Something to Expiate

 A while back I wrote a post on this blog devoted to the concept of "little hells"—by which I mean those small episodes of intense, burning shame from our past that have a way of arising to our recollection unbidden at awkward moments. They could strike one at any time—but they most often come when one's attention is undefended: in the shower, say; on a walk; while driving, etc. 

I quoted Dostoevsky's passage on the subject, from The Idiot: "This sometimes happens with people: unbearable, unexpected memories, especially in connection with shame, ordinarily stop one on the spot for a moment." (Pevear/Volokhonsky trans.) But the term itself I took from a novel by Klaus Mann: "Such memories are like little hells into which we must descend from time to time." (Smyth trans.)

It turns out that the Norwegian novelist Dag Solstad (recently deceased) knew what we were talking about as well. In the opening passage of his strangely poignant and mordantly comic novel about social awkwardness and missed chances for connection, T. Singer, he describes a phenomenon that can only be a close relative of the "little hells" of Mann and Dostoevsky: 

Singer suffered from a peculiar sense of shame that didn't bother him on a daily basis but did pop up occasionally; he would remember some sort of painful misunderstanding that made him stop short, rigid as a post, with a look of despair on his face, which he immediately hid by holding up both hands as he loudly exclaimed: "No, no!" This might happen anywhere at all, on the street, in a closed room, on the platform at the train station [...] (Nunnally trans.)

And so on, in a repetitive, obsessive, tragicomic style somewhat reminiscent of Beckett and Thomas Bernhard. What Singer is plainly experiencing here—and what Solstad is trying to describe—is the sudden and unwanted eruption into one's consciousness of one of these dreadful "little hells."

Many of these shameful memories—as Solstad goes on to point out—trace back to our childhoods. But the exceptionally awkward among us keep adding to their number even as adults. 

I, for one, may have just encoded another one into my memory yesterday. The embarrassment was certainly searing enough to have left some sort of lasting imprint on my limbic system. I predict that years hence, I'll be recalling it at an unprotected moment, and suddenly throwing up my hands in front of my face, and saying "No, no!"

Like many of these private "little hells"—it probably will not sound so bad to anyone other than me. There is an individual nature to shame, the meaning of which—as is the case with one's private coincidences—can't really be conveyed to a second person. I'm also not really inclined to tell you the details, lest I imprint the memory even more firmly in my brain cells. 

Let's just say I misjudged a situation, and let a little too much of my emotions show in an inappropriate context. We were in the midst of a class discussion, reflecting back on an in-person exercise. I went into Divinity School mode, I suppose, and assumed the professor was asking us to delve into our personal experience of the exercise (which had been a mock arbitration—this being a law school class).

I, somewhat mortifyingly, over-explained my feelings about it. I said, perhaps in an overly incendiary way, that I had felt "shortchanged" by the outcome. As soon as the word was out of my mouth, I regretted it. I thought I might offend my classmates, who had acted as arbitrators in the exercise. So I added, in self-accusation, "But that may have been due to my own sloppy advocacy." 

Somehow—though—this attempt to shift the blame to myself only made it worse and more disgraceful. When I explained all this to a friend, he helped me see exactly the source of the shame. It was like, my original statement ("I felt we got shortchanged") might have been innocuous—a good faith engagement with the artificial construct of the exercise. 

But with my clumsy attempts to take the blame, I inadvertently made it seem more serious than it was. By saying "not that I'm accusing any of you," in so many words—I suddenly made it seem like I had been accusing them. 

In one go, I had managed to point the finger unjustly at my classmates, but also to ham-handedly divulge my own insecurity and hurl myself abjectly on the mercy of the group. I had made it all too clear, in short, that I was still kind of mad about the outcome of the exercise—but also that I felt insecure about my performance in it, and afraid that I was to blame for the result—and was seeking reassurance. 

"Oh," said my friend, "So, you felt small. You are worried that you came across as a small person, in that moment."

Oh God... yes! That's it! It's frightening even to say it; but that is indeed the problem.

What does D.H. Lawrence say again, in his poem about the snake? Ah yes, I had been guilty of a "pettiness," as he puts it. I now have "something to expiate." I looked up his exact words: "I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!" Yes, Lawrence, that's exactly the problem. I had been guilty of a paltriness. A pettiness. A mean act. I had something to expiate. 

"Unbearable, unexpected memories, especially in connection with shame," as Dostoevsky puts it. I have just added to their number. An unbearable pettiness. A moment in which I let my insecurity and anger and simultaneous pathetic need for reassurance from my indifferent classmates show through. How intolerable! "How paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!" 

I hold up my hands before my face at the thought, crying: "No, no!"

Oh well. I also talked to my sister about this yesterday. By an amusing coincidence, she happened to have endured a similar embarrassing social moment that day at work, and she was now overthinking it in exactly the way I was ruminating over my own faux-pas. Together, we decided on the only possible consolation in such moments: namely, that no one else cares about our private shames as much as we do. 

It's possible my classmates did judge me fleetingly in the moment, of course. It's also possible that they were scarcely paying attention, and were actually just reading emails on their laptops while I was vomiting up my shame and insecurity and grim accusations before the class, and they didn't even notice. But one thing is certain either way: they don't care about what I said as much as I now do. 

As Thomas Hardy writes, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles—in writing about his protagonist's embarrassment at having to reveal herself to be an unwed mother in the Victorian age—Tess need not have worried so much about the judgment of her peers. None of us in fact need ever fear greatly the specter of disgrace—Hardy writes—because no one is ever thinking about our mortification as much as we are:

"[W]hat had bowed [Tess's] head so profoundly—the thought of the world’s concern at her situation—was founded on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought."

May this realization console you too, the next time you are in one of your own "little hells"!