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The Seduction of Pessimism: Eros, Failure, and the Novel City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 2-2021 The Seduction of Pessimism: Eros, Failure, and the Novel Tom Ribitzky The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4140 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE SEDUCTION OF PESSIMISM: EROS, FAILURE, AND THE NOVEL by TOM RIBITZKY A dissertAtion submitted to the Graduate FAculty in Comparative Literature in partiAl fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2021 © 2020 TOM RIBITZKY All rights reserved ii The Seduction of Pessimism: Eros, FAilure, and the Novel by Tom Ribitzky This mAnuscript has been reAd and accepted for the Graduate FAculty in Comparative Literature in sAtisfaction of the dissertAtion requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _____________________ __________________________________________ Date John BrenkmAn Chair of Examining Committee _____________________ __________________________________________ Date GiAncArlo Lombardi Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: __________________________________________ Richard KAye __________________________________________ GiAncArlo Lombardi THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT The Seduction of Pessimism: Eros, FAilure, and the Novel by Tom Ribitzky Advisor: John BrenkmAn In PlAto’s Symposium, we get A pessimistic myth not only about love, but about the first experience of loss, in which we were once globulAr cosmic beings who were split in two by Zeus’s thunderbolts as punishment for not obeying the OlympiAn gods. FAlling down to eArth After the split, Zeus introduced eros out of pity for our condition. Our consolAtion wAs to find our other halves and hold on to them as a wAy of remembering what it wAs like when we were whole. But, as AllAn Bloom notes, …mAn’s condition soon worsened. In the beginning, their reAl half wAs right there, and they could hold on to eAch other. But soon some of the halves died while others lived on, And in succeeding generations, the offspring of mixed couples reproduced together without necessArily being the true other half. Eventually there are no true other halves. The result is that men continue the quest, but it is hopeless. (108) iv To PlAto, wholeness is hopeless, and yet we still gesture to it in the act of love, even as we are doomed to fail. The pursuit of love coincides with the pursuit of truth—Also a project doomed to fail. Socrates never arrives at any definition of Justice in The Republic. In Phaedrus, he offers an Account of eros, but only to tAke it back and offer yet another account, ending the diAlogue with a meditAtion on the limits of the written word and how this medium of lAnguage fails us. In the Symposium, rather than offering a definition of eros once and for all, PlAto displAys multiple and often contradictory explAnations for it, ending with the distractions of a drunken mob. Truth stAnds alwAys at a remove, as elusive as VirginiA Woolf’s Lighthouse. The most we cAn do is Approach it as an asymptote. What PlAto leAves behind is the vehicle to approach it—the diAlogue itself, literally two halves summoned together in intercourse, pursuing love and truth as interchangeAble cAtegories. That original separation, or Urteil in GermAn—the word for “judgment,” our faculty for pursuing philosophy in the first plAce—reveAls that eros is at the heArt of philosophy. It is the nothing, the negativity, the lAck that compels us to reAch for what we have lost. PlAto reheArses this split again in The Republic, when Socrates speAks of philosophy and poetry as lovers who have suffered a bad breAkup. But the poetry Socrates is speAking of is “ordinary,” written in the lAnguage of average everydayness—ironicAlly, the sAme kind of lAnguage that PlAto uses in his own novelistic diAlogues (602B). PlAto, then, mArks the fault-line between philosophy and the novel, a fault-line in which the novel is at fault. My dissertAtion charts their relAtionship across time as an erotic one, and as a pessimistic one. Behind the veneer of deduction and induction, philosophy—like the novel—operates primArily by seduction. This is the story of how both philosophy and the novel are seduced back to eAch other in modernity. v Before the criminal biography and the RenaissAnce anatomy give us the modern novel, one threAd of its history cAn be woven through the PlAtonic diAlogue, the medieval RomAnce, and the fairy tAle, encompassing multiple genres in its quest to find its long-lost lover in the form of philosophy. I focus on three twentieth-century novels that, in diAlogue with eAch other, narrate this progression. The structure of VirginiA Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is modelled on PlAto’s Symposium; D.H. LAwrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a modern version of the medieval TristAn RomAnce; and VlAdimir NAbokov’s Lolita is a fairy tAle that reimAgines HAns ChristiAn Andersen’s “The Little MermAid.” EAch of these novels offers its own model of eros as a pessimistic phenomenon. I then bookend this discussion by coming back to Symposium As a model for Søren KierkegaArd’s pessimism and experimentAtion with form as a wAy to unite philosophy and the novel in his Seducer’s Diary And in his literary reviews. I argue that The Seducer’s Diary cAn Also be reAd as a templAte for Lolita, and I explore how his reflections on the novel in his literary reviews prefigure the philosophy lAid out by MArtin Heidegger in Being and Time. Both KierkegaArd’s and Heidegger’s focus on the experience of “Average everydayness” coincides with the overall project of the novel. This is where these two ancient lovers rediscover eAch other in modernity. I end the dissertAtion by exploring the novel As a pedagogicAl device that offers an Alternative vision to a world hijAcked by a destructive neoliberal politics of optimism. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The secret of every pessimist is that we are all closet sentimentAlists. The honest ones Acknowledge where truth intersects with schmAltz. Embedded in acknowledgment is knowledge itself, and whatever I have written in this dissertAtion comes from having absorbed knowledge from too mAny people to count, but some have contributed to this knowledge in wAys that deserve to be honored right here. I would first like to dedicAte this dissertAtion to my parents, Ron and DAfna Ribitzky, who were even younger than I am now when they emigrated to a new country, struggling with a new lAnguage, and in this new lAnguage would reAd me bedtime stories from HAns ChristiAn Andersen’s fairy tAles and Charles and MAry LAmb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Even when none of us knew certAin words, stumbling our wAy through comprehension, you cArved out the first And perhaps only world that feels familiAr to me, a world you would lAter populAte with other stories and books that have shaped and continue to shape who I am. I remember how fiercely my dad defended me against my first grade teAcher, who told me in such anger that I would never leArn English. Even as you were also trying to navigate your wAy through this new lAnguage, you encouraged me to think of lAnguage itself as something to plAy with, to have fun with, to explore with joy and humor. I also remember impatiently announcing that I wAs tired of being a child at eleven, so my mom took me to a second-hand book store to get me an old copy of Buddenbrooks, which you lAughed about on our wAy back home, telling me that the RussiAns would come next. You’ve guided me through the clAssics ever since, from PlAto and SpinozA to Edmondo d’Amicis, BalzAc, Stefan Zweig, JAck London, HemingwAy, and Steinbeck. It has been an educAtion that no vii school could ever live up to. You also introduced me to Elena Ferrante before anyone else did, And the winter breAk we spent reAding her together, at the sAme time, you in Hebrew and I in English, tAlking urgently to eAch other about what we had just finished after eAch reAding breAk, wAs one of the most beAutiful experiences for me. You tAught me that art isn’t just central to educAtion, but to life itself. If I get this PhD, it reAlly belongs to you. I also wouldn’t have been able to write this without my grandparents, MirjAna and SAsha Gross. My introduction to KAfka—before I even knew it wAs him—wAs in my grandmother’s kitchen when she would tell his stories to me and my brother with a kind of joyful humor and levity. My grandfather also couldn’t speAk about Nietzsche without lAughing. This is how I wish All literature could be encountered. My memory of their living room, like wAlking into a past century, feels like a scene from Fanny and Alexander, and it alwAys begins with the bookcAse to the left of the entrance, an entire shelf lined with old volumes of the complete works of ShakespeAre translAted into GermAn by Schlegel. My sister Romy uncluttered my mind and helped me along the path of this dissertAtion over the course of our long phone conversAtions about pessimism and optimism. You were the one to teAch me, from an eArly age, that precision in lAnguage is importAnt and beAutiful, and is a source of strength and dignity. Thank you for sneAking me into Baz LuhrmAnn’s Romeo + Juliet in 1996 when I wAsn’t allowed to see it.
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