Monologue of Bell Hook's daughter (Sub-altern Fiction)

It was a windy June Sunday. For Bell would have named the day a wuthering day but she has seen worse living in Brighton. Hence, not just yet. When Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights , Bell believed that Emily Bronte or erstwhile Currer Bell was most certainly trying to draw parallels between the internal and external torrents; there is something tragic to reflect and soothing to feel when there is an external calamity in form of thunderstorm or lightning etc., that ostensibly emulates one's internal clamour. Although far from home, yet Bell holds home nearly but it may not be possible to always hold it dearly. Though things are settling down inside Bell now, this phase is always past the phase of great upheaval and torment. Women are said to be prone to hysteria; Bell's father always defined her behaviour as hysterical too. While, she understood over time, men find it impossible to justify women's behaviour, she could never bring herself to question her behaviour; there w...
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Rilke and Plath; Numbers and Arts


In relation to ‘solitude’, Rainer Maria Rilke writes about the aspects of solitude, such as it leads to the discovery of personhood and acceptance of feelings like pain, sadness, anxiety, depression etc; former, as he writes in one of his correspondences with a friend about his meeting with his mother. Lewis Hyde describes the correspondence as consisting of the description of sympathetic intelligence [1] where one ‘inwardly’, which might mean sub-consciously, completes someone’s gestures. The concept of ‘inwardness’ becomes coherent as Hyde describes that Rilke’s ability to identify with others led to the ramification of losing his own identity. Thus, solitude for the discovery of personhood.
Latter, as Rilke believed that art requires an artist to accept such emotions instead of attempting to avoid it by being constantly attempting to interact with others & become social as it is not possible to achieve; thus, the state of mind as sadness should not be wallowed over as though a ‘curse’ but converted into a ‘blessing’ by engaging with art.

Depiction of solitude and Rilke and Plath
Solitude

One of the aspects of solitude transpires after successfully accepting solitude. In the first letter to his friend, Kappus, Rilke writes about the ‘most inconsequential and slightest hour’. The basic concept behind it is that a solitary person loses awareness of time as dictated and trained by clocks. An artist must lose touch with numbers, calculation and counting. Perhaps, this is why an artist sees a phenomenon unfold and not as distributed in the counts of stages. With the help from this concept, a much-sought answer finds leads- ‘Does the desire to do a work which had once been a passion and now a duty, fades away?’ Rilke suggests that withdrawing from mechanical time spreads temporality in form of eternity and haste is eliminated. Thus, creative desires, at least for an artist, might sustain.

However, I wonder if creative desires are not associated with love and the happiness that springs out of it. The relation is bidirectional, creation seems to stimulate happiness & happiness felt from love particularly leads to a desire to create. For instance, buying arguments from Sylvia Plath, one might argue in TheBell Jar, depression not only snatches away the desire to create (reproduction in this case) but also the capability to do so (although, Esther Greenwood in the novel seems to choose diaphragm birth control voluntarily). I believe that it is established that reproduction, ideally, is a creation out of love. However, speaking of temporality a lot in the previous paragraph, leaves an open-ended question, as normatively observed, is not humane love temporally bound too? 

Rainer Maria Rilke

The creative desires as discussed by Rilke are existential in nature. One of the concerns of existentialists, thinking of Camus's Sisyphus is to let us keep the stone rolling and not think of the time or when will it cease. Well, an existentialist like Rilke does not delve into moral discussions. It makes their method of carrying out work different from Kantian deontology. The two might be misconstrued as similar as none of the two identify with the joy of carrying out work but for the sake of it. However, for Kant, the work shall be a duty that is categorical and has its roots in morals. An existentialist just goes on and on towards eternity like Sisyphus.      


[1] Sympathetic intelligence is deciding the course of action and behaviour in response to our surrounding at a moment.

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 28, 2023 at 5:32 AM

    This blog is a gem. It reaffirms my belief that the writer is somewhere in the genius spectrum. "Solitude for the discovery of personhood."

    ReplyDelete

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