me, it would yield me a pleasure that I have never known yet, and can never know otherwise... „ (zit. nach Johnson 1952, S. 956).
Ich füge hier einige andere Zitate aus George Eliots Middlemarch ein, die sich auf diese zweite Gruppe von Menschen beziehen: „But it is given to us sometimes even in our everyday life to witness the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after her night’s anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond — why, she perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those three who were on one hearth in Lydgate’s house... “ (S. 778). Anderseits wird Rosamond als „inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve“ beschrieben (S. 768); sie zieht ihren Gatten in die verstohlene Korruption des Geistes, über die er sich selbst so äußert: „I have not taken a bribe yet. But there is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity...“ (S.745). „Alas! The scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects“. Sie beschließt Middlemarch mit diesen Worten über Dorothea: „... the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs“ (S.811).
„... that the cold hard armour of pride in which he lived encased should be made more flexible by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance... Who wears such armour, too, bears with him ever another heavy retribution. It is of proof against conciliation, love, and confidence! against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all tenderness, all soft emotions; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable as the bare breast to steel, and such tormenting festers rankle there as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand of Pride itself on weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down“ (S. 581 f.). Und über seine Antagonistin, seine Ehefrau: „Entrenched in her pride and power, and with all the obduracy of her spirit summoned about her...“ (S. 544). Über Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times: „that Bully of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies“ (S. 258).
„I really felt ashamed to take advantage of the ingenuousness or grateful feeling of the child for the purpose of gratifying my curiosity. I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us“ (S. 46).
Zumindest als vordergründige Motivierung. Gerade was ich später ausführen werde, läßt es als wahrscheinlich annehmen, daß auch manches in Dickens’ Erleben und in seinem Charakter von unbewußtem Ressentiment bestimmt wurde — „as well it might!“ -, wie dies für uns alle mehr oder weniger gilt. Doch ist seine sozial-revolutionäre Arbeit manifest nicht von diesem Antrieb erfüllt, sondern vielmehr von dem eines intensiven Mitleids (compassion) und Gerechtigkeitsgefühls.
„If sincerity is the avoidance of being false to any man through being true to one’s own self, we can see, that this state of personal existence is not to be attained without the most arduous effort. And yet at a certain point in history certain men and classes of men conceived that the making of this effort was of supreme importance in the moral life, and the value they attached to the enterprise of sincerity became a salient, perhaps a definitive, characteristic of Western culture for some four hundred years“ (S. 5 f.).
„Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on his own Parliamentary pedestal, turned out to be the windiest creature here: Proposing happiness to the bride and bridegroom in a series of platitudes that would have made the hair of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and trotting, with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling labyrinths of sentences which he seemed to take for high roads, and never so much as wanted to get out of“ (Little Dorrit, S.458).
„We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions, we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them“ (David Copperfield, S. 749).
„Mr. Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in everything good, from banking to building... This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon“ (Little Dorrit, S.292 f.).
„Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares...“ (Our mutual friend, S. 159 f.).
„Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started litte trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs. General’s way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind — to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, the properest. Mrs. General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. General, and blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs. General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration. Hie more crak-ked it was, the more Mrs. General varnished. There was varnish in Mrs. General’s voice, varnish in Mrs. General’s touch, an atmosphere of varnish around Mrs. General’s figure. Mrs. General’s dreams ought to have been varnished — if she had any — lying asleep in the arms of the good St. Bernard, with the feathery snow falling on his housetop“ (Little Dorrit, S. 503).
„... a truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant“ (S. 530).
„It was from this position that all she saw appeared unreal; the more surprising the scenes, the more they resembled the unreality of her own inner life as she went through its vacant places all day long... all a dream — only the old mean Marshalsea a reality... this crowning unreality.. . Everything having been surface and varnish and show without substance“ (S. 517, 519, 557).
„There is no doubt that by day Mr. Swiveller firmly believed this secret convenience to be a bookcase and nothing more; that he closed his eyes to the bed, resolutely denied the existence of the blankets, and spurned the bolster from his thoughts. No word of its real use, no hint of its nightly service, no allusion to its peculiar properties, had ever passed between him and his most intimate friends“ (S. 101).
„Implicit faith in the deception was the first article of his creed. To be the friend of Swiveller you must reject all circumstantial evidence, all reason, observation, and experience, and repose a blind belief in the bookcase. It was his pet weakness and he cherished it“ (The old curiosity shop, S. 101).
„... in the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article, which will bear a deal of stretching and adapt itself to a great variety of circumstances. Some people, by prudent management and leaving it off piece by piece like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather, even contrive, in time, to dispense with it altogether, but there be others who can assume the garment and throw it off at pleasure; and this being the greatest and most convenient improvement, is the one most in vogue“ (S. 100).
„... he took himself into custody by the wrists, and backed himself among the ottomans and chairs and tables as if he were his own Police officer, saying to himself: ,Now, none of that! Come! I’ve got you, you know, and you go quietly along with me!4“(Little Dorrit, S. 672).
„As though a criminal should be chained in a stationary boat on a deep clear river, condemned, whatever countless leagues of water flowed past him, always to see the body of the fel-lowcreature he had drowned lying at the bottom, immovable, and unchangeable, except as the eddies made it broad or long, now expanding, now contracting its terrible lineaments: so Arthur, below the shifting current of transparent thoughts and fancies which were gone and succeeded by others as soon as come, saw, steady and dark, and not to be stirred from its place, the one subject that he endeavored with all his might to rid himself of, and that he could not fly from“ (S. 742). Doch war es nicht Arthurs eigene Schuld, sondern das Verbrechen und die Schande seiner Mutter, die sein Leben mitvergiftete: „It was like the oppression of a dream to believe that shame and exposure were impending over her and his father’s memory, and to be shut out, as by a brazen wall, from the possibility of coming to their aid“ (S. 742).
„... under their outer bearing there was something of the shamed air of two cheats who were linked together by concealed handcuffs“ (S.717). Zuvor heißt es über dieses noble Pärchen, das sich gegenseitig unter falschen Vorgaben in die Ehe gelockt: „... we have both been deceiving, and we have both been deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been bitten“ S. 172). Und: „... we must bear the consequences of the deception — that is to say, bear another, and bear the burden of scheming together“ (S. 689).
„Speculations... bearing the strangest relations towards the prison, but always concerning the prison, ran like nightmares through his mind while he lay awake“ (Little Dorrit, S. 129).
„But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and unfeeling, the sensible and senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now“ (Bleak house, S.758).
„Compress into one handsome face the conscious self-abasement, and the burning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride; and there it hid itself with two white shuddering arms“ (Dombey and son, S.414). „An expression of scorn was habitual to the proud face, and seemed inseparable from it; but the contempt with which it received any appeal to admiration, respect, or consideration on the ground of his riches... “ (S. 521).
Diese Seiten wurden vom Dichter unmittelbar vor seinem tödlichen Schlaganfall geschrieben, wohl am selben Tag: ist es die Ablehnung, die „Verleugnung“ der Wahrnehmung seines eigenen unmittelbar bevorstehenden Todes?
„When it’s not a campaign, of a sort, on behalf of the something better (better than the obnoxious, the provoking object) that blessedly, as is assumed, might be, it’s not worth speaking of. But this is exactly what we mean by operative irony. It implies and projects the possible other case, the case rich and edifying where the actuality is pretentious and vain. So it plays its lamp; so, essentially, it carries that smokeless flame, which makes clear, with all the rest, the good cause that guides it. ... If the life about us for the last thirty years refuses warrant for these examples, then so much the worse for that life“ (Art of the novel, S. 222). Siehe auch Kap. 11 Goethe in Wilhelm Meister und den berühmten Ausspruch über Euripides und Sophokles, nämlich daß der erstere die Menschen darstelle, wie sie seien, und der letztere, wie sie sein sollten.
„With all these personal advantages (to which may be added a strong savour of tobacco-smoke and a prevailing greasiness of appearance) Mr. Swiveller lent back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the company with a few bars of an intensely dismal air, and then, in the middle of a note, relapsed into his former silence... The silence was not of long duration, for Mr. Swiveller, after favouring us with several melodious assurances that his heart was in the highlands, and that he wanted but his Arab steed as a preliminary to the achievement of great feats of valour and loyalty, removed his eyes from the ceiling and subsided into prose again... Having delivered this oration with a great many waves and flourishes of the hand, Mr. Swiveller abruptly thrust the head of his cane into his mouth as if to prevent himself from impairing the effect of his speech by adding one other word“ (S. 61–64).
„Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business, but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a mark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another mark of respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another mark of respectability. His digestion ist impaired, which is highly respectable. And he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for his three daughters. And his father is dependent on him in the Vale of Taunton. — The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself... “ (S. 555).
„Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more and of the outsiders’ incomprehension.“
„Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked uneven flagstones; and through the giant elm trees as they shed a gust of tears“ (S. 11).
„The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadow gathering behind the chair was heavier“ (S. 336).
„Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his terrible appearance of existence, motionless, without a sound. As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy of his face looking where his face looked, and bearing the expression his face bore“ (S. 337).
„All human memory is fraught with sorrow and trouble. My memory is as the memory of other men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I close the bargain. Yes! I will forget my sorrow, wrong, and trouble!“ (S. 341).
„... all things are strange to me. I am strange to myself. I am here, as in a dream. What interest have I in this place, or any place that I can bring to my remembrance! My mind is going blind!“ (S.359).
„... a wintry shudder goes among the little pools... and through the giant elm trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low-arched Cathedral door, but two men coming out resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet“ (Edwin Drood, S. 11).
Übrigens eine Ansicht Manns, die zur heftigen Verurteilung durch W. Muschg geführt hat: „Die Bücher Thomas Manns sind das letzte große Versäumnis der bürgerlichen deutschen Literatur. Künftige Leser werden an ihnen vor allem verstehen lernen, warum das Deutschland, das er repräsentierte, vom Teufel geholt wurde“ (1948, 1969, S.404).
„He would not cease to assail any of these distortions of decency, but his comprehensive vision would perceive them all as no more than vicious symptoms of the great evil permeating every field of human endeavor: the entire structure of exploitation on which the social order was founded. And the fiercest of his attacks he would direct against that golden-faced idol with a heart of iron and bowels of brass.“
„That double-density dialogue... the subtext, the meaning behind the meaning“ (Meyer 1971, S.813).
„... the novel was not a play however dramatic it might be, and among the distinctions between the two forms was the possibility, which belonged to the novel alone, of setting up a fine central intelligence in terms of which everything might be unified and upon which everything might be made to depend“.
„The occasions’, or the more or less peripheral intelligences which James used to mirror his action, serve to reveal it from various (ironically different) angles. Neither the author nor the protagonist is to be allowed to break down and ,tell all’...“ (Fergusson, 1949,1972, S. 104).
„Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderweb of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative... it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations... Catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous force keeps fiction upon her feet“ (James 1884, 1968, S. 397–405).
„By offering us the inner history of his little Maisie or of his young governess, James was in reality re-dreaming and using for art the essential materials of his own childhood; and in turn, using art as a form of catharsis for the lingering wounds within his psyche. He performed self-therapy rather than self-analysis; but he offered us the materials by which we can glimpse his extraordinary private history“ (S. 15).
„Quod advenit“, sowohl als „avenir“ — Zukunft wie als „adventure“ — Abenteuer.
„As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magnetism, there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead of broken..., so Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of being“ (S. 24).
„... the feeling of unexpectedness marks one of the central contrasts between shame and guilt“.
„Shame over a sudden uncovering of incongruity mounts when what is exposed is inappropriate positive expectation, happy and confident commitment to a world that proves to be alien or nonexistent“ (S. 43).
„Boschu ki-vatach ba’u adeha wajjechparu“ (Hiob, 6.20).
„Even more than the uncovering of weakness or ineptness, exposure of misplaced confidence can be shameful — happiness, love, anticipation of a response that is not there, something personally momentous received as inconsequential. The greater the expectation, the more acute the shame; the greater the discrepancy between one’s image of oneself and the image others have of one, the more one has to put on a brave face“ (S. 43 f.).
„Sudden experience of a violation of expectation, of incongruity between expectation and outcome, results in a shattering of trust in oneself“ (S. 46).
„Some capacity for keeping secrets and for choosing when to reveal them, and some access to the underlying experience of secrecy and depth, are indispensable for an enduring sense of identity, for the ability to plan and to act, and for essential belongings. With no control over secrecy and openness, human beings could not remain either sane or free... Conflicts over secrecy... are conflicts over power.“
„Words... separate out precisely those properties that anchor the experience to a single modality of sensation. By binding it to words, they isolate the experience from the amodal flux in which it was originally experienced. Language can thus fracture amodal global experience. A discontinuity in experience is introduced“ (D. Stern, S. 176). „One of the consequences of this inevitable division into the accountable and the deniable is that what is deniable to others becomes more and more deniable to oneself. The path into the unconscious (both topographic and potentially dynamic) is being well laid by language“ (S. 181).
„This state of affairs both integrates and fractures experience and leads the infant into a crisis of self-comprehension. The self becomes a mystery. The infant is aware that there are levels and layers of self-experience that are to some extent estranged from the official experiences ratified by language. The previous harmony is broken... This crisis in self-comprehension occurs because for the first time the infant experiences the self as divided and rightly senses that no one else can rebind the division. The infant has not lost omnipotence but rather has lost experiential wholeness“ (S. 272 f.).
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Wurmser, L. (1989). „Die Dinge sind nicht immer so, wie sie scheinen“ — Doppelheit und Bruch in der Wirklichkeit bei Dickens. In: Die zerbrochene Wirklichkeit. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-00919-2_5
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