Meditations on the Closed Door

99 Pages·2017·0.54 MB·English

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Senior Projects Spring 2017 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects
Spring 2017
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Hannah Celia Harwell Fassett
Bard College, [email protected]
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Fassett, Hannah Celia Harwell, "Stopped Before Beauty: Meditations on the Closed Door" (2017). Senior
Projects Spring 2017. 268.
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Stopped before Beauty: Meditations on the Closed Door

Senior Project Submitted to
The Division of Languages and Literature
of Bard College

by
Hannah Fassett

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
May 2017

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to Matthew Mutter, whose perceptive guidance and vibrant, rigorous
courses have been essential to me. Thank you for introducing me to Simone Weil. You
consistently pushed for work that was beautiful and true, and gracefully communicated the need
for a clear argument. The texts, handouts, and crammed notebooks I have accumulated through
your courses will remain with me, not merely as artifacts but as living documents, testimony to
the rigors of intellectual growth. You supported me throughout the challenges of this experiment,
and I will always be immensely grateful.

Many acknowledgments to all the dedicated literature, written arts and dance faculty I’ve worked
with throughout Bard. Thank you to Cole Heinowitz for a conversation that gave me the courage
to continue on in this winding pursuit, and for a colloquium that genuinely guided this process.
Thank you to Wyatt Mason for an unparalleled introduction to the art of nonfiction. This project
spawned from your assignment of the Lost Cat, and the most difficult piece of prose I ever had to
write. I will continue to aim for the standard of writing set in your course. Many thanks to
Marina Van Zuylen for a warm, passionate introduction to Etty Hillesum, and for never doubting
her courage. And Luc Sante, for one of my favorite courses at Bard. You treated us like writers,
and read our work with serious regard. Your wild prompts sparked the early visions for the
material of this project. Your Prose Studio taught me to cultivate my own.

For Tom Sleigh, who always pushes me to see things clearly, and whose intelligence, irony, and
humor have guided me throughout this process. You have taught me the meaning of Larkin’s
“life lived according to love.”

For my mother, who warned me away from this medium, but knew I would someday find it.
Thank you for our home of books and dust bunnies. Thank you all your true stories. You are my
copy-editor, bullshit detector, and best friend. It is a beautiful thing to have a Mum like you.

For Jolene, my favorite artist.
For Alex Z, who I hope finds his way through.
For Jordan, whose face I will always look toward, and whose life I will follow along.

Finally, for my Dad—this project is for you.

Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………………………………………….……………… 1
Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………………. 9
I. From the Real: Early Encounters with the Beauty of the World……………………… 12
II. Toward the Real: Writing the Illusion………………………………………………… 21
Chapter 2…..…………………………………………………………………………………... 31
I. The Screen of Divinity………………………………………………………………… 34
II. The Shameful Surface…………………………………………………………………. 37
III. Page as Entryway: Literary Encounters with the Beautiful……………………………. 46
Interlude………………………………………………………………………………………... 53
Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………………………….. 58
I. The Chronicles of Affliction…………………………………………………………… 63
II. The Affliction of Chronicling: A Study in Scale……………………………………..... 71
Conclusion…..………………………………………………………………………………….. 87
Bibliography…..……………………………………………………………………………….. 89

“Noah says this is
an error of depressives, identifying
with a tree, whereas the happy heart
wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for
the part, not the whole.”
Louise Gluck, Matins I

1
Introduction

Eventually, our eyes tire from looking, either at ourselves, or at the world. This will lead
us toward an empty page. So, we begin with an image:
At 15, I stood on stage in white lace panties. The play was Noises Off, a British farce
about an acting troupe performing a flop called Nothing On. I played Brooke Ashton, a failing
actress, who played Vicki, a tax collector. While the others talked, she stared at her fingernails.
The audience loved her, and roared with laughter as she moved.
In the final act of the play, the chaos of the actors’ various personal dramas has overrun
the production. The comedy becomes entirely physical. The actors tumble down stairs, over
railings, feebly improvising their lines in an attempt to recover from each misstep. Meanwhile,
Brooke as Vicki carries on, not missing a single line. She follows the invisible thread, one line to
the next. And I follow her, both wearing my own nakedness and performing it, even as the
audience looks through me at Brooke at Vicki wearing her almost nothing in Nothing On. It's as
if the audience, laughing in delight at the unswerving Brooke, can't see me, hidden as I am in my
near nakedness in Brooke in Vicki.
I am nearly naked. I am hiding in plain sight.
* * *
In his chapter Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Immanuel Kant establishes taste, or the
capacity for judging the beautiful as “disinterested and free delight” (Kant 210). This
disinterestedness implies one does not desire the beautiful object, nor do they expect any
satisfaction from it. We are free to simply observe it. Various scholars have contested this notion
of the beautiful. Contemporary aesthetic scholar Alexander Nehemas views the experience of
beauty as inextricably linked to the “pleasure of anticipation” (Nehamas Beauty and Judgment).