Pleasure and Art

I would call the movie Mamma Mia! "objectively awful." I think that if you don't love ABBA, love musicals, or (possibly) like romantic comedies, then there is precisely zero chance you won't hate this movie.

But here's the thing: there are people who love ABBA, there are people who love musicals, and there are people that (possibly) like romantic comedies. So you might enjoy this movie.

I continue to assert reading as an individual activity--finding aesthetic pleasure is an intensely individual, personal, subjective experience. We can discuss objective merits of a work of literature, and certainly it is not in our individual control what books make it into our hands. But whether and to what extent we receive pleasure from a book will be dependent on subjective factors. And what we read, how we read, what sorts of things we focus on when we read, what we look for when we read, what elements of a work we enjoy, what features of writing we devote our attention to, is individual.

Aestheticism: art as entertainment?

Let me start by admitting that I'm doubtful a distinction between art and entertainment is anything other than arbitrary. But a question came to me while lying in bed unable to sleep.

Does "art for art"s sake" turn art into entertainment? More specifically, if literature exists for no sake other than itself, and if literature can teach us about nothing but itself, then how does it differ from other forms of entertainment (say, a derivative sitcom, or a board game)? It is a different pleasure, but is it a fundamentally different type of pleasure?

Certainly there is a difference in the act of creation, but I'm considering this question as a reader, not a writer. When I choose what to do with my time, if I read a book rather than watch a derivative sitcom, or play a board game, how is the reading different than those other activities?

I certainly think something different occurs when I choose to read a work of literature over other forms of entertainment. But then, I have some quirky (perhaps mystical) beliefs about literature's purposes and possibilities.

One might go further to seek the differences between reading a novel instead of other types of (non-fiction) writing (what is fundamentally different between reading, say, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint or Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther?). I'd ask that not to say there is no difference, but to know what those differences are (and to seek what similarities in the reading experience there may be).

But these may be stupid questions, mere garbage caused by the late hour.

Art for Life's Sake

My Reading Declaration in Brief
Chapter Four: Art for Life's Sake

"One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change alas is universal."
Harold Bloom, "Why Read?"

"Art for Art's Sake" has for me the sound of masturbatory pleasure. If art can tell me of nothing but art itself, I will likely say "This is fun, but I have more pressing demands: life demands my engagement, and death is always approaching." But of course I don't abandon literature, for I know that it does offer me something else: it offers me a spiritual journey into myself.

For this reason John Fowles' metafiction moves me. His best novels are thoughtful and innovative reflections on the nature of fiction and literature, but they are not just that: infused in the metafiction are lessons on existential freedom.

For me art provides and demands a deep engagement with the self and the world, but it doesn't matter to me if others don't feel this same demand from art. For I also agree with Harold Bloom that we ought to read to our own purposes. I know mine.

Tolstoy's "What is Art?"

In What is Art?, Tolstoy rejects Aestheticism: he does not believe art should be understood in terms of "beauty" or "pleasure." Instead, as he suggests repeatedly, "the chief characteristic of art is the infection of others with the feelings the artist has experience." "True art" is only when the artist expresses a feeling to the viewer/listener/reader. He writes:

"A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist, nor that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art."

Tolstoy also sees a moral thrust to art, and his particular religious sensibilities infuse his view of art. For Tolstoy, art should encourage "the growth of brotherhood among all men--in their loving harmony with one another." He writes a great deal about "Christian art," and so this book is of more interest to one sharing Tolstoy's peculiar Christian view (as I mostly do) than to one who doesn't.

There is much in this book that I do not assent to (I think his definition of art is far, far too narrow, and he thus dismisses anything that doesn't fit his narrow definition). Tolstoy also spends too much time documenting and critiquing aesthetic theories he disagrees with and art he doesn't like ("upper-class art" or "counterfeits of art," he calls it); it is necessary to the book, but as I read the negative (arguments about what isn't art and why) I was mostly looking forward to the positive (arguments about what is art and why).

I primarily assert the prerogative of the individual reader. If I do accept some of Tolstoy's view (for there is still much I do not), it is because I do, not because I think others should. I would rather stand with Tolstoy, demanding meaning in art and seeking its moral purpose, but I don't expect everybody to view art in this way.

Literature in Our Lives

I've frequently used literature to make sense of or mark significant moments during my life.

As I noted below, my wife and I included a passage of poetry from Milton on our wedding invitations:

The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.

The hope and humanity in these lines helped make the moment more meaningful.

My son's birth was the most intense moment of my life. And when I finally held him in my hands, I quoted King Lear to him: "When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools." At this moment, this intense, dramatic, meaningful moment, I called on the Bard for deeper meaning.

During one stretch of bad luck (it seems insignificant now, but during the frugal days of grad school, it felt rather overwhelming), I was rather consumed by the idea that the universe was just a mishmash of hazard and chance, entirely indifferent to us all. I taped to my door two passages: one from the Bible, when Jesus tells his disciples not to worry so much (As an Obsessive Complusive, this is a pretty meaningful passage for me. Indeed, I again put the passage on my wall at my current house, feeling I need to be reminded that I ought not worry). But I also put a passage on the door from Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, a passage exploring the indifference of the cosmos to human problems. That I could look at these two passages every day in some way helped me.

Literature has not been an abstract, dry study in my life. These are rather concrete examples when I've used literature in my own life. In a broader sense, I've seen the world differently, I've experienced human beings differently, because I've read Dostoevsky, because I've read Fowles, because I've read Sartre. I see the world, myself, and humanity in a different way because of what I've read.

And literature offers us metaphors to make sense of our existence. Homer gave us Scylla and Charybdis to articulate the difficult, impossible choices we sometimes confront in our lives. In the shadow of Abu Ghraib, Cornwall's servant in King Lear, who disobeys his master to try stop him from blinding Gloucester, has deep resonance. Wilfred Owen gives us a poetry to discuss the horrors of war; we can share the reference of "Dulce et Decorum Est." The Lord of the Flies offers us an image: if we want to consider the dark side of humanity, we can picture a bunch of murderous boys running around an island (but then, that's not necessary: when I consider the dark side of humanity, I picture black and white images of Nazis and Death Camps, recalling the Holocaust literature I've read that made me ache for the evils of humankind).

Literature can be a deeply meaningful experience for our lives. It can help us understand ourselves and the world we face; it can help us confront the universal reality of death. Part of that is the aesthetic: when poetry renders an idea into a new, beautiful, resonant form, it has powerfully connected with us. But that aesthetic meaning can be richer when it helps us to consider the experience, the thought, the meaning within it (Lutheran theology might be used to explain the relationship between content and form. Literature is like Consubstantiation: as Lutherans understand communion to be both bread and flesh, wine and blood, so is great literature both content and form, not meaningfully separated). Ultimately, literature has little to no meaning other than that which the reader is willing to give it. But if we willingly engage in it, it can provide us with something deep and meaningful.

I don't engage literature as an academic exercise. I engage literature as a personal renewal, as a spiritual growth, as a meaningful understanding of myself in the cosmos.

Reading and Pleasure

We read for pleasure. If we turn to books during those parts of the day that require nothing of us, it is because those books give us pleasure. We choose to read, and thus I agree with Harold Bloom when he writes that "It matters, if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves. [...] why they read must be for and in their own interest." We read for ourselves, and we ought to read what we want and how we want.

I reject any theorist which requires me to read in a certain way. If a Marxist tells me I must read to examine political ideology and material conditions, I would decline, while not denying his/her right to read for those reasons. I embrace feminism and see purpose in Feminist criticism, but I would reject a Feminist critic that tells me the only reason I ought to read is to examine and reveal patriarchy.

Such approaches limit the reader's pleasure: they deny the reader the ability to read for his or her own reasons, in his or her own interests. They apply a rigid code to literature, not allowing readers to read as themselves or for their own reasons. Again, I don't reject Marxist or Feminist approaches to literature; I just deny that they are primary ways of reading that must be inflicted on everybody.

And so I come to Aestheticism.

It strikes me how moralistic Aestheticism is. Aestheticism, like other theories, seems to assert that there is a proper, correct, right reason to read and way to read, and anybody who doesn’t read the same way is wrong. This appears as a universalization of individual experience: because a particular reason for reading doesn't work for the Aestheticist, it ought not work as a reason to read for anybody. Thus Aestheticism is another approach that attempts to deny the reader his or her individual pleasure in reading; it asserts that the individual reader ought to be reading differently than he or she is. I ask if reading literature for ideas, for education, or for moral edification, gives a reader pleasure, why precisely shouldn't a reader read for these reasons?


Harold Bloom doesn't read as a moralist, but he does recognize the individual's pleasure--and purpose--in reading:

"Ultimately we read — as Bacon, Johnson, and Emerson agree — in order to strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests. We experience such augmentations as pleasure, which may be why aesthetic values have always been deprecated by social moralists, from Plato through our current campus Puritans."

And oddly, in my assertion that one can read for education or edification, I agree with Bloom when he says "Self-improvement is a large enough project for your mind and spirit: there are no ethics of reading." Aestheticism, in a sense, applies an "ethics of reading": it asserts a there is a proper way we ought to read, rejecting other purposes (actually in other places Bloom pretty much does the same thing).

I read as myself, and for my own reasons. Reading offers me the most pleasure when I am able to read for myself and for my own reasons. I can only suggest the same to others.

(This post is something like a response to Daniel Green's response to an earlier post of my own, but it seems better as a stand alone post than as a comment there).

Watching, Reading, and the Aesthetic

I like plot. When I watch a TV show or a movie, I want something to be happening. There are two genres from which I don't demand plot; because horror and comedy attempt to elicit a specific audience reaction (fear or laughter), whether these genres use plot or not to elicit this reaction doesn't matter to me as much as whether or not they do in fact elicit the intended reaction. But generally, if I'm spending time watching something, I would like some sort of story.

But this post isn't about plot; when I'm watching, I don't just want plot. I have a very keen appreciation for the beautiful image. In visual art and entertainment, the aesthetic means a great deal to me. In film and television, what sticks in my memory are not necessarily the ideas, but the aesthetic of the work. I remember the sounds--the music and the way actors speak. I remember the way characters move or hold themselves (when I think of The Sopranos, I see Tony brooding about. I often associate other characters with their visual representations: Janice's distinct plodding walk, or the way Johnny Sac holds and smokes a cigarette, or Silvio's hunched shoulders. Ah, and the sounds! In The Sopranos all of the characters have such unique, distinct voices and speech patterns: when I think of Christopher, of Paulie, of Silvio, of Dr. Melfi, of Uncle Junior, what will stick out to me is the way they talk). In all I watch, I remember the movements of the camera, the way the frame captures the action, the color and movement and tone. Catching parts of Peter Jackson's King Kong on TNT this weekend, I'm struck not just by how much that movie captures beautiful images, but how much that movie is about capturing beautiful images.

Do I read differently than I watch? Perhaps, since I've said for a long time I read for ideas. One of my favorite films is Moulin Rouge, not for any great ideas, but precisely because of the brilliant aesthetic: the music, the movement, the colors, the constantly shifting camera, the distinct speech patterns, the dancing, the gorgeous sets, the costumes, the actors, the beauty of it all. It is the aesthetic of the Red Curtain Trilogy that has enthralled me, not any ideas.

But perhaps it is worth pointing out that while I read for ideas, I am most certainly also reading for aesthetic. When I reject Aestheticism for myself, it is a rejection of "art for art's sake" and a primary or total focus on the aesthetic at the expense of the content. But I most certainly appreciate and recognize the aesthetic originality and power in literature.

Now here's an odd shift: I'm not sure how I read different types of writing differently. I'm not sure my mind is operating differently whether I'm reading literature (poetry, drama, or fiction), history, theology, philosophy, criticism, essays, any remotely serious writing: I'm not entirely sure there's a difference in the way I read.

Ah, but indeed there seem to be different ways my mind is working that I'm not even consciously registering. Actually, I feel rather different when I'm reading a play: it is somehow seems distinct from any other type of writing, and I think I am examining it in a different way (for one thing, my mind is picturing it both on a stage and in a "real" setting that I might picture from reading a novel). I think too I read a poem differently than a novel; in fact, I'm sure I do. And so too must there be a difference in the way I read anything else. But what I'm saying is that I'm not sure what that difference is, and that the similarities in the way I approach any form of serious writing may be greater than the differences. Maybe.

And again I come to Reader-response. I recognize what I respond to in film/television (plot and the aesthetic of sight and sound). Perhaps I ought to become more conscious of precisely how I am reading what I read. I say I read for ideas, but I certainly consider the aesthetic: I don't ignore one for the other. But is the relationship between ideas and the aesthetic in my reading completely understood to me? Just what is it I love about Ted Hughes' Crow so much? If I really had to define it, I'd probably say it is some of my favorite poetry because of the aesthetic, not for any ideas that may be pulled out of these myth-like poems (or is it neither, but rather entertainment? The poems are quite amusing). I respond to Ted Hughes in a way that transcends content and probably resides somewhere in the aesthetic. And even when it is the content I respond to, how would I divorce it from the work's aesthetic? I adore Paradise Lost. I love the content and I love the ideas. But I also love the imagery Milton conjures. I love his poetry. I could spend a long time analyzing and discussing his art in the epic poem. It's a poem beautifully structured and containing many beautiful lines of poetry. It's a poem so rich in both art and content that I rather think it transcends any meaningful separation between the art and the ideas.

So I do in fact read different things differently. My brain pictures different things while I read drama. I respond to poetry in ways that I might not respond to other types of writing. Perhaps what I should say is that when I read history or philosophy or theology, I'm not reading those things that differently from the way I read literature. I've a rather big interest in both history and theology, yet I was an English major and now I'm an English teacher: I started with literature, and I've taken my modes of reading for literature to other types of writing, not vice versa. I might also recognize that in all of my reading, I'm reading for my personal education. At some level, I am reading to learn and to grow, no matter what I'm reading. Perhaps this is another reason that while I do appreciate the aesthetic of literature, I don't accept Aestheticism: I do approach literature for such things as education and edification, concepts that, if I understand it correctly, Aestheticism would reject as morality that doesn't belong in art.

This exploration (navel gazing, certainly, but I hope to a larger purpose) is an attempt to understand the manner in which I watch and read. Harold Bloom wrote a book called How to Read and Why; as a blogger about literature, perhaps my subtitle should be "How I read and why." But blogging about literature probably always contains that as a subtext: it's a rather personal, intimate medium in which to discuss experience with literature.

Reader-Response and Moral Reading

Reader-response Theory discusses reading in terms of "experience," "transaction," or "relationship." It also recognizes the role the reader brings to the text: as a work of literature barely exists outside the mind of the reader, it is worthwhile to examine the reader's participation. It is perhaps the most honest way to read: it doesn't pretend at the objective analysis that other critical approaches may. It requires me to understand that the way I read is but one mode of reading.

Reader-response Theory also recognizes the impact of reading. While it may focus on what the reader brings to the text, it also does not treat the text as an artifact, sealed in a vacuum. Reader-response Theory fully embraces the reality that the text brings something to the reader. We can be deeply, fundamentally changed by what we read.

We might also recognize the morality a reader brings to the reading experience. I am not an Aestheticist: my interest in literature is not to treat the work of literature as an aesthetic creation devoid of moral meaning. I read as a moral being, and I explore art for its moral meaning. That does not mean attaching the author's morality to the text, as Daniel Green recognizes one shouldn't, but exploring moral meaning in the text. Whatever personal failings a writer has does not detract from my reading of that writer's work (though as I'm writing here of the legitimacy of subjective modes of reading, who am I to say another reader must ignore the author's life?).

My most prominent ethical realities are in my embrace of pacifism and my advocacy for animal rights (I was initially going to call them ethical "stances," but they are not mere poses; they are very deep ways of living and thinking that infuse my everyday life). As a reader, I cannot put those ethics aside (that doesn't mean I can't develop an interpretation separate from those ethics--my point here is the reading experience). As I read Golding's Lord of the Flies, a story which explores human nature and violence, I certainly read it as a pacifist. It would be stupid to think I could set aside my opposition to violence while reading the story.

Torrential Downpour

Two thoughts on John Donne's Divine Meditations
1.Donne's religious poetry includes serious doubt and questioning. Divine Meditation #7 begins: "At the round earth's imagined corners..." Immediately there is the recognition that a scientific model of the earth does not match the biblical model of the earth. And #7 ends with "Teach me how to repent; for that's as good/ As if thou hadst sealed my pardon, with thy blood." If? In Christian theology, forgiveness of sins was sealed with the blood of Christ, yet here Donne suggests some doubt of that. In #9, Donne questions religious doctrine on sin/reason and on forgiveness/wrath, then takes a pose of humility...but leaves the questions hanging there. And in #13, he says of the image of Christ on the cross, "And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,/ Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?"

2. Donne has two poetic careers: the early songs which were often rather bawdy, and the later religious poems. But he never really left the sexual imagery behind, did he? Divine Meditation #14, perhaps the best one, contains some powerful imagery of God overtaking the poet, and ends with the request for God to "ravish" the speaker. #18 deals with finding the Church on earth, and suggests that the true bride of Christ would be "open to most men."

Novels
I realized something absurd: in the past ten months, the only novels I've read in their entirety were by Dostoevsky. I've encountered no novelists but Dostoevsky since I finished Gregory Maguire's Son of a Witch last May. None! Now I've certainly read a good deal of drama, poetry, and non-fiction in that time, and Dostoevsky does write rather long novels, so it's not like I haven't been reading a lot. But that's still a little weird to me. So from now until September, I'll only read novels that are around 200-300 pages long, and each novel I read has to be by a different author (I'm starting with Graham Greene's The Quiet American). And of course I'll continue to read drama, poetry, and non-fiction.

Mostly Vegan
The preparations are happening: on April 1st, I'm again going vegan. I'm not going to make a public deal about it (most of my friends and family don't read this blog), but I'm taking the step. I'm "mostly vegan" because I might take it easy with honey, and because on special occasions that are a bit outside my control, I may be a mere vegetarian (like my sister's wedding). But starting April 1st, I'll mostly be consuming fruits and vegetables. I'm very excited.

Theory and Reading
Reader-Response Theory, in my opinion, essentially allows me to read a work of literature in any way I choose. How can I limit my modes of reading to one? I read any work as a Humanist, as a Marxist, as a Feminist, or as a devotee of any other theory I've ever encountered. We can hold multiple thoughts, multiple frameworks, multiple ideas in our heads. I can read a book both as Harold Bloom would want me to and as a Marxist would want me to at the very same time.

The only theory I have little time for is Aestheticism (as I've suggested before). The work must mean more to me than appreciation of art for its own sake; I'm not nearly so interesting in exploring the aesthetics of any work as the ideas of the work. Perhaps I'm a bit of a Moralist as a reader. But that, too, is what Reader-Response is about: recognizing our own subjective modes of reading. My lack of interest in an Aesthetic approach to literature is my own, and I recognize that others do not, need not, should not read literature just the way I do. One of my great frustrations is when people universalize their personal modes of reading, claiming everybody should read literature the same way they do, turning their subjective preferences into literary rules.

Against Aestheticism II (or, my utilitarianism)

Some further additions to the ideas in the post below, Against Aestheticism.

More and more, my evaluation of art and literature is based on what I'll call an "abstract utilitarianianism." When I read a book or see a movie, I have to ask myself a central question. This question can be worded many different ways, but it comes down to this: "What is new in this work that I can take with me?" How that question is answered goes a long way toward how I feel about the work (but it isn't the total answer).

Let me look at recent things I've read and seen that can illustrate and articulate my abstract utilitarianism. I finally got around to reading Beckett's Waiting for Godot. I did not pull much new out of this; HOWEVER, I also recognize why. This play is brilliant, and there are two reasons I didn't pull much new out of it. First, this play is representative of a worldview I am already familiar with--indeed, a worldview I have imbibed and felt and studied for years. Secondly, this play is so influential on the theater and literature that followed it, I feel like I've read several works that were similar in nature. So while on the one hand I don't pull much new from it (though there is a lot of comedy that is sharp and fun), I am at least able to recognize why not.

I recently read Gregory Maguire's Wicked, and besides being the most fun book I've read in quite some time, there were some themes that I can take with, to continue mulling over. No, this novel didn't give me a lot to think about in regard to the nature of evil. However, several things stand out to me. The tension and ambiguity regarding the nature of control and choice in our lives. The tension and cohesion of opposites. There's something for me to claw onto and keep thinking about. Many things, actually.

Earlier this summer I read two books by African-American writers examining the legacy of slavery in the U.S., Toni Morrison's Beloved and Earnest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men. These are important books for me to read. Why? Because I'm white. I do not know what it is like to experience racism against myself. I don't know the details, the emotions, the anxiety. I can only learn about this experience second-hand. Reading Toni Morrison teaches me about the internalizing nature of racism, about the deep impact of racism. That gives me something to take away. Books which show us another way of experiencing the world, that show us how somebody else might view human existence, are the most necessary books of all. There are two approaches to teaching literature. One approach is to find literature students can relate to. This is appealing for students and to the teacher, because it can spark student reactions. But another didactic purpose of literature exists: to show students perspectives other than their own. That, I think, is the more important. What do students get out of RELATING to a work of literature? Something, I'm sure, though perhaps not enough. What do students get by EXPOSING themselves to a work of literature, by having another perspective exposed to them? Immeasurable value, I hope.

Finally, a film I was disappointed with, The Lady in the Water. There were several things I didn't like about the movie, but what comes to mind right now is that there was nothing new for me. I didn't learn anything from seeing it, I didn't relate to it, I wasn't able to learn any new perspective. Certainly that wouldn't hold as a very strong criticism of a film (and I wouldn't use it as an objective analysis), but that it my personal reaction.

This abstract utilitarian view might seem useless for evaluating material that has little artistic value, but still entertains. I say: not so. Not so at all. This is particularly useful in evaluating comedy. The best comedy is that which brings something new to us. Some new way of examining a part of life, some new way of bringing the mundane to comic effect, some new way simply to be funny and make one laugh. The old jokes work--but the best comedies bring something new to the table, they MUST bring something new because they must make us laugh. Above all else, they, must make us laugh. Two anecdotes come to mind: on The Simpsons, when Bart became the "I Didn't Do it" kid, but that got old, and on Alf, when Alf became a famous comedian, but was only telling the same joke, and eventually nobody laughed. Standup comedians will tell you how hard they work, and they do it because they have to. They have to bring you something new if they expect you to laugh. So even for art not meant to inspire, but meant only to entertain us, I can ask myself, "What is new from this that I can take with me?"

Against Aestheticism (or, art for any sake other than its own)

There are many who believe in art for art's sake, who believe particularly that art can have no utilitarian value, and furthermore would be offended by the very notion that art could be utilitarian, as if such effort would be propaganda that tarnishes and blasphemes the holiness that is artistic endeavor.

I am not one of those people.

To believe art can have no utilitarian value is to believe that the way people think has no impact on the way they act or on the shape the world takes. And if you believe that, why would you read for anything other than entertainment value? To ignore art's utilitarian value is to demean art itself, to make it no more useful than cheap entertainments like soap operas, spy novels, and formulaic sitcoms.

But art can do more than entertain. Art can change the way we think. And the way we think affects how we act and how we shape the world (as individuals and as groups). Art for art's sake is its own form of ethical value, of course (within Aestheticism, a writer concerned with morality would be the "unethical" artist, the sellout, creating debased literature). And you can include me among those who would elevate the importance of art in the overall scheme of human existence and achievement. But that is partly because I recognize ways in which art alters our worldviews, our self-perceptions, our consciousnesses, our behaviors. Perhaps art can't be narrowly utilitarian; perhaps it is impossible to predict the actual "use' to which art will be brought. But that doesn't mean that it exists for itself; it is not only writers who should read.

Finally, the most important point.

In fact, Aestheticism is itself narrowly utilitarian. If art exists for art's sake, then the artist examines another work of art only to determine ways he can "use" that art in his own art. If art has no value outside itself, the only art meaningful is that which is useful to the artist, and to that artist all art will be viewed in a utilitarian manner. The artist will say, "How can I use this to shape my own art?" THAT is a debased utilitarianism. The "Aestheticist" artist CAN ONLY EXAMINE ART IN TERMS OF ITS UTILITY TO HIMSELF.