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Progressive Intertextual Practice In Modern And Contemporary Literature (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature) 1st Edition Katherine Ebury
Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance bridges literary studies and psychology to evaluate contemporary grief memoirs for use by bereaved and non-bereaved individuals. This volume positions the grief memoir within life writing and bereavement studies through examination of the genre ’ s characteristics, definitions, and functions. The book presents the views of memoirists, helping professionals, community members, and university students on writing and reading as self-expressive, self-searching, and grief-witnessing acts after the loss of a loved one. Utilizing new data from surveys assessing grief support and bibliotherapy, this text discusses the compatibility of grief memoirs with contemporary grief theories and the role of interdisciplinary methods in assisting the bereaved. Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance will help educators advance the understanding and interpretation of loss within psychology, literature, and medical humanities classrooms.
Katarzyna A. Małecka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Lodz, Poland. Dr. Małecka is the author of numerous publications on death and grief in literature. She has been awarded three international scholarships to conduct her research on loss and bereavement: the interdisciplinary research grant by the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna to study the bibliotherapeutic aspects of literature in work with grieving children; the Fulbright Senior Award Scholarship for her project on the use of modern bereavement memoirs in grief therapy; and the Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship to study the grief-witnessing, bibliotherapeutic, and educational aspects of grief memoirs. She is currently working on her new project exploring the bibliotherapeutic application of grief narratives in the clinical setting and their use in the education of future helping professionals.
Routledge Studies in Literature and Health Humanities
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Shakespearean Drama, Disability, and the Filmic Stare
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Pregnant Bodies from Shakespeare to Ford A Phenomenology of Pregnancy in English Early Modern Drama
Katarzyna Burzyńska
Posthuman Pathogenesis
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Health, Literature and Women in Twentieth-Century Turkey Bodies of Exception
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The Poetry of Loss
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John Donne’s Language of Disease
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Grief Memoirs
Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance
Katarzyna A. Małecka
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Grief Memoirs
Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic
Significance
Katarzyna A. Małecka
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Names: Małecka, Katarzyna, author.
Title: Grief memoirs : cultural, supportive, and therapeutic significance / Katarzyna A. Małecka.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |
Series: Routledge studies in literature and health humanities | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022060293 (print) | LCCN 2022060294 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367623197 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367623203 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003108870 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060293
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ISBN: 978-0-367-62319-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-62320-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10887-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003108870
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To my dad Jan
3.1 Sources of support in grief
74
5.1 Answers to: “While writing one ’ s grief out in the aftermath of a loss may pose a challenge, even small attempts to pour troubling thoughts onto paper may help harness overwhelming experiences and reconstruct a narrative disrupted by a loss.” 174
5.2 Answers to: “I feel like some of the passages from the memoirs presented in PART III were written especially for me.” 175
5.3 Answers to: “After completing the multiple-choice and writing tasks in PART III, and, thus, sharing my grief, I felt some relief regarding my loss.” 176
5.4 Answers to: “After reading the passages from the grief memoirs in PART III, I feel that I would be able to articulate some of my grief experiences more efficiently and openly.” 178
5.5 Answers to: “Published grief memoirs could be helpful for therapy clients who might be willing to read more about the grief process as a springboard for a series of writing exercises that can help clients seek meaning and order in the chaos created by a loss through imposing plot, metaphors, and other forms of figurative language.”
180
5.6 How often do you reach for literary sources that may relate to your grief experiences and help you voice your emotions? 191
5.7 How often do you reach for self-help books for the bereaved? 191
Acknowledgements
As a large part of this book is about support in grief, I owe enormous thanks to my own groups of supporters.
The research for this book was made possible thanks to the trust and generosity of the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission. The final stages of writing the book were made possible by the Kosciuszko Foundation who provided much needed financial assistance.
Many thanks go to my Memphis team of supporters who helped in all sorts of ways, from editorial remarks to not letting me die of hunger. Thank you to Frank Andrasik, Jamison Bottomley, Randy Chertow, Jody Cockroft, Annalee Elmore, Jo Neimeyer, Robert Neimeyer, and Jessie Sawyer. Jessie, thank you for helping with the survey, for Pittsburgh, and, especially, for “Chair Therapy.”
Much gratitude goes to my Polish team of supporters. Thank you to my mom Zosia Małecka and to Zora for their unconditional support. Thank you to my friends who accompanied my family and me on this journey over the years and in the last trying year: Jarek Idzior, Justyna Jaworska, Gosia Myk, Kasia Szmigiero, and Zofia Tatara.
My most humble thanks go to all the participants in my surveys who devoted their time and energy to help me better understand what the bereaved need and do not need in grief.
My biggest gratitude lies with two people from Ohio: Dolores Oravec and Stephen Oravec. Dolores opened her home to me when I most needed it and enabled me to finish the bulk of this book in peace and quiet. In the midst of his own grief, Steve provided invaluable insights, editorial comments, and corrections. This book is as much his as it is mine. Thank you, Steve.
Introduction
The main premise of this book is to demonstrate how memoirs of loss and grief can support the bereaved. This study revolves around two main concepts: grief witnessing and bibliotherapy. Throughout the ages, readers have been seeking knowledge, understanding, and comfort in literary sources, non-infrequently when it comes to the matters of love and death. While over the centuries many elegies, plays, and narratives have addressed loss and grief, the concept of the “grief memoir” is still relatively new. Even newer, or less common, is the application of life writing in clinical bibliotherapy. This book explores grief memoirs and their potential use in grief witnessing, bibliotherapy, and self-bibliotherapy from theoretical and practical perspectives in an attempt to illustrate how they can be of use to grievers and helping professionals alike.
I have been reading about death and grief since I was six, and my professional interests in the topic s pan the last thirty years. While it might be di ffi cult to pinpoint the precise moment when I realized that grief memoirs can be explored for grief witnessing and bibliotherapeutic purposes, the basic ideas for this book took shape in 2015 during the international conference “ Death, Dying and the Disposal of the Body: Eastern and Western Ways of Dying and Death ” (DDD12) organized by 1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia in Romania. It was by far the most comprehensive conference devoted to the topic that I have ever attended, and the only one in my career that included a fi eldtripto a crematorium. Many prominent presenters attended the event, among others Tony Walter and Robert Neimeyer, names that in thanatological circles do not need an introduction. However, the organizers of the conference were the real stars. They made us all very welcome in the beautiful city of Alba Iulia where the fi ve days of talking about death went by too quickly in an atmosphere of real camaraderie and support.
At the conference, I was one of very few representatives of literary studies, and I was surprised that my modest presentation on grief memoirs was attended by many bereavement experts, among them Robert Neimeyer. The audience asked many unstrained and insightful questions. Robert Neimeyer also asked one about the aspects of meaning making in memoirs of grief, DOI: 10.4324/9781003108870-1
which was rewarding for a literary scholar to answer as, after all, one of the main functions of literature is to help us make meaning of and in life.
After my return from Alba Iulia, I devoted my energy to a project that aimed to unite reading, writing, and socio-psychological bereavement theories. It came to fruition in 2016 and was granted funding by the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission in December of the same year. In August 2017, I was on my way to the Loss and Transition Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis. My research there resulted in two interdisciplinary surveys that, together with grief memoirs, constitute the basis of this book. Below, I first introduce those surveys before outlining the content of each chapter. Next, I reflect briefly on the term grief memoir and illustrate why certain narratives that could be considered as less classic examples of the genre were included in the analysis for this study. I finish the introduction with a short overview of grief models that serves as a basis for additional commentary on why empirical bereavement research should be approached from a more interdisciplinary and organic perspective with the active participation of literary scholars and, even more importantly, of those who venture to express their grief in literary grief accounts.
2018 Surveys
My nine-month scholarship in the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis resulted in two surveys. The one that, together with forty or so grief memoirs, constitutes the heart of this book was titled Companionship in Grief: The Supportive Role of Grief Memoirs in Grief Witnessing The survey was advanced in aim and scope, consisting of 131 questions, many of which involved response writing and descriptive tasks. Two identical versions of this survey were conducted simultaneously, one among bereaved community members and one among bereaved students at a US university. The details regarding the survey are provided in Chapter 3, Chapter 5, and Appendix B.
The other survey, completed shortly before the survey for the bereaved began, was much more modest in scope yet with a longer title: Examining the Familiarity of Helping Professionals with Published Grief Memoirs and Their Potential Incorporation into Grief Therapy and Education The results were very encouraging, and some were reported in a 2020 publication in Death Studies. Due to the main focus of this book, which, paradoxically, turned out to be quite wide in scope, the results from only one query from this survey are presented in Chapter 1. Basic details regarding this survey are featured in Appendix C. While the survey is not discussed at length here, the general experience with the responses of helping professionals, especially their generous praise for the concept of using grief memoirs as a therapeutic tool in work with the bereaved, strengthened my belief that literary scholars can greatly contribute to empirical research and that much closer interdisciplinary cooperation is needed for the benefit of scientists and the bereaved alike.
Chapters
Chapter 1 overviews definitions of the memoir to position the grief memoir in the wider context of life writing. It also discusses the grief memoir in the context of other thanatological life-writing genres to trace what common features they share. While newspaper reviews on individual grief memoirs are not uncommon, more advanced research that places this genre not only inside but also outside literary studies is less popularized. Thus, the chapter also presents opinions of the bereaved and helping professionals who, through an online survey, helped establish a working definition of grief memoir from a more pragmatic perspective one that defines not only its literary characteristics but, first of all, the aspects that may be of use to readers, especially to those who have experienced a trying loss. The chapter ends with a brief comparative analysis of the modern elegy and grief memoir, stressing the features that characterize both genres such as their acute responsiveness to the changing sociocultural climate or the avoidance of easy consolation.
Building on the concept of grief memoirs as a form of support for the bereaved introduced in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 provides an overview of various forms of primary and secondary support in bereavement. Family and friends most commonly are considered primary support. Proper institutions such as charity organizations and other people, both lay and professional, to whom we can turn in times of need or crisis are commonly known as secondary social support. Of course, these labels are not binding. For instance, the bereaved may have no or limited immediate family, and their main source of support may come from a charity volunteer. The chapter also discusses the term grief witnessing which, at its core, involves the most devoted form of bereavement support. One of the definitions of a grief witness is that it is someone who is able to acknowledge another person ’ s grief without minimizing it by avoidance, unconstructive advice, or comparing their situation to one ’ s own or to other people’ s misfortunes. After discussing the definitions, types, and signi ficance of diverse forms of support for the bereaved, the chapter focuses on how grief memoirists address grief witnessing and what forms of “companying in grief” they consider most beneficial, which often includes books and reading. Without medicalizing and pathologizing grief, grief memoirs also address what role therapists, counselors, social workers, clergy, grief support volunteers, and those in other helping professions play in the life of a griever. The final part of the chapter revisits the idea behind Phyllis Silverman ’ s original widow-to-widow outreach program which demonstrated that the bereaved are most often the best aides to other grievers. The concept has been practiced by grievers, including readers and writers of grief literature, for ages. “The disconsolate are the masters of consolation. They offer sympathy without illusion,” writes Leon Wieseltier in Kaddish (1998, p. 581). Wieseltier bases his observation on his own longitudinal experiment. For a year, the writer participated in the reading of
Kaddish at various synagogues and perused copious amounts of liturgical and historical texts in order to trace the origin of the titular prayer. Chapter 2 provides such and more examples of how grief memoirists during their bereavement experience sought support in their own writing, in literary sources, including other grief memoirs, and in their readership, the latter often consisting of mourners as well. This griever-to-griever witnessing of one ’ s own and other people’ s griefs is one of the characteristics of grief memoirs.
The idea that grief memoirs could constitute a safe and efficient aid in grief witnessing has been tested by a comprehensive online survey among two bereaved populations of different ages. Chapter 3 discusses the survey data from multiple tasks that were designed to perform a grief-witnessing function and to assess if the bereaved are open to this form of grief support. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 complement each other, so it might be preferable to read them in order to gain a full view of what aspects of grief memoirs inspired the survey tasks and discussions in both chapters.
Among its many aspects, self-applied literary grief witnessing is primarily therapeutic in nature. Thus, Chapter 4 addresses the ages-long practice of self-bibliotherapy that has been officially utilized as “bibliotherapy ” in the clinical setting since at least the 1940s. This chapter begins with an overview of the main aspects of contemporary bibliotherapy such as its definitions, the types of literature it employs, its steps and applications, the conditions it addresses, and its limitations. For instance, it covers the principal idea used in clinical bibliotherapy that the source should be closely matched to the problem it aims to address. This puts grief memoirs high on the list of sources that can be employed as an aid in therapeutic work with the bereaved. Although readers certainly explore this growing genre and its informative and supportive aspects in their own time and according to their own needs, to my knowledge, no clinical studies exist that have tested this life-writing genre with a bereaved population, specific measures, and control groups. Additionally, while at the dawn of clinical bibliotherapy librarians performed an important role in helping clinicians choose the proper literature, today the process is much less interdisciplinary, and mental help professionals often rely only on their knowledge of available sources, which has many disadvantages. This and other concerns regarding the state of clinical bibliotherapy for the bereaved are also addressed in Chapter 4.
Chapter 5 resumes the debate about bibliotherapy from a more practical perspective. The first part of this chapter readdresses the supportive role of literary works in grief, discusses select bibliotherapeutic tasks from the 2018 community survey for the bereaved (CS), and assesses grief memoirs as a potential aid in therapy and self-therapy. The last item on the survey asked if the participants had any further comments, suggestions, or critical remarks regarding the study. The resultant opinions confirm the utility of the survey and address how similar bibliotherapeutic interventions can be improved.
Part II of Chapter 5 discusses sources that, alongside the positive survey results, gave rise to the design of a new bibliotherapeutic project that proposes testing grief memoirs and bereavement manuals among a bereaved population and psychology students. The outline of the project is featured at the end of the chapter. In the concluding paragraphs, I express hope that an interdisciplinary team of researchers can be put together to conduct this complex study, promote increased interdisciplinary cooperation among thanatologists, and encourage mental health professionals to put George Miller’s1969 dream “to give psychology away ” into practice.
Grief Memoirs: Idiosyncratic Inclusion Criteria
As Chapter 1 of this book discusses, de fi ning a memoir can pose a challenge. De fi ning a grief memoir can constitute an even more intimidating task. Just as each grief is shaped by a constellation of over 40 “ psychological, social, and physical factors which combine to make one ’ s bereavement experience and responses as individual and distinct as their fi ngerprint ” (Rando, 2011, “ Foreword, ” para. 3), so are the expressions of grief that may be classi fi ed as grief memoirs.
While the narratives that have been explored for this book come in many forms and dictions, they all address a significant loss through death, where “the death, the loss, the grieving” constitute or perceptibly underlie the reality of the text (cf. Fowler, 2007, p. 527). In some memoirs, this reality is more dominated by introspective emotions and reflections evoked by the loss. Natascha McElhone’ s After You (2010; spousal loss), Joyce Carol Oates’ AWidow’ s Story: A Memoir (2011; spousal loss), or Tanja Pajevic’ s The Secret Life of Grief: A Memoir (2016; maternal loss) could be classified as examples in this category. Some grief memoirs focus more on activities that helped the grieving self adapt to life after the loss. These active pursuits, ventures, or hobbies shape one narrative line, with emotions triggered by loss running parallel to them and resurfacing, or even bursting out, in paragraphs of poignant memories and reflections addressing the rawness of grief more directly. Apt examples here are Kate Braestrup’ s Here If You Need Me: A True Story (2007; spousal loss), Roger Rosenblatt’ s Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats (2012; child loss), or Helen Macdonald’ s H is for Hawk (2014; paternal loss). These three texts also set the grief process in nature. Incidentally, in the past five years, experts in various fields, including bereavement, have been promoting the old idea that our well-being can be boosted by quality time in nature with increased intensity (see, e. g., Florence Williams’ The Nature Fix, 2017; Alan D. Wolfelt’ s Nature Heals, 2021). Some authors weave their grief story around and through research and references to other literary sources that they found relatable and supportive in their mourning. Leon Wieseltier in Kaddish (1998; paternal loss) and Natalie Taylor in Signs of Life (2011; spousal loss) practice this bibliotherapeutic, intertextual way of grieving, each in their own gripping and unique diction.
Many other divisions could be applied to the selection of grief memoirs that I have used to shape the surveys and illustrate the issues that the bereaved tackle in everyday life. However, no divisions or theoretical literary analyses alone would be of particular help to a grieving person. Thus, a classic literary analysis of these texts is not the aim of this book. I use my knowledge that emerged from respectful reading and examination of over forty grief memoirs addressing various types of loss to explore how such texts can become the source of grief witnessing for the bereaved and how the voices of grief memoirists can contribute to the ages-long tradition of using books for bettering one ’ s well-being in life’ s trying moments.
Two other remarks regarding the selection of grief narratives need to be made. While I term all the texts that I have used as the foundation for this book as grief memoirs, grief narratives, grief accounts, or memoirs of loss and grief, I realize that some literary purists might object. In my defense, even Joan Didion, the author of the quintessential grief memoir, seemed uncertain what a grief memoir might be or she might have listed more than Lewis’ A Grief Observed as a relatable source in her grief account. Didion does not acknowledge at least three books she might have found beneficial: M. T. Dohaney’ s When Things Get Back to Normal (1989/2002), Sandra Gilbert’ s Wrongful Death: A Memoir (1997), or Sally Downham Miller’ s Mourning and Dancing: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery (1999). Dohaney’ s short yet impactful book, written after the death of her spouse, is technically a diary. Yet, nothing, apart from dated entries, excludes her narrative from being classified as a grief memoir, especially that the author heavily relies on recollections and reflections on the couple’ s life together. “Tonight I’m remembering other Christmases. I remember when you were an engineering student and Susan was just an infant,” she writes in a section called “Christmas Night” (1989/2002, p. 35). In another entry, her insistence on the signi ficance of memory highlights the loss of common recollections: “I realized today that your death has not only robbed me of my present and my future, but of my past as well. Who else remembers my parents, remembers my children as babies? ” (Dohaney, 1989/2002, p. 55).
Another example of my idiosyncratic criteria is the inclusion of Julian Barnes’ Levels of Life (2013). The narrative has been called “ a putative grief memoir about the loss of his wife” that “is part history, part meditative essay and part fictionalized biography” (Manguso, 2013). I would argue that there is nothing “putative” about Barnes’ book being identified as a grief memoir. As mentioned above and discussed in Chapter 1, one of the characteristics of grief memoirs is their authors’ natural proclivity to explore the stories of others to which they can relate and, thus, intertextualize their loss for insight and support. Thus, in Levels of Life, the three essays —“The Sin of Height,”“On the Level,” and “The Loss of Depth ”—all form Barnes’ tribute to his dead wife. They all become his own “word scaffolding,” to borrow a phrase from another memoirist (see Roiphe, 2008, p. 21), that he feels most comfortable utilizing to capture the enormity of his loss and grief.
Some memoirs are more confessional in nature while some are more reserved or carefully structured. They all, however, gain much of their depth from the fact that, unprecedented as each loss is, some aspects of grief appear to be universal as reflected in the fact that grief memoirists find aid in the stories of others.
Another inclusion principle that necessitates a short commentary regards the gender of grief. Regardless of their form, length, or type of loss they address, the majority of grief memoirs explored for the purpose of this book have been written by female writers. This was not a personal preference or conscious choice. Some of the memoirs were gifted to me, most I ordered myself based on more meticulous internet searches without any gender filter on, and some I found by accident like Barbara Ascher’ s Landscape without Gravity (1993) that was wedged between Moby Dick and Emily Dickinson’ s poems on a shelf in a second-hand bookstore in London. Based on this tripartite randomized research, the world of the grief memoir indeed appears to be dominated by writers identifying as female (cf. Fowler, 2007; Prodromou, 2015). Additionally, many of these texts address partner loss. While the predominance in these two areas may be partially ascribed to the fact that statistically women in most Western cultures tend to live longer and are traditionally perceived as more affective, intuitive, or emotional grievers (see Martin & Doka, 2000), this might not be the only or best explanation for why grief memoirs seem to be written mainly by female writers. As Terry L. Martin and Kenneth J. Doka observe, patterns of grief are influenced by gender, but they are not determined by it (Doka & Martin, 2011; Martin & Doka, 2000). In literary expressions of grief, gender definitely plays a part but so do personal writing styles, interests, and preferences for narrative structure, as exemplified by Barnes’ atypical grief memoir.
Also, even if we assume that women do express their grief in a more profuse manner, most of the memoirs under discussion defy gender stereotypes by exhibiting both instrumental (less affective or expressive) and intuitive (more affective or expressive) characteristics in varying proportions. The instrumentality of these narratives stems from the fact that the memoirists took steps, such as narrating their loss and investigating bereavement literature of various sorts, to frame their sorrow in words. This is a major cognitive, or instrumental, process on many levels. The gender-defying intuitiveness of grief memoirs lies in the fact that even the more reserved grievers for instance, Joan Didion and Lisa Appignanesi have been labeled as such by some reviewers (see, e.g., Cooke, 2018; Maslin, 2011) intersperse their grief accounts with often extended expressions of profound sadness and anxiety triggered by the unpredictability of grief. While I do not have an iron-clad explanation for why more grief accounts are penned and published by female writers, I do not interpret these narratives based on gender alone, which the chapters that follow demonstrate.
Writing about grief is not a new concept. Writing about grief in a narrative form that can be termed a grief memoir appears to be another story.
Thus, in my selection of texts, I made a decision to widen my inclusion criteria. However, I do not feel that I compromise the de finition of grief memoir or the main tenets of this book in any significant manner by being more lenient in my choices. Through voicing their grief experiences in a myriad of forms and styles, grief memoirists tell their audiences that there is no one way to grieve, no one way to talk about grief, no one way to adapt to it. At the same time, most grief memoirists agree about such common bereavement issues as the insufficiency or disappearance of socially engaged mourning customs, the need to confront those who avoid the bereaved and shy away from talking about their loss in a straightforward manner, or the minimization of one ’ s grief by, for example, comparing it to the hardships or losses of others. With the utmost respect for the individuality of grief, this book attempts to examine and utilize some of the common issues that trouble grief memoirists for the benefit of others through theoretical and practical application of these texts. Not all the grief memoirs studied for this book are included in the discussion. Appendix A features additional titles of value not cited in the References.
Grief Theories
While much about grief I have learnt from experience and literary expressions of mourning over the years, clinical bereavement research contributed to my better understanding of certain grief symptoms and reactions and, like grief memoirs, was indispensable in the design of the surveys and assessment of the survey results.
As multiple professional publications detail the milestones in bereavement research, here I revisit only select names and theories that exemplify how scienti fic thinking about grief has changed over the past 100 years. Some of the models listed below highlight the trajectory of grief and some focus on the symptomatology of grief.
All overviews of grief theories customarily begin with Sigmund Freud and his landmark essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917/1976) in which the father of psychoanalysis distinguishes between mourning (grief) and melancholia (depression). According to Freud, mourning is a universal and normal response to the loss of a loved one. Common behaviors may include the griever’ s diminished activity or withdrawal of interest from the outside world. Normal mourning can be resolved through the process of grief work. The mourner revisits the memories of the lost object and gradually disengages from them, thus releasing the emotional energy invested in the deceased. After this process of detachment called “decathexis” in psychoanalysis is complete, one is ready for new attachments.
Another signi ficant stride in grief research was made by the psychiatrist Erich Lindemann who published his findings in a seminal paper “Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief” (1944). Based on a sample of 101 patients, many of whom were related to the victims of the Cocoanut
Grove fire of 1942, Lindemann defined “acute grief” as “adefinite syndrome with psychological and somatic symptomatology,” involving such sensations as “tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intensive subjective distress described as tension or mental pain” (Lindemann, 1944, pp. 141–142). Lindemann agreed with Freud that in contrast to morbid grief, acute grief can be resolved when the bereaved are able to do the necessary grief work and confront those psycho-somatic grief reactions.
In the 1960s, John Bowlby began publishing his work on attachment and loss. In his research, he was soon joined by another British psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes. Bowlby and Parkes defined four phases of mourning that outline the trajectory of grief after the death of a loved one: 1. shock and numbness; 2. yearning and searching; 3. disorganization and despair; and 4. reorganization in which the adaptation to a new reality takes place (Bowlby & Parkes, 1970; Bowlby, 1980).
Parkes made his own unforgettable impact on bereavement studies. Among his multiple achievements, he is most known for his Harvard study of 68 young Boston widows and widowers conducted at Harvard Medical School in the 1970s, which resulted in an impressive list of psycho-somatic reactions to a signi ficant loss (see Parkes and Prigerson, 2010, pp. 23–25). The fourth edition of Bereavement Studies of Grief in Adult Life (2010), cowritten with Holly G. Prigerson, features his contributions in the context of more recent bereavement research.
In On Death and Dying (1969), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross outlined the five stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance which were later applied to the process of bereavement. In the past three decades, Kübler-Ross’ research has been vastly criticized, partially, it seems, because her stages have been taken out of context, oversimpli fied as a go-to model of grief, or misunderstood. In On Grief and Grieving (2007), which KüblerRoss coauthored with David Kessler shortly before her own death, the authors state, “[The stages] are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or goes in a prescribed order” (p. 7). Those who have a less simplistic understanding of her stage approach such as J. William Worden, framer of the four tasks of mourning (Worden, 2009), are able to utilize Kübler-Ross’ theories in a constructive manner.
The Two Track Model (TTM) developed by Simon Rubin opposes the stage and task models, proposing that the bereaved move down two tracks simultaneously, much like a train moves forward on two rails. On the “biopsychosocial track,” mourners contend with somatic distress and disruptive emotions, struggle with concentration in their work lives, and figure out connections to others in their social world. At the same time, the bereaved follow the “relational track,” in which they retain and reconstruct their relationship to the deceased through revisiting memories, sharing stories, or engaging in shared or private rituals of remembrance (Rubin, 1999).
Similar to the TTM is the Dual Process Model (DPM) developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut. The DPM captures the vacillation or ambivalence the bereaved commonly experience between engaging the loss and re-engaging life (Stroebe & Schut, 1999). In “the loss orientation, ” mourners grapple with separation distress when confronted with reminders of the loved one ’ s death and avoid daily demands while remembering the loved one. In “the restoration orientation,” mourners distract themselves from the pain of the loss by dealing with work or other necessary tasks, seek relief in social activities, and begin to redefine those life roles and goals that are no longer viable in the wake of the loss. As they oscillate between these two orientations, the bereaved gradually spend more time in the restoration mode, even though the persistence of the loss orientation is common for many months into bereavement (Stroebe & Schut, 1999).
The above list of grief theories is not comprehensive, and other noteworthy approaches to bereavement are referred to throughout this book. However, as the main focus of this study is the cultural, supportive, and therapeutical significance of grief memoirs, precedence is given to them and to how they can be of use to the bereaved and grief research. To paraphrase Phyllis R. Silverman, I decided that my job was to let grief memoirists and survey participants teach me. Rather than fit the narratives and the survey data into existing grief theories, I hoped that a theory would emerge from the interaction between the two bereaved cohorts (cf. Silverman, 2004, p. 11).
Still, one more approach to grief needs to be singled out here, mainly because the concept of literary grief expressions both precedes it and is its most universal embodiment. In Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (1996), edited by Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman, multiple scholars share their experiences of working with the bereaved that support the titular new understandings of grief. For many grievers, the editors and contributors assert, grief is not about severing bonds with the deceased but about continuing, developing, and adjusting those bonds throughout one ’ s life (Klass et al., 1996). Today, the spirit of individuality-driven success prevailing in many cultures makes it even more difficult for the bereaved to openly talk about their ongoing relationship with the dead and receive much needed social validation for their feelings and personalized rituals. Addressing such cultural changes and more, Continuing Bonds tries to reinforce the concept of sustaining connections to the deceased as a natural way of grief resolution. The editors cooperated on the main premise of the collection and called on other colleagues in their respective fields to contribute their findings and opinions.
As I argue in many parts of this book, such cooperation should be strengthened and maintained among even more diverse fields to support the bereaved across various social structures. Grief memoirs are perhaps one of the loudest modern cries against the medicalization of grief, exemplifying the continuing bonds approach in a myriad of ways. Unlike grief experts, grief memoirists know that there is nothing “ new ” about sustaining bonds
with the deceased, a claim that can be additionally supported by the centuries of elegies and other artistic grief expressions. What might be new is the way in which grief memoirists consistently manifest how their own individual griefs are of personal, social, and cultural importance to them and their audiences, and, consequently, should be of importance to bereavement professionals. Many bereavement experts, including the editors of Continuing Bonds, profess that their new understandings of grief stem from the stories of their grieving patients or clients. Yet, published stories of loss and grief largely escape their focus. In the 2018 follow-up collection Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New Directions for Research and Practice edited by Dennis Klass and Edith Maria Steffen, grief memoirs are barely mentioned. The only representative of literary studies in the volume is Harold K. Bush, a professor of English specializing in nineteenth-century American Literature, who aptly exemplifies the continuing bonds theory based on the works and lives of nineteenth-century writers such as William Dean Howells and Mark Twain.
My naïve yet not ungrounded view is that literary scholars have perhaps much more to add to current bereavement studies than is dreamt of in the research and practice of empirically trained thanatologists. Of all the grief theoreticians listed above, Freud seemed to understand it best, acknowledging on multiple occasions that “creative writers are valuable allies, and their evidence is to be prized highly, . . . for they draw upon sources which we have not yet opened up for science” (Freud, 1907/1976, p. 1814). This thought informs each chapter of this book. I feel unapologetic about my bias in this respect because, like my scienti fically trained colleagues, I have also talked to many bereaved people over the years and have observed that their stories parallel many literary expressions of grief. I have also experienced my own griefs over the years, and my primary support did not come from the clinical descriptions of grief trajectories but from other grievers, elegies, and grief narratives. If clinically trained grief researchers need more allies to support the “ new ” grief theories, grief memoirists provide substantial data to choose from and base even “ newer ” theories on. This book is my attempt to unite different fields of study in order to let the bereaved, with the support of grief memoirists, plot their own grief trajec(s)tories.
1 The Grief Memoir: Meditations upon the Genre
In The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief (2009), David Plante observes, “Grief centers the griever’ s grief everywhere, making connections” (p. 111). Plante’ s insight extends to the key aspect of the genre: in grief memoirs, loss and grief shape the narrative, making connections between social, cultural, and private contexts of the griever’ s life. When loss is overwhelming, many mourners may not even fully realize at first the interrelatedness of changes that grief triggers in their minds, their bodies, and their relations to others (Parkes & Prigerson, 2010; Rando, 1991). Inevitably, the changes shape the expression of grief both in clinical studies and literary output. In literature, grief can assume a role that is comparable to a character that has its “ own will” (Plante, 2009, p. 1). In the Prologue to his memoir, David Plante admits that the notes he took to reflect on the loss of his beloved partner, which later became the narrative proper, seemed to him “spontaneous but random” (2009, p. xi). “I sensed that grief knew more than I did about the evolution of grief, knew something whole while I knew only flashes of the whole,” he states (Plante, 2009, p. xi). Such feelings are not uncommon in narratives of grief, as they are not uncommon in bereavement. Kathleen Fowler (2007), one of the pioneering voices in grief memoir discourse, expressed similar sentiments: “What distinguishes the grief memoir from other literary treatments of grief is that the death, the loss, the grieving is the defining reality the heart of the text” (p. 527).
This chapter overviews definitions of the memoir to position the grief memoir on the map of life writing. I do not aim for cartographic precision in this task of contextualization but hope to cast additional light on what the contemporary grief memoir entails. After exploring over forty grief memoirs, most of them from the past two decades, I agree with Plante that grief knows more about “the evolution of grief” in life and narrative than I do, while I still know only “flashes of the whole.” After this general overview, I set the grief memoir in the context of other thanatological genres to trace some common features many of them share. Then, with help from Kathleen Fowler’ s 2007 article, I outline how, in the chapters that follow, I put her theoretical insights into practice and look at the grief memoir from an interdisciplinary perspective. The first step is taken in this chapter. In
DOI: 10.4324/9781003108870-2
The Grief Memoir: Meditations upon the Genre 13
response to Fowler’ s call for more interdisciplinarity in bereavement studies, I present results from surveys in which three different groups of participants, including helping professionals specializing in bereavement, expressed their opinions on suggested definitions addressing the utilitarian aspects of grief narratives. Finally, to narrow the focus, I address the modern elegy, a genre that shares several characteristics with the grief memoir, such as its acute responsiveness to the changing sociocultural climate and the avoidance of easy consolation.
Any classification that appears in this chapter is not binding it cannot be. Grief as a process encompasses such a multitude of reactions and expressions that it would be arrogant to claim that any definitive catalogue of grief narratives can be established on which one can base the ultimate definition of the genre. Yet, some rudimentary re-assessment is needed, especially for those readers, helping professionals included, who may be less familiar with grief memoirs and their potential to be of help in bereavement. While memoirs of loss and grief may encompass a variety of texts, this book focuses on the signi ficant loss of a loved one through death, relying primarily on memoirs of partner and parental loss.
The (Grief) Memoir: Where to Begin?
Considering that the memoir has been heralded as “the most inclusive and democratic of genres ” (Couser, 2012, p. 26), it seems appropriate to open this discussion with a definition from an online source which, of course, does not deviate much from definitions proposed by some literary critics. On her website, Jill Swenson (2013), a literary consultant and developmental editor who specializes in nonfiction and memoir, states, “Memoir is a genre of non-fiction written in the first person about a slice of life” (para. 1). This is essentially true, and to some of those who aspire to write a memoir, this may even be enough.
In Memoir: A History (2009), however, Ben Yagoda hints at the complexity of this straightforward understanding of memoir: “In this book I use the words ‘memoir’ and ‘autobiography’ ...to mean more or less the same thing: a book understood by its author, its publisher, and its readers to be a factual account of the author’ s life” (p. 1). Yagoda excludes diaries and journals from this mix, which to some may be puzzling as many read like memoirs divided into dated sections. For example, Joyce Carol Oates’ grief memoir includes multiple dated email entries. In contrast to Yagoda’ s interchangeable use of “memoir” and “autobiography,” critics before him made a clear distinction between the two. They understood autobiography as a text more historical in nature, requiring “research, dates, facts” that need to be “double-checked,” while memoir was defined as a story shaped by “how one remembers one ’ s own life” (Vidal, 1995, p. 5). Memoir, therefore, was and is allowed to use more poetic license, which is not to say it is fiction, even though both fiction and memoir “imitate life in the sense that art is said to imitate nature” (Couser, 2012, p. 15).
Apart from the level of factuality, the time scope of autobiography and memoir has also been analyzed. The consensus is that the memoir can be defined as an autobiographical story that covers “some portion of a life” or “ a slice of life” (Zinsser, 1998, pp. 14–15; Swenson, 2013, para. 1). It “ narrows the lens, focusing on a time in the writer’ s life that was usually vivid, such as childhood or adolescence, or that was framed by war or travel or public service or some other special circumstance ” (Zinsser, 1998, p. 15).
Autobiography, on the other hand, “moves in a dutiful line from birth to fame” (Zinsser, 1998, p. 15), or from birth up until the time when the author is still alive and capable of holding a pen or using a keyboard. Thus, “autobiography is more comprehensive,” and memoirs are more selective and focused “in scope ” (Couser, 2012, pp. 23–24). The memoir, therefore, is an autobiographical narrative that covers the most memorable moments, events, and processes in the author’ s life, relying on the author’ s memory. To paraphrase Swenson (2013), the memoir is a subgenre of autobiography about a signi ficant slice of life.
When it comes to whose life is being selectively presented in a memoir, experts fan the flames and matters become a tad more complex. As a rule, the memoir is based on the author’ s lived experiences and written in the first person. For some, however, it matters where the “I” directs its gaze. Yagoda (2009) provides two traditional viewpoints on this issue, one by Roy Pascal from his 1960 book Design and Truth in Autobiography and one by “another scholar, Richard Coe,” dating from 1984. According to them, the difference between autobiography and memoir is that “in the autobiography proper, attention is focused on the self,” while, in the memoir, the narrating self is just one of the characters, or at least remains “neutral,” and the focus is shifted to others (Pascal and Coe qtd in Yagoda, 2009, p. 2). While the memoir can indeed be used, and often is, “to refer to a narrative that is primarily about someone other than the author” (Couser, 2012, p. 18), the 1990s vastly revised the concept, and in most memoirs from that period and beyond, attention is notably focused on the self (Yagoda, 2009).
G. Thomas Couser (2012) adds another distinction, stating that memoir is also considered as a sub-genre of biography. According to Couser, biography “ can be about anyone who has ever existed, ” while “memoir can only concern someone known to, and remembered by, the author” (2012, p. 19). In essence, this is true, that is unless a memoir consists of biographical elements regarding people that the memoirist has never met in person. For instance, H is for Hawk (2014) by Helen Macdonald is as much about the author’ s grief after her father’ s sudden death as it is about training a goshawk and the training methods and lifestyles of renowned falconers. Her memoir features substantial biographical sections on T. H. White, an avid falconer, which, in fact, read more like memoir than biography. Thus, a compromise is in order and, as Couser suggests, even though “there is an important conceptual distinction between writing about yourself and writing about another person, memoirs do not always do just one or the other.
Indeed, in practice, it is difficult to do one without doing the other” (2012, p. 20). To recap, what unites biography, autobiography, and memoir is the relationality between the narrating subject and the object(s) of recollections in which the subject often becomes the object as well.
Relationality in life-writing genres is an important feature. Couser (2012) pays apt attention to this, stating, “In life, and therefore in life writing, we are always characters in others’ narratives, and our own narratives always involve other people. Just as no person is an island, no autobiography is a one-person show” (p. 20). As both the self and relationality are important elements of the narrative process in modern grief memoirs, and as both are in constant flux for a variety of reasons, it is worth pausing the broader debate for a moment and taking a closer look at the grief-struck self and others.
While devoting ample space to the deceased and their support group, grief memoirists also turn a large portion of their attention towards themselves. They observe and self-re flect upon the grieving self’ s adaptation to a reality after loss, which, in turn, becomes significant in the process of commemorating the deceased. Even in titles such as Here If You Need Me (2007); Why Not Me? A Story of Love and Loss (2010); A Widow’ s Story: A Memoir (2011); Unremarried Widow: A Memoir (2013); or On My Own (2016), the grieving self and life after a loss, and not “the lives and actions of others” (cf. Smith & Watson, 2001, p. 198), are foregrounded. Relationships with others are, of course, a defining feature of grief memoirs, yet many memoirists turn the gaze to the grieving self for extended stretches of the narrative, and nowhere is it more visible than when the self considers the notions of self-pity and selfishness traits that are natural despite the unfavorable connotations they may evoke. Increased attention to the self, Kristine Carlson observes (2010), is often essential to the griever’ s survival: “I would ask for and take from others the same love and support I would give if the situation were reversed. . . . Now, for the first time in my life, I could be selfish and inconsiderate ” (p. 54). It is easier to understand this aspect of the grief memoir in the context of grief’ s symptomatology and long-lasting reactions. Grief might be the most complex process we experience in life, and, given that loss does not only pertain to death but to daily micro and macro losses, for instance, of objects, jobs, and relationships, one could say that we grieve all our lives. It gets much more complex and unpredictable when we lose a beloved person to death, or when our health and bodies deteriorate.
As grief memoirs are inextricably linked to the narrating self’ s grief reactions, the justification for self-pity and selfishness needs to be stressed to safeguard the genre from the generalizations and accusations of wallowing in despair, of which memoir in general has been frequently accused (cf. Gass, 1994; Genzlinger, 2011). Western cultures do not look favorably on self-pity, even though they allow and reward unfathomable self-absorption omnipresent in social media. Many grief memoirists try to rebel against the
16 The Grief Memoir: Meditations upon the Genre notion of self-pity, but they eventually recognize the futility of the fight that might, and does, end sooner if one succumbs. “Self-pity is never useful. It tends to distort like a fun-house mirror. Nevertheless I indulge myself heavy helpings of self-pity. Then I stop,” writes Anne Roiphe (2008, p. 4). Towards the end of her memoir, Roiphe seems to recognize the inevitability of this behavior: “Self-pity is the graffiti of the heart but not so easy to avoid. I don’t want to wallow. But I begin to see that wallowing is a chronic malady easy to condemn and hard to cure ” (2008, p. 185). Incidentally, scholarly literature readily provides insight into the concepts of diminished self-concern, self-help, self-neglect, or self-reproach (guilt) in bereavement (see, e.g., Parkes & Prigerson, 2010; Rando, 1991), yet few publications call attention to what grief memoirs point out: that self-pity, if not debilitating and preventing one from functioning in everyday life, may be less detrimental than we generally think. J. William Worden (2009), for instance, acknowledges that there is nothing wrong in crying in front of others. “Some people fear that crying openly will not look digni fied or that it will embarrass others,” he states (Worden, 2009, p. 96). “Crying alone may be useful, but it may not be as efficacious as crying with someone and receiving support,” he adds (Worden, 2009, p. 96), justifying the usefulness of public display of sorrow that could, in this form, be considered as a form of selfpity. Grief memoirists notice the dangers of self-indulging in the feeling, and, as Roiphe exemplifies, manage to control it when they feel it may become counterproductive to themselves and the narrative. What matters for the narrating self, and ultimately for the grief memoir, is that they are not ashamed of admitting such emotions. “Our life story is not about whether we are going to know sorrow and hardship, but when,” states Carlson (2010), validating her “sel fishness” that grief evokes and intensi fies (p. 44).
To further guard the grief memoir against accusations of engaging in narcissistic navel-gazing (cf. Gass, 1994; Genzlinger, 2011), it needs to be stressed that relationality also plays a singular role in this genre. The reminiscences of the narrating subject are framed and molded by the death of the beloved object. Thus, the biographical and autobiographical elements in a grief memoir are dependent on each other to capture the deceased’ s role in the survivor’ s life and substantiate the reasons why the grief after a particular loss is so life-altering. The grief memoir, as Kathleen Fowler (2007) aptly observes, “tries to convey the essence and the particularity of the person who has died and what Allende terms the griever’ s ‘journey of the soul’” (p. 527). Even though the grieving self focuses a substantial amount of attention on itself, there are no grief memoirs, or “griever’ s journey of the soul,” without commemorating the object of grief.
Of course, shifts in focus of the narrating self towards one spectrum or the other occur. For instance, C. S. Lewis’ classic narrative, A Grief Observed , is considered to reveal “little about the spouse ’ s life or death” (Berman, 2010, p. 2) and much more about the narrating self’ s state of the grieving soul and mind:
The Grief Memoir: Meditations upon the Genre 17
I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. . . . Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand. (Lewis, 1961/1994, pp. 10, 25)
More intrapersonal than interpersonal, Lewis’ narrative exhibits strong characteristics of other autobiographical forms such as meditation and apology. Yet, A Grief Observed has been most often classified as “ a memoir of spousal loss” or “ a memoir of grief” (see, e.g., Berman, 2010). This includes professional bereavement literature which considers Lewis’ reflections upon loss as an apt illustration of select grief reactions (see, e.g., Parkes & Prigerson, 2010).
An example of grief memoir that shifts its gaze significantly towards the dead loved one is David Plante’ s The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief (2009). A unique stylistic endeavor from a literary standpoint alone as it is written in the second person, The Pure Lover celebrates the life and laments the death of Nikos Stangos (1936–2004), Plante’ s beloved partner of forty years. Plante opens each chapter with a short meditative thought about the nature of grief and its effects on the griever without, however, referencing the grieving self directly. Some sections resonate with desolation and lack of control: “Grief has grief’ s own will” (p. 1); some with the heightened feeling of mortality: “Grief reveals the griever’ s vanity, the vanity of his grief, the vanity of all his life” (p. 47); and some with loneliness: “Grief abandons the griever” (Plante, 2009, p. 75). These third-person observations cast grief as a character here, a character that becomes an active participant, even a mediator, in Plante’ s dialogue with Nikos. The brief reflections on grief lead the narrating self into the recollections in the second person that present and reflect upon Nikos’ life and then the couple’ s life together until Nikos’ illness and death. The memories emerge in short, stream-of-consciousness paragraphs divided by ample blank spaces, allowing each memory to settle in its own special place, its own allotted niche that will hold it so that it is not lost (Małecka, 2022b). Plante occasionally draws attention to his pain: “My love for you was not enough you died” (p. 103), or “Let loose, I tell myself, let loose all that I feel, let loose all that I feel into grief, and, oh, let that grief expand and expand and expand, so beyond me that grief ceases to be mine” (2009, p. 113). Yet, his expressions of pain never lose sight of Nikos and his death:
No one, no one else in all the world, was dying, no one but you.
The shock of seeing you breathe out and not breathe in made me stand back and exclaim, “He’ s dead,” that shock displacing me to a
18 The Grief Memoir: Meditations upon the Genre periphery from where I saw this other self, no longer me, his hand across his mouth, speechless.
...
I lay beside you and felt your warmth give way to cold, so quickly.
...
It seems to me that all events converge in one, all in your death, which makes of our love one moment, and that lasting no more than the moment of your death, now gone.
(Plante, 2009, pp. 101–103)
Plante ’ s memoir reflects upon the back story of Nikos’ life and then the couple’ s life together at length, so that the reader can grasp the enormity of what was lost. The choice to address Nikos directly, as “ you, ” and handing the narrative over to him can be read as an exemplary case of reconstructing the continuing bond, a grief approach that recommends sustaining the connection with the deceased (see Klass et al., 1996; Klass & Steffen, 2018). The second person narrative, uncommon and difficult to carry without losing the reader’ s interest, presents the beloved addressee as an individual who differs from Plante in many ways, which makes his presence in the story all the more powerful (Małecka, 2022b). Plante remembers that the book was originally twice as long, with his emotions featured more prominently, but his friend, the playwright Edward Albee, told him “to cut himself out and give the book to Nikos,” which the writer did (D. Plante, personal communication, December 8, 2020). Plante, the narrator, is not absent, yet his grief memoir indeed directs attention more towards the lives and actions of others, Nikos and the couple’ s friends, than to the narrator.
In Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (2001), Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson stress the importance of the social aspects of the memoir, seeing the genre as “ a mode of life narrative that historically situates the subject in a social environment, as either observer or participant,” which justifies their basic assumption that “the memoir directs attention more toward the lives and actions of others than to the narrator” (p. 198). Indeed, if one considers a wider setting and the people operating in it, then one may say that memoirists pay more attention outward. Sociohistorical elements are present in most, if not all, life-writing genres. As funeral procedures and mourning are impossible to take place in a vacuum, grief memoirists observe and comment on contemporary social mores and attitudes to death, grief, and mourning. Some of the more recent grief narratives take note of select bereavement research and publications. One of the recurring themes in memoirs of loss is the disappearance of mourning customs and rituals in most Western cultures, which, for some mourners, can profoundly influence the grief process. “What does it mean to grieve when we have so few rituals for observing and externalizing loss? What is grief?” asks Meghan O’Rourke (2011, p. 13), lamenting the scarcity of mourning rituals in America. Like Lewis’ and Didion’ s grief records, O’Rourke’ s engaging story has already become a classic of the genre, partially
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preserve. The constructive forces of the world persistently won his deference and support.
The intensely British desire to have a moral, and, if possible, a religious foundation for a political creed would command our deepest respect, were the human mind capable of accommodating its convictions to morality and religion, instead of accommodating morality and religion to its convictions. Cecil, a stern individualist, weighted with a heavy sense of personal responsibility, and disposed to distrust the kindly intervention of the State, finds, naturally enough, that Christianity is essentially individualistic. “There is not a line of the New Testament that can be quoted in favour of the enlargement of the function of the State beyond the elementary duty of maintaining order and suppressing crime.”
The obvious retort to this would be that there is not a line in the New Testament which can be quoted in favour of the confinement of the function of the State to the elementary duty of maintaining order and suppressing crime. The counsel of Christ is a counsel of perfection, and a counsel of perfection is necessarily personal and intimate. What the world asks now are state reforms and social reforms,—in other words, the reformation of our neighbours. What the Gospel asks, and has always asked, is the reformation of ourselves,—a harassing and importunate demand. Mr. Chesterton spoke but the truth when he said that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and not tried.
Cecil’s conclusions anent the unconcern of the Gospels with forms of government were, strangely enough, the points very ardently disputed by Bible-reading England. A critic in the “Contemporary Review” made the interesting statement that the political economy of the New Testament is radical and sound. He illustrated his argument with the parable of the labourers in the vine-yard, pointing out that the master paid the men for the hours in which they had had no work. “In the higher economics,” he said, “the State, as representing the community, is responsible for those who, through the State’s malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance, are unable to obtain the work for which they wait.”
But apart from the fact that the parable is meant to have a spiritual and not a material significance, there is nothing in the Gospel to indicate that the master considered that he owed the late-comers their day’s wage. His comment upon his own action disclaims this assumption: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” And it is worthy of note that the protest against his liberality comes, not from other vine-growers objecting to a precedent, but from the labourers who cannot be brought to see that an hour’s work done by their neighbours may be worth as much as twelve hours’ work done by themselves. Human nature has not altered perceptibly in the course of two thousand years.
Great Britain’s experiment in doling out “unemployment pay” was based on expediency, and on the generous hypothesis that men and women, outside of the professional pauper class, would prefer work with wages to wages without work. A cartoon in “Punch” representing the Minister of Labour blandly and insinuatingly presenting a house-maid’s uniform to an outraged “ex-munitionette,” who is the Government’s contented pensioner, suggests some rift in this harmonious understanding. Progressives have branded temperamental conservatism as distrust of the unknown,—a mental attitude which is the antithesis of love of adventure. But distrust of the unknown is a thin and fleeting emotion compared with distrust of human nature, which is perfectly well known. To know it is not necessarily to quarrel with it. It is merely to take it into account.
Economics and ethics have little in common. They meet in amity, only to part in coldness. Our preference for our own interests is essentially and vitally un-Christian. The competitive system is not a Christian system. But it lies at the root of civilization; it has its noble as well as its ignoble side; it is the main-spring of both nationalism and internationalism; it is the force which supports governments, and the force which violently disrupts them. Men have risen above selfinterest for life; nations, superbly for a time. The sense of shock which was induced by Germany’s acute reversion to barbarism was deeper than the sense of danger induced by her vaulting ambitions. There is no such passionate feeling in life as that which is stirred by the right and duty of defence; and for more than four years the Allied
nations defended the world from evils which the world fancied it had long outgrown. The duration of the war is the most miraculous part of the miraculous tale. A monotony of heroism, a monotony of sacrifice, transcends imagination.
Now it is over. Citizens of the United States walked knee-deep in newspapers for a joyous night to signify their satisfaction, and at once embarked on vivacious disputes over memorial arches, and statues, and monuments. The nations of Europe, with lighter pockets and heavier stakes, began to consider difficulties and to cultivate doubts. No one can fail to understand the destructive forces of the world, because they have given object-lessons on a large and lurid scale. But the constructive forces are on trial, with imposing chances of success or failure. They are still in the wordy stage, and now, as never before, the world is sick of words. “This is neither the time nor the place for superfluous phrases,” said Clemenceau (ironically, one hopes), when he placed in the hands of Count von BrockdorffRantzau a peace treaty which some stony-hearted wag has informed us was precisely the length of “A Tale of Two Cities.” The appalling discursiveness of the Versailles Conference has added to the confusion of the world; but fitted into the “Preamble” of the Covenant of the League of Nations are five little vocables, four of them monosyllabic, which embody the one arresting thought that dominates and authorizes the articles,—“Not to resort to war.” These five words are the crux of the whole serious and sanguine scheme. They hold the hope of the weak, and the happiness of the insecure. They deny to the strong the pleasures—and the means—of coercion.
The rapid changes wrought by the twentieth century are less disconcerting to the temperamental conservative, who is proverbially slow, than movements which take time to be persuasive. For one thing, the vast spiral along which the world spins brings him face to face with new friends before he loses sight of the old. The revolutionary of yesterday is the reactionary of to-day, and the conservative finds himself hob-nobbing with men and women whom he had thought remote as the Poles.
Two interesting examples are Madame Catherine Breshkovskaya and Mr. Samuel Gompers. Time was, and not so many years ago, when both condoned violence—the violence of the Russian Nihilist, the violence of the American dynamiter—as a short road to justice. Their attitude was not unlike that of the first Southern lynchers: “We take the law into our own hands, because conditions are unbearable, and the State affords no adequate relief.” But Madame Breshkovskaya has seen the forces she helped to set in motion sweeping in unanticipated and shattering currents. She has seen a new terrorism arise and wield the weapons of the old to crush man’s sacred freedom. The peasants she loved have been beyond the reach of her help. The country for which she suffered thirty years of exile repudiated her. Radicals in Europe and in the United States mocked at her. The Grandmother of the Revolution has become a conservative old lady, concerned, as good grandmothers ought to be, with the welfare of little children, and pleading pitifully for order and education.
As for Mr. Gompers, his unswerving loyalty to the cause of the Allies, his unswerving rejection of Germany and all her works, will never be forgiven by pacifists, by the men and women who had no word of protest or of pity when Belgium was invaded, when the Lusitania was sunk, when towns were burned, civilians butchered, and girls deported; and who recovered their speech only to plead for the nation that had disregarded human sufferings and human rights. Mr. Gompers helped as much as any one man in the United States to win the war, and winning a war is very distasteful to those who do not want to fight. Therefore has he been relegated by international Socialists, who held hands for four years with Pan-German Socialists, to the ranks of the conservatives. When the “Nation,” speaking ex cathedra, says, “The authority of the old machine-type of labour leader like Mr. Gompers is impaired beyond help or hope,” we hear the echo of the voices which babbled about capitalism and profiteering in April, 1917. The Great War has made and unmade the friendships of the world. If the radicals propose it as a test, as a test the conservatives will accept it.
The successive revolutions which make the advance-guard of one movement the rear-guard of the next are as expeditious and as overwhelming in the field of art as in the fields of politics and sociology. In the spring of 1877 an exhibition of two hundred and forty pictures, the work of eighteen artists, was opened in the rue le Peletier, Paris. For some reason, never sufficiently explained, Parisians found in these canvases a source of infinite diversion. They went to the exhibition in a mood of obvious hilarity. They began to laugh while they were still in the street, they laughed as they climbed the stairs, they were convulsed with laughter when they looked at the pictures, they laughed every time they talked them over with their friends.
Now what were these mirth-provoking works of art? Not cubist diagrams, not geometrical charts of human anatomy, not reversible landscapes, not rainbow-tinted pigs. Such exhilarants lay in wait for another century and another generation. The pictures which so abundantly amused Paris in 1877 were painted by Claude Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir,—men of genius, who, having devised a new and brilliant technique, abandoned themselves with too little reserve to the veracities of impressionism. They were not doctrinaires. The peace they disturbed was only the peace of immobility. But they were drunk with new wine. Their strength lay in their courage and their candour; their weakness in the not unnatural assumption that they were expressing the finalities of art.
Defenders they had in plenty. No pioneer can escape from the hardship of vindication. Years before, Baudelaire had felt it incumbent upon himself, as a professional mutineer, to support the “fearless innovations” of Manet. Zola, always on the lookout for somebody to attack or to defend, was equally enthusiastic and equally choleric. Loud disputation rent the air while the world sped on its way, and lesser artists discovered, to their joy, what a facile thing it was to produce nerve-racking novelties. In 1892, John La Farge, wandering disconsolately through the exhibitions of Paris, wondered if there might not still be room for something simple in art.
Ever and always the reproach cast at the conservative is that he has been blind in the beginning to the beauty he has been eventually
compelled to recognize; and ever and always he replies that, in the final issue, he is the guardian of all beauty. His are the imperishable standards, his is the love for a majestic past, his is the patience to wait until the wheat has been sorted from the chaff, and gathered into the granaries of the world. If he be hostile to the problematic, which is his weakness, he is passionately loyal to the tried and proven, which is his strength. He is as necessary to human sanity as the progressive is necessary to human hope.
Civilization and culture are very old and very beautiful. They imply refinement of humour, a disciplined taste, sensitiveness to noble impressions, and a wise acceptance of the laws of evidence. These things are not less valuable for being undervalued. “At the present time,” says the most acute of American critics, Mr. Brownell, “it is quite generally imagined that we should gain rather than lose by having Raphael without the Church, and Rembrandt without the Bible.” The same notion, less clearly defined, is prevalent concerning Milton and Dante. We had grown weary of large and compelling backgrounds until the Great War focussed our emotions. We are impatient still of large and compelling traditions. The tendency is to localization and analysis.
The new and facile experiments in verse, which have some notable exponents, are interesting and indecisive. Midway between the enthusiasm of the experimenters (which is not contagious) and the ribald gibes of the disaffected (which are not convincing) the conservative critic practises that watchful waiting, so safe in the world of art, so hazardous in the world of action. He cannot do as he has been bidden, and judge the novel product by its own standards, for that would be to exempt it from judgment. Nothing—not even a German—can be judged by his—or its—own standard. If there is to be any standard at all, it must be based on comparison. Keen thoughts and vivid words have their value, no matter in what form they are presented; but unless that form be poetical, the presentation is not poetry. There is a world of truth in Mr. Masters’s brief and bitter lines:
“Beware of the man who rises to power From one suspender.”
It has the kind of sagacity which is embodied in the old adage, “You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” and it is as remote from the requirements of prosody
The medium employed by Walt Whitman, at times rhythmic and cadenced, at times ungirt and sagging loosely, enabled him to write passages of sustained beauty, passages grandly conceived and felicitously rendered. It also permitted him a riotous and somewhat monotonous excess. Every word misused revenges itself forever upon a writer’s reputation. The medium employed by the unshackled poets of to-day is capable of vivid and accurate imagery. It has aroused—or revealed—habits of observation. It paints pen-pictures cleverly. In the hands of French, British, and American experts, it shows sobriety, and a clear consciousness of purpose. But it is useless to deny that the inexpert find it perilously easy. The barriers which protect an ordinary four-lined stanza are not hard to scale; but they do exist, and they sometimes bring the versifier to a halt. Without them, nothing brings him to a halt, save the limits of the space allotted by grudging newspapers and periodicals.
Yet brevity is the soul of song, no less than the soul of wit. Those lovely lyrics, swift as the note of a bird on the wing, imperishable as a jewel, haunting as unforgotten melody, are the fruits of artifice no less than of inspiration. In eight short lines, Landor gave “Rose Aylmer” to an entranced and forever listening world. There is magic in the art that made those eight lines final. A writer of what has been cynically called “socialized poetry” would have spent the night of “memories and sighs” in probing and specifying his emotions.
The conservative’s inheritance from the radical’s lightly rejected yesterdays gives him ground to stand on, and a simplified point of view. In that very engaging volume, “The Education of Henry Adams,” the autobiographer tells us in one breath how much he desires change, and, in the next, how much he resents it. He would like to upset an already upset world, but he would also like to keep
the Pope in the Vatican, and the Queen in Windsor Castle. He feels that by right he should have been a Marxist, but the last thing he wants to see is a transformed Europe. The bewildered reader might be pardoned for losing himself in this labyrinth of uncertainties, were it not for an enlightening paragraph in which the author expresses unqualified amazement at Motley’s keen enjoyment of London society.
“The men of whom Motley must have been thinking were such as he might meet at Lord Houghton’s breakfasts: Grote, Jowett, Milman, or Froude; Browning, Matthew Arnold, or Swinburne; Bishop Wilberforce, Venables, or Hayward; or perhaps Gladstone, Robert Lowe, or Lord Granville.... Within the narrow limits of this class the American Legation was fairly at home; possibly a score of houses, all liberal and all literary, but perfect only in the eyes of a Harvard College historian. They could teach little worth knowing, for their tastes were antiquated, and their knowledge was ignorance to the next generation. What was altogether fatal for future purpose, they were only English.”
Apart from the delightful conception of the author of “Culture and Anarchy,” and the author of “Atalanta in Calydon,” as “only English,” the pleasure the conservative reader takes in this peremptory estimate is the pleasure of possession. To him belongs the ignorance of Jowett and Grote, to him the obsoleteness of Browning. From every one of these discarded luminaries some light falls on his path. In fact, a flash of blinding light was vouchsafed to Mr. Adams, when he and Swinburne were guests in the house of Monckton Milnes. Swinburne was passionately praising the god of his idolatry, Victor Hugo; and the young American, who knew little and cared less about French poetry, ventured in a half-hearted fashion to assert the counter-claims of Alfred de Musset. Swinburne listened impatiently, and brushed aside the comparison with a trenchant word: “De Musset did not sustain himself on the wing.”
If a bit of flawless criticism from an expert’s lips be not educational, then there is nothing to be taught or learned in the world. Of the making of books there is no end; but now as ever the talker strikes
the light, now as ever conversation is the appointed medium of intelligence and taste.
It is well that the past yields some solace to the temperamental conservative, for the present is his only on terms he cannot easily fulfil. His reasonable doubts and his unreasonable prejudices block the path of contentment. He is powerless to believe a thing because it is an eminently desirable thing to believe. He is powerless to deny the existence of facts he does not like. He is powerless to credit new systems with finality. The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience. “The will,” says Francis Thompson, “is the lynch-pin of the faculties.” We stand or fall by its strength or its infirmity. Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue. Parental legislation for the benefit of the weak leaves them as weak as ever, and denies to the strong the birthright of independence, the hard, resistant manliness with which they work out their salvation. They may go to heaven in leading-strings, but they cannot conquer Apollyon on the way.
The well-meant despotism of the reformer accomplishes some glittering results, but it arrests the slow progress of civilization, which cannot afford to be despotic. Mr. Bagehot, whose cynicism held the wisdom of restraint, maintained that the “cake of custom” should be stiff enough to make change of any kind difficult, but never so stiff as to make it impossible. The progress achieved under these conditions would be, he thought, both durable and endurable. “Without a longaccumulated and inherited tendency to discourage originality, society would never have gained the cohesion requisite for effecting common action against its external foes.” Deference to usage is a uniting and sustaining bond. Nations which reject it are apt to get off the track, and have to get back, or be put back, with difficulty and disaster. They do not afford desirable dwelling-places for thoughtful human beings, but they give notable lessons to humanity. Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.
If the principles of conservatism are based on firm supports, on a recognition of values, a sense of measure and proportion, a due regard for order,—its prejudices are indefensible. The wise
conservative does not attempt to defend them; he only clings to them more lovingly under attack. He recognizes triumphant science in the telephone and the talking machine, and his wish to escape these benefactions is but a humble confession of unworthiness. He would be glad if scientists, hitherto occupied with preserving and disseminating sound, would turn their attention to suppressing it, would collect noise as an ashman collects rubbish, and dump it in some lonely place, thus preserving the sanity of the world. He agrees with Mr. Edward Martin (who bears the hall-mark of the caste) that periodicals run primarily for advertisers, and secondarily for readers, are worthy of regard, and that only the tyranny of habit makes him revolt from so nice an adjustment of interests. Why, after all, should he balk at pursuing a story, or an article on “Ballads and Folk-Songs of the Letts,” between columns of well-illustrated advertisements? Why should he refuse to leap from chasm to chasm, from the intimacies of underwear to electrical substitutes for all the arts of living? There is no hardship involved in the chase, and the trail is carefully blazed. Yet the chances are that he abandons the Letts, reminding himself morosely that three years ago he was but dimly aware of their existence; and their “rich vein of traditional imagery,” to say nothing of their early edition of Luther’s catechism, fades from his intellectual horizon.
If we are too stiff to adjust ourselves to changed conditions, we are bound to play a losing game. Yet the moral element in taste survives all change, and denies to us a ready acquiescence in innovations whose only merit is their practicality Through the reeling years of war, the standard set by taste remained a test of civilization. In these formidable years of peace, racked by anxieties and shadowed by disillusions (Franklin’s ironic witticism concerning the blessedness of peace-makers was never more applicable than to-day), the austerity of taste preserves our self-respect. We are under no individual obligation to add to the wealth of nations. It is sometimes a pleasant duty to resist the pervasive pressure of the business world.
Political conservatism may be a lost cause in modern democracy; but temperamental conservatism dates from the birth of man’s reasoning powers, and will survive the clamour and chaos of
revolutions. It may rechristen its political platform, but the animating spirit will be unchanged. As a matter of fact, great conservatives have always been found in the liberal ranks, and Tory Cassandras, who called themselves radicals, have prophesied with dismal exactitude. It was a clear-eyed, clear-voiced Socialist who, eight years before the war, warned British Socialists that they would do well to sound the temper of German Socialists before agitating for a reduction of the British navy. M. Paul Deschanel says of the French that they have revolutionary imaginations and conservative temperaments. An English critic has used nearly the same terms in defining the elemental principles of civilization,—conservatism of technique and spiritual restlessness. It is the fate of man to do his own thinking, and thinking is subversive of content; but a sane regard for equilibrium is his inheritance from the travail of centuries. He sees far who looks both ways. He journeys far who treads a known track.
Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance. It is a force in the social and political, as well as in the natural order. A party of progress, a party of stability,—call them by what names we please,—they will play their rôles to the end. The hopefulness of the reformer (Savonarola’s bonfire of vanities is an historic precedent for Hawthorne’s allegory) is balanced by the patience of the conservative, which has survived the disappointments of time, and is not yet exhausted. He at least knows that “the chief parts of human doom and duty are eternal,” and that the things which can change are not the things essential to the support of his soul. We stand at the door of a new day, and are sanguine or affrighted according to our temperaments; but this day shall be transient as the days which have preceded it, and, like its predecessors, shall plead for understanding and pardon before the bar of history.
The Cheerful Clan
Now that the Great War is a thing of the past, there is no longer any need to be cheerful. For years a valorous gaiety has been the rôle assigned us. For years we struck a hopeful note, whether it rang true or false. For years the plight of the world was so desperate that we dared not look straight ahead, lest the spectre of a triumphant Germany smite us blind. Confronted with a ruthlessness which threatened to extinguish the liberties and decencies of civilization, we simply had to cast about us for a wan smile to hide from apprehensive eyes the trouble of our souls.
Now the beast of militarism has been chained, and until it is strong enough to break its fetters (which should be a matter of years), we can breathe freely, and try and heal our hurt. True, there is trouble enough on every side to stock a dozen worlds. The beauty of France has been unspeakably defiled. The butcheries in Belgium scarred the nation’s soul. The flower of British youth have perished. Italy’s gaping wounds have festered under a grievous sense of wrong. Russia seethes with hatred and strife. In the United States we see on one hand a mad welter of lawlessness, idleness, and greed; and, on the other, official extravagance, administrative weakness, a heavy, ill-adjusted burden of taxation, and shameless profiteering. Our equilibrium is lost, and with it our sense of proportion. We are Lilliput and Brobdingnag jumbled up together, which is worse than anything Gulliver ever encountered.
But this displacement of balance, this unruly selfishness, is but the inevitable result of the world’s great upheaval. It represents the human rebound from high emotions and heavy sacrifices. The emotions and the sacrifices have met their reward. Germany cannot —for some time to come—spring at our throat. If we fail to readjust our industries on a paying basis, we shall of course go under, and lose the leadership of the world. But we won’t be kicked under by the Prussian boot.
Therefore cheerfulness is no longer obligatory We can shut the door in the faces of its professional purveyors—who have been making a good thing of it—and look with restful seriousness upon the mutability of life. Our intelligence, so long insulted by the sentimental inconsistencies which are the text of the Gospel of Gladness, can assert its right of rejection. The Sunshine School of writers has done its worst, and the fixed smile with which it regards the universe is as offensive as the fixed smile of chorus girls and college presidents, of débutantes and high officials, who are photographed for the Sunday press, and who all look like advertisements of dentifrice.
Popular optimism—the kind which is hawked about like shoestrings—is the apotheosis of superficiality. The obvious is its support, the inane is its ornament. Consider the mental attitude of a writer who does not hesitate to say in a perfectly good periodical, which does not hesitate to publish his words: “Nothing makes a man happier than to know that he is of use to his own time.” Only in a sunburst of cheerfulness could such a naked truism be shamelessly exposed. I can remember that, when I was a child, statements of this order were engraved in neat script on the top line of our copy-books. But it was understood that their value lay in their chirography, in the unapproachable perfection of every letter, not in the message they conveyed. Our infant minds were never outraged by seeing them in printed text. Those were serious and self-respecting days when no one sent our mothers a calendar with three hundred and sixty-five words of cheer, designed to jack up the lowered morale of the family. The missionary spirit was at work then as now; but it mostly dropped tracts on our doorstep, reminding us that we might be in hell before to-morrow morning.
The gaiety of life is a saving grace, and high spirits are more than the appanage of youth. They represent the rebound of the resilient soul from moods of dejection, and it is their transient character which makes them so infectious. Landor’s line,
“That word, that sad word, Joy,” is manifestly unfair. Joy is a delightful, flashing little word, as brief as is the emotion it conveys. We all know what it means, but nobody
dares to preach it, as they preach three-syllabled cheerfulness, and gladness which once had a heroic sound, the “gladness that hath favour with God,” but which is now perilously close to slang. The early Christians, who had on a large scale the courage of their convictions, found in their faith sufficient warrant for content. They seem to have lived and died with a serenity, a perfect good humour, which is the highest result of the best education. But when Mr. Shaw attempted to elucidate in “Androcles and the Lion” this difficult and delicate conception, he peopled his stage with Pollyannas, who voiced their cheerfulness so clamorously that they made persecution pardonable. No public could be expected to endure such talk when it had an easy method of getting rid of the talkers.
The leniency of the law now leaves us without escape. We cannot throw our smiling neighbours to the lions, and they override us in what seems to me a spirit of cowardly exultation. Female optimists write insufferable papers on “Happy Hours for Old Ladies,” and male optimists write delusive papers on “Happiness as a Business Asset.” Reforming optimists who, ten years ago, bade us rejoice over the elimination of war,—“save on the outskirts of civilization,” now bid us rejoice over the elimination of alcohol,—save on the tables of the rich. Old-fashioned optimists, like Mr. Horace Fletcher, put faith in the “benevolent intentions” of nature,—nature busy with the scorpion’s tail. New-fashioned optimists, like Professor Ralph Barton Perry (who may not know how optimistic he is), put faith in the mistrust of nature which has armed the hands of men. Sentimental optimists, the most pervasive of the tribe, blur the fine outlines of life, to see which clearly and bravely is the imperative business of man’s soul.
For the world of thought is not one whit more tranquil than the world of action. The man whose “mind to him a kingdom is” wears his crown with as much uneasiness as does a reigning monarch. Giordano Bruno, who had troubles of his own, and who knew by what road they came, commended ignorance as a safeguard from melancholy. If, disregarding this avenue of escape, we look with understanding, and sometimes even with exhilaration, upon the portentous spectacle of life, if we have tempers so flawless that we can hold bad hands and still enjoy the game, then, with the
sportsman’s relish, will come the sportsman’s reward; a reward, be it remembered, which is in the effort only, and has little to do with results.
“Il faut chanter! chanter, même en sachant Qu’il existe des chants qu’on préfère à son chant.”
The generous illusions which noble souls like Emerson’s have cherished undismayed are ill-fitted for loose handling. Good may be the final goal of evil, but if we regard evil with a too sanguine eye, it is liable to be thrown out of perspective. In the spring of 1916, when the dark days of the war were upon us, and the toll of merchant ships grew heavier week by week with Germany’s mounting contempt for admonitions, I heard a beaming gentleman point out to a large audience, which tried to beam responsively, that the “wonderful” thing about the contest was the unselfish energy it had awakened in the breasts of American women. He dwelt unctuously upon their relief committees, upon the excellence of their hospital supplies, upon their noble response to the needs of humanity. He repeated a great many times how good it was for us to do these things. He implied, though he did not say it in rude words, that the agony of Europe was nicely balanced by the social regeneration of America. He was a sentimental Rochefoucauld, rejoicing, without a particle of guile, that the misfortunes of our friends had given us occasion to manifest our friendship.
It has been often asserted that unscrupulous optimism is an endearing trait, that the world loves it even when forced to discountenance it, and that “radiant” people are personally and perennially attractive. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson said something of this sort, and his authority is invoked by sentimentalists who compile calendars, and birthday books, and texts to encumber our walls. They fail to distinguish the finely tempered spirit which carried Mr. Stevenson over the stony places of life, and which was beautiful beyond measure (the stones being many and hard), from the inconsequent cheerfulness which says that stones are soft. We
cannot separate an author from his work, and nowhere in Stevenson’s books does he guarantee anything more optimistic than courage. The triumph of evil in “Thrawn Janet,” the hopelessness of escape from heredity in “Olalla,” the shut door in “Markheim,” the stern contempt in “A Lodging for the Night,” the inextinguishable and unpardonable hatreds in “The Master of Ballantrae,” even the glorious contentiousness of “Virginibus Puerisque,”—where in these masterful pages are we invited to smile at life? We go spinning through it, he admits, “like a party for the Derby.” Yet “the whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin.”
This is a call for courage, for the courage that lay as deep as pain in the souls of Stevenson, and Johnson, and Lamb. The combination of a sad heart and a gay temper, which is the most charming and the most lovable thing the world has got to show, gave to these men their hold upon the friends who knew them in life, and still wins for them the personal regard of readers. Lamb, the saddest and the gayest of the three, cultivated sedulously the little arts of happiness. He opened all the avenues of approach. He valued at their worth a good play, a good book, a good talk, and a good dinner. He lived in days when occasional drunkenness failed to stagger humanity, and when roast pig was within the income of an East India clerk. He had a gift, subtle rather than robust, for enjoyment, and a sincere accessibility to pain. His words were unsparing, his actions kind. He binds us to him by his petulance as well as by his patience, by his entirely human revolt from dull people and tiresome happenings. He was not one of those who
“lightly lose Their all, yet feel no aching void. Should aught annoy them, they refuse To be annoyed.”
On the contrary, the whimsical expression of his repeated annoyance is balm to our fretted souls.
For the friend whom we love is the friend who gets wet when he is rained on, who is candid enough to admit failure, and courageous enough to mock at it. When Jane Austen wrote to her sister that she did not have a very good time at a party, because men were disposed not to ask her to dance until they could not help it, she did more than make Cassandra smile; she won her way into the hearts of readers for whom that letter was not meant. We know the “radiant” people to whom all occasions are enjoyable, who intimate—with some skill, I confess—that they carry mirth and gaiety in their wake. They are capable of describing a Thanksgiving family dinner as mirthful because they were participants. Not content with a general profession of pleasure in living, “which is all,” says Mr. Henry Adams, “that the highest rules of good breeding should ask,” they insist upon the delightfulness of a downcast world, and they offer their personal sentiments as proof.
Dr. Johnson’s sputtering rage at the happy old lady is the most human thing recorded of his large and many-sided humanity. A great thinker who confronted life with courage and understanding was set at naught, and, to speak truth, routed, by an unthinking, but extremely solid, asseveration. And after all the old lady was not calling for recruits; she was simply stating a case. Miss Helen Keller, in a book called “Optimism,” says very plainly that if she, a blind deaf mute, can be happy, every one can achieve happiness, and that it is every one’s duty to achieve it. Now there is not a decent man or woman in the country who will not be glad to know that Miss Keller is, as she says she is, happy; but this circumstance does not affect the conditions of life as measured by all who meet them. The whole strength of the preaching world has gone into optimism, with the result that it has reached a high place in man’s estimation, is always spoken of with respect, and not infrequently mistaken for a virtue.
Are we then so sunk in dejection, so remote from the splendid and unconscious joy which the struggle for life gave to the centuries that are over? Time was when men needed the curb, and not the spur, in that valorous contention. “How high the sea of human delight rose in the Middle Ages,” says Mr. Chesterton, “we know only by the colossal walls they built to keep it within bounds.” Optimism was as
superfluous as meliorism when the world was in love with living, when Christianity preached penance and atonement for sin, striving by golden promises and direful threats to wean man from that unblessed passion, to turn the strong tide of his nature back from the earth that nourished it. There was never but one thorough-going optimist among the Fathers of the Church, and that was Origen, who looked forward confidently to the final conversion of Satan. His attitude was full of nobleness because he had suffered grievously at the heathen’s hands; but not even by the alchemy of compassion is evil transmutable to good.
The Stoics, who proposed that men should practise virtue without compensation, were logically unassailable, but not persuasive to the average mind. It does not take much perspicuity to distinguish between an agreeable and a disagreeable happening, and once the difference is perceived, no argument can make them equally acceptable. “Playing at mummers is one thing,” says the sapient tanner in Kenneth Grahame’s “Headswoman,” “and being executed is another. Folks ought to keep them separate.” On the other hand, the assurance of the Epicureans that goodness and temperance were of value because they conduced to content was liable to be set aside by the man who found himself contented without them. “The poor world, to do it justice,” says Gilbert Murray, “has never lent itself to any such bare-faced deception as the optimism of the Stoics”; but neither are we disposed to recognize enlightened self-interest as a spiritual agency. It may perhaps be trusted to make a good husband or a good vestryman, but not a good human being.
A highly rational optimist, determined to be logical at any cost, observed recently in a British review that sympathy was an invasion of liberty. “If I must sorrow because another is sorrowing, I am a slave to my feelings, and it is best that I shall be slave to nothing. Perfect freedom means that I am able to follow my own will, and my will is to be happy rather than to be sad. I love pleasure rather than pain. Therefore if I am moved to sorrow against my will, I am enslaved by my sympathy.”
This is an impregnable position. It is the old, old philosophy of the cold heart and the warm stomach. I do not say that it is unwise. I say
only that it is unlikable.
For our quarrel with Christian Science is, not that it prefers Mrs. Eddy to Æsculapius, or her practitioners to his practitioners; not that it sometimes shames us by rising superbly above our froward nerves, and on less happy occasions denies the existence of a cold which is intruding itself grossly upon the senses; but that it exempts its followers from legitimate pity and grief. Only by refusing such exemption can we play our whole parts in the world. While there is a wrong done, we must admit some measure of defeat; while there is a pang suffered, we have no right to unflawed serenity. To cheat ourselves intellectually that we may save ourselves spiritually is unworthy of the creature that man is meant to be.
And to what end! Things are as they are, and no amount of selfdeception makes them otherwise. The friend who is incapable of depression depresses us as surely as the friend who is incapable of boredom bores us. Somewhere in our hearts is a strong, though dimly understood, desire to face realities, and to measure consequences, to have done with the fatigue of pretending. It is not optimism to enjoy the view when one is treed by a bull; it is philosophy. The optimist would say that being treed was a valuable experience. The disciple of gladness would say it was a pleasurable sensation. The Christian Scientist would say there was no bull, though remaining—if he were wise—on the tree-top. The philosopher would make the best of a bad job, and seek what compensation he could find. He is of a class apart.
If, as scientists assert, fear is the note which runs through the universe, courage is the unconquerable beat of man’s heart. A “wise sad valour” won the war at a cost we do well to remember; and from unnumbered graves comes a stern reminder that the world can hold wrongs which call for such a righting. We for whom life has been made, not safe, but worth the living, can now afford “le bel sérieux” which befits the time and occasion. When preachers cease pointing out to us inaccessible routes to happiness, we may stop the chase long enough to let her softly overtake us. When the Gospellers of Gladness free us of their importunities, our exhausted spirits may yet revive to secret hours of mirth. When we frankly abandon an attitude
of cheerfulness, our Malvolio smile may break into sudden peals of laughter. What have we gained from the past seven years if not zest for the difficulties and dangers ahead of us? What lesson have we learned but intrepidity? The noble Greek lines upon a drowned seaman sound in our ears, and steady us to action:
“A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast, Bids you set sail.
Full many a gallant bark, when he was lost, Weathered the gale.”
