On negative, self-destructive irony.
From my "Ironi och existens." (1983.)
( Translated from the original by the author. )
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Foreword.
This translation is an attempt to put together parts of
the original book - Ironi och existens - without altering the original
text, but through rearrangment of the order of the paragraphs maybe make it
a little easier to grasp the meaning . The true meaning of the work is - naturally
- each and everyone's experience of reading the original.
The book itself contains a lot of observations, and the content is arranged
in numbered sentences ( from 1 to 261.). It could not be said to contain regular
"aphorisms". This book of mine were later categorized in ( 100 ! )
Swedish libraries as (sheer) prose. When it was reviewed in the daily papers
the focus was on the main subject, irony, on the author, me,and on the author´s
misconception in relation to S. Kierkegaard. The author´s potrait was
shown alongside the portraits of S. Kierkegaard and Socrates. One daily paper
(GT) devoted a whole page for a review of the book.
All the same it became recommended by independent authorities
(?) for university philosophy students in Sweden. ( Probably as an horror
example of practical philosophy.) My later publication, Splittringar,
caused the Swedish Radio, SR, to make a small broadcast, where an actor finally
read the concluding paragraph on this site (261, of Ironi och existens
).
I cannot say that I regret that it was published. It is an honest book, however
bad it might be. Not all books are honestly written.
The meaning of it could be said to be : to describe negative irony, and to describe an irony directed towards oneself in a destructive manner, and by describing this kind of irony to enable some people to get rid of this kind, this type of devastating irony. Thus - such is the hope of the author - this "interpretation" could be helpful to some therapists around the world.
It was originally written quite simple and without any connection to contemporary psychology. It was not influenced by any special psychologist but rather held in a philosophical tradition. The sole clearly perceivable psychological influence is the one from S. Kierkegaard.
By it's use of a philosophical - and not a psychological - terminology
this text has at least the possibility to be of importance even a long time
after it's original moment of conception.
The following is - I must warn you - neither easy reading nor for amusement
reading at all.....
It is a description of a seriously distorted mental state. It is even - I believe
- a rather tiresome task to read it through. You could not possibly find it
interesting unless 1.) you are yourself in the same deplorable situation yourself,
and want to get out of it, or : 2.) you are trying to - professionally - recognize
a mental state of this kind and to help a person stricken with a syndrome like
the one described here out of it.
The state is not very common, but it is not very unusual either, I believe.
According to passages in - for instance - the writings of both Anna Freud and
Karen Horney persons like the here described are not likely to be found on the
face of the earth.
I am no therapist, and I certainly do not give advise.
What I once wrote was from personal experience, and when I am reading it again
when 23 years has passed, I find it not convincing as a whole, but much of it
enough thought worthy. I have not ( in the interest of historical truth ) altered
anything in the original text.
I am sincerely hoping that this could be of interest - and perhaps help - to
somebody.
( The numbers within brackets are referring to the paragraphs - not page - from
the original book, Ironi och existens, 1983, Bokförlaget Korpen,
Sweden. )
With this new order it will certainly be a new - and smaller - book ( an
essay ), and I am omitting paragraphs I nowadays dislike. It is certainly not
the original work.
K. Genell 2007.
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( The book starts out - not surprisingly... - with a definition of irony. )
"( 1.) Irony is:
A. When something is covering something else, and this "something
else" is meant, asserted, is object of purpose.
B. When the cover and the covered at least in one way is treating the same subject.
C. When the cover by means of a means is referring away from itself, e.g. by
an exaggeration. This, then, is the ironic means.
D. When one beforehand not have agreed about some code by which one is meaning
the opposite to what one really is saying.
E. When the situation has a certain complexity, that is creating a sort of tense
opposition.
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(25.) Self-irony is not irony itself. When irony is, it is there because of
someone's ironizing something, and it is sometimes even simple and free. It
is directed and it has its goal. It enlightens something which the one who has
self irony knows he has got and which he dislikes. It is his attention to show
this.
The one, however, who is ironic trough and through uses irony to cover himself,
to hide himself in behind: he or she has irony all day and all night long; he
or she who has irony all day long - as well as night - keeps creating an irony
which stands free and which hereby is irony per se, an irony itself and which
has the Self of an irony.
(26.) The ironic hereby creates the negate to a relation between himself
and others.
(27.) The ironic is invisible, but: here is the ambiguity: one has to see and
hear the ironic in order not to see or hear him/her.
(34) The ironic is busy being an ironic.
(56.) Hell on earth would be to be meeting an ironical crowd.
(96.) It is apparent that a person is an ironic, if he is. The ironic himself
is not at all apparent. You might say, that he is apparent as a "that"(
"the fact that grass is green" )( germ."dass", French "que"
"le ciel est tel noir, que …"), a small word of mystic in our
language.
(93.) Irony is probably universal, polyglot, meaning that you do not, when
learning a new language, have to learn extra how to be ironic.
Some philosophers - like Kierkegaard and Höffding - claim, with support
from the ancient comedian Aristophanes and his comedy The Clouds, that irony
came with Socrates. Irony was to have been born together with democracy. This,
naturally, is nonsense.
(94.) As Wagener points out, the irony of Socrates was a pedagogical one. Socrates
acted as if he did not know. It was a method, where he led the others in various
debates on philosophical issues. Plato puts - in the late dialogue Meno - Socrates
in a curious position, since S. here claims that all knowledge is remembering.
Probably this was the opinion of Plato, not of Socrates, who had a more down
to earth mind than his pupil Plato. ( Like everybody knows Socrates never wrote
anything, since he claimed , that writing harmed memory capacity.)
(28.) The ironic is mirroring the world as it is: invisible.
(35.) The "Weltironie" respectively "Verdensironie" that
Hegel and Kierkegaard is writing about is a variation on the dialectics of history,
and this is not the irony here at issue.
(59.) The ironic: "Of course I am unimportant, but I do not think that
I am that unimportant. I have reached the pint where I doubt my own existence.
- To God everything is possible, and he did not suffice himself by creating
me, no: he thought it over very carefully, so very carefully that he withdrew
me from the primary creation and decided himself to act as if I did exist. That
is what I am, God's careful withdrawal."
( It could easily be said, that the ironic is not a very sympathetic person, at first sight …. )
The author makes one important distinction. There are two kinds of irony: overt and covert. (Cf. Wayne Booth. In his book on irony.) Id est: Transparent and non-transparent.
(62.) The transparent ironic. ( With the transparent ironic irony is visible,
with the non-transparent it is not. )
The shape of irony is close and it is extremely dependent on all it's parts
which does not allow anything foreign to enter. The concept of "self"(
reflexivity ) is necessary and central when it comes to describe irony and the
ironic. The Ironic is in himself - however small this Self is - and he is himself
by himself.
He does not leave himself: a short visit outside himself ( personified reflexivity
or the "I") is immediately followed by a swift retreat.
He is never leaving himself totally, for sure, and he is bitter about this and
is answering the imaginary question by saying:" If I cannot come out, nobody
is going to enter either!"
The communication of the ironic ( or non-communication (pseudo-communication))
is his very way of existence and constitutes his identity.
( It is not easy to like the person(s) described here, but that was not the prime issue.)
There is a reason why the ironic does come out, ever is leaving himself.
The reason - or ground - is the hate of self, which is letting it's counterpart,
the love of or deification of self, create a balance. This duality is binding
him up. This duality forces him to this communication, by means of speech and
mimics, where he primarily, primarily and all the time, keeps asserting, that
he does not want to be what he is.
The ironic brings forth that which he experiences, that which he innermost is,
and presents it in such a way that the surrounding world ( people ) do understand,
that he does not want to, that he is not able to be what he innermost is, that
which has been withdrawn by himself, hidden into the forbidden.
But a certain picture of his inner self has the ironic got, and he is choosing
to accentuate certain traits with this (former) "Self", and is building
upon it , exaggerates into a grotesque for everybody to relinquish, to accuse,
keep aloof, and at the same time this is the only, the sole thing he is doing
: his life is - in other words - just presenting this picture and this keeping
it at a distance.
The ironic thus gradually becomes a picture of himself or a mirror for himself
and his situation. He becomes a picture of the cleft between himself and the
world, since he even has moved out a part of himself to the world, extinguished
himself as acting subject, transformed it into an object ( a thing, a Hegelian
an sich, a Sartreian en soi ). The ironic has abstained from,
most often once and for all, from trying to tune in with the rest of the world
outside himself, this world, that he finds so wholly "unjust" and
"insulting". So deadly unjust.
But in this very relation which lies in this up keeping of distance, the very
art into which he develops this, there comes up a - seen from the outside -
treacherous paradox… The ironic is incredibly satisfied with himself when
succeeding in expressing, that he does not like himself at all.
The most important, when we are talking about the ironic as a paradoxical being
, is to observe the change in meaning of the word, the concept of "self".
For the ironic life is indeed this: not wanting to be oneself, - it is this:
despairingly not wanting to be oneself, but at the same time despairingly to
want to be oneself in another way, and in a very special way, namely, to want
to be oneself as an ironic, which he truly is as soon as he has succeeded in
explaining what he does not want to be in that indirect manner he is using.
Such is irony. Such a capiuative art can be shaped in and together with irony,
so that it can in it's close form, like a black hole, can be said to realise
it's strength immanently, even if it does not can be said to be inprovocable;
if irony is affected from the outside, one of it's three parts reacts and the
other two are affected as well ( maybe is the strain on the irony heightened
a bit ), but soon irony is in perfect balance again, keeps itself in it's closed
shape - it has a relatively simple structure, you know - and can soon again
constitute the solid "soul" of the ironic in question.
Irony is as much a form of communication as a total defence can be.
This, I assert, can be seen together with the uniqueness which can be found
with the irony, in the fact that it is expressing a negation of itself, but
this negation expressed keeps strengthening irony itself all the time. ( It
must be looked upon each feature: irony can express that a person does not want
to be himself and irony can at the same time be irony upon itself, self-irony
of the irony.)
Irony is educating the ironic into a brilliant speaker ( in his small environment ), and this Art becomes gradually the great ART, which if even not statistically, becomes something of a monologue, or anyway a parody on communication and conversation.- There lies too in the nature of irony to demand a rather intense activity from the person who is the beholder of the irony, which has to do with the natural decline of the ironic Self: the negative irony becomes by necessity poorer and poorer and more and more mannered. ( He, the ironic, is a little like an old Don Juan.) Behind his irony the ironic is aware of this. Deep inside him he starts to feel that something is "too late…".Thus, behind all the smiles and tricks and manners, he knows that this cannot go on for ever. But despair has only one message to give: Forwards!
(80.) Somebody said to me: "You know what happens if you are ironic. Then nobody can see you."
(63.) The identity of the ironic as ironic, which is the only identity he
has (also according to the above ), is immobile to everybody, except for one
kind of people :the non-transparent ironics, who take with them their covert
meanings and opinions home and never is letting anybody even suspect that they
are ironics.
These non-transparent ironics only make themselves visible by their interest
in taking the irony off the transparent ironic. In an immediate way they could
appear to get along with the irony of the transparent ironic, but only for a
while, and then by their ability to uncover by using their skill to cover they
will attack the other.
The non-transparent ironic is unlike the transparent one in the following ways:
A. He ( or she ) never uses ironic means ( and he therefore completely disregards
the ironic means of the transparent ironic, - the smiles, the little winks and
so on … ) B. He keeps the irony within himself. C. He is visible.
The non-transparent does not accept the ironic means of the transparent, however
strong these means can be, and he thus is denying constantly the whole body
language of the transparent one. He is hereby crushing a third of the irony
of the transparent one, and thus the irony as a whole, and thus the transparent
ironic. Each ironic utterance by the transparent is received by the non-transparent
by eloquent naiveté as a determined utterance.( Which it is not.) Against
this assault the transparent ironic has no defence at all. The lovely naiveté
could not by him be judged to be neither true or false and in this state of
unknowingness (all ) irony is dying. The non-transparent is untouchable because
he does not reveal anything ( about himself ) or admits anything, and as an
attacker he is merciless. The transparent one becomes through the non-transparent
visible in his nothingness. This is enough to make him absolutely Nought.
To the non-transparent is assault the best defence: because, if the non-transparent
would accept the irony of the transparent ironic, then the non-transparent would
necessarily become determined, serious, or lose a narcissistic moment, and this
is equally not in the interest of the non-transparent as it is not of the transparent.
(67.) The ironic is mirroring himself in his irony and falls in love with himself, like Narcissus. Worse than Narcissus. Because the ironic is mirroring his invisibility in his irony. Irony is the most beautiful of all things, but irony does not return his feelings, because irony is shut within itself.
(70.) The irony of the ironic is a theft, a robbery of presence.
(72.) The ironic is needed by the others, so that they can define themselves.
(97.) Irony is a drug. Irony seems to be a linguistic structure, which when one tries to understand it escapes through it's circular form. This circularity can be looked upon as a kind of freedom, and irony in motion is impossible to grasp. Irony is always partly about itself, and that Self is freedom, and you cannot grasp freedom.
(141.) One does not demand very much from an ironic. One does not want much with him/her. This is why the ironic seldom comes into closer contact with the will of other people, he/she does not understand the relation between their way of life and their will. The invisible person cannot understand other people since interaction is missing. He has a faint comprehension of their wanting something, and he is acting from a certain knowledge of their wanting to do this or that, but the lack of real understanding makes the others meaningless to him and eventually, lacking feelings for the others and tired of his circus performance, he finally totally ignores the others. And he becomes so lonely, as he in fact has already been in his whole previous life.
(136.) Irony is the orgasm of language.
(137.) Socializing with non-ironics is an opium for the ironic.
(142.) At a certain point something new comes up to the ironic: the double
irony. It is twofold: directed towards the self and directed towards the Other.
A. The irony directed towards the own self ( as well as the other kind ) is
shaped like a double negation; it occurs when irony is accepted/liked by the
recipient but not by the ironic himself. Then the ironic starts to use irony
upon his own irony and is depriving the other of it. The utterance: "I
am Sweden's greatest philosopher ." Becomes through the double irony exactly
what it says, a straightforward ascertation.
B. The double irony directed towards the Other is an exact parallel. The ordinary
kind utterance to somebody who feels liked and accepted by the ironic: "You
are kind of fool." becomes thus twice negated, i.e. direct ( and mean ).-
The ironic then is adding:" I am quite mean to you., am I not?", by
which he wishes to express, that he really is mean. ( Which he is.)
(143.) What about the ironic who loses his irony ? It might be that it is
only a play with words to say that since he is an ironic he has only the identity
of an ironic as an ironic?
Painfully enough, to the ironic, it is a fact that when the ironic loses his
irony he loses his identity and a lot of features and feelings. He both (still
) exists and not. As an invisible something he now is a visible nothing.
The irony was the identity and the former ironic is facing a new horrifying
situation, which he does not hardly understand at all. Beginning the new life
is without qualities himself makes beginning without qualities too. He becomes
a actor, mimicker, a one who is steadily trying but also a relapser into the
cynicism of the double irony, and he hates the relapses. The ironic is now not
any longer an ironic. It is for sure, because he starts to feel that it is he,
him, himself, it is he himself, that is the person that does not exist, and
he knows only one thing: what he definitely is NOT any longer: an ironic. And
that is the place where to begin.
(233.) Irony is a shortcut, too short. The one who is longing himself forward
through life, the one who knows his longing state in it's greatness, that person
can reach his goal, but everyone ought to be aware of, that irony not only is
mocking the Now, but the future too.
(260.) In relation to time the ironic and irony is in an unique position.
( Cf. Hegel about irony as " the eternal absolute negativity".
A. "Only in opposition is freedom." ( Johannes the seducer in The
Diary of the seducer by S. Kierkegaard. )
B. Only in the Now there is freedom.
C. Kierkegaard asserts that there is something seducing in every beginning.
And the ironic could serve as an example of a person , who over and over again
starts anew.
But there is also a kind of permanent waiting for something in the life of an
ironic. The ironic does not get any responses to his pseudo-communication.
If we say that the person who, when he or she does something, does this or that
as if it was the first time ever, then we are close to the way the ironic is
living and behaving. He or she puts all the time all available energy into his
or her irony, and each time the ironic has to be "new". But the decisive
difference between the ironic and other people is in the fact, that the ironic
keeps denying his Now. The ironic is the one who is spending most time on being
new, but it is the total denial of the Now, that makes him or her into the human
being, which on practically every level, does not live. He or she does not prove
it, if his denial itself could not be counted as a proof.
( 261.) To the praise of Irony.
Irony is a naught, and a naught, that Isn´t a starting point. Irony is
freedom and the resting of freedom, a the greatest pause in life, when there
is a making of something new, but this new does not come, per se, from irony
but from elsewhere. The birth of this New is tolerated by Irony; Irony has nothing
to do with it, unless this New is trying to attack Irony. Thus Irony , the pause
of freedom, is not followed by dualities , but by singularities, where humbleness
and cleanness are absolute. But in this sphere, when Irony hesitates for a second
a seductive flight of the thought returns, the humbleness and the cleanness
becomes twice as perceptive, it becomes cut into two and becomes stretched out
again: heaven and hell are enlightened and darkens again and the circles of
Irony are created anew, incessantly: Irony is haunting, it always hunts, it
hunts for prey; it consumes all that is peace, since it hates the treacherous
peace, to create it's own peace, and by these pulse-beats Irony drives this
human being who is open enough in mind onwards. The openness, the vulnerability
, these are places where Irony lives; destroys, brings freedom , pauses, is
leaving room, and is the necessary breathing of the creative intellect, painful
and soothing, eternalizing and accentuating the individual who finds himself
or herself in the Moment of Now on the cutting edge of Time."
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Kaj Genell 1983 , transl. 2007.