Rants on lit. from Guatemala

Jekyll and the enigma of pleasure

Music: I liked the LOdVG so much I’m listening to the hole thing on cd right now.

Read: I finally finished the damned Jekyll. And I have some thoughts on the subject.


I was talking to Mariana an icq friend. And I just realized… I float amongst a lot of uneven circles. First there is the one I made at the University. The other… the circle of math and physics friends of Waleska (did I mention she’s my oldest friend? I met her on high school) And yet another: The musicians circle.

I know this has got nothing to do with anything… it just strikes me as weird. Or might sound weird to someone other than my closest friends. I wouldn’t blame Mariana If she didn’t believe me. Many people just find where they fit and they stay there… why is this? Is it because of the stability, the safety of knowing what to talk about? And I ask myself… would I be comfortable in a room filled with architects? I would probably try to talk of what I remember from my art studies… try to spit out some list of words that come to mind. Something like two people that just remember bits and pieces of each others language… so they have to try to communicate by isolated words… meaning nothing as a hole to each others language. But feel happy they have found a way of sounding familiar…

And in this position I, perhaps, would come across sounding arrogant… But I would just try to lay common ground to make chit chat. I have found that nobody really cares what are you trying to say, or worst yet… where are you coming from.

And I think it is because we don’t have time to figure someone out. We live so fast that we would like it If the person just showed us what he’s about. No thinking. And I have to confess… I’m a very poor profiler. My friend Aleyda is a grate one… but I think perhaps she sometimes goes too far on a judgment of a person.

Now, back to the enigma of freedom. Well as I see it Jekyll is a person that desperately wants to be free. And freedom, it is seen in the text as an expression of evil. And I have to say that the moralism expressed all over the 4 texts in the book by Stevenson is palpable and readily noticeable.

But that is exactly what I want to stay away from… The reduction to the idea of good and evil. Because, even if it is part of the plot, the most important thing for me is the longing of Jekyll. The morbid fascination he had with Hyde. See as Jekyll the good doctor he enjoyed little escapades into the world of pleasure… it was part of his life. But as Hyde he could enjoy deeper parts of pleasure.

And is this need, this selfish – hedonistic way that was so reprimanded. This could only be said to confirm the old thing: “evil feels so good” But it is not it. I think Jekyll wanted to find a deeper manner of pleasure. And it is seen that the realization of pleasure scared the good doctor. But the impulse prevailed.

People, if they consider themselves good, always shy away from the enjoyment of pleasure. Of course in Hyde’s case this pursuit of self gratification went to the extreme. And it scared poor dr. Jekyll. But in essence this deals with the problem good people have when dealing with something that gives them pleasure. Why is this so hard. Why is this a sin?

Another form of this same problem is the problem of freedom. It is of the same form… with different happenings. But this I have to discuss later. I have no more time.