by Angelika Friedrich and Henry Whittlesey
Introduction
In the foreword to the 2023 collection, we offered an in-depth comparative analysis of stories consistent with pragmatic values and norms on the one hand and romantic ones on the other.
Two stories on the pragmatic side, one from the United States and the other from the United Kingdom, were shown to exhibit characteristics of pragmatism such as materialism, self-determination, lack of humor, the pursuit of success, relaxation in activity/materialism, an orientation on ends (Voaden’s The Opportunist), social and “physical” obligations, attention to success, identification with management and activity (Stott’s 5-4-3-2-1).
For literary fiction by romantics, we analyzed La Luvia en Bogotá by Adriana Uribe and Freedom by Krisztina Janosi. These two narratives exemplify many values and norms of romanticism: fatalism, humor, polarization, life as a process, production, freedom, boundless compassion, pessimism, circularity and existentiality. All of these characteristics are largely or entirely absent from the pragmatic stories.
In the foreword to this year’s 2024 anthology, we would like to complement that detailed study with a more comprehensive one. For reasons of space, however, we will only examine romantic literary fiction in this foreword. Since all of the stories published in 2024 are by authors from countries either without a pragmatic leitculture or without dominance by it, we can analyze each one to determine whether romantic or pragmatic values and norms are embodied in the text.
To keep the ambit manageable, the textual analysis below will primarily address the extent to which each story dramatizes the romantic value of the process. This value is one of the most fundamental and tangible. It should be viewed in contrast to an end or goal.
You can easily determine whether you have an end- or process-based mindset by thinking of a task you have just handled or need to handle. If you are primarily focused on finishing the task, especially if you do not want to undertake it, but want or need the result, that would mean you have an end-based orientation. If you look forward to the task for the sake of passing through the different stages involved in it, with the end or goal being of secondary importance, you identify with the process. Gradations are possible, of course.
In the stories collected here, it is quite evident that a romantic orientation prevails at most levels. Since an understanding of the process in romanticism is often tied to other concomitant values and norms, the interpretation of each story will generally delve into these supporting characteristics. Accordingly, it is helpful to have the following (inexhaustive) list as a point of reference:
Materialism vs. the metaphysical / spiritual / existential
Consumption vs. production/living
Determining vs. accepting fate
The end vs. the process
Positive vs. negative attitude toward the future
Education: Critical vs. inessential
Success: Critical vs. inessential
Networking vs. attending to inner circle
Laughter: Sententious vs. pointless humor
Work vs. relaxation
Mental agility: Slow vs. fast
Relaxation in activity vs. polarized minds
Obligations vs. freedom
Manage vs. work in an execution capacity
Love: Tough vs. compassionate[1]
The characteristics to the left are associated with pragmatists; those to the right with romantics.
It might (rightly) be objected that the theme of process in the sense of plot or characters undergoing a series of experiences constitutes a feature of most narratives. When Eric Packer in Cosmopolis (by Don DeLillo) spends two hundred pages spanning an entire day in his limousine to travel across Manhattan, such a story seems to embody the essence of a process. However, the character in this process of riding from first avenue to eleventh avenue wants to reach a destination and fills the trip with other activities to achieve ends in them: e.g., a colonoscopy (in the limousine) while receiving advice from a (beautiful female) philosopher. Furthermore, the protagonist Packer is obsessed with money, i.e., materialistic; he does not accept fate, as his reaction to the failing yen trade reveals; success is critical. And so on.
The process for a romantic is embedded in a framework of secondary values and norms. As we will see in the analysis and then in the stories themselves, the process in romanticism is bound up with romantic rather than pragmatic values and norms. Generally, this is also without reference to an end or goal. Success is nearly absent. So while the process itself can be a feature of both pragmatic and romantic fiction, it assumes special meaning in the context of romanticism with the attendant factors.
Note to readers: the italicized words in each gloss will generally indicate a reference to a value or norm of either pragmatism or romanticism. This is intended to distinguish them from their ordinary meaning. For example, process not italicized means process in its ordinary sense; process italicized implicates the romantic meaning. The word end without italics is used generally, while end in italics is intended in its pragmatic sense. There is, however, not a large discrepancy between the ordinary and theoretical meaning – that is why the terms were chosen.
Priorities by Narantsogt Baatarkhuu
The anthology begins in Mongolia with Ganbat and Chimgee going on a mini-adventure to buy one of the Western products that became popular after independence from the former Soviet Union – mayonnaise or mainuuz, as they pronounce it.
On their trip, the narrator describes a series of misfortunes, mishaps and everyday peculiarities. These are all taken in the spirit of the vicissitudes of the process of living. Neither the narrator nor the characters perceive the course of events – apart from the ID necessary to purchase mayonnaise in the store – as frustrating or absurd. To emphasize the neutrality or even pleasure derived from these (for Americans) strange events and acts, the narrator embellishes the process with unambiguous pointless humor, the polarized perception of being, mental agility and freedom – core values and norms of romanticism.
The first taste of alterity we encounter is when Ganbat and Chimgee cannot go buy the mayonnaise in their car because they are blocked in by another vehicle. It is common in Russia and, evidently, Mongolia to double- and triple-park in residential areas. You leave your phone number on the dashboard of your vehicle so another car owner needing to get out can call. In Priorities, the owner forgot to leave their number.
After Chimgee attempts to set off the car’s alarm, Ganbat pulls out his phone to document the scene for a Facebook video “to build some clout.” It is silly, funny – and very consistent with the disinterest in the end (of getting the mayonnaise) and the mental agility of romantics: They need to get mayonnaise, are having a problem, and a character decides to think about Facebook followers. If you can’t do one thing, at least do another. A pragmatist would not act like this – they would take some subsequent action directly related to the goal.
To a certain extent, Baatarkhuu sets up a contrast between the clearly romantic Ganbat and his more pragmatic wife Chimgee. Yet Chimgee is far from a classic pragmatist: She engages Ganbat each time he stalls for something: first the video; then a broken gate that turns into a quasi-nonsensical discussion about whether a falling tree makes a sound if no one hears it; finally the parameters of hitchhiking where she listens and laughs when Ganbat deadpans an obvious explanation about taxis being yellow and having a sign.
Ganbat and the narrator exhibit myriad traits of romantics. The former is witty and makes corny jokes such as the one about taxis. The narrator, for all intents and purposes, admits the absurdity of the entire story when the must-have mayonnaise that Ganbat and Chimgee failed to get is not even thought of, let alone requested by the guests at their party.
The entire process of procuring mayonnaise fails to produce a result, and the failure is not noticed. Along the way, the actors convey the inessentiality of success, share in pointless humor, are seemingly relaxed, exhibit mental agility. But most of all, the process without an end does not lead to failure: the hosts of the party – Ganbat and Chimgee – stand “with considerable smugness” and welcome their guests. And, appropriately, the farcical adventure closes by picking up on a slight (even worse) modification of Ganbat’s humorous leitmotif: “If a tree grew in the forest and nobody heard it, did it grow?”
The Night the Stars Stopped Shining by Sarah-Leah Pimentel
In a thoroughly somber story, a South-African father initially with great hopes for the future is forced to tell his wife and two children that he has taken a job in Saudi-Arabia to keep the family afloat.
Despite the tragic course of events, Bradley and his wife Lynette, along with the narrator, reveal a romantic mindset. The couple initially live with her parents to save money and then take care of her, sacrificing one source of income in the latter case. These acts alone demonstrate the importance of attending to the inner circle and the disregard for materialism and success. Professionally, Bradley does not aspire to management positions, but rather works in an execution capacity as a bookkeeper and then chooses the freedom of being a taxi driver.
The denouement – when Bradley tells his family about his plan to work for a hotel in Saudi Arabia – is driven by the previously recounted failures and downward trajectory of the family. What seems like a plan for success at first glance, is actually just an effort to survive: “The pandemic had almost ruined him financially. Then the tourists hadn’t come back as quickly as he’d hoped and work almost whittled down to nothing during the winter months. The constant stress about finding money to pay for the essentials was starting to take a toll on the family dynamics. He was always angry. But so was Lynette.” Together with his negative attitude toward the future, the plan is a reflection of his metaphysical mindset and his attention to the inner circle of his family. The pessimism, however, does not affect his boundless compassion for them, which he attests to in the subsequent discussion with his kids and the explanation of his loss of hope.
Finally, the personal narrator articulates a commensurately romantic orientation by ending the story with acceptance of fate. The couple gazes at the Southern Cross in the sky above them, and the narrator reminds the reader of the fatalistic journeys of former discoverers, hoping that Bradley will also “discover” a way home from the Middle East.
Many Happy Returns by Svetlana Molchanova
“If you’re forty and nothing hurts, then you’re dead.” Svetlana Molchanova’s story basically begins with a dumb joke. In the second paragraph, the first-person narrator shares her respect for fate: “I tried to get out of the looming party by pointing out that celebrating your 40th birthday was bad luck.”
Eastern Europe and Russia are bastions of romanticism, so it is not surprising to find corresponding characteristics in this Russian narrative. On the surface, it is about a bad-luck birthday party, first beset by an unexpected rainstorm and then damage caused to the couple’s new apartment. On a deeper or, perhaps, metaphysical level, the narrator is depicting the process of living with its ripple effects: nothing is achieved (the story ends at the dacha basically where it began); appeals are repeatedly made to higher powers (“It was like a spell cast by a witch. Yet we live in three-dimensional reality, not a magic tale. Or do we?”); characters exhibit mental agility by thinking quickly (e.g., solutions to apartment problem; fight with neighbor). This world of romanticism is further intensified by analepses to and digressions on topics echoing romanticism.
The narrator/protagonist’s disdain for success is evident in her dismissive paraphrasing of her husband’s birthday toast – not out of any ill will towards him or the company. On the contrary, every indication, especially the joke in bed at the beginning (“If you are forty…”), indicates a healthy, loving relationship. She is also not in a personal crisis, as her welcoming reception of a surprise encounter with an old classmate reveals. Success is simply frowned on in romanticism.
Freedom is represented in this classmate, Vadim, who has the flexibility to join Katia’s birthday party after running into her. There is no immediate obligation preventing him. If there is some (ostensibly productive) work he could do on this Sunday, he would prefer relaxation. Vadim promptly shares in the romantic spirit by jokingly congratulating the 40-year-old Katia with the words, “Wow, Happy eighteenth birthday again!”
The integration of an old classmate in the family gathering also underscores the attendance to the inner circle. Vadim qualifies as part of this group similar to the way we relate to old classmates at a high school or college reunion. Vadim also demonstrates his inner-circle attitude by offering to drive Katia and Egor to the city when they fail to get a taxi.
When Egor learns that their apartment in the city has been flooded by the upstairs one, the reader encounters a slew of quick thinking: One idea follows another; the failure of one proposal is replaced by another (e.g., to have the decorator renovating their apartment check on the neighbor, to consult the apartment building group chat, etc.). When Egor and Katia manage to come face-to-face with the upstairs neighbor, they are attacked. Egor quickly puts the guy in a joint lock, and, again perfectly in the spirit of romanticism, jokes to a worried elderly lady watching the scene: “Don’t worry… They say it is good to be close to one’s neighbors.”
And Now, It Will All Go Downhill by Jonay Quintero Hernandez
Dating back to volume one, Jonay Quintero Hernandez has been masterfully serializing a story primarily about Edelmiro, a former contract killer, his (romantic) partner Luisa, who murdered her abusive husband, and her daughter Amelia. They have all moved from Madrid to the island of El Hierro (see Amelia’s Euphemism in volume one).
The narrator is clearly a romantic, but it is somewhat difficult to suss out the orientation of Edelmiro, Luisa and, later, the adult Amelia. Perhaps no scene in the five stories (including this year’s) more clearly captures romantic humor than the narrator’s description of the child conceived by Edelmiro (51) and Luisa (47). Edelmiro’s aunt is sent down from heaven in the form of a poodle and must “baptize” the future baby girl destined to save mankind by urinating toward the reproductive tract during insemination.
By setting scenes in heaven and having characters travel between heaven and earth, the narrator creates a framework consistent with the romantic duality of a physical and metaphysical world. Even if the depiction of heaven is treated ironically or prompts laughter, as with the analogy of god being like an old car inside a garage that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists all conceive of differently as metal or glass or rubber or emptiness (see If Something Can Go Wrong…It Will in volume three), there is no moral to the humor, no agenda, as would be the case with pragmatists.[2]
It is perhaps fitting that the clearest end or objective sought and achieved in this story is accounted for by a poodle, not a human being. One cannot help but ask, especially against the backdrop of the humorous efforts of the dog to get Edelmiro and Luisa in bed, whether the narrator is indeed mocking the pursuit of ends in general.
Finally, in the characters themselves, Edelmiro is living out his middle-aged years in the same place he came from. Like the process of living without pursuing ends, there is circularity. And in such circularity, no actor perceives themselves to be getting anywhere. So Edelmiro goes to the bar by himself. He is not unhappy with his partner Luisa. On the contrary, he explicitly mentions how happy he is to have such a partner in his life after living alone for so many years. Unlike the pragmatic partner team (e.g., Branjelina – a portmanteau of the former couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), a romantic just goes about living their own life, here individually, there with their partner, until they disappear like Aunt Amalia and Uncle Restituto who have been missing for years.
Culture Shock by Veronika Groke
Similar to Hernandez’s story, the adult protagonists in Culture Shock do not exhibit a clear romantic identity the way they do in Priorities, The Night the Stars Stopped Shining or Many Happy Returns.
Western European countries such as Spain and Austria tend to have cultures with the closest thing to an equilibrium between romanticism and pragmatism. Perhaps this is being (tacitly) acknowledged by both Hernandez and Groke with narratives that have ambiguous characters but an underlying acceptance of the process of living.
In Culture Shock, Veronika Groke tells about an Austrian family reckoning with their Nazi past. When the mother becomes aware that she received the sourdough starter from her just deceased great-aunt who, it turns out, was married to a man quite highly ranked in the NSDAP, she becomes convinced that she must discard the starter to put an end to the connection.
During the mother’s and grandmother’s discussion and internet research into the family background, the narrator peppers the process with silly scenes, as is so common with romantic narrators: The daughter is called a marmot when she wakes up and asks what her mother and grandmother are doing on the computer in the middle of the night – it is ten o’clock in the morning. The grandmother refers to google as goggle. As opposed to the adults, the daughter thinks quickly and desires freedom in the sense that she does not want to act in accordance with social obligations. Basically, all children are romantics, so this is not surprising. Yet her behavior counters the adults, especially the mother, who wants to conform to the social obligation to separate current Austrian life from anything associated with The Third Reich. The mother, however, is fixated on this obligation and, perhaps therefore, unable to think of a way out of the sourdough starter conundrum.
This rigidity is a classical expression of pragmatism. At least in American literary fiction, the intentions of such a character generally prevail over opposition (if present at all). Here, however, the romantic finds the winning argument, and that position produces not an end, i.e., a new result or development, but rather a return to the status quo – the process described in the story is circular rather than progressive.
Rain Trap by Adriana Uribe
In Bogota, Columbia, the downpour portends something ominous at home. Doña Perla fears for her granddaughter, leaving the office early. Her day has been spent worrying: first about whether the maid Dora will arrive on time; then about her relationship with her boss now that he has become her ex-lover; and finally about the safety of her granddaughter under the leaky roof.
As the narrator explicitly states at the end, Doña Perla is not satisfied with her life, but is failing to escape from it. Here, readers encounter an intriguing dynamic: It looks as if the narrator/author wants to introduce pragmatic values such as an end to be achieved, success in extricating oneself from a predicament, a determination of one’s fate into the narrative. The lead protagonist also seems to ascribe to these values. The plot, the flashbacks, even Doña Perla’s description of herself as “managing” a home and office suggests identification with the pragmatic norm of management.[3] Do we have a pragmatic narrative here?
Two aspects in particular speak against this inference. The first illustrates how culture can influence the content of a story even against the will of its author. If Rain Trap were set in a pragmatic culture, there is a high probability that Doña Perla will either achieve some end and thus succeed or she will clearly fail. Failure will usually be evident against an obvious backdrop of repeated references to problems and the desired change (see, e.g., contemporary work such as Halsey Street, Harlem Shuffle, Free Food for Millionaires or Lake Success, or classics like To the Lighthouse, The Mill on the Floss, Sense and Sensibility).[4] By contrast, in Rain Trap, Doña Perla seems to tacitly accept her fate in the course of the story by not explicitly complaining. Yet the key plot twist setting the general tone is that she merely returns to her previous existence without any success or failure. Again, this is the essence of the circular process of living without any progress.
The second is the romantic context of her surroundings. The spiritual or metaphysical in the form of superstition is referenced: Both Doña Perla and her mother act superstitiously. Acceptance of fate is implied by the indifferent attitude Doña Perla adopts toward her husband’s unfaithfulness and drinking. The inessentiality of success surfaces in actions such as leaving the office early without consideration of the implications and the absence of complaints about emptying the buckets collecting water from the dripping ceiling.
In Adriana Uribe’s story, we see how the culture of the setting can potentially determine the romantic orientation even if the narrator and characters ascribe to pragmatism. According to this line of thinking, it seems that certain cultures prescribe romanticism on a story, a point to which we will return in the conclusion to this foreword.
You Are Her, Aren’t You? by Seyit Ali Dastan
Sila, abandoned by her husband Akin, goes to talk with a café owner named Asli – an anagram of Sila.
The story commences with Sila travelling from Istanbul to Bursa where she is greeted by a breeze hitting her face. After meeting with Asli in the café, Sila feels the same breeze as she disappears among the crowd to return home. Both Sila and Asli whisper the same thing to culminate the encounter: “you are her, aren’t you?”
As we have already seen in multiple stories, Dastan’s narrative also integrates the process of living expressed in circularity without progress. You Are Her, Aren’t You? dramatizes the process in the characters, setting, plot and narration. In other words, the orientation is romantic par excellence.
Who is Sila and what does she perceive?
What Sila observes on her trip from Istanbul to Bursa suggests that she does not identify with the modern, white-collar employees she sees in the new financial district. She cannot understand why they are all in a rush, why some walk with a cup of tea or coffee. It implies a belief that rushing will not provide any benefit, and doing two things at once (walking and drinking) is a misunderstanding of life – either you work (walking) or you relax (drink something), but both are in conflict. By negation, i.e., not identifying with these pragmatic women obviously pursuing success or self-determination and/or possibly active in relaxation (walking and drinking), she reveals herself to be a romantic.
The wisdom inherent in the romantic embrace of the process of life with all its vicissitudes – the flowing vicissitudes – is revealed to be present in Sila after her talk in the café with Asli: She ambles through a less affluent part of town, but one with the best views and embellished by apple, apricot, walnut and chestnut trees. She then passes a single pine tree, likening it to “the wisdom of the town.” That is, the survivors here have wisdom that is missing among the previously seen white-collar employees rushing about.
In what ways is the plot romantic?
Related to Sila’s rejection of corporate women is a core trait of romantic identity that is revealed through the plot: We do not exactly know what Sila is thinking, why she has made this trip to Bursa, whether she is meeting with another person, possibly the lover of her ex-husband, or her double as the anagram suggests. The reason given – to consult the café owner about obtaining microcredit for opening her own café is contradicted by previous statements about the microcredit being for an atelier. Romantics protect inquiry into their spirit and thoughts like a whisper in a locked room: Outsiders never gain access to the deepest, most personal side, and we never find out why Sila has made the trip. The meeting itself, a talk that unfolds over many pages, sheds no direct light on Sila’s thinking. It is an oblique inquiry at best into Asli.
The process of living does not admit of an end other than death. In this sense, it is analogous to a person’s thoughts. A pragmatist seeks ends or development (which equates to an end in our sense here), so we often learn their thoughts. As discussed in the foreword to the 2023 collection, it is clear what pragmatic Elisabeth thinks in The Opportunist (see volume four); likewise with Amelia (the first-person protagonist) in 5-4-3-2-1 (see volume three). Sila plays it close to the chest.
How do the narration and narrator contribute to the romantic orientation, especially the process value?
We have already mentioned the process-based circularity of the novel. Yet the narrator extends it by drawing an analogy between the bus route and Sila’s mind: “As the bus was drawing a pattern on the city grid, it was indeed keeping Sila’s mind in a loop.” After she recalls some driving memories with Akin, the pattern returns to her thoughts, but now in the sense of determining it. She considers whether a pattern is developing, whether an end will be achieved. With a few more observations, however, her attention shifts to the possibility that she will be meeting with the woman Akin has left her for. The idea of an end to the pattern is dismissed without regard.
What aspects of the setting are romantic and how do they differ from a pragmatic setting?
A setting cannot be characterized as romantic or pragmatic in itself. Without a perceiving mind, nature probably exists – if Ganbat (from Priorities) prodded us, a falling tree probably makes a sound and a healthy one is certainly growing – but none of this is tied to values or norms. So a narrator or character must imbue the surroundings with their romantic or pragmatic tenor. This results from what they observe, single out, mention. An everyday example of this can be seen in an analysis of museums in America on the one hand and Germany and Russia on the other. The information at exhibitions in America almost always contains an account of the donors and donor history of a work of art. Often these details are provided on plaques or audio guides for each painting. In Germany and Russia, it is extraordinarily rare for this materialist information to be included. The focus will be on the painting itself, its relationship to a school of art or theory or the artist’s intentions.
In literature, it is similar, as we pointed out last year in the foreword to Material Dissent. Material concerns (inheritance, wealth, the preference for money over sentimental value) in The Opportunists are found frequently in the story set in the United Kingdom. These themes are entirely or largely absent from every other story in the collection. In Valentine Kataev’s classic Time, Forward!, only the American character (out of around 10 prominent protagonists) is connected in any way to the themes of savings, income and plans based on wealth.
Dastan permits some awareness of the material world of money to enter the story, but largely to dismiss its importance. As we have seen, Sila “hates [the financial] district and [its] presumptuous buildings.” The plan to open an atelier or cafe with microcredit is also more about survival than accumulating wealth. Even the secondary objective of this plan is to help women like herself.
Above, we saw the beauty of the immaterial world, especially the wisdom connected with it, when Sila passed through the old, less affluent part of town. By isolating this, the narrator lends such a setting a metaphysical or existential character. The narrator repeats this approach in the next scene when Sila passes by ugly multi-story buildings with inscriptions of blessings and balconies with flowering trees springing from pots – again the contrast of ugly materialism (buildings) to poetic immaterialism (blessings and trees).
Finally, since it is air above all else in nature that facilitates the romantic process-based orientation, it is never surprising when an author makes (unconscious) reference to it. In some cases, such reference looks very intentional, which is why we noted this above: Sila steps out of the bus in Bursa and feels a breeze hit her face; as Sila is preparing to depart from Bursa, she exits a grocery store and feels “the same breeze that had hit her when she first arrived.”
Witches Don’t Burn by Alejandra Baccino
In Witches Don’t Burn, Alejandra Baccino takes the lack of ends in romanticism to another level: Valentina, murdered by her boyfriend, does not die or, at least, returns in spirit.
Obviously, the process of living is intertwined with a process of the metaphysical. Valentina or Val, for short, speaks and thinks in this metaphysical realm, but also communicates with her friend Mariana, nicknamed Mari.
For the first time in this collection, we encounter a story with a plot that progresses to a kind of end: Valentina, buried close to a beach, wants to be found and have her murderer imprisoned. That happens.
But is that the principal aim of the story? We would suggest it is not: The storyline is more about the innocent confusion churning through the mind of a person incapable of understanding why the process came to an end. Perhaps there is also a tension between the end of the plot representing material life and the eternal process of thought conveyed through its inseverable continuation because it assumes no physical form in the material world.[5] This paradigm certainly crops up in romantic literature, as we described in “Conveyors of the Metaphysical in Literary Fiction,” the foreword to the 2021 edition.
Val’s words retain their force as she grapples with the question of why her grandmother, friends, the people in the search team cannot hear her cries because thoughts are eternal. The thoughts are Vals, but they could equally be another person’s. Eventually, she succeeds in speaking with Mari, gives her instructions for where her body is buried. Although sad, in tears, despair, Val also implores Mari to tell her grandmother that she is fine when they dig up the dead body. What is to be made of this “fine”? It must be that the physical part of living is over, has reached its end, but there is still spiritual existence – the way she is interacting with Mari is reminiscent of the house spirits (domovoi), witches and mermaids that influence the lives of characters in Turgenev’s Byezhin Prairie (see “Conveyors of the Metaphysical in Literary Fiction”).
Like the soul in Plato, the process of thought never ceases to be.
A Regular Flat by Mateusz Tymoszewski
The tone is set in the first sentence: We are reading about survival, not success, achievement, progress, development. Any other approach would be misleading, Tymoszewski’s narrator declares: If you aren’t cynical, reality will kick in too hard.
The first-person protagonist in A Regular Flat lives in an apartment block (blok) in Poland not unlike the one in Mongolia that we find Ganbat and Chimgee in – a plain post-Soviet building housing large numbers of families. He is also, perhaps, the quintessential romantic.
Such a person does not have any particular ambition, but is engaged in life. Again we have the process preferred to the end. In one manifestation, this process would simply be to observe your regular, everyday surroundings. – And that is precisely all Tymoszewski’s protagonist does: He describes the conventions, habits, idiosyncrasies, requirements, conditions… in this environment: the stain on the façade from the upstairs neighbor; the violence, arguments and insults; the difficulty of getting connected to the internet; the oppressive summer heat, the elderly women (babcias) hatching from their cocoon apartments on Sundays to cover the benches and feast on rumors; the intricate paths winding to unexpected dead ends. The first-person protagonist is able to meticulously observe all these details precisely because he is not chasing some quixotic goal. With that out of his mind, he focuses on the here and now, the things right before him. He lives in the blok, so what is more natural, in harmony with nature, than to consider your surroundings and the spectrum of states they prompt. Some infuriate; others prompt laughter. Immersed in the life of the building complex, he reveals the polarization of his mind, attends to the inner circle in a slightly broader sense than it is usually interpreted, thereby eschewing consumption, networking (for professional success), and perpetual activity to escape from spiritual or intellectual emptiness.
Three Sides to Every Story by Krisztina Janosi
One of the problems with having kids in the modern-day world is it seems to prevent a depth of relaxation that some desire. For pragmatists’ activity in relaxation, their perpetual activity – at work and in leisure – may shift from social obligations vis-à-vis friends to a child or children, but it is not the disruption experienced by a romantic used to the absolute freedom of lounging around in bed till noon, taking a long bath, lying on the beach without a care in the world.
In Three Sides to Every Story, Krisztina Janosi relates the daughter-mother relationship first from the perspective of the daughter, then from the mother. In the latter, we encounter an honest account of a mother’s life always on the run: “If I had just known it before I agreed to have those kids, I’d never have had them. Literally, taking care of them erases all my lust for life. And I’m not even allowed to say it aloud. Everybody lies in my face about it; everybody says having kids is soo wonderful and rewarding, and how one touch of those little hands makes you forget all the suffering. And how they even shed a tear to make it more theatric. Yep.”
While we do not receive an account of the mother’s life before children, it stands to reason from these remarks that she lived in harmony with a previous process that was interrupted by the children and has never returned. Despite her misery and desire to use the stimulus of things like e-scooters to forget what seems to be the typical disappointment of adult pragmatists promised too much in childhood, a more plausible inference is that her romantic equilibrium has been upset and cannot return because the children impose obligations and hinder freedom: Her children have turned her into a pragmatist against her will and nature. And there is no escape. That is why she now forgets things, can’t handle logistics, feels stress and lacks confidence. The harmonious process has been upset.
The Night in Heaven by Armine Asryan (Nane Sevunts)
“The air was fresh, and her lungs enjoyed the oxygen.” It almost sounds like Julie is forest bathing at the beginning of The Night in Heaven, the 2024 sequel to Armine Asryan’s years-long tale of Julie and her alter ego. For romantics, however, air is not something you live extended periods without and then seek by bathing in. Julie spends much of her life in the Sisian mountains and forests of Armenia.
So is it a surprise that she has “traveled from being a psychologically imbalanced child to a mature woman who stood on firm ground”? Not really. Yet for Julie, surviving is not the sole purpose, as it is for some romantics. She wants to live. Three things come to mind for the achievement of living: nature, freedom and peace. All three are consistent with the values and norms of romanticism: nature = ~the process; freedom = freedom; peace = ~relaxation absent of work.
In the mountainous region of Syunik, on the banks of the Vorotan River, she can surrender to the silence of being alone, immersing herself in nature, freedom and peace. And it is precisely here, in this harmony, that she meets her future tenant and lover. Not surprisingly she imbues her home with a sense of peace and safety. The man she has met comments on the aura.
This nurturing environment is enhanced by her talks with angels and the mysteries of the newcomer. It is not all smooth, however. Nothing is in the process of living, but, as another prototypical romantic, Julie notes the need to accept this: “Up to the sky and down to earth. Moving up and down happens all the time, and you have to adapt to it. It’s part of the process. But there is one thing you should know ahead of time. The ‘lost’ and ‘down’ can be as pleasurable as the ‘up’ and ‘found’. I know it’s hard to accept that, but you can surrender to the ‘lost’ and the ‘down’. Only that makes your path valuable. Surrender to what is. Let it be. Do not fight or yell at the autumn flu you caught, the cough or the pain in your joints. Just focus for a moment on what is going on. Surrender without complaint, without judgment. Will you? I am here for you, my friend. Identify with the unknown. Listen to the silence behind the pain. Your brain is capable of much more than you can imagine. Behind, well behind the pain, is the silence. Go down the path of pain to reach silence.”
This “lost and found” part of the story reads like an instruction manual for living the romantic life. As we have seen in previous stories by Asryan, Julie is constantly wandering through polarized selves and worlds. She provides guidance, but also acts as a model for finding meaning and purpose outside of materialism, success and ends.
Planet Qirim by Anastasia Leonova
It is fitting to close with a story from Ukraine. Certainly not all Eastern Europeans or Ukrainians or Russians are romantics, but their leitcultures are heavily influenced by this mentality and allow the likeminded people among them to thrive. This is one of the key differences between the position of romantics in romantic leitcultures versus those in pragmatic leitcultures (e.g., America).
One of the saddest parts of this awful Ukrainian-Russian War is exactly the pitting of romantics against romantics that has effectively destroyed the lives of all Ukrainian men between the ages of ~20 and ~60 (even if you return from the front alive, almost nobody’s brain and nervous system can handle the exposure to modern-day warfare).
Leonova captures the iterant lifestyle of young romantics couchsurfing, hitchhiking, practicing yoga and other Eastern teachings in Crimea. The first-person narrator travels from one community to another, meeting a mélange of eccentrics of all religions and nationalities.
The process of venturing through these worlds continues until 2013. There is no intention to achieve the end; rather, the end comes as fate. Interestingly, it is accompanied by a strange (metaphysical?) coincidence: “There was an invasion of mushrooms that year in the woods all over Ukraine – south, north, west, and center, not sure about the east.” That has happened twice in modern history: 1941 and 2013.
Conclusion
It is highly likely that all cultures, including ones with a romantic leitculture, allow for a degree of pragmatism in the narrative or life in general.[6] Yet the tenor of a work of art or the interpretation of a life in romantic cultures shifts the weight from pragmatism to romanticism through the framing of the events, the narrator’s position, the characters’ identities, etc. That is what we see in Rain Trap, where a narrator and, basically, the sole protagonist seem to ascribe to pragmatism, but the story as a whole remains true to romanticism. A similar point was made in the answers to the four questions posed in the context of the remarks on You Are Her, Aren’t You?
Both the story by Uribe and the one by Dastan are set in romantic leitcultures largely marginalizing pragmatism. In And Now, It Will All Go Downhill and Culture Shock, two stories set in cultures with at least influential pragmatic circles, the authors could have produced a pragmatic story. Arguably, this is not possible in a society with a romantic leitculture such as Columbia or Turkey because the setting, protagonists acting in the setting and the plot in that setting cannot escape the leitculture framework even if the author (and narrator) diverge. The balance will still be in favor of romanticism, unless the story is set elsewhere (perhaps this is why the greatest American writer Henry James set many of his novels in Europe).
An implication of this argument is that the change from a romantic to a pragmatic leitculture will not emerge from literary fiction, but from society itself. Literary fiction in a pragmatic leitculture can be produced with a romantic orientation as Angelika Friedrich or Henry Whittlesey did in Shambolic, but it will be interpreted along pragmatic lines.
This is precisely the reason romanticism is so difficult to explain to American pragmatists, despite numerous romantics in America. The leitculture of pragmatism guides Americans’ understanding and blinds them to alternatives.
One of the reasons for publishing these international stories is our view that romantics are not properly represented in literary fiction.[7] Yet if a story set in a romantic leitculture with protagonists and a plot in that location will inevitably evince the values and norms of romantics, then why does perypatetik need to publish these works? It would seem that we could take any published work translated into English and base our peripatetic alterity arguments on them.
To a certain extent, there are merits to this argument. Especially the inevitable emergence of romantic values and norms in any narrative set in a romantic leitculture. The problem is that translated work from such cultures tends to represent such romantics in a light similar to what we see here in Janosi’s Three Sides to Every Story: The lead protagonist is depicted in a manner that will be interpreted negatively by a pragmatist or reader in a pragmatic leitculture. To embrace the diversity within a country dominated by pragmatism, it is necessary to also represent romantics in a positive light. Readers need to be able to identify with the protagonists and see something positive in their lives. That is the essence of diversity. That is when different kinds of people are treated as equals. If all they read are works like Halsey Street or Lake Success, it will be assumed that the life of romantics is undesirable.
As we have argued in Peripatetic Alterity and the forwards to these anthologies, one of the strangest aspects of the American literary fiction landscape is its purported embrace of diversity, while it consistently marginalizes non-pragmatic characters. This makes ideological sense in an environment with a pragmatic leitculture, but it does not constitute an affirmation of diversity and inclusiveness. Furthermore, despite the pragmatic environment, a strong argument can be made that a majority of the multicultural American population is actually romantic in nature. When such a nation’s literary fiction implicitly denigrates their lifestyle through negativity, while implicitly affirming the pragmatic way of life, such writers and publishers contribute to the dismissal of literature by wide swaths of the populace as well as the tension and frustration rampant even among people who once probably identified with pragmatism, but may have been romantics guided incorrectly.
There are clear paths from romanticism to a functional private sphere and society. It is only necessary to understand what they are. One of those is the process of living. In this florilegium, you can read twelve stories about this process in adult life transposed across the world, with most protagonists welcoming the vicissitudes of romanticism and flourishing. Next year, we will discuss the implications of romanticism and peripatetic alterity in greater depth. Enjoy the ordinariness of an alternative world.
Works cited
Friedrich, Angelika; Smirnov, Yuri; Whittlesey, Henry (Eds.) Peripatetic Alterity – A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being: Romantics and Pragmatists. New York: perypatetik, 2019.
Friedrich, Angelika; Whittlesey, Henry. “Conveyors of the Metaphysical in Literary Fiction – Case Studies.” Conceived, Childhood Transadapted. New York: perypatetik, 2021.
Friedrich, Angelika; Whittlesey, Henry. “An Analysis of the Values and Norms of Romanticism and Pragmatism in Literary Fiction.” Material Dissent: Adulthood Transadapted. New York: perypatetik, 2023.
Smirnov, Yuri; Whittlesey, Henry. “The Purpose of Literary Fiction at the Beginning of the Third Millennium.” Evanescent: Young Adulthood Transadapted. New York: perypatetik, 2022.
Footnotes
[1] Cf. Peripatetic Alterity, pp. 17-58, 59-92, 160-187.
[2] See parts of chapters 2, 3 and 6 on humor in Peripatetic Alterity.
[3] As a secretary in the office, she handles execution-based tasks rather than what we (at perypatetik) define as management.
[4] With respect to the contemporary stories, this issue is discussed in “The Purpose of Literary Fiction at the Beginning of the Third Millennium” (foreword to 2023 collection).
[5] Even if functionalists are ultimately correct and able to reduce mental acts to the physical substrate, the thought produced by the neurons or whatever will not assume a physical form the way a human body does.
[6] This applies in reverse as well.
[7] See “The Purpose of Literary Fiction in the Third Millennium.”