Tag Archives: Augustine

At the Circus with Franz Kafka and Augustine – Part II

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In contrast to Kafka, Augustine, in Confessions, saw the circus in a less ambiguous manner. While Kafka made the choice between one end of the circus and another very complicated and difficult to decipher, Augustine makes it into a clear either/or decision. He associated the circus with the worst vices of society and, in his friendship with Alypius (arguably, his closest friend), we see that Augustine figured Alypius’s detachment from the circus as the first stage of conversion (which he, in fact, did together with Alypius – the image in this post is based on this group conversion). To be sure, Augustine makes it his task to wean Alypius away from the circus. But the irony of this is that Augustine had far worse vices to deal with, but if it weren’t for Alypius and their friendship, he would not be able to address them.   Regardless, the foil of his friendship with Alypius is the circus.

Augustine lived with Alypius and Nebridius when he moved to Milan. They were all friends and, as Augustine notes, they had the deepest discussions on religion, philosophy, and society. Reflecting on his friendship, Augustine records Alypius’s origins and the first time they met, in Carthage. He, like Socrates and many of his pupils, was older than Alypius. Regardless, their attraction to each other – which has much to do with virtue and character – is mutual:

Among this group (of friends) Alypius came form the same town as myself. His parents were leading citizens. He was younger than I and had attended my classes when I began to teach in our town and later in Carthage. He was much attached to me because I seemed to him good and cultured, and I was attached to him because of the solid virtue of his character, which was already apparent when he was of no great age. (VI, vii (11), 98)

However, immediately following this kind description, Augustine notes how Alypius, a young man of “solid virtue,” was, to his detriment, in love with the circus. He is “miserably” involved with the circus and his passion for it was “fatal”:

Nevertheless, the whirlpool of Carthaginian morals, with their passion for empty public shows, sucked him into the folly of the circus games. At the time when we was miserably involved in that, I was using a public lecture room as a professor of rhetoric there…I had discovered his fatal passion for the circus, and was gravely concerned because he seemed to be about to throw away or even already to have thrown away a career of high promise. (99)

When Alypius comes in to visit Augustine’s rhetoric class, Augustine rises to the occasion to save Alypius from the circus. But because Alypius is so addicted to the circus, Augustine regrets that “imposing some degree of pressure” or even his friendship was not enough.

But there was no means of warning him and recalling him by imposing some degree of pressure, either by the benevolence of friendship or by exercising the authority of the teacher. (99)

But when, one day, out of the blue, Alypius makes a surprise visit, something miraculous, in Augustine’s view, happens that enables Augustine to save Alypius from the circus:

One day I was sitting at the usual place where my pupils were present before me. He came in, greeted me, sat down, and gave his attention to the subject under discussion.   I was expounding a text which happened to be in my hands. While I was expounding it, it seemed opportune to use an illustration from the circus games which I sued to make my point clear, and to make it clearer and more agreeable I was bitingly sarcastic about those captivated by this folly. (99)

By being sarcastic about the circus, Augustine tells us that Alypius felt the words on the circus were distinctly for him. He knew Augustine cared about him and became “angry with himself.” This led Alypius to “love me more ardently.”

Augustine sees this moment as prophetic. And, citing Ezekiel, he argues that he “cured a wasting mind of high promise” by weaning him off the circus. In the wake of this, Alypius pleaded with his father to allow him to go and learn with Augustine: “His father yielded and granted his request.”

However, once they started learning, Augustine learned of another folly; namely, the “Manichee superstition” that emulated chastity. Augustine calls it “only a shadow and a simulation of virtue.” But this very simulation is what puts Augustine on edge because he, quite frankly and openly, loved women. Their main difference – within their friendship – was on this very point. And by way of it, Augustine was prompted to reflect on how, despite his desire to pursue the truth, he was still indecisive. This comes out of the fact that Augustine was tainted by experience while Alypius was too “innocent”(102).

Regardless, the message is clear. Augustine could not have taken Alypius on as a student or…as a friend without weaning him from the circus.   On that note, he seems to be telling us that even if philosophers and theologians can be friends, and live together, as Alypius and Augustine did in Milan, they can be only melancholy and perplexed. The joy and distraction that Augustine sees as “fatal” has no place in religion and philosophy which are, in his estimation, a serious and not a vulgar (that is, a common) pursuit. Virtue and the way of truth do not lead to the circus.   The circus, in other words, will lead one astray.

And by way of inspiring Alypius to hate himself and his passion for the circus, Augustine suggests that he saved a soul from self-destruction.   As Augustine notes, this salvation- from-the-circus made Alypius “love me more ardently.” And it is through this circus-free love of Augustine that Alypius comes more into dialogue with deeper questions about truth and the true way of life.   It seems as if, in Augustine’s world, God tolerates and even produces different ironies (such as Augustine’s contradictory lifestyle) but God does not tolerate humor and the circus which, to his mind, will only lead one to destroy one’s soul.

…to be continued….

At the Circus with Franz Kafka and Augustine – Part I

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The circus – whether it is ancient, medieval, or modern – is a riotous place. And the question of how to describe and place the circus in Western theology, philosophy, literature, and art is, despite what many would think, an important question.   It was of interest to such great theologians as Augustine and Petrach and writers and thinkers like Rebelais, Franz Kafka, and Ernst Bloch.

Of the above-mentioned writers and theologians, Augustine and Kafka have the most fascinating differences. Yet, at the same time, what brings them together most – namely their common understanding that the circus must be figured by theology and literature – is more fascinating. Figuring the circus has implications for life, the imagination, and religion.

In Kafka’s short story “Up in the Gallery,” the narrator, who seems to be speaking from “up in the gallery,” makes a thought experiment regarding a “frail, consumptive equestrienne in the circus.” If she were to be

urged around and around on an undulating horse for months on end without respite by a ruthless, whip-flourishing ringmaster, before an insatiable public…then perhaps, a young visitor to the gallery might race down the long stairs through all the circles, rush into the ring and yell, Stop! against all the fanfares of the orchestra still playing the appropriate music.  

This “perhaps” suggests that the opposite may also happen: the “young visitor” may just let this go on in front of himself and the crowd. He will, in short, let the circus happen. And this is almost like what Kafka tells us actually takes place. The circus goes on, but with a difference. The ringmaster brings in a messianic kind of figure, a “lovely lady, pink and white” who replaces the “frail, consumptive equestrienne”:

But since this is not so; a lovely lady, pink and white, floats between the curtains, which proud lackeys open before her; the ringmaster, deferentially catching her eye, comes toward her breathing animal devotion; tenderly lifts her up on the dapple gray, as if she were his own most precious granddaughter about to start on a dangerous journey.

The ringmaster “masters himself” enough to “crack the whip” and prepare the “lovely lady, pink and white” and “the audience” for the ultimate performance.   But something goes wrong and the audience doesn’t respond in the way one would expect them to do at such a spectacle:

Before the great somersault (the ringmaster) lifts up his arms and implores the orchestra to be silent; finally lifts the little one down from her trembling horse, kissed her on both cheeks, and finds that all the ovation she gets from the audience is barely sufficient.

Meanwhile, she, “right on the tips of her toes, in a cloud of dust, with outstretched arms and small head thrown back, invites the whole crowd to triumph.” But they don’t. There is, it seems, an abyss between the circus performer and the circus. And at this, the “visitor to gallery lays his face on the rail before him and, sinking into the closing march as into a heavy dream, weeps without knowing it.”

In other words, the visitor, who is a surrogate for the narrator, who is “up in the gallery,” is a witness to the demise of the circus and “weeps without knowing it.” He has a secret, unconscious sadness about its demise. His witness is also unconscious.

In Kafka’s story there are only two possibilities for the “young visitor.” He can either say “Stop!” to the original circus spectacle which pushes the “frail, consumptive equestrienne” to her utter limits: “urging” her to go in crazy circles. Or he can let the circus happen and ultimately…fail. We see the latter option unfold and we hear the description of the traumatic rupture as unconscious. Only we, as readers, we “in the gallery,” see it.

But what does Kafka look to engage in this short story/parable? It seems that, for Kafka, both options are still possible. And that the end of the circus is not something to take lightly. The question is not that the circus will end so much as how it will end. However, in order to understand this question, one must grasp the meaning of Kafka’s description of the two kinds of circus events.

The first description seems to describe a situation where “the young visitor” must face a circus that has gone out of control, at the urging of the ringmaster, and spun into wild circles. But he must face it and the audience and say “Stop!” By doing this he can, consciously, suspend the madness. This poses an interesting challenge to a kind of Nietzschean or Bataillean “yes saying.”  (And it is important to note that Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Genealogy of Morals, associated the original, historical “no” of morality in the Western tradition with the Jews.)  The second description, in contrast, describes the circus in a state in which the audience is separated (alienated) from the thrall of the performance. And the visitor’s cry at this failure of the circus is unconscious.

Which ending is better? What ending should we choose? Or is it too late for the circus?

(In the next blog entry we will discuss Augustine’s reading of the circus. And in the third entry to this series we will discuss the two of them, together.)