Epiphany can be defined as the sudden realization of the essence or meaning of something, as well as the understanding of the truth of certain situations or one’s life as a whole. In Death in Venice, Gustav von Auschenbach’s recognition of his love for and obsession with Tadzio is a kind of epiphany that, while not exactly beneficial or positive marks a point in which the character experience complete clarity and begins to express honesty about his previously rejected desires.
Gustav von Auschenbach, having led a life of dedication to his craft, prides himself on disciplined perfectionism and dignity. His life up to the point at which the novel takes place has been largely uneventful. Many ominous occurrences help to illustrate Gustav’s state of mind at the story’s opening. His exchange with a strange gondola rower who turns out to be a criminal, as well as his sighting of a disturbing old man dressed to look youthful are both v
aguely perilous encounters which serve to establish Gustav’s uneasiness. Upon discovering Tadzio, Gustav slowly allows his principles and dignity to erode as his obsession expands. Tadzio seems to tap into the lifelong desires that Gustav has repressed in the interest of being fully committed to his work. The end result of this obsession, however, is the writer’s death.
While not necessarily in the dark before this epiphany, von Auschenbach was certainly very repressed. After feeling a vague need for a vacation, he travels to Venice completely unaware of what waits for him. The obsession is something that, given his principles, is extremely hard to verbalize. However, when he finally declares, “I love you,” it is clear that he has accepted the truth about his feelings and desires. Though neither overtly religious or spiritual, von Auschenbach’s epiphany marks a change in his profound change in his state of mind and worldview and could therefore be seen as spiritual. This epiphany was solely brought on by the travel experience, before which von Auschenbach had lived a stable and principled life. His deeply ingrained longings were awakened through his trip to Venice and his sighting of Tadzio. While von Auschenbach’s Venetian experience led him to a greater freedom and honesty, which is not to be ignored, his travels ultimately resulted in his mental torture and death.
Epiphany is not always positive, as indicated by Death in Venice. Discovery, especially self-discovery, can be quite painful and sometimes thoroughly detrimental. Gustav von Auschenbach, having lived a monotonous and increasingly stagnant life was unable to process the hard truths of his dangerous desires, considering them foreign, unpleasant, and sinful; his inability to ever speak or reach out to Tadzio being proof of this. While it was certainly a moment of complete honesty, von Auschenbach’s revelation and declaration of his love led him to further introversion. The downward spiral that began with the first time he laid eyes on the young boy grew from a preoccupation to a complete obsession leaving him unable to focus on anything else and changing his worldview and philosophy to suit his festering desires. This epiphany of his uncontrollable lust led to his bizarre death but allowed him to gain a deeper knowledge of himself.
In the biography of Naguib Mahfouz it is mentioned that the 1919 revolution in Egypt greatly affected the author. While Mahfouz wrote a novel more directly related to the revolution (Palace Walk) elements of revolution can be seen in The Journey of Ibn Fattouma. Ibn Fattouma sets out on his journey to find Gebel, a promise land of sorts. He makes his way through different societies along the way, and encounters many different lifestyles. He flees his home city because of the corruption that exists there, but as he travels through the different lands, he finds that problems exist in all societies.
The idea of revolution can easily be seen in the first place Fattouma settles, Mashriq. The whole society is based on a free love, free thought foundation, a stark contrast to more rigid societies. Even though this culture is open and free spirited, it is not without rules and regulations, and Fattouma rebels against these guidelines by trying to raise his family in the ways of Islam. The other lands reflect revolution through their insistence on upholding freedoms and security, and in the final land that he enters, the importance of self awareness. The majority of Ibn Fattouma’s resistance is passive, relating directly to the Egyptian revolution, which was a non-violent effort to stop the British occupation of the country.
The interesting aspect of the story lies in the final pages when Ibn Fattouma finally catches a glimpse of the land of Gebel and the book’s ending before we learn about the secrets the place may hold. Gebel is Ibn Fattouma’s chance to create a better existence for the people in his homeland. He travels for years in order to find this elusive land, and we never find out if he finds what he’s looking for. People travel to see new places and things and gain new experiences that will help them change their view of the palce they call home. Fattouma travels for exactly this reason, to find something in a distant land that will change the place he came from. As readers we don’t see the final leg of his journey because this secret that he seeks is unattainable. There is no one secret to perfection in life, and we do not see Gebel because Ibn Fattouma has already learned what he needs to know to make his homeland a better place. Through his travels he has learned to accept other cultures and is able to embrace their strengths and weaknesses. It is the skill, not the instant life perfection supposedly housed in Gebel, that will potentially help him make his home a better place.
I really like Ian McEwan’s novels. Before reading The Comfort of Strangers I had read Atonement, and found both to be interesting and engaging. McEwan’s stories are often dark and sinister, turning everyday moments into tragic events. There is something about the way he describes chaos and violence that is almost poetic, however disturbing the situation might be. As I began reading The Comfort of Strangers, I was instantly drawn in by McEwan’s style, but I was waiting to stumble across the story-altering twist, the piece of information that would drastically change the meaning of everything before it. With twelve pages left in the book, the twist came on page 115 when Caroline shows Mary the wall of pictures of Colin.
I’m not usually the type of person to yell at the characters in horror movies or books, I don’t usually tell them to leave the dark, scary basement, but McEwan made me care about Colin and Mary, and as Mary saw the pictures on the wall, I wanted her to run as fast as she could away from the crazy woman next to her. Even though I had expected things to go badly for Colin and Mary, when everything went downhill I wasn’t expecting how horribly wrong it would become. I was expecting some sort of confrontation between Robert, Caroline and Colin, but I was not expecting it to end in death, or at least not death in such a gruesome manner. Colin’s murder removes any of the romanticism that sometimes accompanies death in fiction; there are no dramatic final words, no tearful goodbyes. Because the story shifts to Mary’s perspective, we drift in and out of consciousness with her and miss Colin’s final breath, making his death even more sinister.
I think McEwan’s main accomplishment in The Comfort of Strangers is the message he presents regarding the dangers of travel. His characters go off to Italy to rediscover the strength in their relationship, and instead find themselves facing down death. It is this idea, that any traveler at any time in any place could easily fall victim to a dark and sinister death at the hands of someone more familiar with their surroundings that adds a truly chilling overtone to the entire story. Anyone could take a wrong turn and end up in a dark alley with an unsavory character, but that’s not exactly highlighted in any of the travel brochures that promise fun times and beautiful scenery. Colin and Mary wanted an authentic experience so much that they were unable to see the danger their new authentic acquaintances represented.
I took a trip to England once. I had always wanted to travel there, and I had finally gotten my chance with a trip through school. I was very excited, ready to see all the sights and hear all the British accents. Without actually visiting, I had decided that England was my favorite country, though I couldn’t tell you why. Perhaps it was something about the way the rolling hills looked in pictures of the English countryside, although it could just as easily been the funny hats the Queen’s guards wear, I was always intrigued by the little things. In any case I had never been so excited for a trip in my life.
After a plane ride that seemed to take forever we landed at Heathrow airport in London. We stumbled out of the terminal and onto our little bus, perfect for our group of ten people. I’m not sure how long it took, be we ended up in the tiny town of Frome. Our hotel was small, but the sliding door in my room opened onto the lawn overlooking a perfect set of rolling English hills.
We spent the next ten days taking day trips on our bikes to all sorts of beautiful and exciting places like Stonehenge and the historic bathhouses in Bath. We saw caves and monuments and lots of rolling hills. I actually spent some time getting very lost on one of those hills, surrounded by tall grass and sheep. All these experiences were enjoyable and interesting, but they weren’t as life altering as I had wanted them to be.
About halfway through the trip we spent a day off schedule. This was the first day that we didn’t have every moment planned out, and it turned out to be the most interesting. Our bike trip for the day took us to a beach. It was July, but the air was cool and the water was cooler and the beach was deserted. Instead of sand the entire beach was made up of smooth, beautiful rocks and pebbles. We spent about two hours just having fun, running around over the shining rocks, trying to skip stones and some of us even dared to brave the chilling water.
It was on that rocky beach that I began to feel like this trip was going to be something unbelievably important in my life. There was something about sitting on the smooth rocks, staring out to the horizon that spoke to me better than a guided tour of Stonehenge ever could. I can’t say exactly why that moment was so important to me, but It was the moment my trip really began. I sat on that beach and stared out at the ocean, thinking that if only I could see far enough, I could see America, I could see the east coast that I called home. To be fair if I had seen any big mass of land it most likely would have been Ireland, but the idea of seeing my home from a completely different angle was fascinating to me. We left the beach, but I took a part of it with me, using the feeling of looking at things in different ways to enhance the rest of my trip. I’ll never forget the feel of those wet rocks beneath my bare feet, and I’ll never forget how my trip to England forever changed the way I travel.
While many of the novels we read had elements of epiphany, there were a few that stood out the most. I think that the epiphany in Sputnik Sweetheart is perhaps the most unique epiphany that we read about. When Sumire realizes that in order to be happy with Miu, she has to seek out a part of Miu that no longer exists in their current reality. In many ways this relates directly to why most people travel in the first place. In many cases, travel is a tool for discovering another part of or way of life that is not evident in one’s everyday life. People travel to escape the banality of the day-to-day, and they go searching for something more. In Comfort of Strangers for example, Colin and Mary go to Italy to search for a new strength that will help them improve their relationship. They too, embark into an alternate type of reality, a reality parallel to their own that is only accessible to them because they are traveling.
The realization that Sumire comes to is life altering, not only for Sumire, but for Miu and the narrator as well. By seeking out something completely different and leaving behind everything she knows, Sumire leaves the people she cares about in the dark. They are greatly affected by her departure and go to great lengths trying to find her. The question is, was Sumire’s epiphany a good thing or a bad thing? Because we don’t follow Sumire on her journey, we aren’t really aware if she found what she was looking for, but we do see the damage her disappearance does in the lives of Miu and especially the narrator.
In The Comfort of Strangers, Colin and Mary experienced a moment that seems to help them realize a goal of their trip. Much of this class has been based around the idea of finding the authentic experience through travel. While in the bar with Robert, Colin and Mary “began to experience the pleasure, unique to tourists, of finding themselves in a place without tourists, of making a discovery, finding somewhere real…they in turn asked the serious, intent questions of tourists gratified to be talking at last to an authentic citizen.” (McEwan, 29) They manage to find a small sliver of authenticity amid the normal tourist culture, and while this is important in the story, what comes of this discovery is perhaps more pertinent. Later in the story, the couple realizes that their authentic encounter with Robert has actually caused a great detriment to their ability to completely enjoy their trip. They spent so much time searching for something authentic that once they found it failed to notice how dangerous it could be. The epiphany here lies in the idea that while authentic experiences are welcome, it is important to realize that the safety and familiarity of tourist experiences are indispensably valuable.
I don’t believe in God. Not the God of my Catholic school classmates, the one who didn’t exist when they were out partying on Saturday nights, drinking and sleeping around, but who loved them on Sunday mornings and forgave them for their sins, even if they were still hung over. This God hasn’t appealed to me since I was twelve, when I decided I didn’t want to be confirmed in my parents’ church. I guess I believed in God before that, but I can’t remember. I know I liked going to church on Sundays and baking the bread for Communion in my Sunday School class. I have never been to Europe and been inside the Duomo in Florence, or the Siena Cathedral or walked around the Cathedral Complex at Pisa, but I do study art history, so I know what they look like. They are impressive, especially when you think about how they were built. They didn’t have modern technology. These immense buildings, all the more impressive as they move towards High Gothic, towards the sky, were built by hand. Many workers, stonemasons and artists and sculptors, put their entire life into a building that wasn’t completed in their lifetime. The first time I walked into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights, near Columbia, I got goosebumps. It is HUGE (it is, after all, the largest cathedral in the world, and the third largest church). Like, jaw-dropping huge. Bobst is overwhelming in its own way, but Bobst is not a House of God. This building was constructed (with a lot of problems along the way, not unlike many of the thirteenth and fourteenth century churches) as a monument to this Lord. It was designed by an architectural firm, and its design has changed many times, and it is still unfinished. But despite all of this, it is still a House of God. I remember standing in the nave the first time I went there and being overwhelmed. I have already said I don’t believe in God. And I still stand by that statement, but for that moment, I felt like there had to be something to this: people have devoted their entire lives to this building, and hundreds and thousands of people have devoted their entire lives to churches and cathedrals across Europe. Are they doing their lives’ work for something or someone that doesn’t exist? It made me hope that there was something to it: that there really is a God, even a Christian one. It seems like too many people have devoted too much time to something for it not to exist.
On the Road is one of, if not the most important book of the Beat Generation. It defines an era, an attitude, a way of life. And it is utterly annoying and frustrating. I read On the Road and Dharma Bums in high school, and I enjoyed them both, but rereading this novel was torturous. I haven’t had any experiences like some of the people in our class, although I have felt out of place in my life, but I found nothing to identify myself with Sal and his friends. They were selfish, whiney alcoholics and drug addicts, looking for something to waste time on. I think many of them may have been genuine, but this fact didn’t redeem their aimless lives. I don’t think Jack Kerouac’s value as an American novelist can be debated, because he surely embodied the aimless feeling of this generation, but I think in many ways he is seen as a role model, and many teenagers and young adults have the desire to embody his lifestyle and to go on the road as he did. I think what is missing here is what he discovers at the end. How do his journeys change him, or inspire him to change; what does he learn? I read the book before, and I remembered nothing about it. I think that says something. The novels we love the most we may forget, but when we start to read them again it comes back to us. On the Road stayed a mystery all the way through. I didn’t learn anything from Sal or his friends, except maybe what not to do.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary by Xiaolu Guo suggests a kind of epiphany very different from what an epiphany is traditionally thought to be. The Oxford English Dictionary defines epiphany as “a manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being,” and this is typical: a religious experience. But Xiaolu Guo makes the idea of an epiphany a very ordinary, everyday experience, without removing the sacred from it. In the novel Zhuang is living in a foreign country, learning about both the culture she is trying to become a part of and about love. The book is set up as both a dictionary and a journal. Each entry is a new word: it contains the definition, provided by a dictionary, and her experiences of the word. Each new word, and each new entry, is a kind of epiphany. She is not just learning words but she is learning what they mean, and how their meaning affects her life. In learning these new words and their meanings she is learning the difference between her culture at home in China and the Western culture.
One entry is entitled “Future Tense,” and in it she discusses Love, as a Chinese concept and as a Western concept:
‘Love,” this English word: like other English words it has tense. ‘Loved’ or ‘will love’ or ‘have loved.’ All these specific tenses mean Love is a time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.
If our loved existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite.
She explains that Chinese does not have past, present, or future tenses. Everything is in one tense: this makes learning English very difficult because the Chinese speaker must learn that things exist “in a particulr period of time:” she must learn this about love as well, but not in the abstract way in which she learns is school. She is not learning about love from a teacher in a classroom, but from a lover in the world. She must learn as she experiences.
Every new experience she has and every new word she learns is an epiphany. Even though these epiphanies become commonplace, I think they are sacred experiences, if not in a religious sense. Love is a sacred thing, and so is everything else that she learns about. Everything she learns is taken for granted by those who already know it, but for her each word is something completely new, and her joy in learning words is expressed to other people.
Frank took my hand.
“Thank you God…”
I tried to keep my eyes closed, but the urge to examine the table, the people, Brian – who I had looked at many times before, but was somehow different – was overwhelming. The prayer droned on and I closed my eyes again and waited for something terrible to overtake me. The plane ride had been filled with admonitions about what I shouldn’t say and shouldn’t do and shouldn’t be. Without saying anything at all, he had transmitted these fears through the stale, chilled air of the coach cabin.
My hair felt too short against my neck. I couldn’t free my hands to adjust my sweater to hide my androgyny. I was stuck exposed with what I was sure was atheist, feminist whore written on my forehead. An itch began to creep up my arm. I breathed deeply and practiced acceptance. Jesus looked down from above the mantle, chiding me for my feeble attempt at Buddhist practice.
“…and thank you Jesus for bringing Brian and Marisa safely from New York to be with us on this special day. Amen.”
Brian squeezed my hand.
It was the first time he had acknowledged my presence since we’d arrived.
The drive from Milwaukee was the first indication that I would be spending the holiday alone with his family. His mother nervously asked him to drive. The humming silence of the engine and the tires on the road was broken only occasionally by church gossip and exits fast approaching on the left and right. I sat quietly passing judgment about the infrequency of his calls home and the wayward brother he never talked about and the religion he had so wholeheartedly forsaken in exchange for anger and regret.
His childhood home was unassuming. The siding matched the sparse lawn and said nothing of the trauma contained within its boxy four walls. I couldn’t remember why we’d come here. I thought maybe after five years some of the pain would have washed away. Selfishly, I wanted to see where he’d come from. I wanted to tell him that it actually wasn’t so bad. I wanted to erase his memories. F
rank finished eating and got up without a word. The television flickered back on and, beer in hand, he faded away.
I asked Margie about her job and about the renovations in the basement, but the words seemed hollow.
I washed the dishes while they looked up cell phone plans and Black Friday sales on the internet. The kitchen felt cold.
Rather than argue in the house, we went out and cranked up the heat in the car. I wanted to tell him to come back. I wanted him to know how much it hurt to be in the same room with him and feel alone. I wanted to shake him and see the light come back on behind his eyes. But we didn’t speak. We didn’t say a word. The radio clicked on and we sat staring straight ahead listening to the Christmas music they erroneously play before Thanksgiving. I glanced over at him and he was looking back. The tears ran down his face. I took his hand and we waited for the words that could, however inadequately, express the moment.
Several days and at least 3 or 4 drafts later, I'm still struggling to communicate my ideas.
I was quite interested in the "inexpressibility topos". Hence the struggle. I actually picked up a book about Montale by Clodagh Brook that specifically tackles the inexpressibility topos in Montale's work. While much of it was irrelevant, it developed a useful history of the idea (Dante through the Modernists), which I found quite illuminating.
There is certainly more than one connection to be made with Sputnik Sweetheart, but a few stood out:
(1) Brook highlights the significance of WWI for the Modernists - “One of the primary theories to emerge is that a world which had undergone such radical transformations in those years needed a concomitant upheaval in its means of expression” (Brook 6). I wonder if the same might be said of the impact of the Tokyo gas attacks on Murakami. On reading Underground, I found a number of places in which he questions his own capacity to represent the realities of the individuals he interviewed. He was especially struck by an interview with Ms. "Shizuko Akashi", who, as a result of the sarin attack, lost both her memory and ability to speak. When faced with the necessity to speak for her, he questioned "just how vividly could [his] choice of words convey to the reader the various emotions (fear, despair, loneliness, anger, numbness, alienation, confusion, hope…) these people had experienced” (236). This problem takes on even greater meaning in the second section of his book when Murakami suggests that terrorism and perhaps violence in general is the manifestation of a need for self-expression that exceeds the capacity of words and language.
Given the timing of Sputnik Sweetheart's publication, it seems likely that many of the themes and issues that the Tokyo gas attack provoked for Murakami were still reverberating as he penned his novel.
(2) Having already strayed off the path of a formalist reading of the novel, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine Sumire as a kindred spirit to Murakami. She seems to share his uncertainty about the capacity of her prose. By her own account, her writing is lacking something essential. “Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize – no crystals, just pebbles.” In response, K recounts the story of the Chinese gates built with the bones of soldiers who had died in war. “When the gate was finished they’d bring several dogs over to it, slit their throats, and sprinkle their blood on the gate.” The ritual was thought to revive the soldiers’ souls and complete the gate. Although Murakami returns several more times to the baptismal blood bath, its meaning is never revealed. Through his use of metaphor, Murakami extends the practice of elevating the ineffable. The very thing that would make Sumire's writing complete and perhaps, because of her sense of the inextricable link between her idea of self and her capacity to express, would Sumire herself whole is "some form of truth harboured beyond the word" (Brook 1).
(3) All of these themes come to a head with Sumire’s last words, so to speak. Sumire’s epiphany at the end of the document that K reads on her computer is simultaneously revelatory and dissatisfying for the reader. It on the one hand offers an acknowledgment of the coexistence of two worlds and hints at an explanation for Sumire’s disappearance (which would be an epiphany for the reader) and on the other hand denies the reader closure by ending with an unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question.
“I’m in love with Miu. With the Miu on this side, needless to say. But I also love the Miu on the other side just as much. The moment this thought struck me it was like I could hear – with an audible creak – myself splitting in two. As if Miu’s own split became a rupture that had taken hold of me.
One question remains, however. If this side, where Miu is, is not the real world – if this side is actually the other side – what about me, the person who shares the same temporal and spatial plane with her?
Who in the world am I?”
There is an incapacity of language to answer the question of her own reality. The novel is ultimately just an ellipsis, a sort of meta-aposiopesis, “pointing towards it without voicing it” (Brook 11).
In Underground, Murakami writes, “Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you’re no longer talking about reality” (363). This is undoubtedly what we encounter in the novel. Each effort to pin down some truth about the characters (K’s evasion of self-description, Miu’s trauma, and indeed Sumire’s disappearance), leads further away from reality. Words become increasingly inadequate to express the multiplicity of selves each character ostensibly represents. As Murakami concludes in Underground, “The mountains are not mountains anymore; the sun is not the sun.”