There was a woman in
the 1940s who was famous, glamorous, and also a respected actress.
She could have rested on her laurels, but she was dissatisfied, and her
dissatisfaction took her to the battlefields of World War II in Europe, where
she risked her own life and health to bring relief to thousands. Her name was
Marlene Dietrich, and she illustrates what Aesthetic Realism says about what
makes dissatisfaction wise or foolish, right or wrong.
The distinction is
tremendously important, and Aesthetic Realism explains it. Dissatisfaction is wrong and hurtful when
it arises from the desire to have contempt, from the feeling, “This world
and the people in it aren’t aren’t good enough to satisfy me, and my
dissatisfaction is a sign of my superiority!” Dissatisfaction is right when it
arises from the desire to respect the world and people. In an issue of The
Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Ellen Reiss explained,
"The beautiful dissatisfaction arises from this fact, stated by Eli Siegel: 'Man's deepest desire, largest desire, is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis.'... Without knowing it, people everywhere are dissatisfied with themselves because they are not doing all they can to like the world.
And
she continues:
"It is a person's welcoming of this
beautiful dissatisfaction which is the source of all art; for art comes from
this feeling: "I have not been fair enough to the world; I must see it
more truly, honoringly."
I. What I
Learned about Dissatisfaction
In college, there were some
dissatisfactions I had that were wise: I demonstrated for the Civil Rights movement and against the Vietnam War. It
was clear to me that there were injustices that needed to end. But I also used my
dissatisfaction with these injustices to feel
superior. Even the people I marched with were subject to my scorn. I’d think, “She’s smart, but not as
cute as I am,” or, “she’s pretty but not as smart as me.”
I
had a growing dissatisfaction with myself. I wrote in my journal, “I must relax my tension and jealousy
of others.” And: “How can I relate
the worst in me with the best in me? My fear is of never finding out. I’m tired and depressed.”
It
was in New York as attended the New School that I did find out! I learned of
Aesthetic Realism and its description of contempt: “the addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Right away, I felt relieved and started
to be self-critical. Then, in a
document I wrote to Eli Siegel for an Aesthetic Realism lesson, I told him that
my friends said I was bossy and acted like a generalissimo! “I’ve found
a certain kind of satisfaction,” I wrote, “from ignoring what I please.” In the
lesson Mr. Siegel said:
ES. As you suggest, you feel not so good
about the way you’ve seen people.
There’s a certain kind of dissatisfaction—or guilt--about oneself.
ES. The questions we have are: Is there
anger?—that’s dis-satisfaction with what’s not oneself—and is there
contempt? And if we are angry and
we have contempt in the wrong way would we have guilt? If a person can in any way see that she
has a wrong emotion, would she have a feeling of regret, which is akin to guilt
and is guilt?
DT. That’s logical, that’s true.
ES. The deepest dissatisfaction is that we
don’t think we’re just to what’s real.
We have an obligation to everything, which means to see it as it
is.
The good effect of what I was learning was immediate!
Instead of being depressed, I began to respect my dissatisfaction with myself.
I wrote in my journal: “I see that desire in me to have contempt for things
outside myself. As I’ve tried to
be accurate, respectful to all things more, I’ve been much happier.”
II.
She Had a Wise Dissatisfaction
Many people think Marlene Dietrich’s career
began with The Blue Angel—the 1929 film directed by Josef von
Sternberg. But she wanted to be an
actress and singer from an early age, and worked hard to be good at it. There
is a true dissatisfaction with ourselves which Ellen Reiss describes in a
statement I love:
"The people with the most true pride, have not been satisfied with themselves, and have always hoped to respect themselves more. There are the noble, tremendously practical and lovable statements of Robert Browning, 'Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, /Or what’s a heaven for?,' and 'What I aspired to be,/And was not, comforts me.' Browning knew that there is a beautiful dissatisfaction with oneself that can have one truly like oneself—in fact, is necessary if one is to like oneself. The more just we want to be, the less satisfied with ourselves we are—yet the more we authentically esteem ourselves."
Something
like this kind of dissatisfaction was had by Marlene Dietrich, although she did
not always live up to it. Born in Berlin in 1901, she was the daughter of a
career military man, and began working as a chorus girl: but biographers
describe her as always studying to do better. Steven Bach writes of how she
learned to accompany silent films on her violin, and says, “Exactitude became
second nature to Marlene and a lifelong habit….”
She made her film debut in 1922, in So sind die Männer
[That’s How Men Are]. She acted in German productions of The Taming of
the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Shaw's Back to
Methuselah and Misalliance--giving
her a grounding in stagecraft honed by productions of widely varying scales and
styles.” Then came The Blue
Angel, after which, in 1930, she was brought to Hollywood and made Morocco
with Gary Cooper, Shanghai Express, and many more films.
“All
beauty,” Eli Siegel stated, “is a making one of opposites, and the making one
of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” In her films, as in the
1939 Destry Rides Again with James Stewart, she is a riveting relation
of seriousness and grace, of intensity and ease, of lightness and depth that
affects you.
As she
worked at her art, the relation of opposites became greater. In Billy Wilder’s
1957 Witness for the Prosecution, she played two roles: the
beautiful but sinister Christine Vole, and an ugly Cockney woman wanting
to sell letters which incriminate Christine. (photo) In a scene with the
barrister played by Charles Laughton, she shows him the letters, taunting him:
“Ow, come off it! Didya bring any money?!” And showing him a terrible scar on
her face, she scornfully gibes “Want to kiss me, ducky?!” Said Elsa Lanchester, who was also in
the movie: she took “lessons in Cockney from Charles…I never saw anyone work so
hard."
In
the 1959 movie Judgment at Nuremberg she plays Mrs. Bertholt, a mature,
charming woman whose late husband was a Nazi military general, and in a scene
with Spencer Tracy, who plays the chief judge of the trials at Nuremberg, [photo]
she tries to justify what he did, protesting, “My husband was a soldier: he was
brought up to do one thing—to fight in the battle and to fight well.” I believe her acting is so fine here
because of the way she puts together self and otherness—opposites at the heart
of acting and of our lives: she used her enormous personal dissatisfaction, her
hatred of the Nazis and what the German people did in the Second World War, to
portray convincingly a woman whose way of seeing was oh, so different, a woman
trying to defend so reasonably something horrible, and her performance is compellingly
chilling and real. Later, she said
it was a role she was proud of, and I believe it had a powerful effect on the
thousands of people who have seen this important film.
III.
Women Learn This in Consultations
Susan Adler, whose life is very different
from that of Marlene Dietrich, is a vivacious woman who is proud of being a
botanist, an art curator, and a wife.
She began consultations expressing dissatisfaction with both herself and
the world: “I’m too soft, too affected by things. I’m dissatisfied with the
news, the environment.” At the
beginning of the consultation, she told us she’d grown up in a country with
fascist leaders, and we asked:
C. Do you think you came to an
attitude to the world? Do you see it as a friendly place, unfriendly, or
indifferent?
SA. Oh yes—unfriendly. When I grew up, I was afraid.
C. So if you have an attitude to the
world of fear, you were either right or wrong. Perhaps in some ways you were correct. But then we can USE one thing we’re
afraid of to affect how we see everything.
SA. Oh! I see.
C. That would make us not see where
we could like something, because we’re already prejudiced in behalf of
protecting ourselves. And if our deepest hope is to like the world, that would
make for agitation.
SA. Yes! Very logical.
C. On the other hand, you’ve been
interested in knowledge--you’ve felt the world was something to know. That much
you liked it. For instance, a
chemical compound such as NACL is made up of sodium and chlorine. Chlorine by
itself can be dangerous, but with sodium it makes a compound which is good—it’s
salt. So opposites are made one in this compound?
SA. Yes!
C. Do you think that this shows you
may be able to care for the world because it’s made in a good way?
SA. Oh!...Yes.
C. Aesthetic Realism shows that how
the world is made is different from how it’s run. This we ask you
to test honestly.
SA. Wow. I wish I could see things that
way. What stops me?
We
respected Mrs. Adler for asking this, and explained:
C. There’s that in the self which
wants to see value in things. But
there’s something else that says “I want myself pure.” This is the desire to
think the world dirties us by affecting us with its nastiness, and all its
conflict. We may dislike
ourselves, be confused, but there’s something which says, “Just me by myself is
fine—without all this bad stuff.”
We asked Mrs. Adler to read point 3 of the "Four Statements of Aesthetic Realism":
SA. “There is a disposition in every person
to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.”
C. When you said that you were too
“affected by things”: Does that say you feel the world has a bad effect, and
the way to take care of yourself is not to be affected by things?
SA. Yes, that’s me!
IV. Why Women Are
Dissatisfied with Themselves in Love
Yes, women are dissatisfied with men. But Susan Adler, Marlene Dietrich, and
most women have had big dissatisfaction with ourselves in love. And the
reason is explained by Ellen Reiss in an issue of The Right Of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, issue #1381, as she
writes about a woman she calls Katie and her boyfriend, Sam:
"Katie is a lawyer. But she uses Sam to get
away from the diverse world she was born to be fair to. Without stating it, she
wants to annul…co-workers, clients…demands of family and friends…, through this
one man's approval, in this one man's arms. She has given Sam a truly ugly job: to make her feel
superior to that manifold reality not Katie. He wants the same from her.
Both comply; but it's a purpose they can't like themselves for. So they find
themselves ill-natured and fighting, and don't know why.
"Real love…is the using of one person, in
his or her tremendous particularity, to know and care more for the busy,
puzzling, abundant, multifarious world."
There
were men that Marlene Dietrich felt encouraged in her that hope to know and
care more for the world. For
instance, in Josef von Sternberg she found a director whom she felt would tell
her how she could be fairer to the art of acting. But there was also a great pain when they began a close
relation. Though all that occurred
is not clear, it can be asked: did their distress and finally their split, have
to do with the fact that, with all that was fine in terms of art, they made
each other “feel superior to that manifold reality not” themselves? On and off the set, wrote a colleague,
she and Von Sternberg “withdrew into an ivory tower.” Did they despise each other for this? And though there was adoration, Ms.
Dietrich had to do with other men at the same time. She said, “I failed him. I was never the ideal he sought. He was never quite satisfied.” And the team that had made The Blue Angel, Shanghai
Express, and more, separated with fury, regret, and sadness.
From
early in her life, Marlene, with her beauty and intellect, was able to conquer
men. In 1923, she had married
Rudolph Seiber and they had a child, Maria, in 1924. And though Ms. Dietrich prided herself on being
liberated—I’m sure there was much pain when it came to men and sex. She wrote later:
“They thought they were going to bed with Marlene Dietrich, but they woke up
with just me.” Eli Siegel said to
me in an Aesthetic Realism lesson:
"We want to like the world, and we also want
to feel we don’t need the world and we can please ourselves. Most often the pleasure of sex is
associated with a victory over the world.
So despite the world and its seeming being against us, we had
pleasure: which means there is an accomplishment of self. And this is the thing that has to be
debated: as soon as you have pleasure and
you think it’s only from yourself, you cannot respect yourself."
Jean
Gabin, the French actor and military hero, was the
only man Miss Dietrich said she truly loved: “I have loved him without being selfish,
without any thoughts at the back of my mind, and I tried to give happiness,
even though I did not succeed always.”
As she said this, was she saying that with most men she had had some
kind of thought that was selfish—though with Gabin, she “did not succeed
always”? I believe so, and I
respect her self-criticism.
Ms.
Adler was also dissatisfied with herself in her marriage. In one consultation, we said:
Consultants: The
large thing we learned is that the purpose of marriage is like the purpose
of art: through another person to care more for everything. One danger for a woman is to feel
she’s more sensitive than her husband, smarter, deeper.
SA. Yes. This disturbs me a lot.
C. And that he is not as
smart as she is.
SA.
Yes! Sometimes I say that. I feel
dissatisfied and I say No, I understood better than you!
C. There is a desire to be
superior….Do you think you have that? And is it good for you?
SA. Yes, I have that. And no it is not!
In
the consultation I mentioned that some time ago, my husband, Jeffrey Carduner,
pointed out that he’d say something, and I’d say, No, and just disagree. Said Ms. Adler:
SA. Oh, I have that! In the car: Go this
way, go that way, I know better than you!
Sometimes I’m a boss about that.
C. And then what happens
to your desire to learn?
SA. I think it’s discouraged.
C. Yes,
it’s completely opposed. We have these two purposes: I want to like and I want
to be better than. This fight goes
on in us. We have to know it and
the more we know it the more we can combat it and make another choice.
SA. Oh, thank you! That is what I want.
IV. Dissatisfaction Can Be Beautiful, Wise, and Right
In his lecture on dissatisfaction, Mr.
Siegel said:
"When we are dissatisfied with something, we
should be satisfied with our dissatisfaction. If a person doesn’t like
something and says, 'I am proud of how I don’t like this,' at that moment his
dissatisfaction changes into satisfaction. To be dissatisfied truly is better than to be satisfied
untruly."
There
was a time of which Marlene Dietrich was very proud: She’d been against Hitler
and the Nazis for years--her Hollywood home was a refuge for writers,
directors, actors who escaped the Nazis’ brutality. But she was dissatisfied
and wrote: “I couldn’t do much but I had to do something.” That something was to go to
Europe to entertain troops--not from
afar: she went right to the front lines! Wrote Charlotte Chandler:
"In Bari (Italy) she was taken to a hospital
with pneumonia. Marlene’s hands and feet were frozen in the Ardennes….She said
it was: “Unforgettable, and…once you’ve had frostbite, your hands and feet
always remember and let you know."
Wrote Steven Bach:
"She spent more time entertaining at the
front than any other performer, male or female….She spent the Christmas of her
forty-third birthday entertaining the 99th Army near Bastogne at the
center of the Battle of the Bulge…."
I
close with a song Marlene Dietrich sang that has a relation of poignancy,
dissatisfaction, and something cherished: “Lili Marlene.” It meant
a lot not only to American soldiers but to Marlene Dietrich herself—a serious
yet dissatisfied person who was hoping to be honestly lighthearted. The song
has in it what Aesthetic Realism shows makes for beauty--it puts opposites
together: as a soldier sings of his longing for his girl, the melody falls and
then rises, falls and rises. It is a moving and good
song, having in it pain and pleasure, yearning and true satisfaction. It
relates two parts of Dietrich’s life: originally written in German during the
First World War, it was then translated into English and she sang it for
thousands of GIs who loved it. Here are the beginning and ending
verses:
“Outside the barracks, by the corner light
I’ll always stand and wait for you at night;
We will create a world for two
I’ll wait for you the whole night through
For you, Lilli Marlene,
For you, Lilli Marlene…
---
Resting in
a billet just behind the line
Even tho' we're parted your lips are close
to mine,
You wait
where that lantern softly gleams
Your sweet face seems to haunt my dreams,
My Lillie of the lamplight,
My own Lilli Marlene."
And
hear are the first two verses, sung by Ms. Dietrich:Lilli Marlene
Marlene
Dietrich was proud of her war work, I believe because it expressed the dissatisfaction,
and the love for the world that she wanted to make sense of. Aesthetic Realism teaches us how we
can.
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