Introduction
The connection between morality and art can be pursued in many ways. The aim of this text is to provide a closer look at how Iris Murdoch makes this kind of connection. And it should be noted that Murdoch rarely speaks about one of the two notions without omitting the other. More concretely, this text is going to deal with the issue of moral identity of a writer as reflected in Murdoch’s novel The Black Prince , which was written in 1973 and which won the
Whitbread Prize. Basically, this issue consists of three parts: first, the general notions of
Murdoch’s ethics will be analysed, i.e. ‘subjectivity,’ ‘realism’ and ‘descriptivity’; then, more specifically, the link between the content of the novel and ethical notions such as truth, good and evil, g/God, love, happiness, virtue, justice, or guilt will be dealt with; and then, the relationship between ethics and aesthetics will be pursued focusing on such issues as
‘metafiction,’ the genre of tragedy and the use of symbol.
As far as Murdoch’s general views on morality are concerned, it must be mentioned that she considers the use of language to be necessarily subjective; consequently, even works of art are inherently subjective. This thesis is reflected in the novel as Bradley Pearson, the main hero, speaks about present events without the knowledge of the future, although the novel is written in the future compared to the present of the hero. By this, not only the knowledge of what is to come remains hidden but also the criticism of the actual author of the book, i.e. Murdoch.
Also, Murdoch is renown for her search for truth, and her intention to describe the world as it is without the distortion of fantasy; and both these aspects contribute to create what A.S. Byatt calls ‘realism.’ This thesis of Byatt includes all the aspects when truth is pursued either by Bradley, or Murdoch herself in the novel. As far as Bradley is concerned, he expresses many times in the novel that art, i.e. his art as well, should aim at searching truth however frustrating this search may be.
Moreover, Iris Murdoch is said to be one of the most prominent embodiments of the descriptive approach in ethics, and this ethical approach projects itself into Murdoch’s literary works. In this sense, the descriptivity is reflected not only in the descriptive style, but also in
Murdoch’s treatment of the characters in the novel who can behave freely making mistakes, too.
In addition, concrete moral issues are reflected in the novel as well. Mainly, these are notions alluding to the Platonic ethics, notions such as truth, virtue or goodness; here,
Murdoch expresses her belief that good art should aim at searching truth and goodness, which is in tune with Plato. The notion of God, however, avoids traditional explanations of e.g.
Christian faith as the religious concept Bradley presents is concerned with the personality of the artist who takes responsibility for his actions and should focus on searching goodness with no regard for any kind of external God.
As far as the connection between ethics and aesthetics is concerned, first, the phenomenon of ‘metafiction’ will be pursued focusing on the nature of the relationship between Bradley and the addressee of the book which Bradley is writing, considering it to be his masterpiece. Also, most important events are analysed with regard to such notions of the genre of tragedy as climax or peripety . Finally, the novel includes use of symbol as the book of Hamlet serves as matter for discussion led by the characters in the novel; and this symbol conveys many allusions e.g. as a tragedy or as a masterpiece of form.
2 1.
A Short Biography of Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She studied
Classical languages, ancient history and philosophy at Somerville College in Oxford (between
1938 and 1942) and philosophy at Newnham College in Cambridge (between 1947 and 1948).
Her first major published work Sartre: Romantic Rationalist appeared in 1953. In 1954, her first novel Under the Net was published. She married John Bayley, teacher and critic, in 1956.
Apart from other jobs, Murdoch was employed as an Assistant Principal at the Treasury and a lecturer at Royal College of Art in London (Conradi xv). She was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1975 and was awarded the C.B.E. in 1976
(1).
The works of Iris Murdoch can be subdivided into novels, articles and works dealing with literary aesthetics, and also several philosophical works. She made her debut as novelist with Under the Net (1954), whose protagonist is a Sartrean hero. A Severed Head (1961) exploited Jungian theories of archetypes. The novel was turned into a play with the help of
J.B. Priestley and later into a film (1971). It analyzes Freud's theories about male sexuality.
The Bell (1958) depicts an Anglican religious community in Gloucestershire. Bruno’s Dream
(1969) is a novel about dying and A Word Child (1975) deals with the moral dilemmas of love and hate, humility and power, self-obsession and attention (Franková 15). Among the prizes won by Murdoch are the Whitbread Prize for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) and the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea (1978).
Often, Murdoch uses fantasy and Gothic elements, but her characters are realistically portrayed in their attempts to find meaning to their lives in extraordinary situations. Many of her novels have a religious or philosophical theme, but she avoided clear political statements
(Wood 2).
3 Among her philosophical works are The Sovereignty of Good (1970), The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artist (1977) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1983,
1993). Moreover, in 1980 she wrote an unpublished Platonic Dialogue , and in 1997
Existentialists and Mystics was published (ed. Peter Conradi), which is a collection of
Murdoch’s essays on modern Platonism, Existentialism, and such figures as T.S. Eliot, Albert
Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Elias Canetti. Among the topics and issues are also the sublime, the concept of love, and the role of literature in curing the ills of philosophy.
2.
The Black Prince : Possible Readings
The Black Prince was published in 1973. The title carries the connotation of soldierly bravery commonly attributed to Edward, Prince of Wales, who was the eldest son of Edward
III (1330-1376) and . Although the figure of the Black Prince is a notorious example of medieval chivalry, the connection between him and the hero of the novel is not completely clear. The clearest common denominator might be the early death of both of them; despite that, however, it seems that the link consists merely in the parallel between the initial letters of the name of Bradley Pearson, the hero of the novel, and those of the Black Prince.
At the same time, however, this novel can be read as alluding ambiguously, and ironically, to Shakespeare’s Hamlet through the character of Bradley Pearson, and also through some of the literary features of the novel, e.g. the tragic development of the plot and the occurence of suicide. Although the author of this text is quite sceptical to Murdoch using such kind of thematic formalism, Peter J. Conradi claims that the Shakespearean phenomenon is a major aspect of the novel: according to Conradi, the novel keeps up a running commentary about Hamlet and its characters are mainly writers or readers (Conradi 185).
4 The Black Prince can have a biblical reading, too. Bradley Pearson is punished for something he did not commit, and this aspect of the novel seems to allude to the biblical story of redemption by sacrifice. Despite that kind of similarity, Bradley himself claims several times that the reason why he accepts the punishment is not religious in the traditional sense but moral and aesthetic (19). His only religion or religious feeling is closely linked to his artistic activity as everything except art is subordinate to art for him.
Another possible way of reading the novel is by seeing the two major characters as a dichotomy of ‘the artist’ and ‘the saint’ in the Platonic sense (Conradi; Franková). This idea will be dealt with later in a separate chapter. What is needed so far is the fact that the Platonic tradition puts ‘the writer’ morally below ‘the saint’ as the ‘saint’ figure is treated as the
Platonic man questing for the good, the real and the truth (Franková 31) while ‘the artist’ is presented as the creator of works containing mere fantasy (ibid.).
3.
Murdoch’s Characterization of Morality: Subjectivity, Realism,
and Descriptivity
According to Peter Lamarque, morality is an inherent part of literary aesthetics. He says:
Literary aesthetics is that branch of the theory of literature which is (a) distinctively philosophical and which (b) focuses attention on those aspects of literary works in virtue of which they are works of art… Aesthetics, as a philosophical enquiry, is concerned with analysing the very concept of art, what art is , the special attention it commands in human lives, the judgements and evaluations that relate to it, the links between art and morality and truth, as well as such elusive notions as beauty and taste. (Lamarque 1)
As far as Murdoch’s view of morality is concerned, she often combines ethical and aesthetic aspects to explain it. This fact should not be considered surprising as her own
5 personality is a combination of a philosopher and writer. She says: “[…] one cannot avoid value judgements. Values show, and show clearly, in literature” ( Existentialists and Mystics
21). Murdoch extends this statement further by claiming that “language itself is a moral medium,” that “almost all uses of language convey value” (ibid. 27). Both these examples show clearly Murdoch’s awareness that to express a moral stance one needs to be subjective.
In addition, in her talk at the University of Caen, Murdoch revealed what she considered her own philosophy of a writer: “The Novel itself, of course, the whole world of the novel, is the expression of a world outlook” (Conradi 1). Thus, Murdoch admits that writing a novel means being necessarily subjective and projecting one’s ideas, or even one’s personality, into the piece of literature. Then she says something even more significant: “Any novelist produces a moral world and there’s a kind of world outlook which can be deduced from each of the novels” (ibid.). By this, Murdoch specifies her previous statement into claiming that writing a novel means being subjective even when expressing one’s opinion about morals. Although being a Platonist, here Murdoch diverges from Plato’s concept since
Plato treats the world of ‘ideas’ as something rather objective, existing beyond the real perceptible world.
Another aspect of Murdoch’s novels which might seem contradictory to what was said above is ‘realism.’ However, this aspect should be seen as a philosophical approach rather than a general characteristic of what appears in Murdoch’s novels.
According to A.S Byatt, ‘realism’ is for Murdoch “a technique for discovering more about reality, for describing the world as it is, when not distorted by private fantasy or desire”
(Byatt 269). But Byatt admits that there is a significant difference between Murdoch and such realists as George Eliot or Tolstoi, or even the way in which some of Murdoch’s own novels are written (e.g. The Bell or A Fairly Honorable Defeat ): among the aspects relevant for
Byatt’s way of seeing the novel are fantasy, improbable plotting, farsical invention and literary joke which are connected to the fact that their subject-matter is so largely concerned
6 with the nature of art (Byatt 269). She describes the novel as “a fable about the moral value of realism, rather than as a realistic novel in itself” (ibid.)
As far as ‘descriptive’ approach to morals is concerned, this is usually treated in opposition to the ‘normative’ approach: for example Bernard Gert defines ‘morality’ in the following way: “The term ‘morality’ can be used either
1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or, a. some other group, such as a religion, or b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons (Gert 1).
With the descriptive approach in fiction, the problem is, of course, twofold: i.e. writing descriptively in general (e.g. describing appearance, landscape, etc.), and writing descriptively about human behaviour, which is a rather modern way of approaching human morals. As far as the first moment is concerned, the literary method used by Murdoch may be characterized as ‘descriptive’ (Dunphy 145), or in accordance with what Murdoch calls
‘realistic’ (Franková 27).
4.
Moral Aspects of The Black Prince
In the above chapter, Murdoch’s moral philosophy was characterized as subjective, realistic, and descriptive. This moral philosophy is then projected into several concrete aspects of the novel itself: descriptivity in dealing with human behaviour, as is for example in
Bradley’s final speech when he himself adopts an indeterminate way of looking at human morals; and also a complete range of descriptively, subjectively and realistically treated basic moral issues such as truth, good and evil, g/God, love and Eros, happiness or virtue.
7 At the same time, Bradley Pearson and Arnold Baffin, the two writer figures, bear similar characteristics; on the other hand, the Platonic tradition of seeing the figure of an artist and/or a writer makes the characterization rather more complex.
4.1 Descriptivity in The Black Prince
The fact that Murdoch makes frequent use of descriptivism, either literary or ethical, is mirrored in her style and in the treatment of the characters. As far as her style is concerned,
Murdoch often describes room interiors, human appearance, smells and tastes and creates rich visual images: Bradley’s own flat is described in such a detailed realistic way for instance.
What is even more significant, even Murdoch’s approach to morals may be called descriptive. Murdoch does not prescribe what is morally correct, or appropriate; Bradley says in “The Foreword of Bradley Pearson”: “I have no religion except my own task of being”
(19). In this claim, Bradley reveals that his kind of religiousness, if this term may be used as it is not a traditional religious belief, is closely connected with his literary activity.
Third, also the way the story is narrated can be treated as descriptive: the main hero of the novel warns the reader at the beginning of the novel (in “The Foreword of Bradley
Pearson”) that he, Bradley, is going to narrate the story without adding information from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. Moreover, here Bradley also expresses his belief that the contemporary literary technique aims at the same. His words are the following:
“[…] I shall in telling it [i.e. this fable] adopt the modern technique of narration, allowing the narrating consciousness to pass like a light along its series of present moments, aware of the past, unaware of what is to come” (11).
According to Floyd B. Dunphy, Murdoch is a representative of descriptive ethics used in literature; moreover, literature seems to be one of the fittest modes of expression suitable for the representation of descriptive ethics: “…it is literature, in terms of parable,
8 story and metaphor, which is best able to engage the moral ambiguity of our lives with fresh vision”(Dunphy 1).
Murdoch herself thinks that any sort of moral or value judgement is necessarily complex and tentative due to the disappearance or weakening of organised religion because this situation results in the loss of social hierarchy and religious belief ( Existentialists and
Mystics 27).
4.2 The Artist and the Saint
Among the ways Murdoch approaches her characters is the polarization of two characters into two opposing roles, i.e. ‘the artist’ and ‘the saint.’ In Human Relationships in the Novels of Iris Murdoch , the saint-figure is defined as “the Platonic man questing for the
Good, the embodiment of the pursuit for the real and the truth” (Franková 31). The figure of the artist is characterized as “the harmful living image of fantasy, magic and illusion, […] also a questing hero…” (ibid.).
According to Peter J. Conradi, Murdoch starts viewing her characters in this way already in her essay “Existentialists and Mystics.” Because of that, her novel Under the Net should be read as having two heroes: a ‘would-be artist’ and a ‘would-be saint’ (Conradi 20).
There is a substantial difference between Conradi and Franková concerning the roles of ‘the artist’ and ‘the saint’. Franková’s idea of the two antipodes describes what they do (i.e.
‘the saint’ is questing for the Good; is an embodiment of the pursuit for the real and the truth); while Conradi points out what the two wish or wish not : “one [i.e. ‘the artist,’ or ‘a would-be artist’] living by the will and by a hunger for aesthetic form, the other [i.e. ‘the saint,’ or ‘a would-be saint’] living by a constant sacrifice of the will” (Conradi 20).
Another set of similarly functioning characters appears for instance in one of
Murdoch’s novels preceding The Black Prince : A Fairly Honorable Defeat. In that novel,
9 Rupert, who believes that human beings can experience the difference between good and evil, is the saint-figure and Julius, a sceptic and manipulator, is the artist-figure (Franková 34).
The Black Prince is said to use this technique when polarizing Bradley Pearson and
Arnold Baffin: Arnold is the typical Platonic artist concerned only with the form, while
Bradley is the philosopher-figure occupied with serious moral thought (Franková 31). As other kinds of systematization, these two have similar drawbacks: they project a pair of characters into antipodes while necessarily simplifying the remaining part of their characteristics. Nevertheless, the figures appearing in the novel are complex enough to demand simplification when dealt with from particular points of view.
The two writers, i.e. Bradley and Arnold, reveal their aims in the following dialogue.
Arnold starts: “I know I’m a second-rater. [But] I believe that the stuff has some merits or I wouldn’t publish it” (172). Then he adds: “Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea” (172).
Here, Arnold reacts to Bradley’s criticism directed towards him, i.e. Arnold, by admitting that he, Arnold, is aware of his literary imperfections and that he does not fight against them.
Bradley’s stance then is characterized as an alternative which is not better than Arnold’s and which features both the vision of perfection and inner disharmony: “[You] finish nothing, publish nothing, nourish a continual grudge against the world, and live with an unrealized idea of perfection which makes you feel superior to those who try and fail” (172). Also
Rachel, when she talks to Bradley, wonders how it is possible that such a naive person as
Bradley is a writer (180).
It can be seen that both kinds of writers, i.e. Bradley’s and Arnold’s, have their positive and negative aspects and both are potentially harmful. The question remains whether
Murdoch herself identified with one of the two writer characters. The fact is that she produced a great many novels in a short span of time (which can be related to Arnold’s way of writing).
Despite that, however, her ideal of a good writer is connected with ‘imagination’ rather than
‘fantasy,’ ( Existentialists and Mystics 24) and the notion of a strict and honest search for truth
10 and art written without picturing weird fatasy distant from the real world speaks for Bradley as the eventual favourite of Murdoch.
4.3 Truth
The search for truth is one of the central themes in the novel. At the same time, it is one of the more complex issues as the whole of the storyline can be seen as a gradual progression from one opinion to quite the opposite. In her philosophical works, Murdoch has several times spoken about the human tendency to deform reality by seeing it through
‘egocentric fantasy’ (Byatt 270). Murdoch also projects this idea into her novels including
The Black Prince .
In the course of time, Bradley often changes his mind: an almost symbolic example is the repeated situation when Bradley changes his decision to leave the town so that he can have the opportunity to write the book he considers to be his masterpiece. Similarly, at the beginning of Part Two of the novel Bradley first experiences his passion for Julian along with a radical change in his perception of his environment:
Some readers may feel that what I am describing is a condition of insanity, and in a way this is true. […] However it is one of the peculiarities, perhaps one of the blessings, of this planet that anyone can be its object. […] Now I could see. Can any lover doubt that now he sees truly? (207)
It is typical of Murdoch that the last sentence can be explained in two ways: either now
Bradley really sees truly, or Bradley now believes that he sees truly.
Bradley is constantly occupied with thoughts concerning truth. He says: “All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth” (11). Here, Bradley expresses his belief that art should aim at discovering and describing the truth, however difficult and frustrating is its search, and this belief is also in accordance with Murdoch’s thesis concerning truth in art. She says: “Good art accepts and celebrates and meditates upon the defeat of the discursive intellect by the world. […] good art
11 mirrors not only the (illusory) unity of the self but its real disunity” ( Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 88).
There is a slight hint in “Editor’s Foreword” that the novel should not be expected to end happily: “That art gives charm to terrible things is perhaps its curse. Art is a doom. It has been the doom of Bradley Pearson” (9). Similarly, A.S. Byatt claims that “any character in a novel by Iris Murdoch who feels that his or her life has a necessary, non-accidental form, or that he or she has had a vision of truth or reality is almost certainly deluded” (Byatt 270).
Byatt attributes this delusion to “human tendency to ‘deform’ reality by seeing it through egocentric fantasy” (ibid.).
Similarly, Conradi discusses what Byatt called ‘deliberate indeterminism’ (Conradi
186) and presents also another feature of the novel, which is its eroticism, mentioned also by
Murdoch herself: “There is always something moral which goes down further than the ideas, the structures of good literary works are to do with erotic mysteries and also deep dark struggles between good and evil” (Conradi 186-7). And Bradley argues in a similar way: “The virtues have secret names…” (11).
4.4 Good and Evil
Although the concept of goodness is a focal point in Murdoch’s philosophy, her way of dealing with it is quite unique and stands apart from the ways of other philosophers. In her text The Sovereignty of Good , Murdoch describes her own idea of ‘the Good’ as “non- representable and indefinable” (97). But we are “mortal and equally at the mercy of necessity and chance” (ibid.). It can be seen again that with Murdoch, basic moral terms are quite indeterminate and accidental by nature.
There is also an equivalent to the concept of ‘chance,’ or rather ‘accident,’ in The
Black Prince : “The wicked regard time as discontinuous, the wicked dull their sense of natural causality. The good feel being as a total dense mesh of tiny interconnections” (125).
12 Saying all this, Murdoch diminishes significantly possible positive aspects of her view of goodness, and places accident higher than human ability to decide between good and evil.
As far as the characteristics of ‘supreme good’ are concerned, Murdoch speaks very much like Plato, who thinks that ‘supreme good’ is a synonym for ‘perfection.’ For Murdoch,
‘perfection’ is reflected more in her notion of ‘the other.’ This appears to result in putting absolute ‘perfection’ beyond the real world, quite apart from the subject, i.e. the human being
(or the mind); and Plato’s view seems to be abandoned partly by this.
In his essay “Iris Murdoch on the Good, God and Religion” Joseph Malikail says that her own notion of ‘the good ’ is so important for Murdoch that she defends it against such philosophical branches as Kantianism, utilitarianism, behaviourism, existentialism or G.E
Moore’s ‘naturalism’ (Malikail 1).
Murdoch states that ‘the good ’ in her own view is A) real, B) transcendent, and C) intrinsic. Malikail says: “As Murdoch conceives Morality to be real, it is an object of knowledge as there is no ubiquitous gulf fixed between factual reality and value” (Malikail 2).
Moreover, criticising Moore, Murdoch claims that “with no substantial vision of the good, the moral becomes a matter of will's choice ” (Malikail 2).
According to Murdoch, the result of such contemporary academic thinking is
“adventures of the will,” i.e. moral decisions without any kind of a moral imperative or moral guidance. Murdoch accepts some of the notions believed by Plato, e.g. duty or selflessness; nevertheless, she does not end in being a complete Platonist. As Obumselu says: “She has failed to re-animate the world-view in which those concepts presided, the world-view assumed in the nineteenth-century realistic novel which she so much admires. The world reflected in her own work is lonely and absurd” (Obumselu 35).
With the writers occuring in the novel, i.e. Bradley and Arnold, these notions of good and evil can be traced in the following way: Bradley clearly considers his only good to be his writing and everything, even his affections, are subject to this goal. Arnold differentiates
13 much more between his personal life and writing; nevertheless, neither he is completely innocent as far as his relationships with women are concerned: his wife Rachel is unhappy in their marriage as Arnold takes her for granted and does not care sufficiently for her (173).
4.5 God
To see the position of God in Murdoch’s metaphysics and also in The Black Prince , it must be first revealed what the relationship between God and goodness is. According to
Mary Warnock, a friend of Iris Murdoch, the relationship between ‘God’ and ‘the Good’ in
Murdoch’s metaphysics is the following: “She holds that goodness has a real though abstract existence in the world. The actual existence of goodness is, in her view, the way […] to understand the idea of God” (Malikail 6). In Murdoch’s words, ‘Good’ is a real representation of ‘God’ which is treated as unreal, i.e. as ‘a dream’ (ibid.). The relationship between God and
Good in the Platonic sense is also explained in one of Murdoch’s rare statements which include the notion of ‘God’: “God sees us and seeks us, [Plato’s] Good does not”
(Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 83). But Murdoch adds that the Christian God has been mainly absent from post-Kantian philosophy (ibid. 80).
There is a slight resemblance between Murdoch and Plato reflected in the novel: in the first place, both Murdoch and Plato were reluctant to regard God as the primary factor in human life. Bradley doubts whether there is any such thing in reality as to love God:
‘All things work together for good for those who love God,’ said Saint Paul. Possibly: but what it is to love God? I have never seen this happening. There is, my dear friend and mentor, some hard-won calm when we see the world very detailed and very close... But the dark and the ugly is not washed away, this too is seen, and the horror of the world is part of the world. There is no triumph of good. (108)
After Bradley falls in love with Julian, the notion of God comes to his mind and he expresses almost mystic feelings and ideas about God:
The conventional notion of the Christian God pictures Him as having created and being about to judge. A more intimate theology, and the one more consonant with the nature of what we know of love, pictures
14 a demonic force engaged in continuous creation and participation. I felt that I was, at every instant, creating Julian and supporting her being with my own (208).
In this extract, Bradley uses the words ‘continuous creation’ and ‘participation,’ alluding thus to the ancient ideas of renewal and spiral development (e.g. of Democritus); by this, the religious aspect of the novel moves further away from Christianity.
At the same time, as can be seen in the example, Bradley as an artist is an individualistic person, and his only religious concept is embodied in his own mind. He even speaks about “becoming God himself” (207). He declines to question his deeds or decisions from the point of view of a person placed hierarchically below an almighty God and acts solely on his own accord. What is more, he also takes whatever responsibility there may be resulting from his actions. In this way, it can be claimed that Bradley’s only religion is the faith of the artist in himself; and the only absolute idea which has a say in Bradley’s life within this artistic, religious and philosophical system is love, or ‘the other .’
4.6 Love, ‘the Other ,’ ‘Unselfing ’
One of the famous quotations of Iris Murdoch is “Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real” ( The Quotations Page ). This realization of what true love looks like is made by Bradley at the end of Part One of the novel. When he falls in love with Julian, Bradley perceives a complete loss of his previous egoism. He uses the word
‘selflessness’ to describe his feelings of the moment: “True love is eternal. It is also rare [...]
Love brings with it also a vision of selflessness” (210).
The whole complex moment of climax psychological, moral and emotional is described in this way:
How right Plato was to think that, embracing a lovely boy, he was on the road to the Good. I say a vision of selflessness, because our mixed nature readily degrades the purity of any aspiration. But such insight, even intermittent, even momentary, is a privilege and can be of permanent value because of the intensity with which it visits us (210).
15 Here Bradley clearly points out the transient and ethereal nature of any such concept as
‘otherness.’
An almost identical word to describe the character of true love -‘unselfing’ - is used by Ana Lita in her article “‘Seeing’ Human Goodness: Iris Murdoch on Moral Virtue”:
I want now to speak of what is perhaps the most obvious as well as the most ancient and traditional claimant, though one which is rarely mentioned by our contemporary philosophers, and that is Love. Of course Good is sovereign over Love as it is sovereign over other concepts, because Love can name something bad. But is there not nevertheless something about the conception of a refined love, which is practically identical with goodness? Will not ‘Act lovingly’ translate ‘Act perfectly,’ whereas ‘Act rationally’ will not? It is tempting to say so (Lita 1).
In this text, Ana Lita places ‘Good,’ Love, and e.g. reason into a dialectical hierarchy, putting
‘Good’ above all the other concepts. Also, the concept of ‘a refined love’ can be placed highest, which appears similar to Murdoch’s metaphysics.
The book’s subtitle ‘A Celebration of Love’ has a double meaning. First, it refers to
Plato’s book Symposium , where the concept of beauty is debated, and second, it suggests that the Platonic Eros will be playing a major role. As was already mentioned, Peter J. Conradi focuses on the latter concept of the novel: “It is a superb thriller, a black book about marriage, a dark book about authorial rivalry. It is also a reflective book about love and it is this aspect which I shall emphasise” (185).
Conradi also claims that Bradley’s remarks about the nature of l/Love, as well as
Loxias’s, who is ‘the Editor’ of Bradley’s manuscript, reveal that the concept of love is extended into a Platonic (or Neoplatonic) notion of a ‘high Eros’ (Conradi 187). According to him, the evidence for this statement consists mainly in the following example: “Man’s creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story” (9).
It is significant that Bradley uses the word ‘selfless’ when he speaks about Plato’s dream of love. This way of treating Plato’s concept of love is a specification of e.g. Emanuel
16 Rádl’s view: he claims that Plato’s concept of love is rather ‘impersonal,’ existing beyond the real material world (Rádl 171).
According to Franková, Murdoch defines love as ‘seeing the other’: “The direction of attention is, contrary to the nature, outward, away from self which reduces all to false unity, towards the great surprising variety of the world, and the ability so to direct attention is love” (Franková 67).
The concept of ‘selfless love’ should be dealt with as quite different from the concept of ‘love as Eros’. It should be noted that Bradley combines the two notions in his story, and this is in accordance with what Mr Loxias says in his “Foreword”: “What follows is in its essence as well as in its contour a love story. I mean that it is deeply as well as superficially so” (9). Moreover, Bradley also feels remorse because of the fact that he fell in love with the daughter of Rachel as Rachel is still in love with him. Consequently, what inspires him to write and feel fulfilled becomes also one of his greatest remorseful and morally questionable events in life.
4.7 Happiness
Although it is sometimes felt as inappropriate, Plato includes happiness into his own ethics. His kind of happiness, sophrosyne , goes hand in hand with love and selflessness (Frede
14), and also ‘reasonableness’ (Rádl 180). Similarly in The Black Prince , Bradley finds happiness, his only happy feeling mentioned in the novel, at the very moment when he realizes that he loves Julian – that he loves Julian selflessly and in a quite different way than he loved Christian or Rachel. “Love brings with it also a vision of selflessness” (210), he says.
Then he tries to express his way of understanding Plato, and he describes Plato as a visionary of a selfless love which has the potential to change the world, in words very much unlike the neutral and reasonable style of “Part One”:
Ah, even once, to will another rather than oneself! Why could we not make of this revelation a lever by which to lift the world? Why cannot
17 this release from self provide a foothold in a new place which we can then colonize and enlarge until at last we will all that is not ourselves? That was Plato’s dream. It is not impossible. (210)
In the end, if Bradley is still happy, it is a much wiser sort of happiness, a happiness of an experienced old man. He himself does not use that word at that moment. Rather, he talks about responsibility, and his brief reasonable style of speech reappears.
Nevertheless, if Conradi’s and Byatt’s approaches to the novel should be considered, the novel on the whole contains far too many tragic or tragedic features to be treated as optimistic in any way. More likely, Bradley’s fight for human dignity is pointed out in the novel; a fight against ‘embarrassment’ in the fashion of Dostoevski’s novels, which is also in tune with Conradi’s claim (Conradi 184).
4.8 Virtue
Bradley, the main character in the novel, has some of the features of a tragic hero as he dies in the end without fulfilling his momentary dream of a selfless world. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that his virtue wins in the end. It can only be claimed that the ‘new’
Bradley (after he falls in love with Julian and experiences a radical change of his self) succeeds in loving Julian selflessly, and also accepts the sentence for a crime he did not commit. The whole text of the novel denies the notion that religious (or moral) innocence must be rewarded. Bradley accepts the guilt imposed from the outside world and thus redeems himself on his own accord, i.e. without the presence of a Christian God.
When Murdoch uses the word ‘virtue’ (e.g. 211), she alludes to the four Platonic
‘virtues’: wisdom ( sophia ), courage ( andria ), temperance ( epithymetikon ) and justice
(dikaiosyne ) (Rádl 180-1). From these, wisdom especially is mentioned several times by
Bradley, who is aware of the fact that wisdom changes along with time. He says for example:
“I hope that I am a wiser and more charitable man now than I was then – I am certainly a
18 happier man – and that the light of wisdom falling upon a fool can reveal, together with folly, the austere outline of truth” (11).
Also, the notion that virtue can be learnt is not contradicted in the novel. Although
Bradley sometimes treats other people’s actions as good or bad ones (e.g. when his sister
Priscilla is abandoned by her husband), he never debates whether their aim is virtuous or not.
In Murdoch’s book Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals the concept of ‘virtue’ is characterized as the link between art and religion (481). She also says that “the demand that we should be virtuous or try to become good is something that goes beyond explicit calls of duty” (ibid. 482). In this view, people have in their minds this “shadow of religion” and should live “a single moral existence” (ibid. 483). Saying all this, Murdoch avoids again any sort of allusion to God or external deity. The moral duty exists within each human being and has one existence only,
4.9 Justice
As Bradley is not a typical religious person, his kind of sense of justice is rather individualistic. He feels justified to judge other people but he cannot bear being criticised. He also perceives reality in a distorted way.
The turning point in his treatment of justice occurs at the end of “Part One”: at first, he feels strongly about every minute detail which he dislikes and is rather open about it; then, he realizes that he was quite wrong and changes his mind about Arnold’s writings, about
Christian, etc.
In the end, at a moment not unlike catharsis, Bradley admits that reality is a much greater thing than he can perceive as a whole. He says: “How little in fact any human being understands about anything the practice of the arts teaches one. An inch away from the world one is accustomed to there are other worlds in which one is a complete stranger” (381). He
19 feels ‘puny’ (381) and humble in the face of the whole complex past and unsuspected present which taught him a lesson.
Bradley dies at the very end of the novel of a quick-growing cancer, which is described indirectly by the figure of Bradley’s editor. This may be another symbolic moment reflecting the general feeling that something higher than Bradley, which does not have to be a g/God, rules the plot and the whole novel as well.
There are also many features reflecting the ironic and tragicomic character of the plot or the text itself, features which warn against reading the novel as a moral fable directed against injustices of life.
4.10 Guilt
The notion of guilt is one of the most remarkable notions in the novel. Murdoch treats guilt as something imposed from the outside but willingly accepted by the hero: Bradley
Pearson is sentenced to prison although he did not kill Arnold Baffin. Nevertheless, he feels guilty for Arnold's death because he, Bradley, had an affair with Rachel, Arnold's wife.
Moreover, he has fallen in love with Julian, Arnold's daughter. The whole complex of his feelings is described in the following way: “I had not willed Arnold's death but I had envied him and (something at least) detested him. I had failed Rachel and abandoned her. I had neglected Priscilla. Dreadful things had happened for which I was in part responsible“ (388).
Even Bradley’s editor says that Bradley “surrendered himself to the trial as to a final exorcism of guilt from his life” (388). We can see that Bradley accepts the guilt even though the guilt is not thoroughly his own.
Moreover, the whole of the novel makes the issue of guilt so complex that in the end it can be only perceived with great difficulty what deeds deserve punishment (and corresponding feeling of guilt) and what do not. Although Bradley accepts it, his punishment is only part of the complex and indiscernible mixture of actions, events and accident occurring
20 in the novel. Such complexity of the situation in the novel is in accordance with what Conradi calls ‘realism’: “…its people [i.e. the characters of the novel], in all their awfulness, frailty, sadness, and ordinary human incompleteness, are real to the reader” (Conradi 184).
5.
Moral Characteristics of Bradley Pearson and Arnold Baffin
The personality of Bradley Pearson bears many of the features of a typical thinker’s image: the long time-span needed to write a book; lengthy making of a single decision whether to leave London or not; profound knowledge of what one is speaking about during the discussion with Julian etc. As far as Bradley’s behaviour is concerned, it should be differentiated between how Bradley behaves before his falling in love with Julian and after that.
Before this change, Bradley’s only goal is to write the book which he thinks will be his masterpiece: “All I care about is getting my book written” (173). Bradley also considers everything else to be subordinate to this goal. This situation results in the fact that his behaviour is selfish in effect: he neglects his relationship with Rachel, and his relationship with his wife Christian is equally miserable.
After this change, Bradley’s behaviour is considerably more altruistic, at least towards Julian with which he indulges in long talks, or towards Francis Marloe, the annoying omnipresent brother of Christian. At the same time, Bradley is no longer as self-absorbed as he used to be before and produces his writing along with having a relationship with Julian.
Bradley’s decisions are not motivated by any such thing as religious fanatism or bad intentions. On the contrary, his intentions are always the best he can have. Despite all that, he helps cause at least some of the unhappy events because his intentions are conceived without any concern for their possible effects. He wants the best for Rachel as well as Julian while the
21 two relationships, i.e. to Rachel and to Julian, almost exclude themselves, especially when
Rachel makes demands for Bradley’s feelings (217).
Often, Bradley expresses his belief that his artistic freedom is a necessity, even more important than the love relationship with Rachel. Later though, his artistic freedom gradually becomes a more inclusive thing for him: as he falls in love with Julian, he no longer demands any such kind of freedom and comprehends that he is not restricted actually by this emotion.
The two occupations of the mind then become united.
In the end, Bradley retains the remnants of his freedom but this is not enough to prevent him from proving his innocence or change such unhappy situations as Julian’s forced departure or Arnold’s death.
The issue of human freedom is even more significant if the whole text of the novel is considered. It almost seems as if Bradley had too much freedom and too little concern for other people to become a true philosopher and a true writer able to write his best works at the moment. Then he wakes up spiritually and experiences a vision of the unity of art and love (or
Eros). Then, however, his development ends in crisis and he loses the vision, or at least a significant part of it. Human freedom seems at this very moment severely limited by chance, misfortune, or even human misunderstanding, no matter how great the vision might have appeared. And the artist has no say in this respect because he is only a servant to the truth. All those aspects of Bradley’s personality help to create a muddle of opposing tendencies which may easily become harmful within the net of human relationships, especially when these tendencies are not managed or reconciled.
The moral personality of Arnold Baffin is quite different from Bradley Pearson’s.
Arnold is a much more practical person without much depth or thought. Bradley reveals that when writing, Arnold uses a catchy mixture of features with the only intention to write for the writing’s sake and to be a successful writer.
22 The practical quality in Arnold enables him to make schemes of possible relationships between his friends, e.g. a renewed relationship between Bradley and his wife
Christian. This very quality is something Bradley lacks and he, Bradley, is conscious of it.
Nevertheless, he does not want to change his manners and become a practical person and even openly criticizes this quality in Arnold. (The question remains whether Bradley would solve the complex situation if he had more of this quality.)
From the immediate point of view of morals, Arnold is quite subordinate to Bradley, for he is concerned with form and has no real ethical vision. But if this situation is seen from the point of view of the whole story, Bradley’s vision stands apart as equally harmful in the end.
Also, the complexity of both Bradley Pearson’s and Arnold Baffin’s personalities, as well as the story line contribute to the overall picture where it cannot be shown what is moral and what is not. Similarly, it cannot be claimed that there is discernible goodness or badness in the novel (see chapter “Good and Evil”).
6.
Does Bradley’s Behaviour Have a Goal? Moral Purpose of Art
If something should be identified as Bradley’s aim, it might have two variants: his personal aim not to hurt anyone, and his artistic aim. More often, however, Bradley speaks about his artistic goal: e.g. in his opening words in the novel:
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth. I have endeavoured in what follows to be wisely artful and artfully wise, and to tell the truth as I understand it, not only concerning the superficial and ‘exciting’ aspects of this drama, but also concerning what lies deeper. (11)
23 Here, Bradley admits that he is concerned with form, too (he uses the words “wisely artful and artfully wise”), but much more with truth. In a different place, he also says that beauty is present when truth has found an apt form (81).
One of the features that Murdoch shares with the philosophy of Plato is the important role of ethics in literature or arts in general. Plato is even afraid of those writers who have no respect for ethos (or moral purpose of art), and are potentially threatening to young people’s education. As Oliver Strunk puts it, “in such a state [i.e. a perfect state] education is paramount and art derives its main value as a means of attaining this educational ideal”
(Strunk 9).
Murdoch’s view can be summarized as “All art is a struggle to be, in a particular way, virtuous” ( Iris Murdoch Quotes ). In the short sequence of words, Murdoch expresses her opinion that art should attempt at virtue, from which two things result: first, Murdoch does not say that her art achieved perfection or that her art should stand as a model of morals.
Second, one of the differences between Murdoch and Plato is also the fact that while
Plato prescribes how people should act (e.g. in his Republic ), Murdoch describes this without evaluation. Moreover, according to Dave Robinson and Judy Groves, Plato presents the reader with moral norms (Robinson, Groves 56). Despite that, however, according to Plato these norms are nothing more than just a convention (ibid. 59), and they are also necessarily subjective (ibid. 56). The notion of the ‘subjectivity’ of moral norms is also claimed by
Friedrich Nietzsche (ibid. 56).
As far as the relationship between art and life is concerned, Bradley knows that the two are quite different: “Though I am a creative person, I am a puritan rather than an aesthete.
I know that human life is horrible. I know that it is utterly unlike art” (18). Elsewhere,
Bradley claims that real life has a comic character whatever his aspects:
Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His
24 creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. (81)
By stressing that “life is horrible,” Bradley clearly moves away from any kinds of idealization
(including the Wildean “Life imitates art”) towards the Dostoevskian kind of literature focusing on common erring people. At the same time though, according to Bradley (11), and according to Murdoch as well, art should aim at searching and discovering truth, or at least partial truth as the perception of the world is necessarily fragmented ( Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 2). As Murdoch claims: “The great artist sees the vast interesting collection of what is other than himself and does not picture the world in his own image” ( Existentialists and
Mystics 30).
7.
Ethics and Aesthetics
Whatever his character, ethics and aesthetics combine in the person of Bradley
Pearson: he is an artist whose art has a moral aim and whose behaviour is consciously moral.
Bradley claims in the novel: “I have always felt that art is an aspect of the good life, and so correspondingly difficult[…]” (187) The very moment typical of such a combination of ethics and aesthetics comes when Bradley says that he finds one of his last decisions aesthetically attractive. But this situation starts already with Bradley’s admitting that “for an artist, everything connects with his work, and can feed it” (125). For Bradley, his falling in love with Julian immediately starts to feed his creative potential, although this connection of events is quite surprising for him. He feels filled not only with emotions, but also with creative power:
It had not ceased to be clear that my new ‘occupation’ was not in any sense an alternative to my life’s work. The same agency had sent me
25 both these things, not to compete but to complete. I would soon be writing and I would write well (212).
Even the point of the novel contains a mixture of ethics and aesthetics: Bradley is sentenced for the murder of Arnold which he did not commit, and finds this aesthetically attractive but moral in a quite complex way; or alternatively, it is not the trial itself which
Bradley considers beautiful but rather the assumption that he killed Arnold: “The notion of actually assuming Arnold’s death (and ‘confessing’) did occur to me an aesthetic possibility.
If I had killed him there would have been a certain beauty in it” (387-8). The whole notion is, of course, quite extravagant and its moral basis subject to speculation. It must be added though that even many concepts of Plato appear more aesthetic than truly ethical in their character (e.g. the concept of the world of ‘forms’).
7.1 Moral and Aesthetic Moment of Metafiction; Pearson and Loxias
‘Metafiction’ can be defined as “a term given to fictional writing which self- consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. Metafictional writings may also explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text” (Waugh 2).
The questions posed by The Black Prince seem to be the following: what is the relationship between Murdoch and Bradley, and what is the relationship between Bradley and a potential reader?
Murdoch’s attitude to Arnold and Bradley is a subject for discussion. There are many ways in which she might have intended to approach the two. That is why this text is not going to cover this problem. It must be added though, that some aspects of the novel appear to prove
Murdoch’s critical approach at least to Arnold: Bradley calls him a ‘one-book-a-year’ man
(23) or describes his work as “sentimental” (216). As was already said, the literary personality of Iris Murdoch contains features of both Bradley and Arnold: e.g. Arnold’s fruitful literary production and Bradley’s concern for the search of truth.
26 As far as the answer to the second question is concerned, the figure of Mr Loxias must be brought to the fore. Mr Loxias is Bradley’s editor and also one of his last friends. He,
Loxias, has the last (and also first) word in the novel. His role is being Bradley’s reader and the relationship between the two, i.e. Bradley and Loxias, is the only explicit relationship in the novel which has metafictional character. It is significant that Loxias refuses to draw morals from the story. He says: “[…] Bradley’s death has made a lengthy commentary seem otiose. Death cannot silence art, but it can suggest spaces and pauses. So I have little to say.
The reader will recognize the voice of truth when he hears it. If he does not, so much the worse for him” (412).
Peter J. Conradi points out several other facts concerning Loxias: first, this name belongs to the mythical subriquet of Apollo. This fact alludes to the myth about Apollo’s and
Marsyas’s musical contest in which Marsyas becomes the victim of the struggle between
Dionysian and Apollonian art (Conradi 188).
Second, Loxias is mentioned as the person who reveals Bradley’s Neoplatonic philosophy. He says in his “Foreword” explaining Bradley’s literary goal and also Bradley’s philosophy which consists in the search for truth with regard to supreme love (and also Erotic love): “What follows is in its essence as well as in its contour a love story. I mean that it is deeply as well as superficially so. Man’s creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story” (9). Here, among other things the Platonic notion appearing e.g. in Symposium comes to the fore: the notion that one can search truth and goodness even through Erotic love.
7.2 The Moral Message of Tragedy
One of the features most relevant for thorough examination is the genre of tragedy.
As the inclination of this text is to pursue ethical aspects of the novel, this chapter is going to
pursue those connected with the genre of tragedy, and these are catharsis , climax , and
peripety .
27 Mainly, the aspect which seems to be one of the more important in this view is the
notion of catharsis . According to Aristotle, this is a sudden emotional breakdown or climax
that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great pity, sorrow, laughter, or any extreme change
in emotion that results in the renewal, restoration and revitalization for living (‘tragedy’ in
Wikipedia ).
For individual characters, of course, this form of radical change comes at different
moments. For Bradley, whose catharsis is the only truly relevant for the stated topic, it comes
when he falls in love with Julian, and this catharsis is also the most profound in the novel.
Bradley’s first bad experiences are connected with Rachel, who is the wife of Arnold Baffin,
and Priscilla, who is Bradley’s sister. Rachel is almost killed by Arnold and Bradley has to
help her and watch her miserable condition; Priscilla’s condition is equally miserable when
she leaves her husband.
The psychotherapeutic effect of Bradley’s catharsis is evident from the very place in
the novel, but it also reappears at the end when Bradley has just been sentenced to prison:
The psyche, desperate for its survival, discovers deep things. How little most so-called psychologists seem to know about its shifts and its burrowings [sic]. At some point in a black vision I apprehended the future. I saw this book, which I have written, I saw my dearest friend P.L., I saw myself a new man, altered out of recognition. (389)
At the same time, however, Bradley’s catharsis is quite different from the ancient tragedic moment of catharsis. Bradley first experiences catharsis which has a positive cause, i.e. falling in love. This cause brings him happiness and selflessness, which contrasts to the fact that the novel is actually a tragedy.
The second moment of catharsis comes for Bradley towards the end of the book, when his death is approaching, and has a truly negative cause, i.e. the trial, but the consequent
‘revitalization for living’ is something which is missing: Bradley only comes to reconciliation with himself.
28 The whole aspect of catharsis is quite significant in the novel, but the changes it brings to Bradley’s behaviour are so intertwined with other events occuring in the novel that the situation cannot be analysed down to its roots. At the same time though, these changes are so important that they cannot be ignored.
Another feature of the tragedic genre is climax . This aspect of ancient drama can be explained as “the point of highest tension or drama” (‘climax’ in Wikipedia ). It is the moment of “greatest danger for the hero” and usually consists of a seemingly inevitable prospect of failure (ibid.). Climactic moments usually precede moments of catharsis. In the case of The
Black Prince though, there is a much more sophisticated development: the novel includes many moments which could be characterized as climactic, e.g. Rachel’s near death at the beginning of the book (21), Priscilla’s miserable condition after leaving her husband (74), her eventual suicide, etc. But it is difficult to tell which of these moments is the truly climactic one resulting in a significant change (except from Bradley’s falling in love with Julian, which changes Bradley radically); moreover, the whole development of the plot grows so complex that it is almost impossible to single out moments necessary for future development of the events occurring in the novel.
As far as peripety is concerned, this feature of ancient tragedy is reflected in the novel as well. It is usually defined as “a sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances,” ( Wikipedia ) and the aspect of ‘suddenness’ is stressed as the most important.
One of the first peripetic moments is also one of the first moments of the book:
Bradley wants to leave London and certainly does not expect Arnold Baffin’s phone call in which Arnold says that he has probably just killed his wife (21).
Also Bradley’s behaviour is full of peripetic, and odd, moments, e.g. when he refuses to prove calmly that he did not kill Arnold (386). And when he says in his Foreword: “All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple” (11), he admits that what he is going to speak
29 about finally got out of his hands and is highly improbable. (The reappearing moment of surprise is another proof that Murdoch lets her characters live individual lives.)
7.3 The Use of Symbol: Moral Meaning?
If there should be a symbol pointed out as primary in The Black Prince , it would be
Shakespeare’s Hamlet despite the fact that such a large number of the particular aspects of this book are included in this concept. To name just a few examples, Hamlet is usually associated with ‘moral duty,’ ‘heroic hesitation’ (Greer 56) or commentary about the state of theatre or the state of the country. In The Black Prince , however, Hamlet becomes a symbol of the mastery of form, the aspect of self-reflection, and humanity. It can be seen that Bradley pursues possible aspects standing above form and succeeds in finding that the process of creating form results in creating identity of the person who utters the words. This person uttering those words is a writer in this case, of course.
The book of Hamlet is brought by Julian to be discussed with Bradley at the end of
Part One of the novel (193). Bradley later says: “The thing is a monument of words, it is
Shakespeare’s most rhetorical play, it is his longest play, it is his most inventive and involuted literary exercise” (199). Here, the importance of form and style is stressed, but both these formal aspects are inferior to the message which consists in continuous self-reflection, and also humanity which is meant as a moral concern directed at the same level, not from above.
Bradley also says to Julian at that moment about Shakespeare:
He has performed a supreme creative feat, a work endlessly reflecting upon itself, not discursively but in its very substance […], a meditation upon the bottomless trickery of consciousness and the redemptive role of words in the lives of those without identity, that is human beings. (199)
It can be seen from this example that the second feature of Hamlet , i.e. its self-reflection, projects itself in the novel as a special kind of metafiction in the very substance of the play.
30 This feature is quite difficult to approach as Murdoch does not repeat this notion elsewhere in the novel.
The third aspect of Hamlet is later pursued further by Bradley. He says: “No high theory about Shakespeare is any good, not because he’s so divine but because he’s so human.”
Here again, not the form is dealt with but substance, this time it is not self-reflection but the very personality of the author, i.e. Shakespeare.
Carla Dente Baschiera extends further the idea that The Black Prince is a re- th invention of Hamlet in her article “Re-inventing Ambiguity for the 20 Century.” In fact, not only The Black Prince but also Murdoch’s other novels allude to Hamlet , e.g. Henry and
Cato , The Sea, the Sea or The Good Apprentice . To the question “why are authors rewriting
Shakespeare” (Baschiera 45), she gives the following answer: “Any reading of Shakespeare’s plays is bound to focus on, and highlight the interaction between our literary past and present, while actually constructing it” (Baschiera 45-6). Here Baschiera suggests that Murdoch makes a connection between our (literary) past and present in some sense, but this connection is subject to discussion outside the space of this text as it belongs to literary history.
31
Conclusion
The aim of this text was to present how Iris Murdoch makes a connection between art and morality, and this search was based on the example of one of Murdoch’s novels The
Black Prince from 1973. These two notions, i.e. art and morality, combine not only in the personality of Iris Murdoch as she was both a philosopher and a writer, but also in her writing which reflects her philosophical thought.
In this novel, three major aspects were found relevant. First, general issues of
Murdoch’s morality in connection with the novel were dealt with, issues such as the inherent
‘subjectivity’ of moral judgement, ‘realism’ in the sense of the search for truth and truthful depiction of reality, and ‘descriptivity’ meaning not only the descriptive ethical approach as reflected in literature, but also descriptivity of style, the development and time relationships of the plot.
Second, concrete moral aspects of the novel were pursued, such as truth, good and evil, g/God, love, happiness, virtue, justice or guilt; and the relationship between these issues and the hero of the novel Bradley Pearson. Among the most important findings related to this part are e.g. the indiscernible character of good and evil, the Platonic treatment of truth, love, virtue and happiness, and also the fact that religion occurs in the novel not as typical organized faith but as a specific belief of the artist in oneself.
Third, the relationship between ethics and aesthetics was pursued. In this view, the relationship between Bradley and his editor Mr Loxias was focused on in the sense of a writer – reader relationship; also, the genre of ancient tragedy was treated; and also the use of symbol was covered as the book of Hamlet is frequently spoken of in the novel.
Moreover, dealing with The Black Prince demands also presenting such information as first, how this novel can be interpreted, and the possible readings are e.g. as a parallel to the biblical story of redemption by sacrifice or as a re-invention of Hamlet making a connection
32 between Hamlet and Bradley Pearson, the hero of The Black Prince . Also, this text tried to follow possible allusions conveyed by the title of the novel.
Second, the notions of the ‘artist’ and the ‘saint’ were covered as this dichotomy presents two kinds of characters: one, (the Platonic ‘artist’) aiming at writing filled with fantasy without trying to look for truth; and the other, (the ‘saint’) searching for reality and truth and aiming at goodness.
33
Works Cited
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch: The Saint and the Artist . London: Macmillan, 1987.
Conradi, Peter J. (ed.) Existentialists and Mystics. Writings on Philosophy and
Literature . United States: Penguin,1997.
Dunphy, Floyd B. “A Vision of Ethics: Apprehending the Other in the Literary
Psychology of Iris Murdoch.” Literary Research/ Recherche littéraire 20.39-40
(2003): 145-163 < http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/literary_research-ef/no39-
40/articles5.html >. (April 2005)
Franková, Milada. Human Relationships in the Novels of Iris Murdoch. Brno: Masaryk
University, 1995.
Gert, Bernard. “The Definition of Morality” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Summer 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
forthcoming < http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/morality-
definition/ >.
Greerová, Germaine. Shakespeare . Praha: Argo, 1996.
“Iris Murdoch” in Guardian Unlimited Books.
“Iris Murdoch Quotes” BrainyQuote .
2005)
Lamarque, Peter (ed.) Philosophy and Fiction. Essays in Literary Aesthetics .
Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1983.
Lita, Ana. “ ‘Seeing’ Human Goodness: Iris Murdoch on Moral Virtue” in Minerva –
34 An Internet Journal of Philosophy Vol. 7 2003.
Malikail, Joseph. “Iris Murdoch on the Good, God and Religion.” URL:
http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol4/murdoch.html (12 May 2005)
Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1993.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Sacred and Profane Iris Murdoch.” Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce
Carol Oates Home Page. < http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/murdoch.html>.
(6 Apr. 2005).
Obumselu, Ben. “Iris Murdoch and Sartre.” JSTOR: ELH vol.42, no.2 p. 296. URL:
“Quotations by Author” The Quotations Page .
Spear, Hilda D. Iris Murdoch . Houndmills: Macmillan, 1995.
Strunk, Oliver. Source Readings in Music History . New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
Wands, D.C. “Iris Murdoch Bibliography” in Fantastic Fiction .
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Wood, Sylvia M. “Iris Murdoch” in Books and Writers .
35 Supplements
1. List of Murdoch’s Works
• Novels
Under the Net (1954)
The Flight from the Enchanter (1955)
The Sandcastle (1957)
The Bell (1958)
A Severed Head (1961) with J.B. Priestley
The Unofficial Rose (1962)
The Unicorn (1963)
The Italian Girl (1964)
The Red and the Green (1965)
The Time of the Angels (1965)
The Nice and the Good (1968)
Bruno’s Dream (1969)
A Fairly Honorable Defeat (1970)
The Sovereignty of Good (1970)
An Accidental Man (1971)
The Black Prince (1973)
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974)
A Word Child (1975)
A World of Child (1975)
Henry and Cato (1976)
The Sea, the Sea (1978)
A Year of Birds (1978)
36 Nuns and Soldiers (1980)
The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983)
The Good Apprentice (1985)
The Book and the Brotherhood (1987)
Above the Gods (1987)
The Message to the Planet (1989)
The Green Knight (1993)
Joanna, Joanna (1994)
The One Alone (1995)
Jackson’s Dilemma (1995)
Something Special (1999)
• Plays
A Severed Head (1964, with J.B. Priestley)
The Servants and the Snow (1973)
Art and Eros (1980)
Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986)
The Black Prince (1989)
• Philosophical Works
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953)
The Sovereignty of Good and Other Concepts (1967)
The Existentialist Political Myth (1989)
Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992)
Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (1997)
37 2. The Black Prince cover
3. Iris Murdoch
4. Iris Murdoch depicted in the film Iris
38
39