It would not be going too far to suggest that “The Lifted Veil” belongs to the fundamental establishment canon of existentialist literature, despite the essence of the story’s publication preceding the existence of the term by nearly a century. As an establishment work, however, the story need not actually have been a work of existentialist literature. George Eliot was writing during the same period as Soren Kierkegaard and his philosophy is considered fundamentally essential to the development of existentialism. The real question at hand is not whether “The Lifted Veil” should or should not be open for inclusion in the existentialist canon, but whether it is or is not forwarding an existentialist narrative.
This is a story about a man who lives nearly the first two decades of his life like anybody else, but then overnight develops the ability to see visions of the future which always come true. Good, bad or boring, he is given unsolicited insight into how the lives of others turn out to one extent or another. He is himself not immune to these visions, either; in fact, he lives most of his life knowing the date and means of his own expiration. And the overwhelming bulk of that life—let’s say 99.5%--is lived in a state of intensifying unhappiness. Heaven knows he’s miserable, but even worse, he knows he’s miserable. Any why shouldn’t he be? One of his first visions is a scene taking place many years into the future in which his wife—who was his brother’s fiancé at the time—calls him a madman and urges him to kill himself. He spends most of the marriage waiting for that day to come and that scene to be played out, expecting it to become a major turning point in his life. Instead, it is just another mundane day in the ongoing miserable marriage that he knew was coming because, well, he literally saw it coming. The epicenter of Latimer’s misery is life’s lack of mystery. He knows so much that is coming his way that he cannot work up any ability to experience happiness.
Think about watching a movie with a fantastic twist ending you never saw coming. Now think about watching that very same movie in which you’ve been told there is a fantastic twist ending, but not what the twist is. Now, lastly, think of watching that movie already knowing the twist ending ahead of time. For argument’s sake, let’s say that it is not just the twist that makes the movie so great. Fantastic story, Oscar-winning acting, groundbreaking special effects, the whole deal. Despite all that, which scenario is going to allow you to enjoy the movie the most? Obvious, right? You want the surprise of the twist. In fact, many people want the surprise of the twist so much that they often consider a so-so movie with an unforgettable twist to be better than a great movie with no twist. That is, until they watch the one the twist a second time. No matter how great The Usual Suspects was that first time when you didn’t know that you-know-who was going to turn out to be Keyser Soze, it is never going to be quite as good ever again.
This is Latimer’s entire life. Going to a movie with where he already knows what happens in the last two minutes of the show. And knowing the ending annihilates his opportunity to find any pleasure in the ninety minutes leading up to those final two. The legendary existentialist writer Albert Camus famously took the story of Sisyphus being eternally damned to a punishment of rolling a rock almost all the way up and over a hill only to have it roll right back down to its starting place just before he reaches the top. For centuries, Sisyphus was an iconic symbol of misery, but Camus transformed into an existential icon by showing how Sisyphus could actually find meaning and subsequent pleasure in his eternally vain toil.
Sisyphus already knows how the story ends each time he starts to push that rock back up the hill. The ending will never change and he knows that, too. When it comes to ever getting that rock successfully up the hill so it can roll down the other side, hope has long since fled from Sisyphus. So what do you do when you know the ending cannot possibly give your effort any meaning? You find meaning in the effort. You find meaning in the very act of existing, not the essence of existing. And when one can master this admittedly difficult task, it is very like that one will find that essence and that essence will be rare because it belongs entirely to you. It is your existence after all.
This is the lesson that Latimer never learns and so, like the Sisyphus of old, he becomes a symbol of the horror of an existence without meaning. So corrupt is his ability to find pleasure and joy in the simple act of existence that even when he witnesses a genuine, bona fide miracle never before witnessed by the eyes of man—a miracle that leaves one witness “quivering and helpless” and another “paralyzed” by the limitless possibilities of science—for him, this scene “seemed of one texture with the rest of my existence: horror was my familiar, and this new revelation was only like an old pain recurring with new circumstances.”
The message of the story becomes crystal clear in that moment. Latimer is a figure of pathos, the “miserable ghost-seer” he describes himself to be through his wife’s eyes—in his own estimation of what she thinks of him. And he is pathetic because he is so obsessed with finding mystery in his life where few mysteries still exist that he creates mysteries for himself…which also turn out not to exist. Latimer is so single-mindedly focused on what he cannot see that his whole life is “Darkness—darkness—no pain—nothing but darkness: but I am passing on and on through the darkness: my thought stays in the darkness.” This is the essence of existentialist philosophy: constantly peering into the darkness for what can never be seen obstructs the ability to find meaning in what remains in the light.
