Introducing: Bruno, Danby, Nigel

Dali, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus

In this post I want to discuss what I see as a kind of parallel construction in the characterization techniques with which Murdoch introduces three of her principle characters in the first three chapters, viz., Bruno, Danby, Nigel. This parallelism is not simply a reiterated structure, but informs what has gone before - that is, certain figures and tropes take on new definition and significance as the newly introduced characters are foregrounded. 

From the title, to the opening sentence and chapter, we are clearly meant to take Bruno as our 'hero' (but that in what Northrup Frye calls the ironic mode - in which the hero is inferior in power/knowledge to his environment/other characters). It is important to establish right away that the narrative form, though third personal, is located towards the subjective/limited poles of the axes of interiority and knowledge. This 'third person personal' perspective is established immediately by the heavy use of intensional and modal propositions in the opening paragraphs. "The room seemed to be dark"; "Perhaps he had nodded off over his book"; " Danby must not know that Nigel broke the Simla cup. Bruno must remember to say that he broke it himself". The narration is decentered, but still lends voice to the interior happenings of the characters, while also remaining limited by their limited perspectives; in this case, the narrator remains as ignorant of the time of day, or just how he fell asleep, as Bruno.

Curiously, the story begins with the enigmatic statement, Bruno was waking up. The most ready reading of this use of the past progressive verb tense is to indicate that Bruno was in the (open-ended process) of waking up. As opposed to a past perfect action - Bruno woke up - whose logic is sequentiality - A took place. Then B took place. So C took place., etc. "Perfect" - as opposed to progressive - means complete, the literal meaning of perfection. To say that Bruno was waking up therefore implies that Bruno had not (yet) woken up. There is an undeniable reference to the Proustian process of waking up, as we see that the sleeping/waking distinction goes beyond the physiological, discrete states of conscious/unconscious: re-engaging the world, reorienting oneself in it is not a passive and instant occurrence, but an active achievement - to awaken, we are reminded, is a "success" verb, ie.,one can be waking up without succeeding in waking up, while one cannot, eg., be going for a walk and not succeed in going for a walk. 

Significantly, while we begin with an ongoing, contextualizing process (which acts much more like a description of a state of affairs than the description of an action; compare: It was a dark and stormy night); however, we are never explicitly given a cue to suspend this context/action - either that it has been interrupted or accomplished. From the outset, Bruno is located indefinitely in a space between sleeping and waking (as a consequence, we already have a reading of the title from the first sentence, as this describes the dream state). All of these themes are immediately confirmed/repeated by the subsequent statement - "The room seemed to be dark." There is of course immediate tension between the suspended claim to the rooms seeming darkness and the rooms being dark - a room that looks dark just is dark (or: seeming is not a success verb). But once again, the act of light perception is made into a process, one mirroring the process of waking up; light is the ground for seeming - light (broadly, metaphorically) opens up the field of perception (broadly, metaphorically) and in the opening of the light, objects seem this way or that way; but in the transitionary state of waking up, the way the light itself (the ground of seeming itself) may seem this way or that. This inoffensive little phrase denoting an old man's eyes slowly adjusting to his surrounding actually has profound and undeniable (for someone as indebted to Plato as Murdoch) philosophical connotations - the focus of the suspending function of seeming is not a claim about a given experience of the world, but a claim about the conditions of possibility of experience at all. This of course echos and expands all the philosophical/spiritual potency of the notions of waking/sleeping/dreaming hinted at in the first sentence, which claims all three as true, namely, That:  Bruno was asleep, Bruno was awake, Bruno was dreaming.

These grammatical aspects of both sentences also firmly establish us in medias res - "beginnings" are impossible: that we always start in the middle of things, or, more aptly here - as well as hint at large philosophical issues we are sure to encounter - they also initiate a stylistic theme that will act to characterize Bruno's own temperment: that of suspense/suspension. The opening passages of the book are riddled with suspension, incompletion, stopping short: From the indefiniteness of the first two sentences - en train de se reveiller, seeming - we find Bruno holding his breath, and testing/wondering: again, interruptions, suspension of the processes of breathing, knowing respectively. This is followed up by a conditional (which suspends its possible consequents) - whose alternatives are bad and worse - a conjecture about what he was doing when he fell asleep, and then an explicit reference to "that dream": which already echos the title, as well as possesses the demonstrative pronoun "that" which both imputes/suspends the reader's common knowledge of a specific dream; finally, it closes with the enigmatic, vaguely foreboding, and subtly suspenseful reference to the "hatpin" - a object from which all the murkiness of this first passage hangs (sus-pend of course contains the notion of pendere: to hang). 

The suspension started in the opening sentence arguably ends with the opening of the next paragraph: "It was not night, thank God. The cowering mind and body fidgeted, discovering themselves in time." Allegedly, Bruno's 'waking' involves, for reasons we will discuss soon, orienting himself in time (ie, afternoon, night). But this sentence too contains noteworthy suspensions: first, is the use of the definite pronoun "the" rather than the personal pronoun "his" to modify mind and body. This suggests a residue of alienation that has not been overcome in fully "waking up". Indeed, the mind/body have discovered "themselves" and this initiates a theme that will be prevalent for Bruno's condition: that both the mind and the body do not belong to him, but in dying have taken on a monstrous life of their own.  But even more remarkable is the playful/profound ambiguity of the prepositional phrase, "in time". This reads two ways, and I would claim that neither reading predominates: discovering themselves in time means they discover themselves after all, or at last, or eventually. This responds directly to the indefiniteness of the waking process, signifying its completion. As in statements like, She'll come around, in time,  Time here takes on the significance of a distance that the natural processes of resolution must traverse. But the other reading is that waking means: mind and body find themselves within time, that is, not of being in a particular here/now, but being subject to the conditions of hereness and nowness (note the deeper meaning of the "reflexive" form of this verb, as well as its resonance with the german befindlichkeit, an existential term that Murdoch no doubt was well familiar). Here time is metaphysical: the form of consciousness (Kant) or the horizon for any understanding of being (Heidegger). Time is commonly understood in this way as container - it is the empty space within which all things (mind and object) commune; as such it is no-thing. Here waking up is finding oneself thrown into the world, suspended in the nothing (to use some language that is not entirely my own).

It is here that we are introduced to the existential themes that will predominate Bruno's situation. Bruno tests the light because he anxiously anticipates the time of day (or night) and he anticipates these because they in turn signify whether he will have a playmate (Danby or Nigel) or whether he will be left alone to sleeplessly "gasp with emotion" from his "million-times-thought-thoughts" (11), which consist mainly of regret over his life lived, and uncertainty whether there is any time/point in trying to redeem things now. There is also reason to see Bruno as caught up in an inauthentic, or unowned, existence: from the very Sartrean claim that he existed for himself mediated by the opinions of others, glimpsing "himself only in the averted eyes of Danby and Adelaide…” (6), to his worrying more about the practical affairs of his death - his "death duties" - rather than confronting his imminent  death itself (6), to his claim that he would rather suffer for eternity in purgatory because this would contain a godlike judgment on his life, which, again a la Sartre, would absolve him of his own responsibility to create his own values (11). Indeed, Bruno's transformation into a monster means: he is alienated from his mind, from his body, and his guilt has become "a monstrous unwilled part of himself" (11). 

This transformation into a object (a 'being-in-itself', not a free 'being-for-itself') is elaborated with Bruno's identification with his red bath robe - the pathos-laden last garment he will wear, and which will outlive him. This contains some very famous Platonic symbolism - it recalls the argument, given by Cebes in the Phaedo, which moves from the sophistic argument for the immortality of the soul: after a man dies, upon seeing the coat he was accustomed to wearing, one might argue that the man must still live, since a man lasts longer than a coat. This is of course rejected, since a man outwears many coats in a lifetime, and yet there can/will be one which outlives him. But this leads to the line of reasoning that the soul is like the man, and it wears many coats - or bodies. But from this possibility of reincarnation, it is concluded, nothing can be said about immortality, because, like the last coat a man wears, any body may be the last one the soul wears, and so any impending death could be final, even given that the coat analogy holds. It is of course too early to read too much into this allusion, but it obviously resonates with Bruno's preoccupation with his impending death and his inability to resolutely grasp his own mortality. [The Phaedo has further important correspondences: one argument for immortality consists of equating life/death with waking/sleeping and showing how the one comes out of the other.]

The next chapter/character is Danby. In a large way, he is defined by contrast with our encounter with Bruno. Danby is introduced as "in bed with Adelaide the maid service" and this at once contrasts Danby's beddedness with Bruno's bedboundness - the bed as both "love nest" and prison - both communal and solitary - and it also sets up a characterization style for Danby - Danby exists in and through his relations to women. Indeed his relationships with Linda, Adelaide and Gwen are all treated before anything is positively said of him - and when it finally is, it is "Danby was attractive to women".  And while both Bruno and Danby are defined to some degree by their multiple relationships with women, Danby is seen as a good deal more adept at this, by virtue of the simple fact that he arranges them diachronically, rather than synchronically (ie., Maureen/Janie fiasco). 

If the narrative style that came to condition Bruno-foregrounded scenes was characterized with suspense, by contrast, Danby is often narrated with short, sometimes tersely factual sentences, which are permitted to change rather abruptly, with a sort of light hearted indifference: RE the transition from Linda to Adelaide: "Then one day she went back to Australia. THey exchanged three letters. Six months later Danby had taken up with Adelaide. She was sweet, she was there" (18). Then it jumps to Gwen. All this serves to show Danby's ability to cope with change and loss, and this of course contrasts strongly with Bruno's own stuckness and regret. Indeed, Murdoch boldly drops the word "stuff" twice while introducing Danby, which is clearly meant to indicate not a puerile vocabulary of the author, but the simplicity of the subject, of Danby - who's life energy was "cheerful stuff", and the 'basic stuuf of the trade' as what he loves about his job. 

And though the simplicity of Danby's character may border on stupidity or vacuity, it is clear that he is coping with the contingencies of his life in his own way. His consolation for the rather senseless death of his wife is telling: “It was just the sort of lunatic thing she would do. It was typical. Comic, really” (26). Here is Danby's thought process: he goes from tragic fact, to personal trait, a word: comic. Generalized, Shrugged at, laughed at. Terser, simpler. Comic relief. 

This ability to cope with change insouciantly is elaborated in the very first words from Danby's mouth and the opening lines of the chapter, offset almost like a dedication or epigram: "O Adelaide, sweet adelaide, The years may come, the years may go..." This is it seems an Irish folk song sung for the departed - it goes on, "But the loving thoughts of her who's gone, forever will remain". What's telling here is that while he inserts Adelaide's name in the tune, it is surely his late wife that the ode is meant - it is thoughts of her that remain with him. After all, as it goes on in all it's easy transistioning abruptness, as Adelaide is chattering sweet nothings, we find suddently that "Danby was asleep. Dreaming of Gwen" (26). Again, we see the ease with which Danby can fall asleep, in contrast to Bruno's "drama of waking and sleeping", as a sort of easiness with life, an innocence and freedom from guilt and care. But there is more than just a dying old man filled with regret and a easy going young(er) man in a woman's company. For there are many hints that Danby's own cheer is to some degree deluded. The easy transition from woman to woman, his insertion of Adelaide into his wifes ode, his departing Adelaide in his bed for Gwen in his dreams - all this might have consequences that Danby is too dense to be aware of. Danby's own self-understanding is as harmless "comic relief". His naively simplistic ethical slogan is put forward immediately: “He thought that one should do what one wanted on the whole as long as one did not make people unhappy” (21). This might be called the leanest possible ethical theory. But it goes on: "...and he saw no reason why he should make Adelaide unhappy." (20). Not only is this terribly, unromantically unambitious, it also immediately causes the reader to suspect that he does not make Adelaide all that happy, at least in certain respects. She "suits" him. He "supports" her. What could be simpler?

But Danby too is lying in bed in the dark, and though his vestments are not a red robe, but a living breathing woman "glued to his side", he too sits in the half dark, half light - he lies comfortably, looking at "his knees outlined against the thin curtains which glowed faintly with the light of the street lamp..."(21). And though perhaps he is not as veiled as Bruno, who sees only faintly the light that shines through the edges of his red curtains, the image is still one of artifical light coming through a veil (remember we're dealing with a Platonistic author here!). But still, while Bruno's gaze at the curtain or veil is one of angst, Danby's is one of 'relaxation' - a simple man, happy to lie on his back just like that. Subtly enough, this image of a man in good health with his knees up refer us back to the miserable state of Bruno's own lower extremities - him struggling to lift his own feet, “scrabbling inside the metal cage which lifted the weight of the blankets off them” (3) while Danby has pulled up his feet, by lifting his knees, quite naturally. 

This theme of legs becomes unpacked further with the introduction of Nigel in Chapter 3. Nigel proves to be the most nimble: his is introduced not lying, as the other characters, but sitting "cross-legged" and as he moves to standing, it is pointed out that his legs remains crossed thoughout the motion. He "glides" to his room - where he turns and turns, or - let's just come right out with it - spins and spins: Nigel the spider. From the gracefully articulated legs, to the spinning and the black clothing , to his sitting, listening, unobserved, in a dark corner, solitary. Even his "concentric universe" is the image of a spider's web - and his furniture is too like a spiders web: "against the wall...sleek and flat" (27) This all serves to contrasts with Bruno's useless limbs and his feet that are crushed by his blankets and which are curling up, rounded, distorted, much like a spider pretending to be dead. [We will later find that Nigel was a dancer.] 

And if Danby's room has thin curtains, and Bruno's thick ones that let light in at the edges, Nigel's are light proof, "thick as fur". As the chapter unfolds, we find, through pronouncements of varying sensicality, of varying degrees of cliche, that Nigel is some sort of mystic - "All is one" - and probably a nihilistic one at that, which is evinced not only by the presence of the word, Annihilation, but also by his hearing without responding to Bruno's cries (importantly, Bruno's name is not mentioned - he is only an 'old man', which serves to show Nigel's devotional detachment and abstraction). Nigel's curtain's are as thick as fur - he has shut out the outside sources of light (and locked the door behind him) in order to cultivate the inner light - which is here symbolized with the candle. Indeed we seem to observe him in something of a mystical communion: "The presence is agony, punishment, stripes, the extended being tortured into a single point."(29). This Presence is presumably the unnamable All = One. And notably, the sentence itself is in the present tense. Moreover, the whole chapter takes place in the present tense. The effect of this choice is not only to cleverly refer to the 'eternal now' that the mystic seeks, but also to add an timelessness to Nigel's - to the mystics - ritual: it is happening even now, as you read. Of course, the most cogent reading is that Nigel himself is rooted solidly in the present. For the last paragraph begins, "Later...", and so we are forced to attempt to locate these strange, present tense passages within the temporal structure of the narrative. 

Furthermore, it is with Nigel that the sentences begin to become fragmented: the entire passage beginning "Concentric universe" is sentence fragments. Even as the metahphysics is one of unity and clarity, the sentences fragment and their content becomes more opaque. Nigel however is no Siddhartha; Bruno's apprehensiveness that Danby doesn't like Nigel (which is not yet confirmed by Danby) and Adelaide's uneasiness with him become our own. Even the word oft used to describe how good NIgel is with Bruno has an equally double reading: it is "uncanny" which again might just serve to intensify  his skill, or it may take on its reading as the infamous translation of Heidegger's unheimlichkeit - being-not-at-home - a reference that Murdoch could not have been unaware of. To be not at home is to be a foreigner - to be seen as a stranger or an outsider. This sentiment is often cited as the one that gives rise to spiritual journeys that culminate in epiphany. However it also refers to the fact that Nigel's motives - even his facility with Bruno, what they do, what they talk about - are completely veiled to us. And his being something of a spider incarnate is relevant too: because insects are disgusting, even frightening to people, even if they are harmless miniscule little beings. They make us uneasy on a level we can't quite explain.  And while the others lie in beds, Nigel is prostrate on the floor; and this too should resonate with both valences: the ground as the the foundation, the ground as what is lowest. Nigel, we might say, is something of a wild card so far and the range of his potential is the greatest. 

I think beyond the observations I've put forward above, we can make some generalizations about Murdoch's characterization style that we can anticipate will carry throughout. We have already seem how the narrative voice takes on the aspect of the character which it is foregrounding. This fact alone raises questions about relativity. Prevalent themes are of  light/darkness, sleeping/waking, and again and time - as extension and "extensionless point". There is also something of a Spinozistic mind/body identification: so far, we see the not only the character's bodies, but their entire physical situatedness (their clothing, their relations or lack of relations to others, their physical locations) as mirrors or expressions of their mental situatedness. 

Our characters, different but somehow actualized possiblities that lie on the same axes, all live under one roof, and yet in three chapters we are in three different worlds: Bruno in his prison - whose only option of communication is crying out loudly, with no guarantee of reply; Danby well rooted in his half underground extension - his "semi-basement annex" and Nigel in his upstairs (attic??) cloister. Prison, annex, cloister - where is the house? It is unfolded from within as an ununified location which is held together by cries, whispers (sssh!), and spies.  From without we know of its general shabbiness, and also that “The chimneys of Lots Road power station towered above, suitable extensions of that murky infertile earth” (21) - the chimneys standing for the menacing external powers that dominates this household, and the infertile earth indicating that our cast is childless, and perhaps all older than 40. 

Each chapter brings up the notion of dreaming.  This seems the least insidious for Danby, who states in his offhand way, "We all live in a private dream world most of the time. Sex is largely in the mind" (24). Danby's dream is perhaps that his behavior is harmless and without consequent. He is insensitive to the Otherness of his women - they are, as the image suggests, like Eve from his rib - is his delusion, which may be broadened as we see his complicity/interference with helping Bruno reunite with Miles over the issue of who gets the "stuff". Nigel's dream is the old mystics - that difference is a dream -  dualisms (love and death) are dissolved and all is one. Bruno's dream, so far anyway, is that everything is dream - like Nigel, except there is no Oneness that remains after awaking. "This dream stuff...would terminate at some moment and be gone, and no one would ever know what it had really been like" (10). That everything will be as though it never was is Bruno's dream, and as we find him, this is his only consolation for the burden of his life, which is, at this stage, nearly tantamount to the burden of his past; if he cannot forget then maybe, then certainly, the cosmos itself must forget everything. 

De Chirico, The Anguish of Departure