Murray, R. (2016). 'Delightfully dense': The Art of Stupidity in Late James. The Henry James Review, 37(2), 191-203. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/618704 Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via John Hopkins University Press at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/618704. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. University of Bristol - Explore Bristol Research General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/user-guides/ebr-terms/ ´'HOLJKWIXOO\GHQVHµ7KH$UWRI6WXSLGLW\LQ/DWH-DPHV 5DFKHO0XUUD\ 7KH+HQU\-DPHV5HYLHZ9ROXPH1XPEHU6SULQJSS $UWLFOH 3XEOLVKHGE\-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV )RUDGGLWLRQDOLQIRUPDWLRQDERXWWKLVDUWLFOH KWWSVPXVHMKXHGXDUWLFOH Access provided by Bristol University (23 Nov 2016 10:41 GMT) “Delightfully dense”: The Art of Stupidity in Late James By Rachel Murray, University of Bristol In The Golden Bowl (1904), Henry James establishes Adam Verver’s “emulation of the snail. The snail had become for him, under this ironic suggestion, the loveliest beast in nature” for it “marked what he liked to mark” (132). A “mark” denotes a “visible trace or impression on surface” (OED). The snail appears to be a symbol of Verver’s undisclosed intelligence; rather than marking out precisely what the creature signifies James provides a “visible trace” of the presence of a discerning mind. Perhaps the trail is also a mark of obscurity, the sign of a mind that has retreated too far into itself, for Verver becomes an increasingly insular figure who friends and family hesitate to deem either “sublime” or “stupid” (423). The unresolved ambiguity as to whether he is a wise man or a fool marks out a trail of “ironic suggestion” in late James where stupidity has become indistinguishable from sublimity. Like Adam Verver, Adorno and Horkheimer find something marked in the snail: The emblem of intelligence is the feeler of the snail, the creature “with the fumbling face,” with which, if we can believe Mephistopheles, it also smells. Meeting an obstacle, the feeler is immediately withdrawn into the protection of the body, it becomes one with the whole until it timidly ven- tures forth again as an autonomous agent. If the danger is still present, it disappears once more, and the intervals between the attempts grow longer. The snail’s sense is dependent on a muscle, and muscles grow slack if the scope for movement is impaired. Stupidity is a scar. It can relate to one faculty among many or to them all, practical and mental. Every partial stupidity in a human being marks a spot where the awakening play of muscles has been inhibited instead of fostered. (213–14) Adopting the feeler as an emblem of intelligence conveys an unexpected proximity between two seemingly opposing qualities. Relocating intelligence from inside the The Henry James Review 37 (2016): 191–206. © 2016, Johns Hopkins University Press 192 The Henry James Review safe confines of the skull to the exposed antennae of a snail highlights the vulner- ability of a faculty that reaches out into the unknown. If, as Adorno and Horkheimer claim, exercizing intelligence is a risk, this raises questions about the extent to which stupidity is utilized as a means of self-protection in James’s work. For instance, when Prince Amerigo and Charlotte Stant are devising the impromptu trip that marks the beginning of their resumed affair, she coyly remarks: “Ah, for things I mayn’t want to know I promise you shall find me stupid” (293). Made manifest, Jamesian stupidity may be nothing other than the tactical concealment of intelligence. With this in mind, could it also be the case that Jamesian intelligence can, at times, manifest itself as the careful concealment of every “partial stupidity in a hu- man being”? In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), Fleda Vetch observes that Mrs. Gereth “had really no perception of anybody’s nature—had only one question about persons: were they clever or stupid? To be clever meant to know the ‘marks’” (126). What are the “marks” that only a clever mind can know? Mrs. Gereth’s brand of cleverness is exclusive; its criteria remain hidden from view. A clue can be found in the preface to Spoils, in which James makes an attempt to distinguish cleverness from intelligence, arguing that Mrs. Gereth “was not intelligent, was only clever.” Fleda, on the other hand, “was only intelligent, not distinctively able” (33). It is easy to become mired in the slight distinction between the two terms, but in both cases James makes it clear that an able mind is only able to thrive at the expense of some other necessary qual- ity. In Fleda’s case it is the ability to be practical, whereas Mrs. Gereth’s “sharpness” has impaired her subtlety of insight (91). The singularity of each woman’s mind is “only” that: in both instances James is suggesting that there is something disabling about relying on the intellect alone. The mysterious “marks” of Mrs. Gereth come to resemble scars of stupidity left by her overweening cleverness. Fleda is not fooled, and as her observation suggests, she soon realizes that the “masterful and clever” (SP 39) mistress of Poynton is actually rather imperceptive. Mrs. Gereth’s mental resources are often used to obscure rather than to reveal the truth, leaving Fleda feeling stupefied by the older woman’s destruc- tive intellect.1 When Fleda starts to play this “hideous double game,” Mrs. Gereth suffers the same fate, admitting: “you plunge me into stupefaction” (119, 186). The etymology of both stupid and stupefy is the Latin verb stup¯ere, which denotes being physically stunned or stopped in one’s tracks (OED). Exemplifying the gravitational pull of bathos, Fleda’s depth of thought plunges Mrs. Gereth into obscurity. By dem- onstrating the ways in which both women actively thwart one another’s powers of understanding, James presents intelligence as a destructive force that leaves individuals unable to see a situation clearly. Similarly, in The Golden Bowl, after Bob Assingham takes umbrage at being deemed “immoral” by his wife Fanny, she responds: “I’ll call you stupid if you pre- fer. But stupidity pushed to a certain point is, you know, immorality. Just so what is morality but high intelligence?” (89). Fanny’s use of chiasmus enacts a criss-crossing of terms resulting in the confounding of a double opposition. The sentence bears the scars of stupidity as again “only one question” comes of Fanny’s flattening of two separate categories—the ethical and the epistemological—into near equivalence. What is significant about this moment is that it is “clever” Fanny, rather than “stupid” Bob, whose moral failings are being highlighted here (144, 89). By using these terms inter- changeably Fanny allows the subject of intelligence to obscure the issue of morality. Art of Stupidity in Late James 193 Like Mrs. Gereth, who cares “only” whether people are clever or stupid, Fanny Ass- ingham is guilty of privileging her intellectual ability at the expense of her principles. This is not the only time that James calls the ethics of intelligence into question. In her first impression of Owen Gereth, Fleda sets up an implicit contrast between him and his mother, noting how it was “rather remarkable to be stupid without offense—of a pleasanter effect and more remarkable indeed than to be clever and horrid” (SP 40). Fleda loses sight of this principle over the course of the text, but it is something that James asks the reader to bear in mind. Stupidity, embodied in Bob Assingham and Owen Gereth, adds an ethical imperative to The Spoils of Poynton and The Golden Bowl by demonstrating that it is more important to be kind than to be clever. Fleda also refers to Owen oxymoronically as “delightfully dense” (SP 40). The term “dense” encapsulates the all too easy slippage of Jamesian intelligence into its opposite, stupidity. Density signifies simplicity, denoting a “degree of consistence of a body or substance,” as well as “thick-headed” people (OED). It also denotes a level of stylistic complexity that verges on obscurity, as is apparent in Bradley Deane’s reference to the “dense syntactical thicket” (93) of James’s late works. At a micro level the term “dense” reflects the stupid-clever dialectic of late James. A cognate of stupidity, the notion of density is rooted in a physical property and only developed informal connotations in the nineteenth century. During the time that James was writing the semantic range of the term expanded in order to belittle.2 This paradoxical movement is complicated by the fact that James’s late texts often achieve the opposite effect, transforming stupidity from a negative into a positive trait of characters such as Owen Gereth and Bob Assingham. In contrast to the calculated and at times devious behavior of those closest to them, Owen and Bob demonstrate a “consistence” and even a benevolence of character that stems from their simple outlook on life. Through them, James demonstrates a growing recognition of the value of stupidity as a foil to the artfulness of intelligence. There were a number of factors that forced James to recognize the value of stu- pidity. Spoils was written during a period of mourning for James, who was lamenting both the decline of high culture as well as his own creative mortality in the face of a hostile public. The publication of the text followed a six-year novelistic “interregnum” between 1890 and 1896, in which James moved away from the bourgeois form of the novel, partly, it seems, as a response to the demands of an increasingly concentrated mass readership for short stories and plays (Graham 101).