"The Satanic Verses"

From Particularity to Transcendence

 

 

by Koronaiou Marianthi Eleni

 

 

 

Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses', like all good and thought provoking pieces of literature, is open to so many ways of reading as the times it has been, or will be, read. It restricts the reader in specific geographical places, chronological instants, human behaviors but, at the same time, reading between the lines the reader is set absolutely free. Every time it is being read it transforms according to the readers' feelings, memories, thoughts, like a magic mirror on which the reflection of one person may never be the same. Thus the only possible reference to this text is a reference to one perception of it, to one of all its conceivable meanings. We enter the world of Dreaming where everything is variable, inconstant, uncertain and vague, the world of Gibreelsaladin Farishtachamcha and their constant flux. The dependence on each other of these two major characters of the novel is great; their travels through time are parallel and interrelated, the one changes in accordance/contrast to the other. I will try to argue that they both experience a struggle- of a personal as well as a social nature- and that at the end they both win, a victory of loss.

When first reading the book there seams to be a very significant difference between Gibreel and Saladin, that of good and evil. After all, the one does take the form of an angel while the other transforms into devil. This distinction though is not successfully applicable to the characters, for the swift between negative and positive feelings and attitude is constant in both of them. From goodness Gibreel passes to badness when at the same time Saladin follows the opposite direction. This jump from the one site to the counter one does not only occur once but multiple times in the book. Therefore we are allowed to conclude that both good and evil coexist in both personalities. Actions and personalities are not in themselves good and evil. Those who perceive them impose the ethical value and meaning to them. Rushdie probably wanted to overcome, transcend this intention of giving meaning and evaluating someone. Looking at Saladin and Gibreel not as two individuals but as symbols of humanity and human nature we may find the truth about them where Rushdies' hero Allie finds it, on a mountain. A piece of earth remote from all social and technological ab-, mis-use. When Allie is on this pure piece of nature she finds herself in a place beyond good and evil, she finds her truth [1]. Nature, humans "the mountain are [was] diabolic as well as transcendent, or, rather, their [its] diabolism and their [its] transcendence are [were] one"[2]. Human nature combines all human features and qualities, whatever their supposed moral value, into a controlled and coherent whole, it is beyond good and evil [3]. The same is true for Saladin and Gibreel for they both together represent humanity. Thus we realize that we may not assume that they differ in a moral point of view.

Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha go through the same kind of fight against anything imposed to their personalities from the conventions of an already formed community, but they do so in two different realms. Farishta operates in the Realm of Dream and Transcendence though Chamcha lives in the Reality one. The first could be apprehended as a symbol for all humans' inner, philosophical, religious and artistic challenges and the second as a symbol of every individual's revolutionary mood and conflict with the practical repressive social norms. Thus, since each of them symbolize one of the two characteristics of Being (mental and physical) their conjunction forms a representation of the whole sphere of humanity. Rushdie makes an ontological metaphor using these two characters that need each other to exist, that form and complete one another. The Satanic Verses is by no means about the quarrel between these two men. Gibreel does not attack Saladin. The true mode of freedom, at which he aims, is the gratification of being, the transparent knowledge that may not come through an activity of conquest and an antagonistic relation towards the 'Other'. Gibreels' agony concerns inorganic matter, in this context comprehension of and reconciliation with his opposite, or, better, his other dimension (organic/ Saladin) is presupposed in order to reach his aim. He seeks the freedom of his ego in a spiritual journey. He has no need to test his existence against 'otherness', for he has come to terms with the totality of his being, he has realized the coexistence of the matter and the spirit, he does not need to define himself but to be let free. In Gibreels' story we witness a fight between the pleasure principle and the repressive reality principle.

 

 

Each one wants to ascend the next step and at the same time is afraid of what is above him. Each one seeks to achieve what the other above him already has, but in his struggle he experiences feelings of jealousy and redemption, of fear and hate for those who represent their goal. This kind of reaction enforces the previously stated argument that the novel should not be interpreted via a conventional moral system of opposing values. "Love and hate, gratitude and revenge, good nature and anger, affirmative acts and negative acts, belong together."[4]  Thus the book is, as far as I am concerned, about these conflicts, and it is in this context that Rushdie presents Saladin hating and fighting Gibreel. He does not fight Gibreel the particular person, but the universal, Gibreel as a symbol of what he wants to achieve.  Besides the obvious differences between Farishta and Chamcha, aside from the hate expressed we can detect that Rushdie retains the image of their reconciliation, of their unity. When accusing their 'enemy' they both have the same complain, his absence, the non-assistance.

 

Gibreel:

…Gibreel Farishta is often filled with resentment by the non-appearance, in his persecuting visions, of the One who is supposed to have the answers. He never turns up, the one who kept away when I was dying, when I needed needed him.[5]

 

and Saladin:

…'It was his treason at Rosa Diamond's house; his silence,

nothing more'.[6] Chamcha,… recalls with overwhelming

force the earlier blankness, Gibreel standing on the stairs while he,

Chamcha, horned and captive, was dragged into the night; and

feels the return of hatred…[7]

 

 

…at Rosa Diamond's house where Saladin 'needed, needed' Gibreel. One word from the latter would have saved Chamcha from abuse and imprisonment.

 

Saladin Chamcha

as a victim of the social conventions and the disciplinary community and a revolutionary against them. There is nothing special about his origin, he is not born with a purpose nor a gift. A simple man, not really successful in his life, who rejects everything about his origin, his family, language, country, friends. He feels imprisoned in the society he was born and wishes to be set free from all customs and dictated ways of behaving. Another country seams at the beginning a realization of a dream for him, he thinks he can there find freedom. He gives his first fight in his house, his family. He denies them and lives for London with the wish to become a perfect English man, as if this would free him. "I am not your kind…You're not my people. I' ve spent half my life trying to get away from you"[8] he says to an Indian who tries to help him while he is half way metamorphosed into a goat. Though I believe that Saladin's anger is not against Indians any more and he realizes that. He is being transformed into an animal via the eyes of English, multi national people. It is not the nation that makes him differ and dangerous- thus devilish- but the expression of his will of a just and free society. It was not a change of scenery that Saladin needed, but a changed society, a society freed from conventions and both material and mental restrictions. In a way Saladin resembles Birju in "Mother India", if we apprehend Birju's actions as a way of protesting against "the impersonal codes of law by which they were bound in urban and national life"[9]. Saladin's as well as Birju's aggressive attitude is to be attributed to the desperation the injustice of the community has generated inside him. His acts are revolutionary ones, he is a 'dangerous individual' in Foucault's [10]terms and deserves to be punished, for the sake of the stability of the community.

Saladin looses his wife and his job and goes to prison, all due to a misunderstanding to an injustice. It is failure for a proper judgement and indifference towards him that lead him to hatred. With all this anger and hate inside him he is changing appearance, becoming an animal, but transgression alone is not valid as a mode of criticism.

It is impossible,.., to theorize social change on the basis of transgression alone. Another mechanism must exist alongside it that can convert various border crossings, the broken taboos and profaned totems, into transfigurations of the social morphology[11]

This is Saladin's rebellion, a typical not an essential one. He makes childish games with dirty verses to challenge Gibreel, without realizing the consequences of his actions and the superficiality of his 'act of war'. He does not finally understand who he wants to blame. After his 'adventure' he wants to be born again and to be accepted in the popular culture, to be legitimated by the dominant. He returns to India, reconciels with his father and stays with an Indian girl. The saying of Camus could also be put in Saladin's mouth:

 

Having started from an anguished awareness of the inhuman, the meditation on the absurd returns at the end of its itinerary to the very heart of the passionate flames of human revolt. Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences which are my revolt, my freedom, my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death-and I refuse suicide[12]

Saladin's problem is not solved, he might be just in the beginning of a virus cycle where his hate and absurdity will keep on coming back again and again. He will continue to suffer from time to time and then reconcile with his situation again. His task was not fulfilled and like Sisyphus in Camus, he chooses life and torture instead of death and possible liberation.

 

 

Gibreel Farishta

is born to give pleasure [13]. In a way, at the beginning of the novel, he represents a society in which the pleasure principle reigns. He represents in his work, his films, a polytheistic community, and via these films his audience rejoice. There is a strong relation between polytheism and the pleasure principle in the sense that deities belonging to polytheistic religions are much closer to human nature than the One omnipotent God. They do not oppose a morality that ignores all human weaknesses and wills, they do not come contra nature and love, as monotheism does. On the contrary they share the same weaknesses and obsessions with their followers, they fall in love, they make love, they hate and fear. All these absolutely natural aspects of human nature have become subjects of condemnation and taboos in the monotheistic worlds, whereas polytheism embraces them.  Furthermore the relationship between humans and divinity is utterly different. In monotheism people live with the fear of the ultimate judgement. They must try to act according to the laws, the will of God and they will be judged at the end of their lives. In polytheism there is reciprocity in the relation between men and god. You please the god and will be pleased, give and receive, there is an immediate transaction and not the oppressive idea of a final judgement.[14]  The polytheistic city in the Satanic Verses is a place filled with life, entertainment and happiness, "O the splendour of the fairgrounds of Jahilia!"[15], where life is play and joy. But for this grate and free town Mahound consists a real threat, "for that one, one, one, his terrifying singularity. Whereas I am always divided, always two or three or fifteen"[16]. Just like Gibreel was always divided, between multiple movies, between his public and personal life, past and present, dreams and reality. He wanted also to become a unified one, to reach the absolute truth and knowledge, the totality.

In his dreams he helps Mahound in gaining the war over polytheism, not only that but he dictates the faith of monotheism too. He becomes omnipotent, lives depend upon him and he can do with them as he pleases. In his wake he tries to embrace this morality. He tries to refuse love and decides to make movies about monotheism. He does not understand yet what he is doing. He becomes the one through whom the pleasure principle is weakened and repressed by the reality one. With the triumph of Muhammad and monotheism:

…the life instincts were perverted and constrained; bad conscience was linked with a 'guilt against God.' In the human instincts were implanted "hostility, rebellion, insurrection against the master', 'father', the primal ancestor and origin of the world". Repression and deprivation were thus justified and affirmed; they were made into masterful and aggressive forces which determined human existence. [17]

Gibreel supported this morality and its adaptation by the society, and without realizing it he contributed to a future of restrictions, where all progress is unavoidably related to the progressive repression of instincts and will. Jahilia has lost its glamour and is not filled with exalted people any longer. The town is hardened, it has become sad and poor. "Mahmound's arm had grown long; his power had encircled Jahilia, cutting off its life-blood…The fairs in Jahilia, these days, were pitiful to behold"[18]. Gibreel's effort to make movies about monotheism is in a way an attempt to imprison even art, the only possible medium man has to fight the repressive reality principle. The crowd victim of the morality he has preached fights him against his decision. He is called blasphemous and looses his charm and power he had over his admirers. Maybe one could argue that people did not react that violently against Gibreel just because their religion was threatened with pollution by becoming a central subject to a movie but their reaction was against another more vital threat. That of loosing their only medium to pleasure. They witnessed the repression that tortured them being imposed onto their only hope for freedom, art.

But Mahmound and Gibreel along with him also feared something. Farishta had not yet found peace and inner freedom. Instead of walking towards his wish he finds himself even further away. He finds that the idea of God was the illusion behind which lie the knowledge and the harmony of desire and realization. Immortality and the strict morality of god were not what he was seeking. Anyhow immortality is not a human characteristic, thus humans may not find fulfillment in it.  "Everything among the mortals has the value of the irretrievable and the perilous"[19] it is their finite life that gives meaning and importance to all their wishes and deeds. Via something inhuman the full comprehension of human nature and inner freedom may not be achieved. Something even more powerful than God, more sincere and essential will lead Gibreel to his destination. That which he is now afraid of, poetry.

Baal, the poet, was dragged to the killing ground after the orders of Mahound when he shouted to the prophet: "'Whores and writers Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive' Mahound replied, 'Writers and whores. I see no difference here.'"[20]. We can not but recall the film Pyaasa[21] here. A film about a couple misunderstood and rejected by the community. An ignored poet loved only at the time he is believed to be dead (non-threatening existence) and hated again when he returns with his truth and a whore, a beautiful, sensual woman, "everything that the misogynist tendencies prevalent culture exploit"[22]. There is no room for this freed from all convention couple in the community governed by the reality principle. Their whole life in that society in a continuous moral struggle, an effort to be understood and to make others understand, show them the way to pleasure and freedom but "moral victory can only result in withdrawal to a nonexistent space, to nowhere, a space that the films do not indicate visually at any point of the narrative"[23] for it would be impossible to indicate the poetical Void, the Open.

Gibreel is afraid of verses but actually he operates through them and is saved by them, he is led to transcendence. It was verses and singing that saved him from his fall after the accident[24]. The Satanic Verses that he spontaneously whispered to Mahound for the acceptance of other deities in the religion [25], show his inner tendency towards the multiplicity, the acceptance of all aspects of human soul and body, his will for the fulfillment of human wishes. It seems to me that the choice of the title for the book is not irrelevant. Satanic Verses. Satanic under the perspective of our civilization of the oppressed, the restricted pleasure principle, under the rule of logic, orthologism and reality. Satanic because they form a threat to our well structured capitalist societies, because they provoke thinking and emotions and citizens with a personal opinion are no good citizens, they might not accept their role as o productive machine, they might rebel and destroy the economy, they are not and may not be under control. Even the Athenians killed Socrates as a troublemaker. 

 

 

 

It is difficult for us to accept that these different journeys that the characters experience, might be in a parallel line, as it is difficult to understand how one can experience liberation from the reality since we understand freedom in the reality, within the "struggle for existence".  However, the realm of freedom is envisioned as lying beyond the realm of necessity and Gibreel tests freedom only by staking life itself :"Gibreel put the barrel of the gun into his own mouth; and pulled the trigger; and was free"[26]. Rushdie presents us with two spheres of human existence, reminding us that human existence is one. Gibreel is the nature of the free individual, who brings harmony between individual and universal gratification. Saladin does not achieve this harmony, he chooses to be effective in the realty. Gibreel's aspect of particularity (individuality) passes away. He moves beyond the principium individuationis, through his suicide his body disappears. He overcomes his temporal form, he negates temporality, and he transcends from the mode of being in which all potentiality is actuality. The most powerfully conflicting instincts inside him are not anymore in control. His destructive impulses prevail, they are thus being satisfied, and they operate towards the annihilation of life. Rushdie, through literature, whose constitutive mental faculty is the imagination, with a remarkable virtuosity escapes our stereotypical conception of the nature of dialectics, he offers dialectic of life a process, a collective journey. The power of the novel lies not just in this synthesis but on the extend that it discloses the implications of the structure of being.

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

1.        Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, Grate Britain: Vintage Press 1998

 

2.       Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, New York: Vintage Press, 1996

 

3.       Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, New York: Vintage Press, 1968

 

4.        Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred, United States of America: Harvard, 1996

 

5.        Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, London: ARK Edition, 1987

 

6.        Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal, Labyrinths, UK: Penguin Books, 1964

 

7.        Guru Dutt, 'Pyaasa', H, 1957

 

8.        Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema 1947-1987, USA: University of                     Texas Press, 1993