Literary History versus Rand Thereon


Recommended Posts

Here's some additional information regarding Tony's two main points of confusion:

First, I found an even better quote from Rand on the essence of "Romanticism" and its defining characteristic:

"Following the rule of fundamentality, it is as a volition-oriented school that Romanticism must be defined and it is in terms of this essential characteristic that the nature and history of Romantic literature can be traced and understood."

That quote touches on something I want to get into, maybe on a separate thread. The "something" is Rand's invented view of the "essential characteristic" of Romanticism and her sloppiness about the history of literature.

At the risk of having too many irons in the fire, I do want to start a new thread on the issue of Rand's "essentializing" the distinction between "Romanticism" and what she dubbed (in an historically huge over-generalization) "Naturalism."

I also intend to return to my tale of Van Meegeren and his fake "Vermeers." I haven't had time this last week.

The reason why I started that thread was because of a statement by Jonathan Lopez on page 10 of his book The Man Who Made Vermeers:

[Van Meegeren] knew precisely how to seize on the zeitgeist and turn it to his own

ends; to match what people wanted to hear with what he wanted them to believe.

Jonathan Lopez, The Man Who Made Vermeers, pg. 10

That, I thought, is so similar to what Rand did in her presentation of "Romanticism" as affirming and "Naturalsim" as denying the existence of volition. She was correct that the assortment of novelists called "Naturalists" in literary history denied the existence of "free will." They were avowed determinists deriving from what they thought of as Darwin's theories, which they didn't well understand. They were more in the category "Social Darwinist" than "Darwinist."

However, Rand's taking that particular set of novelists as the fundamental opposition to "Romanticism" - and then "volition" versus "non-volition" as the essential difference between two categories of art - produced major distortions in her views on literary history, and ultimately in her views on the visual arts as well.

Tony does have basis for seeing the basic historical division as that between "life as it is" versus "life as it could and should be." This is closer to how the difference is seen in literary history, albeit not "life as it could and should be" for "Romanticism." Instead, often, life as it can't be but as people might wish it were. Reality versus fancy (including supernatural fancy) is how the distinction is generally made in literary history - and as a distinction going back to before the advent of the novel in Western literature.

Tomorrow I'll quote from what I think is a good brief history of the novel.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The great irony of Rand's literary theory is that the real world Romantics (the ones who existed outside Rand's imagination) were with few exceptions extremely hostile to reason, capitalism, civilization, even reality itself. For example, Keats criticized Newton's optics for "unweaving the rainbow." Hegelianism dominated the early Romantics and Marx.

It also doesn't help Rand's case that "Naturalists" Crane, Wharton and Wright were better novelists than Hugo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The great irony of Rand's literary theory is that the real world Romantics (the ones who existed outside Rand's imagination) were with few exceptions extremely hostile to reason, capitalism, civilization, even reality itself. For example, Keats criticized Newton's optics for "unweaving the rainbow." Hegelianism dominated the early Romantics and Marx.

It also doesn't help Rand's case that "Naturalists" Crane, Wharton and Wright were better novelists than Hugo.

Not Marx. Marx rejected Hegel's dialectic, and only referred to it to contrast it with his own dialectic.

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e. the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea’, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea’. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. (Capital, Afterword, Second German Ed., Moscow, 1970, vol. 1, p. 29).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Without Hegel, Marxism would have taken an entirely different shape. Hegel aimed his dialectic toward pantheism. Marx merely took the Hegelian structure and oriented it toward atheistic, "scientific" materialism. Marx's structure was lifted largely from the Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach, (The Essence of Christianity,1843). So if Hegel is all about "spirit," Marx is all about immutable "history." We can choose to ignore the essential Hegelian thread in Marx's thought, but it's there all the same.

Consider the following passage from Hegel's Philosophy of History and argue, if you will, that it had no influence on the Marxian argument:

As to the political condition of North
America, the general object of the existence of this State is not
yet fixed and determined, and the necessity for a firm
combination does not yet exist; for a real State and a real
Government arise only after a distinction of classes has arisen,
when wealth and poverty become extreme, and when such a
condition of things presents itself that a large portion of the
people can no longer satisfy its necessities in the way in which
it has been accustomed so to do. But America is hitherto exempt
from this pressure, for it has the outlet of colonization constantly
and widely open, and multitudes are continually streaming into
the plains of the Mississippi. By this means the chief source of
discontent is removed, and the continuation of the existing civil
condition is guaranteed. (p, 103)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Without Hegel, Marxism would have taken an entirely different shape. Hegel aimed his dialectic toward pantheism. Marx merely took the Hegelian structure and oriented it toward atheistic, "scientific" materialism. Marx's structure was lifted largely from the Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach, (The Essence of Christianity,1843). So if Hegel is all about "spirit," Marx is all about immutable "history." We can choose to ignore the essential Hegelian thread in Marx's thought, but it's there all the same.

Yes, and therefore turns it into a completely different idea. Hegel's dialectic is an almost supernatural mechanism by which the "Idea" acts on reality, whereas Marx's dialectical materialism is exactly opposite, and it says that material forces shape human ideas.

Your argument could just as easily be applied to Rand and Plato and "prove" that Objectivists are dominated by Platonism because they turn the primacy of consciousness over existence on its head.

Consider the following passage from Hegel's Philosophy of History and argue, if you will, that it had no influence on the Marxian argument:

As to the political condition of North

America, the general object of the existence of this State is not

yet fixed and determined, and the necessity for a firm

combination does not yet exist; for a real State and a real

Government arise only after a distinction of classes has arisen,

when wealth and poverty become extreme, and when such a

condition of things presents itself that a large portion of the

people can no longer satisfy its necessities in the way in which

it has been accustomed so to do. But America is hitherto exempt

from this pressure, for it has the outlet of colonization constantly

and widely open, and multitudes are continually streaming into

the plains of the Mississippi. By this means the chief source of

discontent is removed, and the continuation of the existing civil

condition is guaranteed. (p, 103)

Just because two people might agree on some point doesn't prove that one "dominates" the thinking of the other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The great irony of Rand's literary theory is that the real world Romantics (the ones who existed outside Rand's imagination) were with few exceptions extremely hostile to reason, capitalism, civilization, even reality itself. For example, Keats criticized Newton's optics for "unweaving the rainbow." Hegelianism dominated the early Romantics and Marx.

It also doesn't help Rand's case that "Naturalists" Crane, Wharton and Wright were better novelists than Hugo.

Probably, Francisco, why she called her version Romantic Realism.

I have a soft spot for the bold quality of writing by Richard Dawkins, despite his determinist ethics(!) and was recently remembering his excellent counter to Keats in 'Unweaving the Rainbow'. Also, I have reservations on whether Hugo was the best literary Romanticist. (But I havent read Les Miserables in French, and wouldn't manage it anyways).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Except that she didn't distance herself from the Romantics per se or associate her theory exclusively with the school of Romantic Realism. E.g.:

"Romanticism is the conceptual school of art."

"What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values."

"Following the rule of fundamentality, it is as a volition-oriented school that Romanticism must be defined."

"The Romanticists did not present a hero as a statistical average, but as an abstraction of man’s best and highest potentiality, applicable to and achievable by all men, in various degrees, according to their individual choices."

"Philosophically, Romanticism is a crusade to glorify man’s existence; psychologically, it is experienced simply as the desire to make life interesting."

"Romanticism demands mastery of the primary element of fiction: the art of storytelling—which requires three cardinal qualities: ingenuity, imagination, a sense of drama."

Note that all of the definitions above can be applied just as well to Neoclassicism. Rand's key goal of presenting man as he might be or ought to be is unmistakably classical.

.

And why didn't she call her book on aesthetics The Romantic Realist Manifesto?

Years ago I concluded that the underlying meaning of "Romanticism" and "Naturalism" in Rand's theory is "Here's what I like" and "Here's what I dislike."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Without Hegel, Marxism would have taken an entirely different shape. Hegel aimed his dialectic toward pantheism. Marx merely took the Hegelian structure and oriented it toward atheistic, "scientific" materialism. Marx's structure was lifted largely from the Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach, (The Essence of Christianity,1843). So if Hegel is all about "spirit," Marx is all about immutable "history." We can choose to ignore the essential Hegelian thread in Marx's thought, but it's there all the same.

Yes, and therefore turns it into a completely different idea. Hegel's dialectic is an almost supernatural mechanism by which the "Idea" acts on reality, whereas Marx's dialectical materialism is exactly opposite, and it says that material forces shape human ideas.

Your argument could just as easily be applied to Rand and Plato and "prove" that Objectivists are dominated by Platonism because they turn the primacy of consciousness over existence on its head.

Consider the following passage from Hegel's Philosophy of History and argue, if you will, that it had no influence on the Marxian argument:

As to the political condition of North

America, the general object of the existence of this State is not

yet fixed and determined, and the necessity for a firm

combination does not yet exist; for a real State and a real

Government arise only after a distinction of classes has arisen,

when wealth and poverty become extreme, and when such a

condition of things presents itself that a large portion of the

people can no longer satisfy its necessities in the way in which

it has been accustomed so to do. But America is hitherto exempt

from this pressure, for it has the outlet of colonization constantly

and widely open, and multitudes are continually streaming into

the plains of the Mississippi. By this means the chief source of

discontent is removed, and the continuation of the existing civil

condition is guaranteed. (p, 103)

Just because two people might agree on some point doesn't prove that one "dominates" the thinking of the other.

While Marx and Engels rejected a dogmatic use of Hegel's dialectic, they retained what eminent Marxist scholar Louis Althusser called "its rational kernel."

As for Rand and Plato, what part of her philosophy does she owe to the author of The Republic?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rand was at her worst when trying to do history, including that of art and aesthetics. She was much too emotional and eager to give hostile misreadings of others' ideas.

J

Rand's concept of the Dark Ages was also an historical shambles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I decided that before delving into the actual history of literature (contra Rand's version thereof), I'd provide some background material on Rand's presentations on aesthetics.

"The Objectivist Newsletter" started publication in January 1962.

The "Objectivist Calendar" section of the February 1962 issue included an announcement that

On March 1, Ayn Rand will begin a twelve-week series of radio programs for the Columbia University Station WKCR. [....] The format will be as follows: on six alternate weeks, Miss Rand will give one of the lectures she has delivered at various universities. On the other six programs, Professor John Hospers of the Philosophy Department of Brooklyn College will discuss Objectivism and the lecture of the preceding week, with Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden. [....]

The six lectures in the series were:

March 1 - "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business"

March 15 - "The Objectivist Ethics"

March 29 - "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age"

April 12 - "Conservatism: An Obituary"

April 26 - "Our Esthetic Vacuum"

May 10 - "Faith and Force: the Destroyers of the Modern World"

One of these lectures, "The Objectivist Ethics," had already been published as a pamphlet (in December 1961). Four of the others followed in published form.

The exception was the lecture on aesthetics, "Our Esthetic Vacuum."

Roger Bissell surmises in his essay "A Neglected Source for Rand's Aesthetics" (Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 2002, vol. 4, no. 1), that the radio talk was the same as the lecture Rand gave at the Creative Arts Festival of the University of Michigan on May 15, 1961. (I got the date from an endnote on pg. 507 of Heller's biography of Rand.)

An excerpt from that University of Michigan lecture (without the date) appeared in the November 1962 issue of "The Objectivist Newsletter." The title used for the excerpt - and for the University of Michigan talk - was "The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age."

An audiocassette of the Columbia University radio broadcast - with Q&A - was eventually sold through the ARI bookstore. The lecture can now be gotten from the ARI bookstore as an MP3 download for $0.99 - link.

Roger Bissell transcribed the audiocassette version of the talk for his own use in writing the JARS article mentioned above. He graciously sent me a .pdf of his transcription back in 2008. I've been re-reading the transcription.

Like Roger, I think it's a shame that the lecture (by whichever title, "The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age" or "Our Esthetic Vacuum") was never made available in print. It contains all the basic features of Rand's theories about art - except for those added in "Art and Cognition" (1971) - and thus demonstrates that Rand pretty much had her whole approach in place by 1961.

At the same time, there are some differences from her later essays. I'll describe a few of those subsequently.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ellen,

I'm looking forward to what you have to say on this subject, but in the mean time, I can't resist posting these links to images of the "aesthetic vacuum of our age" -- light paintings and "Spirographs" created using the Roomba:

http://twistedsifter.com/2013/04/long-exposure-photos-of-a-roombas-path/

https://www.flickr.com/groups/roomba/pool/

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[...] the "aesthetic vacuum of our age" -- light paintings and "Spirographs" created using the Roomba:

http://twistedsifter.com/2013/04/long-exposure-photos-of-a-roombas-path/

https://www.flickr.com/groups/roomba/pool/

J

Our age isn't Rand's :laugh: She died more than 30 years ago. She wouldn't even have had much idea of what's possible with computer graphics.

I wonder if she'd have stuck to her ruling out of photography as art if she'd seen some of the examples you've posted over the years.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apropos this post from the "Apples ..." thread:

[...] Rand unknowingly copied [Kant's] notion of mankind's need of art, and also unknowingly made his concept of the Sublime her signature aesthetic style! Heh.

J

Emphasis on the "unknowingly."

My belief as to the origins of Rand's formal aesthetics is that she read Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life" circa 1943, at Frank Lloyd Wright's instigation - he asked in a letter if she had read it. And from there she developed her two core ideas - "benevolent-universe" versus "malevolent-universe" premises and "sense of life" in her technical meaning. (She'd written of Roark that he had "a sense of life as exaltation," which I suspect was the impetus to Wright's asking her if she'd read Unamuno.)

Ellen

PS: Rand and Kant are hardly alone in noticing mankind's need of art. Plato already noticed this, and I suspect others before written works.

Here's a tidbit from "Our Esthetic Vacuum":

You have heard the expression "a tragic sense of life" used by philosophers and estheticians. "Tragic" is not the only possible attribute of that concept. There can be a tragic sense of life or a benevolent sense of life or a heroic sense of life, etc., according to one's basic estimate [of oneself and of existence].

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the "Apples ..." thread, Michael quoted the beginning of Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life.

Cross-posting from my reply:

[....]

Repeating [the passage] with an emphasis added:

Philosophy answers to our need of forming a complete and unitary conception of the world and of life, and as a result of this conception, a feeling which gives birth to an inward attitude and even to outward action. But the fact is that this feeling, instead of being a consequence of this conception, is the cause of it. Our philosophy - that is, our mode of understanding or not understanding the world and life - springs from our feeling towards life itself. And life, like everything affective, has roots in subconsciousness, perhaps in unconsciousness.

Rand says of "sense of life" that it's an emotional-generalization pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, formed from an estimate of oneself and one's capacities to cope with life, an estimate which she says becomes a metaphysical view of man's status in relation to the universe. I think the parallel is striking.

In the next post, I'll quote how Rand introduces "sense of life" in her earliest known presentation.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In post #11, I wrote that:

Roger Bissell surmises in his essay "A Neglected Source for Rand's Aesthetics" (Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 2002, vol. 4, no. 1), that the radio talk ["Our Esthetic Vacuum," which Rand gave on Columbia University's radio station on April 26, 1962] was the same as the lecture Rand gave at the Creative Arts Festival of the University of Michigan on May 15, 1961 [titled "The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age"].

[The talk, by whichever title] contains all the basic features of Rand's theories about art - except for those added in "Art and Cognition" (1971) - and thus demonstrates that Rand pretty much had her whole approach in place by 1961.

At the same time, there are some differences from her later essays.

One difference is the order of presentation from her big-three later essays ("The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," April 1965; "Philosophy and Sense of Life," February 1966; "Art and Sense of Life," March 1966).

Another is that she doesn't have the "sense of life" notion as elaborately worked out as in the later articles.

She starts the talk by asking listeners "a hypothetical question. Suppose that you were born and are now growing up in some miserable little village, lost in some trackless prairies, miles away from civilization," and never seeing "anyone but a handful of dull, stagnant, brutalized people, who spend their lives in the meaningless drudgery of the same routine of labor, year after year, with no interest, no purpose, no ambition beyond the range of their immediate need." Further that "You are growing up with an incoherent, inarticulate sense of longing for something better [...]." She describes in detail the desperate desire for something better, then asks the listener to suppose that your only contact with the outside world is "a movie theater where a film is shown once a month."

"Ask yourself what will happen to you," she continues, "if that movie screen shows you New York City, or if it shows you ten variants of your own village. [....] What will either picture do to you? What will it do to your view of life, to your values, to your soul, to your future?" She says that "If you understand the difference that these two alternatives would make to you, you understand the nature and meaning of art in human existence."

She then gets to the body of the talk. I'll elide for now some particulars which are well familiar from her later essays, such as her view of what "metaphysics" is, and the sorts of questions to which she says all humans have some form of answers, whether consciously or subconsciously.

[....] Art is the expression of man's deepest, most fundamental, most philosophical values. Art is the concretization of metaphysics. Let me explain this fully.

[A]ll men have a philosophy of life that directs their choices and actions. If they do not form it consciously, they form it subconsciously, by means of an emotional generalization, by an unidentified, unverbalized estimate of the value and meaning of their own existence.

Observe, for example, that some people are always attracted to the new, the original, the untried, that they like to take risks, to venture out, to stand on their own - while other people in the same circumstances prefer to play it safe, to stick to the customary, the established, the known. The first kind are motivated primarily by the desire to seek enjoyment or gain. The second kind are motivated primarily by the desire to protect themselves from suffering or loss. Under any superficial reason they may give for their choices, their basic reason is a philosophical estimate of man's position in the universe which they have formed subconsciously. The first kind have concluded that life is good, that success, happiness, the achievement of his values are possible to man. The second have concluded that life is evil, that man is doomed to fail, that existence by its very nature is set against him, and that disaster is his metaphysical fate.

Neither of these two types may have given any conscious thought to these questions and may not have any consciously reasoned grounds for their views. Yet, their emotions have summed up their experiences and have become a basic attitude toward life, a basic motivation. In the presence of a new experience, the immediate reaction of the first type of man will be eagerness or enthusiasm; the immediate reaction of the second type will be fear.

It is in this manner that most men from their convictions, their answers to the basic questions of philosophy: [....] All of us have formed our answers to these questions, whether we know it consciously or not, and these answers direct our actions, our choices, our preferences, our tastes, our values.

[....] All men form their first philosophy of life on the subverbal, subconscious level. [....] Observe that under any specific, particular, momentary emotion you may experience, there is a deeper emotional undertone, a constant which seldom varies, a leitmotif so deeply rooted in your consciousness that you take it for granted and are seldom able to identify it. That is a metaphysical emotion. That is your basic estimate of yourself and of existence. That is your sense of life.

A sense of life is the emotional counterpart of metaphysics. It is the metaphysics of the subconscious. You have heard the expression "a tragic sense of life" used by philosophers and estheticians. "Tragic" is not the only possible attribute of that concept. There can be a tragic sense of life or a benevolent sense of life or a heroic sense of life, etc., according to one's basic estimate. [Whether a person goes on to form a conscious philosophy or not], all men possess and retain a sense of life. It is this aspect of man's consciousness that is the special domain, the realm, the concern, and the source of art.

Art is the expression and the projection of a man's sense of life.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The following passage is how Rand starts her discussion of literary history in her 1961/1962 "Esthetic Vacuum" talk:

Throughout most of mankind's history, mysticism has held a monopoly on morality and on art. In primitive societies, art was the servant of religion; it created temples, idols, gods; it projected those forces which man was to regard as the rulers of the universe and of his own destiny. In most of mankind's art, man himself was presented as a weak, helpless, terrified, distorted, and deformed creature, But there were exceptions. There were three periods in history when Western culture was dominated by a philosophy of reason: Ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the nineteenth century. It is only in these three periods that the dominant trend in art was not dedicated to the degrading and deforming of man, but to the glorification of man, of his existence, and of this earth.

The greatest artistic innovation of the nineteenth century was a new literary form, the novel. Prior to the late eighteenth century, the novel did not exist. What did exist in literature was only plays, poems, sagas or chronicles. These last were fictionalized biographies of historical figures or of legendary heroes and gods. Some historians may regard certain earlier works - for instance, Don Quixote - as novels, but such works are closer to chronicles than to novels in literary form.

Ellen

PS: See this post (#467) on the "Apples..." thread for Rand's discussion of esthetic judgment from that talk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The following passage is how Rand starts her discussion of literary history in her 1961/1962 "Esthetic Vacuum" talk:

Throughout most of mankind's history, mysticism has held a monopoly on morality and on art. In primitive societies, art was the servant of religion; it created temples, idols, gods; it projected those forces which man was to regard as the rulers of the universe and of his own destiny. In most of mankind's art, man himself was presented as a weak, helpless, terrified, distorted, and deformed creature, But there were exceptions. There were three periods in history when Western culture was dominated by a philosophy of reason: Ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the nineteenth century. It is only in these three periods that the dominant trend in art was not dedicated to the degrading and deforming of man, but to the glorification of man, of his existence, and of this earth.

The greatest artistic innovation of the nineteenth century was a new literary form, the novel. Prior to the late eighteenth century, the novel did not exist. What did exist in literature was only plays, poems, sagas or chronicles. These last were fictionalized biographies of historical figures or of legendary heroes and gods. Some historians may regard certain earlier works - for instance, Don Quixote - as novels, but such works are closer to chronicles than to novels in literary form.

Ellen

PS: See this post (#467) on the "Apples..." thread for Rand's discussion of esthetic judgment from that talk.

Here is yet another example of Rand writing history as it could be, ought to be. The fact that the Greeks made their gods in the image of beautiful men and women does not alter the fact that in ancient Greek theology fate was firmly in control of the universe and of man's destiny. Against these supernatural forces, man was indeed "weak, helpless, terrified." For an excellent discussion, see The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions.

The Randian history lesson would also have us believe that the Renaissance represented a return to the sort of rational thinking Rand approved of. In fact, the Renaissance saw the revival of Rand's old bête noire, Platonism. See "Platonism in the Renaissance." In particular, Michelangelo, through Plotinus, was an excellent practitioner of Neo-Platonist idealism. See Liana De Girolami Cheney, Neoplatonic Aesthetics.

As for the Romantic Age, I have already discussed the militant anti-rationalism of that school.

The novel was not an innovation of the 19th century or even of the late eighteenth century. Its provenance goes back as far as Petronius in the reign of Nero. Even if we stick to English literature, to accept Rand we'd have to ignore the masterpieces Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722), Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (I, 1740; II, 1741), Clarissa (1747-48), Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749).

Don Quixote, a chronicle? "A factual written account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence"?

I admire Rand, but this is just embarrassing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is yet another example of Rand writing history as it could be, ought to be. The fact that the Greeks made their gods in the image of beautiful men and women does not alter the fact that in ancient Greek theology fate was firmly in control of the universe and of man's destiny. Against these supernatural forces, man was indeed "weak, helpless, terrified," [....]

A cavil with the "could be," but agreed about Rand's writing history to suit her desired story-line.

Oddly, in regard to the Greeks, and with no indication of noticing the discrepancy, she goes on in the next paragraph to say that fate and the gods controlled man's destiny in Greek literature. Here's that paragraph and the subsequent one. Both were used in the published excerpt.

[start add] There are some differences of detail, mostly shortening, but one of special interest, between the talk and the published version.

The one of special interest is her changing the line "Man as a being of free will did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century" to "Man as a being who possess the faculty of volition did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century." [End add]

Prior to the nineteenth century, literature presented man as a helpless being whose life and actions were determined by forces beyond his control: either by fate and the gods, as in the Greek tragedies, or by an innate weakness, a "tragic flaw," as in the plays of Shakespeare. Writers regarded man as metaphysically impotent, incapable of achieving his goals or of directing the course of his life; all of them shared the premise of determinism. On that premise, one could not project what might happen to man, one could only record what did happen - and chronicles were the appropriate form of such recording. The concept of "fiction," in the full sense of the word, was impossible.

Man as a being of free will did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century, and the novel was his proper literary form. The great new art movement of the nineteenth century was Romanticism, and the Romantic novel was its proper expression. Romanticism saw man as a being able to choose his values and to achieve them, able to reach his goals, able to control his own existence. The Romantic writers did not regard man as a plaything of unknowable forces; they regarded him as a product of his own value choices - and, exchanging the role of chroniclers for the role of creators, they did not record the events that had happened, but projected the events that should happen; they did not record the choices that man had made, but projected the choices man ought to make. They lived up fully to the literary principle formulated by Aristotle. Aristotle said that fiction is of greater importance than history, because history presents things only as they are, while fiction presents them as they might be and ought to be.

Other remarks later, including about Rand's severely truncated view of the beginnings of art in the human past and her linking of art to religion from its earliest beginnings (which for her seem to be not long before Ancient Egypt), thus in effect assuming her own thesis about art being - always - "a concretization of metaphysics."

I'm rushed, anticipating my husband's return from Las Vegas (the Heartland Institute climate conference), and I want to look at a couple other threads. I'll get back to this one soon as I can, which might not be till tomorrow.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Note the "Add" to the above post.

Vis:

There are some differences of detail, mostly shortening, but one of special interest, between the talk and the published version.

The one of special interest is her changing the line "Man as a being of free will did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century" to "Man as a being who possess the faculty of volition did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century."

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Prior to the nineteenth century, literature presented man as a helpless being whose life and actions were determined by forces beyond his control: either by fate and the gods, as in the Greek tragedies, or by an innate weakness, a "tragic flaw," as in the plays of Shakespeare. Writers regarded man as metaphysically impotent, incapable of achieving his goals or of directing the course of his life; all of them shared the premise of determinism. On that premise, one could not project what might happen to man, one could only record what did happen - and chronicles were the appropriate form of such recording. The concept of "fiction," in the full sense of the word, was impossible.

Man as a being of free will did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century, and the novel was his proper literary form. The great new art movement of the nineteenth century was Romanticism, and the Romantic novel was its proper expression. Romanticism saw man as a being able to choose his values and to achieve them, able to reach his goals, able to control his own existence. The Romantic writers did not regard man as a plaything of unknowable forces; they regarded him as a product of his own value choices - and, exchanging the role of chroniclers for the role of creators, they did not record the events that had happened, but projected the events that should happen; they did not record the choices that man had made, but projected the choices man ought to make. They lived up fully to the literary principle formulated by Aristotle. Aristotle said that fiction is of greater importance than history, because history presents things only as they are, while fiction presents them as they might be and ought to be.

Free will was not a dominant literary idea in the 19th century novel, even before the arrival of naturalism. Fate as either a malevolent or moral force is common in the American novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the British novels of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, and the French novels of Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Flaubert. In fact, when Rand writes that "The Romantic writers did not regard man as a plaything of unknowable forces," it is hard to imagine whom she has in mind other than Victor Hugo. And even with Hugo, fate plays a significant role in his plots.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[From the "Frank's Niece!" thread]

pg. 66 [Heller's biography of Rand]

[Frank's] role in King of Kings was his first part in Hollywood.

[....] When [Ayn] first saw him on the set, he was dressed in a short tunic, with sandals laced to his knees and a long scarf tied jauntily around his head. He was Cyrus's twin brother.

Ellen

Cathy immediately saw the resemblance to her Uncle Frank.

Here's something I came across [...].

It's from an advertising circular for "21st Century Objectivist Conferences 1994-95." Bill Bucko's English translation of The Mysterious Valley was forthcoming in November 1964. A full-page ad by The Atlantean Press includes this:

[my bracketed insert; ellipsis in original]

In a 1962 interview published in Mademoiselle magazine, Ayn Rand said about childhood influences on her desire to become a writer, "The first thing that impressed me, very much--and I am not emotionally indifferent to this day--was an adventure story in a French children's magazine called 'The Mysterious Valley.' ... It had an enormous influence on me because it presented in complete form the sort of man I could admire. It was just an adventure--British officers in India--but written in a very heroic way. I mean heroic in my sense: not brutes but men of ingenuity and intelligence. No [other] work of literature has ever impressed me quite that much."

I wonder how entirely Rand's childhood remembrance would have held up upon re-reading the book as an adult. The featured British characters, Cyrus in the forefront, are "heroic" in a dashing Errol Flynn sort of way. They're also precipitate and rash. They'd have died multiple times over if not for the cool judgment and foresight of the French archaeologist it's their good luck to connect with. The author, though gently and kindly, has a slight tongue-in-cheek tone toward the British.

Reading The Mysterious Valley myself last fall, I thought several times of the contrast between the Ross and the Amundsen South Pole expeditions.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From The Mysterious Valley

Text by Maurice Champagne

Illustrations by René Giffey

Translation by Bill Bucko

First published in serialized form in 1914 and read in that form (in French) by Ayn Rand, age 9

Epilogue

[Prefatory comment. The "Epilogue," read without the preceding story, might sound as if the reason the British had gone into the Mysterious Valley was to save a damsel in distress. In fact what started the adventures was the disappearance of some of the British garrison who had been carried off by specially trained tigers. The discovery that an Englishwoman is being held captive by the Hindu adversaries comes only near the end of a long, complicated set of adventures.]

Here end the adventures of the Frenchman Théodore Bardin and the seven English officers whom fate led, by different routes, to the heart of that Mysterious Valley, and who were saved by the devotion of two simple servants who were faithful and loyal to their masters.

Several months of rest restored them to health.

Under Hobson's attentive care [Hobson is the British post's doctor] the unfortunate woman they had saved, a young Englishwoman named Ellen Wood, daughter of a rich merchant of Calcutta, recovered her reason. Only then did her rescuers learn that she had been carried off while touring the wild gorges of Sikkim with her father. The merchant had been slaughtered before her very eyes while trying to defend her.

Hobson and Multon remembered the affair, which had been much talked about, though it had proved impossible to find those responsible.

The young lady found herself alone in the world. Fortunately she never lacked the friendship of her rescuers, who helped her overcome her grief.

The Frenchman, moreover, became her closest friend; we say "friend" because an even stronger affection bound her to another of those men who hadn't hesitated to risk life and liberty on her behalf.

Several months later the newspapers of Great Britain announced the marriage of Miss Ellen Wood and Captain Cyrus Paltons. The ceremony was very beautiful, attended by the elite of English society.

It isn't necessary to add that since their return to Darjeeling, the two orderlies were no longer treated as servants but as friends.

As for the Mysterious Valley, it was impossible to find what had become of it. Had it been drowned under the waters of the upper lake, when the fanatics tried to blow up one of its walls? Did it now form a new lake under which the valley slumbered forever?

No one could tell, because in spite of the most minute investigations, it proved impossible to find [any traces of the tunnels, the ladder, the paths].

[...] the Englishmen might almost have believed it had all been some strange and fantastic dream, if the presence of the newlyweds - not to mention the terrors, fatigues and sufferings they'd endured - hadn't reminded them that for several days they had braved great perils down there in that lost and inaccessible region, in the depths of the unknown valley - savage and forever Mysterious.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now