# Mimesis
## Erich Auerbach
### 2024

# Literature

# Places

# Art & Architecture

# Words

# Theses
1. Genesis & Odyssey
- Parataxis (clauses combined with *and*) and hypotaxis (subordinating/dependent clauses)
- Both Genesis and Odyssey use parataxis but to different effects?
- Homeric actions are all external - characters speaking, setting and time completely defined, rather than internal thoughts
- Everything is described in foreground with 100% light, even during flashbacks like Odysseus' scar
    - Flashback presented in present tense and divorced from narrative, rather than as Odysseus recollecting the memory
- In Genesis 22:1 Abraham & Isaac, God introduces himself but is unspecified where he comes from, what he looks like, what time it is, etc
    - In contrast to Odyssey
- Bible - externalization of only that which is necessar for narrative, all else left in obscurity, only decisive points emphasized
    - (in Woolf - only nondecisive points emphasized)
- Bible's humans are much more psychologically deep
- "Homer can be analyzed but not interpreted", because everything is spelled out for us
- But Bible can be interpreted into our own world due to its ambiguity
- Goal in Odyssey is to transport us into another world by offering such detail about it
- Goal in Bible is to overwhelm our own sense of reality and replace it with the Bible's, written like this because of the inherent claim to objective truth
    - Although, advancements in technology have made Bible seem more foreign to us than it would a thousand years ago
- General ambiguity in the Bible allowed later interpretation to unify even disparate parts written by different authors with different histories/theologies/regions
- Boring chronicles and genealogies give Bible a historical character, though it be legendary
- Homeric poems for the most part only animate the ruling class, but Bible is moreso just regular people
- Homeric world has stable social order, but Old Testament has a lot of political maneuvering
- Homer occassionally allows the routines of daily life to enter the sublime (like foot washing scene)
- But Bible is replete with the commonplace becoming sublime, revealing the influence of God into everything - the everyday and sublime are inseparable
- It is not important to understand the history of the texts because their influence on world was primarily in their completed form

5. Song of Roland
- Also exhibits parataxis to great extent on multiple levels
- laisse parallel - scenes that echo each other (eg Ganelon being chosen as emissary, Roland being chosen as rearguard; captains of each army speaking)
    - show similarities between christians and muslims
    - simplified, static, worldview
- laisse similaires - same verse repeated with very slight differences
    - intensifying effect
    - slowing down/zooming in
    - nuance and different perspectives
    - emphasis on changing portion
    - literary effect of "returning to same point" or "regression" - halting of time
- similarly, lines themselves are largely paratactic
- "staccato" character - no flow, each line starts anew (regression helps w/ this)
- generally in classical language, parataxis is low style, oral, comic, realistic whereas hypotaxis is elevated
- but in Song of Roland, parataxis is elevated style, first, as only being concerned with aristocracy
- In Bible - simple parataxis allows sublimity in brevity in contrast to immense questions and content
- However, Song of Roland has no deep questions - everything has already been decided, simplified, stylized Christian worldview with no nuance
    - "pagans are wrong and christians are right"
    - Could not be called tragic
- But medieval Frankish epics are not so - like Nibelungenlied - they still exhibit great diversity, emotion, lack of rigidification, and wider cosmos / philosophical questions
- Yet religious chansons de gestes exhibit black-and-whiteness
- However not due to being religious - Bible is anything but simple and lacking nuance.
- Almost a series of independent scenes, not causally linked together, typification of characters like captains except for the main characters
- Literature becomes signification
- However, the rigidification allows brief moments/scenes of emotion and questioning, which are emphasized starkly in contrast to the rest of the stylized work
- In other epic chanson d'alexis, vernacular french version, in the high scene of alexis leaving home, shows great emotion and philosophy, unlike the rest of the work,
    - However the latin version is entirely rigid 100% with no emotion or questioning.
    - Vernacular can be thought of as a freeing of rigidity imposed by early medieval Latin literature
- But since early Christian literature was in no way rigid, what happened later?
    - Spread of Christianity over a disparate geography and cultures required schematization of figures and stories to effectively communicate Christian ideas
        - Also as it became older, the figures became less real and more historicized
        - Similar to Christian art history
    - Collapse of western Roman Empire led to rigidity and a desire for more clear answers, less nuance, almost paralysis
        - Eventually became liberated through vernacular literature
- Heroic epic *is* history, as it recalls historical conditions, although distorted

20. To the Lighthouse
- Focus on mundane events (like measuring stocking) leading to a deep movement of consciousness and psychology within
- Fluidly moves perspective between individuals and locations and times
- Sometimes paragraphs with no clear speaker, so it must be author. But paragraph is as unknowing as characters/reader; author is not omniscient.
    - Makes subjective statements like "Never did anybody look so sad"
- There is no single external viewpoint from which characters are shown, but viewpoint shifts between each characters inner world in turn
- Stream of consciousness apt for this purpose, but Woolf's non-omniscient narrator, and multiplicity of perspectives is novel
- We see Mrs Ramsay from perspective of multiple consciousnesses, all of them subjective, and try to construct an objective truth from them
- Fog in "Time Passes" that explores entire house kind of similar to perspective? Relationship w/ Eliot's yellow fog?
- Proust in contrast only uses memory as a device for exploring the past, but not different people at same time
- Woolf picks very short, mundane moments (like measuring of stocking) to go on lengthy inner-world explorations
    - Implication that the inner world is richer and fuller, and every second of our lives is full of humanity
    - Other authors would have picked a more significant moment instead
- Times of recalled scenes is ambiguous in Woolf, so more fluid than stark flashback in Odyssey scar
- The main thread of narrative happens in background consciousness
- "As though an apparently simple text revealed its proper content only in the commentary on it" (pale fire?)
- Proust development of narrative via memory
    - Neo-Platonic idea of true prototype of subject to be found in soul of artist; in this case, artist and subject are same
- Film, unlike novels, can reveal a completely different time and place in great detail in a few seconds before returning back to original scene
    - Causing modern authors to be acutely aware of the limitations of the novel due to language
- Important events (like deaths) in To the Lighthouse only mentioned in passing, similar to Proust/Mann
- Idea that the totality of life is contained in any random fragment, and this is better suited than a summary recital of all of the events like in a history that emph. important points of history
- Similarly, philological idea that one can analyze a single passage from a book and glean more than analyzing entire book (like Mimesis!)
    - entire history of european realism would have swamped Auerbach
- Why did this narrative style evolve after WWI? Widening of man's horizon of knowledge, ideas, culture, existence (started in 15c and grew rapidly w/ globalization)
- Caused crises of adjustment with conflicts of reliigions, economic systems, philosophical debates, etc.
- Led to tendency of fascism which proclaims one ideology to exclusion of all others, to resolve conflict
- But project of modern writers/Woolf: show that multiple perspectives and consciousnesses can exist in harmony and can give rise to an objective truth together
- Finally - idea that all of humanity is contained within mundane moments that are shared by all humans, unifies us and focuses on our commonality regardless of origin or strata