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establish a link between all the disparate consciousnesses in the poem.
Eliot wrote:
Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a character , is yet the
most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-
eyed merchant, seller of currants melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the
latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women
are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in
fact, is the substance of the poem. (1969: 78; emphasis in original)
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This description of Tiresias position as the poem s all-encompassing con-
sciousness has long provided a point of difficulty. However, Bergson s ideas
may bring us closer to Eliot s meaning. In Bergsonian terms, Tiresias as-
sumes the role of the poem s central self because it is his superficial social
self who provides the stability necessary to relate the poem. Since all the
characters in the poem meet in Tiresias, then in Bergsonian terms they
are all layers of Tiresias self, merging and interpenetrating throughout
the poem. The many other voices that vie for prominence provide the
subject matter of the poem just as the layers of self which exist below the
social self are ultimately responsible for its shape. The tension which
Bergson and Eliot see as existing due to the collision of the various aspects
of self provides a dynamic element in the poem, while placing these as-
pects within a superficially stable self (Tiresias) gives the poem a sem-
blance of stability. The complexity of Tiresias role is, therefore, within the
bounds of what Eliot stated in his note to the poem itself.
Other modernists also found Bergson s concepts of memory and self
appealing. Collage, as a technique, is very much dependent on memory
and perception for it requires the viewer to make connections between
the various components of the artwork. Stream of consciousness is predi-
cated on the existence of a self whose consciousness we follow. The works
of Joyce and Faulkner, in particular, challenge the notion of a singular
self, replacing it with a multiplicity of selves that is very Bergsonian.
Creative Evolution
Many of his contemporaries considered Bergson s Creative Evolution (first
published in French as L Evolution créatrice in 1907) as his most important
work. In it he argues that living occurs in a temporal plane and that recon-
struction or representation of that living occurs in a spatial one, but he
insists that the totality of human life is explained by the interaction of the
two. He suggests that an understanding of how individual organisms de-
velop over time would permit a fuller understanding of how the universe
as a whole operates. And he develops the concept of the élan vital to ac-
count for evolutionary change. He defines it as the
original impetus of life, passing from one generation of germs to the following
generation of germs through the developed organisms which bridge the in-
terval between generations. This impetus, sustained right along the lines of
evolution among which it gets divided, is the fundamental cause of varia-
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Bergsonism
tions, at least those that are regularly passed on, that accumulate and create
new species. (1928: 92; emphasis in original)
This force exists both in global terms all living organisms are subject to
the push of the élan vital and on individual terms each organism has its
own élan vital which accounts for its evolution. Bergson s creative evolu-
tion counters the prevailing neo-Darwinian mechanism which said that
adaptation is purely an organism s response to external stimuli, and it also
opposes neo-Lamarckian finalism because it does not argue that the adap-
tations occur in order that the organism reach some state of evolutionary
perfection.
Equally important as the élan vital to Bergson s evolutionary theory was
his concept of intuition. By intuition, Bergson meant instinct that has
become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object
and of enlarging it indefinitely (1928: 186). Intuition, by the sympa-
thetic communication which it establishes between us and the rest of the
living, by the expansion of our consciousness which it brings about, . . .
introduces us into life s domain, which is reciprocal interpenetration, end-
lessly continued creation (1928: 187). But intelligence cannot be dispensed
with, for it is from intelligence that has come the push that has made
[intuition] rise to the point it has reached (1928: 187). Together these
two permit a fuller understanding not only of objects external to the indi-
vidual, but also of the inner world, for when we turn our gaze inward, we
intuitively enter into an understanding with ourself and then employ our
intelligence to explain what intuition has revealed. Intuition becomes the
means by which we may apprehend the essence, the organic wholeness,
of other organisms and ourselves. Together, élan vital and intuition create
an alternative approach to understanding the nature of life the one de-
scribing how life evolves and the other how we can experience objects
outside ourselves.
Bergson s evolutionary theories fit into the tradition of early twentieth-
century vitalism that had been renewed by developments in nineteenth-
century science. However, his vitalism was controversial, prompting many
of his contemporaries to attack his ideas with great force. As Paul Douglass
and Frederick Burwick point out, the prewar moment when Bergson s
Creative Evolution became the center of debate was a period of rant and
rhetoric, during which Bergson was called a phony and a fake by many
who had adopted aspects of his philosophical method like Maritain,
Russell, Jung, and Santayana. They go on to suggest that Santayana
accused Bergson of stirring the winds of doctrine and that he helped to
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fire a new mode of Western thought one which required sacrificial fig-
ures. Bergson became the scapegoat (1992: 2) and his vitalist theories
became a prime target. They claim that the damnation of Bergson sug-
gests a disturbing possibility: that his work is a repressed content of mod-
ern thought (1992: 7).
This claim is borne out by the way in which Bergson s vitalism inserts
itself into twentieth-century thought, for unlike his notions of time or
memory, there are few examples of the élan vital or intuition being used
directly by artists. Rather, it is the organic wholeness explicit in Bergson s
creative evolution that provides a foundation for Modernist experimenta-
tion. It provides them with justification for insisting that the form of an
artwork must be considered as essential as its content; indeed, that the
two are an inseparable organic whole in which both function to achieve
the desired effect. Furthermore, modernism takes as one of its central aes-
thetic tenets the notion that the artist must continually create the abso-
lutely new work; they must constantly counter the tendency of the
materials of art to become lifeless. Imagism, for instance, can be viewed in
a different light if we recognize the extent to which it embraces Bergsonian
concepts as articulated in Creative Evolution. Ezra Pound s description of
how an image works on the reader of an Imagist poem is remarkably
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