Robert Tulip wrote:The Silent Men is a beautiful and painful story about mortality and how men are bound by existential finitude.

Isn't the the sea the physical reminder of the infinite (unboundedness) to Yvars as was the desert for Janine?

What I like about this story is how Camus starts from an existential philosophy, and shows how deep themes of life can be seen in ordinary circumstances. In thrown finitude, people seek freedom, but economic constraints place as firm bonds as the iron bands of an oaken barrel. In Heidegger's terms, anxiety is the basis of ontology, as we consider our future, past and present as care. The barrel, an ancient craft requiring creativity and skill, facing a modern world in which it cannot compete with industrial technology, is a symbol of the men's life, as the staves strain and coordinate beneath the metal.

"Thrown finitude," I imagine, means that we find ourselves without self-knowledge. But really,

I. Style is character.
II. Character is fate.

So we can find what we look for.

Tom

I look at thrown finitude as a basis for self knowledge. When Socrates said 'know thyself' he was calling for a recognition of finitude, as the self inhabits a mortal body and world, even while linking to the infinite as immortal soul. The sea certainly links us to something bigger than ourselves, but to the infinite? I am not so sure, as even the sea has its daily cycles of light and dark, heat and cold, smooth and rough, and these are very much part of the bounds of human finitude. Yvars is thrown into this finite world, and while he may dream of the infinite as symbolised by the ocean, the sea is in the end finite, as is life.

I mentioned the line 'character is fate' in the Your Inner Fish thread 'What is Nature' as a translation of Heraclitus' line ethos anthropoi daimon. Here we see a connection between Camus and evolutionary thought, as style, consisting of behavioural traits, has direct finite links to fate, as the destiny of our existence. Saint Paul made a similar claim in Romans 5:3 when he said suffering produces endurance, endurance character and character hope. Hence to say style is fate can link to Paul's idea that in suffering we obtain finite grounds for hope. Camus is presenting existential style, bounded by rather bleak bonds, as a source of inner freedom.

Robert Tulip wrote:I look at thrown finitude as a basis for self knowledge.

Robert by style I mean how an author's self is put into every expression, not consciously but unconsciously and therefore truthfully (aletheia). Even when an author is semiconsciously giving himself away he does so because he trusts that others will not notice. The Adulterous Woman is adulterous as a reflection of Camus' own adultery; The Silent Men are silent because his own mother was half-deaf; the setting is Africa because Camus' own setting is Africa; and so on. Heidegger dealt with this revelatory aspect of expression in his Memorial Address on the death of Conradin Kreutzer. Kreutzer's uniqueness as expressed in his music arose from his unique position in his background, a uniqueness that modern technological society replaces with controllable uniformities. I have not found that Heidegger developed the idea of revelatory expression to the point where it could be practically applied in literary criticism.

Tom

Tom, part of what you are saying seems to be that an artist has a conscious plan, but also discusses themes that have subconscious meanings, and style is a combined result. Your implication that truth/aletheia is primarily in this unconscious disclosure goes strongly against the grain of modern rationality, which identifies truth with conscious representation through language.

Existentialism, in Camus and Heidegger, recognises a deeper form of truth as disclosure, but I am not convinced that accidental correlations - such as with Camus' deaf mother - mean all that much. One of the distinguishing features of great art is that it is often in touch with subconscious moods and motives, and deliberately encodes them in things which also have a simpler direct meaning. So for Camus, adultery has numerous nuances of meaning, with Janine's simple yearning standing as a parable for everything from her marriage to the relation between France and Algeria.

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger does precisely what you ask, describing the revelatory expression contained within Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes. Similarly, in An Introduction to Metaphysics, he uses Goethe's graffito, over all summits is peace, to meditate on the revelatory meaning of the word 'is' as a form of literary criticism.

Robert Tulip wrote:Tom, part of what you are saying seems to be that an artist has a conscious plan, but also discusses themes that have subconscious meanings, and style is a combined result.

Not exactly, Robert. What I am saying is that a person unconsciously and wholly discloses the seemingly hidden self in any expression, but the clarity of this disclosure is greatest in art. I admit that to read anything in this manner is difficult, but I am sure it is possible because I have occasionally done so. For me this understanding of revelation resolves many philosphical and religious issues.

To read Camus correctly is to discover the soul of Camus. Had Heidegger read Van Gogh's shoe pictures correctly, he would have discovered Van Gogh in them.

Tom

Wow Tom, that is a beautiful idea - how "a person unconsciously and wholly discloses the seemingly hidden self in any expression." Disclosure, in this existential revelatory sense, is very far from the conventional doctrine of truth as representation, restricted to our explicit ideas. It is like God sees into our soul, like that gospel song his eye is on the sparrow. Consciousness is such a small part of style, and of mood for that matter. Heraclitus had another nice saying: 'nature loves to hide'. Are style and soul the same? Surely we can create a fake style which is out of touch with our soul? Can we discern the truth beneath these layers of meaning, or is soul just there in principle as an ultimate tantalizing insight?

Robert Tulip wrote: . . . that is a beautiful idea - how "a person unconsciously and wholly discloses the seemingly hidden self in any expression."

Notice how you can (I imagine) in many cases recognize from just a few words who is talking in BookTalk. Expression is permeated by individuality. In telegraphy this unintended expression of self is called fist.

Are style and soul the same?

Style is the utterance of soul, but basically they are identical just as we cannot separate a flower from its fragrance.

Heraclitus had another nice saying: 'nature loves to hide'. Surely we can create a fake style which is out of touch with our soul? Can we discern the truth beneath these layers of meaning, or is soul just there in principle as an ultimate tantalizing insight?

People love to hide but also want to be found (Poe's Imp of the Perverse). We consciously try to create a self for public presentation, but unconsciousness leave clues to the real self exposed. Given time and meditation, anyone who looks will eventually arrive at the self, no matter how dressed up it may be.

Tom

yodha wrote:

Thomas Hood wrote:http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... i_59211539
Camus's "The Silent Men" and "The Guest": Depictions of Absurd Awareness - Critical Essay
Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1997 by Rob Roy McGregor

Woah Thomas, that article was quite some read! I don't think I understood any of his absurd philosophy. But, it did help me in understanding the stories better.

As for all the stories from this book, the endings are the most puzzling. In this story, why does Yvars say that "Ah, it's his fault!"?
The above article provides some of the possible reasons:

Is the blame for the general collapse of interpersonal relationships? For his own daughter's illness, a kind of retribution for his treatment of the workers? For establishing a personal barrier that prevented Yvars from expressing concern for Lassalle's daughter? Or is the placing of blame a self-serving exculpation for his failure to call out in sympathy to Lassalle?

I wasn't quite satisfied by any of the above.

I took it as a kind of 'what goes around, comes around' philosophy. His daughter getting sick and having to go to the hospital happened, it was thought, because of his meanness as a boss who wouldn't give them what they wanted.

Robert Tulip wrote:Surely we can create a fake style which is out of touch with our soul? Can we discern the truth beneath these layers of meaning, or is soul just there in principle as an ultimate tantalizing insight?

And is it really necessary to do so in writing? I ponder that often. When I write, it's my life and current circumstances that come through.

I doubt my soul is aware that my bones ache a lot these days, that I cannot think about 'other side of the sea' excursions without considering where I'm going to sleep and how comfortable I might be sleeping out on the land, like I could get away with doing as a young woman.

My soul, the way I see it, carries the memory of many lives, and contemplates a much different existence than I, in this present physical body, would think about.

Yet when I deliberately write from the POV of a younger woman (or man, at times - it's a great writing exercise to write from the opposite sex POV), I don't get hung up in providing comfort for the younger woman's aching bones - I tend to use my own younger self as a basis for the character. Sometimes, it's a younger self that did not exist - sometimes I give her a freedom that I, myself, didn't have. Sometimes it's a mirror of exactly who I was.

But soul? I couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like to truly 'write from the soul'. I'd have to call it 'writing from the mind'.

Here's something I just wrote this morning, for one of the 'daily writes' at a writers' forum . . . I'm not here to show off my talent (or lack of) as a writer - this is just to show that my writing does indeed reflect who I am and where I am at this point in my life . . .

Cautious Rider

It was springtime, yet a pale sun had hidden behind ominous clouds for the most part of the day. At dusk, a light snow fell across the city, making Doris a cautious rider. She was moving down Indian Road, her recently purchased Schwinn on 'manual'. Right foot firmly planted on the pedal, the other ready to facilitate a sudden stop, she kept her eyes peeled to the storm-damaged tarmac, avoiding the worst of the ruts and holes, yet-to-be filled by tightly-budgeted city work crews. Just the thought of taking a slip and tumbling across the road was enough to make her bones ache in fearful anticipation.

The scent of freshly roasted chicken emanating from the machine's rear basket made her anxious for home. Still, she doubted she'd eat right away; she was tired from her weekly stint as a volunteer at the garden centre, and looked forward to an evening nap, that might well extend into the wee hours of the morning. A late-night snack had a good chance of taking precedent over supper during the more civilized hour of eight.

At the entrance to the lot, she was tempted to throw the switch and let the bike go putt-putt-putt down the cobblestone walkway, but reluctantly dismounted and walked toward her closed-in patio behind her ground-floor apartment. She knew from her years as being a tenant and part of a superintendent team, that the last person to be breaking common-area rules should be either staff or owner of an income property.

Of course it needs re-working - it's done as a 'quick write' kinda' thing . . . but it tells the reader about me:

1) I'm an older woman;
2) I'm one of two things - the owner of an income property - or - a 'wanna be' owner of an income property;
3) It tells the reader that this writer is contemplating the purchase of an EE-lectric bicycle;
4) It tells the reader that I am conscious of other people and how they might feel about me - how they 'would' think about me;
5) It tells the reader that I actually think about being in the situation of owning an apartment building, having an electric bicycle and how I need to nap after having done some work.

It tells how I am, how I feel, what I might like - it tells the reader that I like (enjoy immensely) chicken and that is what I'd choose were I picking up supper for myself after a day's work.

My soul, and I'm sure of this, is unaware of all this.

Were I to 'write from my soul', I'd need to meditate, then write what actually crept into my mind while meditating - that's where I'd find out what my soul would write.

I use dreams in my writing sometimes - dreams actually tell me what I really think, want and how I really feel about things. But that's writing from the 'subconscious' . . .

I'd like to think that when I die, I'll be fully enlightened and God will not send me back to do anything over. That is when my writing will be done in stardust, if I feel a need to write anything at all.