Creative Evolution: Symbolist Representations of Bergson's
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Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Edensor, Louise ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0680-1103 (2010) Creative Evolution: Symbolist representations of Bergson’s duration in the works of Katherine Mansfield. In: Katherine Mansfield Symposium, 4-5 June 2010, RMIT Melbourne. [Conference or Workshop Item] Draft pre-submission version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/21213/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. 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See also repository copyright: re-use policy: http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/policies.html#copy Creative Evolution: Symbolist representations of Bergson’s duration in the works of Katherine Mansfield In this paper I examine the influence of key philosophical ideas of the Modernist period upon the work of Katherine Mansfield, examining how her use of symbolism integrates the philosophical concepts of Henri Bergson into her writing. Upon the publication of Creative Evolution in 1907, a period of ‘Bergsonianism’ began, which prompted lively academic debate amongst the intelligentsia. Bergson’s subsequent publications, on time and memory, were instrumental in recasting the depiction of human reality in literature. Bergson’s philosophy explains how the human intellect comprehends time as both ‘le temps’ and ‘la durée’. The former involves the intellectual spatialisation of time into minutes, hours and days; the latter is our true perception of time which is intuitive, the merging of past and present states of consciousness, which form our duration. Bergson’s philosophy unravels how the human consciousness is viewed in terms of spatialisation, in the same way that time is understood. This he describes as ‘spurious’1, our true consciousness being a delicately nuanced succession of states which interpenetrate to form a continuous stream. Our duration is the experience of past, present and future states of consciousness simultaneously, triggered by immediate perception of the world around us. In order to act in the present, we must interpret these present perceptions, and invoke memory images from the past, to guide our actions. Each moment we experience is therefore unique; the combination of present perceptions and memory images recalled are unique to each moment. This, Bergson concludes, results in human consciousness being in a perpetual state of becoming, as our conscious states continuously merge into one another2. Throughout his work Bergson reminds us that language, which is essentially static, is an inadequate medium for the expression of the dynamic and fluctuating reality of the human intellect3. Modernist writers seeking new ways of representing such a reality turned towards symbolism as a method to show the reader reality rather than attempting to tell it. Through examination of three of Mansfield’s short stories, I outline the influence of Bergson’s philosophical ideas on Mansfield’s writing and show how this is expressed through symbolism. It is not my intention to state definitively that Mansfield’s works encapsulate Bergson’s ideas in any deliberate way, but to suggest that the Zeitgeist of Bergsonianism represents one of the many influences upon Modernist texts. Indeed, the influence exerted by Bergsonianism was itself transitory, interest in his theories diminishing by the time of his publication The Creative Mind in 1934, and this not only speaks to the very nature of the world described by Bergson’s theories, but also to the nature of literary influence during the Modernist period. As writers sought new ways of representing reality in literature, the relative importance of an influence was as transitory as the nature of human consciousness itself. Bergson’s ideas therefore, encapsulate both the temporality experienced by human perception and demonstrate the transitory nature of literary influence. Furthermore, the intertextuality of Mansfield’s writing forms part of the construction of her genius, showing that her technique was never a demonstration of artifice for the sake of art. The poetic nature of her writing, her rhythmic style and the integration of both philosophy and symbolism are 1 not aesthetic but purposeful. She does not engage in artifice for its own sake but to further her social commentary, in particular in relation to the subjection of women to the brutality and hypocrisy of patriarchy. I will show how these techniques, coupled with Mansfield’s focalised narratives, demonstrate her ability to integrate some of the key philosophical and intellectual influences of her day into her writing, which in turn, created a new type of short story: a truly Modernist short story. Bergsonianism In Bergson’s terms, humans cope with reality through objectification. What Bergson refers to as our ‘reflective consciousness’ (or le temps) permits us to counterbalance the fluidity of reality through the objectification of time (90). He explains: Let us notice that when we speak of time, we generally speak of an homogenous medium in which our conscious states are ranged alongside one another in space, so as to form a discrete multiplicity’ (90) Thus, in order to comprehend reality we think of time in terms of space: hours and minutes form the homogenous character of time. This allows us to ‘use clear cut distinctions, to count, to abstract’ but our true perception of the world is ‘heterogeneous, that of sensible qualities’ and Bergson names this Pure Duration (97). He explains that humans apply the same measuring mechanism to inner states of consciousness as we do to objects we perceive externally but states of consciousness are not ‘essentially external to one another, and become so only by being spread out in time, regarded as an homogenous medium’ (99). When we allow ourselves to experience ‘a succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another’ we are experiencing Pure Duration or la durée (104). Bergson gives the example of a melody to explain the qualitative nuances of human consciousness: Could we not say that, if these notes succeed one another, we still perceive them as if they were inside one another and their ensemble were like a living being whose parts, though distinct, interpenetrate through the very effect of their solidarity? (104) The very nature of human consciousness then, perpetuates a continuous state of becoming as we experience the qualitative changes in our feelings and emotions which merge into one another. Bergson illustrates: ‘Situated between the matter which influences it and that on which it has influence, my body is a centre of action, the place where impressions received choose intelligently the path they will follow to transform themselves into movements accomplished. Thus it indeed represents the actual state of becoming, that part of my duration which is in process of growth’4 For Bergson, the present is action; the past, incapable of action, is pure idea. The process of becoming involves the action of the present mingled with the memory images of the past because ‘there is no perception which is not full of memories’(24). Based on our interpretation of present perceptions and the memory images of the past, we act. Our 2 anticipation of the future allied with the memory images recalled from our past create a state of becoming in the present; our states of consciousness interpenetrating one another to form a continuous stream. Each qualitative moment we experience is, therefore, unique: we can never experience the same thing twice because the memory of past experiences coupled with the anticipation of the future brings a state of becoming unique to each moment. Throughout his work Bergson is conscious of the paradox inherent in attempting to recreate in words (which are essentially static) the fluidity of the human consciousness. He repeatedly refers to language as an inadequate medium to express duration: ‘The brutal word, which stores up what is stable, common, and therefore impersonal in human impressions, crushes, or at least covers over, the delicate and fleeting impressions of our individual consciousness’5. Writers of the modernist period endeavoured to capture the experience of duration through stream of consciousness narratives and, as I will illustrate in Mansfield’s work, the importance of memory on present action. T. E. Hulme writing in 1909 captured the difficulties endemic to trying to confine human consciousness to words: I always figure the main Bergsonian position in this way: conceiving the constructs of logic as geometrical wire models and the flux of reality as a turbulent river such that it is impossible with any combination of these wire models, however elaborate, to make a model of the moving stream.