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Auerbach's Mimesis The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Research · October 2018

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Minon Weber
Approaches to Realism
Autumn 2018

Reading Erich Auerbach’s highly influential Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western

Literature, it quite quickly becomes evident that Auerbach is not seeking to supply us with a

universal recipe for realism in literature, if such a recipe even exists. As Edward Said writes in the

introduction to Mimesis ”Auerbach offers no system, no shortcut to what he puts before us as a

history of the representation of reality in Western literature” (Said xxxii). Rather, we embark on an

intriguing ride through Western literature across thousands of years, in order to understand just how

closely style and history are related. Through focusing on, and analysing passages of texts written

by various writers throughout time, Auerbach expands into connecting the text with its historical

environment. Focusing on the 13th chapter of Mimesis, ”The Weary Prince”, in which Auerbach

discusses Shakespeare, I will use the ”gravedigger scene” form Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, to

test and analyse Auerbach’s views on realism in Mimesis.

To define realism is a complex task in many aspects. We may think that realism lies in the

aesthetic of a text, in its style. We may think that realistic writing would be the opposite of fancy

writing, raw texts with few metaphors, allegories and similes. But then we have texts such as James

Joyce’s Ulysses, full of symbols and allusions, yet a work many consider to be realist. Perhaps the

most intricate aspect of defining realism, though, is the fact that realism is a thing of change.

Reality, and so too realism, is object to change throughout time not necessarily because, or simply

because, we change our values and the way in which we write, but because the substance and stuff

of reality itself changes. Our understanding of the real and reality is not the same as it was in
 Weber !2
Dante’s, or Shakespeare’s time. This aspect is fundamental for Auerbach’s view of realism in

Mimesis.

Auerbach’s approach to realism is based on a historicist perspective. Throughout Mimesis

we are shown the ways in which literary works are shaped and formed by the dynamics of their

time. For example, in the first chapter of Mimesis, Auerbach compares Homer’s writing to that in

the Old Testament, explaining that the style of Homer is externalised and characters and events

become fixed both spatially and temporally. In Homer’s works, everything is brought to the surface,

making depth impossible. Homer creates a present, a ”now”, which is the only truth needed. Thus,

the physical existence is the only existence in Homer, as other perspectives of time are not

presented. This, he illustrates with the example of Achilles. Auerbach explains that Achilles ”looses

almost all his ’presentness’ so long as he is not physically present” (13). In the bible, on the other

hand, Auerbach identifies a shift, a shift towards characters with more depth, more layers of

consciousness (13). Characters are described as having the power to affect other characters or

events even though they are not physically present, ”both the physical and psychological

background is fully manifest” (13). Furthermore, characters and their actions are more complex in

the Bible, because their actions are affected by their previous history and their background in a

psychologically more intricate way than possible in Homer (12), there is actual character

development.

Another shift identified by Auerbach, is the mixing of styles. The mixing of styles is a

concept Auerbach repeatedly returns to in his discussion of realism, as it represents a pivotal

moment for realism. Auerbach explains that Shakespeare has become the central figure for the

rejection of the strict separation of styles in French classicism (313). Shakespeare represents the

first instance of comedy and tragedy existing side by side in the history of literature, he ”mixes the

sublime and the low, the tragic and the comic” (317) in a revolutionary way. Tragic scenes are

undercut with humour, turning the tragic into a more real matter, using the comical in order to speak
 Weber !3
to a more real part of reality. Tragic actions alternate humorous scenes with common people and

everyday activities. Furthermore, Shakespeare mixes styles in terms of involving characters of high

and low rank, as well as high and low style in diction, alternating between prose and verse for

example, as in Hamlet 3.1.120 where Hamlet is speaking in prose while Ophelia replies to him in

verse in the ”Get thee to a nunnery!” scene. Likewise, in the much earlier Divine Comedy, Auerbach

draws attention to Dante’s use of vulgar and ”low” language. Dante made vernacular language

valuable in a way it had not been appreciated before, for example by using certain words that were

not used in literature at the time (Auerbach 181). Furthermore, Auerbach observes that the use of

comedy generates an alternate form of sublimity and realism, as it allows multiple actions of

various genres and tones succeed each other, creating a mingling of interactions and impressions

(189). In Dante, Auerbach identifies different kinds of reality. Dante represents, for Auerbach, a

more real reality. Through figural realism, the comedy of Dante produces ”an almost painfully

immediate impression of the earthly reality of human being” (199), Dante describes who we really

are; the grotesque, the vernacular, the real, and in doing so, he is writing realism.

To further illustrate and test the key points in Auerbach’s account of the representation of

reality Mimesis, I have chosen to examine a passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In 5.1 we find the

scene famously known as the ”gravedigger scene”. Two clowns enter the scene, which takes place

in a graveyard. This scene immediately presents the mixing of styles so characteristic for

Shakespeare, and characteristic for Auerbach’s view on realism. In the beginning of the scene, the

gravediggers are the only characters present. Two commoners are given space and voice. Later, they

will interact with Hamlet himself, mixing the sublime with the low, the high status of a prince with

the low status of simple gravediggers. Furthermore, the gravediggers are discussing matters such as

equality, corruption and society, subjects usually not assigned characters of lower classes. Through

their interaction, their clever wit is juxtaposed to their low social status. Moreover, the activity of

digging a grave, which is common and an everyday activity in that it is pursued by people of low
 Weber !4
social status, is given attention. What also becomes evident, is the connection to the portrayal to the

physical-creatural, which Auerbach connects to the representation of reality (313). As Auerbach

notes, there are in most of Shakespeare’s works, as well as in Dante’s and Zola’s, portrayals of the

grotesque, of death, of the macabre. In the gravedigger scene we are encountered with the actual

digging of Ophelia’s grave, we are in the environment of death, decomposition and decay. Later in

the scene, 5.1.171, Hamlet will hold in his hands the very skull of the King’s former jester, Yorick,

whom Hamlet knew for many years. Perhaps most important to note though, is the alternation of the

tragic and the comic which permeates the scene. The scene takes place in a graveyard, a place of

graveness and death, yet the gravediggers are making jokes, singing songs and throwing up skulls

from the ground. While digging Ophelia’s grave, they are simultaneously joking about the very

Prince of Denmark and his tragic, humiliating insanity (and joking about the people of England,

relating to the audience of Shakespeare through their wit), commenting about Hamlet’s growing

madness that ”Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he” (5.1.145).

Furthermore, the gravediggers make parody of legal jargon when speaking of Ophelia’s apparent

suicide, which would typically not grant her a Christian burial, saying that ”It must be se

offendendo” (5.1.9). We can thus see, that the humour of the gravediggers is mostly at the expense

of the sublime, making fun of both coroners, social laws, and the prince. It is also interesting to note

how this scene, with its tragedy undercut by comedy, contributes to make Hamlet more human,

more real. Hamlet is interacting with simple gravediggers, and they are dealing with similar

thoughts. The gravediggers conversation about death, suicide and all humans meeting the same fate

no matter class, corresponds to Hamlet’s ”To be, or not to be - that is the question” (3.1.55-88)

soliloquy. Likewise, Hamlet becomes more humble when met with the skull of Yorick, as he is put

literally face to face with the inevitability of death. The mixing of styles, the mixture of the tragic

and the comic, the sublime and the low, as well as notions of the physical-creatural are thus the key

tools of realism in the gravedigger scene.

over thousands of years. He focuses on literary moments where the common and the real is treated

with seriousness and examines what allowed that realism to be written. Thus, he finds that realism

has been written and presented in Western literature solely when the historical environment of an

author has allowed him to reject the separation of styles. Reality becomes deeper with time, and as

reality changes, and literature develops, new modes of representation are given space. Auerbach’s

realism is one characterised by presentations of the grotesque, of the humorous undercutting of

tragedy, and of the breaking down of the separation of styles. It could be argued that Auerbach is

unclear in his strategy for dealing with realism, as Ankersmit expresses in ”Why Realism?

Auerbach and the Representation of Reality” (1), though I would argue it is a strength in Auerbach,

to approach realism as a mystery to be solved. Instead of approaching realism as a style of writing

and dissecting it, Auerbach questions what made realism possible in the first place, he examines the

dynamics of history and society, and the interplay between them, to identify the milieu that births

the possibility of a style of literature that turns inward and presents ourselves and our minds in ways

previously impossible.
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Works cited

Ankersmit, Frank. ‘Why Realism? Auerbach and the Representation of Reality.’ Poetics Today, 20:1

(1999): 53-75.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R.

Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Said, Edward. Introduction. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans.

Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. ix-xxxii.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Eds. Ann Thompson, Neil Taylor. London: Arden Shakespeare,

2017.

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