Existentialism And Modern Literature by Davis Dunbar McElroy Ph.D

Author:Davis Dunbar McElroy, Ph.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Philosophical Library/Open Road Media
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

These are the reflections of the great German novelist when writing of Kafka’s tragi experience. I feel sure that he would agree with me when I say that if we wish to study the deadly and enervating perils that threaten human existence, we must read Kafka’s novels; but we wish to discover one possibility of overcoming them, we must study his life: denied faith and love, Kafka found some contentment, at last, in his art. But despite the temptation to dwell on this point it is time to go on to other matters.

I have been hitting about rather haphazardly in my selections of recent authors who bear evidence to my contention that our literature, as well as our other arts, stands as a warning which We disregard at our utmost Peril. This lack of system, however, is probably due to the nature of the literature which has been produced in the past fifty or, so years, a period during which the tendencies which I have been describing have been international rather than national. This literature, of course, as I have already mentioned, is not all of one suit, no need to pretend that it is, but it is rather like a pinochle deck: if you turn up a card you may not find the ace of spades or the black queen, but you stand a pretty good chance of turning up one of her sisters, a knave, or a joker.

It is interesting to observe that the first full-length portrait of man drawn from the existentialistic point of view appeared nearly a century ago in the heyday of Queen Victoria’s reign, when all the world was young, and all the grass was green (or so we suppose). The author of this piece was Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian poet and playwright, whose existentialistic play, Peer Gynt, appeared in 1867. At that time, Soren Kierkegaard, the founder of the existentialistic movement, had already been dead for over thirty years, but inasmuch as he had written all of his books in Danish, a language unfamiliar to most Europeans, he was not known outside his own country except in Norway where Danish was the official court language. This is one reason why Kierkegaard’s work remained almost unknown in Europe and America until fifty or so years ago when it was first translated into German.

It is well known that Ibsen was a great admirer of the work of Kierkegaard; but even if we were ignorant of this fact, the marks of the Danish existentialist’s influence are too strong in Ibsen’s work to leave any question in our minds. Ibsen’s lyric drama, Peer Gynt, is a satiric-fantasy of the Norwegian character and a tragedy of a lost soul. If one views it narrowly, it-can also be read as an existentialistic tract. Of course it is a great deal more than that, for it is the work of a great artist and also one of the best things he ever did. For this reason I earnestly hope that

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