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

Chapter II. Platonic ideas in Murdoch's novels of the 70s
2.1 70s - the heyday of creativity Iris Murdoch: Platonic ideas with enduring ideas of the philosophy of existentialism
The heyday of Murdoch's work falls on the 70s, when she creates her best works (except for the early novel "Under the Net"). These are the "Black Prince", "Sea, Sea", "Child of the Word". Among them, the most significant and artistically perfect is The Black Prince (1973), which combines Platonic ideas with the enduring ideas of linguistic philosophy and existentialism and its predecessor, the Danish thinker S. Kierkegaard.
In The Black Prince, one of Murdoch's favorite tricks is clearly revealed, which appeared in the novel Under the Net, and in The Severed Head, and later in the 70s (Sea, Sea, Child of the Word). The writer narrates on behalf of the already middle-aged, almost sixty-year-old Bradley Pearson, who tells about his intimate experiences associated with both artistic creativity and his love for a young girl. The remoteness of the hero-narrator from the personality of the author, Iris Murdoch herself, determines the difficulty of revealing the author's assessment, the author's attitude to the depicted. The ideological load on each artistic component of the work, on the plot and composition, is increasing. An important role is played by the ratio of the point of view of the narrator and other characters, who at the end of the novel also get the floor. Symbols and leitmotifs and the very title of the work carry great meaning.¹¹
Already in the first novel "Under the Net", the opposition of genuine creativity and handicraft, which brings income, but deprives the writer of real spiritual burning, was outlined. In The Black Prince, this collision is developed. Murdoch creates an expressive image of Arnold Buffin, a businessman in the literary world, releasing a novel a year to please the primitive tastes of the public. But the main character, Bradley Person, published only three books by the age of fifty-eight. This is a martyr of the pen, full of holy dissatisfaction with himself. He constantly burns the pages of his manuscripts, because he feels that he is still far from creating a genuine work of art. But he is convinced that his main book is yet to come. For Pearson, the moment of creativity is a special state of mind, it is self-giving, the tension of all spiritual and physical forces.
The theme of creativity is intertwined in the novel with the theme of love. Under the influence of Plato, Merlock comprehends love - both spiritual and physical - as a creative principle, similar to artistic creativity. It was under the influence of his love for the young Julian, the daughter of Arnold Buffin, a love that became for Pearson both happiness and a tragic test, that he created his main and only book. Love, like a creative take-off, appears in the novel as a sizzling force. Experiencing his feelings for Julian, Pearson feels explosions of "black flame" in his chest. The god of love Eros seems to him a demonic, terrible beginning, he calls him "Black Eros". Hence one of the interpretations of the title of the novel: "The Black Prince" is a symbol of painful love that brings a person both happiness and suffering. The name of the novel is also connected with the image of Galet from Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name. This image acts as a link between the theme of love and the theme of creativity. Pearson falls in love with Julian when they discuss Shakespeare's Hamlet. At the same time, it turns out that the girl played Hamlet on the school stage and wore a black suit in this role (the motif of the “black prince”). Pearson's love passion reaches its climax when he sees Julian in Hamlet's outfit. At the same time, according to I. Levidova, the great tragedy of Shakespeare, in the interpretation of Murdoch, is the most complete expression of the personality of the English playwright in the word.
But why should love and creativity bring a person, along with happiness, such torments? We find the answer to this question in understanding the collision that is Murdoch's favorite and is a kind of subtext of Pearson's story. This is a collision of "man and the world." The existentialist thought about the absurdity of life, about the loneliness of man runs through the whole novel. Philosophical maxims are put into Pearson's mouth, based on the teachings of Kierkegaard, one of Murdoch's favorite thinkers. Pearson talks about how life is terrible, meaningless, full of pain and the expectation of death.
Murdoch's statements of the mid-60s indicate that in relation to this school, in particular to Sartre, the critical aspect becomes predominant. She denies any connection with existential philosophy and speaks only of her speculative interest in the ideas of Kierkegaard, the forerunner of this philosophical trend. But even here, in the first place, it is not so much the approval as the controversy. From the point of view of this controversy, the novel "The Unicorn" is sometimes considered. It is this novel that testifies to the growing, serious interest in Plato. One of the heroes of the novel, not a participant, but only an observer of events, expounds the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher, which the author shares. It is not surprising that soon, in 1964, Murdoch's philosophical work "The Idea of Perfection" was published, where for the first time the existential view of the world is directly opposed to the Platonic thesis about the unity of goodness and beauty. And in 1967, a lecture given in Cambridge, "The Priority of the Concept of Good over Other Concepts", was published, where the concept of good is affirmed as the dominant one in the moral development of the individual. Fascination with the ideas of Plato turned out to be very long. Murdoch's original manifesto was Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Exiled Artists (1976). Here the genetic dependence of one's own ethical views on Plato's is declared. At the same time, differences are highlighted. The writer does not consider herself a “pure” Platonist, because, unlike her teacher, she puts art above philosophy, moreover, she claims that the possibilities of art are endless, that the artistic word has tremendous educational power. According to critics, the new quality of the prose writer was embodied in the so-called "Platonic" novels, including "Lovely and Good", "Bruno's Dreams", "The Black Prince".¹²
The scope of action is the private relationships of the characters - between Person and his ex-wife Christian, after the death of her second American husband, who returned to London; between Pearson and Juliam and her parents Arnold and Rachel Buffin; he is unwittingly drawn into family scandals that poison the lives of his sister Priscilla and her husband Roger; advantage in the sphere of everyday life also appears brother Christian Francis Marlo, prone to pathology, in the past deprived of a medical diploma, now living on handouts. But in this private life of the characters, the author wants to find out not the boring routine, but the embodiment of the eternal disharmony of human existence, full of tragic surprises (such as Priscilla's suicide, Baffin's murder, Pearson's life imprisonment).
In an effort not only to confirm, but also to strengthen Braddy's idea that "the world is a vale of suffering", that a person is in the grip of some "powerful forces", Murdoch duplicates situations, arranging them in order of increasing tension and irreparability. Priscilla tries to commit suicide twice, but the first time she is saved, the second time help comes too late; twice there is a quarrel in the Baffin family, during which the spouses use the poker and twice call Pearson for help; but if in the opening scene of the novel Rachel receives only a minor injury, then in the final scene, the outcome of the situation is tragic: Buffin dies.
The unknowability of life, the incomprehensibility of its mysterious ways of development is also revealed in a paradoxical situation, Bradley indignantly condemns Roger for betraying his wife and loving a young girl. But a few days later he falls passionately in love with the young Julian. Moreover, the intensity of Bradley's emotional experiences is again expressed in an unexpected and ridiculous state of the body, an attack of nausea and vomiting - just at the moment of a joyful meeting with his beloved. The hero strove to devote his whole life to creativity, but he was hindered by the service, by the presence of others. He gains true freedom and the ability to write only ... in prison, where he is imprisoned on charges of murdering Baffin.
Entering into contacts with the people around him, Pearson feels himself the object of spiritual violence. Such are the constant demands of the ex-wife Christian for a meeting, the love harassment of Rachel Buffin, the visits of Arnold Baffin. These characters, and partly Pearson himself, are always busy sorting things out with each other. But the more these relations are discussed, the more confused they appear, the more the truth, which seems generally unknowable, eludes. This idea about the elusiveness of truth is also confirmed compositionally. After Pearson's story about his love for Julian, about his relationship with the Buffins and how Rachel killed her husband, monologues of other characters follow - Rachel, Christian, Julian, Marlo, and all of them, each in their own way, seek to refute the hero's confession and prove that he is the killer of Arnold Baffin!¹³
Who is right? At the plot level, the author does not give an answer. He only clashes between two judgments about Pearson - the negative opinion of Rachel and others and the sympathetic one - the publisher Loxia, who is the author of the preface to the history of Pearson and the afterword to it. Bradley Pearson also speaks with his preface and afterword. This "frame" includes the main part of the novel, called "The Black Prince. Holiday of Love ”and which is the book that, under the influence of trials, Bradley wrote in prison and left after his death for the judgment of readers. It is as a book, albeit with squeamish hostility, that Bradley's story is considered by his opponents, who accuse the writer of having biasedly and incorrectly presented the story that really happened in it.
Thus, the problem of truth and the possibility of its comprehension acquires another aspect in the novel - this is the question of the relationship between the truth of life and the truth of art, the relationship between reality and art. Murdoch's position here appears complex and contradictory, which is especially clearly revealed in the judgments of Pearson himself. So, on the one hand, he claims that he wrote his book, driven by “an elementary need to tell the truth about what is widely distorted and falsified”, that “real art expresses the truth, it is the truth, perhaps the only truth”, that words "art" and "truth" are essentially synonyms; a number of statements suggest that when talking about the truth in a work of art, Bradley and, undoubtedly, the author behind him, mean its correspondence to the truth of life: "The artist is looking for a special language to express the truth in it." There are even attempts to reveal the connection between the ethical and aesthetic principles in the work: "Beauty is present where the truth has found a suitable form." Thus, we are talking about the artistic embodiment of truth as something original, but acquiring in the work its own special life, a new being.
However, on the other hand, in a number of statements, often parallel to the names, Bradley asserts the sovereignty of a purely aesthetic principle - it is identified with the truth as such, already out of its connection with reality ("... the height of beauty and proportion is truth, and even in contradiction with the latter: "Here the question arises: where is the truth? Is this the reality? "- the hero exclaims after thinking about the obligation of the artist to depart from "simplicity" (the truth of life?), about the inevitability of "elegant complexity in a work of art."
Along with the search for a “suitable form”, purely psychological reasons also contribute to the separation from the truth of life - the inability of a person to “correctly” describe the other and himself! “How biased is my image of Arnold, how superficial is the image of Priscilla! Bradley exclaims. - Emotions cloud the view, they do not highlight details, but, on the contrary, pull generalizations and even theories. When I write about Arnold, my pen trembles with resentment, love, remorse, fear. It’s as if I’m trying to fence myself off from him with words, to hide behind a scattering of words. We protect ourselves from troubles with descriptions and humble the world with syllogisms. What he is afraid of is the main key in the artist's soul. Art often serves as a barrier to us. (I wonder if this is true of great art?). Instead of a means of communication, it often becomes a means of mystification.
So, realizing the difference between artistic truth and the truth of life, Murdoch nevertheless cannot grasp the unifying and subtle connection and prefers to hide behind a paradox, stating: art is a means of asserting the truth, but it is also a means of mystification! Why? The answer to this is the last, final monologue of Bradley, focused not on justification before the court, but on introspection, on an attempt to comprehend the source of his creativity. As is clear from his reflections on the tragedy he experienced, which allowed him to go beyond the ordinary, to feel himself in the claws of divine power, that is, to join some secrets of being, the laws of the universe, the source of creativity for Bradley was not reality itself, but the experience of its individual experience . What matters is not the facts of life, but what they become for the artist. And if only legally weighty “evidence” mattered to the judges, then Bradley’s creative imagination was fed by his deeply personal, incomprehensible to others, reactions to what happened to him, to the mysteries of life that appeared to him.¹⁴ These are the riddles of love, and the painful, inevitable paradox of creativity: words are powerless to reflect the intensity of the artist’s soul in the process of his creative self-destruction, because they are only “reflections of inexpressible meanings, like bonfires on a night river”; without the light of these meanings, “almost any speech is only a distortion of the truth” (not without reason, Bradley refers, “the wise Plato does not accept artists. Socrates did not write a word, neither did Christ”).