Post-war British Fiction as 'Metaphysical Ethography' Ikonomakis, R.

Post-war British Fiction as 'Metaphysical Ethography'

Ikonomakis, R.

Citation

Ikonomakis, R. (2005, April 21). Post-war British Fiction as 'Metaphysical Ethography'.

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The Second World War constitutes a turning point in post-war British literature. Traditionally realistic, the British novel becomes historical-revisionist in the 1940s, then turns into the ‘People’ s War’ novel; it becomes ‘visionary’ (Bradbury) or ‘problematic’ (Lodge) through the 1950s. Successively, it turns serious, moral, experimental, anti-1960s (Taylor), self-conscious, historiographically metafictional (Hutcheon), and magically realist. always reflecting life’ s fragility, and the ‘flickering ontology’ (McHale) between reality and fiction. It is in the light of post-war, meta-textual, ‘postmodern magical realism’ (D’ haen) as interested in ethics and virtue, in ontology and the nature of reality, that both John Fowles’ s and Iris Murdoch’ s novels are to be considered. Murdoch’ s novels are closer to the nineteenth-century realist tradition, Fowles’ s are more postmodern.



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Since World War I, literature has often been discussed in terms of ‘death’ : its language, authors, heroes and novels are considered dead. Fortunately, the novel since has turned out to be more alive than ever, having recovered its humanistic purpose. The post-war novel asametaphysical pathway to ethics is what I choose to examine in this study. This new type of ethical novel, which questions the nature of the new reality and human condition, I propose to call ‘metaphysical ethography’ . The metaphysical ethography transcends mere morality to explore the essence of Goodness through paradigms of human experience, sheds light on the new givens of reality and endeavours therefrom to impart the related moral principles based on acts of Good. It especially provokes our ‘attending to’ human nature and individual ‘otherness’ , so essential a precondition of the respect for human life.

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through the accessible language of fiction. I shall stress the significance of their novels as metaphysical media and call attention to their ethical intimations towards acts of Goodness by displaying, LQWHUDOLD, the various forms of power at stake in art as in life. Through Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s metaphysical ethographies and their philosophical writings, we can draw a new ethical frame of reference and arrive at a re-definition of the contemporary novel as the new tool of Good, the new house of socially and morally beneficial metaphysics.

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Fowles (a ‘thinker’ and a magus) believes that by dint of ‘looking for an ethical truth’ , the artist becomes capable of ‘looking at’ , which Murdoch (a ‘watcher’ ) calls ‘seeing’ . This unselfish ability to attend to the uniqueness and the 'DVHLQ of every form of life is the issue at heart in Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s metaphysical ethographies. In order to make us VHH, both writers examine the ontological unease of the post-war Man, his moral suffocation and entrapment into egoistic fantasy, and the ways to deliverance. They also confront us with antagonistic situations, the power struggle into which their characters are ensnared.

Oxymoronic pairs, antinomies, contrasts are at the heart of the post-war novels under investigation. Among Fowles’ s fictional polarities, we find the tension between a magus and his apprentice. The 1977 version of 7KH0DJXV, a detective novel and a %LOGXQJVURPDQ, concentrates on Nicholas Urfe’ s moral journey toward ‘existential authenticity’ , under the guidance of Maurice Conchis. Symbolically named after two British kings, Charles and his Buddhist cousin, James Arrowby, stand for two forms of godly power in 7KH6HDWKH6HD, where Murdoch investigates the power-driven ego’ s ‘self-serving fantasy’ and its difficult ‘struggle to see the world and others rightly’ . In Murdoch’ s world of (would-be) saints and artists, James, a magician and a saint of sorts practising ‘moral gaze’ , is the pointer to Charles’ s moral self-redefinition.

The author’ s reality and fiction constitute another set of the ‘counterpoles’ in 7KH0DJXV. Fowles’ s post-war ego-obsessed, ‘existentially inauthentic’ anti-hero of successive failures incarnating the 1950s decadent society and the reader are ERWKsubjects to initiation. Fowles’ s autobiographic investment further bridges the ‘gap’ between fiction and reality. Through various games of substitution, Fowles also reasserts his godlike authorial powers, which postmodernism queries. Women with Fowles finally prove the real magi orcarriers of moral wisdom. In 7KH6HD WKH6HD, the magus builds a maze of deceits, but falls himself in the trap of ‘reality flickers’ and is therefore the one to experience the suffering leading to authenticity. Despite his retirement from the theatre, Charles has not completely given up the magic of the theatre world, like Prospero in Shakespeare’ s 7KH7HPSHVW: he still ‘directs’ the last play of his life. The magi of Murdoch’ s novels, besides being male figures, are monsters, self-deluding egos.

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it displays, the post-war metaphysical ethography leads us to our inner moral light by means of a ‘new vocabulary of attention’ .

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In Murdoch’ s philosophy, we find the traces of Plato’ s ideal of Good as associated to Beauty. To Fowles, influenced by Heraclitus, beauty is the anti-pole of ugliness, and thus contains it. His novel challenges representation, the ego’ s generalized mistake to fictionalize itself and its surrounding. Against the flight of time, the metaphysical ethographers tell us, we feed ourselves on illusions of eternal life, which keep us from facing UHDO life, where the way to goodness and authenticity is never the easiest one.

Nature is a metonymy of the characters’ behaviour and inner state in both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s novels. The characters in turn invest the elements and objects with a soul of their own. To Fowles, nature is a great teacher of the respect for life. In _{7KH0DJXVhe opposes Athens’ s city life to the rural life of Phraxos} Island. In 7KH 6HD WKH 6HD, the peninsula of Narrowdean is contrasted with London. Murdoch also pictures the American dream versus Puritan England through Charles’ s childhood. Charles’ s and James’ s stances disclose another discrepancy between western capitalism and eastern esotericism.

If art’ s sociological aim is to ‘change human nature’ by imparting moral values to society, its voice needs to be accessible. In other words, the novel needs to speak ‘human’ , the universal language of human experience. The metaphysical ethography displays and respects differences, shows that each human paradigm is a unique complex network of obscure details, which can thus not be objectively classified through accurate scientific terminology. Post-war (anti-)heroes are distressed, wonder about the world around them, their senses and perceptions have changed mainly because of the image culture and speed. The post-war metaphysical ethography re-individualizes where science has disindividualized. As in nineteenth-century literature, Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s novels are DERXW their characters and their (anti-)heroic essence. The post-war metaphysical ethographer speaks about and to a world trapped in form but hiding content, a world so complex and confused that it can only be conveyed through the language of lived life.

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mocking ‘black’ phoneticized speech in 7KH 6HD WKH 6HD, as a social indicator asserting his feudal-colonial submission to Charles.

Antagonisms dwell everywhere in both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s novels, and are implicit in nearly all the issues treated here. Art reveals nature, life and the world as receptacles of contradictions. For Murdoch, philosophy should return to the simple language of life and true human interaction via literature, in order to recover some moral structure. The metaphysical ethographer warns us here: it is wrong to unify languages, races and values. Differences make us unique and contradictions define the world. However, Good does not need Evil to exist. The metaphysical ethographer speaks of morals to us and reformulates their necessity by steering us through the new givens of the modern world.

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Despite all allegations of its non-referentiality, language is still referential since it has Man and his world as centres of gravity. A new type of language is required, though, that would truly re-connect man to the world, and the world to meaning. For the abominations of the global wars have created a linguistically unfamiliar reality and words have indeed become inadequate to translate the world. Murdoch emphasizes the lying function of words and Fowles alludes to the fictiveness of language. Language is the mirror of the society in which it appears. Art language must participate in the real world in order to infer meaning and be accessible in order to influence. Unlike scientific jargon, ordinary literary language does not intend to control the world, but to render it as is, with all its inherent mysteries and (hurtful) truths. Life and Men are much more complex than what any ‘esoteric babble’ can divulge. Truth is thus relative and defies any attempt at exactness.

The metaphysical ethography provides the reader with the clarity of the human soul through the simple and familiar images of myth and symbol. Its characters, like real persons, are difficult to define and their puzzlement is mainly due to their disconnection from any metaphysical-moral structure. Fowles and Murdoch expose the forms of (linguistic) power and de-humanization responsible for this puzzlement that science also exploits. We understand that the ethical literary language is the new essential language of difference, that universal tool as potential truth-bearer because it exposes both truth and lies and reshapes our grammar into new meanings. The metaphysical ethography mirrors the ‘essential aspiration to truth’ by contemplating the world and speaking from, of and for it in the simple re-humanized language of human exchange. It is representational in rendering a world that cannot be rendered precisely.

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and their creative power over men. But mystery shrouds all his female characters, their thoughts and aspirations.

Women have become the baits of the technology of desires, ‘moulded’ by male fantasies. This conceptualization of persons into images endangers any true relationship with the RWKHU, as the post-war metaphysical ethographies reveal. In 7KH 0DJXV, this conceptualization is a conscious process actually resulting in a reversal of powers: women satisfy male fantasies and thereby reinforce their control over men, manipulating (their own) bodies to their ends. Nick ends up as a persecuted lad. On the contrary, Murdoch’ s hysteric female protagonist, Hartley, originally embodying the ideal, innocent woman of the past, becomes a ‘mad woman in the attic’ . In 7KH0DJXV, Lily embodies the ‘Lawrentian woman of the past’ , fascinating to the androgynous modern mind that has confused the sexes. Fowles advocates Lawrence’ s theory of ‘phallic consciousness’ and the Lawrentian ideal relationship as surrender to the ‘wholeness of being’ .

Fowles somehow ‘re-advertizes’ all the twentieth-century hyperbolic images of women onto the male-ordered world screen, as ‘confections’ made by men for the delight of men. The woman has always lived through a kind of hyper-self misunderstood for something she never actually was, experiencing the tyranny of compromising with the perfection of the image of the ideal media woman. She may have won (sexual) equality, but she is still the victim of the male fantasy machinery to which she ultimately conspires. The post-war metaphysical ethography endeavours to show that the conceptualization of persons threatens art, love and virtue, that form is a great comforter but also a great destroyer of imagination, mystery and freedom. It redirects our thought to such awareness and acceptance of the real, for its purpose is to be ‘for life’ s sake’ .

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Both Fowles and Murdoch bring forward Plato’ s idea of the ‘simulacrum’ , that the media technologies have propagated to saturation and thereby further distanced Man from reality and from his own humanity. Like the prisoners in Plato’ s cave, Nick and Charles are chained to the echoes and shadows of their passions and ambitions. In 7KH 0DJXV, actors, 'RSSHJlQJHU, twins, identity usurpers, and originals, all prove the prodigious counterfeits of a plagiarist genius. In 7KH6HD WKH 6HD, Charles’ s life is entirely made up of fictions as well, abstract ideals of love, replicas of the past, simulacra of the present. The metaphysical ethographer, like Plato’ s enlightened prisoner, reveals the world as is, its essence shadowed by desires. S/he reveals that truth is relative: it can be lie, as lie can be truth.

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infested all the aspects of life. Both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s novels are locales where such a new human ‘morally loaded’ language is spoken.

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In 7KH 0DJXV, story-telling, play, acting, pretence, mirror-situations are master cards in the author’ s godlike shuffling of temporal shifts. In this game of ‘piecemeal evocations of the past in the present’ , Fowles also creates and de-creates characters, thus toying with his reader’ s ‘mental chronological arrangements’ and with the ‘ontological stability’ of his novel’ s world, again firmly ‘establishing his authorial power’ . In this authorial godgame, costumes are worn and scenes set up to revive the past in the present and vice versa. Oralityconstitutes the main communication tunnel from the past to the present (and conversely), as in Conchis’ s anachronistic anamnestic accounts which revisit the past critically – all, past and present, is text. Writing also authenticates the present and the past. Writing, on the other hand, is Charles’ s vehicle in his time travels in _{7KH6HDWKH} 6HD. He reconstructs Hartley by superimposing the memory of her young face on her old face. Hartley becomes her own replica, swallowed by a signifier without signified. Nostalgic impulses reject the present in favour of a Utopian past (Hutcheon). But the past is irrecoverable and nostalgia only creates a perfect situation impossible in a world of imperfect situations.

Old orality was synonymous with patience, memory, real exchange, and writing was made for the lazy. Neo orality is the expression of impatience, of the immediate present, of forgetfulness in simulacra of exchanges, where writing is threatened. The metaphysical ethographers help us recover our patience by keeping us attracted to their novels. They teach us that the past is fraught with consequences and that its recovery is an illusion that can only damage the present and cripple the future. Wishing to regain the past ensues from our weakness in front of situations we cannot dominate and thus want to transform into something reassuring. Through their ‘showings’ , the metaphysical ethographers offer us something of their ‘whole sight’ and emancipate us from form and falsity.

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Existentialism survives today in residual forms, in such issues as Man’ s ontological solitude and ‘freedom’ , lonely self-realization and disconnection from God and traditional values. Both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s metaphysics, originally anchored in French existentialism, culminate in ancient or eastern philosophies of life and Man. Murdoch’ s metaphysics draw on Christian-Buddhist mysticism and Platonist Idealism. Fowles is a humanist influenced by Heraclitus. Where Fowles and Murdoch depart from Sartrean existentialism is in the universalizing credo that ‘incapable of choosing the worse for himself, Man can only choose the best for all men’ . Both metaphysical ethographers saw for themselves that Man’ s choices are not always for the best, for they are often driven by irresponsible passions.

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portrait of the foulest man in the foulest world, which threatens to define Man’ s future ego too as a materially starved, power-crazed ‘savage god’ . In this ethically unsanctioned world of which Man is the only ‘immanent’ cause, Man’ s life is only a simulacrum of existence, being rarely in touch with his ‘existingness’ , often because not allowed to. The Existential Man made Mute succumbs to autistic games, with no other reciprocity than that leading to the self. The post-war metaphysical ethography rethinks morals and renews the Idea(l) of Good, restores life’ s mystic scape in a world constantly pointing to its meaninglessness.

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In 7KH 0DJXV, Nick Urfe’s existentialist insouciance goes hand in hand with a deficient ‘filial charity’ : he is the model type of the post-war ‘discipline en vogue’ despising all traditional authorities and values, like family, love, or social relationships. Ethical systems and God have receded into a distant background, the father fails in guiding his children. Fathers and mothers are failures, absent metaphorically and physically, in both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s metaphysical ethographies. Their novels are thus peopled with existential orphaned characters, but still characters in search of (parental) security. Orphan characters in search of a way home are metonyms of the Existential Man roaming the world alone. Our orphaned existences are in the hands of hazard, which plays wicked games. The labyrinth of human selfishness fosters the exploitation of the insecure and nemesis is sometimes unjust.

The post-war metaphysical ethography enacts Man’ s dereliction: orphan characters or characters simply cancelled by necessity, and apparently absent authors. Through parental desertion and its consequences on their castaways, the metaphysical ethography shows the importance of real guidance and real ties to the healthy development of the individual.

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Hazard makes our life thrilling. God is not there in the traditional sense, but the metaphysical ethographers always point the way to the gods or Perfect Love. Hazard may also be unfair in choosing its kings and its slaves. Heraclitus’ division between the Aristoi and the Polloi has influenced Fowles’ s _{7KH $ULVWRL. Fowles} sees this division between the Few and the Many within ourselves. It is the novelist’ s role – as an Aristos – to educate the mob. A novelist must be a humanist and show understanding. Both Fowles and Murdoch are ‘atheistic humanists’ . Murdoch asserts that if one wants to reach Good, one must transcend God. Yet Good is an image of God. The arguments on the (non-)existence of God in 7KH 0DJXV resurrect the idea of God too. Hell (absolute knowledge) constitutes our dwelling because we have lost God in our attempts to explain Him. And denying God equals denying the human in Man. ‘God is unique, not a thing to be given ‘place’ in the world’ (Murdoch). God is a ‘situation’ (Fowles). There are as many gods as they are situations, as is allegorically illustrated in 7KH0DJXV¶s pageant of false gods born of Man’ s pseudo-knowledge. In 7KH6HDWKH6HD, James warns us that ‘our attachments compose our god’ , that malicious gods have replaced the God of Love.

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precondition to Man’ s ‘psychological health’ . The metaphysical ethography conveys both the incommensurability of God and our finitude in the world that we should accept in order to perceive the divine. It displays our false gods’ many faces (of good as of evil) and puts the character in situations where (the search) for Go(o)d is enacted, and through them, guides the readers out of their ego’ s vanity and will to power. It shows that true meaning lies in human experience and that the only worthwhile path is that which leads to Perfect Love… or God.

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Death is present in our daily moral practices, as in life’ s creative destructive impulse. Madness and death (suicide) go hand in hand in both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s novels. In 7KH6HDWKH6HD, James’ s death is not suicide proper, but the assertion of a free choice devoid of any attachments, whereas Hartley’ s death wish emerges from a tortured soul unable to stand life. Suicide is a macabre game when Conchis invites Nick to swallow ‘suicide pills’ in _{7KH0DJXV, whereas it concludes} a life of selfishness with De Deukans.The metaphysical ethographerstresses that the individual power of willed death should not be exerted: whether out of morbid attraction or cowardice, or as spiritual achievement, it is treason against life.

Prolonged self-isolation, obsession with oneself, painful revelations can turn one into a dead man or a madman. Charles is familiar with madness in 7KH6HDWKH 6HD: Lizzie’ s love for him is an ‘old madness’ . His own obsession persists throughout the narrative. Love does not always redeem, it can be ‘another slavery’ , when it dwells in total selfishness or when one betrays one’ s authentic self. ‘Compassion’ and ‘justice’ , and ‘authenticity’ and ‘freedom’ , the keywords in understanding Murdoch’ s and Fowles’ s metaphysics, are the qualities helping one to withstand the world’ s silly gambles and destructive power mania, i.e. war, the degradation of the souls through killing for power and profit. Great literature, Murdoch asserts, ‘combines both the horror and absurdity of human life’ , it provides ‘true pictures of the situation of man’ . The ego’ s power drive is the source of all evil. Freedom starts with duty, love with selflessness, choice with Good. All should be first and foremost ‘attending’ to the reality outside the self.

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The freedom and love ideals that both Fowles and Murdoch propound are increasingly improbable in a society where freedom is synonymous with indulging in ephemeral pleasures and love has its share of ‘monstrosity’ . Our ‘throwaway society’ is characterized by the ‘disposability’ of goods as of values and stable relationships. The metaphysical ethography shows us that to aspire to fleeting values is a daily curse: the artificial, instantaneous, and contingent object ‘imposes’ itself upon us, insidiously promising to fill our spiritual void. The western KRPR VDSLHQV threatens to become a ‘KRPRVROLWDULXV’ .

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descriptions alternate with actual visualisations of framed narrative comments, producing the cinematic effects of silent cinema. Fowles asserts his omnipotence by blurring once more the boundaries between real and unreal, thus further jeopardizing the ontological stability of the text. The textual ontological instability points to Man’ s existential instability, as his eye is obsessively turned upon his own self. The metaphysical ethography lays bare the dangers of supplanting individual reality by ideal images of individuals. By worshipping the image and the illusion of power that it confers, we are de-humanizing a world already stripped of its humanity.

The image of the prostitute is related to the prohibition-free world of pornography as purchasable and exhibited, hyperbolic sex. The woman is ‘reduced to inferior states’ , possessed, ‘cannibalistically devoured’ , not loved. In the minds of the male protagonists of the metaphysical ethographies under scrutiny, uninhibited love often connects a woman to the image of a prostitute. Yet, the roles are eventually reversed, since the awareness of being an object of sexual domination turns women into the actual dominators, as in 7KH0DJXV, where Nick is ‘victimized’ in the process. Pornography is one of the products of ‘black art’ , because it is invested with emotionless and violent sex appealing to lower instincts. From the 1970s on, sex is ‘dispersed’ in pornography and art thus loses its moral target. The violent man is made the hero of a post-war world where everything is permitted. The metaphysical ethographies caution the readers against the dangers of all forms of addiction, and invite them to use their will-power to break away from the golden prison of mindless delights.

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Nick in _{7KH0DJXV and Charles in 7KH6HDWKH6HD are subjects of a society where} broken marriages and failed bonds spread suffering and misery. They impersonate ‘sterile’ earthly pleasures, in contrast to their mentors, their frenetic sex life leading nowhere but to ‘sex for sex’ s sake’ . To Charles, as to Nick, women are ‘little treats’ , like canned food, quickly consumed, pleasurable, and disposable. About love and pleasure, both protagonists share the self-centred view of the ideal sexual relationship as uncommitted. The price women pay for this is abortion, solitude, rejection. Birth becomes unbirth, children are doomed in a society where sexuality is delivered from feelings and procreation, but in thrall of its own liberation.

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Fowles and Murdoch explore the realms of control and subjection from many angles. Fowles is especially preoccupied by the collector’ s mentality. In both 7KH 0DJXVand 7KH6HDWKH6HD, Conchis and Charles collect various objects, besides collecting affairs: stones, works of art, driftwood sculptures, curious objects, Buddhist statues, fetishist or profane objects. In 7KH 0DJXV, one even finds a colony of human-size puppets, among which a female automaton, emotionless, speechless, always available, sequestered, a sex machine substituting love by virtual pleasure designed to satisfy male desires. Collection is for collection’ s sake, beyond any ethical or religious preoccupation, and the object finally possesses the possessor.

Absence reigns in collecting and in sexual fetishism. Absence of the object of love, but also of the loving subject. What remains is an LPDJH of love, a mere simulacrum. Likewise, black or bad art destroying dream and imagination threatens to replace good art, art with content or ‘seriousness’ . Our stance toward life needs proper re-orientation (Murdoch) or re-education (Fowles). Hoarding cherished objects is human. But collection here is an onanistic self-indulging amassing of meaningless items. Its pleasures are autistic, pure simulations unaware of the objects that provoke them, self-deluding ‘palliatives of death’ , says Fowles. The twentieth-century happy Man is rich. Money plays here its monstrous role. Lack of money breeds inequality, violence and crime, its superabundance brings power, vanity, and evil or may even trigger off the mechanisms of madness.

Pleasure derived from unquestioned sources, sex regardless of its emotional and biological implications, addictions, mindless non-shared joys rooted in fakes, irresponsible money spending are issues against which Fowles and Murdoch take a stand because all lead to misery. Only by transcending ‘hedonautism’ can one reach true selfless love and happiness. Authentic selfhood and love are the premises of a new ethical dimension. Pleasure grounds life, but it should be aware and respectful of its object. Both metaphysical ethographies provoke our anti-autistic meditation on something other than ourselves.

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Our polyphonic world has become a readable text, and so has the novel. Texts juxtaposed, transposed, inserted, collated, meta- or intertexts, texts superimposed on multi-levelled discourse lines produce multiple narrative or ontological levels, intersecting with each other and sometimes creating incongruous sub-worlds forming a ‘heterotopia’ . When the ‘primary diegesis’ is trespassed by ‘hypodiegetic worlds’ , and the latter by ‘hypo-hypodiegetic’ worlds, then worlds HQ DEvPH are created (‘Chinese-boxes’ intertextuality). All these ‘recursive structures’ lay bare the process of world-construction in both fiction-making and in our minds. A mirror world become autarchic is an allegory or ‘hypertrophied metaphor’ .

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visions or premonitory dreams, which he jots down in his diary: self-questionings, impressions, opinions, descriptions, epistolary thrusts, dialogues, flashback accounts or anachronistic (day)dreams associated with current thoughts and happenings reveal his state of mind and the events to the reader. Fantastic ‘PHWDOHSVLV’ plays here an important mind-perturbing role: the ‘embedded’ stories constitute zones, where the boundaries the real and the unreal become undifferentiated, creating disturbing events preparing the mind for even more disturbing situations.

The alleged death of the novel/author is allegorically duplicated in the iconoclastic burning of books in 7KH 0DJXV. The author who penetrates his/her own fiction highlights his/her demiurgic power. By demystifying authorial power, what is achieved is the establishment of that very power ‘in a displaced form’ . The structures of power and its arbitrariness are thus laid bare. By making her main character a memoirist, Murdoch introduces and foregrounds the ‘postmodernist WRSRV of the writer at his desk’ . This PLVH HQ DEvPH of the novelist’ s act is duplicated in a Chinese-box-like process: the writer writing about a character writing in turn. Reading and writing are of equal importance in Murdoch’ s novel: they both determine events and constitute acts of self-discovery.

Fowles proves that there are no absolute gods, only godgames, and that, as in any game, power alternates, permutes, changes hands. His ends are usually twofold or open, and so are Murdoch’ s. Fowles finally drops his magic and thus withdraws as a god-novelist, and power is transferred to his characters, but also to his readers. What is often lost, however, in many of the new ‘demystification’ art techniques, where the reader/viewer is made aware of the processes engendering art, is spontaneity. What may be lacking too in this deconstruction process is content, the texture of life. Still, Fowles and Murdoch combine all the existential questions: ‘what’ , ‘why’ , ‘how’ , and point the ‘way’ to possible responses. Truth is delightful, terrible or funny but it is our creative task to make it up for ourselves.

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The metaphysical ethographers use the ‘strategy of omission’ , interrupting answers or adopting silences, fantastic freezes and ambiguities, mixed with the conventional themes of the fantastic, to reinforce the supernatural thrill in narratives blurring the limits of the real-unreal and the present-past. Fear of the dark, haunted house, attic rats and ‘attic women’ , gloomy atmospheres, ‘fear of one’ s own fear’ shape Murdoch’ s Gothic. Fowles’ s ‘Greek Gothic’ (Kane) also includes devils, spiders, death-skulls, sorcerers and ‘lads in cellars’ . A series of claustrophobic spaces invade the novels indeed, all pertaining to the Gothic enclosure motif: windowless chapels, cryptlike churches, tombs, underground cells and cisterns, narrow cabins in 7KH 0DJXV, inner rooms, dog-kennels, damp churches, enclosed backyards in 7KH 6HD WKH 6HD But the characters’ spatial movements first actually isolate them from reality.

The games on the real and the supernatural, chess-like truth-lies divergences are part of the stuff of our world, where reason is all-powerful, but where we fortunately still believe in ghosts: reason has not completely won us over yet. We are believers with a huge power of imagination and need for mystery. The metaphysical ethography forces us to face our false representations and our ego’ s godgame of ‘chimerical arrangements’ . It is difficult to break away from our prison-minds and get rid of our fears and egoistic ambitions. Yet, we have the power to choose for the best because we are also the vehicles of qualities that define God.

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The endings of both Fowles’ s and Murdoch’ s novels are open in a typical ‘anti-Victorian’ refusal to close. In both novels, we deal with ‘forking-path’ narratives ‘realizing mutually-exclusive possibilities’ . Although Fowles is a believer in organic plots, in _{7KH 0DJXV he leaves us with few implicit possibilities. The} novelist-god and his god-like players have only apparently withdrawn. The reader is only apparently free to end the novel as s/he wishes, because this end partakes in the novel’ s rules of coherence. We imagine that Nick is ready for a future life with Alison, but nothing is certain.

Love between characters, between the reader and the text, between the author and his creatures, love as ‘metaleptic’ has to overcome selfishness in order to become Pure Love, otherwise it is haunted by demons. In 7KH 6HD WKH 6HD, ‘demon’ is synonymous with obsession-egoism, power-possession, jealousy-envy, etc. All point to a desperate wish to extend life. Yet, death-awareness makes us life-aware. Through the confrontation with death, Fowles and Murdoch, show us that life is worthy of respect. It is to such rediscovery that both Nick in 7KH0DJXV and Charles in 7KH 6HD WKH 6HD are brought, through the painful process of ‘unselving’ that finally leads them to real freedom. Life is so complex and confused that no end can do. Our life is an Odyssey, a journey to Love made difficult by our delusions and egoistic passions. Through the metaphysical ethography, we become the witnesses of the human hunt for love, of which Art is the natural habitat.

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In this perpetual post-war age, the metaphysical ethography reveals the details of life by reflecting difference. In a world of acceleration, transient surfaces and theorizations of Man which elude the singularity of the individual, the metaphysical ethography restores simplicity by making us aware that we are endowed with the power of love and compassion and that we can choose to opt for goodness. It helps us accept the frightfulness of life by rendering the world intelligible and by disclosing it as is. It humanizes the world through the re-individualized language of human exchange, which contains the vocabulary of attention and speaks to all because we recognize ourselves in it. It draws its post-war moral metaphysics on a variety of human experiences. It explores the ‘catastrophic success’ of Man’ s destructive-creative mania, its post-war urges to embrace all kinds of extremities, and Man’ s new fears that no science can allay: Man is disconnected from all systems of belief once providing stability, arts are silenced, language proven false, and god and the father declared dead.

The metaphysical ethography could then become a new sacred text since it provokes metaphysical reflection, our mind’ s exercise, it speaks human and wants to change society from the premises of Good, it is attentive to the world and understanding to our ego’ s demons. The metaphysical ethography is thus the place of a new ethical framework, new language meanings and new hopes whereby the world may be saved. It shows us goodness, reminds us that we can opt for good by resituating good and evil within the new givens. It reflects the relativity of the post-war world and it is still existentialist in questioning society and institutions. Orphanhood remains a metonym for the rootless existential Man who seeks home, love and new meanings in an uncertain world.



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There is in us the intuition of ‘G(o)od’ . The role of ethical literature is to ‘use the suitable metaphors or invent suitable concepts to make the features of the experiences of good visible’ (Murdoch). This inner intuition of Good is a fundament of humanity, of which the ultimate surrogate is God. We need to adopt ‘religious attitudes’ in order to find ‘therapies for the sorrows and disorders of the souls’ (Jung). Through meditation, unselving or decreation can take place and teach us respect and cleanse our mind of selfishness. Our puzzlement resides in the bafflement of relativity, which makes us incapable of discerning good from evil. Our moral duty is to ‘lessen the part of evil in the world’ when it is clearly recognized. Education helps us achieve such moral duty, and it should be threefold says Fowles: social, personal, and synoptic (grasping the whole of existence). We need a polymorphous education that would teach us how to discipline our desires too, by including the arts in order to be efficient. Because only art helps us tame our conflicting feelings about the world.

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humanity, prompting us to enact goodness, bestowing Go(o)d upon us anew. It is what we ought to place our faith in.



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Greek philosophy and art were often one and the same thing, displaying the conflicts of generations, the differences between men and the gods, in a world where good and evil were two recognizable notions. Poetry, plays, tales always played a morally didactic or spiritually enlivening role. Until the nineteenth century, art imitates nature, concerned with the depiction of life. The novel is then linear, its characters stable and its worlds coherent. It is HQJDJp, beautiful, spiritually enlivening, reflecting the social order and steady beliefs of the time. At the end of the nineteenth century, art becomes for art’ s sake and beauty is for pleasure only. From the beginning of the twentieth century onward, art is bereft of its moral agency, based on arbitrariness, absurdity; it is not ethically uplifting any more. It becomes dark, pessimistic, and minimal. The novel has no plot, interest, passion. Its characters are hollow, mechanical, and irrational. An a-moral literature emerges from the godless and meaningless world, reflecting the spiritual emptiness and hopelessness of post-war society. The turn of the twentieth century also means a rediscovery of ancient philosophers and classical poets. In Murdoch and Fowles’ s metaphysics we recognize many aspects of Matthew Arnold’ s own definition of culture as the last saviour of an English society unable to transcend materialism: art as the truest way of looking at the world and improving it through the search for perfection; the fear of the mechanistic values resulting from industrialism and wealth; real freedom lying in responsibility; the need for a sociological literature directed toward the moral education of mankind. Murdoch and Fowles also return to the ancients, who enlivened the world spiritually (Arnold).