Innocente
O Mirth and Innocence! O milk and water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days.
– Byron
Okay, here’s something. Or maybe not. For years now, there’s been a niggling wonder in the back of my mind when reading certain books.
Books by Roth, Burgess, L. Durrell, Nabokov, Amis père & fils and… well, a sizeable portion of male fiction writers over the age of 50 (I know, Byron doesn’t count; besides, he was just a big baby).
It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
– Mignon McLaughlin
The question is this: What is this preoccupation with Innocence, this gaping reverence, the growing desire among “declining” males to possess or recapture it, or at least its icons – sometimes to the point of unseemliness?
The graceful flowers of innocence are more valuable than the laurel crown of fame.
– Franz Grillparzer
Is it mere nostalgia for the bright and distant days of vaporous thought and raw passion (even if when you’re truly innocent you don’t know it, and only ache for knowledge); is it fear of old age, a desire to dominate or… ?
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
– Mason Cooley
All of these seemed possible, but then dismissed because I can’t say that I’ve been struck by the same preoccupation amongst women writers (or acquaintances) of those generations – all of whom are certainly prey to the same degree of nostalgia and fear, and propensity to indulge.
No, it is not only our fate, but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.
– Elizabeth Bowen
So I’m leaning, dismayed, towards Dean’s poignant take: ‘Darling, it’s just gonads gunning for eugenics.’
Aw, jeez. Is that all?
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Comment
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— Dean Allen Feb 10, 5:31am # - I have wondered before (and wonder here again) whether this (the small number of over-50 female writers who praise innocence) may be proof that few women have been innocent long enough to value the state? :-) Witness Eve, after all, and her eager rush towards the apple tree…
— Michael Feb 10, 2:17pm # - ahem ;)
Of course, the literary king of innocence was Blake, wasn’t he? But more than that, this trend of over-50 male writers yearning for days gone by might simply be the regret of actions that cannot be undone. Isn’t a clamor for innocence a desire to cast off responsibility? Can an innocent “infant joy” possibly be to blame for what happens to it?
(p.s. just noticed that surrounding the word “ahem” with asterisks bolds it. The Kinetic Muse contingent eagerly awaits Textpattern.)
— sjc Feb 10, 4:05pm # - Most ageing males believe (and this is actually not limited to them, because I am still in the prime of my youth) that they did not have enough sex in high school, and that somehow, if they could do it all over again, they would have more sex.
The potential for more and better sex is equated with innocence.
This is less flippant than it sounds. Honest.
— August Feb 11, 2:04am # - It is external metaphor for the lifelong quest for the center of one’s being, done by action in earlier years, now in ëlder”years, in this depiction of ïnnocence”, lost or otherwise, that you refer to. You will never find this in someone who meditated his whole life, or in a mystic, or in anyone whoever looked below the surface(s) in their life. Surprised you don’t see it that way.
— ana ma roopa Feb 11, 3:28am # - Maybe it’s that, at least in the past and perhaps still in many places, women/girls are expected to stay innocent and virginal and men/boys are expected to be worldly and experienced. Perhaps both sexes rebel against this, and maybe at middle age this rebellion comes to the fore. Women then say, No I’m not so innocent and I want to be a full powerful person recognizing my knowledge and experience. And men say, No I’m tired of the pressure to be the powerful man on top of his game and I want to be a child again and just play and throw off these responsibilities. Maybe it’s just compensating for a lack of balance when both sexes want to be full human beings free of the roles society presses on them. Then again, maybe it’s just hormones. ;-)
— leslee Feb 11, 12:20pm # - The longing may be somewhere between The Rebel and Iron John. A breadwinner discovers the violence necessary for his own survival (including his progeny) and reacts in horror. The continuation of one’s own existence demands the annihilation of other life: even vegetarians destroy.
— Justin Feb 11, 2:57pm # - Nostalgia plays a large part in this search for “innocence”, yes, but a longing for innocence need not be entirely gonad-driven:
“Now, as his children got older,he felt the need to feel his way back to those earlier experiences, knowing he could not live off their childhood forever, knowing at the root that there was some poetry to that era of being that could not survive translation. He had been trying so long, wrapped in his life of duties and cogitation. Soon the poetry of his children would be lost to him, as it dimmed in his memory, if he did not find his way back to that primal language.
“His mind was braced for epiphany—for all the dark corridors of his adulthood to be burst aside like a dandelion head parting in the wind.
“Sometimes the reams of psychiatry that he had ingested just seemed to highlight the shortcomings of human explanation. He felt like jettisoning the tomes of his library out of his office window and leaving for the life of simplicity which he knew was mythical, but still yearned for.
“He knew the real path was painful and hard.”
—”Mackerel Sky,” Chapter Three: Miasma
Sometimes this quality of innocence is something that brings us back to ourselves—like a certain smell or taste can cause memories to erupt in our consciousness, as was described by Proust with his tea-cake experience (maybe someone can supply the reference for that? book, chapter, etc.). This quality of transport, of re-embracing experiences, selves, moments of perception which we had previously thought lost, can be a true discipline—our childishness has been lost, yet our childlikeness can be regained (improved upon?).
However, as with all things our attitudes may easily become corrupted, the gonads may intervene, and dysfunctional fantasies may be indulged.
As for the gender distinction, perhaps women lose less of their emotional selves (compartmentalize less) as they mature and so do not feel as strong a yearning to trace their way back to a child-like way of experience? Not a complete answer, but another option.
— QHLTH60 Feb 14, 1:12pm # - The reference for Proust is “Swann’s Way” (1913), the first volume of A la recherche du temps perdu.
— QHLTH60 Feb 14, 5:48pm # - It is true, I think, that men, no matter what age, are attracted to women of child-bearing years. And this naturally becomes a burden to mathematicians as the man grows older.
As the divide in years yawns wider and wider, men opt to seek not only fertility but innocence because it is not offspring they are seeking, rather their own youth.
— Jim Feb 15, 4:02am # - Look at Carol Shields’s “Unless”. I think it’s a meditation on innocence as much as a novelistic treatise on power.
Most of Alice Munro’s stories are about “loss” of innocence. (And the harsh realities of knowledge.)
Joyce Carol Oates seems obsessed by innocence.
I do know what you mean though. I think men are promised things – in many ways. There is no way to live up to such promise.
It is kind of biblical. Deeply cultural.
Men’s lib, anyone?
— MOJdeB Feb 17, 10:45pm # - Nabokov doesn’t really count because he was only writing for the money. The rest are weirdly bent individuals. But I still agree with the thematic point.
I’m not sure it’s all about the nads for older men. I think it’s just as much about the knees, back, neck, shoulders, and other things that have a tendency to either stop working or be sore all the time, and for no good reason. You get a lot of conditioning for free as a young man, but as an older man, you have to pay a price to stay in shape. I think that innocence is a yearning for what used to come free, but now you have to pay for.
FWIW.
— IB Bill Feb 18, 8:59pm # - Fine points, and eloquence finer still – I’m always so awfully impressed by y’all – but I’m still not a middle-aged man (saving up for that), so can’t know for sure and will have to trust your theories.
I choose instead to be a wimp and respond just to this:
“Look at Carol Shields’s “Unless”. I think it’s a meditation on innocence as much as a novelistic treatise on power.”
because certain parts of that book were like a fist in the gut for me.
I agree that it was a mediation on innocence, but not so much on the lost innocence of the narrator who continues to feel discomfort with “girly” situations and who, I think, is comfortable with being a grown-up – despite the feeling of helplessness that we all hope or presume we’ll overcome at some point.
Most overwhelming for me was that strange sadness we feel when we realize that our children are no longer innocents. We have irrational thoughts of not having protected them enough when it comes too soon in our eyes (I still remember the first time I saw my daughter bleed, and what it did to me).
We’re sad, I think, because we know full well what awaits them, that it’s out of our hands, and can only hope for the best.
— gail Feb 19, 11:51am # - ‘Darling, it’s just gonads gunning for eugenics’ as applied to innocence, seems to me to be much less than poignant. I regard it rather as a quip or a witticism meant to grab one’s attention by being attractive because of its apparent truth; but I disagree with Dean’s thought because it not only eschews a penetrating and incisive comment on the topic but because he projects the obvious and superficial as causal. This is a successful attempt at humor, which I sense is the intention, because it brings a smile to the face of the reader/listener but; in my opinion, it fails to identify a deeper cause at work.
No one can look into the subconscious of the of the writers on the subject, identify the pertinent experiences, cull them out, and present them for inspection to those interested in knowing the source of the views these authors expressed.
These facts however, do not prevent the discovery of truth; or why these many authors regarded innocence as something lost yet desirable. If the true cause, idea, or reason for something happening were derivable only from logic or scientific method, then homo-sapiens would still be drawing on cold cave walls. Experience, observation and thought still produce sound answers to the question ‘why’.
Avoiding the lengthy explanations the above assertions may need I will simply state my opinion.
I think it is necessary to consider the time and the societies in which these writers lived and especially the ideas that they were taught to believe to be true. Belief is stronger than reason; how else account for current day suicide bombings of innocents. And, derivatively and obviously, all that is believed is not necessarily true. Yet this rarely stops a believer from action.
Accepting this statement about belief as truth, I suspect these writers were strongly influenced by the thoughts prevalent in the western societies of their time, best expressed in a few short phrases:
“Suffer the little children to come unto me” “You must be as one of these to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” “…it is better to have a millstone tied around your neck and be dumped into the sea…”
These thoughts suggest that it is better to be childlike, accepting all in life as good and natural, rather than having an adult viewpoint of life bespattered with cynicism and suspicion.
Another strong belief that was pervasive (and perhaps tortuously derived from the idea that it is necessary to be child-like and innocent to gain the reward of heaven) was that sexual intercourse was at best necessary but dirty, manifesting mankind as bestial rather than spiritual; or beast-like rather than god-like. Shakespeare’s reference to a man and woman making the four legged beast, while amusing, is apt and telling of the local attitude towards sex.
Elizabeth Bowen expresses the idea clearly and succinctly: only the innocent picnic in Eden (heaven) but in this world we are predestined to mature in bodies that demand the very sexual satisfaction that prevents us from attaining our spiritual reward, which, it is believed, is our proper goal. What a quandary!
Those who have these beliefs quite naturally begin to reflect on their own end as they find themselves farther from birth and closer to death. If you believe there is a god and a heaven and a hell and you believe that the only way into heaven is by being as innocent as a child this will cause any believer to regret the loss of innocence and perhaps make an attempt to regain it by reflecting on it, and peut etre writing about it.
Please do not think that I ascribe religious belief as the only reason for the frequency of commentary on innocence in literature or that I think that all the writers were religious.
But I do proffer the idea that the religious beliefs of centuries has a strong and often unrecognized influence on the ideas, thoughts and writings of those who live under their sway.
I should add that I do not think that it is always sexual innocence that is being discussed by the authors. The consideration of innocence covers the gamut of moral behavior. Furthermore, I do not think that most of the writers who were quoted envisaged the age of innocence extending into puberty and young adulthood. I think it more realistic to think of the age of innocence as approximately between the ages of five, six or seven and twelve years of age. For many, a truly magical time of life.
— Guy MacDonald Feb 29, 1:32am #
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