Abstract
In 1908 Alexander Blok, the Russian poet, wrote this diagnosis of the modern temper:
All the most lively and sensitive children of our century are stricken by a disease unknown to doctors and psychiatrists. It is related to the disorders of the soul and might be called “irony.” Its symptoms are fits of an exhausting laughter which starts with a diabolical mockery and a provocative smile and ends as rebellion and sacrilege.1
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References
Quoted in Abram Tertz, On Socialist Realism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1960, p. 74.
Northrop Frye rightly states “that the ironic tone is central to modern literature.” Northrop Frye, “The Road to Excess,” in Myth and Symbol. Edited by Bernice Slote. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1963, p. 11.
José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art and Notes on the Novel. New York: Peter Smith, 1951, p. 48.
“Cosmic irony, the popular irony of Fate, dramatic irony, Socratic and Romantic irony, the ironies of tension and paradox promulgated by the New Critics — we have only to try cataloguing these and the rest to realize how complex are the meanings now available in this protean word; behind the recent notoriety is a long, involved, and sometimes important career which began in the age of Socrates.” Norman Knox, The Word Irony and Its Context, 1500–1753. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1961, p. ix.
Beda Allemann, in Ironie und Dichtung (Unterjesingen-Tübingen: Günther Neske, Pfullingen, 1956), analyzes the underlying connection between modern literature and irony. Irony is discussed as it appears in the work of Friederich Schlegel, Solger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil.
Alfred Edwin Lussky, Tieck’s Romantic Irony. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1932, p. 89. Friedrich Schlegel was convinced that paradox constituted the heart of irony. “Die Paradoxie ist für die Ironie die conditio sine qua non, die Seele, Quell und Princip....”
Friedrich Schlegel, Literary Notebooks, 1797–1801. Edited by Hans Eichner. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957, p. 114.
Oskar Walzel, German Romanticism. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1932, p. 43.
“This is the universal import of the genial god-like irony as this concentration of the Ego in itself, for which all bonds are broken, and which can only live in the bliss of self-enjoyment. This irony was the discovery of Herr Fried, von Schlegel, and many have chattered about it after him, or it may be are giving us a fresh sample of such chatter.” G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art. Translated by F. P. B. Osmaston. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1920, I, 91.
Calvin O. Schrag sums up as follows Kierkegaard’s interpretation of irony. “To attain ethical existence one must first become aware of the incongruity between the inward and the outward, between the subjective and the objective, as they are expressed in one’s life. Hence the ironist uses irony precisely ‘because he grasps the contradiction there is between the manner in which he exists inwardly and the fact that he does not outwardly express it.’ The ironist apprehends the discrepancy between the inward lack of wisdom and the outward manifestation which conceals this lack.... These cross-currents of incongruity and discrepancies define the ironical situation.... The ironist, who is in the ‘boundary zone’ between the aesthetical and the ethical, poignantly expresses these incongruities and thus drives beyond the aesthetical to the ethical.” Calvin O. Schrag, Existence and Freedom. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1961, p. 195.
Sedgwick defines irony as “the sense of contradiction felt by spectators of a drama who see a character acting in ignorance of his condition.” G. G. Sedgwick, Of Irony. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948, p. 49.
David Worcester, The Art of Satire. New York: Russell & Russell, 1960, p. 75.
In his analysis of the poetry of Ezra Pound, Albert William Levi describes the method of ironic juxtaposition that is one of the favorite devices in the technical repertory of the poet. His discussion illustrates the meaning of irony in one of its modalities. “A beer-bottle on the pediment of the monument to a war hero; beating a mule with an asphodel; the juxtaposition of these incongruous images without further comment provides a comment nevertheless, and that comment is deeply ironic. And irony is a kind of wry muscularity in the intellect. But it is more than that. Irony is a criticism of life. Any active cognition of disparity and incongruity is a critical commentary upon the nature of the world. To be acutely aware of the contrast between fact and value, the fake and the fine, the cheap and the beautiful, Kung and Herr Krupp, modern hypocrisy and Homeric truth, Ch’in Ming and contemporary advertising, neschek and ethos, a concentration camp near Pisa and the Tempio Malatestiano, St. Trophime and the Albert Memorial, John Adams and Franz Joseph, is to be a moralist. And to present these contrasts within the texture of an epic poem is to orchestrate values according to an ironic method.” Albert William Levi, Literature, Philosophy and the Imagination. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1962, p. 155.
“It was Plato’s pupil Aristotle who used irony in a good sense, to describe the gentle assumption of weakness and ignorance, coupled with a polite desire to be enlightened, which was the characteristic dialectic technique of Socrates; and he passed on the concept of Socratic irony through the Romans to us. Yet it was more than a technique of philosophical investigation: it was also a weapon of satire.” Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 56.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus sought to erect a philosophy of tragedy on the awareness of the absurdity of existence. Robbe-Grillet, however, sets out as a novelist to shatter the anthropomorphic conception of the tragic. The world is absurd, yes, devoid of meaning, but in what sense is it to be considered tragic. See John Cruickshank (ed.), The Novelist as Philosopher. London: Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 25.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism. Translated by Philip Mairet. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1949, pp. 33–34.
Pascal Covici, Jr. points out the real difference in Huckleberry Finn between the views of Huck and those of Mark Twain. See Pascal Covici, Jr., Mark Twain’s Humor. Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1962, pp. 76–77.
“Basically Musil regards irony not as a device but as an intrinsic attitude toward life itself. Irony is at the heart of Musil’s wide-ranging conception of ‘possibility’ and the ‘possibilitarian’; to see things simultaneously as they are, and as they just as well could be but are not, is certainly an ironic attitude. Irony in this sense creates detachment, and in the case of Ulich paralysis, for the possibilitarian, an ironic personality, cannot commit himself to any course of action.” Burton Pike, Robert Musil. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1961, p. 159. Here, in the case of Robert Musil, a novelist of immense sweep and imaginative power, we see a confirmation of Hegel’s diagnosis of the essentially negative, paralyzing effects of the ironic attitude.
Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living. Edited and translated by A. E. Murch. London: Peter Owen Limited, 1961, pp. 161–62.
José Ortega y Gasset, The Modern Theme. Translated by James Cleugh. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961, pp. 91–92.
Isaiah Berlin logically disposes of the doctrine of relativity and its corollary, the assumption that life is a dream. “We protest that ‘everything’ cannot be a dream, for then, with nothing to contrast with dreams, the notion of a ‘dream’ loses all specific reference.... If everything is subjective or relative, nothing can be judged to be more so than anything else.” Isaiah Berlin, Historical Inevitability. Oxford, 1954, p. 61. Quoted in René Wellek, Concepts of Criticism. Edited by Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963, pp. 13–14.
Alan Reynolds Thompson, The Dry Mock, Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948, pp. 257–258.
H. G. Wells, in a lecture delivered at the Royal Institute on “The Idea of a World Encyclopedia” voiced the hope of liberalism by seeking to establish the philosopher — or rather the scientist — as king. The Utopian expectations — and sorry limitations — of the liberal mind are evident in his confession that he dislikes “isolated events and disconnected details. I really hate statements, views, prejudices and beliefs that jump at you suddenly out of mid-air. I like my world coherent and consistent.” H. G. Wells, The Idea of a World Encyclopedia. London: L. & V. Woolf, 1936, p. 5. Toward the end of his life Wells was forced to give up this Utopian faith.
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage. New York: Vintage Books, 1961, p. 654.
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 236.
As Eugene Ionesco says: “Je n’ai jamais compris, pour ma part, la différence, que l’on faite entre comique et tragique. Le comique étant intuition de l’absurde, il me semble plus deseperant que la tragique.” Eugene Ionesco, Notes et contre-notes. Paris: Gallimard, 1962, pp. 13–14.
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbevilles. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950, p. 508.
See the Chapter on “Time, Suicide and Death,” in F. Temple Kingston, French Existentialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961, pp. 28–47.
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 285.
See Charles I. Glicksberg, “The Spirit of Irony in T. S. Eliot’s Plays,” Prairie Schooner, XXIX, Fall 1955, pp. 222–237.
Albert Camus, The Stranger. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage Books, 1954, p. 154.
In Comic Laughter, Marie Collins Swabey shows that “perception of the ludicrous helps us to comprehend both ourselves and the world, making us, at least in the highest reaches of humor, feel more at home in the universe by aiding in the discernment of value.” Marie Collins Swabey, Comic Laughter. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1961, p. v.
Franz Kafka, Dearest Father. Translated by Ernest Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins. New York: Schocken Books, 1954, p. 323.
Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka. Edited by Max Brod and translated by Joseph Kresh. New York: Schocken Books, 1948, pp. 290–91.
Edwin Honig treats of irony in relation to allegory in Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1959), but fails to indicate that the allegorizing tendency is opposed to the ironic vision. Lawrence forcefully sums up the objections that might be raised against the use of allegory in literature. “A man is more than mere Faithfulness and Truth, and when people are merely personifications of qualities they cease to be people for me.”
D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse. New York: The Viking Press, 1932, p. 8.
“The allegorical satirist is more likely to achieve his purpose if he can sustain the attitude of the ironist who philosophically observes the incongruities of human life....” Ellen Douglass Leyburn, Satiric Allegory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956, p. 11.
The satirist is, in short, “a moral man appalled by the evil he sees around him, and he is forced by his conscience to write satire.” Robert G. Elliott, The Power of Satire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960, p. 265.
Suzanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953, pp. 348–49.
J. L. Styan, The Dark Comedy. Cambridge: The University Press, 1962, p. 291.
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© 1969 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Glicksberg, C.I. (1969). The Ironic Vision in Modern Literature. In: The Ironic Vision in Modern Literature. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0977-0_1
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