Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) / Theodor W. Adorno (1903 - 1969)
I.
The narrator of Lady Chatterley's Lover identified the modern era as an essentially tragic age; one in which the skies have fallen and we are left among the ruins, with no smooth road into the future. Nevertheless, we are encouraged to live and learn, rather than weep and wail; to scramble over the obstacles and build new little habitats, have new little hopes. [1]
This post-cataclysmic emphasis on the small scale - on being more modest in all things, including our architectural ambitions and personal aspirations - does not mean a fall into triviality, however, as I very much doubt that Lawrence wants us simply to peel potatoes and listen to the radio, even if this is arguably a preferable alternative to tragically wringing our hands [2].
That said, Lawrence is surprisingly ambivalent when it comes to this subject: one might have expected him to be strongly opposed to such and, at times, he is; often contrasting the elemental beauty and primeval darkness of a natural landscape with the ugly triviality and falsehood of modern life [3].
But, at other times, Lawrence criticises those those who hold themselves aloof from small talk and playful banter, suggesting that it is this refusal that hinders their ability to develop more meaningful relationships:
"They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse." [4]
II.
Unlike Lawrence, some people are not so ambivalent on this question: they aggressively condemn those individuals who devote themselves to activities regarded as trivial pursuits; i.e., childish games, old-fashioned hobbies, pointless pastimes, amateur undertakings, etc.
Doubtless, this includes blogging ...
In fact, I recently received an email from an anonymous reader informing me that blogging in the almost obsessive manner that I blog - about what are trivial personal concerns disguised with philosophical or literary references in order to appear of import or possible interest to others - reveals me to be an affected narcissist who, in avoiding the serious challenges of the real world is effectively part of the problem.
They close their email thus:
I'm sorry to say, but you're essentially a complacent conformist who blogs more as a coping mechanism, rather than to bring about much needed social and political change and I would remind you of these lines from Adorno:
"Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness
and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the
principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is
radically evil." [5]
III.
Now, appreciative as I am of such criticism, I can't say that I'm persuaded by Adorno's identification of triviality with evil (nor of evil with inertia, when the latter is not merely the negative ideal that he would like us to believe, but a vastly complex state) [6].
Ultimately, as with his broader critique of the Kulturindustrie I find Adorno's thinking on this question somewhat exaggerated and overblown: no one is attempting to consummate triviality and thereby lead us into absolute horror.
The fact is, being trivial does not make you evil; it
simply means that you prefer to linger at the crossroads, uncertain of which way to head, but happy to chat with others you may encounter rather than
forge ahead on a single path leading you to the mountain top.
And so, push
comes to shove, I'm more inclined to side with Oscar Wilde rather than Adorno, who advised: 'We
should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the
serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.' [7]
It seems to me that it is this mode of thought - more comical than critical - that offers us the best chance of surviving among the ruins; for it allows us to find something more important than meaning and that's humour. Refusing to take things tragically, means learning how to laugh in the face of adversity, which might not make us better human beings, but it will almost certainly make us less earnest and the enemy of ascetic idealism [8].
Notes
[1] I'm paraphrasing (and quoting words and phrases from) the opening paragraph to D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). I have written about this opening in a post dated 21 September 2019: click here.
[2] In the second version of Lady C., the narrator of the tale says: "We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. Having tragically wrung our hands, we now proceed to peel the potatoes, or to put on the wireless." How we read this line is very much open to interpretation.
See The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 223.
[3] See, for example, the letter to J. D. Beresford (1 February 1916), in which Lawrence contrasts the Cornish coastline, with all its heavy black rocks, to the "dust and grit and dirty paper" of the modern world in all its non-elemental triviality and shallowness.
The letter can be found in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol. II., ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge Universty Press, 1982), p. 519.
[4] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron (Cambridge University Press, 1992), chapter VII, p. 178.
[5] Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 115:
[6] I know this because inertia became a key term in D. H. Lawrence's understanding of energy and materiality. Unlike other modernist writers - including Adorno - who disliked inertia and always wrote in praise of dynamism, Lawrence contrasted negative inertia (associated with industrialism and the ideal of limitless production) to positive inertia (associated with the limits and fragility of life and its generation).
Readers who are interested might like to see the essay by Andrew Kalaidjian, 'Positive Inertia: D. H. Lawrence and the
Aesthetics of Generation', in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1, (Indiana University Press, Fall 2014), pp. 38-55. This essay can be accessed via JSTOR: click here.
[7] Oscar Wilde, from an interview with Robbie Ross, published in the St. James Gazette (18 Jan 1895): click here. This, of course, is the philosophy behind The Importance of Being Earnest (1895): 'A Trivial Play for Serious People' as it was originally subtitled.
[8] In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche concludes that the ascetic ideal has "even in the most spiritual sphere, only one type of real enemy [...] these are the comedians of the ascetic ideal", i.e., those who arouse mistrust in the latter via a refusal to take things seriously. See On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), III. 27, p. 125.
Readers interested in this, might also like to see Keith Ansell-Pearson's essay 'Toward the Comedy of Existence', in The Fate of the New Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill (Avebury Press, 1993).
