Self-Knowledge and the Heros Tragedy in Death in Venice and Salom - Case Study Example

Self-Knowledge and the Hero’s Tragedy in Death in Venice and Salomé Although the link between ancient Greece and the pre-World War I Europe in which both Thomas Mann and Oscar Wilde wrote may seem at best tenuous, it is nevertheless necessary to briefly consider the roots of classical tragedy when embarking on a discussion of heroism in Death in Venice and Salomé. Although both books do deviate somewhat from classical form and style, both Wilde and Mann were inarguably well aware of – and strongly influenced by – the thirty-five hundred year-old European tradition in which they were inscribing themselves as writers of tragedy. In particular, Mann’s notions of the genre were largely shaped by Greek influences, albeit filtered through the lens of Nietzsche. Although the novel had not yet been invented when Aristotle created his requirements for heroism in tragedy, many of the character elements he described hold true even for more contemporary forms. I would therefore like to study the role of tragic heroism in Salome and Death in Venice as follows: I would like to begin with a very brief exploration of the roots of the classical (Aristotelian) conception of the tragic hero; second, I propose to examine Aschenbachs role as a tragic hero in Death in Venice in light of both classical and contemporary ideas about the genre; and finally, I would like to study the problem of heroism in Salomé, which offers a somewhat less straightforward situation. Writing in the Poetics, Aristotle clearly outlines his conditions for defining both tragedy as genre and the characteristics of a tragic hero. In addition to his insistence on the unities of time and action, the most salient feature of his description of a hero is undoubtedly the emphasis he places on the need for balance. Rather than depicting a hero as a larger-than-life figure who should command the audience’s awe and adoration, he instead stresses the need for an all-too-human imperfection. Although he does specify the ideal social position of a saying, saying that “he [must be] one of those who are in high fortune” (Aristotle 47), he also asserts that a tragic hero must be a “character… who is not pre-eminently virtuous and just, and yet it is through no badness or villainy of his own that he falls into misfortune, but rather through some flaw in him” (Aristotle 47). The heroes of Death in Venice and Salomé embody this particular conception of heroism to varying degrees. There is, however, one area in which both Aschenbach and Salomé fulfill Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero: both possess a fatal flaw (or hamartia) that ultimately leads to both of their downfalls, one that would have been quite familiar to Greek audiences. When considering the relative weaknesses of Mann’s and Wilde’s protagonists, any reader of these two works would do well to keep in mind the immortal dictum of the Delphic oracle: Know Thyself. Although Aschenbach’s and Salomé’s personalities may seem to be directly opposed – Aschenbach is fundamentally cut off from himself and his desires, unable to indulge even his slightest need without toppling into a morass of self-destruction; Salomé is nothing but an unrestrained personification of physical and sensual needs – both are fundamentally lacking in self knowledge, and it is this flaw that ultimately drives both of their tragedies. The question of whether Aschenbach, Thomas Mann’s upright, Prussian protagonist, can be considered a tragic hero would appear to be relatively straightforward: the trajectory of the eminent, accomplished writer from restrained citizen to desperate, yearning, cholera-stricken creature, represents a clear “change of fortune”, a movement from (dubious) happiness to misfortune. In the process, however, he gives license to desires that he has repressed for many years – desires that are unleashed with such ferocity that they ultimately destroy him. What is interesting about Aschenbach’s tragedy is not the ‘what’ but rather the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. Although Death in Venice does undoubtedly contain echoes of Aristotelian notions of tragedy in its unity of plot and its flawed but highly respected hero, it is equally a modern tragedy. On Mann’s part, this balance between classicism and modernity was quite a deliberate move. If not strictly doctrinaire in terms of form, Mann was certainly beholden to the Greek influence on tragedy in many other respects. He was famously influenced by Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, in particular the “dichotomy between the Dionysian, the irresponsible, primitive, outpouring of passion, and the Apollonian, the principle of order, control, and form, and accounted for great art (Greek tragedy) as the controlling of Dionysus by the even more powerful Apollo” (Beckett 579). We can easily understand Death in Venice, specifically Aschenbach’s journey from complete repression to utter debasement, as a metaphor for the necessity of this kind of balance. Having repressed any vestige of Dionysian disorder or unrestraint in his personality for decades, Aschenbach is consequently undone completely by his obsession with Tadzio. We can therefore view Mann’s goal in Death in Venice not as the mimicry of Greek tragic form, but rather as an exploration of its principles and emphasis on balance. Mann establishes Aschenbach’s estrangement from the world around him at the very start of the book, describing him as “too busy with the tasks imposed on him by his own ego and the European soul, too laden with the care and duty to create, too preoccupied to be an amateur of the gay outer world” (Mann 6). Paradoxically, Aschenbach’s failure to explore the outer world is in reality representative of his failure to explore his inner world. At the same time, however, Aschenbach’s very desire to escape his circumstances points to an unfulfilled yearning, a potential greatness of spirit that the hero has never allowed himself to explore – and the persistent crushing of that potential magnanimity is part of his tragedy. He is anxious, eager to flee all that is familiar, but at the same time he is unwilling to abandon his familiar desire for control. His “new impulse, which thus late and suddenly swept over him was speedily made to conform to the pattern of self-discipline he had followed from his youth up” (Mann 6). True spontaneity, we are to understand, is impossible for Aschenbach. Even the act of escaping must be carefully planned, controlled, and executed: despite his weariness Aschenbach delays his departure for two entire weeks in order to attend to affairs “both literary and practical” (Mann 15). It is therefore entirely unsurprising when fissures begin to appear in Aschenbach’s carefully constructed psychic fortress. As he watches Tadzio bathe, for example, something primitive and unrestrained is evoked within him. The boy is described as “virginally pure and austere… tender as a young god, emerging from the depths of the sea, outrunning the element – it conjured up mythologies … of the origin of the gods (Mann 33). Here we must pay particular attention to Mann’s language. Beyond its frankly sexual imagery, it is striking for its implicit references to ancient Greece. The image of the god “emerging from the depths of the sea” recalls Poseidon arising from the bottom of the ocean, while the figure’s obvious youth and untamed nature (he is able to “outrun the elements”) clearly evokes Bacchus or Dionysus. Here Aschenbach’s “Apollonian” aloofness begins to melt – significantly here, he hears “poesy hymning itself silently within him” (Mann 33). Appreciation of beauty is no longer reduced to cold, formal, distant observations. It has instead become something internal, produced by the self. We can also read this description as a direct reference to Nietzsche’s ideas regarding the role of “Dionysian” liberation in the acceptance of one’s full humanity. In the Birth of Tragedy, he writes, “Either through the influence of narcotic drink, of which all primitive men and peoples speak in their hymns…that Dionysian excitement arises; as it intensifies, the subjective fades into complete forgetfulness of self (Nietzsche 13) . The poetry “hymning” within Aschenbach echoes this melding of ecstasy, art, and religion. Having denied his Dionysian side so intently, however, Aschenbach is bound to be destroyed by it, and in his death, we find both abjection and liberation. Despite the protagonist’s debasement, some form of authenticity has been liberated, and the author has at last come to know himself. Desperate and moribund at the end of the novel, Aschenbach sinks down and murmurs to himself: “...You know that we poets cannot walk the way of beauty without Eros…We may be heroic after our fashion, disciplined warriors of our craft, yet we…exult in passion, and love is still our desire” (Mann 72). Aschenbach may end up as a slave to his passions, but he has at least gained the knowledge necessary to declare the necessity of passion in the life of an artist. This limited knowledge, unfortunately, must be internalized at the expense of his own destruction; Aschenbach, in his newfound understanding of the human soul, neglects, once again, to understand the role of moderation. In surrendering himself to his Dionysian side and his obsession with Tadzio, however, he has still only gained an incomplete understanding of himself. Right before his death, as he sits in the hotel lobby staring at Tazio, Mann writes that Aschenbach “sat just as he had sat that time in the lobby of the hotel when first the twilit grey eyes had met his own” (Mann 74). The implication here is that Aschenbach has remained the same all this time, eternally fixed in his obsession, never investigating himself or his passions. He has become static, incapable of growth. Ironically, Apollonian austerity and Dionysian frenzy meet: both extremes are equally destructive, coming together in a state of eternal un-movement. Despite his brilliance and renown, Aschenbach, in the end, does not learn nearly enough to save himself. While the role of the tragic hero can reasonably be said to belong to Aschenbach alone in Death in Venice, the situation is somewhat more complex in Salomé. Despite the heroine’s eponymous status, one could equally argue that Herod’s attempt to intercede in order to spare Jokanaan’s life in the final moments of the play makes him as much a hero as a villain. In any case, both characters soundly challenge most accepted notions of heroism. Although the subject matter of Salomé, as well as the protagonists’ biblical status, would seem to make the characters a logical choice for a tragedy à la Sophocles, this is not quite the case in Wilde’s play. Although the drama does observe the unities of time and action, there are nonetheless several significant deviations from classical form and style, most notably in regard to the conduct and personalities of the protagonists. The first and most obvious issue is Salomé gender: Aristotle was quite clear in stating the inappropriateness of “valor…or unscrupulous cleverness” in a woman (Poetics 55), and consequently, any tragedy with a female protagonist must, in his eyes, be considered a tragedy of second rank. In regard to Salomé, it can hardly be denied that the heroine (and I use that term in the most neutral sense) embodies some of the more cliché aspects of feminine nature. If Aschenbach’s restraint and initial stoicism are characteristically male traits, Wilde’s insistence on Salomé’s unrestrained nature and boundless, unforgiving need comprises one of the most significant aspects of the play. From the very beginning, when Salomé is caught staring at the moon (represented in mythology alternately by the Titan Phoebe and the ancient Babylonian Ishtar, goddess of love and war), Wilde reminds his audience insistently that Salomé’s character is utterly determined by her sex. In a sense, her tragedy can be said to be the natural result of it. She is a slave to her passions, lacking critical insight into her own motivations. Everything about her is simply appetite. During her initial exchange with the First Soldier and Syrian about her desire to speak with Jokanaan, for example she remains utterly impervious to their repeated assertions about the impossibility of such an occurrence: “Bring him to me”, she orders, deaf to any possibility of refusal. “I will speak with him”… “Bring forth this prophet” (Wilde 92). When she does finally address the prophet directly, her language is frank and sensual, designed entirely to seduce: “I am amorous of thy body, Jokanaan!” she calls to him. “Neither the roses of the garden of the Queen of Arabia…nor the feet of the dawn when they light on the leaves, nor the breast of the moon when she lies on the breast of the sea [is] so white as thy body” (Wilde 97) . In this quotation, we can observe a curious interplay of innocence and sensuality. Salomé’s repeated references to the color white, typically a color associated with purity, contrast sharply with explicit images such as “the breast of the moon when she lies on the breast of the sea”. Her words condense into flowing, seductive, endless phrases that pull the spectator along and make him (presumably a him!) powerless to resist. Despite her refusal to listen to warnings (or perhaps because of it), Salomé can hardly be called malicious. Her punishments are not thought out but are rather impulsive, childish acts. If Aschenbach grows increasingly bound by his obsession throughout the course of Death in Venice, Salomé begins in that state of total debasement and fails to gain any understanding of her motivations. Nor, it must be said, does she desire to do so. Likewise, the illicitness of her desires can hardly be disputed – even Herod is repulsed by her order to be brought the head of Jokanaan. She inspires pity and fear in us – as well as an undeniable fascination – because she is so unstrained, not because of any redeeming moral or intellectual qualities, and her absence of reflection precludes any possibility of elevating her above her heinous act. We may sympathize with Salomé for the abuse that she suffers at Herod’s hands, but in contrast to a character such as Oedipus, who is driven to investigate his origins out a desire to stop the plague that is raging through Thebes, Wilde’s heroine displays no magnanimity. She is Freud’s hysterical female unconscious unleashed, causing destruction and devastation in her wake. Returning to Aristotle for a moment, we can also take note of his specific prescription that a character’s downfall not be caused by any form of depravity (Aristotle 47), and Salomé’s final and most gruesome act – to kiss the lips of Jokanaan’s severed head – is nothing if not depraved. Her final act does nothing to elevate her in the eyes of the audience. If anything, any pity they have felt for her before is likely to be rapidly extinguished. Part of Wilde’s goal here is clearly to repulse the audience (which would presumably contain a contingent of upright bourgeois Parisians) and to shock them out of their complacency. Yes, such an overabundance of horror in a single evening is likely to produce a cathartic effect in an audience, but at the same time, there is more than an element of mere spectacle involved. If Salomé is a tragedy – as it presumably is – and the titular character is not a heroine, who, then is, is the hero? Although Jokanaan is indisputably the most virtuous character in the play, he is also the most one-dimensional. Most of our knowledge of him comes from his off-stage pronouncements, and as a prophet, his sole role is to attempt to inspire repentance at Herod’s court. Likewise, Herodias is aloof and superior, and she undergoes no major change throughout the play. The only significant character that remains, then, is Herod. Unlike characters such as Orestes and Electra, whose crimes are provoked by their need to avenge their father, however, Herod is simply presented to us as a motive-less lecher. His background is never discussed, nor do we ever learn what motivated him to murder his older brother and marry his wife (a scenario oddly reminiscent of another famous tragedy: Hamlet). Rather, Wilde simply paints him as a leering debauchee, who spends most of the play lusting scandalously after his step-daughter/niece. Any justification for considering him a true tragic hero in the classical mold would therefore depending on the amount of leeway we are willing to allow in the definition of “flaw”. Is Herod a fundamentally good man who has allowed his carnal appetite to get the better of him, or is he truly the essence of depravity, able to access a flicker of humanity in the face of an act even more depraved than what he himself would endorse? Although Herod’s attempt to dissuade Salomé from ordering Jokanaan’s death imbues the character with a degree of complexity previously unseen, it is ultimately inappropriate to conclude that this single act is sufficient to redeem all of his crimes that have preceded it: from his brother’s torture and death to his attempted seduction of Salomé, Herod’s hesitation to kill Jokanaan can rather be seen as the manifestation of a moment’s conscience rather than as a deep and abiding character trait. He is also driven largely by selfish motives: Jokanaan may indeed be a prophet, Herod admits, and his attempt to save Jokanaan’s life is in reality a futile attempt to save his own soul. Even if we disregard Aristotle completely and consider Salomé only in modern terms, it would exceedingly difficult to justify pity for – never mind admiration for – as character as despicable as Herod. Can Salomé then be called a tragedy without a tragic hero(ine)? It is an undeniable symptom of the distance between Aristotle and Oscar Wilde that this is perhaps the case. In conclusion, I would like to return to the threat evoked in the opening words of Death in Venice: “on a spring afternoon of that year 19—which for months posed a threat to our continent” (Mann 1). Having published the novel in 1912, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Mann can be seen either as a prophet or as simply a commentator on the numerous inter-European conflicts that flared up in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth. Regardless of Mann’s ability to predict the future, however, he clearly captured the unease and sense of anticipation that hung over Europe in the years before the Great War. Likewise, the frenzied desire experienced by Wilde’s characters in Salomé, published in 1894, would seem to indicate a society on the brink of self-destruction. Despite their classical roots, both works can therefore be read as deeply modern works that are indicative of a society utterly at odds with itself and on the brink of explosion. Both the eventual crumbling of Aschenbach’s froideur and reserve, and Salomé’s unrestrained wantonness foretell the catastrophe that would engulf Europe just a few short years later. Like the two protagonists, the continent fell victim to its own self-ignorance, with consequences that could only be described as tragic. Works Cited Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953. Beckett, Lucy. “Aschenbach, Mann and Music”. The Musical Times Vol. 114, No. 1564 (1973): 579-582. Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories. Trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter. New York: Vintage Books, 1954. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Ian Johnston. 9 August 2008. Johnstonia. 28 November 2008. Wilde, Oscar. “Salomé.” The Plays of Oscar Wilde. Intr. John Lahr. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. 83-124. Read More