Generosity Versus Grudgingness in Men

Does Generosity Pay?—in Life and in The Red and the Black

People think if they're generous they will be dopes who only give of themselves. Eli Siegel saw, with terrific logic, that real generosity is the one means of getting what we want most. In Self and World he writes:

We cannot be whole beings if we are not fair to what is not ourselves...To be selfish is to be the whole self; to be the whole self is to have a sense of otherness.

I learned that "to have a sense of otherness" is what we're born for, to see meaning in the world. But most people decide early that what is "other" is against them, something one has to fight and have contempt for. This feeling most often begins in the family, as is the case with Julien Sorel, who is described at the beginning of The Red and the Black as handsome and intelligent:

A short lad, about eighteen or nineteen years of age...His...black eyes...revealed a thoughtful, fiery spirit.

Julien's family lives in the small French town of Verrières. They are poor and run a water saw-mill. Julien loves to read, and one day his father catches him reading his most cherished book, about his hero Napoleon, instead of minding the saw. He hits Julien gruffly, knocks the book into the river and swings him around. Stendhal writes:

Julien's big, black eyes, brimming with tears, found themselves confronting the old carpenter's little grey ones.

Poverty has encouraged anger and unkindness in Julien's father, and Julien uses this to feel the whole world is against him, to have an early "grudge" against it.

A person fortunate to be learning about this near the beginning of his life is Billy Konrad. In his second consultation, when he was 6-1/2 years old, we were teaching him what it means to have a generous and exact way of seeing people: to have good will. Mr. Konrad was outwardly very cheerful, but when we asked where his father could do better with him, he became quiet and said sometimes his father yells at him. We knew he needed to try to see, from within, how his father feels: if he has a lot on his mind and loses his temper does he like himself? We asked Billy Konrad to imagine that he was Samuel Konrad, and we asked:

Consultants. Sam Konrad, do you think you can get too angry too fast?

Billy Konrad.  (as Sam Konrad) Yeah.

Consultants. Angrier than maybe you should?

Billy Konrad.  Yes.

We explained that to have good will, a person has to think as deeply as he can about another—even someone he feels hurt by. This includes thinking about where the person might be hurting his own life. We said: "The criterion is this: is it good for the person who is doing the yelling to do the yelling? If your father yells at you...ask "Is it good for him that he's yelling at me, or is it not good for him?" And Billy Konrad said, "Not good for him."

Billy Konrad is learning to be kinder. He is not making the choice Julien Sorel makes, beginning with his father to see the whole world as an enemy to beat.

In The Right Of Eli Siegel writes: "Julien Sorel is one of those figures in fiction that have a battle with the world they know." A chief way Julien battles the world is through being fiercely ambitious. He decides, against his father's wishes, to become a priest, and in this way to get ahead. A "magnificent" church is being built in Verrières, and Stendhal writes:

All at once...[Julien] announced his plan of becoming a priest, and was constantly to be seen...committing to memory a Latin Bible which the curé had lent him...In [the curé's] company Julien made show of none but pious sentiments. Who would have guessed that his...face, so...gentle, concealed an unshakable determination to undergo a thousand deaths rather than fail to achieve success?

Growing up, I was more financially fortunate than Julien Sorel. But what Eli Siegel writes in The Right Of was true of both of us: "Getting ahead is the purpose of every spry youth from the Atlantic to the Pacific." I, too, could appear gentle while I was ambitious as hell. For example, in seventh grade I represented my class in the Miami science fair. But once I was there I was hardly thinking about science. I was wrapped up in how I could get the reporter from The Miami Herald to take my picture so I would be in the paper.

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that we were born to like the world different from us, not to manipulate it and have contempt for it. If we're not trying to be fair to the world, we'll feel nervous and empty. That is what I felt, and in the class I quoted from, Ellen Reiss explained why, as she so accurately and kindly put into words what had been my way of life: "I don't see myself as existing to treasure something, give myself to something. I exist to get things from people."

Article Sections
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5