In Antonio Damasio's book, "Looking for Spinoza'', his interest in a Philosopher that lived almost half a century ago and thousands of miles away becomes the basis for his studies and his pursuit in answering the question of the mind /body connection as it relates to modern day advances in neuroscience. His studies were spurred by the insight of Philosopher Spinoza and his progressive attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature. And with this knowledge we can peer into the functions of literature and its many affairs with our emotion and feelings.
Damasio begins with Shakespeare. In his play Richard II. Richard tells Bolingbroke about a possible distinction between emotion and feeling; "The external matter of laments" expressed in his face is merely the, Shadows of unseen grief, that "swells with silence in the tortured soul". He says his grief lies "All within." In this passage, it is clear that Shakespeare alludes to the concepts of affect, but does not properly identify it. Shakespeare got it wrong. In fact, the emotions came before the feeling, as Bolingbroke's grief did not lie "All within", but began all without. As Bolingbroke looks into the mirror and declares what he sees as "Shadows of unseen grief", he is in fact mistaken. The causative factor lies in the emotion-- the external effecting the internal. In fact, the mind and body are parallel attributes of the same substance, with emotions preceding feelings. Even Shakespeare got it wrong-- but in the realm of literature it is safe to say that Shakespeare, for the most part got it right.
Damasio suggests that it is no coincidence Shakespeare died before revising Hamlet. He begins the play with a question; "Who's there?", and never quite gets to the answer, as his play is about the meaning of life and death, and a quest in understanding human behavior. Shakespeare isn't the only one who has vied for answers to these questions, but writers have been making attempts for centuries. Words, styles, and plots become the medium for life's questions, as we briefly (or not so briefly) surrender ourselves to different ideas, and in the process are effected by the way in which the narrator directs us through our own emotions to the place of thoughts.
As Damasio points out, our primary emotions of fear, anger, disgust, and happiness are most consistently caused by the same sort of stimulus across several cultures (as well as other species) (Damasio 44). These primary emotions are the basis for a good piece of writing. Obviously, a writer such as Stephen King has done his fair share of inciting the basal emotions, but even the more unassuming writers use the tactic of the primitive. Instincts of fear or paranoia have been so often seamlessly woven into stories through character or narrative perspective.In Dennis Johnsons novel "Angels"(used as an example of great writing in Francine Prose' book, "Reading Like a Writer") a scene at a Greyhound bus station is a brilliant example:
"In the Oakland Greyhound all the people were dwarfs, and they pushed and shoved to get on the bus, even cutting ahead of two nuns, who were there first. The two nuns smiled sweetly at Miranda and Baby Ellen and played I-see-you behind their fingers when they'd taken their seats." (Prose 80)
Johnson begins with the stimulus, but quickly shifts to the perspective of Jamie.
..... But Jamie could sense that they found her make-up too thick, her pants too tight. They knew she was leaving her husband, and figured she'd turn for a living to whoring. She wanted to tell them what was what, but you can't talk to a Catholic.(80)
The reader is transfered from her anxious perspective to a deeper state of anxiety via her visionary state of the Greyhound terminal;
".... Jamie sat by the window looking out and smoking a Kool. People still crowded at the bus's door, people she hoped never to meet-- struggling with mutilated luggage and paper sacks that might have been contained, the way they handled them, the reasons for every regretted act and the justifications for their wounds. A black man in a tweed suit hat held up a sign for his departing relatives: THE SUN SHALL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD."(Joel 2:31). Under the circumstances. Jamie felt close to the stranger.
Around three in the morning Jamie's eyes came open. Headlights on an entrance ramp cut across their flight and swept through the bus, and momentarily in her exhaustion she thought it was the flaming head of a man whipping like a comet through the sleepig darkness of these travellers, hers alone to witness. Suddenly Miranda was awake, jabbering in her ear, excited to be up past bed time." (81)
Johnson's writing becomes something of a clue to the mind. Her style of writing contorts a certain stimulus into a thought that is not necessarily accurate, but enlivens a perspective that all readers in some form or another are made familiar with. Induced by exhaustion and anxiety, the scene as illustrated by the character is of one who is overwhelmed by her emotions. The abstract percussion of her thoughts are formed through stimulus doused in primary instinct.
Within these passages Damasio's theory of a nesting principle is moved into literary action. As Damasio defines it, the nesting principle is, "simpler reaction incorporated as components of more elaborate ones-- a nesting of the simple within the complex. As Johnson begins Jamie's account of the Greyhound bus station, she is also using her words to illustrate a different reality. through the state of paranoia Jamie's descriptions become more and more synonymous with her negative emotions.
Her attention is drawn deeper into the grim perceived realities of those around her, where even inanimate objects project her own anxieties: "mutilated luggage" and headlights of an entrance ramp as a "flaming head of a man whipping like a comet". The scene comes alive by her descriptions, as the reader is immersed in her narrative,becomes effected by the negativity and fear that is illustrated. What makes this piece of writing so relatable to the reader is the succession by which the characters anxieties heighten, as naturally as one may have felt themselves at one time or another. This unfolding of the primary emotion is in itself a working definition of the nesting principle presupposed into the pages of Johnson's book. It is a complicated knot to untangle, but Damasio simplifies the process for one to make sense of: [Imagine] a tall messy tree with progressively higher and more elaborate branches coming off the main trunks and thus maintaining a two-way communication with their roots. The history of evolution is written all over that tree."(Damasio 38)
As the reader reads, the feeling that emerges is really "the idea of the body being in a certain way."(85) In the beginning of Damasio's chapter on feelings, he asks the reader to imagine them self lying on a warm beach. As a result of the exercise, Damasio points out the Physiological changes that ocurred, and further points out that as one directs their attention away from the state of being on a warm beach, any thoughts that followed remained consistent with the pleasurable feeling that had been previously created. Khalil Gibran take the power of imagery to great heights and is a master in using words to create state's of being through writing. On the subject of solitude Gibran writes:
"The sorrowful spirit finds relaxation in solitude. It abhors people, as a wounded deer deserts the herd and lives in a cave until it is healed or dead.
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation." (Gibran 885)
In this passage, the visual description is the vehicle by which Gibran defines a certain feeling-- in this case solitude. The reader is easily confined by his words as their bodies become the hunting ground of Gibran's thoughts. when asked about the subject of art Gibran would reply, "Art is one step from the visibly known to the unknown."(816)
Gibran's writing, like that of Damasio's beach excersize creates an idea of the body being a certain way, a powerful tool in the literature as well as every day life. It may be the reason by which people prefer different types of writing, as our emotions form preferences. Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis lends to this idea: " In brief, the signal marks options and outcomes with a positive or negative signal that narrows decision-making space and increases the probability that the action will conform to past experience." (Damasio 148) The saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover" may in actuality be impossible to avoid. Whether a person is aware of it or not, emotional signal can alter functions of consciousness so that decision making processes become biased.
The reasons why you prefer a certain writer may be lost in translation, as one who enjoyed "The Prophet" may also like something as different as "Catcher In The Rye." Whether one is drawn to a certain style of dialogue, a certain character in a story, or a certain narrative perspective, much of what we value as opinion raised through our own inner reflection is really a fragment of the whole that makes up our decision processes.
The perspective by which a writer writes cannot for the most part be avoided, whether they are narrating in their own voice, or through a character in their story. It is no fluke that in Toni Morrison's six previous novels, she focuses on the struggles of African American women. In her writing, Toni Morrison tries to describe a place where "race exists but doesn't matter. (Miller 18)
Morrison is identified as a writer with the ability to describe terrible events in simple terms, and in the most charming way possible. After interviewing Morrison, Claudia Dreyfus points out that: "One suspects that Morrison long ago figured out how to battle the cruelties of race with her wit.(18) Damasio's hypothesis is perhaps illustrated in Morrison's writing style, protective of the way in which tragedies are recalled-- a mechanism of her mind lessening the trauma of similar past experiences.
When Morrison's book "The Bluest Eye" was published in the 70's, it spurred a generation of many other African American women to write and publish their stories, including the likes of Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor. In Morrison's writing, the summation of her past experiences, whether conscious or unconscious, breaks into the dialogue of her writing-- and has subsequently touched those with similar life experiences. This domino effect of sorts can also be applied to Philosopher Spinoza himself.
The reasons by which Spinoza chose the books he read had much to do with other progressive thinkers of the time, as well as by his personal experiences of not quite fitting in to any mold of his contemporaries. His library contained several different religious books, from the Bible to the Kaballah. His books were not limited to the religious views of Calvin, or the tactics of Machiavelli, and included authors of such differing perspectives on the subjects Spinoza was interested in. Spinoza's aim in his studies was to create a road to salvation for everybody, obedient to the rules of a Democratic state. Spinoza's ideas were born from the very struggles that drew him towards inner reflection, and moved him in a way that cannot be documented by date and time. His work is the pursuit of understanding the self-- the way by which he went about it was very different from anyone before him, but in his progressive theory lies the same goal of writers that came before him and writers who precede him.
It is the human condition, whether understood abstractly of scientifically, that motivates people to write. In fact it is another fragment of our evolution, as Damasio takes the knowledge of a Philosopher and uses it as a catalyst to study and create new treatments for pain and depression in the future. Antonio Damasio's book "Looking for Spinoza" is worth reading.
Works/Cited
Damsio, Antonio.Looking For Spinoza. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc.,2003.
Gibran, Khalil. The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books,2000.
Miller, John and Kristen. Legends 2. Novato, California: New World Library, 2004.
Prose, Francine. Reading Like a Writer. New York, New York: Harper Collins, 2006.
1 comment:
Lilly, awesome job on the blog dude! Your writing is great. Keep up the good work.
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