Evil, Secularism and Religion in Hermann Hesse's Demian (1919)

Home , Demian, Poems (Hesse collection)

People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Larbi Ben M’Hidi University, Oum El Bouaghi

Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages

______

Department of English

Evil, Secularism and Religion in Hermann

Hesse’s Demian (1919) and in Selected Poems by Wallace Stevens

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in Anglo-American Studies

By: HALEM Asma Supervised by: Dr. BOUGHERARA Khemissi Examined by: ACHIRI Samya

2017/2018 I

Dedication

I dedicate this work to my beloved parents for their unconditioned love, support and forgiveness. I also dedicate this work to Badr Eddine. It is also dedicated to my sister Amel, to my beloved Grandmother Aicha and my supportive aunts, Meriem, Khadidja and Hadjer, as well as my uncles Salim, Bachir, Lakhdar and Messaoud, without forgetting my dear

Naima.

Acknowledgment

First, praise be to Almighty Allah, the most merciful, without whom this work would have never been completed. Then, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr.

Khemissi Bougherara for his patience and guidance. I would also like to thank all those supported me thorough this dissertation especially Badri and Asma Chaar.

III

Abstract

Modern literature is usually viewed as secular. This view is based on assumptions proposed by a waning secularization thesis which argues that advancement in modernity will lead to the displacement of religion. Against this scholarship, there has recently been a resurgence of interest in religion and secularism among literary critics. The post-secular literary studies enabled reengagement with religion in works that were perceived to be secular. For twentieth century modernists, religious frameworks continue to be attractive.

They have ambivalent attitudes to both religion and secularism which permits a secular reading of their works. By focusing on the secular and religious dichotomy, post-secular studies run the risk of maintaining the boundaries it set to deconstruct. This research proposes the introduction of a third element. The focus of this research is the concept of Evil in its relationship to both secularism and religion. This research, through literature review, critical analysis, as well as symbolic and hermeneutical reading, aims to engage the notion of secularism, religion and evil in the novel of Demian (1919) by Hermann Hesse, and the poems of Wallace Stevens namely “Sunday Morning” and Esthétique du Mal.” This research concludes that Evil plays as both an agent and a challenge to secularism.

Keywords: Religion, Secularism, Evil, Hermann Hesse, Demian, Wallace Stevens, “Esthétique du Mal,” “Sunday Morning.”

Résumé

La littérature moderne est généralement considérée comme laïque. Ce point de vue est basé sur les hypothèses proposées par une thèse de laïcisation en déclin qui soutient que le progrès de la modernité conduira au déplacement de la religion. Contre cette thèse, il y a eu récemment un regain d'intérêt pour la religion et la laïcité parmi les critiques littéraires. Les

études littéraires post-laïques ont permis de réengagement avec la religion dans les œuvres perçues comme laïques. Pour les modernistes du vingtième siècle, les cadres religieux continuent d'être attirants. Ils ont des attitudes ambivalentes à la fois à la religion et à la laïcité, ce qui permet une lecture post- laïques de leurs œuvres. En se focalisant sur la dichotomie laïque et religieuse, les études post-laïques risquent de maintenir les frontières qu'elle fixées pour se déconstruire. Cette recherche propose l'introduction d'un troisième

élément. L'objet de cette recherche est le concept du Mal dans sa relation avec la laïcité et la religion. Cette recherche, à travers la revue littéraire, l'analyse critique, ainsi que la lecture symbolique et herméneutique, vise à engager de manière critique la notion de laïcité, religion et le mal dans le roman de Demian (1919) par Hermann Hesse, et les poèmes de Wallace

Stevens à savoir « Sunday Morning » et « Esthétique du Mal. » Cette recherche conclut que le Mal joue à la fois un rôle d'agent et de défi à la laïcité.

Mots-clés: Religion, Laïcité, Mal, Hermann Hesse, Demian, Wallace Stevens, «Esthétique du

Mal», «Dimanche matin».

مص

األ العصر ع م يظر ليه ع أنه أ عني. يرت ها الرأ ع اعء مر من خال

فرضي عني مئ ، تو الد في الحداث سي ل ن الدين. في مبل ه الفرضي ك ه مخرا

انع االه بلدين العني بين ال األبيين. مت الداس األبي م بعد العني من ع االت بلدين في

أع ك يُظر لي ع أن عني.بلس لأل العصر في الر العشرين، ال تا األر الديي جاب لديم

مواقف مق ت الدين العني م يسح براء م بعد العني ألعلم. لن من خال الركي ع الثئي

العني الديي ، فإ ه الداس تعر لر الحف ع الحد الي تدف لفي. ير ها الحث خ

عر ثلث في الداس. يعد أ الشر هو عمل تحد لعني. محو ها الحث هو مفو الشر في عالقه بل من

العني الدين. دف يها الحث ، من خال مراجع األبي ، الحيل الد ، بإلضف ل الراء الرمي

الأيي ل االنرا الد في مفو العني الدين الشر في اي مي )1919( لتب هيرم هيس ، قئد

اال سيف هي " "Esthétique du Mal" "Sunday Morning". يين ها الحث ل أ الشر يعب كعمل

تحد لعني في آ احد.

الكلما المفتاحي: الدين ، العني ، الشر ، هيرم هيس ، مي ، اال سيف ، "Esthétique du Mal"، "Sunday Morning".

Table of Content: noidacideD ...... I taeDegdoiwonoDi ...... II tariscat ...... III

Résumé ...... IV

V ...... ﺺﺨﻠﻣ

Table of Content ...... IV

List of Abbreviations ...... IVV

General VDiseidaideD ...... 1

Chapter One: Evil and Secularisation ...... 4

1. Secularism and Religion ...... 4 2. Secularism and Literature ...... 9 3. Post-secularism ...... 13 4. Evil ...... 15 5. Conclusion ...... 18

Chapter Two: Affirmation of Life in Demian ...... 19

1. A brief Biography of Hermann Hesse ...... 19

2. Demian (1919) ...... 20 3. Religious Symbolism ...... 23 4. Evil in Demian (1919) ...... 24 5. Conclusion ...... 33 Chapter three: Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Secularism ...... 34 1. Post-Secularism in the Poetry of Stevens ...... 34

2. “Esthétique du Mal” ...... 38 3. Conclusion ...... 45

General Conclusion ...... 47

Works Cited ...... 49

VII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CP The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

D Demian

OALD Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 1

General Introduction:

Modernism is a movement that, for many critics, started in the late 19th century and continued until 1965 (Kimmelman 321). It is an artistic movement that celebrates the present and reflects the cultural changes brought by modernity and urbanization. It was characterised by extensive artistic experimentation and innovation especially in the period preceding the

First World War. Modernism is also characterised by plurality because it encompasses many different artistic currents such as Futurism, Symbolism, Dadaism, Imagism, Existentialism and many others. This plurality makes modernism difficult to define. But, generally,

Modernism is described as a break with the past. Indeed the long-held assumptions about language, culture, gender roles, religion, and reality were undermined by the new discoveries such as the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, the philosophical nihilist theories of

Frederich Neitzsche, and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin among others.

These discoveries were critical blows to religion more than any other cultural aspect. Frederick Nietzsche declared “the death of God” rejecting all the paradigms of religion, then Darwin’s On the Origins of Species (1859) substituted the anthropomorphic image of man made in the “likeness of God” with that of man descending from apes (qtd. in

Quinn 267). In addition, Sigmund Freud in The Future of an Illusion (1927) rejected the need for religion arguing that religion had three main functions; “to exorcize the terrors of nature, to reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, and to compensate humankind for the suffering imposed by civilization, _tasks more than adequately appropriated in the 20th century by science and human reason” (qtd. in Ziolkowski, “Modes” 5). These intellectual crises are believed to have accentuated the rift between religion and the modernists. Modernists, nevertheless, refused to embrace a world emptied of the sacred. Religion for them was still an essential element that needed to be understood in a new light.

Secularism, which by definition gives priority to the immanence of life over

Transcendence, is thus an inadequate framework to handle modernist literature. It is especially evident in the way in which modernists treat the experience of evil, in the sense of pain, poverty, diseases, violence and wars among others. The unjustified violence of World

War I and II, for example, is believed to have discredited the values of secularism and pure rationalism for their inability to explain evil. Modernists are, therefore, torn between a desire to affirm life that was denied to them by religion, and a longing for religion which gave them a form of consolation, _that pain and evil in the world were justified and had a greater purpose. Modern literature can be seen as the expression of this struggle in which evil is both as an agent of and a challenge to secularisation.

The idea for this thesis arose from a series of questions that began with questioning the place of religion in modern literature, a question that led to a vast debate of opposing religious and secular point of views. The overall aim of this research is to advance understanding of modernist literature. This research is divided to three chapters. The First chapter is theoretical while the second and the third are analytical. The objectives of the first chapter, entitled “Evil and Secularisation,” are to evaluate, through literature review, the notion of secularism in order to demonstrate that secularism does not subsume the disappearance of religion. It also aims to examine the relationship between literature and religion to demonstrate that literature can never be entirely secular, as well as to examine the concept of evil. Indeed, evil is an important issue that can be deceive in the debate over secularism. If religion would be done away with what compensation can secularism offer to the experience of evil which is so central in human life? Based on the assumption that the

Western idea of secularism is different from that of the rest of the world, the evaluation of this relationship draws almost entirely from the Euro-American experience with secularism.

Secularism is also a difficult term to define. It well known that politically it is the doctrine of

3 separation between church and state. While this research does refer to political secularism, it does not make the object of focus. Secularism for this research is an attitude and a way of thinking that does not make reference to transcendence. Moreover, it is important to note that

Religion throughout this research is not only Christianity with its dogmas, doctrines and institutions but also the abstract form of religion, or the general belief in transcendent Being who orders the universe. The second chapter, entitled “Affirmation of Life,” aims to analyse critically through hermeneutical and symbolic reading the theme of evil in its relations to both secularism and religion in the novel Demian (1919) by Hermann Hesse. The German novel Demian has been chosen for its explicit reference to evil, and because “the situation in

Germany is generally representative for the situation in the other major European literatures”

(Ziolkowski, “religion” 19). The third chapter, entitled “Wallace Stevens and the Limits of

Secularism,” aims to evaluate the ambivalence of Stevens towards religion in his poem

“Sunday Morning,” as well as to analyse the concept of evil in its relations to secularism and religion in the poem “Esthétique du Mal.” The research aims to formulate that the experience of evil serves as both an agent to and a challenge to secularism.

Chapter One:

Evil and Secularisation

Twentieth-century modernity, vaguely defined in terms of rising autonomous sovereignty, growing capitalism and developing sciences, all of which are secular elements, is assumed to be the dividing line marking the beginning of a predominantly secular era where religion has lost all its influence (Butler 1-2; Chavura 66). This assumption, being part of the controversial secularisation thesis which celebrates the triumph of Enlightenment intellectualism over superstitious beliefs or religion, fails in providing a genuine account of the modern period, let alone its literature, by excluding the influence of religion. Thus, judging modernist literature as purely secular literature would lead to its misunderstanding and undervaluing. Regardless of the priority that the West gives to the secular, it does not reject the religious. In fact, Europe and America have, to varying degrees, “witnessed the increasing salience of religion” and the dawn of a “post-secular age” in which the revival of religion is felt all over the Western world (Enayat 2). This chapter analyses the relationship that secularism has first with religion, then with literature, before moving to an examination of the relationship that evil has with both religion and secularization.

1. Secularism and Religion:

Secularism is a part of vigorous interdisciplinary debate. It is a difficult term to define with different meanings for different periods in history as well as in the diverse disciplines.

But it is generally accepted to define secularism as “the belief that religion should not be involved in the organization of society, education, etc” (OALD 1334). Charles Taylor defines secularism in three ways. He defines it as public spaces emptied of religion, a lack in

5 religious beliefs and practices, but more importantly, as the framework through which all investigations and questionings must proceed (20). He introduces it as a process made by

“human beings having lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves” from primitive sources of knowledge (22). But he contradicts himself in affirming that the state “secures the freedom of the churches; and the churches sustain the Godly ethos which the Republic requires” (453).

Along the same line, Graeme Smith defines secularism as immanence without transcendence

(21). Smith argues that living in a secular world entails a disregard for religion. But he, nevertheless asserts that Western secularism is in fact “the latest expression of Christianity”

(1, 7). These two controversial claims reveal the flaws in some accounts of secularism. While these definitions place secularism and religion in opposition, suggesting a dividing line between them, they also show that secularism and religion are, in fact, interrelated.

The secularisation thesis argues that advancement in modernity would lead to the demise of religion. The first effort made by this thesis was to place religion and secularism on opposing grounds, a division that is neither present contemporarily nor historically. For many critics, secularism was born out of Christianity (Conolly 19; Said 115). Edward Said believes the roots of contemporary secular institutions of the Western world to be readapted and redistributed Christian dogmas and doctrines in a secular framework (121). Saba Mahmood also argues that the values of liberal democracies are in fact the direct heirs to Judaic values of justice and the Christian values of love (8). In addition to their contemporary link, they also share common historical origins. According to William Franke, secularism is the result of a religious vision that started with Averroes, Moses Maimonedes and most importantly, for the West, in the works of Dante. Dante is a secularist who urged the transfer of theological wisdom using vernacular languages instead of Latin through his Il convivo to offer the commoners access to theological knowledge limited to the educated few (4-5). Moreover, the etymological origins of the term secularism originate from the Latin word saeculum which

means “this world” as opposed to God’s realm (Chavure 68; Carlson 53; Hämäläinen and

Tomaszewska 3). This definition suggests that Christians coined this term to differentiate the

Christian God from pagan Gods. In Greek mythology, for example, the Gods lived in the same world as humans and interfered with all aspects of their life as well as with nature. The

Christian God, in contrast, was absent from the human world and constituted another realm which was the transcendent (Uotinen 34). For early Christians, the secular world was a space where believers and nonbelievers coexisted to seek common interests. It was also a space where worldly interests were perused as well as transcendent goals such as salvation through deeds in the secular world (Carlson 55). The opposition between transcendent and secular in early Christianity was thus a positive vertical opposition (Chavura 68).

Whether to foster power for a rising bourgeoning class or as a political strategy, the use of the word saeculum was, later, instrumented against religion and became its opposite in a horizontal opposition. Chavura provides an interesting account of this shift in which the secular changed from being interrelated to being exclusive of religion (66). In this process, the Church was the main cause of its alienation. Chavura argues that the Church was abusive in subordinating secular hierarchies supported by the claim that it represented the sacred (68).

Thus, the church had priority over the secular owing to, in the words of Thomas Aquinas,

“the secular power is subject to the spiritual power as the body is subject to the soul” (qtd. in

Chavura 68). With the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, the separation between the religious and the secular remained but without the hierarchical subordination of the state to the church. Chavura remarks that “the state was no longer subordinate to the ecclesiastical powers but remained subordinate to the word of God, obliging the magistrate to receive counsel from able preachers and theologians” (69). Throughout this period of history, the two realms of politics and religion, or secular and sacred, were clearly separate but they have not yet excluded each other. Chavura marks the French Revolution as the historic

7 landmark in which the secular took an antireligious meaning. This shift was due mainly to the intolerance of the Catholic Church and its oppression to the freedom of intellect (69-70).

While it is agreed that the Church played a major role in its own exclusion; religion, however, can never be equated with the power of the Church. Also, marking the French Revolution as the beginning of this binary opposition is an unsound generalization, for it does not take into consideration the religious pluralism in Europe. Whilst the French Revolution resonated in the whole Western World; it did not inspire other countries to do the same.

Talal Asad offers other accounts for the emergence of this antagonism. He informs that many elements contributed in opposing the secular to the religious (Formations 25). One of them found in the Renaissance, with its humanist revival, made human flourishing the highest purpose in life (Taylor 18). While, at that period, human flourishing was still reliant on transcendence, the growing capitalism and consumerist culture soon displaced transcendence for other worldly aspirations. Asad also notes that the humanist revival restored other binary oppositions such as mythos and logos, natural and supernatural, and intellectual and imaginary which fed Enlightenment attacks against the religious (Formations

26-27). In addition to humanism, the Renaissance Reformation created religious conflicts.

Secularism was a political strategy used to unite Western Christendom by creating a neutral space for public debate and by enabling each the free practice of faith without fear of persecution. Secularism, seen in this light is a liberation of religion and not its executioner

(Connolly 20; Enayate 9, 12).

Enlightenment is another decisive period in giving shape to the dichotomy. Certainly, the developments in philosophy and natural sciences were important factors in discrediting theism (Hämäläinen and Tomaszewska 7). It was Jacop Holyoake, an Enlightenment thinker, who coined the word secularism in 1851. He used it to avoid the charges of atheism for his liberal and free thinking by a still dominantly religious society (qtd. in Asad, Formations,

23n6). Holyoake was, thus, trying to promote secularism as a society where progressive social reforms could be pursued without threatening religion, yet politicians and the elite class manipulated the term in order to legitimize their cultural and political projects which rested on many elements that led to the displacement of religion (qtd. in Enayat 56).

Controversially, science and philosophy of the Enlightenment, especially in the first half of the eighteenth century, were not instruments of atheism; if anything they showed great support for faith. On this account Susan Neiman, relying on many testimonies of

Enlightenment thinkers, reminds that all new discoveries provided a strong argument of a genius Creator (28). Asad adds Imperialism, one of secular projects of the Western states, as the element that had the greatest impact on the creation of the dichotomy. He proposes that imperialism led to the clash with other civilizations and religions, especially Islam, resulting in the establishment of anthropologic studies whose findings discredited the historical narratives of the Bible (Formations 31). Philology, especially through the work of the

German Higher Criticism, exposed the multiple authorship of the Bible and discredited its divine origins (Formations 37). These findings; however, did not undermine religion but rather freed it from the shackles of dogmas to shed the light on individual faith. Indeed, belief remained unshaken despite evidence that “Sanskrit outdated Hebrew” (Said 136). Moreover, since the bible is no longer reliable, the divine could be known personally without the need for the Bible which freed religion by putting faith at the centre of the religious experience

(Asad, Formations 38). Indeed, as stressed by Thomas Altizer, secularization promoted the rediscovery of genuine Christianity (qtd. in Franke 02). Against Enlightenment positivism,

Derrida also reminds that “most Western philosophical concepts are still imbued with their theological source” and that intellectualism, whether it acknowledges it or not, feeds on

“predicates and references issued from Christianity” (qtd. in Chérif 14). Assuredly reason gives order to the world, but it does not give it meaning. Derrida considers that the separation

9 between the two realms creates a void which reason is found to be unreliable to fill (qtd. in

Chérif 13). He also urges that civilizations should not “idealize reason as opposed to faith, or vice versa” (qtd. in Chérif 16). This point is also found in Eliot who observed that Freud was no substitute for religion because he only restated “old truths in modern jargon.” He also believed that blind reliance on reason was a “phantom dilemma” since it was not reason “that has destroyed religion but our preference for unbelief” (qtd. in Harding and Schuchard xix).Terry Eagleton, in similar vein, argues that the apparently secular science of psychoanalysis is in its origins Christian theology. Indeed psychoanalysis was a form of theology in its treatments of the psyche instead of the soul by way of confession to a psychoanalyst instead of a priest; both religion and psychoanalysis have a narrative tendency toward human desire. He argues that they are built around the notion that humans are born in disease which requires “traumatic breaking down and remaking” for psychoanalysis and

“conversion” for Christians. The difference is that psychoanalysis shifted the attention away from God towards the unconscious (19). Indeed, many notions of modern theory are secularized religious doctrines.

In short, secularism and religion are interrelated both contemporarily and historically.

Their separation has been a mistake carried over by the secularisation thesis and its proponents. This mistake was nevertheless influential in the establishment of many fields of study including the literary studies.

2. Secularism and Literature:

Secular literature is thought to be an art that does not make any reference to transcendence or religion, and it does not search meaning beyond the immanent world (Lee

17). Yet, the absence of specific references does not indicate that religion has been done away with. For William Franke the absence of God from modernist literature is not a sign of

10 a complete secularisation, but rather it is the most religious of signs because silence is more meaningful than any account about God. It is likely that all the previous conceptions about

God have been inadequate (3). Dante is, again, worth mentioning to clarify the interrelation between the secular and the religious in literature. For Franke, Dante’s Divine Comedy embraces a radically secular view, by depicting the world in realism rather than as a symbolic reflection of the transcendent realm. He also notes that by placing himself as a protagonist,

Dante defended the autonomy of the human being. The transcendent is; nonetheless, immanently present both in the narrative and in individuals (6). Susanna Lee also finds religion in secular literature. For her, it is a literature that explores the tensions of modern life that result from a desire to live in a world organized by God and a desire to determine and to control that order (14). Secularization, accordingly, is a narrative structure that deals with

“individual fantasies about God” in a way that suggests narrative experimentations are theological in nature and that the modern novel is the richest locus of phantasms about God

(16). Moreover, Kathryn Ludwig takes the use of religious themes and journeying into the soul by modernists as signs not of the reaffirmation of the religious but rather continuous engagement with it (83). All these account demonstrate the interrelation between religion and secularism even within literature.

Literature and religion have always been linked. The first literary attempts of man have been in the service of a deity. According to Graham Ward, one of the most important signs of the continuous link with religion is its perpetual implication in notions of

“thaumaturgy, revelation, providence and eschatology” even though those terms have been secularized and replaced by terms such asaesthetic epiphanies, the omniscient narrator, and the sense of an ending (“How” 77, “Why” 23). Ward maintains that the narrative, the imaginary, language and the act of reading are elements that ensure literature can never be entirely secular. He maintains that both religion and literature are cultural products (“How”

74, “Why” 21). Ward notes that while literature does not merely copy, Mimesis exceeds it and creates, relying on imagination (“How” 74). The imagery is a well of experiences that are spatially conceived and are connected in the form of narrative. Being a basic cognitive process, narratives are mental schemes used to make sense of the world and have a sense of identity. The narrative tendency of both literature and religion is their first link. Drawing on the works of Jacques Lacan and Cornelius Casoriadis, Ward believes that the consciousness, or the primary imagination, can only treat a fraction of those experiences while the unconscious, or the secondary imagination, receives the rest (“How” 75, “Why” 22). The unconsciousness is the precondition for the consciousness and is also the space of an endless conflict between desire and reality. The imaginary in both its aspects defines for the subject what is real and what it desires (“How” 75, “Why” 21). Culture, religion and literature are the products of the unconscious and, therefore, beyond the subject’s control. Ward adds that the

Western cultural imaginary has both secular and religious elements. It has been greatly influenced by its past Judeo-Christianity but it has been equally influenced by secularisation.

Therefore, no consciousness can retrieve a purely secular, or a purely religious view of the world (“How” 82, “Why” 25). Language and reasoning are also rooted in the imaginary.

Assuredly, Literature is not merely about production, but involves reception as well. Thus, agreeing with Ward, the act of reading is also beyond the control of writers. As Kristeva’s notion of semiotics denote, meaning precedes sign (qtd. in Ward, “How” 79). It likely then, that it is the unconscious, rather than conscious where meaning is constructed.

Criticism is a secular enterprise. In his Secular Criticism, Edward Said wrote that

“Criticism…is always situated, it is skeptical, secular, reflectively open to its own failings”

(qtd. in Asad, “Historical,” par. 1). To this statement, Tala Asad traced the meaning of

Criticism to provide an understanding of how criticism is secular. He notes that the word criticism originates from the Greek verb krino, meaning “to differentiate,” “to decide,” “to

judge,” “to fight,” “to accuse”. It was used in the juridical field and indicated the ability to analyse, to question, and to judge. Its use is secular because it involved worldly matter, such as the resolve of conflicts, and it did not intend to reveal cosmic truth (“Historical,” par. 3). It was also used to refer to public free speech conducted by philosophers in the fourth century

B.C., in order to teach people how to evaluate their lifestyles. This mode of Criticism was absorbed by Christians, in the medieval period, to teach people about God publically, to interpret scriptures as well as to infer doctrines and the will of God from other texts

(“Historical,” par. 4). It was the interpretation methods of Augustine and other theologian that provided the tools for literary criticism (Ziolkowski, “Religion” 22). During the theological strife of the Reformation period, criticism was no longer about revealing the Christian elements in texts, but came to concern itself with the reality expressed in the texts (Asad,

“Historical,” par. 5). Historical criticism, of the recently recovered Greek texts and scriptures, was a result of this shift. The skeptics of the seventeenth century used the term to distinguish between intellect and revelation (Asad, “Historical,” par. 6). During the end of the Eighteenth century, Criticism was appropriated by the epistemological philosophy of Kant which argued that criticism should only be applied to knowable ideas. It was with return of the Romantics to problems of aesthetics that Hegel enabled the term criticism to deal with both the transcendental and the phenomenal as two “dialectical constituents” of the real (Asad,

“Historical,” par. 7). In the twentieth century, Neo-Kantians reframed criticism with epistemology. It became a measure of “universal reason”, and a fundamental tool in the natural and the human sciences. Scientific fact became the one that can be criticized and therefore be falsified. Religion, being immune to rational critique, cannot consequently have influence over scientific facts. It became an element that “must not be taken too seriously”

(Asad, “Historical,” par. 10). The New Criticism was a result of this development.

The New Criticism was a secular project, an intellectual move against the leaning toward taking the religious and cultural standpoint of writers in the analysis of their work.

Norman Reed Cary argues that the proponents of the New Criticism, such as Bloom, criticised “theocritics” for their indifference to literature as an aesthetic experience and their conception of literature as a mere manifestation of doctrinal ideology. The disregard of content in favour of form appeared to be more reductive to Literature since it reduces the aesthetic experience to a mere intellectual puzzle short of meaning (266). The failure of the

New Criticism demonstrated that literary studies were relying on the unstable ground that is the secularization thesis. Seidel argues that excluding religion from literary studies is a violation of a fundamental law of Literary theory for which no concept can be defined without its opposite and that the secularization thesis distorted all literary histories (639).

With the secularisation thesis being discredited, the return of religion in literary studies was, therefore, inevitable (Said xxii; Singh 1; Corrigan, par. 4; Barber, par. 1;

Parmeggiani 417). The manner in which religion needs to be integrated is a major issue which led to the development of the post-secular in literary theory.

3. Post-secularism:

The post-secular is a form of criticism, an attitude or perspective from which works of literature are examined. For Graham Huggan the prefix “post” means a “critique of” and not

“after” since there was never a secular age in the first place (98). The post-secular enables interpretations that question the concept of religion (Ludwig 82).A post-secular attitude allows the exploration of how secularism has shaped religion as a private faith, how individuals have held it and the circumstances that led to its reaffirmation. This reengagement with religion does not imply a surrender of the secular ground for public debate or a reversal back to the religious, but rather, as Magdalena Mączyńska asserts, it is a

necessary “methodological corrective” (74). This corrective is achieved through dissolving the boundaries between the religious and the secular realms as well as a revision of certain religious concepts in light of the secular ideal. Thus, the post-secular in literary studies reconciles both sensibilities. Moreover, Cheryl Walker finds that a post-secular attitude enables the religious reading of a work that was not intended to be so far as it does not abuse the conventions of informed reading, “which are based primarily on the connotative and denotative possibilities of language” (qtd. in Corrigan par. 37). This is possible because secular writers could cross over into religious themes to find something of value for them, then post-secular religious readers can also cross over into secular themes to find something of value (Corrigan, par. 38). It is important, nevertheless, to understand the development of secular and religious binaries in literary studies. Kaufmann suggests that while there is little consensus and little limit over the use of the term post-secular in literary studies, there is a general agreement on its aim to deconstruct the secular and religious binary as a way to avoid the misleading absolutist narrative of either (68). He notices that Post-secularism is a trend similar to feminist theory and criticism in its ability to enable a reengagement with texts from any historical period (70; Ludwig 82; Levitt 116). Because, as it has been demonstrated, the secular and the religious have been historically connected, Kaufmann can postulate that the post-secular has “always been available as an option when considering the relationship between the religious and the secular regardless of any particular historical moment” (71).

Also, the post-secular is not a new concept, but rather another stage of a historic process.

Corrigan links it to the project of Romanticism. He finds that following the rationalism and the disillusionment of the world during Enlightenment, Romanticism brought back the religious, not in its traditional sense, but revived through saving some aspects of the religious heritage reconstructed in a manner that makes it intellectually apprehensible, as well as

15 emotionally relatable (par. 30). The Romantics relinquished the dogmatic base of Christianity to save ideals and values (Mączyńska 75).

Post-secularism has many shortcomings. Mączyńska rightly points that any investigation of dichotomies runs the risks of further affirming them (77). Also, Laura Levitt reminds that many in the field of cultural studies are reluctant to welcome the religious back into the institution since the word religion bears the “taint of abjection.” Post-secularism is thus careful in reopening cracks in a still evidently secular institution (111). But since the secular, as Asad denotes, is a concept that brings together other sensibilities (Formations 20).

It can integrate other concepts to the study of the dichotomy. While Everett Hamner proposed science as a third element, this research proposes evil. 1

4. Evil:

The problem of evil has haunted humanity ever since the rise of civilization (Mills

19). Indeed, the experience of evil, in the sense of pain, suffering, poverty, diseases, violence and wars among others, results in a sense of alienation from the world. Evil is a form of anomaly that obstructs the affirmation of life in the immanent world and leads to a quest for meaning whether religious or anti-religious. According to Neiman, the problem of evil is a problem of intelligibility of the world, and, therefore, links both secular and religious thought

(8).Western intellectuals, both theologians and secularists examined this issue. Literature too did not fail in exploring this theme exhaustively. It is an attractive concept because it is timeless, engaging and enables the religious and the secular culture as well as the popular and the elite culture to overlap (Slotkin 14). Part of the attraction of evil is that “it offers an experience of moral depth which otherwise so often seems lacking in our lives” (Dews 1). It is especially relevant in modern philosophical debates on which Susan Neiman argues that its

1 See Everett Hamner, “Determining Agency: A Postsecular Proposal For Religion and Literature –and Science” (Religion & Literature, Vol. 41, No.3, 2009), 91-98.

16 most pressing issue is not epistemological but evil (5). For Matthew Mutter, the problem of evil has a controversial relation to secularization. Western thinkers have relinquished their

Christian faith due to the needless and uncompensated for evil and suffering in the world. It was an agent of secularization (18). Rationalism, intellectualism and secularization; however, did not put an end to evil nor were they able to explain it leading many to return to religion. It was a challenge to secularization.

Evil cannot be confined to a single meaning. On describing evil, Terry Eagleton said that “the less sense it makes, the more evil it is,” thus, demonstrating the failure of reason to grasp it (9). Like those who found the question when is an object a work of art less intriguing than to question what is art, Jeffrey Sharpless, Jr. proposes that instead of asking what is evil, it is preferable to ask when is evil (5). For theologians, evil is a punishment and the result of the fall (Reginster 236). It is when humans are disgusted with this life and feel homesick for the home they were once expelled from. It is when they are reminded that reason is limited and they cannot see the divine plan; for evil is a form of blessing in disguise. It is also when free will deviates and leads to sin. Moreover, evil is when God tests humans as a way to forge character fit for His kingdom (Eagleton 93; Woudenberg 178). In short, theologians believed, in the words of Pope, that “whatever is, is right” (qtd. in Neiman 37).

The Enlightenment view of the world, as a harmonious whole open only for rational scientific explanation above all other transcendent explanations, unleashed an obsession with evil. For Neiman, theology made the mistake of regarding natural evil and moral evil as the same type which was caused by God (23). She notes that the Lisbon earthquake that startled

Europe in 1755 marked the beginning of secular interpretation of evil. Since an earthquake is a natural disaster, it could not be caused by humans, nor their sins (25). Thus, the “core

Christian beliefs were under attack for their apparent incompatibility with the evil in the world” (Hickson 11). As a solution, the problem of evil was divided into two categories

17 namely natural evil and moral evil. Science, biology and geology were able to provide explanations for natural evils such as diseases and earthquakes. The secular perception of natural evil was successful not only in freeing human intellect from retrograde thinking of humans as depraved but God as well from blame. Secular thought, however, was not able to adequately address the problem of moral evil.

Western intellectuals from Rousseau, Kant to Nietzsche made the problem of moral evil an important issue in their philosophies. Rousseau believed that evil was not the result of the original sin because, for him, expulsion from Eden was punishment enough. He suggests that evil was a collective crime and the natural result of the rise of civilisation (qtd. in

Neiman 46). He suggests that, driven by sexual desire, the primitive man created communities and by the same desire committed crimes, detached himself from others, strived for power and developed technologies (qtd. in Neiman 47-8). As a solution for evil, he proposed education. In his Emile, Rousseau argues that the reversal of civilization is impossible, but through educational psychology conducted away from society children, whom are primitive, can learn to live in the society without causing evil (qtd. in Neiman 48).

The child, Emile, was taught by an adult who created the learning environment. His education, then, cannot be pure enough to prevent him from causing evil (qtd. in Neiman 56).

Another view was proposed by Kant who, influenced by the theodicy of Augustine, argued that moral evil was the result of free choice. He defines evil as a violation of moral law; a violation that occurs whenever moral law is placed second to individual inclination

(Sharpless 14). He believes that choosing to violate moral law is due to its incompatibility with individual maxims or values, and as a solution for evil, he proposes the introduction of universal moral laws (qtd. in Neiman 78). Against Kantian thought, Nietzsche argues that the notions of good, bad and evil are relative. He suggests that moral law is the result of power relations, and, therefore, cannot be universalized (qtd. in Neiman 213; Sharpless 17;

Reginster 26). As an alternative solution for evil, he proposes the abolition of the notion of evil as something bad and proposes to accept it as something necessary (qtd. in Sharpless 15;

Reginster 34). McClure rejects the attempt of philosophy to replace religion in explaining evil. He finds religion has a consoling function which philosophy cannot compensate. The religious language with its semantic content is irreplaceable and provides human beings with a force to bear pain and suffering (337).

5. Conclusion:

In short, to hold the secular as a concept exclusive of religion is erroneous and the result of a discredited secularisation thesis. Despite its flaws, the thesis had a great influence on the field of the literary studies. To correct this mistake and avoid reductionist secular readings of literature, reengagement with the religious is necessary. Post-secularism in literary studies allows the deconstruction of the binary opposition and enhances the literary experience. However, the insistence on focusing solely on the dichotomy can run the risk of maintaining it. A possible solution is the introduction of a third element as a mediator between the religious and the secular. The brief account on evil demonstrated the secular scholar have tried to account for evil without reference to transcendence. Their attempts, as it is argued in the coming chapters, are not satisfactory.

Chapter Two:

Affirmation of Life in Demian

James Wood identifies modern fiction and the modern novel specifically as “the true secularism of fiction—why, despite its being a kind of magic, it is actually the enemy of superstition, the slayer of religions, the scrutineer of falsity” (qtd. in Singh 3). However, this view is reductive and overlooks the complexity that characterises the modern exploration of religion. Indeed, the exploration of religion and secularism in modern novel is ambivalent.

Hemann Hesse’s novel Demian (1919) exemplifies such ambivalence in its treatment of evil.

The novel has won great recognition and fame in the United States. The brief section on the

Biography of Hesse demonstrates that the novel is the direct result of a wartime conscience.

Demian brought great relief to the youth who were deeply traumatized by the war

(Ziolkowski, “Celebration” 60). It was influential because it evaluates both spiritual and secular treatment of the problem of evil. This chapter analyses secularism in the light of the post-secular in the novel Demian, as well as a critical analysis of the problem of evil relying on hermeneutical and symbolic reading of the novel.

1. A Brief Biography of Hermann Hesse:

The background of the author is usually of little importance in the analysis of the works of literature. Yet, a short account on the life of Hermann Hesse is helpful because, as many critics have argued, all of his works are autobiographical (Diamond 69; Krapp 10;

Gowan 225; Jehle 43). Hesse was born on July 2, 1877 in Calw in the Black Forest of

Württemberg, Germany. He underwent a strict upbringing under his pious parents who were also missionaries. At the age of thirteen, Hesse was sent to a monastic school in Maulbronn to become a theologian but he ran away in order to become a poet (Hill 146). Horrified, his parents took him to be exorcised. Unable to heal his faith, they reluctantly accepted his choice. For Hesse, this experience was traumatic, and marked the first crack of many in his religious faith (Hill 147). Before achieving his first success, he has successively moved from one vocation to another, unable to settle down. He worked as a merchant’s apprentice, as the assistant of his father at a publishing house, at a mechanical shop, as a clock-work factory worker, and as a bookseller (Hesse “Life” 7-8). Upon his first literary success, he got married and settled down. It was not long before came a period of suffering in his life. At the age of forty, his was on the verge of collapsing. His son was dangerously sick, his wife became mentally ill, his father died, and the First World War erupted (Hill 148). On his suffering, he commented that “this strange existence that seemed to, really, bring me only pain, disillusionment, and loss” (“Life” 12). Moreover, during this period, he was abandoned by his country and called a traitor because he did not approve of the war. For Hesse, the war was

“something no human being and no god had a right to do” (“Life” 11). During this period of crisis, he was obsessed “with suffering” (Hesse “Life” 12). The result of his meditations on evil was his novel Demian written in 1917 and published in 1919 under the pseudonym of

Emil Sinclair.

2. Demian (1919):

Demian is a first-person narrated Bildungsroman. The Bildungsroman, or novel of self-education, is a genre that follows the development of the protagonist in what Mikhail

Bakhtin calls “the image of man in the process of becoming” (qtd. in Jeffers 2). The term

Bildungsroman was first used by Karl Morgenstern in the 1820s. For Morgenstern, it was a genre that depicted “the Bildung [meaning education]of the hero in its beginnings and growth

to a certain stage of completeness” (qtd. in Jeffers 49). The term was later brought to prominence by Wilhelm Dilthey who described it as the tracing of a “legitimate course” of the growth of an individual through different and valuable stages which represented building blocks for “a higher stage,” (qtd. in Jeffers 49). Susanne Howe describes it as the process by which:

The adolescent hero … sets out on his way through the world, meets with reverses

usually due to his own temperament, falls in with various guides and counsellors,

makes many false starts in choosing his friends, his wife, and his life work, and finally

adjusts himself in some way to the demands of his time and environment by finding a

sphere of action in which he may work effectively. . . .Needless to say, the variations

of it are endless. (qtd. in Jeffers 49)

The journey of self-cultivation, as depicted in the Bildungsroman, is a secular project, but it, nevertheless, goes through stages of sin, fall, guidance, revelation and rebirth which are religious in nature. The form of the Bildungsroman allows thus a post-secular reading that combines both the religious and the secular sensibilities.

Demian follows the life of the protagonist Emil Sinclair as he navigates through his youth. During his early childhood, Sinclair thought he lived in a world of ‘light’, of bourgeoisie and pietism. Even though he was aware that there was evil in the world, he did not experience the ‘other’ world directly himself. Sinclair often felt and resisted the tempting call of the ‘other’ world which, for him, was both intimidating and attractive. The distinct division between good and evil created harmony in the life of 10 year-old Sinclair, but it was shattered when he got involved with an older boy from the ‘other’ world. In order to impress him, Sinclair lied about a mischief; he told him that he stole apples from a garden. To get money from Sinclair, Kromer blackmailed him. Unable to pay him because he was not of age to get pocket money, Sinclair lived in torment for weeks as a slave. During this period,

Sinclair was torn between the two worlds, unable to belong to neither. His torment was terminated with the help of Demian.

Demian was both a mentor and an ideal to Sinclair. He taught him how to look at life, and especially evil, differently. With Demian, Sinclair learned that he can aspire to a life where there was both the good and the evil. However, in order to live that life, Sinclair had to relinquish his religious beliefs; something he was not yet ready to do. Sinclair parted ways with Demian, confessed to his parents, and, like the Prodigal Son, returned to the world of

‘light’.

During adolescence, Sinclair once again confronted with evil; however, this time it is not a temptation from the outside, but rather from the inside. Puberty awaken sexuality, an urge that is for his world of ‘light’ an evil and a shame. Sinclair realizes that there is not escape from evil whether from within or without. During this existential crisis, he encounters

Demian again, and with his help goes through a process of individuation and self-realization in order to affirm life to the fullest and make peace with the evils of his fate.

During his journey towards the self, Sinclair encounters many symbolic figures such as Beatrice, Pistorus, Knauer, and Frau Eva. All of them in their way help Sinclair address an aspect of the self, life and evil. Unity of the self and harmony in life is then encountered when he is able to ascend to Abraxas, a Gnostic God, that unites both good and evil. His newfound religious life, however, is disrupted with the outbreak of the First World War, the most horrible of evils, and the death of Demian.

The setting in Demian is often symbolic, otherwise irrelevant and unworthy of naming. The different locations represent stages of his life. While presented in a narrative continuity, time is chronologically uncertain. It is also, as Lawson asserts “well adapted to the subtle and effective expression of a philosophy” (54). Indeed, time is also symbolic and reflects the different stages and changing attitudes of the protagonist. The theme of Demian

23 is a quest for the self, destiny and affirmation of life through struggle with evil. Indeed,

Sinclair declares that all he wants to do “was try to live the life that was inside (D 67). But it is difficult because of the problem of evil that is a constant obstacle. The narrator is also the protagonist, a young adult who, from the point of view of his adult self, reflects on his life.

The two first chapters represent his childhood self, followed by adolescence in the three following chapters, and adulthood in the last two chapters.

3. Religious Symbolism:

Demian deals explicitly with the problem of evil. In order to make sense of evil, both within and without, the protagonist uses biblical and Gnostic symbolism. The novel offers itself to a hermeneutical reading:

For the theory of the hermeneutic circle is not restricted to the relationship of parts to

the whole within the work. Indeed, it insists on seeking the total work, in turn, as

simply an aspect of the cultural consciousness that produced it. The work can be

understood fully only as an expression of the greater whole, just as that whole can be

grasped only to the extent that it incorporates many individual works. (Ziolkowski,

“religion” 24)

The whole, for sake of this research, does not lie outside the novel in an attempt to identify the attitudes of the author to religion. Due to the intentional fallacy, the beliefs of the author cannot be known. The whole is the narrative progression towards closure and the parts are the symbols. The meaning of symbols is inferred from the whole, and the whole is built with its parts.

Gnosticism is a form of Christian heresy that appeared throughout history in numerous and different Gnostic sects. Demian draws mainly from Manicheans and Basilides

24 systems of belief. Mani, the founder of the Manichean sect, believed that God could not have created this world without a cause. Mani argued that the world was created by two beings.

God, who represented good, created the spirit and a corrupt substance, which represented evil, created the body. For Manicheans being, or the body with its mechanisms and desires, was evil while the soul was good (McBrayer and Howard-Snyder 8). Similar dualistic belief is found in Basilides thought. For them, Abraxas is the creator God in whom both evil and good are united. For both Gnostic systems of belief, salvation is attained through gnosis.

Gnosis is a process of individuation aimed at attaining knowledge of the self because it is through the self that an individual can attain knowledge of God.

Demian relies on these Gnostic beliefs presumably because, as it is proposed by P.

Justin McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder, Judeo-Christianity does not deal convincingly with the problem of evil (xii). Sinclair, the protagonist, in his interpretation and coming to terms with evil, moves from Christianity to Gnosticism. Robert Galbreath distinguishes the modern treatment of Gnosticism, as exemplified in modernist novels and specifically in

Demian, with the ancient. He finds that “although the novels are significantly gnostic, their tone and ambiance, as well as the conclusions which emerge from them, are quite different from those of early Gnosticism” (24). He informs that gnosis is problematic for modernists because, unlike ancient Gnostics, they have a hard time to believe their gnosis enables them to reach God. Accordingly, modernists cannot distinguish between a transcendent state and

“falling into delusion, mental disorder, and the demonic” (25). Moreover, Hesse uses the

Gnostic God, not as an alternative for the Biblical God, but as symbol to understand him and come in terms with evil.

4. Evil in Demian (1919):

Demian begins with Sinclair reminiscing a state of harmony in his childhood. At this stage, he belongs entirely to the world of light, and is aware of the closeness of evil. For him, the world of light represents “forgiveness and good resolutions, love and respect, wisdom and

Biblical proverbs” while the ‘dark’ world represents “ghost stories and scandalous rumors, a richly coloured flood of monstrous, tempting, frightening, mysterious things” (D 3). For

Sinclair, the ‘other’ world is tempting, beautiful and horrible. Both worlds are binary opposites; religion requires a state of purity and ragards everything that could distract from piety with suspicion. Schopenhauer thought that such a life was boring and that evil was needed to make it interesting (qtd. in Neiman 197). This view was shared by Sinclair who found living in the other world more interesting. Unable to live there himself, he often read stories of prodigal sons who left the world of ‘light’, and wondered what it would it become of them if they did not return (D 7-8).

The parents of the ten-year old Sinclair wanted him to become a theologian. At first, Sinclair is compliant and reflects conservative Evangelical beliefs and attitudes:

My sisters were also part of the brightly-lit world. I often felt they were naturally

more like Father and Mother than I was—more well-behaved, more perfect, better.

They had their faults, and bad habits, but ones that never ran very deep, I felt. Not like

with me, where any contact with evil was so painful and difficult, and where the dark

world seemed to lie so much closer. (D 8)

This passage is resonant with the doctrine of predestination. For John Calvin (1509–1564),

God predestined certain chosen people for salvation and the others for damnation (qtd. in

Hickson 11). Sinclair, thus, believes that his sister, like his parents, are chosen by God. But, unlike them, he is not confident in being chosen. Out of fear, Sinclair denies his attraction to the ‘dark’ world because he does not want to be damned. Thus, he is tormented and torn

26 between the two worlds. One day, Sinclair makes the acquaintance of Kromer, an older boy from the ‘other’ world’. To be accepted by Kromer, Sinclair lies and boasts about steeling apples in a garden (D 9). Out of resentment toward the bourgeoisie class to which Sinclair belonged, Kromer torments and blackmails Sinclair who feels that now, after his deed, belongs completely to the ‘other’ world (D 10) The theft is an allusion to both the fall of

Adam and Eve by sin and to the confessions of Saint Augustine who had a great influence on the theology of John Calvin. For Augustine, evil does not exist. It is free choice that lacks of good, or “privatio boni” (Woudenberg 179). According to this view, by lying, Sinclair commits a sin which is a state of “goodness corrupted but the result of that corruption is not the acquisition of any quality, but loss, [and] absence [of goodness]” (Home 40). Augustine suggests that humans are either good or evil. Due to his lack of goodness, Sinclair is not allowed to be part of the world of ‘light’ and is unable to pray, for he “no longer had any right to pray” (D 16). There is no escape from suffering for him. Evangelical religion for

Sinclair is, thus, an unattainable choice between either the world of ‘light’ or the world of

‘evil’.

Sinclair is saved from his tormentor by Demian. It seemed as though Demian was a

“voice that could just as well have come from within”, a voice “that knew everything, better and more clearly” than he knows himself. For Sinclair, Demian is both the symbol of the ideal inner self and fate, or meaning of life. These two traits are necessary elements for the fulfilled life to which Sinclair aspires. Conversations with Demian can then be seen as conversations with his possible future self and fate. Also, Sinclair testifies that “fate and character are different names for the same idea” (D 60). Joseph Mileck argues that the name

Demian was inspired by the Greek word “daimon.” A term used by Socrates to refer to his advising inner voice and his guiding spirit (171). In other Greek thoughts “daimon” is fate, or destiny, which can either be good or evil. Heraclitus says that “a man’s character (spirit) is

his fate (daimon)” (qtd. in Newton 522). On the surface, Heraclitus suggests that fate is determined by spirit, or self, and by shaping the self the individual can shape his fate. But on a deeper level, it is a formula for a way of life (Punsly 14). The spirit is the ideal self. It is not a state of being but a state of becoming. Thus, destiny is a process of becoming. This idea is resonant in the works of Nietzsche and is presented in his philosophy of “amor fati,” or the love of fate (Reginster 207).

Loving fate requires loving the process of becoming with all its influencing elements, including evil. For Nietzsche, evil is needed for there to be good. His ideas may seem consistent with Christian theology; however, unlike Christianity, he offers not to bear or conceal evil behind a hope for goodness, but rather her offers to love evil for its sake

(Reginster 233). To achieve ‘amor fati’, Nietzsche proposes that one must attain a position beyond good and evil. In order to reach this state one must abolish the preconceived ideas of good and evil. He believes that both concepts are the result of power hierarchies. The upper nobles, holding all the power, decide the ‘good’, while the slaves, out of envy and resentment, for life is always resistant to their hopes and desires, decide that all which leads to suffering is ‘evil’ (Jeffers 17). The notions of good and evil are, therefore, relative, determined by perspective, and not fixed categories outlined by religion. Evil is not the disease of life, but rather it is discourse that inflict life with suffering (Jeffers 18).These views are important in understanding the position that Sinclair takes towards religion. For in religious framework, evil, both within and without, causes him to suffer, to hate himself and his fate. To affirm life, the philosophy of Nietzsche seems an attractive solution.

Sinclair and Demian explore the possibility of Nietzsche’s philosophy. While walking home with Sinclair, Demian asks him what he thinks about the biblical myth of Cain and

Abel. 2 Sinclair replies that he has never really questioned the myth, suggesting that the stories of the Bible are treated a given. To his answer, Demian informs him that the story can be interpreted differently from the perspective of Christian dogmas (D 21). For Demian, the

Christian interpretation is not satisfactory and suggested that:

the mark came first: that’s where the story started. There once was a man with

something in his face that frightened people. They were afraid to lay a hand on him,

or his children; they were awed ... [The mark] must have been something uncanny,

almost imperceptible: a little more spiritual … This man had power, and others were

afraid of that power. He was ‘marked.’ They could explain it however they wanted,

and ‘they’ always want what’s easy and comforting and puts them in the right. (D 22)

Demian clearly demonstrates a Nietzchean reading of the myth of Cain. He suggests that

Cain is found evil because people are afraid of him, that it is not the truth but a relative perspective. It can be noted that even though the interpretation that Demian gives rejects

Christian morality, it does not reject the truth of the biblical story. His attitude is consitant in the entire novel; he urges Sinclair to reject the Christian doctrines, but not belief in God. It can also be noted that good and evil are not abolished but rather inverted (Punsly 22). Cain becomes good while the others who accuse him of evil become bad. At this stage of his life,

Sinclair is attracted by secular interpretations of evil and the meaning of life, but he is still attached to his religion. He only wants his religion to accept his dark side and not make him depraved. Demian is thus an unattainable ideal for the ten-year old Sinclair. It may be one of the reasons why Demian is presented as an older boy in an upper school grade. After being released from the clutches of Kromer, he retreats to the “paradise lost” of his parents by way

2 The first death in human history was a case of murder. “Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve … came to murder his brother Abel … through envy” because his sacrifice was better accepted by God. As a result Cain had to bear the stigma of his deed, a mark of sin and evil. “Cain and Abel, Allusion of.” (The Facts On File Dictionary of Classical and Biblical Allusions, edited by Martin H. Manser Facts, On File, Inc., 2003), 57.

29 of confession and avoids Demian (D 32). This can be interpreted as Sinclair being too young to understand his fate or his inner self. Demian, however, is not gone. He is always in the background, and Sinclair is constantly aware of his pressuring presence. The link between the infantile regression stage of Sinclair with the return to paradise suggest that, in Freudian terms, religion is an infantile, or primitive, need that cannot satisfy the needs of the conscious man (Mills 23; Jacoby 7). Because Sinclair is still a child, he is able to be satisfied for a short period with religion.

After childhood, adolescence announces “‘dark world,’ the ‘other world,’ was back”.

This time, evil is not from without, as it has been with Kromer, but from within. Evil is no longer a mere attraction to the ‘other’ world; it is deeply embedded in the flesh, a possessing need. For Sinclair, religion is, again, unsatisfying in the treatment of the sexual drive which is treated as taboo fit for the ‘other’ world. Frustrated by his parents who have done their best to help him deny and repress his urges in order to keep him in the childhood stage; he suffers.

For Sinclair, “desperately hanging on to the irretrievable past and clinging to the dream of a paradise lost— [is] the worst and most deadly of all dreams”. Sinclair describes his desires as

“primal drive” (D 35-6). He is inclined to refer, yet again, to secular interpretations in order to deal with this form of inner evil. Jon Mills argues that evil is not only the result of bad intentions, but is also imbedded in the human unconscious structure. He finds that

“primordial, ontological violence [is] in the very masonry of the human psyche” (33). The fact that humans do not engage in evil is the result of reason and the strength of consciousness; yet, consciousness does not change the inner structure, rather evil is always present even if not exteriorized (34).Moreover, Mills find that the religious beliefs are infantile because the idea that humans are born good and are corrupted into sin by natural desires is illogic (43). Since the desire is natural and human nature is good; then desires are good. For Jung, the aim of psychoanalysis is to reveal and embrace the ‘evil’ within through a

30 process of individuation (McGrath 55). Like gnosis, individuation is the process of transforming humans into higher beings by achieving a state of inner harmony. The difference, however, is that gnosis is a religious process that aims at reaching affinity with

God, as a form of worship, while individuation is a secular process that aims to worship the self (Galbreath 35). Sinclair, again, rejects the secular solution of evil as proposed by Jungian analysis in the form of individuation.

During this period of crisis, Demian returns to Sinclair’s side. He goes to the same class as he and sits next to him. It is later revealed that it is his mother who wills Demian to stay behind in class (D 38). His mother is the symbolic personification of life; her symbolism is further explained later in this section. This symbolic gesture can be interpreted as the readiness of Sinclair to engage his fate and begin the process of individuation. Indeed, it happens that by coincidence, the teacher at school mentions the story of Cain and Abel. This time Sinclair accepts the voice of Demian; he declares that “what he was teaching was not how it really was, that it was possible to look at it differently, that criticism was possible” (D

38). It is important to note that it is criticism that Sinclair allows and not the rejection of religion as a whole. The new knowledge that Demian introduces to Sinclair this time is that humans are not free; they are bound by these desires and needs. This notion alludes to the philosophies of Will introduced by both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. For Schopenhauer, there is no escape from evil in the world. He argues that life is a state of suffering caused by needs and desires which demand to be fulfilled. But the needs are never-ending and therefore the suffering is permanent. Such a realization brings nihilism and despair. 3 To overcome this state one must negate his will and live like a hermit desiring nothing (qtd. in Reginster 11).

Nietzsche criticised the philosophy of Schopenhauer describing it as a negation of life. That it

3 Nihilism is a form of despair. “In its broadest description, nihilism is the belief that existence is meaningless.” The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Bernard Reginster, Harvard University Press, 2006), 2.

31 is less worth living that a Christian life in which suffering is at least compensated. As an alternative, he proposes the philosophy of the yes-saying with and the will to power (Punsly

15). Nietzsche believes that asceticism whether compensated for or not is not a life worth living. He argues that a better life can be achieved by saying yes to life and willing to achieve all desires. But since desires are never-ending and their achievement is not enough, one must not will to achieve desires but rather to challenge life. In the process of becoming, one should not strive to fulfil desires, but to suffer and overcome suffering (qtd. in Reginster 12).

Sinclair adopts this Nietzschean secular mode of living. He says yes to all his desires, unleashes completely his dark side and wills to suffer. Demian is absent in this experiment which hints to the coming failure of this experiment. With the help of an eighteen-year old youth, Sinclair is initiated to the ‘dark’ world with its alcohol and women:

My first binge was soon only the first of many. A lot of drinking and running wild went

on in our school, and I was one of the very youngest students to join in; before long I

was no longer merely a tolerated novice but a ringleader, a star of the scene: a

notorious, reckless barfly. Once again I belonged entirely to the dark world—to the

devil—and in that world I was considered a splendid fellow. (D 53)

Sinclair listens to all his desires and wills the will to power. During this period, he experiences much of the dark world except sex. For despite his urges and the availability of opportunities, Sinclair respects women, and more importantly, love. Saying yes to life; however, just as in the secular asceticism of Schopenhauer, leads to nihilism because both philosophies are devoid of real meaning in life.

Sinclair is unhappy, life is meaningless and he hates himself. His return to the world of ‘light’ is not possible because he feels too tainted by sin to be allowed to return. He is saved; however, by the love for a girl he sees in the park. He names the girl Beatrice, an

32 allusion to Dante. Like in the Divine Comedy, the love of Beatrice is not physical, but spiritual because she symbolizes the love of God and the purgation from sin (Benfell 152).

For Sinclair, “this cult of Beatrice completely changed my life. From one day to the next, the premature cynic had become an acolyte with only one goal: to become a saint” (D 57).

Sinclair is back in the world of light and swears to never return to the world of darkness, again rejecting the dark side. He dedicates an altar to Beatrice and tries to paint her face.

After numerous trials the face of Beatrice becomes the face of Demian whom he now misses greatly. He tries to reach him but in vain. His desperation and longing to unite with his inner self and destiny brings back the suffering, and Beatrice can no longer keep the darkness away. During this period Sinclair wavers between madness and sanity. It is a dream that brings him out of this state. Sinclair dreams of a bird breaking out of an egg. Demian forces him to eat the bird, and the bird eats him from within. The dream symbolizes the rebirth of the self after death and a new beginning. As soon as he wakes up, Sinclair paints his dream and sends it to Demian’s old address in the hope that it will reach him and that they will reunite again. The next day, Sinclair receives a message from Demian: “the bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy a world.

The bird flies to god. The god is called Abraxas” (D 71). Symbolically in order to reunite with his inner self and his fate, Sinclair must destroy the pious world of his parents and embrace Abraxas, a God that unites both good and evil. He does not meet Demian, but he has hope.

One day Sinclair walks by a church and hears a music that appeals to both his dark and light side. As he stands astonished that a church could still hold meaning for him, he meets the musician. Pistorius is a former theologian student who became an organist. In the author’s life, he is the psychologist of Hermann Hesse (Mileck 172).They become friends, and Pistorius teaches Sinclair about Abraxas. Like Demian, Pistorus becomes a mentor for

Sinclair, but unlike Demian he does not teach him anything new. He helps him bring the dark side to consciousness and to control it. Sinclair has another dream in which the bird manages to break the egg and learns to fly and control his flying with breath. The dream symbolizes the new control Sinclair gains over life.

The summer before the start of his University studies, Sinclair has learned to live with evil in the world through. Accordingly, he and Demian finally reunite. Sinclair was able to embrace evil because of Abraxas. In another dream, Sinclair heard the voice of an angel saying “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (D 82). He interprete it as God’s bless.

Abraxas is, therefore, not a Gnostic God, but rather the biblical God freed from the Christian dogmas. Satisfied with the progress of Sinclair, Demian introduces him to his mother Frau

Eva. Sinclair feels both sensual and spiritual love for her. Like her name suggests, she symbolizes Life. Frau in Hebrew means life, and Eva is the mother of humankind (Mileck

173). He is able to affirm life through love and spirituality, but not for long; the First World

War breaks out. Before he dies in war, Demian reassures Sinclair that if he may need him

“again someday, against Kromer or something else,” he will not come because he is already within. By knowing himself, his fate and reaching Abraxas, Sinclair is able to reach a better harmony than the one he has lived in his “paradise lost.”

5. Conclusion:

Throughout the novel, Sinclair vacillates between the worlds of ‘light’ and ‘darkness.’

This binary way of life was imposed by religion. His inability to reconcile both worlds and the inflexibility of his religion torments him. He is then compelled to seek a way to come in terms with evil without losing his self. Sinclair explores both religious and secular interpretations of evil such Augustinian theology, Calvinism, Nietcheanism, psychoanalysis, and Gnosticism. The solution that enables him to find peace in life is a form of abstract

34 religion that emphasises inner faith rather than doctrine. Evil through this process is both an agent and challenge to secularism; it both undermines and liberates religion.

Chapter Three

Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Secularism

Wallace Stevens wrote in 1902, that the “the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself, the mysterious callings of nature and our responses” (qtd. in

Pohl 86). For Stevens, the secular world served, through challenge, to affirm his faith. But with time he grew more disenchanted with religion, and his position became decidedly more secular. His secular stand is nonetheless rather problematic. Indeed, his poetry registers his vacillating temper between the religious and the secular which may be the result of his passion for life and his religious upbringing. This chapter begins by demonstrating the

Stevens’ ambivalence regarding religion through the analysis of his poem, “Sunday

Morning.” But since, as it has been argued in the first chapter, a dialectic reading runs the risk of maintaining the dichotomy, the second section deals with the notion of evil as a challenge to secularism.

1 Post-Secularism in the Poetry of Stevens:

Wallace Stevens did not merely accept the secularization thesis and the death of God as a given, he rather explored the implications and limitations of a complete secular life. For

Stevens:

The major poetic idea in the world is and always has been the idea of God. One of

the visible movements of the modern imagination is the movement away from the

idea of God. The poetry that created the idea of God will either adapt it to our

different intelligence, or create a substitute for it, or make it unnecessary. These

alternatives probably mean the same thing. (qtd. in Mutter 5)

Stevens presumes that God is a myth created through poetry. He suggests three ways to secularise poetry, namely adaptation, substitution, and removal. With adaptation religious ideas are revised in a secular framework while retaining their transcendent referent as the example of psychoanalysis in the first chapter. In substitution, the transcendent referent is replaced with a secular one such as when Stevens, like Matthew Arnold, chooses poetry, or

‘supreme fiction’ as a substitute for Religion (Mildenberg 82). Removal is a solution proposed by Nietzsche for whom adaptation and substitution leave a vacancy in which religion can return (Reginster 41). These approaches reflect Stevens’ perception of the sublime. Stephen Sicari argues that the religious dogmas and rituals worked to bring the sublime from heavens to earth. With the disenchantment of the world and the loss of credibility in religious dogmas, a new vehicle must be generated because a desire for

“something sublime from above remains;” the return to earth does not negate transcendence or the need for it. It makes the sublime part of the human environment “and this is the principle of the Eucharist” (203). In other words, Sicari argues that the solutions proposed by

Stevens are in essence theological ones.

“Sunday Morning” is one of his most famous poems. The poem comes in an eight stanzas, each self-contained and in exactly fifteen lines, blank verse in perfect iambic pentameters. It is a poem in the form of a dialogue between a third-person male narrator and a woman on whose thoughts and attitudes he comments. For Matthew Mutter, this poem is one of the most famous “anti-Christian poetry in literary history” (3). Against this attitude, Joy

Pohl argues that to read “Sunday Morning” as an atheist declaration contradicts the attitude of

Stevens to which the works produced contemporaneously and onward have been characterised with ambivalence toward religion (83). Certainly, this poem begins with and favours a secular position, yet it does not sustain it; it even demonstrates its failure.

It is important to note, relating to the focus of this research, that this poem was first published in 1915. Like “Esthétique du Mal”, it is the product of wartime consciousness plagued with the shadow of death which secular though cannot compensate. James

Longenbach suggests that it may be viewed as an exploration of Freudian conception of wartime consciousness which gives life “its full significance” (“Stevens” 74).

The title, “Sunday Morning,” as Eleanor Cook proposes, is open to a religion and a secular reading. It represents both the Sabbath and the day of the Sun (64). The poem begins with a secular position:

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. (CP 66-7)

The poem starts with the male speaker describing a woman who is declaring her independence by not going to church, hence rejecting religion. In sensual imagery, she meditates complacently on her secular life for which she has chosen her “cockatoo” as symbol. Stevens substitutes religious symbols for Secular ones. The birds, religious symbols and mediator between man and the divinity (CP 66), become secularised. The woman contemplating the bird finds freedom and commodities enough “to dissipate / the holly hush of ancient sacrifice” (CP 67). In a dream, however, she is taken on the wings of her parrot to

Palestine where she feels the pressure of “that old catastrophe” and contemplates the crucifixion (CP 67). What gives her pleasure in her secular life becomes “things in some procession of the dead” (CP 67). Thus, without going to church, she makes her own Sabbath

(Hobsbaun 424). In the second stanza, the male speaker protests at her return to religion, and asks “why should she give her bounty to the dead?” who can only come in a dream (CP 67).

He reinterprets Sunday in secular terms, and reminds her that the sun and the “beauty of the earth” in all its aspects can as well be cherished like the heavens (CP 67). The male speaker furthers his argument in the third stanza. He weighs the narratives of both paganism and

Christianity, and then rejects them both. The heaven is no more but a mere sky. Pain and happiness are better thought of as part of nature, instead of being from an “indifferent” divinity (CP 67). In the fourth stanza, the woman half pleased explores the possibility of a complete secular life. She finds freedom pleasant and sweet. But when death arrives, without a Christian paradise or a Pagan underworld, she finds no permanent home for the spirit that can outlast or resist nature’s mutation. To her inquiry the male speaker reminds, as noted by

Longenbach, that religious myths are ephemeral and that only “April’s green” of nature will last (“Stevens” 72). In the fifth stanza, to her “need of some imperishable bliss,” the make speaker assures that “death is the mother of beauty,” and that it is with death that life gains meaning (CP 68). Cook reminds us that the “Willow” tree is a symbol of both death and unrequited love (64). The symbol is used to convey some dark aspects of death before giving more positive aspects in the following stanza. Indeed, death brings sorrow and separates loved ones, but it is this sense of finitude that moves the world, as it is demonstrated in the sixth stanza. In the seventh stanza, the woman “voyeuristically watches pagan sensuality and orgiastic Dionysian behaviour from a steep icy peak of social eliticism” (Longenbach,

“Stevens” 74). This stanza demonstrates the absurdity of the speaker’s worship of nature. The

“hyperbolic chants” of the primitive men who lived in harmony with nature do not demonstrate “hedonism” but “depression” because nature, for them was not enough

(Longenbach, “Stevens” 74). In the last stanza, the pigeons, which Cook regards as symbols of the Holy Spirit, fly casually with spontaneous cries which suggest the absence of design and purpose. The male is still not convinced. For him, there is no God; Jesus “lay” and

Palestine is just a “tomb” (CP 70). Yet, his description of life is no longer positive but dark and meaningless (Pohl 85).

In short, “Sunday Morning” which was read as a celebration of secular life is in fact a poem about the failure of secular vision to affirm life without reference to transcendence. It expresses a sense of sublime complacency found in a secular mode of life, yet it is rendered futile by the inevitability of death. Indeed, the shadow of death is present and disturbs both characters. The male speaker has tried to naturalise and accept death, but without religious compensation he was compelled to accept the futility of life. Death urges them to seek a deeper meaning to their life than that of the fulfilment of their desires. Because such life has been experienced by the primitive man and it did not suffice him. “Sunday Morning” is, thus, a poem about the failure of humans to create meaning, or a “vision,” outside the scope of religion (Pohl 84).

2. “Esthétique du Mal”:

In 1944, a soldier wrote to The Kenyon Review that contemporary poetry was

“lamentable in many ways because it was cut off from pain.” To the request of the soldier,

Stevens wrote to John Crowe Ransom that what interested him was a “letter from one of your correspondents about the relationship between poetry and what he called pain. Whatever he may mean, it might be interesting to try to do an esthétique du mal” (Longenbach, Plain 238).

“Esthétique du Mal,” however, is more than a mere reply to the desire of the soldier for poetry about pain. Indeed, evil has been a major topic in Stevens’ poetry since “Sunday

Morning” (Longenbach, “Stevens” 84). Stevens, in an undated statement wrote that it could be regarded as “the measure of civilization” (qtd. in Chittick 176). He probably means that through his poem the solutions that civilisation proposed for evil would be evaluated.

“Esthétique du Mal” does not aim to vanquish evil through poetry or compensate for it aesthetically but to explore the limits of secular perception.

“Esthétique du Mal” is a long poem of fifteen cantos. Many scholars, like Matthew

Mutter, wrongly regard the poem as an inconsistent collage of renewed attack on the problem of evil (114). In contrast Dinnah Pladott argues that the cantos could be grouped into groups each of which discusses similar themes. For Pladott, the first two cantos position the argument of the poem in context. The third and the forth expose the futility of evading evil.

The fifth is a celebration of love. The sixth and the seventh celebrate the imperfection and the importance of timeless art in absorbing evil. The eighth and the ninth deal with the dangers of the negation. The remaining cantos are evaluations of secular approaches to evil (67).

“Ethétique du Mal” also follows a thematic thread that links the cantos with repetition. This repetition is not reductive because each repeated notion is repeated innovatively each time.

The notion of evil is discussed in relation to other notions which are mostly secular like art for example.

Stevens explained the choice of the title “Esthétique du Mal” in a letter to John Crowe

Ransom; he stated that “aesthetics” equated “aperçu,” meaning insight, or vision, and Mal, when translated from French, means both evil and pain (Chittick189). Thus “Esthétique du

Mal” is his exploration of secular vision on evil. Weinfield argues that throughout the poem,

Stevens challenges in philosophical dialogue the thoughts of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and

Schopenhauer among others (27). Indeed, Stevens explores the secular sentimentalist ideas of

Baudelaire, the yes-saying and nihilism of Nietzsche, and the ascetic nihilism of

Schopenhauer and other secular views.

“The first two cantos prepare the reader for a quest for meaning” (Pladott 69). The first canto describes the perception of evil from the point of view of an unknown protagonist:

He was at Naples writing letters home And, between his letters, reading paragraphs On the sublime. Vesuvius had groaned For a month. It was pleasant to be sitting there, While the sultriest fulgurations, flickering, Cast comers in the glass. He could describe The terror of the sound because the sound Was ancient. (CP 313-4)

Eleanor Cook argues that the “He” is a reference to the soldier. But since the protagonist contemplates evil from a detached position; he cannot be the soldier who is looking for poetry that engages evil, but rather he could be the poet of whom the soldier complained. The protagonist perceives evil as remote in space, evil was in “another ether,” and in time, it “was ancient” (314).Weinfield describes the language of Stevens in the first stanza as a pain remedy, “In other words, at the same time as the sublime is invoked, it is distanced—or sublimated—by comic irony” (29). Moreover, to meditate on evil, he relies on literature as if he were a student making a research. There is no emotional or physical involvement with evil except in the form of a distant death which awaits at the end of life or as hunger when time for lunch approaches. In the second canto, he becomes aware of the urgency of evil. The presence of acacias, symbol of duality between good and evil, in proximity afflicts his sleep

(Steven 13). Because “pain is human” and because “pain is indifferent to the sky,” he realizes that his detachment is the cause of his suffering and that the he needs to engage evil (CP

314).The canto concludes with a statement that foreshadows the coming cantos.

The third and forth cantos both break the maxim; the third evades evil with a secular break from religion and the fourth through aesthetic sentimentalism. The second cantos concluded with lamenting the human rejection of Christianity which “saves” in the end. The third canto is in the form of tercets evoking the terza rima of Dante which implies a secular

42 challenge to the transcendent (Mutter 119). Indeed, by associating evil with hell and Satan, religion gave an explanation to evil. But with secularization, “heaven and hell / are one” (CP

315). Also, the secular world is described as “terra infidel” for its resistance to human flourishing with suffering (CP 315). The voice of the poem blames anthropomorphism for the alienation of God who is “not to be distinguished when we cry” (CP 315).In a Nietzschean reading, Pladott argues that when God became human out of sympathy, relieved “from woe both great / and small” and became “a constant fellow of destiny;” humans were made weak and created an “uncourageous genesis” (70). The result of which was a rebellion against God and the creation of a secular world that “might be enough” (CP 315). But as the use of “as if” in the concluding tercet: “as if hell, so modifies, had disappeared / as if pain, no longer satanic mimicry, / could be born, as if we were sure to find our way”, suggests that secularism is not enough (CP 316). “Having now committed himself to a Nietzschean orientation in which the theological underpinnings for ethical constructs have been stripped away, Stevens faces the danger of succumbing to sentimentality and triviality” which he addresses in the fourth canto (Weinfield32). From the first line, and the use of the letter B in the third, it can be assumed that the sentimentalist is Baudelaire. The sentimentalist is described as someone satisfied with generalities and abstraction (Pladott 70). The repetition of the word transparent suggests that he is unable to go beyond the sensory perception. But the artist, who saves the rose from being generalized as a mere flower, like it has been done by the sentimentalist, is found to be no better because he substitutes the “nakedest passion for barefoot / Philanderin” (CP 316). Art and Sentimentalism are, thus concluded to be inappropriate visions to engage with evil. They both fail to recognize the evil within and only project it in nature.

The fifth Canto is “hymn to human love, as a form of comfort. Stevens returns to a sense of the sublime, this time as seen in human love” (Cook 184). Human love, unlike

divine love, does not require evil to be manifested. It comes “within what we permit, within the actual within the near” (CP 317). This form of love permits to evade and forget “the ai-ai”

(CP 317). Human love also requires self-love which in turn requires the acceptance of the evil within. While love may be seen as an evasion of evil, it actually requires facing it.

The sixth and seventh cantos emphasize the impossibility of perfection. The former contrasts the tone of the latter. The sixth canto deals with the imperfection of nature in the form of a fable. The speaker mocks “clownish” sun who longs for the moon. They long for reunion in order to reach perfection, but “space is filled with / rejected years” (CP 318). In the same manner, the bird craves perfection and is tireless in his travel to reach a higher transcendent state, but the bird “downwardly revolves” (CP 318). The speaker thus mocks their attempts at perfection when they are threatened by death. The seventh canto is “divided into elegiac quatrains” (Weinfield33). The red rose “that is in the soldier’s wound” was traditionally associated with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but Stevens, as in “Sunday

Morning,” secularised the symbol to mean death and war (Pladott 71). This canto relies on symbolism to evade evil. It tries to displace the horrifying massacres in which “the soldiers

… have fallen red in blood” by glorifying those fallen soldiers in “deathless rest instead of morning them and contemplating the evil of war (CP 319). For Stevens “If all that can be said of the soldier’s wound is that it is like a red, red rose, then clearly something is woefully impoverished in our poetry” (Weinfield34). The reason for the impoverishment of the imagination is found in the next cantos.

The eighth and ninth canto deplore the loss of religion and its impact on the imagination. Both cantos comment each other. While the former deals with theological negation the latter deals with aesthetic negation (Pladott 71). The eighth canto begins with the first tragedy:

The death of Satan was a tragedy For the imagination. A capital Negation destroyed him in his tenement And, with him, many blue phenomena. It was not the end he had foreseen. (CP 319) Rather than the traditional account of the dealing with death of God as a symbol for the loss of religious belief, this poem innovatively laments the death of Satan as a tragedy for the imagination. Satan archetypically is a mythic figure that accounts for the imperfection of the fallen world. He has provided a framework for the experience of evil without which evil and

“many blue phenomena” cannot be explained (CP 319). To the limits of his secular imaginary, “the shaken realist” can but panic “when he sees reality” which is empty and tragic (CP 320).This canto suggests that the movement toward secularism and the rejection of religion created a greater tragedy than the death of Satan. The loss of that framework was a bigger tragedy because humans can now say ‘yes’ to the world “in the full knowledge that it destroys” (Mutter 135). Indeed, as it has been mentioned in the previous chapter, negating life through the secular asceticism of Schopenhauer and the Dionysian life affirmation, or yes saying, of Nietzsche both lead to nihilism. In other words, Satan is necessary element to explain or compensate evil for the imagination. As an extension to the eighth canto, the ninth laments the deprivation of imagination. From the “paradise of meanings” available to it from religion, it is now limited to “what one sees,” “what one hears,” to “one meaning alone” (CP

230). Philip Hobsbaun traces this view to Martin Heidegger who defined the world as matter influenced by perception (424). Accordingly, Secular vision on evil is limited one interpretation only; an interpretation based on subjective perception which is prone to error and limitations. The ninth canto explores a vision “that buffets the shapes of its possible halcyon / against the haggardie” (CP 321). The “halcyon” and “haggardie” are birds that symbolized the opposing notions of light and suffering, or evil, respectively. This canto

45 explores the Nietzschean attempt to solve the relativity of perception by attempting to make a movement beyond good and evil. However, this vision is rejected because humans “require” another chant, another “genesis” to fulfil the “a primitive ecstasy”, for religion is a basic human need (CP 231).

The remaining cantos from ten to fifteen examine possible ways to fulfil the

“primitive ecstacy” (CP 231). The tenth canto through the maternal motif explores the possibility of a return to primitivism. It is “an extended critique of pagan incorporations of pain as forms of ‘nostalgia’—attempts to insert primitive religiosity into a post-Christian setting” (Mutter 128). In this canto, alluding to Jungian psychoanalysis, the scholar is researching his primal collective subconscious to explain evil.4He finds that “his anima liked its animal / and liked it unsubjugated” (CP 231). Like Nietzschean suggestion, this view appeals to the yes-saying side of life, another kind of “Dionysian pleasure in the indistinguishability of suffering and desire” (Mutter 129). The eleventh canto deals explicitly with the war as an evil to end evil. This canto is more violent than its predecessor. For the speaker, evil is inevitable, and concludes that “Life is bitter aspic” (CP 322). He finds the choice of soldiers to fight against evil is hypocrite. He points that the choice of “paratroopers

/ [to] select adieux” is dishonest, for in war there is no heroism or “sacrifice worthy of celebration” (Chittick 179). He suggests that paratroopers have chosen to die as an escape from the reality of evil. Also, the contrasting lines “Natives of poverty, children of malheur, / the gaiety of language is our seigneur,” compel the speaker to admit with bitterness, the unfortunate loss of religion and its discourse of pity and mercy. The twelfth canto explores an empiricist attempt to deal with evil in the world. The scientist “disposes of the world in categories” of “peopled,” or “physical,” and “unpeopled,” or “metaphysical” (CP 323). Both

4 In Jungian psychoanalysis, there is in besides the Freudian personal unconscious, there is a primeval, collective unconscious that shares in the psychic inheritance of a race if not all humanity.A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (Wilfred L. Guerin, etal., Oxford University press, 2005),202.

46 realms deal with certain aspects of human life and can overlap. The speaker explores the possibility of a third world and its consequences for life with evil. It is a world without knowledge of transcendence where people chose to be alone and their will makes “no demands; it “accepts whatever is as true, / Including pain” (CP 323). The speaker concludes that science destroys and that such a world is barren because of the need for love (Cook 188).

The thirteenth canto deals with evil in the world as a generational heritage in the Freudian sense. “It may be that one life is a punishment / for another, as the son’s life for the father's”

(CP 323). For Freud, universal guilt is the result of oedipal repression, but for the speaker, this is “second concern” and “a fragmentary tragedy” because death awaits both the father and the son (CP 324). Death, “this force of nature in action is the major / tragedy” (CP 324).

The fourteenth canto explores the limits of political utopianism as a solution for evil. The speaker argues that a utopian world free from evil is but “logical lunacy” (CP 324). He finds that the politicians create the cause and in their oppression, they force “one meaning” upon the world which is bound to fail, as it has been mentioned earlier. The last canto sums the conclusion of the argument. The speaker admits that “the greatest poverty is not to live / in a physical world” because human love can relieve from evil, but rather it is “to feel that one’s desire / is too difficult to tell from despair”(CP 325). “Although Nietzsche has been the primary philosophical influence on ‘Esthétique du Mal,’ Stevens has at last been able to work himself free from Nietzsche’s influence” by rejecting his hedonistic philosophy for renewed interest in religion. Indeed, the lines: “of what it sees, for all the ill it sees? / speech found the ear, for all the evil sound, / but the dark italics it could not propound” describe the limits of secular vision.

3. Conclusion:

In a letter to John Crowe Ransom, Stevens mentions that at the end of “Esthétique du Mal” he intended to end the poem with a question mark; he renounced the idea and

“punctuated it in such a way as to indicate an abandonment of the question” (qtd. in Chittick

188). Indeed, one can conclude that it is the result of his failed experiment to find a secular vision to explain, or compensate, the evils in the world without needing a transcendent reference. The experience of Wallace Stevens with evil demonstrates the limits of the secular vision. The poem “Esthétique du Mal” exposed the flaws in the sentimentalist, ascetic, nihilist, yes-saying, no-saying secular visions that have attempted to explain religion without religion. It demonstrates the limits of secular vision through evil. Evil is a challenge to

Secularism.

General Conclusion:

One of the most compelling aspects of literature is that it thrives on ambiguity.

Modernists were not short on ambiguity which rendered the interpretation of their attitude, especially towards religion, difficult to ascertain. Indeed, for a long time, literary studies denied religion any space in the critical examination of literary works. While it is true that criticism is a secular project, it was, nonetheless, made possible by religion especially through the hermeneutics of St. Augustine.

The main aim of this research has been to advance an understanding of literary modernism, because to regard modern literature as secular literature is reductive. One objective was to analyse the notion of secularism in the West. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that the ‘movement’ away from religion was the result of a secularization thesis that appeared in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This thesis predicted that the rise of modernity and intellectualism would lead to the disappearance of religion. But time has witnessed the resilience of religion as well as its gradual return in the Academic fields in the form of post-secular studies. Another objective has been the evaluation of the relationship between secularism and literature in order to demonstrate through an examination of the post- secular that literature and religion are continuously linked. The post-secular aims to deconstruct the binary opposition between the religious and the secular. This project succeeded in undermining the notion of the secular as an independent notion exclusive of religion. Certainly, both historically and contemporaneously, the religious and the secular are continuously linked. The obsessive focus on the dichotomy, however, runs the risk of maintaining it. This research suggests the introduction of evil as a third mediating element.

Indeed, the problem of evil has plagued man since the dawn of civilization. It is a concept that leads to conflict and rejection of religion in favour of a secular concept. However, evil

49 also challenges secular reason and imagination that tries to explain it by running the risk of reengagement with religion. In its relation to both religion and secularism, the concept of evil has been analysed in the Novel Demian (1919) by Hermann Hesse and the poem “Esthétique du Mal” by Wallace Stevens.

Demian (1919) by Hermann Hesse deals with evil as both a challenge to and an agent of secularism. For Sinclair, the protagonist of the novel, religion denies human flourishing and regards everything sensual as primal and evil. This sensuality and primitivism for

Sinclair are the composing parts of his nature. When religion rejected this side of him, He was lead to rebellion and downward plunge into hedonism. His wandering period does not last long because he realizes the futility of such a life. Accordingly he undertakes a quest toward God. The encounter of evil in Demian by Hermann Hesse is thus both a challenge to and an agent of secularisation.

The long poem “Ethétique du Mal” written during wartime also reflects Wlallace

Steven’s reflection on evil from a secular perspective. Stevens tries to give an evaluation of the secular visions that were supposed to replace the religious explanations of evil. Yet, he is unable to come to terms with evil through secular visions and renounces the question altogether. These views include the visions of a detached scholar, the hedonist, the psychologist, the fatalist, the primitive as well as the scientist among others. In short, Stevens has tried to substitute the religious consolation of evil with secular compensations, but he has failed to achieve this goal.

The religious experience is central to human life. It may not be compensated for by other secular aspirations or institutions. Indeed, without the possibility of transcendence, life would have no meaning, and creatures would live in despair awaiting fatality.

Works Cited:

Asad, Tala. “Historical notes on the idea of secular criticism.” TIF,25, January 2008,

tif.ssrc.org/2008/01/25/historical-notes-on-the-idea-of-secular-criticism.

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