Lacrimae rerum (rant)
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 6:30 pmI found this article on sorrow by Robert Bly. An article which will probably be useful, but as to the following - “A few years ago in Romania archaeologists found a small basalt statue, very elegant in its blackness, of a man seated. It is the oldest Sorrowing Male so far found. It hints that grief has been for thousands of years a masculine emotion; men’s sorrow seems unusual in that it seems inexplicable.” - sweet Jesus, Mr Bly, do you really think women don’t feel inexplicable sorrow too? That we don’t experience weltschmertz, existential angst, nameless and illogical glooms of the spirit? But now, do women, as artists, make such a great fuss of our sorrow as men do? Perhaps a survey is in order.
Maybe we can, in fact, explain inexplicable sorrow. Might it all be down to the fact that we are sentient individuals and we are going to die? And that all that we love in the world is going to die? But women, with the responsibility of raising the next generation, can hardly afford to wallow in this beastly prospect too much, or we would kill all our children at birth to spare them from the world’s pain. But while women may keep popping out generations in defiance of the Grim Reaper gibbering at the opposite goal, don’t imagine for a minute, Mr Iron John Bly, that your grave and sober sorrow is some sort of singularly male business.
Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
I thought at first that he was saying “Hey, actually it’s not a weird thing for men to feel sorrow, contrary to the popular belief that men must be manly and strong while women get to do the pathetic crying thing.” And then I read it again and my head met my desk in a loud, crashing fashion. It’s like he seems to be saying that men’s sorrow is somehow more deep, more mysterious than women’s sorrow; somehow better? More worthy? It’s all sorrow. It’s all awful. Regardless of what is or isn’t hanging between your legs.
September 12th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Actually, if he is speaking of this one: http://www.dervent.ro/j/scrieri/poezii/Ganditorul.jpg it’s called “The Thinker”, without any sorrow whatsoever.
And it wasn’t found alone, but in pair with the one called “Woman Seated”, presumed to be the wife.
Here’s a pic of them both: http://www.ici.ro/romania/images/orase/ct_ganditor.jpg
So Mr.Bly seems to go the other way around, adapting things to his agenda.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Alankria - I had the same sort of head-meets-desk experience. It’s so frustrating when someone who’s well read, a thinker, a poet, comes out with something so downright dumb - you wonder how they missed the bleeding obvious facts.
Harlay - I remember those! Maybe it’s just the angle of the image, but in the second picture the man looks to be smiling (actually, he looks like he’s talking on a cell phone…). They’re fascinating as art - they could have been made in the 20th cent. under African influence.
September 12th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
They were made about 7000 years ago by a group called The Hamangia Culture (actually I have no idea how to translate all these specific terms, I hope I’m doing a decent job). Wikipedia should have an entry, I’m a lazy bastard who just woke, coffee is more important than search engines at the moment.
Anyway, they were a rather small group, the first ones (recorded) to populate the Black Sea coast, along what is today Dobrogea in Romania and the north-east area of Bulgaria.
Their particularity was the art they produced - showing expression, male statues (rather unusual for the time) as well as female ones.
I hope my memories are good as I am rather proficient at forgetting things.
September 14th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
its because men are not ment to have feelings beyond hungry cold itchy and Where are the girls
September 16th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Men are allowed to be angry, too - more than women are. And in literature - though maybe not in life - male characters can usually get away with more self pity and brooding than female characters (I think - and I’m not sure why; it’s almost as if a man focused on himself is acceptable, but a woman focused on herself isn’t…?)
September 16th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
As a bloke, I interpret Robert Bly’s comments differently…in that I do not ‘get’ from the article a sense that he is contrasting mens feelings of sorrow with womens. (And I assume here he means ‘Men’ literally, and not the paternalistic ‘Mankind’.)
Gravitas has to be one of my favourite words (thank you, Iain M. Banks) and it is well positioned in his article. Western men are generally raised not to show emotions such as fear, sorrow, compassion etc…and especially in Anglo Australian culture these can be derided as ‘weak’ emotions…those that lack ‘gravity’. Is it any wonder then that we see such an increase amongst Gen X and Boomer men of depression? Is it giving it another name, or just the emergence of acceptance of a state of mind, a state of feeling?
His quote: ‘Men often enter genuine feeling for the first time when in deep grief, after cheerfulness and excitement have failed for years to bring them there.’ rings true for me and for many other men I know in recent times…for we strive to be the happy-go-lucky, man-the-hunter types…prone to working long hours, destructive tendancies, lack of self-conviction, internalising issues, and do not realise what we are doing to ourselves (thank you, Stephen Biddulph).
It has only been in recent months for me, following the death of our 7th unborn child, that the depth of gravity, the ’sorrow of the world’, has really hit home for me. Is it the ‘entrace to (my) soul, a wide road to God’? Perhaps. It certainly has me seeing and understanding things in a way I would never do before. The pain may, eventually, be worth it.
In my (generalised) observation, woman are better at opening this door, travelling this road. Whether you are maternalistic or not, most women I know are better ‘wired’ for expressing their sorrow, their grief, and being more congruent with their emotions and pain. As a result, they can endure more, and, in my experience, tend to do so whether they want to or not.
A difficult thing for a woman to realise is that men experience pain and sorrow differently to them, and cope with it (or not) differently. How many women watch their male partners/fathers/brothers/etc. ‘close up’ when they are mourning or in pain, only to watch it seep or explode out in other ways later on?
Robert Bly’s words about being ‘more alive the older we get’ are valid…as long as men let themselves learn and accept whatever pain and sorrow comes their way.
September 17th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Al - this is in no way intended to belittle your grief, and if you got something from the article, I’m glad. I just can’t read “men’s sorrow seems unusual in that it seems inexplicable” without thinking that Bly hasn’t given women’s sorrow enough thought.
“A difficult thing for a woman to realise is that men experience pain and sorrow differently to them, and cope with it (or not) differently.” - That men deal with it differently, at least sometimes, I’ll pay - we’re socially conditioned to deal with it differently. But I’m not sure that men and women actually experience pain and sorrow differently. That’s really saying there’s a biochemical difference in emotional experience between the genders - or am I misunderstanding you?
I do wonder whether women are sometimes more open about expressing these emotions because when we’re quiet and subtle about it, men just don’t notice, and assume we’re fine? That isn’t the whole story, I know; still, would you say that women and men (necessarily making a huge broad generalisation) experience happiness, anger or fear differently?
I truly don’t know, either, that women are ‘wired’ to express sorrow and so forth better than men. Conditioned, perhaps; and early conditioning may result in wiring (I think the neuroscientists are still out on that one). But it has occurred to me that even women are really only allowed emotional outpourings for certain reasons, such as loss of a loved one, or compassion for someone’s suffering. Existential angst - deep inexplicable sufferings of the soul - have usually been left for men to express, as if women have no right to feelings that verge so perilously close to self-pity.
That said, I’m all for men coming to an understanding of the sorrows they feel - but ditto for women. My gut feeling - for whatever it’s worth - is that in the present age we’re all rather deficient at articulating our sorrows (however we may express them in inarticulate ways, be it weeping or raging or suicide).
But - if women really are better at opening that door, if that’s the truth, I would very much like to know why. Do we perhaps learn sorrow very young, as small girls, when we realise that men rule the world and we will never be men - whereas man, when hit belatedly with the fact that he isn’t master of the universe, takes it hard? Does it come from the early-learned repression of our natural selves under the role of femininity, so that we’re acquainted from a young age with the feeling of mourning for something lost? Is it simply biological? All the preceding no doubt sounds cranky - it isn’t meant to. Curses on typed communication. I’m genuinely curious about the subject, and am simply tossing through ideas as they come to my mind.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
‘Evening my dear - no, nothing to belittle. It is what it is.
The pivot point seems to be what Bly is proposing - the contrast of the “experience” of pain and sorrow, versus the contrast in “dealing” with pain and sorrow, between the genders.
With the “experience”, all we can really base our judgements on is observation, anecdote and empathy…as it is beyond our senses to really, accurately “experience” another’s pain and sorrow. Instead we do the next best thing - position ourselves in the same place and say “what would I feel in the same situation?”. Yes, there may be some biochemical bits at play…I’ve seen what reproductive hormones can do, and when they are snapped like a taut rubber band the whiplash is devastating. But they can also salve, and calm, and make one forget. That men and women have different mixes and concentrations of chemicals in their body…is a start…but so much of it boils down to ourselves, our perceptions, experiences, and fortitude.
Is it (seemingly) ‘inexplicable’? I would not go that far. I think all rational sorrow can be fairly explained. Sorrow for the sake of sorrow does not do it for me, no matter what set of X and/or Y combinations you sport. I agree with you on the social conditioning, and the mental condition of children. Children are survivors, and we carry the traits forward with us that serve us in our younger years. Only child vs Baby child. Son vs Daughter. Strong father figure, absent father figure. And so on. A lot depends on what we see around us - on what is deemed ‘acceptable’. What ever will make sure we are not abandoned in the jungle by our tribe.
I love watching the difference between young boys and girls of 3 years old - just developing and ego and the ability to consciously tell lies. In our circle of friends-with-kids back here, with few exceptions the young girls are more articulate, more gregarious, and more in control of their emotional communication. The boys generally fall into the fire-hot/tree-pretty school of thought and interpretation.
From my own experience - yes, I agree - the realisation that you are not the master of the universe - or even of your own wee demesne - is like someone turning off the gravity and feeling your stomach give a lurch that tells you that something odd and paradigm-shifty has just occured. It can consume you, but it can also be liberating…Accepting that concept - even if you don’t embrace it and buy it a frosty glass of Singha to wash down your Goong Ma-Now - is a tough one, but gees it makes life easier. Who wants to be master of the freaking universe?? [ and don’t say ‘Skeletor’, that’s just plain wrong… ]
In this day and age, I am not too sure how many of us spend time contemplating Original Sorrow, and on this point, whilst there may be some spiritual or deep-memory validity to what Bly is saying…I’m sorry but I believe primative man gave about as much thought to the feelings of the animal he’s slaughtered as I gave to the feelings of the teabag I eviscerated in boiling water this evening…
September 19th, 2007 at 4:15 am
I tend to think all ‘inexplicable’ sorrow can be explained by the fact that we’re sentient creatures who know we’re going to die. I could be wrong, of course.
The observable differences between young girls and young boys are fascinating, I agree. I wonder if it’s the same across cultures? (Remembering a study which concluded that male and female babies are socialised differently from the get-go.) Still, men catch up with women later - the world has never seemed to suffer a shortage of talkative men amongst the voices that get listened to (even if the male masses are as, or nearly as, excluded as the female masses).
I wonder, when young girls are being gregarious, who are they being gregarious with, and why? I seem to recall - vaguely - wanting to socialise as a search for approval, for allies in my little battles, to find someone who would answer my questions the way I wanted them answered, who would see me the way I wanted to to be seen, or who saw the world the way I did. I lived less in the real world than in a world of imagination and stories. But of course I don’t know if I was unusual or not. As you say, children are survivors - I wonder if girls, encouraged to be likeable and pleasing, develop the communicative skills that increase their chances of being liked and loved?
September 20th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
(Skipping past the male/female sorrow discussion) I don’t think any sorrow can be inexplicable, but it can be inexplicably timed. We go through every day slowly building a little stock pile of sorrows that eventually is too big to hide under the bed, and then we feel it. What causes it to come out on the surface can be a mystery though.
September 28th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
In my case the trigger is usually something embarrassingly sentimental - puppies, old songs, bad poetry…