As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

by Susan Sontag

  After three months of silence in the desert, speaking is a violently physical act. (For how long?)

  Ivan searching for a reply to something I said: “Wait … I can taste it but I can’t yet find the words.”

  I make an idol of my moral consciousness. My pursuit of the good is corrupted by the sin of idolatry.

  2/17/70

  I’m in exile (America) from my exile (Europe).

  Abandoned. Struggling not to feel abandoned.

  Kleist (Puppet Theater): If you don’t have your center of gravity within yourself, you have it somewhere else (in another person?) which sets up infinite possibilities of distortion. Carlotta’s ambivalence—(unlike Eva) she doesn’t project it on to persons (she’s too gentle, too affectionate, essentially too uncritical of people) but she feels the profoundest ambivalence toward herself. Experiences herself as a deeply dependent person, and despises herself for that.

  Re: her telegram: “Paris seems so far away.”

  —What I must understand is that nothing about Paris was a positive experience for C. It was for me: however painful, I was with her.

  Importance, to C., of the notion of being “civilized.” Being civilized means having self-control, being able to be gay and friendly when you feel despair. The ability to laugh on the phone with an acquaintance in the midst of great private suffering is “civilized” to her—dissociated and anxiety-provoking to me. [Being civilized] means keeping things separate—different states of being with people, different states of self-manifestation and self-revelation—with the standard of being pleasant for people to be with.

  Carlotta thinks of herself as “decadent.” How deep is this? Is it only aristocrats who can be decadent? She doesn’t think of herself as either “compromised” (“self-compromised”) or “corrupt”—epithets I might apply to myself (while I would never describe myself as decadent).

  With C.’s telegram today, we’re back in Square 1. Will she—and when—find the energy to make another move?

  C. has become the first big intellectual event (this past week) since my trip to Hanoi. And [calls my] consciousness into question. As my trip to Hanoi made me re-appraise my identity, the forms of my consciousness, the psychic forms of my culture, the meaning of “sincerity,” language, moral decision, psychological expressiveness, etc., so the trip to Paris—pain, loss, abandonment, the advent of anguish + insecurity—has made me re-appraise almost everything about the forms of my thinking and feeling. A shaft boring into my consciousness—deeper and deeper (as I talk to Don, Stephen, Eva—especially Don)—“the seminar.” I feel a big gain in wisdom, in perceptiveness—if not in emotional maturity. The last 8 days have been like a year’s worth of work with Diana. Better, richer in some ways than the psychoanalytic dialogue—this home analysis with friends—because I can analyze the cultural (Jewish, American, psychoanalytic, etc.) forms of my consciousness, not just their sources in my individual psycho-biography.

  I feel a sense of mastery, amid all the pain and anguish at being abandoned. A breakthrough of intelligence like this—perceptions not only verbalized, but spun out into a long, searching, open-ended discourse—makes me know I’m alive and growing. It’s almost as great a source of vitality—of feeling palpably the sense of life in me—as being in love. I feel once again, and I rejoice, that I’m not busy dying—I’m still busy being born.

  America vs. Europe again:

  C. doesn’t see herself as the product of her history, but the vehicle of her nature. For me, I am the product of my history. That’s all my “nature” amounts to—And since I understand how arbitrary, in part, my history is—its result, my nature, logically seems modifiable, transcendable.

  Psychoanalytic thinking sensitizes one to the contingent quality of the self—as the product of a history that is contingent, rather than the expression of a nature that is given. It persuades us that we are being “passive” if we merely accept our selves … Hence, the essential optimism of this culture. Psychoanalysis took root here, as it did nowhere in Europe, because it supports the feasibility of “the pursuit of happiness.”

  Carlotta is profoundly pessimistic about love, human relations, the possibility of happiness. Ultimately—whatever my melancholy and despair—I’m not. I think it is possible to make it, to break through, to avoid the traps (through grace, luck, intelligence, vigilance, passion, art, vitality—whatever.)

  The biggest danger is that she will give me up.

  I love C. just as much as ever, but my love is no longer innocent—and it never will be again. That makes me very sad—I feel an enormous sense of loss right there, quite apart from my anxiety that in the end I will lose her. But it was inevitable, I suppose; in the end, maybe better. Carlotta would have to be so exceptionally whole and sane to have not created situations which would have destroyed the innocence of my feeling for her. And that is too much to ask of her—of anyone.

  It’s no accident that I fall in love for the first time in so many years a year before David and I are separated. He’s been too important to me in the last six years really to give myself to anyone. He’s been safety, refuge; wall; security in being needed, and loved, and necessary, literally and morally. A relationship that needed no justification—self-justifying, fully functional, and limited. But no accident, too, that I’ve fallen in love with someone who invites me to exercise my parental talents, now losing the object on which they’ve been exercised (with David’s growing up). To be “with” Carlotta even some of the time—I can no longer imagine living with her all the time, and I think I can settle for less (maybe it would prove to be better for me that way, not just better for her)—would still make great demands on my ability to give unselfishly, generously, undemandingly—to find my pleasure in pleasing her, my happiness in making her happy—to be permissive and strong. The sense in which C. plays the role of child with any lover is that one can’t expect to be given to, to be supported, to be reassured by her. She offers her (unreliable) presence—the beauty of her person; her charm; her vitality; her pathos; her wit and intelligence. But she makes no promises (loyalty, fidelity, reliability, practical assistance)—about that she is extremely scrupulous and honest. It’s other people, those who love her, who make promises to her. (Everyone who has loved Carlotta must have understood at least that much from the beginning.) And she tells them that she will not be surprised, or reproachful, if they can’t keep the promises they make (or change their minds). She always thinks they are promising too much—and that she isn’t worthy of their donation of self, and that they will, must ultimately become disappointed in her.

  Carlotta is exceptionally free of rage, anger, rancor, hostility. She is a profoundly gentle person. I love this in her. (It reminds me of myself.) But this must be one reason for her terribly self-destructive history. She’s rarely known how to defend herself, except by withdrawal (tuning out, running away). How come she never developed even a normal capacity for hostility? This can only be explained by things in her childhood. Too much insecurity to allow anger. But if there’s no anger experienced, one feels so vulnerable—anxiety must then mount to intolerable levels. Thus, already at eighteen, she had to seek the extreme recourse of heroin to disconnect herself from the anxiety. (As she once told me, if she hadn’t taken heroin, she would have committed suicide.)

  I remember in August Robertino [a friend of Carlotta’s] saying to me, “One gives up a lot when one loves Carlotta.” And how surprised and moved I was when she replied quietly to both of us: “But I give up a lot too.”

  Can I love non-possessively, permissively—without withdrawing myself, setting up my own defenses and strategic retreats, on the one hand, or reducing the amount and intensity of my love, on the other? I would like to try, with Carlotta. Not just because I am so completely in love with her that I have no choice but to try anything that’s possible—though that’s true. But also because it might be very good for me. I have such strong tendencies to abandon myself to someone with whom I’m in love—to want
to give up every-thing, to be possessed totally as well as to possess totally. What I envisage as perhaps possible with Carlotta is the contradiction of my symbiotic, Siamese-twin marriages in the past. I might have learned to love fully (as I really never have done) and to remain autonomous and be able to be alone without anguish—at the same time. That would be a tremendous victory, a great change in what C. would call my “nature” (but which I stubbornly insist on believing is less than that).

  Telling Eva about speaking French so much (with Florence) makes my English deteriorate—I said, “It seems as if, ultimately, I have room for only one language”—She laughed and said, “Another example of your taste for monogamy.”

  I feel inauthentic at a party: Protestant-Jewish demand for unremitting “seriousness.” Going to a party is a “low” activity—the authentic self is compromised, fragmented—one plays “roles.” One isn’t fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn’t (can’t) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn’t literally tell lies.

  Carlotta has no share in this type of consciousness (typically Puritan). The convivium has its value, and standards of presence appropriate to itself. The fulfilling of these standards means one is “civilized.” There is no guilt attached to the situation of being at a party as such for her, as there is for me. Rather, perhaps, some guilt attaches to unsociability, being uncompanionable. The lies, or partial truth-telling, that sociability requires are part of civiltà. No inner demand for complete authenticity in Catholic culture.

  Mine is a second-class, truncated Puritanism. Parties depress me (I feel demeaned) while I don’t usually feel depressed, corrupted, or demeaned if I go to a bad movie or play. As long as I am a spectator, a voyeur (however much response I may have inside) I haven’t essentially violated or demeaned myself. I draw the line between participation and voyeurism. The only parties I go to where I feel clear (and usually not depressed) are those in which I behave like a spectator—the party becomes a movie—and I discuss it with the person I came with or the one person I already know who is there; and regard meeting new people as an intrusion on my essential activity. Or else I use the party as décor, backdrop to be in a different way privately with the person I came with (as when I used to go to parties with Irene, or go to parties to dance with Paul [Thek]).

  If I were a full-fledged Puritan, I’d be worried about being corrupted by spectacles too. But I’m not.

  I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall—like seeking love in a whorehouse. Even more, I somewhere take my unsociability as evidence of my “seriousness,” a quality which I take as necessary to my existence as a moral being. What a strange set of assumptions, as I now see by comparing them with those of Carlotta. Carlotta never seeks to establish, to herself or to others, that she is “serious.” Indeed, the concept hardly makes sense to her. She has always been faintly amused (and, I suppose, somewhere alarmed) when I told her—as, God help me, I have repeatedly—that my love for her is “serious,” that I’m a “serious” person. Now I see, for the first time, how it must seem funny to her.

  For C., emotions—actions—are. Their quality and duration become self-evident. There’s no need for advance certification of them as “serious,” or for that kind of retrospective appraisal. It must seem to her like some pretentious, pointless kind of rhetoric.

  Bigger gap for C. than for me between emotions and actions. I often use “will,” the ethical ought, to make the jump. If you don’t have the idea of laying down that kind of bridge (and pushing yourself across), it must be much easier to be indecisive. Protestants + Jews are much fonder of the will + the “ought” than Catholics. This must be very strong in her—bigger than Gemini character, neurotic patterns, etc.

  Carlotta—Southern European, Catholic culture—uses the convivium (parties, dinners, etc.) to tune out. Protestant-Jewish culture uses work. One is allowed to tune out on the full authentic private self in work—in the fulfillment of the routines of a vocation, a profession, a job—because work itself is a moral imperative: satisfying the requirements of the discipline of the self and the necessity to relate communally to others. Work is experienced as discipline—the background of which is ascesis—even though it also gives pleasure. One is allowed to become “depersonalized” in work, to forget the self (to lose contact with its most intimate feelings and needs)—indeed all that is necessary if one is to give oneself fully to the work. The party and other forms of convivium are, of course, not at all ascetic—on the contrary. The depersonalization is hedonistic, non-utilitarian, not moralized.

  Carlotta never asks herself if she has behaved “authentically,” never scrutinizes herself to see if her actions really correspond to her feelings, never despairs of being in touch with her “real” feelings. She experiences her problem not as one of knowing what she really feels, but of living with—and not being torn to pieces by—the (contradictory) feelings she has.

  Northern Europe, US:

  Protestant culture proposed the self as a mystery to the self. Hence, the rise of introspection, the keeping of journals, silence in Protestant countries. (Cf. Sweden, especially for the latter.) Catholic culture doesn’t propose the self as mysterious psychologically, only as complex, contradictory, and sinful. Carlotta doesn’t experience her self as alienated (hidden) from herself, but rather as contradictory to the point of being almost intolerable. It’s the problem of co-existence (peaceful co-existence) with her self that she hasn’t solved, not the problem of contact with herself, which is what I feel is my problem (and task).

  I see life as a set of projects / tasks. C. doesn’t. This makes it much easier for me to make decisions, or at least to conclude that a decision must be made (and then force myself to take one—even if I have to invent it). Obviously, my set of mind corresponds much more to the conditions under which work in the world is performed. And everyone knows that much more work gets done in Protestant than in Catholic countries. This view is obviously exacerbated in a woman in a Catholic country—because there are strong positive pressures on every girl which discourage the mental set that creates a capacity to work. Intellectual skills, except those involving the development of sensibility, are not encouraged in girls. Executive or administrative force is disparaged as “aggressive,” castrating, unbecoming, unfeminine. Women are encouraged to work, not only in Catholic countries but everywhere, only in situations where they take orders—or perform thoroughly routine tasks (as in housework). To be creative or to direct an enterprise, in a woman, is by cultural definition, aggressive. For a woman to function as an autonomous, independent, decision-making being is, by cultural definition, unfeminine—even though the culture allows, and even flatters, a small number of exceptional women who defy the prohibition and function this way anyway. So Carlotta’s set [of mind] with respect to will, action, decision-making is not only furnished by her culture, but is heavily compounded by the fact of being a woman.

  Women have traditionally represented the “Southern” values, men the Northern values—within any given country. Women are easier, softer, more amiable, less responsible, less intellectual, less serious about work, more spontaneous, more sensuous (though not more sexual—sexuality remains part of the masculine domain of will, force, decision-making, taking the initiative, exercising control, anticipatory behavior).

  Simple (too simple?) thesis: the very burden of the project distracts—eventually cuts oneself off, promotes dissociation from—one’s feelings. I conceive my life linearly, as a series of projects. Plans, the exercise of will, skill in judgment, and good instincts in decision-making make it possible for me to move along the line of my life, moving from one project to the next. In all this, is it any wonder that feelings—still, in my case (even in my old, most benighted days) a powerful motivating force in the choice and execution of every project—could get a little lost.

  Carlotta has never c
onceived of her life as a series of projects—life is not a line, or a highway—it’s basically a group of free-standing events. Those events are basically discussable separately. They can be compared with each other, and each can be understood as a reflection of (at least some partial aspect of) something all her actions share—as their underpinning—her “nature.” Her actions all illustrate her nature. She discovers her nature through her actions. Indeed, she uses her actions to discover her nature—her actions, and her capacity for a particular action. Thus, she discovered her feeling about going to New York—the extent of her panic, fear of me, guilt toward Beatrice, etc., etc.—by her inability to leave Paris with me for New York. But there is no notion of a “key” action, more important and more self-revelatory than the others (even of a group of key actions). Hence, in a sense, no one action is irrevocable—or irrevocably self-defining. Thus, she doesn’t define herself as brave—because of the action by which she freed herself of heroin. She doesn’t (and this is my strongest source of hope) define our relationship as over because she abandoned us (our plans) and backed out of coming to New York.