Early in Part I of
The Concept of Irony,
* Soren Kierkegaard illustrates the "ironic totality" of Socrates (through whom the concept of irony "makes its entry into the world") by describing a painting of Napoleon's grave:
There is a work that represents Napoleon's grave. Two tall trees shade the grave. There is nothing else to see in the work, and the unsophisticated observer sees nothing else. Between the two trees there is an empty space; as the eye follows the outline, suddenly Napoleon himself emerges from this nothing, and now it is impossible to have him disappear again. Once the eye has seen him, it goes on seeing him with an almost alarming necessity. So also with Socrates' rejoinders. One hears his words in the same way one sees the trees; his words mean what they say, just as the trees are trees. There is not one single syllable that gives a hint of any other interpretation, just as there is not one single line that suggests Napoleon, and yet this empty space, this nothing, is what hides that which is most important.
The tone of this description is not without sympathy for that "unsophisticated observer" unable to recognize the concealed figure of the empty space who, therefore, cannot fall under the sway of the "alarming necessity" of that which emerges. There are those who are
kept from the mysteries. That the empty space in this analogy is really a depiction of Napoleon, and that his hardly visible countenance is the "most important" part of the picture, must not go unnoticed. If the picture were of Wellington's grave, for instance - the resting place of the one overshadowed in memory by the man he conquered,
le vainqueur du vainqueur de monde - Kierkegaard could not have made the analogy. There is no such picture and Kierkegaard is precisely that philosopher of history who, though awakened by the spirit and aware of the claim of his bolder brethren, refrains from its articulation and, in that forbearance, considers himself only an imitator.
This likeness drawn, however indirectly, between Socrates and Napoleon is not the first of its kind in
The Concept of Irony. Kierkegaard spends a footnote wishing "to explore the relation between Socrates and Christ . . . despite the fact that there still is always a modest little asthmatic doubt in me that the similarity consists in dissimilarity and that there is an analogy only because there is a contrast." Yet he has already, in the same footnote, indicated the source of that dissimilarity:
Christ himself declares: "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and as for the apostles' view of him, it was palpable--not an ingenious work of art. "That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled" (I John 1:1). For this reason, Christ also declares that kings and princes have longed to see him, whereas Socrates, as already noted, was invisible to his age. Socrates was invisible and visible only through hearing (loquere ut videam te). On the whole, Socrates' existence was apparent, not transparent.
What light is cast on the former analogy by the latter? What role does Napoleon play alongside Socrates and Christ? Let us assume, following the first analogy, that all three are in their graves, and let us ask how they are remembered. A view of Socrates is mediated by Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes [and also, but this is another matter, by Socrates own view that he was "warned" by a invisible
daimonion] and, subsequently, by the tantalizing difference between what he says and the truth. The view of Christ is contained in the Gospels and the Church, but also in the memory of the palpable. What is the view of Napoleon? According to Kierkegaard's image, Napoleon floats--barely visible--in the empty space above his grave. Is it possible to imagine this ghostly countenance as the
only possible view of Napoleon, the view of "alarming necessity"-- a view which is "always already" an abstraction in the service of the philosophy of history?
In
The Birth of the Modern, Paul Johnson recalls different glimpses of Napoleon by several of his contemporaries.
William Hazlitt: The question with me is whether I and all mankind are born slaves or free . . . Secure this point and all is safe; lose it and all is lost . . . If Buonoparte was a conqueror, he conquered the grand conspiracy of kings against the abstract right of the human race to be free; and I, as a man, could not be indifferent which side to take.
Eugene Delacroix: The life of Napoleon is the event of the century for all the arts.
Francisco de Goya in 1819 moved to Madrid and into what he called "The House of the Deaf Man" and painted on its walls his image of the naked, unseeing, mad, and gigantic Saturn--an allegory of the Bonapartist attempt to remake the world--gobbling his own children.
George Sand lived off raw onions, sunflower seeds, green lemons, and soup made with candle-ends, shared with the soldiers. She remembered the noise of the wheels of the wagon in which she lay, crunching over the bones of a corpse in the road. She remembered clutching at the sleeve of a trooper, only to find his arm missing.
G. W. F. Hegel, from Stuttgart, ran a pro-French newspaper, the Bamberger Zeitung, mostly copied from the official French government organ, the Paris Moniteur; he thought Bonaparte, whom he had seen ride through Jena in 1806, was the Weltseele, the personification of reason, and he applauded Bonaparte's troops even though they stole all his money.
Ernst Ludwig Posselt wrote of "the Emperor" as of a god and said that one of the highest slopes of the Alps should be cleared and "Napoleon" inscribed on it in giant golden letters so that the glint of them could be seen even in Germany.
Wellington: Bonaparte could do what he pleased; and no man ever lost more armies than he did. Now with me the loss of every man told. I could not risk so much. I knew that if I ever lost 500 men without the clearest necessity, I should be brought upon my knees to the bar of the House of Commons.
Metternich: In a June of 1813 exchange with Napoleon - Napoleon: "You know nothing of what goes on in the soldier's mind. I grew up on the field of battle. A man like me cares little for the lives of a million men." Metternich: "If only the words you have just spoken could be heard from one end of Europe to the other." Bonaparte: "I may lose my throne. But I shall bury the whole world in its ruins." Metternich: "Sire, you are a lost man."
And finally there was
Jane Austen: "..."
You will forgive me if I explain the last by quoting from Allan Bloom's
Love & Friendship:
Nothing much really happens in Austen's novels. The action is confined to the quest for mates and the more or less successful outcomes of such quests. There are no politics, no conspiracies, no high crimes, no wars. In Pride and Prejudice soldiers play a certain role, but that there is a great war on with Napoleon, or that these men might be called upon to fight and die, is at best hinted at. . . .
Austen's horizon is so narrow and cramped that one might accuse her of being simply feminine, unable to recognize or appreciate politics, war, and the movement of great ideas. . . .
But when one actually reads Austen, the intensity and excitement are as great as or greater than what one discovers in other writers. It is a kind of miracle, but the fate of Jane and Elizabeth Bennet in their relations to Bingley and Darcy engages us. Stripped of all external drama, the history of the heart as presented by Austen is endlessly fascinating. . . .
She is like Socrates, who appears hopelessly conventional and moralistic to Thrasymachus, with whom he ironizes, while he actually knows everything Thrasymachus knows, and much more, and goes well beyond Thrasymachus' critique of justice.
P.S. Since it's hardly three pages later, and since everyone would do well to be reminded of the
gracklog's lovely post on Austen, there is also this concerning the letter of explanation that Darcy wrote to Elizabeth:
[Darcy] is softened by the very act of writing his explanatory letter. Its effect on Elizabeth is to make her think, forcing her to enter into the ambiguities of her feelings. The letter really settles the issue, and their marriage is the inevitable result of their each coming to understand the significance of the act of writing the letter as well as its content.
P.P.S. Since the footnote just below mentions him, I might as well quote a couple possibly relevant (to Jane Austen's work at least) thoughts about Helen of Troy from Ranasinghe's
The Soul of Socrates:
[Helen's] ability to mimic the heart's desires of many suggests that she has no real identity of her own; she is nothing without the erotic recollections of her victims. This quality makes her the perfect beloved. It is her very shallowness that makes her seem so profound: she can perfectly reflect her lover's innermost desires. . . .
We shall soon see Alcibiades come close to saying that he left for Sicily because he could not stand to live in the same city as Socrates. This was because Socrates reminded Alcibiades of the paltry character of the goals that his fevered desires craved. The false Helen was but a beautiful floating signifier; Alcibiades was convinced that the truth was to be found within the stony heart of Socrates.
*This book is extremely difficult to read. I cannot even begin to claim that I've understood a page of it, so I'm doomed to these guesses. Those familiar with Nalin Ranasinghe will recall his attention to Socrates' quotations and intentional misquotations of Homer. Even that subtle work cannot prepare the reader for the obscure material that informs Kierkegaard's thinking or for the tortured relation that his style has to the systematic.
Posts
