Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes belongs to the
generation of British postmodernist writers, and postmodernism is not
exclusively literary phenomenon.
Generally, postmodernism is a very paradoxical
phenomenon. It is never either/or, it is always both/and at the same time. The
contradiction would be the very second name of postmodernism.
Reflections on Postmodernism
Postmodernists rejected the view
which culminated with realism, that literature was a reliable source of
universal truths, though such view was never before questioned. In the
tradition of postmodernism this assumption is questioned. There are no
universal truths, according to postmodernism, there is no one constant,
measurable reality, there are only realities. The very assumption that art imitates
life is questionable; it could be that art imitates life. There is a
lot of scepticism, as a typical element of the postmodernist world view.
Postmodernists are also very sceptical about the modernist view that reality is
to be found in its inner rather then outer manifestation. So, there are no
clear definitions, there are no clear solutions. There is no realm that
contains objective reality and objective truth, according to postmodernist, and
in this context we speak of relativism, which is another typical postmodernist
trait. Modernists also believed in the cult of the genius, which they inherited
from the Romantics, according to which artists were the elite, hypersensitive
persons who can grasp the ultimate truth, which was another idea of modernists
that postmodernists rejected. Modernists still pretended that their novels were not
constructs but that they somehow revealed the truth, which again the
postmodernist challenged. Even the notion of consciousness, personality, mind,
were rejected by the postmodernists, who claimed that consciousness was rooted in
language which describes nothing but itself according to them. Postmodernist
literature is not only literature; they integrate philosophical, linguistic,
anthropological theories of the 20th century, theories of human
sexuality, which reflects the eclectic nature of the postmodernist literature.
To postmodernists, language is another construct, a toy invented by human
beings, not necessary for the purpose of describing the outside phenomena, but
it is a play, signifier does not refer to the signified, but what we have is
the constant play of signifiers. Language refers back to itself, especially in
literature. Per convention, when 10 people use the word
‘tree’ all ten of them may have a different image on their mind, which is the
reason there can never be true communication. According to
postmodernists, one needs to be very careful using the language. Human mind,
according to postmodernists, is not a constant, it remains in the state of
constant flux, which proves their notion that there is no such thing as
personality, because it is not a stabile phenomenon, just a set of moods, which
is never the same, even in the single day. They say it is a very delicate,
phantom like phenomenon called consciousness. Even our thinking is rooted in
language, according to postmodernists, which means it is unreliable, because
language itself is unreliable and provisory. We have the Post-Freudian approach
according to which, the unconscious is also rooted in language, which makes it
highly elusive, just as the reality is illusive. Our view of reality,
regardless of whether it is external or internal reality, is always subjective.
Postmodernism is on the other hand it is very liberating and creative, because
if there are just realities or truths all of them subjective, there are no
borders or rules as to how to create or write. Freedom involves great
possibilities, but also great pitfalls. Literature in postmodernism can by no
means claim to represent the truth, it can only present one or two or three
versions of the same story, which means that the author can deliberately play
with the idea and offer several solutions, or endings. Even the interpretation
of the work of art by the reader greatly depends on reader’s point of view,
education, social standing, making it again, highly subjective.
Flaubert’s Parrot
Flaubert’s Parrot is almost a textbook example of a postmodernist
novel, of
the second half of the 20th century, one of the major messages of
Flaubert’s parrot is that literature or art in general, cannot fully represent
life. They constantly draw attention to the limitations of art and literature,
reminding the reader that what he is reading is fiction, which is in a very
intricate way connected with the reality.
In Flaubert’s Parrot, in Chapter 2 entitled Chronology, Barnes
offers us three different versions of Flaubert’s biography. There is no text in the traditional
sense. Text is anything that someone writes, says, etc. So, even the past is
always highly subjective, and context is very important. For that reason, neither literature,
not history can claim to represent the truth. Postmodernists
completely abolish the old fashioned distinction to fiction and non fiction, to
them any discourse is equally reliable and equally unreliable as the rest of
them. There is also inter-textuality, that is another characteristic
of postmodernist novels, present in Flaubert’s Parrot. It is not only open to
the literary discourse, with the plot, the characters, the story, the style,
etc, it makes only part of postmodernist novels. Alongside with the literary
discourse, there is also a scientific discourse, present in Flaubert’s Parrot
in the lectures on Gustave Flaubert given by literary critics some of whom
existed, while others are invented, there is also a biography, which is a third
kind of discourse, there is also exam, letters, etc. People not accustomed to postmodernism are
confused by this. They want to abolish distinction between fiction
and non-fiction. Sometimes we do not even know if these inserted texts really
existed, or if perhaps they were invented by the author. So, just as they mix real
personages with fictional characters, there is
also a mixture
of real, authentic texts and texts invented by the author. The point
of that is to make the reader realise that it is impossible to make the distinction between what
is real and what is fictitious.
As we said, postmodernist literature
did not even attempt to assert itself as the source of reliable truth, they instead keep
reminding the reader constantly reminded of this unreliability. That is the
game that they play with the reader and themselves. They play with
this chaos very creatively, they draw attention to the disorder, unreliability,
relativity and to the absence of reliable answers. Just like modernists before
them, they keep betraying expectations of the reader. They combine many things,
and take a lot from modernists. Postmodernist novels, just like modernist novels before
them, get the readers confused, irritated and provoked. That is a
deliberate plan on the part of the postmodernist writer, because they believe
that when the reader is provoked or irritated, maybe he or she will start thinking.
Barnes makes it clear that his
narrator Geoffrey Braithwaite does not know everything. Barnes ridicules his
own narrator, by showing that he knows very little, let alone the truth. His
narrator’s perspective is limited and subjective, which makes all answers
illusive, temporary, provisory and unreliable. Living means living with
uncertainty, which we have to come to terms with. That is one of the
provocative messages of the postmodernist literature, which could also lead to
a creative, liberating experience.
Themes
This issue of elusiveness of the
truth is one of the major themes of this novel. It is thematised through the
very figure of the narrator, who is widowed physician who is obsessed with
Flaubert’s fiction and his life. Geoffrey Braithwaite he believes in the
humanist illusions that the postmodernism rejects. He is taken by the author as
the example of the old way of thinking. This humanist view of the narrator is
reflected in his notion that education matters very much, that one can
accomplish anything if she or he desires it very much, that there are certain
universal truths applicable to all human beings, that history progresses, that
each historical period is more advanced then the previous. When Barnes makes
such a narrator, the reason he makes it that was is to ironise him. He makes
him question his own notions. One of the illusions in which the narrator
believes and which Barnes ridicules, is that if you want to learn something about your favourite
author, you can understand it better if you learn as much as you can about his
life. In order to ridicule this view, Barnes offers us in Chapter two three
different versions of Flaubert’s life. The author make it
deliberately obvious that such notion is ridiculous by giving two completely opposed versions of the biography with the third one being somewhere
in between. Indirectly, the author wants to suggest that it is
foolish to believe you could get much better insight into the work of art by
close study of artist’s life, just as it is ridiculous to believe that one’s
path to the truth has anything to do with minor facts or details that make no
difference at all, such as the fact of which of the stuffed parrots was the one
that Flaubert used briefly, as he was writing one of his short stories. So Flaubert’s
parrot becomes the symbol of the desire for the objective truth, which
Braithwaite pursues, but which keeps escaping. So Braithwaite concentrates on
one of Flaubert’s short stories “The Sacred Heart”, not even “Madame Bovary”,
his major work. He makes a journey to Rouanne and hears that there are two
stuffed parrots, and he tries to decide which one of the two was the one
Flaubert used and kept on his desk as he was writing his short story. So Barnes
ridicules this enterprise, making it apparent how impossible this task of
finding the real parrot really is, and the pursuit of the parrot really serves
as a symbol of Braithwaite’s humanist desire to grasp the objective truth and
to establish the exact amount of relation between reality and fiction. The novel
ends in Rouanne in France, just where it begun, with Braithwaite being unable
to identify the right parrot, finding that there could even be the third
parrot, indicating that his pursuit was impossible and even unnecessary. Barnes
ironises these humanist notions of the narrator, suggesting how pointless it is
to keep trying to find out anything about the parrot, or the life of the
author, suggesting the absence of reliable answers as the only reality. He
suggests this at the very end of the novel. The parrot is then the symbol of
illusiveness of the truth.
Another important aspect is
meta-fictionality. All postmodernist novels have the element of meta
fiction. They
are not only fiction, they are fiction about writing fiction. That
is one of the recurrent themes. They remind us of how difficult it has become
to write books, so they write books about impossibility of writing books. Sometimes
it is called self-referentiality. All of the postmodernist works are
self-referential, they all refer back to themselves, just as the language does.
Postmodernist novels draw attention back to themselves. Postmodernist writers
draw attention to the reader that what he or she is reading is a construct, a
work of fiction, they keep reminding the reader of fictionality of fiction,
again connected with the view that art cannot imitate reality, which undermines
the Aristotelian notion of art as mimesis, so their works are anti-mimetic,
anti-illusionist, they make it impossible for the reader to identify with
characters. They are doing it to show that every creative act is a play. When
it is a play, it is both fictional and real. When they seem most playful on the
surface, they turn out to be very serious. That is the approach of
postmodernist artists.
In chapter 7 titled Cross Channel,
there is section about the omniscient narrator and the unreliable partial
narrator in the postmodernist fiction. Barnes talks about this convention of
the narrator, ridiculing and ironising it. Barnes explains how it was merely a
formal device that even the artists of the old times did not believe in. He
also comments on the partial narrator of the postmodernist fiction. He claims
it was a “form of cubism”, the artifice is not reflection of reality. To draw
attention of postmodernist novels being very playful, Barnes draw attention to
the so-called authorial intrusion. Other devices include framing and inter-textuality.
Barnes keeps a dialogue, a sort of debate on the literary issues, mentioning the novel with two
endings to suggest that even that is an illusion, because there is always the
author who is behind. The true postmodernist novel will have to have a blank
page at the end, to let the reader decide what the ending would be. That would
be the true postmodernist novel, that would be the true freedom. That
is postmodernisms taken to the extreme. It demystifies literature as serious,
elevated business, reinforcing at the same time its importance.
Authorial intrusion: Throughout
Flaubert’s Parrot, the story is broken off, or delayed by the intrusion of
either the narrator or the author. In the realist tradition, authorial
intrusion also existed, reflected through the omniscient narrator, but now it
happens for the different purpose. When the realists did it, the purpose was to
uphold the illusion, not to dismantle it, as postmodernists do. These various
insertions about the search for the real parrot are interconnected with the
story of narrator’s life. Again the distinction here is abolished and very
vague. His search for the real parrot is inseparable from his life. Geoffrey
Braithwaite is obsessed with Flaubert and Madame Bovary, his major work. Barnes
indicates indirectly why this story of Madame Bovary is so interesting and
fascinating to Geoffrey Braithwaite, and as it turns out, there are parallels between
the story of Madame Bovary and his life, in which he also had an adulteress wife who
also committed suicide. He thinks that he might be responsible for the suicide
of his wife. His profession was also the same as the profession of Madame
Bovary’s husband, namely, he was a physician and Madame Bovary’s husband
was apothecary. Not only that he identifies himself with the novel, but he
also has a feeling that his life and his marriage are almost a replica of Madame Bovary. Life here imitates art, which
is
a complete postmodernist
inversion.
The private life of Geoffrey Braithwaite
is a copy of the book. Additional irony is when we look at different frames. By
studying Gustave Flaubert, Geoffrey Braithwaite hopes to be able to understand
his marriage better, which is another humanist illusion, because art can never
be pursued in therapeutic purposes. He thinks that if he somehow grasps better
Madame Bovary, he would find a key to
his own life and find out why his wife committed suicide, which is not
something he is aware of, he masks it as his own intellectual pursuit. It
enforces the belief that art does mingle with reality. It should not be taken
as a reality, but it does contain elements of reality, and it remains very
indefinite. There is another ironic juxtaposition, namely, the juxtaposition
between the life of Emma Bovary and the life of Madame Bovary’s English
translator whose name is Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, in examination
paper in Chapter 14. This woman who translates Madame Bovary into English feels
the connection between herself and Emma Bovary. In the same Chapter, the first
exam question is the relationship between art and life, so in a way, Barnes
puts the reader in the role of a student, not a student of literature, but the
student of life. In introduction to the exam questions, it is said: “It has
become clear to the examiners in recent years that candidates are finding it
increasingly difficult to distinguish between art and life. Everyone claims to
understand the difference, but perceptions vary greatly. For some, life is rich
and creamy, made according to old peasant recipe, from nothing but natural
products, while art is a pallid commercial confection, consisting mainly of
artificial colourings and flavourings.” That is the traditional view. “For
others, art is the truer thing, full, bustly and emotionally satisfying, while
life is worse then the poorest novel, devoid of narrative, peopled by whores
and rogues, short on wit, long on unpleasant incidents and leading to a
painfully predictable ending. Adherence of the latter view tends to cite Logan
Smith “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Candidates are
advised not to use this quotation. Consider the relationship between art and
life suggested by any two of the following statements or situations.” The text
is the discourse of exam.
We are invited to think about this,
which is a major goal here. Another typical postmodernist technique applied
here, which we have also seen at work in the Golden Notebook, is framing, which
sums up to existence of several layers of the narrator. This again reinforces
the view that there is no clear distinction between art and life.
The first narrative level is the story of the physician
Geoffrey Braithwaite, on that very level, already complications begin, because
various real personages make appearance, like Jean Paul Sartre who is there, in
addition to Enid Starky, one of the real, existing scholars specialising in
French literature, thee is also Christopher Rigs, a truly existing person. This
is a post modernism because it relativises Geoffrey Braithwaite as a fictional
character, because he appears together with real persons who are frequently
inserted.
The third level is that Geoffrey
Braithwaite, the fictional character is interested in Gustave Flaubert, dead,
but real writer of the 19th century.
So, the third level is the life of Gustave
Flaubert, his relationship with Louise Colette. There are other long dead
persons who come to voice, there is Flaubert himself speaking n the third version of
his biography, and his long dead lover, who was also a real person.
Occasionally they completely supplant the first level, the level of Geoffrey
Braithwaite, challenging what he knows about Flaubert’s life. We wonder who to
believe, which again means that we should not be too hasty that Flaubert or
Colette can offer the more reliable story. The final level is the level of
fictitious characters in Flaubert’s works, namely the world of Emma Bovary,
Felicity, and others, all of whom seem to Geoffrey Braithwaite as real as he is
himself. So much so, that he suspects and fears that his life and his marriage
had been anticipated in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which is particularly ironic,
because we know that both Braithwaite and Emma Bovary are fiction. Furthermore,
the novel Flaubert’s Parrot is the quest for the real parrot on which the
fiction was based and Geoffrey Braithwaite tries to establish the exact nature
of this connection. The answer is always complicated, Barnes deliberately
confuses the reader to show how difficult it is to distinguish between life and
fiction.
Next issue is the inter-textuality. Barnes inserts the array of
different texts, which are not not necessarily traditionally associated with
literature, we have texts, excerpts from students’ guides, essays, letters,
portions of literary criticism, allusions to other works of art (modernist
technique taken to the extreme). Other literary works alluded to here include
Madame Bovary, French Lieutenant’s Woman and Lord of the Flies. So, this is no
longer a novel in a traditional sense, it includes different discourses in
text. It includes not only the main story, the story of Geoffrey Braithwaite,
which is by no means the most prominent one in the novel, but also the author’s
numerous theoretical discussions about the nature of literature, his dislike
for the coincidences. According to Aristotle, accidents in the work of art are
an indication of the incompetence of the artist.
There is also a passage in which the
narrator expresses his hatred to critics. He is
very disrespectful and provocative. It is to be found in Chapter 4 – Emma
Bovary’s eyes. In this Chapter, an excerpt is given from Enid Starky’s critical overview of
Flaubert’s work. Barnes ridicules this as rubbish, because this kind of information is not needed by anyone. Barnes
also mocks the halo of seriousness which surrounds literary critics. He speaks of Enid Starky’s lecture and mocks her
manner of speech with French accent, he
says this through the narrator, Geoffrey Braithwaite. He is not
irritated only with Enid Starky, he was first irritated with Flaubert, because
such literary genius failed to be consistent in describing the exact colour of
his most famous character’s eyes, but his anger soon shifted to Ms. Starky. He
relativises the distinction between the ordinary reader and the professional
critic. This passage, like many like it, has nothing to do with the action.
Everything is equally worthy to be present in the novel, both the main action
and the digression. In this particular Chapter he attack the attitude of
literary critics, whose approach to the books is obsolete.
Another thing he deliberately
abandons in the novel is chronology. There is no chronological sequence. The
author himself is no longer a presiding authority. Here, Barnes abandons the
norms of narrative, like chronology structure, the beginning, the middle and
the end. The author can no longer expect that his moral vision of the world is
binding by the reader, so he also gives up the didactic function of literature.
The moral relativism concerning all kinds of moral issues makes it increasingly
difficult to get anything of a message or a solution or a instruction from the
novel, they merely make moral inquiries, without preaching or advocating a
certain moral view. If they do preach, they preach in a way that ironises
preaching. The narrator, fails not only in finding the truth, but also in
trying to understand himself, both the truth and he himself, remain mysteries.
Geoffrey Braithwaite has lived through a traumatic experience, he is yet to
cope first with the infidelity of his wife and then with her suicide (which
could have also been a murder), because he does not find a straightforward way
to tell the story of his life.
Another typical postmodernist theme
is the view of history or the official historiography and its relation to
literature. Official history is no longer seen as the source of objective
truth, because it is rooted in language, just like any other discourse. Biography
is also a form of historiography. What we get to read in history books,
including biographies, are only somebody else’s versions, which are inevitably
subjective, and as such, they are unreliable as evidence of what has really
happened. We can never know exactly what the past was like. There is always the
aspect of personal perspective. He subverts the notion of scientific
objectivity, because any kind of intellectual work, reflect the attitudes, the
views and the values of its author. Literature, more then about anything else,
speaks about its author, just as the language speaks most of itself. This means
that social, moral and political prejudices, wherever they are, be it a work of
literature of a history, are unreliable. Context is everything in postmodernism.
Text is always embedded in some context. Historiographer in writing history,
just like the novelist in writing novels, presents only one of the possible
stories, based on what he or she has heard or read, often relying on equally
unreliable sources. He creates out of a chaotic mess of material, which he has
been able to gather about a certain historical period, to make it a meaningful
piece. So historiography is fictionalised and fiction is historicised, both
equally reliable and both equally unreliable. A lot of postmodernist novels
deal with history.
In the end of the novel, the
narrator finds himself unable to reveal the exact truth of Flaubert’s life.
Illusiveness of the knowledge of the past is emphasised here.
Biographies in the Novel
The first biography emphasises the
facts from Flaubert’s life. It focuses on Flaubert’s artistic, intellectual and
romantic strengths and his triumphs in professional and private life.
Biography No.2, focuses on Gustave’s
poor health, intellectual underdevelopment, his pitiful achievement as lover.
It focuses on his downfalls and his weaknesses. It notes problems with
alcoholism, problems in writing, romantic problems, etc. It even mentions how
he contracted syphilis.
Flaubert’s autobiography is a
compilation of Flaubert’s own thoughts on his experiences.
The narrator highlights our
inability to know the truth exactly. History is just another literary genre, in
the view of the narrator. History is something highly subjective presented to
be objective. Cross Channel – “The past is a distant receding coastline and we
are all in the same boat, along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes,
each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed,
one of the telescopes will be in continual use, it will seem to tell the whole,
the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion and as the boat sets off again,
we return to our normal activities, scanning from one telescope to another.
Seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another, and
when the blur does clear, we imagine that we did it all by ourselves.
The Chapter “The Case Against”
enumerates a number of views contrasted again against the postmodernist view,
namely the view of constant progression of human race, the view of historical
progression, etc. “What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of
preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest, or is
it simply that our desire to know the worst is love’s favourite perversion?” This
is very philosophical. “For some this curiosity operates as baleful fantasy. ..
I loved Ellen and I wanted to know the worst. I never provoked her, I was
cautious and defensive, as is my habit. I didn’t even ask questions, but I
wanted to know the worst. Ellen never returned this caress. She was fond of me,
she would automatically agree as if the matter wasn’t worth discussing that she
loved me. But she unquestioningly believed the best about me, that was the
difference. She never searched for that sliding panel that opens the secret
chamber of the heart, the chamber where memory and corpses are kept. Sometimes
you find the panel, but it doesn’t open. Sometimes it opens but your gaze meets
nothing but a mouse skeleton, but at least you looked. That’s the real
distinction between people. Not between those who have secrets and those who
don’t, but between those who want to know everything and those who don’t. This
search is a sign of love.” Geoffrey Braithwaite has a very postmodernist
definition of love; he makes clear distinction of people who live in illusion
and those who do not. The Chapter continues with enumeration of various
accusations made against Gustave Flaubert, namely that he hated democracy and
humankind and that he did not believe in progress. On this third accusation,
Braithwaite says: “I cite the 20th century in his defence”. Later he
says that literature is affected by politics (context), not vice versa. He
discusses all sorts of issues in small segments.
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