Introduction chapter I. The Philosophy of Existentialism in the Early Novels of Iris Murdoch

1.2 "Two-faced Eros" by Plato in Murdoch's novels of the 60s and 70s
A. Murdoch (born in 1919) made her debut with the novel “Under the Net” (1954), immediately showing herself to be a talented master of the word, able to give the narrative both lyricism and an elegant humorous coloring. Already in this work, the future distinguishing features of the novelist were reflected - interest in the topic of art, in depicting a creative personality and respect for moral and philosophical problems, interpretation of the behavior of characters in the light of modern theories, in this case - linguistic philosophy and existentialism. The originality of Murdoch's artistic quest is directly related to her profession. For many years, the writer has taught a course in philosophy, primarily existentialism, at Oxford University. Teaching activity does not interfere with creativity: Murdoch is the author of more than thirty novels. She poses and solves moral and philosophical problems on the basis of private life, avoiding socio-historical concreteness in depicting the fates of the characters and their inner appearance. Sometimes only some details (the characters drive cars and fly planes) can determine that the action takes place in the 20th century. socio-political reality is present in Murdoch's novels only in separate echoes, not reflected in the central collision of the novel. At the same time, the private life of the characters is inscribed in the general picture of a philosophically interpreted being, the idea of which is based in Murdoch on the idea of human loneliness, its dependence on fatal accidents, passions, on the idea of the incomprehensibility of truth, the lack of mutual understanding among people, on the Freudian interpretation of the human psyche.⁶
Under the Net is, to this day, perhaps Murdoch's clearest novel. It is permeated with a sense of the incompleteness of life, only emerging opportunities. It was written before the era of "underground" and counterculture, leftist convulsions of youth revolt, "sexual revolution" and international terrorism. It feels the traditionalism of life in the British Isles and the charm of old Europe, not yet affected by the newfangled obscurations of thought and morality. And such a cute "anti-hero" as Jake, who combines the features of a charming rogue from a picaresque novel and a simpleton from the novel "high road", will not be repeated in Murdoch's prose. Therefore, apparently, the comedy of life prevails here over its tragic beginnings, and simple miracles still come with actors, and they are able to distinguish them in the twisting of existence. For all that, the problematics of Murdoch's creativity are laid down and defined already here, and here it appears equal to itself - unique, instantly recognizable by intonation and slyly uninhibited; by the merging of fact and fiction in prose, that is, the sensual visibility of the objective world and the exciting, slightly quivering haze in which the personal perception of the characters and the author wraps this world; by obsession with a range of problems that go back to what the philosopher's students do on the pages of the novel: "... the world is a mystery to which they consider it possible to find the key".⁷ Murdoch's books are a bunch of such keys, and each one is able to unlock one small secret, but not the secret of the world, for it is unknowable. About this unknowability and the tragicomedy of life generated by it, in essence, all her novels are written. The name of the first of them is ambiguous. It can be deciphered in such a way that Jake is confused in himself - his feelings, aspirations, actions. But is it only one thing? “Bad people consider time to be discontinuous. They deliberately dull their perception of natural causality. The virtuous, on the other hand, perceive being as an all-encompassing dense network of the smallest interlacings, ”the Black Prince says in the novel. Jake can hardly be called virtuous, though not bad, and he, like the vast majority of the writer's characters, flounders under this net. In Murdoch's understanding, the "network" itself is neither good nor bad, but is an objective embodiment of the chaos of being in human life.
“What innumerable chains of fatal cause and effect have been scattered over the earth by human vanity, jealousy, greed, cowardice, so that other people stumble over them,” reflects the old egoist Charles Arrowby, the protagonist of the novel “Sea, Sea” (1978). But, firstly, as the writer shows, those who spread it stumble first of all on the chain. And secondly, the “network” can also be woven from beautiful qualities:
“You must wrap a net of kindness and Christian love around him,” Douglas said. Imagining the enraged Randle, entangled in the nets, Ann almost burst out laughing, but then her heart was flooded with a burning, protective tenderness for her husband ... ”(“ Wild Rose ”).⁸
In the eyes of the writer, the “net” symbolizes the primordial chaos of being, which, within the framework of human life, turns into a tragicomedy. The latter is fed and reproduced by what, in relation to Murdoch's work, can be defined as the Tower of Babel syndrome - a total misunderstanding by a person of others, his environment, and even himself. In each novel, the syndrome gives a different clinical picture, manifesting itself in outwardly dissimilar symptoms. This is the presumptuous readiness of the characters to “pick up the key” to something that cannot be opened by any key. It is an equally arrogant determination to attribute to others feelings, thoughts and aspirations that they do not have. “Hartley loves me and has long regretted that she lost me. How else. She does not love her husband” (“Sea, Sea.”) This incomparable “how could it be otherwise” clearly demonstrates the simple mechanics of self-deception. The same elementary egoism, “the feeling of a money-grubber, the desire to grab and not give away” (ibid.). At best, it is the original secret of a person’s inner being, which is not always intelligible to himself, as the hero of “Under the Net” well said: “The essence of my life is a secret conversation with myself, and turning it into a dialogue would be tantamount to suicide.” Such a complete focus on themselves all the time makes Murdoch's characters blind, deaf and unintelligent, more than self-satisfied - self-sufficient. “You are so fresh, so peaceful, like a cat that has just calved,” throws his ex-wife (“The Black Prince”), immersed in sensual savoring of a newly flared love passion, to the hero. But it is this self-sufficiency that turns their best intentions into stones, with which, according to a well-known saying, the road to hell is paved, and in the same book a person is called to escape "from the bestial, egocentric night, located in close proximity to any, the most civilized from U.S". And all because of the same arrogance Murdoch's characters find themselves in grotesque situations, that is, ridiculous and bitter at the same time.
Critics have noticed that in many of Murdoch's novels this dance has its manager, or conductor, whose will and desire determine its intricate figures, that is, ultimately the fate of the characters. For the most part, such a manager plays a sinister role; he is mysterious, eccentric, endowed with distinct demonic properties and performs the functions of an evil wizard in the plot. in a novel meaningfully titled Escape from the Wizard (1956), the psychoanalyst Palmer Andersen from Severed Head (1961), the femme fatale Emma Sands (Wild Rose), the wealthy Julius King (A Quite Honorable Defeat), historian David Crimond ("The Book and the Brotherhood", 1987).⁹
Murdoch also has his own saints, or at least candidates for such - Hugo Belfounder from the first novel, James Temper Pace in The Bell (1958) or Brenden Craddock (Henry and Cato, 1976). They also try to influence the course of events, they do it worse than the "wizards", but in essence the role of both of them is purely nominal. What mysterious and omnipotent, it would seem, Misha Fox and Julius King - they are not fishers of people: people are caught on their own weaknesses and vices, and the "wizards" Murdoch, like the evil spirit in M. Bulgakov, only manifest, catalyze this process. After all, in three famous novels of the 1970s, written by her in the first person ("The Black Prince", "Child of the Word" and "Sea, Sea"), the narrators themselves act in two roles at the same time: "wizard" and "saint" - and they are caught in the same way, they are “under the net”.
All this fits into the general chaos of life, which makes it cruel and unfair. "Life is generally unfair." - summed up in the novel "The Black Prince", where at the same time it is clarified why exactly "Good does not triumph, and if it triumphed, it would not be good." And the tears do not dry up, and the torment of the innocent and the suffering of those who have experienced soul-crippling injustice are not forgotten. In another book, through the lips of the hero, a conjecture is expressed that the confusion, disorder of life deprives it of its tragic beginning: “Everything is vulgarly mixed up in me - repentance, remorse, annoyance, riot, hatred. And there was no tragedy. Tragedy is art. There are no tragedies in life” (“Child of the Word”). Where there is no place for tragedy, logically, comedy should rule, but things are not so simple with Murdoch: “Almost any story about our affairs is comical. We are infinitely funny in each other's eyes. Even the most beloved creature is funny to its admirer. The novel is a comic form... God, if he existed, would laugh at his creation. At the same time, it cannot be denied that life is ridiculous, devoid of meaning, subject to the needle of chance, that pain and the expectation of death rule over it. From this, irony is born, our dangerous and inevitable weapon ”(“ The Black Prince ”).
Murdoch's irony is an amalgamation of the sublime, the beautiful, the sad, the macabre and the funny, taking many and varied forms and extending to all spheres of human experience and existence. Such irony really does not allow comedy or tragedy in its “pure” form, but it turns the picture into a stvovanie, arising from the pen of the writer, in a tragicomedy. According to Murdoch, the sometimes unnatural unity of the incompatible has as its source not so much the imperfections of human nature and social structures, which all go back to the same chaos, but the absolute, supreme paradox of being - the inseparability of life and death. For Murdoch, the mere fact that death exists, and not just exists, but inevitability and immutability, gives existence a qualitatively new dimension, changes the very perception of life. In poetic form, this specific, incomparable feeling of death in life was expressed by the modern Russian poet Alexander Kushner:
But even on the lightest day
Quiet, invisible.
Death is like a grain at the bottom
Shines with multicolored brilliance.
In a grove, in a field, in a fresh garden,
Evil horsetail and milkweed.
A sharp poison penetrates
Heart secretly burning.
Like someone behind a bush.
Behind the barn, behind the buffet
Holding a ring over wine
Monogrammed and secret.
How black is his back!
How the sun shines on the ring!
But without this grain
The taste is not the same, the wine is not drunk.¹⁰
The presence of death in the artistic world created by Iris Murdoch is all-pervasive - from the clinically impeccable fading of life ("The Dream of Bruno", 1969) to the numerous momento mori that lie in wait for the reader on the pages of her books: "... the loneliness of the sea and that special feeling, now realized as a sense of death, which it always seemed to instill in me” (“Sea, Sea”). To say that the taste of death gives the sharpness of life in Murdoch's books would not be entirely accurate, and this is not the point: he imparts a special tension and purity to the very experience of life with all its injustices and even abominations, tames chaos and somehow fills life with meaning. . It is dual and dialectical, this experience, and it is impossible to understand whether the obsession with “the mute horror of mortal flesh, dull, soulless, irreversible” (“The Black Prince”) translates into a piercing feeling of “the fragility of the human body, its fragility, fragility, its complete dependence from extraneous causes ”(“ Sea, Sea ”), if, on the contrary, the awareness of the fragility and frailty of the flesh gives rise to the fear of death.