Condemned to be Free
Like the character played by Liv Ullmann in Igmar Bergman’s 1966 classic film Persona, one perceives in her character a desire to escape from the world when the one thing longed to be escaped is the self. Such is instigated by the fear of exposure for heinous crimes which one cannot categorically identify, at times the desire to envelop one’s self in a shroud, a hiding place created by a state of irrational unease through a self consciousness making one wish that the inescapable was avoidable. With every thought the anguish of paranoia may release the sensitive self to lower depths according to one’s own self repulsion. And in these times, when one feels acute anxiety and inner anxiety of fear, fearing to fall farther, are these depths not only compounded and made more insufferable by an acute sense of insurmountable isolation?
Like the self fabricated cocoon which Ullmann’s entire performance is constructed upon, her fictive and defensive being, woven through time and self-conflict, so carefully articulated that this Persona has judged, by her own anxiety, herself as guilty. Ullman’s character is hopeless to hope for the impossible: to speak and not be heard, to move and not be seen, to cry and be understood, to think and not betray the self so fearful to one’s own inner being. Ullmann’s character in the film exists in a self implemented silence and reclusiveness.
However resolutely, this existential state is universal, by varying degrees, one whose rules all must abide by: that of the human intercourse. In the extreme, like Ullmann’s character, one might be bound in a state of desperation, of self-loathing, of self-prescribed solitude however unjustified, with an irrational fear of exposure to the world.
One may leave neither house nor home- nowhere is one immune to the existential predicament. The terror of guilt, the feeling of being caught in a situation although innocent of any categorical fault, one finds one’s moments charged with thoughts of unquenchable damnation, a predestined hell; the fear to betray oneself through gesture, word and being, only to wish to breath, to encounter the earth one so longs to inhabit and propagate, a life so longed to be lived. All are prisoners, captive in a web of existential self consciousness.
One might try and do what one will but one cannot shed the shell, the body, the I who longs to be but cannot, the I who can share a harmonious existence with those that the I loves, adores but cannot build a bridge to. The I fears, the I loves but cannot fulfill that potential without fear of exposure, existing in a state of frenzied anxiety, in the Heideggerian notion of angst; this most “primordial fear,” this “turning away and falling prey…making fear possible.” This is a turning away from the self finding this self fearful. From what is it that the persona is afraid of? Resolutely it is not solely the subjective self and not solely the Heideggerian “they” that frightens one. It is the nature of ones conscious self confronted with the “other” that is the foundation of anxiety.
Ullmann portrays bold personality traits and is not someone one might suspect of falling prey, of succumbing to a self-inflicted torture. But none, even the most strongly willed, such as Ullman, in angst, avoids the impulse to discover an exile where she seeks the authentic self through self realization- the ultimate goal, in a tender scenario of finding the true self one believes to exist yet cannot find. Ullman’s contrived exile from the world, the universe she has created from silence, avoids everyday life that all must participate in, in order to exist phenomenologically. She neither speaks nor interacts with others other than the interlocutor whom in the film is the mouthpiece of the taciturn Ullman- she has, for herself created her own chamber of horrors- self inflicted in the conflict of phenomenological being.
According to Hideggerian theory of an unknown “they,” that which is beyond the “self,” who is Ullmann’s they, the cause of her angst? She is hiding herself from the possibility of being perceived by beings encountered in the surrounding world, an unshakable paradox. Apparently she is experiencing the angst of what is “the perception of what is objectively present tak[ing] place,” states Heidegger. The objectivity at hand is a very equivocal one for the “self,” and there is no absolute. One might register in Ullman’s character a hateful, irrational and misanthropic persona, one which has earned her exile. Yet her irrational being is a merely a phantom of her true self in a state of conflict. This is none other than, according to Heidegger a self “in search for one of the most far-reaching and most primordial possibilities of disclosure which lie in Da-sein;” the self in its state of being.
Much conflict within the existential self and the experience which is inescapable, of “being,” of Da-sein, resides with the indeterminate angst of which is the everyday, a common and universal reality. A categorical system, to model the self amongst the “they” is not possible, there are no set parameters of the phenomenological. One discovers or finds the self within the panorama of the “they”, through being, often creating the phenomenon of anxiety due to the overwhelming phenomenological possibilities- intercourse with the “they”.
Persona concludes with no existential definite besides that of “care”, the action of being; Heidegger and the state of phenomenology, identifiable yet indeterminate in an equivocal structure resulting in the chaos of angst.
According to the philosophy that Sartre pioneered, existential beings are slaves to one’s own self consciousness. In Heideggerian theory of consciousness one is a slave to one’s own self awareness as guilt, and driven by it. Guilty or not, human consciousness, according to Sartre was an awareness of a transcendental self, an object distant to the “other,” beholden to the same anxiety as Liv Ullman’s character. She battled, with no foundation or true a priori conceptions in the Kantian sense- an angst ridden, anxious, self conscious perceived by her fear of the “other.”
To elucidate this conjecture, one might begin with an explanation by Heidegger on what exactly is Da-sein and the “they” or Sartre’s “other.” For Heidegger, Da-sein, is his primary state of “being” or departure into the realms of the phenomenological signified as “being-there,” or being “objectively present.” His “they” resounded with Sartre’s “other” as “being with the world” contingent with “being a self.” What Bergman alluded to through Ullman’s “persona” was the state of anxiety of experience, the state of the self in conflict with the “other.” Yet this reflective consciousness is a mere state of human existence, according to Sartre, which no adroit being can avoid, and no “null ground of a nullity,” according to Heidegger, can appease.
Angst forms an integral aspect of Heidegger’s Being and Time, a trajectory based upon “the fundamental attunement of angst as an eminent disclosedness of Da-sein;” an attunement of the “self” and the dynamic in the face of the “other.” This dynamic leads to the fundamental quality definitive of all action: “care.” According to Heidegger, the phenomenon of “care” is pervasive in its universality as an extension of the “self” to the “they,” and its motivating source is the core of human experience.
This core of human experience may be made cogent aesthetically by a comparison to the multi-faceted sculpture of Alberto Giacometti, whose relationship to Jean-Paul Sartre is highly reputed. Giacometti’s homogenous figures all bear a similar aesthetic and signification, not merely Minimalist modernity but existentialist philosophy; its fundamental form relative to existentialism is profound, also seen in his painting and drawing.
Giacometti’s figures are delicate, are not merely a study of form but a study of humanity whose being is what is present yet whose essence is malleable. These waif-like, apparently brittle sculptures are solid brass, with an unbreakable core whose exterior or “persona” is rendered loosely, absent. They personify this ideology in their figural construction and epistemology.
According to the all seeing eye of Sartre, the anxiety or self consciousness is the human predicament. In the prodigious oeuvre of Giacometti, figures of all sizes, like the diversity of the body, delicately poised in an existential conflict of mind, body and soul-spirit, the Da-sein in the face of the existential experience. This dynamic might be viewed as a condition which all “being” souls, through an infinite intercourse of relationships- through the mind’s eye and through the intuitive eye plays out the human condition. Like the durable yet delicate sculptures by the artist, the result is beautifully and eloquently phrased in bronze. While the essence follows existence, the external is indeterminate leaving the core which these sculptures signify, standing erect in an infinite strength.
Rothko plays out the existential model in his abstract expressionist canvases. As Sartre professes, the conscious is a consciousness of itself as it is a transcendental state of awareness. The experience of witnessing a Rothko, the metaphysics of the personal relationship which each viewer finds between the self and the canvas may be likened to a great reflecting pool. The metaphysical quality in his work allows the act of looking to be returned. This is a spiritual synthesis, an exploration of the inner self, a phenomenon not caused by insecurity or fear, anxiety or angst, but a channel to the soul opened by meditation on Rothko’s work and one is free to explore and revisit the essence of the self which many are blinded to.
Camus’ metaphor of the Myth of Sisyphus extemporaneously discloses, like a twentieth century Erasmus, the folly of humanity and symbolizes the inauthentic, ironical “absurd” of the human predicament. To many, inauthentic being cannot be avoided, the reverse to Ullman’s tragic authentic being. Too often the case with the inauthentic being of the “they” is an anticipated fear of self conscious recognition and possibility of conflict with the “self.”. As the rock of Sisyphus will never find its resting place, so does denying reality leave one in a state of unrest, of anxiety and the “absurd” of the “they.”
Camus draws a striking connection with Dostoevsy whereby the “absurd” might be assuaged. In Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, particularly the Brothers Karamazov, a light from the darkness and “absurdity” that envelops the world Dostoevsky creates, so pervasive, is actually attainable. As Camus’ own theory of ideology and fatality is introduced in his metaphor of the absurd in the Myth of Sisyphus, he also sees redemption and a justification in Dostoevsky’s protagonists. Camus presents a vantage point whereby authenticity might transgress the absurd, might see beyond the fates and delve into the “hero’s” consciousness. Such is the case in Dostoevsky’s psychological journeys, a subjective perspective which leads the reader haphazardly through the realms of dementia yet one may find it poetic, even sublime.
The Myth of Sisyphus is a tragic humanist metaphor of the absurd, however in the work of Dostoevsky and the frantic, unpredictable and devastating events which encompass the lives of those who exist in large measure “on the fringe,” here the absurd often manifests itself as authentic as ultimately, the hero is redeemed, such as in the final two pages of Crime and Punishment, as Raskolnikov dedicates his soul to God.
What is the authentic being of a Dostoevskian character who often finds reconciliation? There is an exceptional quality in the author to portray a complex and multi-dimensional nature. In the majority of the literature, angst is fundamental to the tone in the existential conflict in a mesh of being. The protagonist and the antagonist are often uncannily similar and the author unravels their intertwined natures throughout the novel revealing the authenticity in the struggle of both.
Like Bergman, Dostoyevsky’s work is highly psychological and probes the vicissitudes of existentialism through the maze which is a mis-en-scene for the analytical approach to decipher the character’s nature which one finds progressively revealed as one follows them through the Dostoevskian labyrinth. This ensemble of human relations, even to the most threadbare, like a Giacometti, results in the existential battle of myth and reality.
Thus, how does the innocent discover his or herself while experiencing a state of irrational fear and self imposed exile- to hide from the phenomenon of the “they” without a verifiable state of guilt” such as Dostoevsky’s Alyosha. Kant might answer with his theory of the transcendental nature of mind over matter. In pursuit of reason, one must rely on one’s own a priori conceptions of the mind. Yet without logical and empirical grounds for thought, reason becomes unfounded.
Experience is frequently based on the transcendental thought with no objective base. Thus the mind is an organ allowing complete liberty to comprehend, however too often, as Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason suggests. The rational takes flight, such as the metaphysics which Kant aimed to limit in his Critique through reason. Too often these flights of the mind may lead from the rational to the irrational through false logic. Generally speaking, two predicates conceptualized by analysis can take the mind far from reality.
In a mind in the state of angst, like the Greeks, seek reason to combat the unknown, ignorance, fear, the unanswerable. The existential is, from the extreme of Ullman’s character to another extreme, harmonious encounters with nature, part of humanity and can also be seen. In all possibility of inter-connections, a fascinating aspect to being, is free if one is only to reconcile, like Dostoevsky’s Raskolnicov, and embrace the human intercourse- relating, and find one’s self, as Heidegger states- “at home.”.
Such dynamics, a range of existential phenomenon, are profoundly addressed by the reaction which has been the toil of artists, writers and poets, philosophers having to confront a society with wars, revolutions, inter-relational disputes, famine, poverty and demographic reconstruction and the phenomenon of angst and anxiety. Goya lived in a veritable mental prison, not only fighting psychosis but instantaneous loss of hearing. His mind was his prison, as his latter works may allude to.
In painting, one sees the terror in the eyes of many of Gericault’s mid- nineteenth century portraits; humanizing and sensitive representations of the mentally ill. Baudelaire casts an eerie shadow through his vivid depictions of the depths of the heart of Parisian life in the mid nineteenth century, and Giacometti portrays the anxiety of the 1960’s and demand for a more egalitarian society. These are only three examples from different epochs which demonstrate the pervasive state of angst and there is no apparent end to such metaphors.
Analytically, there is no quantifier to predict the effect the human environment will have on an individual, all are equally susceptible to existential phenomenon. Like the perfect relationship, the marriage, the subject of Bergman’s 1973 Scenes from a Marriage, one might not foresee the elements that premeditated the sudden rupture of this seemingly harmonious relationship. There may be no grounds for the character played by Erland Josephson and his sudden, apparently irrational departure from a blissful relationship and Liv Ullman’s reaction to an “absurd” situation. Yet one finds in Bergman’s second installment, Saraband, with thirty years of separation, an equally volatile relationship in the two. Love is irreconcilable between these irascible pair and the film concludes with Josephson’s final panic.
Phenomenology is succinct with the many factors one might find from without, in the “they,” or the “other,” in conflict with the self. It is an abstract discipline, theorized by Heidegger and many others including Sartre and is as relevant contemporaneously as it was valid for Plato. It was and will always be a universal reality.
A universal state of art, a performatist utopia is becoming more and more a contemporary condition. It is an integral aspect to post-historical art. A unique individual perception results when all viewers have a personal experience, resulting potentially in an alleviation of anxiety in a utopia of open dialogue which one might not find in art which is didactic or condemning. Such art only increases the phenomenon of angst. This is the case with Bill Viola’s video installations. Each viewer enters and leaves engaged in a potentially open discourse. The art, personal to each observer begs more questions than answers and invites intense contemplation.
Giacometti’s sculpture is universal, as is existentialism to a utopian ideology accessible in its relativism to all who participate in the human discourse. Giacometti’s beings exist in a mutual, homogenous existence while retaining the self, the core amidst the “they”. Only through self-recognition can the true authentic being be realized- can begin. By Sartre’s definition of existentialism true recognition must exist with a reflective consciousness. One must discover this essence in accord with the “other” or one is lost.
Ullman’s character was not without an almost perceptive intuitive voice; even she cannot fully mask her “persona.” However, for those without self imposed silence, for those who bear with their own proactive actions, the quality of “care,” Ullman’s hiding from the existentiality of the human phenomenon seems cowardly, one might find reason to condemn Ullman’s predicament and the phenomenon. But, tragically, like Sisyphus, this is what she has been dealt- her lot in life. However, as with freedom of choice, with agency, many bear the existential not as a burden but see beauty in it, the positive side of the human intercourse. A beauty such as this fills the many pages of Proust.
True to his own history, told by an elderly Marcel Proust, the invalid, exiled not by a choice but by necessity, evokes nothing more than impressions of his life upon his readers. The existentiality of Proust is rendered beautifully, lovingly, thoughtfully in a transplant of his gift to humankind- translated Time Regained, or In Search of Lost Time.
The episodes which constitute the six volumes are a fragmented narrative and are temporally interwoven. The weighty material of phenomenology and existentialism might be lightened here, where the weight of Berman’s characters in their angst is far heavier.
The existential questions of who, what, where, when, why and how might simply be answered in this study of human experience. It is apparent that with Proust, no slight is given to a thoughtful gesture, a touch, a smell, a memory, a moment which might be otherwise left ignored. In the processes of that which is human, Proust leaves no stone unturned, no idiosyncrasy for the mind, no confusion- Proust meanders his way adroitly and lucidly through his own experience, seemingly distanced from the reader’s yet with an air of freedom of expression and ease.
His Modern narration delves into those human “intangibles” which Proust presents lividly. It is Proust, from his early days in Combray, his experiences at Balbec, his travel to Venice and his final years in Paris who may reveal to the reader, not through rhetoric, but through biographical experience, an authentic alternative and fruitful “being.”
As an exemplar to the antithesis of the absurd, what is before the readers’ eyes is a very honest, truthful writer whom one comes to know. One might certainly find a unique quality to Proust’s existentialism. It might be safe to say that Proust had a love affair with life. His entire approach within the six volumes delves into a humanitarian study, first hand, of life at the fin de siècle, at the very pinnacle of cultural, political, sociological, demographic and economical states of being in Paris during those golden years.
The upheaval of Paris in the years just prior to Proust’s youth might be perceived as a universal, acute phenomenological reflective consciousness of the masses. A pervasive anxiety galvanized the inhabitants of Paris towards revolution, yet this galvanizing resulted in these golden years of Parisian history, the Fin de siècle and in no aspect of the writing of Proust does the reader confront the intensity of nineteenth century Parisian history which is ample in the works
