Lukácsian film theory and cinema: A study of Georg Lukács' writing on film 1913–1971 9781526129642

Citation preview

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

LUKÁCSIAN FILM THEORY AND CINEMA

A STUDY OF GEORG LUKÁCS’ WRITINGS ON FILM, 1913–71

IAN AITKEN

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukácsian film theory and cinema

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document For my parents: Bill and Eileen

Lukácsian film theory and cinema Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

A study of Georg Lukács’ writings on film, 1913–71

Ian Aitken

Manchester University Press Manchester

Copyright © Ian Aitken 2012 The right of Ian Aitken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 7884 2 hardback First published 2012 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any ­external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not ­g uarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

Edited and typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Contents

    Preface Part I: An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film   1  The early aesthetic and ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic     of the Cinema’/‘Gedanken zu einer Ästhetic des Kino’   2  Narrate or describe? Lukács’ literary ‘typology’   3  Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory:     The Specificity of the Aesthetic/Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen   4  Socialist humanism and Toward the Ontology of     Social Being�������������������������������������������� /Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftslichen Seins   5  The film journal interviews and other writings   6  Conclusions

page vi 1 3 36 69 105 128 164

Part II: The film writings, 1913–71   7  ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’   8  ‘Film’   9  ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’ 10  ‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’ 11  ‘Cultural Manipulation and the Tasks of Critics’ 12  ‘Film, Ideology and the Cult of Personality’ 13  ‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’ 14  ‘Expression of Thought in Film’ 15  ‘Revolution and Psychology of Everyday Life’

179 181 187 218 231 237 242 244 256 263

    Bibliography     Index

269 279

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Preface

This book, on Lukács, is the third in what has now become a trilogy of books on cinematic realism. Initially, however, only two such books were planned. The first: European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction, attempted to position realist film theory and cinema against the general context of European film theory and cinema, and, therefore, encompassed areas such as formalism, structuralism, and post-structuralism; as well as the work of Grierson, Bazin, Kracauer, Lukács, and various forms of realist cinema. This study provided the foundation for the second book: Realist Film Theory and Cinema: The Nineteenth-Century Lukácsian and Intuitionist Realist Traditions, a book I had been working on, in one form or another, for the previous fifteen years. Realist Film Theory and Cinema focuses entirely on the realist tradition, and explores both the origins of cinematic realism in nineteenth-century realism, and the film theories of Kracauer, Bazin, Grierson, and Lukács. It was while working on European Film Theory and Cinema that I came to the realisation that Lukács’ writings on the cinema had not been satisfactorily addressed within English-language film studies, and that awareness grew stronger as I worked on the two chapters on Lukács in Realist Film Theory and Cinema: chapters which relied mainly on Lukács’ writings on literature, rather than film. The problem was that, with the exception of one piece, none of Lukács’ writings on film had been translated into English. In addition, these writings were also widely dispersed, and gaining access to them was easier said than done. As a consequence, these writings were not very well known. The one piece which had been translated was the remarkable ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, which first appeared in 1911. But even this essay – one of the overlooked gems in the history of film theory – was not translated well enough until relatively recently. These factors led to the decision to research and write this present book,which is divided into two parts. In the first part of the book I attempt to interpret Lukács’ writings on the cinema, develop a reconstructed model of Lukácsian film theory, and then apply that

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Preface

vii

to an analysis of Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film The Leopard; an analysis which leads on from, and can be related back to, my earlier analysis of Visconti’s other Risorgimento film: Senso, in Realist Film Theory and Cinema. The second part of the book contains the translations of Lukács’ writings on film. In his excellent translation of Lukács’ 1968 condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, The Process of Democratization, Norman Levine tells us that his co-translator, Susanne Bernhardt, carried out the initial translation of the text, while he then brought his own expertise to bear on the subject, and, in the process, went on to ‘refine’ the primary translation (Levine and Bernhardt (trans.), 1991: ix). I do not know exactly what Levine means by the term ‘refine’ here, but I think I can guess, because the process he describes is very similar to that which I employed when working on the translations in Lukácsian Film Theory and Cinema. The primary translations of the various texts by Lukács in this book were mainly carried out by Juergen Reichert, a professional academic translator with a background in German political philosophy. Juergen did an excellent job, and I wish to take this opportunity to express my thanks for his invaluable contribution. His input saved me a considerable amount of time. Lukács can, at times, be an exceedingly impenetrable and opaque writer, and sometimes it can be very difficult indeed to understand exactly what he is trying to say, or argue. This problem is also compounded by a frequently employed tendency to resort to a phalanx of often arcane Hegelian and other concepts; and by an equally perplexing tendency to use the same term to mean a range of different things. Juergen approached these problems with great perseverance for the cause in hand. However, I soon realised that I would have to use the primary translations mainly as a guide, and foundation; and that I would have to go back, again, to the German and Italian originals myself, and read them through, word for word, retranslating as I went. This turned into an intensely empirical, time-intensive and protracted affair, as I tried to untangle some of the very multifaceted and intricate conceptualisations in The Specificity of the Aesthetic and other works. In addition to the difficulties involved in understanding and then translating the various conceptual configurations which Lukács deploys, the philosopher’s writing style also posed some formidable challenges for the process of translation. Towards the end of his career Lukács often liked to write in a rather loosely structured way, and sometimes displayed a fondness for using exceedingly long sentences, and paragraphs, divided up by a considerable number of commas, semi-colons, colons, brackets, etc. Some paragraphs could, quite frequently, be two or more pages long! Faced with this, I came to the conclusion that I would have to alter the structure of Lukács’ prose from time to time, in order to make it more

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

viii

Preface

i­ ntellectually coherent in the English translation. However, I also attempted to keep such alterations to a necessary minimum. Throughout, the objective was to keep the translations as close as possible to the language and grammatical structures in the original texts, and this was possible because of the presence of the critical commentaries which make up the first half of this book, which analyse and explain the content of the translated pieces. Of course, a balance had to be struck here between any literality of translation and the need to render sense and meaning in the translated materials. However, the objective was to steer that balance firmly in the direction of the former. That objective proved to be – comparatively – straightforwardly achievable in respect of both Lukács’ early German piece: ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’; and the late writings in Italian, which mainly appeared in the leftist Italian film journal Cinema Nuovo. However, that balance proved more challenging to attain in the section on film from The Specificity of the Aesthetic, largely because of the substantial number of highly abstract concepts which Lukács employs here, but also because of his sprawling writing style. Again, here, the intention was to bring the translated language and linguistic structures as close as possible to the original. However, at certain points, it also became necessary to depart from this practice, in order to render the translations fully meaningful. This proved necessary at times, even though Chapter 3 of this book analyses this section of The Specificity of the Aesthetic in depth. Nevertheless, I believe that the balance struck here, one which still aims towards a high degree of literality, was successfully achieved. I also believe that these translations of Lukács’ writings on film will play an important role in stimulating further academic research into Lukács’ ideas on film. However, the translations constitute only one division of this book, and, in the other, I attempt to analyse these writings, and then develop a reconstructed model of Lukácsian cinematic realism. The ������������������������������������������ model of film theory and cinema which emerges from this exercise is, in many important respects, quite different from those which previously have been derived from an analysis of Lukács’ writings on literature; and this, in turn, means both that these earlier models will now have to be reassessed, and that Lukács must now be viewed in a new light. This book has taken five years and more to write, and has proved to be an exigent, though also rewarding project. Throughout this period of time, I have received support from various quarters, and I would now like to take this opportunity to thank those who helped me bring the book to fruition. Juergen Reichert’s important contribution has already been mentioned. Michael Ingham, of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, was a source of encouragement, and also participated in the translation process, helping greatly. The remarkably efficient Hong Kong Baptist University inter-library loan service was always helpful; and Baptist University also provided me with

Preface

ix

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

some funding for this project, for which I am grateful. I would also like to thank the conveners of various conferences who allowed me to speak about Lukács in the interim, including Deane Williams of Monash University, Gina Marchetti of Hong Kong University, and Rob Stone and Owen Evans of the University of Swansea. Finally, I would also like to thank both my wife, Linda, who gave me much support over these last five years, and other family members, friends and colleagues who rendered the same.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Part I An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

1 The early aesthetic and ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’/‘Gedanken zu einer Ästhetic des Kino’ The early aesthetic The early aesthetic of Georg Lukács, particularly as set out in his Soul and Form/Die Seele und die Formen (1910) and The Theory of the Novel/Die Theorie des Romans (1916), has already been well explored in a number of studies. Given this, what follows here will not attempt to duplicate such work, in either depth of analysis or breadth of coverage, but will aim, instead, to provide a more conditional delineation of the early aesthetic, as prelude to a more substantive analysis of Lukács’ first engagement with film theory in his ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema/Gedanken zu einer Ästhetic des Kino’ (1911/1913) (hereafter referred to as ‘Thoughts’). That prelude must also commence by way of an introduction to the two foremost contexts which influenced the early aesthetic: those of ‘romantic anti­capitalist German sociology’, and the prevailing intellectual climate within then contemporary Hungary. These contexts determined the ‘tragic vision’ which underscored all Lukács’ writings of the 1908–1916 period, and which also shaped his understanding of the cinema (Goldmann, 1967: 169). Romantic anti-capitalism Lukács’ early aesthetic was influenced by a conception of modernity inherited from thinkers such as Max Weber, Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Töennies, Edmund Husserl, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and the neo-Kantian revival which influenced many thinkers in central Europe around the turn of the century. This tradition of ‘romantic anti-capitalist’ thought was the most influential ‘Weltanschauungen in European culture since the end of the eighteenth-century’, and the ‘dominant world-view in German as well as Central European intellectual life’ when Lukács came to write both Soul and Form and ‘Thoughts’ (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds),

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document



An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

1989: 189). At the hub of this ­ conception of modernity was a conviction that the rulers of the modern world had turned against the essence of what it was to be human in order to advance forms of social relationships founded on the requirements of technical, ‘instrumental rationality’. Weber’s key conceptions of ‘instrumental rationality’ and ‘disenchantment’ will already be familiar to many readers, though perhaps fewer will be aware that such concepts should also be related to a more general context of ‘German neoromantic sociology’ (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 193) associated with the Weberian-dominated ‘Southwestern German School’ of philosophy and sociology based at Heidelberg and Freiburg Universities. Lukács was strongly influenced by this neo-romantic ‘anti-capitalist’ school of thought, and was also a student of Weber at Heidelberg University between 1912 and 1915 (Goldmann, 1972: 129). In addition to Weber, one other proponent of ‘neo-romantic’ sociological thought who influenced the formation of Lukács’ ideas at the time, particularly in Soul and Form, was Georg Simmel; and it was chiefly from Simmel that Lukács was to derive one of the mainstay concepts of his entire intellectual system: that of ‘objectification’ (Vergegenständlichung) (Arato, 1971: 129). ‘Objectification’ refers to the process whereby man fashions objects for the purpose of personal ‘self-cultivation’ (Arato, 1971: 130). According to Simmel, such creation is an innately human propensity, inherently advantageous to consciousness, which enables man to shape material reality in the image of consciousness, and make such ‘objectifications’ of consciousness enduringly concrete. Objectification is, therefore, an indispensable constituent within the growth of human consciousness, an anchor to which consciousness can append itself, enabling human thought to achieve a permanent material domicile within the unending stream of subjective becoming which constitutes the Lebenswelt, or ‘life-world’. In addition to such generally routine residence, however, objectification also enables consciousness to form one of the two elemental dimensions of authentic human culture, that of ‘objectified culture’; and, in this sense, ‘the world of objectification is culture and culture is the development of the human essence beyond its natural state’ (Arato, 1971: 129). The conception of objectified culture advanced here by Simmel appears to be a relatively sanguine one up to this point, given that it is based upon the premise that consciousness and the creation of ‘objects’ co-exist within an affiliation essentially advantageous to consciousness. However, it is important to understand that Simmel’s conception delineates an ideal, rather than real state of affairs, and is premised on the notion that, at some long past undisclosed elemental juncture in the development of human consciousness and society, a close and redeeming identity existed between objectification and

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic



consciousness: between the ‘cultivation of things’ and the ‘cultivation of ourselves’ (Arato, 1971: 129). However, Simmel goes on to argue that such an identity was bound to decay, because ­objectification, as a materiality distinct from consciousness, inevitably takes on forms of autonomy progressively more divergent from the authentic needs of consciousness. At one level, the opposition expressed here between human consciousness and materiality can be associated with a more general flourishing of the existential disposition within Europe after the turn of the century; a disposition which regarded object-making as existentially perilous for consciousness, because such object-making constituted a ‘category of existence’ which could not be entirely ‘controlled or predicted’ by consciousness (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 8). Lukács was influenced by this postulation of an existential dichotomy between the ‘soul’ and the ‘world’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 59), and by the tragic vision which underlies such a dichotomy. However, he was also influenced by the notion that, because this dichotomy was once, according to Simmel, prefigured by an authentic identity between these two terms, the possibility remained open that such correspondence may be reconstituted in the future, within new acts of objectified and ‘non-objectified’ (see later in this chapter) culture. Simmel’s existential conception of the opposition between consciousness and materiality influenced much of Lukács writings of the 1908–16 period, but so also did Simmel’s related and more socially founded belief that the dichotomy between consciousness and objectification was augmented immeasurably by the dissonant impact of capitalist modernity. According to Simmel, as the division of labour and resultant ‘specialisation’ and fragmentation of human activity escalated out of control within modernity, man had fewer opportunities to express himself through the creation of objects which embodied the totality of his vision and needs (Arato, 1971: 130). Instead, the ceaseless flow of objects which began to appear now expressed only a fragment of that vision and those needs, and, as a consequence, both man and his objectifications become increasingly fragmented, while man also became progressively more ‘alienated’ (entfremdet) from both the world of his own objectifications, and his own essence (Arato, 1971: 130). This equation between objectification and fragmentation was important for the young Lukács, and in his later History and Class Consciousness/ Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1923), evolved into the key concept of ‘reification’ (Verdinglichung), which was initially derived, via Simmel, from Volume 3 of Marx’s Das Kapital (Aitken, 2006: 68). However, while concepts such as reification clearly imply the actual existence of a fragmented, alienated, and inauthentic human condition, they also entail the potential existence of its converse: a condition founded in a more ­authentic form of human essence.



An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

In Soul and Form, Lukács refers to this as the dimension of the ‘Soul’, while, in the late aesthetic, he would come to refer to it as that of ‘intrinsic being’, or Ansichsein (Lukács, 1981: 477). At this stage in the development of his ideas, therefore, Lukács was committed to the notion both that the prevailing state of the human condition within modernity was profoundly inauthentic, and that authentic human ­essence could be conceived of as existing in a definite and absolute sense, beyond historical contingency. The Hungarian context In addition to the influence of neo-Kantian and existentialist thought, Lukács’ conception of modernity was also influenced by the more indigenous experience of Hungarian culture and society, and particularly by the idea that Eastern Europe might provide the foundation for the growth of a lustrous ‘new European culture’ which might emerge from the pandemonium of modernity (Kadarkay, 1991: 64). The influence on Lukács of thinkers such as Simmel and Weber had led him to draw a distinction between the ‘excessively rationalised spirit of western capitalism’ and an Eastern European culture still more closely correlated to older and more intuitively vital forms of human community (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 190). In comparison to the hazards posed by modern ‘­western civilisation’, which was portrayed as ‘culture-destructive’ and ‘non-culture’ (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 192), Lukács hoped for a ‘breakthrough towards a new epoch of world history’ in Eastern Europe, through a re-emergence of the ‘organic Gemeinschaft’ (organic community) which characterised Homeric Greece and the Christian middle ages (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 191). Nevertheless, despite this anticipation that a new phenomenon might flower in the East, Lukács also believed that the inherent backwardness and bourgeois-conservatism of Hungarian culture and society would probably ultimately resist such dispensation (Kadarkay, 1991: 64); and this scepticism concerning the possibility of rebuilding an organic Gemeinschaft last found in the Christian middle ages was also reinforced by the rapid expansion of capitalist industrialisation in Germany from the 1870s onwards (Holzman, 1985: 10–11). By the time that he came to write both Soul and Form and ‘Thoughts’, therefore, Lukács was becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that the fast-expanding frontiers of mechanised ‘western civilisation’ were not so far away from the gates of Budapest (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 193), and this led him to the auspicious conclusion that, far from the likelihood of a utopian Gemeinschaft materialising in the East, an over-arching ‘crisis of culture’ (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 4), instigated by the growing reach of the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic



‘mechanised factory’ of modernity, was quickly spreading across Central and Eastern Europe (Arato, 1974: 115). In his work of the 1910–16 period Lukács argues that two diametrically opposed forms of reaction are imaginable in the face of this cultural crisis, and the context of ‘spiritual homelessness’ generated by it (Kadarkay, 1991: 64). These are the alternatives of ‘surrender … [or] … struggle … the two poles of the possibilities of life’ (Radnoti, 1973: 157). Here, ‘surrender’ implies either a passive, ­everyday acceptance of the ‘unbearablness of the given empirical existence’ (Radnoti, 1973: 160) or a retreat into what Lukács refers to as religion-oriented ‘contemplative mysticism’ (Radnoti, 1973: 157). Both these forms of capitulation are rejected by Lukács on the grounds that they imply a negation of the vital human imperative to attain ‘selfhood’, an imperative which can only be realised through a form of ‘struggle’ which is ‘militantly’, rather than ‘contemplatively’ mystical; and which is also vigorously ‘Luciferian’ in its quest for perfection (Radnoti, 1973: 157). In the face of the ‘unbearableness of the given empirical existence’ (Radnoti, 1973: 160) the individual must direct an obdurate ‘Luciferian spite’ at the given (Radnoti, 1973: 157), attempt to ‘perfect … himself in himself and by his own power’, and strive to banish ‘every half-measure out of the world’, and from his own activities (Lukács, 1971: 90). Lukács’ appropriation of the Luciferian absolute here is significant in signalling the enormity of the mission which he sets before the philosophically ‘militant’ individual, and also illuminates the unconditional character of the oppositional tenor which he adopted at this time. The Lucifer of Christian mythology reacted absolutely against the entire celestial design in order to realise his subversive dream of immortal self-hood, and Lukács calls upon the individual human agent to adopt an equally categorical and seditious determination to abjure given empirical existence, in order to realise her/his own mortal self-hood. This accent on the individual’s uncompromising ‘struggle’ to reject concession and ‘half-measures’ in order to seek out unqualified forms of experience emphasises the extent to which Lukács’ early work, and Soul and Form in particular, is concerned with unconditional conceptions of self-hood; while also indicating the degree to which the early work can be associated with the over-arching preoccupation with the Absolute which was characteristic of classical German idealist philosophy (Goldmann, 1967: 168). In Soul and Form, the struggle to achieve absolute self-hood takes the ‘form’ of the modes of individual repudiation which Lukács describes in essays on Sören Kierkegaard and Jena romanticism. As its position within the title of Soul and Form suggests, the term ‘form’ has considerable significance for Lukács, and refers to a modality which links action in the world to the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document



An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

u­ ltimate end of the realisation of the soul. As such, form is more than just an activity, it is a ‘metaphysical principle’ which relates essence to life and seeks to establish order in relation to the characteristics of the soul (Meunier, 1987: 167). The personal ‘forms of … refusal or evasion’ (Goldmann, 1967: 171) which Lukács explores in Kierkegaard’s ‘desire to see the absolute in life, without any petty compromise’ (Lukács, 1974: 32), and Novalis’s ‘stubborn’ emphasis on the ‘exclusive importance of the ultimate goals’ (Lukács, 1974: 51); are classed by Lukács as ‘non-objectified’ forms because they do not possess materiality. However, when such forms take on materiality within the work of art they become ‘objectified’, turning the art-object into an authentic, material ‘form’. In both cases, be they non-objectified or objectified, ‘forms’ stand for a recognition of the essential needs of the ‘soul’; and, in addition to the non-objectified forms of refusal which Lukács explores in Soul and Form in the essays on Kierkegaard, Theodor Storm and Novalis, objectified forms are also addressed, as in the work of Stefan George, Charles-Louis Philippe, and Richard Beer-Hofmann. However, it has been argued by some commentators that, while Soul and Form is primarily concerned with a study of the various rebellious ‘forms of refusal or evasion’ of ordinary life, The Theory of the Novel both continues this preoccupation, but also attempts to go beyond such activist oppositionalism in order to explore forms in which the dissonance of life is organised into a more meaningful totality (Goldmann, 1967: 172). However, any categorical distinction between Lukács’ two books, based on the supposition that one is more constructive than the other, would be misleading, and it is more accurate to suggest that, despite the apparent difference in orientation between Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel, both books are marked by the same continual, uneasy shifting of position between a pessimistic acceptance of the impossibility of hope in ‘the age of absolute sinfulness’, and a more optimistic tone which also characterises Lukács’ work during this period (Lukács, 1971: 153). In both Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel Lukács was influenced by Simmel’s belief that works of art are able to transcend the general process of cultural alienation through a committed engagement with the category of totality, an engagement which establishes a relationship between artist and the art work akin to that of a ‘whole subject recreating, rediscovering and repossessing himself in a whole object’ (Arato, 1971: 130). However, and on the other hand, in both Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel, the idea that the forms allow the soul to create a work which constitutes a unity: ‘selfcontained and complete in itself ’, often occurs in interchange with the perhaps less hopeful notion that the forms cannot create meaningful unity, but can only ever amount to various individuated instances of resistance, refusal

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic



or evasion of the pseudo-totalities of ordinary reality (Márkus, 1983: 11). The Theory of the Novel addresses the first of these two possibilities more directly than does Soul and Form, as the chapters on ‘Integrated Civilisations’ and ‘Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Apprenticeship’ clearly attest, and it is precisely for this reason that The Theory of the Novel has been interpreted as being more ‘optimistic’ than Soul and Form. However, and in contradiction to this thesis, it should be remembered that The Theory of the Novel actually concludes with both a muscular repudiation of the constructive aspects of Tolstoy’s War and Peace and an enthusiastic celebration of Dostoyevsky’s attempt to achieve an evasive ‘remote[ness] from any struggle against what actually exists’ (Lukács, 1971: 152). The contexts of romantic anti-capitalism and the Hungarian background referred to in preceding sections of this chapter, together with the dialectic between pessimism and hope in Lukács’ writings, inform the body of work produced by Lukács between 1908 and 1916, and which makes up the ‘early aesthetic’. This body of work consists of the essays written between 1908 and 1910, which were eventually published as Soul and Form in 1910; A History of the Development of Modern Drama, which was written between 1907 and 1909 and published in 1911; ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, which was originally published in 1911; and The Theory of the Novel, which was written between 1914 and 1915, and first published in 1916. The remainder of this chapter will now explore the key themes and concepts evident within this body of work, before finally turning to an analysis of ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’. Key themes and concepts The key themes and concepts evident in the early aesthetic include those of ‘life’, ‘real life’, ‘lived life’, ‘empirical/ordinary life’, ‘soul’, ‘soul reality’, ‘culture’, ‘being’, ‘becoming’, ‘essence’, the ‘great moments’, ‘form’, ‘the forms’, ‘the great forms’, ‘totality’, ‘fate’, ‘fragmentation/specialisation’, and ‘destiny’. These concepts are often defined in an imprecise way in Lukács’ writings, and are therefore open to a range of readings. However, one clear demarcation that can be made here is between those concepts which refer to the abridged condition which human experience is faced with within modernity (as in ‘life’, ‘lived-life’, ‘empirical/ordinary life’, ‘fragmentation/specialisation, ‘the forms’), and those which refer to a more utopian condition of experience (as in ‘soul’, ‘culture’, ‘real life’, ‘essence’, ‘the great moments’, ‘totality’, ‘fate’, the ‘great forms’, and ‘destiny’). In addition to these two groupings of concepts, a third category evident within the early aesthetic also embraces notions which

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

10

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

refer to more non-aligned aspects of lived experience, and includes concepts such as ‘being’, ‘becoming’, and also ‘form’. As with Lukács’ early aesthetic in general, these three categories of concepts have also been explored exhaustively in a range of fine and helpful critical studies, and this chapter will not attempt to recapitulate such work. Instead, an attempt will be made now to reconstruct Lukács’ intellectual system in outline only, and the various concepts referred to above will be integrated into such a reconstruction. The starting point for any restitution of Lukács’ early aesthetic must be his pivotal conception of ‘soul’. ‘Soul’ means something like ‘ideal human essence’, or ‘authentic being’; that which is, and always actually has been, fundamentally representative of humanity (Kadarkay, 1991: 68). Crucially, such essence is defined ‘a-temporally’ by Lukács, who, following Dilthey, regards essential, though currently subjugated human nature, as basically immutable (Goldmann, 1967: 167). In addition to such immutability, Lukács also defines soul in terms of a ‘structure’ of qualities, rather than as a singular entity (Goldmann, 1972: 129). So, for example, the soul is made up of intrinsically benign components such as ‘idealism’, ‘love’, ‘eros’, ‘intellect’, ‘creativity’, ‘freedom’, ‘wholeness’ and ‘truth’ (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 8); a constitution which, amongst other respects, makes clear the extent to which Lukács’ utopian conception of soul is derived from Hegel’s conception of the Absolute as a transcendental domain in which the principle of freedom is embodied and fostered (Aitken, 2006: 71). The notion of the soul as immutable ­ atemporal ‘significant structure’ also suggests the influence of both Kant and ­phenomenology: influences which reached the young Lukács through his association with the neo-Kantian school at Heidelberg University, and the phenomenologically inclined school at Freiburg University (Goldmann, 1972: 129). The principal impact of these influences was to further reinforce the absolute conception of the soul which Lukács had initially derived from Hegel and Dilthey, providing that conception with an ‘essentially non-genetic’ and ahistorical point of reference (Goldmann, 1972: 130). This body of influences also endows Lukács’ conception of soul with a distinctly metaphysical tenor, as though soul was some sort of supra-material force or imperative, or a kind of ‘life force’ of man (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 7). Here, soul exists as an other-worldly abstract ideal in a Kantian noumenal, or Platonic sense. However, for Lukács, this metaphysical conception of soul also exists as a latent ideal located within the consciousness of each individual human being, and to which each individual human being may strive to approximate; and this, in turn, suggests that Lukács’ conception of soul comprises both a metaphysical and an existential dimension, and that the aforesaid existential dimension is located within the latent significant structure of categories potentially resident within the authentic singularity

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

11

of the consciousness of each individual (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 7). Soul, therefore, exists both as a Platonic ideal and as a latent simulacrum of that ideal within the consciousness of each person. However, soul cannot be equated merely with each singularity of consciousness existing within ‘empirical life’, and, in contrast, must be associated with the authentic element within each individual consciousness, an aspect which comes into being when individual consciousness is raised up to the same level as the soul (Goldmann, 1967: 173). Although, in the early aesthetic, Lukács emphasises both the abstract ideal of soul, and the possibility of the manifestation of soul within the consciousness of the singular individual, these accentuations tend to be given different levels of prominence from work to work. Even given such variation, however, it is possible to argue that Soul and Form, in particular, tends to give clear prominence to the soul’s relationship to individual consciousness, and, consequently, when he also came to write ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ in 1911, Lukács was already more committed to a broad-spectrum ‘philosophy of individualism’ than to any exhaustive exploration of ideal abstract categories (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 7). This accent on individual consciousness, rather than on the abstract ideal, is also partly responsible for the ‘tragic vision’ evident within Soul and Form (Goldmann, 1967: 169), in that this emphasis led Lukács to stress the extent of the chasm which exists between individual experience and the ideal, and, also, the disheartening impossibility of realising the trans-individual set of values which constitutes absolute soul within the structures of ordinary life. Although, within the early aesthetic, pursuit of the soul may be a life ‘vocation’ (Márcus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 8) for those who strive to rise above the ‘anarchy of light and dark’ which constitutes ‘real life’, full attainment of such a vocation is rarely possible (Lukács, 1974: 152–3). In addition to this absolute and individuated conception of soul, Lukács’ early aesthetic also deploys a number of concepts which designate ways in which the authentic singularity of each individual consciousness may seek to rise above empirical life. These include the concepts of ‘culture’, ‘higher culture’, the ‘great objectivations’, ‘form’, ‘work’, ‘being’, and the ‘great moments’; and these concepts will now be outlined. The term ‘culture’ refers to projects which are chiefly concerned with the exploration of human essence. Such projects may be individual ‘non-objectified’ acts, or ‘objectified’ works of art, and are what Lukács refers to as ‘forms’. The corpus of great works of art, or the ‘great objectivations’, also constitute the realm of what Lukács calls the ‘higher culture’, which he distinguishes from the lower culture of ‘ordinary life’. The meaning of the term ‘work’ is closely associated with that of ‘form’, but refers more to the activity or process of resistance and creation

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

12

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

which becomes embodied in the ‘meaningful structure[s]’ of objectified or non-­objectified forms (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 10–11). Lukács also makes a crucial distinction between two different types of objectified/non-objectified culture, on the grounds that these represent different domains of the soul. It will be recalled that the soul is made up of an amalgam of categories, or tendencies. Some of these, such as ‘intellect’ and ‘idealism’, are highly intellectual or ethical in orientation, more ‘serious’ or rational in tenor, and concerned with the often uncompromising pursuit of essence. However, others, such as ‘eros’, are more connected to the idea of the human being as an instinctual physical entity, existing in a free manner within the world, and resisting the ‘mechanisation’ fostered by modernity. Other aspects or tendencies of the soul, such as a desire for ‘life’, ‘love’, ‘freedom’ and ‘creativity’, can be associated with either the intellectual/ethical or instinctual aspects of the soul. While Lukács abstains from drawing unambiguous dividing lines between these groupings, he does make a more general distinction between those aspects of the soul which are uncompromisingly committed to the pursuit of essence in objectified and non-objectified culture, and those which revel in a more instinctual, free creative appropriation of appearance. This distinction also becomes particularly significant when Lukács comes to write on the cinema, a medium which, he believes, awakens the eternal ‘child’ in the spectator, so that this child ‘becomes master of the spectator’s psyche’ (Lukács, 1913). This distinction between these two dimensions of the soul is also elaborated further in the two most important essays in Soul and Form: ‘On the Nature and Form of the Essay’, and ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’. In ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’ Lukács proposes a distinction between everyday experience in a fallen world (‘empirical life’) and the experience of human essence which can be found within the classical Greek drama, within whose ‘forms’ the ‘self ’ becomes ‘soul’, because the questions raised in these dramas are always ‘the ultimate ones’ (Lukács, 1974: 155). Here, in ‘the eternally great model for all drama that seeks the soul of form – the Oedipus of Sophoclese’ (Lukács, 1974: 164), tragedy is seen as a process and form in which ‘essential, true nature [becomes] more and more manifest …[and in which all that exists is] the clear, harsh mountain air of ultimate questions and ultimate answers’ (Lukács, 1974: 155). The drama, then, is an exploration of ‘ultimate questions and answers’, in which the mundane detail, normally subsumed within the ‘anarchy of light and dark’ which constitutes ‘empirical life’ (Lukács, 1974: 153) is ‘aroused into life’ itself (Lukács, 1974: 156), that is, into ‘real life’ (Lukács, 1974: 153); and in which each detail of the narrative is always connected to essence, and to the ‘peak of existence’ (Lukács, 1974: 159).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

13

This relationship of detail to essence in classical drama also leads Lukács to explore the ways in which such a relationship should ideally be formed, and this, in turn, leads him to develop his important notion of ‘being’, or Wesen. For Lukács, the key question for drama is how essence can be given form in such a way that ‘the sensual, immediate, the only real, the truly “being” thing’ becomes endowed with essence (Lukács, 1974: 156). This is what he means when he says that, in Oedipus Rex, all form, all detail, is intimately linked to soul, so that what we find here is the ‘soul of form’ (Lukács, 1974: 164). When such close rapport occurs in the drama, the detail, the ‘sensuous, immediate’, corresponds more closely to the ‘platonic idea’, and its ‘being’ becomes greater than its mere existence as a sensuous immediate existant (Lukács, 1974: 156). Real ‘being’, therefore, as Lukács requires this term to be understood, does not just stand for ‘being in the world’ in a naturalist or empirical sense, but a being in the world which is also connected to essence. ‘Being’ is, then, the unity of essence and appearance, of idea and thing, in which the manifestations of life connect up to ‘ultimate relationships’ (Lukács, 1974: 156). Lukács argues that there is a fundamental existential need for such unity to occur, and goes on to argue that there is also an equally fundamental need to cleave to the ‘faith’ that such unity is capable of occurring, because such faith transforms the ‘eternally un-provable possibility’ of such unity into a determination to bring unity into existence, and thus make it ‘into the a priori basis for the whole of [human] existence’ (Lukács, 1974: 156). It is, therefore, apparent that Lukács’ theoretical system places great emphasis upon the sort of unity of ‘life’ with ‘ultimate relationships’ which he discusses in ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’. However, what Lukács says concerning how such unity may be forged also has particular significance for an understanding of his position on film. First, Lukács argues that the dominant culture of ordinary life seeks to institute continuity and stability, and minimise the impact of unforeseen change. Ordinary life is: flat and sterile, an endless plain without any elevations; the logic of such a life is the logic of cheap security, of passive refusal before everything new, of dull repose in the lap of dry common sense. (Lukács, 1974: 155)

As previously argued, according to Lukács such ‘logic’ is also inimical to the needs of human essence because such essence requires an active ‘refusal’ of ordinary life. However, such a logic can be overcome when essence becomes connected to ordinary life, and to the ‘sensual immediate’, through unanticipated incidence; when ‘dull repose’ and ‘passive refusal’ of essence are disrupted by some unforeseen disturbance which acts as a catalyst for active refusal. Such disruption cannot really occur through the exercise of reason because ordinary life has already appropriated rationality into itself, and ­ emptied

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

14

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

reason of any rebellious propensity it might once have possessed; and this, for Lukács, means that, in general, all ‘rationalistic, and therefore false explanations must be rejected here’ (Lukács, 1974: 159). In contrast to the exercise of sustained reason, only the momentary experience of the irrational, the inadvertent, the unpredicted and intuitively grasped can effectively disclose the normative, rather than ‘natural’ reality of ordinary life, and thus illuminate the extent to which ordinary life has now diverged from the quintessence of human essence. As argued above, this intuitive experience of essence is a largely momentary one, and Lukács refers to these moments of disruption and illumination as the ‘great moments’, and goes on to assert that ‘the essence of these great moments is the pure experience of self ’ (Lukács, 1974: 156). These ‘great moments’, during which ordinary life is ‘raised up’ into the world of essence, ‘happen in a flash’, as a ‘leap of the great transformation’, ‘suddenly and all at once’ (Lukács, 1974: 159). In addition to this manifestation of momentary experience based upon a form of intuition ‘outside the scope of logical explanation’ (Lukács, 1974: 166), the great moments also present us with a ‘different world’ to that of ordinary experience (Lukács, 1974: 155), one based on the intrinsic unity which characterises the great moments: a unity in which past, present and future have become fused together to form a ‘mystical unity’ (Lukács, 1974: 159). When, therefore, Lukács writes about the tragic drama in ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’, he adopts a metaphysics grounded in the intuitive revelation of an essential totality; a revelation which is significantly at odds with the experience of everyday reality, an experience which is, in contrast, grounded in the inessential and over-rationalised encounter with a fragmented reality. However, if the objectified classical ‘form’ of Sophoclean drama expresses the essence of the soul – that essence associated with the extreme affirmation of self-hood – the objectified ‘form’ of the essay expresses those aspects of the soul more concerned with physicality, intuition, transient materiality, visceral encounter, freedom, and creativity. And, correspondingly, while the classical drama aims to arrive at a stripping down to fundamental inquiry, to the ‘clear, harsh mountain air of ultimate questions and ultimate answers’, the essay seeks to ‘suggest’ expansively and impressionistically, rather than ‘assert’ exhaustively; and also addresses a range of intermediate, as opposed to ultimate questions (Goldmann, 1967: 171). Thus, the essay form which is discussed in the chapter of Soul and Form entitled ‘On the Nature and Form of the Essay’ is celebrated for its avoidance of systematic perspective, and for its ability to ‘calmly and proudly set its fragmentariness against the petty completeness of scientific exactitude’ (Lukács, 1974: 17). For Lukács, therefore:

The early aesthetic

15

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

One thing is certain – that if the drama stood at one end of the scale, the essay … would have to stand at the other. And this is not a scholastic classification; it has deep reasons within the soul. (Lukács, 1974: 25)

In addition to this degree of indeterminacy and ‘fragmentariness’, the essay form is also characterised by a primarily ‘ironic’ relation to truth, because it illuminates the reality of ordinary life as a world without any ‘true’ meaning (Kadarkay, 1991: 104). In other words, the essay prefers irony to an apparently candid straightforwardness which in actuality only serves the purposes of ‘petty longing and cheap fulfilment’ (Lukács, 1974: 17); and the essayist is, therefore, to be regarded as a primarily ‘negative type who attempts to be responsible without possessing the self-evident responsibility of a systematic thinker’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 101). Here, ‘irony denotes a clear consciousness of the chaotic world’, and the essayist has an imperative responsibility to engage in unsystematic thinking (Kadarkay, 1991: 104). In Soul and Form, therefore, the essay form is defined as one which gravitates between the exploration of truthfulness and the deconstruction of established truths; and between analysis and impressionistic expression. The essay is a form which ‘mediates between art and philosophy’; and the representative function of this literary form is to ‘express conceptually a view of the world as experience, as a question of life’ (Márcus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 5). This form of mediatory expression also aims to portray the experience of life in all its contradictoriness, and, as a consequence, the essay often adopts a structurally dialectical, rather than unitary, character. Lukács also brings this approach to bear directly in Soul and Form, where one essay, entitled ‘Richness, Chaos and Form’, is actually structured in terms of a dialogue, while another: ‘Platonism, Poetry and Form’, analyses the dialogues and dialogic approach of the arts reviewer Rudolph Kassner. The essay form is, therefore, characterised by fragmentariness and contradictoriness, and, here, a dialectical stance towards issues of truth, irony, analysis and expression is adopted. However, if, in Soul and Form, Lukács defines the essay form as one which explores the valuable aspects of the soul evident within the world of experience, while also avoiding the disingenuous exactitudes of instrumental rationality, in The Theory of the Novel, he also defines the novel form as one which carries out these self-same tasks to an even more radical extent, in order to more fully encapsulate the disquieting ‘dissonance’ of life which characterises modernity (Lukács, 1971: 72). According to Lukács, the novel takes the essay form one step further by largely giving up on the diagnostic posturing of the latter, and by attempting to replicate the indeterminate and contradictory character of modern experience. It is because of this that the novel is ‘the form of the epoch of absolute sinfulness’ (Lukács, 1971: 152), and also a ‘true-born form in the historico-philosophical sense’, because it corresponds ‘to the true

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

16

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

condition of the contemporary spirit’, one which is characterised by the dissonance of life (Lukács, 1971: 73). Lukács carries this somewhat nihilistic position to an extreme in the concluding pages of The Theory of the Novel when he argues that the novel should be ‘remote from any struggle against what actually exists’ (Lukács, 1971: 152). After all, there is little point in attempting to be constructive, or engage in ‘struggle’, when all hope ‘can easily be crushed by the sterile power of the merely existent’ (Lukács, 1971: 153). Nevertheless, and as argued earlier, in both Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel Lukács often moves back and forth between the kind of nihilistic pessimism expressed in the above quotation, taken from the very last sentence of The Theory of the Novel, and a more hopeful conception of the role of the novel which is based upon the ability to organise the dissonance of life into a meaningful totality. Such changeability over the possibility for hope, or the lack of any such possibility, pervades Lukács’ work of the 1908–16 period. One final aspect of Lukács’ early thought which should be considered now before turning to an analysis of ‘Thoughts’ is his conception of temporality, and particularly that conception which appears in Soul and Form. According to Lukács, in those moments of the Sophoclean drama when ‘essential and true nature [becomes] more and more manifest’ (Lukács, 1974: 155) the normal experience of temporality is suspended, because such ‘great moments’ do not possess temporal duration, and thus no longer lie ‘within the plane of temporal experience’ (Lukács, 1974: 158). The ‘great moments’ within the Sophoclean ‘form’, can therefore, in the words of one Lukácsian interpreter, be characterised as ‘significant atemporal structures’, which render time motionless in order that the Absolute may be portrayed (Goldmann, 1967: 169). However, in contrast to the a-temporal ‘great moments’ generated by the great dramatic forms, ‘ordinary life’ is viewed as a constantly but meaninglessly changing, and also ‘flat’ and ‘sterile’ kaleidoscope of temporality, which inhibits the soul’s ability to experience the ideal; and, if Sophoclean drama is able to distil the absolute through transcending the remorseless flow of temporality, in ordinary life temporality takes the form of a ‘process of continuing decadence, as a screen which is interposed between man and the absolute’, and which separates man from the Absolute (Goldmann, 1967: 176). This distinction made here between the a-temporal ‘great moments’ and the ‘continuing decadence’ of temporal existence implies that, for the most part, man is able only to experience decadence, rather than ‘essential and true nature’, and it is this implication which lends what has been described as a ‘tragic vision’ to Lukács’ work of this period (Goldmann, 1967: 169). However, the extent of that tragic vision becomes even clearer when it is considered that

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

17

any transcendence of temporality, as, for example, within the great moments, is only ever a momentary one. ‘Empirical life’, whose ‘banal pathways’ are characterised by ceaseless temporal flow, in which ‘everything flows … and nothing ever flowers into real life’, is the dominant reality, and, after the great moment has passed, ‘one has to fall back into numbness’ (Lukács, 1974: 153). The ‘tragic’ and pessimistic conception of temporality evident here also echoes Lukács’ more general position in Soul and Form on the existential fate of individual consciousness within ordinary life, where the ongoing process of objectification incessantly produces objects increasingly alien to human need and being; and, in similar vein, time is also seen as alien to consciousness’s attempt to achieve a clear view of things. However, temporality may be even more alien to consciousness than is objectivation, because whereas some objectivations, the ‘great objectivations’, may approximate to consciousness, the constant flux of temporality, in which ‘nothing is ever completely fulfilled’, stops the soul from finding itself (Lukács, 1974: 152–3). Nevertheless, and as with so much of Lukács’ work during this period, this tragic conception of temporality as a ‘process of decomposition and decadence’ often alternates with more hopeful formulations, and, in this respect, a distinction can be drawn between Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel. As has been argued, in Soul and Form the temporality of ordinary life is conceived of as amounting to ‘the most unreal and unliving of all conceivable existencies’ (Lukács, 1974: 153). However, in The Theory of the Novel, temporality is also conceived of both as the essential vehicle through which selfrealisation may occur, and as capable of being shaped into a totality within the work of art (Goldmann, 1967: 176). For example, Lukács argues that ‘real duration, real time [is] the life-element of the novel’, a life-element through which the dissonance of life may be organised into a prevailing, and not just momentary totality (Lukács, 1971: 151). This conception eventually leads Lukács to the conviction that the a-temporal ‘great moments’ of the drama are, in a sense, troublingly parasitical upon the stream of temporality, whereas the real duration life element of the novel echoes the character of the temporal flux itself; and, under the increasing influence of phenomenology, Lukács begins to consider such correspondence to be both of value, and as aesthetically specific to the novel. As, we will see, this view also eventually ­influences Lukács’ understanding of film in The Specificity of the Aesthetic. Before considering that work, however, we must first turn to an analysis of Lukács’ first engagement with film theory, in his ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’.

18

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’1 Generally speaking, ‘Thoughts’ encapsulates the broad-spectrum tone of repudiation and negation which permeates Soul and Form. ‘Thoughts’ also focuses on four key aspects of the film medium: (1) the temporal nature of the medium (2) the relationship between film and the ‘present’ moment (3) the ‘naturalism’ of the film image, and (4) the forms of causality able to be illustrated within the medium. ‘Thoughts’ begins by returning to many of the themes explored by Lukács in ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’ essay. However, in ‘Thoughts’, these themes are now fixed more plainly on the question of the experience and representation of temporality. As has been argued, in his work of this period Lukács makes a key distinction between the experience of ordinary life and encounter with the ‘great moments’, those moments when ‘ultimate questions’ are raised up from the monotony of regulated existence. As has also been argued, Soul and Form is, in addition, infused with a pessimism which is based on the conviction that these are only moments, which soon pass, so that the individual must then ‘fall back into numbness’ (Lukács, 1974: 153). In Soul and Form the a-temporal great moment is also mainly defined in terms of its conceptual significance and consequence. However, in ‘Thoughts’ important forms of understanding come to be defined more in terms of existence within the present moment, and, as will be argued, the key change here is from an approach which emphasises conceptual understanding to one which accentuates more experiential, intuitive forms of comprehension. This transformation also leads Lukács to set out a correspondingly transformed conception of ‘soul’ in ‘Thoughts’, in which soul is defined, first, in terms of a kind of liveliness of spirit, and, second, as an existence within the attendant moment. The first of these definitions relates to Lukács’ general understanding of soul as a collection of tendencies, some of which veer towards weighty rationalisation, others towards the impulsive pursuit of freedom; and, while ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’ largely focuses upon the former grouping of tendencies, ‘Thoughts’ largely focuses upon the latter. The second definition of soul evident in ‘Thoughts’ relates to Lukács’ understanding of what he refers to as ‘man’s deepest truth and position in the universe’, that is, that he can only ever actually experience the present moment. Within the ­compromised forms of ordinary life such experience is, of course, heavily circumscribed and abridged in quality. However, Lukács also argues that this experience of the moment can be lived to the full, and that ‘to be present, to live exclusively and intensively, is a form of destiny’ in itself. Here, it is not only encounter with ultimate questions which brings essence, or ‘destiny’, into being, but also a direct, ‘vivid’ experience of the transient empirical instance. Lukács’

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

19

u­ nderstanding of ‘man’s deepest truth’ here contains a clear tragic dimension, in that an understanding of the present moment cannot lead seamlessly to an understanding of totality, but, more usually, to a further ‘fall back into numbness’. On the other hand, Lukács believes that the ability which film possesses to render the transient empirical instance ‘exclusively and intensively’ can lead to the illumination of human essence, and of ‘man’s deepest truth and position in the universe’. In ‘Thoughts’, Lukács characterises the experience of the great moments within the drama as an experience of the ‘absolute present’. The ‘absolute present’ is the ‘metaphysical category’ of the drama, a category which stands outside temporality because the great moment (and any ‘moment’, for that matter) is characterised by exclusivity, whereas temporality is characterised by inclusive flow. The great moments of the drama no longer lie ‘within the plane of temporal experience’, and possess no ‘temporal duration’ (Lukács, 1974: 158). What we have here, therefore, in the great moment of ultimate questions and answers, is a ‘different world’ to that of ordinary experience (Lukács, 1974: 155), one in which past, present and future become fused together to form a ‘mystical unity’ (Lukács, 1974: 159) ‘outside the scope of logical explanation’ (Lukács, 1974: 166). However, there is an ironic incongruity here, in that, although the absolute present of the great moments is actually dependent upon the stream of temporality, it nevertheless must remove itself from that stream in order to come into existence. Temporality, the temporality of ‘ordinary’, or ‘lived’ life, is the indispensable conveyer of the great moments, and, therefore, also the ‘necessary counterpart’ of the great moments. It is this understanding of the great moments, and, therefore, also of the drama, as dependent upon the underlying reality of the temporal flow, yet also alien to it, which, in ‘Thoughts’, leads Lukács to view film as a medium whose value lies in the fact that it is not alien to the phenomenological flow of temporality, but is, in contrast, actually structured in terms of that flow. As an aesthetic medium, film is not afflicted by the abstract disingenuousness of the drama, and the ‘absolute present’ of the drama, the exclusive ‘moment’ waterlogged with spiritual weightiness, is to be distinguished from living ‘exclusively and intensively’ in any and every moment, within the inclusivity of the temporal flux. In this sense, it is film, rather than drama, which is more directly associated with ‘man’s deepest truth and position in the universe’. Lukács largely derives his account of temporality within ‘Thoughts’ from his understanding of phenomenology. The influence of Simmel and Husserl is evident here, but so also, according to one commentator, is that of Bergson (Blankenship, 2001: 22). There are, for example, apparent similarities between Lukács’ account of temporality, as set out in ‘Thoughts’, and Bergson’s conception of the élan vital, a force which supposedly permeates the ­evolutionary

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

20

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

process as an evolving flux, causing life to evolve and transform itself in an ‘endless stream of becoming’ (Aitken, 2006: 174). In addition, there are also some correspondences between Lukács’ approach and the three modalities through which Bergson argues the élan vital can be comprehended: those of ‘intellect’, ‘instinct’, and ‘perception’. For Bergson, the most basic mode of experiencing reality is perception. However, for Bergson, perception is the ‘lowest degree of mind’ (Aitken, 2006: 174), because submersion of the self in the immediate object of perception rules out a fundamental aspect of the human condition – the ability to engage in reflective activity. However, if perception is problematic because it lacks reflective intentionality, then reason, or ‘intellect’, is also equally problematic because of its tendency to transform the élan vital into a series of artificially ‘fixed’ states. On the other hand, the third modality, that of ‘instinct’, is more propitious. ‘Instinct’ does not operate in the way that intellect does, through rationally dividing up the fluctuating élan vital into a series of unnaturally demarcated areas (or ‘moments’), but, instead, transcends both perception and reason by knowingly and intuitively comprehending the élan vital as flux. As Husserl puts it, through ‘instinct’ we ‘return to the flux through supra-rational reflection … we “grasp” meanings in flux as a global experience closed to analysis’ (Aitken, 2006: 174). Whether Lukács knowingly intended the matter or not, these Bergsonian notions suffuse both his early aesthetic in general, and ‘Thoughts’ in particular. For example, within this body of work ‘intellect’ comes under considerable criticism through its association with an increasingly abstract modernity. In addition, the account of temporality submitted within ‘Thoughts’ also shares some similarity with the notion of the élan vital, as, for example, when Lukács describes the ‘temporality’ (Zeitlichkeit) of the cinema as ‘movement … [in] … perpetual flux’. However, and in accord with the general position of the early aesthetic, in ‘Thoughts’ Lukács tends to place more emphasis on ‘perception’ rather than ‘instinct’. The Bergsonian concept of instinct implies a substantial degree of genuine understanding of reality, particularly when instinct reaches the level of ‘intuition’, or ‘self-conscious instinct’ of reality. However, at the time he came to write ‘Thoughts’, and perhaps because of the subject he is dealing with, Lukács does not appear to envisage that such a level of understanding might be possible. Instead, and in place of this possibility, ‘Thoughts’ places greater emphasis upon the submersion of the self within the immediate object of perception. Here, knowledge of reality is not gained primarily through either rational or ‘intuitive’ reflection, but through empirical and sensual encounter with the ‘seamless succession’ of the film images. As has been argued, Lukács contends that the ‘absolute present’ is the ‘metaphysical category’ of the drama, and, in ‘Thoughts’, he continues to regard the experience of the absolute present as an essential aspect of human

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

21

experience, and one modality through which the soul may take form, and the superficialities of ordinary life be transcended, even if only ‘momentarily’. In this respect, therefore, ‘Thoughts’ follows the same line of argument expressed in ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’, and in Soul and Form more generally. However, Lukács also argues that, as with the drama, film also possesses its own metaphysical category, and one which, though fundamentally different from that associated with the drama, constitutes a similarly valid modality through which the soul may take form. The metaphysical category of film is not the ‘absolute present’ of the drama, but the ‘absolute reality of the moment’, and, whereas the experience of the absolute present transcends temporality, the experience of the absolute reality of the moment, like the experience of the medium of film itself, takes place within and is surrounded by the temporal flow. The concept of the absolute reality of the moment will be discussed in much greater depth shortly in this chapter, but it will first be necessary to consider how Lukács conceives of the cinematic moment as situated within the cinematic sequence. Such a consideration is necessary at this point because, in ‘Thoughts’, Lukács argues that the cinematic sequence corresponds to the temporal flow, and it is this contention which shapes his understanding of the concept of the absolute reality of the moment. According to Lukács, in representing the absolute reality of the moment within the film sequence, film represents our experience of the evolving Lebenswelt, because, just as, in the Lebenswelt, empirical instances are experienced as they evolve and interrelate with each other in an impressionistic, fluid manner, so also, in the film sequence, empirical ‘moments’ may merge ‘with one another [to] generate the temporal sequence of “cinematic”-scenes and are only linked to each other in immediate and seamless succession’. In the, perhaps, ideal situation which Lukács evokes here, logical ‘causality’, ‘inexorable necessity’, and ‘specific content’ would not be involved in the construction of such succession. Rather, such linkages would be based on patterns of physical similarity and difference, and forms of intuitive association. Rather than transcending or being very different from our experience of temporality, therefore, the film sequence analogously replicates our experience of the temporal Lebenswelt. As Lukács puts it, the ‘pictures of cinema … [are] uncannily … lifelike … in terms of their … effect’ upon the spectator, where that effect is similar to the effect generated by experience of temporality and the Lebenswelt. While, therefore, in the drama, the ‘great moment’ freezes, or ‘arrests’ the temporal flow, ‘the temporality and flow of the cinema are pure and unsullied: the essence of cinema is movement as such, perpetual flux, the never-resting change of things’. Here, the association which Lukács makes between the film sequence and the Lebenswelt appears to be framed in largely positive terminology, and this

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

22

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

is further emphasised when he asserts that such association also endows the medium with a ‘boundless possibility’ that is, for Lukács, clearly of benefit when set against a context of repressive and increasingly specialising modernity. As Lukács puts it, ‘everything is possible: that is the worldview of the cinema’, and he clearly considers this to be all to the good. However, near the beginning of ‘Thoughts’ Lukács also raises a very different prospect when he suggests that, as both a medium of the temporal flow, and the very antithesis of drama, film may also stand for the converse of an imperative dimension of soul; and he points to the contemporary fascination with film as being, at least to some respect, based upon an unwholesome fixation with all that is the opposite of the Sophoclean soul of ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’; as though the fascination with film indicates some injurious and possibly irresistible existential urge to contemplate inauthentic existence. This distinction is also further emphasised when Lukács asserts that while the dramatic ‘great moment’ possesses a ‘deep inner quiet quality’, the cinematic ‘sequence’ merely possesses the character of ‘pure surface’ (reiner Oberfläche). Here, film is no longer associated with the character of the Lebenswelt, but with the distortion which the Lebenswelt has undergone within the debasements of ‘ordinary life’, and, in addition, with a premised latent human existential need for vacuity. Taken together, these two factors imply that, rather than acting as a force for the good, as Lukács implies in other sections of ‘Thoughts’, film may actually accentuate some of the most regressive aspects of ordinary life: those aspects which ‘the innermost of our soul never wants to become nor can ever become identical with’. According to Lukács, therefore, the desire to know this ‘life without fate, without reasons, without motives’, as it appears in the film sequence, may stem from excessive immersion within ordinary life, and from a self-destructive and perverse instinct to face up to what is ‘alien to the soul’; and, in this case, cinema only offers ‘a life without soul’, devoid of the great moments by virtue of which the Sophoclean soul achieves form. This definition of film clearly appears to align the medium with the regressive, fragmenting tendencies of modernity. However, as we have seen, elsewhere in ‘Thoughts’, Lukács also argues that film is of value in being a medium of the temporal flow, and in reproducing the character of the Lebenswelt. There appears, therefore, to be something of a contradiction here. However, the caveat which Lukács expresses here concerning the dangers of a ‘longing for such a [cinematic] life’ must be viewed in proper perspective, and it can be argued that, in general, in ‘Thoughts’, film is viewed in largely positive terms, as a medium whose association with the Lebenswelt far outweighs any possible appropriation by the abstract forces of modernity and ordinary life, or any tendency the medium might possess to reinforce a melancholic fascination with nihilism. It will be recalled that a dialectic of pessimism and optimism

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

23

characterises the works which make up Lukács’ early aesthetic, and this dialectic can also be discerned within ‘Thoughts’. However, in ‘Thoughts’, that dialectic shifts ineluctably towards optimism. In addition, it should also be remembered that Lukács’ criticism of film in the respect referred to here also probably reflected a more general contemporaneous high-cultural concern that film was a medium of the popular classes, and far removed from the high arts. Lukács’ position here, as set out in ‘Thoughts’, is probably influenced by this context. However, even if this is the case, such a position is not central to the overall argument which he seeks to propose in the 1911/1913 essay. The ‘absolute reality of the moment’ As in accordance with the general tenor of Soul and Form, in ‘Thoughts’, the experience of film is understood in terms of an encounter with a new and authentically valid form of refusal, and one which, as previously argued, Lukács defines in terms of a medium-specific ‘metaphysical category’: the filmic ‘absolute reality of the moment’; a metaphysical category which, by virtue of being so ‘unmetaphysical’, in that it is so empirically based, comes to constitute a new and ‘completely different metaphysics’. While, therefore, the metaphysical principle of the ‘absolute present’ in the drama is ‘purely metaphysical, keeping everything empirically alive at bay’, the metaphysical principle of the ‘absolute reality of the moment’ in the film leads to a renunciation of metaphysical abstraction, and to a profound embrace of ‘empirical-life’. As argued earlier in this chapter, this embrace of the empirical does have the potential to reinforce the superficialities of ordinary life which are so alien to the ‘inner self ’ of man. However, Lukács argues that the portrayal of ‘empirical-life’ within the film image focuses attention upon a concrete human reality which can be distinguished from both abstraction and the structures of ordinary life. Moreover, Lukács also argues that this portrayal of the concrete present, of the ‘absolute reality of the moment’, is equally as important as the engagement with abstract ‘fate’, and the ‘absolute present’ which takes place within the drama. As Lukács puts it, ‘to be [in the] present … means to live as exclusively and most intensively’ as when exposed to fate, and, when applied to film, this suggests that he believes that film has at least the potential to match the great form of the Sophoclean drama in terms of consequence. Of course, the absolute reality of the moment in the film image remains a representation, and is categorically distinct from that which is represented. Amongst other things, and as Lukács puts it, this means that, though a film image of, say, a human being, may display certain aspects and attributes of that person, unlike in the drama, the person himself is not actually present

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

24

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

when the representation is observed by a spectator. What is in the film image is not ‘real life’, or what Lukács calls ‘living life’ (Lebendigen Lebens). Instead, it is what Lukács calls ‘fantastic’ life. The substance and experience of ‘fantastic’ life differs from that of real life in a number of respects. First, real life is that which is directly experienced perceptually, and which is actually present to the experiencing subject and rooted in the now. However, fantastic life is not present in this sense, because the image presented to the perceiving subject is an image which, though perceived in the present moment by the perceiving subject, is of another time and place. In other words, the film image is not rooted in the perceptual now to the same extent and in the same way that perceptual experience itself is. The fantastic life which becomes manifest within the medium of film is, therefore, different from the normal experience of temporality, even though film is homologically structured in terms of the temporal flow, and is a ‘medium of the temporal flow’. As Lukács would come to argue later, in The Specificity of the Aesthetic, the film image is, therefore, actually ‘deanthropomorphising’ in this respect, because it is so radically different from perceptual experience (Lukács, 1981: 473). Second, fantastic life also differs from real life in that it is shorn of all context, and, as Lukács puts it, has become ‘pure surface’. Third, a fantastic life removed from normal temporal experience, and shorn of all context, also need not obey the laws and relations of causality which govern real life. Fourth, and finally, fantastic life necessarily lacks the presence and weightiness of those aspects of living life which are concerned with the absolute present and fate. All of this begins to add up to something which, once again, sounds quite negative, as fantastic life presents itself as ‘a life the innermost of our soul never wants to become’. However, Lukács argues strongly that, although fantastic life does pose some dangers to the soul, it is not to be contrasted negatively with living life, but, on the contrary, should be conceived of as a valuable and ‘new aspect’ of living life. But, in what way exactly is fantastic life both valuable and new, and how has it become a ‘new aspect’ of living life? For Lukács, one answer to this question can be found in film’s ability to portray ordinary life in a way which is shorn of the instrumental logics and causalities which buttress the repressive structures of ordinary life. Here, editing technique can overturn physical causality itself, and present an illogical and irrational world. At the same time, the film image is also able to focus attention back on to the concrete nature of living life, and, even though the image in the film shot is a fantastic image it is still related to living life in this respect. It is this dual capacity which leads Lukács to assert that the fantastic life evoked by film has now become a ‘new aspect’ of living life: an aspect which both helps reduce the encroachments of ordinary life upon, and also helps foreground, living life. So, Lukács does not view the filmic portrayal of fantastic life as a

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

25

­problem, but, and, in contrast, as potentially liberating: ‘everything is possible: that is the world-view of the cinema’. It will be recalled that, for Lukács, the soul is made up of a conglomeration of aspects, some remorselessly questful, others more aimlessly visceral in character, and it is with these latter aspects that Lukács now associates both the cinema of the fantastic and the absolute reality of the moment. For example, Lukács argues that, by giving up the demanding quest for ultimate questions and answers, film ‘renders everything light, exhilarating and soaring, frivolous and dancing’. This may amount to the opposite of the Sophoclean soul, but it is also identical to other qualities which the soul requires, such as a purposeless and physical engagement with the immediately given. Lukács also links this notion of film as associated with a renunciation of the arduous ‘weight of fate’ with a concomitant rejection of the principal means through which the fateful ‘absolute present’ is realised: that is, via language and conceptual thought. Because, the ‘resonating voiced concept is the transmitter of destiny’, it is, ultimately, the ‘revocation of the word’ which makes it possible for film to generate both the ‘absolute reality of the moment’ and the light and soaring world which the non-Sophoclean soul requires. Here, the film turns away from signification in order to portray sensual immediate experience of living life. In place of the word, film ‘represents actions, but not the causes of those actions, its characters have movements, but no souls, and what happens to them is just an event, and not destiny’. In film, everything that is important must be expressed by ‘events and gestures’, and any recourse to the word and concepts represents a ‘falling out’ (Herrausfallen) from this figurative sphere, and a ‘destruction of its essential value’. Lukács is at pains to point out that, as with film’s lack of fate and destiny, this abandonment of language does not amount to an inherent aesthetic ‘imperfection’. Instead, Lukács views this absence as a productive limitation, in that this apparent limitation of the cinema actually enables the given-ness of immediate existence to be pictured, perhaps for the first time. Here, all attempts to grasp the absolute are given up, and, instead, only the concrete immediately given is embraced. What we have here, therefore, is what appears to be a quite radical aesthetic position on film, in which not only is empirical representation prioritised, but any substantive recourse to the word is also regarded as alien to the aesthetic specificity of the medium. ���������������������������������������������������������������������� The renunciation of conceptual rationality evident here has two important implications for film as an aesthetic of the ‘absolute reality of the moment’. First, such renunciation means that film must be conceived of as an aesthetic medium in which logic, ‘inexorable necessity’, ‘causality’ and explicit signification cease to function as leading organising principles. Instead, in film, each ‘moment’ should be characterised by a lack of overt signification.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

26

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

These ‘moments’ are also not linked together through any form of logical ‘causality’, in the normally understood sense of that term. Instead the principles of combination of the cinema are based upon various forms of association, forms which are not determined by semantic content. According to Lukács, these forms of association generate an ‘immediate and seamless succession’, and a ‘suggestive linkage by means of pure sequence’. The dominant organising principle of an aesthetic of film should, therefore, be one of non-rational conjunction, of conjunctions based upon physical and sensory aspects; and Lukács clearly sees the cinema as constituting a ‘world’ of the non-conceptual here, one which, moreover, has for a long time been ‘suppressed’ by both the ‘abstract-monumental weight of destiny’, and instrumental, conceptual rationality. The mission of film is to liberate both this world of the non-conceptual, and the non-conceptual aspects of the soul: ‘the child that is alive in each human being’. In place of the ‘predominating force’ of the ‘why’, which characterises an aesthetic of the ‘absolute present’, an aesthetic of the ‘absolute reality of the moment’ focuses on the ‘how’ of unfolding events. Reason, logical explanation and rational causality give way here to observation and the experience of interactions, and, through this, the non-conceptual aspects of experience ‘flourish’, the Lebenswelt is redeemed, and the screen is ‘filled with a new rich and plentiful life’. In a particularly intricate section of ‘Thoughts’ Lukács goes into some depth in describing what this ‘new rich and plentiful life’ might consist of, and, intriguingly, he chooses to do so in relation to the representation of nature. As we have seen, Lukács characterises this new, rich and plentiful life revealed by the cinema as essentially non-conceptual, experiential and material in character. However, he also identifies this new form of life more specifically, in terms of the ‘vivacity’, ‘liveliness’ or ‘living-ness’ (Lebendigkeit) of nature. Here, the term Lebendigkeit appears to stand for the vivacious character of the effervescent, constantly unfolding physical interactions and observed events which suffuse and make up the natural world; and, in relation to this, Lukács refers to such natural phenomena as ‘the rush of water, the wind in the trees, the silence of the sunset and the roar of thunder’. This Lebendigkeit suffuses the forms of movement and activities to be found within the evolving, animated world of the Lebenswelt, as that world progresses within temporality as a sphere of material exchanges. This concept of Lebendigkeit also leads Lukács to develop a rather unusual, and also highly elaborate model of aesthetic realism in ‘Thoughts’. In effect, Lukács appears to argue that this ‘liveliness’ in nature has, through the cinema, now acquired an artistic form that is authentically realistic, in the sense that ‘the rushing of water, the wind in the trees, the stillness of the sunset and the roar of the storm, are here transformed into art’. Here, ‘the value [of film]

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

27

as a work of art’ consists in that the image or filmed sequence of, say, the ‘rushing of water’, is drawn from the ‘world’ of natural events and processes, and is also substantially similar to that world. On the other hand, the value of, say, a painting, as a work of art, consists in that the image of the rush of water in the painting is drawn from other ‘worlds’, ie. the world of painterly codes and conventions; and in that the natural ‘rushing of water’ is also substantially different from those other worlds. Underlying this argument is the notion that the codes and conventions of film are closer to perceptual experience, and, therefore, to the world of nature and external reality, than are the codes of painting. In particular, and in this very difficult section of ‘Thoughts’, Lukács also argues that film enables perceptual experience to fix on this important, rich and energetic life-force of Lebendigkeit; a life-force or energy which is also profoundly empirical in character. Lukács argues, therefore, that the film image is able, by virtue of its aesthetic specificity, to grant the Lebendigkeit of nature, and, by implication, all forms of non-conceptual, material experience, ‘an artistic form’ which amounts to ‘art as natural event’. The codification of nature which takes place in the film image and sequence is, therefore, closer to the original structure and being of the perceptual experience of Lebendigkeit than occurs in other forms of aesthetic representation, such as painting; or, to put it another way, film is able to capture the experience of Lebendigkeit better than other aesthetic medium because the effervescence which suffuses life is structurally similar to the fabric of the film image and sequence. Film possesses an effervescent, vibrant fabric, which consists of ‘seamless succession’, and ‘never-resting change’. In film, the natural, and more general non-conceptual, material world becomes visible for contemplation in its capacity of liveliness, and, as Lukács puts it, in film, ‘Man [may have] lost his soul, but [he has also] [re]gaine[d] … his body’. Lukács also argues that the artistic form which film gives to perceptual experience and natural phenomena does not just render that experience and those phenomena in a neutral way, but is also able to make them poetic, or instill a poetic aesthetic value, and, therefore, beauty, in the ordinary world of material interactions. As well as capturing the effervescence of Lebendigkeit, therefore, film is also able to bring beauty into the desolate tracts of ordinary life. This poeticisation of the ordinary may also cover things not normally thought of as inherently beautiful at all, such as, for example, cars, where ‘a car becomes poetic, as in a romantic and dramatic pursuit’; or, to take another example, the ‘common bustle’ in the street, which is given an ‘elementally forceful poetry’ within film. Through the film image, therefore, and in a sense which looks forward to the French cinematic impressionist concept of photogénie, a colourful poetic vision of the liveliness of life floods back into the grey world of ordinary life (Aitken, 2001: 82–3). As with such a poeticisation

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

28

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

of life, Lukács also argues that the film image ‘decorates’ ordinary life, so that what is achieved is the ‘becoming-decorating of the non-pathetic ordinary life’. Here, ‘decoration’ is viewed as something precious, rather than trivial or vacuous, and as a kind of antidote to the pragmatic, teleological instrumentality of ordinary life. Similarly, Lukács argues that film is also a true medium of ‘entertainment’, where entertainment stems from a meaningful exhibition of the visceral aspects of the soul, and is embodied in such categories as ‘excitement’, ‘suspense’, ‘amusement’, and ‘pure thrill’. Here, Lukács argues that film manages to turn entertainment into a ‘meaningful category’. As argued earlier, this filmic poeticisation and decoration of ordinary life is also associated with those aspects of the soul which are more visceral, intuitive and creative, and Lukács argues that ‘in the cinema we should forget [our higher moments] in order to become irresponsible: the child that is alive in each human being is set free and becomes master of the spectator’s psyche’. Film, therefore, is the medium of the portrayal of nature, the body, material interactions, the life-force of Lebendigkeit, and the psyche of childhood. As we have seen, in ‘Thoughts’, Lukács implies that a kind of identity exists between our perception of the film image and sequence and our perception of the ‘living life’. This identity consists in the fact that, in both cases, what is perceived is the concrete immediate, in transient, interactive evolution and motion; and it is the presence of this identity which leads Lukács to assert that the ‘world’ of the film sequence is ‘uncannily life-like’, in relation to our experience of nature. Lukács also argues that it is the mission of film to represent the ephemeral domain of des Lebendigen Lebens, and that to go beyond the ‘boundary’ of this domain, into, for example, the province of drama, rational conceptualisation and language, would, as has been argued, constitute a ‘falling out from this world’. The true subject-matter of film, therefore, is this Lebendigkeit and ‘living-ness’ of things, and Lukács compares the representation of this sphere of energetic, vital transformation with what he refers to as the portrayal of the ‘living will’ of the dramatis personelle within the great moments of the Sophoclean drama. In both cases what we have is a kind of vibrant, energising dynamism which can be distinguished from a lifeless materiality of things which both film and drama must disavow. Here, and as argued, Lukács’ notions of Lebendigkeit and lebendige Wille appear to refer to something like a life-force, or form of energy, which must be drawn upon and displayed in film and drama respectively. This is achieved in the drama through the emanation of the ‘living will’ of the actor, a fateful discharge which inevitably involves conceptualisation; whereas, in the cinema, it is achieved through the presentation of the living-ness of things, a presentation which, as argued, should seek to avoid conceptualisation. So, just as the drama both uses and abjures the temporal flow in order to present both

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

29

‘background’ and ‘destiny’, while film remains a medium of the temporal flow and presents only background; so, also, drama employs both the amorphous force of the living will and conceptualisation, while film portrays only an indefinite background of indeterminate liveliness. However, Lukács does not regard this distinction between the ways in which drama and film portray ‘living-ness’ as necessarily a problem, and, in contrast, regards the distinction as both complementary and fruitful for the future consolidation of medium specificity, as he argues towards the end of ‘Thoughts’, when he contends that the emergence of film may have the effect of forcing drama to ‘cultivate its real concern: the great tragedy, the great comedy’; and that such a return to the authentic roots of the drama may also force cinema to seek a contrary aesthetic form, which will be specific and appropriate to the medium, and which will be thus ‘internally appropriate and … truly artistic’. The appearance of cinema will, therefore, exercise a kind of purification upon both drama and film, forcing both mediums to reflect upon their own aesthetic specificity. At the same time, this aesthetic purification will also lead to a renewed focus on the different aspects of the soul with which drama and film are inherently concerned: those which are related to the realisation of dramatic ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’, on the one hand, and those which, on the other hand, are more related to the cinematic ‘child that is alive in each human being’. The kind of film which Lukács endorses in ‘Thoughts’ would, therefore, be a combination of naturalism, melodramatic effect, popular culture and surreal symbolism; and would also be characterised by both the use of special effects techniques and the deployment of a lyrical, poetic quality. A Lukácsian film would also be full of concrete, descriptive representations, and these would outweigh representations driven by plot or action. Lukács also celebrates the fact that, at this point in time (1911), film largely constitutes only a ‘naive’ protest at the instrumental meaningfulness of the dominant culture. However he also looks forward to a time when great film artists would emerge, the filmic equivalent of an Edgar Allan Poe or E.T.A. Hoffmann, who would render the ‘accidental phantasms of cinema into a meaningful metaphysics’. The ‘kino debate’ As has been argued, ‘Thoughts towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ can be associated with the broad inclination of Lukács’ thinking over the 1908–16 period. However, the essay can also be related to a context of contemporary debate on film then taking place in Germany. ‘Thoughts’ was originally published in Hungary, in a German-language newspaper, in 1911, and was

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

30

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

then republished, in a slightly revised version, on 10 September 1913, in the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper, where it was selected for publication over a large number of competing submissions on the same topic. These submissions were representative of the ‘kino debate’, a deliberation on the cinema which found expression in the Frankfurter Zeitung and other leading newspapers and journals (Levin, 1987: 37–8). This debate over the cinema took place over the period from 1910 to around 1931, and included contributions from major figures such as Lukács, Ernst Bloch, Béla Balázs, Siegfried Kracauer, Rudolf Arnheim and Bertolt Brecht; as well as from many lesser known figures such as Rudolf Kurtz, Rudolf Harms and George Otto Stindt (Kaes, 1987: 24). The ‘kino debate’ encompassed a variety of positions which cannot be addressed fully here. Instead, and for the purposes of this analysis, the debate will be characterised schematically as one polarised between a view of the cinema as constituting a threat to the continued authority of the high arts and bourgeois culture, and one which viewed the cinema as offering a much needed corrective to that authority. From the perspective of the former standpoint, the cinema was frequently associated with the threat posed to high and bourgeois culture by the emergence of the mass media, mass society, and the hurried expansion of the ‘great city’, or ‘Groβstadt’. However, from the latter perspective, film not only came to be seen as a new social force which required more open-minded exploration, but also as a medium which might be essentially characteristic of the larger array of forces which were then transforming the intellectual and social milieu. Here, and within this latter intellectual framework, ‘the metropolitan soul … tumbling from fleeting impression to fleeting impression’ increasingly came to be understood in terms of the ‘cinematographic soul’ (Kaes, 1987: 12). During the 1910–20 period the idea that film was in some way emblematic of the experience of modern culture and society also evolved into a view that film was also, and in addition, capable of illuminating and transforming that experience, a supposition which was, to some extent, based on the observation that the medium had emerged as a new, and, therefore, still untainted art form, within a period in which the existing arts had fallen squarely under the spell of instrumental, disenchanting capitalism (Blankenship, 2001: 31). Within the terms of this position, film was now seen to offer the possibility of ‘heroic wonder in the midst of … a world that is now only a cold, eminently rational machine-room’ (Kaes, 1987: 14). This perception that film might be able to challenge disenchantment and instrumental modernity was also influenced by the idea that the medium’s primarily visual, gestural, and non-cognitive identity was of particular importance in this regard. Such a view can also be associated with a more ­general

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

31

context of philosophical interest in non-verbal, gestural communication which influenced German culture and film theory over the 1890–1930 period. For example, as early as 1895, Hugo von Hofmannsthal observed that ‘we are in the midst of a terrible process of squashing things under the weight of meanings … and thus there awakens a desperate love of all those arts which are exercised in silence’ (Kaes, 1987: 25). Later, Hofmannsthal was to argue that the soul expresses itself best in ‘pure gestures’; and, that ‘deep down people fear language, in language they fear the instrument of society … [and] … of being a powerless cog in a machine’ (Kaes, 1987: 26). This emphasis on the physical, gestural, and non-verbal within early German film theory found substantial expression in Béla Balázs’ 1924 book The Visible Man and the Culture of Film, with its focus on film’s ability to express a poetic reality which existed beyond the rational. However, an over-arching concern with the redemptive powers of the visual and non-cognitive was also characteristic of much of Weimar film theory during the 1920s, and into the early 1930s. In addition to this concern with the redemptive visual capacity of the cinema, some German cultural theory of the time also looked to film to provide a model for a new kind of aesthetic form which would be better able to represent the contemporary condition. Thus, as early as 1913, Alfred Döblin called for the development of a ‘cinematic style’ within literature which would be founded upon the rapid montage of discontinuous scenes which characterised the early silent film (Kaes, 1987: 28). In addition to montage, the documentary aspect of film also influenced understandings of what a more ‘cinematic’ cultural aesthetic might consist of, and this aspect of the medium permeated many of the literary and artistic forms of art to appear in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s, including the ‘New Objectivity’ movement of artists such as George Grosz, Otto Dix and John Heartfield. It is immediately apparent that Lukács’ 1911/1913 essay can be associated with the kino debate. For example, in ‘Thoughts’ we find the same anxiety concerning the instrumental power of language, and the same celebration of the gestural and visual. Many other such examples may be given. However, it could also be argued that ‘Thoughts’ makes a distinctive contribution to the kino debate in two respects. First, and in a manner which reveals the influence of phenomenology, Lukács places considerable emphasis upon the experience and cinematic portrayal of temporality as flux and flow, both as something tragically characteristic of everyday experience, and as a latent utopic force. Second, Lukács’ argument that classical drama and the film may complement and ‘purify’ each other, forcing both mediums back into a closer identity with their own aesthetic specificity, and, in so doing, also embodying different, but equally vital dimensions of the soul, may well have been unique at the time.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

32

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ has, unfortunately, been the subject of only a relatively limited number of academic appraisals, both in English and other languages, and has, as a consequence, become something of an overlooked piece within the history of film theory. Nevertheless, some noteworthy interpretations of the essay have emerged. One commentator, for example, argues (obviously, quite correctly) that questions of temporal experience are central to the essay, and the influence of Bergson is invoked to the extent that Lukács’ early writings are seen to be ‘riddled with references to Bergson’ (Blankenship, 2001: 23). However, the influence of Bergson on ‘Thoughts’ still remains to be definitively established, and it may not exactly be the case that the early writings are ‘riddled’ with references to the French philosopher either. While, as argued previously, the influence of Bergson is apparent in Soul and Form in particular, there are in fact very few direct references to Bergson in either Soul and Form or The Theory of the Novel, only a limited number in the History of the Development of Modern Drama, and none at all in ‘Thoughts’ itself. In addition, Lukács’ early writings are also ‘riddled’ with references to many other figures, including Husserl and Simmel, and the conceptions of temporality put forward in ‘Thoughts’ could as equally be derived from these as from Bergson. In addition to this ascription of the influence of Bergson, yet another commentator has argued that ‘Thoughts’ is characterised by a concern for both the formative possibilities of editing, and the film image’s ‘indexical’ relationship to external reality (Levin, 1987: 41). However, although ‘Thoughts’ is, self-evidently, concerned with the formative potential of editing, it is less clear that the essay proposes an ‘indexical’ relationship between film and reality, certainly where the term ‘indexical’ is used in any sense associated with the semiotic theories of the American linguist Charles Sanders Peirce. At one level it is perfectly valid to argue that Lukács believes the ‘rushing of water’ in nature and the representation of Rauschen in the film sequence correspond to each other in a number of the respects already outlined in this chapter. However, that is not the same as arguing that Lukács is thinking of such correspondence as ‘indexical’ in any sense similar to Peirce’s use of the term; and such an argument would imply a semiotic frame of reference which would be inappropriate to ‘Thoughts’ and completely unfamiliar to Lukács. Lukács’ discussion of verisimilitude in ‘Thoughts’ actually involves reference to a more general philosophical sense of something approaching indexicality than the more narrowly defined Peircean concept of the ‘index’, and in this more general philosophical sense it is better to understand Lukács as viewing the film sequence as depicting an extensive range, number and coexisting aspects of reality, some of which, in addition, are non-material. This

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The early aesthetic

33

is quite different from the Peircean definition of the index as having an actual or very close and even physical connection to that which is represented. In this wider Lukácsian sense, an ‘indexical’ representation in film is one which points to a complex state of affairs in the world, and, here, the term ‘index’ begins to give up the sort of critical relevance it might possess in other contexts. In ‘Thoughts’, for example, the realist, rather than indexical, portrayal of these states of affairs is attributed to film’s ability to, amongst other things, portray the flow of ‘living-ness’, and, in this respect, the film sequence is not an indexical at all because it portrays something which is non-material. So, rather than sharing a singular ‘existential bond’ with the phenomenon of rushing water, as one commentator has put it (Levin, 1987: 41) the portrayal of rushing water in the film sequence depicts, or points to, a number of aspects – and, importantly, humanly meaningful aspects – of that phenomenon. First, the sequence portrays an image of rushing water which is similar in some respects to the image of such water which appears within perceptual experience; and the effect of such a portrayal upon the spectator is to bring that spectator beneficently closer to his or her own experience of the Lebenswelt (this latter, and the following utopian ideas are not implied by Peirce’s notion of the index). Second, the sequence portrays the life-force of Lebendigkeit, which suffuses perceptual experience of the natural world; and the effect of this portrayal upon the spectator is to bring that spectator closer to a form of energy which is expressive of a sense of freedom essential to the soul. Third, and finally, the sequence portrays freedom and beauty, and the effect of such a portrayal upon the spectator is to bring her or himself closer to her or his own species essence. As has been argued previously, the fact that film is able to point to very general conceptions of the soul, or ‘living-ness’, was important to Lukács, because he believed that such portrayals played a role in combating what he took to be the prevailing and directive abstraction characteristic of the modern world. In any event, and as asserted, none of the above is able to be encapsulated in the idea of the ‘index’, and the notion of representation proposed in ‘Thoughts’ cannot be said to be naive realist either, as any definition of that notion as ‘indexical’ might imply. In addition to ‘temporality’, and a supposed ‘indexicality’, another aspect of ‘Thoughts’ which has emerged as a focus for critical discussion is the essay’s apparent advocacy of what has been translated as a ‘fantastic naturalism’ (Levin, 1987: 42). Here, ‘Thoughts’ is characterised as auspiciously ‘dialectical’ in its formulation of a ‘fantastic naturalism’ within which, as Lukács put it, ‘everything is possible and real, everything is equally possible and equally real’ (Lukács, 1913); and it is argued that ‘what distinguishes the essay from other meditations on the specificity of the cinema’ at the time is that it seeks to combine both these realist and relativist-fantasist imperatives in perhaps

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

34

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

equal measure (Levin, 1987: 42). So, for example, in ‘Thoughts’, Lukács argues that, in each film sequence, realism and possibility ‘are put on an equal level with each other, and come to have one identity’. What Lukács means here is that, within the film sequence, the ‘absolute reality of the empirical moment’ within one shot will be followed by the absolute reality of the empirical moment within a second shot, and that the cut between these two shots will be based upon unlimited possibility; and, here, we arrive at what Lukács actually refers to as a ‘fantastic closeness to nature’ (das phantastisch Naturnahe), or ‘trueness to nature’ (Naturwahrheit), rather than a ‘fantastic naturalism’. The phrase ‘fantastic naturalism’ is, in fact, a mis-translation of the German phantastisch Naturnahe, and the term ‘naturalism’ is also a mis-translation of the terms Naturnahe and Naturwahrheit, both of which appear in ‘Thoughts’. In fact, Lukács does not use the term Naturalismus, the German equivalent of the English term ‘naturalism’, anywhere in ‘Thoughts’ (Blankenship, 2001: 33). ‘Naturalism’, is, of course, a term loaded with western historical and cultural consequence, and, because of this, Lukács may have deliberately distanced himself from its application in ‘Thoughts’, which, it will be recalled, was originally written in Hungarian, and at a time when Lukács believed that the West posed a threat to indigenous forms of Hungarian culture. Certainly, in Soul and Form, written around the same time as ‘Thoughts’, Lukács is directly critical of western naturalism. For example, in the chapter on Jena Romanticism and Novalis, entitled ‘On the Romantic Philosophy of Life’, naturalism is indirectly associated with the ‘cruel and bloodthirsty logic’ of western rationalism (Lukács, 1974) Similarly, in A History of the Development of Modern Drama, also written around 1910, naturalism is condemned as offering a ‘false promise’, as the ‘literary stone that would turn all to gold’ (Blankenship, 2001: 33). In addition, the terms Naturnahe and Naturwahrheit contain considerable philosophical weight within the German romantic philosophical tradition, with Naturnahe, in particular, indicating a far more idealist modality of correspondence to nature than could ever be associated with the naturalist movement. All of this suggests that ‘Thoughts’ should not be associated with the advocacy of any form of naturalist aesthetic. Instead, ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ promotes a cinema of das phantastisch Naturnahe, in which empirical representation, possibility, and the level of abstraction implied by the notion of Naturnahe, accompany each other, as the film unwinds before the spectator. According to Lukács, a new ‘unified and diverse world’ is created within this cinema of das phantastisch Naturnahe: a world in which a closer contact with the Lebenswelt, and with the spirit of human freedom, come together to create a potentially utopic medium.

The early aesthetic

35

Notes

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

1

‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ was originally published as an article in a newspaper, and therefore has no page numbers. All unreferenced citations which appear here in this chapter hereafter are from ‘Thoughts’.

2

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe? Lukács’ literary ‘typology’

This chapter will attempt to chart the continuities and discontinuities which exist between Lukács’ early aesthetic of the 1908–16 period, and that which will be referred to here as the ‘middle period’. The middle period will also be dated in two different ways. In one respect, the middle period must be dated as beginning in 1916, because The Theory of the Novel provided the foundation for many of the ideas which inform Lukács’ writings of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. However, The Theory of the Novel also remains closely associated with the early aesthetic, and can be regarded as a bridge between the early and middle periods. Because of this, Lukács’ middle period must also be dated from around 1930 – the date at which he returned to literary criticism following his conversion to Bolshevism in 1918 – until 1957, and the appearance of the key work which looks forward to the late aesthetic: On Besonderheit as an Aesthetic Category/Über die Besonderheit als Kategorie der Ästhetick. The fact that these two dating schemes must be employed here also means that any analysis of Lukács’ middle-period aesthetic must begin with a reconsideration of the key themes present in The Theory of the Novel. However, before any such a review takes place it will first be necessary to provide an outline of Lukács’ relationship to the historical context of the 1918–57 period, because, as will be argued later in this chapter, that association influenced the ways in which key ideas originating in the early aesthetic were both sustained, and crucially modified. An outline of Lukács’ political involvement and writings, 1918–57 In 1918, inspired by the Russian Revolution, Lukács joined the Hungarian Communist Party, and immediately immersed himself in concentrated political activism. In 1919 he was made Minister for Education and Culture in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of March to August 1919. When the Republic fell to counter-revolutionary forces Lukács went into exile in

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

37

Austria, Germany, and then Russia, and only returned to Hungary after the country had become absorbed into the Soviet orbit following the ending of the Second World War. After 1945 he again became actively involved in political and cultural matters within Hungary. However, in 1949 his ideas were criticised by communist opponents within Hungary and he was once more forced to leave the political stage. When the Hungarian Revolution broke out on 23 October 1956 Lukács was made Minister of Culture in Imre Nagy’s reformist Patriotic Government. However, after the Soviet invasion on 4 November Lukács was deported to Romania, and expelled from the Communist Party. Although Lukács has been frequently criticised for the extent to which he associated himself with official communism, his relationship with the communist establishment was actually fraught and difficult, and characterised by public condemnation, deportation, exile, and enforced silence – as well as tacit complicity. This was primarily because, although a committed communist, Lukács invariably championed a position on cultural politics which was more liberal than that endorsed by official policy. This led to regular official denunciation of Lukács’ writings. For example, History and Class Consciousness/ Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1923) was denounced as ‘revisionist’ by the Comintern in 1924, on account of its indebtedness to Hegel; while the 1928 ‘Blum Theses’/Thesen über die politische und wirtschaftliche Lage in Ungarn und über die Aufgaben der Kommunistischen Partei Ungarns were also similarly condemned. After 1930, and following the criticism of the ‘Blum Theses’ and History and Class Consciousness, Lukács was forced out of the political arena, and thereafter wrote mainly on literary criticism. However, one consequence of this rather aggressive eviction was that, between 1930 and 1933, Lukács played a central role in developing an aesthetic literary theory based on Marxist premises, and, as a consequence, emerged as one of the most influential Marxist cultural theorists of the period. But this period in the limelight was once more to prove epigrammatic, and, after 1934, Lukács’ influence was sharply curtailed when his then symbiotic theory of critical realism, the literary expression of the political views expressed in the Blum Theses, was displaced by the dogmatic doctrine of socialist realism advocated by Maxim Gorky, Alexandrovitch Zhdanov and others. Zhdanov’s congressional speech to the First Soviet Writers Congress in Moscow in August 1934, entitled ‘Soviet Literature: The Richest in Ideas, the Most Advanced Literature’, marked the end of Lukács’ brief ascendancy, and the inauguration of a cultural dictatorship which reflected the ‘progressive consolidation of Stalin’s powers’ (Bisztray, 1978: 40–1). Nevertheless, and despite such attenuation, during the period of the anti-fascist popular front, between 1934 and 1939, Lukács’ ideas on critical realism, and on the ­necessity for alliance

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

38

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

with progressive bourgeois forces, did manage to retain some of their previous authority. However, after his return to Hungary in 1945 his position, as expressed in works such as Literature and Democracy (1947), which recalled the perspectives of the ‘Blum Theses’, once again came under severe attack from Stalinist ideologues within Hungary whose intensity of criticism reflected the new sectarian climate of the Cold War. After 1947, Lukács returned once more to the safer escarpments of literary and philosophical criticism, and, in a highly prolific phase of his career, produced Goethe and his Age/Goethe und seine Zeit (1947), The Young Hegel/ Der junge Hegel (1948), Essays on Realism/Essays über Realismus (1948), Existentialism or Marxism?/Existentialisme ou Marxisme? �������� (1948), Russian Realism in World Literature/Der russiche Realismus in der Weltliteratur (1949), Essays on Thomas Mann/Thomas Mann (1949), and Balzac and French Realism/Balzac und der französische Realismus (1952). ���������� Following the death of Stalin in 1953, and the rise to power of Nikita Khrushchev, the so-called ‘thaw’ period of 1953–58 ushered in a time of relative liberalism within the communist world, and Lukács found himself once more able to speak out again about the extent to which Stalinist dogma had misrepresented Marxist philosophy (Parkinson, 1970: 28). Works such as The Meaning of Contemporary Realism/Wider den missverstandenen Realismus (1958), with its – admittedly guarded – criticism of socialist realism, reflect the enhanced liberalism of the times, though Lukács also produced works with less evident political content during this period, including The Historical Novel/Der historische Roman (1955), and the work which looked forward to the 1963 Aesthetic: On Besonderheit as an Aesthetic Category. Although it is sometimes argued that a distinction can be made between Lukács’ thought and activities prior to 1918, and afterwards, any suggestion of a decisive rupture in Lukács’ ouvre between the early and middle period is over-stated, and works such as History of the Development of Modern Drama (1906), Remarks on the Theory of Literary History (1909), Soul and Form (1910), ‘Aesthetic Culture’ (1910), The Theory of the Novel (1916), and the unpublished ‘Heidelberg Manuscripts on Aesthetics’ (1912–18), incorporate themes which Lukács would continue to address and revise throughout the middle period. Nevertheless, one crucial transformation which did occur in Lukács’ thought following his conversion to communism in 1918 was that the dialectical balance between pessimism and optimism which characterised the early work shifted more clearly towards an affirmative stance after 1918. Whereas, in 1916, Lukács was in ‘a general state of despair’, in 1918, he was able to ‘glimpse’ a ‘window to the future … at last! At last! A way for mankind to escape from war and capitalism’; and this new-found sanguinity led him away from the exploration of the forms of refusal which he had

Narrate or describe?

39

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

undertaken in Soul and Form to the conjecture of more affirmative aesthetic models (Lukács, 1990: xi). However, such affirmation was never unadulterated, and what becomes significant, over the 1918–57 period, is both the way in which this new-found hopefulness and purposiveness transforms some of the central aesthetic categories of the early period, and the way in which those categories also retain a philosophical coherence which resists such willed transformation. Lukács’ ‘typologies’ In Chapter 1 it was argued that ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic for the Cinema’ can only be properly understood through a return to the work of Lukács’ 1908–16 period, and, in particular, to Soul and Form. Similarly, in order to understand the intellectual constitution of Lukács’ middle period, it will first be necessary to return to the final phase of the early period, as represented by The Theory of the Novel, because the writings of Lukács’ middle period seek to establish an aesthetic typology whose starting point, although implicit within the work of the 1908–16 period, is most clearly instituted within The Theory of the Novel. In many respects, Soul and Form must be considered as an exploratory and experimental work, which renounces any attempt to develop any over-arching meta-explanations of either soul, or form. In contrast, however, The Theory of the Novel is more purposive in seeking to establish an inclusive ‘typology’ which covers the evolution of literary ‘forms’ from the classical Greek period to that of Dostoyevsky. The principal imperative of The Theory of the Novel, is, therefore, to establish such a typology, and, in particular, ‘a typology of the novel form’ (Lukács, 1971: 96). However, it will be argued here that the typology elaborated in The Theory of the Novel also underpins the literary typology elaborated by Lukács during the entire course of his middle period. For this reason, while Soul and Form served as the founding basis of the previous chapter, The Theory of the Novel will serve as the preparatory point of departure for this chapter. The source of the typology: the ‘transcendental correlation’ and primitive naturalism Within the early aesthetic Lukács often makes reference to the concept of an original transcendental human condition in which an effective identity existed between the soul and social formations within the world. Here, man was transcendentally at home, and able to experience a profound sense of totality. In Soul and Form the source of this utopian totality is located in some primal

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

40

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

existential locus in which the soul was in accord with its own ‘objectivations’. However, as we have seen, the ‘tragic vision’ which pervades Soul and Form is premised upon the notion that, following this primal utopian conjuncture, man’s objectivations came to constitute an ‘object world’ increasingly alien to consciousness (Márcus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 8). Such alienation is presented as existentially inevitable in Soul and Form, and the consequence of the manufacture of an object world which operates through essentially nonhuman imperatives. Nevertheless, in addition to this ahistorical, existential source of alienation, the notion of a social and historical determination of this fall of man is also present in nascent form within Soul and Form, in various guises, and largely premised upon the ‘romantic anti-capitalist’ critique of modernity which influenced Lukács so much during his youth (Löwy, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 190). In The Theory of the Novel, however, these social and historical determinations become far more pronounced, as Lukács attempts to establish a ‘historico-philosophical’ typology of the evolution of great literary forms, in relation to the extent to which those forms converge with or diverge from the ideal of the primal transcendental correlation (Lukács, 1971: 40). In The Theory of the Novel, Lukács is extremely vague about the historical locus of this primal identity between the authentic needs of the soul and extant social formations, and, in many respects, he appears to be mainly referring to an ahistorical situation, or idea, rather than to any particular period in history. This is made clear when he argues that, in a social formation within which the transcendental correlation still holds, there is no need for either art or philosophy, because the sense of totality which prevails makes such requirements redundant. Here, there are no ultimate questions to be asked, and there is also no need to interpret things. Instead, artists need only describe things, and remain ‘simple narrators of events’ (Lukács, 1971: 47). In such a utopian situation, therefore, where the transcendental correlation remains intact, a sort of naive descriptive naturalism appears to be the aesthetic mode which best matches the ‘transcendental topography’ of the social mind (Lukács, 1971: 32). However, it also appears that such naturalism is also only appropriate to this absolute ahistorical condition, and, outside of this transcendental correlation, and, therefore, within historical experience, in a situation where a rupture between the particular and the general has been effected, such primitive naturalism becomes increasingly incongruous. In The Theory of the Novel, Lukács argues that this utopic ‘transcendental correlation’ began to disintegrate around the time that classical Greek culture and society came into being (so, presumably between 1000–600 BC), and, for Lukács, this means that, although this culture and society was inevitably tainted by alienation as a consequence of such a disintegration, it still retained

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

41

traces of the original transcendental identity, to the extent that ‘the Greek world’ constituted a ‘perfection which is unthinkable for us’ (Lukács, 1971: 30–1). Nevertheless, according to Lukács’ logic, classical Greek philosophy and art only emerged because the transcendental correlation had already become profoundly ‘disturbed’, and Lukács sees Greek philosophy, tragedy, and the epic arising historically out of a dawning sense of the loss of immanence of meaning in life, and, out of a condition ‘when the substance had already begun to pale’ (Lukács, 1971: 34). In Greek philosophy and art, therefore, we find that the ‘ultimate base of artistic creation has become homeless’, and that man has already become ‘transcendentally homeless’ (Lukács, 1971: 41). The paradox here, therefore, is that one of the greatest of artistic periods emerged out of the experience of the loss of immanence of meaning in life, and was, therefore, ineluctably infected by a predestined and manifestly experienced sense of disenchantment. In The Theory of the Novel, Lukács argues that ‘disturbances’ within the transcendental correlation are caused by a collapse of the experienced sense of unity between the self and the world, and that such a collapse is, in turn, caused by the uninhibited expansion of society, an extension which ultimately undermined the ‘smaller’ ‘circle’ of the Greek world (Lukács, 1971: 33). Lukács argues that this remorseless development carries on up to the present day, to the point at which ‘our world’ has become ‘infinitely large’ (Lukács, 1971: 34). Such an expansion may bring richness and diversity to contemporary experience, but it also brings danger, because it ‘cancels out the positive meaning – the totality – upon which their [the Greeks’] life was based’ (Lukács, 1971: 34). However, if art and philosophy arise as a consequence of the expansion of society, and the concomitant loss of the sense of the immanence of meaning in life which attends that expansion, then art and philosophy must (should), according to Lukács, also strive to reconstitute the ‘positive meaning – the totality’. What, therefore, distinguishes The Theory of the Novel from Soul and Form, is the extent to which Lukács now asserts that the primary role of art must be to reconstitute the immanence of meaning in life within an artistic totality; and this focus on totality now determines the configurations of the typology of art which he develops during his middle period. In his work of the 1916–53 period, including The Theory of the Novel, Lukács seeks to establish a general typology of great literary ‘objectivations’. As has been argued, the fundamental source of Lukács’ typology is a transhistorical naturalist aesthetic mode which Lukács does not really elaborate on in The Theory of the Novel, but which is essentially descriptive, and fully compatible with and appropriate to the transcendental correlation between soul and world. Here, there is no difference between ‘narration’ and ‘­description’,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

42

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

because the story of what is matches the description of what is: narration is description and description is narration. However, as the transcendental correlation goes to rack and ruin this form of dispassionate description gives way to more engaged narration, and there then appear the first two major historical ‘forms’ within Lukács’ typology: forms which reflect the two core aspects of the soul which Lukács sets out in Soul and Form, those of ‘essence’ and ‘life’. When ‘life immanence’ disappears two options become available for art: either build anew from the ruins of ordinary life, or ‘seek refuge in the abstract sphere of pure essentiality’ (Lukács, 1971: 42). The two forms which correspond to these options are the epic, and the drama, and it is these two forms, emerging out of the loss of primeval unity, and an absolute idealist naturalism, which both represent the next stage in Lukács’ typology, and objectify the two non-objectified ‘forms’ which the soul is able to adopt in response to the loss of immanence: those of life, and essence. In The Theory of the Novel, therefore, Lukács links the two core forms of the soul: those of essence and life, to the two objectified forms of drama and epic. The drama seeks to combat the loss of immanence of meaning in life through focusing on questions of destiny, and through marginalising what Lukács refers to as the ‘background’ against which the destiny of ‘essential being’ is played out (Lukács, 1971: 42). Lukács adopts this position on drama in the early aesthetic, and remains faithful to it throughout the 1916–57 period. In fact, while Lukács’ position on the novel evolved over this time, his conception of drama remained remarkably constant, a constancy premised on the belief that the need to pursue essence against a context in which ordinary life was at such variance with the latter must always be maintained. It is this continuing necessity to pursue essence which leads both to the persistent presence of the drama over the passage of time, and to a constant reaffirmation of the clear role and mission of drama to pursue ‘ultimate questions and ultimate answers’ (Lukács, 1974: 155). Lukács is often dismissive of contemporary dramatists who deviate from that role and mission, and, as has been argued in Chapter 1, his celebration of the cinema in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic for the Cinema’ was partly influenced by the notion that, by portraying ‘life’, film would leave the way clear for drama to return to its true Sophoclean roots. However, if the drama is concerned with essence, the epic (like film) is concerned with ‘life’, and, in the epic, it is the full plenitude of the ‘background’, a background which must be ruthlessly excised from the drama if the latter is to hold to its own aesthetic specificity, that is of chief importance. In The Theory of the Novel these differing conceptions of drama and epic are also related to two phrases which will become crucially important to Lukács’ writings of the 1930–57 period. In the chapter in The Theory of the Novel

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

43

entitled ‘The Problems of a Philosophy of the History of Forms’, in which Lukács discusses the essential difference between tragedy and epic, he argues that ‘Great epic writing gives form to the extensive totality of life, drama to the intensive totality [added emphasis] of essence’ (Lukács, 1971: 46). As will be seen in Chapters 3 and 4, the phrases ‘extensive totality’ and ‘intensive totality’ come to mean something quite different from this in Lukács’ later writings, as the notion of intensive totality becomes increasingly applied to the novel, rather than drama. Here, however, as the quotations from The Theory of the Novel make clear, ‘intensive totality’ refers to the conceptual condensations of the drama, while ‘extensive totality’ refers to that which is marginalised by such conceptual compression: the empirical plenitude of a quotidian which finds expression within the epic. According to Lukács, the classical Greek epic (he refers to the work of Homer here, so, presumably the Iliad and The Odyssey, though he does not mention any particular work) remains premised upon the notion that the immanence of meaning in life still exists. For Lukács, the great works of Greek epic literature survey ‘the immeasurable infinity of the events of life’, and, in so doing contemplate the ‘luminous meaning’ which is still to be found within life (Lukács, 1971: 50). Lukács also argues that the classical epic does not attempt to over-organise the plenitude of life which it portrays, but aims to portray ‘the empirical nature of the object[s]’ which persist within life in a more random manner (Lukács, 1971: 49). This is because the fullness of life is not pre-arranged in itself, but spreads out like a mantle within and before immediate, empirical, human experience. As Lukács puts it, ‘the totality of life resists any attempt to find a transcendental centre within it’, and the absence of such an organising centre means that it is the fluid, intersecting ‘background’ of life which finds expression in the epic, as a means through which the extensive immanence of meaning can be represented (Lukács, 1971: 54). However, while the epic is premised on the notion that the immanence of meaning in life still exists to some extent, the fact that such immanence is no longer fully present also causes the epic to adopt a dialectical ‘form’ in which meaningless ‘segments’ co-exist alongside others still pervaded by authentic meaning (Lukács, 1971: 49). This dialectical form also further reinforces the indeterminate portrayal of empirical life in the epic, and the unsystematic character of the aesthetic form of the classical epic. Finally, in addition to the portrayal of a dialectic between meaningfulness and meaninglessness, and a rendering of the indeterminacy of life, Lukács also argues that the classical epic shows that life is to be largely understood through intuitive, rather than conceptual means, and this is because the great epic writers fully appreciate that such an approach would better respect the complex empirical munificence of life, and would not ‘confront the object in a more dominant

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

44

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

[conceptual] way’ (Lukács, 1971: 50). According to Lukács, in the epic, representations which depend on disproportionate levels of conceptuality are often circumvented because they amount to an ‘abstraction’ from the empirical plenitude of life (Lukács, 1971: 54); while a more evocative portrayal of ‘the subjectivity which simply accepts, which humbly transforms itself into a purely receptive organ of the world’ is given precedence (Lukács, 1971: 53). Nevertheless, and despite this emphasis on intuitive receptivity, Lukács does, as will be argued later in this chapter, see some role for conceptuality in the epic, in the form of what he refers to as ‘pure cognition’. The aesthetic model of the classical epic put forward in The Theory of the Novel views the epic as a form characterised by an evocative, intuitionist naturalism, and by an interplay of meaningfulness and meaninglessness; and this interpretation of the characteristics of the epic also leads Lukács to argue that the forms of meaningfulness to be found within the epic possess a distinctive modality. That modality consists, first, in a portrayal of man’s interaction with a physical world in which life is celebrated for its sensual vitality, and for a physical, ever-evolving vivacity which nourishes the soul. Here, at least in this respect, man still retains a ‘home’ in the world, and this home, sited within an experience of the evolving patterns of physical reality, is contrasted with the tendency towards stasis which characterises ordinary life, and which is portrayed within the cultural mean of ordinary life. As we have seen, in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic for the Cinema’, this meaningful vitality of life is encapsulated within the concept of Lebendigkeit, or the ‘living-ness’ which pervades reality, a life-force which is also contrasted to the more static materiality of ordinary life. In The Theory of the Novel, Lukács makes a similar distinction to the above, that is, between movement and stasis, in terms of a division between one of the two domains of the soul, that of ‘life’, and the domain of ‘ordinary life’. Two forces pervade human existence, both of which are related to either stasis or change. One of these is what Lukács refers to as ‘first nature’: a combination of the two core aspects of the soul (freedom and totality). First nature is ‘pure cognition’, ‘pure feeling’, where ‘pure cognition’ is the domain of essence and totality, and, ‘pure feeling’ the domain of life and the empirical; and both of these domains are characterised by a propensity towards movement and change (Lukács, 1971: 64). ‘Second nature’, on the other hand, tends towards stasis, inertia and changelessness; and is ‘rigid and strange … a charnel-house of long-dead interiorities’ (Lukács, 1971: 64). In the epic, the world depicted is suffused both by ‘first nature’ – and particularly the form of first nature associated with an intuitive experience of the physical world – and by second nature. In the epic, therefore, man still has a ‘home in the world’, and that home consists of both the physical ‘background’ of life associated with ‘pure

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

45

feeling’, and the foregrounded epic plot of heroism and fate associated with ‘pure cognition’. However that home in the world is still incomplete, because it is intersected by the forces of second nature. The first distinctive modality of meaningfulness found in the classical epic is, therefore, this first nature, which consists of ‘pure feeling’ and ‘pure cognition’: man’s interaction with the movement and beauty of the plenitude of life, and with the issue of his own destiny. However, Lukács argues that a second distinctive modality of meaningfulness can also be found in the classical epic, one more evidently coupled with the idea of totality. The world of the epic may consist of a plenitude of miscellaneous empirical representations, linked together only in some measure by the structures of narrative and plot, but these representations and structures are also correlated in that they share a common existence within temporality, which always flows in the one direction, gathering everything up within itself as it courses onwards. Here, the experience of temporality as a ‘life-totality which carries all men’ (Lukács, 1971: 125) challenges the stasis and fragmentation of second nature and ordinary life; and this means that, even though much of human experience is characterised by stasis and fragmentation, there is also always, at the same time, unity everywhere, and so ‘hope’ is always ‘part of life’ (Lukács, 1971: 126). Lukács clearly draws on phenomenological ideas of the Lebenswelt and duration here in arguing that it is this mode of totality which is apparent within the classical epic, and, here, in this second modality of meaningfulness which characterises the epic, ‘pure feeling’ and ‘pure cognition’ flow and evolve together, alongside second nature, so that the epic is able to attain the ‘rich and rounded fullness of a true totality of life’ (Lukács, 1971: 126); and so constitute an ‘affirmative experience of the life process’ (Lukács, 1971: 127). The epic is able to accomplish this because it contains so many affirmative elements, related to both the beauty of nature and the heroism of man. However, according to Lukács, unlike the tragic drama, the epic is doomed to disappear, because, in an ever more God-abandoned world, its affirmative stance becomes increasingly anachronistic. In The Theory of the Novel, Lukács places considerable emphasis on the ability of ‘integrated civilisations’ to generate art which maintains a sense of the immanence of meaning in life, and, because of this, he grants the ‘transcendental condition of the form-giving’ of the epic a long though irregular historical compass, which takes in the classical Greek period, the Christian middle ages, and the early heroic stages of the Enlightenment. Here, mysticism and notions of beneficient reason provide the foundation for a belief in the immanence of meaning within life. However, that beneficient compass eventually comes to an end as one ­ historico­philosophical problematic evolves into another, and as the epic evolves into

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

46

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

the third major literary ‘form’ within Lukács’ typology: the ‘novel of ­abstract idealism’, a form inaugurated in 1605 by a work which Lukács describes as the ‘first great novel of world literature’: Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Lukács, 1971: 103). According to Lukács, Don Quixote is the ­historico-philosophical ‘form’ which corresponds to the new historico-­philosophical problematic, a problematic generated by an existential belief that ‘the Christian God [had] begun to forsake the world’ (Lukács, 1971: 103). For Lukács, Cervantes lived in the ‘period of the last great and desperate mysticism’, in which a belief in the immanence of meaning in life was fading, and, though Don Quixote demonstrates the futility of resisting this disappearance, the novel nevertheless mounts ‘the first great battle of interiority against the prosaic vulgarity of outward life’ (Lukács, 1971: 104). What is important about Don Quixote, therefore, is the way in which the novel exhibits an attempt to find authentic meaning in a world ‘abandoned to its immanent meaninglessness’ (Lukács, 1971: 103). While the fading form of the epic still held fast to a belief in the immanence of meaning in life, the novel of abstract idealism mounts a heroic, though ultimately futile defence of an immanence which has already evaporated. Following Don Quixote, and the novel of abstract idealism, Lukács argues that two principal historico-philosophical literary forms emerge. One of these, the novel of ‘the romanticism of disillusionment’, which Lukács associates with ‘the great dramas of German idealism’, turns its back on life, and attempts to inhabit the ‘pure essential sphere of the drama’ (Lukács, 1971: 105). Although he only mentions Heinrich von Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas (1811) in this respect in The Theory of the Novel, Lukács seems to consign much of German romanticism to this class of literature; a supposition also reinforced by the appraisals of Novalis and Jena Romanticism to be found in Soul and Form, in which Lukács describes romanticism as a ‘deliberate withdrawal from life’ (Lukács, 1974: 50). Unlike in Don Quixote, therefore, where interiority still fights to find a home in the world, ‘the elevation of interiority to the status of a completely independent world’ within the novel of romantic disillusionment constitutes a counter-productive form of ‘desperate selfdefence’, which, in leaving the world behind, cannot show the way forward (Lukács, 1971: 114). After the novels of abstract idealism and romantic disillusionment, the next historico-philosophical literary form which Lukács refers to in The Theory of the Novel is one that embodies a providential vision of man and reason which stems from the early Enlightenment. The idea that man is marked by a ‘natural benevolence’, and that the ‘rules of society and the duties of humanity’ are in accord with a divine plan, can be found in ‘providentialist’ philosophical works such as Pope’s Essay on Man (1733), Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

47

(1721) and Morelly’s Code de la Nature (1755) (Aitken, 2006: 9); as well as – according to Lukács – in an assortment of associated chivalric romances and adventures (Lukács, 1971: 105). However, Lukács also argues that this form can also be associated with the later, and somewhat less providentialist nineteenth-century novels of Flaubert and Stendhal. Although Lukács does not endow this ‘form’ with any particular title in The Theory of the Novel, in The Historical Novel, written during the 1930s, he uses the phrase ‘socialcritical realism’ to refer to the work of Flaubert and Stendhal, and that phrase will consequently also be used here in relation to The Theory of the Novel. According to Lukács in The Theory of the Novel, in the social-critical realism of the nineteenth-century, the novel still overlaps with the epic in that it ‘justifies and completes the life totality of the hero … [in order] to achieve perfect, genuinely epic unity at the end’; and Lukács argues that the presence of such epic unity indicates the extent to which a novel such as Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale (1869) has its roots in both Enlightenment conceptions of providentialist reason, and the world-view of the epic (Lukács, 1971: 129). Unsurprisingly, given his general position on the nature of ‘ordinary life’, and given the classical German philosophical influences upon him, Lukács believes that the literary work associated with this western European providentialist paradigm could never constitute the way forward, because the belief in the immanence of meaning in life which it embodied was increasingly at odds with a world becoming less and less meaningful. However, Lukács does not believe that any of the three ‘forms’ discussed so far: those of ‘abstract idealism’, ‘romantic disillusionment’, and ‘social-critical realism’, are able to take up the challenge of finding meaning in a world becoming progressively more incoherent. However, that challenge is more effectively taken up in the next great form to appear within Lukács’ typology: that of the late eighteenth-century German Bildungsroman, or ‘novel of character development’, and, in particular, in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Apprenticeship (1775–76). Here, according to Lukács, a ‘reconciliation between interiority and reality, although [shown to be] problematic, is nevertheless [shown as being] possible’ (Lukács, 1971: 132). However, and unlike the novel of romantic disillusionment, that reconciliation is, based upon the assumption that interiority must now accept the need for compromise in living in the world of social forms, and that ‘the hero actively realises this duality: he accommodates himself to society by resigning himself to accept its life forms’ (Lukács, 1971: 136). Lukács argues that, in the Bildungsroman, the demands of essence, interiority, and freedom are shown as bound by a rich and enriching resignation concerning the limitations of the self, and the need to realise interiority ‘within the world of social structures’ (Lukács, 1971: 136). Here, the social

48

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

world is not shown as meaningless, but as ‘a world of convention, which is partially open to penetration by living meaning’ (Lukács, 1971: 137). In the Bildungsroman, therefore, the individual comes to an insightful understanding of this, and accepts the compromise forced upon interiority which allows him to ‘come home’ to live in the world of social forms: His ultimate arrival expresses the present state of the world but is neither a protest against it nor an affirmation of it, only an understanding and experiencing of it which tries to be fair to both sides and which ascribes the soul’s inability to fulfil itself in the world not only to the inessential nature of the world but also to the feebleness of the soul. (Lukács, 1971: 136)

According to Lukács, a work such as Wilhelm Meister portrays the soul as ‘feeble’, and yet still also depicts the world primarily ‘from the point of view of the subject’ (Lukács, 1971: 140). However, one consequence of this approach is both that the authentic soul cannot be portrayed, and that the social forms depicted also necessarily lack sufficient ‘substantiality’ (Lukács, 1971: 141). So, both the soul and the social forms are shown as lacking full consequence, and, despite its perceptible advantage over the novels of abstract idealism, romantic disillusionment and social-critical realism, the Bildungsroman also ultimately fails to show the way forward in representing both authentic interiority and the meaningful substantiality of social forms. Following the Bildungsroman, the next, and perhaps most important ‘form’ within Lukács’ typology is that of ‘classical realism’, a term which Lukács applies to the nineteenth-century novels of Dickens, Scott, Tolstoy, and Balzac. However, Lukács’ conception of classical realism is not a homogeneous one, and a distinction can be drawn between that conception as it is expressed in the early aesthetic, in The Theory of the Novel, and as it is formulated in the various works of the middle-period aesthetic. In fact, and in addition, it is also around the key category of classical realism that important distinctions begin to open up between the work of the pre- and post-1918 period, and particularly around Lukács’ interpretation of the writings of Balzac. Lukács only began to use the term ‘classical realism’ after 1930, and, most systematically, in a chapter of The Historical Novel entitled ‘The Classical Form of the Historical Novel’, a chapter which deals with the writings of Balzac in some depth. However, the interpretation of Balzac found in The Historical Novel is quite different from that which appears in The Theory of the Novel, and, bearing this in mind, while the interpretation in The Historical Novel will still be referred to here by its middle-period Lukácsian nomenclature of ‘classical realism’, that found in The Theory of the Novel will be given a new designation: that of ‘Balzacian realism’, in order to clearly distinguish the one from the other.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

49

A particularly dark vision underlines the conception of Balzacian realism found in The Theory of the Novel. Here, according to Lukács, the affirmative, idealistic traces of the Enlightenment evident in the ‘social-critical realism’ of Flaubert and Stendhal are set aside and ‘a completely different path towards epic immanence’ is chosen, one characterised by a ‘subjective-psychological demonism’ which is depicted as an ‘ultimate reality’ (Lukács, 1971: 108). Balzacian realism is based, first, on a melancholic resignation that the soul enshrined with earnest endeavour will inevitably be shattered by the force of circumstance, and, second, on a concomitant recognition that ‘the profound hopelessness of the struggle … [and] … victory of [ordinary] reality’ is predestined (Lukács, 1971: 86). According to Lukács, Balzac portrays a world which is characterised by ironic circumstance and, by figures who display a ‘demonic’ ‘inadequacy’; while he also shows ‘subjective-psychological demonism’ to be characteristic of an ‘ultimate’, social reality (Lukács, 1971: 108). Balzac’s novels are suffused with a ‘strange, boundless immeasurable mass of interweaving destinies and lonely souls’, and these destinies and souls correspond to the temper of an unhinged transcendental correlation with a veracity which none of the previous ‘forms’ following on from Cervantes were able to come close to achieving. Lukács focuses on the uncompromising nature of Balzac’s vision here, in showing characters spurred on by a ‘demonic’ intensity, blundering through life without really knowing what anything ultimately means (Lukács, 1971: 108). Within this dark conception of Balzacian realism Lukács also returns, to an extent, to one of the key themes evident in Soul and Form: that of the ‘Luciferian’, which is evident here in relation to notions of ‘subjective-psychological ‘demonism’. The difference here, however, lies in the fact that, whereas the Luciferian of Soul and Form was characterised by an uncompromising demonic determination, in The Theory of the Novel it is characterised more by a demonic inadequacy. However, according to Lukács, Balzacian realism is not only important because it illuminates the reality and futility underlying ordinary life, but also because Balzac’s work inherits the epic’s concern to portray the flow of temporality within a life-background; and as a consequence of this inheritence, Balzacian realism is able to convey the sort of authentic sense of the totality of life which was distinctive of the Greek epic. Lukács argues that The Human Comedy is, therefore, not so much ‘unified’ by the ‘repeated appearances and disappearances of individual characters in the infinite chaos of the different stories’, as by the ‘chaotic demonic irrationality’ which suffuses all the novels in the Comedy, and bonds them together. Here, an ‘extreme heterogeneity of … constitutive elements’ characterised by a demonic irrationality achieves a ‘concentration’ which leads to a ‘paradoxical homogeneity’, and thus the ‘rescue’ of an ‘immanence of meaning’ (Lukács, 1971: 108–9). All

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

50

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

these ­ heterogeneous instances are subsumed within the flow of a demonic irrational ‘sense of a life-order, which we feel as a great lyric backdrop behind each individual story’ (Lukács, 1971: 109); and it is this ‘chaotic, demonic irrationality’, and ‘great lyric backdrop’, which links things together into a totality, a totality which, although functioning mainly as a background to the manoeuvrings of characters, is still suffused with meaning as a totality (Lukács, 1971: 109). That totality also has a direction – it flows along a course; and takes the form of a ‘concrete and organic continuum’, moving along the temporal course of duration (Lukács, 1971: 125). This amounts to the ‘unity … of the authentic great epic – the totality of a world’, even though that world may neither be given as a rationally meaningful one, nor foregrounded (Lukács, 1971: 109); and what we see across the course of the Comedy is the ‘common basis’ of a life-experience, which ‘corresponds to the essence of life as lived at that moment’ (Lukács, 1971: 109). This ‘backdrop’, or ‘life-order’, is not therefore achieved through the individual struggles of characters in the Comedy. It is a historico-philosophical condition which is lived through by those characters. This conception of Balzacian realism as constituted by a form of ‘­subjectivepsychological demonism’ and ‘demonic inadequacy’, operating against a ‘background’ which expresses the historico-philosophical condition of a deranged transcendental correlation, is characteristic of the position adopted over Balzac within The Theory of the Novel (Lukács, 1971: 108). That position is based on phenomenological conceptions of the Lebenswelt and temporal duration, and views Balzacian realism as the inheritor of the tradition of the ‘authentic great epic’ (Lukács, 1971: 109). Unlike the classical epic, however, Balzacian realism shows totality as an irrational totality. Although an immanence of meaning in life is portrayed here, the temper of that meaning only reflects the reality of souls ‘fatally at cross-purposes with one another’, which, for Balzac, is both ‘the essence of [modern] reality’ and, therefore, an ‘ultimate reality’ (Lukács, 1971: 108). During the 1930s a number of important events occurred which were to strongly influence the development of Lukács’ thought up to the late 1950s, and which ultimately led him to develop the model of Balzacian realism referred to here into that of ‘classical realism’. One of these events was the publication in German in 1932 of Engels’ 1888 letter to the English novelist Margaret Harkness, a piece which was to have a major impact upon the formulation of a western Marxist theory of aesthetic realism during the 1930s. Central to Engels’ letter is his concept of the typical as the ‘reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances’ (Engels, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 269). ‘Characters’ must be typical, ‘but the circumstances which surround them’ should also be so (Engels, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 269–70). Here, Engels’

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

51

formulation of these circumstances as typical differs markedly from the model of the Balzacian ‘background’ put forward by Lukács in The Theory of the Novel. Under Engels’ formulation, ‘circumstance’ is related to a historically specific and structured context which it is typical of, and the meaning of that relation is, therefore, relatively clearly indicated at a conceptual level. Here, characters no longer manoeuvre in front of a generalised and symbolic ‘background life-order’ which is relatively autonomous from the foreground of narrative and plot, but are more narrowly related to particular aspects of that background. One consequence of this is that the background loses much of its autonomy, indeterminacy, and intuitionist character, as it becomes more directly connected to the conceptual world of narrative, ideational discourse, character and plot. Engels begins his treatise in the ‘Letter’ with a critique of Harkness’s socialrealist novel City Girl. However, he soon moves on to the main substance of the letter: a discussion of Balzac and The Human Comedy. According to Engels, the historical context depicted within Balzac’s chronicle is that of France during the 1830–36 period, and, within this relatively precise historical periodisation, the ‘circumstances’ which Engels takes Balzac as describing are defined as consisting not of a ‘strange, boundless, immeasurable mass of interweaving destinies’ (Lukács, 1971: 108), as in the ‘Balzacian background’ conjured up in The Theory of the Novel; but as phenomena concretely related to a series of identifiably emergent, and declining, social formations. In addition, not only are the Engelsian ‘circumstances’ typical in the above sense, but so too are the Engelsian ‘characters’, and this reinforces the extent to which, in Engels’ formulation, background circumstance and characterisation are more narrowly connected than is the case with the position on Balzac elaborated in The Theory of the Novel. Under Engels’ formulation, a character is typical if he or she shares certain similarities with other individuals existing within a certain place and time, while a circumstance is typical if it also shares certain similarities with other circumstances existing within a certain place and time. A typical character is, therefore, typically related to a typical circumstance if that relationship shares certain similarities with other relationships existing between other typical characters and circumstances within a certain place and time. In addition, in Engels’ formulation, these typical characters, circumstances and relationships can be shown as changing and developing ‘almost year by year’, and, instead of showing the general flow of time moving onwards all-inclusively, the writer must, instead, portray typical characters, circumstances, and relationships existing within a prospectively circumscribed period of time, and pattern of development of time (Engels, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 270). Furthermore, these typical phenomena are conceived of as typical not just because they

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

52

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

are ­similar in a number of respects, but because they are similar in the crucial respect that they are all related in one way or another to the principal historical force which motivates social, economic and political change and development: that of class struggle (Engels, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 270). It is this motive force of class struggle which ought to be represented as it develops ‘year by year’, and as it links typical and evolving characters, circumstances, and relationships together. It is clear from this that the purpose of the Engelsian formulation of realism is to focus aesthetic representation on the causal factor of class struggle, and on the extent to which character and circumstance are effects of that causal factor. Engels argues that The Human Comedy can be considered to be a ‘complete history of French society’ (by which he really means a history of class struggle and change), and one which portrays that history as ably as does the best example of academic historiography. In fact, Engels insists that he has learned more about France during the 1830–36 period through reading the Comedy than he has from a reading of ‘all the professed historians, economists and statisticians of the period together’ (Engels in Craig (ed.), 1976: 270–1). All of this suggests a reading of the Comedy as sociological tract, rather than work of art, and reveals a degree of determinism and objectivism which is very far removed from the tone of Lukács’ The Theory of the Novel, in which the Comedy is, as has been argued, seen to portray a ‘chaotic, demonic irrationality’ and ‘great lyric backdrop’ (Lukács, 1971: 109), rather than any form of ‘complete’, systematic, ‘history’. Perhaps unfortunately, however, it is this somewhat deterministic and rationalised Engelsian model of aesthetic representation, rather than the more unformulated, impressionistic model projected in The Theory of the Novel, which Lukács takes up and propounds within the writings of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and which forms the basis of his second model of the intensive totality. In elaborating this model, Lukács now distances himself from the idea, strongly evident in The Theory of the Novel, that the novel should seek to represent the full plenitude of life. It will be recalled that, in The Theory of the Novel, the phrase ‘intensive totality’ referred to the way in which the Sophoclean drama distilled all things into an ‘intensive totality of essence’, while the phrase ‘extensive totality’, referred to the way in which epic and novel portrayed the fullness of life (Lukács, 1971: 46). However, in a 1930s essay such as ‘Art and Objective Truth’, the phrase ‘intensive totality’ now refers to a type of novel, rather than drama, and one in which aesthetic representation does not indeterminately disseminate, but systematically congregate meaning: The totality of the work of art is rather intensive: the circumscribed and self-contained ordering of those factors which objectively are of decisive ­significance for the portion

Narrate or describe?

53

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

of life depicted, which determine its existence and motion, its specific quality and its place in the total life process … .The objective character of the area of life represented determines the quantity, quality, proportion etc., of the factors which emerge in interaction with the specific laws of the literary form appropriate for the representation of this portion of life. (Lukács, 2005: 38)

As is self-evident, the emphasis here is on systematic, ‘objective’, and conceptual understanding, and implies the deployment of a form of aesthetic representation which will encapsulate such a ‘specific’ form of comprehension. This quotation also reveals a clear focus on three premises which were not readily apparent within the early aesthetic. The first of these is a belief that a conceptual knowledge of social-historical reality can be developed systematically and objectively. The second is that the novel can then reflect that conceptual comprehension of a ‘portion of life’, though such reflection will not be the same as the original cognate understanding because it will be rendered through ‘the specific laws of literary form’. The third is that the ‘interaction’ between conceptual comprehension and literary form should always be settled in favour of conceptual understanding. In other words, content will always have priority over form. This model of the intensive totality of the novel, rather than drama, is, therefore, now concerned with a social and class-based nucleus, rather than with an immanence of meaning that is disseminated throughout life; so that the primary intensive totality of the drama now becomes reconstituted as a critical analysis of a particular historical conjuncture set out within the ‘form’ of the novel. During his middle period Lukács increasingly came to abandon the idea that the extensive portrayal of an empirical background might be of value in illuminating the alienated nature of subjectivity within capitalist modernity, and, instead, came to the conclusion that empirical portrayal might actually reinforce that alienated condition. For example, in History and Class Consciousness, Lukács drew on the Marxist concept of ‘reification’ (Verdinglichung) in order to depict capitalist society and culture as consisting largely of autonomous fragments, often disconnected from authentic human requirement. This sense of the ‘reification’ of reality was first referred to by Marx in Das Kapital III. However, although the concept of reification played only a relatively minor role in Marx’s overall perspective in Das Kapital and elsewhere, in History and Class Consciousness Lukács argued that reification was not only the ‘central problem in economics’ but the ‘central structural problem of capitalist society’ (Lukács, 1990: 28). This emphasis on the impact of reification was one of the factors which led Lukács to stress the extent to which subjectivity had become fragmented within capitalist modernity (though other factors also carried through from the early aesthetic in this respect), and this, in turn led him to the conviction that such fragmentation

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

54

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

now had to be challenged at all levels, and from a Marxist perspective premised on the need to achieve totality. Whereas, therefore, in both Soul and Form and ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic for the Cinema’, disorganised portrayal still furnished the possibility that the reality of social fragmentation might be illuminated in a valuable manner, in History and Class Consciousness such portrayal is regarded as only deepening the crisis. The focus on reification in History and Class Consciousness was one of the factors which eventually led Lukács to argue that an aesthetic approach based on extensive empirical description might reinforce the prevailing abstraction within capitalist society. Another was the theory of cultural history which he derived from the analysis of nineteenth-century French history presented in works such as Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), and The Civil War in France (1870). Here, Marx argued that the collapse of the Paris Commune in 1848 had led to the establishment of a reactionary bourgeois republic, and to the attendant institution of a general sense of hopelessness and despair within progressive intellectual circles. Lukács seized with enthusiasm upon this idea that a general collapse of idealism had occurred in 1848, and then went on to link the notion to the account of Balzac found in Engels’ ‘Letter to Harkness’, in which Engels celebrates Balzac’s achievement in portraying large-scale processes of social change as ‘one of the greatest triumphs of Realism’ (Engels, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 271). In combining these ideas derived from Marx and Engels, Lukács came to a conclusion that was to shape his entire approach to literature over his middle period, and shape it largely for the worst. Taking his cue from Marx, Lukács insisted that, following the suppression of the Commune, progressive writers had turned away from the Balzacian mission to represent social totality, because a progressive totality no longer seemed attainable ( Jameson, 1971: 201). According to Engels, Balzac’s ‘great achievement’ had lain in the fact that, even though he was not in sympathy with the processes of social changes which were occurring at the time, he still felt a need to understand, and portray them. As with Engels, so also for Lukács, Balzac’s response was the correct one, while, according to Lukács, the reaction of those progressive intellectuals who had turned away from the mission to represent social totality after the catastrophe of 1848 was both regrettable, and ultimately self-defeating. Such blanket condemnation of writers who were often socialist to the bone soon came to dominate Lukács’ writings during the middle period, and this, in turn, and regrettably, led him to further entrench himself within a stance which would eventually prove to be counterproductive, and have extremely negative consequences for his later critical reputation. That stance is clearly set out in ‘Tolstoy and the Development of Realism’, an essay which appears in Lukács’ Studies in European Realism (1950). Here,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

55

Lukács argues that ‘the evolution of bourgeois society after 1848 destroyed the subjective conditions which made a great realism possible’ (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 282); and that, after 1848, it became far more difficult to view society as ‘a complex of vital and contradictory relationships between human beings’. According to Lukács it was this context, this ‘lifeless setting’, which determined the evolution of both naturalism and modernism as forms of art which had turned their back on realism, and the attempt to portray the social totality (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 285). At one level, Lukács is charitable about a writer such as Emile Zola when he argues that, during the 1848–1900 period, Zola had little option but to adopt a naturalist approach, because ‘even the really honest and gifted bourgeois writers … could find nothing they could support wholeheartedly … they remained mere spectators of the social process’ (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 283). However, Lukács’ charity does not extend too far, and his overall position remains one based upon the conviction that, if Balzac was able to produce great works of realism during a period of time in which the society he loved was undergoing ‘irretrievable decay’, then Zola, and the intellectuals of the 1848–1900 period, should have been able to do likewise (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 270). Although Lukács is, therefore, predisposed to make some allowances for Zola and other writers of the period, he deeply disapproves of the artistic turn which they took, and is in no doubt that the appearance of naturalism represented a catastrophic error of judgement which led to the creation of a form of literature which was far too narrowly focused and fragmented (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 284). Furthermore, while Lukács believed some allowances could be made for the inauspicious position which nineteenth-century naturalist writers found themselves in, he did not believe that any similar allowance could be made for the continued existence of a naturalist approach after 1900, when the growth of what he refers to as ‘the new humanist movement’ (Marxism and other forms of socialism) made it possible once more to envision and represent social reality as a totality (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 283). Lukács’ criticism of naturalism as a movement which favoured the portrayal of empirical ‘description’ over a rendering of the social totality also provided the foundation for his criticism of modernism as a movement which favoured the depiction of ‘abstraction’ over the representation of reality, and his writings of the 1930–57 period were largely premised upon the conviction that the continued existence of such movements served to consolidate capitalist fragmentation, obstruct the development of a modern, realist aesthetic, and serve as an obstacle to the further institution of socialism. For example, in ‘Art and Objective Truth’, an influential essay dating from the mid-1930s which relies heavily on the dialectical materialism of Engels and Lenin, and

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

56

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

also on Lukács’ own 1924 book on Lenin, Lukács argues that naturalism and modernism exemplify the ‘two extremes of contemporary aesthetics’. On the one hand, naturalism is characterised by an ‘insistence on immediate reality’, while, on the other hand, modernism insists upon abstraction from immediate reality, and also constitutes a ‘denial of reality to the extent of ‘abstracting it out of existence’ (Lukács, ‘Art and Objective Truth’, in Lukács, 2005: 32–3). Both movements, according to Lukács, represent a ‘flight from the great issues of the era’, and amount to ‘an ideology of reaction … characteristic of the theories of the imperialist period’ (Lukács, ‘Art and Objective Truth’, in Lukács, 2005: 33–4). However, while Lukács criticises both naturalism and modernism, his primary target is naturalism, and he tends to view modernism largely as an inevitable outcome of naturalism, arguing that ‘the aesthetic approach of naturalism inevitably engenders formalist methods of fiction’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 131). Here, Lukács contends that naturalism is particularly injurious because it deploys an indiscriminate ‘descriptive’ approach which ‘merely levels’, cannot establish ‘proportions’, and reinforces the central processes of capitalist modernity. Because of this, ‘the predominance of description is not only a result but also and simultaneously a cause’ of the ‘continuous dehumanisation of social life’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 127). This position on the dangers posed by the ‘descriptive method’ led Lukács to discard the more dialectical approach to empirical experience and representation which he had adopted in the early aesthetic. As we have seen, in these earlier works a distinction is made between the fragmentation characteristic of ‘ordinary life’, which engenders alienation, and a sensual experience of empirical immediacy, which brings about freedom. However, in the writings of the 1930–57 period this distinction is generally neglected, and the fragmentation of ordinary life becomes more associated with most or all modes of empirical experience and representation. Within the early aesthetic, engagement with the immediate experience of the fullness of life – as constituted by the ‘backdrop’ of ‘Balzacian realism’ elaborated in The Theory of the Novel (and, for that matter, the ‘light and lively world’ indicated in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’), was set alongside essence, as one of the two polar dimensions of the soul, and also as the proper preserve of the novel. However, in the middle period, this aspect of the soul is marginalised, and the novel is not so much defined as an aesthetic medium categorically competent to portray the ‘fullness of life’, as was the case in The Theory of the Novel, but as one adept at setting down the sort of fundamental ‘nodal’ moments and conjunctures which Lukács had previously thought to be the proper province of the drama. In addition, while, in the early aesthetic, the presence of description was associated with significant forms of refusal, a ‘child-like’ sense

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

57

of instinctive abandon, and the ‘demonic irrational’; in the middle period, the shift of emphasis from ‘life’ to ‘essence’, in conjunction with the influence of communist ideology, leads to a corresponding accent on portraying such crucial points and conjunctures in an affirmative manner. Now, because of the victory of socialism, the historico-philosophical form of the novel was no longer historically, morally or philosophically obliged to encapsulate the ‘immanent meaninglessness’ of life under capitalist modernity (Lukács, 1971: 103), but should, instead, ‘struggle … to restore meaning to life’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 147). This more affirmative stance, which now takes precedence over the dialectical rendering of hopefulness and hopelessness which characterised the early aesthetic, also goes hand-in-hand with the adoption of an increasingly normative orientation which is exercised in relation to questions of both aesthetic form and ethical standpoint, to the extent that ‘healthy’ form and ‘healthy’ content are seen as inseparable. This disposition reaches something of a high point in the essay ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, within which supposedly ‘unhealthy’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘decadent’ ethical attitudes are seen to generate a ‘dissolution of [aesthetic] forms’ (Lukács, ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, in Lukács, 2005: 104). Here, Lukács argues that both naturalism and modernism are the products of an unhealthy psycho-philosophical mind-set, and that, in contrast to these two movements, ‘perfection in form in great works of art means [goes hand-in-hand with] the harmony of rational human and social content’ (Lukács, ‘Healthy or Sick Art?, in Lukács, 2005: 104). This normative attitude, which equates the aesthetic form of the realist intensive totality with a proper and healthy way of both living, and understanding reality, also extends to questions of conceptual and intuitive comprehension in the middle aesthetic, with the emphasis now placed on the importance of conceptual capacity. In effect, the dialectic between intuitionist and rational modes of knowledge which is evident within the early aesthetic is abandoned, because the emphasis now placed on the struggle to generate affirmative and ‘healthy’ forms of signification leads Lukács to place a corresponding emphasis on conceptual rather than intuitive forms. Now, intuitive forms of comprehension and representation are also regarded as potentially ‘unhealthy’, and associated with ‘regressive’ movements such as symbolism and irrationalism. These transformations from dialectical positions premised partly on the inherent value of empirical description, to a more normative position partly based upon the felt need for such description to be diminished or even discarded, are also perceptible in the highly influential essay ‘Narrate or Describe?’, which was first published in 1936. In this essay Lukács accepts, somewhat unenthusiastically, that ‘description’ was, and still remains, a necessary feature of the novel, because of the need to portray the new, complex, and sensuously

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

58

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

detailed modern mass society. However, Lukács is keen to argue that such description must, ideally, only constitute ‘a base for the new, decisive element in the composition of the novel: the dramatic element’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 118). There is a need now, in these times, to be decisive, and so the disinterested, inexplicit ‘background’ of the novel must become more purposefully organised in relation to dramatic imperatives which are principally concerned with the portrayal and resolution of human problematics. In place of the demonically irrational ‘lyric backdrop’ of the Balzacian realism endorsed in The Theory of the Novel – a backdrop which evoked the generalised meaning of totality as a ‘life-force’ – the descriptive empirical base now becomes a mapped dais upon which human motivation and action can be explored in a more targeted manner. ‘Objects,’ Lukács argues, ‘come to life poetically only to the extent that they are related to men’s life’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 137), while the ‘inner poetry of life is the poetry of men in struggle’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 126). On the other hand, when the ‘descriptive method’ predominates, objects cease to be related to this ‘inner poetry’, and ‘the “peripheral” begins to bloom everywhere’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 131). The consequence, according to Lukács, is that the human struggle to ‘restore meaning to life’ through action is lost, as art sinks back into ‘the arid, flat prose of everyday bourgeois life’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 133). What we have here is a shift from the notion of a ‘life-force’ which permeates nature to that of an ‘inner poetry’ which is now associated mainly with men actively engaged in struggle. In place of a more phenomenological emphasis, in which men and purposive projects are umbilically connected to a flux of other objects and phenomena, there is now a shift to the abstracting out of human purposiveness from that flux. The new communist age demands purposive action and projects within which men individually and collectively strive dynamically to re-establish the immanence of meaning in life. The ‘descriptive method’, on the other hand, is incapable of portraying such a quest, and can only portray a series of ‘still lives’, in which men are shown enmeshed passively within ordinary life. As Lukács puts it, ‘the descriptive method lacks humanity. Its transformation of men into still lives is … the artistic manifestation of its inhumanity’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 140). In addition to this inability to portray processes of intellectual reflection leading to purposive action, the ‘descriptive method’ is also rejected by Lukács because of its inability to make value distinctions, or establish hierarchies of signification, ‘because both the important and the unimportant are described with equal attention’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 131). This process is not only one

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

59

of levelling across, ­however, but also one in which a ‘reversed order of significance’ comes about, as matters redolent with ‘human significance’ are reduced in scope, and empirical detail is raised up, so that ‘the mud on Napoleon’s boot at the moment of the hero’s abdication is as painstakingly portrayed as the spiritual conflict in his face’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 131–2). The aesthetic epistemology set out in ‘Narrate or Describe?’, like that of the middle period in general, is founded on a rather different theory of knowledge to that set out in the early aesthetic. The early aesthetic was based upon a combination of premises and notions derived from existentialism, phenomenology, and German idealist philosophy. Here, purposive projects play only a limited role within the overall intuitive character of the Lebenswelt, and men seek to grasp freedom and totality through individual acts of ‘objectivised’ or ‘non-objectivised’ culture. Here, the ‘forms’ can be either forms of ‘refusal’, as in Dostoyevsky, or forms which seek some measure of totality, as in the ‘Balzacian backdrop’, Tolstoy’s ‘attempt to go beyond the social forms of life’, or the Bildungsroman. In addition, the means of realising such forms are primarily intuitionist, rather than rational in character. However, in the middle period, Lukács comes to reject this impressionistic, intuitionist approach, and, in its place, proposes a theory of knowledge based on a term which perhaps becomes the key notion of the middle period, that of ‘perspective’ (Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, 2005: 122). Now, supplementary to possessing a more affirmative stance in showing men struggling through reflection and action to improve themselves, the novel must also be structured as a hierarchy, in which levels of signification are clearly laid out. In addition to the model of affirmative perspective set out here, the aesthetic model of the middle period also does not appear to make any clear theoretical distinction between form and content, even though certain types of aesthetic form, and various matters relating to content, are addressed at length and endorsed or rejected. In fact, form does not really appear to exist in any autonomous sense for Lukács, as becomes apparent when he argues that ‘form is nothing but the highest abstraction, the highest mode of condensation of content’ (Lukács, ‘Art and Objective Truth’, in Lukács, 2005: 50–1). At one level, this argument is difficult to understand because, clearly, form is categorically distinct from content, and cannot really be warrantably defined as a ‘mode of content’. However, what Lukács means here is that all questions of aesthetic form should be determined by questions of content, and, moreover, by a content closely associated with human meaningfulness. For Lukács, this means that ‘content determines form’ (Lukács, ‘The Ideology of Modernism’, in Lukács, 1963: 19), and one consequence of such determination is that the novel (and, by extension, film) must be based essentially on a

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

60

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

plot and narrative which links all description to issues of human consequence (Lukács, ‘Art and Objective Truth’, in Lukács, 2005: 51). Lukács believes that the elevation of technique over content inevitably results in formalism, naturalism, and modernism, and that only the realist novel firmly based in plot and narration, in which form is closely linked to conceptual content and detailed characterisation, and also organised into hierarchies of importance within a perspective which distinguishes between the important and the superficial, constitutes the way forward. In contrast a whole host of movements, including surrealism, symbolism, naturalism, futurism, constructivism, and, very frequently, ‘new objectivity’, are repeatedly criticised because they adopt a ‘static approach to reality’ (Lukács, ‘The Ideology of Modernism’, in Lukács, 1963: 34). As has been argued in this chapter, the literary typology fashioned by Lukács through the course of his career can be subdivided into that part which arises from The Theory of the Novel, and that which emerges from the writings of the 1930–57 period, and what is particularly pertinent to an understanding of the relationship between Lukács’ literary and film theory is the fact that these two bodies of writing also embody divergent orientations towards two key terms and concepts within the Lukácsian typology: those of ‘life’, and ‘temporality’. In The Theory of the Novel these terms are predominantly informed by a phenomenological conception of the Lebenswelt which Lukács derives from Husserl, Bergson, and others. However, during the middle period, this influence increasingly gives way, and notions relating to the experience and depiction of social class, rather than phenomenal experience, come to predominate. This does not, however, mean that a fundamental epistemological divide can be drawn between Lukács’ conceptualisations of these two terms in 1916, and during the 1930–57 time-span, and what we have here, at an underlying philosophical level, both in terms of these key conceptualisations, and also others that cannot be considered here for want of space, is more in the character of an adjustment of emphasis or orientation, rather than any radical conceptual division between the early and middle aesthetic periods. This point is important because, as will be argued in Chapter 3 on Lukács’ late aesthetic and theory of film, the presence of such adjustment not only enables significant correlations and distinctions to be drawn between the early and middle aesthetic positions, but also between the early, middle, and late positions, and particularly as these relate to Lukács’ interpretation of film in The Specificity of the Aesthetic. Within the early aesthetic, the concept of ‘life’ is characterised in two different, though related ways. The first of these refers to the free, sensual, and intuitive experience and depiction of immediate empirical reality, and this characterisation is most evident in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

61

and Soul and Form, though also in The Theory of the Novel. However, the second of these characterisations links the experience and representation of empirical reality to the experience and representation of more intermediate social forms, and this characterisation is more evident within The Theory of the Novel. Here, in an analysis of the forms of the epic, Lukács argues that the role of the epic (and, therefore, also, by implication, the novel) is to portray the ‘extensive totality’ and ‘background’ of life’, where ‘life’ is seen to constitute a combination of empirical and intermediate social interaction. As Lukács puts it in The Theory of the Novel, the role of the epic is to portray ‘the breadth and depth, the rounded, sensual, richly ordered nature of life as historically given’ (Lukács, 1971: 46). Both of these definitions of life are broadly consonant with the notion of the Lebenswelt, whose influence underlies most of the early aesthetic, including extensive sections of The Theory of the Novel. However, within the writings of the middle period, a third characterisation of the experience and representation of ‘life’ emerges, and one that is, in addition, also based on a return to a conception of the soul which, in the early aesthetic, was associated with essence, rather than life. Now, in the middle period, the idea of the soul as the embodiment of purposeless freedom appears less frequently, and – necessarily associated with such infrequent allusion – the very idea of the duality of soul itself as freedom and totality is also largely abandoned, as, increasingly, Lukács refers to one, rather than dual modalities of being. This emergent conceptualisation of a singular mode of the soul also prioritises both cognitive conceptual activity and purposeful action, rather than intuitive sensual experience and purposeless reflection; and this means that, within the middle aesthetic, the soul is thought of, and also should be portrayed as, something like the destiny-driven – or at least idea and objective-driven – figures of the Sophoclean drama, rather than the ‘irresponsible’ ‘eternal child’ conjured up in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’. In ‘Thoughts’, Lukács celebrates film’s ability to allow ‘the child that is alive in each human being’ to emerge (Lukács, 1913). However, in the middle aesthetic, Lukács has no time for such childish irresponsibility, as his socialist convictions lead him to develop a far more purposeful characterisation of both the experience and representation of soul and life; and the role of the novel. Nevertheless, this more instrumental modality does not become hegemonic within the middle period and, and as will be argued later in this chapter, the categorisation of Balzacian realism which is set out within The Theory of the Novel, and which is typified by a ‘subjective-psychological demonism’ and ‘chaotic demonic irrationality’, is carried on into some of the works of the middle period, qualifying the more purposive conceptions of experience and representation which Lukács increasingly favours in these later writings.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

62

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Nevertheless, as argued, in his middle period writings Lukács does place greater emphasis upon a more singular, and purposive conception of the soul, and it is this which, amongst other factors, leads him to adopt his third model of the experience and representation of ‘life’. Now, life is no longer associated with the experience and representation of either the empirical world or a combination of empirical and intermediate forms, but with the experience and depiction of a more structured and inclusive world, which not only encompasses the empirical and intermediate-social, but also the key elements and nodal points of a ‘particular social reality at a particular time’ (Lukács, 1976: 177). In his writings of his middle period, therefore, Lukács more or less abandons the first of his characterisations of the soul (as freedom), and, at the same time, links the second (as totality) to the third model of the experience and representation of life which he proposes, and all of this comes together to constitute a new model of the ‘intensive totality’; a model which then comes to dominate the middleperiod aesthetic. It will be recalled that the first model of the ‘intensive totality’, as set out in The Theory of the Novel, was associated with the drama and essence, while the ‘extensive totality’ was associated with the epic/novel, and also with the notion of life. In the middle aesthetic however, the meaning of the term ‘intensive totality’ changes. Now, no distinctions are made between extensive and intensive totality, essence and life, as they were within The Theory of the Novel, and both become components of a new, more totalising intensive totality, which accommodates both life and essence, in order to portray the ‘totality of the life process’ (Lukács, 1976: 104). At the same time, the phrase ‘extensive totality’ begins to fade from view. The fact that no fundamental distinction is now made between life and essence within the middle aesthetic also means that no elementary division can now be made between drama and the epic/novel either, because both are viewed as attempting, though in different ways – the drama focused more on essence than on life, the epic/novel the converse – to portray ‘the totality of the life process’, and to connect closely both the particular to the general, and interiority to the external world. While, therefore, in the early aesthetic, Lukács was very keen to draw distinctions between drama and the novel, he is far less concerned with such distinctions in the middle aesthetic, because he now sees the novel as essentially carrying through the project of the drama. However, even though Lukács was less concerned with distinctions between drama and novel during this time, he was determined to draw a ‘decisive dividing line’ between both drama and the novel, and what he referred to as a ‘Lyric’ mode which only portrayed subjective interiority (Lukács, 1976: 103). Lukács is very clear throughout the middle period that the subjective ‘transformation of human beings into a chaotic flow of ideas’, as in a ‘Joyce-like shoreless torrent of associations’, ‘destroy[s] … every possibility of a literary presentation of the complete

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

63

human personality’ (Lukács, ‘Preface’, in Lukács 2002: 8). In order to avoid such chaotic subjectivism, interiority must, therefore, always be shown to engage in a ‘visible interaction with objective, outer reality’, and Lukács’ new conception of the ‘intensive totality of life’ is one which encompasses empirical reality, individual human action, feeling and thought, and the interaction of individuals within both intermediate social formations and general, determining historical circumstance (Lukács, 1976: 103). This also means that, within the middle aesthetic, the emphasis on life as constituted by empirical reality is retained to a degree, but also that this emphasis is now linked to the portrayal of both intermediate formations, and the ‘essential and most normative connexions of life, in the destiny of individuals and society’ (Lukács, 1976: 104–5); and what we now have, in terms of both a definition of human reality, and an aesthetic model for the novel, is what Lukács refers to as a ‘totality of objects’ constituting the ‘full span of life’ (the phrase ‘totality of objects’ will be discussed in more detail later, but, for the moment, can be understood as referring to the totality of empirical, intermediate, and general factors and elements involved in a particular conjuncture) (Lukács, 1976: 163). The aim, therefore, is to understand and portray human experience comprehensively, and, what we see within the middle aesthetic is the gradual adoption of an inclusive aesthetic model premised on the need to realise one of the two dimensions of the soul: that of totality. However, in this process the other dimension of the soul, that of freedom, takes on less consequence, and this, in turn, leads to a concomitant subsidiary role for both interiority and empirical reality within the middle aesthetic. The subordination of the empirical within the middle aesthetic stems from a number of sources, many already mentioned to varying degrees. One of these sources is the marginalisation of both the first definition of ‘life’ (that of life as sensuous experience of immediate reality), and one of the core aspects of the soul (that of purposeless, creative freedom), within the middle aesthetic. Yet another is the classical Marxist critique of empiricism and naturalism, and concomitant endorsement of a model of aesthetic representation which aims to describe the world in a way which is broader, deeper, and more multifarious than an empiricist mode of understanding which, as Marx put it, ‘everywhere sticks to appearances in opposition to the law which regulates and explains them’ (Bottomore, 1991: 175). These and other influences generate an impetus away from the consideration and portrayal of empirical reality, and towards the consideration and portrayal of social reality. At the same time, the subordination of interiority within the middle aesthetic also stems from similar sources to those which led to the underplaying of empirical representation. The new model of the intensive totality which emerges after 1930 focuses upon intermediate and general categories of experience because these refer to an essentially

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

64

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

social form of human experience, while the categories of empirical and interior depiction refer to essentially individual forms of experience. As Lukács makes clear ­repeatedly in a work such as ‘Narrate or Describe?’, the principal role of depictions of interiority and empirical detail within the intensive totality is to illuminate and shore-up portrayals of typicality, and this means that neither of these sets of depictions should possess any forcefully autonomous presence. In addition to the redefinition of the concept of life within the middle-period writings, a redefinition of the early notion of temporality is also apparent. At one level these two concepts can be said to constitute the two essential dimensions of the intensive totality, in that whereas the term ‘life’ now refers to the inclusive intensive totality, what is chiefly signified by Lukács’ use of the term ‘temporality’ is the way in which that inclusive totality evolves through the course of temporal duration. It will be recalled that, in the early aesthetic, Lukács had argued that the course of temporal duration could be divided up into historical epochs, which he referred to as ‘historico-philosophical configurations’. These configurations materialised, one after the other, within the course of historical time, and each displayed different degrees and types of divergence from the ideal but unattainable unity of authentic interiority and social experience which Lukács alludes to in The Theory of the Novel. In addition, during the historical existence of these configurations one or more significant aesthetic forms appear which match the explicit ‘historico-philosophical’ condition of each configuration. However, in the middle aesthetic the phrase ‘historico-philosophical configuration’ largely disappears, and is replaced by the term ‘social historical process’. Despite the change of terminology here, though, a change largely predisposed by Lukács’ switch from a Hegelian idealist to a Marxist-Leninist historical-materialist affiliation, the reference of the previous terminology is mainly retained, and what Lukács continues to address is the idea of a historical-social epoch or age in which the dialectic between the needs of interiority and the condition of society takes on a particular historical form and course; and in which the significant art forms which emerge within such an epoch are both determined by that course, and also attempt to depict it. However, while this general stance on historical evolution and aesthetic representation is maintained across the middle period, Lukács now turns his attention away from the trans-historical spans considered within The Theory of the Novel, and towards more recent historical developments; and that stance now becomes increasingly defined in terms of the transition from a period of reactionary bourgeois imperium dating from 1848 to the gradual emergence of a humanist, socialist society around 1900. The problem here, however, is that this change of orientation increasingly leads Lukács to evaluate canonic works of literature in relation to the extent to which they either portray the shortcomings of bourgeois society as bourgeois society, or envisage a future transition into socialism.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

65

Lukács argues that the bourgeois or socialist novel at its best seeks to r­ epresent the course of social-historical development and change both at any one historical point in time, and ‘in movement’ (Lukács, 1976: 163), and, for Lukács, ‘The essential aim of the novel is the representation of the way society moves’ (Lukács, 1976: 169). In other words, the novel now has a clear dispensation to portray social-historical perspective and development and must adopt a narrative structure able to carry through such dispensation. Such representation must also take into account the role of what Lukács refers to as ‘progressing’ and ‘retarding’ factors: factors which either contribute to or work against the consolidation of authentic human nature and, or, the emergence of a genuinely humanist-socialist social order (Lukács, 1976: 170–1). The chief progressing factor to be portrayed here is that of human freedom and the drive for equality and justice; while the chief ‘retarding’ (or ‘maintaining’) factor to be represented is the imperative to preserve a status quo which stands against the overall institution of freedom, equality, and justice (Lukács, 1976: 171). Lukács conceives of society as consisting at one level of a series of struggles between these progressing and retarding tendencies, and goes on to argue that, within a society dominated by bourgeois capitalism, this struggle will also normally be won by the more overriding retarding tendencies. It follows from this that such an outcome should also be mirrored within the bourgeois-realist novel, which should depict the balance of the dialectic between freedom and oppression which exists within bourgeois society, a balance which is weighted in favour of oppression, but in which progressing tendencies still exist. This is why, in Balzac, a ‘fine flowering of the spirit’ is always present but also always overcome by ‘a swamp of self-prostitution corruption and depravity’ (Lukács, ‘Balzac: Lost Illusions’, in Lukács, 2002: 60). On the other hand, this is also why a later work of socialist critical realism produced during the period of the ‘new humanism’, after 1900, is able to be more positive, and envisage a past or present bourgeois social formation in which progressing tendencies show the way forward. Such a novel ‘is in a position … both to portray the totality of a society in its immediacy and to reveal its pattern of development’, and, in such a novel, the ‘flowering of the spirit’ may be seen to hold its own against the swamp of corruption and depravity (Lukács, ‘Critical Realism and Socialist Realism’, in Lukács, 1963: 99). As previously argued, in the middle-aesthetic period Lukács is not overly concerned with drawing distinctions between drama and novel, perhaps because, during this period, it is the novel that is by far his over-riding concern. However, he does make one distinction between the two that is of some consequence here: one between the ‘totality of movements’ in the drama and – to return to a phrase briefly mentioned earlier – the ‘totality of objects’ in the novel. According to Lukács, the drama is characterised by a series of events in which

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

66

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

contradictions move remorselessly towards an inevitable, culminating collision, thus constituting what Lukács – quoting Hegel – calls a ‘totality of movement’ (Lukács, 1976: 108). Here, all ‘movement’ is encapsulated within a totality because the dramatic action eventually reaches a convulsive, circumscribing climax; and the central tendency here is one of dynamic movement towards ultimate conclusion. However, the novel is not so much characterised by a ‘totality of movements’ as by a far less dynamic ‘totality of objects’, within which a given section and period of the social-historical formation is portrayed in its full plenitude (Lukács, 1976: 177). Here, all ‘objects’ are linked together into a totality, and the emphasis is on the portrayal of those objects and the relationships which persist between them, rather than on the procession of those objects and relationships through temporal duration, towards some distant end-point. Clearly, such a procession must be depicted to some extent. However, that procession need not reach any conclusive destination, and the accent, instead, will be on portraying an extant state of affairs. All of this means that the totality of objects within the literary intensive totality, be it a bourgeois or ‘socialist-humanist’ intensive totality, need not generate any final, grand ‘collision’, or transformation, as in the drama. In the novel of critical realism ‘there is not the slightest need to depict ultimate victory or even a decisive triumph’ (Lukács, 1976: 169–70); and, while the drama may depict the ‘great convulsions, the great breakdowns of a world’, the novel will show the slow ‘process of disintegration’ of that world (Lukács, 1976: 169). However, even though the novel is not required to portray long-term largescale transformation, Lukács does make a distinction between the bourgeois and socialist-humanist novel here when he argues that the former is unable to visualise and represent the development of bourgeois society into anything other than a bourgeois order. For Lukács, this is an inescapable limitation of the bourgeois novel, and stems from the underlying fact that, in a capitalist society in which dominant ideology constantly seeks to set limits upon attempts to understand the social totality, the writer ensconced within a bourgeois world-view and ideology is unable to form a clear understanding either of that totality, or the way that it might be evolving into a new, different, and more advanced configuration. Social configurations do always evolve, and do always eventually develop into new and different kinds of social configurations. The bourgeois-realist novel, however, is unable to achieve the sense of perspective necessary in order to either make full sense of existing reality, or imagine alternatives to it; and it is partly because of this lack of genuine perspective that, for example, the characters within Balzac’s novels lurch from ‘catastrophe to catastrophe’ in a doomed attempt to understand the world around them (Lukács, ‘Balzac: Lost Illusions’, in Lukács, 2002: 57). However, while Lukács appreciates the difficulties which a nineteenth-century realist

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Narrate or describe?

67

novelist such as Balzac faced in attempting to arrive at a trans-historical sense of perspective in his work, he also believes that both contemporary socialist-humanist novelists, and bourgeois novelists who are now in a position to view existing socialism, have a duty to portray such perspective; and so ‘perspective’ now becomes one of the key terms of Lukács’ middle period. While, therefore, the fictional world of the enlightened novel may be disordered, and the characters who people that world may live within the framework of either bourgeois or corporatist-communist existence, the author must now ensure that the meta-narrative of the novel employs a perspective which encompasses that which lies beyond the fragmented understandings of those frameworks. However, Lukács does not only ask for a sense of trans-historical perspective here, but also for one which is structured in a systematic manner, from beginning to end; and this is to be achieved by establishing what he refers to as the ‘decisive social essence’ (Lukács, ‘Balzac: The Peasants’, in Lukács, 2002: 45). The phrase ‘decisive social essence’ refers to the fundamental historical changes that are occurring within a social configuration, such as, for example, those related to the transition from feudalism to capitalist society, or the supposed transition from capitalism to socialism. The portrayal of a particular stage of social development in the novel must, therefore, always be undertaken through the perspective afforded by a comprehension of the ‘decisive social essence’, and everything within the novel must contribute towards the portrayal of this decisive social essence. All the chains of cause and effect portrayed within the novel, all ‘accidents’ and seemingly chance events, all conflicts between progressing and retarding tendencies, are influenced by a need to conform to the logic of how to realise this decisive social essence. In this sense, there is also no more ‘setting’ within the Lukácsian intensive totality, because everything is now directly linked to this central conceptual trope. What we find prioritised, therefore, in this conception of the middleperiod aesthetic intensive totality, is the central category of perspective, a perspective which embraces both an abstract causal conception of historical development, and all material aspects of a particular historical conjuncture. All empirical instances within the novel are related to this perspective, in one way or another, and nothing is left unrelated. Conclusions This chapter has not attempted to undertake an exhaustive analysis of Lukács’ intellectual system over the 1916–57 period, as such a task would be beyond the scope of this book’s primary concerns. Instead, the focus of attention here has been on several key concepts which have their source in the early

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

68

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

a­ esthetic, and which also influence the late aesthetic, and Lukács’ writings on film. These concepts are those of ‘life’, ‘soul’, ‘freedom’, ‘totality’ and ‘essence’, the ‘intensive totality’, and ‘temporality’; and it has been argued here that the decisive change which takes place in the middle aesthetic relates most strongly to the categories of life, intensive totality, and temporality. The effect of these changes is to replace an indeterminate, intuitive model premised upon empirical and intermediate representation, with one based on conceptual narrational perspective. In this process Lukács comes to denigrate both naturalism (the ‘descriptive method’) and modernism, and also comes to adopt a highly prescriptive approach towards aesthetic representation. However, a distinction has to be made between the remorseless underlying logic of Lukács’ position, as it is set out here, and much of his actual, more applied literary criticism, which is rarely able or disposed to exemplify the full rigour of the intellectual model set out in a largely theoretical essay such as, say, ‘Narrate or Describe?’ For example, in The Historical Novel, a doctrinaire rejection of naturalism, and insistent emphasis on intensive perspective, is far less easily found; while, in another middle-period essay such as ‘Balzac: Lost Ilusions’, Lukács refers to the ‘wide space’ of the novel, a phase which is reminiscent of the ‘Balzacian background’ of The Theory of the Novel (Lukács, ‘Balzac: Lost Illusions’, in Lukács, 2002: 56–7). Similarly, in an essay entitled ‘Tolstoy and the Development of Realism’, which appeared in Studies in European Realism in 1950, Lukács adopts a tone which is at some considerable variance with the theoretical model of the narrational, mediated, affirmative intensive totality of the middle period, when he celebrates the ‘terrible dark poetry’ of Tolstoy as emblematic of an ‘epic-poetic’ critical realism (Lukács, in Craig (ed.), 1975: 303). Other examples could be given, and what these and many other possible examples show is that, in fact, many of the foundational concepts and orientations from the early aesthetic continue to exert a force on the middle-period writings. As will be argued in Chapter 3, many of these concepts and orientations also go on to exert a profound influence on both the late aesthetic and the late writings on film. While it is, therefore, necessary to develop the redefinitions of concepts such as life, totality, and essence to be found in the middle period aesthetic into the sort of a coherent intellectual model fabricated in this chapter, it also needs to be borne in mind that such a model remains an abstract, and does not define or characterise the entire spectrum of Lukács’ literary criticism during the ­middle-period, or the whole of the legacy that is handed on to the late and final writings, including the writings on film.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

3 Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory: The Specificity of the Aesthetic/Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen

Between 1945 and 1949 Lukács enjoyed considerable status as the communist world’s most renowned philosopher and aesthetician. In 1945 he also finally returned home from exile to his native Hungary, where he hoped to play a part in building a new, socialist culture. Shortly after his return he accepted a chair in Aesthetics at the University of Budapest, and helped edit the journal Forum, which was dedicated to the development and exploration of Marxist literary theory. However, in 1949 the Stalinist Hungarian Communist Party consolidated its hold over political and cultural life in the country, and one consequence of this was that the theory of progressive bourgeois literary realism which Lukács had developed in his writings of the 1930s and 1940s came under sustained official assault. As we have seen, Lukács consistently rejected both naturalism and modernism in those writings, although the focus of his censure was generally on the former, rather than latter. Nevertheless, over the 1945–49 period Lukács became particularly insistent and blunt in his denigration of modernism, as he forcefully pressed the case for committed, socially purposive realism. In addition to his withering assault on modernism, Lukács also turned his critical fire on philosophical existentialism during this period, because, just as, in his view, bourgeois-modernist aesthetics and art posed the greatest challenge to the development of a Marxist aesthetics, so also, Lukács believed, did western bourgeois existentialism pose the greatest threat to the development of Marxist philosophy. Lukács travelled to Western Europe during this period and engaged in heated debates with Karl Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre. The debate with Sartre was a particularly acrimonious one, with insults exchanged on both sides; Lukács asserting that the existentialist idea of freedom amounted to a ‘philosophical fallacy’, attractive to ‘individuals who refuse to participate in democratic life’, and Sartre rejoining with the slighting claim that Lukács’ ideas were little more than stereotypical ‘statements’, and that ‘the earth no longer turns

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

70

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

for Lukács. Perhaps in a secret corner of his soul it spins a little’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 400). During this period, what Lukács described as his ‘relentless struggle against the decadent Western philosophy and art’ may have succeeded to some extent in raising the international profile of Marxist aesthetics, but the polemical and accusatory tone which he often adopted also alienated many progressive artists and intellectuals from his thinking, both in the West and in the East, and for a considerable time to come (Kadarkay, 1991: 410). The difference of opinion with Sartre took place in Paris in 1949, and led to Lukács’ return to Hungary that year as something of a celebrity, and the most important Marxist critic of western modernist culture. Unfortunately, Lukács’ iconic standing did not last for long though, and a series of Communist Party purges which took place over the 1949–54 period eventually claimed him as one of their principal victims. In July 1949, and following both his Western European lecture trip, and the publication of The Young Hegel in 1948, Lukács was charged with ‘idealism, cosmopolitanism, and blasphemy against Lenin’ by party ideologues (Kadarkay, 1991: 405–6). Given the intimidating political environment that then prevailed in Hungary, Lukács knew such language could easily be translated into actions taken against him. Fearful of what might be about to happen, he responded immediately with a repentant 35-page certificate of ‘self-criticism’. However, this was deemed to be an insufficient declaration of confession, and Lukács was forced to reduce his paper to a far more directly penitential five pages of ‘constructive self-criticism’ and ‘revision’ which was eventually published in the journal Társadalmi Szmle in August 1949 (Kadarkay, 1991: 406). Nevertheless, and despite this abrogation, Lukács continued to come under attack from figures related to the Party, and, in response to this context, he attempted to draw back from any prominent involvement in public life. However, Lukács’ enforced abdication from the public sphere also seems to have somehow, and perhaps paradoxically, further reinforced his dogmatic hostility to modern art and philosophy; a hostility which reached its zenith with the publication of the highly polemical The Destruction of Reason, which appeared in 1954, although several chapters within the book had been originally written between 1945 and 1950. The Destruction of Reason argued with strident confidence and assurance that western democracy was closely associated with fascism, and that modern western philosophy was deeply irrationalist. According to Adorno, The Destruction of Reason represented ‘the destruction of Lukács’ own reason’, and the book has certainly tainted Lukács’ reputation severely (Adorno, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 152). Read again today, it appears excessively militant and insensate. However, both Lukács’ period of puritanical Stalinism, and the Stalinism embedded within the Hungarian body politic, began to subside quickly after

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

71

1953, following the death of Stalin, and Lukács soon found himself caught up in the preparatory stages of what eventually became the Hungarian Revolution. Having been pummelled by party hacks during the 1949–54 period, Lukács now found himself pressed back into service in the demands for reform which swept Hungary during 1955–56. During this period, Lukács also developed his influential theory of ‘Stalinism’, in which he argued that Stalinism should not be associated with one person, but be better regarded as a particular kind of totalitarian system, to be distinguished from other such systems, and certainly from more genuine forms of communism. Lukács’ theory of Stalinism helped to make him into something of a celebrity once more in Hungary, but it also created a future problem, in that it contradicted the then official Soviet interpretation of Stalinism as a ‘cult of personality’, an interpretation which had already been elevated to the status of formal policy by Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, at the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956. This embryonic problem was also exacerbated when, in October 1956, Lukács accepted a post as Minister of Culture in the new, reformist Hungarian government, led by Imre Nagy. Lukács soon resigned his post, however, on the somewhat intemperate grounds that the new government still contained some ‘Stalinists’ within its ranks. As events transpired, though, it is possible that this resignation may have saved his life. On 4 November the Soviet Union invaded Hungary. Nagy, Lukács and others were then arrested and transported to a prison camp. Nagy was eventually executed, apparently with great cruelty, but Lukács managed to escape death, although he expected that his end might come at any moment. Nevertheless, after his release, and from that point onwards, Lukács came under repeated attack, both from the new pro-Moscow regime in Hungary, and from Moscow itself; to the extent that he was accused of being ‘“the leading philosopher” of the 1956 revolution’, and the ‘theoretical shield behind which the counter-revolution marched’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 442–3). Following his narrow escape, and the context of unremitting hostility directed against him by powerful and threatening forces, Lukács vowed to stay out of politics for the foreseeable future, and devote himself to the task he had been preparing for over the last few years: the writing of his Aesthetic. During 1956 Lukács’ position on modernism also began to moderate somewhat. The key work here is Widen der missverstanden Realismus, published in English as both The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, and Writer and Critic (referred to hereafter as The Meaning of Contemporary Realism). Although the book appeared in 1958 it was actually written over the 1955–56 period, and was derived from a set of lectures which Lukács delivered at the Deutsche Akademie der Künste (Germany Academy of Art) in autumn 1955. Such a

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

72

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

chronology covers both Lukács’ Stalinist and anti-Stalinist phases, and makes the orientation of The Meaning of Contemporary Realism quite different from that of The Destruction of Reason. In The Meaning of Contemporary Realism Lukács continues to develop his position on bourgeois realism, a position which had acquired an enhanced reputation due to the publication of The Historical Novel in 1955. The essays in The Historical Novel were originally written during the late 1930s, and Lukács presents them again without amendment, arguing, somewhat unpersuasively in the Foreword of the 1960 edition, that, because the book was a ‘theoretical’ exploration of the ­bourgeois-historical novel in relation to ‘the portrayal of totality’, rather than a ‘purely literary-historical’ study, it did not require amendment (Lukács, 1976: 9). Essentially, however, Lukács is arguing that his position on realism – and therefore also on naturalism and modernism – had not altered between the late 1930s and 1955; and the same is largely, though, as we shall see, not entirely true of the positions relating to these terms found in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, which, Lukács argues, ‘contains no ideas I have not expressed elsewhere’ (Lukács, 1963: 9). Nevertheless, although Lukács’ position on realism may not have changed substantially, his position on Stalinism certainly had, and the context of The Meaning of Contemporary Realism is the post-Stalinist ‘thaw period’ ushered in by Khrushchev at the Twentieth Party Congress; as is made clear when Lukács argues in his book that ‘the effort to rid the [Marxist] movement of the disastrous legacy of Stalinism – and to rediscover the creative core of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin – remains our most urgent task’ (Lukács, 1963: 7). For Lukács, this ‘task’ should also involve the adoption of a less dogmatic official position on bourgeois literature, and Lukács cites a letter by Lenin’s wife in support of such an endeavour, in which she (so Lukács contends) argues that Lenin’s influential essay ‘Party Organisation and Party Literature’, which became the ‘bible of sectarianism in the arts during the ideological dictatorship of Stalin and Zhdanov’, ‘was not concerned with literature as fine art’, but only with didactic works (Lukács, 1963: 7–8). As we will see, Lukács’ position here led him to adopt a more liberal position on both bourgeois-realism and modernism in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. Although the literary style of The Meaning of Contemporary Realism is quite different from that of The Destruction of Reason and other writings from 1954, and is no longer ‘degraded into a mere affair of Marxist dogma’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 425); its source in a series of lectures, combined with Lukács’ self-styled charge to rescue Marxism from Stalinism, nevertheless means that the work remains polemical and somewhat normative. For example, although Lukács highlights the problem caused by the ‘illustrative’ (ie., ideological) aspect of socialist realism in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, he does

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

73

not take his criticism of socialist realism particularly far, and even concludes his study with the twin assertions that, in its commitment to the representation of totality, socialist realism remains closer to the model classical realism of Balzac and Tolstoy than does the more ‘problematic’ contemporary bourgeois realism of Thomas Mann and others; and, that, as socialist realism develops, bourgeois critical realism ‘will wither away’ (Lukács, 1963: 114). This normative and dismissive approach is also applied to modernism in the chapter in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism entitled ‘The Ideology of Modernism’. Here, Lukács argues that artistic form should always be determined by ‘the basic question … what is man?’, rather than by purely formal considerations, as is often the case with modernism (Lukács, 1963: 19). In addition to such realist, humanist determination, Lukács also argues that the writer is under an ethical imperative to represent the sort of forms of ‘socially normal typology’ which are often subverted within modernist practice. Thus, realist writing should exclude the sort of ‘degraded’ ‘neurotic’ characters found in the writings of Joyce, Beckett, Musil, and Faulkner (Lukács, 1963: 31). Lukács does not approve of these types of characterisations and forms of representation, even if they do reflect a ‘nightmarish’, distorted reality; and, in a re-articulation of earlier essays from the 1940s such as ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, he goes on to argue that ‘Life under capitalism is, often rightly, presented as a distortion … of the human subject. But to present psychopathology as a way of escape from this distortion is itself a distortion’ (Lukács, 1963: 33). It is not always clear whether Lukács’ writings over the 1950–58 period represent entirely his own sincerely held views, or the political tightrope which he was compelled to walk at the time. In The Meaning of Contemporary Realism Lukács clearly has to be very careful about what he says, given what almost happened to him in 1956; and the tightrope which he treads in his book compels him to remain both critical of modernism, and supportive of socialist realism. Nevertheless, at least in some parts of The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, Lukács appears to be becoming a little more open to the idea of modernism, and this comes through in relation to his treatment of the work of Franz Kafka. In The Meaning of Contemporary Realism modernism is associated with Lukács’ enduring bete noir, naturalism, on the basis that, in both, descriptive detail is insufficiently connected to historical-social context. This is why modernism has an ‘essentially naturalist character’ (Lukács, 1963: 52). For Lukács, the problem with Kafka lies very much here, for, in representing a world in which ‘human beings are degraded to mere objects’, Kafka not only creates representations which are too objectified, but also too individuated, and insufficiently related to context (Lukács, 1963: 52). As another consequence of this, these representations also become overly symbolic, and, in a re-articulation of an idea common within the middle-period aesthetic, that

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

74

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

descriptive detail in naturalism leads to abstract ­ symbolism, Lukács argues that the symbolic modernist-naturalism in Kafka’s writings establishes an inopportune and fragmented ‘allegory of transcendent Nothingness’ (Lukács, 1963: 53). However, while Lukács is primarily motivated to denounce such symbolic modernist-naturalism, and nihilism, he is also concerned here to reinterpret Kafka in terms of a more advantageous empiricist-realism; and this leads Lukács to assert both that Kafka belongs with the modernists, and also with ‘the great realistic writers’, because of his ‘imaginative evocation of the concrete novelty of the world’ (Lukács, 1963: 77). Rather surprisingly, Kafka is actually hailed as ‘one of the greatest of all’ realist writers, his ‘original achievement’ much needed in the present day, his work possessing ‘astonishing impact and startling power … wonderfully suggestive descriptive’ (the term ‘descriptive’, of course, is usually employed pejoratively within Lukács’ middle-period writings) (Lukács, 1963: 78). Thus, at least to some extent, Lukács holds Kafka up for considerable praise, and, while the overall treatment of Kafka in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism certainly falls squarely within the general critique of naturalism and modernism which is symptomatic of the middle-period aesthetic, something new may be emerging here: a more positive conception of suggestive, concrete modernism, which looks back to the early aesthetic, and forward to both the late aesthetic, and Lukács’ consideration of film. The Aesthetic Between 1954 and 1956 Lukács wrote a number of articles on philosophical aesthetics which appeared in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (German Journal of Philosophy). These articles were then re-published together, in 1957, as On Besonderheit as an Aesthetic Category/Über die Besonderheit als Kategorie der Ästhetick (referred to hereafter as Besonderheit). A Hungarian translation, A különösség mint eszlétikai kategória, also appeared the same year. Lukács regarded this work as pointing towards a new direction: as a ‘prolegomena’ to the later The Specificity of the Aesthetic, in the Kantian sense of that word. In Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, Kant had argued that Hume had ‘first interrupted my dogmatic slumbers and gave my speculations in the field of speculative philosophy a new direction’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 445). That new direction was towards the study of empirical reality, and represented a shift away from a scrutiny of abstract philosophical generalisation, towards an understanding of the particular and specific. As with Kant, in both Besonderheit, and the later Aesthetic, Lukács is concerned with identifying the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

75

specificity of the aesthetic, and, as with Hume’s influence on Kant, the impact of the 1956 Revolution and Occupation on Lukács seems to have led him to wake from his own ‘dogmatic slumbers’, and to focus on forms of particularity and individualism, as opposed to the general and normative definitions which he had sometimes applied throughout the middle period. For example, in Besonderheit, Lukács quotes Descarte’s ‘omnis determinatio est negatio’ (‘every definition is a denial’), in order to question the wisdom of arriving at definite aesthetic laws and models, whether those laws and models be derived from Marxism or not (Kadarkay, 1991: 445). It appears, therefore, that the path towards the late aesthetic may lead from the empirical-realist consideration of Kafka in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, to Besonderheit, and, then, as we will see, to a reflection on the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn; before finally arriving at the Aesthetic itself. On Besonderheit as a Category of the Aesthetic is a little-known work, and has been completely eclipsed by The Specificity of the Aesthetic. Nevertheless it still succeeded in arousing the wrath of the communist establishment when it appeared because its focus on what Lukács called the ‘dialectics of the particular’ was read as a metaphor for a need to both understand the specificity of Hungarian communism, and reject more general communist models imposed from outside. In Besonderheit, therefore, Lukács is calling directly for a philosophical shift from a study of axioms to a consideration of particularity, and, indirectly, for a political shift from the Soviet model to a specifically ‘Hungarian road to socialism’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 445). While it is the notion of ‘perspective’ which dominates the aesthetic of the middle period, therefore, a focus on particularity now emerges as a key theme in Lukács’ thinking, and this has considerable implications for his future consideration of film in The Specificity of the Aesthetic. The Specificity of the Aesthetic (hereafter referred to as the Aesthetic), appeared in 1963, and marks a return to the questions of abstract philosophy Lukács had more or less set aside following the publication of History and Class Consciousness in 1923 and Lenin: A Study of His Thought, in 1924. Apart from The Young Hegel (1948), and the highly polemical The Destruction of Reason (1954), the bulk of Lukács’ major writings over the 1931–63 period were concerned with questions of literary criticism or political philosophy. The Aesthetic, therefore, marks a point of changeover, as well as return to some of the issues which Lukács had explored in early works such as Soul and Form and The Theory of the Novel. At the same time, Lukács’ return to general questions of high aesthetic theory in the Aesthetic also accompanied his re-engagement with issues relating to film. Lukács’ first engagement with film was, of course, through his ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, which was originally written in 1911. However, it was not until much later in his

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

76

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

career that he turned once more to the cinema, in a series of interviews and short essays published between 1958 and 1971 in the film journals Cinema Nuovo and Filmkultúra, and in a section of the Aesthetic entitled ‘Film’. However, a distinction can be drawn between the section in the Aesthetic and the journal contributions, in that these contributions (with the exception of two) were all produced over the 1965–71 period, after Lukács had completed work on the Aesthetic, and had commenced work on his next, and final major project: Toward the Ontology of Social Being/Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftslichen Seins (1971–73) (hereafter referred to as the Ontology). These contributions must, therefore, be seen against a context in which Lukács had moved on from the central concerns of the Aesthetic, to concentrate more on questions of ontology and ethics. Lukács’ general attitude to all things intellectual and otherwise also changed immediately after completing the Aesthetic. The catalyst for that change was the death of his wife, and the impact which this emotional ‘catastrophe’ had on Lukács also further requires that a distinction be drawn between Lukács’ last period, from 1963 to 1971 – the period in which the journal contributions were made – and the slightly earlier period of the Aesthetic (Heller, et al., in Heller (ed.), 1983: 126). There are, therefore, grounds for considering both the treatment of film and general articulation of Lukács’ late aesthetic in the Aesthetic as a distinctive body of thought, bounded, on the one hand, by the writings on literary realism of the middle period, and, on the other, by the work on the Ontology. While the former of these has been described as a ‘masquerade’ (Heller, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 178), and the latter as work carried through by the mourning Lukács ‘under the stern discipline of an unwavering asceticism’ (Heller, et al., in Heller (ed.), 1983: 126), it could be argued that the Aesthetic returns to many of the core premises and character of Lukács’ thought, and, in particular, to a model of human ‘species essence’, or Gattungswesen, which has its source in the conceptions of ‘soul’ to be found in Soul and Form, The Theory of the Novel, and ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’. On the other hand, the Aesthetic has also been characterised as ‘a puzzling and curious work’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 450). In the Aesthetic, Lukács returns to the questions of alienation and the means through which alienation might be transcended which he had originally considered in the early aesthetic. As in that body of work, so, in the Aesthetic, the source of alienation is conceived of as both existential and historical: existential, in that human consciousness must confront a world of objects alien to consciousness; and historical, in that capitalist modernity reinforces the subordination of consciousness to that world of objects through instating conditions such as fetishism, commodification, and reification. These existential and historical factors engender what Lukács refers to as the domain of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

77

‘ordinary life’, a utilitarian and materialistic domain in which consciousness is ‘trapped and held fast in a web of a thousand strands, a thousand contingent connections and relationships’ (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 31). However, despite such entrapment, consciousness is also endowed with the capacity to transcend the manifold conditionalities of ordinary life through identification with the province of the ‘soul’, and engagement with the movement of ‘culture’, in an attempt to realise freedom and totality. As we have seen, the concept of the ‘soul’ was central to Soul and Form. However, in the Aesthetic, the term ‘soul’ is largely replaced by those of ‘species essence’ (Gattungswesen) and ‘being’ (Wesen). Nevertheless, this amounts only to a terminological, rather than conceptual shift, and both of these terms continue to refer to the idea that the experience of freedom and totality is an innate requirement of human nature (Heller, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 177). Such experience is also characteristic of the idea of ‘culture’, a term which pervades the early, middle, and the late aesthetic periods, and which refers to the forms of activity which the soul engages in, in order to achieve freedom and totality. As we have seen, such forms of activity can be either ‘objectivised’ or ‘non-objectivised’. Non-objectivised forms of activity are the outcome of attempts to transcend alienation and experience freedom and totality within the course of everyday existence; while objectivised forms of activity are the outcome of attempts to embody such transcendence and experience within works of art, and even, as Lukács asserts in the Aesthetic in relation to film, within forms of mass culture (Lukács, 1981, II: 489). However, while manifestations of non-objectivised culture are of undisputable value, manifestations of objectivised culture are sometimes of more questionable worth, because a work of art, like all other objects, inevitably adds to an object-laden world foreign to consciousness. Nevertheless, and despite this, the Aesthetic is premised on the conviction that, within a contemporary world increasingly beset by instrumental rationality, works of art have now become almost the last refuge for the exposition and representation of species essence. While, therefore, Lukács had once placed considerable emphasis on the capacity of manifestations of nonobjectivised culture to embody ‘true’, as opposed to ‘fetishised’ consciousness, in the Aesthetic he argues that the potency of such manifestations has diminished because the contemporary world – including the ‘socialist’ world – is now a ‘completely reified world’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 823); and that true consciousness can now only find expression through the work of art: ‘the objectivation whose function is defetishization’ (Heller, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 184). However, not all art possesses this ‘de-fetishising’ principle, and only the ‘great objectivations’, which have ‘worked themselves out’ of the fetishised consciousness which characterises ordinary life (Heller, in Heller (ed.), 1983:

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

78

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

185), and which ‘possess timeless validity’, have the capacity to exhibit species essence (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 14). In addition to establishing the general principle that the work of art possesses the potential to demonstrate species essence, Lukács also turns to the character of such demonstration as a form of ‘reflection’ (Widerspiegelung). In fact, Volume I of the Aesthetic actually begins with a consideration of the ‘problem of reflection’, indicating how important this notion is for the work as a whole (Lukács, 1981, I: 27). Because he is a philosophical realist and historical materialist, Lukács emphasises the point that all art, everyday thought, and scientific rationalisation, is, at one level, a form of ‘reflection’ of reality (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 116). However, Lukács does not use the term reflection in a naive sense, and argues instead, and in a way that conforms closely to classical dialectical materialist theory, that thought and art, are ‘copies’ (Abbild), ‘imitations’ (Nachahmung) or ‘reflections’ (Widerspiegelung) of reality (Lukács, 1981, II: 467). Here, ‘reflection’ of reality is mediated through consciousness, and artistic reflection can, therefore, be considered as a formulation of ‘the relationships in which men stand to the experienced world’ (Pascal, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 148). Of course, any particular formulation may encompass only a limited range of these relationships. However, to be a ‘great objectivation’, such formulations must also encompass the twin aspects of species essence: freedom and totality. In addition, though, because artistic reflection must at least aim to portray the generality and totality of relationships in which men stand to the world, this ideal model of ‘culture’ as freedom and totality must also be presented in conjunction with the way in which such ideal traits co-exist alongside the contradictions and contingencies of everyday experience and ‘ordinary life’, because such antinomies are manifestly part of the totality of lived experience. This means that the art work, as reflection of reality, must aim at totality, and, in doing so, also be a formulation of both the essential and the secondary, the ideal and the ordinary relationships in which men stand to the experienced world. This, in turn, also means that the proper domain of art is one constituted by the intersection of the ideal, the commonplace and the inferior; a domain which Lukács refers to as that of ‘speciality’, or Besonderheit, the ‘central aesthetic category’ (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 115). Literally translated, the German term Besonderheit should mean ‘special’ in terms of ‘particularity’, or ‘distinctiveness’. However, Lukács does not use the term in this way, and, in the Aesthetic, Besonderheit refers to the ‘special’ significance of the intermediate, rather than the particular, or singular. As we will see in a moment, for example, Lukács makes a distinction between Besonderheit as the realm of the intermediate, and Einzelheit as the realm of ‘singularity’.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

79

Although Besonderheit may be the central category of the aesthetic, however, it remains only one modality of the mega-category of ‘reflection’, or Widerspiegelung, which Lukács believes to amount to the most fundamental form of knowledge, because it unites human consciousness and the experienced world with external reality. In the Aesthetic Lukács also discusses three types of categorical applications of reflection, which he argues are ‘the most general forms of reflection’ (Lukács, 1981, I: 686). These are the categories of the singular (Einzelheit), the universal (Allgemeinheit), and the ‘special’ (Besonderheit). These categories, which are derived from Kant, Hegel, and also formal logic, and which were also widely used in works of classical twentieth-century Marxist-Leninist philosophy, refer respectively to particular things, the universal type of a particular thing, and the way in which particular things become absorbed into relative generalities; and, for Lukács, these categories are not separate from each other, but are to be conceived of as points along a graded scale. Lukács also argues that artistic reflection cannot mainly be associated with either Einzelheit or Allgemeinheit, because a work of art is neither a universal thing nor a particular thing; but is made up of many parts and relations; and also tends to portray generalities, rather than singularities or universals. This means that it is the third category, that of Besonderheit, which is most appropriate to the aesthetic reflection of reality. Besonderheit marks out the province which lies between the singular and the universal, and Lukács argues that, in an attempt to deliver an account of the relations and determinations which accrue to things, artistic reflection moves ‘up’ from the singular, and ‘down’ from the universal, in a series of movements which constitute provisional, partial syntheses of these relations and determinations (Lukács, 1981, II: 240). We can see here, in this median notion of Besonderheit, or ‘speciality’, an echo of the idea expressed within the middle-period aesthetic that the realm of the bourgeois-realist novel is one in which nothing of a ‘decisive’ character ought to occur. As with such an absence of final novelistic determination, Besonderseit also refers to a situation in which a series of complexes continues to evolve outside of and apart from any act or process of fundamental alteration. Similarly, as in the middle aesthetic, so also in the Aesthetic, Lukács refers to the partial syntheses which make up the field of speciality as ‘mediations’. While, however, there may be some similarities here with the middle aesthetic, there are also significant differences. For example, Lukács adopts more abstract terminology and concepts in the Aesthetic than can be commonly found within the middle aesthetic when he argues that, within the field of Besonderheit, art draws ‘down’ universals as ‘powers of life’ (Macht des Lebens) related to the fate of man (Lukács, 1981, II: 229). Here, ideal concepts such as, for example, the ‘tragic’ are drawn down into a series of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

80

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

relations and determinations which exemplify or attend on the tragic (and, as we will see, often do so trenchantly) without ever encompassing the noumenal, abstract character of that category. More closely related to the middle aesthetic though is Lukács’ argument that art also takes ‘up’ singularity into Besonderheit through placing the singular item, such as, say, an individual fictional character, within a series of relations and determinations, some of which typify both that character and those relations and determinations, some of which do not. In this process, the concrete nature of singularity is also left behind, although, as will be argued, Lukács also goes on to make an important distinction here between the object as singularity, and the individual person as singularity; and, unlike that of the object, the identity of the individual person as singularity is not left behind here, but very much retained. In addition, Lukács also makes a distinction here between the noumenal category of singularity (Einzelheit) and its manifestations within phenomenal experience, arguing that, in terms of human experience, such manifestations take on the form of micro-complexes, rather than pure singularities. While art takes up singularity into complexes of relations and determinations within Besonderheit, therefore, those, and other relations and determinations, are also inherent within any particular manifestation of singularity, as no one thing can be entirely separated from the determinations and relations associated with it, and which surround it (Lukács, 1981, II: 232). Initially, the relations and determinations associated with a manifestation of singularity are ‘undeveloped’, and exist as a body of disorganised possibilities which is then given augmented structure, as singularity is taken up into the field of macro-mediations which constitutes both Besonderheit, and the work of art (Lukács, 1981, II: 247). Here, the relations emanating from the singular interact with other relations operating at a more general level, and constitute a series of interactive, evolving ‘complexes’. However, for Lukács, within the phenomenal experience of lived Besonderheit (or the Lebenswelt – which amounts to the same thing), and also within the sphere of Besonderheit which constitutes the main body of the work of art, such organisation is also crucially dictated by the need to centre on, and build on, those relations and determinations connected to the singular and the intermediate which are associated with the ‘humanly relevant substance’ (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 129). This is also a need which, according to Lukács, is often vitiated within ‘ordinary life’, and which the work of art is, therefore, duty-bound to institute in the interests of both the Aesthetic, and the actual experienced character of the Lebenswelt. The artistic Besonderheit can, therefore, be conceived of as a sort of mediating and mediated sphere, in which a ‘direction of movement takes place within the margins of Besonderheit’. Here, artistic renderings of Einzelheit and Allgemeinheit can be found in which Macht des

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

81

Lebens (powers of life) and the singular as micro-complex interact within a field of mediations devoted to the exploration of the humanly relevant substance. The ‘direction of movement’, or series of movements, which takes place within the aesthetic is, therefore, one which leads ‘upwards’ from the singular, and ‘downwards’ from the general. However, it is always one which, ultimately, has both ‘its origins and ending in Besonderheit’, in the sense that Besonderheit is the central organising principle here (Lukács, 1981, II: 240). As argued, while artistic Besonderheit constitutes a ‘space for movement’ which appropriates the boundaries of Einzelheit and Allgemeinheit, that space for movement should, ideally, not encompass Einzelheit or Allgemeinheit in any substantive sense, and should always remain primarily within the intermediate territory of Besonderheit. For Lukács, the ‘basic categorical structure of the aesthetic sphere’ is one in which Einzelheit and Allgemeinheit become sublated (aufgehoben) into Besonderheit; where the Hegelian-derived term ‘sublate’ refers to a situation in which the singular and the general are negated in their pure categorical form, while continuing to persist as partial elements of a new synthesis within Besonderheit (Lukács, 1981, II: 240). Lukács then goes on to describe how the general and the singular come to be sublated into Besonderheit. In terms of Allgemeinheit, Lukács appears to argue (as indicated earlier, when it was stated that the general can often persist trenchantly) that, while the general must be sublated into Besonderheit, it cannot be entirely so sublated, because, as a universal, it must retain a forceful element of universality, or it will simply be negated, and have lessened vitality within the work of art. In any case, the concept of sublation does not imply such a total categorical elimination. This means that the universal still appears within the field of Besonderheit, and within the aesthetic sphere, as an important, often fundamentally determining power of life (Lukács, 1981, II: 229). On the other hand, the aesthetic sublation of the singular occurs in a somewhat different manner, and through a process in which the relations and determinations accruing to the singular are brought out and made ‘more visible’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 232). However, and as previously argued, not all those determinations and relations which accrue to the singular should be made visible in this way, and only those which relate to humanly relevant being. Here, and as argued, Lukács defines the singular more as a complex, than a pure categorical singularity, and, in yet another dig at naturalism, he goes on to argue that aesthetic reflection should not attempt to capture the uniqueness of the singular, ‘as in naturalism’, but, on the other hand, should seek to set out the humanly relevant aspects of the singular as complex (Lukács, 1981, II: 232–3). On the other hand, and as will be argued more fully later in this chapter, Lukács also insists that art must respect the singularity of the identity of the individual

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

82

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

person. Like the singular, the universal also exists in the work of art as a form of complex. However, the universal as complex is of a much more abstract and decisive character than is the case with the singular as complex, and particularly the human singularity as complex; and Lukács insists that art must remain closer to the humanly singular than the universal, so that ‘the spiritual and sensuous heart of the system must never leave the ground of concrete human life’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 218). This conception of the sublation of the artistic singular and general within Besonderheit, and of Besonderheit as a kind of sphere or field of movement, then leads Lukács to address questions of aesthetic style appropriate to such a process. For example, Lukács (unsurprisingly) sees naturalism as moving too far from the centre of Besonderheit towards particularism, and allegory as moving too far towards universalism. In both cases here, the resulting diminution of Besonderheit also means the loss of Ansich, the human aspect of reality, because the scope for exploring the relations and determinations which make up the human system of activity is reduced if that system becomes disproportionately universalised or atomised. These views clearly echo both the criticism of ‘abstract idealism’ found in The Theory of the Novel, and that of the ‘descriptive method’ found in an essay such as ‘Narrate or Describe?’ However, in general, it is the early rather than middle aesthetic which comes closer to the overall orientation of the Aesthetic. For example, the notion of Besonderheit set out here is more akin to the notion of the indeterminate Balzacian ‘background’ of The Theory of the Novel than the more organised intensive totality preferred in the writings of the middle period. Similarly, the notion of ‘powers of life’ being ‘drawn down’ from the universal is also far more unformulated a concept than the idea of instilling a determining ‘decisive social essence’ within every mediation of the intensive totality. All of this suggests considerable connections between the early and late aesthetics, as Lukács returns to the domain of high philosophy. Lukács’ notion of the singular as complex, and his demand that art must portray the humanly relevant substance, also leads him to argue that the ‘immediate unity of the personality’ should be ‘predominant’ within the work of art (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 136). Here, Lukács makes the distinction already touched upon earlier between the singularity of objects and of persons, and, while the singularity of objects may not be taken up into artistic Besonderheit (as in naturalism) because that would lead to atomisation and fragmentation, that of the person must retain its identity within the work of art, in order to maintain the fundamental importance of individual human identity and value. There is also no real point in emphasising the singular identity of an object per se, because it does not matter whether or not the relations and determinations accruing to that object overwhelm

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

83

its ­singular identity. The object is only significant, and only has an identity, insofar as it relates to meaningful human matters; and a focus on the identity of the object as such – as an autonomous material thing – could only lead to naturalism. However, it is a different matter altogether where human beings are concerned, and, in accord with the governing principle of sublation, the work of art should attempt to portray the array of relations and determinations which accrue to a particular human being without allowing those relations and determinations to overwhelm the unitary identity of that person. In addition to the Hegelian notion of sublation, Lukács also derives this position from one of the works which influenced his middle period: Engels’ 1885 ‘Letter to Minna Kautsky’, in which, according to Lukács, Engels draws on the general idea of sublation to insist that in the work of true realist literature ‘everyone is a type, but also similtaneously a single individual, a Dieser [a ‘present one’], as old Hegel would have expressed himself ’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 232). In the Aesthetic, Lukács also argues that this sort of portrayal is also to be facilitated through the principle of ‘inherence’ (Inhärenz) (Lukács, 1981 I: 704). Like Besonderheit, inherence is not restricted to works of art, but is a more general concept related to understanding and representation, and refers to a situation in which a conglomeration of relations and determinations can be ‘grasped immediately’ through the scrutiny of a concrete singularity, but where, in addition those relations and determinations do not overwhelm the identity of that singularity (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 136). Here, the identity of the singular is maintained because the array of relations and determinations which accrue to it only inhere to it, and are not concretely part of the singular, so that the singular then retains precedence. Because meaning can, in addition, only be attributed to what is humanly relevant, that singularity can only be a person, or, in the case of the realist work of art, a fictional character; and this in turn means that the concept of inherence has an inherent humanist denotation. Through inherence, the singular as human micro-complex is afforded a structure of meanings, relations, and determinations, through both the mode of representation employed in the work of art, and the concomitant aesthetic reception of that mode. So, for example, within a suitably structured novel, relations and determinations inhere to a particular fictional character if the novel seeks to establish that character’s singular identity in relation to and through an array of relations and determinations (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 136). It is then hoped that the reader will follow a similar path, led by the process of inherence. The principle of inherence can only be set out in outline at this point, because it is one best explored in application. However, such a detailed application of the concept of inherence is beyond the scope of this present study, which is here preoccupied mainly with situating the concept within Lukács’

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

84

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

overall position within the specificity of the Aesthetic. What can be said now, however, is that the principle of inherence functions as a sort of practical application of the principle of sublation, and illustrates how sublation may be seen to work within the work of art. It is also apparent that inherence is concerned with evocative, intuitive understanding and representation, and, as we will see, this fits well with Lukács’ general intuitionist position on film as set out in the Aesthetic. At the core of that position, however, and as exemplified by the principles of sublation and inherence, is the idea that ‘what is particular and contingent in the individual must never vanish entirely’ (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 137). It is clear from the above that the principles of inherence, sublation, and also Besonderheit, are based on a predominantly intuitionist, rather than rationalist theory of knowledge, and the same holds largely true of the general theory of aesthetic reflection which Lukács sets out in the Aesthetic. Unlike scientific reflection, which is based on a degree of systematic generalisation that is, according to Lukács, ultimately ‘deanthropomorphising’, art must never turn into a ‘somewhat orderly complex of facts … that might be refuted by another complex of facts’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 218). Aesthetic reflection, even in conceptually based forms of art such as literature and drama, is largely based on an ‘approximate … evocation’ and expression of the relationships in which men stand to the experienced world; and, in order to generate such an expression, the art work must evoke, rather than systematically conceptualise those relationships. Thus, in the Aesthetic, Lukács refers to the ‘sensual-sensuous [rather than conceptual] systematisation’ (sinnlich-sinnfällige Systamatisierung) which takes place within the work of art, the literary ‘aesthetic evocation of a “world”’; the aesthetic system as having a ‘spiritual and sensous heart’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 218); the ‘auditory-evocative’ role of music; the ‘visual-evocative effectiveness’ of architectural design (Lukács, 1981, II: 238); and – of significance to this study – the ‘visually-evoked atmospheres’ of film (Lukács, 1981, II: 497). It is clear, therefore, that Lukács’ general position is based on a predominantly intuitionist model of aesthetic experience. However, like the meta­category of ‘reflection’ itself, that model is not only premised upon the notion that the art work should evoke a fictional aesthetic world, but also upon the conviction that such evocation should engender change in the recipient of aesthetic experience. The art work must, therefore, not only be seen to establish value of various sorts within itself, but must also help to bring about an augmentation of value within the consciousness of the spectator, and, following this, through action, within the life-world of the spectator. According to Lukács, the aesthetic should be concerned with the presentation of the ‘here and now of man and his environment’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 223); and Lukács

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

85

argues that what occurs in aesthetic expression is that the work of art constitutes a ‘picture of reality’ out of which the spectator intuits a world (a real ‘picture of reality’) which is the presumed basis of the art-picture currently before her or him. Here, the artist’s art-picture is presumed to stem from and embody the interaction between artistic consciousness and a lived/experienced situation or set of situations in human historical experience. This is the ‘real picture of reality’ which the spectator intuits as lying behind the art work, and which the art work is deemed to refer to (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 120). Generally speaking, the world evoked in the work of art is viewed as significant, because it is ordered, and impressive in various ways, not least of which is that it constitutes a totality, and mobilises arresting forms of characterisation. At the same time, the ‘real picture of reality’ which the recipient intuits as lying behind the art work is seen, by approximation, to be charged with meaning and significance also. This intuition then leads spectators to compare these more satisfying intuited ‘world’ and ‘art’ pictures with their own lesser picture of themselves and own world, and this process can provoke change. Two totalities are in evidence here: the totality of the art object and its ‘world’, and the totality of the perceived congruence between consciousness and lived/historical experience which, it is supposed, was the initial basis for the art object. The intuition of these two Totalitäts by the spectator/recipient, in relation to her/his own lesser experience, can then lead to what Lukács calls a ‘catharsis’ or ‘moving-shaking effect’: an enhanced awareness of the inadequacy of ‘ordinary life’ which provides the potential for the spectator to move out of aesthetic experience and attempt to change her or his own real world (Királyfalvi, 1975: 117). This idea of a dialectical process of engagement with and agent-led activist disengagement from the aesthetic in order to enhance self-awareness, and effect change in the world, lies at the centre of Lukács’ theory of realist aesthetic experience in the Aesthetic. Finally, it should be clear by now that the model of aesthetic experience which Lukács sets out in the Aesthetic is very much based on the premise that the work of art must seek to achieve a form of almost organic unity. For example, Lukács insists that each detail within the work of art must play an apposite role within the work as a whole, and must relate to every other detail in order to form a complete system, in which the ‘sensuous systematisation of all determinants’ aims at ‘completeness’, and the formation of a ‘concrete totality’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 218). As we have seen, the notion of totality is central to virtually all of Lukács’ writings, and, here, in the Aesthetic, is often associated with an understanding of the Lebenswelt which Lukács now also relates to the model of Besonderheit. Lukács views the world of human experience as consisting of an evolving series of relative and partial totalities, or ‘complexes’, which persist in a flux of interaction with each other. This is the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

86

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

‘extensive totality of the world of objects and relations’, and also the worlds of the Lebenswelt and Besonderheit. However, because the work of art is a finite ‘objectivation’, it must necessarily arrive at a renunciation of the experience of this continuing, extensive totality – and confine itself to the portrayal of ‘the intensive totality of the determinations in a concrete ensemble of objects and relations’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 217). As the term implies, and as the above argument suggests, the artistic ‘intensive totality’ must necessarily be unified, and all of its parts must play a proper role within the design of the whole. Such a model of organic unity seems to imply unified and apposite coherence at the level of aesthetic form, and, while Lukács does regard this as an ‘important issue’, in order to avoid the charge of formalism he is quick to state that the ‘formal side of the problem of totality in art’ is not his main concern (Lukács, 1981, II: 218). Alongside formal coherence, completeness and totality, the intensive totality of the work of art must also portray human-oriented ‘truth of life’ in a manner that also amounts to a meaningful totality – and this is Lukács’ main concern. While the work of art (and particularly the visual or auditory work of art) is not required to provide answers, it is obliged to present a coherently meaningful expression of the ‘truths’ which it is attempting to portray. Lukács also turns to ethical-philosophical ground here, when he argues that the experience of ‘completeness’ is, in fact, an essential human need, and that, when the work of art is able to relate the world of objects and relations to humanly relevant meaning so as to form a totality of objects, relations, and human-oriented ‘truths of life’, a profound degree of aesthetic portrayal and experience is attained. Lukács argues that the issue of the human need for completeness and totality is an area which, since the time of the ‘Romantics’, has received far too little attention; and that the romantic emphasis upon the ‘unfolding of personality’ has superceded this concern with completeness, a concern which he believes to be a ‘fundamental requirement of human life’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 219). The Aesthetic and film One of the reasons why Lukács was disinclined to become genuinely involved in an intensive study of the cinema was his belief that such commitment should ideally be offered by experienced specialists in film aesthetics, rather than by someone with a completely different affiliation. Lukács’ position here stems primarily from a philosophical stance derived from Hegel’s categorisation of the arts into distinct fields, and from his own concern with the aesthetic specificity of the arts. Nevertheless he did attempt to identify the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

87

aesthetic specificity of film both in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, and, in the Aesthetic, where the identity of the medium is discussed alongside that of literature, music, architecture, painting and other fields. Before turning to an analysis of the treatment of film in the latter work, however, it will first be advantageous to briefly summarise some of the key themes of the former, as such a summary will provide a platform for appreciating the continuities and discontinuities between ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ and the Aesthetic. In addition, the summary of ‘Thoughts’ presented here will not attempt to recapitulate the first chapter of this book, but will, instead, seek to explore some of the key concepts found in ‘Thoughts’ in greater detail. This more in-depth resumé will provide a fitting platform for an analysis of the treatment of film in the Aesthetic, and serve to link Lukács’ works of 1910 and 1963 together. As has been argued, In ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ Lukács emphasises both the negative and emancipatory potential of film form. For example, he argues that, in lacking ‘reasons’, ‘motives’, ‘background’ or ‘perspectives’ (Lukács, 1913), the film image reinforces the conditions of fragmentation and reification which characterise the subordination of consciousness within modernity, and, in consequence, becomes just one more ‘fragmented’ element in the ‘web of a thousand strands’ or objectivations which entrap consciousness (Márkus, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 6). On the other hand, Lukács also argues that, because film form was founded in and emerged from the very substance of the modern condition it also possessed the potential to disclose the brutish reality of that condition to the spectator, and, in so doing, intimate alternatives to that condition. If the film image possesses a ‘life without presence’, a ‘life without soul’, it is then also endowed with a utopian potential for expressing boundless possibility. Here, film constitutes a ‘completely different metaphysics’ (Lukács, 1913), one in which ‘Everything is possible – that is the worldview of the cinema’ (Lukács, 1913). However, although ‘Thoughts’ endorses an oppositional ‘cinema of the possible’, or ‘fantastic’ (Lukács, 1913), as we have seen, the essay also qualifies such endorsement in a number of crucial ways. For example, while Lukács’ enthusiasm for a cinema of the fantastic is based on his conviction that such a cinema would embody one of the two core aspects of ‘culture’ – that of freedom – he also believes that a cinema of wholly unlimited possibility would experience difficulty in embracing the other – that of totality – because the portrayal of totality requires a degree of organisation alien to a cinema of unlimited latitude. In the Aesthetic, Lukács also argues that any potential that lies latent within a cinema of the possible is inevitably constrained by the nature of the film image as concrete micro-totality. Here, the singular is given in such all-inclusive concentration that possibility as an oppositional

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

88

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

category becomes suspended, and the result is that the shot, the ‘totality of a single moment’, comes to reinforce the prevailing reification of ‘ordinary life’. In addition, such reification is also reinforced by the tendency which such a ‘mere moment’ has to ‘vanish’ quickly, as the film unfolds (Lukács, 1981, II: 492); and this means that prevailing abstractness is not only reinforced by the inclusive character of the film shot, but also by a concision and transience disadvantageous to the emergence of a cogent spectatorship which seeks to comprehend reality. The sort of random, ‘irresponsible’ spectatorship inevitably involved within a cinema of the possible also fails to conform to the model of aesthetic ‘reflection’ which Lukács endorses in the Aesthetic, in which a more coherent form of spectatorship is imagined – one self-impelled to compare the ‘worldpicture’ of the art work with the life-world of the spectator, so that the ‘leap’ from the ‘everyday human being’ (des Menschen des Alltags) to the ‘whole human being’ (Menschen ganz) – the person who understands himself and the larger picture of things – can take place (Lukács, 1981, II: 477). As we have seen, in the Aesthetic, Lukács has much recourse to the meta-category of ‘reflection’, or Widerspiegelung, a category which, as previously argued, stands for a formulation of ‘the relationships in which men stand to the experienced world’ (Pascal, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 148). However, Lukács also argues that, in order to satisfy human need, such a formulation must be dual in essence: must be a ‘double reflection’ (doppelter Widerspiegelung). In addition, when he comes to relate the idea of this double reflection to film he concludes that film is characterised by ‘a strange case of double reflection’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 467); and, according to Lukács, the treatment of film in the Aesthetic is largely motivated by the need to investigate this peculiar form of double reflection. In other words, to a certain extent, the entire discussion of film in the Aesthetic is filtered through this central concept, a concept which Lukács must give precedence to because of its relation to his underlying convictions concerning the importance of Marxist philosophical realism. The term ‘double reflection’, when applied to film (Lukács also applies it to architecture, crafts, gardens, and music in the fourth section of Volume Two of the Aesthetic), refers to a reflection of Wesen – or what Lukács also now increasingly refers to as intrinsic human meaning (Ansichsein) – and the forms of ‘appearance’ (Erscheinung): the world of phenomenal forms and experience (Lukács, 1981, II: 477). In the early aesthetic, Wesen and Erscheinung stood for the two spheres of the soul. Wesen refers to the sort of confrontation with ultimate questions and answers which the ‘naked soul’ engages in within the classical Greek drama: a confrontation which Lukács explores in depth in the essay in Soul and Form entitled ‘The Metaphysics of Tragedy’. Here, questions of human value and meaning are faced unswervingly, and consequential

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

89

decisions are made concerning life, death, and destiny. On the other hand, the term Erscheinung refers to a free and visceral experience of and representation of the phenomenal forms of everyday life. As we have seen, in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ Lukács makes much of the ability of film to render the forms of appearance in a vibrant and poetic manner. However, in the Aesthetic, he adopts a rather different approach to this question, to the extent that the notion of the forms of appearance now loses some of the vivacious, poetic connotations that it possessed in the 1913 formulation. Now, the double reflection in film is ‘peculiar’ for two reasons. The first of these is that the extent of film’s ‘closeness to life’ (Lebensnähe) (Lukács, 1981, II: 475), that is, to human perceptual experience, means that a new relationship between artistic form and perceptual experience is constituted, to the extent even that artistic form, and perceptual experience set within the real course of temporal duration, are brought into correspondence for the first time. Related to this is also the fact that ‘film is the only art in which visibility and the real course of time are categorically [emphasis added] linked’; and, for Lukács, this new kind of ‘categorical’ relationship is ‘unusual’, but also significant, because no previous form of aesthetic visual representation has been able to engage in such a relationship (as we will see later in this chapter, this relationship comes to play an important role within Lukács’ theory of film) (Lukács, 1981, II: 474). The second reason that the double reflection in film is also peculiar is that the ability of the medium to achieve a ‘closeness to life’ imparts a degree of importance to the naturalist capacities of the medium which also distinguishes it from all other art forms. Bearing in mind that, as argued, the notion of film as constituting a ‘strange case of double reflection’ motivates much of Lukács’ discussion of film within the Aesthetic, we will now explore these two reasons for the peculiarity of the medium, beginning, first, with the idea of film’s ‘closeness to life’, and to the ‘anthropomorphising’ and ‘deanthropomorphising’ consequences which flow from such proximity. As we have seen earlier in this chapter, Lukács is concerned that the inherent ‘singularity’ of the individual shots within the film medium might play a role in reinforcing the general fragmentation of experience which persists within modernity, and this concern now leads him to the belief that the categorical specificity of film should, as a priority, now be theorised in terms of the way in which a medium which is inherently empirical is able to overcome fragmentation and particularity, and portray totality. This belief, which, of course, connects the late aesthetic to the theoretical model of the literary middle aesthetic, also leads Lukács to set out a model of the relationship between film, reality, and totality which is based upon an understanding of the ‘anthropomorphising’ and ‘deanthropomorphising’ character of the medium. As we have seen, earlier in the Aesthetic Lukács considers distinctions

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

90

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

between those aspects of representation which are ‘anthropomorphising’ and those which are ‘deanthropomorphising’, and, in the Aesthetic, he draws upon the idea of the singularity of the film image to argue that the ‘photographic foundation of film’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 493) poses a significant threat to the medium’s ability to portray the human system of activity, because ‘photography, as a starting point, is, as such, deanthropomorphising’, and therefore incapable of accommodating both Wesen, and inherent features of human perceptual experience, such as movement, sound and duration (Lukács, 1981, II: 468). This view of the ‘deanthropomorphising’ character of the medium also, of course, takes us back to ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, and to the notion there that the film image portrays ‘a life without soul, made up of pure surface’ (Lukács, 1913). However, in the Aesthetic, Lukács goes on to argue that film must seek to overcome this deanthropomorphising disposition, and adopt a countervailing ‘anthropomorphic’ temperament, in order to bring the photographic basis into closer accord with, first, perceptual experience, then, human value; and, thus, institute the ‘double reflection’. Lukács argues that the attempt to bring film closer to perceptual experience, and so achieve ‘closeness to life’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 477), is ‘an essential element of the homogenous [i.e. aesthetically specific] medium of film art’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 473). Given this, Lukács argues, the film medium must use the technical means at its disposal in order to replicate perceptual experience, and so correspond to the ‘forms of appearance of everyday life’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 470). However, the portrayal of Wesen must also, and paradoxically, entail a degree of movement away from the forms of appearance of everyday life, because such portrayal has as its principal objective the evocation of something more abstract than perceived reality; and this, in turn, implies a degree of ‘re-working of the individual images and their sequence’ so that the form of such images and sequence becomes dissimilar to the forms of perceptual experience (Lukács, 1981, II: 494). This could, of course, imply a degree of formalism, and, as will be argued later in this chapter, Lukács’ system does allow a certain measure of formalist experimentation, so long as that measure is directly connected to the need to realise subjective experience, and also portray the interaction between Wesen and the forms of appearance. However, in general, Lukács is at pains to distinguish his own aesthetic stance here, within which the portrayal of perceptual experience is taken ‘up’ to the level of species essence and formatively modified in the process, from less benign, ‘merely formal’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 494) approaches, in which formalism is employed as an end in itself; and/or in which the portrayal of perceptual experience and species essence is taken back ‘down’ into the deanthropomorphic, photographic basis of the medium. In the case where the portrayal of perceptual experience is taken up

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

91

to the level of species essence, exploration of the means of representation in order to represent the human condition transforms the film ‘objectivation’ into an instance of ‘objectivised culture’; while, in the latter two cases, such exploration results in the creation of an objectivation which merely adds to the already oppressive weight of the thing world. As will become clearer when his analysis of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered, Lukács is essentially making a distinction here between the use of film form to represent critical aspects of the human condition, and the use of such form to either portray an atomised, fragmented object world, or form itself. It is clear, therefore, that, although the terminology used in the Aesthetic, may differ from that of the middle period, where Lukács is highly critical of both modernism and naturalism, this distinction links the writings of the middle period with the Aesthetic. As argued, ideally, in a film, individual shots and sequences should be ‘reworked’ in order to portray Wesen, while also retaining the closeness-to-life of the phenomenal forms of experience (the ‘double reflection’). When such immanence and closeness is realised through the aforesaid re-working, the film is potentially able to reach the level of ‘the aesthetic’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 467) and the ‘artistic heights’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 494). However, in a modernist or formalist film, artistic re-working is primarily aimed at an exploration of artistic form, and, therefore, is governed by a ‘purely formal’ ‘creative-­organising principle’; where the creative organisation is not informed by the requirement to realise either Wesen, or the vibrancy of the phenomenal forms of appearance (Lukács, 1981, II: 494). Such a purely formal creative-­organising principle, as, Lukács contends, is found in the Soviet montage cinema of the 1920s, also amounts to a ‘technicalist-positivistic metaphysics’, rather than one centred on a portrayal of the interaction between Wesen and the forms of appearance (Lukács, 1981, II: 495). It seems, therefore, that the aesthetic model set out in the Aesthetic entails the need for a relatively high degree of correspondence between the formal constitution of the art work and our customary forms of perceptual experience, and the requirement for such correspondence also appears to be necessitated by Lukács’ contention, that, although, at one level, the ‘photographic basis’ of the medium may be ‘deanthropomorphic’, at another level it is actually anthropomorphic, because it enjoys a privileged correspondence with our perceptual experience of external reality (Lukács, 1981, II: 468). As a philosophical realist and Marxist, Lukács is committed a priori to the conviction that both our perceptual experience and aesthetic representations of reality are, in principle, able to converge with reality, and are not merely, or entirely, symbolic constructions. This conviction leads him to argue that

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

92

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

the photographic basis of film enjoys a privileged status because that basis was developed in order to meet an existential need to replicate our perceptual experience. If, therefore, our perceptual experience converges with reality, and, if the photographic basis corresponds to a significant extent with perceptual experience, then that basis can also, in a sense, be said to ‘converge’ with reality. When, for example, Lukács discusses the relationship of perception to external reality, he argues that ‘the colour green appears in consciousness as a physiologically necessary reaction to a determinate frequency of vibrations’ (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 117). Lukács does not argue here that there is a viridical identity between copy (psychological appearance/physiological reaction) and original (frequency of vibrations) here, as such a stance would rest upon naive realist assumptions incompatible with his Marxist philosophical realism. Instead, Lukács argues that the condition of necessity which figures the particular representation in consciousness of that which we label ‘green’ also endows that representation with an advantaged status that stems from such necessity: a necessity which must inevitably entail an extensive degree of correspondence with reality (Parkinson, in Parkinson (ed.), 1970: 117). It also follows from this, that, if film is able to generate a simulacrum of this representation, that simulacrum will also be similarly endowed with a privileged status, one which is derived from the close relationship between the film image and a perceptual representation which is of necessity related to reality. In the Aesthetic, Lukács appears to theorise the relationship between film, perceptual experience and external reality in terms of four distinct provinces which flank each other. First, there is the external province of a material world which we encounter through our sensory apparatus as frequencies of vibrations. Second, there is the external province of material physiological reactions, which arise from our sensory apparatus in response to the encounter between that apparatus and those vibrations. Third, there is the truly ‘internal’ province of consciousness, or perceptual experience, within which those physiological reactions assume a certain ‘appearance’. Fourth, and finally, there is the external province of the material, photographic film image, which, although external and material, and thus fundamentally dissimilar to consciousness, is developed in response to a need to portray the appearances which physiological reactions take on within consciousness. Although these four provinces are fundamentally different from each other, and each is composed of a different substance, provinces two (physiological reactions), three (consciousness) and four (the film image) are fundamentally determined by the need to realise correspondence with province one (external reality). This means that the empirical basis of the film image can be conceived of as a concrete structure whose material constitution is fundamentally driven both by

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

93

the imperative to correspond to external reality as that reality ‘appears’ within consciousness, and by the need to hold such a correspondence to ‘appearance’ up for contemplative reflection. Lukács believes that film’s ability to generate a simulacrum of the appearance which perceptual experience takes on within consciousness endows the medium with a genuine authority. In addition, he also believes that the ‘photographic basis of the medium’ is particularly important in respect of this because, although the photographed film image may possess deanthropomorphic tendencies, it also possesses an anthropomorphic capacity, residing within the authentic nature of its representation of the way that perceptual experience of external reality appears within consciousness. Even though the photographic image may not, in itself, possess intrinsic aesthetic quality, and even though it also generates a ‘possible alienating effect’, it still possesses a ‘very concise authenticity’ which stems from the fact that it is a partial simulacrum of perceptual experience (Lukács, 1981, II: 473). As argued, Lukács does not argue that this kind of ‘authenticity’ is an aesthetic quality per se, and insists that this is just a foundation – though a necessary one – for a later artistic re-working which aims to reach the aesthetic. Nevertheless, Lukács also believes such authenticity to be important in itself, and to endow film with considerable consequence as a representational medium. As such, this authenticity must be retained, and built upon, ‘as an essential element of the homogenous medium of film art’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 473). However, the photographed image is not only authentic on these grounds, but also on the grounds that it captures an important aspect of human experience: the ‘being so’, or Sosein, of the world (Lukács, 1981, II: 473). Whatever we experience in daily life, and whatever attitude we choose to adopt towards such experience, we also, at one level, experience that which we encounter as simply ‘being so’: as an array of mute materials which exist and which we encounter. Furthermore, it is, paradoxically, precisely the de-anthropomorphising effect of photography which allows this aspect of reality to be captured, because, here, we are presented with the world, rather than the human world. Lukács argues that, while the objective of film technique may be to bring the medium closer to the visual apperceptions of everyday life, that re-working must also maintain the empirical authenticity, or identity, of the image; an authenticity which rests in the ability of the filmic image to represent both the way experience of external reality appears within consciousness, and the character of ‘just being so’ (Geradesosein) (Lukács, 1981, II: 491). This ability also places limits upon a human tendency to misappropriate reality into human concerns, and to subordinate reality to those concerns; and, for Lukács, the encounter with the ‘just being so’ is an authentic aspect of perceptual encounter within the Lebenswelt, and, in order to represent our experience of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

94

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

the Lebenswelt fully, film must represent a ‘just being so’ which is separate from and not secondary to a diegesis charged with a human purposiveness. It is because of this imperative that Lukács maintains that the relatively autonomous photographed image must be retained as ‘an essential element of the homogenous medium of film art’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 473). However, and as will be argued later in this chapter, Lukács’ position here does not – according to him – necessarily imply a filmic ‘naturalism’. So far, it appears that, for Lukács, the medium-specificity of film can be sited in three principal aspects of the medium. The first of these is the ability of the image and sequence to corrolate with the appearance which experience of external reality takes on within consciousness. The second is the ability to represent an essential aspect of experience: the ‘being so’ of things; while the third lies in an ability to portray Wesen. Of these three aspects, the first appears to be most specific to the medium of film, because this aspect depends most upon the ‘primary … technological form of film’, which, Lukács argues, consists in the ‘rapid movement’ and sequence of the images (Lukács, 1981, II: 470). However, it is important to note that, and as previously argued, this aspect is not in itself aesthetic in character. As a Marxist, Lukács is at pains to avoid the rebuke of technological determinism here, and so he argues that the technological facility which serves as a material foundation for the portrayal of the aesthetic ‘does not simply and naturally emerge from technological possibilities’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 470). In other words, although the technological basis of film provides the indispensable and necessary condition for the portrayal of the forms of appearance, and, therefore, the double reflection, to the extent that these could not be portrayed if that technological basis did not exist, that basis is not in itself sufficient to ensure that a portrayal of the double reflection, and, therefore, the aesthetic, will ‘simply and naturally emerge’. Given the imperative to corrolate with the appearance which experience of external reality takes on within consciousness, and also the need to portray Soesin, it would appear that the aesthetic model of film evident in the late aesthetic entails that, in order to remain faithful to the aesthetic specificity of the medium, film must remain ‘realistic’ in disposition. As we have seen, Lukács believes that the realist film image, when structured in accordance with the principle of Geradesosein and the forms of appearance, possesses inherent ‘truth’ value, because the photographic foundation of the medium can be linked to external reality. Because of this, that realistic foundation should be maintained, rather than changed radically. In contrast, the problem with the ‘technicalist-positivistic metaphysics’ of a cinema of ‘Montage’ is that such a cinema is founded upon excessive manipulation of the photographic foundation, and Lukács believes that such a measure of manipulation establishes the conditions which make it ultimately greatly probable that such films will

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

95

‘transform the photographed truth into a direct untruth, into a lie’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 496). Lukács is, for example, apprehensive about the incidence of ‘reassembl[ing]’ manifest within Battleship Potemkin/Bronenosets ‘Potemkin’ (Eisenstein, 1925), and, although he acknowledges that even the most realistic of films may still ‘exhibit the same problematic of truth and un-truth that is inherent to any use of language in human life’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 496), he nevertheless believes that such a predicament is more liable to materialise the further the medium transports itself away from the naturalism of the photographic basis, in order, for example, to pursue the ‘purely formal’ ‘creative-organising principle’ which underlies formalist montage cinema (Lukács, 1981, II: 494). If, therefore, the ‘authenticity’ of film resides in an imperative and facility to engender a simulacrum of the appearance which perceptual experience takes on within consciousness, then films which turn their back on such an imperative and facility inevitably cede such authenticity; and, in doing so, undermine their own aesthetic authority. In addition to his conviction that the aesthetic authority and specificity of film resides in the ability of the medium to create a simulacrum of the manifestation which perceptual experience institutes within consciousness, Lukács also argues that such authority and specificity is also established by the medium’s capacity to render the interaction between ‘being’ and ‘appearance’ in a medium-specific manner, and one which, in addition, also corresponds to the way in which that interaction is experienced within everyday reality. What Lukács argues here is that film is able to �������������������������������������� portray ‘different kinds of relations of being and appearance’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 481) as they ‘persist side by side’, and in an equivalent way, without prioritisation; as is the case with the experience of everyday life (Lukács, 1981, II: 481). When film manages to achieve this, the ‘reciprocal; relationship which exists between man and his environment is also re-established’, and the ‘outside world’ (Aussenwelt) regains the same importance as the human beings who are portrayed in the film (Lukács, 1981, II: 478). When such reciprocity occurs film also achieves an artistically ‘legitimate general effectiveness’, guaranteed by the fact that the medium holds to its inherent mission to portray the true character of the Lebenswelt, a character which is not dominated by man (Lukács, 1981, II: 481). Lukács’ argument that ‘closeness to life determines the decisive questions of style of film’ appears, at one level, to suggest a position which might be described as naturalist (Lukács, 1981, II: 477). As is well known, in his various writings, including, as we have seen, in the Aesthetic, Lukács constantly inveighs against naturalism. For example, ��������������������������������� in his ‘Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, written one year after the publication of The Specificity of the Aesthetic, Lukács is concerned to distinguish Solzhenitsyn’s short novel – which he regards as historically significant – from naturalism,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

96

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

through arguing that, in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, concrete details manage to achieve unification within a circumscribed totality, whereas, in a naturalist novel, such unity generally does not occur. Lukács refers to the genre of literature of which One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) is an example as the ‘novella’, and argues that such works are rightly able, because of their necessarily more limited compass, to omit ‘social genesis’, agency and perspective (Lukács, 1971: 8). Here, in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the ‘aesthetic concentration on essentials’ (Lukács, 1971: 14) takes the form of ‘suggestive description’ and an ‘inner completeness, roundness and coherence’; and Lukács argues that this is sufficient to distinguish Solzhenitsyn’s work from naturalism (Lukács, 1971: 26). We see here, in this account of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, the same concern with organic unity which also pervades Lukács’ general account of artistic reflection and Besonderheit in the Aesthetic, although, of course, the 1964 essay is less philosophical than the Aesthetic, and can also be linked more clearly to Lukács’ middle period in terms of its continuing diatribe against naturalism. For example, and despite his praise for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1964, Lukács still remained somewhat discomfited by the book’s lack of perspective, even though he says that the ‘novella’ form has the right to omit such perspective. Later, in 1969, this sense of discomfort becomes even more pronounced, as, in the essay entitled ‘Solzhenitsyn’s Novels’, Lukács insists that both One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and the modern novella in general, mark only a ‘transitional stage’ in the development of a new ‘great form’: the ‘universal novel’; an example of which he sees in Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle (1970), a work which, according to Lukács, combines the portrayal of a symbolic circumscribed reality with an account of social-temporal perspective and totality (Lukács 1971: 37).� Lukács’ endorsement of the universal novel in ‘Solzhenitsyn’s Novels’ stems partly from the views he held during the final period of his career, from 1965 to 1971, a period in which, as already argued, he had moved away from some of the ideas elaborated, not only in the Aesthetic, but also in his ‘Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, in order to address broad-spectrum questions of ethics in Towards an Ontology of Social Being. Nevertheless, Lukács’ position on naturalism, even in 1969, and despite himself, still remains somewhat hesitant and unsure, and echoes of the position adopted in both the Aesthetic and the 1964 essay can still be observed within the generally anti-naturalist standpoint of the 1969 essay. For example, when comparing Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain with Solzhenitsyn’s novels, Lukács describes the ‘environment’ portrayed in Mann’s novel in terms of the forms of naturalistic, symbolic representation he, Lukács, endorsed in the 1963–64 period; arguing that, in The Magic Mountain, ‘the uniformity

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

97

of the setting is made the immediate foundation of the narrative’ (Lukács, 1971: 37). Such ‘uniformity of setting’ was of course the object of Lukács’ criticism during the middle period, when not just a uniformity of setting, but the presence of any ‘setting’ at all was regarded as unfortunately associated with ‘the descriptive method’. However, in 1969, the notion of a ‘universal novel’, which endows an ‘environment with a universal breadth and depth’ through the focus on ‘setting’, necessarily implies a degree of naturalism and symbolism; and this aspect of the 1969 essay not only connects up with the tenor of Lukács’ thinking in the period of the Aesthetic, but also, and even, to the kind of indeterminate ‘Balzacian background’ elaborated in The Theory of the Novel (Lukács, 1971: 37–8). Nevertheless, whatever his writing may otherwise indirectly suggest, in the Aesthetic, Lukács is still at pains to point out directly that he is not arguing for the aesthetic specificity of film to be associated with a naturalist position. For example, although, at one point, he comes to the surprising conjecture that ‘it seems, therefore, that a naturalism, which elsewhere appears the converse of art, might be artistically possible in film’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 479), he quickly refutes this stance, arguing that the approach he is advocating ‘must not be referred to as naturalism’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 481). Lukács’ position in arguing this here is based on a definition of naturalism informed by his previously referred to distinction between ‘being’ and ‘appearance’, as is made apparent when he argues that: the philosophical-artistic meaning of naturalism consists in that, in naturalism, the being that appears wanes, or even completely vanishes, behind an appearance that is fixed in its immediacy’. (Lukács, 1981, II: 479)

In naturalism, therefore, being ‘wanes if not completely vanishes’, and only appearance remains. As we have seen though, in the kind of film or approach to film which Lukács advocates, being and appearance co-exist more or less equally. Taking the example of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich once more, Lukács argues that, here, notions of social totality and esential human nature resonate behind each descriptive episode within the work. In other words, here, being does not wane away behind appearance, and there is, instead, an equivalence of being and appearance. Taking another example, this time from film, when Lukács discusses the films of Charlie Chaplin he argues that Chaplin provides an ‘absolutely valid expression to the ordinary man’s feeling of isolation against the context of the machinery and apparatus of modern capitalism’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 482). In this kind of film, and Lukács is probably referring to Modern Times (1936), ‘being’ (Chaplin’s persona) remains alongside ‘appearance’ (machinery, apparatus, and the ­auditory-­visuality of the film), and the presence of this interaction between and equivalence of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

98

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

being and appearance means that a film such as Modern Times ‘must not be referred to as naturalist’ (although, of course, there are also other reasons why this particular film should not be termed ‘naturalist’) . Lukács also argues that, because the medium of film is capable of representing the interaction of being and appearance, it possesses both ‘elasticity’ (Elastizität) and ‘instability’ (Labilität) (Lukács, 1981, II: 482). Film possesses ‘elasticity’ precisely because it is able to represent both being and appearance. Where this is achieved meaningfully and appositely, as in say the Chaplin, film is also able to rise above the ‘trodden’ ‘path of triviality’ of ‘ordinary life’ while remaining connected to authentic species character. However, when such increase occurs the danger also arises that such elevated films may find themselves cast adrift from the ‘deepest mass emotions’ of the people (Lukács, 1981, II: 483). These mass emotions are – after all, and unfortunately – now inundated with and polluted by the soulless traits of ‘ordinary life’, and, so, when film rises above the trodden path of triviality in order to distance itself from ordinary life it also risks distancing itself from a lived experience which is real to those involved; and which cannot easily be set aside in the sort of far-reaching manner which Lukács celebrates in the chapters on Kierkegaard and Novalis in Soul and Form. However, and in addition, even though the ‘deepest mass emotions’ of the people may be corrupted by the practices of ordinary life, they also remain stubbornly connected to authentic species character, and must be held on to in part because of this. In this respect, therefore, the ‘elasticity’ of film is a potential problem for the medium, which can lead, at one level, to a form of misguided elitist practice; and what is required is film-making which accommodates being, and the effervescent forms of appearance, while, at the same time, is also able to distinguish between authentic popular human import, elitist intellectual indulgence, and the forced mundanities of ordinary life. The properly ‘elastic’ film will, therefore, be full of the vibrant forms of appearance, and will remain connected to basic human meaningfulness: will remain a popular art form, or Volkskunst, rather than art-house cinema; and will also portray a form of Wesen which relates to common species character, rather than the privileged uncertainties of intellectual angst often found in art-house cinema. On the other hand, however, while possessing ‘elasticity’, in its ability to portray the forms of appearance, and forms of authentic species character, the film medium also possesses a potential ‘instability’, in that it can easily fall back ‘down’ completely into either the world of ordinary life, or into the ‘deanthropomorphic’ basis of the medium. Here, film may adopt trivial, naturalist or formalist modes of representation, within which being all but fades away, and the forms of appearance lose their realistic vivacity. Lukács also believes that the fact that film is an industrial art form, closely connected to a

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

99

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘capitalist financial basis’, makes a descent into the inauthentic flood planes of ordinary life more likely to happen than not; while he also continues to argue that intellectual minority forms of filmic naturalism, formalism, and modernism pose a continuing hazard to the aesthetic specificity and humanist orientation of the medium. Nevertheless he still looks forward with some optimism to the future advance of the cinema, arguing that: there are always again [he mentions Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film Bicycle Thieves/Ladri di biciclette] attempts to direct the extensive diversity given in film towards finding a deeper content of life, and to discover, in this jungle, new and diverse human possibilities. (Lukács, 1981, II: 483)

The idea that film should portray ‘being’ and the even-handed interaction of being and appearance, when taken together with the notion that the medium should also be considered as ‘elastic’ in the sense given above, suggests a form of cinema which need not always necessarily adhere completely to the ‘forms of everyday life’, or Lebensnähe; and, in fact, Lukács argues that, in certain circumstances, it is appropriate for film to ‘go beyond the immediate given reality of everyday life’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 483); and that ‘transitions into and out of everyday life can take place’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 484). Clearly, the portrayal of Wesen implies a certain degree of symbolism and formalism, and what Lukács has in mind here is a form of cinematic formalism which he wishes to distinguish from both formalism proper, and naturalism; a form which seeks to represent more subjective aspects of the interrelation between being and appearance. Here, Lukács invokes the ‘cinema of the fantastic’ first set out in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, as he argues that transitions out of everyday life may seek to portray ‘the dream character and the mental reality of the dream’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 483). In representing subjective realities, therefore, film may adopt ‘the most extreme phantasm’ in terms of modality, and, as a consequence, in film, ‘there are no limits to the representation of the fantastic’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 484). However, and as argued, such representations are only permissible when they are employed to portray the interaction of being and appearance as experienced subjectively. All of this suggests that a Lukácsian cinema is able to accommodate a considerable degree of formalism. However, given the ‘authenticity’ which the portrayal of Lebensnähe endows on the medium, such formalism, based on transitions ‘out of ’’ everyday life, will always be dominated by corresponding transitions back into ordinary life. Such a return is also necessitated by Lukács’ belief that, by virtue of its aesthetic specificity, the ability which film possesses to portray subjective aspects of the interaction between being and appearance is of a limited compass. For Lukács, film is primarily ‘an art of vibrant [eventful] visuality’, and

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

100

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

this ­empirical character makes it difficult for film to portray what Lukács refers to as an ‘indefinite objectivity’ of subjective experience, which, according to him, is characteristic of the visual-auditory arts (Lukács, 1981, II: 484). Lukács believes that art forms such as literature and drama are able to portray interior subjective experience directly because they employ language and concepts. Such art forms are, therefore, able to reach and depict the ‘intellectual heights’. However, according to Lukács, the visual and auditory arts are only able to depict interiority indirectly, and this process of the indirect depiction of interiority is what Lukács refers to when he uses the term ‘indefinite objectivity’. However, and as we will see, although such art forms are unable as a consequence to reach the ‘intellectual heights’ of interiority which, for example, the drama is capable of reaching, Lukács does not regard this as a medium-specific weakness, but – and especially in the case of film – as a potential medium-specific strength, which forces film along a path which is congruent with the medium’s own inherent authenticity and ‘homogeneity’. Lukács argues that, because film is a primarily visual medium, within which language always plays a ‘secondary’ role (Lukács, 1981, II: 485) it must portray indefinite objectivity through primarily visual, ‘visual-auditory’, or ‘sensuous-immediate’ – rather than conceptual – means (Lukács, 1981, II: 486). In effect, Lukács argues that a lack of propositionality and conceptuality is categorically specific to the visual and auditory arts, including the film medium; and that film, in particular (because of its empirical basis), must aim to both represent ‘physical definiteness’, and, also, portray indefinite objectivity through primarily visual-auditory means. However, far from believing this to constitute a problem for film, Lukács believes that, in relying on the visual­auditory, and in subordinating intellectuality to the ‘sensuous-immediate’, film is able to portray the way that being and appearance actually appear and co-exist within experience of the Lebenswelt. According to Lukács, therefore, film must rely mainly on visual-­auditory means in order to portray the interaction of being and appearance, and, for Lukács, the most important of such means is the aesthetic principle of Stimmungseinheit, or ‘unity of atmosphere’, which, Lukács contends, may be considered to be the ‘central motivating principle of film effects’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 490). According to Lukács, the film sequence consists of a succession of shots, a progression of ‘audio-visual moments’, each of which is capable of evoking an ‘atmospheric value’, consisting of visual-auditory forms, connotations, denotations, feelings and ideas. These atmospheric ‘values’ need not necessarily be primarily expressive, but they do need to evoke a distinctive, if intangible and incomplete, emotive identity; and what Lukács emphasises here, therefore, is the individuality of atmospheric value evoked by particular shots, rather than the expressive character of such values. Each shot

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

101

is, ­ therefore a kind of micro-totality, and depicts a concrete section of the Lebenswelt, a section which is necessarily complete unto itself, both in reality (as it is perceived) and as it is depicted (within the frame of the shot). This emphasis, and focus on identity, also indicates that Lukács’ aesthetic model is not based primarily on notions of aesthetic expression, but on notions of aesthetic specificity, uniqueness and totality (in terms of totality, this also brings us back to Lukács’ argument that the work of art, including film, necessarily ‘revokes’ the continuous character of extensive reality in order to form a distinct, unified intensive totality) (Lukács, 1981, II: 217). Lukács goes on to argue that each sequence of these audio-visual micrototalities should also amount to and evoke a more general ‘atmosphere’, or Stimmung. These atmospheres then succeed each other across the course of the film, and make up the audio-visual body of the film. According to Lukács the transition from one of these atmospheres to another can be based on varieties of contrast and similarity. However, ultimately, this succession of atmospheres must cohere into an final unity of atmosphere, or Stimmungseinheit; and it is primarily when the principle of Stimmungseinheit is achieved, and also when an equivalence of being and the forms of appearance is meaningfully portrayed; that the film is able to reach the level of das Ästhetic. The central category here is clearly that of totality, at the level of the shot, the cinematic sequence, and the film as a whole; but a totality which must contain an equivalence of Wesen and Erscheinung. However, totality is defined here in terms of an identity which reveals itself through the portrayal and intuition of indeterminate ‘atmosphere’, rather than through the exercise of intellect. What is of particular significance here is that, in attempting to identify the ‘central moving principle of film’s effect’ Lukács focuses on two highly impressionistic and symbolic concepts. The meaning of the German term Stimmung is difficult to capture in translation. At one level, Stimmung refers to an aesthetic evocation of emotional atmosphere, ambience, mood, or ‘voice’, which, though including contradiction and exclusion, aims to achieve synthesis, inclusion, and, therefore, identity. At this level, Stimmung can be contrasted with Vestimmung, which can be defined as an aesthetic evocation of atmosphere, ambiance or mood within which contradiction and exclusion have the upper hand. However, at another level, Stimmung also refers to atmosphere or ambiance which is, in some way, evocative of a more ethereal, disconcerting, disquieting, and challenging set of moods and emotions. Stimmung, thus, goes beyond the commonplace in order to evoke the uncommon. This might all suggest that Lukács points to a particular kind of identity which is revealed by the film image, an identity which may also be found within the Lebenswelt itself. Indeed there appears to be something here akin to the ‘tragic vision’ which, one commentator has argued, can be found

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

102

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

in Lukács’ early aesthetic, and particularly in Soul and Form (Goldmann, 1967: 169). Developing this premise further, it might be argued that what the film image reveals is a disquieting totality, a reality which is indefinable, perplexing, and ultimately unfathomable. If this reality is also constitutive, in part, of our actual experience of the Lebenswelt, then we are doomed to constantly experience the sense of incompleteness and incomprehensibility which is also delivered to us through the Stimmung which emanates from the filmic image. Film thus becomes a vehicle for the expression and illumination of an existential angst and world-weariness which is actually affiliated to the human condition. Unhelpfully, Lukács does not discuss Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit in any particular depth in the chapter on ‘Film’ in the Aesthetic, and much of what there is revolves around a rather schematic analysis of Lawrence Olivier’s 1945 film Henry V. Here, Lukács argues that Henry V corresponds to the principles of Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit through its employment of a pervasive visual style, one based on ‘the atmosphere of the late medieval age’, which unites the film at the level of visuality (Lukács, 1981, II: 491). Lukács describes this as an ‘atmospheric-visual expression’ of Stimmungseinheit, in which a dominant visuality unites areas such as sound, language, music, colour, performance, and dialogue into an overall totality, or Stimmungseinheit; although one which is only completely unified at the level of visuality (Lukács, 1981, II: 491). However, Henry V might fail a global test of Stimmungseinheit because it mixes up a visual dimension derived from Flemish painting with a then contemporary music score (composed by William Walton) and, of course, the plays of Shakespeare. According to Lukács, such an exercise in historical cutting and pasting is potentially counterproductive if the ultimate objective is to achieve totality, as is made clear when he argues that Olivier’s Hamlet ‘gives too much emphasis to the “primordial” and thus comes into “atmospheric contrast” to the renaissance character of the story and spoken text’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 491). Here, ‘atmospheric contrast’ based on an incongruity of the elements involved disrupts the attempt to evoke ‘the ultimate unity of atmosphere as a whole’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 490). For Henry V to correspond more closely to the principle of Stimmungseinheit, therefore, the visual style of the film would have to be derived from either Shakespeare’s time, or the period of the setting of Henry V; while the musical score would also have to be derived from one or other of these periods. And so on. All this suggests that the principle of Stimmungseinheit is based more on classical aesthetic concepts of coherence and correspondence than on romantic concepts of expression and expressionism; and this, in turn, also relates to the idea of ‘completeness’ which Lukács refers to when discussing the artistic portrayal of Besonderheit. In addition, it also suggests that Lukács’ ­understanding

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory

103

of Stimmungseinheit refers to a notion of authenticity which goes beyond romantic conceptions of the authenticity of interiority, to embrace an authenticity of external, physical, historical and contemporary aspects of reality. Even though it is a highly symbolic concept, therefore, and one which is comprehended intuitively, rather than rationally within aesthetic experience, Stimmungseinheit, as Lukács employs the notion, is not a primarily expressive concept; and, in fact, Lukács deploys the notion of Stimmungseinheit in a realist, even documentary manner, insisting that the succession of Stimmung in film be related to external reality through the synthesising authentifying action of a Stimmungseinheit based on realist-­coherence principles. However, Henry V may have been an inappropriate example for Lukács to fix upon here because the basic tenor of what he says about the film shot as Stimmung and micro-totality implies something closer to perceptual experience than the highly stylised Henry V. This is made clear, for example, when he argues that: the possibilities and limitations of film are based primarily on the special kind of atmospheric value that is able to render the photographic image authentic to the recipient. Each film image is experienced as a mimesis of reality that, from the very beginning, is authenticated as reality by the fact of having been photographed. (Lukács, 1981, II: 491)

Here, Lukács also returns to the notion of ‘just being so’, or Sosein, referred to earlier in this chapter, when he argues that, at the level of both shot and sequence, there is one atmospheric complex which is particularly important to film: that which emphasises the ‘just being so’ of the shot and sequence. This is the ‘basic atmospheric character’ of film: the image of something which is just ‘being so’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 497). The importance of this kind of atmosphere is also determined by the idea of the ‘double reflection’ which characterises film, whereby an even-handed portrayal of being and appearance must be portrayed. All of this suggests that the predominant ‘atmosphere complex’ within a Lukácsian film will be one which retains Geradesosein at the level of both image and general diegetic content, and that a fifty-fifty cut between descriptive passages and more plot-based narrated ones will be effected. Such a cut is, once more, derived from Lukács’ general position on the double reflection, and from his insistence that film must portray the even-handed interaction of being and appearance which prevails within the Lebenswelt. Finally, in addition to achieving such even-handedness, and unlike Henry V, a Lukácsian film should (or might) also attempt to capture the sense of existential angst which, it has been argued earlier in this chapter, appears to be associated with Lukács’ conceptualisation of Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit. Although, as

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

104

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

argued, this notion is not very apparent within the Aesthetic, in fact, most of the examples which Lukács provides in the chapter on film concern individuals who are overwhelmed or oppressed by the surrounding object-world; and this reinforces the argument that a sort of tragic vision underscores and can be drawn from Lukács’ conceptualisation of Stimmung. One final aspect of Lukács’ conceptualisation of Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit which remains to be considered now is the issue of how these largely intuitionist concepts may be related to conceptual ideas. The concepts of Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit are clearly indeterminate and symbolic in character. In addition, both are also concerned with primarily emotional, rather than conceptual portrayal. However, Lukács argues that these ‘emotive aspects’ of Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit are capable of being given a ‘very concisely drawn physiognomy’, because they can also be associated with, or evoke, distinctive conceptual formulations (Lukács, 1981, II: 493). For example, Lukács talks about the conceptions of anxiety and hopelessness generated by the rapid swinging of a chandelier in Vladimir Pudovkin’s The End of Saint Petersburg; and the idea of oppression evoked by the images of marching feet descending the Odessa Steps in Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin. What we have here, therefore, is a connection between feeling and idea, in the sense that the feelings generated by Stimmung inevitably suggest a range of both other feelings, and, ideas; and Lukács goes on to argue that film possesses an ‘extraordinary effectiveness’ in linking ideas and emotions, and that it is this effectiveness in generating an ‘inseparability of atmosphere and ideological content’ which enables film to be ‘the most effective form of expression of the most dissimilar and opposing tendencies’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 493). However, Lukács also argues that ideas, and the contextual suppositions which might be associated with them, must ‘shine (scheinen) out of ’ the feelings generated by both Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit, and the ‘atmospheric fragments of reality, clustered and joined together’ (Lukács, 1981, II: 493). In other words, although ideas and contexts may be associated with atmosphere, they must also be derived from atmosphere. For Lukács, therefore, Stimmung and Stimmungseinheit are not only realist, as well as expressive concepts, but also ones which, though primarily intuitionist in character, nevertheless embrace conceptuality, albeit at a secondary level. Both of these concepts are also centrally concerned with issues of identity and totality. They are classical, rather than romantic in character. Having said all this, however, these concepts remain difficult and elusive.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

4 Socialist humanism and Toward the Ontology of Social Being/Zur Ontologie des ­gesellschaftslichen Seins Between the appearance of The Specificity of the Aesthetic in 1963, and his death on 4 June 1971, Lukács devoted his remaining though still substantial energies to two associated endeavours. One of these took the form of a revisionist philosophical attempt to return to the classical roots of Marxist philosophy, and this eventually resulted in the posthumous publication of Toward the Ontology of Social Being (1971–73) (hereafter referred to as the Ontology). The other took the form of a more practically oriented exertion to both demoralise the raison d’être of orthodox communist ideology, and replace that rationale with one associated with forms of ‘humanist socialist Marxism’ (Shafai, 1996: 1). This latter objective, which, Lukács believed, would, like the Ontology, also mark a return to the classical nineteenth-century Marxist tradition, was mainly pursued through the writing of journal articles, and the granting of numerous interviews, some of which were published in the film journals Filmkultúra and Cinema Nuovo. This twofold and corresponding philosophical and political undertaking established the framework for Lukács’ writings on film over the 1961–71 period, and must be explored in outline here before those writings themselves can be considered in depth. Political commentaries During this final period of his career Lukács consistently argued for the democratisation of the existing communist system in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Lukács had been speaking out keenly against the still everpresent authoritarian legacy of Stalinism since the days of the Hungarian Revolution, and, since then, and in the spirit of the much earlier Blum Theses, he had also endorsed greater cultural, political, and intellectual interaction with the West. In concord with Bertrand Russell he also condemned the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia which took place on 21 August 1968, arguing that this violation of an experiment in socialist enlightenment had

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

106

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

discredited the ‘attraction of communism’ and ‘darkened’ the socialist ideal (Kadarkay, 1991: 460–1). However, and for perfectly warrantable reasons, Lukács also felt the need to be carefully circumspect over this period, and, because of this, decided to keep many of his more trenchant criticisms of the authorities out of the public domain. Nevertheless, and despite the menacing censure that was often directed at him by the Party apparatus, Lukács doggedly continued to give numerous cautiously crafted interviews on the subject of socialist renewal over the 1961–71 period, and the interviews which appeared in film journals must be viewed against this greater context. For Lukács, the reform of socialism within the communist world was required on fundamental moral, as well as political grounds. Essentially, Lukács wished to revive what he took to be the ethical epicentre of communism and Marxism, one which he believed could be located within a particularly vital notion of ‘species being’, or Gattungswesen, which, for Lukács, was elaborated most strikingly by Marx in the Paris Manuscripts. According to Agnes Heller: Lukács often remarked to us, his disciples, how crucial the reading of the Paris Manuscripts was for his self-criticism; the discovery of the concept of human species and of the central role, in Marx, of ‘species essence’ (Gattungswesen) was a great intellectual shock for him. ‘Class’ cannot take the place of species – that was how he came to conceive Marx’s position – but it was just such a substitution that had characterised History and Class Consciousness … The shock that Lukács felt at this confrontation with the Marxian concept of human species was a response to his own anxiety and frustration, to the unrest of his own critical spirit … Lukács believes in his God, yet at the same time he recognises all the dirt and horror of ‘God’s created world’ and contrasts this extant world with an ideal world which would be commensurate with his God. (Heller, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 177–8)

The notion of species being may well have been renounced in many of Lukács’ writings of the 1920s and 1930s, but it also appears in one form or another in many of his other writings, including Soul and Form, The Theory of the Novel, The Historical Novel, The Specificity of the Aesthetic, and the Ontology; the majority of which also display the same sense of ‘anxiety and frustration’ with regard to a ‘god created’ (and man created) world which was far from perfect. However, in the final phase of his career, Lukács increasingly came to conceive of an ‘ideal’ world in terms of the humanist reform of existing socialism and communism. Lukács’ conception of species being, or Gattungswesen, is, therefore, as his remarks on the Paris Manuscripts indicate, based on an absolute and categorical understanding of human nature, and, in arguing for a ‘renaissance of Marxism’, Lukács grounds his case in the conviction that a truly socialist society can only emerge when the social organisation of society is brought into congruence with such an immutable model and conception of human nature (Kadarkay, 1991: 461).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

107

These convictions concerning the objective existence of a true human nature, or Gattungswesen, and the necessity of bringing Gattungswesen into correspondence with ‘social being’, or Gesellschaftslichen, underscores both Toward the Ontology of Social Being and Lukács’ other writings and interviews of the 1963–71 period. Lukács believes that such an authentic coming together of genuine individualism and ideal social being will eventually lead to both a regeneration of ‘socialism’ and concomitant demise of capitalism, although he acknowledges stoically that these hoped for outcomes might take a long time to materialise, possibly ‘as long as one hundred or three hundred years’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 461). The degree of continuity evident in Lukács’ work in respect of the concept of Gattungswesen also makes it apparent that, at least in respect of this notion, a patent correlation can be drawn between Lukács’ early, middle, and late periods. However, Lukács himself believed that such a correlation went well beyond the idea of Gattungswesen, and, writing during his final years, argued that even his conversion to Marxism in 1918 did not fundamentally ‘rupture’ what for him was a career built on intellectual continuity: In my case, everything is the continuation of something else. I do not think that there are any non-organic elements in my development … Marxism: a qualitative change but no rupture in my development, unlike in [that of ] many others. (Bayer, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 181)

Lukács’ belief that a truly ‘socialist-humanist’ society could only emerge when the social organisation of society was gradually brought into congruence with Gattungswesen also implies a conception of historical development in which such congruence is achieved progressively, and by degree (Shafai, 1996: 2); and the relationship between this conception of historical development, and Lukács’ appropriation of the Hegelian movement of the ‘Spirit’ towards the ‘Absolute’ in the early writings, further reinforces his submission that connections, rather than divisions, should be mainly drawn across the trajectory of his work. During this final period of his career Lukács’ twofold concern to return to the classical roots of Marxist philosophy, and help establish a humanistsocialist society within the communist world, were also deeply influenced by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, an event which led Lukács to both deepen his preoccupation with abstract conceptions of authentic individual and social being, and advance a now more pressing vision of a future socialist society. However, ultimately, and despite the consequence of the historic political events taking place on the ground, it was Lukács’ unvarying underlying preoccupation with high philosophy which again took precedence over any more direct involvement in matters of practical politics; and

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

108

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

one consequence of this was that his political writings over this period remained somewhat unfocused and broad-spectrum. This was particularly the case, for example, with the 1968 monograph Democratization: Its Present and Future (sometimes known as The Process of Democratization), which was written shortly after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. In this monograph Lukács calls for the development of a genuine public sphere within the Soviet Bloc. However, and in line with his more abstract theoretical concern with questions of individual and social ontology, the 1968 monograph did not put forward specific proposals for political reform, but relied, instead, on the more intangible notion that a general and utopian transformation of both popular consciousness and the political system was required if the people were to engage in meaningful participation within the political process. In the 1968 monograph Lukács lobbies both for a popular-led political cultivation of a species essence grounded in freedom, reason, ethical behaviour and knowledge; and for the transformation of the existing social system in order to accommodate such cultivation. As Lukács puts it: The task of the democratization of socialism is to overcome the last, most developed stage of inhumanity, the one that reduces man to a mere obstacle, an object, a potential adversary or enemy. (Kadarkay, 1991: 463)

Lukács obviously has the Eastern European and Soviet communist system in mind here, and it is equally evident that he believes that system to be in pressing need of reform. However, the rather intangible concern with ‘democratisation’, alienation, and objectivation apparent here, while characteristic of the approach adopted in the 1968 monograph, proved to be incompatible with any attempt at more direct political intervention on Lukács’ part. It has been argued that Lukács’ adoption of a broad and utopian political position between 1968 and 1971 was to a large extent ‘dissonant with the post-1968 spirit’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 463). After all, this was a period of great historical consequence, which not only encompassed the Czechoslovakian Revolution and resulting invasion and military occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union, but also the apogee of the Vietnam War, the radicalisation of the western intelligentsia and international students’ movement; and a near revolution in France. Given all this, there appear to be grounds for arguing that Lukács’ position, as expressed in the 1968 monograph, appears somewhat disconnected and aloof from the then course of world-historical events. However, even if that may be so, it is still necessary to understand that Lukács’ stance at the time was influenced by a philosophical conviction that was of innermost importance to him: a conviction derived from Hegel’s categorisation of the arts and sciences into different and distinct fields of expertise (Aitken, 2006: 84). This position led Lukács to the belief that it was

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

109

not for him to offer practical political advice on politics to others, as he was not an expert in the sphere of pragmatic political or economic reform. Lukács considered himself to be a specialist in the field of philosophical and literary aesthetics alone, and, it was within this field, and only within this field, that he was willing to make specific pronouncements, evaluations, and analyses concerning ideas, texts or events. In other fields he was only willing to offer broad-spectrum counsel covering general principles. Lukács, therefore, felt himself constrained to operate within the parameters of his own specialism. In addition, and once again under the influence of Hegelian thought, he also believed that his primary responsibility was to act as a commentator at the level of what he referred to as ‘pure’, rather than ‘political’ (i.e. applied) ideology; and this conviction guided the approach he adopted, not only in the 1968 monograph, but throughout the 1963–71 period (Bayer, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 186). However, and perhaps more pragmatically, Lukács’ position here was also guided by his own almost fatal personal experience in falling foul of the communist establishment during the immediate aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956; an experience which led him then, and on later occasions, to the conviction that he should withdraw from direct engagement with a brutal and dangerous political adversary. These factors, in combination with a persisting if somewhat masochistic remaining sense of loyalty to the Hungarian Communist Party, finally led Lukács to the decision not to publish the 1968 monograph, which, as a consequence, remained unpublished until long after his death (Kadarkay, 1991: 464). This resolution, when combined with the rather distanced stance which Lukács took on the issue of political involvement, meant that he was unable to provide the sort of political leadership that many expected of him during this crucial period of time, and this, in turn, led to a further decline in his reputation, both at home and abroad. This stance may also well have helped to create the perception that ‘the place for politics is left empty in Lukács’ [later] philosophical system’ (Bayer, 1989: 182). However, even though there may be grounds for sustaining such a perception, it should also be remembered that, throughout this period, and as a general categorical imperative, Lukács insistently called for the democratisation of socialism, so that ‘the “objectively” socialist relations may also become “subjectively” socialist’ (Bayer, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 188). In other words, Lukács did play a role, but one which was consonant with his general philosophical stance, and one which he defined. During this period Lukács’ ideas on socialist development also became increasingly premised on a conception of historical evolution within which the struggle between socialism and capitalism was viewed as constituting the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

110

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

‘basic contradiction of the entire [contemporary] world-historical period’ (Bayer, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 182). However, Lukács did not believe that this struggle should, or even could ever be resolved through force, and, although he believed that, in the long run, capitalism would be forced to search for a ‘socialist solution’ which would emerge from within itself, in the meantime, and for the far forseeable future, he believed that the two ‘systems’ would have to co-exist with each other, and respect each other’s mandate and prefecture (Bayer, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 183). In many respects this stance reflects the underlying principles of détente, the balance of military power, and nuclear deterrence, all of which dominated this period of the Cold War. However, the importance which Lukács gave to the principle of peaceful co-existence between capitalism and socialism also reflects a philosophical concern with categorical specificity which had underlined the approach to aesthetic matters adopted in The Specificity of the Aesthetic. Despite his belief in the inevitability of an eventual socialist triumph, therefore, as the social and the individual, the general and the particular, finally come into congruence around authentic species being, Lukács insists that, at this particular and continuing historical conjuncture, the two ‘systems’ of capitalism and socialism should be viewed as categorically specific in character: Unlike the preceding economic formations, both systems are fundamentally of a universal character. Both could emerge only on the basis of the whole world becoming an inextricably unified configuration economically and therefore politically. Both have the immanent tendency to shape the world to its own model of life; and neither can abandon that objectively necessary aspiration without giving up its own self. (Lukács, quoted in Bayer, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), 1989: 184)

Because these two systems carry within them this inherent compulsion to ‘shape the world to … [their] … own model of life’ the prospects of apocalyptic confrontation between them is ever present, and it is such confrontation which Lukács believes must be avoided at all costs. What Lukács imagines, therefore, is a form of historical development based upon an equivalence of power and authority stretching into the forseeable future: a kind of enduring cut-and-thrust of political rivalry which is never allowed to reach boiling-point. According to Lukács, the persistent, parallel development of these two ‘universal’ systems means that both are bound to follow their own distinct and ‘immanent’ economic, social, political, ideological, and, also, cultural courses. Bourgeois-capitalist and socialist cultural forms are, therefore, perceived to be both inherently dissimilar in character, and also impelled from within to maintain and reproduce such dissimilarity; and, while cross-overs

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

111

of cultural tendency between the two systems may and will occur, the fundamental cultural immanence of each will remain inviolate. This position leads Lukács to insist both that socialist culture must be treated with due deference by western intellectuals, as an autonomous realm of value with its own norms and characteristics; and that bourgeois-capitalist culture should also be treated with respect by socialist intellectuals, because that culture also contains its own inbuilt areas of positive value. As will be argued later in this chapter, this notion that the two systems of socialism and bourgeois-capitalism possess correspondingly distinct and vital cultures is also frequently reasserted within the late writings on film. Although, as has been argued, Lukács believed both that the categorically distinct character of the two systems of socialism and capitalism must be maintained for the forseeable future, and that the cultural immanence of the two systems should be respected, he also believed that socialist culture had a political responsibility to attain aesthetic excellence in order to draw western intellectuals to both socialist culture, and socialism itself. Although, therefore, Lukács believed that an authentic democratic-socialist culture would ultimately be seen to be superior to a bourgeois-capitalist one which was inherently unable to grasp the overall picture of the world-historical period, he also believed that the ultimate hegemony of socialist culture was a matter for the future and, in the meantime, socialist artists must engage in a civilised struggle to win over bourgeois intellectuals and audiences by creating works of art of the uppermost quality. Such civil engagement would also involve a considerable degree of interaction with the West within the field of culture, and, far from seeing such interaction as a problem, Lukács actively promoted it, and had actively practiced it himself from as early as the 1940s, when he had crossed swords with Sartre in the Sorbonne. In this respect, Lukács’ engagement with the work of Solzhenitsyn in the 1960s can also be viewed as an attempt to both appropriate the work of a major dissident figure in exile to the democratic-socialist cause, and further promote a form of literary critical realism within the Soviet Bloc. Whether intended or not, this stance on the need to promote a critical socialist culture, and engage in the appropriation of bourgeois and dissident cultural forms, also placed Lukács himself in a strong position, as the most highly respected and best-known socialist literary theorist of the period. The ontological structure of ‘social being’ and ‘everyday life’ As has been argued, during this period Lukács was influenced by a robustly held desire to both promote socialist-humanist democratic reform and bring

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

112

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

about a renaissance of classical Marxist thought. However, in attempting to accomplish these objectives he also drew on one of the key ideas of both the early and middle aesthetic periods: the idea of the Lebenswelt as ‘everyday life’ in temporal ‘flow’; and, writing shortly before his death, Lukács now conceives of ‘social being’ in similar terms to the idea of the Lebenswelt, as a ‘flow’ of ‘everyday life’ (Lukács, in Shafai, 1996: 50). Moreover, this flow of everyday life consists of an accumulation of particularities in interactive motion, and it is this accumulation of particularities which constitutes the ‘ontology of everyday life … the primary space out of which emanates complicated forms of social practice such as ethics and aesthetics which in turn enrich and develop the daily life of human activity’ (Shafai, 1996: 50). However, it needs to be understood that Lukács is describing an ideal situation here, in which everyday life is marked by freedom, and he believes that such enrichment and development will only transpire when the ‘forms of social practice’ actually do feed back into the primary flow of everyday life – thus contributing towards the greater good – rather than merely becoming the privileged preserve of the select few, as is the case within bourgeois-capitalist, fascist and Stalinist societies. In an ideal social formation, therefore, the ‘forms’ would arise out of and return to the ‘primary space’, and everyday life would be experienced as an essentially providential Lebenswelt: If we imagine everyday life like a huge stream, science and art branch from it in higher forms of reception and reproduction of reality, become differentiated and take shape according to their specific aims, achieve their pure form in this characteristic stemming from the needs of life in society, to return at last – as a result of its effect, its influence on the life of the people – into the stream of everyday life. Thus, this stream is constantly enriched by the highest achievements of the human mind, assimilates these to its daily, practical needs, from which new branches of higher forms of objectifications arise as questions and demands … The special categories and structures of man’s scientific and artistic reactions to reality can only be derived from this dynamics of genesis, of development, of self-regulation, of being rooted in the life of man-kind. (Lukács, in Shafai, 1996: 50)

In reality, therefore, all the ‘forms’ of art and science are consequent upon and ‘rooted in the life of man-kind’ to begin with. What is of crucial importance, however, is that they remain so rooted, and also flow back into everyday life after they have attained their ‘pure form’. It is this phenomenologically derived formulation of the relationship between the forms and the primary space which informs Lukács’ late conceptions of social being and socialist-humanism, and also guides his insistence in the late writings on film that film must eventually redirect its own ‘higher forms of reception and reproduction of reality’ back towards the working class. What is also of significance here – and perhaps new – is that Lukács

Socialist humanism

113

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

draws an indirect equation between the concept of the Lebenswelt and political democracy, or, to put it another way, the concept of the Lebenswelt now helps to shape Lukács’ notion of political democracy. As we will see, this notion that a correspondence can be drawn between the characteristic modality of the Lebenswelt and forms of political democracy will also have important consequences for the way in which Lukács develops an aesthetics of film within the final period writings. For Lukács, the realm of ‘everyday life’ is the ontological foundation of social being, and that foundation is made up of the manifold and heterogeneous flow of particular acts and interactions which take place within daily experience. This also means that the realm of everyday life is, in the first case, a realm of individual acts and interactions which human beings engender within the social formation. The foundation of social being is, therefore, profoundly empirical in character, and Lukács evokes the idea of the ‘ultimate, insurpassable facticity of reality’ in arguing that any attempt to arrive at a proper understanding of social being must grasp the heterogeneous particularity of this reality (Lukács, 1982: 98). Lukács also argues that the constellation of particular human acts and interactions which make up social being are engendered primarily because the flow of everyday life contains contradictions, and, following Hegel, he goes on to argue that contradiction is the ‘ultimate ontological principle’ (Lukács, 1982: 2). It is, in addition, when the individual human being addresses the contradictions which pervade life that he or she takes on the role which, for Lukács, is most characteristic of human species essence: that of the ‘responding being’ who first reflects upon the reality which he or she encounters, and then acts in consequence of such reflection (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 129). This process of reflection and response could, as one of Lukács’ interviewers has rather anxiously offered, be seen as ‘essentially subjective’ in character, and ‘frightfully like existentialism’ (Holz, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 130). However, Lukács is keen to distance himself from the orthodox communist bête noir of existentialism, and, in doing so, paraphrases Marx in claiming that ’men make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 131), in order to argue that the constellation of myriad events and circumstances which make up everyday life creates demarcated ‘space[s] of [possible] action’, within which the individual is faced with a circumscribed range of choice on how to respond to those events and circumstances (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 129). When the individual exercises such choice as a ‘responding being’ he or she exercises an authentic form of freedom because that ‘freedom consists in him having a choice to make between the possibilities inherent within a particular space of action’

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

114

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

(Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 129). However, such freedom is also limited by the parameters of the self-same action space, and, although Lukács remains keen to define the ‘relationship of freedom and necessity’ which prevails here in a way that ‘does not abolish freedom’ altogether, his intention is also to define that relationship in a way that, in accordance with Marxist tenets, places limitations upon excessive subjectivism (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 132). Lukács’ formulations here clearly suggest at least a phenomenological, if not existential reading of Marx’s original precept. However, whether or not this is so, it is clear that Lukács’ primary intention is to theorise the connection between freedom and determinism in a way which privileges both the former and empirical experience. However, although Lukács wishes to conceptualise the ‘relationship of freedom and necessity’ in a way that ‘does not abolish freedom’, he also wishes to conceptualise that relationship per se, and, in the Ontology, does so by recourse to the concept of the ‘complex’. Lukács’ characterisation of everyday life as a heterogeneity of individual responses and acts through which choice is exercised clearly encompasses one dimension of the Hegelian conception of Geist, that of freedom. However, it also encompasses the other, that of totality, because, although such responses and acts are constitutive of ‘essential human specificity’, Lukács argues that they are also associated with the ‘process of creating and comprehending [man’s] world’ (Lukács, 1982: 24). This is so because the flow of everyday life not only consists of an un-structured heterogeneity of concrete responses to the experience of life, but also of what Lukács refers to as ‘complexes’, within which that heterogeneity clusters and coalesces. Lukács also argues that there are two polar forms of the ‘complex’: the concrete ‘complex of the individual person’, and the abstract complex of the ‘social totality’, and, between these two poles, a range of intermediate complexes also exist which regulate and organise the heterogeneity of responses to the experience of life. This idea of the ‘complex’ as the key consolidating element within social being appears to be similar in a number of respects to Lukács’ conceptions of ‘speciality’ (Besonderheit) in The Specificity of the Aesthetic, and aesthetic realism in the middle period writings; a comparison which seems to be corroborated when Lukács provides an account of how Hegel characterises the social being of post-revolutionary Europe: Hegel’s point of departure is the realistic description of bourgeois society whose dynamic he sees in the regularities that directly arise out of the accidents of individual behaviour; [emphasis added] he correctly views this whole sphere as one of particularity, of relative universality in relation to the individuals. The universality of the bourgeois state now has to be developed out of the immanent dialectic of this sphere … He [Hegel] saw clearly that this particularity, which he took as the categorical­ ­ characteristic of

Socialist humanism

115

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

bourgeois society was a specific feature of the present era: to be precise, as the foundation and bearer of the contemporary social forms. (Lukács, 1982: 17–18)

Although Lukács makes a more general point here in this section of the Ontology, as part of a wider discussion of the historical difference between the bourgeois world and that of the classical Greek ‘antique polis’ (Lukács, 1982: 18), the equation which he makes between ‘the realistic description of bourgeois society’ and the ‘regularities’ that directly arise out of the ‘accidents of individual behaviour’, seem to link the notion of the ‘complex’, which is so central to the Ontology, to the idea of Besonderheit, which is equally central to both the literary writings of the middle period (though, indirectly here), and to the Aesthetic. In all of these cases a comparable representation of existence can be observed in which the ‘regularities’ that connect up the ‘accidents of individual behaviour’ occur because those regularities are always a response to a reality of cause, effect and circumstance within everyday life which is itself characterised by ontological regularity. Lukács insists that his conception of everyday life refers to an ontological, rather than merely epistemological reality, and argues that everyday life must be considered as having a social ontology based in regularity because ‘reality has an intrinsic order of priority’ which necessarily engenders a reiteration of responses, which then becomes manifest as the ‘complex’: I would say that its [ontology’s] object is the really existing. And its task is to investigate the existing and trace it back to its being, and thus to discover the various gradations and connections within it … the primary form of existence is the complex, that one must therefore investigate the complex as complex, and proceed from the complex to its elements and elementary processes. (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 17)

According to Lukács, therefore, the model of the ‘complex’ can be used to stand for the regularities which occur within everyday life, and the ontology of social being can be regarded as consisting of ‘a complex, dynamically contradictory … [set of ] … totalities’, or complexes: If we now attempt to summarise what is most essential in Hegel’s ontology from what has so far been obtained, we arrive at the result that he conceives reality as a totality of complexes that are in themselves, thus relatively, total, that the objective dialectic consists in the real genesis and self-development, interaction and synthesis of these complexes. (Lukács, 1982: 72)

Lukács also argues that, precisely because the complex is a synthesis of ‘accidents’, and is, therefore, marked by contradiction, chance and contingency, it cannot be considered to be predominantly rational in character; and, in fact, according to Lukács, the flow of everyday life possesses an ‘insuperably … uneven’ and, as we have seen, ‘accidental’ character:

116

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

social development must be in an insuperable sense uneven. For heterogeneous components of one kind or another always come into play … and on account of their heterogeneity they have an insuperably accidental character … there is in history an insuperable element of chance. (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 132–3)

It follows from this that any approach to the understanding of social being which conceives of social being as exclusively or predominantly rational or coherent in disposition must, inevitably, lead to a distorted understanding of reality. Yet, according to Lukács, such approaches still persist, particularly in the mind-sets of those who rule the communist world, and one consequence of this is that, within the authoritarian states of the Soviet Bloc, ‘the more the rationality of reality is elaborated in thought, the more strongly grows the illusion that the totality of reality can be conceived as a unitary and rational system’ (Lukács, 1982: 97). According to Lukács this misguided ‘illusion’ leads to an over-emphasis on ‘bureaucratic concentration, [and] the detailed supervision of every detail’ within communist societies, when what is really required is a concrete understanding of the often contradictory and frequently chance-driven complexities and minutiae of social being (Lukács, New Hungarian Quarterly, 1968: 74). Given this, and based on the premise that the contingent plays a ‘central role’ within the totality of complexes which makes up everyday life, Lukács goes on to argue that social being must be understood and represented through a combination of rational and intuitive means of comprehension and representation (Lukács, 1982: 99). Lukács also rejects the idea that it is possible to make a clear-cut distinction between intuition and rationality, arguing that, ‘considered epistemologically’, such a distinction ‘has no basis whatsoever’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 45); and, echoing analogously a key concept within the Aesthetic, he insists that reason and intuition should have an equivalent presence within the various forms of comprehension and representation. This position also leads Lukács to reject both the pre-eminence ascribed to intuition within classical ‘German philosophy’, and the ‘exaggerated sense of logic’ found in ‘neo-positivist’ philosophies: an embellishment which leads to the endorsement of a ‘universal rationality which in fact does not exist’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 46). This irrationalist tendency within Lukács’ thought is also influenced by a conviction which has its origin in the early writings, and which is also reinforced by the ‘empirical’ stance which Lukács adopts in relation to the understanding of social being within his late thought, that rationality can be used for manipulative purposes, and, throughout the interviews he gave over the 1967–71 period, he was at pains to criticise such rationalist ‘manipulation’ of empirical diversity, arguing, for example, that such manipulation is often totalitarian in effect, and that ‘we Marxists have underestimated in a criminal way the importance of individual

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

117

decisions’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 130). It is also significant that, in these writings from his final period, Lukács does not emphasise the dangers of irrationalism to the extent that he did during the 1950s, and particularly in The Destruction of Reason. It seems, therefore, that, in these final writings, the need to draw attention to the importance of particularity, and the negative consequences of bureaucratisation, take precedence over reference to the perils posed by the irrational. In addition to an accent on the role of the contingent within everyday life, Lukács’ conception of social ontology is also characterised by a number of other emphases, which will now be considered. The first of these is the idea of social being as ‘flux’, and meaning as ‘relational’. Here, Lukács draws upon the ideas of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and, in particular, on what he refers to as ‘Heraclitus’ doctrine of the universality and omnipotence of becoming’, in order to characterise the ontological structure of social being as marked by perpetual fluctuation, and as in a perpetual state of ‘becoming’ (Lukács, 1982: 86). In addition to this concern with social reality as perpetual flux, Lukács also argues that the meanings ascribed to phenomenal experience within everyday life should also be considered to be essentially relational, rather than singular and fixed. Not only is everyday life governed by the principle of contingent becoming, therefore, but the meanings generated within everyday life are also more correctly regarded as interrelated, rather than autonomous. At one level, Lukács appears to be advancing a relational theory of meaning here which is similar in some respects to certain forms of post-structuralist or postmodern thought. However, as we have seen, Lukács’ conception of the ‘complex’ as the central structuring element within social being places limitations upon relationality, and, in addition, Lukács draws his understanding of relational meaning from Hegel, classical phenomenology and dialectical materialism, rather than from post-structuralist or postmodernist traditions that he was in any case unfamiliar with; and his conception of relational meaning, and the relationality of event and circumstance, is best understood in terms of the model of the complex: a model which consists of relative totalities which are engaged in a constant process of ‘genesis … interaction and synthesis’ (Lukács, 1982: 72), and which are, in addition ‘in an insuperable sense uneven’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 132–3). It is this characterisation of social being in terms of flux, relationality, and relative totality which leads Lukács to an understanding of everyday life as essentially indeterminate, largely intuitively experienced, yet also comprehensible to a degree; and this understanding also conforms, once more, to an orthodox conception of the Lebenswelt. Lukács also drew on these ideas of the world as in a state of perpetual flux and becoming in order to reaffirm one of the central distinctions from the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

118

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

middle period: that between realism and naturalism, a segregation, which, even as late as 1967, he still believed to constitute ‘one of the greatest oppositions within aesthetics’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 36). However, Lukács does not return to this ‘great opposition’ within the pages of the Ontology in order to address questions of aesthetics, but in order to reaffirm the fluid and relational character of social being, and he does so by relating the concept of naturalism to what he refers to as the ‘understanding’, and that of realism to what he refers to as ‘reason’. According to Lukács, naturalism and the understanding seek to define things as existing autonomously in themselves, while reason (and, therefore, by implication, ‘realism’): raises itself above understanding in so far as it recognises the true-contradictory and dialectical – relationship between what appear to be completely autonomous and independently existing objects … [and in so doing] … grasps reality as consisting primarily of many-leveled dynamic complexes and their multi-lateral dynamic connections. (Lukács, 1982: 77–8)

While the understanding seeks to comprehend the ‘facticity’ of particularity, reason seeks to comprehend particularity as part of a system, and as defined in relation to that system: the system of the ‘many-levelled dynamic complexes and their multi-lateral dynamic connections’. In addition, reason also inaugurates its practice of analysis at the level of the complex, and then works down towards the particular. In contrast, the understanding as it is manifest within a form such as ‘bourgeois science’, first seeks to isolate the particular, and then place particulars together in order to form a complex. According to Lukács such a procedure is injudicious, and, in its place: One must … investigate the complex as complex, and proceed from the complex to its elements and elementary processes, and not (as science generally believes) first find certain elements and then construct definite complexes from the interplay of the elements. You will remember that Hartmann conceived the solar system on the one hand and the atom on the other as complexes of this kind. I regard this as a very fruitful idea. (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 17)

All this is reminiscent of the Aesthetic, and, at the basis of Lukács’ notions of the ‘complex’ and ‘reason’, therefore, is a conceptualisation of the general configuration of the complex, the particularities within the complex, and the relations between particularities and complexes, as constituting first, mediumterm, and then an eventual absolute totality within the social formation. As particularities begin to conglomerate, driven by the regularities experienced in reality, the point is reached when a recognisable ‘complex’ materialises, and it is from this vantage point that reason then tries to grasp the role of any particularity within the system as a whole. As one particular is identified, its ‘multi-lateral’ relations with other particulars are noted. After this, the ‘­­­­­multi-

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

119

levelled’ evolution of this network of particulars and the relations between them is considered, as realist analysis moves down towards a starting point which is indissolubly linked to the totality of the complex, just as, according to Lukács, there is an ‘inseparable interconnection between the individual and society’ (Lukács, 1982: 25). Lukács’ model of social being also has a clear historical dimension, because social being is conceived of as being in a constant state of evolutionary becoming. As argued earlier, this process of evolutionary progression is motivated principally by the aspiration to bring social being into better correspondence with authentic human-species essence, a correspondence which would become manifest with the establishment of a humanist-socialist system as the governing form within society. As we have seen, Lukács believes that it may take a very long time indeed before such a correspondence can come to pass. Nevertheless, he believes it to be encumbent upon all progressive persons to take part in the struggle to bring about such a utopian ‘humanisation’ of social being. The fluid and relational model of social being which Lukács elaborates within the Ontology also leads him to the conclusion that, despite the difficulties involved, progress towards the humanisation of social being can be achieved, because individual acts and complexes within social being may, in certain circumstances, become ‘inseparably entwined together to produce a social movement’, and such critical mass may then lead to significant social change (Lukács, 1982: 25). Significantly, Lukács also argues that such a movement of social reform will probably need to be set in motion by some sort of significant shock to the existing system. Reiterating a key notion taken from the early aesthetic, Lukács argues that such an upset will be necessary in order to: mobilise millions more intensively … I am speaking in this Leninist sense when I say that such a feeling of a definite change is necessary to put the mechanism into practice … if we do not fight resolutely and tenaciously for the change then things will not be changed over the years’. (Lukács, New Hungarian Quarterly, 1968: 77–8)

Despite the explicit reference to ‘Leninist’ thought here, the conception of shock and ‘definite change’ set out has many parallels with similar notions spread throughout the entirety of Lukács’ writings. In all of these cases the notion suggests the need for some surprising and dynamic catalytic force or event to occur in order that the individuated and social experience of ‘ordinary life’ is shaken into a new and enhanced state of awareness, which may then bring about positive change. This conception of shock also falls fully into line with Lukács’ political quest at the time to reform eastern block socialism and make a ‘Marxist renaissance both possible and necessary’ (Lukács, New Hungarian Quarterly, 1968: 75). However, it also reveals a radical, even

120

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

revolutionary stance towards questions of political reform which would not have found favour within the then communist establishment.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The core intellectual model of the Ontology Lukács’ Toward the Ontology of Social Being is a large and complex work, divided into two parts and eight chapters. Part One includes chapters on Wittgenstein and Existentialism, Nicolai Hartmann’s theory of ontology, and the ‘ontological’ theories of Hegel and Marx; while Part Two includes chapters on labour, social reproduction, the role of ideology, and contemporary forms of alienation. Throughout, the writing is loosely structured, digressive, and often difficult to comprehend. Making overall sense of and appreciating the Ontology is, therefore, a complicated enterprise, as even some of Lukács’ closest disciples found when he invited them to review the prospective manuscript during the winter of 1968–69. In fact, students such as Agnes Heller were not only confused by the Ontology, but also ‘“extraordinarily” critical’ of the work. However, although Lukács listened to such criticisms, he refused all help in completing the final version of the work, arguing that ‘I have to clean my own dirty laundry’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 465). Such evidence suggests that Lukács was well aware of the shortcomings of his final work, one which he had once thought would stand as a fitting epitaph to his career; and, in the end, and given the criticism of Heller and other members of the Budapest School of scholars who gathered around him at the time, he decided against publication (Grumley, 2005: 20). Cogniscent of the difficulties attendant upon coming to grips with the Ontology, Lukács also took the opportunity to give a number of interviews between 1969 and 1971, in which he attempted to summarise his objectives in writing the Ontology. For example, towards the end of an interview which he gave in 1971 to the Hungarian writer István Eörsi, Lukács tried to précis his core concept of social ontology. The long, partly edited quotation which follows is dense and difficult, like the Ontology itself, and this problem is compounded by the fact that Lukács is speaking informally here, in a freeflowing interview situation, to an interviewer who is encouraging him to be expansive: Int: In conclusion, would you like to say a few words about your last work, the Ontology? GL: Following Marx I conceive of ontology as philosophy proper, but as philosophy based on history … That is to say, things do not change of their own accord, by virtue of spontaneous processes, but as a consequence of conscious choices. Conscious choice means that the end precedes the result … An object without categorical aspects cannot exist. Existence means, therefore, that a thing exists in an objectively determinate form

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

121

… In the Marxist system of categories every object is furnished from the outset with attributes, with thinghood … A non-objective being is a non-being … The categories, therefore, are components of objective reality … history is the system of categories in the process of change. The categories, therefore, are forms of beings. To the extent that they become ideas, they become forms of reflexion, without losing their primacy as forms of being. In this way completely different forms of categories with their various contents come into being … .The uniqueness of objects is inseparable from their being and cannot be reduced to anything more fundamental. This means that the system of categories itself develops in such a way that the category of uniqueness evolves in an extraordinarily process from the uniqueness of a pebble to the point where the uniqueness of man is reached. (Lukács, in Eörsi (ed.), 1983: 141–2)

Here, in a rather convoluted comportment which nevertheless embodies the key concerns of the Ontology as a whole, Lukács points to both particularity and the complex as the fundamental elements of social being, although, here, the term ‘category’ replaces that of complex. In another interview, this time given to the journal New Left Review in 1970, Lukács appears to re-cast the fundamental notions of particularity and the complex into ideas of ‘teleology’ and ‘causality’, when he argues that the Ontology is centrally concerned with the question of the relationship between ‘freedom’ and ‘necessity’, or ‘teleology and causality’: My new work [the Ontology] centres on the relationship between necessity and freedom, or, as I express it, teleology and causality. Traditionally, philosophers have always built systems founded on one or other of these two poles; they have either denied necessity or denied human freedom. My aim is to show the ontological inter-relation of the two, and to reject the ‘either-or’ standpoints with which philosophy has traditionally presented man. The concept of labour is the hinge of my analysis … if primitive man is confronted by a heap of stones, he must choose between them … he selects between alternatives. The notion of alternatives is basic to the meaning of human labour, which is always teleological – it sets an aim, which is the result of a choice. It thus expresses human freedom. But this freedom only exists by setting in motion objective physical forces, which obey the causal laws of the material universe. The teleology of labour is thus always co-ordinated with physical causality, and indeed the result of any other individual’s labour is a moment of physical causality for the teleological orientation (Setzung) of any other individual. The belief in a teleology of nature was theology, and the belief in an immanent teleology of history was unfounded. But there is teleology in all human labour. This position, which is the nucleus from which I am developing my present work, overcomes the classical antinomy of necessity and freedom. (Lukács, in Eörsi (ed.), 1983: 173)

The core purpose of the Ontology, therefore, is to illustrate the ontological inter-relation of freedom and necessity, teleology and causality, particularity and totality, within a ‘space for action’ which opens up for the ‘responding being’ who chooses between alternatives, and then acts. Human beings always aim for something, always have an objective, always have a ‘teleological

122

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

orientation’, or what Lukács refers to as Setzung; and this is always related to action because ‘the teleology of labour is always co-ordinated with physical causality’. Despite many of Lukács’ professed intentions, therefore, it seems, given these quotations, that the Ontology must be considered as a work of existentialist and phenomenological humanism, as well as Marxism.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The ontology of being: A schematic intellectual reconstruction Bearing in mind both the substance of this last, extensive quotation, and also what has been argued previously, an attempt will now be made to outline a conditional, intellectually reconstructed model of the fundamental logic of the Ontology. This model will also divide the concept of the ontology of social being into two provinces: those of ‘being’ and ‘human-social being’. In this model, the model of the ‘category’ also refers to a field of phenomena within ontological being, while that of the ‘complex’ refers to a more ordered structure of phenomena within what will be referred to as human-social being. The exercise in Lukácsian logic which now follows is unavoidably intricate and demanding, but also important to undertake if the late writings on film are to be adequately understood. The underlying intellectual model of the Ontology 1  The ontology of being

• �������������������������������������������������������������������������� Because he is a philosophical realist, and as argued in Chapter 3, Lukács believes that perceptual experience converges with external reality. What follows, therefore, is based on the premise that, to say that an object ‘possesses’ an attribute is the same as to say that such an object is ‘ascribed’ an attribute, because, from a philosophical realist perspective, attribution and possession can converge. Of course, we do ascribe attributes to objects, but such ascription does not mean that those objects literally ‘possess’ such attributes, as they are formulated within our conceptual schemes. However, the fact is that we ascribe attributes to objects for good reason, and because we think that those objects possess features which correspond to those attributes, albeit indirectly. This is what Lukács means when he says that the attributes are ‘part of ’ the object (for a fuller discussion of this issue see Chapter 3). • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� According to Lukács, each material object within material reality is, at a fundamental level, singular and particular, and has an ‘objectively determinate form’ by virtue of that singularity.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

123

• ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Each object can, therefore, only exist at all if it possesses an objectively determinate form grounded in its own singularity. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� The objectively determinate form of any object also includes a number of ‘attributes’, which are ascribed to a particular object on the grounds that we believe such attributes converge with aspects of that object. These attributes, therefore, become part of the object, in terms of our experience of it, and in the sense that Lukács holds up. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� These attributes (for example, ‘shape’) are also shared by other objects. • ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Attributes are, therefore, ‘categorical’ in nature, because they constitute forms of being beyond the particular. They are, therefore, intermediate forms of being and category, and intermediate forms of ascription. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� A ‘category’ is, therefore, an intermediate class of attributes and characteristics of material objects, such as, for example, the class of ‘shape’. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� Each singular object possesses/can be ascribed a number of categorical attributes (for example, size, colour, mass) which are also shared by/attributed to other objects. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� Each categorical attribute can, therefore, be associated with a range of singular objects. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������� The categories do not possess an ‘objectively determinate form’, and therefore do not exist in the full material sense that particular objects grounded in their own unique singularity do. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� Particularity is, therefore, the objective source of being, underlying the intermediate realm of the categorical. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Because the categories do not possess an ‘objectively determinate form’ they must be considered to be conceptual formulations. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� However, the categories are still related to the world of particular objects by virtue of the fact that the categories exist both as global concepts (for example, ‘shape’) and as attributes of particular objects/ascriptions given to particular objects. We (philosophical realists) also believe that our categorical ascriptions converge with objects in external reality, and this also means that they are directly related to those objects. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������� This means that the categories remain ‘a component of objective reality’, and should not be conceived of as non-material entities in an idealist sense. This, once more, emphasises the extent to which Lukács wishes to construct a materialist ontology of social being. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� As already argued, the categories exist both in a categorical sense, as ‘concepts’, and in a concrete sense, because they are part of particularity, and, thus, external material reality. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ The categories become categorical attributes when they are linked to material reality. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� However, this also means that ‘particularity’ itself also exists as a category

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

124

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

(the singular), as concrete singularity (a singular thing), and as a categorical attribute (the ascription of particularity to some thing). • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ However, because particularity is the ultimate source of being, and all that actually exists in a materialist sense is singular, the category and categorical attribute of particularity should have priority over all other categories and categorical attributes. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� This also means that the real source of knowledge, and of being, is always the particular, and not the intermediate or abstract. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� However, as has been argued, the particular is closely linked to the intermediate in the materialist ontology of being, because all singular objects possess/are attributed categorical attributes, and because all categorical attributes are concretely connected to singular objects. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� The domain of being, therefore, consists of this interaction between concrete singularities and the intermediate fields associated with them. • ����������������������������������������������������������� All this constitutes Lukács’ materialist ontology of being. Although Lukács’ ontology of social being has its basis in a conception of material reality drawn from Marxist/Hegelian dialectics, it is much more centrally concerned with human social reality. What follows now will, therefore, attempt to map Lukács’ ontological position on the nature of ‘being’ onto the socialist-humanist stance which he adopts in his final period, because it is these two positions which make up his understanding of human and material ‘social being’. 2  The ontology of human-social being

• ��������������������������������������������������������������������� Each individual human being within the system of social being has an ‘objectively determinate form’ and being by virtue of his or her own singularity. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Each individual human being can only exist if he/she possesses an objectively determinate corporeal form grounded in his/her own singularity. • ���������������������������������������������������������������������� The objectively determinate form of a person includes a number of categorical attributes which are associated with/ascribed to that person. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� These attributes include biological, psychological, behavioural, emotional, analytical, social, ethical, intellectual, material, and other categorical attributes. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� These attributes (for example, ‘courage’, or ‘youth’) are also shared by other persons. • ���������������������������������������������������������������������� These attributes are, therefore, categorical attributes, because they constitute forms of being beyond the particular. They are, therefore, ‘intermediate’ forms of social being. • ������������ In a purely biological ontology of being, these categorical attributes would

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

125

only include those of gender, age, physicality, etc. • ���������� However a social ontology of being would include these biological categories, but would also go beyond this to include categorical attributes such as class, ethnicity, occupation, race, belief, and thought. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� However, in a social ontology of being, intermediate social categories such as class are not as important as personal particularity, because personal particularity exists in an objectively determinate manner, while the social category of class does not. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� However, at the same time, all individual persons also have a species character (Gattungswesen) as human beings, and are linked together by this. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ This species character is founded in the need to experience freedom and totality. • ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� In an ideal situation, species character and social being will be in congruence with each other. • ������������������������������������������������������������������� This also means that both personal human particularity and species essence are more important than the intermediate social categories, including that of social class. This was Lukács’ great ‘discovery’ in his final period (Heller, in Heller (ed.), 1983: 177). • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� Each singular person possesses/is ascribed a number of categorical attributes which are also shared by other persons. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� Each categorical attribute can, therefore, be associated with a range of persons. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� What we have therefore, at the basis of social being, are the ‘object world’ of external reality, numbers of persons, and numbers of categorical attributes which are ascribed to/possessed by those persons. Through the power of individual and collective agency, various relations of cause and effect and other factors, including many which are motivated by chance, accident, and irrationality of various types, these persons and attributes coalesce to form relatively coherent, interacting, and evolving ‘complexes’. • �������������������������������������������������������������������� The complex is, therefore the motivated movement of persons and categorical attributes into a relatively coherent system, and, unlike a natural system (such as, for example, a storm) the human complex system is partly – though not wholly – put into motion and structure by individual human beings, though within a context that those individual human beings never fully understand. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� The complex, therefore, consists of individual persons, categorical attributes, various elements of material reality, and the relations between these. The complex, therefore, contains both particularities and intermediate forms, and, within social being, coalesces into collective institutions, practices, ideologies, events, and patterns of human existence.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

126

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

• �������������������������������������������������������������������� However, only the individual person has an ‘objectively determinate form’, while intermediate institutions or practices of any sort do not. The British (or Hungarian) army does not ‘exist’ to the same extent that a particular soldier within that army exists. Therefore, personal individuality is, as already argued, the source and foundation of all human social being. This notion is of fundamental importance to Lukács in his final period, as he seeks to combat the inhuman face of Stalinism and capitalism. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� However, at a fundamental level, the personal individuality of a particular person is also inseparably linked to the species character of all human beings. As we have seen, this notion is also of great importance to Lukács, as he elevates the concept of Gattungswesen above that of social class. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� The development and evolution of the complex within social being is motivated by the need to realise species essence within personal and social experience. However, various factors oppose this, and these include the factors of external, material reality, chance and accident, the irrational, and a human and social obsession with power, egocentricity, narcissism, and selfishness. • Gattungswesen, freedom and totality are, therefore, fundamentally altruistic in character, and it is this which Lukács seeks to embody in his conception of ‘socialist-humanism’. • ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� As argued, the individual person possesses/is ascribed a range of categorical attributes, and that person and those attributes interact with other persons and other attributes within a material environment to form an interactive social system: the complex. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� The social formation, therefore, consists of a number of interacting and evolving complexes. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� Historical development, therefore, consists of the social formation of complexes in the process of interactive and evolutionary change. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� This evolving interactive system of complexes is also what Lukács refers to sometimes as ‘social being’, sometimes as ‘everyday life’, sometimes as the domain of Besonderheit. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� The basis of social being is the individual person, who, when faced with a variety of circumstances, and with an aim in mind, selects a course of action from a range of alternatives, and then acts. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� This means that authentic human individuality only really emerges when a person is able to behave in this manner, and that it also does not so emerge when a person is unable, for various reasons, to behave in that manner. • ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Both the selection between alternatives, and the carrying out of an action, is delimited by the ‘space of action’ available. This action space places limits upon the individual person’s ability to think and act.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Socialist humanism

127

• ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� So the source of change is the particular individual choice, made within a space for action which delimits that choice. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� However, the choices which are made, and are made with an end in mind, are not always correct or warranted ones, and do not always lead to the desired end. In addition, the choices which are made cannot be made on the basis of a full knowledge of the complexes which the individual finds herself or himself within. • ����������������������������������������������������������������������� This means that change does not come about always in accord with rational principles and processes, or the needs of species essence. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������� This makes it impossible to create a rational overview, understanding or regulation of the system of everyday life. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Instead, attempts must be made to understand the processes of selection and action which are taking place within the interactive micro-­complexes which make up the totality of everyday life, and to understand the factors which are ‘progressing’ or ‘retarding’ the realisation of species essence within the social sphere. • �������������������������������������������������������������������������� This also, and as argued, means that the principle of personal particularity is more important than the principle of social generality. • ������������������������������������������������������������������������ It is, therefore, important to focus on the particularity of the person within social being, because the individual person is the ontological basis of social being, and of change. • �������������������������������������������������������������������������� A system must, therefore, be created which focuses upon the particularity of the person, and the need to cultivate the individual’s ability to exercise choice and action. • ���������������������������������������������������������������������� Constitutionally, the individual person wishes to exercise choice and action in the pursuit of freedom and totality. As in the Aesthetic, to a large extent the underlying model of the Ontology is based around the three philosophical concepts of the particular, the intermediate, and the abstract. As in the Aesthetic, so also in the Ontology, emphasis is also placed on the particular, and on the relationship of the particular to the intermediate. In Lukács’ ontology, the abstract is also seen in largely oppressive terms, and as inimical to the basic materiality of individuality which makes up ontological social being. In human-social being, only the individual person possesses ‘objectively determinate form’, and all other aspects of social experience are merely ‘categorical attributes’, of one sort or another. What is of prime importance, therefore, is to understand the true role of individuality within the social complex, and to establish social structures which will promote particularity. As we will see now, all of this has considerable bearing on the late writings on film.

5

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

In contrast to both the Aesthetic and the Ontology, Lukács’ writings on film during his final period are informal and unsystematic, and, with one major exception, consist of impromptu responses to questions put during interviews. Nevertheless, a number of distinct themes can be discerned within these writings, and many of these echo the central concerns of the Ontology. These themes, which will now be explored one by one, comprise (a) ‘manipulation’ (b) ‘technical reason’ (c) ‘shock’ (d) ‘resistance to manipulation from the ground up’ (e) ‘form and content’ (f ) ‘authorship’ (g) ‘the aesthetic categories of Stimmung and indefinite objectivity’, and (h) ‘totality’. (a) Manipulation Lukács’ dialogue with film during the final episode of his career is premised upon and influenced by his overriding political and social concerns. This could hardly be otherwise, given the extent to which he devoted himself to social and political commentary over the 1964–71 period. However, and intriguingly, what emerges particularly clearly in the writings on film is the extent to which he now seems to perceive the contemporary social and political environment as dominated by a controlling rationality which has instituted a ‘general domain of manipulation’ within contemporary experience (Lukács, 1965: 407). Echoing views previously expressed in the Aesthetic and elsewhere, Lukács does not appear to make any clear distinction between existing socialist and capitalist societies here, and describes the contemporary dominion of manipulation as a ‘general tendency of our times’, and one which characterises both socialist and capitalist ‘systems’ (Lukács, 1965: 407). The prominence attributed to the role of manipulation here has a measurement of its foundation in Lukács’ denigration of Stalinism as an authoritarian, controlling system; and in his belief in the urgent need to humanise and democratise existing communism. However, although that foundation also

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

129

influences the tenor of much of Lukács’ other writings over this period, the issue of ideological exploitation tends to be less trenchantly and centrally addressed in these writings than is the case with the film writings. What is significant in the writing on film, therefore, is both the revelation of the extent to which Lukács now conceives of contemporary society as pervaded by an ‘overwhelming reality of manipulation’, and the fact that he now chooses to address this particular problem via an exposition on film, rather than, as in the generality of his other writings from this period, in relation to more broad-spectrum questions of social and political reform (Lukács, 1965: 408). It seems, therefore, that, as with other periods of his career, an engagement with film leads Lukács to assume a course of thought at variance with his more usually adopted positions. One probable reason for the sharpened intensity of Lukács’ standpoint on the issue of ideological manipulation here is that he may have felt less constrained in expressing views which would be published in Italian, and in a book or journal article about cinema, than he would were he to be published in Hungarian, and in a book or journal article on literature, politics or philosophy. During this period Lukács certainly felt politically exposed, and, as a consequence, exercised considerable caution concerning what he chose to place within the public domain, and where he chose to place it. The relative sanctuary offered by the Cinema Nuovo journal may have led him to believe that he could comment there more safely, both on his disquiet concerning the hazards attendant on exposing himself to official scrutiny, and on the enveloping enlargement of manipulation. Nevertheless, and despite such sanctuary, Lukács still believed that speaking out against the current state of political affairs in Hungary and the Soviet Union remained a ‘risky’ endeavour (Lukács, 1965: 408). Another reason why Lukács may have chosen to focus on the ‘overwhelming reality of manipulation’ in the film writings is that he believed such exploitation to be significantly reinforced by the mass media, to the extent that, in his view, the current ‘manipulation of public opinion in all press and literary publications, not to speak of cinema … is … alarming’ (Lukács, 1965: 408). Returning to a view of cinema expressed in the Aesthetic, Lukács argues that the capitalistic nature of film’s mode of production would always make the cinema particularly susceptible to ‘manipulat[ion] in a capitalist sense’ (Lukács, 1967: 249); and that the cinema may ‘by its very nature, and certainly more so than any other art … [become] … exclusively destined to exercise immediate mass [ideological] effects if … [it remains] … in the hands of the great capitalist powers’ (Lukács, 1965: 407). On the other hand, and as will be argued later, Lukács also believed that film possessed the potential to both resist such an ill-starred fate, and play a constructive role in ­ undermining exploitation.

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

130

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

(b) Technical reason In the writings on film, Lukács argues that ideological manipulation now constitutes the characteristic ‘Weltanschauung’ (world view/world ideological tendency) of the modern world (Lukács, 1965: 407). However, he also argues that, within this Weltanschauung, an important and particularly regressive role is played by the exercise of ‘technical’ reason, which, according to Lukács, now presides over contemporary human consciousness. Here, Lukács returns to one of the key themes of the early aesthetic, and also to one of the key notions he had inherited from his friend and mentor Max Weber: that of the ‘three spheres’, wherein it is argued that the sphere of technical reason has come to dominate the spheres of ethics and aesthetics within modernity (Holub, 1991: 136). This position also leads Lukács back to one of the central themes of The Specificity of the Aesthetic when he argues that the current ascendancy of technical reason leads to the subordination of all ‘internal’ ‘human and social content’, and to the ‘exclusive … or at least in large measure, prominence to all questions of the technical’, and to the ‘primacy of the technical’ (Lukács, 1965: 407). As we have seen, in his other writings from this period Lukács argues that an over-reliance on rationality poses difficulties for the comprehension of an everyday life which is to some extent governed by irrational and unpredictable forces. However, in these other writings Lukács does not particularly place emphasis upon the problems posed by the hegemony of technical reason, and it seems that, as with his focus on the more general Weltenschauung of manipulation, it is the engagement with cinema and film which leads him to attend to this issue so directly in the late writings on film. This degree of commitment also leads Lukács to discourse on the notion of the ‘technical’ in relation to film in four different respects, and all four of these tend to focus on the negative consequences which ensue from a preoccupation with ‘technical reason’. Firstly, Lukács employs the notion of the ‘technical’ to refer to an overuse of formal techniques, such as, for example, in the Soviet montage editing of the 1920s. Secondly, Lukács also uses the notion to refer to genres of film criticism and theory which place undue emphasis upon external questions of technical form, and inadequate weight on more ‘internal’, human issues. Lukács is opposed to such a bias because it elevates a concern for form over a concern for content, where content stands for the human experience of ‘life’: Behind every question in its purely formal appearance stand serious and significant problems of human life. … Films and criticism that operate at an aesthetic level dominated by technical issues must be set against a criticism capable of interiorization and profound aesthetic depth … [and of reaching] … the real human being. (Lukács, 1965: 407)

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

131

The third sense in which Lukács discusses the notion of the technical is in relation to a preoccupation with the bureaucratic organisation and mechanisation of the commercial film industry. Here, Lukács refers to the way in which the use of technical reason has created both an industrial apparatus of cinema based on mass production, and a deliberately generic and formulaic form of film. Lukács believes that both of these developments will inevitably lead to the exploitation and manipulation of the spectator. Fourthly, and finally, Lukács employs the notion of the ‘technical level’ to refer to the inherent technical nature of the film medium, and to its existence as an accumulating corpus of technical ‘inventions’: The birth and later evolution of cinema films were and are determined much more strongly, much more intensely, by inventions of a purely technical nature, to an extent that was not the case with any older art genres, with the possible exception of architecture. (Lukács, 1965: 406)

Lukács also goes on to argue that, when a focus on ‘purely technical nature’ is conjoined with a preoccupation with technical form, technical reason, and bureaucracy; cinema and film are more likely to turn away from meaningful engagement with everyday life, ‘internalisation’ and ‘aesthetic depth’, and, instead, appreciably buttress ‘the general domain of manipulation’ (Lukács, 1965: 407). When all four of these conceptions of the technical are considered it also becomes clear that, for Lukács, cinema and film at least have the potential to embody some of the most damaging features of an exploitative contemporary Weltenschauung. (c) Shock In these writings on film Lukács also re-engages with another concept which he addressed throughout the early, middle, late, and final periods: that of ‘shock’. In the generality of these writings, this term tends to refer to a providential process in which the individual human being is shaken propitiously out of his or her quotidian state of being in order to both recognise the mundane character of ‘ordinary life’, and the possibility of transcending that character. In the final period of his career this concept of shock also becomes particularly imperative to Lukács, when he asserts that a far-reaching upset to the existing political system – ‘a definite change’ – will be required in order to ‘mobilise millions more intensively’, and bring about significant social and political reform (Lukács, in Eörsi (ed.), 1983: 177). In all of these writings, therefore, the concept of shock carries affirmative connotations, and is regarded as a catalyst for achieving transcendence, understanding, and energising change. However, just as, in the film writings, Lukács tackles ­questions

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

132

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

of manipulation and technical reason in a manner out of kilter with his other writings from this period, so, when he addresses the concept of shock in relation to cinema and film, rather than in relation to questions of literature, philosophy or political reform, he also adopts a quite different stance to that commonly found in the other late writings. In fact, the conception of shock deployed within the late writings on film is not only significantly at odds with that deployed in the other late writings, but also with that deployed throughout Lukács’ entire body of writings, because, in the film writings, the concept of shock is defined negatively, rather than positively, and associated with the ongoing fragmentation of experience, and experience of fragmentation: Think only of the shock-effect. Today shock is one of the principal tools of manipulation … it is in the essence of shock to provoke a momentary nervous tremor, that in both its origins and consequences, is unable to remotely touch on setting and background. And in this manner … such a tremor provides assistance to the ideology of manipulation: shock, its explosive effect, the unanticipated character of its manifestation, gives to those who are affected by it, and all the more so to those who provoke it, the illusion of a non-conformist attitude … [and this stops] an authentic non-conformism … [becoming] manifest. (Lukács, 1965: 407–8)

According to Lukács, therefore, the conveyance of cinematic ‘shock’ through the use of special effects techniques, or unexpected turns of plot, ac­­ tion, and characterisation, is typically perceived by the spectator as a representation of something ‘unusual’, and, therefore, atypical; and, precisely because of this, these representations are unable to illuminate the usual ­ contextual ‘“­backgrounds” of things’ (Lukács, 1965: 407). At a less significant level, Lukács does believe that cinematic shock may confer a degree of positive worth on the cinematic experience by virtue of the notional ability which shockladen representations have to comprise moments of elation, which can then stand in contrast to the bureaucratic uniformity of ordinary life. As has been argued in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, such a stance on the affirmative and positive role of shock can be found throughout Lukács’ writings, while, in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, such a stance is similarly adopted over a consideration of cinematic shock. However, when writing in the film journals, Lukács argues that the potentially liberating impact of shock has less consequence within the contemporary experience of film than the constellation of ‘nervous tremors’ which is generated by shock-overloaded representations: representations which predominately work to ‘aid the manipulation of ideology’ by establishing a form of spectatorship based on shallow euphoria (Lukács, 1965: 408). Within the contemporary cinematic experience, therefore, the hegemony of ‘tremor’ supersedes any facility to reflect calmly upon the ‘backgrounds’ of things, and also neutralises any utopian potential which the portrayal of cinematic shock might possess (Lukács, 1965: 408).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

133

In addition to an inability to illuminate context, and a tendency to generate facile forms of spectatorship, Lukács also argues that shock is also regressively ‘momentary’ in essence, and that, as a consequence of this, the encounter with cinematic shock tends to reinforce a dominant controlling Weltenschauung which always seeks to segregate and splinter. An association can also be discerned here between the notion of the particularity of objects and persons, which Lukács places such importance on in the Ontology; and the momentariness of temporal shock, which he refers to in the late writings on film. As we have seen, in the Ontology, particularity is defined as an essential component of social being. However, Lukács also argues that particularities are always linked to other particularities, relations and attributes within a ‘complex’, and that the complex is a relative totality, as opposed to mere collection of fragments. In the same way, writing about film in the Aesthetic, Lukács contends that temporal ‘moments’, as in the film shot, become linked to other moments within the complex of the sequence, to form the temporal duration of that film sequence. As we have seen, when this happens, film becomes relatively more ‘anthropomorphising’, and Lukács argues that, in both social being and film, particularities are taken up into the intermediate sphere of the complex to form relative totalities. Lukács also argues that such a taking up is not only a constituent attribute of these two domains, but also something that ought to happen. It is when such a taking up does not occur, in the case of film as a result of the ‘momentary’ disruptions and fragmentations caused by the impact and portrayal of cinematic shock, that the medium then reinforces the ‘general domain of manipulation’ within contemporary experience (Lukács, 1965: 407). Nevertheless, although an association can be made between the notions of the particular and the momentary, as they appear in Lukács’ late writings, a distinction between these notions must also be made. During this phase of his career, and as a committed historical materialist, Lukács tended to place greater emphasis upon notions of materiality than on notions of temporality, and one consequence of this intellectual prejudice is that the particularity of empirical experience is given greater prominence in his thought than is the momentariness of temporal experience. In addition, the latter is also deemed to pose more of a prospective danger than the former because of the latent tendency which momentariness possesses to suspend a consideration of contexts and ‘backgrounds’. Of course, particularity may also augment a tendency to suspend consideration of contexts, by virtue of its fragmentary quality. However, particularity remains a concrete material category which, within Lukács’ theory of ontological social being, can be linked up to concrete material complexes. On the other hand, temporality is not a concrete material category, but rather a form of abstract mental experience, and so, for

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

134

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Lukács the historical materialist, temporality plays a – for him – lesser role in the formation of complexes (for example, and unlike in the Aesthetic, Lukács rarely discusses temporal duration in the film in the film journal interviews). Lukács’ prioritisation of material particularity over temporal momentariness here stems from his determination to hold fast to a Marxist historicalmaterialist position, and, when applied to his conception of social being, leads him to a position in which the temporal moment is seen to be more likely to reinforce the dominant Weltenschauung of manipulation than is the case with material, empirical particularity. It follows from this, therefore, that, within Lukács’ philosophy, the temporal momentariness of shock which is portrayed in film, and the ‘nervous tremors’ which such momentary shock engenders, are also more likely to reinforce manipulation than is the case with a filmic naturalism grounded in material particularity. At one level, Lukács’ overall stance on these issues appears to be weighted, and even somewhat specious, in that there is no logical reason for such a prejudice to be adopted. After all, in an absolute sense, particularity is just as likely to lead to fragmentation as is the case with momentariness. As argued, Lukács’ position here stems from an ideological determination to position himself as a Marxist, and distance himself from any idealist, phenomenological or existentialist reading of his ideas. However, despite his intentions during the final period of his career, at least some of his work is often best read in such a way. Finally, Lukács argues that cinematic shock often works to regressive effect because it is ‘simplifying’, existentially disruptive, and ‘illusory’. According to Lukács, shock is necessarily superficial in essence, and helps to reinforce a dominant bourgeois and bureaucratic culture which always seeks to ensure that genuine ‘human and social content’ is ‘simplified and trivialised’ (Lukács, 1965: 407). Related to this is the fact that the ‘explosive effect’ of shock is able to override both the rational and reflective intuitive capacities of the spectator (Lukács, 1965: 408) This explosive effect places limits upon the ability of the spectator to act in the manner consonant with that of a ‘responding being’, and also causes the ‘space of action’ available to the spectator to implode. All of this has the effect of making the spectator more vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. Cinematic shock is also illusory, because it is perceived to be a manifestation of something out of the ordinary; and this perception also creates an ‘illusion’ amongst those who produce and consume cinematic shock that they also are also somehow participating in an experience which is out of the ordinary, somewhat unconventional, and ‘non-conformist’ (Lukács, 1965: 408). However, Lukács argues that such a perception amounts to no more than deluded sophistry, and that no meaningful form of non-conformism is involved in the experience of cinematic shock. Rather, the commonality of shock within the cinema ensures that the emergence of

The film journal interviews and other writings

135

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

an ‘authentic [form of ] non-conformism’ based on ‘critical judgement’, and on engagement with the ‘theoretical or ethical level’, does not come to pass (Lukács, 1965: 408). Finally, it could be argued that the theorisation of cinematic shock in Lukács’ final writings on film is one of the key areas of theory within those writings, and that Lukács’ approach here also appears to endorse a form of cinema which is relatively ‘shock-free’, and grounded in forms of reflective cinematic realism. (d) Resistance to manipulation from the ground up It could be argued that the emphasis which Lukács placed upon the role of cinema and film in reinforcing instrumental rationality and ideological manipulation largely reflected his own experience of the social reality of the times. That experience was, after all, one of direct encounter with intimidating bureaucratic systems, including, for example, the state-owned Hungarian film and television systems; and, given that, at the time, Lukács experienced manipulation as the dominant Weltanschauung of the epoch at a personal and daily level, it is not particularly surprising that he should also associate the mass commercial cinema of the day, within both East and West, with that inauspicious context. Nevertheless, Lukács held that a general resistance to manipulation within everyday life remained a real possibility, even to the extent that ‘there is not a day, not an hour in which life does not offer opportunities to resist in a real way’; and, despite his views on the association between mass cinema and manipulation, he similarly held such resistance to be possible within the cinema, and through filmic representation (Lukács, 1965: 408). An example of Lukács’ more optimistic stance here can be found in the film journal interviews, when Lukács is asked a number of questions concerning the value of recent Hungarian films directed by Miklós Janscó, András Kovács, István Szabó, Zoltán Fábri and Ferenc Kosa. Lukács’ response to these questions is to assert that these films both embody important contemporary forms of social content, and illuminate hitherto overlooked aspects of Hungarian history. So, for example, and in the latter respect, films such as The Round Up/Szegénylegenyek ( Janscó, 1965) and The Cold Days/Hideg napok (Kovács, 1966) adopt an enlightening, revisionist stance towards the portrayal of the Hungarian political past in showing how residual aspects of Hungarian national culture influenced the way that twentieth-century Hungarian fascism evolved out of nineteenth-century rural feudalism (Lukács, 1968: 411). These films are, therefore, progressive, because they illuminate problematical and reactionary aspects of the historical Hungarian social being of the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

136

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

1867–1919 period (Lukács, 1968: 410). Although Lukács warns, somewhat ironically, that the approach adopted in The Round Up and The Cold Days is likely to make Janscó and Kováks unpopular with present day Hungarian ‘bureaucrats or nationalists’, he nevertheless feels that the contribution of these films ‘constitutes a big step forward … [and] … in the field of of the conception of history, Janscó and Kovács should be considered as representatives of a true and authentic avant-garde’ (Lukács, 1968: 411–12) because their films portray forms of ‘authentic non-conformism’ at the ‘theoretical’ and ‘ethical’ levels (Lukács, 1965: 408). Lukács also argues that films such as The Round Up and The Cold Days not only illuminate aspects of the Hungarian public sphere in providing an ‘experience of openness that is of value’ (Lukács, 1972: 173), but also do so by exploring contradictions within historical everyday life from the ground up. Thus, these films show how the interaction and activities of ‘common and mediocre people’ led to social continuity and ‘transformations’ which both ensured the continued existence of feudalism, and the eventual emergence of a ‘criminal fascis[m]’ after 1919 (Lukács, 1968: 409). Such an argument follows a historical materialist trajectory in pre-supposing that historical change comes about as a result of the influence of popular material forces, rather than the intervention of ruling elites, or the force of abstract ideological formations; and this, in turn, reflects Lukács’ determination at the time to revisit the ancestry of classical Marxism. In addition, Lukács’ argument also corresponds to the model of social being proposed in the Ontology, in that, here, as there, the interaction and activities of ‘common and mediocre people’ can be seen to constitute a complex, or series of complexes, which evolve both upwards, towards the level of the social formation, and synchronically, as the social formation evolves through time and undergoes a series of transformations. As is apparent, Lukács’ stance on these films falls fully into line with his general position at the time over the proper balance of influence which ought to hold between, on the one hand, understanding and representing contemporary everyday life in itself and as it unfolds, and, on the other, the conceptualisation of the everyday from a priori bureaucratic, philosophical, or even aesthetic-filmic positions. As with contemporary social being, so, in this discussion of new Hungarian cinema, Lukács contends that superior understanding, and more sophisticated forms of representation, come from a close and open scrutiny of and portrayal of the everyday locus of historical social being; and not from a portrayal of the upper echelons of society, or adherence to the pre-existing normative interpretations of ‘bureaucrats or nationalists’, or, for that matter, philosophers (Lukács, 1968: 411). Lukács’ stance on these two films also addresses the issue of authorial ideological expression to a certain extent, in that he argues The Round Up in

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

137

­particular expresses ‘a position – very clearly declared’, which Lukács associates with the viewpoint of the director (Lukács, 1968: 411). Issues relating to Lukács’ conception of film authorship will be addressed more fully later in this chapter; all that needs to be clarified here is his conception of authorial ideological expression in relation to the idea of exploring contradictions within the complex from the bottom up. Lukács argues that the authorial ideological position within The Round Up is mainly derived, first, from an exploration and representation of the particularity of individual relationships, and, second, from an exploration and representation of the way in which those relationships form interacting ‘complexes’ within the body of the narrative. While the director may have had a provisional understanding and position on the historical conjuncture which his film portrays, that position is modified and more fully informed by an approach which seeks to explore contradiction within the complex from the ground up. When this occurs, the film-maker’s position becomes more ‘objective’ (Lukács, 1968: 411). Lukács believes it perfectly proper for a film to express a clear position, rather than aim at neutral description, so long as that position emerges from an investigation of particularity within the complex, and, in this sense, and in terms of ideological expression, the role of the film author is to represent the transformation of social content in an expressive way, by exploring contradiction within the system of complexes from the ground up. The final authorialaesthetic ‘position’, emerges, therefore, in the first place, from the film-maker’s analysis of ‘The data provided by everyday intercourse with the real world’, and, in the second place, from an expressive interpretation of that data; and Lukács’ stance here is thus characterised by a ‘basic empiricism’, and concern for ‘that primary level of experience, the data of everyday reality, whose theoretical relevance [he] emphasises’ (Pinkus et al., in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 10). (e) Form and content The film journal interviews also show Lukács holding fast to a notion which permeates the work of the middle, late, and final periods: the notion that issues of ‘form’ must always be considered secondary to issues of ‘content’. During the middle, late, and final periods this notion is also influenced by the idea that ‘content’ is equivalent to human meaning and species essence, whie ‘form’ is related to ‘objectivation’ and bureaucratisation; and that, in a situation where form dominates content, species essence will be made subordinate to objectified instrumental rationalities. As already argued in Chapter 4, this theme also takes on added consequence during the final period of Lukács’ career, where, at the political and social level, ‘form’ is identified with ­existing

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

138

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

bureaucratic authoritarianism, and ‘content’ with the authentic ontology of social being. ‘Formalism’ is not, therefore, only an unfortunate tendency within the arts, but also the aesthetic reflex of an instrumental rationality which is responsible for the contemporary Weltanschauung of manipulation. Given the magnitude of Lukács’ concerns over this issue during the period it is not surprising to find the theme of the relation between form and content resurfacing recurrently within the film journal interviews, and one instance of such recurrence can be found in Lukács’ evaluation of the formalist technique employed in the films of the new Hungarian cinema of the 1960s. Lukács accepts that these films have brought about a ‘technical enrichment’ of the medium through their use of innovative formal strategies. However, he also argues that this is not important in itself, and that these works are of value chiefly because such enrichment is employed in order to portray a new social content that could no longer be rendered well using pre-existing techniques (Lukács, 1968: 408–9). Lukács goes on to argue that the directors of these films have prioritised content over form through first coming to an understanding concerning the character of those aspects of social being under scrutiny, then by creating aesthetic form and technique appropriate to that character. As a consequence of this approach, in these films, ‘the development of authentic and non-formal art’ takes place; and this is infinitely preferable to the mere ‘revolutionis[ing] of form … from the point of view of form’ (Lukács, 1972: 173). Characteristically, Lukács also insists on bracketing this discussion of the relationship between form and content in the new Hungarian cinema within a more general conception of artistic ‘authentic non-formal development’: For me this issue at stake here pertains not only to the cinema, but is much broader … every aesthetic form is always the form of a certain content … There are two possibilities. The first is to revolutionise form from the point of view of form, in a manner which seeks to find new modes of expression only at the level of form. And it is possible to find – second case – new forms of expression when the artist, in terms of content, discovers the new that cannot be expressed in the form used previously. If the artist finds an adequate form, or at least one approximately adequate, then we have the development of authentic, and non-formal art. (Lukács, 1972: 172–3)

The conception of film ‘content’ articulated here is taken directly from the analogous conception of social being set out in the Ontology, and also from the model of humanism which permeates Lukács’ final writings. In the first case, the term ‘content’ refers to the structure and composition of the system of complexes which make up social being; and it will be recalled that a ‘complex’ is a micro-totality, related to other micro-totalities within the overall social formation of everyday life; and within which individual ‘responding beings’ actively seek freedom, knowledge, ethical enlightenment,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

139

and ­totality. In order to portray ‘content’, therefore, a film should first seek to represent individual ‘responding beings’ making choices which are related to the realisation of ‘species essence’ within ‘spaces of action’, and in response to circumstances of various kinds. The individual human beings within the complex must also be portrayed to a large extent in their singularity, as each person has an ‘objectively determinate’ being by virtue of that singularity, and because the category of singularity itself plays a role of primary importance within social being. Such a portrayal should also involve the various ‘categorical attributes’ of each person, including biological, psychological, behavioural, emotional, analytical, and other attributes. However, and as argued in Chapter 4, these categorical attributes are not only individual but are also socially shared, just as a complex will consist of individuals implicated in social relationships. In addition to portraying the categorical attributes and complexes in their particularised modality, that is, in relation to concrete individual persons, therefore, the film should also show how these encompass other persons and situations within the social formation, and form clusters and conglomerations within an interactive human-social system which is constantly changing. In addition, the film should also represent attempts to realise species essence, and the forces arraigned against such attempts. The term ‘content’, therefore, applies to a situation in which the humanist ideal is represented within a social formation, and in which both that ideal and the social formation are seen to be grounded in both the indeterminate interaction of contradiction within the complex, and the pre-eminence of particularity. At one level, Lukács’ conception of ‘content’ may appear naive, because he frequently employs a phraseology grounded in generalised humanist precepts, such as, for example, his assertion that ‘The understanding and explanation of the great human problems of a period … is the real vocation of literature, of all the arts’ (Lukács, New Hungarian Quarterly, 1968: 81). Such a statement is both somewhat self-evident, and rather simplistic. However, it will be recalled that, although, throughout his career, Lukács frequently employed highly abstract and universalised conceptions of human nature, these were, nonetheless, generally related to much more sophisticated intellectual formulations and programmes. In addition, the notion of content set out in the late writings is also highly structural, as well as humanist in character, as is made apparent by consideration of the model of social being set out in the Ontology: a model which is structured in depth, from its source in the observing being, to the complex, and, finally, to the totality of the social formation. It will also be recalled that the approach which Lukács adopts in Soul and Form has been described as centred on a conception of human essence as ‘significant structure’ (Goldmann, 1967: 168). It would, therefore, be a ­mistake

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

140

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

to read Lukács’ conception of content in too simplified a manner, even though some of the terminology which he uses might lead readers to make that mistake. Finally, this conception of ‘content’ also lends itself to a certain way of structuring a film, based upon the model of social being set out above. To a certain extent this problem of interpretation also arises when considering Lukács’ notion of aesthetic ‘form’. In the final writings Lukács does not want to talk about questions of aesthetic form much, regarding this as both a distraction, because it takes attention away from the real and pressing need to discuss questions of content; and as a danger, because such a preoccupation with questions of aesthetic form might enhance the contemporary Weltanschauung of manipulation (Lukács, 1965: 407). As we have also seen, so-called ‘authentic non-formal development’ takes place in a situation in which form and content are either indissolubly linked, or where form is clearly subordinate to content. The problem here, however, is that this approach does not actually address the question of what film form consists of per se, and, as with the question of content, this may also give the impression that Lukács employs a rather simplistic conception of aesthetic form in his final writings. As with the question of content, though, this would also be a misleading impression, and, although Lukács attempted to avoid discussing questions of aesthetic form at the time on general political and philosophical grounds, a model of aesthetic form remains discernible within the final writings: a model which consists of a synthesis of the notions of Stimmung (atmosphere), the ‘complex’, and ‘singularity’. The notion of Stimmung has already been considered here in relation to The Specificity of the Aesthetic, and will also be considered later in this chapter, along with the key concept of ‘indefinite objectivity’. What is of direct concern at the moment, however, is the need to understand the relationship which obtains between Stimmung, the complex, and singularity, within the model of aesthetic form which appears in Lukács’ late and final writings on film. Lukács argues that ‘in any art the direct significance of things comes from the atmosphere’ (Lukács, 1969: 12). One consequence of this designation is that the ‘things’ which are portrayed in a film will have to be represented and appropriated primarily through intuitive means, because an atmosphere is, by nature, non-conceptual. Another consequence which ensues from this is that film should seek to portray both particular atmospheres, and the relations between atmospheres, through such intuitive means. It is immediately apparent that Lukács’ stance here concerning the interrelation of filmic Stimmungs within the film can be related to his formulation of the manner of interrelation of complexes within the social formation. In both cases, we have an analogous structure and mode of comprehension which is impressionistic, indeterminate, and multi-faceted; in which intuition takes precedence over

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

141

rationality and conceptualisation. We can also say that, although the complex contains a ‘content’ of particularities, relations, categories, and attributes, and Stimmung gives that content an overall emotional tonality, both complex and Stimmung share a similar structure, as set out above. It is apparent, therefore, that, although Lukács may have preferred not to discuss questions of aesthetic form much in the final writings, an aesthetic model of film form is nevertheless discernible within those writings, and that model is based both on Lukács’ notions of Stimmung, the complex, and particularity; and on the relationship which obtains between these three categories: a relationship which is governed by a combination of rational and intuitive association within which intuition always has the upper hand (other categories are of course involved here. However, these are not addressed in the film journal interviews, and will be discussed later in Chapters 6 and 7, when Lukács’ general theory of cinematic realism is considered). In fact, a Lukácsian film would be structured and experienced in a way similar to the way in which the Lebenswelt is structured and experienced; and, if that is the case, then such a film would not only adopt the form, but also the content of the Lebenswelt. This is partly what Lukács has in mind when he argues that, in any particular filmic representation, content and form should, ideally, ‘constitute an inseparable functional unit’ (Lukács, 1972: 173). What is also apparent here is that Lukács remained wedded to this phenomenological conception of form and content throughout his career. For example, writing between 1910 and 1912, in a paper entitled ‘On the Phenomenology of the Creative Process,’ he argues that: The creator is a genius if his experiences contain the technical forms of the work as necessary experiential forms, if for him the relationships which constitute the work are the relationships of his immediate experience … Only this fact is decisive: the coincidence of experiential form and technical form. (Lukács, 1972: 321–2)

It seems, therefore, that this early phenomenological standpoint ultimately provides the theoretical basis for the position on form and content adopted during the final period. However, during that period it would not have been wise politically for Lukács to have admitted to thinking under the influence of phenomenology, and, consequently, he does not so admit. (f) Authorship The model of the relation between form and content described above also helps determine the idea of authorship found in Lukács’ final writings on film, an idea which has already been briefly considered in this chapter in relation to the question of ideology. According to Lukács, the film director should

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

142

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

be actively involved in and be reflectively aware of his or her contemporary political, social, and cultural context, and must not stand apart or be isolated from that context. This notion of the artist as active within and responsive to a social context pervades all of Lukács’ work, and includes the account of the relation between Homer and Greek society given in The Theory of the Novel, the characterisation of Balzacian realism set out in The Historical Novel, and the interpretation of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch found in Solzhenitsyn. This social-activist notion of authorship was, of course, partly influenced by Lukács’ conversion to communism in 1918. However, it will be argued here that, even after that conversion, this conception of authorship remained more influenced by a predominantly existentialist, rather than Marxist range of concepts, and ones which Lukács had first encountered prior to 1918. This existentialist orientation is also reinforced by the emphasis placed on the concrete individual person as a ‘responsive being’ evident in the Ontology, an emphasis which, as we have seen, at least one contemporary commentator on Lukács found to be worryingly ‘existentialist’ (Lukács, in Pinkus (ed.), 1974: 130). As argued, in the Ontology, Lukács places considerable emphasis on the particularity of the choice-making responsive being, and, in the final writings on film, this position leads Lukács to argue that, in addition to immersing himself or herself fully within the struggles and contradictions of social being, the film-maker must also arrive at an individual, though also knowledgeable, understanding of those struggles and contradictions, and then actively embody that understanding within her or his film. Just as the employment of the Stimmung and ‘complex’ form enables the film to take on the ontological structure of social being, therefore, here, the act of film-making becomes the aesthetic correspondent of the existential ‘response’ to possibilities which occurs at the level of the individual agent; and this further indicates the extent to which Lukács’ notion of social-activism is derived more from existentialist, and less from Marxist premises. This emphasis on personal choice and intentionality also leads Lukács to argue that film-makers should not insert disinterested forms of representation in their films, because conceptual neutrality is at odds with the inherently volitional existential activity which occurs within the ‘space of action’: activity which is premised on an imperative to establish a preference, and which is, as Lukács argues, teleological in essence (Lukács, in Eörsi, 1983: 173). Consequently, Lukács is more than happy to endorse the presence of a ‘position – very clearly declared’ in Janscó’s The Round Up (this, of course, is very different from the stance endorsed in the Aesthetic, where the notion of Geradesosein is so important, and this indicates the extent to which Lukács adopted an increasingly humanist position in his final period) (Lukács, 1968: 411).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

143

Whichever ‘position’ is adopted by the film-maker, though, Lukács is adamant that it must be multifaceted and sophisticated enough to encompass an adequate array of the contradictions and unsettling circumstances present within ‘everyday life’; and this entails that a film such as The Round Up should not only avoid ideological neutrality, but also ideologically one-dimensional forms of ‘instructional’ or ‘propagandistic’ film-making. This also means that a film should not seek to provide ‘answers’, but, instead, ‘ask questions’, and, as is the case with the films of Janscó and Kovács, present both ‘positive and negative aspects of society’ in order to ‘make people seriously reflect on a situation of the past or present, and compare it with their own’ (Lukács, 1969: 8–9). It is, in addition, especially important that the new Hungarian cinema in particular should engage in such an venture because: Hungary will never be a culturally developed country if those who are called upon to guide us ideologically or politically do not engage with the contradictions of the history of our country, and do not renounce and abhor that which is abhorrent and repugnant in that history. (Lukács, 1968: 411)

Lukács’ conception of film authorship is, therefore, premised upon the idea that the film-maker should engage actively, critically, and personally within his or her historical context, because such an engagement is congruent with the existential activity of the concrete individual within everyday life; and because such an engagement will also give that existential activity both a ‘non-objectified’ cultural form, in the shape of the film-maker’s own individual agency; and an ‘objectified’ cultural form, in the shape of the resulting film. Such engagement will also aim to understand, and then portray, both the human-social character of relations within a particular historical conjuncture, and the essential existential character of humanity: one which is grounded in a desire to both experience freedom, knowledge and totality, and act as a responsive being. (g) Expression of thought in film In an interview entitled ‘Expression of thought in Cinematic Work’ Lukács goes into some depth over what he considers to be film’s characteristic mode of expression, and, in doing so, returns to two key aesthetic categories first discussed in The Specificity of the Aesthetic: those of Stimmung (atmosphere) and ‘indefinite objectivity’. In the interview, Lukács once more argues that film is a predominantly non-conceptual medium, which cannot express ‘intellectual problems’ as well as literature can. This limitation is partly caused by the fact that, in film, language functions at one and the same time as both ‘an expression of meaning’ and as a ‘sound’ or ‘tone’ (tono), which expresses

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

144

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

feelings and ‘atmosphere’ (Stimmung) (Lukács, 1969: 9). However, although Lukács argues that this dual function places limits upon film’s ability to articulate concepts, that limitation is tempered by the fact that the medium still uses language to some extent; and, as a consequence of this, remains able to express intellectual problems, albeit in a circumscribed manner. As Lukács puts it, in the case of film, ‘the situation is not so extreme’. In contrast, however, Lukács argues that, in an entirely visual and non-linguistic medium such as painting, ‘an intellectual problem cannot be expressed’ as such at all (all of this is largely consonant with the position adopted in the Aesthetic) (Lukács, 1969: 10). And yet, according to Lukács, great paintings are still somehow able to suggest, without being ‘able to express intellectual problems intellectually’ (Lukács, 1969: 10). What Lukács refers to here is the aesthetic encounter with a great painting in which the spectator intuits the presence of conceptual themes and issues within the artwork, even though those themes and issues are not portrayed directly (Lukács, 1969: 10). According to Lukács, this experience also accompanies the aesthetic encounter with music, as ‘it is indisputable, for example, that from Bach and Handel, through to Beethoven and up to Bartok, great music refers to a whole series of ideological problems’ (Lukács, 1969: 10). Lukács contends that film possesses a similar ability to suggest intellectual problems by virtue of the fact that it is a predominantly non-linguistic, visual-aural medium, although, and as argued, he also asserts that film is additionally able to portray concepts directly to a limited extent. However, Lukács also implies that, in order to conform to the categorical specificity of the medium, the filmic portrayal of concepts should be indirect, suggestive, and subordinate to the visual and aural capacity of the medium. Films should refer or allude to ‘ideological problems’ and concepts, rather than portray them directly. All this returns us to the notion of Stimmung and the aesthetic specificity of the film medium discussed in the Aesthetic. Another central issue for Lukács in this interview is the ability of film to represent interiority, or the ‘indefinite objectivity’, which, as we have seen, is characteristic of the visual arts; and, at the heart of Lukács’ argument here concerning the specificity of film as an aesthetic medium is the contention that film is not aesthetically predisposed towards the representation of indefinite objectivity. It will be recalled that, in the Aesthetic, Lukács had argued that, as an aesthetic medium, film is more able to represent ‘definite objectivity’, that is, the ‘external’, material world, and less able to portray ‘indefinite objectivity’, that is the kind of ‘internal’ processes of psychological signification which the plastic arts are able to represent. The portrayal of the latter is necessarily ‘indefinite’, because these internal processes cannot be directly represented in a primarily visual medium, and also ‘objective’, because these processes are typically intuited as being present, and are in fact present in that

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

145

sense, because psychological complexes actually do coalesce into regularities within social being (we know and expect them to be present even though they cannot be represented directly). In the Aesthetic, Lukács had argued that the ability to portray ‘definite objectivity’ to a greater and ‘indefinite objectivity’ to a lesser extent determines both the essential predisposition of film towards the portrayal of externality, and the specific aesthetic configuration of the medium based upon that predisposition. However, the question this then raises for Lukács is how precisely should film portray both definite and indefinite objectivity, and the relationship which obtains between these two categories, in a manner consonant with the aesthetic specificity of the medium? In order to answer this question Lukács draws once more on the concept of Stimmung, and applies that concept, again once more, to a brief analysis of Henry V (Olivier, 1944), building upon the previous discussion of that film carried through within the pages of the Aesthetic. As we have seen, Lukács contends that, ‘in every art the direct significance of things comes from the atmosphere’ (Lukács, 1969: 12). This implies that all artistic expression is predominantly indeterminate and indirect in character, and this is certainly what Lukács also has in mind for filmic expression. It also follows from this that, if film is an art form of externality, then the significance of that externality should be primarily portrayed through ‘atmospheric’ expression, and that the film itself should largely consist of the atmospheric rendering of externality. In discussing Henry V, for example, Lukács argues that the key aesthetic achievement of Olivier’s film can be located in the way that a substantial part of the dramatic and linguistic content of the original play is transformed into an atmospheric sphere of ‘landscapes-­settings’ (Lukács, 1969: 10). Here, it is feelings, moods, emotions, and intuitive spectatorship which predominate, as landscapes, scenery, and music re-model Shakespeare’s text into a world which is mainly expressed visually and aurally; and in which the primary role of concepts and language is to mediate emotional fields – while also being expressed within those fields – in order to facilitate the alignment of those fields into a succession of evolving Stimmungs, and, eventually, into an ultimate unity of atmosphere, or Stimmungseinheit. This means that the aesthetic specificity of film lies in part, first, in the ability of the medium to portray both definite and indefinite objectivity (and the relationship which obtains between these two categories) through the evolving display of Stimmungs; and, second, in the fact that such portrayal has, as a consequence, that both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ phenomena are portrayed primarily within emotional fields, rather than conceptual frameworks. This also suggests that the film medium operates at a largely non-conceptual level when acting in congruence with its own aesthetic specificity. However, it ­remains open to question as to whether Henry V is actually structured in

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

146

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

this manner, and it has to be said that Lukács’ analysis of the film remains somewhat cursory, In any event, there are, however, many similarities here with the position endorsed in the Aesthetic. As already argued, Lukács’ model of how film represents definite and indefinite objectivity through a series of interacting atmospheres which eventually add up to a unity of atmospheres corresponds closely to the definition of ‘everyday life’ proposed within the Ontology. It will also be recalled that, within the Ontology, the term ‘complex’ refers to a multifaceted micro-tomid-size network of concrete individual instances and relationships which embodies order and disorder, causality and contingency, and is, moreover, not subject to any overall governing rational protocol. It seems, therefore, that it is, ultimately, Lukács’ notion of ‘everyday life’, as a domain of numerous definite and indefinite instances and relationships organised into interacting ‘complexes’, which are also related in a ‘concrete’ manner to totality, which provides the foundational model for Lukács’ understanding of how definite and indefinite objectivity should be portrayed within the succession of filmic Stimmungs. In the interview, Lukács also makes it clear that the portrayal of definite and indefinite reality within the dialectical evolution of complexes which make up the film does not necessarily entail that the medium should represent only contemporary externality and internality. This is because, according to Lukács, film is always able to afford a considerable sense of ‘reality’ to its portrayals of both past and future, as well as the present, and this makes it possible for the medium to represent successfully forms of what might be called ‘non-existing externality and internality’ (my terminology) set in the fictitious past, and future. Film, is, therefore, not only able to portray definite and indefinite objectivity within existing social being, but also within a literally non-existing past or future social being (Lukács, 1969: 11). All of this makes clear the extent to which Lukács’ understanding of film draws heavily on his underlying definition of ‘everyday life’, and, in turn, also makes evident once more the extent to which that definition draws on an essentially phenomenological orientation which Lukács often preferred to downplay during this particular phase of his career. However, the influence of the Marxist and Hegelian dialectic is also evident here, and his position here must be considered to encompass both phenomenology and dialectics. (h) Totality At one level, the model of film indicated here appears to have the potential to result in a relatively chaotic and confused work, given that such a model

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

147

seeks to represent the convoluted networks and contingencies of everyday life. However this potential for confusion is tempered by two features of ­everyday life which Lukács singles out, and which have already been referred to: that of the emblematic mode of action of the ‘responding’ individual, and the tendency of complexes to coalesce. As argued previously in relation to the discussion of the Ontology, in order for the primary existential process of ‘response’ to be carried through effectively the individual agent needs both time to reflect on the range of ‘possibilities’ available to him or her within a ‘space of action’, and for that space itself to be such as to be advantageous to the effective carrying through of the process. In addition, and as also already argued, Lukács contends that the key structuring element of social being at a level beyond that of the concrete responding individual is that of the ‘complex’. These complexes are not autonomous, but interact and combine with each other to constitute the totality of the social formation, and, when a film represents this situation more organically, the potential for confusion in representation is mitigated. When transferred to the aesthetic domain of film, these qualifications suggest that the Lukácsian model of film must seek to achieve an appropriate balance of coherence and incoherence, order and disorder, indeterminacy and determinacy; and, in writing about The Red and the White/Csillagosok katonák ( Janscó, 1967), for example, Lukács argues that Janscó’s film is not clear enough, may contain too many issues, and might have achieved ‘greater artistic outcomes … [by] … slow[ing] down the tempo on more complicated passages and dramatic events’ (Lukács, 1968: 417). What is significant here is the extent to which Lukács’ objections to these aspects of Janscó’s film are not made on the grounds that those aspects have undermined the formal, stylistic achievements of the film, but on the grounds that they have undermined the activity of the ‘responding being’, and departed too much from the objective structure of social being. Finally, and to reiterate, if we return to the model of social being which Lukács sets out in the Ontology, and which has been described in depth in this chapter, we can see that the theory of film which he sets out within his final writings is determined largely by that model, as well as by elements which he takes from the Aesthetic, and also from the early and middle-period writings. While the final writings on film, which consist mainly of interviews, may be essentially informal, therefore, most of their substance is drawn from the highly formal Aesthetic and Ontology, and this means that they cannot be explored only in terms of the material they contain alone, but must, rather, be interpreted and understood in the light of these two works.

148

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lukács and Cinema Nuovo Some of Lukács’ late writings on film first appeared in the Hungarian film journal Filmkultúra. However, these writings were then invariably translated relatively quickly into Italian in order to be published in the Italian film journal Cinema Nuovo. However, the translator is not cited, and, in addition, some of the late writings on film were also published first in Cinema Nuovo, without any prior publication in Filmkultúra. Cinema Nuovo was founded in 1952 by the leftist film theorist Guido Aristarco, as a response to both the decline of Italian neorealist film-making, and the growing importance of Marxist aesthetics. From its outset, therefore, the journal was conceived of as one which would explore the cinema from a Marxist perspective. In 1954 Luchino Visconti’s film Senso appeared, and seemed to embody the sort of social-realist model of film-making which Aristarco thought capable of moving beyond the naturalism of the then dominant neorealist cinema, to more clearly accommodate Marxist aesthetic theory; and, in particular, Lukácsian aesthetic theory. Visconti’s Obsession/Ossessione (1942) is generally considered to have ushered in the Italian neorealist film movement of the 1940s and early 1950s. Italian neorealism was influenced by a number of factors, amongst them a nineteenth-century Italian literary tradition which had its roots in French naturalism. Visconti was familiar with the work of perhaps the most important of these nineteenth-century Italian novelists, the Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga, and based his own The Earth Trembles/La Terra trema (1947) on one of Verga’s novels, The House by the Medlar Tree/I Malavoglia (1881). The House by the Medlar Tree focuses on the relationships between poor Sicilian fishermen and their local culture and environment, and Visconti also adopts this naturalist approach in his own film. However, although La Terra trema was influenced by this naturalist tradition, Visconti had also been associated with the Italian Communist Party since the mid-1930s, and, after the end of the Second World War, made himself familiar with debates on Marxist aesthetic theory within which, as we have seen, naturalism was viewed as a regressive movement within the arts. Visconti was influenced by this context, and, as a result, moved away from the naturalist style of his earlier films, in order to embrace a more social-realist style of film-making. The outcome of this change in orientation was Senso (1954), made one year after the death of Stalin, and when Lukács’ ideas had once again become prominent. In place of the naturalism of La Terra trema, Senso adopts a highly stylised melodramatic approach to portray the doomed Austrian occupation of Venetian provinces during the final period of the Italian Risorgimento (Resurgence), the period from 1815 to 1871 during which Italy gradually

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

149

became a unified nation. While, therefore, in La Terra trema, Visconti was more concerned with the intricacies of regional lower-class culture, in Senso, he is more centrally concerned with issues of national culture and the actions of the ruling class and this leads him to adopt a more wide-ranging social-realist approach. When it appeared in 1954 Senso was immediately acclaimed by intellectuals on the communist left in Italy because of the extent to which the film was seen to have abandoned the supposedly ‘reactionary’ naturalism of neorealism, and instead adopted an aesthetic model more in accord with the tenets of socialist realism. For example, Aristarco described Senso as ‘a great historical film, a revolutionary film which has brought our cinematic history to a new peak’. (Liehm, 1984: 148) As we have seen, after the death of Stalin in 1953 Lukács’ model of critical realism become more influential, particularly in western Europe; and Lukács’ reputation was also further enhanced by his involvement in, first, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and then the Czechoslovakian Revolution of 1968. During this period, therefore, Lukács was seen as an influential figure in some quarters, even if he was later to be criticised in other quarters for a lack of direct involvement in the affairs of the day. In any event, he was certainly regarded as important by Aristarco and Cinema Nuovo. When Senso arrived on the scene in 1954, therefore, the film’s attempt to link the personal to the social and political appeared to Aristarco and others to furnish a model which could be associated with Lukácsian conceptions of critical realism, and, from that point on, and up until the late 1960s, the issue of not only Marxism, but also realism, became a central concern of the journal; while Lukács became an obvious and prominent reference point. Affinities between Lukács, Aristarco, and Cinema Nuovo were also deepened further in 1963, when the appearance of Visconti’s The Leopard triggered a new round of debate over questions of progressive cinematic realism. However, while Aristarco regarded Senso as ‘a great historical film, a revolutionary film’ (Liehm, 1984: 148), he criticised The Leopard for not putting forward a more positive socialist reading of Italian national history (see Chapter 6) (Bacon, 1998: 86). Lukács himself did not comment directly on either Senso or The Leopard. However, it was after the appearance of The Leopard, and the debate which that film generated, that both the majority of Lukács’ Cinema Nuovo writings began to appear, and Aristarco and others began to write on Lukács in the pages of the journal. Lukács’ initial contribution to Cinema Nuovo turned out to be an explosive affair, though that was certainly not his opening intention, and it is worth going into this matter in some depth here, as it is illustrative of certain difficulties the journal then had in understanding and coping with Lukács’ thought. In the 1958 September–October issue of Cinema Nuovo Lukács

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

150

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

published a short commentary accompanying a much longer provisional table of contents written by his former student, István Mészáros. The table was for a proposed book on film aesthetics. The combined letter and table of contents was published in Cinema Nuovo under the title ‘Sui problemi estetici del cinematografo’ (‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’), and Lukács’ contribution took the form of a number of what he later referred to as ‘epistolary’ remarks on the proposals of Mészáros (Lukács, 1961: 503). In other words Lukács felt that he was speaking rather casually, and it is not even clear that he – initially at least – intended his remarks to be published. Indeed, the introduction to the piece, written by the editors of Cinema Nuovo, states that ‘the notes we have published here were not intended for publication: they are part of an exchange of opinions between the Hungarian philosopher and his student, Istvan Mészáros’ (editorial introduction to ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, Cinema Nuovo, no. 125, 1958). Nevertheless, and despite such cautionary remarks, Cinema Nuovo clearly believed the Lukács-Mészáros ‘notes’ to be of considerable importance, and particularly given the ‘authority’ of Lukács: These notes are of particular interest because, for the first time here, Lukács intervenes directly into the field of cinema studies. We believe that the notable importance of this intervention should not escape the attention of readers in general, and critics in particular, because of the authority which Lukács has within the field of contemporary culture, and because the issues that he debates provide a new theoretical position on the film.   We are particularly pleased about this direct intervention also because we have been the first film journal to have focused on Lukács, to have become acquainted with his books, and to have applied some of his principles to the criticism of film. (Editorial introduction to ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, Cinema Nuovo, no. 125, 1958: 128)

As previously stated, ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’ is divided into two parts, the first (seven pages) written by Mészáros, the second (three pages) by Lukács, and what is most significant about the piece as a whole – including everything written by Mészáros – is that it is almost entirely a précis of the ideas which Lukács would later elaborate within the pages of the Aesthetic, and to a lesser extent in the Ontology and film journal writings of the 1960s. Mészáros divides his outline into fifteen provisional chapter titles, and provides a one to two paragraph-length description of each area; and, written across these we find concerns with subjects such as ‘The aesthetic particularity of filmic reflection’, the ability of film to portray ‘the totality of objects’, the difficulties involved in adapting drama for the screen, the secondary role of speech in film compared to audio-visuality, and the difficulties which film faces when attempting to portray conceptual issues. In addition, the central role of the ‘atmosphere’ in film is addressed, as is the importance of Chaplin,

The film journal interviews and other writings

151

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

and the similarities apparent between film and the epic. Finally, several issues also emerge here which can be related more clearly to the position adopted in the Ontology and the other final-period writings. For example, in a section entitled ‘The relationship between the public and film’, Mészáros invokes the notion of the ‘public character’, by which he means something like a contemporary Zeitgeist, or world-view; and he goes on to argue – again very reminiscent of Lukács – that film must portray the humanly relevant ‘adequate vital subject matter’ of this ‘public character: It is possible to truly understand the periods of flourishing and crises of the film only after having concretely grasped the peculiar nature of the public character required in film. In fact, even, in this sense, for example, between the silent film and the sound film, there is a difference that concerns the public character: the crisis of Chaplin at the time of the transition from silent to sound was not born merely out of the difficulties related to adapting to the new language, but also out of a search for both new, adequate vital material, and a new connection with the public character. (Mészáros, in Lukács and Mészáros, 1958: 129)

In an echo of one of the key themes of the Ontology and Lukács’ other late writings, Mészáros also goes on to remark that the ‘observer-community’ of film spectators and critics is essentially composed of ‘individuals’ (Mészáros, in Lukács and Mészáros, 1958: 129); and that ‘no valid universal rule exists here, since there are always concrete determinations’ [original emphasis] (Mészáros, in Lukács and Mészáros, 1958: 134). Clearly, Lukács must have been discussing these ideas with his former student for some time, and Mészáros may also have read Lukács 1957 work On Besonderheit as an Aesthetic Category: the work which prefigured the Aesthetic; because the proposed outline for a book set out here addresses so many of the issues which would soon appear in the Aesthetic, and also later in the Ontology and other final-period writings. Lukács’ response to Mészáros, which is set out in the second part of ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, is mainly of interest, to a lesser extent, because of the degree to which it endorses all of Mészáros’ proposals (though it could hardly do other, given that the proposals stem from Lukács), and, to a greater extent, because it looks forward directly to the Aesthetic. For example, Lukács argues that film cannot represent ‘the totality of objects’; that film can only become a ‘homogenous medium’ when the filmic ‘environment’ carries the burden of content; that a ‘truly good film is characterised by a certain atmosphere, by the artistic determination of its entire tone’; that objects and protagonists should have equal representation; and that ‘form’ is more important than ‘technique’ (Lukács, in Lukács and Mészáros 1958: 135–7). All of this is, of course, familiar from the section on ‘Film’ in the Aesthetic. However, Lukács is writing in 1958, five years before the Aesthetic appeared; and this means that his late ideas on film are probably being published for

152

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the first time here. What is also apparent is that what is being proposed here amounts to a phenomenological conception of cinematic aesthetic specificity, as the two Hungarian philosophers attempt to set out how film functions in terms of ‘interiority’, ‘exteriority’, ‘variability of the angle of vision’, the ‘configuration of atmosphere’, ‘physiognomy and extension’, ‘the auditative’, ‘lines of movement’, ‘the function of movement’, ‘movement-action’, ‘the rendering present for us’, etc. In other words this is an aesthetic position based on the visual-auditative-gestural, and not on the word, or action. ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’ clearly covers a wide range of issues, as the two writers try to imagine the full range of what might become an aesthetic of the cinema. It also has to be said that much of the article does indeed take the form of ’notes’, fleetingly addressed and then rapidly moved on from; and most of its contents must have been largely incomprehensible to the then readers – and even editors – of Cinema Nuovo, who would have known little or nothing about what the two writers were talking about. ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’ is, therefore, a highly fragmented and difficult piece of writing which, as argued, seeks to cover an extremely wide range of issues, albeit very schematically. However, the editors of Cinema Nuovo chose to highlight one of these issues in particular: the issue of the distinction between ‘technique’ and ‘form’. It should be clear by now what Lukács means by the term ‘form’: one of the key notions within his aesthetic system since as long back as Soul and Form. ‘Form’ refers to instances of ‘objectivised’ or ‘non-objectivised’ ‘culture’, and, in terms of the former, to works of art which embody freedom, totality, and significant human meaning. In another early work, an essay written in 1910 (and reprinted in 1972) and entitled ‘On the Phenomenology of the Creative Process’, Lukács had argued that the forms of experience should become the ‘forms’ of the work of art. In other words, artistic ‘form’ comes into being in a situation in which authentic human experience has become embodied considerably within a work of art, and the role of technique here is to facilitate such exemplification (Lukács, 1972: 315) Much later, in the film journal articles from the 1960s and 1970s, Lukács repeats this position when arguing that only when technique is used to express significant meaning does ‘form’, and, therefore, a true work of art, come into being (Lukács, 1972: 172–3). This is also what he had in mind in ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, when he made his distinction between technique and form, and when he argued that form was more important than technique. In fact little real discernible amendment is evident here between Lukács’ positions in 1910 and 1958, as becomes clear when Lukács argues in 1910 that the point is to:

The film journal interviews and other writings

153

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Find an adequate form for that [phenomenal] experience, which is independent of art and has its own existence … The work of art and its means of expression are no more than ways or means to this end. What is central here is a great and profound self-articulation and expression of the creative person … [and] … the emphasis is [also] upon finding the effective means, those elements of the work which endow it with a self-enclosed existence – i.e. upon technique. (Lukács, 1972: 315)

and when he argues in 1958, in ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’ that it is important to ‘fully separate form from technique’ (Lukács and Mészáros, 1958: 135). In making this distinction between form and technique, and in arguing for the superiority of form over technique, therefore, Lukács would not have felt that he was saying anything particularly new, and certainly would not have felt that he was saying anything that, from his point of view, was particularly controversial. It is a position, after all, which is also reiterated in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, published in 1958, and in which, as has been argued, Lukács commends the distorted ‘form’ of Kafkaesque realism, but also criticises types of modernism in which technique is used as an end in itself (Lukács, 1979: 45). However, Lukács’ ‘remarks’ were to become the subject of an unexpected polemical critique launched in the communist newspaper L’Unità on 22 January 1959, in an entry entitled ‘Lukács, il film e la tecnica’ (‘Lukács, the Film and Technique’), by the communist film critic Umberto Barbaro. Barbaro had, so he said, earlier read Lukács’ Prolegomeni a un’estetica marxista, which had been published in Italy in 1957 (this book, apparently ‘an essay collection by Lukács’ (Levin, 1987: 45), does not appear in any of the bibliographical accounts of leading Lukács scholars, leaving open the possibility that it is, in fact ‘On Besonderheit as an Aesthetic Category’, or some variant of that work. But this remains uncertain.) Barbaro claimed that, after the Prolegomeni had been published, he had written an earlier article in L’Unità – though he does not provide any reference details for this – criticising the work. The essence of Barbaro’s criticism is twofold. First, that Lukács did not address the case of film in the Prolegomeni, and, second, that this was also characteristic of his work in general: When György Lukács’ Prolegomeni a un’estetica marxista was published in Italy (Editori Riuniti, 1957), I complained, in an article published in l’Unità, that in that book – as in all of the noted Hungarian author’s books – the art of cinema had been completely disregarded. Quite frankly, I deemed it an enormous matter that a critic and philosopher, whose constant and tireless work is so aimed at contributing to the creation of a Marxist aesthetics, could omit not only a theoretical contemplation, but also even a critique or even just an exemplification of that which to us (i.e. Marxists) is, beyond doubt, the most important of the arts, as Lenin himself put it. (Barbaro, 1961: 501)

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

154

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Barbaro’s second charge was, however, very much more serious than that of cinematic indifference. Barbaro claimed that Lukács was a closet idealist. The charge of ‘idealism’, usually emanating from within some Stalinist autocracy or other, had, of course, haunted Lukács throughout his career, beginning with the criticism of History and Class Consciousness, and Lukács’ responsive ‘Autocriticism’; and perhaps culminating in the charge of idealism levied against Lukács by the Stalinist Hungarian Communist Party in 1949, and then in Lukács’ subsequent, and humiliating, act of ‘self-criticism’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 405–6). Now, in 1959, Barbaro again puts forward the dreaded reprobatory indictment of ‘idealism’, arguing that Lukács is ‘still very attached to idealist maxims’, and associating him with the idealism of the Italian philosophers Benedetto Croce and the pro-fascist Giovanni Gentile. The basis of the charge are Lukács’ remarks in his notes to Mészáros that a distinction has to be made between form and technique, and that form is also more important than technique. Barbaro interprets this as an idealist distinction which a Marxist such as himself is duty bound to repudiate forcefully: Lukács’ more recent outlook is still imbued with an idealist imprint. In this respect, it is interesting to note how that outlook coincides almost precisely, almost word for word in fact, with Giovanni Gentile’s brief preface to Luigi Chiarini’s Cinematografo, published in 1934. Gentile wrote: ‘The problem (of whether film can or might be able to have an artistic quality) has always played second fiddle to the evermore dominant interest that scholars have in cinematographic techniques.’   Generally speaking, the devaluation of technique is characteristic of the aesthetic of idealism, especially as found in the thought of Croce. In his view, a work of art (intuition-expression) is already fully expressed, complete and perfect, within the artist, in interiore animi, so that its extrinsic manifestation is purely incidental … a means by which to preserve the already fully-fashioned creation. (Barbaro, 1961: 501–2)

To argue that the distinction between technique and form made by Lukács in his brief remarks to Mészáros implied that he also believed in such a mystical conception of the work of art – one which is also a misreading of Croce’s own views – was, of course, a leap of breathtaking proportion, and also reminiscent in its unwarrantability of the Stalinist attacks made upon Lukács in 1949. In fact, Croce’s conception of the role of intuition in aesthetic experience, and his notion that it is through reflective action that the individual person engages with reality, is quite similar to the positions which Lukács adopts during his late aesthetic (Passmore, 1966: 300–1). However, Croce’s model of aesthetic experience is far removed from Barbaro’s caricature of it, and it is also a dubious enterprise to link the liberal Croce, and, through him, the Marxist-Leninist Lukács, with Gentile, who was a prominent spokesman for the Italian Fascist Party of Mussolini during the 1930s (Passmore, 1966: 302). Nevertheless, presumably to orthodox communists like Barbaro

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

155

such distinctions were extraneous, and ‘idealism’ was indeed the ‘diavolo’, as Lukács suggested in his response to Barbaro: a response entitled ‘Diavolo azzurro o diavolo giallo?’ (‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’); which was published alongside Barbaro’s original article in the November–December 1961 issue of Cinema Nuovo (see Chapter 10). Lukács was stunned by Barbaro’s criticism, not to say accusations, and pulled no punches at all in dealing with the hapless, and, unfortunately, also mortally ill (though it is not clear that Lukács knew this to be the case) Italian. First, Lukács ridicules the charge that he, as a literary theorist, should be criticised for not being a film theorist: On the basis that I had not addressed the cinema sufficiently in my writings, Umberto Barbaro assumes that I undervalued its importance. He refuses to accept the fact that even for the most encyclopaedic writer, the number of issues that he has not been able to tackle always exceeds the number of those he has. For example, I have never published an essay on music or painting. Does this then mean that I do not appreciate either Beethoven or Rembrandt? (Lukács, 1961: 503–4)

However, Lukács’ ire is chiefly directed against Barbaro’s misreading of his remarks over form and technique. In his article, Barbaro had sought to disprove the mystical-Crocean conception of art by reference to a documentary film on Matisse: Any reader can easily come to an understanding how Croce’s concept of art as a perfect and complete interiority goes against all of our experience, when we contemplate, for example, the work of a painter; and here, an excellent documentary on Henri Matisse provides just such an opportunity to understand this. In this film, the artist is seen painting upon a thick layer of paper … Matisse … briefly contemplates his work, and then tears it up, before immediately proceeding to create a similar portrait, this time eliminating most of the details from its previous version; and then also tearing that one up as well, and beginning yet another, all the time further simplifying the preceding drawing by yet again eliminating even more details … However, it soon becomes evident that each new sketch is not merely characterised by a decrease in details which are deemed to be superfluous. Rather, each new depiction involves a slight, though significant, variation of the parts that have succeeded in surviving from the earlier draft … This … cannot but convince us definitively of the absurdity of the idea of creativity as intuition-expression. Yet even those unfamiliar with aspects of art can comprehend that a film is not complete, entire, in its every detail, before even a single scene has been shot; or that an architect builds only to preserve the memory of an internalised imagination. (Barbaro, 1961: 502–3)

Lukács’ response to this is caustic, but also entertaining. First he insists that Barbaro’s article does not even merit a reply, but that he feels obliged to render one nonetheless because of the status the article has gained through being published in L’Unita. He then accuses Barbaro of not having read the Prolegomeni at all, and of also not really addressing his 1958 letter. Instead, he

156

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

accuses Barbaro of basing his criticism only on part of the letter cited by the editors of Cinema Nuovo in their introduction to the text, it being a convention of the journal to take an extract from an article and place it, highlighted, either at the head, or just after the first few paragraphs of an article. Lukács thinks that this is all that Barbaro actually read: Umberto Barbaro … takes certain quotes from the preface, according to which I agree with Mészáros when he distinguishes technique from form, and then immediately adds that I would thereby undoubtedly contest the importance of technique in art. I must confess that, even though I do not hold the logic of neo-positivists in high esteem anyway, this rather frivolous rendering of my position still astonished me nonetheless.   Let’s just assume that I would like to tour the outskirts of Rome and I ask an acquaintance to get me a ticket for such a tour. He finds me a ticket, warning me however that it is not a rail ticket but a bus ticket. Umberto Barbaro would greet my acquaintance by saying, ‘What? You make a distinction between train and bus? You therefore deny the existence of a bus! You, then, are an idealist, you deny progress’! … From whence my critic’s affirmations concerning my professed position toward technique come remains a mystery to me. He claims to have reviewed my book, Prolegomeni a un’estetica marxista, which contains a small section on technique and form … Apparently, however, my critic did not pay much attention to what preceded this section. On the other hand, why should he have done? When one is a neo-positivist, it is unnecessary to have the facts: one already knows everything. In fact, what ensues here constitutes an extremely useful lesson for me. My critic writes a detailed account of a film on Matisse, and I thus discover to my tremendous amazement that Matisse painted with colours and brushes, and that his artistic notions did not leap forth directly from his mind straight on to the canvas. He thus resolves what, for me, had been a very difficult problem, one I had been pondering for years: why had Michelangelo left behind so many incomplete works? Since he ‘saw’ his statues in their final state, ‘fully complete’, in their blocks of marble, why did they not just leap out, nice and finished, on meeting the mere gaze of the artist? It has only been upon reading Umberto Barbaro’s illuminating treatise that I have been able to come to the unexpected conclusion that Michelangelo had worked the marble with a chisel, and I have thus finally shed light on the problematic involving his artistic work.   In truth, if one really wanted to deal with such an important issue in an adequate manner Umberto Barbaro’s exposition would have to be put aside completely. (Lukács, 1961: 504)

The irony here is deep and biting, and it could be argued both that Barbaro got what he deserved, or that Lukács might have exercised more restraint. It needs to be borne in mind though that, in his article, Barbaro had linked the ideas of Lukács with the ideas of Gentile: a prominent fascist; and that alone would have enraged Lukács. It is not, however, the case, as Lukács argues, that Barbaro only read the editorial preface to ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, before going off on a rather feral anti-idealist tangent, because Barbaro quotes Lukács’ comments on the distinction between form and technique which

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

157

appear within ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’: to be exact, on page 135. In fact, in what Lukács refers to as the ‘editorial preface’ of the article, which appears on page 128, the editors of Cinema Nuovo completely misquote Lukács, in stating, quite incomprehensibly, that Lukács calls for a distinction to be made between form and theory – not technique! (editorial introduction to ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, Cinema Nuovo, no. 125, 1958: 128) Barbaro does not reproduce this blunder, and this disproves Lukács’ assertion that the former did not read the article. Nevertheless, it remains true that Barbaro’s article makes no mention at all of any of the other issues addressed by Lukács and Mészáros. It is also important to note here that Lukács makes no real attempt to deny the charge of idealism in his article (although he had no basis for trepidation anyway: Barbaro hardly had the authority to have him shot, as was definitely the case with Lukács’ Stalinist adversaries in 1949 and 1956), but only the mystical account of artistic creation put forward by Barbaro. In particular, Lukács makes no attempt to distance himself from the name of Croce. This is partly because, during the 1960s, Lukács had returned to Hegel repeatedly in the process of writing up The Specificity of the Aesthetic, and was concerned to distinguish what he took to be the important from the more problematic aspects of Hegel’s thought. So, for example, in 1964, one year after the appearance of the Aesthetic, he argued that: The present text [i.e., the Aesthetic], both in its basic outlook, and in its detailed considerations, will frequently deal with questionable aspects of Hegelian aesthetics; nevertheless the philosophic universality of its [Hegelian aesthetics] concept, its historico-systematic synthesis, remains a permanent model for the outline of any aesthetics. (Lukács, 1964: 58)

Similarly, Section III Part I of the Ontology is entitled ‘Hegel’s False and his Genuine Ontology’, and here Lukács attempts openly and directly to investigate the Hegelian system in considerable depth. At this time, therefore, Lukács had no intention of turning his back on Hegel, or the idealist tradition in general, but only on those aspects of Hegelianism and idealism which he took to be questionable for one reason or another; and such repudiation certainly did not involve Croce, whose focus on the importance of intuition is fully matched by Lukács’ considerations within both the Aesthetic and the Ontology. In fact, during this period of his career, Lukács tried to create a new synthesis of Hegelianism and Marxism. As a first step, he thought that this would involve sorting the idealist sheep from the idealist goats: i.e., Hegel (good) from Schelling (not so good). However, this first step did not really lead to the anticipated second step: to the creation of a great Hegelian-Marxist synthesis, because, in the end, most of the key concepts and approach which

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

158

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Lukács adopts in the Aesthetic are indebted to Hegel, rather than Marx. All of this explains why Lukács was not disposed to deny Barbaro’s charge of idealism, and why he was only prepared to insist that said idealism represented neither a blue nor a yellow devil. As we have seen, in The Specificity of the Aesthetic, Lukács argues that intuition plays an important role within aesthetic experience, and this position also led him to criticise Barbaro’s approach to intuition, as expressed in the latter’s article. Barbaro had argued that an intuitionist approach lay at the heart of ‘the blind alleys created by idealist philosophy of art’, and that, in terms of idealism, ‘in Lukács, what remains of this is the notion of intuition, a notion which must be definitively repudiated’ (Barbaro, 1961: 503). Lukács responds by insisting that the latter’s attack on intuition is nothing more than a ‘fashionable … conceptual deformation’, and, although he plays down the importance of intuition in this paragraph – describing it in terms of a set of commonplace psychological processes – he nevertheless still defines it in Hegelian terms, as a form of revelation of things, which then passes into conscious awareness. It also needs to be said that the term ‘intuition’ itself does not appear in ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’, further reinforcing the claim that Barbaro’s critique did not stem from an in-depth reading of the piece. Lukács finally ends his article by comparing Barbarov to Zhdanov, and by refusing to accept the sort of absolute categorical distinctions he feels both Zhdanov and Barbaro try to make: I have always lamented the fact that Zhdanov always wanted to reduce philosophical disagreements to feuds between materialism and idealism. This opposition leads to a simplistic vulgarisation because it disregards the contrast between dialectics and metaphysics, and the complicated reciprocal relationships which exist between two groups of antagonistic tendencies. But even the outrageous philosophical position of Zhdanov pales in the face of the pseudo-contrast between technicalism and intuition. Through it, the philosophy of art is merely placed at a crossroads, where it must choose – to borrow from Lenin – between the blue devil and the yellow devil. (Lukács, 1961: 505)

One final point to make here on this dispute with Barbaro concerns Lukács’ accusation that Barbaro was a ‘neo-positivist’: a charge that the editors of Cinema Nuovo felt it incumbent upon them to rebuff (Barbaro having died in the interim). The term ‘neo-positivism’ recurs frequently in Lukács’ writings from the mid-1950s onwards, and usually refers to a tendency within philosophy to place undue emphasis on objectivist methods. In both The Destruction of Reason and the Ontology, for example, Lukács singles out both existentialism and neo-positivist ideologies as the twin obstacles to the development of a progressive dialectical method: the former leading to irrationalism and subjectivism, the latter to a pseudo-objectivism and, ultimately, in the wrong hands, to domineering instrumental rationality. Lukács also often, but

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

159

by no means always, uses the term neo-positivism to refer to the philosophical movement normally referred to as ‘logical positivism’, and to the group of philosophers who gathered around the Vienna School of logical positivism from the 1920s onwards: philosophers such as Moritz Schlik, Otto Neurath, and Rudolf Carnap. The Vienna School was stridently anti-metaphysical, believing that anything that could not be verified by experience could not be the proper subject of philosophical enquiry (Passmore, 1966: 368). The ‘verification principle’ which emerged from this stance eventually became the chief instrument of the Vienna School, and the assumed basis for a prospective ‘scientific philosophy’. The movement perhaps reached its apotheosis in the ideas of Neurath, who argued for a ‘physicalist’ philosophy in which all statements about experiences were to be expressed in the language of physics (Passmore, 1966: 376). Lukács referred to the ideas of Carnap and other objectivist-minded philosophers from time to time in his work, and particularly in The Destruction of Reason, in which even Wittgenstein comes under strong criticism for his supposed affiliation with the movement. In truth though, there were many different schools of thought within the logical-positivist movement, and Wittgenstein himself always rejected the idea that he was associated with the movement, or that the verification principle should be turned from a methodological principle into an über theory (Passmore, 1966: 368). The extent to which Lukács understood these differences of intellectual gradation is difficult to gauge, and, in all probability, he was not too familiar with the detailed arguments of someone like Carnap. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that Lukács would be fundamentally opposed to logical positivism. Most of Lukács’ key concepts were of a type that would have been rejected as unverifiable by the tenets of logical positivism. As a realist, Lukács also believed in a many-layered reality, which stretched from the empirical to the abstract, as his model of the ‘complex’ makes clear; and this again puts him at odds with the pragmatic orientation of logical positivism. Lukács also believed that turning philosophy into science would be retrograde, and would probably lead to the further consolidation of instrumental rationality under the twin force of capitalism and Stalinist communism. His definition of both aesthetic experience and social being also emphasised intuitive experience, and defended such experience against the forms of logic the ‘neo-positivists’ insisted upon. Beyond this, and possibly even most importantly, Lukács would have felt that, in criticising the logical positivists, he was only carrying on the work begun by Lenin in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (1908), in which Lenin criticised the ideas of Ernst Mach, Carnap, and others. From that point onwards, the term logical positivism, or ‘neo-positivism’, became something of an expletive

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

160

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

within the Leninist tradition, and Lukács was more than happy to carry on this particular struggle. Lukács’ encounter, and sometimes overly antagonistic engagement with neo-positivism, might not have mattered too much in the end, and it might have been possible to place his anti-positivist diatribes in the same relatively inauspicious category as his unwise but persistent haranguing of ‘irrationalism’ and existentialism. In these latter two cases, the invective was mainly polemical in character, often undermined by his writings elsewhere, often intemperate, and primarily adopted in order to support a Marxist-Leninist position which is ultimately not central to Lukács’ core thought anyway. As should be clear from earlier chapters, Lukács’ Marxist-Leninist thought is not as important as his Hegelian-idealist thought; and is often dogmatic to boot. The invective against neo-positivism – and particularly the criticism of Wittgenstein – could therefore have been put in its properly circumscribed polemical place, and set against Lukács’ far more valuable exposition of the dangers posed by instrumental bureaucratic rationality, and the dehumanisation of the individual within contemporary life. The problem, though, was that, at times, Lukács also associated the neopositivist vision with the arts, and, hence, the description of Barbaro as a ‘neopositivist’, on account of the latter’s focus on ‘technique’ (this was hard on the Marxist-Leninist Barbaro, and also unfair). Here, Lukács does not only relate what he sees as an over-preoccupation with artistic technique with a move away from a concern with both ‘form’ (in the Lukácsian sense of the term) and content; but also with a ‘neo-positivism’ which, according to the unimpeachable Lenin, is a supposedly reactionary bourgeois philosophy. As we have seen, Lukács also carried this criticism of neo-positivism into his account of film when he referred to the ‘neo-positivist metaphysics’ of montage which characterised the Soviet cinema of the 1920s, and, here, the indictment of neo-positivism becomes more serious than the charge of modernism, because Barbaro – and Eisenstein – are now not just seen as advocates of aesthetic modernism, but also as involuntary architects in the consolidation of what lies at the heart of both the capitalist and Stalinist systems: instrumental rationality. In effect, Lukács uses the allegation of neo-positivism (and, elsewhere, ‘irrationalism’) here just as others used the charge of ‘Hegelianism’ against him. He did make distinctions between blue and yellow devils. Fortunately, however, Lukács did make a distinction between what he called the neo-positivist theory of montage, and actual montage films, and actually spoke approvingly of Soviet montage films such as Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925) and The End of Saint Petersburg (Pudovkin, 1927).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The film journal interviews and other writings

161

After the furore over the Barbaro affair had settled down the tone adopted towards Lukács in Cinema Nuovo became one of some deference towards the elderly philosopher, particularly after the appearance of The Specificity of the Aesthetic; and the main objective then became one of attempting to outline Lukács’ overall position as expressed in The Specificity of the Aesthetic, for the benefit of the journal’s readers. Not exactly an easy task, but one which Cinema Nuovo took on with some fortitude. Thus, in a 1967 article, Guido Aristarco attempts a fairly faithful survey of Lukács’ late aesthetic ideas, within which he makes the argument that Lukács’ theory of reflection is not to be confused with ‘mere mimesis’ or the simple ‘imitation of reality’ (Aristarco, 1967: 259). In his article Aristarco also points out – without reference to Barbaro, and without questioning the issue – that one of Lukács’ key principles at this time is that the aesthetic must be distinguished from the merely technical level (Aristarco, 1967: 259). A year later, in the January–February 1968 edition of Cinema Nuovo, Ugo Finetti carries out a similarly considerate review of History and Class Consciousness, and Lukács’ subsequent ‘Autocriticism’; arguing that the book was Lukács’ first attempt to ‘renew the revolutionary aspects of Marxism’ in conjunction with the ‘Hegelian dialectical method’ (Finetti, 1968: 34). Oddly, for an article in a film journal, Finetti’s article makes no mention of film, but goes to some lengths instead to set out Lukács’ overall political position, and particularly his stance on Hegel. Three years later, in the July–August 1971 edition of Cinema Nuovo, and shortly after Lukács’ death on 4 June, Finetti adopts a similarly – and unsurprisingly, given the death – valedictory tone, asserting that ‘the history of the work of Lukács can be summed up in one phrase: fidelity to reality, fidelity to Marxism’ (Finetti, 1971: 248). There then follows a supportive summary of many of Lukács’ key principles from the late period. For example, Finetti argues that Lukács’ had called, rightly, for an ‘open-minded consideration of Marxist thought’, in order to rise above both ‘empiricism’ and ‘dogmatism’ (Finetti, 1971: 248). Finetti also endorses Lukács’ call for a reform of existing socialism based on the importance of the individual, and on the actual structures of everyday life (Finetti, 1971: 251), before incongruously quoting a less temperate Lukács referring to Nietzche as a ‘reactionary and imperialist’ in The Destruction of Reason (Finetti, 1971: 254). In all of these accounts the objective is to set out Lukács’ ideas, rather than interrogate them. That changes, however, in a four-part article originally published in Hungarian, and then published again in Italian in Cinema Nuovo in August, October and December 1980, and February 1981. In ‘La teorie del cinema nell’ opera di Lukács’ (‘The Theory of Cinema in the work of Lukács’), Zoltan Novak strongly criticises Lukács’ ideas, as expressed in The Specificity of the Aesthetic, arguing that, though ‘an important work of Marxist philosophy’,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

162

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

the Aesthetic is ‘pervaded with problems related to the theory of film’ (Novak, October 1980: 31). Rather eccentrically, Novak takes issue with Lukács’ claim that the photographic base of film is ‘disanthropomorphic’ by referring to some relatively insignificant branches of perceptual theory which, he feels, proves the contrary; and he goes on to argue that such theory ‘refutes Lukács’ theory of reflection’. Such refutation, according to Novak, also therefore entails an equivalent refutation of Lukács’ theory of naturalism, because, presumably, if the photographic base is anthropomorphic after all, then naturalism cannot be dismissed in the way that Lukács habitually does (of course, Lukács would have argued that this ‘scientific’ justification of naturalism was neo-positivist) (Novak, October 1980: 135). Novak’s next target is the concept of the ‘double reflection’, which, he argues, cannot be applied to all films or to all film-makers, though he does not explain why it cannot. In any event, it is doubtful, given what he writes, that Novak really understood fully what Lukács meant by the term ‘double reflection’ (Novak, December 1980: 29). Lukács’ denigration of montage is then rejected as amounting to an unnecessary ‘limitation of the language of the cinema’ ( Novak, December 1980: 30); while he finds little sense in the notion that ‘unity of atmosphere is central to the art of the film’ (Novak, December 1980: 33). What we see here, of course, especially in relation to the issue of montage, is characteristic of the rejection of Lukács’ position on modernism which would eventually become a given. Novak’s conclusion is that Lukács has achieved much as a Marxist but little as a theorist of the cinema (Novak, December 1980: 35). In his fourth and concluding article, however, Novak is somewhat more magnanimous, perhaps because this is his final statement of position, arguing that, though Lukács’ theory of film contains many errors, Lukács developed ‘an important theoretical conception of film’, and created the basis for a ‘Marxist science of the cinema’ (Novak, February 1981: 23). Taken together with Lukács’ own Cinema Nuovo articles, the articles on Lukács written by Aristarco and others illuminate both the problematics of a historical context, and the rather tentative relationship which existed between Lukács and film culture, at least as far as Italy and central Europe are concerned. Cinema Nuovo had looked to Lukács’ late work in order to develop a model of cinematic realism that could support the emergence of a progressive Marxist cinema, both in Italy and beyond. The problem, however, was that the level of abstraction which Lukács operated at in The Specificity of the Aesthetic made it unlikely that such an outcome could ever really have come to fruition. By 1980, Lukács’ reputation had also declined markedly in the West, against the context of an increasing interest in the thought of Antonio Gramsci in Italy, the rise of ‘Screen theory’, and the continuing ­persistence of

The film journal interviews and other writings

163

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

repressive communist regimes around the world. In the end, the renaissance of Lukácsianism within Italian film culture rather faded away.

6

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

One of the strongest and most longstanding forms of criticism that has been levelled against Lukács is that his conception of realism is too closely associated with a particular genre of art: that of the nineteenth-century realist novel; and that, as a consequence of this, as well as for other reasons, he came to disregard and rebuff some of the most vital artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including a politically progressive naturalism, and most forms of modernism. Lukács’ disavowal of naturalism eventually proved relatively uncontroversial, given the extent to which the classical naturalist tradition had fallen out of favour by the 1930s; and, while the inter-war period in Europe saw the flowering of important naturalistic art forms, such as, for example, the documentary film, there was no broad-spectrum theoretical return to the nineteenth-century naturalist canon, as exemplified by the ideas and writings of Emile Zola. However, Lukács’ disparagement of most forms of modernism was quite another matter, and brought his theory of critical realism into considerable question against a context of the emergence of a western critical tradition – including a critical cinematic tradition – which embraced modernism forcefully as a potentially progressive form of artistic intervention. Given this difficulty, it will be helpful, at this point of conclusion, to address Lukács’ stance towards modernism, and the historical reaction to that stance, in order to come to a clearer understanding of both. Lukács’ consistent – or apparently consistent – rejection of modernism turned a number of potentially sympathetic writers and artists on the left against him, starting with Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s, who, both paradoxically and ironically, suggested that Lukács had actually developed a ‘formalist’ aesthetic: The formalistic nature of the theory of realism is demonstrated by the fact that not only is it exclusively based on the form of a few bourgeois novels of the previous century (more recent novels are cited in so far as they exemplify the same form), but also exclusively on the particular genre of the novel. (Brecht, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 70)

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

165

In place of what he described (in a typically provocative manner) as a normative ‘formalist’ approach, Brecht argued that a continual process of experimentation was required in order to represent reality, and that a reconstructed conception of realism must be ‘sovereign over all conventions … We shall not stick to too detailed literary models; we shall not bind the artist to too rigidly defined models of narrative’ (Brecht, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 82). During the 1930s a similarly critical approach was also adopted by Lukács’ one-time friend, Ernst Bloch, who accused Lukács of painting everything in ‘black and white’, and of making sweeping generalisations over modernism (Bloch, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 21). Bloch’s chief target had been a 1934 essay by Lukács entitled ‘The Greatness and the Decline of Expressionism’, in which Lukács described expressionism ‘as the literary mode corresponding to a fully-developed imperialism’ (Lukács, quoted in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 17); a description which Bloch rejected as far too sweeping, and also as misrepresenting expressionism. In contrast, Bloch argued that the expressionist artists were right to ‘shatter any image of the world, even that of capitalism’, and that Lukács was wrong to equate ‘experiment in demolition with a condition of decadence’ (Bloch, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 22). However, Lukács’ response to Bloch in his ‘Realism in the Balance’ (1938) is unrepentant, and vigorously deprecates not only most forms of modernism, but also his own The Theory of the Novel, which he now denounces unreservedly as ‘a reactionary work in all respects, full of idealist mysticism, and false in all its assessments of the historical process’ (Lukács, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 17). Essentially, the debate between Bloch and Lukács centred on differing viewpoints concerning the validity of artistic response to the experience of lived fragmentation. For Bloch, expressionism was valid because the movement embodied such experience in its formative representations, whereas, for the more ‘positive’ Lukács, it was incumbent upon the artist to rise above such fragmentation, and create a work of art which was well-ordered and inclusive. For Lukács, creating a fragmented work of art which reflected the reality of a fragmented world only exacerbated fragmentation; and, as we have seen, this is a position which he held to throughout his middle period. After the Second World War, and against a context of the apotheosis of modernism in western art, criticism of Lukács’ conception of modernism continued to grow, and was further inflamed by the appearance in 1954 of The Destruction of Reason, a book which, according to Theodor Adorno, represented ‘the destruction of Lukács’ own [reason]’ (Adorno, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 152). Adorno’s coruscating essay on Lukács: ‘Reconciliation under Duress’, accused Lukács of yoking together ‘things and people who have absolutely nothing in common with each other’ under a blanketing misunderstanding of modernism (Adorno in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 156); and of

166

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

reducing Hegel’s critique of Kantian formalism ‘to the simplified assertion that in modern art the emphasis on style, form and technique is grossly exaggerated’ (Adorno, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 153). Adorno also goes on to argue that ‘works of art which ignored their own form would destroy themselves as works of art’; and comes to the categorical conclusion that Lukács’ argument that modernism should be counted as a symbol of decadence is thoroughly regressive: The core of his theory remains dogmatic. The whole of modern literature is dismissed except where it can be classified as either critical or socialist realism, and the odium of decadence is heaped upon it without a qualm, even though such abuse brings with it all the horrors of persecution and extermination, and not only in Russia. The term ‘decadence’ belongs to the vocabulary of conservatism. (Adorno, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 153–5)

Adorno’s aesthetic position on ‘autonomous art’, where art ‘becomes an analogy of that other condition that should be’, and where ‘analogy’ also implies the use of modernist technique as an antidote to the vulgarities of capitalist consumer society, was, of course, at loggerheads with the sort of realistic approach advocated by Lukács (Adorno, in Harrison and Wood (eds), 1992: 763–4). And, anyway, Adorno regarded Lukács as a hopeless case who had sold out to the ‘unrelieved sterility of Soviet claptrap’ (Adorno, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 151). On the other hand, one of Lukács’ suspicions concerning modernist art had always been that such art played a certain role in the preservation of bourgeois-capitalist society, and it has also been argued by various other commentators that, after the Second World War, the avant-garde modernism of the inter-war period was indeed recuperated by the ruling class, and shorn of much of its radical spirit. Now, Adorno’s ‘autonomous’ art was no longer autonomous, but bought and sold within the framework of consumer capitalism, and now embellished ‘the splendid new structures of the great insurance companies and multinational banks’ ( Jameson, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 209). Here, modernism had – allegedly – lost its avant-garde status, where such status entails the adoption of a compellingly critical approach to the exigencies of human experience and understanding, at the aesthetic, social, and political levels. The debate over realism, modernism, and the avant garde is, of course, a farreaching and complex one, which cannot be entered into fully here. However what will be said here from the point of view of mere conviction, rather than any foregoing analysis, and in the relative latitude offered by these concluding remarks, is that it is, surely, anyway, unnecessary to make fundamental distinctions between realism and modernism in terms of the avant garde, as both are potentially able – and neither is necessarily incapable – of critical application:

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

167

of keeping ‘culture moving in the midst of ideological confusion and violence … [the] … true and important function of the avant garde’ (Greenberg, in Harrison and Wood, 1992: 531). Unfortunately, however, Lukács did make such fundamental distinctions, on the grounds that the over-preoccupation with questions of aesthetic form within modernism must inevitably lead to a loss of critical vigour; and, in this, he was influenced by Communist Party policy on the arts which saw modernism as a form of decadent bourgeois art, and realism as the more appropriate type of art for socialism and communism. Lukács played and toed the Party line here, and also came to convince himself of its value. Of course Lukács could have viewed both modernism and realism as useful instruments in the building of socialism, because to be a supporter of realism does not necessarily or logically entail that one also has to be an opponent of modernism. However, by the mid-1930s, such distinctions and segregations had become entrenched within Party doctrine, via Engels, Lenin, Zhdanov, and various lesser functionaries; and Lukács had perhaps little choice but to fall in line here. The real problem is that he also went on to promote and even believe in what Adorno referred to, perhaps a little too categorically, as the ‘unrelieved sterility of Soviet claptrap’. In any event, and leaving the question of Lukács’ culpability or otherwise aside, what we are concerned with here is the need to understand the historical response to Lukács’ engagement with modernism, and his response to that response; and we will now return to that issue. Fortunately for Lukács, more comradely and constructive criticism than that offered by the combustible Adorno came from other quarters during the 1950s and 1960s: for example, from Marxist theoreticians such as Roger Gaurady and Ernst Fischer. Gaurady put forward a theory of what he referred to as ‘shoreless realism’ in his D’ un réalisme sans rivages/For a Realism without Shores (my translation) (1963) during the 1960s; while Fischer developed a similar approach in both The Necessity of Art/Von der Notwendigkeit der Kunst (1959) and Art and Alienation/Kunst und Koexistance (1966). Echoing Brecht, Bloch, and Adorno; Gaurady and Fischer argued that the use of distorted stylisation in works of art did not amount to a corruption of realism, as, they believed, Lukács had argued; but, instead, constituted a valid attempt to modify existing realist conventions in order to represent a changing reality more appropriately (Bisztray, 1978: 168). This, of course, was precisely Brecht’s point when he argued that ‘Anyone who saw me at work would think I was only interested in questions of form. [However] I make these models because I would like to represent reality (Brecht, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 82). As argued, Gaurady and Fischer were Marxists. However they were not Leninists, and, because of this, Lukács did not interact with them, or feel obliged to give their artistic positions much time of day. The same fate also

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

168

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

befell Arnold Hauser, whose epic, Marxist Social History of Art was studiously ignored by Lukács. Like Gaurady and Fischer, Hauser was not a Party Leninist, ‘did not share Lukács’ political standpoint and is consequently ignored’ (Lichtheim, 1970: 126). Lukács’ attitude to modernism even came to alienate his own self­proclaimed ‘disciples’: students and colleagues such as Ferenc Fehér, Agnes Heller, György Márkus, and Mihály Vajda; all members of the Budapest School over whom Lukács exercised philosophical sovereignty. Such adherents eventually felt obliged to distance themselves from a feature of Lukács’ thought, which ‘some of us initially shared and dogmatically defended, whilst others never accepted it, but which all of us have abandoned in the last five years’ (Heller, 1983: 130). A similar, regretful, disengagement was adopted by fellow spirits in the world of film such as Guido Aristarco, the founder and editor of Cinema Nuovo, and a friend of Lukács, who, writing in 1965, nevertheless felt compelled to refer to the Lukácsian position on modernism as ‘absurd’. Aristarco argued that it had now become impossible to reject the ‘great expressive power’ and formal technique evident in the work of nihilistic bourgeois-modernist film-makers such as Bergman or Antonioni, in favour of some more restricted and implausibly ‘positive’ Marxist-realist model (Aristarco, 1965: 604). Writing in 1965, Aristarco now rejects his friend’s assertion (which he claims Lukács made in 1961) that the two great dangers facing culture are ‘naturalistic elements’ and the ‘anarchistic tendencies of avant-gardism’; and, like Brecht, Gaurady, Fischer, and Lukács’ Hungarian philosopher-followers, calls for a rapprochement between Marxism and modernism (Aristarco, 1965: 604). The conviction that Lukács’ model of critical realism was both organically and inflexibly wedded to the nineteenth-century realist tradition, and possibly irreconcilable with modernism, also led many others to dismiss his thought and contribution, either in part or in whole, as irrelevant. Particularly significantly, Brecht’s critique of Lukács in the 1930s went on to influence the development of formalist-modernist film theory after 1968, so that Lukács’ ideas came to be largely discarded by English-language film theorists during the period of ‘Screen theory’, and beyond (Lapsley and Westlake, 1988: 164). All such criticism was, however, water off a duck’s back to Lukács, because he saw it as emanating from a bourgeois-liberal or bourgeois-Marxist camp, while his own position stemmed from staying securely within the cultural and intellectual formations of a Leninist stance on art; a stance grounded in the insistence that the true role of art was to show the way forward to the institution of a future socialist society. Lukács believed that modernism was incapable of such vision, and that the bourgeois-modernists were, therefore, misled; and he genuinely and sincerely believed that two distinct camps were

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

169

involved here, and that it was also his duty to act as spokesman for the MarxistLeninist, Soviet-communist camp; and with that, for the definition of realism which had been handed down from the commanding figure of Engels. Lukács also genuinely believed that, despite the deformations of Stalinism, the Leninist ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ had largely been achieved within the Soviet Bloc; and this meant that he also felt duty-bound to accept what was implied by that dictatorship: namely, the sovereign role of the Party. This is why he was prepared to play the part of spokesman for Party policy and the historical development of ‘socialist’ culture; and why, as Adorno argues, he often gave the impression of ‘operating reductively, imperiously distributing labels such as critical or socialist realism’ and behaving ‘like a Cultural Commissar’ (Adorno, in Jameson, 1992: 153). Lukács’ belief in the existence of the two distinct camps also meant that he did not approve of those who switched camps, or at least of those who joined what he perceived to be the opposite camp. So, for example, when his very close colleague, István Mészáros, joined the Literary Gazette in Paris, then a forum for Hungarian dissident writers who had left Hungary after 1956, Lukács cut off all contact with his former student: I welcome your fidelity to Marxism … When you assumed a position in the Literary Gazette I severed all contact with you. I hope you see the futility of working with these people. It makes no difference whether we deal with bourgeois democrats, servile to imperialism, or communist renegades who behave like Dostoevsky’s repentant revolutionaries. All of them, whether consciously or unconsciously, block the road to the future, and are enemies of the only possible progress. (Lukács, in Kadarkay, 1991: 447)

However, from the beginning until the end, there is not just one Lukács, but two: one traversing a conservative – and, yes, normative – sometimes fearful path, or even tightrope; the other cognisant of the negative consequences attendant on following such a path, and filled with a desire to force through an aesthetic and personal encounter with the authentic unpredictability and particularity of being. And, as has been argued, Lukács attempted to carry this project through at both the aesthetic and political level. That being so, it may be helpful at this stage to look in more detail at Lukács’ relation to the political first, before returning later to the question of modernism; because an understanding of that relation will better help to clarify Lukács’ position on both modernism, and realism. According to Aristarco, ‘Marx is dead’ and ‘Lenin deposed’, while Lukács is just far too ‘positive’ (Aristarco, 1965: 604) for a period which contained too many unsavoury developments, including the defeat of May 1968 in Paris, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Vietnam War. As we have seen, Lukács was criticised at the time for his lack of direct involvement, and also leadership, in relation to the ­world-

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

170

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

historical events that were then unfolding around him. But Lukács also campaigned relentlessly for the democratisation of existing communism during this period, spoke out against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was almost executed for the part he played in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It is indeed ironic that his life was spared by Stalinist forces because he had earlier resigned from the revolutionary Hungarian government, given that said resignation was partly based on the grounds that there were still too many Stalinists in that particular government (though, admittedly, it was also based on the grounds that radical elements in that government wished to take Hungary out of the Soviet Bloc entirely, and into the free market). Lukács sometimes gave the impression – and sometimes much more than just an impression – that he was too accommodating with a communist system which was often oppressive and brutally tyrannical. However, this was the case with only some periods of his career, when he seems to have allowed his critical faculties to become overwhelmed by a blind belief in the system, and, particularly, in Leninism. On the other hand, throughout the majority of his career he consistently opposed Stalinism, and sought to liberalise communism. As one insightful commentator has also indicated, a ‘basic empiricism’ underlies Lukács’ thought (Pinkus (ed.), 1975: 10), and, in his final period, Lukács employed this empirical stance in order to focus on the rights of the individual person, the dangers of bureaucratisation and instrumental rationality, and the importance of seeing social being in terms of indeterminate, fluid particularity. Lukács devoted the last years of his life to this task, and Isaac Deutscher’s claim that Lukács was the ‘advocate sui generis of the Stalin era’ is both ungenerous and one-sided (Deutscher, quoted in Kolakowski, 1978: 77). Lukács was an anti-Stalinist who occasionally wrote ‘Stalinist tracts’, such as, for example, The Destruction of Reason, ‘by general consensus his [Lukács’] worst and by far his silliest Stalinist tract’ (Kadarkay, 1991: 421). But he was not a Stalinist: he was a Leninist, and he remained a staunch Leninist throughout his career. This meant two things. First, it meant he believed that the ideals of Marxism by no means implied the coming into being of the sort of repressive totalitarian bureaucracy instituted by Stalin. Second, and as previously argued, it meant that he also believed in the leadership of the Communist Party, the existence of the one-party state, the socialist economy, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, and the omniscience of Lenin. During the 1950s, Lukács was a leading figure in the ‘Leninist opposition’ to Stalin, which looked back to the Leninist regime of the New Economic Policy of 1921 as pointing the way forward for Hungarian communism (Levine, in Bernhardt and Levine (trans.), 1991: 4–5). The New Economic Policy was, above all, a pragmatic and pacific policy, which both sought to consolidate

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

171

the Revolution of 1917, and also develop accommodating economic, and therefore also cultural and political links, with the capitalist world. This also sums up Lukács’ overall political point of view, and he has to be understood as a committed Marxist, dedicated to the liberalisation and democratisation of communism within a Leninist framework which both cultivated co-operation with the West, and yet insisted upon the preservation of a distinct humanist-socialist cultural, economic, and political framework for the East. As his students, Ferenc Fehér and Agnes Heller insisted, Lukács was the ‘greatest personality’ behind ‘oppositional reform Marxism’, and it was he ‘who formulated the programme: the renaissance of Marxism’ (Fehér and Heller, quoted in Bernhardt and Levine (trans.), 1991: 4–5). That formulation was based on a belief in the sanctity of individual experience, and on the importance of particularity. And this was because, in his late period, Lukács saw no distinction between Gattungswesen (‘species being’), the individual person, and an ideal political system; and also because he believed that the ‘public and private person’ must be fully integrated within a polity based in a Gattungswesen of ‘everyday life’ (Levine, in Bernhardt and Levine (trans.), 1991: 41). It has been argued in Chapter 4 that, in the final periods of his career, Lukács became preoccupied with both the nature of empirical experience and a phenomenological approach to knowledge: with an empirical phenomenology. In this respect, both The Specificity of the Aesthetic and the Ontology can be seen to form part of one greater study of the way in which all things flow from and back into the substratum of everyday life. In this regard it should also be borne in mind that the Aesthetic was originally meant to be a threevolume work, the final volume of which would attempt to situate aesthetic categories back into the historical framework of evolving everyday experience. Given this, and the clear phenomenological underpinning evident in the Ontology, it can also be argued that Lukács’ commitment to a renaissance of Marxism was also part of this overall empirical phenomenology, because, as we have seen, at this time, Lukács believed that existing socialism must be rebuilt from foundations of individual experience deeply entrenched within the quotidian. It will also be recalled that, in 1968, and very shortly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Lukács felt compelled to write a response to that invasion, but never published that response. That response, a book, originally written in German as Demokratizierung Heute und Morgen (Democracy Today and Tomorrow), remained unpublished until a West German edition appeared in 1985; and was eventually then translated into English in 1991 as The Process of Democratization: the title which will be used here. What is of particular significance here is that immediately after the invasion of Czechoslovakia Lukács halted work on the Ontology in order to write The

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

172

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Process of Democratization, and what we have here, therefore, is a shift from the study of the phenomenology of social being within the Ontology, to a study of politics grounded in a conviction concerning the need to focus on the phenomenology of everyday life. As Lukács puts it: ‘The centre of our interest here is how socialist democracy can penetrate into everyday human life’ (Lukács, in Levine and Bernhardt (trans.), 1991: 102). Given this, it can be argued that not only The Specificity of the Aesthetic and the Ontology, but also The Process of Democratization, and Lukács’ other late writings, including the writings on film, form one inter-related whole: one aesthetic, social, and political phenomenology; one ‘unitary view of human social existence’: These phenomenological investigations are broadened to the realm of politics in The Process of Democratization. In Lukács’ excursions into social ontology, the aesthetic, social being and politics must be seen as three expressions of an ambitious enterprise to offer a unitary view of human social existence. (Levine, in Bernhardt and Levine (trans.), 1991: 4–5)

As argued in Chapter 4, The Process of Democratization does not put forward specific proposals for political change, but, instead, relies upon the more intangible notion that a general transformation of both popular consciousness and the political system was required if the people were to engage in meaningful participation within the political process. In the 1968 monograph Lukács lobbies both for a popular-led political cultivation of a species essence grounded in freedom, reason, ethical behaviour and knowledge; and for the transformation of the existing social system in order to accommodate such cultivation (Kadarkay, 1991: 463). And the monograph is also ‘a statement that Marxism cannot be reduced to Stalinism and that Marxism is a refutation of Stalinism’ (Levine, in Bernhardt and Levine (trans.), 1991: 4). Lukács’ 1968 monograph can, therefore, be viewed as a central component in his attempt to develop a comprehensive, phenomenological model of aesthetic and human-social existence. The problem is, however, that Lukács’ Leninism constantly distracted him from this advantageous phenomenological undertaking, and led him to adopt conservative stances, not only in relation to politics, but also art; and even Lukács’ disciples in the Budapest School eventually came to feel that his unflinching loyalty towards Leninism was ‘a fatal flaw’ (Heller, quoted in Bernhardt and Levine (trans.), 1991: 5). And Leninism really is at the heart of Lukács’ difficulty, because, while part of him always insisted on endorsing said Leninism, another part of him was only too aware – though perhaps not always consciously so – of the limitations which such endorsement necessarily entailed. It is also anachronistic that Lukács’ critical assault on Stalinism was based on the issue of totalitarian ‘bureaucracy’, given the extent to which

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

173

Leninism itself virtually entails a bureaucratic system of governance. It could be argued, for example, that both the theory of ‘democratic centralism’ and the principle of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat under the leading role of the Party’ inevitably lead to a bureaucratic system, without checks, balances, or redress. It was also Lenin, not Stalin, who endowed the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat with its repressive mandate in the first place, when he insisted in 1918 that ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is power won and maintained by the violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, power that is unrestricted by any laws’ (Lenin, quoted in Bottomore, 1991: 152). It seems inconceivable that the Lukács of 1956 and 1968 would have ascribed to such a position. Nevertheless, even in the interviews which he gave towards the end of his life he continued to support the general idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, arguing only that the notion had become twisted out of shape by Stalinism. A kind of intellectual schizophrenia, or inability to overcome fundamental contradictions, seems evident within Lukács’ thought here, and the result is that his work is often pervaded by a degree of uncertainty, equivocation, and dualism, as he switches between a normative Leninism and a more liberal, critical stance, influenced by phenomenology and other sources. And this is as much true of his position on the arts, as on politics. In the case of art, take, for example, the following two quotations from two works produced during the 1930s, the first, from ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, the other from ‘The Tragedy of Heinrich von Kleist’: … all sick art is ephemeral. At best it seeks its subject matter in what is secondary, peripheral, merely momentary and without future … This … is not limited to the decadence of our times. Literary and art history is a mass graveyard where many artists of talent lie in deserved oblivion because they neither sought nor found any association to the problems of advancing humanity and did not set themselves on the right side in the vital struggle between health and decay. (Lukács, 2005: 109) The psychology of Kleist’s plays, and that of his novellas as well, is based explicitly on the solipsistic isolation of human passions and, as a consequence, on the insurmountable mistrust that the characters in his writings feel towards each other … .In keeping with this psychological basis, the plot adopted in Kleist’s plays and novellas centres on delusion, misunderstanding and self-deception … in such a way that each case of exposure renders the tangled web of misunderstandings all the more opaque, that with each further step the thicket of misunderstandings becomes all the more impenetrable [until] the final catastrophe – which often occurs suddenly and without connection to what went before … (Lukács, 1993: 26–7)

In the case of ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, the ‘right side’ is of course MarxistLeninism. However, Lukács’ comments in ‘The Tragedy of Heinrich von Kleist’ reveal a quite different world-view. Lukács is not criticising Kleist here:

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

174

is not accusing him of being a ‘sick’ artist deserving of oblivion; but is instead commemorating the ‘unfulfillable longing’ which permeates his work; and, from the perspective of ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, such a state of unfulfillable longing does not sound like a particularly ‘healthy’ state to be in (Lukács, 1993: 26). It has been argued in Chapter 1 that a dialectic of optimism and pessimism, affirmation and negation, flows through Lukács’ early aesthetic, and what we also see here, exemplified by the above two quotations, is the continuation of that dialectic into the middle period. Here, the optimism now springs from Lukács’ Leninism, while the more nihilistic tone stems from both phenomenological existentialism, and the German critique of modernity which influenced Lukács so much. The argument that Lukács’ work is permeated by a phenomenological approach also helps illuminate the key distinction which he makes between ‘technique’ and ‘form’. As this study has shown, Lukács always argued, from as early as the 1910 essay ‘On the Phenomenology of the Creative Process’, that form should come from content: that the forms of experience should become the forms of the work of art; and this stance is, in fact, similar philosophically to that which Brecht had asked for in the 1930s, when the latter had insisted he was not a formalist, and that he made models because he wanted to represent reality. In fact, the mediated model of the classical-realist intensive totality, in which the phenomenal forms of appearance are, in fact, subordinated to the technical structures of the nineteenth-century realist novel, is only really to be found in polemical middle-period Leninist-inspired essays such as ‘Art and Objective Truth’ and ‘Narrate or Describe?’, and is far more ambiguously evident in middle-period works such as The Historical Novel, or German Realists in the Nineteenth Century: the work in which ‘The Tragedy of Heinrich von Kleist’ appears. In addition, this model is also applied fairly schematically in the two essays just referred to, as Lukács moves hurriedly through countless references to Scott, Zola, Balzac, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Goethe, Homer, Hebbel, Marx, Lessing, and, of course, Lenin. Finally, this model of the mediated intensive totality is not found in the early and late aesthetic periods at all; and this means that Brecht got it – at least partly – wrong when he accused Lukács of ‘formalism’, as Brecht meant that term to be understood; and as a reading of The Theory of the Novel, The Historical Novel, The Specificity of the Aesthetic, Solzhenitsyn, ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, and the writings on the New Hungarian Cinema of the 1960s bear witness. If, therefore, the totality of Lukács’ writings are considered, it soon becomes clear that those writings add up to much more than patronage of what Brecht called ‘a few bourgeois novels of the previous century’.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Conclusions

175

All of this suggests that a reassessment of Lukács, and especially of Lukácsian film theory, is required. As earlier argued, Lukács’ ideas have been consistently discarded within the English-speaking film studies academy from the 1960s onwards, against the backdrop of prevailing structuralist, post-structuralist, and postmodernist partialities. However, this negative response was rarely based on any particularly altruistic attempt to understand Lukács’ ideas, and in fact no really substantive attempt was made to reconstruct Lukács’ intellectual system, and then apply it to the analysis of particular films. After the postmodern moment in film studies had begun to wane, around the early 1980s, the question of realism once again reappeared on the critical agenda, and Lukács also re-entered the academy, in the work of Lovell, Jameson and others: Lovell’s Pictures of Reality (1980) being particularly ground-breaking in this respect. However, Lukács’ foreign-language writings on the cinema were not generally available to these scholars, whose stance would surely have been influenced had they encountered ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, or the section on film in The Specificity of the Aesthetic. The result of all this is that, for one reason or another, Lukács – and his film theory – has, and have, not exactly enjoyed an even-handed or felicitous compact within English-language film studies. Misunderstandings over Lukács’ ideas here often spring from three principal and related sources: (1) the fact that most scholars writing in English have largely consulted the literary writings from what I have referred to as the ‘middle period’ – from 1930 to around 1957 – and not the earlier or later philosophical writings, some of which – admittedly – had not been translated into English; (2) the fact that Lukács’ actual writings on the cinema were not consulted – again, largely because they had not been translated into English; and (3) the fact that only a relatively few of the writings that had been translated into English were addressed anyway. This latter also begs the question as to why English-language film studies has paid so little attention to Soul and Form, The Theory of the Novel, or even The Historical Novel, all of which have long been translated into English? Any attempt to understand Lukács through returning repetitively to polemical works such as ‘Realism in the Balance’, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, ‘Art and Objective Truth’, or ‘The Ideology of Modernism’, is bound to result in an off-centre understanding. And why so often the focus on the questionable Leninist Lukács, rather than on the far more valuable phenomenological-idealist Lukács? This study has also sought to show that both a ‘basic empiricism’, and a fundamental phenomenological orientation, exist as an often subterranean constant throughout the trajectory of Lukács’ career, whatever negative utterances he himself might have made concerning either empirical ‘description’ or phenomenology during his middle and late periods. This study has

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

176

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

also shown that this constant is also particularly evident in Lukács’ account of film. What also becomes clear, when this persistence is taken into account, is how close Lukács actually is to the other proponents of what in an earlier work, I have referred to as the ‘intuitionist realist’ tradition within film theory: a tradition which encompasses the ideas and work of André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, and which is often unhelpfully referred to as ‘classical realism’ (Aitken, 2006). For example, and to take the empirical first, the Lukácsian concepts of Lebendigkeit, Naturnähe and Geradesosein are very close to Siegfried Kracauer’s conception of the ‘redemption of physical reality’, and André Bazin’s conceptions of the ‘dialectic of concrete and abstract’ and the ‘secondary’ detail. All of these notions allude to the way in which the empirical content of the film image resists absorption into the humanly centred narrative and plot, and remains to be contemplated in and for itself (Aitken, 2007: 107). For example, writing about Robert Bresson’s Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (1944–45), Bazin refers to the ‘secondary details’ in a particular scene as ‘indifferent to the action’, and he goes on to argue that it is this indifference which ‘guarantees’ the film’s realism (Bazin, 1967: 110). As we have seen, Lukács argues something similar when he asserts that the ‘just being so’ of things should be evident within the film image. In addition to this shared emphasis on the concrete, we also find the concept of the Lebenswelt, with its connotations of fluid indeterminate space-time continuums, in which ‘purposive projects’ are of only minor importance, evident in the work of both Kracauer and Lukács. Both of these thinkers write against the context of what they see as the increasing rationalisation, bureaucratisation, and abstraction of contemporary experience, and both emphasise the importance of experiencing the indeterminate, sensuous Lebenswelt as an antidote to such abstraction. And, if that context of abstraction is not fundamentally different now from what it was in the 1960s, when both Kracauer’s Theory of Film and Lukács’ The Specificity of the Aesthetic and Toward the Ontology of Social Being were written, then these works, and the concerns they confront, remain compelling. This study has also attempted to develop a reconstructed model of Lukácsian cinematic realism. The model which appears here as a consequence draws on all four periods of Lukács career, but attempts, in particular, to link the early with the late and final periods. The model of film theory and cinema which emerges from this exercise is, in many respects, also quite different from that which has been derived previously from the literary models found in Lukács’ middle period; and is characterised by an approach, and type of film, in which human affairs, plot, and narrative do not over-govern the portrayal of empirical, phenomenal reality, but sustain such portrayal. Here, the ‘forms of appearance’ and the ‘outside world’ enjoy ‘equal’ representation

Conclusions

177

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

with the portrayal of human-being; order is combined with disorder; meaningfulness with meaninglessness; and contemplative spaces abound in which the existential ‘responding being’ thinks and acts within ‘spaces for action’. Some startlingly consequential concepts also emerge here: concepts such as Geradesosein, Lebendigkeit, and Naturnähe, to say nothing of Stimmung and Inherenz; all of which invoke a form of luminous, pulsating cinema of ‘secondary’ sensuous substance. As Lukács put it in ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, and The Specificity of the Aesthetic: a new, homogeneous and harmonious, unified and diverse world emerges in the cinema, that, in the worlds of literature and life, finds its equivalence in the fairytale and dream. In film, we find: maximum liveliness without an interior inner third dimension; suggestive linkage by means of pure sequence, a reality strictly bound to both nature and the most excessive fantasy; and the making-decorative of non-pathetic ordinary life. In the cinema everything that romanticism sought to achieve through the theatre can now be attained: the maximum uninhibited mobility of the characters, the complete coming alive of the background, of nature and of interiors, of plants and animals; but a liveliness that is not bound to either conceptuality or the limitations of ordinary life. (Lukács, 1913) in film, there is also an intrinsic relationship between the human being and the world of objects. But what is specific to film is that – just as in real life – in their appearance both have to possess a completely similar degree of reality. In this way the reciprocal relations which actually exist between man and his environment are not given up in any way. In relation to the other arts, this approach also offers a new perspective which can be expressed most clearly in terms of negation: now, man no longer dominates these reciprocal relations with the world, but, as is actually perceived by men in everyday life, what we have here are truly reciprocal relations, involving various equally real factors (it should also be understood, that these distinctions exclusively refer to form in film; although the outside world in the epic may have a similar degree of reality as the portrayal of man, in terms of content, man is always necessarily at the center). (Lukács, 1981: 478)

But, beyond any reconstruction of Lukácsian cinematic realism lies the far more important subject of realism itself. It has been argued here both that Lukács’ realism is existential and phenomenological, rather than MarxistLeninist; and that that is all to the good. That stance is also characteristic of intuitionist realism in general, in the work of Bazin, Kracauer, and Lukács. Other forms of realism are of course also imaginable, and, hopefully, this book will contribute to future studies of the issue that matters most: that of realism. As argued in a previous work, we engage with the question or experience of realism more or less continuously, and our daily movements within the Lebenswelt are premised upon assumptions concerning the reality of that life-world (Aitken, 2006: 230). Film theorists should not ignore this everyday reality of realism. And then there is also the question of realism and

178

An analysis of Lukács’ writings on film

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

­totality. In a world-capitalist system grounded in social reification and existential fragmentation it remains important to grasp the larger picture: to have ‘access to a sense of society as a totality’ ( Jameson, in Jameson (ed.), 1992: 212). In his film theory, Lukács attempted to address both these issues.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Part II The film writings, 1913–71

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

7

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’

We can never escape from the condition of conceptual confusion: something new and beautiful has arisen in our time, but, instead of accepting it as it is, one tries with all possible means to place it within old, inappropriate categories, and, in doing so, deprive it of its true meaning and value. Today, ‘cinema’ is conceived of either as an illustrative educational instrument on the one hand, or as a new and cheaper competitor to the theatre on the other; on the one hand, pedagogically, on the other, economically. But that a new form of beauty is just that: beauty; and that it is destined to be appraised in terms of the aesthetic, is something still only very few consider. A well-known playwright has, from time to time, fantasised that, through the perfection of technology and the ability to reproduce speech fully, the cinema could eventually come to replace the theatre. If this occurs, he maintains, then every ensemble would be a perfect one: the theatre would no longer be dependent upon the inconsistency of accessible performers and performance, and only the very best actors would perform in plays, while their performances would also always be excellent, as those performances in which the cast were not at their best would simply not be recorded. Here, a good performance would become something eternal, while the theatre would also lose all of that which is merely ephemeral, and become, in consequence, a grand museum of faultless achievements in performance. However this beautiful dream is a great error. It overlooks the basic precondition of all stage effects: that they are produced by living human beings. For it is neither in the actors’ words and gestures, nor in the events of the drama, that the basis of theatric effect rests, but rather in the power of a human being, in the living will of a living human being, which radiates out unmediated and without impediment, onto a correspondingly living assemblage. The stage is the absolute present. The transitory nature of its achievements is not a regrettable weakness, but, rather, a productive limitation: it is the necessary correlate and sensuous expression of destiny in the drama. For destiny is what is present as such. The past is merely a framework, in the metaphysical sense,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

182

The film writings, 1913–71

something entirely without purpose (if a pure metaphysics of the drama were to be possible, one in which there would be no need for any merely aesthetic category, concepts such as ‘exposition’ or ‘development’ would no longer be acknowledged). And, in terms of destiny, the future is entirely unreal and meaningless: death, which brings all tragedies to a close, is the most compelling symbol of this. Through the becoming-present of the drama, this metaphysical feeling becomes immensely augmented in immediacy and sensuousness: man’s deepest truth and position in the universe appears as a self-evident reality. The ‘present’, the being-here of the actors, becomes fatefully evident, and, therefore, appears as the deepest expression of a human being in the drama who is at the mercy of fate. To be present, which really means to live exclusively and most intensively, is a form of destiny in itself, though, unfortunately, the so-called ‘life’ [which we habitually experience] never attains the sort of intensity that could raise everything up into the sphere of destiny. That is why, even without great drama dedicated to the portrayal of destiny, the mere appearance of a really important actor on the stage (Duse, for example) already amounts to great tragedy, mystery, worship. Duse is the completely present human being, who embodies Dante’s dictum that ‘essere’ is identical with the ‘operazione’ [to be is to act/to perform]. Duse is the melody of the music of fate, that must sound no matter whatever else is playing out in the accompanying scenario.1 The absence of this ‘present’ is the essential characteristic of the ‘cinema’. Not because films are imperfect, not because the figures must, today, still persist in silence; but because these are only the movements and actions of people, but not people. This is not a shortcoming of ‘cinema’, it is its line of demarcation: its principium stilisationis [central principle of stylisation]. Through this the pictures of cinema become uncannily lifelike, not only in their technique, but also in their effect of appearing identical to nature; and are no less organic and vital than those of the stage, but just uphold a life of a completely different kind; they become – in a word – fantastic. However, the fantastic is not the opposite of the living life, it is only a new aspect of it: a life without presence, a life without fate, without reasons, without motives; a life the innermost of our soul never wants to become nor can become identical with. And even when there emerges – as there often does – a longing for such a life, this longing is only directed at a foreign abyss which is, in fact, alien to the inner self. The world of the ‘cinema’ is a life without background or perspective, without distinction in terms of weight and qualities. For only presence gives fate and substance, light and lightness to things. It is a life without measure or order, without essence and value; a life without soul, made up of pure surface. The temporality of the stage, the flow of events taking place on it, is always something of a paradox: it is the temporality and flow of great moments,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’

183

something which has a deep inner quality of rest, as of something almost brought to a halt, become eternal; and this is a direct consequence of the influence of the excruciatingly strong ‘present’. However, the temporality and flow of the ‘cinema’ are entirely pure and unsullied: the essence of cinema is movement as such, perpetual flux, the never-resting change of things. These different temporal categories correspond to the different fundamental principles of composition of stage and cinema. One is purely metaphysical, keeping everything empirically alive at bay; while the other is so strong, so exclusively empirically alive, unmetaphysical; that through this extreme disposition (Zuspitzung) another, completely different metaphysics comes into being. In a word: the fundamental law of linkage for the stage and performance is that of inexorable necessity, whereas, for ‘cinema’, it is that of unlimited possibility. The individual moments merge with one another to generate the temporal sequence of ‘cinematic’-scenes, and are only linked to one another in terms of immediate and seamless succession. There is no causality involved in such joining together; or, to be more precise: causality is not constrained or determined by anything related to content. ‘Everything is possible’: that is the world view of the ‘cinema’, and, because, through its technique, and in each individual moment, it is able to express the absolute (even though only empirical) reality of this moment, the latent significance of this ‘possibility’, as a category opposed to ‘reality’, becomes suspended; the two categories are put on an equal level with each other, and come to have one identity. ‘Everything is true and real, everything is equally true and equally real’: this is what the picture-sequences of ‘cinema’ teach. Thus a new, homogeneous and harmonious, unified and diverse world emerges in the ‘cinema’, that, in the worlds of literature and life, finds its correspondence in the fairytale and dream: maximum vivacity (Lebendigkeit) without an interior third dimension; suggestive linkage through mere sequence; strictly nature-bound reality and extreme fantasy; the becomingdecorative of the non-pathetic ordinary life. In the ‘cinema’ everything that the romanticism of the theatre had sought – in vain – to achieve can now be attained: extreme uninhibited mobility of figures, the complete becoming-alive of the background, of nature and interiors, of plants and animals; but a liveliness that is not bound to the content and limitations of ordinary life. The romantics attempted to force their feelings about the world onto the stage by employing a fantastic closeness to nature. But the stage is the realm of naked souls and destinies. Each stage is Greek in its innermost essence: abstractly arrayed people step forth and present their plays about destiny in front of abstract and empty column-lined halls. Costume, decoration, milieu, opulence, and the variety of external events, are a mere compromise for the stage; in the really decisive moments these always become superfluous

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

184

The film writings, 1913–71

and distracting. The ‘cinema’ merely presents actions, but not their cause and meaning; its characters merely have movements, but no souls, and what happens to them is just an event, and not destiny. It is for this reason – and only ostensibly because of current imperfections in technology – that the scenes of cinema are silent. The spoken word, the sounding concept, are the conveyors of destiny; and only in them and through them arises the binding continuity of the psyche in the dramatic performer. The revocation of the word, and, along with it, of memory, of duty, and of the obligation to oneself and the idea of one’s own selfhood, does, when the wordless is remoulded into a totality, render everything light, exhilarating and soaring, frivolous and dancing. What is important here, is that representation must be expressed exclusively through events and gestures; any appeal to the word represents a falling-out from this world, a destruction of its essential value. Through this, though, everything that has always been crushed by the abstract-monumental weight of destiny now blooms, and takes on a rich and plentiful life: on the stage, that which occurs is unimportant, so overwhelming is the role of destiny; in ‘cinema’, the ‘how’ of events has a dominant power over all else. The livingness (Lebendigkeit) of nature here acquires artistic form for the first time: the rushing of water, the wind in the trees, the stillness of the sunset and the roar of the storm, as natural processes, are here transformed into art (not as in painting, which draws its painterly values from other worlds). Man has lost his soul, but gains his body; his greatness and poetry lies here in his ability to overcome physical obstacles by means of his strength and skill, while comedy arises when these obstacles prove to be insurmountable. Those achievements of modern technology that are irrelevant to every great art will also become powerfully fantastic and poetic here. For the first time, in the ‘cinema’ – to give but one example – a car can become poetic, as in a romantic and thrilling pursuit involving other cars. In this way also the common bustle in the street and in the market place acquires a powerful humour and an elementally forceful poetry. The naively animalistic (naiv-animalische) happiness of a child delighting in carrying out a prank, or the helplessness of the unfortunate one who has lost his way; these can be rendered in a most unforgettable way. We assemble in the theatre, in front of the great stage of great drama, in order to reach our highest moments; in the ‘cinema’, we should forget these heights and become irresponsible: the child that is alive in each human being is set free here, and becomes master of the psyche of the spectator. The truth-to-nature (Naturwahrheit) of the ‘cinema’ is, however, not bound to our reality. Furniture moves around within the room of a drunkard. His bed flies with him high over the city – only in the last moment is he able to hold onto the side of the bed, while his shirt waves about like a flag, enveloping him. The bowling balls which a group of people intend to use

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’

185

become rebellious, and chase those people across mountains and fields, forcing them to swim across rivers, run across bridges, and climb steep staircases, until, finally, the skittles come alive and catch the balls. The ‘cinema’ can also become fantastic on a purely mechanical level, as when films are projected in reverse-motion, when men get up from underneath speeding cars, when a cigar butt becomes bigger while being smoked, until finally the moment arrives when a complete cigar is placed back into the box. Or one can manipulate the film so that strange creatures seem to spring down from the heights and into the abyss, where they hide, like caterpillars. These are images and scenes from a world similar to that of E.T.A. Hoffman or Poe, or to one like that of Arnim or Barbey d’Aurevilly – only the really great poet, one able to order and interpret them, and transform them from mere technique-driven accidental phantasms into a meaningful metaphysics, and into a pure style, has not yet arrived. What has been achieved so far has emerged naively, and often against the will of the people, and often only out of the spirit of the technology of the ‘cinema’: an Arnim or a Poe of our day would, however, find here an instrument appropriate for his scenic longing (szenische Sehnsucht); as rich and innerly adequate as the Greek stage was for a Sophocles. Admittedly: a stage of recuperation from oneself, a place of amusement, of simultaneously the most subtle and refined, and the most crude and primitive kind; and never one of edification or elevation of any kind. Yet, this has the consequence that a cinema that has developed in an intrinsic manner, and which remains true to the appropriate idea of itself, may also pave the way for Drama (again: for the really great Drama, and not what goes by the name of ‘Drama’ today). The insurmountable urge for amusement has almost completely expelled the drama from our stages: we can see everything in the theatre today, from dialogue-driven trashy novels, to innerly anaemic short stories, to empty, bombastic presentations of grand historical campaigns – but no Drama. The ‘cinema’ can administer a clear break here: it has the ability to render everything that belongs to the category of amusement manifest, and is able to do so more effectively and certainly better than can the stage of the spoken word (Sprechbühne). No suspense-packed theatrical piece can possibly compete in terms of breathlessness of tempo here; every approximation of nature brought to the stage is a bare a shadow of what is possible here; and instead of the raw abbreviations of the soul [found in film], which, because they are based on a form of spoken drama, are, mistakenly likened to souls, and, are, therefore, [inevitably] found to be repulsive; a world of premeditated and inevitable soullessness arises: a world of pure externality. What on stage was brutality can here become childlike, suspenseful as such, or the grotesque. And when, one time – I speak here about a rather distant though deeply anticipated goal desired by all of those who are sincerely

The film writings, 1913–71

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

186

concerned about the drama – the inconsequential literature of the stages is brought down through this competition, then the stage will be forced once more to cultivate that which is its real vocation: the great tragedy, the great comedy. And while amusement was condemned to be portrayed in a rather crude manner on the stage, because its content contradicted the forms of the drama-stage, it can, nevertheless, in the ‘cinema’, find an adequate form that is internally appropriate, and thus truly artistic, even if that is still rare in the cinema of today. And when those talented psychologists possessing the talent to write [trashy] short novels are expelled from both stages, it can only be beneficial for them, and also bring health and clarity to the culture of the theatre. Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt, 10 September 1913 Notes 1

Eleanora Duse, 1858–1924 was a well-known Italian actress of the period (translator’s note).

8

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

When dealing in this chapter with certain principal questions of film art, we are primarily doing so because it is also here that a strange case of double reflection exists. This – abstract – fact of the matter links it with the other problem-complexes already dealt with. This abstract commonality would, however, prove misleading, if we do not, at the outset, deal with differences, if not contradictions, that are important, and which also set apart the kind of reflection found in film from the other manifestations of double mimesis. The double mimesis in music is so unique that puzzlement or confusion scarcely need to be considered here. In its concrete manifestations of double mimesis film is similar to architecture. But, since, in both cases the starting point is a deanthropomorphic reflection and its technological realisation, which are only transformed into the aesthetic by way of the process of double mimesis, it seems to us useful to touch briefly upon apparent similarities and real differences which exist in these areas. For the time being let us consider the relationship – so important and so often misunderstood – between film and technology. Walter Benjamin was one of the first to raise this question in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. However, even though he indeed brings to bear a series of subtle observations and astute insights, his romantic anti-capitalist attitude often obscures problems at hand. Among which, above all, his notion concerning the loss of the ‘aura’: that is, the loss of the uniqueness of a work of art as a result of its potential for technical reproduction, comes into consideration.1 Even though Benjamin’s polemic against those tendencies of capitalism detrimental to the arts is justified in many respects, he goes to such lengths that he comes to distort the nature of the problem – copperplate engraving and lithography are not only means of reproduction, but also the basis of independent artistic creativity; engravings by Rembrandt, lithographs by Daumier, have their unique aura, and convey that aura regardless of the number of copies that exist. The reason for pointing this out here is that, as we will see, this mistaken stance has also had misleading consequences for our understanding of film.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

188

The film writings, 1913–71

When we now return to the technical side of the double reflection in architecture and film, we are dealing with the construction of a real entity, whose reality is unaffected by whether or not its visual transformation into the aesthetic takes place. However, it is only in the latter instance, of course, that the aesthetic can come into being. On the other hand, the technical level of film takes from its very outset, and for granted, the reflection of a given reality, even though the end-product will always be a representation of reality, and never reality itself. That has as a result that, in architecture the double-ness of reflection is always retained, no matter how much the visual creation of space may suspend the original, merely useful reality. By contrast, in film, ultimately, a single and unified reflection of reality emerges from the process of the double mimesis, in which the traces of its genesis are utterly obliterated. Accordingly, the transformation process into the aesthetic quality is fundamentally different. Photography, as a starting point, is, as such, deanthropomorphising; it is the film technique, which is itself a reflection of reality, which is able to suspend such deanthropomorphism and render what is depicted similar to the normal visibleness of everyday life. Naturally, there is still not yet anything inherently aesthetic contained in this; it is merely a rendering of the immediately given reality, and, at best, only an account of it. Even in a case where film reproduces, say, a theatre performance, where the object might have an aesthetic character, its reproduction does not inherently possess an independent aesthetic principle. The technology of films even provides for the possibility of a return to deanthropomorphism, as, for example, with the use of slow motion. Anyway, what obtains here, as everywhere, is that technology must have reached a high enough level for there to be any question of a transformation into the aesthetic. What appears to be the specific feature of film, however, is that the technology it is based on could only have materialised in the context of highly developed capitalism, and, as one consequence of this, here, the impact of technological developments on artistic ones found expression in a more vehement, more discontinuous and crisis-prone manner than in any other art. Suffice to recall that the invention of the sound film took place right at the point in time when the silent film was reaching its highest artistic heights, and that this brought about a deep aesthetic crisis which lasted for years, and led to a serious artistic regression in film production. Sure enough, as seen now from a historical vantage point, this ‘sudden rupture’ appears to be less dramatic than it must have appeared to those directly concerned. In addition, the necessity to organically link auditory elements with specific cinematic imagery was already implicitly present in silent film, and the fact is that, from the very beginning, no silent films were conceivable without musical accompaniment, is a clear proof of this. We will shortly discuss some

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

189

of the aesthetic problems that are related to this. Suffice it to say now that, however, the crisis which occurred at the dawn of the sound film will not be diminished by the belated insight that the crisis was not in the end as radical as it first appeared. Also it will not be diminished by further technological innovation, the decisive driving force in film production, but one which also comes from the outside. Think, for example, of the contemporary effect the spread of television has had on film. It is already here that the specific capitalistic genesis of film finds its expression. Architecture is also a distinctive and collectively based form of art. Naturally, only with the emergence of capitalist society could technological and economic determinants interact with architecture’s aesthetic tendencies. However, film is from its very inception intellectually as well as technologically the product of capitalism. That has, for the time being, the consequence that all of film production is unconditionally subordinate to capitalist interests. In other contexts we have indicated that the spread and generalisation of capitalist production has had a profound influence on the state of all the arts. But without question this relationship is strongest in relation to film. The production of a film involves costs on a totally different scale to those incurred by all other arts, with the exception of architecture. Thus the emergence of non-capitalist ‘islands’ is much more difficult here than elsewhere. And since we are concerned here with a historical-materialist aspect of our question, we are content for now with the mere reference to this situation here of the much stronger prevalence of the merely pleasurable (ranging all the way down to pure kitsch), and the extent to which this is more opposed to the aesthetic, and even to aesthetic intentions: and also the relatively confined room for manoeuvre for the creation of real art in comparison with any other field. Later we will be concerned with the often complicated correlations which this constellation has with the mimetic disposition of film, and this will itself be analysed in a dialectical-materialist manner (Lukács, 1981, II: 481). The general similarity between architecture and film consists in that, in both cases, certain technological possibilities were brought about through economic development, and also in that these possibilities circumscribe the concrete space for manoeuvre within whose margins both art forms are able to fulfill their social mandate. In both cases aesthetic confusion results when theory specialists and even more so the practitioners of capitalism improperly identify technological necessities and possibilities with that artistic technique that is derived from the aesthetic treatment of such technological necessities and possibilities; and which transforms deanthropomorphic material into the specific aesthetic mimesis of these respective arts. This distinction is especially important in relation to film because, here, the boundaries

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

190

The film writings, 1913–71

between these two approaches to the technical appear to merge into each, often without a transitional phase. In architecture, to be precise, the newly discovered technological laws and possibilities are only secondary, are only of a visual character inasmuch as each and any spatial representation must also be visually perceptible, and whereas it is at the second level, where the aesthetic mimesis of visuality is made the foundation of architectural composition, the primary, purely technological form of film, while not aesthetic in itself, is already nothing other than a visual reflection of reality, and is transformed through rapid movement, through the continuous experience of the succession of the photographic depictions, in an anthropomorphising way, bringing that depiction closer to the forms of appearance of everyday life. The doubling of mimesis, its diversion into the aesthetic, arises from this basis; however, it does not simply and naturally emerge from technological possibilities, and has to be consciously created, and in relation to a social mandate that may also often be only implicit. Only then does the homogeneous medium, the artistic ‘language’ of film, come into being. We follow the assertions of Béla Balázs here when we refer to David Griffith as the initiator of this kind of representation.2 How paradoxical and confusing the new visuality generated in this way initially appeared to the audience we have described in earlier contexts extensively (Lukács, 1981, II: 115) [actually, fairly briefly, earlier in this chapter]. Balázs gives at this point a detailed analysis of the technical means that help to generate such a strange new world of visibility; among other things he highlights aspects such as the continuously changing distance between spectator and image which can occurr (in contrast to the constancy of distance in the theatre), and the changes in perspective in both totality and detail which are brought about through cutting and montage. However, it is not the analysis of individual technical questions that is important to us; rather it is the fact that a visible, sensuous and evident world emerges sui generis, whose specific aesthetic laws must be posited in terms of the reflection of reality. The qualitative change that takes place in the second mimesis can perhaps be best illustrated by briefly looking at Benjamin’s analysis of acting performances in theatre and film; even more so, given the unhelpfully negative stance adopted by the author with regards to the mechanisation of art, which we, in contrast, believe allows a form of expression to occur enabling certain elements of something new to become clearly visible. Benjamin starts from the assumption that the actor’s performance in theatre ‘is presented through the person of the actor’, whereas the apparatus of film is ‘not expected’ to ‘respect the totality of this performance’. According to Benjamin, the outcome is a selection, a procession of ‘optical tests’ (optischen Tests). As a result, the personal contact between actor and audience which takes place during the stage

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

191

performance is lost. The spectators are only able to empathise instead with the apparatus; and a ‘test’ emerges.3 Two remarks have to be made in relation to this. First, the choices made, the new arrangements, etc., in the actor’s performance, are not simply ‘tested’ by means of some apparatus; rather – in genuinely artistic films – the apparatus is manipulated by the director, operator etc., from the standpoint of a new homogeneous medium, in a concrete aesthetic sense. Understood more generally, the adaptation of acting performance to the concrete totality is not anything qualitatively new in the history of dramatic art. Wherever an ensemble is to be established – and this is the real artistic form of theatre for sure – directors and artistically conscious actors take care that a harmonious reciprocity, an orientation towards the intellectual and sensuous contents of drama and to the sentiments contained in the drama, permeates each representation, each gesture. What, as we saw, Diderot demands of each actor, now emerges as a postulate for ensemble acting (Lukács, 1981, I: 408). Important ensemble theatres such as, formerly, for example, that of Otto-Brahm, or, in more recent times, Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, have demonstrated that the individual performance is not diminished by such ensemble playing, but, rather, is augmented by it. It is precisely because film is no mere photographic reproduction of a play, but a particular kind of construction of reality, that the double mimesis (the reflection of reality reflected by the actor) emerging here is no optical testing, but rather a new mimetic forming and fixing of those moments that are appropriate to rendering the concrete filmic content optimally meaningful. The result here is no ‘optical test’, but rather an aesthetic construction, the giving-of-formto a concrete and specific content. Of course, not every film actor, and his performance, will become the object of such a transformation, however, from the outset, this should be the objective. Seen from the perspective of the actor, movements, gestures, etc. must have a qualitatively different character than in the theatre. Since actors cannot rely on the continuity of a dialogue which is aesthetically primary – and this applies also to the sound film – a new, heretofore unknown form of visual expressiveness emerges that can be augmented in terms of its penetrating power by forms of cutting, editing, etc. However, this is also, and from the very beginning, a form of stylisation which is also implemented and completed ‘through the apparatus’. Secondly [this is the ‘second’ of Lukács ‘two remarks’ which he wishes to make concerning Benjamin’s ideas on the relationship between filmic ‘selection’, the spectator, and the ‘apparatus’], to be sure, Benjamin is correct when he ascertains the absence in film of that personal contact between actors and audience that is an essential factor in the theatre. However, this correctly articulated negation does not negate the aura of uniqueness, as portrayed by Benjamin; rather it generates a completely new relationship with the audience. For the film actor

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

192

The film writings, 1913–71

is, admittedly, not an immediately present human reality (unmittelbar menschliche gegenwärtige Realität), as is the actor in the theatre, where human contacts between real persons in the auditorium and on stage are able to take place; rather he/she is a mimetic construct, the artistic depiction of an active human being. But, so is the human being in painting and sculpture. And, where real art is operative, the absence of personal contact never amounts to a lack of aesthetic evocation. We will also see later that the transposition from the paradox-rich though still yet mimetic sphere of theatre into a decidedly and unambiguous double mimesis of film does not weaken the actor’s aesthetic possibilities and aesthetic importance within the filmic totality. Quite the contrary, it augments them (Lukács, 1981, II: 488). With this, we already find ourselves in the midst of discussing the peculiarities of the filmic double mimesis. We have previously emphasised the still not yet aesthetic character of simple reflection, that is brought close to everyday life through the application of film technology. However, we can now look from a more positive angle at the sense of negativity implied by this statement, based on the notion that, as with each and every photographic image, those generated by means of the filmic apparatus possess a very concise authenticity. That means that, independently of any aesthetic quality, yes even independently of any possible alienating effect, each photograph has to suggest the following: at the moment of the shoot the represented object looked indeed like it appears in the photograph; the lens is impersonal and inerrant. (We are not talking here about the physiognomic distortions which long-exposure often produces; the single images of a film-strip are snapshots that do not allow for this source of error in depicting photoscopic-mechanistic reality. Snapshots can astound and alienate us; but there is no doubt about their authenticity.) While the unwinding of film brings the medium closer to the visual apperceptions of everyday life, the accent remains very much on such authenticity. For whatever we experience as real in everyday life is – especially in its immediate ‘being so’ (Sosein) – just real. Although we can comment either positively or negatively, and adopt various emotional positions in relation to it, it remains something that confronts us as a reality which is completely independent of our thoughts, emotions, and efforts. Of course, photography is a reflection of reality, not reality itself; however because it depicts reality mechanically and abidingly in an – originally deanthropomorphising – way, that which is portrayed through this type of mechanically faithful depiction must also seek to preserve, as mimesis, this authenticity of reality. Even though the aesthetic means of film order and organise, and exceed, in their general effects, the immediacy of everyday life, they do not revoke the – photographic – depiction of reality, but, instead, merely place it in completely new contexts (by means of the choice of particular moments, of joining these together by means of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

193

tempo and rhythm, and through other ways of connecting them, etc.). This authenticity has to be continually retained; it has to be and ought to be an essential element of the homogeneous medium of film art. But the source of authenticity is reality itself: what is captured in the photograph can only make the objectively existing, specifically visual being-real of its respective object manifest. However, the photograph’s degree of being true to reality is also determined by the nature of the object portrayed. It is also clear, for example, that an animation film can only give authenticity to the fact of the drawings, but can never make the drawings themselves appear as a reality. Also, a photographed backdrop cannot possess a greater authenticity of being real than its visual forms of appearance actually possess. Under the influence of the expressionist fashion it was possible to experience the environment of the film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari as an uncanny ‘reality’. However, this only appears so from a naive perspective, and, in fact, this environment merely consists of elaborate decorations, that do not evoke reality at all. Where a film seeks to a make a ‘miracle’ authentically effective, it must preserve the photographic process as much as possible, so that its immediate forms of appearance retain the character of reality. This is where a drastic contrast between film and the other visual arts becomes apparent. In these other arts, authenticity emerges as an end-result of the mimetic-artistic transformation process which takes place in the depiction of reality. And, where the composition is failing, there can be no authenticity whatsoever; this must be generated purely through aesthetic creative principles, and must be authenticated in the immanence of the work of art; while the worst photography possesses an authenticity, in the above mentioned sense, that is non-detachably inherent. It is in this respect that the deep and consequential affinity between everyday life and film also clearly expresses itself. This closeness to everyday life is also intimately linked – as cause and effect – to the fact that the visual world of film, in dramatic contrast to other visual arts, is not static, not moribund, but is rather in permanent motion. (We are talking only about the purely visual arts here, and not, for example, an art-form such as the theatre, where visuality cannot be separated from the aesthetic use of language.) Concerning arts which have a visually homogeneous medium, we have discussed in other contexts the problem of quasi-time (Quasizeit) [the visual representation of temporality in which there is no actual duration], and have done so regardless of whether, in any particular case, it was objectively or subjectively portrayed (Lukács, 1981, I: 671). But in film real-time prevails: film is the only art in which visibility and the real course of time are categorically linked. (The time-spans that lie between the individual scenes are not related to this problem.) It is also perhaps of advantage here to confront the principal distinction determined by negation: what Lessing

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

194

The film writings, 1913–71

called the ‘fruitful moment’ is necessarily absent in film (Lukács, 1981, I: 672). That is to say, when the visual depiction of reality is – when directly viewed – determined in a static-stabilised way, the represented moment of the present has to be such, that, in it, reality becomes meaningfully visible as a transition from the past into the future. This necessity compels the artist to represent the present in such a way – so intensively concentrated – as can never exist within the reality of everyday life. In contrast, in film, as in any real-time sequence, the moment of the present is a real moment of transition between past and future. Normally, we have experienced the past as moments of the present, moments that vanish into the past in front of our eyes. Only a second before its passing that present moment also had the potential to become part of either a threatening or an alluring future. Thus the single moments correspond exactly to a closeness to everyday life; although their content and consequent formal linkage can afford them a meaning more paramount than the experienced moments of real life. Of course, in terms of psychological intensity, the single moments of film can, well, even must, surpass the average standard of experienced everyday life. However, that does not affect the categorical structure described here. This has of course yet another consequence concerning the categorical structure of film. On the topic of the fine arts, we have demonstrated that these are able to portray, with visual definiteness, only the external appearance of human beings and objects, and are able to connect these together into a structure; while the internal necessarily appears here in the form of an indefinite objectivity. As an art of visibleness film cannot escape this categorical inevitability. The closeness to life of film, which is connected with the photographic authenticity of the film images, with their real-time sequence interconnected unwinding, creates an impulse to minimise this indefiniteness, and at the same time demands closely connected heterogeneous forms of visual comprehension and representation of reality that are suited to such a minimisation. Seen from this vantage-point the afore-mentioned crisis in the evolution of film: the displacement of the silent film – a displacement only apparently directly induced and generated by technology – appears in a new light. That is to say, that the real reason for the change was in fact a need to put this aesthetically necessary minimisation of indefinite objectivity into practice against a context in which the silent film had recourse to means of communication, such as inter-titles and connective texts, that were completely external to it as an artistic medium; and which also both foregrounded indefinite objectivity, and took attention away from definite objectivity. This was the real impetus towards change. And yet, even while the silent film was engaging with such alien means, it was also, as already demonstrated (Lukács, 1981, II: 469), engaging with a more aesthetically congruent strategy, in

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

195

­drawing on continuous musical accompaniment in order to sufficiently concretise the atmospheric content of the scene-sequence (it is clear that, in none of the other visual arts, is there even a distant analogy to what happened here). The sound film then attempted to find means to present itself as a work of art which could possess a greater inherent aesthetic immanence. One such was, first of all, the reproduction of those noises that would normally appear in the course of the action. That is to say that, the appearance of the world of objects, of nature, the city etc., in their animate being, is now reproduced not only visually but also in terms of sound, so that closeness to life is enhanced, and the filmic authenticity of the depicted representation is also able to be expressed much more clearly and richly than was the case before. Any definitive judgement concerning the technical perfection of the reproduction of the auditory lies beyond the issues of concern here. What is of concern for evaluation here is only the compositional consistency, both in itself, and as embodied in the unfolding storyline, as, in this respect, a general imperative of the multi-faceted, homogenous medium. (The concrete possibilities of such a composition are a matter for film dramaturgy.) As a matter of principle, it also has to be said that the auditory aspect plays only an accompanying role in relation to visuality in the film. However, this statement does not imply a belittling of the auditory aspects, if the term accompaniment (Begleitung) is understood in the strict sense of the term, as, for example, when relevant differences are taken into account (mutatis mutandis) in music. Thus, there can also be moments in which sounds appear to have a decisive function. Generally speaking, however, the aesthetic direction of action, and the atmosphere evoked by that action, will be primarily accomplished through visual composition. This is often even true in instances where the respective element is primarily an auditory one. Thus, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane aims to illustrate the musical dilettantism of the millionaire’s wife while the millionaire is trying to promote her as a great singer. But the source of comedy here is not the bungling that can be or is represented by means of acting, or even the actual incompetence represented; but the despair that finds expression in her singing instructor’s gestures and mimickry during the lessons, rehearsals, and performance. If one is to compare this to the musical comedy of Beckmesser [a character in Wagner’s opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg] in the Meistersingers the specificity of film becomes evident. We will deal later with the functions of a language that is now becoming ever more conceived in technical terms (Lukács, 1981, II: 496). The necessity to draw upon music as a trigger of a certain atmosphere further demonstrates the strength of the already accentuated tendency to minimise indefinite objectivity. Film’s closeness to life means, to be exact, the tendency to portray life as immediately transparent and graspable, a demand that is also true for the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

196

The film writings, 1913–71

e­ veryday person in relation to his/her own environment. Whereas, the other arts address this demand by maintaining a more or less resolute distance from the appearances of everyday life by means of a second immediacy, which is based upon further mediations, the film must fulfil it through the mimesis of a reality that is close to everyday life (authentically real); it cannot therefore maintain the sort of high level of indefinite objectivity to which – in different ways – the fine arts and pure music owe their highest effects. This closeness to life determines the decisive questions of style of film. However, film also possesses such a strong elasticity of its homogeneous medium that it can often show evidence of a high degree of instability; especially because the second immediacy of artistic composition must be brought close to the immediacy of life. The subjective side of this constellation also corresponds exactly to its objective nature: the transformation of the whole human being of everyday life (des ganzen Menschen des Alltags) into the ‘whole human being’ (Menschen ganz) who is oriented towards his/her own world of homogeneous mediums, is here far less abrupt, much less disjointed, than is the case with all the other arts. Of course, the possibility for this transition always exists in film, otherwise the film could not become genuine art; and, by giving examples (Lukács, 1981, II: 115) [Lukács refers here to an earlier discussion of the ideas of Béla Balázs] we also showed that, as in any art, the ‘language’ of film has to be learnt, and to be adopted. Practical experience demonstrates, however, in congruence with the theory of reflection, that the ‘receptive’ (rezeptive) mastery of this ‘language’ tends to place incomparably less testing demands on receptivity – especially in human terms – than does the equivalent mastery of the language of any of the other arts. The aesthetic position related to film’s closeness to life has, as far as the content and form of the medium are concerned, a twofold significance. On the one side the unlimited diversity of everyday life becomes the object of artistic mimesis. The whole environment of man, nature, flora and fauna, the social environment created by man himself, all appear as a complete reality, and one that as a matter of human-oriented principle is completely of the same kind and of equivalent value. This necessarily ensues from the authenticity of the world that has been photographically depicted, in which everything possesses the same degree of reality, and which photography must bring to life. Seemingly, in painting, we also have to deal with a similar existential intensity of the depicted objects (as in landscape, still life, interiors, etc.) However, when taking a closer look it becomes apparent that everything that is composed by means of painting is, in terms of the character of its representations, already inherently related to the world of man (and also, therefore, to the respective self-consciousness of human-kind) so that, as a consequence, the artistic ‘just being so’ (Geradesosein) of each represented object is overcome

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

197

by this relation, and made subordinate to it. The objective of the painterly endeavour, to succeed in arriving at an account of the intrinsic being of the depicted object by way of mimesis, is determined by this orientation from the very beginning; which is present in and permeates all aspects of the work. This particular modality of aesthetic mimesis is even more conspicuous in the representation of epic forms. What in painting prevails implicitly, here appears in an open and direct manner: no object of the human environment, whether associated with either nature or society, can become epically alive and evocative, if it is not directly related to active men, to their external and internal problems, and does not, starting from that point, also preserve the specific features of the modality of ‘just-being-so’ involved here, in terms of both content and form. The idyllic landscapes and interiors in Werther and the sky above the battlefield of Austerlitz in Tolstoy all evidence the same quality as far as this fundamental principle of composition is concerned. Of course, in film, there is also an intrinsic relationship between the human being and the world of objects. But what is specific here though, is that – just as in real life – both have to possess a completely similar degree of reality in their appearance. Through this the reciprocal relationship between man and his environment, the humanist meaning of aesthetic mimesis, is not given up in any way; only that, in relation to the other arts, a new aspect appears, which can again be expressed most clearly as determined through negation: it is not man as centre which now determines the reciprocal relations with the world, but, as is actually perceived by man in everyday life: a reciprocal relationship involving several equally real factors. (It should also be understood, that these distinctions exclusively refer to form; although the outside world in the epic may have the same degree of reality as the portrayal of man in terms of form, in terms of content, man is always necessarily at the centre.) In terms of compositional design, this distinction has the most far-reaching consequences with regards to content, in terms of selection, grouping and giving effect, etc. For it is the case that, what we have just defined in a negative way is fundamentally equivalent in terms of meaning to our preliminary definition of the unlimited variety of the world of film. Since, within the scope of this work, it will be impossible to extensively elaborate on what is involved here, we have to confine ourselves to an explication using some concise examples. Let us take the fashioning of the child. In works of literature the child appears primarily as merely a human-in-becoming (werdender Mensch); the most important and richest constructions of childhood – in Goethe, Keller, Tolstoy, Roger Martin du Gard, etc. – fundamentally reflect the preliminary stage of the later development of the child, its prerequisites, those essential forces and tendencies that emerge initially in order to render subsequent occurrences genetically more evident. This structure remains ­ intact even

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

198

The film writings, 1913–71

where such development is suspended by early death, as in the case of Hanno Buddenbrook. However, it is only in film that the existence of the child, the pure particularity of childhood as an end in itself, as a being in itself, and relying only on itself (in sich ruhendes Sein), can be represented. It suffices to recall the astonishing impact of Jackie Coogan, in order to perceive the totally new possibilities that are presented here. Of course, it should be added that film is also able to fashion childhood as the preface of a human life; but this does nothing to alter the unique possibility just emphasised. (We have already talked about the principal difference between cinematic visuality and visuality in painting, and, in the same way, children’s portraits in painting are of a qualitatively different world to that which appears in film.) This situation becomes even more apparent with regards to the fashioning of animals. For example, in works of literature, that, with much love and forcefulness, emphasise the particularities of animals, it is the human being who nevertheless remains at the centre of composition – I would like to refer to A Man and His Dog by Thomas Mann and Nicky by Tibor Déry – in this respect. By contrast, and as in the case of the portrayal of children, in film, the same type of independence of composition can become possible for the animals portrayed. I don’t even want to talk about the many films in which animals are at the centre, about those animals that become famous and popular darlings of the mass audience. It seems, therefore, that a naturalism, which elsewhere appears the converse of art, might be artistically possible in film. Given that, in the theatre, a child on the stage – not to mention animals – always appears naturalistic; the independence of composition just mentioned in regard to film, one corroborated by long practice of watching films, appears to constitute an exception to the principle that art must avoid naturalism. However, this is only an appearance, brought about through the authenticity of the primary photographic mimesis as the basis of cinematic construction. (The fact that many films are indeed naturalistic has nothing to do with this issue.) The philosophical-artistic meaning of naturalism consists in that, in naturalism, the being (Wesen) that appears, wanes, or even completely vanishes, behind an appearance (Erscheinung) that is fixed in its immediacy. However, the relationship between appearance and ‘being’ which exists in man’s world is, in principle, ontologically different from that which obtains in such pre-human nature: here, being coincides to a large extent with the generic species (Gattungsmäßigkeit), and can thus become directly evident in the life-expressions of the individual human being, which then appear as exemplars of the species as a whole. It is the social life of people, with the emergence and continuous rising development of individuality, that brings into existence those complex relationships that, in turn, determine particular forms of construction in the various arts

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

199

in which being and appearance necessarily collapse into each other. When Marx criticises Feuerbach for comprehending human-being (menschliche Wesen) only as a ‘species’: as an internal, silent generality that merely links many individuals naturally, he refers very clearly to the problem we will now be dealing with.4 That is to say, social development, in Marx’s words, the ‘drawing away from nature’s limitations’, brings about a being of man that is not only essentially generic in terms of the natural-genetic alone, and which, in possessing either consciousness, un-consciousness or false consciousness, aims to go far beyond the natural-species generic in terms of decisive content. In the socially generated concept of human being, in which human-species (Menschengattung) is considered as a socio-historic category, the interplay between concrete individuality and the particular social formation becomes the predominant consideration. This is why, in the aesthetic reflection of reality, it is, especially, this new relationship, that now becomes the leading factor in comparison with the mere nature-determined generic-species. Since drama is that form of art in which the human world almost exclusively finds expression in terms of its intrinsic totality and its particular being-for-itself (Fürsichsein), its mimesis expresses this new ontological situation most acutely. That is why antique tragedy consciously distinguished its performing actors from mere anthropologically conceived human beings through the use of specific stylistic means (masks, thick-soled buskins (Kothurn)) [Lukács uses the spelling ‘Kothurn’ here, but the Greek word is ‘cothurn’, and refers to the type of high ‘platform shoes’ worn by actors of ancient Greek tragedy.] When contemporary theatre returns to the direct appearance of man in the construction of the actors, it is not in order to return to man as a nature-determined being; rather, it is quite the opposite, and greater emphasis is placed on an individuality that is only socially possible, and which evolves in a dialectic relationship to socio-human issues. Now, it is clear that the child – and also, though to a lesser degree, the domesticated pet animal – is no pure nature, but a transitional phenomenon, in which, however, the nature-like being, the silent generic species (die stumme Gattung), referred to by Marx, more or less predominates. It is the very task of education to transcend this, and to transform the child into a person, thereby slowly, qualitatively, changing the person’s relation to his/her generic nature. But, without question, the special poetry of child-being, the specific particularity of childhood, is located in this, that this rootedness in the nature-determined species-being becomes effective as a vibrant force. As a result of their relationship to man, a stronger or weaker tendency emerges in the case of pets to go beyond the absolute and total dependence on the pure nature-like species, though there still remain clearly marked boundaries here; and the fundamental relation is only modified, and never completely

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

200

The film writings, 1913–71

suspended. Dependent upon the specificity of their mimesis, and dependant upon their respective homogeneous mediums, the various arts try to organically incorporate the child and pet into their ‘world’. Only the scenic construction of the drama offers insurmountable obstacles to such inclusion because, as already demonstrated, in drama, being has a qualitatively augmented dominance in the purely socio-historic sense. From here, we can begin to understand the specific possibilities of film. The authenticity of the photographed being brings about a homogeneous medium that is able to bring the constructed ‘world’ closer to that of everyday life than is either possible or permissible in the other arts. This is also why, in film, different kinds of relations of being and appearance can persist side by side, and, also, achieve an artistically legitimate general effectiveness; for, in everyday life, it is understood that objects which may have different structures in terms of their relations of appearance and being also exist side by side, and affect each other as equal realities. Film transposes this specific feature of the visibility of everyday life onto the homogeneous medium through composition, and, because this is an artistic transposition, the portrayal of these different interrelations generates important effects. Also, in the cases dealt with here, of the child and pet animal, the purely nature-determined way of being of wild animals can come to generate legitimate contrastive effects. Film can also here achieve a universality of represented objects without being forced to rely on the hegemony of particular parti pris homogenising tendencies, as is the case with the fashioning of the epic. It is this foundation which makes film’s inherent artistic homogenisation of everyday life absolutely sufficient for its purposes, and, therefore, this very specific kind of representing and linking of objects must not in any way be referred to as naturalism. However, one should not rest with such a position concerning the specificity of film that relates only to the mere factuality of the medium. For the possibility of film as popular art also arises out of this character, again, in a twofold fashion; and, in order to understand this phenomenon properly one has to begin with this doublesidedness. Seen from a social perspective, film offers the cheapest productions, most widely accessible to the broadest circles. It is a platitude that this is closely related to the capitalist financial basis of the cinema, to the technological possibilities of mass reproduction, and to the role of advertisement etc. Also that, as a consequence of this dependence on high finance, film is accommodating to the most common needs of the masses. The instability of its homogeneous medium, the relatively smooth and effortless transition from the whole man of everyday life to the ‘man as whole’ (Menschen ganz) of cinematic receptivity, makes possible the depiction of a world, which, in the inexhaustible diversity of its appearances, satisfies the most particular needs, and the dreams that result from average (and

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

201

below average) instincts. It offers grotesque ridiculousness and exciting thrills that may contain the kitschiest happy endings, alongside bloodthirsty sadism. What emerges here, in great number and multiple variation, are – when superficially regarded – art-like forms, that, in their inner content, are really only simple continuations, vicarious realisations, and counterfeit intensifications of the daydreams of everyday life. However, the homogeneous medium of film is not only unstable but can also be elastic, and, as such, is able to undertake the relatively smooth transition from the whole man [of everyday life] to ‘man as whole’ (Menschen ganz), and this means that it is also possible to leap beyond simple, ordinary everyday life. This suggests that film also possesses the potential to be a true and great popular art, which can become a comprehensible expression of general, deeply, and commonly felt emotions of the people. In this way, films by Eisenstein and Pudovkin have augmented the powerful events of the revolution of the Russian people by turning those events into symbols which can be related to the people’s general concerns over issues of suppression, and the struggle for liberation. And, at the other end of the spectrum Chaplin has succeeded in giving a humorous, comprehensive, and absolutely valid expression to the ordinary man’s feeling of isolation against the context of the machinery and apparatus of modern capitalism. Of course, these are exceptional cases, and there are only a relatively small number of similar cases. However, even when there is a quantitatively overwhelming superiority of inferior films, such realisations give a clear indication that – and irrespective of the scarcity of such realisations – film is capable of achieving the highest potential, and can be evaluated in terms of aesthetic value. However, the mere comparison of these two poles will not allow us to arrive at a sufficient and just evaluation of film, because, in fact, many good films do manage to avoid the path of triviality trodden by the majority of films, although, in rising above the level of only ordinary everyday life, such films may pay for such augmentation because they are thereby only able to address the deepest mass emotions in a peripheral manner, or by way of merely eccentric detours. However, we cannot address here the rich differentiation of this intermediate layer which lies between the two extreme poles we have referred to. The determination of these poles demonstrates already that the subjectmatter of film encompasses the extensive universality of life, and that film is also oriented towards achieving both the broadest effect, and the most immediate comprehensibility. In the early days of film, and even today, such content is, undoubtedly, frequently employed only as a pretext to play out various ingeniously or comical loosely connected incidents, and to display those visual-auditory possibilities of film that are oriented towards diversion and sensationalism (wild chases, murders, etc.). But, apart from this, and even

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

202

The film writings, 1913–71

given the peaks of achievement which can sometimes be reached even here, there are always again attempts to direct the extensive diversity given in film towards finding a deeper content of life, and to discover, in this jungle, new and diverse human possibilities. With regard to content, film offers universal and inexhaustible perspectives for such a search. In particular, the specific kind of vivid visuality in film is always capable of discovering a deep poetry, a real human nature, and a rich scale of emotions ranging from oppressive grief to liberating laughter (Bicycle Thieves by de Sica) in very simple, very ordinary facts of life, that would otherwise just pass by without being noticed. The elasticity of the homogeneous cinematic medium can, on the one hand, suffuse ordinariness with poetry and make it meaningful, without causing the abundance of details in everyday life to degenerate into naturalism; and, on the other hand, go beyond the immediately given reality of everyday life. In film it is also quite possible to not only portray vividly the objectively given external world, but also those important subjective aspects that are aroused in the dramatis personae. I would like, in this respect, merely to refer to the dream of the protagonist in the Soviet film Polikuschka who, in the very moment he loses the money entrusted to him, sees himself in a dream triumphantly giving back the money to the lady of the manor who had initially put him to the test. Here, the film, in an oblique way, simultaneously emphasises, and lends an exaggerated symmetry of movement to, both the dream character and the mental reality of the dream. Film is therefore able – precisely as a result of its photographic authenticity – to lend a manifest and evident reality to the most extreme phantasm. By rendering everything plausible, by giving the same sense of reality to each object, there are no limits to the representation of the fantastic. Here also, transitions into and out of everyday life can take place, where the scale of emotion ranges from the buoyantly playful to the suffocatingly uncanny. These limitless possibilities render film into the most popular form of mimesis; they pave the way – naturally only as a possibility that is rarely realised – to an authentic and great popular art. However, this very unlimited variety, this sensuousness that is close to life, this extensive universality of film, simultaneously constitutes the limits of its expressive possibilities. As an art of affective visuality, that is also complemented by the emotive complex of the auditory, film is unable to express the highest intellectual life of man, which literature, directly through means of the word, can transform into poetry, and which the visual arts and music – in different ways – indirectly configure into an indefinite objectivity. What has to be absent from the affective visuality of film is what Michelangelo or Rembrandt, through movement, facial expressions, gestures, etc., made conspicuous, pregnant with meaning and enigmatic, ‘inexpressible’ (in the Goethean sense), and this is not even to speak of what constitutes certainly

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

203

only a part – although an extremely important part – of the content of literature. It is clear that, in this respect, the specific closeness film has to life plays a decisive role, for, in establishing the visual affectiveness and authenticity of the thing-like existence (gegenständlichen Existenz) of all objects – something which is also poignantly characteristic of all the visual arts – film inevitably minimises indefinite objectivity, and will, as a consequence, be unable to scale the heights of intellectuality that we have just referred to. However, and as argued, the expression of indefinite objectivity is characteristic of some of the most important moments in the visual arts, and also, in addition, constitutes a potentially ever-present tendency. Now, as far as works of literature are concerned, we have already shown extensively that the transformation of language from signal-system two into one in which signal-system one predominates can never be realised through isolated acts (Lukács, 1981, II: 154). This means that a thought that has been declared independently will remain only a thought (and also one with a deanthropomorphising character) if the whole linguistic atmosphere that surrounds it, the whole linguistic milieu from which it originates and to which it leads, was not homogenised towards a literary evocation from the very beginning. In such cases it loses its ability to characterise a specific person in a specific situation; and, from the vantage-point of human experience, it remains an example of merely abstract intellect (independent of how concrete that thought may be within a particular system of thought); it loses its basis in the human soul, and cannot be a constituent element of literature. On the other hand, we also know that the effectiveness of a thought expressed in terms of poetry is not so much dependent on its value as thought as it is on literary-human requirements. The literary structure of words generates the possibility for literature to shape the spirit; the final words in Goethe’s Iphigenia have, despite expressing something seemingly mundanely trivial, an immense ethical-intellectual power, and the truest spirit, while, in Gerhart Hauptman’s sensuous and emotionally expressive language, thoughts, remain only thoughts, disappear without leaving a lasting trace, or remain as alien elements. This atmosphere of literary word formation has necessarily to be absent from the event-filled visualauditory film. We will return to the issue of the use of language in film as an aspect of composition in other contexts (Lukács, 1981, II: 496); and, at this point, it need only be stressed that it is impossible to derive the sensuous-spiritual artistic atmosphere, which constitutes the basis for the human construction of the spiritual in literature, from the visual affectivity of film, which is accompanied acoustically, and in which words have necessarily and logically only a secondary, auxiliary, and supplementary role. This compositional limitation of film not only refers to the intellectual heights, although this is certainly where it appears most strikingly, but also permeates all aspects

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

204

The film writings, 1913–71

of filmic representation, though in a manner which may not, for the most part, be particularly noticeable. When, for example, in literature, a particular group of people (soldiers, priests, etc.) is introduced into a composition, that composition is clearly able to render the social background, present social role, and historical perspective of that group, and thereby render their socialhuman existence concrete and comprehensible. However, in the immediacy of film, these commentaries, which may appear to be only inconsequential, but which, in reality, provide the foundation for and determine the sensuous appearances, must disappear. In terms of direct relevance this does not necessarily weaken the impact of film, as its sensous appearances, operating through spontaneous associations, are able to compensate for this. But only a small period of time has to pass before the spectator, in contrast, sees a mere, brute fact, while the real social correlation remains altogether obscure to him. During the early 1920s the perceptive critic Herbert Jhering, on observing a film adaptation of Othello, remarked that it would be impossible for fundamentally great tragedy to enter into such a work.5 Since then a whole series of literary masterworks have been adapted for the screen, of course on very different levels, but always in such a way that the intellectual apex was diminished within the cinematic composition. In poor films this results in a kind of assimilation-effect consequence; and, although it is true that, while this does not rule out the possibility that film might eventually contribute to the popularisation of great literature, even with such favourable outcomes, the fundamental facts outlined here remain unaltered. Closely related to this issue is that much discussed question as to which literary genre the screenplay owes its greatest affinity. The immediate starting point, the relationship of the screenplay to the drama which is then performed in the theatre, is, once and for all, an outdated one. Any genuine analysis of the artistic foundations of drama and film must lead to the demonstration of an aesthetic distinction: there, the absolute supremacy of dialogue, here, of the sensuous-immediate forms of appearance. Seen from a perspective informed by the history of the theatre, the development initiated by Reinhardt’s stage, in which literary dialogue was forced back into the background in favor of a more decorative-oriented stage direction – and the similarly anti-drama theatrical experiments of expressionism – have, without doubt, supported and popularised mistaken views concerning the similarity between drama performed in the theatre, and the film. Similarly, the great epic has little in common with film texts. When understood purely theoretically it seems to be a real and compelling fact – and the author admits that he himself has also occasionally succumbed to the fascination invoked here – that, in contrast to the drama, the reflection apparent in the epic and the film appears to be that of something that has occurred in the past. Here, the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

205

recipient does not appear to be confronted directly with the unfolding of an actual event, as is the case with drama, but, and, in contrast, with an event that has already previously taken place, and is now being shown to us anew. However, while this applies to the epic in an aesthetic sense, it only applies to film in a technological sense, because, in film, we do not ourselves experience the events that have occurred, but merely their finished likeness. As a result the double reflection of the film loses the bygone character (Vergangenheit scharakter) of its mimesis, and its second immediacy proves to be the more forcefully present. What is deceptive here lies precisely in the type of reflection involved, which, given its degree of immediacy, we have tended to view as authentic, but which, in fact, only constitutes an element of mediation, and also one which, through its unfolding, remains, for us, in the present. There may also appear to be similarities between the important role which the world of objects plays in film and epic literature. However, this apparent similarity is misleading, for we have already shown, on the one hand, that the realisation of the world of objects as that world relates to man is based on diametrically opposed principles in epic and film; and, on the other hand, that the representation of the totality of objects, the highest and most poignant form of synthesis that great epic literature is able to arrive at on this field of objectivity [field of representations of objects] (Felde der Gegenständlichkeit), is closed off to film. This also points to the practical significance of those limits to the ‘world’ of film which have just been theoretically explicated: that is to say, the great diversity of objects can only reach the level of such a totality through the exercise of intellectual acts. The objects themselves, in their immediate-real being, merely reveal the concrete possibilities for the formation of a genuinely epic totality of objects; and such a totality itself only emerges as a result of the process of men in action becoming conscious of their relations to the world of objects within the intellectual orientation of the great epic, so that those complexes of objects, in their relationship to men, act as typical mediations, through which the typical conflicts of a particular stage within a social formation emerge. Apart, also, from the difficulties that derive from an extensive comparison between film and the great epic, a general limitation to composition in film, and one that is inherent to this genre, becomes apparent here. Without doubt, within literature, film has the highest affinity to the novella, the short story. Important stories, such as, for example, by Maupassant or Chechov, have already delivered effective and adequate screenplays. Here exists a possibility that has not as yet been sufficiently utilised, one which remains only a possibility. Nevertheless, even given this, it would be dogmatic to consider the content of film exclusively in relation to the novel. There are a large number of good films, whose textual content cannot be related to ­literary form.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

206

The film writings, 1913–71

This far-reaching independence of the film script from various literary genres has led Balázs to regard the screenplay as a special category of literary genre.6 I think he is wrong. The screenplay is always only the initiator, the instigator for a later visual-auditory development which encompasses the final artistic realisation of the film. The analogy to dramatic text and theatre (or poem and song recital) seems, therefore, to be a misleading one. Drama, or the poem, has an independent, autonomous aesthetic existence, regardless of whether it is performed, or composed, or recited. Given the fact that very different types of co-operation exist between the various arts, no broad-spectrum conclusions should be drawn here which would impinge on aesthetic specificity, and result in an inappropriate level of uniformity. This should also be the case with value judgements, which should be avoided. For example, when dealing with music, we have emphasised the great value Boito’s opera libretto has brought to Verdi’s Othello (Lukács, 1981, II: 369). However, even given this, it should also be understood that these merits are confined to having set free the possibilities for later development in Verdi’s dramatic music; while Shakespeare’s tragedy is a great work of art in its own right. The aesthetic organisation of the screenplay should be viewed from this perspective. While the drama is an autonomous reflection of reality, the screenplay is just a springboard for the double mimesis realised in the film: screenplay-author, actor, director, operator etc., together work in close co-operation to bring out the final and aesthetically relevant form of the film. This, of course, means that the intellectual and aesthetic qualities of the screenplay cannot be considered to constitute legitimate form per se; we know, on the contrary, how often some great acting achievement falters over the fact that the screenplay is trivial, or is full of kitsch; and how often a good screenplay inspires the ability of those who are involved in its realisation. However, all that this shows is that the screenplay is an important, even integral, element of film, but not an independent art form in itself. This is so because the literary qualities of a screenplay are not considered in their ‘being-for-itself ’ (Fürsichsein), but in the way that they take us to and point to the final cinematic composition itself. The screenplay might, for example, contain beautiful images of nature, however these evocative features will vanish behind the real recordings and become, once the film is completed, totally superfluous and generally unimportant. As a direct literary reflection of reality the screenplay can only be an element, though an integral one, in the whole of the complete work. This appears even clearer when we consider the role of the actor in drama and film. As we have demonstrated repeatedly, the drama is characterised by a specific homogeneous medium, based in dialogical creation. When the actor gives a vibrant embodiment to this mimesis a double mimesis evolves, however with an important nuance: it is an interpretation of an already

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

207

i­ ndependent mimesis, one that is complete in itself. (Similar to the function of the conductor, the various instrumentalists and singers in music.) The great genres of theatre that have remained alive throughout the course of history were created by dramatists, and were then embodied by actors, and differently so during different historical periods; and the immortality of acting performance consists in the fact that these constitute important links in the chain of interpretations of Hamlet or Falstaff; and the same is much the case with music. Here, the film presents something radically new: the acting performance now becomes something that is final per se, no longer the interpretation of a pre-existing literary model but the particular and independent creation of a model that is revealed sensuously through the personality of the actor. This provides film, as a new site of important popular art, with a genuine legitimacy, because, in many cases, it allows the prevailing and immediate power of the actors to create a model. However, it would be absolutely wrong here to draw mechanically on any analogy with the Commedia dell’arte. In the Commedia dell’arte we find models embodied by actors, but these have already been defined from the very beginning, whereas, in film, it is the case that certain individual actors themselves become distinct models, and, moreover, on a world scale. The double-sidedness of film as popular art also becomes very clearly apparent here. At the lesser level, we find actors and actresses who, by means of their physical being, are able to embody in a sensuous manner the common wishes and dreams of the ordinary-average. Such models offer extremely interesting material for sociological research. In terms of the aesthetic, however, it is sufficient here to merely register their existence. What is of far greater importance than this is the state of affairs which arises in which good, occasionally even outstanding actors, are able to personify a particular complex of distinctive features which are then raised up to the level of a socially legitimate model of typicality: the appearance of popular ideals of beauty in the acting of Greta Garbo, tragic femininity in Asta Nielsen, bravery and ready wit in Gérard Philipe, superior forms of humour in Buster Keaton‘s highly individual acting performances; and, here, the particular respective roles merely offer the opportunity, and sometimes only the pretence, to render such a popular model of typicality. Given our observations up to this point it may appear as obvious that we see in Chaplin the highest manifestation of this tendency. Undoubtedly, Chaplin is one of the most important actor personalities of all time. But he has not – in contrast to most great actors on the stage – based his appeal on the embodiment of various literary models, as is the case with actors such as Baumeister, Mitterwurzer or Bassermann. Rather it is in his physical existence, in his gestures and mimicry, carried through in inexhaustible variations, that the typical behaviour of the ‘little guy’, the man

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

208

The film writings, 1913–71

of the masses within the context of contemporary capitalism, becomes sensuously and symbolically expressed. Thus, he is able to express the socio-historic condition at a high level of typicality, and few of his contemporaries in other arts have been able to match such an achievement. One should not come to forget how close the emotional field fashioned by Chaplin, as well as its social triggers (Auslöser), is to the world created by Kafka. However, in Chaplin, terror and helplessness are not merely rendered sensuous from the perspective of interiority, but in an inseparable unity of interiority and exteriority. Thus emerges a world-historic humour that triumphs over horror, and one whose strength – in fashioning an objectified deepening of the Kafkaesque problematic – finds its expression in the very fact that it renders the esoteric into something that is effective in a popular, exoteric way. When we now briefly come to summarise the central motivating principle of filmic activity we come by necessity to the notion of unity of atmosphere (Stimmungseinheit). In literature, and also in the fine arts, atmosphere (Stimmung) is one of the inevitable outcomes that evolve out of the composition of constellations, where that composition has its ultimate foundation in human experience itself. The mimetic realistic-character of film, which flows from its already outlined authenticity, must be so organised that each image, each series of images, primarily evokes a definite and strong unity of atmosphere, or the aesthetic does not generally come into existence. It is only from this understanding that the choices and arrangements made by the director and operator in particular complexes of images become comprehensible in relation to notions of achievement in performance: what matters is the auditively accompanied, but primarily visual-atmospheric value of images and their sequence. That is why, in Battleship Potemkin, we see, on that monumental staircase descending down into the harbour of Odessa, only the feet, the boots of the Cossacks; and not the Cossacks themselves. That is why, in the film Chapayev, the farewell of the protagonist to his friend and adviser Furmanov is designed in such a way that the car of the latter departs slowly, and disappears gradually. That is why, in the film The End of Saint Petersburg, we see an abandoned hall in the Winter Palace with a single chandelier, which slowly starts to shake, then swing around, and finally crash down. All technological means of film-making (close-ups, dimming, etc.) only acquire aesthetic meaning if they are employed to express the unity of atmosphere, the transition from one atmosphere to another, and the contrast between particular atmospheres. Similarly, cutting, editing, tempo and rhythm etc., are nothing but means to be employed in order to lead the spectator from one atmosphere to another within the ultimate unity of atmosphere as a whole. Thus, atmosphere is the main vehicle for the spectator. All those technical innovations, in which empiricists and positivists seek and believe to find what

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

209

is aesthetically new and specific to film, are only means to synthesise atmospheres, the transitions of one atmosphere into one another, their sequence, and contrasts; and thus direct the process of aesthetic receptivity. I take, as example, the colourfulness (Farbigkeit) of film. Questions of technological advancement, or the fact that the image in the black and white film may have been incomplete, in relation to colour, are not considered here. From an aesthetic point of view, whether the technologically perfect resolution was at all forseeable is a secondary question, as is whether or not the [black and white film] should be considered to be technically deficient, or whether it exhibited an inappropriate use of existing technological possibilities. The only aesthetically relevant question here is: does a particular instance of colouring express the atmosphere of the given moment, does it prepare for what is to come, does it contribute to the unity of atmosphere of the whole film; does it come together with the other visual and auditory moments, and with the overall content of the film, or does it not? Films which are successful in this respect include Moulin Rouge, which gave atmospheric-visual expression to the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec; and Henry V, in which Olivier succeeded in immersing the whole film in the atmosphere of the late medieval age through alluding to Flemish painting in the colouration of the film. Such cases are mentioned here only as methodological examples, and what is said here also refers to all the components of the film. In order to complete this list of examples, though, it may also be helpful to mention an unsuccessful one: the scenic environment in Olivier’s Hamlet gives too much emphasis to the ‘primordial’, and thus comes into atmospheric contrast with the Renaissance character of the narrative and spoken text. The possibilities and limitations that we find in film are also based primarily on the special kind of atmospheric value (Stimmungswert) that is able to render the photographic image as authentic to the recipient. Each film image is experienced as a mimesis of a reality that, from the very beginning, is authenticated as reality by the fact of having been photographed: because it was able to be photographed it must – in just this form – be considered to have possessed a real existence. We have already seen that such authenticity must necessarily be absent from all the other arts. One thinks, for example, of how different storytellers have to invent their own epic means, and give form to them, so that the ‘just being so’ (Geradesosein) of the content is able to be regarded as legitimately and genuinely real by the reader. Similarly, visual representation in the visual arts is of a different order to the immediate appearance of the concrete and real visual model of nature to be found in film. Where the closeness apparently seems to be greatest – as in the similitude of the portrait – close analysis reveals that the opposite is in fact the case: the fact is that – irrespective of aesthetic value – as a pictorial or sculptural depiction of a

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

210

The film writings, 1913–71

specific human being, the question remains as to whether that depiction really does resemble that human being, and this also raises the question of how resemblance itself should be conceived of. This relationship to reality also determines the character and the specific quality of the atmosphere that is predominant in works of art. What all the other arts have in common is that, in them, atmosphere is normally only one means used to generate evocatively energetic impressions, and is generally not the predominant means; and, in any case, in these other arts, atmosphere is always a product of an artistic fashioning that gives aesthetic form to objects and to the relations between them. In contrast, film conveys the being of the objects directly (their depiction is necessarily experienced as authentic) and also conveys the atmosphere spontaneously; and the fact that this spontaneity is the product of a complicated, even sophisticated artistic combination of multiple factors, does not change anything about the categorical make-up and realistic character of the film images. What becomes clearly evident here is that this authenticity produces only the possibility for the artistic fashioning of film, and that, where such authenticity is realised, it gives a special nuance to the atmospheric content. However, as such, it can never bring about an aesthetic transformation of what has been seen. The spectator, therefore, experiences film as a mediation of a reality, a mediation which leaves him/her with an impression of having an experience of the immediate reality of life. In this way, the mimetic character of film is also intensified, and, at the same time, minimised to a mere moment which has a tendency to vanish: each singularity is also ’seen as just being so’ (gerade so gesehen), and, through the lens of the film apparatus is legitimised as real. What is absent, in film, however, is what in theatre we would call the presence of the actor: a presence whose impact is based on the actor’s own immediate physical reality. However, this would also be incompatible with the omnipresence of being that is necessarily generated by film: that is to say, that, in theatre, a hierarchically structured twofold reality emerges, in which the actor is qualitatively experienced as real in a completely different way to the settings. By contrast, in film everything depicted must have completely the same character of reality, since here everything equally represented is a technically exact copy of reality. This equivalence is the necessary consequence of the double mimesis in the film, and cannot be suspended. On this foundation, atmosphere unfolds as the universal and dominant effect-category (Wirkungskategorie) of film. This universality can also be found across an extraordinary scale: from tacky kitsch, to the most tragic heights of a genuinely socially based portrayal of humanity, to the bitter but still cheerful situation of ridiculousness in which man finds himself in contemporary society. The extraordinary ideological effectiveness of film also depends not the least on its constructed atmosphere permeating all questions of ­worldview, all

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

211

pressing opinions about social occurrences; and it is also through the mediation engendered by atmosphere that the hearts of the recipients are reached. It is exactly this inseparability of atmosphere and ideological content experienced by the spectator which makes film the most popular art of our times, and the most effective form of expression of all kinds of dissimilar and opposing tendencies. At the same time, what we have also described repeatedly as the authenticity of depiction in film brings a special nuance to the representation of ideology: the atmospheric fragments of reality, clustered and joined together, make it appear as though ideology develops out of the thing itself, out of reality itself, thereby affording an immediate, often unconscious ability to address emotions with a circuitously effective penetrating power. Seen from this vantage-point, the fact that film might be unable to give form to the highest and richest intellectuality should not be regarded as a weakness, but rather as a strength of the medium, because, in the context of emotive aspects, and immediate-sensuous perceptibility, each ideology or tendency can have a very concisely drawn physiognomy. The film is also one of the most characteristic symptoms of what, at a given point of time, preoccupies the masses of the people, how they spontaneously take up a position on social problems which surface.7 (This is, in turn, a problem for historical materialism. However, we only refer to this here in order to at least hint at its close connection to the formal character of film.) The photographic foundation of film, that we have already examined with regard to the question of artistic effects evolving from its various aspects, undoubtedly entails the danger of a mere naturalism; for film, according to its immediate nature, is first and foremost a visually exact report upon a part of reality, a joining together – a montage – of such meticulously depicted fragments of reality. In order to throw some light onto this potential artistic danger it should be indicated for the time being that, in both theoretical as well as practical respects, film played an important role in all naturalistic literary trends of the period after the First World War, or at least those that crossed over equivocally into the naturalistic; and in many ways it still does so today. It may suffice if we refer here to the stylistic endeavours of the ‘neuen Sachlichkeit’, to the insertion of film strips into dramatic performances, for example in the theatre of Piscator, the inclination of many narrators to dissolve epic breadth and continuity into a sequence of short, very often naturalistically inclined scenes, the – aesthetically arbitrary – insertion of ‘real documents’ into literary works, etc. Of course, in earlier work, an indistinct boundary between artistic representation and direct ‘documentation’ is also apparent, for example in the school of Zola, or in Upton Sinclair. Film, however, provides a new basis for such tendencies, a seemingly persuasive confirmation; for, here, actuality report, document, instruction, publicity, etc.,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

212

The film writings, 1913–71

can dissolve into artistic composition so quickly, so imperceptibly, that a clear boundary between these areas cannot be ascertained at all. The extremely complicated re-working of the original document of reality is often, and as we have seen in the case of the very perceptive Benjamin (Lukács, 1981, II: 467), perceived of as a mechanical violation of the real depictability. And yet it is solely and alone this re-working of the individual images, and their sequence, that can raise film up from the level of everyday perceptions of reality, to the artistic heights. We have attempted to describe these levels by recourse to the general category of atmospheric content (Stimmungshaftigkeit), and have also simultaneously indicated the immense breadth and depth, and extensive variability this category might have in relation to ideology. This breadth and depth are also present with regard to artistic composition. However, removing oneself from the level of everyday life, the rising above this level, no matter how often that may occur, can amount to something that is merely formal: that is, where the aesthetic productivity in cinematic representation not only employs montage merely as a technical means of expression, but also elevates this aesthetic-world-view to a creative-organising principle. In such cases, films emerge whose prevailing tendencies correspond extensively with those of contemporary bourgeois literature and art, and which can therefore stand together with them in terms of intimate, reciprocal influencing relationships. However, the aesthetic treatment of the photographic fragments and their inter-linking can also be a thorough, a realist one, and be directed at the portrayal of being: at the truly creative comprehension of a radical new aspect of reality, and its transformation in a truly artistic sense. In the course of this necessarily complete immersion, problems of aesthetic mimesis emerge that, of course, stem from the specific basis of the particular homogeneous medium that characterises film. The concrete issues that would arise in this context necessarily belong to a film dramaturgy, and cannot be treated like similar problems in other forms of art. The author only observes with strong satisfaction that such an important specialist of cinema as Guido Aristarco, when dealing with Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita, felt compelled to return to the old distinction between narration and description, that is, between the inner (innerlichem) and external (äußerlichem) comprehension of objects and their associations.8 We believe that only the employment of general aesthetic categories that are appropriate to the specificity of film will enable the genuinely artistic, truly realistic character of film to be worked out in detail, and thereby liberate its theory and practice from the technicalist-positivistic (technizistisch-positivistisch) metaphysics of montage. Such aesthetic distinctions are, as a matter of principle, highly important for the film, precisely because, otherwise, it would be impossible to

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

213

­comprehend, theoretically as well as practically, the transitions of its ‘language’ from the closeness to everyday life, to art, on the one hand, to critical analysis (journalism, reporting, etc.), on the other. When we raise the issue of ‘language’ here, we also do so consciously because, in all specific features of cinematic expression, the issues prevailing are closely related to those that are posed by the use of language (without quotation marks). The purely academic application raises no special problems; because, in this case, it is about making objects perceptible that otherwise, for subjective or objective reasons or circumstances, would be inaccessible to human sensuousness. The fact that such films often draw on artistic means of expression in carrying this through means nothing in principle; very often, the language (without quotation marks) of academic works is ‘artistic’, vivid and suggestive, even awakens experiences, without thereby suspending or disrupting the basic deanthropomorphising character of the exposition given. As far as the journalistic use of film is concerned – of course, reports also belong to this category – it compellingly follows from the points we have made so far that the authenticity of what is depicted contributes fundamentally to the evocation of an intensified effect of truthfulness and reality. Here the immediate impression is also easily generated that a verbal report could lie without difficulty, while photographs must necessarily correspond to reality. Such prejudices augment the radius and intensity of the influence of this kind of propaganda. But it should not be forgotten, that the same technical means that are able to raise the credibility of film up from the mere level of everyday life to genuine aesthetic evocation, are equally able to transform the photographed truth into a direct un-truth, into a lie. Balázs mentioned once that, without inserting any new image, and just by re-arranging, and by the use of cuts etc., it would be possible to give the Potemkin film an oppressive counter-revolutionary atmospheric content. The daily events in reports can, naturally, be even more easily ‘reassembled’, without thereby losing their immediate, authentic effect. Thus, when we take into account all its specific features, we can still say that the ‘language’ of film exhibits the same problematic of truth and un-truth that is inherent to any use of language in human life. We repeat: this short survey of the essential mimetic aspects of film cannot address concrete-dramaturgical problems. Only one general question remains to be addressed now in order to round off our remarks: the role and function of language in film. In order to respond to this issue accurately one has to go back to the silent film. On the one hand, it is apparent that the silent film could not do without the word in as far as continuous captions had to be used in order to keep the spectator informed about the indispensable facts of the action. On the other hand, we know that, in order to establish understanding and to emotionally elucidate the atmosphere continuously, it

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

214

The film writings, 1913–71

had to draw on music as an auditory-evocative accompaniment to the events. These two aspects are also found in the sound film, and, directly or indirectly, are a continuation of the compositional necessities that were relevant to the silent film. Only in the sound film, and as a complement to these two aspects, does the third become prominent: language as monologue, dialogue, speech, etc.; and, through this aspect, it becomes the task of film to bring alive immediate human destiny as a constitutive part of the action. Already the first question, that of providing information about indispensable facts, poses essentially new tasks. Whereas, in the epic, such a bringing-to-knowledge forms an essential part of the narrative suspense, and, while, in drama, the exposition constitutes an organic unity with the construction of the dialogical evolvement of destiny, in any film, new ways have to be found in order to address this question. Since, here, the spoken word does not lie at the centre of the homogeneous medium, and, can, accordingly appear only as a supplement to the visual-auditory events represented, it is, each time, a special dramaturgical-compositional question, as to how the necessary maximum of information can be combined with a minimum of prosaic interference with the atmospherics. In the second moment [the second question/aspect of film which was addressed earlier, regarding the role of language in supporting the construction of atmosphere], the aesthetic leap from silent to sound film becomes most apparent: here, the spoken word becomes part of those sounds that constitute the auditory accompaniment, and also contributes to an intensification of the visually evoked atmospheres. Here it is also impossible to establish general rules. Only concrete analyses of concrete successes and failures can determine the possibilities and limitations which arise here. The previous evolution of the sound film also unambiguously shows that the realistic rendering of sound – including human speech – is not sufficient to ensure a continuous and sufficient auditory accompaniment of the visual-atmospheric evocation, and that the sound film is, therefore, always pressed to accentuate this audibility with the use of music. Without being able to go fully into the details of this question it has to be mentioned that this necessity is also intimately associated with the specificity of the indeterminate objectivity in film, with the tendency to minimise that indeterminate objectivity; and with the basic atmospheric character of the medium. Music, as double mimesis of emotions that are directly and atmospherically expressed, is especially suited to minimise such indeterminate objectivity, whose authentic-extrinsic reality requires an emotive-atmospheric supplement. Thirdly, and finally, the sound film recognises the spoken word as a dramatic element of the action: the relationship between two people unwinds in front of us in all its untruthfulness, and this is discharged in the form of a scene of acutely attenuated psychological contrasts. In such cases the ­actors

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film’

215

must use sharp and sophisticated words to draw out the consequences of their relationship. However, although there is a closeness to the dramatic here, it should not be forgotten that speech in drama grows out of dialogical continuity, while here it can merely be prepared through visual-auditory, atmospheric means. On the one hand, they must bring about a liberating clarification of experienced tensions, while, on the other hand, they must not go beyond the framework of a unitary atmosphere that is engendered in a visual-auditory way. From this stems the necessity of establishing the atmosphere very carefully in such scenes of crisis, in their relative concentration and brevity; and at the same time it should also be mentioned, that, according to the concrete circumstances, these stipulations require a specific treatment in each particular case. Anyway, an organic relationship with the visual-auditory atmospheric content is also indispensable here. One thinks here about the great pacifisthumanistic speech that is given by Chaplin at the end of The Great Dictator. Its meaning could without doubt have been more concentrated. However, its temporal compass, its tone, etc., are conditioned by the basic atmosphere of the whole film: as a human judgement on the nightmare that we have experienced in the form of war and Hitlerism; and it is also no coincidence that the filmic rendering of this speech calls upon musical accompaniment. Although Chaplin had surely planned to critique this system of fascist inhumanity by means of thoughtful reckoning, this descends indiscernibly – and, objectively considered, not by chance – into the purely emotional. All these associations lead to the conclusion that the decisive principle of film composition is the adherence to atmospheric unity. Of course, atmosphere has to be understood in the sort of universal sense that has already been explicated, and it is also understood that such a unity is also compatible with the strongest contrasts. However, given all the contradictoriness implied by this, films must also possess a solid unity, otherwise they will easily break apart into heterogeneous pieces as, for example, in de Sica’s Miracle in Milan, where the opportunity was missed to endow the settlement of the poor, living amicably together, in mutual affection, with the atmosphere of a fairytale-like unreality, so that, when later miracles really do occur, they appear as a total break, as a sudden transition into a completely different world. What is more, it is an essential part of film that – as a result of its repeatedly referred to authenticity – it is less sensitive than literature to improbabilities in its presumptions (one thinks about de Sica’s adorable comedy about the elephant that the poor teacher receives as a gift); and, yes, film allows independently conceived comic and poignant episodes much more leeway, and requires much less justification for them than is the case with the other arts (I only refer to the episode in Dictator when Chaplin shaves a man to the accompaniment of the melody and rhythm of Brahms’ ‘Hungarian Dances’);

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

216

The film writings, 1913–71

provided that this ultimate unity of atmosphere will hold. Such remarks refer, understandably, merely to films that have arisen from artistic intentions. The great majority of films possess a unity only in terms of the rudimentary social needs that they were produced to fulfil, and their audiences react to them mainly in a purely materialistic way, or purely in accordance with extrinsic suspense-creating moments. In these contrasts we come again to the already mentioned seamless transitions between elasticity and instability of the homogeneous medium, which come about as a result of the substantive closeness to our experience of everyday life. It is through the overall tendency to slip down from elasticity into instability that really good films are in practice rarely evident; and the primary reason for this can be found in the possibilities for film development, in the need for huge amounts of capital for production, in the contemporary socially inevitable composition of such capital-strong, concentrated-bureaucratic organisations. The analysis of the fact that a form of art that is predisposed to be an emblematic art of the people almost always degenerates into the merely comfortable, even into kitsch, is also a problem for historical materialism. But what was important to us was to reveal those inner form-giving factors, those kinds of mimesis, which approach such social conditions and influences precisely from the specific artistic essence of film. The Specificity of the Aesthetic, Vol. 2 (1963), pp. 467–99. Notes 1 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Benjamin, Collected Writings Vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1955), p. 371 and 368. 2 ������������� Béla Balázs, Filmkultúra, pp. 20–3. [Lukács does not provide journal volume or number of issue information]. 3 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Benjamin, ‘The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Benjamin, Collected Writings, Vol. 1, p. 397. 4 �������������������������������� Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, ‘Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Historical-Critical Anthology; Works, Writings, Letters’, commissioned by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow (Moscow: David Rjazanov, 1933–35) (MEGA) 15, p. 535; ‘Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels Works, vols 1–39’ (Berlin: Dietz, 1956–68) (MEW) 3, p. 534. 5 ������������������������������������������������� Herbert Jhering, ‘Othello as Film’, in Jhering, From Reinhardt to Brecht: Four Decades of Theatre and Film, Vol. 1: 1900–1923 (Berlin, 1958), p. 423. 6 ������� Baláz, Filmkultúra, pp. 211 and 256 [no volume or issue information provided]. 7 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� For a good and complete account of the relations between the German film and people between the wars, against the context of Hitler’s rise to power, see Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler (Hamburg, 1958). 8 ���������������������������������������������������� Guido Aristarco, ‘Before the Last film of Fellini’, Les Lettres Françaises, 814 (1960).

‘Film’

217

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

[See also Lukács, ‘Narrate or Describe?’ (1936), in Problems of Realism, pp. 103–45. Lukács is referring to Essays über Realismus, published in 1948, and republished in an expanded version in 1955 as Probleme des Realismus. Both volumes were published in Berlin by Aufbau-Verlag.]

9

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

‘I consider it an important thought,’ writes Lukács to his student Mészáros, ‘your attempt to clearly separate form from technique. The greatest theoretical failing of the literature pertaining to film is the mixing up of these two things, which leads Balázs, for example, to treat as problems of form and of the theory of genres, questions which are above all related to the theoretical’.1 by György Lukács and István Mészáros

The notes we have published here were not specifically written for publication: they are part of an exchange of opinions between the Hungarian philosopher and his student István Mészáros, who is compiling a volume on aesthetic issues of the film. These notes are of particular interest because, for the first time here, Lukács intervenes directly into the field of cinema studies. We believe that the notable importance of this intervention should not escape the attention of readers in general, and critics in particular, because of the authority which Lukács has within the field of contemporary culture, and because the issues that he debates provide a new theoretical position on the film. We are particularly pleased about this direct intervention also because we have been the first film journal to have focused on Lukács, to have become acquainted with his books, and to have applied some of his principles to the criticism of film. We will shortly publish an extensive essay by György Lukács entitled ‘Epic and Drama’, and the second part of István Mészáros’ study on the structure of theoretical problems of the cinema: ‘Film and Drama. The question of public character in film’.

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

219

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Letter to Lukács Turin, 8 March 1958 1  The ‘layers’ of the theory of film (the structure of film-related issues). One of the greatest failings of film theory has been the fact that it has mixed together issues of diverse character and validity. There is an attempt to absolutise as aesthetic truth that which has a merely technical validity, and so forth. To reach a conclusion on the true problems of aesthetics it is necessary to proceed by separating these absolutely (technical issues, ‘grammaticality’ – from their exterior form – ‘the poetic’ – from the theory of genres – filmic drammaturgy, general literary and aesthetics theory, and specifically film-related aesthetics). It is of course obvious though that there is no Chinese wall between these. 2  The nature of film theory. On the one hand, abstract-formal, on the other hand and at the same time strictly practically-empiricist (or else: totally ignoring formal issues to focus solely on those related to content and ideology). The reasons for this situation: (a) the relatively young age and the limitations of other sorts of the material that is at our disposition; (b) the canonisation of the silent film, and the lack of a fundamental review of this canonisation in the new circumstances – a fact that produces its own effects of limitation; (c) general prejudices of a primarily philosophical nature; (d) method (lack of a properly aesthetic-philosophical approach to the matter). 3  The relationship between the public and film. The question of the public nature of film. It might seem strange but it remains a fact that nobody ever found it necessary to compare the film with the drama from this point of view. Film is generally compared with the theatre and not with the drama and, hence, from the technical point of view (the ‘invariability’ of the angle of vision and of the distance between stage and spectator, and the fact that the latter sees in every moment all of the scene, in contrast with the variability of the angle of vision and the distance, let alone the ability of the film to concentrate on particularities). Skipping over the fact that even the aforementioned are only relative truths, given that distance, angle of vision etc., also change in theatre corresponding to the scenic action; the fundamental in the relationship between film and drama is not of a technical but of a social character: the film can blossom and become true art in the twentieth century precisely because it does not need the public disposition of drama (the ‘publicness’ of film has in this a relationship with the public which has something of an epic character). From this fact arises artistic and structural consequences of great importance (the particular character of filmic heroes, etc.). It is possible to truly understand the periods of flourishing and crises of the film only after having concretely grasped the peculiar nature of the public character required

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

220

The film writings, 1913–71

in film. In fact, even in this sense, for example, between the silent film and the sound film, there is a difference that concerns the public character: the crisis of Chaplin at the time of the transition from silent to sound was not born merely out of the difficulties related to adapting to the new language, but also out of a search for both new, adequate vital material, and a new connection with the public character. Solution: on the one hand the relationship between the individual (the spectator) and the film as a real collective experience, and on the other the relationship between the individual (as creator who follows with the machine to hold the events, according to determinate principles) and the observercommunity, which in the cinema is composed of individuals. The difference between film and television from this point of view. Regarding the public character of film, it is necessary to examine the attempts of Bert Brecht to create a new public character in the drama (epic elements, the chronicler, etc.) and at the same time to adapt a scenic technique of ‘filmic’ nature. 4  How film becomes art (‘Grammatically’). The singular chance happening and the atypicality of photography. The ‘art’ of photography: composition, specific situation, effects of light and shadow, particular ‘types’ and situations of ‘genre’, visual angle, etc. (In truth, the issue here is not one of photography’s artistic development preceding film but, rather, its parallel or even later development: of a result separate from the artistic evolution of the moving picture, of the application of some of the results of this ultimately on still photography). The artistic possibilities of the element of movement; its power aimed at dissolving the singularity; contrast and action; the possibility to place a determinate thing in relief, to emphasise it, to separate the important from the insignificant; the possibility of a more complex representation; the presentation of human relationships and their interdependence and reciprocity. Close-up: the possibility of a penetrating psychology. 5  The audiovisual character of film. In film theory one finds a proper physical-physiological description of this phenomenon. Lacking though is its anthropologic-aesthetic concretisation: in its place, the physical-physiological description extends directly to art with a formal-technical absolutism. In what manner is the ‘audiovisual’ character manifested in other artistic fields? (Aside from theatre, in literature in general and, in a certain sense even in music and the figurative arts. The problem of ‘interior listening’ and ‘interior seeing’.) The complexity of real artistic experience. And the different intensity in respect to real artistic experience, for example, to be present at a concert of a relatively mediocre orchestra, or to listen to a recording and technically perfect reproduction, by an orchestra of the highest class, who interpret the work with maximum artistic conscientiousness.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

221

The real artistic experience which culminates in a certain sense, at the ‘interior level’ of the senses can also be found in types of art which do not have an audiovisual character. The anthropological foundation of this fact is that the subject of the lived artistic experience is a whole man, in relation to the senses, one who records his impressions – as he does in life – on ‘two planes’: one where the visual dominates the auditative, and vice versa. And another question: in what measure does this wholeness in the lived artistic experience have an objective base; that is, to what degree does it stem from objective artistic determination? (Only approximately, within the large and almost ungraspable configuration of the atmosphere, however for those who regard the concrete form of this wholeness, is there total freedom.) It is a particularity of the film also to be able to determine objectively in great measure this ‘wholeness’ (for example in silent scenes) and to be able to supply its character of immediate audiovisuality in the service of artistic purposes with a great evocative force. (This fact makes possible the formation of an unusual artistic language.) 6  The aesthetic particularity of filmic reflection. The aesthetic distinctiveness of film should not be considered to lie in ‘filmic specificity’ (editing, close-ups, frames), since this can only provide a frame for film, as rhyme and rhythm does in poetry, for example, or as harmony and beat does in music. True filmic specificity is no more than the suitable artistic reflection of particular vital subject matter in respect to its physiognomy and extension. The particular physiognomy of this vital subject matter comes from the overall public character and the realisation of the full particularity of the ‘totality of the objects’ (subjective, in a certain sense, in that via the presence of the spectator-creator-describer within the picture, the reflected environment can be presented not only in the objectivity of its reciprocity (interchange of effects) with the protagonists of the film, but also in artistic contrast with it, in both the original present time of the film (present-past time or past-present – with emphasis on the former – but never pure present or pure past) as well as the given artistic possibilities of representation, from the choice and concretisation of the vital contemporary subject matter to the formation. Particularity of artistic formation: a singular combination of the visual, of the ‘literary’ (reflection, narrative, action-movement) and of the auditative, in addition to their permanent coexistence (‘inseparability’). (This phenomenon, and this is new, is also evident in a certain sense in other art forms: an evocative appreciable force of great intensity in literature; a narrative concentration and dynamism in painting; etc. Yet, while here this phenomenon relates more to issues of artistic style and individuality, in film, instead, the focus is more on a characteristic of general validity and of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

222

The film writings, 1913–71

d­ eterminant character. Through intrinsic artistry, and not formal exteriority, a good film encompasses all three aforementioned elements and does not merely play the role of the violins in a symphony orchestra.) Even the difference between the silent film and the sound film arises form this problematic: with the advent of the sound film the physiology and the extension of vital artistic subject matter also changed. The silent film has a fundamental epic-lyrical character (or lyrical-epic) while the sound film is essentially epic-dramatic (or dramatic-epic) with respect to its immanent nature. 7  Phenomenon and substance in film. The aforementioned attest to a particular artistic mode of representation. One of its characteristics is the possibility of using a sort of ‘optical artistic illusion’ in the presentation of substance. The artistic annihilation of the appearance through proximity, immediate contrast, etc., without the danger of allegorical symbolism (even given the two-headed physiognomy of the ‘totality of objects’, resulting from the continual presence of the observing-representing subject). In this manner the penetration into the substance is of a propositional immediacy (but not a symbolic illustration of thesis) with a certain intellectual character. (This, of course, is true only for the mode of representation, which cannot be deprived of determination through human relationships.) The ‘lyrical intellectualism’ of the film. 8  The ‘hurrying’ without pause of the film. The romantic anti-capitalist critic (e.g. Adorno) recognises in this characteristic only the negative side, and is not disposed to accept that one finds here a new method for the artistic presentation of the substance. For example, acceleration and slow motion (not in a technical but in an artistic sense): stopping at length on instances deemed important. And on the other hand passing over less critical moments. In certain cases, instead, speed of rhythm could be the most adequate way of expressing substance (crescendo of the dramatic force, etc.). While it is true that film is an art marked by a non-contemplative character (though, with regard to the instance of its observation, even the genuine theatrical experience is much less contemplative than the impression provoked, for example, by a painting, or a genuine musical experience), it nevertheless also allows an artistic concentration of another kind, and in great measure eliminates the casual and arbitrary element of the interpretation and of the ‘completion’. (Issues of synchronism, simultaneity, etc. must also be dealt with here.) 9  The position of the film in the system of the arts. a) The relationship between film and the visual arts (the mistake of identifying it with the figurative arts – e.g. Ragghianti. The complex visuality of film. The ‘filmic character’ in figurative art: consecutive series of the engravings of Hogarth; series of drawings that form an internal unity with the epic-lyrical

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

223

poems of the poet-painter W. Busch; as precursors in a certain sense of the silent film, etc.). b) The relationship between film and literature (the objectivity of the work of art as such, and the particular subjectivity of the film; the immanent value of the work of literature and the ‘lack of value’ – in the immanent-literary sense – of the screenplay; the relationship between vital dramatic, epic and lyrical subject matter and the film; the possibilities and the limitations of the transposition into film of works of literature; the relationship of literary genres with film, etc.). c) The relationship between film and music (music and picture; the filmic function of the acoustic effect; the cessation of the immanence – so to speak: ‘the thing in itself’ – of music in film; the insufficiency of ‘music of accompaniment’ in the film; attempts at rendering music noticeable-visual (Walt Disney, for example); the application of the ‘leitmotif ’ in the film; the distinctive filmic function of music in Chaplin, that is also lacking in serious musical value: in his silent films characterised by ‘leitmotif ’, in the sound film – for example A King in New York – it serves to highlight or introduce a change in action or rhythm; filmic music and musical characterisation; Prokofiev-Eisenstein: Aleksandr Nevskij; the new ‘functional’ attempts of the avant-garde – for example Hans Richter; etc. 10  The particular artistic language of the film. Its complex quality; a certain ‘architecturalism’; the ‘collaboration’ of diverse ‘perceptible levels’; the composition of the total effect in a final unitary instance on differing perceptible planes; the artistic function of change of rhythm, of the environment, of planes, of distance and of the angle of vision. The function of movement. (Movement in the other arts: in two directions; on the one hand external – such as in painting, in following the diverse parts, details, the lines of movement, consequential happenings, action; in the theatre, following the voice, the actors’ movements; in concert halls, following the continual changing sounds of the various instruments, the movements of the soloists, the director of the orchestra, etc. – and internal on the other; that is, it moves from the external lines of motion of the photographed scenes through our eyes toward internal comprehension, towards the artistic substance. In painting, for example, a system of movement through the repetition of certain lines of external movement, through the continuous return and delay on certain points, through the composition of the painting as a whole in a varied manner and always increasingly enriched by detail). Owing to its non-contemplative nature, the language of film joins the two directions in a single movement. Ultimately, in an artistically valid film, a complete picture of a unitary character in which the details are found ‘at their post;’ and do not make up an independent life

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

224

The film writings, 1913–71

to suffocate the others, or to ‘make-forget’ the anaemia and the ‘packaging’ function of the major part of the work. The ensuing result for means of artistic cinematographic language is: the persistence of a visual-reflexive and atmospheric total picture, in which single details appear only through the imaginary reproduction of movement-action. The problems of proportion and of harmonious composition. (And also on this point: to what degree is it possible, given the conditions of filmic expression, for spectators to participate actively? Further, what new receptive aptitudes might arise with the help of cinematographic language?) 11  The form of the screen. The formalist solution to the problem: according to Eisenstein, there is a conflict between the ‘horizontal’ way to see (nostalgia for the calm tranquillity of the plains in contrast with the velocity of modern life) and that of the ‘vertical’ (smokestacks, skyscrapers and piers, as adequate visual expressions of modern life). He had volunteered to resolve this conflict with the proposition – never accepted – to adopt a square screen. In reality, this is not an abstract-formal-external problem but, rather, an intrinsically artistic one. To examine: artistic repercussions – for the composition of the painting, for the selection of vital facts, etc. – deriving from changes in the form of the canvas. In film: the interior contrast between the form of Cinemascope and similar vital subject matter, such as in the drama of Racine. The problem of the mere exteriority and of the artistically motivated monumentality which is still necessary. (In this same connection also the question of maximal complexity and the more dramatic character of the subject matter of modern life.) The film, however, not only contains what has been said regarding spatial composition and action; but also the possibility to eventually change the order of time. (For example, rendering present for us in the picture of the screen an action which for the protagonist is necessarily future, etc.) It would be possible to offer new artistic possibilities through the conquest of difficult technique of the variable screen with respect to form and magnitude. 12  Theatricality and pictorial character in the film. Two types of theatricality: a) artistically motivated, b) purely external (pseudo-pathetic, exclusively spectacular, inspissating). The theatricality necessary in the silent film: tendency towards typification in a scene, in a situation. (Therefore, not for the fact that film was initially photographed theatre.) Theatricality is also evident in the later films of Chaplin, of high aesthetic value. The role of the pantomime. (Also in this case the function is different in the silent film and in the sound film.) In the same manner certain scenic solutions are reminiscent of pictorial compositions, just as other pictorial elements have a considerably greater role in silent film. (For example the ‘types,’ which, as a matter of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

225

s­ peaking, have their internal qualities written all over their face. This goes as far as negating the professional actor, for Pudovkin as well as others.) In modern film the justification for theatricality is reduced to a minimum: the atypicality of a single scene and the typicality of complex series of scenes. At the same time: the insufficiency of the ‘type’ (in its aforementioned meaning and, that is, as synonym of ‘ready-found in nature’) or, rather, the contrast between exterior and interior. Elsewhere, however, painting has notable importance in modern film, but of a very different character. (Perspective, colour film, dramatisation with effects of light and shadow, the function of the natural environment, etc.) 13  Subjectivity and objectivity in the film. Subjectivity determined objectively, and objectivity marked by the subjective. The determining force and the determination of artistic individuality, the relative freedom of artistic individuality in the film. (The limits of the artistic liberty of the director.) Repercussions of filmic time – past and present – on the objectivity of the representation. 14  Intrinsic necessity in the composition of details. Within the limits established by the elements mentioned in the preceding points. The infinite possibilities in film for choosing angle of vision, distance, lighting, etc. Infinite, theoretically, but, however, also limited in reality. The determining force of the vital subject matter to be represented: it drastically reduces the number of the possibilities of choice. Another factor that leads to a better understanding of this immanent-artistic necessity: the need for artistic unity. (It excludes solutions that are diametrically opposed to the fundamental tone, and those that are in stark contrast to it.) Criteria: to what degree are the angles of vision, etc. chosen in order to evoke with suggestivity, and with artistic unity, the most profound content in the vital subject matter represented. No valid universal rule exists here, since there are always concrete determinations of the given scene (and the overall picture of the given film) which produce value. With regard to the single scene, the necessity for words to have only an approximate validity: artistic representation can be realised equally adequately through a variety of visual angles, diverse distances, etc. (The solutions of scenes of a psychological character, however, just to give an example, very clearly remain ‘on the outside’ of a film characterised by an overall picture and a calmly epic flow.) 15  Problems of cinematographic drammaturgy. The filmic hero. (Fun­ damentally of epic and not dramatic character; it even contains elements constantly present within the ‘epos,’ such as, for example, the shoes, the cane, the gait, certain recurring gestures and grimaces typical of The Tramp.) Screenplay. (Its structure; the ‘iron screenplay’ and improvisation; the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

226

The film writings, 1913–71

­ odifying effect of the environment; the role of dialogue; etc.) The actor. m The problem of style, etc. For now, these couplings make up this scheme. I do not consider it ‘ready’ or in any sense mature, and I feel that in elaboration I must make changes not only in the order of the points but also in the accentuation, in the proportion. And in the internal system of some questions, through ‘moves’, further subdivisions or unifications, or by placing greater importance on certain problems that might perhaps at present only be merely mentioned in passing within a single sentence. With this current level, I have sought only to render an account of the problems that present themselves in this field, and of their nature; brought to the aesthetic level those formulated in a formalistic mode; and, on the other hand, those I have newly formulated – at least as pertains to the study of film … István Mészáros Lukács’ reply Budapest, 15 April 1958 The outline of your book interests me greatly; it contains many new issues, and of course I am certain that in the course of your elaboration others will also appear. In any case, I consider it an important and productive thought of yours to attempt to clearly separate form from technique. The greatest theoretical failing of the literature pertaining to film, as far as I know, is its mixing up of the two things, which, for example, in Balázs, leads to the consequence that he treats as issues of form and of the theory of genre questions that are above all related to technique. This problem will, of course, have to be elaborated well theoretically. I suggest that, as you write, you deal with this issue as one of the principal ones and, hence, as a concrete polemic against the practices which persist today. As for individual points, I will not linger on those upon which I am largely in agreement with you, nor on those dealing with issues very specific to film because – as you well know – I am an indolent frequentor of the cinema halls, and know very little about filmic production. I will therefore take into consideration the following points: 3  Stage and film. On the stage the actor is physically present, while in film it is only the image that remains in view. This fact alone already veers the issue in a direction in which the drama is played out in the present, while, however, the act of being photographed signifies a specific past. However, in this is also presented the characteristic of film: that it is much closer to the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

227

epic than to the drama. This is also expressed in the function of dialogue. The drama is built up exclusively upon the dialogue, while, in film, dialogue is not fundamental. Of course, this does not mean that dialogue is not important in film; on the other hand, even in a novel or in a short story, dialogue may appear at decisive points, but the fact is that it cannot be the exclusive bearer of the action and representation of man, and here the dialogue signifies something qualitatively different to that which occurs in the drama. One need only think of problems such as the representation of dramatic atmosphere. A modern director might imagine, for example, that for Chekhov, it is possible to create the atmosphere with the use of the wings, with a particular sort of illumination, etc. In my opinion, this is a fundamental error. The dialogue is the exclusive carrier of true dramatic atmosphere. In film, this is all very different. There, precisely because of the fact that protagonist and environment are homogeneous, that is, neither are direct realities but are reflections thereof (while on stage the actor is real, and the environment is, of course, an elaborate reflection), there is created a homogeneous everyday medium in which the environment is bearer of the content at least as much as man is. This fact also has many analogies in the epic. 5  I entirely approve the emphasis on the total man. It is necessary however to add that, in contrast with life, where a total man is faced with the heterogeneous totality of reality, in every form of art, the total man is directed towards a particular homogeneous ‘medium’ and it is the specific connection of the latter that directs his receptive capacities. This homogeneous medium is precisely one of the principal instances of the divergence of genres and of the single arts (it goes without saying that in certain cases this is also true of their affinity). 6  Regarding present time, I have already commented in point three. The continual awareness of viewing a photograph – in contrast with the theatre – makes the past dominate the present, and this once again brings film closer to the epic. And this issue of the totality of objects is one that requires much reflection. I am very doubtful that it can be compared to film. In my opinion, if a film is related to a literary genre, it is more likely to be so with a short story rather than a novel, and even a short story is unacquainted with the requirements of the totality of objects. The fact that in the novella and in the film much importance is also given to the world of objects of a particular period of life which is represented, does not yet signify the totality of those objects. This, however, is a question which has not yet been elaborated by aesthetics, and in the case of film it will be necessary to find the aesthetic laws able to encompass its own world of objects. This would be, for example, one of the principal problems of the theory of genre. At first thought, it is easy to believe

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

228

The film writings, 1913–71

that the world of objects plays a much larger role in film than it does in the corresponding literature. But in thinking of novels such as Conrad’s Typhoon or Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, it is evident that a new problem emerges. It must be elaborated. With regard to dialogue, I have already made comments in point three. In my opinion, there is a qualitative difference between theatrical dialogue and that of every other genre. 8  The question of rhythm. This relates once again to the relationship with the epic. In the epic, in fact, it is possible to change rhythm within the same scene uninterruptedly: for example, to leap from one instant to another with the assistance of a transitional phrase. In the drama, though, it is only possible to slow or accelerate rhythm between scenes, and also this has only a secondary importance, in coherence with the fact that every scene is dominated by the essential present; while in the epic such leaps may have a decisive importance. I am not referring to those modern tales in which the ‘cut’ of the scene comes to be effected under the influence of the film, but to classics such as Tolstoy, who often represents in a detailed way a part of some scene and then follows by summarising a long period of time in a single sentence, only to then continue setting things out in a more detailed way, using a rhythm which eventually becomes even more different from the previous. Here, we are not dealing simplistically with the influence of film on literature but with a consequential parallelism, and, for reasons of principle, the drama cannot be even slightly related to this phenomenon. In this same point it is necessary to separate to the maximum decisions which are fortuitous and those which are arbitrary. Because, as you well know, the fortuitous is an integral part of the structure of any short story, and hence its function in film should be examined. Another interesting problem should also be analysed: the a posteriori motivation – very common in literature – when an unexpected and seemingly arbitrary fact proves to be necessary in the course of subsequent events. 9  You very cautiously discuss the series of engravings (Hogarth, etc.). In such series, in as much as they constitute art, each page constitutes a closed unit, while in film, any single image is, in principle, the continuation of a preceding one and the preparation for one which will follow, and acquires all its significance from this connection. 14  The truly good film is characterised by a certain unity of atmosphere, by the artistic determination of its entire tone: this corresponds to what can be considered as the sound of the tale. Naturally, the difference lies in the fact that in literature the author can intervene directly, while this is impossible in film; under this aspect the unity of tone is more akin to the stage. But reference here must be made to an aforementioned statement: the unity of tone of the stage is essentially determined by dialogue and all the other

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’

229

things are only accessories, while, in film, every protagonist and object constitutes a homogeneous unity from this point of view. Applying this yardstick to the cinematographic art created to date, then – and this is so even in good films – we run into the problem of naturalism. In fact: either this unity of atmosphere exists completely, or its level is on a relationship with certain phenomena of life. For example, while walking in a forest one might say that the forest has a certain atmosphere; in certain aspects we may see a certain unity of tone, etc. The unity of tone of a story is on an artistic level of far greater superiority to this. That it is also possible to realise this much higher level in film I have seen in the case of the English film on Toulouse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge, as well as in another British film on Henry V – albeit a little too stylised, based on old Flemish paintings). This all has to do with the organic unity of visual, auditory and spiritual elements; a unity that can be attained only if this artistic principle, and the principle of genre, dominates the technical, rather than the latter – as often is the case today – governing the artistic construction. The unpleasantness of colours in chromatic films is, for the most part, not only a question of technique, but, rather appears when issues of the unity of tone are not the principal driving force. Yet, be clear that any colouration should serve this unity of tone. The same is true for the representation of the human voice, although, I think, in this field this also has to do with technical failings. Truly, this last requirement demonstrates that the question is not determined by the poles of naturalism and some pictorial decoration: harmonise the tone of the human voice with those of visuality and ideal content. These are my observations in passing on your plan. If things progress, write to me again and I shall respond to the best of my abilities …

György Lukács

Notes 1

This is in fact a completely incorrect rendition by the editors of Cinema Nuovo of what Lukács actually said, and one that, in fact, renders Lukács’ statement here thoroughly incomprehensible. Lukács did not say ‘leads Balázs, for example, to treat as problems of form and of the theory of genres, questions which are above all related to the theoretical’. What he actually said, on p. 135 of the Journal, was ‘leads Balázs, for example, to treat as problems of form and of the theory of genres, questions which are above all related to technique [or ‘the technical’] (tecniche)’. As I have argued previously, this article by Lukács and Mészáros is relatively incomprehensible as it stands. However, this misquote must have thrown any reader brave

230

The film writings, 1913–71

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

enough to ­attempt a reading of the article into total confusion. Strangely enough, in his critique of Lukács’ and Mészáros’ article, Umberto Barbaro quotes Lukács correctly here, and does not seem to spot the misquotation in the Journal (see Chapter 5 of this book, and ‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’, also reproduced in full in Chapter 10).

10

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’

In 1958, the September–October issue (no. 135) of Cinema Nuovo, published correspondence between György Lukács and Istvan Mészaros in which they discussed the aesthetic problems of the cinema. Umberto Barbaro commented on the philosophers’ letter in the Rome edition of l’Unità, on 22 January 1959, and his article, ‘Lukács: the film and technique’ is published here in its entirety. Lukács’ response to the article is only now being published since its original appearance coincided with Barbaro’s grave illness, and his almost immediately subsequent death. In his particularly confrontational article, Lukács labels Barbaro, sic et simpliciter, a neo-positivist. This mistake is likely due to the fact that the philosopher was not familiar with the entirety of Barbaro’s work. Nonetheless, Lukács’ observations surpass this moment of polemical contingency, and are in fact deemed to be of current interest, contributing to clarifying fundamental issues relating to technique and art. Further, his commentary reiterates the philosopher’s recognition of film as an important means of expression. Umberto Barbaro When György Lukács’ Prolegomeni a un’estetica marxista was published in Italy (Editori Riuniti, 1957), I complained, in an article published in l’Unità, that in that book – as in all of the noted Hungarian author’s books – the art of cinema had been completely disregarded. Quite frankly, I deemed it an enormous matter that a critic and philosopher, whose constant and tireless work is so aimed at contributing to the creation of a Marxist aesthetics, could omit not only a theoretical contemplation, but also even a critique or even just an exemplification of that which to us (i.e. Marxists) is, beyond doubt, the most important of the arts, as Lenin himself put it. This is even more strange considering that, in 1913, Lukács had penned a short commentary on the film (‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’), and also in view of the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

232

The film writings, 1913–71

fact that he had been a friend and admirer of Béla Balázs, that brilliant and profound theorist of the art of the film. Now, the front cover of the Milanese edition (issue no. 135) of Cinema Nuovo somewhat mistakenly claims to have published ‘Lukács’ first writings on the problems of cinema’. These writings, dated April 1958, were, in essence, a series of notes centred on a project regarding the aesthetics of cinema put forth by one of Lukács’ former students: István Mészáros, a then recent political émigré to Italy. Both the student’s project and the teacher’s replies are characterised by a writing style which may be defined as private; so much so, in fact, that readers may find the exchange rather incomprehensible; and, because of this, it is impossible to make too much sense of it. Nonetheless, Lukács’ introductory sentences to his response are striking, and may cause more than just a handful of readers to consider the Hungarian writer to be a paleo-Marxist – to borrow the term from a pamphlet written by the Italian Cesare Cases (Marxism and Neopositivism, published by Einaudi in 1958). Yet this label is not quite accurate, for it does not adequately designate a Marxist who is still very much attached to idealist maxims. Lukács considers his student’s attempt to ‘fully separate form from technique’ to be an ‘important and productive’ endeavour. He adds that ‘the principal problem with critical literature on cinema … is this very blending of the two, which, as in Balázs’ discussions on form and the theory of genres, causes technical issues to come to the fore’. A discussion of this first comment is necessary here, and not so much either for the purpose of making it clear that such critics, beginning with Balázs, cannot all be accused, as a block, of an over-adherence to issues of technique. In the same way, nor can all their Italian counterparts be accused of precisely the opposite (my first writings included), given that they are now slowly detaching themselves with some difficulty from the idealist philosophy which then dominated the nation, especially as exemplified by the work of Croce and Gentile. In any event, at least all these critics managed to put together some substantial discussion relating to the art of the film. No, instead of such clarifications, there is a more pressing need here to illustrate and re-emphasise the extent to which Lukács’ more recent outlook is still imbued with an idealist imprint. In this respect, it is interesting to note how that outlook coincides almost precisely, almost word for word in fact, with Giovanni Gentile’s brief preface to Luigi Chiarini’s Cinematografo, published in 1934. Gentile wrote: ‘The problem (of whether film can or might be able to have an artistic quality) has always played second fiddle to the evermore dominant interest that scholars have in cinematographic techniques.’ Generally speaking, the devaluation of technique is characteristic of the aesthetic of idealism, especially as found in the thought of Croce, for whom

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’

233

a work of art (intuition-expression) is already fully expressed, complete and perfect, within the artist, in interiore animi, so that its extrinsic manifestation is purely incidental: material, occasional and practical; a means by which to preserve the already fully fashioned creation. Though Croce’s aesthetic theories have met with much admiration both in Italy and abroad (one need only think of the European cultural elite who have embraced these theories, including Vossler and Schlosser), he has also had many opponents among artists of many different colours, who are more familiar with the world of art, and who have a more direct experience of the process of making art. The latter did not easily adapt to the concept, one contrary to all their experience, of the non-existence of a mediating technical dimension which lay between the artist’s internal vision and the realisation of a work of art. Any reader can easily come to an understanding of how Croce’s concept of art as a perfect and complete interiority goes against all of our experience, when we contemplate, for example, the work of a painter; and here, an excellent documentary on Henri Matisse provides just such an opportunity to understand this. In this film, the artist is seen painting upon a thick layer of paper, which is clipped to the easel. He works extremely quickly. He ponders his model carefully and then expediently crafts a convincing portrait. It is a true portrait, loyal to the original in every detail. Matisse then briefly contemplates his work, and then tears it up, before immediately proceeding to create a similar portrait, this time eliminating most of the details from its previous version; and then also tearing that one up as well, and beginning yet another, all the time further simplifying the preceding drawing by yet again eliminating even more details. He continues thus, sketch after sketch, producing each new draft expediently, an incredible number of times. However, it soon becomes evident that each new sketch is not merely characterised by a decrease in details which are deemed to be superfluous. Rather, each new depiction involves a slight, though significant, variation of the parts that have succeeded in surviving from the earlier draft. This procedure finally culminates in an image that is one of Matisse’s most beautiful creations. The same documentary shows Matisse at work on a painting. He is seen striking the canvas at amazing speed with a thick storm of brushstrokes. The director of the film very intelligently shot this scene of impetuous bravado in slow motion. And the results are of enormous interest: what in fact we find is that each stroke of the brush divides up into three distinct stages: first, the brush traces the desired form over the chosen spot on the canvas, and in the empty air; then the shape is drawn in lightly, before it is finally given its ultimate thick and heavy mark; then, the artist marks and corrects, and renders definitively with a flood of conjoined brushstrokes. The artist then becomes a critic of his own work, making corrections and final adjustments, before

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

234

The film writings, 1913–71

executing the final piece. This process is not only carried out on the work overall, but also on each single brushstroke, the three stages of which are carried out in an instant. This truly entertaining spectacle of the concrete birth of a work of art (and, hopefully its similar description here) cannot but convince us definitively of the absurdity of the idea of creativity as intuition – expression. Yet even those unfamiliar with aspects of art can comprehend that a film is not complete, entire, in its every detail, before even a single scene has been shot; or that an architect builds only to preserve the memory of an internalised imagination. It is disappointing that Lukács did not reflect on film longer, and with greater commitment, because it is precisely through film that contemporary aesthetics has come to acquire the opportunities and notions required to escape the blind alleys created by idealist philosophy of art. In Lukács, what remains of this is the concept of intuition, a notion which must be definitively repudiated, as must the concepts that give rise to grave misunderstandings regarding artistic matters, and which also constitute a most serious obstacle to the development of a theory of artistic reflection and typicality and, thereby, of a Marxist aesthetic. Umberto Barbaro Georg Lukács In an article published in l’Unità on 22 January, Umberto Barbaro comments on several of my passing observations, which were originally intended purely as correspondence (epistolare) (included in missives to my former student István Mészáros) on film, and previously published in Cinema Nuovo. As will here be pointed out, the article does not merit any response. Nonetheless, the context in which it was published confers upon it a certain import, and a response may perhaps serve to rectify some important issues, which were completely turned on their head in this article. Umberto Barbaro cites certain phrases from the editorial preface introducing my observations without going into the actual text itself (a critical technique and methodology he employs frequently, as the reader will soon discover). He therefore takes certain quotes from the preface, according to which I agree with Mészáros when he [Mészáros] distinguishes technique from form, and then immediately adds that I would thereby undoubtedly contest the importance of technique in art. I must confess that, even though I do not hold the logic of neo-positivists in high esteem anyway, this rather frivolous rendering of my position still astonished me nonetheless.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’

235

Let’s just assume that I would like to tour the outskirts of Rome and I ask an acquaintance to get me a ticket for such a tour. He finds me a ticket, warning me however that it is not a rail ticket but a bus ticket. Umberto Barbaro would greet my acquaintance by saying, ‘What? You make a distinction between train and bus? You therefore deny the existence of a bus! You, then, are an idealist, you deny progress’! Using this same ‘methodology’, and on the basis that I had not addressed the cinema sufficiently in my writings, Umberto Barbaro assumes that I undervalued its importance. He refuses to accept the fact that even for the most encyclopaedic writer, the number of issues that he has not been able to tackle always exceeds the number of those he has. For example, I have never published an essay on music or painting. Does this then mean that I do not appreciate either Beethoven or Rembrandt? From whence my critic’s affirmations concerning my professed position toward technique come remains a mystery to me. He claims to have reviewed my book, Prolegomena to a Marxist Aesthetics, which contains a small section on technique and form (p. 167 and following). Apparently, however, my critic did not pay much attention to what preceded this section. On the other hand, why should he have done? When one is a neo-positivist, it is unnecessary to have the facts: one already knows everything. In fact, what ensues here constitutes an extremely useful lesson for me. My critic writes a detailed account of a film on Matisse, and I thus discover to my tremendous amazement that Matisse painted with colours and brushes, and that his artistic notions did not leap forth directly from his mind straight on to the canvas. He thus resolves what, for me, had been a very difficult problem, one I had been pondering for years: why had Michelangelo left behind so many incomplete works? Since he ‘saw’ his statues in their final state, ‘fully complete’, in their blocks of marble, why did they not just leap out, nice and finished, on meeting the mere gaze of the artist? It has only been upon reading Umberto Barbaro’s illuminating treatise that I have been able to come to the unexpected conclusion that Michelangelo had worked the marble with a chisel, and I have thus finally shed light on the problematic involving his artistic work. In truth, if one really wanted to deal with such an important issue in an adequate manner Umberto Barbaro’s exposition would have to be put aside completely. This is because, when considering success or failure in the problematic of a great artistic career, questions of technique should be of only a very secondary importance. From the point of view of technique, Michelangelo could do whatever he wished. However, the problematic of his artistic activity actually issued from the great social and ideological contradictions of his era, as well as from his artistic position on mediating these; on finding an artistic form adequate to the powerful and contradictory content of the problems of the era, in order to create a suitable artistic reflection of

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

236

The film writings, 1913–71

that reality. Technique is an important, subjective element in the conquest of objective form. But the former can only be attained through the latter, and not the opposite. Yet Umberto Barbaro promotes his ‘problem’ to a philosophical level. He poses his dilemma: either faith in the importance of technique, which alone holds the path to salvation; or intuition. In other words, either neo-positivism or the idealism of Croce. And this reveals all of the narrow-mindedness and pettiness – qualities which are profoundly provincial – of neo-positivism. It completely and utterly ignores the existence of thinkers such as Aristotle, Vico, Hegel and Marx, Cernicevskij and Lenin, who considered the philosophy of the problems of art from a point of view that made it impossible for such pseudo-problems to become visible. Just as, for the mouse, the cat is the largest animal in the universe, so for neo-positivism, Croce is the one great adversary, against whom neo-positivism must struggle, in its heroic battles against windmills. (The fact that in other countries Croce is replaced by some other local celebrity changes absolutely nothing in this particular case of philo­sophical provincialism.) Umberto Barbaro’s insistence on placing intuition at the fore of his criticism is nothing more than a sort of fashionable trend born of conceptual deformation. Intuition, as I explained in an article over thirteen years ago, signifies nothing other than the impromptu psychological passage to conscious awareness of a thought process that had, until that point, been occurring unknowingly. To attribute a dubious importance to it, or even to place it at the centre of a philosophy, is simply an arbitrary and irresponsible way of exchanging an element of a subjective process for the objective methodology of the thought process. I have always lamented the fact that Zhdanov wanted to reduce philosophical disagreements to feuds between materialism and idealism. This opposition leads to a simplistic vulgarisation because it disregards the contrast between dialectics and metaphysics, and the complicated reciprocal relationships which exist between two groups of antagonistic tendencies. But even the outrageous philosophical position of Zhdanov pales in the face of the pseudo-contrast between technicalism and intuition. Through it, the philosophy of art is merely placed at a crossroads, where it must choose – to borrow from Lenin – between the blue devil and the yellow devil. György Lukács

11

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Cultural Manipulation and the Tasks of Critics’

Faced with the task of writing an introduction for his [Guido Aristarco’s] new book, an invitation which is certainly flattering to me, I will not attempt to hide my embarrassment and the inhibitions that I feel. These originate in the well-founded awareness of my incompetence when to it comes to formulating concrete assessments in concrete discussions concerning questions of cinema. It is true that I have dealt previously with the problems of cinema, in my youth. If, even today, I can only consider the piece of writing I was then dedicated to as one-sided, and occasional, it nevertheless remains testimony to a vital interest in the birth of a new genre of art, and was written at a time in which there were still few, even amongst film producers and critics, who believed that a new art had come to be born. Ever since then I have continued to follow the evolution of the cinema with great interest, even though a lack of time, and preoccupation with my other more central concerns, did not allow me to concretely address particular problems in a way that seems to me to be the only way to attain an authentic and non-fictitious competence. Ultimately, in the first part of my Aesthetics [actually, in the second part] (The Specificity of the Aesthetic), I attempted to take a position on what I believed to be the problems related to the most important principles of an aesthetics of the cinema. And even on that occasion, I sought not to pass myself off as somebody who is competent in relation to particular questions that are often seen as exceptionally important in artistic circles, and did not have the possibility to explore, in particular, the historical evolution of this new art. I must say that I believed then – and I still believe today – that the most relevant social and aesthetic problems connected with cinematographic art should be grasped in their ensemble, even by those inclined to consider them otherwise, and from an abstract point of view. The birth and later evolution of the cinema were and are determined much more strongly, much more intensely, by inventions of a purely technical nature, to an extent that was not the case with any other and previous type of

238

The film writings, 1913–71

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

art, with the possible exception of architecture. This has the necessary consequence that the … Behind every question in purely formal appearance stand serious and significant problems of human life, which cast their influence throughout the medium of the artistic configuration through which one finds or loses Man. We must resist manipulation, whether it is voluntary or imposed, of culture, and, therefore, also of cinema. Films and criticism that operate at an aesthetic level dominated by technical issues must be set against a criticism capable of interiorization and profound aesthetic depth, which, in a spirit of truth and accuracy, is able to go to the heart of things, and which, in doing so, cannot but arrive at the real human being. (György Lukács) [It is a stylistic feature of Cinema Nuovo to break up the flow of an article by positioning a key quote from elsewhere in the article near the beginning of the article. In this process of highlighting, the language in the repeated quote is also often changed a little.]

literature on cinema, by now already substantial, has come to be informed by the analysis of these technical innovations and, in the best of these cases, of their psychological effects. And, in comparison, research on the social significance of this new art form has been relatively rare, and even rarer yet have been attempts to grasp the aesthetic essence. This trend not only flowed out from the genesis of the new technical means of expression of the cinema, but also, and perhaps above all, from the typical way of regarding art today, from the absolute predominance of particular technical issues over all basic questions of aesthetics. And yet, in the final analysis, this is not just a question immanent to aesthetics, as it is not a question of ‘worldview’, but is rather rooted much more in the general tendency of our times, in the general domain of manipulation, which, in always greater measure, goes on to subjugate even, and in its entirety, the field of art. That this dominance, in the case of cinema, cannot but reveal itself with particular significance, hardly needs to be said. If film production is in the hands of the great capitalist powers, and with an immediateness and completeness that is by far greater than is the case with any of the other arts, the cinema, by its very nature, and certainly more so than every other art, is destined exclusively to wield immediate mass effects. The problem of manipulation is not, however, limited to questions of the technical; manipulation also has as a spontaneous consequence – sometimes also a conscious one – that, in granting exclusively, or at least in large measure, prominence to all questions of the technical, it deflects attention from the manipulation of human and social content. This process, the intimate connection which exists between the primacy of the technical and conviction that manipulation is limitless, must not be simplified and trivialised, even though it is easy to ascertain that the most banal forms of kitsch can be patched up and disguised, and then forcefully marketed, in maximum and

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Cultural Manipulation and the Tasks of Critics’

239

standardised doses, on a mass scale. It is equally incontestable that in both these dimensions a convergence of these tendencies has been realised. Think only of the shock-effect. Today shock is one of the principal tools of manipulation. Apart from its propagandistic effect in numerous irruptions of the unexpected, subversion, sensation, etc., it can be provoked in an easier and more sure manner with a new technical trick, and it still goes without saying that the technical semantics of critical judgement are firmly satisfied by this correspondence. All the more because it is in the essence of shock to provoke a momentary nervous tremor, that, both in its origin and consequences, is unable to remotely touch upon setting and background. And in this manner – whether one likes it or not, whether one knows it or not – such a tremor provides assistance to the ideology of manipulation: shock, its explosive effect, the unanticipated character of its manifestations, gives to those who are affected by it, and all the more so to those who provoke it, the illusion of a non-conformist attitude, from which cannot flow any decisive opposition, on the theoretical or ethical level, to that which is being manipulated, and without which an authentic non-conformism cannot become manifest. All this can come into existence on the technical-artistic level in perfectly good faith. It can even expand itself into a ‘world view’, enough for this state of manipulation in which man has come to find himself to become conceived of in terms of a ‘human condition’, whether that condition is defined in terms of existentialism, or depth psychology. Such an opposition can also be raised up to the aesthetic level, to the radical negation of that which exists, and this can be realised in the anti-novel, or anti-drama etc., without, for all that, rescuing a single human being from manipulation. However, does not such submission, voluntarily and in good faith made, portray effectively and meaningfully the unstoppable power of manipulation, and, its subjective reflection: alienation? In my opinion, the answer is no. And I would argue no with regard to both the objective social level, and to the subjective human level. Of course, this dual negation is related to the inopportune consequence of the emergence of a real opposition. And here is where things become serious. Among the material consequences is that one eventually finds oneself excluded from the number of those who ‘count’, who cannot speak (even though this can be treated as a matter which is, socially speaking, not without relief ), other than when we are alone among ourselves, with our own ideological and moral convictions; and in the end, this is a serious opportunity to lay down a trial of the character. It is a risk that must be run unless you wish to welcome completely passively this overwhelming reality of manipulation. The irresistibility of which is not, nevertheless, that apparent. On the contrary, there is not a day, not an hour in which life does not offer opportunities to resist in a real way; and, however, at the same time, the degree of the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

240

The film writings, 1913–71

manipulation of public opinion in all press and literary publications, not to speak of cinema, means that this opposition is as yet only expressed in what is, beyond comparison, the weakest way. This is an assertion that, in our day, may be difficult to document in a convincing manner. But if one thinks, for example, of fascism, which by now belongs to the past: how many works of art (including those of propaganda) are there that would be able to bear comparison, quantitatively and qualitatively, with the last letters of anti-fascists sentenced to death, with the diary of Fucik, etc. (in like regard, the Italian cinema may be said to have fared better). However, the overall impression is, to be honest, quite alarming. And with every probability, the same judgement concerning our present state of affairs will also be given by a not-toodistant future. But let us turn to the cinema and its activities, Mr Aristarco. If containing manipulation, whether carried through in a deliberate manner or not, whether done voluntarily or through imposition, involves culture, and, therefore, the cinema; at the least, the tasks of theory and criticism in those spheres in which, by their nature, production is more difficult, and there is a tendency towards industrialisation and commercialisation, must be to resist. However, resisting in the first rank is not a matter of engaging in direct political or propagandistic struggle; even though the majority of those complicit with cultural manipulation are, nevertheless, artists who believe in art, people of good faith, who are all sincerely engrossed with their philosophy and their aesthetics, and who are also often quite talented and even independent thinkers and critics. Against their false ‘world view’, and their false aesthetic, against their counterproductive conception of art, it is necessary to posit an authentic theory, convincing, and capable of convincing. The overcoming of technicalism in the theory and practice of cinema, the demonstration that, behind every question which in appearance is purely formal, stand serious and significant problems of human life, which cast their influence through the medium of the artistic configuration in which one finds or loses the human being: this is the central task of a critical cinematography and theory that today will be worthy of this name. The specific knowledge, the fine aesthetic sensibility, should be necessary prerequisites, but no more than prerequisites: this is not the same thing. What arises from this – pointing the right way as opposed to leading us astray – has its foundation in such relationship with the life of man. ‘Being radical’, says Marx, means to go to the core of things. But for a human being the core of things is the same human being. Chaplin is not and never was a Marxist. Nevertheless, he has demonstrated in the most diverse ways how we can take advantage of the new technical possibilities of cinema in order to anchor, as he unforgettably anchored, the image of a human being in danger, of his struggle for survival, and the unmasking of that

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Cultural Manipulation and the Tasks of Critics’

241

which is in contrast to and is a pitfall for humanity. A cinema and film criticism that move on the level of externalised technicalism must be contrasted with a criticism capable of internalisation and profound aesthetic depth, and which, in a spirit of truth and accuracy, goes to the core of things, and cannot but arrive at the human being, at the real human being, who suffers and engages in the social struggle between men and against other men. To the modest degree to which I consider myself competent in issues of cinema, to the modest degree that I have an understanding of its production as a whole – and also because I realise that I am not able to verify many of your judgements because of my ignorance of the models to which you refer – I have nevertheless drawn from your writings the firm conviction that you are a film critic inclined to go the right way. For this reason I have considered it a duty and an honour to be given the opportunity to write these lines of introduction to your book. I hope that this work will provoke open and sharp debate, and succeed in helping to elucidate the various questions of cinema, such that, if authenticated, in the clarification of these questions we can also go on to invite clarifications of the problems of humanity. Budapest, April 1965 ‘Introduction’ to the book by Guido Aristarco, published by Feltrinelli, The Dissolution of Reason: Discourses on the Cinema, published in Cinema Nuovo, vol. 14, no. 178 (November–December 1965), pp. 406–9.

12

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film, Ideology and the Cult of Personality’

We asked György Lukács the following questions: 1  In various circumstances, and also recently, you have, with quite some insistence, referred to the worrying problems that the cult of personality has been causing the socialist world. Don’t you hold that in the criticism of this cult there has been and still is an instrumental deformation and that this meaning has served to cover up revisionist forms and to [create] substantial distrust in Marxist methodology? 2  Like you, we also believe that the cultural situation – as it presents itself today – requires a coherent, integral, rational, trustworthy Marxist inquiry. What cause can be attributed to the dissemination of distrust in Marxism among intellectuals of the ‘left’? 3  It seems that cinema reflects and records this crisis relatively explicitly (especially through the work of young [film-makers] and what are considered to be ‘new waves’). Don’t you think that this theorisation of disengagement, which originates within the internal alliances of the left, constitutes an assistance – and one that is not always disinterested – to reactionary culture? 4  Of the films that you have had the opportunity to see recently, which seem more significant in the area of an indication of renunciation, and which of an indication of perspective? Dear Mr Aristarco, the problems that you mention are of considerable weight and interest, and should – in reality – be discussed between us in a personal conversation. I believe that the much needed overthrow of the cult of personality still means little from an ideological point of view. It constitutes a change in tactics, and even when a communist movement is well conducted tactically, as it is here in Italy, the mere tactic itself is not valid [in itself ]. Mass movements cannot be conducted …

[Guido Aristarco is posing the questions here on behalf of Cinema Nuovo, and so Lukács is responding to him. Hence, ‘Dear Mr. Aristarco’.]

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Film, Ideology and the Cult of Personality’

243

The situation today is very problematic. On the one hand, an increasing number of men feel that the hypotheses, those that were dominant as of 1945, have lost their raison d’être; and that is why multifarious crises arise everywhere. On the other hand, in regards to the film in relation to this context, a particular confusion can arise. To return to the conception of the world in Marx, with the purpose of applying that in proper measure to a reality that in the meantime has totally changed, requires remarkable effort. We are still at the beginning of a desirable overthrowing: the well thought-through deposition of the cult of personality still means little from an ideological point of view. It is a change of tactics, says Lukács, and the mere tactic is not valid [in itself ].   … purely in a tactical way, and to return to the conception of the world in Marx, with the purpose of applying that conception in proper measure to a reality that in the meantime has totally changed, requires remarkable effort. Here, we are still at the beginning of an auspicious overturning.   It is extraordinarily interesting that you wish to apply such questions to films. The situation today is very problematic. On the one hand, an increasing number of men feel that the hypotheses, those that were dominant as of 1945, have lost their raison d’être; and that is why multifarious crises arise everywhere, and we have hardly begun to initiate their clarification. On the other hand, as regards film in this context, a particular confusion can arise. Film is intrinsically a genre that is more immediate than others, and, consequently, in its technical mode of production, a genre that lends itself to be manipulated in a capitalist sense. Particular complications result from this, and you are right in a way when you consider it conceivable that reactionary answers may be given to the important questions of our era. This always happens in times of crisis (Lenin had considered these trends even on the eve of October.)   I write this, of course, as an observer not specialised in the cinema. I am so busy with my work, that very rarely do I get out to see new films. In parentheses: Have you seen Cold Days by my compatriot András Kovács? I found it very interesting. With warm greetings, your György Lukács

Cinema Nuovo, vol. 16, no. 188 ( July–August 1967), pp. 248–9.

13

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

In recent months the philosopher Georg Lukács has attended the screening of some new Hungarian films that have obtained recognition at home and abroad, and which are considered to be amongst the most representative. Among the works shown were Miklós Janscó’s My way Home/Igy Jöttem/ Sono venuto cosi (1964), The Round Up/Szegénylegenyek/I disperati di Sandor (1965), The Red and the White/Csillagosok, katonák/Stellati, Soldati (1967), and Silence and Cry/Csend és kiáltrás/Silenzio e grido (1968). Films shown by András Kovács included Difficult People/The Unyielding/Nehèáz emberek/ Uomini difficili (1964), Cold Days/Hideg napok/I giorni freddi (1966), and Walls/The Lost Generation/Falak/I muri (1968). Films screened by István Szabó included Father/Apa/Il Padre (1966), and other films screened included Zoltán Fábri’s Twenty Hours/Húsz óra/Venti ore (1965), and Ferenc Kosa’s The Thousand Days/Tizezer nap/Diecimila soli (1967). The complexity of these Hungarian films, with their various themes, raises a large number of issues, both artistic, and related to our society today, and Filmkùltura asked Lukács some questions concerning these matters. The interview – which we publish in full, by kind permission of the Hungarian journal, and the translation of Ivan Lantos – took place on 10 May, in the home of the philosopher. The questions were posed by reporters Yvette Biró and Szillárd Ujhelyi. Yvette Biró (Y.B.): One observes in these films that one is ultimately able to see some common characteristics, both with regard to the attitude of the authors, and in a methodological context. What is your understanding of these characteristics? G.L.: It would be extremely difficult to sum up in one sentence the characteristics of the new Hungarian films, or even their shared characteristics, as even the two most accomplished authors, Janscó and Kovács, use methods that are absolutely contrasting. The originality here, in my opinion, lies in the fact of having found a way to use the new technical developments of cinema in the right way. On the other hand, we must also bear in mind that the film is a new

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

245

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

form of art, and, above all, that the two directors mentioned have brought about a substantial technical enrichment. Even in the West novelty [in the cinema] is predominantly portrayed … To be able to follow the film we must learn the language. However, the question that then arises is how, in what way, and over what period of time this should take place? The cinema of today reproduces the various transformations at an elevated speed; and this is a positive thing. It is not true, however, that a very accelerated rhythm in itself constitutes something artistic. One has true art when maximum clarity is achieved using the apposite tempo. Even in the most revolutionary transformations, technique should not determine content, and it is content which must regulate the application of technique. By György Lukács [It is a stylistic feature of Cinema Nuova to break up the flow of an article by positioning a key quote from elsewhere in the article near the beginning of the article. In this process of highlighting, the language in the repeated quote is also often changed a little.]

… from the technical point of view, and is sometimes denounced for a lack of content. Our cinematography tends now to be occupied by with new elements, for example new types of human sentiment, and ways of expressing human relationships, and in this sense these new means express our real problems. So, if you deal with the subject from the point of view of social content, we can affirm that we find ourselves before a renewal, and in this sense it is possible to present, to some extent, something new and original to the West. However, we must make a distinction between the revitalisation of technique itself and its expression in terms of art. There is a translation in terms of art if the public becomes aware of how with these means it is possible to express new kinds of relationships. And we can verify that this is indeed occurring. To quote just one example: one of the new techniques consists in the representation of a past human action through flash-back, with a journey back in time. This could amount to only a technical resolution. However, in using this technique, Kovács has managed to demonstrate in The Cold Days how people of the most common mediocrity – who, in Hungarian literature, are portrayed as playing only a secondary role: you can see some of this in Mikszáth’s novels – can become transformed into criminal fascists.1 This transformation, or mutation, is not presented theoretically or analytically, but is represented by a projection into the past by means of a certain kind of cinematography. Kovacs thus attained two results here: on the one hand, he gave a new meaning to a historical period, and, on the other, he has realised that meaning in an individual and expressive way, through the deployment of artistic technique. As I understand it, I giorni freddi has been a great success abroad, and it is understandable that it has been received with favour by foreign experts.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

246

The film writings, 1913–71

Y.B.: But beyond talking about content and form, is it a problem that this [your] approach does not deal with the issue of the direct relations [between these film-makers]? While it is clear that Janscó and Kovács work with methods that are clearly antithetical, is it not perhaps possible to discover common traits in their approach? Do you see something in common between the two, in this respect? What problems do they confront, and with what objective? G.L.: Of course they have certain things in common, and, in this sense, the cinema, in Hungary – or, at least, within Hungarian culture – plays today an avant-garde role. We, in fact – and in this context our history of literature and our critics are at fault – are always placed in the position of having to accept any external modernism, while, in reality we also continue to proceed on the basis of the mistaken politics of the old cultural superiority. I am referring here to the fact – for example, taking the history of literature – that in reality we cultivate the justification of the past on the lines of an Elemér Császár.2 What is required, in order to overcome all this, is a specific dialectic. Marxism, in fact, does not merely consist of the clarification of certain causes, and in the explanation of the relationships between things. I think that our historians have reason to argue that, prior to 1867, there were no serious revolutionary movements in Hungary, and that Deák3 was really bound to sign the agreement. This is the truth. But it is one thing to support, and document it, this truth, and another to glorify it. Because it is equally true that the process of the liquidation of feudalism, weak and superficial in 1848, also remained external to the programmes of ’67 [1867]. The rise of capitalism had not touched provincial and agrarian feudalism. Now, all the literature of this period has propagandised [this as] an evolutionary process, and, in part, this also continues today. I refer above all to Jókai4 who has addressed this problem in terms which can even be described as apologetic. The film of Janscó, The Round Up (1965), has, however, finally broken with this conception. The Count Ráday5 represents, for Jókai, an enlightened man of great stature, who, amongst other things, comes to the realisation – great idea – of the need to make a distinction between the freedom fighter and he who would appropriate private property. Janscó broke with all of this, and [in his film] the problem of ‘Rádaism’ appears more as a medieval bestiality. This is, for me, a great step forward. At this point we also touch upon an important question of theoretical categorisation. When Lenin spoke of political positioning – not in his newspaper article [the influential ‘Party Organisation and Party Literature’ (1905)], which also has nothing to do with literature, but in a youthful piece of writing – he said that Marxism was characterised by two facts. On the one hand, it is able to conceive of society more objectively than is the case with bourgeois science; and, on the other, and at the same

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

247

time, it is also able to take up a position within this more objective conception. And it is my opinion that The Round Up also accomplishes this. There exists in this film a position – very clearly declared – concerning the necessity to abhor in our history everything that deserves to be abhorred. Hungary will never be a culturally developed country if those who are called upon to guide us ideologically or politically do not engage with the contradictions of the history of our country, and do not renounce and abhor that which is abhorrent and repugnant in that history. However, we have noticed a certain amount of aversion to and protest concerning this principle. And this protest is even directed, to a certain extent, against Cold Days. There is, in fact, an erroneous view of the situation, and a view which is, after all, not only limited to a few bureaucrats, but also extends to writers who are both sincere and intelligent, according to whom Hungary found itself taken into custody by fascism, just as Pilate was in the Creed … and this is not true … The development of the events that led the country to fascism began in 1867, and we never deviated from what was then considered to be the road to development ‘alla Prussiana’. The revolution of 1918–19 was too short to lead to decisive changes. Hungary, which had not fully succeeded in liquidating feudalism, entered into fascism with flags flying. Enthusiasm and aversion And this is what András Kovács presented in his portrait of the everyday life of the average person. Mikszáth has had the great merit – he has been the most critical of the Hungarian writers – to have shown that negative aspect in the development of Hungarian history; always without anger, without indignation, but also always with respect for the truth. Now Janscó and Kovács raise the issue, though focusing on the fact that, for the sake of the development of Hungary, we must abhor what deserves to be abhorred. This is certainly not a popular attitude, neither with some of the bureaucrats, nor with the nationalists. However, from the ideological point of view, and regardless of the opposition of adversaries, this attitude constitutes a big step forward, and I hold that, in the field of the conception of history, Jancsó and Kovács should be considered as representatives of a true and authentic avant-garde. Y.B.: Discussions on this topic have certainly led to manifold developments. However, some critics have argued that these films dispossess the people of certain traditional values, or forms of national sentiment. G.L.: I can also agree with that. Szilárd Ujhelyi (S.U.): I believe that this can also be associated with the issue

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

248

The film writings, 1913–71

of Twenty Hours [Fábri Zoltán, 1965 – based on the 1964 novel of the same title by Ferenc Santa]. Because both film and novel undermine certain myths, and today cause us to think about those things in our relatively recent past which are repugnant; and at the same time also indicate, in that recent past, those determining and effective characteristics which also influence us for the better, we remain enthusiastic about them today. Ultimately this helps to ensure the maintenance of a certain continuity … G.L.: There is no need to fear the solutions offered by continuity, since many today believe in these. If a type [of person] in a fit of madness kills, let us say, wife and children, in so far as this takes place impromptu this event does not present itself as an answer for the continuity of the life of those individuals. It is necessary to remember that continuity, in itself, cannot be interrupted. If I argue that, within a certain process, a turning-point is presented, I refer to a question of content within the sphere of continuity. And the problem always lies here. I must once more ask myself the question: what is the significance of the way in which men consider their own past, and, the past in general? If you will permit me, I will give an example in relation to this with reference to France. Bourgeois-French culture has demonstrated, in the persons of Tocqueville and Taine – that which corresponds to the truth – that the fight against feudalism has, starting from the departure of Louis XI, possessed a certain degree of continuity in the direction of centralisation. From this point of view the French revolution does not represent anything other than an episode. And I repeat that this is to a large extent the case. But in this episode there is a decisive and determining element, the revolutionary fracture: the destruction of the Bastille. Today, well over a century and a half later, the people of Paris, every year, line up on the festival of 14 July, not with the continuity of Tocqueville, but with the discontinuity of the destruction of the Bastille. If French democracy is today, even in this age of De Gaulle, in some respects the most avant-garde among bourgeois nations, that is due to the fact that the capture of the Bastille represents, even for the most simple Parisian saleswomen, a cause for deep enthusiasm. In our history also it should be like this. That is, to be enthusiastic about those things that merit our serious and unconditional enthusiasm. And, at the same time, to eventually confront with anger and the same enthusiasm those men who, we come to believe, are acting in some cases in a direction contrary to progress. In this camp, totally mistaken systems are thought to be valid. Of course, there are also those that are opposed to these errors: Ady, and above all Bartók. The ‘Cantata profana’, for example, arrives finally with the defeat of man in the protest against national barbarism. However, Bartók was not so much outraged by what happened in Afghanistan, as by what was

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

249

done by Horty and Hitler in the 1930s. And it is this which prompted him to compose the ’Cantata Profana’, and emigrate to America. In Ady, Attila József, young Illyés6 and above all in Bartók – or let’s also say in a critic such as György Bálint7 and so forth – we have, indeed – models of how to judge our present and our past. S.U.: Only that these models turn against an abhorrent past and present in the name of a social system which has still yet to come. I have emphasised the problem of Twenty Hours because it deals with a very complex question. Indeed, it deals with the break with a system that has not been established by another society, but that we ourselves have constructed. We are opposed to our errors in order to preserve the outcomes achieved. The present, and the mistakes of the past G.L.: Each revolutionary class inherits the faults and merits of the social system that has preceded it, and, here, it very much depends on how much energy can be released and liberated from the mistakes … Here is the biggest difference between Lenin and Stalin. Lenin expressed himself, in his writings, on the subject of old Russia, in a somewhat rudimentary manner, without conceding anything to traditionalism; but was attacked in response with a flood of sentimental adherence to the tradition of Pushkin and Cernyscevskij … and so on. In the era of Stalin, however, one entered into the use of the practice of deeming General Suvorov, who had fought the French Revolution, a precursor of socialism. And this is what one cannot not accept, in either small or large measure. Do not stop fighting hard for these things, and I am pleased that our excellent directors outpace me on this same position. Because it is clear that if one were to explore the errors appertaining to a remote and forgotten past, the issue would be much less interesting, and above all [merely] theoretical. But to say something with great force: that if the tradition of Ráday – as depicted by Jancsó – had not existed in Hungary in certain measure, it would not have been so easy for Mhály Farkas, [that is another matter].8 Y.B.: Then the historical issues here do not only exclusively point to the past? It is also possible that they can also illuminate current situations? G.L.: It is clear to those interested in the facts of the past that those facts also have a reflection in the present. For example, in Hungary after 1867 there existed a terribly bureaucratic administration, which Mikszath also came to mock. A writer of today should tackle this theme if bureaucratisation continues to exist. In varying forms, to demonstrate a certain degree of development,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

250

The film writings, 1913–71

a people may take decades, even centuries, to manage to shake off the errors of its past. But in my opinion these cannot be shaken off if they are not confronted and criticised. S.U.: I would like to pose a question, absolutely from a layman. Just now you spoke about French history. It is clear that during the period of Jacobin dictatorship – as even Lenin says – terror did not distinguish between necessary and unnecessary acts of violence. Let me put myself in the shoes of an individual of that period who takes stock of these political mistakes. Will he have the courage to denounce the recent past, knowing that, beyond the frontier, the forces of restoration, who could profit from this raising of consciousness, are [at the] ready?! G.L.: I believe that Anatole France, with his novel The Gods Have Thirst, responds well to this question. Like the French people, French literature, has not pulled back from facing this question … But in these films, and in these critiques, there is no mention of the fact that a revolutionary tendency exceeded, for revolutionary reasons, those limits upon which great revolutionaries, such as Marat and Lenin, had their opinions. This is not being dealt with here … In my opinion, Khruschchev was right in regards to few things, but he was right when he argued that the political processes of the 1930s were politically superfluous in that they were directed against an opponent already defeated … No, under the dictatorship of the Hungarian proletariat, terror played an irrelevant role, and this question does not merit speaking about. But for that one who is regards the period of Rákosi, the crux of the matter is that those whom he had eliminated as enemies of socialism and as an opposition, were, in reality, neither an enemy of socialism, nor an opposition. S.U.: The problem is that, in terms of that regime, in various positions and offices – now I am not referring to illegality – in diverse positions and in different posts of operation, that communist generation associated with Rákosy still lives today; raising the issue that, in facing this very problem, one may at the same time, in this comparison, come to condemn one’s own past. G.L.: In this regard, I say that those who took part in these things must come to terms with that reality. I am not saying that we need to call in all these people to justice; but at least public opinion must compel them to confront their actions. Why should we spare them this? Where is it written, in Marx or Lenin, that this is the ethics of socialism? S.U.: Now I take the part of the devil’s advocate. Everything that was said is true, as it is true that, in that period, many things also happened for which people were then sincerely enthusiastic about. I could announce the names here of people whom we loved: people who had to confront these same issues and try to establish their own [sense of ] continuity. To conclude, one should

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

251

not condemn all of the past, and, in fact, there are many things for which one, quite rightly, should be enthusiastic. G.L.: I do not discuss this, and nor is it possible to put things in place in a manner that will satisfy everybody: for example, you cannot fight against contraband without striking at the smugglers. Many assert that many unjust things happened here, but that these now belong to the past, and, therefore, that one should forget about them. Instead, I say do not forget about them. I bear testimony to this with an episode from my life. I was in the second year in secondary school. When the teacher entered, we got to our feet. A small boy went to the chair in front of the professor with a certificate to show him, and, when returning to his place, punched me in the belly with a fist. The professor did not notice this, but when I, in my turn, punched my companion back, he saw this, and proceeded to have a row with me. I then revealed that the boy had hit me first. Only afterwards did I come to feel ashamed of that act. And I can say that if over the rest of my life I have always behaved honestly, this is also due to the fact that then, when I was in second grade in secondary school, I felt ashamed of myself. I think it is a positive step in the life of a man to be often ashamed of himself. With all probability, others have also had similar experiences. This idea has been taken up in productive ways in our literature: for example, in the great pedagogical novels of Makarenko. Makarenko treated in an exemplary way the socialist educational system, when, after mortification and catharsis, it began to offer liberation to the mortified: now forget! But when must we forget? When catharsis has already occurred. In these matters, this is the only thing we can ‘forget’ if we really want socialism, because, without educational work of this type, one lives in a pseudo-socialism. There are circumstances in which you cannot talk about positive facts, but where it is necessary only to talk about negative things. In the house of Count Ráday, I am not interested in whether he had possibly also positive sides. This touches upon an age-old question, which not only affects us. When I was young a sensational thing occurred: a famous actress begged Ibsen to change the finalé of Nora in such a way that she, having confessed to her husband what she had done, would remain with him. And Ibsen pleased her by writing a new finalé, to demonstrate what absurdity had come to be commonly present in this kind of drama. The problem of rhythm G.L.: Nora is no longer Nora if she does not go away … Also, it cannot but harm our past to put aside controversies, because, in this case – and this I

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

252

The film writings, 1913–71

have also verified with very competent intellectuals – [it would amount] to returning to the question of revolutionary terror in a superficial, badly formulated manner. If, in any case, revolutionary terror comes to be identified with illegality then we have reached totally wrong conclusions … If we have the courage to speak openly of evil, we may be given many more occasions later to come upon what is good, and be able to speak of that. Y.B.: Let me go back to the phase of the interview in which you talked about revolutionary violence. The accusation of having ‘unmasked’ revolutionary terror, and of having placed revolutionary violence and counter-revolutionary violence on the same level of validity, has been directed at Stellanti Soldati [Miklós Jancsó, 1967]. G.L.:There has indeed been revolutionary terror. And if we want to remain Marxists we must acknowledge this; which, however, does not justify saying that, in this country one can be shot in the head undeservedly. We are not dealing with that. I admit that I find the position of openness of Jancsó justifiable from this point of view, in that, with numerous examples, he demonstrates how contradictory revolutionary and counter-revolutionary can be from an ethical point of view. This is not about setting black against white, humane revolutionary against counter-revolutionary assassins, but about showing the psychology of those who fought for the good cause, compared to that of those who fought for the wrong cause. In this I am in complete accord with Janscó, and here a new artistic question arises, which, in truth, I noticed less, but which has been advanced by intelligent and observant spectators. Cinema today – and this is a positive thing – reproduces the various transformations [of life] at a highly elevated speed. In films from the West this occurs to excess; detective films, for example, are based upon events which are very simplistic from a human point of view. I ask myself if the themes addressed by Jancsó might not have required a slower tempo. It is not true that a very accelerated rhythm constitutes an artistic achievement per se. One has true art when maximum clarity is obtained through exploiting the appropriate tempo. And here I have some doubts. In fact in his last two films, Jancsó pushed this substantially correct tendency to the extreme, but did not succeed in achieving greater artistic outcomes; better perhaps to slow down the tempo on more complicated passages and dramatic events? I have raised this objection as a layman, with regard to matters which, in general, I am entirely in agreement with. Y.B.: It is a question to which I can only respond with another question. If we admit that these works are avant-gardist, and travel along a substantially new road, is it perhaps not also true that, from a formal point of view, this requires avant-garde procedures? Possibly, in relation to what we are used to today,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

253

and in terms of today’s perceptive capacities, perhaps the rhythm is a little too rapid, the solutions a little too unusual, but later, all this may be justified. G.L.: It is possible. And I don’t dare to speak too much about this, but merely limit myself to the expression of a doubt. My experience indicates to me that, in general, even in the most revolutionary transformations, it is not the technique that should determine what should express the content, but it is rather the content that should regulate the application of technique. I leave open the question of whether it’s just a matter of the perception of the presentday filmgoer, or a problem of tempo in general which we encounter rather frequently. To offer an example, I will allude to a thoroughly strange episode: one day I happened to be listening to a concert, during which there was a performance of a Beethoven symphony which I particularly like. On that occasion it didn’t please me; on the contrary it irritated me. So I turned to a musician friend to find out what had happened. He replied that the conductor had taken it too fast, and this was the cause of the piece’s monotony … I repeat that my observation about Jancsó was only indicative of a possibility; it would be interesting to me if the discussion on this matter were to be taken up by cinema experts. Y.B.: In reality this discussion seeks to be able to arrive at and establish the necessary and maximum quantity of information that the filmgoer can succeed in acquiring in a given period of time. G.L.: This is a common problem that is posed by every form of artistic expression, and is a determining factor, in different ways, in different cases. In this sector, cinema follows a very precise rule which I am perfectly well acquainted with. And in order to follow the film successfully we must learn its language. The question that must be put here, however, is this: how and when is this actually achieved? Really I don’t want to mount a critique of Jancsó; I have merely posed a problem which isn’t actually the fruit of my own personal observation, but rather one that stems from the suggestions of a number of honest and well-disposed persons. S.U.: Yes, in fact, from all of this arises the discussion on content; indeed many people haven’t known how to grasp the significance of what Jancsó was intending to say. They haven’t understood the fact that ‘if two do the same thing, it isn’t the same thing’ (‘si duo faciunt idem, idem non est’) [In this Latin proverb the ‘two’ referred to by Ujhelyi might be revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries.] G.L.: They haven’t taken account of the socialist action of socialist elements. Maybe in this case a deceleration of rhythm, however minimal, say of half a second, would have been able to clarify the events. One needs to pay careful attention; these things sometimes depend on small artistic nuances of meaning.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

254

The film writings, 1913–71

Y.B.: Turning to The Cold Days and Silence and Cries it seems to me on the whole that the two films also express critical judgements on the people themselves. For a long time, in fact, the romantic opinion existed that the ruling class was dissolute and on the wrong path, while the people preserved intact their sense of honesty. G.L.: This opinion is unacceptable, because if the people had confronted the ruling classes with incorruptible honesty they would not have been able to maintain their supremacy. This is why we say that the revolutionary movements of ’18–’19 had so shaken up the peasant class that, as a consequence, the most disparate things occurred in the rural areas, to such an extent that, later, Szálasi found many followers in this social group. And this is a reality in our development which cannot be erased from history. Jancsó is absolutely right when he represents these events. A situation so romantic – and I’m only citing the case of Hungary here – in which, in whatever phase of the revolution or the counter-revolution, it can be clearly seen who were the revolutionaries and who were the counter-revolutionaries, can only rarely be verified. The great difficulty with all Hungarian history consists precisely in the fact that the peasants, who ideologically speaking were betrayed by all parties, even by the old social-democratic party, did not find themselves in a genuinely revolutionary position. And to this it is necessary to add that we have committed a grave error in the dictatorship of the proletariat by procrastinating over the re-distribution of lands and property, because this explains why there were no genuine prospects of revolution for the masses. I do believe that Jancsó represented with absolute fidelity the life of the countryside. I think that, on this point, it brings us to the primary question, which is this: today we are very much inclined toward romantic idealisation, which, however, is utterly useless when confronting our past; in this approach, in fact, the entire history of Hungary becomes incomprehensible. Cinema Nuovo, vol. 17, no. 196 (November–December 1968), pp. 408–19. Notes 1 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Kalman Mikszáth, critical-realist Hungarian novelist, who lived from the turn of the last century to the beginning of ours. 2 �������������������������������������������������������� Literary critic of the 1920s with very restricted views. 3 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Ferenk Deák, statesman, chief advocate of reconciliation between the leaders of Austria and Hungary, which occurred in 1867. 4 ������������������������������������������������������������������� Mór Jokái, the greatest novelist of Hungarian national romanticism. 5 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Gedeon Ráday acquired a notorious reputation as the real commissioner of Szegod region between 1868 and 1871, who fiercely persecuted former volunteers who had

‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’

255

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

fought during the war of liberation of ’48, the so-called ‘no-hope’ [volunteers]. 6 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Endre Ady, Attila József, Gyula Illyés: eminent figures of modern Hungarian poetry. 7 ����������������������������������������������������������� György Bálint, publicist, and a victim of Nazi persecution. 8 ��������������������������������������������������������������� One of the reasons for the illegal trials in the era of Rákosi.

14

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Expression of Thought in Film’1

Yvette Biró: I would like to know from Lukács what he thinks about Diecimila soli’ [a film by Ferenc Kósa, 1967, Hungary; original title: Tizezer Nap, English title: The Ten Thousand Suns], which deals with the history of the last thirty years in a very singular language, and in a poetic key, which I find somewhat romantic. Lukács: Yes, in a poetic style, but often with confused sentimentality. I focused on the films of Jancsó and Kovács because they are testament to a commitment that is straightforwardly socialistic inasmuch as these films represent reality as it is in fact, while, at the same time, they work from very clear choices, even from an emotional point of view. After all, this remains their principal characteristic. Of course, I may be mistaken, because I am not familiar with all of Hungarian film production, but it seems to me that, even given their respective differences, these directors have something in common that distinguishes them from all the others. Speaking of that, I would also like to respond to a rather important objection. I don’t believe that a work of art, and in particular a film, has necessarily to provide answers to the questions that it raises. I continue to find valid the position of two amongst the greatest artists of my youth, Ibsen and Chekhov, who argued that the task of the writer is to pose questions: the answers will be given by history or social development. Ibsen did not have to say whether or not Nora succeeded in redeeming herself. He raised questions concerning negative aspects of married life and marriage, and now, in our society, tens of thousands of women have followed the example – in one way, or another – of that which Nora did after having left. But that was not Ibsen’s task, and would not be today, in a film. If this, as a work of art, can succeed in making people seriously reflect on a situation of the past or present, and compare it with their own, it has achieved its purpose. It is certainly not the case, for example, that films should be made which show what innovations must be introduced into the textile industry in order to achieve new levels of mechanisation: that is the task of the Ministry.

‘Expression of Thought in Film’

257

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Film, however, has the task of representing the positive and negative aspects of society and, since in this area it is capable of assuming an essential importance, must capture the attention and reflection of the man of the street, who often skims over the facts, reacting solely on a sentimental level, without reflection. If, at the cinema, even only one person out of ten succeeds in identifying the right way, the film has achieved its objective. It is not possible to express, musically, an intellectual problem as such. In cinema the situation is not so extreme, but we have still not yet arrived at the point where we can find the means to portray fully the character of thought. One has not yet reached the point where one can understand in a thorough way where one can get to in this respect, and this is also connected to the fact that, in film, words are, on the one hand, an expression of meaning, and, on the other, a tone, which serves to create or mediate an atmosphere, since both of these functions are performed by words. The film cannot arrive at the results of drama. by György Lukács [It is a stylistic feature of Cinema Nuova to break up the flow of an article by positioning a key quote from elsewhere in the article near the beginning of the article. In this process of highlighting, the language in the repeated quote is also often changed a little.]

Y.B.: We are fully in accord with this, but what many people wonder about is whether the public is able to keep step with the new demands of today’s films. If the majority of spectators do not possess sufficient maturity, what right have directors to compel them to have to confront this high level? Lukács: If the people were as backward as they – in this case the bureaucrats – would have us believe, it would not have been possible to achieve a socialist revolution. If, on the other hand, things had advanced so well, as the bureaucrats have argued on various occasions, the revolution would not have been necessary. Since neither one nor the other of these are true, and the revolution is a fact, it is necessary that cinema and the other arts work in the interests of revolution and intellectual development. Y.B.: In a previous interview, and also in your most important work on aesthetics, you have expressed some reservations concerning the intellectual possibilities of film. Has the vision contained in recent works, including La Guerra è finita [The War Is Over (1966)], by Alain Resnais and Jorge Semprun, modified your judgement? Do the techniques used by the most recent cinema demonstrate a ‘new’ capacity to extend the boundaries? In the films referred to, have you found solutions that have some elements worthy of note in terms of the area of intellectuality? Lukács: I believe that the entire question should be addressed from the point of view of aesthetics and cinematic dramaturgy, in order to avoid having to

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

258

The film writings, 1913–71

confront issues not yet analysed. It is possible to examine intellectual problems in relation to questions of form, and in relation to questions of content. It is beyond discussion that literature, and above all drama, are, from the point of view of form, more suited to express [intellectual problems]; however, intellectual problems are present everywhere in some way. And this is what, in my aesthetics [The Specificity of the Aesthetic], I have referred to as ‘indefinite objectivity’. I am convinced, for example, that an intellectual problem cannot be expressed through a painting. However, if you examine the portraits of Rembrandt, not only are we able to establish the intellectual physiognomy of the individual portrayed, but also his intellectual problems. However, this is not the same as affirming that painting is able to express intellectual problems intellectually … There are, finally, enormous differences between the drama and the epic, between the lyrical opera (l’opera lirica) and the film. The problem also arises even for opera and music. It is indisputable, for example, that from Bach and Händel, through to Beethoven and up to Bartók, great music refers to a whole series of ideological problems. Nevertheless, and regardless of that, it is not possible to express musically an intellectual problem as such. In the field of cinema the situation is not so extreme, but we have still not managed to find the means of truly grasping this intellectual physiognomy. One has not yet reached the point where one can understand in a thorough way where it is possible to arrive at in this area, and this is also related to the fact that, in film, the word is, on the one hand, an expression of meaning, and, on the other, a sound which creates or mediates an atmosphere; and the word performs both of these functions. I believe that film cannot reach the same point as drama. For example, it is not possible to transfer onto the screen the scene that begins with Iago provoking Othello and which continues when the latter remains alone, with the marvelous contemplative monologue commencing: ‘and now, goodbye weapons’, etc. It would be a hollow thing, even when recited by the best of actors. On the other hand, there are dramatic beats through which tense situations are created, and this is a road that film can also take. I maintain that, from the point of view of content, intellectual problems are of course indispensable in film; but there is also a need to identify suitable means to adapt and express these. And it is my opinion that we have not yet entirely discovered these. What I say now may appear somewhat heretical, but when I saw the films by Olivier, I had, with the exception of Henry V (Olivier, 1945), the distinct impression that, in them, Shakespeare’s text was something of an accessory: for what purpose – I wondered – does Shakespeare speak so much here, when there is no need? For the Hamlet film I had

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Expression of Thought in Film’

259

this impression, even though, from the point of view of the structure of the drama, the dialogue in Hamlet is perfect. It is interesting to recall, on the other hand, that Henry V, where the whole of the drama is transposed into landscape-settings, and so forth, created a deep impression in me from a cinematographic point of view. This, of course, is only one element of comparison, an aspect of the problem that interests us, and, speaking of which, one which neither Kovács nor Janscó has found a complete solution to. They, in their field, should continue to experiment in order to identify the dramatic character, and the dynamics of the word, match these to the face and body of a man who is active, and give life to situations in which precisely those words are needed, and not others. I do not think that it is possible to transpose such contemplative intellectuality to the screen. Y.B.: In many respects, regarding the medium of words, this is probably so, but in the method employed by Kovács in his I giorni freddi [Cold Days/ Hideg napok, 1966], which consists in putting various episodes side by side, comparing them, and looking for parallels between them, do we not have an intellectual tension created through the expression of an idea which I would say was well-defined, explicit? Lukács: It is possible, if all of this is transposed … And in I giorni freddi it is good that, in the prison, the dialogue that takes place and the reality of the past develop along parallel tracks, and that the situation corresponds to the dialogue: as, for example, in the scene where the characters stand in the middle of the ice, and throw men into the water. Without this scene, the dialogue in the prison would be empty, useless. Y.B.: From this it appears clear that the dialogue is not an end in itself but part of the entire composition, and that a very important part is played by the montage, the composition arranges the pieces usefully, and there is a science in their systematisation. Lukács: Of this I do not discuss, I only say that the cinema must find the way – and Kovács managed this better in I giorni freddi than in Muri [Walls] – how to utilise its own specific means. This is a huge undertaking, and I do not think that cinema has solved this problem, which must have solutions. However, I am not in a position to speak about this. Y.B.: Nevertheless, I can refer to the example that was mentioned earlier, the film of Resnais and Semprun. The solutions adopted by these directors are very exciting, above all in their use of temporal elements … Lukács: It is a very interesting film. Y.B.: In many respects the attempt to move away from a precise chronology is a new element of the language of film, even though, beginning with Proust,

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

260

The film writings, 1913–71

there are literary precedents to this. In film that choice constitutes a useful and original expressive experience. Lukács: It is an originality which is different in respect to that which is associated with literature. Here, there is someone who recalls times past (I am aware that I find myself up against Goethe here – I will face him – ), who recalls his own life. And in fact, from a physiological point of view, I have, before Goethe and his memories, come to this understanding as a commemoration. Film is able to render this memory as a present reality, and from this something entirely new is derived, whose dramaturgic consequences we have not yet adequately understood, and have not yet fully exploited. Y.B.: In the films we are talking about, time has yet another dimension. It is not only simply the past and recollection which are important, but rather a certain dimension of perspective on time, fantasy, imagination, and the ‘future tense’ of the dream. For example, in La guerra è finita, the sequences in which the protagonist tries to imagine what the girl is like who considered him bashful on the telephone. Lukács: This is very possible, even in this field the film has an advantage with respect to literature. Indeed such pre-imagination – what a person thinks first about how to decide in a critical situation – also has great importance in life. If then an idea of that kind takes literal form in film, the process of imagination may then be able to stimulate a change of mind in the man who finds himself at the point of making a choice, negative or mistaken, and indicate to him that which is negative or mistaken, and present, in what he might do. In developing this aspect I see great possibilities, among other things, for the authentically cinematic role of words. But, as has been made apparent to me, we are still very far from realising this objective. At this stage still too much weight is given to the technical possibilities of cinema, and questions of content are not raised: nor must we forget that in every art the direct significance of things comes from the atmosphere. In real life I know few things so dramatic as the scene from Macbeth in which, after the assassination, he hears the knocking at the door of the castle. The fact of the knocking on the door in itself is nothing, and only related to the technical aspect of things. The essence here is the relationship between the two elements. The task of cinematic dramaturgy is to discover the problems related to these elements. I am convinced that we can still understand many interesting things if we examine these elements from the point of view of content, that is, not the knock in general, but the knock of Macbeth. Y.B.: This example is perfect, because in fact it deals with a succession of elements, namely with a problem of composition of film, and, in particular, with that which must precede and that which must follow. This is the basic con-

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Expression of Thought in Film’

261

cept in the structure of the film. On the other hand, we must also think about what, with great originality, Eisenstein has said: in every single moment there is also present a vertical montage, when it is not only the things which succeed each other, the one after the other, which are at stake, but also diverse things acting simultaneously and which, together, have a degree of signification which is very complex. Vertical montage plays a very moving role in Silenzio e il grido [Silence and Cries, Miklós Jancsó, 1968], where the director succeeded in creating a very taut atmosphere. Lukács: This film I liked a lot and one could speak of it at length, but I do not want to add anything else, except to say that we can still expect a lot from Janscó and Kovács. It is necessary that friends of cinema support them and understand that a commitment to elucidate the worst sides of the past and the present is a positive thing and a contribution to the development of socialism. I want you to understand that my criticism, though perhaps somewhat harsh, is a socialist criticism. I do not speak from the point of view of so-called bourgeois humanism. I am always rebuked for sincerity, but without this, true art cannot be born. And I am not at all sure, for example, that we must always and in whatever way call upon positive aspects. Since youth I became filled with enthusiasm because Endre Ady had called István Tisza ‘Kan Batbony Erzsébet’, and did not speak ever about the good qualities of Tisza, who was an intelligent and honest man. And yet, Ady had reason to call him so. Without that we cannot go forward: as long as we cannot open a breach in the wall of the old nationalism, certain things will continue in some way to survive. Y.B.: Therefore it is not accidental that cinema achieves results when stepping forward onto the path of truth. Lukács: The fact is that the discussion on film is possible only from a communist point of view. The strength of true Marxism-Leninism lies in the truth, and we will not accept that we have to renounce that idea, and all that is best in our resources, for tactical reasons. It is very important that there are men like Janscó and Kovács who, with the language of a new art, are trying to assume a serious attitude towards our past and our present. Cinema Nuovo, vol. 18, no. 197 ( January–February 1969), pp. 8–13 Notes 1

The Italian phrase ‘Espressione del pensiero nell’ opera cinematografica’ does not translate well into English in a literal way. However, it is clear that Lukács is referring to the ‘works of the cinema/cinematographic works’ here.

262

The film writings, 1913–71

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

In other words, to ‘films’. Hence the English title chosen here is ‘Expression of Thought in Film’, even though that moves away substantially from the Italian original.

15

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Revolution and Psychology of Everyday Life’

This is one of the last interviews granted by György Lukács before his death. It was broadcast on television on 5 March 1971. The questions were posed by director András Kovács, director of, amongst others, the film I muri [The Walls]. The Hungarian text of the interview originally appeared in the magazine Filmkultüra, no. 1, 1971 (Budapest). A.K.: In 1919, during the Hungarian Republic of Councils, you participated in the Government, and, as an administrator working for the people, you were the first person in history to nationalise the cinema. What memories do you have of those events? G.L.: I have few memories. We cannot forget that the history of the dictatorship of the proletariat has generally been written in a Stalinist manner. Under this appearance it demands a kind of sovereign power, very intelligent, and up to the task of putting everything in place. In reality, however, I was absolutely no such a sovereign. During the dictatorship of the proletariat of 1919 it was – in the ambit pertaining to the commissioner of the people’s office – my only merit to call in – for assistance – the directors of all the progressive currents in the various fields of music teaching. If you ask me now, after fifty years, who nationalised the cinema I cannot give you a precise reply. Personally, I was very much concerned with issues – public education, the university, literature, art – but, I confess, I knew very little of what had happened in film. Of course, one cannot forget that in 1919 the impact of cinema on cultural and artistic life was far less than it is today. A.K.: The nationalisation, after all, could have created the possibility for greater development … G.L.: Of course. If the film had had the same success that we had, for example, with music, we would have achieved a very good result. We must not forget however that the dictatorship of the proletariat only lasted one hundred and thirty-three days.

264

The film writings, 1913–71

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

A.K.: In that period many newsreels were produced. G.L.: Yes. The revolution is something very specific for those who cannot get close to the psychology of everyday life. The revolutionary is that sort of person in whom patience is joined to impatience. Impatience on its own can create a kind of ‘happening’; and after a series of ‘happenings’ it can occur that the former revolutionary, having remained a disappointed, cynical man, is himself integral. The fact that one becomes a revolutionary – as Balqui did in France, as Bebel did in Germany, and as great theorists and teachers such as Marx, Engels and Lenin did – depends on one’s whole life. by György Lukács [It is a stylistic feature of Cinema Nuova to break up the flow of an article by positioning a key quote from elsewhere in the article near the beginning of the article. In this process of highlighting, the language in the repeated quote is also often changed a little.]

A.K.: It is interesting to note the extent to which the counter-revolution had such apprehension of those newsreels that they were concealed with much thoroughness. They were not even found in 1945. Only as late as 1954, and after thirty-five years, did they come to light. At the same time, some negatives of other documentary films which had never been developed into films were also found. I am not sure if you know them. G.L.: Unfortunately I do not know about this. By around 1954 I had more or less withdrawn [from public life]. I can tell you that I am hearing about them for the first time. A.K.: In one of those newsreels we also see you, speaking at a political meeting. Do you know it? G.L.: I do not know these frames, though it is certainly possible that I was filmed; in fact, during that period, I held many meetings. A.K.: believe that after fifty years I have to let you see this newsreel. Another question: in your studies of aesthetics, the film has, on the whole, had a secondary place. G.L.: That is quite so. My aesthetics is based above all on literature; I then added, still in my youth, the figurative arts, and then later, mainly through the influence of Bartok, also music. I have only dealt with film incidentally, as attested by my short article written in 1912 [‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, first published in 1911, and republished in 1913 – not 1912]. A.K.: Where did it appear? G.L.: At the time it was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and now in the collection Writings on the Sociology of Literature.

‘Revolution and Psychology of Everyday Life’

265

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

A.K.: Did you have other encounters with the cinema? G.L.:Around 1910 I tried, together with Ernst Bloch of Heidelberg, to found a society that could have the ability to realise the latent artistic possibilities of the cinema. That initiative was born in conjunction … it seems extremely interesting to underline how Lukács deals here – and even in a television interview – with complex cultural, artistic and political problems, not only those which relate to the cinema (which have been included in a section of his last Aesthetics), with the usual historical lucidity and moral-Marxian orientation … [This note is a comment by the editors. It is a feature of Cinema Nuovo that editorial comments are sometimes inserted at various points along the course of an interview, in addition to the questions asked by the interviewers.]

… with a short-term revival of the film. Often I frequented the cinema of the profane, and I must add that encountering Chaplin was my greatest experience. I do not know how much cineastes acknowledge Chaplin nowadays. But beyond the narrow scope of cinematographic criticism, it is my opinion that Chaplin is one of the major figures in the artistic struggle against the alienation of the imperialist epoch. Certain of his sequences are a profound exposure of dehumanisation and alienation; an intense, but, at the same time, powerless protest that has no equivalence in either literature or art. Of course, at that time I was also in touch with cineastes. For example in Berlin and Moscow with Béla Balázs. Later, after my return home, I had an exchange of letters with Aristarco, who also came to visit me personally in Budapest. A.K.: After your occasional relationship with the cinema, it seems to me that you have devoted more time in recent years. G.L.: I would like to allude here to one of the phenomena of cultural development. In the case of large countries, it is understood that major transformations coincide. Consider, for example, that Goethe and Beethoven were contemporaries, and we can find analogous coincidences in the French, English, Italian and Russian evolution. So, Mussorgsky was a contemporary of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and so on. The development of a small country cannot have such a large breath [literally ‘vasto respiro’], and, in the Hungarian evolution we can find periods with great personalities and others in which a certain art has had the function of guiding. And here I would like to refer to the new poetry of Ady, published in 1906. Not much later music, with Bartok, has played an important part in Hungarian culture. Analysing the epoch of Horthy, I do not know of a poet whose work has had an impact which can be compared with that of the Cantata profana of Bartok. Now I have the impression – and I want to stress that it is only my impression, in order that it should not be given too much weight – that in this very complicated process in which we want to elaborate a new socialist culture, liberating it from the

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

266

The film writings, 1913–71

traditions of Stalinism, the cinema has a role to play as a crucial part of the avant-garde. That is to say, the cinema raises many issues of vital importance, which specialists in other fields shy away from. A.K.: You have always shown an extraordinary sensitivity towards new means of expression. From this point of view, how do you judge the new Hungarian cinema? G.L.: For me this issue at stake here pertains not only to the cinema, but is much broader. Therefore, I would like to respond to your question by employing terminology that is appropriate to aesthetics in general: every aesthetic form is always the form of a certain content. In the definite appearance, content and form constitute an inseparable functional unit. There are two possibilities. The first, is to revolutionise form from the point of view of form, in a manner which seeks to find new modes of expression only at the level of form (in Hungarian poetry we have numerous examples). And it is possible to find – second case – new forms of expression when the artist, in terms of content, discovers the new that cannot be expressed in the form used previously. If the artist finds an adequate form, or at least an approximately adequate, then we have the development of authentic, and non-formal art. I believe that in the field of Hungarian cinema, one is on the right track towards such a vision of the issue. And this is very important. In addition, there is a second fact here that any setting-out of a problem, any solution, can succeed perfectly or less so: indeed, considering the actual development of film and of the society, I would say that [the former] is impossible. In this sense it is necessary to consider the significance of the new Hungarian cinema, as an experience of openness that is of value, even though there remain problematic elements associated with the use of form-content. Distress and social transformation A.K.: After speaking of the Hungarian situation, allow me one more question. I would like to know from you, who knows world culture so well, if you see the possibility that the cinema of our country will cross our borders, and have a certain influence also in other directions. G.L.: I believe that is possible. Some problems raised by Hungarian films are valid for all; for example, that of his [András Kovács’] film The Walls is exactly the theme of Janscó in The Red and the White, concerning the political and moral significance of various forms of violence. And this is also a question on which artists and theoreticians around the world have addressed for many years. Semprun touches on the same question in Long Voyage. The ­experiences

‘Revolution and Psychology of Everyday Life’

267

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portrayed by the new Hungarian cinema are valid everywhere where anxieties and social transformation occur. Of course, I am not enough of a specialist to predict eventual success or failure here, but I would like to say only that there are the possibilities that these Hungarian films have a certain part to play in the development of European and world cinema.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor, ‘Commitment’, in Harrison, C. and Wood, P. (eds), Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Antholog y of Changing Ideas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 760–4. Adorno, Theodor, ‘Reconciliation under Duress’, in Jameson, Fredric (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 151–76. Aitken, Ian, ‘Distraction and Redemption: Kracauer, Surrealism and Phenomenology’, Screen, vol. 39, no. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 124–40. Aitken, Ian, European Film Theory and Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001). Aitken, Ian, ‘Pictorialist Naturalism and La Terre’, in Fowler, C. (ed.), Representations of the Rural (New York: Wayne State University Press, 2005), pp. 65–79. Aitken, Ian, Realist Film Theory and Cinema: The Nineteenth-Century Lukácsian and Intuitionist Realist Traditions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). Aitken, Ian, ‘Physical Reality: The Role of the Empirical in the Film Theory of Siegfried Kracauer, André Bazin and Georg Lukács’, Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 1, no. 2 (2007), pp. 105–21. Aitken, Ian, ‘European Film Scholarship’, in Donald, James and Renov, Michael (eds), The Sage Handbook of Film Studies (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2008), pp. 25–53. Aitken, Ian, “‘What is There Really in the World?”: Forms of Theory, Evidence and Truth in Fahrenheit 9/11, a Philosophical and Intuitionist Realist Analysis’, in Buckland, Warren (ed.), Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies (New York and London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 310–30. Arato, Andrew, ‘Lukács’ Path to Marxism, 1910–1923’, Telos, vol. 7 (1971), pp. 128–36. Arato, Andrew, ‘The Neo-Idealist Defence of Subjectivity’, Telos, vol. 21 (Fall 1974), pp. 108–61. Arato, Andrew and Breines, Paul, The Young Lukács and the Origins of Western Marxism (New York: Seabury Press, 1979). Aristarco, Guido, ‘Lukács’ Beträge zu Film und Filmkritik’, in Benseler, Frank (ed.), Festschrift zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Georg Lukács (Neuwied, Berlin: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1965), pp. 588–604. Aristarco, Guido, ‘L’ incarico sociale del cinema e la sua conversione nell’ estetico’, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 16, no. 185, ( January–February 1967), pp. 257–61.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

270

Bibliography

Armes, Roy, Patterns of Realism (London: Tantivy Press, 1971). Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Bacon, Henry, Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Bahr, Ehrhard, Georg Lukács (Berlin: Colloquium, 1970). Bahr, Ehrard, ‘Lukács’ “Gotheanism”: Its Relevance for His Literary Theory’, in Marcus, Judith and Tarr, Zoltán (eds), Georg Lukács: Theory, Culture and Politics (New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction Publishers, 1989), pp. 89–95. Balázs, Béla, Der sichtbare Mensch oder der Kultur des Films (Vienna and Leipzig: Deutsch-Österreichischer Verlag, 1924). Barbaro, Umberto and Lukács, Georg, ‘Diavolo azzurro o diavolo giallo’, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 10, no. 154 (November–December 1961), pp. 500–5. Bayer, József, ‘On Lukács’ Later Political Philosophy’, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), Georg Lukács (1989), pp. 181–8. Bazin, André, What is Cinema?, Volume 1 (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1967). Beardsley, Monroe, C. (ed.), Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985). Bernhardt, Suzanne and Levine, Norman (trans.), Georg Lukács, The Process of Democratization (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991). Bernstein, J.M., The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukács, Marxism and the Dialectics of Form (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Bisztray, George, Marxist Models of Literary Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). Blankenship, Janelle, ‘Futurist Fantasies: Lukács’ Early Essay “Thoughts toward an Aesthetic of the Cinema”’, Polygraph, 13 (2001), pp. 21–36. Bloch, Ernst, ‘Discussing Expressionism’, in Jameson, Fredric (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 16–27. Bondanella, Peter, Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present (Northampton: Roundhouse, 1983). Bosanquat, Bernard (trans.), Hegel: Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (London: Penguin, 1993). Bottomore, Tom, A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). Brecht, Bertolt, ‘Against Georg Lukács’, in Jameson, Fredric (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 68–85. Colletti, Lucio, Marxism and Hegel (London: New Left Books, 1973). Congdon, Lee, The Young Lukács (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983). Craig, David (ed.) Marxists on Literature: An Anthology (Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1975). Crow, Dennis, ‘Form and the Unification of Aesthetics and Ethics in Lukács’ Soul and Form’, New German Critique, vol. 15 (1978), pp. 159–77. Deutscher, Isaac, Marxism in Our Time (Berkeley, CA: Ramparts Press, 1971).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Bibliography

271

Eagleton, Terry, Marxism and Literary Criticism (London: Methuen, 1976). Eagleton, Terry, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). Ehrenstein, David, ‘Leopard Redux’, Film Comment, vol. 19, no. 5 (September–October 1983), pp. 16–18. Engels, Friedrich, ‘Letter to Margaret Harkness’, in Craig (ed.), Marxists on Literature (1975), pp. 269–71. Eörsi, Istvan (ed.), Georg Lukács: Record of a Life, An Autobiography (London; Verso, 1983). Estève, Michel (ed.) Luchino Visconti: l’histoire et l’esthetique. Special edition of Etudes cinématographiques, no. 26–7 (Autumn 1963). Feenberg, Andrew, Lukács, Marx, and the Source of Critical Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Fehér, Ferenc, ‘The Last Phase of Romantic Anti-Capitalism: Lukács’ Response to the War’, New German Critique, Winter (1977), no. 10, pp. 139–54. Finetti, Ugo, ‘Lukács, coscienza di classe e controautocritica’, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 17, no. 191 ( January–February 1968), pp. 30–9. Finetti, Ugo, ‘Lukács: Fedeltà al reale e fedeltà al Marxismo’, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 20, no. 212 ( July–August 1971), pp. 248–56. Furst, Lilian, R. (ed.) Realism (London and New York: Longman, 1992). Gluck, Mary, Georg Lukács and His Generation 1900–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). Goldmann, Lucian, ‘The Early Writings of Georg Lukács’, TriQuarterly, vol. 9 (Spring 1967), pp. 165–81. Goldmann, Lucian, ‘The Aesthetics of the Young Lukács’, New Hungarian Quarterly, vol. XIII, no. 47 (1972), pp. 129–56. Goldmann, Lucian, Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). Greenberg, Clement, ‘Avant Garde and Kitsch’, in Harrison, C., and Wood, P. (eds), Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 529–41. Grumley, John, Agnes Heller: A Moralist in the Vortex of History (London: Pluto Press, 2005). Hampson, Norman, The Enlightenment: An Evaluation of its Assumptions, Attitudes and Values (London: Penguin, 1990). Hanfling, Oswald (ed.), Philosophical Aesthetics: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Harrison, C. and Wood, P. (eds), Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Hay, James, ‘Visconti’s Leopard: Remaking a National-Popular history’, Forum Italicum, 21 (Spring 1987), pp. 36–48. Held, David, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980). Heller, Agnes, ‘Lukács’ Aesthetics’, The New Hungarian Quarterly VII (1966), no. 24, pp. 84–94.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

272

Bibliography

Heller, Agnes, ‘Lukács’ Later Philosophy’, in Heller, Agnes (ed.), Lukács Reappraised (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 177–90. Heller, Agnes (ed.) Lukács Revalued (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). Heller, Agnes, ‘The Philosophy of the Late Lukács’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 6, no. 1 (1980), pp. 147–63. Heller, Agnes, Everyday Life (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984). Heller, Agnes, ‘Von der armut am Geiste: A Dialogue by the Young Lukács’, in Terezakis, Katie (ed.), Engaging Agnes Heller: A Critical Companion (Plymouth, Lexington Books, 2009), pp. 253–61. Hippolyte, Jean, Studies on Marx and Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 1969). Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, ‘The Theory of the Novel and the Concept of Realism in Lukács and Adorno’, in Thompson, Michael, J. (ed.), Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 75–98. Holub, Robert C., Jürgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere (London and New York: Routledge, 1991). Holzman, Michael, Lukács’ Road to God: The Early Criticism and its Pre-Marxist Background (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1985). Houlgate, Stephen, Freedom, Truth and History: An Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1991). Huhn, Tom, ‘Lukács and the Essay Form’, New German Critique, 42 (Fall 1987), pp. 183–92. Jameson, Fredric, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971). Jameson, Fredric, Aesthetics and Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1992). Jay, Martin, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas (Cambridge: Polity and Basil Blackwell, 1984). Joos, Ernest, Lukács’ Last Autocriticism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983). Kadarkay, Arpad, Georg Lukács: Life, Thought and Politics (Cambridge, MA and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991). Kadarkay, Arpad (ed.), The Lukács Reader (Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995). Kaes, Anton, ‘Literary Intellectuals and the Cinema: Charting a Controversy (1909– 1929)’, New German Critique, no. 40 (Winter 1987), pp. 7–33. Királyfalvi, Béla, The Aesthetics of György Lukács (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). Koch, Gertrud, ‘Béla Balázs: The Physiognomy of Things’, New German Critique, no. 40 (1987), pp. 167–77. Kolakowski, Leszec, Main Currents of Marxism, Volume Three: The Breakdown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). Kracauer, Siegfried, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974). Kracauer, Siegfried, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Bibliography

273

Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). Lapsley, Robert and Westlake, Michael, Film Theory: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). Larkin, Maurice, Man and Society in Nineteenth-Century Realism: Determinism and Literature (London: Macmillan, 1977). Larrabee, Harold (ed.), Selections from Bergson (New York: Appleton-Century-Croffts Inc., 1949). Lenin, V.I., Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1972). Leprohon, Peter, The Italian Cinema (London: Secker & Warburg, 1972). Levin, Harry, Refractions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). Levin, Tom, ‘From Dialectical to Normative Specificity: Reading Lukács on Film’, New German Critique, no. 40 (Winter 1987), pp. 35–61. Levine, Norman, ‘Introduction: On the Transcendence of State and Revolution’, in Bernhardt, Susanne and Levine, Norman (trans.), Lukács, Georg, The Process of Democratization (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 3–62. Lichtheim, George, George Lukács (New York: Viking Press, 1970). Liehm, Mira, Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the Present (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1984). Livingstone, Rodney, Georg Lukács: Essays on Realism (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980). Lovell, Terry, Pictures of Reality (London: BFI, 1980). Löwy, Michael, Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (London: New Left Books, 1979). Löwy, Michael, ‘Naphta or Settembrini?: Lukács and Romantic Anti-capitalism’, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), Georg Lukács (1989), pp. 189–206. Lukács, Georg, A History of the Development of Modern Drama/A modern drámafejlödésének története, 2 vols (Budapest: Franklin, 1911). Lukács, Georg, ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’, Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt (10 September 1913). Lukács, Georg and Mészáros, István, ‘Sui problemi estetici del cinematografo’, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 7, no. 135 (September–October, 1958), pp. 128–37. Lukács, Georg, ‘Diavolo azzurro o diavolo giallo’ (author’s translation of title as ‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil’), with Umberto Barbaro, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 10, no. 154 (November–December 1961), pp. 500–5. Lukács, Georg, ‘Critical Realism or Socialist Realism’, in Lukács, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (1963), pp. 93–135. Lukács, Georg, ‘The Ideology of Modernism’, in Lukács, Georg, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (London: Merlin Press, 1963), pp. 17–46. Lukács, Georg, ‘Introduction to a Monograph on Aesthetics’, New Hungarian Quarterly (1964), pp. 57–72. Lukács, Georg, ‘Introduzione’, in Guido Aristarco, Il dissolvimento della ragione: Discorso sul cinema (Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 1965). Reprinted as `Manipolazione

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

274

Bibliography

c­ ulturale e compiti della critica’ (author’s translation of title as ‘Cultural Manipulation and the Role of Critics’), Cinema Nuovo, vol. 14, no. 178 (November–December, 1965), pp. 406–9; and as ‘Vorwort’, in Aristarco, Guido, Marx, das Kino und die Kritik des Films, Spingler, Andreas and Pflug, Maja (trans.) (Munchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1981); and as ‘Preface’ in Aristarco, Marx le cinéma et la critique de film (Paris: Lettres Modernes Minard, 1972), pp. 7–12. Lukács, Georg, ‘Film ideologia e culto della personalità’ (author’s translation of title as ‘Film, Ideology and the Cult of Personality’, Cinema Nuovo, vol. 16, no. 188 ( July– August 1967), pp. 248–9. Lukács, Georg, ‘Interview’, New Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 29 (1968), pp. 74–82. Lukács, Georg, ‘Tecnica, contenuti e problemi di linguaggio’ (author’s translation of title as ‘Technique, Content, and the Problems of Language’), Cinema Nuovo, vol. 17, no. 196 (November–December, 1968), pp. 408–19. Originally published in Filmkultúra, 3 (1968). Lukács, Georg, ‘Espressione del pensiero nell’ opera cinematografica’ (author’s translation of title as ‘Expression of Thought in Film’), Cinema Nuovo, vol. 18, no. 197 ( January–February, 1969), pp. 8–13. Lukács, Georg, Goethe and His Age (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1969). Lukács, Georg, Solzhenitsyn (London: Merlin Press, 1971). Lukács, Georg, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). Lukács, Georg, ‘On the Phenomenology of the Creative Process’, The Philosophical Forum: A Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 3–4 (Spring–Summer 1972), pp. 314–25. Lukács, Georg, ‘Rivoluzione e psicologia della vita quotidiana’ (author’s translation of title as ‘Revolution and the Psychology of Everyday Life’), Cinema Nuovo, vol. 21, no. 217 (May–June, 1972), originally published in Filmkultúra, 1 (1971), pp. 170–3. Lukács, Georg, Soul and Form (London: Merlin Press, 1974). Lukács, Georg, ‘Tolstoy and the Development of Realism’, in Craig, David (ed.), Marxists on Literature (1975), pp. 282–345. Lukács, Georg, The Historical Novel (Harmondsworth: Peregrine Books, 1976). Lukács, Georg, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (London: Merlin Press, 1979). Lukács, Georg, The Specificity of the Aesthetic (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1981). Lukács, Georg, The Ontology of Social Being, Volume One: Hegel (London: Merlin Press, 1982). Lukács, Georg, ‘Interview, New Left Review’, in Lukács, Record of a Life (1983), pp. 171–82. Lukács, Georg, Record of a Life: An Autobiography (London: Verso, 1983). Lukács, Georg, Democratization: Its Present and Future (Budapest: Magvetö, 1988). Lukács, Georg, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (London: Merlin Press, 1990). Lukács, Georg, The Process of Democratization (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Bibliography

275

Lukács, Georg, ‘Realism in the Balance’, in Jameson, Fredric (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 28–59. Lukács, Georg, German Realists in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). Lukács, Georg, ‘The Tragedy of Heinrich von Kleist’, in Lukács, German Realists in the Nineteenth Century (1993), pp. 17–49. Lukács, Georg, ‘Integrated Civilizations’, in Kadarkay (ed.), The Lukács Reader (1995), pp. 179–86. Lukács, Georg, ‘Balzac: The Peasants’, in Lukács, Georg, Studies in European Realism: Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Zola, Gorky (New York: Howard Fertig, 2002), pp. 21–46. Lukács, Georg, Studies in European Realism: Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Zola, Gorky (New York: Howard Fertig, 2002). Lukács, Georg, ‘Art and Objective Truth’, in Lukács, Georg, Writer and Critic and Other Essays (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse Inc., 2005), pp. 25–60. Lukács, Georg, ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’, in Lukács, Writer and Critic and Other Essays (2005), pp. 103–9. Lukács, Georg, ‘Narrate or Describe?’, in Lukács, Writer and Critic and Other Essays (Lincoln: iUniverse inc., 2005), pp. 110–48. Lunn, Eugene, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1982). MacIntyre, Alasdair, Against the Self-Images of the Age (New York: Schocken Books, 1971). Meunier, Jean-Guy, ‘Form, Structure and Concept in the Young Lukács’, in Joós, Ernest (ed.), Georg Lukács and his World: A Reassessment (New York and Paris: Peter Lang Publishing, 1987). Marcus, Judith, Georg Lukács and Thomas Mann: A Study in the Sociology of Literature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987). Marcus, Judith and Tarr, Zoltán (eds) Georg Lukács: Theory, Culture and Politics (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1989). Marcus, Millicent, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). Marcus, Millicent, Filmmaking By the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Márkus, György, ‘Life and the Soul: The Young Lukács and the Problem of Culture’, in Heller, Agnes (ed.), Lukács Revalued (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), pp. 1–26. Marx, Karl, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968). Maslow, Vera, ‘Lukács’ Man-Centred Aesthetics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXVII (1967), pp. 542–52. Mészáros, István, Lukács’ Concept of the Dialectic (London: Merlin Press, 1972). Nochlin, Linda, Realism: Style and Civilization (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). Novak, Zoltan, ‘La teoria del cinema nell’ opera di Lukács’, Parts I-IV, Cinema Nuovo, Part I, vol. 29, no. 266 (August 1980), pp. 29–33; Part II, vol. 29, no. 267 (October

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

276

Bibliography

1980), pp. 31–5; Part III, vol. 29, no. 268 (December 1980), pp. 29–34; Part IV, vol. 30, no. 269 (February 1981), pp. 21–3. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, Luchino Visconti (London: BFI, 2003). Parkinson, G.H.R. (ed.), Georg Lukács: The Man, His Work, and His Ideas (New York: Random House, 1970). Parkinson, G.H.R., ‘Lukács on the Central Category of Aesthetics’, in Parkinson (ed.), Georg Lukács (1970), pp. 109–46. Partridge, Colin, Senso: Visconti’s film and Boito’s Novella: A Case Study in the Relations Between Literature and Film (Ontario: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). Pascal, Roy, ‘Georg Lukács: The Concept of Totality’, in Parkinson (ed.), Georg Lukács: (1970), pp. 147–71. Passmore, John, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966). Passmore, John, Recent Philosophers (London, Duckworth, 1985). Pinkus, Theodor (ed.), Conversations with Lukács (London: Merlin Press, 1974) Radnoti, Sandor, ‘Balázs and Lukács: Two Radical Critics in a “God-forsaken World”’, Telos (1975), pp. 155–64. Rockmore, Tom (ed.), Lukács Today: Essays in Marxist Philosophy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1988). Rubino, Carl, A., ‘A Bomb Manufactured in Pittsburgh: Past, Present and Future in The Leopard’, Forum Italicum, 21 (Spring 1987), pp. 16–25. Schifano, Laurence, Luchino Visconti: The Flames of Passion (London: Collins, 1990). Servadio, Gaia, Luchino Visconti: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). Shafai, Fariborz, The Ontology of Georg Lukács: Studies in Materialist Dialectics (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996). Sim, Stuart, Georg Lukács (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994). Singer, Peter, Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Sorlin, Pierre, The Film in History (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1980). Stern, Laurent, ‘Georg Lukács on Narrating and Describing’, in Marcus, Judith, and Tarr, Zoltán (eds), Georg Lukács (1989), pp. 75–87. Stirling, Monica, A Screen of Time: A Study of Luchino Visconti (New York: Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1979). Tavor, Eva, ‘Art and Alienation: Lukács’ Late Aesthetic’, Orbis Litterarum 37 (1982), pp. 109–21. Taylor, Charles, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Terezakis, Katie (ed.), Engaging Agnes Heller: A Critical Companion (Plymouth, Lexington Books, 2009). Tertulian, Nicolaus, ‘Lukács’ Ontology’, in Rockmore, Tom (ed.), Lukács Today (Boston: D. Reidel, 1988), pp. 243–74. Thompson, Michael, J. (ed.) Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2011). Tökei, Ferenc, ‘Lukács and Hungarian Culture’, in Marcus and Tarr (eds), Georg Lukács (1989), pp. 153–67.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Bibliography

277

Tonetti, Claretta, Luchino Visconti (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1983). Vaughan-James, C., Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1973). Wellek, René, Four Critics: Croce, Valéry, Lukács and Ingarden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984). Williams, Raymond, ‘A Lecture on Realism’, Screen, vol. 18, no. 1 (1977), pp. 61–74. Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Willett, John (ed. and trans.), Brecht on Theatre (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979). Zitta, Victor, Georg Lukács: Marxism, Alienation, Dialectics, Revolution: A Study in Ideology and Utopia (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964).

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Index

Adorno, Theodor 70, 165–7, 222 Ady, Endre 248–9, 261 ‘Aesthetic Culture’ 38 Alexander Nyevsky 223 Aristarco, Guido 148–9, 161–2, 168, 212, 237, 240, 242, 265 Aristotle, 236 Art and Alienation 167 ‘Art and Objective Truth’ 55–6, 174–5 Balázs, Béla 30–1, 190, 206, 213, 226, 232, 265 ‘Balzac and French Realism’ 38 Balzac, Honoré de 48, 51, 54–5, 65–6, 73, 179 ‘Balzac: Lost Illusions’ 68 Barbaro, Umberto 153–8, 160–1, 231, 234–6 Bartók, Béla 144, 248–9, 258, 264–5 Battleship Potemkin 95, 104, 160, 208, 213 Bazin, André 176–7 Beckett, Samuel 73 Beethoven, Ludwig van 235, 253, 265 Benjamin, Walter 187, 190–1, 222 Bergson, Henri 19, 20, 32 Berliner Ensemble 191 Bicycle Thieves 99, 202 Bildungsroman, the 47–8, 59 Bloch, Ernst 30, 165, 167, 265 ‘Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?’ 155 ‘Blum Theses’, the 37–8

Brecht, Bertolt 30, 164–5, 167–8, 174, 191, 220 Bresson, Robert 176 Budapest School, the 168, 172 Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The 193 Cantata Profana, The 248–9, 265 Carnap, Rudolf 159–60 Cernyscevskij 249 Cervantes, Miguel, de 46 Chaplin, Charlie 97–8, 150, 201, 207, 215, 220, 223–4, 240, 265 Checkhov, Anton 205, 227, 256 Chiarini, Luigi 232 Cinema Nuovo 76, 129, 148–50, 152, 155–8, 161–2, 168, 231–4, 242 Cinematografo 232 Citizen Kane 195 City Girl 51 Civil War in France, The 54 Code de la Nature 47 Cold Days, The 135–6, 243, 245, 247, 254, 259 Cold War, the 110 Commediia dell’arte 207 Commune, the 54 Conrad, Joseph 228 Coogan, Jackie 198 critical realism 73 Croce, Benedetto 154–7, 232–3, 236 Czechoslovakia, invasion of 169–71 Czechoslovakian Revolution, the 149

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

280 Dames du bois de Boulogne, The 176 Daumier, Honoré 187 democratic centralism 173 De Gaulle, Charles 248 Descartes, René 75 De Sica, Vittorio 99, 202 Democratization: Its Present and Future/ The Process of Democratization 108, 171–2 Destruction of Reason, The 70, 72, 75, 117, 158–9, 161, 165, 170 Deutscher, Isaac 170 Dickens, Charles, 78 dictatorship of the proletariat, the, 546–7 Diderot, Denis 191 Dilthey, Wilhelm 3, 10 Döblin, Alfred 31 Dolce Vita, La 212 Don Quixote 46 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 9, 39, 59, 265 Education sentimentale, L’ 46 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, The 54 Eisenstein, Sergei 104, 160, 201, 224, 261 End of Saint Petersburg, The 104, 160, 208 Engels, Friedrich 50–5, 83, 167, 169, 264 Essay on Man 46 Essays on Realism 38 Essays on Thomas Mann 38 existentialism 69, 113, 158–9, 174 Existentialism or Marxism? 38 expressionism 165 Fábri, Zoltán 135, 244 Faulkner, William 73 Fehér, Ferenc 168 Fellini, Federico 212 Feuerbach, Ludwig 199 ‘Film’ 187–217 ‘Film, Ideology and the Cult of Personality’ 242–3 Filmkultúra 76, 148, 244, 263 Finetti, Ugo 161–2

Index First Circle, The 96 Fischer, Ernst 167–8 Flaubert, Gustave 47, 49 Forum 69 France, Anatole 250 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30, 264 French Revolution, the 249 Garaudy, Roger 167–8 Garbo, Greta 207 Gentile, Giovanni 154, 156, 232 German Realists in the Nineteenth Century 174 Gods Have Thirst, The 250 Goethe and His Age 38 Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von 47, 174, 197, 203, 206, 265 Gramsci, Antonio 162 Great Dictator, The 215 ‘Greatness and the Decline of Expressionism’, the 165 Griffith, David Wark 190 Hamlet 102, 209 Harkness, Margaret 50 Hartmann, Nicolai 120 Hauptman, Gerhart 203 Hauser, Arnold 168 ‘Healthy or Sick Art?’ 57, 73, 173–4 Heartfield, John 31 Hegel, G.W.F. 3, 10, 37, 66, 79, 86, 113–15, 117, 120, 157–8, 161, 166, 236 ‘Heidelberg Manuscripts on Aesthetics’ 38 Heller, Agnes 120, 168, 171 Hemmingway, Ernest 228 Henry V 102–3, 145, 209, 229, 258 Heraclitus 117 History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics 5–6, 37, 53, 75, 154, 161 ‘History of the Development of Modern Drama’ 9, 32, 34, 38

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Index

281

Historical Novel, The 38, 47–8, 68, 72, 142, 174–5 Hitler, Adolf 249 Hoffmann, E.T.A. 29 Hoffmannsthal, Hugo von 31 Homer 43 Human Comedy, The 49–52 Hume, David 74–5 Hungary, invasion of 71, 75 Hungarian Communist Party 69–70, 109 Hungarian Revolution, the 37, 71, 75, 149, 170 Hungarian Soviet Republic 36 Husserl, Edmund 3, 19–20, 32

Lenin, Vladimir Ilich 55–6, 70, 72, 159–60, 167, 169–70, 174, 231, 236, 243, 246, 249–50, 264 Lenin: A Study of his Thought 75 Leninism 167–9, 171–4 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 193 ‘Letter to Margaret Harkness’ 50, 54 ‘Letter to Minna Kautsky’ 83 Lettres persanes 46 ‘Literature and Democracy’ 38 Literary Gazette 169 Logical positivism 159 Lost illusions, 111 Lovell, Terry 175

Ibsen, Henrik 251, 256 ‘Ideology of Modernism, The’ 73, 175 Illyad, The 43 intuitionist realism 176 Iphigenia 203 Italian Communist Party 148

Macbeth 260 Mach, Ernst 159 Magic Mountain, The 96 Man and His Dog, A 198 Mann, Thomas 73, 96, 198 Marat, Jean Paul 256 Martin du Gard, Roger 197 Mastersingers of Nurenberg, The 195 Marx, Karl 53–4, 63, 113–14, 120, 158, 169, 174, 199, 240, 250, 264 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism 159 Mattise, Henri 155–6, 233, 235 Maupassant, Guy, de 205 Meaning of Contemporary Realism, The 38, 71–5, 153 Mészáros, István 218, 231–2, 234, 150–1, 154, 156–7, 169 ‘Metaphysics of Tragedy, The’ 12–14, 18, 21, 88 Michael Kohlhass 46 modernism 55–7, 60, 69, 72–3, 153, 164–8, 245 Modern Times 97–8 Morelly 47 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis, de 46 Moulin Rouge 209, 229 Musil, Robert 73 Mussolini, Benito 154

Jameson, Fredric 175 Janscó, Miklós 135–6, 143, 147, 244, 246–7, 249, 252, 254, 256, 259, 261, 266 Jaspers, Karl 69 Jena romanticism 7, 34, 46 Jhering, Herbert 204 Joyce, James 62, 73 Kafka, Franz 73–5, 208 Kapital III, Das 53 Kant, Immanuel 3, 10, 74–5, 79 Keaton, Buster 207 Khruschchev, Nikita 38, 71–2, 250 Kierkegaard, Sören 7–8, 98 King in New York, A 223 Kino Debate, the 29–30 Kliest, Heinrich von 46, 173 Kosa, Ferenc 135, 244, 256 Kovács, András 135–6, 143, 243–7, 256, 259, 261, 263 Kracauer, Siegfried 30, 176–7

Index

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

282 Nagy, Imre 37, 71 ‘Narrate or Describe?’ 57–9, 64, 82, 174–5 naturalism 55–7, 60, 69, 73, 81–3, 95, 97, 118, 164, 229 Neccessity of Art, The 167 New Economic Policy 170 New Hungarian Cinema 174 New Left Review 121 neo-positivism 158–9, 160, 232, 234–6 New Objectivity 31, 60, 211 Nielson , Asta 207 Novak, Zoltan 161–2 Novalis 8, 34, 46, 98 Odyssey, The 43 Oedepus Rex 12–13 Olivier, Lawrence 102, 258 Ossessione 148 ‘On Aesthetic Issues of the Cinema’ 150, 152, 156–8, 218 On Besonderheit as an Aesthetic Category 36, 38, 74–5, 151, 153 ‘On the Phenomenology of the Creative Process’ 141, 152–3 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch 91, 96–7, 142 ‘On the Nature and Form of the Essay’ 12, 14 Othello 204, 206 Paris Manuscripts, The 106–7 ‘Party Organization and Party Literature’ 246 Peirce, Charles Sanders 32 phenomenology 10, 19, 31, 141, 172, 174–5 Piscator, Erwin 211 Poe, Edgar Allan 29 Pope, Alexander 46 Polikuschka 202 Prolegomena a un’estetica marxista 153, 155, 231, 235 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics 74

Pudovkin, vladimir 104, 201 Pushkin, Aleksandr 249 realism 118, 164–7, 175, 177 ‘Realism in the Balance’ 165, 175 reason 118 ‘Reconciliation under Duress’ 165 Red and the White, The 147, 244, 266 Reinhardt, Max 204 ‘Remarks on the Theory of Literary History’ 38 Rembrandt, Rijin, van 187, 202, 235, 258 Resnais, Alain 257, 259 ‘Revolution and the Psychology of Everyday Life’ 263–7 Risorgimento, the 148 ‘romantic anti-capitalism’ 3–4, 187 Round up, The 135–7, 142–3, 244, 246 Russian Realism in World Literature 38 Russian Revolution, the 171 Sartre, Jean-Paul 69, 111 Schelling, Friedrich Willhelm 157 Scott, Walter 48, 174 ‘screen theory’ 168 Senso 148–9 Shakespeare, William 258 Silence and Cries 254, 261 Simmel, Georg 3–6, 8, 32 Sinclair, Upton 211 Social History of Art, The 168 socialist realism 72–3 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 75, 95, 111 ‘Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch’ 95–6, 142, 174 Sophoclese 12 Sorrows of Young Werther, The 197 Soul and Form 3, 6, 7–9, 11, 14–18, 21, 23, 32, 34, 38–42, 46, 49, 54, 61, 75–7, 88, 98, 102, 139, 152, 175 Specificity of the Aesthetic, The 17, 24, 60, 74–105, 110, 114, 118, 127–30, 134, 140, 143, 144–7, 150–1, 157–8, 161–2, 171–2, 174–7, 237

Index

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Stalin, Joseph 37–8, 71, 149, 170, 249 Stalinism 70–2, 128, 159, 170, 172–3, 263, 266 Stendhal 47, 49 Studies in European Realism 54 Szabö, István 244 ‘Technique, Content, and Problems of Language’ 244–55 Ten Thousand Suns, The 256 Terra trema, La 148–9 Theory of Film 176 Theory of the Novel, The 3, 8–9, 15–18, 32, 36, 38–51, 56, 58, 60–2, 64, 68, 75–6, 82, 97, 142, 165, 174–5 ‘Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ 3, 6, 11, 16–29, 31–5, 39, 44, 54, 56, 60–1, 75–6, 87, 89–90, 132, 174–5, 177, 231, 264 Töennies, Ferdinand 3 ‘Tolstoy and the Development of Realism’ 54, 68 Tolstoy, Leo 9, 48, 59, 73, 174, 197, 228, 265 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri 229 Toward the Ontology of Social Being 76–7, 96, 105–7, 114–15, 118–22, 127–8, 133, 138–9, 142, 146–7, 150–1, 157–8, 171–2, 176 Twenty Hours, 244, 248–9

283 ‘Tragedy of Heinrich von Kleist, The’ 173–4 Unita’L 153, 155, 231, 234 Vajda, Mihály 168 Verdi, Guiseppe 206 Vico, Giambattista 236 Vienna School 159 Vietnam War, the 169 Visconti, Luchino 148–9 Wagner, Richard 195 Walls, The 266 Walton, William 102 War and Peace 9 War is Over, The 257, 260 Weber, Max 3–4, 6 Welles, Orson 195 Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Apprenticeship 47–8 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 120, 159, 160 ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The’ 187 Young Hegel, The 38, 70, 75 Zhdanov, Alexandrovitch 37, 158, 167, 236 Zola, Emile 55, 164, 174, 211