MODL 5304 Postings

“And, even accounting for the rest, you lack one thing: God!”
-From “To Roosevelt” by Rubén Darío
In Dario’s poem despising the political strength of Theodore Roosevelt, he accuses the United States of being “the future invader of the guileless America of indigenous blood that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks in Spanish.” Recurrent in the poem is Darío’s insistence that despite the power wielded by the English-speaking people of the Americas, the heart and soul of the western hemisphere resides in the Spanish-speaking peoples who have faith in someone bigger than the United States. What the United States lacks is religious virtue and when virtue “takes the form of a cross”, as Jose Marti puts it, “they cast it off in horror.” Dario seems to say that it has been Latin America that has born the cross and is destined for future glory.
Both Dario and Marti desire to create a connection between contemporary and ancient Americans. Marti argues that “The history of America, from the Incas to the present, must be taught in clear detail and to the letter, even if the archons of Greece are overlooked.” So he is willingly to cut off American ties with Europe, not only socially and economically as he argues elsewhere, but also historically in order that Americans may take pride in their indigenous roots. Dario also speaks this way when he talks of “the guileless America of indigenous blood”, hinting not only at Latin Americans’ ancient character, but also of their innocence.
Despite Marti’s rejection of Europe and its ways, and Dario’s despising of the United States they both point to Christianity, not native to the Americas, as a unifying factor and a strength of Latin Americans. That said, Latin American Christianity has historically been syncretic as Christian practice was often commingled with indigenous religious traditions. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the Virgin of Guadalupe who was the unifying symbol during the Mexican Revolution in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe replaced an indigenous one without losing its non-Christian aspects. The Creoles, Mestizos, and Indians adopted the symbol of the Virgin of Guadalupe as something unique and defining of New Spain, a religious identity that gave them a special place in the sight of God. If anyone is interested in this topic a good book is Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence (1994) [in Spanish it is Memoria mexicana (1987)] by the Mexican author Enrique Florescano who argues ways in which the peoples of Mexico unified themselves through the adoption of symbols and the rewriting of history in order not only to give themselves a place in the world, but to distance themselves from Spain. When I read Marti and Dario it seemed as if the spirit described by Florescano continued or perhaps was revived during the Modernismo movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

One of Flaubert’s friends commented on Sentimental Education that it is “a book with a non-existent subject, no plot at all and featureless characters. It’s rather interesting” (xxvi). After reading this quote the first thought that came to mind was George’s, on Seinfeld’s “The Pitch”, response to Jerry’s question “Well what’s the show about?” George emphatically states: “It’s about nothing.” There does seem to be a lot of similarity in the outline and overall worldview of Seinfeld and Sentimental Education, specifically in the idea that despite all the “somethings” that are happening it feels as if “nothing” really matters nor is anything being accomplished.
Just as Flaubert set out to record the morality of his generation, Seinfeld appears to be doing the same thing. There is a point where one asks oneself “what really matters?” For Flaubert’s protagonist, Frederic, it is his almost self-destructive love of an older married woman. From the outside his actions and thoughts are pitiful and illogical, but then one thinks of the odd and seemingly pointless things one does on a daily basis and it is easier to relate to Frederic.
By the end of the novel all Frederic and his friend Deslauriers have are memories. Deslauriers states that they both failed to realize their dreams because, “I was too logical, and you were too sentimental” (458). There was always a reason why Frederic could not be fulfilled. Always an “if” such as: “If I’d had a woman who loved me, I might have achieved great things” (20). He is never fully contented, except in fleeting moments of rapture when she pays a bit of attention to him. Instead he is continually disgusted with others’ happiness because he sees them as settling for so little when he can never obtain his ambitions.
It seems that Frederic needs a lesson from Candide on being content and striving for achievable goals. Of course the fact that he can never truly be with his love, similar to Sab perhaps in some ways, is not only the tragic drama of the book, but also what makes it appealing.
Because of his money, Frederic had time for this ridiculous passion that led to immense times of ennui. At the costume party where everyone appears to be enjoying the pleasures of life, Frederic “caught sight of whole worlds of misery and despair” as a woman dressed as a Sphinx commented that “Life isn’t much fun” (137). As is apparent in the novel, life is not fun because everyone is focused on their own selfish ambitions. There is nothing in the novel to bring people into a truly happy communal setting.
To tell the truth I prefer Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables to Flaubert’s Sentimental Education. Hugo offers hope and sacrificial love whereas Flaubert offers ennui and infatuation. Flaubert can be complimented perhaps on bringing to light the morality of his generation, but if anything it is an example not to follow. Like Seinfeld, Sentimental Education may reflect the day-to-day reality that we can all relate to, but truly there has got to be more to life than that.

“It can be that at times the soul is free and noble though the body be enslaved and base” (30). -Sab

I enjoyed Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda y Arteaga’s Sab more than I though I might. I thought the similarities between Sab and Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written a decade later, were interesting, specifically the way in which the main African slave characters were sacrificed, or rather in each case offered themselves up as sacrifices, in a society that could not appreciate their souls.

A theme I saw repeated was the idea of transcendence of the soul over the body. For Sab this is a crucial concept because he realizes that he will never be able to express his earthly/material love for Carlota, but he dreams of uniting with her in a heavenly realm when his soul leaves his body in pursuit of his angel. In Sab’s dying lines we read his expression that “I no longer live…yet I still love” (147). In many of Sab’s quotes there is the romantic idea of “self” – that is a part of a human (ei: the soul, love, etc.) which though contained in a body, can transcend it and therefore is the more important part of our being.

I thought Carlota’s dream of living in Cuba, amongst the innocent nature of Pre-Columbian times, was interesting and perhaps comparable to our discussion on Candide. Candide experienced type’s of gardens and of course the best one, El Dorado, did not satisfy him because of his ambition. In Carlota’s desire there is a longing for a utopia, a type of Garden of Eden, but it was just a dream and the reality she had to live out was anything but utopian.

Overall I thought the work was well constructed, humane, and touching.

Enlightenment thought took on various characteristics depending on the thinker, but in general it was a time of challenging accepted laws and doctrines with scientific and natural explanations. With his novella Candide (1759), Voltaire took the literary opportunity to contrast the recent thought reflected in Pangloss’ argument that “this is the best of all possible worlds”, with reality.  One of the questions answered in Candide is, “what is the natural state of human nature?”  Instead of blaming the nature of humanity as tainted with original sin, Voltaire argues that humans are naturally good and it is the illogical social conventions, the hypocritical religious institutions, and the ambitious martial/political machines that jade and corrupt an otherwise happy existence.  The lack of cosmopolitanism is obvious throughout the work both on a general and individual level.  The naïve and good-natured Candide traverses a world where he sees armies that rape and murder innocent civilians, religious persons who beat and burn their fellow neighbor, and social elites who separate humans according to the manufactured ideas of noble and common.  After Candide has murdered the Inquisitor and the Jew, Cunégonde asks how someone “born so good-natured” could commit two murders in as many minutes.  Candide’s reply reveals Voltaire’s contempt for the institutions that change good into evil, and innocence into degradation:  “when one is in love, jealous, and has been whipped by the Inquisition, one becomes a stranger to oneself” (18).  Voltaire argues that even though murder is a crime against nature it is the unnatural actions of others that corrupted Candide.  While being horribly whipped to the rhythm of religious hymns Candide questions “If this is the best of all possible worlds, what on earth are the others like?” (13). The one community in which Candide does find harmony is in El Dorado.  In this mythical city Candide experiences a society that lacks many of the attributes that Voltaire sees as destructive in the contemporary world.  When Candide asks, “you don’t have monks who teach, who argue, who rule, who conspire, and who burn people who don’t agree with them?” the reply is an unequivocal “We’d have to be mad” (39).  In El Dorado Voltaire defines the perfect religion as the acknowledgement of one God who is continually thanked.  There is not the “religious zeal” that leads to “dreadful excesses” as experienced previously by Candide (7). El Dorado’s monarch interacts as an equal with the people he governs.  Candide is astonished at the protocol to embrace the king, as humiliation and inequality are unnatural.  There are no jails, no courtrooms, and no political or military ambition.  In Candide’s world there are laws for war, but the only law mentioned in this utopia is the law against tyranny.  Instead of expending their time with killings and humiliations, the people of El Dorado devote themselves to scientific achievement as is revealed in their huge gallery of “mathematical and astronomical instruments” (40).  By the end of the novella Candide accepts the imperfection of the world and determines with his companions to avoid evil through manual labor.  Voltaire’s enlightened vision involves a world devoid of “boredom, depravity, and poverty” because humans are united in the belief, “Let us work without philosophizing” (78 & 79).  The limited cosmopolitanism found at the end of the story is summed up in the narrator’s words that they all “did something useful” (79).

“I am a historian, for I can trace a complete picture from individual extant data, and I know where parts are missing and how to complement them.” –Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831)I thought this quote, found in our Enlightenment article, was both bold and yet revealing of the truth about history.  I do not use the words “truth” and “history” in the same sentence lightly for it reminds me of the work by Joyce Oldham Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob entitled Telling the Truth About History (1994) in which, similar to Hayden White’s article, the objectivity of history is challenged, and specifically for what we are talking about this week in class the positivism of the Enlightenment historians.  They argue some good points, but in a sense they destroy more than they build.  They attempt to leave the reader in doubt of not only religious, but also scientific understanding.  In the end all they offer is relativism, which of course is in vogue in many circles, but I see as destructive.  Hayden White’s “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” attempts to reduce history to fiction by arguing that “the manner of making sense of it is the same” (98).  In other words the means, which is using a narrative style, using metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, etc., in the writing of history necessarily makes it fiction.  In Keith Windshuttle’s book The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering our Past a defense is made in the name of traditional history.  One of Windshuttle’s targets is White whose arguments he contends are incoherent.  In response to White, Windshuttle basically argues that if the historian performs a “poetic act” in choosing a framework, which is mutually exclusive – for White acts as if the definability of the four tropes is powerful and determinative – than how can historians overlap, merge, and create dual existences of tropes in their writing?  Historians are not so confined as White contends.  They are free to choose a variety of stylistic devices in the construction of history, but they embellish and explain rather than predetermine its outcome.  Niebuhr’s quote is bold in the sense that he claims to not only be able to put together the puzzle pieces of history, which are often complex or missing, but also to complement them in such a way that they flow together.  Between the two I feel that Niebuhr is more balanced than White in that both admit that history is constructed, but Niebuhr struggles to find what truths can be brought forth, whereas White denies its existence.  My question to White would be if everything is a fiction, than what truth are we to take away from his arguments?  I am not trying to demean everything White argues because he makes some good insights on which historians should reflect.  However, fully accepting his arguments that history is fiction and that its origins are in the “literary imagination” (99) leads to the denial of any kind of truth and undercuts who we are as human beings, for in the end that is what history is about.