Karin Kukkonen
Literature makes you feel, and it can get you thinking too. But how do you move from signs on a page to thoughts and feelings? And why does fiction sometimes feel more real than the world around us? My name is Karin Kukkonen, and together with my colleagues from the Literature, Cognition and Emotions Project, LCE for short, we will discuss these and other questions in the coming weeks. Today's guest is Tone Selboe, Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. Tone, thank you for joining us.
Tone Selboe
Well, thank you very much for having me.
Karin Kukkonen
So, you work on what one might describe as the big novels of the 19th century, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, Bleak House. And these big novels, in the way in which you approach them, also seem to evoke big feelings in readers. What do you think is particular to the way, in which these 19th century novels treat emotions and feelings?
Tone Selboe
Well, of course, all literature will evoke or can evoke emotions and feelings, but these big novels are in a way very accessible, in the sense that it's easy to recognise emotions and feelings, and how they actually turn feelings, as a sort of a general concept, into narrated emotions – as judgments or declarations of love – or link them to so-called realistic persons, which we can easily imagine as somebody you might meet on the street, or might meet at a party, or whatever. And because they are so well plotted and are so dialogic in form, and depict various situations where people are embodied in conflicts... and also, they use the word emotions, feelings, et cetera, quite a lot – I mean, the writers do. They are a good way to start, at least, or also a good way to continue. But they are very good at demonstrating how fiction can demonstrate feelings in a way, which is analogous to the way we try to understand feelings in persons we meet in real life. That's at least one way of looking at it.
Karin Kukkonen
So you would say that a novel – like, well, let's pick Anna Karenina – makes emotions observable?
Tone Selboe
I think that's a good way of putting it. It also makes emotion complicated, in the sense that it depicts meetings, feelings, situations, people who are confronted, in a way which reminds us how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand other people. And we can, you know, you can read people, so to speak, but you never understand... Well, other people always see you as different from the way you see yourself. And also, people go through developments or they do not go through developments. But they might think of themselves as emotional, for instance – but in reality, they are not. Or, emotions can be full of conflicting sensations. And I think Anna Karenina is a very good example of this, since you mention it. Not only Anna, which is the one – the main character – which is maybe easiest to start with to sympathize with, but also her husband, Karenin, whom she leaves. And I think that's a very good example of how an author like Tolstoy, who's learned from the English realist novel, learned from the French realist or 19th century novel, does it. Because he does, in a sense, to start with, present us with Karenin as somebody quite despicable and a dry stick, somebody you wouldn't want to be married to. And you can understand that she maybe wants to leave him, and you can understand the way she falls in love with this sort of dashing Vronsky. But Tolstoy is very good at showing us how there are situations, where we actually are forced to try and see it from his [Karenin's, ed.] side of view. For instance, there's this scene where she gives birth. She has been unfaithful with Vronsky and she's expecting his child, and Karenin is away and, you know, really wants her dead. And then, she's almost dying while she's giving birth, and he comes, and then Vronsky and Anna are forced to see that Karenin is suddenly this heroic figure – and this figure who surprises not only Anna and Vronsky, but also himself. He comes to love this little girl she's giving birth to. He takes care of it – and then, it shifts again. So it's not straightforward. It's not like he goes from bad to good, and then we have this happy ending, as you know. But it shifts back and forth, and you have these sort of subtle nuances all the time, and also this self-analysis. And I can – maybe if I'm allowed to stick with Karenin a bit longer, I just...?
Karin Kukkonen
Please do. I mean, as far as husbands – in Tolstoy – go, he is quite far up the ladder.
Tone Selboe
He is, I agree. I was trying to find a quote. I'm not going to read a long one, but just a short one. Since we are talking about literature, it could be a good idea to let literature speak. And this is a big novel, of course. It's fairly early in the novel, and he just thinks that to feel jealous and that jealousy is a despicable feeling. And he sees Anna with Vronsky at this social setting, as in one of the saloons there, and he thinks, oh, that's perfectly all right, you know, she's my wife. Why should I feel jealous? That's not something I do. Because he trusted her.
Karin Kukkonen
And he loves her.
Tone Selboe
He loves her, yes. And he told himself that it was necessary to love her, because that's something he does, because he's married to her as well. And then, suddenly he's forced to revise this – and this is where this kind of novel, and Tolstoy in particular, of course, is very good. So, I'm just reading you a little bit, and then you can have this as an example: "Now, however, although his conviction that jealousy was a despicable feeling and that one should have trust had not be destroyed, he felt he was standing face to face with something illogical and nonsensical, and he did not know what he should do. Alexey Alexandrovich was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very nonsensical and incomprehensible because it was life itself. Alexey Alexandrovich had spent his entire life living and working in official spheres which had to do with the reflections of life. And every time he had bumped into life itself he had shied away from it. He was now experiencing a feeling similar to that which would be felt by someone who, calmly crossing a bridge over a precipice, suddenly discovers that this bridge has been taken down, revealing an abyss. This abyss was life itself, while the bridge was the artificial life Alexey Alexandrovich had been leading. For the first time conjectures occurred to him about the possibility of his wife falling in love with somebody, and he was horrified by the idea." [(Lev Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Rosamund Bartlett, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 145)., ed.] And I think this is a fantastic passage, showing how he's only lived in the reflections of life. He's lived in the official part of life, but now he is face to face with life itself, and he doesn't understand his own feeling. And it's very easy to recognize, even though one might not have experienced exactly the same. This sort of shift in sensation is very well conveyed in this image of him, walking over this bridge and looking down into the abyss, and realizing that – for the first time in life – he is actually faced with life.
Karin Kukkonen
And it is not pleasant.
Tone Selboe
It is not pleasant, as it isn't to be confronted. It doesn't necessarily make him a better human being, but it makes him a human being. It makes us understand him better, I think.
Karin Kukkonen
And I guess that is... well, it seems to be a combination of a character's experience which is then also given words, or given this image of the bridge that he has built himself – that won't keep him, that gives not enough stability – from the narrator.
Tone Selboe
I agree. And also, I think, what Tolstoy is very good at, and Dickens in another way, and George Eliot yet another way, is very good at, is to show how you can't put this sort of exact division between thoughts and emotions. They go together, and you definitely don't know yourself when you're thinking and when you're feeling, and what makes you make that decision, and not the other. And that very often happens, in this kind of novel, in social situations. And that's something which attracts me with this – besides as being, you know, good literature. It's this... you're sort of invited in to this almost like social experiment.
Karin Kukkonen
It is a strange world Tolstoy takes us into.
Tone Selboe
But so does Flaubert, so does Dickens, so does Eliot. It takes us into these, in different ways, alien worlds. I mean, of course, for me as a Norwegian not reading Russian, I was reading this in Bartlett's translation now. It's a completely alien world, but you can still relate to it. And I think... The way feelings are mixed, and feelings are confronted, and feelings are conveyed to the reader, with lots of what you might call cognitive dissonances – it's not like it's harmonic, or all explained in nice passages. It's quite often presented as, sort of, you have to work on it to try and understand it.
Karin Kukkonen
There is a problem.
Tone Selboe
There is a problem, yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
Also a way of distancing so that the emotions, of course, are something that draw us in and that we've experienced ourselves. But then, if we go to another novel that we addressed very briefly, Middlemarch, there is, of course, that famous distancing sentence: "But why always Dorothea?" So what is that – or what do you think is – this push and pull of identifying with or distancing from characters? Is this something an author might design or...?
Tone Selboe
Well, I think George Eliot is a very, in many ways, philosophical author. And she also writes essays and treatises, and you know.
Karin Kukkonen
And she translates German philosophy...?
Tone Selboe
Yes. And she translates difficult German moral theological philosophy, so yes. So I think – to a certain extent, of course – she does design it. She wants, I mean, she sees the novel as a good way or a good place to try and discuss these kinds of feelings, whether they be moral or otherwise, because you have this room where you're basically allowed to do quite a lot. And you have this freedom in the novel to present a lot of different characters. And you were talking about pushing and pulling, which she does, but Tolstoy also does. It's quite interesting, because they do a similar thing, the two of them. This question, "Why always Dorothea?", which you refer to, refers – of course – to Dorothea Brooke, who's married to Casaubon. And we read it, we, more or less, I think, tend to agree with the Middlemarch society – that why on earth should she choose him. He's not an attractive character. And he turns out not to be after their marriage, so we are sort of confirmed in our view. And then they come back again after the honeymoon, and the narrator goes on about telling us about how horrible he is. And then you have this sudden sort of intervention, almost like it's sort of a moral intervention in the novel saying, "But why always Dorothea?" Why not also Casaubon? Even though everybody hates him, he's also a human being. He's also an inner mind and he's also craving for love and attention.
Karin Kukkonen
And he has a dream.
Tone Selboe
And he has the dream, yes. He's going to solve... Yes, he's going to write this enormous oeuvre, The Key To All Mythologies. And it's a kind of title which always makes my heart bleed, because it's what you would tell any PhD student, you know, don't try and write the key to all mythologies. And he fails, of course. But we are reminded that he is also somebody worth attention and feeling and sympathy, whatever you like to call it. But I think...
Karin Kukkonen
And I mean, Dorothea sees that.
Tone Selboe
Dorothea sees that. And there is a touching scene where she sees him as a wounded animal, which is very, very strong. But it's also a question whether she succeeds – I mean, George Eliot – in conveying this sympathy to us. Because to a certain extent, yes, we accept it... I'm saying we, I mean, every individual reader will experience this in different ways, I suspect. But, it's still open. It's not like, oh, yes, then she explains via her narrator or whoever, that now we suddenly should be fond of Casaubon and be "aw" – it's not that simple. It's not that straightforward. So she lays it out as a possibility, as Tolstoy does with Karenin. They do it in different ways, but it's a similar move. They turn their perspective. They follow one perspective, and then they make a shift, and they turn the perspective – and they do it via words, but they also do it via gestures. And it's not always conscious. It's also these small movements, sensations – it can be the blinking of an eye, it can be a sudden blush, it can be that you behave in a way which you haven't planned to do. All this is represented in these social rooms or situations, or whatever one might call it.
Karin Kukkonen
You have called it situations of sympathy.
Tone Selboe
Yeah, I like this word, situations, because it reminds me that they are, I think, fundamentally social novels in the sense that they are no... They aren't islands floating on their own. There are... In all these novels, there's a social level which is very strong, and you have individual characters embedded in situations, in sort of everyday use of the term, with other people, but also in bigger collective structures, which you might also call a kind of situation. And it's also embedded in processes, so that they sort of try out new ways of dealing with each other, and finding ways of action within bigger social structures. So, they are sort of composed of situations, in every sense of the word, I think, many of these big novels. And I think, maybe it has to do with the fact that – it's probably Balzac who said it the best that, you know, he says he wants to write... He says – in the preface to La Comédie humaine – that he wants to present us with a histoire de moeurs, with a sort of a history of manners, individual manners, and that he wants to write the history that the historians have neglected. And by that, I think he means that he wants to go down to the – sort of – street level and look at daily histories connected to individuals, which is not part of the generals' history or the bigger. Today, maybe we could call it the micro history – probably, the historians would call it that today – that kind of...
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah, and I mean, he is... Especially Balzac, I think is someone who is very systematic. You were talking a little bit earlier, I think, with respect to George Eliot, about the sort of experimental... He can try out different perspectives, and it seems to me that someone like Balzac, I mean, he really had the ambition to map all layers of French society in the mid 19th century. I mean, even within an individual novel, like Père Goriot, where you have the boardinghouse, and people are living on different floors.
Tone Selboe
It's fantastic. And the further they move up, or the further Goriot moves up, the deeper he sinks. So you have these...
Karin Kukkonen
Because the flats get cheaper.
Tone Selboe
Yes, they get cheaper towards the top. Yes. And he is a brilliant example of somebody – who had this ambition as well – who mapped a certain phase of French history. So La Comédie humaine is an enormous amount of books, and tales and novels and whatever, showing us French society at a certain age. So, it's quite extraordinary.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. I mean, it's sociological in a way.
Tone Selboe
Yeah, I was... I've been playing a bit with this word, because of course, all novels and all literature is historical and sociological and... but what I think is so typical of Balzac, and also often said the same, I think, of Tolstoy and Eliot and others, and Dickens... It's a kind of, I think of these novels as a kind of anthropological... It's a literary anthropology, I think. Because you see history through the humans, through human experience. And through, as what you started with, through feelings and emotions, and whatever you like to call it. I mean, you can talk about feeling as in sort of overall category. And then, you have registered emotions, like when you actually have them presented as something which is conscious, but feelings, emotions, affects, all these sort of sensations are there. And I think also, at least within the English novel, that they are very aware of the fact, that they're trying to answer that. Eliot and Dickens, in different ways again, are responding to specific social situations. And for Dickens, the novel was a way of trying to reform the British society. And a very good example of how he presents emotions in a way which hadn't been presented before — so that, when he presents somebody who's poor, he doesn't present it in a way which says, that this person is poor because that's his own fault, that he's not able to work. He actually presents this as something social. You might well call it...
Karin Kukkonen
It's a systemic problem.
Tone Selboe
It's a systemic problem. And you might well call it sentimental, which of course it also is, but it's sentimental in a sort of fundamental way. It's linked to sentiments and to emotions. And, in that way, it's quite interesting how they respond – to Dickens, in this case, responds to thoughts, which comes later on the sociological level or a psychological level. So quite often these writers are quite early in analysing society, in a way which you see in other disciplines as well, of course, but later on. So they have paved the way for discussions which we can recognise in later sociology or psychology or whatever. And I think that's what Raymond Williams thinks about, when he in a very complicated little article, which is called "Structures of feelings", where he sort of points to that these feelings, they aren't registered yet on the collective level. They start – it's quite interesting.
Karin Kukkonen
Sort of the ground rumbling?
Tone Selboe
Yeah, the ground rumbling, yes. And he uses, I think, Dickens as one of his examples, you know, that the way Dickens presents poverty or social change, hasn't yet been accepted on an overall level – but it's coming.
Karin Kukkonen
Going back to something, that you said earlier on, about George Eliot having this interest in morality... I mean, that I think is also something that quite clearly applies to Dickens. Where do you see the link between that interest in – well, let's call it a moral message and the emotional impact of those novels?
Tone Selboe
I wish I could give you a straightforward answer to that.
Karin Kukkonen
Or maybe... I mean, it's the way in which we've talked about the rumbling in the ground, so far. It seems to be quite value free – let's put it that way – whereas, I mean, there clearly are values attached to what Dickens and Eliot are doing.
Tone Selboe
I think one of the interesting things is that moral, morality, religion, beliefs – it's all there, but it has to be fought out. It has to be lived through. And there's no identity between moral situations on the one hand, or moral feelings and ethical behaviour on the other hand. You have characters, in both Dickens and Eliot, who are so-called moral people in the eyes of society, and preaching virtues and good behaviour, and then they are revealed to be quite immoral people in other situations. And again, not necessarily because they're evil, but because they're human. This is, of course, this famous Bulstrode in Middlemarch, who has tricked his way to money and done all sorts of bad deeds. But – he isn't necessarily an evil person, but he's sort of caught in this net of his own actions. And then, when life catches up with him, and he's revealed to be a villain in some ways – in some ways he is – there's this fantastic scene between him and his wife. And he's always looked down on his wife – or she has been admiring him, she's been this sort of humble, gray character. And then she rises up to the situation and, you know, and he is completely humbled. And she says, look at me, Nicholas. It's a fantastic scene. And it's a fantastic scene because hardly anything is said. It's something at the end of that paragraph – I don't have it word by word now – but, she can't say what she thinks is right. And she can't force him to confess and he can't... he doesn't dare to confess, but they're looking at each other. And that scene is hardly any words. It's only gestures and...
Karin Kukkonen
... Bodies.
Tone Selboe
Bodies, and eyes looking at each other. And of course, that's also a way of saving their marriage, because if everything is said, then it's probably impossible, I think, to live on together. But they're both, I mean – again, you have this shift in power, where he sinks, she rises up to the situation and sort of saves him, in some ways, by being a proper moral person. But I think that's something these novels are very good at – sort of to complicate ethical questions. And then, always base them, not in abstract principles, but in concrete actions. And of course, George Eliot who is sometimes accused of being the most abstract thinker, or that she's too much of a head... And that's because, you know, I don't think she would have been accused of that if she'd been a male writer... But, you know, this whole thing about you know...
Karin Kukkonen
And I mean, she chooses the name George.
Tone Selboe
She chooses the name George, yes. That's true, yeah. But she... I think that both Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch and all the things I've read by her, everything which is close to a moral principle and sort of a doctrine. And you do have these sentences there, and you do have a quite authoritative narrator, and almost like, you know, an author figure sort of speaking through.
Karin Kukkonen
Quite different from Austen.
Tone Selboe
Completely different from Austen, for instance. Yes. But even so, they lose, I was about to say, not texture, but they, they lose value when they're not linked to concrete actions, and concrete experiences, and concrete feelings. That's when they live and grow and become important.
Karin Kukkonen
So these big feelings, that we started with, actually also need – yeah – let's call them moral aspects or reflection?
Tone Selboe
I think so. I don't see a contradiction between feelings and reflection and analysis. You can say, Elliot is more of an analytical, openly analytical, writer than Dickens, for instance, but is no less emotional. It's just presented in a different way. And I think reflection, thinking, analysis and emotions, they go hand in hand. And I think it's very important – and I think we talked about that before already – that when it so happens, you don't know whether something is the fruit of your imagination or your reflection or your spontaneous feeling.
Karin Kukkonen
So that seems to be a cognitive process in and of itself.
Tone Selboe
Yeah, and you said something about push and pull – It goes sort of... it's sort of intertwined as, yes, you might well call it a cognitive process. It's sort of embedded in each other.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. A sort of multidimensional...?
Tone Selboe
Yeah, you might well say so.
Karin Kukkonen
Or dialogic, to use a word that...
Tone Selboe
... Dialogic, yes. Yeah. And of course, there is a lot of dialogue in these novels as well. They're very good at writing dialogue, which is a very difficult thing to do and very... They're also very good at ironic dialogue. So, playing at these different layers of of meaning. So we are... you might well say that these – as I know I already have said – that these are accessible to another extent than, for instance, Proust or Virginia Woolf or the classic modernist novel. But what is very impressive: They are so well plotted – at the same time, the sentences are so rich and so subtle, so...
Karin Kukkonen
And I guess, in order to bring the plot to full effect, I mean... if we think of all the couples in Anna Karenina. Karenin and Karenina are not the only couple.
Tone Selboe
No, no. You have Levin and Kitty and...
Karin Kukkonen
And Stepan and Dolly.
Tone Selboe
Of course. Of course. Yeah. So there are a lot. I mean, and these couples, of course, they form parts of the plot, and they form the story, and the storyworld, and the whole sort of fictional world we meet. But they also give us a lot of food for thought. So I think that's very interesting.
Karin Kukkonen
And I guess, that might help us account for why, you know, we can still have a very engaged conversation about a novel on Russian aristocrats.
Tone Selboe
And why should, on what earth should we be so interested in them? But we are.
Karin Kukkonen
Do you think we still have novels like that today, or is this a tradition which, I mean... We've talked about the ways in which this is rooted in particular concerns of the 19th century, both literary and social and moral. Is this something that is still being written today or is there a different...?
Tone Selboe
Of course, there is good literature today, but...
Karin Kukkonen
I didn't ask about good literature.
Tone Selboe
I know you didn't, I know you didn't. I don't know, really. I mean, it's done differently. I think a big realistic novel, like this, is a form which is very strongly linked to the 19th century. And it survived the 19th century to an extraordinary extent, but it doesn't have the same impact, I think, today. I would say, if I was going to read sort of big novels today, which really makes an emotional impact, and also is linked to a political context or a social context, I would go to, for instance, Ali Smith's seasonal quartet. Yes, that I think is fantastic, a fantastic example of a novel which is able to – or, four novels – which are able to do some of the same things, but doing it in a completely different way, answering to... She's answering to her time and to the way we live now.
Karin Kukkonen
I mean, it's almost written in real time, isn't it?
Tone Selboe
It's almost written in real time. And I think she succeeds. But it does it – and I think that's also one of the strengths – in a completely different way from the 19th century novel. And also in a very different way from the 20th century modernist novel. So it's a mixture of different forms, which is sort of embedded in her world. And that's of course, it's hard to do and it's very impressive, I think. But I think she is a very good example of somebody who manages to make these very moving confrontations between persons on an individual level, or between two people, for instance, and then lifting it up, so that you never forget the bigger perspective. So... And of course, there are other examples, but that's the best example I can think of.
Karin Kukkonen
So this is your recommendation for our listeners?
Tone Selboe
Yes, maybe it is. Yes. I would love to recommend Ali Smith's... Everything by her, but especially the seasonal quartet. Or you can read – reread – Anna Karenina or Bleak House or Middlemarch, or Daniel Deronda, which is a novel which – in Norway at least – is almost unknown. It's not translated, and I haven't met many people outside sort of literary circles or people interested in the 19th century novel, who has read Daniel Deronda. And it's such a strong testimony to Jewish history, for instance, or to the question of race and ethnicity, and all that, so.
Karin Kukkonen
Which we are still struggling.
Tone Selboe
We are struggling with this question every day, yes.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. Well, Daniel Deronda first.
Tone Selboe
Daniel Deronda first. And then Ali Smith.
Karin Kukkonen
Thank you. Thank you so much for this excellent conversation on big feelings, situations of sympathy, the Victorian novel and the novel today, Tone.
Tone Selboe
Thank you, Karin.
Karin Kukkonen
And thanks to everyone for listening to the LCE podcast.