THE LOOK OF DISTANCE Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel. Courtesy of the Musses Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels. THE LOOK OF DISTANCE Reflections on Suffering & Sympathy in Modern Literature—Auden to Agee, Whitman to Woolf WALTER J . S L A T O F F OHI O STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS : COLUMBUS Copyright © 1985 by the Ohio State University Press All Rights Reserved. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Slatoff, Walter J. (Walter Jacob), 1922­ The look of distance. Includes index. 1. English literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Suffering in lit­ erature. 3. Sympathy in literature. 4. American literature—History and criti­ cism. I. Title. PR479.S93S58 1985 820'.9'35 3 85-10447 ISBN 0-8142-0385-X "April Showers," by B.G. DeSylva and Louis Silvers, © 1921 (Renewed) WARNER BROS. INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. Excerpts from LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, by James Agee, copy­ right 1939 and 1940 by James Agee; copyright © renewed 1969 by Mia Fritsch Agee, are reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company and Peter Owen Ltd. (London). Excerpts from LETTER OF JAMES AGEE TO FATHER FLYE, 2nd edition, copyright © 1971 by James Harold Flye, copyright © 1962 by James Harold Flye and The James Agee Trust, are reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company and Peter Owen Ltd. (London). Excerpts from THE MORNING WATCH, by James Agee, copyright 1950 by James Agee; copyright © renewed 1979 by Mia Fritsch Agee, are reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company and Peter Owen Ltd. (London). Excerpts from "Squares and Oblong,," by W.H. Auden, in POETS AT WORK, ed. Charles D. Abbott, copyright 1948 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; re­ newed 1976 by Henry David Abbott, Karl Shapiro, Rudolph Arnheim, are re­ printed by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. "Musee des Beaux Arts," from The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden, copyright 1945 by W.H. Auden, renewed 1966 by W.H. Auden; and "September 1, 1939," from the English Auden: Poems, Essays, and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Edward Mendelson, copyright © 1977 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredth, and Monroe K. Spears, executors of the Estate of W.H. Auden, are re­ printed by permission of Random House, Inc. "Versions," from Reaching, by George P. Elliott, is reprinted by permission of the Estate of George P. Elliott. Excerpts from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST, ed. Edward Connery Latham, copyright 1923,1934, © 1969 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; copy- (Copyright notice continued on page vi) To ZOE AND MEGAN (Copyright notice continued from page iv) right 1951, © 1962 by Robert Frost, are reprinted by permission of Holt, Rine­ hart, and Winston, Pubishers, and Jonathan Cape Ltd. Excerpts from THE HEART OF THE MATTER, by Graham Greene, copyright 1948, renewed © 1975 by Graham Greene, are reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc., William Heinemann, Ltd., the Bodley Head, Ltd., and the author. Excerpts from "Indian Camp," in The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, by Ernest Hemingway, copyright 1925 Charles Scribner's Sons, copyright renewed © 1953 Ernest Hemingway, are reprinted with the permission of Charles Scrib- ner's Sons and Jonathan Cape Ltd. (The First Forty-Nine Stories). "Let's All Join Sticky Hands," by Robert Hershon, was first published in Epoch, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1962); reprinted by permission. "May-June, 1940" and the excerpts from "Age in Prospect," by Robinson Jef­ fers, are reprinted with the permission of Jeffers Literary Properties. Excerpts from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, by James Joyce, copyright 1916 by B.W. Huebsch, copyright renewed 1944 by Nora Joyce, definitive text copyright © 1964 by the Estate of James Joyce, are re­ printed by permission of Viking Penguin Inc., The Society of Authors as the literary representatives of the Estate of James Joyce, and Jonathan Cape Ltd. Excerpts from TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, by Virginia Woolf, copyright 1927 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; renewed 1955 by Leonard Woolf; and from A HAUNTED HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES, by Virginia Woolf, copyright 1944,1972 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., are reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., the author's estate, and The Hogarth Press. Excerpts from the poems of Emily Dickinson: reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951, © 1955,1979,1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, edited by Thomas H. Johnson; reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company (Inc.) "When Man Enters Woman" and "The Rowing Endeth," from THE AWFUL ROWING TOWARD GOD, by Anne Sexton, copyright © 1975 by Loring Conant, Jr., Executor of the Estate of Anne Sexton, are reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company and Sterling Lord Agency. Excerpts from Miss Lonelyhearts, in Nathanael West, MISS LONELYHEARTS & THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, copyright 1933 by Nathanael West, are re­ printed by permission of iNew Directions Publishing Corportation and Martin Seeker & Warburg, Ltd. "To a Dog Injured in the Street," in William Carlos Williams, PICTURES FROM BRUEGHEL, copyright 1953 by William Carlos Williams, is reprinted by per­ mission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. The excerpt from Funny Girl is copyright © 1963 and 1964 by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne. Chappell-Styne, Inc., and Wonderful Music Corp., owners of publication and allied rights. All rights reserved. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix I. Introduction 3 PART ONE II. Some Varieties of Armor and Innocence 15 III. Furious Compassions; Pity and Contempt 41 IV. A Terrible Promiscuous Compassion 67 V. Heights and Depths of Distance 101 PART TWO VI. The Engulfing of Others and Delicious Unions with Death 133 VII. Coming Together and Apart 155 VIII. The Lonely Embraces of Artists 199 PART THREE IX. Singing about Suffering 233 X. With Respect to Voyeurism 265 Notes 281 Index 305 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THEIR VARIOUS GIFTS OF HELP AND ENCOURAGEMENT, I WISH to thank Mary Ahl, Murray Beja, Jonathan Bishop, Tom Burke, Allan Emery, Johann Hannesson, Winston Hannesson, Lamar Herrin, James McConkey, Paul Sawyer, Don Slatoff, and Joan Slatoff. Above all, I wish to thank my wife, Jimmy, who contri­ buted far more than I can possibly acknowledge. I am grateful also for a Humanities Research Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences of Cornell. THE LOOK OF DISTANCE I • Introduction THIS BOOK IS AN EFFORT TO TALK ABOUT SOME MATTERS THAT have deeply concerned me for nearly a lifetime of reading and teaching, and to do so in a way that will not do violence either to the kinds of experiences I talk about or to the nature of my engagement with them. In general, there is a disturbing gap between the conventional modes of discourse about literature and literature itself. When the subject is suffering and sym­ pathy, that distance seems not only uncomfortable but inde­ cent. My own engagement has been largely in the form of a debate with myself—about particular literary works, parti­ cular characters, and particular issues—and my deepest effort as a teacher has been to persuade my students to take part in that same debate rather than to sell them a thesis or survey a body of material. Inevitably, it seems to me now, the book has taken on a similar form. Put most broadly, the debate is about whether the reading and teaching of literature can be decent occupations in a uni­ verse so much ordered by suffering as this one and about the appropriateness of various responses to suffering—by authors, fictional characters, and readers, including the readers of this book. Put more personally, it is about whether in my reading and teaching I am performing something ugly, voyeuristic, and evasive or am doing one of the best and least harmful things I know how to do. Subordinate questions have to do with the relative merits of too much compassion as against too little; with the relations between compassion and self-crucifixion; with the appropriate distances between humans, between humans and other animals, and even between gods and men; with the possibilities of human con­ nection and the curious ways people have found to remain simultaneously together and apart; and with what might be called "moral aerodynamics": the motions of highfliers like Icarus, Jesus, Vittorio Mussolini, and Joyce, and the impacts of all sorts of things—from boys to bombs to violets—that can fall from the sky. As may be evident already, it is a debate INTRODUCTION about tones as well as ideas and feelings, for suffering is not adequately acknowledged by solemnity alone. Obviously these are not questions that are subject to answers or even ones that yield much light when approached directly. What light this book does provide is generated chiefly, I believe, from the motions of its own flight, its moment-to- moment journey through and above the landscapes (and sea­ scapes) it crosses, rather than a place it arrives at. And I urge my readers to attend not only to the human inhabitants we encounter but to the various birds, animals, and flowers as well, especially to their use and misuse, whether it be Zeus's use of a swan to rape Leda, Conrad's use of the horse that Stevie Verloc wishes to take to bed with him, William Carlos William's use of an injured dog for singing away his pain, my own use of eagles, deer, and roses, as I seek to hold my book together and to conclude it. I hope the reader will not merely observe my debate with myself, which from a distance may seem excessive, but will join in, at which distance it may seem more necessary, even quite urgent.