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Article Excerpt
THE ENLIGHTENMENT has become a vexed point of controversy in the postmodern
era. In Dialektik der Aufklarung (1944), Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argue that the universalisms and instrumental reason of the Enlightenment lead to the inhumanity of Auschwitz. Jean-Francois Lyotard similarly blames Enlightenment thinking for "the totalitarian and ecological nightmares that have bedeviled the twentieth century" (Boyne 3). In contrast, both Jurgen Habermas and Richard Rorty have defended the emancipatory social project started by the Enlightenment. (1) Historians of the period contest that the Enlightenment has been made into a caricature of itself, an "Other" against which postmodernism seeks to define itself (Baker 1). Karlis Racevskis concedes, "postmodern thought has not uncovered anything that the Age of Enlightenment, in its more lucid moments, did not already know" (77). (2)
Naturally, this theoretical controversy is reflected in the postmodern novel. Postmodern fiction has shown a marked interest in the themes of history thus prompting Linda Hutcheon to coin the phrase "historiographic metafiction" to describe the trend (xii). The common thrust of most historiographic metafiction is to interrogate what we think we know of the past, how it is represented, and why one version of the past prevails over another. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that quite a number of postmodern historical novels have been set during the Age of Enlightenment. Amy Elias has observed that these novels "enact philosophical debates about the relation of modernity to postmodernity," which "may be seen as an interrogation of the Father, the originating Word, by a postmodernist sensibility" (179-80). Per Olov Enquist's Magnetisorens femte vinter (1964; The Magnetist's Fifth Winter) and Livlakarens besok (1999; The Royal Physician's Visit) are splendid examples of postmodern historiographic metafiction. This essay will analyze Enquist's engagement with the Enlightenment in these two novels which bracket his lengthy literary career. In the process, this study should clarify Enquist's position in the murky terrain of postmodern ideas. There is nothing naive or uncritical about Enquist's presentation of the Enlightenment, but nonetheless, both novels put forth a defense of reason and attempts to create a better world.
MAGNETISORENS FEMTE VINTER
Magnetisorens femte vinter is set in 1793 and for the span of several months follows events in the life of Friedrich Meisner, a character inspired by, but not identical to, Friedrich Anton Mesmer. In fact, Mesmer is mentioned in the text in order to make the distinction between Mesmer and Meisner clear to the reader. Other novelists have trodden this historical path, like Brian O'Doherty in The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P*** (1992). O'Doherty treats Mesmer as a man who considers his methods to be scientific; he is a man of the Enlightenment, who genuinely wishes to help his patients. The doctors who malign him and his methods are merely resentful that he has taken their patients away. For O'Doherty, Mesmer is a manifestation of Enlightenment thinking but not a contradiction to it. This particular view of Mesmer is not uncommon; however, Enquist's Meisner is something altogether different. (3) Meisner is a self-serving charlatan and an expert at gaining power over others.
Enquist's narrative picks up Meisner's story just has he has taken refuge in a grotto after having been forced to flee from angry farmers who wish to punish him for fraud (their pigs died) and sexual assault (he has had intercourse with one of the farmer's daughters). He seriously injures those who try to climb up to him, even killing one of his pursuers. After some days of siege, he is captured. Against all odds, Meisner escapes with the help of one of his captors who has fallen under the spell of Meisner's compelling personality. Meisner and his new companion make their way by theft and murder. Meisner gains new clothes and a money bag after a wealthy traveler has followed him into the woods, never to appear again. Meisner sexually exploits and abandons a pair of women they meet on their journey. Thus, by way of introduction, the reader is in no doubt that Meisner is a thief, a murderer, and a sexual predator, but the portrait is not really as simple as all that. The complexities begin to manifest themselves when he sets up practice in the peaceful town of Seefond.
Enquist has chosen a moment in time when one episteme is poised to give way to the next. The science of the Enlightenment is being challenged by the new mode of romantic art, and people are made uneasy by reports of the French Revolution. Virtually every scholar who has written on the novel has noted the tensions represented in Seefond. The binary oppositions given include "kunst/ufunuft" versus "laege/fornunft" (Henningsen 51) [art/irrationality versus doctor/rationality], "irrational" versus "rational" "emotion" versus "reason," "unconsciousness" versus "consciousness" (Shideler 39), "tro" versus "vetande; "mystik" versus "skepsis," "illusion" versus "sanning" (Lundqvist 161) [belief versus knowing, mysticism versus scepticism, illusion versus truth], "den demoniske konstnaren och predikanten" versus "rationalisten, det kritiska fornuftets ihardige foresprakare" (Ekselius 192) [the demonic artist and preacher versus the rationalist, the enthusiastic spokesperson for critical reason]. Enquist sets up a contrast between romantic irrationality in the form of Meisner and Enlightenment rationality in the form of the doctor, Rudolph Steiner. Claus Selinger, another doctor, assumes a position somewhere in the middle and his hesitations and doubts are the main source of all the complexities surrounding this apparently simple opposition.
Given that Meisner is established in the reader's mind as a thief, liar, and murderer, one might imagine that the moral weight in the story would all reside with the opposing side of reason. This easy judgment is complicated by the fact that Meisner cures Claus Selinger's daughter from blindness. The episode is loosely based on the historical Mesmer's famous attempt to cure the blind pianist, Maria Theresa von Paradies. Maria, Selinger's daughter, became blind after having been raped by marauding soldiers at the age often. Within a modern psychoanalytic paradigm, this affliction would be diagnosed as hysterical blindness. Meisner's charismatic powers and lies provide healing narratives to his patients: "Ge dem en logn eftersom de behover den" (80) ["But give them a lie, since that's what they need" (71)]. (4) If they believe in him, they can make themselves well. His cure of Selinger's daughter is effective and completely beyond the powers of the science and rationalism of the day.
The moral high ground of Enlightenment science is built on shifting sand. The doctors of Seefond are not nearly as successful as Meisner. Medical science still avails itself of bloodletting, leeches, and odd herbal concoctions. One of Claus Selinger's treatments runs as follows: "Jag ordinerade da givetvis sex blodiglar att appliceras strax bakom oronen, tre pa var sida, och en pase belladonna att baras innanfor kladerna intill det onda stallet pa hennes kropp" (61) ["Naturally, I prescribed six leeches, to be applied just behind the ears, three on either side, and a bag of belladonna to be worn inside her clothes next to the affected area" (53)]. Selinger himself feels that his cures are mostly a matter of chance; patients get well or die regardless of what he does to them. Another limitation of the scientific paradigm is its inability to acknowledge the validity of anything outside itself. Selinger relates a case involving an eighteen-year-old girl who was dying of mysterious causes, which the reader suspects might have been psychological. One of Mesmer's pupils volunteers to magnetize her but is refused: "Lakaren hade forklarat att hon var dodsdomd och maste do" (69) ["The doctor had declared her certain to die" (60)]. (5) The patient dies, although she might have been saved by the experiment: "en fortjanstful dod" ["a deserving death"], "i fornunftets hagn" (69) ["within the bounds of reason" (61)]. (6) Selinger also describes a surgical experiment performed on a soldier who had lost his nose in battle: "Resultatet blev en fasansfull klump, en kottig rodblank utsvallning" (64) ["The upshot was a monstrous lump, a shiny red fleshy swelling" (56)]. The surgeon is nonetheless pleased by the potential of the procedure, even if his patient after enduring great pain looks like a sideshow freak. Here we tread on the territory of instrumental reason that Horkheimer and Adorno feared. The desired goal of scientific results takes precedence over human pain and suffering. Patients become objects, not people.
Enquist deliberately problematizes...
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