Meryam

“Here, in this supreme menace to the will, there approaches a redeeming, healing enchantress – art. She alone can turn these thoughts of repulsion at the horror and absurdity of existence into ideas compatible with life — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
I. “I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive”:
I believe there are two ways you can read The Secret History. You can either appreciate it as an atmospheric, dark academia, backwards murder-mystery, or, you can take it as a character puzzle and a charade of symbolisms – the two are equally amusing. I read it twice and employed both techniques, which gave me some insights. There is a question underneath the narrative: ‘Who would you be if you could follow all your impulses? And are these impulses your truest self?'. This is a major aspect of the Dionysiac Bacchanal in Euripides' Bacchae – a complete release of your individuality to become ‘one' with the ‘whole' perhaps a collective unconscious (could be nature, community, the universe, you name it) in order to achieve your purest version.
This identity question is one I usually ponder over and over in my head, and I adore books that explore this conflict of impulses, such as The Picture of Dorian Grey and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The maxim ‘Know Thyself' is the basis for all of these tragedies, and is a concept incredibly tricky: it's not just knowing if you are introverted or extroverted, if you are romantic or cynical; it is a lingering practice which puts us constantly in check, wondering ‘is this me?'.
Now, there is something peculiar about the characters which attracted me from the beginning: their intensity. Every one of them – Richard, Henry, Camilla, Charles, Francis and Bunny – is troubled by some kind of mental exaggeration, be it an excessive obsession, an abuse of alcohol or cigarettes, a tendency to catastrophise, alarming sensibilities, or heavy self-repression. They are always on the edge of a metaphorical precipice. The more someone represses something, the bigger that something becomes. I consider Richard and Henry to be the most repressed characters but in very different ways. As an unreliable narrator, Richard is simultaneously lying to the characters and the reader (and even to himself) – we are only able to catch him because sometimes his repressive shell cracks, some interior glimpses appear, and what we see is desperation. Richard is always desperate: to be liked, to be accepted, to belong, to know, to be someone else. Whereas Henry's submerged façade is of a dangerous kind: he hides a violence within himself, a cruelty, frightening us and Richard with his obstinacy. Always the most composed character, it is uncanny to see how far he can go to ensure his will: escaping to Argentina, travelling to Italy with Bunny, the Bacchanal, the murder, the final scene at the Hotel. Everything he does is driven by this internal force he possesses, a frighteningly determined force, completely blind to anything that escapes its target. Henry suffers from a sick delusion of grandeur. Neither we nor Richard will ever understand the extent of what he harboured inside.
The story as a whole is immersed in a fog of delusion, just like the ones Dionysus is known to create. Although a deceiver, the god is capable of exposing one's true colours – he is the sombre excess of nature. On the other hand, civilised oppression is connected with Apollo, a representative of harmony in opposition to Dionysus. Both concepts are extensively described in Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, and we need to master them to understand my take on The Secret History.
II. The Need for Tragedy:
“In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. “ - E.M. Forster.
Nietzsche begins The Birth of Tragedy by distinguishing the Apolline and the Dionysiac, the first associated with a harmonic illusion and the second with an intoxication that stupefies the senses. With Dionysiac intoxication, man loses control of himself in ecstasy and forsakes his individual subjectivity, becoming one with nature through the communion born of music and dance. This state of mind is what Plato called ‘Telestic' or ‘ritual madness', whose patron is Dionysus. One of the most intriguing perspectives is Nietzsche's explanation for the creation of the Gods via Greek imagery: it was a matter of survival, as it was necessary to put something like the Olympus between humans and the horrors of the forces of nature (the Titans). One could say this is the premise of every religion, after all, most religions persist because we need to put something between us and the only element of nature yet unexplained: death. Much like we need reality in order to dream, and suffering to conceive pleasure, the Apollonian and the Dionysian cannot exist without each other. According to Nietzsche, Apollo represents a moderate and harmonious beauty. For an individual to have moderation, he needs self-knowledge – he needs to know his limits: ‘Know Thyself' and ‘Nothing to Excess' are maxims originating from this mostly aesthetic beauty. ‘Hubris' and exaggeration on the other hand are considered barbaric. Therefore, Apollo would be the civility and Dionysus the titanic barbarity of uncontrolled passions, instincts and impulses.

Thus knowing what is Apollonian and Dionysian, what would then be the tragedy and how does the birth addressed in the title occur? According to Nietzsche, the birth of tragedy is due to the union between these two opposing forces: the Apollonian gives a structure of beauty to the chaotic feelings of the Dionysian. In practice, this union happened when the Greeks joined lyric poetry with instrumental music and inserted this element into the theatre, thus creating the chorus.

When he wrote this book, Nietzsche was only a 28-year-old professor of Greek Language and Literature, hence his fresh passionate interest in the subject and his somewhat unorthodox opinions. For instance, he curiously detested Euripides and placed him as one of the culprits for the death of tragedy, since the Dramatist was an intellectual companion of the philosophers, mainly Socrates and Plato. Together they contributed to the destruction of the irrational in Homeric poetry by proposing an ‘excess' of rationality, optimistically thinking everything can be known through logic, surpassing the Olympian mysticism as well as the forces of nature: aesthetic Socratism is the principle behind its death.
To Nietzsche, Socrates could not understand tragedy because his ‘eye had never glowed with the sweet madness of artistic inspiration' (p. 136). Socratic philosophy establishes that if wisdom is Virtue, all ‘sins' are fruits of ignorance – this idea disregards the transcendental: the obscurity deriving from the state of negation of the self needs to be clarified, nothing can remain unexplained, not even nature, previously justified by the moods of the gods. In short, the death of tragedy occurred because, by discarding the transcendental and the unknowable of the divine, the Greeks lost their fear of the irrational and sought to explain it.
III. Apolline Repression and Dionysiac Excess:
In a conservative society, there is no space for such a thing as a Bacchanal, and any kind of expression which embraces animalistic extravagance is considered amoral and barbaric. Yet, Nietzsche would argue all human beings have the Dionysian side and it needs to be released in a ‘healthy' manner, and not completely erased from our personalities. Then comes the Apolline repression, which is directly proportional to the greatness of the animalistic desire. Knowing oneself means knowing the extent of one's desire or as Carl G . jung said :” until you make the unknown know it will direct your life and you'd call it fate” for this Dionysian rejected side of the self is what Jung would later call : the shadow self- the anima/animus.
The dichotomy between ‘to live' and ‘to know' is one of the main points of Nietzsche's critique of the incessant and optimistic quest for knowledge, which despises the mysticism of inexplicable things as ‘barbaric'.
Returning to The Secret History, I'd like to call your attention to the enigmatic Henry Winter. As I said before, he is uncanny because his outside never matches his inside: there's always dissonance with the way he speaks and carries himself, with what he seems and does. One could argue that all of them are repressed and it would be correct, but Henry is the one who always takes everything a little too far, a little too literal – he is the Dionysiac excess waiting to burst. The nearest thing to a plot twist concerns Henry, specifically his true desires and designs. We close the book feeling we never actually knew who he was. The Bacchanal was his idea, and I believe the seed was planted during one of the most memorable scenes (and a personal favourite) through a speech uttered by Professor Julian. To me, it is the soul of the novel and the essence of what Nietzsche argued:
‘It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.' (p. 45)
The extreme repression makes the idea of this violent outburst appealing.
IV. The Amusement of the Gods:
Since the foundation of Greek civilisation, the mystical elements of divine mystery were common in the life of the polis. One of the great pieces of evidence of this supernatural connection is the constant presence of prophets and oracles in Greek plays. However, Knox emphasises how in the last half of the 5th century BC, when the great playwrights were working, religious traditions were losing strength and, consequently, the power of prophecy was declining.
Knox sees the events of this period as an intellectual revolution, and young intellectuals came to view prophecies and oracles with scepticism: when Protagoras proclaimed man as the measure of all things, he subjugated to man not only nature but the gods and religion itself as well.
Perhaps most important for our text and for understanding Nietzsche's and Tartt's artistic argument is this brilliant phrase from Knox:
‘But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero's personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him'. (KNOX, p. 138)
Art, as Nietzsche said in The Birth of Tragedy, transforms the horror of existence into the sublime. Ultimately, this is what the Hampden group seeks to achieve with the bacchanal. If we consider Richard as the hero of the novel, we can see he fulfils Knox's premise, for in the end, we realise he, through his bad choices driven by obsession, is solely responsible for what happens to himself.
V. Tragedy and Duality – Euripides' Play:
At one point, Pentheus (a main character in Bacchae) enters a Dionysian trance - he can no longer distinguish between reality and delirium: he sees two suns, two Thebes, and Dionysus as a bull. His state of consciousness alludes to Henry's description of the bacchanal:
“Wolves howling around us and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white [...] Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye [...] Duality ceases to exist; there is no ego, no ‘I'. (TSH p. 186)”
But above all, this state of imposed illusion, of a coercive fog, can be applied as a metaphor for the whole book: our narrator, being unreliable, deludes the reader as he deludes himself, and the ecstatic glow of Hampden and his Greek sect begins to fade in the first act of brutality and disappears altogether when Richard overcomes his denial (a denial similar to Pentheus') and understands who those people really are. The Dionysian use illusion to reveal the truth. Professor Edith Hall says about Dionysus:
“If the divine personality of Dionysius can be reduced to any one principle, it is the demonstration that conventional logic is an inadequate tool with which to apprehend the universe as a whole. Dionysius confounds reason, defies categorization, dissolves polarities, and inverts hierarchies. (Bacchae and other plays - Oxford)”
In the Bacchae, Pentheus is tricked by Dionysus into disguising himself as a maenad so he could spy on the women's Dionysiac ritual. This course of action, motivated by morbid curiosity and a certain resentment, resembles Richard's attitude towards the group: he too is an impostor, an outsider who poses as a person of wealthy origin and desperately tries to mask his lack of ‘refinement'. He wants to discover the secret of the group's mystical element, wishing to be included in its activities, so that perhaps he too can become ‘mystic'. Pentheus' discovery of the tragic truth (catharsis, one might call it) was his undoing – this is the premise of most Greek tragedies, above all Oedipus Rex – and the same happened in Richard's life.
VI. Dionysiac Delusions of Grandeur: the otherness of the group:
Nietzsche displays a ghastly amount of elitism in relation to ‘the masses' which according to him are nothing but ‘blurred copies of great men'. The philosopher's delirium of grandeur is similar to the group's self-perception against the rest of Hampden College (dare I say the world) – some are more hypocritical than others (Henry being the most open about it, describing the murder of the farmer as ‘a minor incident, really') but all of them think they are intellectually and morally above everyone else, and this aura of self-aggrandising is partly what attracts Richard because he wants to be part of this ‘importance'. He already sees himself apart, but he needs external validation.
Again, this idea of being ‘out of time' and ‘out of place' is part of the group's attitude which hinders their ability to identify with other people, making them isolated and insensitive, and therefore enabling them to commit murder as well as lesser cruelties – like in Nietzsche's argument, they do not see themselves in ‘the masses'; this presumptuous ‘otherness' is the rationale behind their actions. Everything about them is anachronistic: from Henry being unaware of the moon landing, their clothes and stationery supplies, to the twins' incest resembling a Sophocleain tragedy. This makes them impossible to relate to, while also increasing their allure.
Considering all Dionysus represents along with the ending of Tartt's novel, I believe the god has also won in The Secret History. In many ways, I see Richard as a kind of Pentheus – the self-righteous outsider desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the divine, defeated by the forces he tries to be part of. Symbolically, Richard was also torn apart by maenads – the people who played a part in his self-destruction were the ones who performed the bacchanal. Like Pentheus, he is deluded first by his own stubbornness and self-deception, and afterwards by Dionysiac powers. We cannot rely on his testimony about the events, as much as we can't rely on Pentheus' view of the Bacchae. Ultimately, just as Pentheus was blind to Dionysus being in front of him, so was Richard towards the true nature of the people he once idolised.Like Pentheus, he is deluded first by his own stubbornness and self-deception, and afterwards by Dionysiac powers. We cannot rely on his testimony about the events, as much as we can't rely on Pentheus' view of the Bacchae. Ultimately, just as Pentheus was blind to Dionysus being in front of him, so was Richard towards the true nature of the people he once idolised. Henry is the greatest Dionysiac force in the novel because he is the greatest mystery – we only see short displays of the violence he is repressing and the manipulation he exerts on others. And of course, like the objects of their obsession, the story of the Classics group ends in tragedy. The god is a reflection of the people who created him, and the kids at Hampden could never reflect him in the same way. In The Philosophy and Literature of Existentialism, Barnes explains how, in modern times, especially from the 19th century onwards, ‘Religion has abandoned the supernatural in favour of the “super-ethical natural”.

I liked the over all idea, the general theme of Oedipus that floated over the whole of Kafka's story, and by consequences i also was at awe at how far it sprung, and gave everything a spatio-temporel meaning, i liked the connections in each of the stories and the parallels in and between the two . I loved the atmosphere , we can call “calm japanese retro mundane”? Calm seashores, milk and sandwiches..... I did like how the song served a sort of second prophecy of events. also i liked that i read this while being fifteen, The way time is no big factor.how facts doesn't matter, their world operate on hypothesis and theory , how it's the impression not the definitive action, as the prophecy was fulfilled: kafka killed his father, tho he didn't really do it nakata took his place, he slept with his sister tho it was only in an invaded dream, and his mother, although for the last two they were or weren't his relatives, but it didn't matter again facts were nothing in front of hypothesis, it was the feel, the idea he had while sleeping with them: that they were his mother and that was his sister, so the act was to be judged the same . + and the crows.

In the unbearable lightness of being a fundamental question is asked, if something only happens once then it is bound to be forgotten and forgiven as time passes and so it is unimportant. Such is life, it only happens once by integrating the believe that life is insignificant then everything is permissible essentially, one's action are as free as unimportant, only half real and devoid of any meaning. Oherwise there is heaviness of according meaning to things. that crushes but makes life more real, and through the greatest disciplines and responsibilities comes the greatest pleasure. So which is better ?
Each answer is personified through a character . Tomas is the definition of lightness , he doesn't understand why one would limit themselves in living life, and so he wouldn't give up his romantics even after getting married. Tereza is heaviness, moral and decent, thus even when she tries to imitate tomas in his betrayals she finds herself unable to. Sabina is a repressed heaviness covered by lightness, an internal conflict.
Lightness following the authors opinion in choosing the title, And the theses antithesis of arguing (presenting the pros before refuting with the cons- which shows that he has an unfavorating opinion on lightness) becomes unbearable, empty . The solution to the unbearable lightness of being. Is faith and religion, because then by admitting that every action will be judged and this judgement would have it's effects displayed eternally, it defies the very basis of it's lightness for it is no longer bound to be forgotten and forgiven with time, with faith everything you do is weighted on the balance eternally. But how to deal with actions that are permissible, not good nor bad?

Nearing it's end ,my heart started murmuring an episode again , and the idea that maybe i would die when the novel ended , was i born to read this book? The idea didn't seem so strange It has resonated with me beyond the ordinary.

Plato is good. plato is really good!