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Approximately four months ago, as I meandered among the various displays of a unique and intriguing bookstore in Toulouse, famed for its distinctive way of promoting books, my gaze landed in the non-Francophone Fiction section on a front cover: a title, Le Dîner (The Dinner), an author I was unfamiliar with, Herman Koch, and a massive lobster spilling over a plate, occupying the entire lower third of the front cover. Even though the illustration could have quickly repelled me as a person who loathes all kinds of seafood, an irresistible force drew me to the book. I took the time to read the blurb on the back cover before making my way to the cashier. This goes to show that sometimes, we can be inexplicably attracted to that which repulses or horrifies us…
The Philosophy / Literature Debate
Before delving into my discourse in its proper form, I would like to take a step back to invoke the debate that has pitted philosophy against literature, knowing, however, that all art, in this case literature, can always be justified by a philosophy.
First of all, let us go back to Hegel, whose thought and work, emanating from German Idealism, had a major influence on all modern and contemporary philosophical movements. For Hegel, philosophy is an embracing discipline, in the sense that it unites within its sole ambit all other disciplines, all knowledge, into a kind of total system which he refers to as the “phenomenology of spirit.” Following this line of thought, it is therefore understandable why he asserts with strong conviction that philosophy is, in every respect, superior to literature.
However, Schelling, also a representative of German Idealism and initially a close friend of Hegel, found himself compelled to part ways with him, in order to oppose his thought with a view to better preserve his ties with Romanticism: from this perspective, he unhesitatingly acknowledges that literature is, in every respect, superior to philosophy.
Let us finally turn to Heidegger: originally deeply immersed in the phenomenological system of his mentor Husserl, he soon saw his intellectual interests focused on the question of being, or even the meaning of being, which he illustrates in his renowned work, Being and Time. In regards to his philosophical stance and reflections, Heidegger considers that philosophy and literature are equal, both drawing from the same source: the spirit. He adds that they complement each other, as one thinks what the other articulates.
In fact, some literary works are strictly vehicles for philosophies. In this vein, I would consider the entire oeuvre of Michel Tournier, who self-proclaimed as a smuggler of philosophical novels. On the other hand, some philosophical works are mere reflections on literary works. Here, I would think of the philosophy of time conducted by Paul Ricœur on Proust in Recherche du temps perdu (Search of Lost Time).
Literature Speaks…
Le Dîner (The Dinner), a novel by Dutch author Herman Koch, was published in the Netherlands in 2009, in France in 2011, and subsequently in several other countries. It is one of the most translated Dutch novels in the world. The narrative, composed of 46 chapters, is structured eponymously, like the various parts of a dinner, more particularly that of a gourmet restaurant in Amsterdam: aperitif, starter, main course, dessert, digestif, culminating in a final epilogue named “Tip.”
The narrator is a history teacher named Paul, married to Claire with whom he has a fifteen-year-old son, Michel. Paul has a brother, Serge, a politician on the verge of becoming the prime minister of the Netherlands, married to Babette with whom he has two sons, Rick and Beau, the latter having been adopted from Burkina Faso. The two pairs of parents find themselves one evening, at Serge’s request, in a gourmet restaurant where everything exasperates Paul: the affected manners of the maître d’hôtel, his whispering voice, the endless details he provides on the origin of each ingredient, the ridiculously scant quantity of food on the plates, the exorbitant prices displayed on the restaurant’s menu, etc. In any case, Paul is easily irritated by absolutely everything: by his brother who always seeks to be the center of attention, by his students who are most often unbearable and ungrateful, by his superficial and idiotic colleagues, by society as a whole which generates only disappointments and pains… This evening, he is more on edge as, before making his way to the restaurant, he came across a video on his son’s mobile phone showing Beau beating up a homeless man on a subway platform, while the voice of the person filming is none other than that of his own son, Michel. This discovery brings him back to a recent news story, that of a woman who perished in the torched room of an ATM, whose surveillance camera showed two adolescent silhouettes with barely identifiable faces. His gut feeling tells him nothing good about all of this.
As the various stages of the dinner progress, personalities are revealed, animosities too, as well as the stakes of the dinner in question. Soon, Serge declares, in a serious and authoritative tone: “We must talk about our children,” a statement which, in reality, serves as the “main course” of this dinner. Indeed, Serge is well aware of the offenses of their respective sons and he plans to sacrifice his career and his chance of becoming prime minister, to denounce the two adolescents and assume his parental responsibility. Paul, who knows that the authorities are looking for the culprits, who only their parents have managed to identify, has no intention of denouncing the two delinquents. The exchanges become increasingly bitter as the reader finally understands that the narrative is a pretext for a critical, even acerbic reflection on today’s society, its derailments, gratuitous violence, the alienated sense of responsibility, the near absence of clear-sightedness…
And yet, upon taking some distance, the readers who are spontaneously inclined to judge, can only find themselves disconcerted and ultimately ask themselves what they, as parents, would have done in Serge’s or Paul’s place.
Synchronicities
In 2009, while writing his novel, Herman Koch drew inspiration from a real-life incident, which he fictionalized: the murder of a homeless woman in Barcelona, attacked in December 2005 in a bank foyer and then burned alive by two teenagers, sons of wealthy families. Unbeknownst to them, they were filmed by the bank’s security camera; the footage was later broadcast on Spanish television. The assailants were sentenced in 2008 to 17 years in prison. Following this trajectory, it appears that the Dutch novelist tasks fictional literature with the mission of “telling,” especially of articulating the unspeakable: for, parental attachment and parents’ love for their children are severely tested in the story as they struggle between the duty to “tell” (here, the act of “telling” is deftly embedded) what they should not keep on their conscience, or to become accomplices through their silence. Indeed, can they continue to protect their children under such circumstances? And conversely, can they stop protecting them? At what cost?
However, considering what has been happening in France and Switzerland in recent days, how can we not perceive synchronicities between literature and reality? In analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung posits synchronicity as a notion to be understood within the context of the collective unconscious, taking on the character of a coincidence that strikes the individual or individuals who notice it, because it carries a potent meaning. It is potent because it reaches a dimension that goes beyond the subjectivity of the individuals who perceive the coincidence to touch the common sense of norms, values, world representations, and the place that each subject occupies within it.
When recent outbreaks of violence erupted in France, perpetrated by angry young people who assault, vandalize, loot, and set fires, my reading of Herman Koch’s The Dinner returned to me as a synchronicity. However, beyond my own individuality, the narrative in question resonates so powerfully with current events that the ten years separating the publication of the novel from today’s events seem to suddenly dissolve, echoing the new inquiries of physics into the space-time continuum.
In any case, returning to the first part of this article, I would suggest that Herman Koch’s novel also appears to set the groundwork for a necessary, even urgent and unavoidable reflection of our times on the violence of the world’s youth and the absence of a sense of responsibility: doesn’t literature seem to tell us that the world lacks philosophy, both in the etymological sense of the love of wisdom and in the broader sense of the set of questions that human beings should ask about themselves and the world they inhabit, in order to examine the answers and expand their consciousness?
In conclusion, what of Lebanese youth today? Mostly manipulated by political parties, indoctrinated, often incapable of solid reflection, of properly informed, documented reasoning, they appear wholly lacking in any capacity to think about the world, therefore devoid of any philosophical competence, as well as any ability to articulate it in literature. What remains of Lebanese youth in the face of these dangerous gaps, of the inability to expand their consciousness? Denial and delusion.
I sincerely hope I am wrong.