The key to
Auerbach’s analysis, he tells us in many different ways, is the relationship
between the totally different conceptions of the structure of reality that
underlie the two passages, and the language with which Homer and the Elohist
tell their stories. What is not said
in the Genesis story is as
significant as what is said in the Odyssey.
As Auerbach
proceeds, slowly and with enormous patience, through the entire sweep of the
development of Western literature, we see the literary resources crafted by the
writers of one era being carried forward and deployed in ever more complex
fashion until, by the time he has reached the familiar terrain of the
Nineteenth Century novel, we have some appreciation of how much lies beneath
the surface in the novels of Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust (the last chapter).
The first
passage of Chapter Two is an extended monologue placed by the author,
Petronius, in the mouth of one of the guests at a feast being hosted by a parvenu businessman named Trimalchio. The
passage is gossipy, circumstantial, full of detail about the backgrounds,
pretensions, successes and failures of the other guests seated around the
table. Very much in the manner to which we have become accustomed in modern
novels, the speaker unconsciously reveals himself, and unintentionally places
himself perfectly in the social and economic milieu of which the host,
Trimalchio, is a prominent and successful example. (Compare the way in which
Becky Sharp reveals herself through her narration in Thackery’s Vanity Fair.) The discourse is vulgar,
chatty, and entirely interior to the scene the speaker is describing. The
following passage by Auerbach gives some sense of the thrust of his analysis:
Petronius does not say: This is so. Instead he lets an “I,” who is identical neither with himself nor yet with the feigned narrator Encolpius, turn the spotlight of his perception on the company at table – a highly artful procedure in perspective, a sort of twofold mirroring, which I dare not say is unique in antique literature as it has come down to us, but which is most unusual there. In outward form this procedure is certainly nothing new, for of course throughout antique literature characters speak of their experiences and impressions. But nowhere, except in this passage by Petronius, do we have, on the one hand, the most intense subjectivity, which is even heightened by individuality of language, and, on the other hand, an objective intent – for the aim is an objective description of the company at table, including the speaker, through a subjective procedure.
But,
Auerbach argues, the convention of the separation of styles makes it impossible
for an author like Petronius to discuss anything serious, let alone tragic, concerning
the sorts of characters who are attending Trimalchio’s feast. They can only be
the subject of comic portrayals, regardless of how accurate and penetrating
Petronius’ anatomisation of their character flaws, aspirations, and social
origins. What is even more interesting, to my way of thinking, Auerbach notes
that although the world portrayed by Petronius is in constant turmoil, with
some getting rich quickly, others just as quickly losing their fortunes and
falling to the status of slaves, it is, from the point of view of modern social
and economic theory, a static world. Individuals rise and fall, but Petronius
has no sense of the deeper and longer acting social forces that might be
transforming the entire social world, not merely the fortunes of this or that
actor in that world.
The same is
true of the next passage Auerbach considers, a speech by a rebellious member of
the Roman legions by the Roman historian Tacitus. Because Tacitus is a great
literary artist, the speech is powerful and effective as a set piece. But
although the occasion for the speech is a moment of the greatest uncertainty in
the young Roman empire – namely, the death of the first Emperor, Augustus (the
speaker, Percennius, is protesting the low wages, long service, and harsh
treatment meted out to the common soldiers in the legions) – Tacitus has no
sense of or interest in moving historical forces that may bring about changes
in the Empire.
After
quoting two modern historians of ancient Rome, one of whom, Rostovtzeff, is one
of my very favourite historiographers, Auerbach says:
what [both statements] express goes back to
the same peculiarity of the ancients’ way of viewing things; it does not see
forces, it sees vices and virtues, successes and mistakes… an aristocratic
reluctance to become involved with growth processes in the depths, for these
processes are felt to be both vulgar and orgiastically lawless.
What
Petronius and Tacitus lack, in common with the other Greek and Roman writers of
antiquity, Auerbach suggests, is the idea of historical forces moving beneath
the surface, forces of which Trimalchio’s dinner party or Percennius’
rebellious speech are merely symptoms or expressions. This is an idea with
which we are now quite familiar, and in the novels of Stendahl or Tolstoy or
indeed Austen, it finds expression either explicitly or by implication. We
might imagine that it would be necessary to jump across many centuries to find
a passage that shows us far-reaching forces beginning to stir beneath the
surface. But Auerbach locates a passage contemporaneous with Petronius and
Tacitus in which something very like this finds expression – the passage in the
Gospels in which the Apostle Peter thrice denies Jesus. Jesus, you will recall,
has been arrested, and his disciples have been allowed to slip away undetained.
But Peter follows Jesus and the officers to the high court, showing uncommon
courage. Once there, he is challenged several times to admit that he is one of
Jesus’ group, and three times he denies that he is.
As Auerbach
makes clear, this is a situation that simply could not be satisfactorily
rendered by Greek or Latin authors. First of all, the participants – Peter, a
young woman who confronts him, the soldiers, indeed Jesus Himself – are common
people of the lowest social order, and the strict separation of styles forbids
that anything tragic or momentous or of world-historical importance should be
portrayed as involving them in any essential way. As Auerbach rather nicely
puts it, “viewed superficially the thing is a police action and its
consequences; it takes place entirely among everyday men and women of the
common people; anything of the sort would be thought in antique terms only as
farce or comedy.” And yet, Peter’s situation is of the most profound significance
possible. What is more, this is the man on whom Jesus has chosen to found His
church. This is St. Peter, the first Pope, the man from whom flowed an
institution that transformed first the Roman Empire and then all of the Western
world.
There is
much, much more in Auerbach’s analysis of the passage that I simply do not have
the space or the energy to capture. But the central idea I want to leave you
with is this: The thoroughly modern sociological/historical idea of deep-moving
long-running social, economic, and political movements that transform a society
– the idea on which Marx’s theories are built, and that finds expression as
well in the writings of every great modern social theorist – finds its first
primitive powerful expression in these New Testament passages. Originally, the
transformations are metaphysical or theological, and are imposed from outside
the social order by God – the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. But
the violation of the principle of the Separation of Styles, the presentation of
subterranean movements among the common people that will eventually burst forth
into world-historical significance, the literary and conceptual possibility of
a thoroughly secular deployment of
these same ideas in the works of Marx and others – all of this is prefigured in
the New Testament two thousand years ago.
2 comments:
This "strict separation of styles" seems to be a manifestation of the utter contempt that ruling people have had for the lowest of the low that in their (ruling types) have rendered common people historically invisible. I get a kick out of how the servants in Downton Abbey are permitted to silently witness the most candid and condescending attitudes, towards them, of "their betters." Or consider Romney's famous 47 percent diatribe in the presence of wait people. Clearly he had no sense that lowly wait people might, to borrow from Marx, "enter upon the scene of history." I think, too, of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua where one illiterate peasant hid weapons under the very floorboards in a tavern frequented by the Somocistas.
But this begs the question: could it have been possible for common people to have written the gospels, if they were in Greek?
Ah reading this blog post brought back memories of younger days, reading CAPITAL with students and teachers who were believers in the biblical sense but also very interested in Marxism and political activism. They were absolutely committed to the idea that Marxism and non-institutionalised religion shared the same world-view and goals. Of course, their opinions were very much inspired and shaped by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez who as far as I know coined the term liberation theology in 1971.
These ideas made their way to other regions outside of Latin America where they were digested, discussed, re-worked and applied to the political circumstances of the time. For example, before the 1979 revolution, some of the political groups in Iran, notably ones that claimed to be both Islamic and Marxist (e.g. Mojahedin-e-Khalq; MEK) drew a lot on and weaved together these two narratives to garner support and mobilise people.
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