PHENOMENOLOGY AND AESTHETICS

ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA

THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

VOLUME XXXII

Editor-in-Chief:
ANNA- TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
Belmont, Massachusetts

a sequel to:
Vol. XII
Vol. XVIII
Vol. XIX

: The Mirror of Man in Literature

: The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition
: Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: The
Sea
Vol. XXIII : Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: The
Airy Elements in Poetic Imagination
Vol. XXVIII: The Elemental Passions of the Soul in the Human
Condition
Vol. XXX : Ingardeniana II, and Other Approaches to Aesthetics,
Literature and the Fine Arts

PHENOMENOLOGY
AND AESTHETICS
APPROACHES TO COMP ARA TIVE
LITERATURE AND THE OTHER ARTS
Homages to A -T. Tymieniecka
Edited by

MARLIES KRONEGGER
Michigan State University

Published under the auspices of

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
A-T. Tymieniecka, President

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Phenomenoldgy and Aesthetics / edited by Marlies Kronegger.

p.
cm. -- (Analecta Husserllana ; v. 32)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Phenomeno logy in 1 i terature.
2. Phenomeno logy and 1 i terature.
3. Phenomenology.
4. Aesthetics.
1. Kronegger, Marl ies, 1932II. Series.
B3279.H94A129 vol. 32
[PN49J
142' .7 s--dc20
[809' . 93384J
90-4351

ISBN -13: 978-94-0 I 0-7409-4

e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2027-9

DOl: 10.1 007/978-94-009-2027-9

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,

P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes
of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press
Sold and distributed in the U.SA. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Printed on acid-free paper

All rights reserved

1991 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1991

No part of the material protected by this copyright notice

may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without written permission from
the copyright owner.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE THEME / Vindicating the Enjoyment of Literature

ix

MARLIES KRONEGGER / Phenomenology and Aesthetics -

New Approaches to Comparative Literature and the Other

Arts: Introduction

xi
xv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE
THE LIFE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERATURE
A. History and Phenomenological Literary Theory
WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI / The Concept of Autonomous

Art and Literature Within Their Historical Context

B. Time and Description in Fiction

W AL TER BIEMEL / On the Manifold Significance of Time in

the Novel

17

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN / One Autobiographer's Real-

ity: Robbe-Grillet
PETER MORGAN / Heidegger and English Poetry
MICHAEL E. MORIARTY / Expressionist Signs and Meta-

phors in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time

39
49

61

PART TWO
PHENOMENOLOGY AND LITERATURE:
THE HUMAN CONDITON
A. The Primeval Sources of Literary Creation
CHRISTOPHER

S.

SCHREINER /

Vivacity of Disaster

Faulkner/Levinas: The
71

vi

T ABLE OF CONTENTS

The Recursive Matrix: Jealousy and the

Epistemophilic Crisis
WILLIAM S. HANEY II / Phenomenology and the Structure of
Desirability
ANDRE A. ACIMAN /

87
103

B. The Experience of the Other

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER / The Voice of Luxembourg Poets
E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE / The Ramatoulaye-Aissatou

115

Styles in Contemporary African Feminism(s)

Nature and Civilization as Metaphor
in Michel Rio's Dreaming Jungles
HARLAN R. PATTON / Problems of Literary Expression in
Les Nourritures Terrestres
ARON AJI / Lucie Sebetka: The Phenomenon of Abandonment in Milan Kundera's The Joke

131

MARK W. ANDREWS /

149
157
165

PART THREE
AESTHETIC RECEPTION
A. Life-Reverberation and Aesthetic Enjoyment
YUN LING AND JESSE T. AIRAUDI / "Essential
Witnesses": Imagism's Aesthetic "Protest" and "Rescue" via
Ancient Chinese Poetry
BABETTE E. BABICH / Towards a Post-Modern Hermeneutic
Ontology of Art: Nietzschean Style and Heideggerian Truth
CYNTHIA RUOFF / Le Veritable Saint Genest: From Text to
Performance
MU

181
195
211

B. The Existential Significance ofAesthetic Enjoyment

THOMAS RYBA / Husserl, Fantasy and Possible Worlds
ROBERT R. ELLIS / Phenomenological Ontology and

227
Second

Person Narrative: The Case of Butor and Fuentes

Modifications: A Reading of
Auden and Iser

239

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA /

249

T ABLE OF CONTENTS

vii

C. Aesthetic Reception and the Other Arts

A Study of Visual Form in Literary

JOSEPH KRAUSE /

Imagery

259

Indian and Western Music: Phenomenological Comparison from Tagore's Viewpoint

267

SITANSU RAY /

INDEX OF NAMES

273

THE THEME

VINDICATING THE ENJOYMENT

OF LITERATURE

This collection of essays presented at one of our conferences continues

the research program in which we are unraveling the deepest impulses,
tendencies and inspirations that animate the literary work. The present
studies only vaguely refer to our own systematic views about the ways
in which literature and the fine arts spring forth from the interplay
between the creative imagination and the proficiencies of the Human
Condition. Their main thrust is to inquire into the ways in which the
literary work can be approached. This inquiry, however, exemplifies in
its main lines our chief contention, the one which I have been forcefully
advocating for some two decades in lectures and studies published in
our book series. In my most recent monograph ("The Elemental
Passions of the Soul and the Life-Significance of Literature," Analecta
Husserliana, Vol. XXVIII, 1989) I substantiated this contention in
extenso. First, it is through marveling/wonderment that art, and in
particular literature, takes off and, second, that it is through aesthetic
enjoyment - as one of the primogenital factors of the Human Condition - that literature, and the fine arts are generated.* The conclusion
is obvious: it is in enjoyment also that lies the key to their being
received and appreciated by the reader/spectator. This is not the place
to dwell on the innumerable ways in which aesthetic enjoyment is
ciphered in the life-significance of the literary work; we refer the reader
to our above-mentioned study. What, however, is manifest in the
different approaches to literary works and the varied points of fascination to be found in them as displayed in the present collection is that
though techniques of interpretation and hermeneutics possess some
validity in that they help dissect complexities and can enhance understanding by throwing side lights on the make-up of the particular
literary work, it is not intellectual interest and the need to satisfy
curiosity about structural puzzles or abstruse linguistic games that
* Cf. A-T. Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Creative Experience and the Critique of
Reason, Book I, Kluwer, 1989, and, The Passions of The Soul and The Ontopoiesis of
Culture: The Life Significance of Literature (Logos and Life, Book III), 1990.

ix

THE THEME

ultimately carry the work and it is not the quest for these that should
inform any interpreter who would truly convey the meaning of the
literary work to the reader or audience. The literary work is not meant
to be a game played with words, concepts, historical puns. It calls for
enjoyment at the level of its essential concern: the vision of life that it
crystallizes. The royal approach to it is through the channel of the direct
spontaneous enjoyment it gives or is apt to sustain. This aesthetic
enjoyment is analogous to the reader/spectator's life-enjoyment as
he/she salvages meaning within his/her own framework of life experiences. Thus, the uniquely personal, spontaneous/resonance of the work
with the experience of the recipient is the surest guide to the retrieval of
the life-significance of literature.
The large spectrum of personal fascinations manifested in the
present collection shows how the literary work stands out and becomes
alive within the perspectives of each of us. It is aesthetic enjoyment that
gives us access to these perspectives. Through their opening the lifesignificance of a work and the vision of life it intimates are glimpsed.
Filtered through literature this vision enters, expands, and enriches our
lives and our very beingness, for though only glimpsed there it is seen
the more profoundly for being woven into the tapestry that first caught
our eye. The master weaver of tales can thus inform a whole culture,
can inspire age upon age. It is just this vision that a focus upon
structures and techniques of any sort on linguistics will miss.
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

MARLIES KRONEGGER

PHENOMENOLOGY AND AESTHETICS NEW APPROACHES TO COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE AND THE OTHER ARTS

Introduction
Our investigations show us ways of orchestrating human existence and
aesthetic enjoyment. Aesthetic enjoyment and phenomenology imply
one another. They take us away from sclerosed, jaded artifices of
literary analyses based on artificial forms, structures, and devices, and
bring us back into the real world of all there is alive. In opposition to
the view that sees the literary text basically as a system of meanings,
A-T. Tymieniecka and our investigators propose that it is a specific
pattern of life-significance, universal and uniquely personal at the same
time, that matters. In the drama of being, each life is an open and
unfinished book in which the unfolding and perfecting universe has
recorded its cosmic biography. Each life is at a given time a summation,
a living history of ebbs and flows of the ocean of being. So situated,
each individual is caught between the cosmic self and social mould and
toils to break out and away in order to further cultivate his or her
cosmic heritage.
Creative subjectivity cannot awaken itself except in communion with
Nature. It is not enough to consider the mutual entanglement of Nature
and man in relation to aesthetic feeling or the perception of beauty.
What matters to us, is the mutual entanglement of Nature and man, the
coming together of World and Self, in relation to artistic creation. Then,
we truly enter our subject matter, asking ourselves with Tymieniecka,
what is the creative act? The papers presented here show why the
aesthetic significance of life, which enters into the existential self-interpretation of the human being, is at its roots poetic. With Tymieniecka
we realize that the creative process is not limited to literature, the arts
and thought, but is as wide as life.! Creativity in literature, the arts, and
thought is part of the creativity of life, a transforming factor of life,
making us participate in a whole, a unity, of everything there is alive.
We are born together with everything that exists - with all that is alive.
Creativity is the irreducible element of the human condition, the
Xl

xii

MARLIES KRONEGGER

freedom to transcend our ties to Nature and the conditions of our own
life world achieving the full potential of human personality. Her
distinct, unique voice sustains the reader, teaching us nothing, except
the significance of life, a means to life more abundant, more immediate
and spontaneous, taking us on a voyage of discovery - a voyage of
acquiring a total, rather than a partial view of the universe. Tymieniecka's
life-world conception challenges Husserl in the evolution of its forms,
and lays the cornerstones for a specifically human self-individualization-in-existence of which the creative act is the vortex. It is the
creative orchestration of human existence and of everything there is
alive, which is Tymieniecka's path in order to become the path herself.
In her opening lecture of the Symposium she knew how to lift
philosophy and literature out of time and space, and how to integrate
them into the whole cosmic process.
There is one element of human experience which remains almost
identical, in origin and effect, whether it is turned into poetry, painting
or music. It is .the experience which Tymieniecka has called a moment
of vision. The metaphysics underlying her vision is an aesthetic and
unifying experience, seeing all things in the cosmos as part of a vast
general order in the act of creation. Vision is the spontaneous response
of the poetic imagination to the challenges which life puts on man. Her
poetic approach to Nature and the Human Condition relates to the
primacy of the poetic sense over the intelligible sense. The poetic sense
is the first epiphany of the creative intuition, imaginatio creatrix. The
marvel of great creations is their radiant communicativity by virtue of
the poetic sense, a charge of poetic knowledge and free, autonomous
existence expressing the inner song of the work, the soul of the poet,
artist and musician.
We are seeking the Human Condition in the plenitude of works of
the mind in which every tone of the past raises an echo in us today.
Aesthetic experience of a work of art takes place in the orientation to
its aesthetic effect, in an understanding that is pleasure, or rather
"aesthetic enjoyment" in Tymieniecka's terms. Aesthetic enjoyment
occurs before there is cognition and interpretation of the significance of
the work. It was Kant who raised the aesthetic to an authority of
mediation between nature and freedom, sensuousness and reason, yet
also denied any cognitive function to the subjective aesthetic judgment.
The German poet Goethe distinguished three kinds of readers: one
which enjoys without judgment, a third that judges without enjoyment,

INTRODUCTION

xiii

and the one in the middle which judges as he enjoys and enjoys as he
judges. This latter kind really reproduces the work of art anew.
The division of our Symposium into three sections is justified by the
fact that phenomenology, from Husserl, Heidegger, Moritz Geiger,
Ingarden, in Germany and Poland, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, E.
Levinas in France, Unamuno in Spain, and Tymieniecka, in the United
States, have revealed striking coincidences in trying to answer the
following questions: What is the philosophical vocation of literature?
Does literature have any significance for our lives? Why does the lyric
moment, present in all creative endeavors, in myth, dance, plastic art,
ritual, poetry, lift the human life to a higher and authentically human
level of the existential experience of man? Our investigations answer
our fundamental inquiry: What makes a literary work a work of art?
What makes a literary work a literary work, if not aesthetic enjoyment?
As much as the formation of an aesthetic language culminates in artistic
creation, the formation of a philosophical language lives within the orbit
of creative imagination.
In sum, our investigation focuses, first, upon the ramified workings
of the poetic imagination; second, we seek to exfoliate the Human
Condition, expanding our metaphysical vision, a most intimate penetration into the nature of things as we participate in their constructive
becoming; third, it seems that words and sounds of a poem, or the
rhythm of dance, are only the small, visible aspect of a far greater
mystery that lies beneath and beyond the audible and visible. The
aesthetic language of writers functions in harmony with their feelings
and ideas, reflecting the primal process of life which is holistic and
formative. It is not imprisoned in a linear uni-verse of theories and
grammar, but free and open to an interdependent world. Aesthetic
pleasure and phenomenology imply one another; they are interrelated.
We make poetic sensibility and intuition the heart of our quest. In the
open field of purposeful experience, our commitment is not to conquer
the world, but to explore and find ourselves, to restore the self we are.
The specific objective of our Symposium is to establish the phenomenological basis for aesthetic reception, and demonstrate the force,
originality, and international impact phenomenological aesthetics has
had on East and West. The present collection of phenomenological
investigations includes the creative quests of both philosophy and
literature to reveal, interpret, and communicate the enigma of human
existence. In this light, both disciplines are a creative function of

xiv

MARLIES KRONEGGER

humanity, and both at their best not only enrich but enhance the
highest level of human functioning, wherein creator interprets the self
and receiver of said interpretation is self-illuminated.
NOTE
1 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Logos and Life. Creative Experience and the Critique of
Reason, Book I. Dordrecht, Boston, London, Tokyo: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1988, and, The Passions of The Soul and The Ontopoiesis of Culture: The Life
Significance of Literature (Logos and Life, Book III), 1990.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We deeply appreciate the financial and academic support of Michigan

State University, and especially of the following departments: Romance
and Classical Languages, English, Humanities, Philosophy, Music,
Religion, and Lifelong Education. To Professor George P. Mansour,
and Provost David K. Scott our gratitude for their enlightening opening
addresses. Thanks to our respondents, Profs. Mechthild Cranston
(Comparative Literature), Surjit S. Dulai (Humanities), Kenneth D.
Harrow (English), Bruce L. Miller (Philosophy), Jeanne Nelson (Poet),
Fran~oise Ravaux (Romance Languages and Literatures), Richard T.
Peterson (Philosophy), Kurt Schild (Linguistics), A. C. Goodon (English),
Joseph I. Donohoe (Romance and Classical Languages), Eldon and
Beth Vanliere (Art) for their vital contributions. Most cordial thanks
for about 120 books received from authors in Luxembourg, a gift to the
Michigan State University Main Library.
Professor Marlies Kronegger, the president of The International
Society of Phenomenology and Literature, an organ of The World
Phenomenology Institute, has inspired, organized and directed this
beautiful conference with skill and gracefulness. She deserves our
profound appreciation.
A-T. T.

xv

PART ONE

THE LIFE SIGNIFICANCE OF LITERATURE

A. HISTORY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL

LITERARY THEORY

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI

THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMOUS ART AND

LITERA TURE WITHIN THEIR HISTORICAL CONTEXT

When we speak of art, we usually think in terms of masterpieces; and

we take it for granted that these masterpieces each represent a totality
in which disparate elements are harmoniously united to create a work
which is a self-contained entity, "in sich selbst vollendet," meaning
complete in itself as well as perfect. Karl Philipp Moritz suggested this
concept to define autonomous art in a short essay "Versuch einer
Vereinigung aller schonen Kiinste und Wissenschaften unter dem
Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten" written in 1785. In 1788, that is,
exactly two hundred years ago, he followed this up with a longer
treatise, "Uber die bildende Nachahmung des Schonen," which became
better known because Goethe was involved in its conception in Rome,
reviewed it, and in 1829 published extracts from it in his autobiographical work Die Italienische Reise.
At that time, that is, forty years later, the concept of the autonomy of
art had already come to be more widely accepted than that of German
Classical literature. Both have together exerted a considerable influence
on Western art, literature, and education. In "German Studies," however, and in hindsight, they have been subjected to criticism and their
theory and practice made partly responsible for the catastrophe
brought upon mankind by the Hitler era.
Today, one of the main charges levelled against German Classical
literature is that its concept of autonomous art demanded the perfection
of art for art's sake. The advocates of autonomous art, so this critique
continues, sacrificed any progressive political ideas to this goal and
remained aloof from the political issues of the day, such as, for
example, the problems which arose out of the French Revolution. They
neither attempted themselves nor encouraged others to actively intervene ("eingreifen") in order to change societal conditions. Instead, it is
claimed, they - that is, Moritz, Goethe, Schiller, and those later
responsible for disseminating and interpreting their works in the
schools, the universities, and the theater - addressed themselves
exclusively to a small elite, abandoning the uneducated or less educated
masses to trivial literature and the authorities of society. All this meant
3
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 3-14.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI

that they encouraged their fellow Germans to accept the vicissitudes of

the status quo.!
This critical view of the consequences of the aesthetics of autonomous art claims to be "historical". At the same time, however, it
involves a "philosophical" approach to history, in that it is based on a
preconceived philosophical conviction as to how history should and
could have happened, and how - partly owing to Classicism - it failed
to happen. I intend to compare this cirtique with the theory and
practice of Classical autonomous art in the context of the 18th century.
Today we seem to have little in common with that era and its concept
of art. But is it as little as the philosophers of history suggest? I shall
leave it to each individual to decide for her/himself exactly how remote
they are and what we still share or could - and perhaps should - still
share with them.
Let me deal in reverse order with the points of criticism I have
mentioned - briefly , but in the context of the historical positions and
intellectual preconceptions of the 18th century which it is essential to
know if we are to understand what is meant by the autonomy of art.
First, then, let us examine the allegation that Classical autonomous art
is politically abstinent.
Of all their works, Goethe's and Schiller's historical dramas had the
widest influence on German cultural history. In the theater and in the
schools, they reached the masses and became part of the popular tradition. Without exception, they deal with political topics, and especially
with the question whether in each particular case the forces in power
serve the common good or try to strengthen their own predominance.
This was the question around which the political thought of the
Enlightenment revolved, and in this context people were asking long
before 1789 whether conditions should be changed through violent
revolution or through reforms.
1787 saw the appearance of both Schiller's history of the exemplary
revolution of the Netherlands against Spain as well as his tragic
conspiracy of the then Spanish Crown Prince Don Carlos and his friend
Marquis Posa. In 1788 the Briefe iiber Don Carlos subjected the
revolutionary Posa to a rigorous analysis and critique. In the same year,
the year before the French Revolution, Goethe's Egmont attacked the
ideological revolution which Spain was imposing by force upon
Holland. Goethe's Erzahlungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795) and
his verse epic Hermann und Dorothea (1798) deal with refugees fleeing

AUTONOMY AND HISTORY

the French revolutionary troops. Schiller's tragedy Wallenstein (1800),

while set in the Thirty Years' War, throws critical light on the Revolution. Each year until 1805 there followed great dramas dealing with the
themes of power and law, up to and including Wilhelm Tell, the
glorification of Swiss liberation.
Time and again - and particularly under Hitler - censorship
prohibited the performance of most of these dramas or certain passages
from them. All of these works were based on thorough research.
Goethe was Cabinet minister and his friend Schiller was the brother-inlaw of the Weimar ambassador in Petersburg: both men with their close
connections with the Weimar court and with numerous politicians such
as their friend, the ambassador and later Prussian minister, Wilhelm
von Humboldt were better versed in political issues than great German
artists have ever been since. Why then, we must ask, are their works
said to be apolitical? Because, of course, they warned against the
revolution, whose historical hour had arrived - according to the
present philosophical view of history - and because they recommended reforms instead.
To be sure, in 1789 there already existed a century-old tradition
which pleaded for reforms within the established system. These
demands were, as every historian agrees, realistic and corresponded
with the attitudes of the time. 2
In their struggle against the despotism of the absolute princes and
the high nobility, the German middle class had two weapons at their
disposal: morality and art. According to the causal thinking of the age,
in the great chain of being (the central idea of the age), everything is
and has an effect. Morality and art have an effect on the hearts and
minds of men, and thus, it is hoped, on the rulers too. They possess the
power and authority to impose improvements from above. But even the
princes, like everyone who did actively intervene ("eingreifen") in the
course of events, could only achieve good ends by good means. For evil
means, evil motives were bound to produce evil effects. This way of
thinking was more than merely a belief or an ideology. It was the means
to keep their own main weapon, morality, intact.
In all the Classical works, very great value was put on the fact that
the representatives of middle class values did not put themselves in the
wrong. And all criticism of the despotic rulers culminated in the accusation that they comer their opponents to the point that they finally
cannot escape guilt - which was worse than suffering injustice or even

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI

death: "Of all possessions life is not the highest, /The worst of evils is,
however, guilt." (Final lines of Schiller's The Birde of Messina.)
In the poetic works, this principle is often violated, and most
champions of the good cause fail. But none of this detracts from the
effect that they will continue to exert in the future. This can be denied
only by those who understand, or rather misunderstand, literature
exclusively as the direct expression and reflection of its own present.
Today there can be no doubt that the dead and the murdered have an
extremely strong impact on the attitudes of the survivors. Admittedly,
even the strongest influence can, of course, pale or be suppressed by
other forces, be they political or intellectual.
By no means, then, were the works of the Classical authors apolitical. On the contrary, they even instructed citizens, nobles, and princes
in how they should act ("eingreifen"). And indeed these moral maxims
recurred in the writings of philosophers like Kant and even of kings like
Friedrich of Prussia - although in practice the latter tended to act
more as a Machiavellist. However, some enlightened people were
already aware that in reality the Italian politician was advocating the
political ethics to be embraced by the Enlightenment,3 i.e., an ethical
politics - or, more precisely: the priority of ethics over politics, the
autonomy of ethics beyond any political aims, ends, techniques or
means. And this also meant: the ethical autonomy of man in contrast to
total determination by his so-called "base nature" or by external
conditions.
Is there an inner essential or even structural relationship between
autonomous ethics and autonomous art or was their "marriage" purely
a matter of timely convenience? Autonomy meant self-determination,
sovereignty, mental independence from other, external laws, principles
and ends: independence from the authorities of social life in politics
and also in the Church, which was usually only concerned with serving
the prince or upholding its own power by ruling over peoples's souls.
Autonomous art claimed the same independence for itself: independence from all external and alien objectives, including ethics, as long as
ethics was reduced to little more than the moral prescriptions of
society, the princes, the Church, and the narrow-minded bourgeoisie.
Autonomous ethics not only distanced itself from these regulations, but
even replaced the Enlightenment principle of happiness as the reward
for morality by the goal of becoming worthy of happiness - an inner
state rewarding in itself. Here autonomous ethics met entirely with the

AUTONOMY AND HISTORY

tenets of pure religion, which at that time was identified with autonomous ethics. Supporters of both liked to call themselves the 'invisible
church'. Autonomous art also counted itself part of this subversive
opposition. To be sure, art did not serve ethics or religion. What was
good in ethical and religious terms did not automatically make good art.
But all that was beautiful, good, and, of course, true, found itself united
in a mutual autonomy, and independence, and in their common resistance to enlistment in the service of external ends.
Autonomous ethics, however, rejected not just the abdication of the
individual's autonomy to regimentation by authorities, but any kind of
determination by ends and purposes. What the individual does here and
now sub specie aeternitatis will determine its consequences anyway. The
"means," that is, ethically good behaviour became an end in itself although supposedly never beyond what is beneficial for mankind. Thus
it was not the social conditions which determined how good and happy
people were: these conditions were only good in as far as people were
good. Therefore only better people could be the cause and precondition of better conditons. This meant that it was not necessary to wait for
better conditions, or, as we would say today, for the redemption
("Einlosung") of utopian promises. The individual human being could
and should behave as morally as possible in the immediate present: this,
if anything, was the way to achieve happiness both for the individual
and for his fellow human beings, even if the immediate consequences
were devastating.
For this reaseon, too, the Classical authors believed in reform and
not in revolution. They did not, however, recommend merely subjective
goodness, but demanded responsible consideration of the consequences.
But if doubts arose as to which way to go, then that which was ethically
right had to be the ultimate criterion. Beyond that people were not
particularly squeamish. In self-defense Wilhelm Tell shoots the tyrant
GeBler with the same sportsman's pleasure in the hunt as the Holocaust
film showed amongst inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto when they shot
a member of the SS.
But what exactly was the function of the autonomous work of art in
this chain of cause and effect? It was, as it was put then, "Nachahmung,"
the author's imitation of an imagined action. In turn, the recipients were
supposed to imitate the imitated action in their own minds, and, as they
did, they passed value judgements, and did so unfettered by what would
prevent them from doing so in real life. In real life we seldom possess

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI

the moral strength and courage to commit ourselves to the good cause.
We should, however, so Schiller hoped, at least be able to achieve this
in the context of artful appearance and then ultimately, thanks to this
aesthetic and theoretical practice in making right decisions, become
more and more often able to do the same in real life too. The artist and
the individual in real life have the same task:
Show the direction toward the good to the world which you will influence, and the calm
rhythm of time will bring its development. The pure moral drive directs itself toward
the absolute, it knows no time, and the future becomes the present because it necessarily develops out of the present. (...) Direction and achievement are one, and the
journey is done as soon as the first step has been taken. (Ober die asthetische Erziehung
des Menschen, 1795, 9. Brief).

A lovely example of Schillerian pathos, aiming less at logical

accuracy than at ethical motivation. Even if we substract the overkill
from this rhetoric, the question remains: given the close relationship in
substance and structure between autonomous art and autonomous
ethics, why do we need autonomous art for this? Couldn't trivial
literature, political agitation, and religious instruction after all fulfil the
same purpose and, above all, be more easily understood? This is
precisely the argument of the "historio-political" critics of the German
classical authors - who, of course, were of a different opinion.
The same impulse, so their line of argument went, that drives everyone in one direction today, may drive everyone in the opposite direction tomorrow. Besides, who knows just what the right direction is?
Each individual, everyone, must continually seek to discover the right
direction - to the best of his/her own ability, autonomously, following
the judgement of his/her own ethical reason, also in aesthetics. Therefore what autonomous art wants to do is not so much to pass on the
author's personal judgements and beliefs, but rather to develop and to
train the autonomous use of reason by the public. Autonomous art is
intended to create autonomous morality.
But only if we, the recipients, are challenged to "imitate" the work
with our mental capacities - instead of being fed ready-made political
slogans and platitudes or being made the object of agitational manipulation - can we develop and preserve this kind of autonomy. In order to
understand the work of art, we must be forced to make an effort
ourselves, and get assistance only in mixed or hidden signals. We find
ourselves confronted with the merits and appeal of precisely that
position against which we are meant to decide. We see this position

AUTONOMY AND HISTORY

emerging for reasons which are human, good and socially well understandable, indeed, legitimate. In their plays the German classical
authors seem to proceed in such an objective and impartial fashion that
nowadays they are often misinterpreted as having even refused to take
sides and as treating every position as equally justified. The truth is that,
even in their time, objectivity did not mean neutrality, much less the
refusal or inability to take sides or arrive at a judgement. Quite the
contrary: it was the attempt to master the difficult task of arriving at a
fair judgement, at, well- objectivity.
The impression of objectivity is achieved because the object of the
"imitation" is not just an action, but in each case represents a segment
of the entire world which is subject to the same laws that rule our own
lives. It is a microcosm, a world in miniature, a "silhouette," as it was
called then, of God's Creation. We cannot perceive Creation as a
whole. The artist, however, senses and imitates it. He creates a totality
"perfect in itself' (Moritz). It appears more transparent and accessible
than Creation itself, but, like life, it resists easy understanding and, in
the final analysis, only reveals itself if seen from a perspective which,
transcending normal life, is closer to God.
From this perspective, the artist looks upon God's great Creation
and upon his work, the creation of the second, smaller creator. And
through his work he spreads enlightenment. For the congenial recipients rise up to join the artist and to take their place beside him. In
moments such as these, they know no human authority above them:
they are autonomous. And perhaps they are aware of their good
fortune. As Moritz describes it:
[In moments like this] there appears to be no estate in the world which could rob man
of his power to experience the true superiority of his mind in contemplating the
condition of things and their relationships and to lift himself in one flight of his mind's
power beyond all that which would limit, torment, and oppress him down below. (Das
Edelste in der Natur, 1786)

At the same time, these lofty spheres bring a sense of humility. The
work of art, perfect in itself and therefore beautiful, reflecting Creation
with its eternal and universal laws and values, becomes an example and
symbol of that which is always real, true and valid, which will become
transparent yet again in innumerable cases. We only have to be able to
realize it, to learn to realize it. Classical dramas depict the themes of
their age in the medium of myth and history precisely because the

10

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI

eternal, fundamental human laws and values are and will always remain
in force as they were then and will be in the future. Because autonomous art does not subordinate itself to the current political issues of the
day, it is relevant in every age.
But even if one subscribes to such a concept of symbolic art: is it not
true that art which is as demanding as this caters merely for an elite
amongst the educated? For much of classical art it simply is not.
Goethe's and particularly Schiller's plays became part of the popular
culture, first through the theater, later through the schools. This popular
understanding was first undermined by scholars of German with an
allegiance to the Empire and then by those who adopted the Marxist
ideology. They did not find enough "power politics," not enough
emphasis on the goals of either the military predominance of the nation
or the political predominance of the class. But to serve such purposes
would have meant autonomous art's betrayal of its very own autonomy
as well as that of mankind. It would mean succumbing to a dependency
on ends and even more on means which are difficult to reconcile with
the ethical destiny of mankind. The same would be true - and this
opens quite a different perspective - if art were to become dependent
on the approval of the public, of critics, of publishers or on money. In
opposition to all that, Moritz defined the autonomy of art as follows:
In contemplating the beautiful object / .. .! I roll the purpose back into the object itself:
I regard it as something which is completed, not in me, but in itself, which [therefore]
constitutes a whole in itself, and pleases/satisfies me for its own sake, since I am
relating the beautiful object not to me but myself to it. ("Yersuch")

If the German classical writers were not at all neutral regarding

political issues, they were also not indifferent to the success of their
works. Schiller, for one, wrote partly in order to earn his living, and
honoraria were increasingly becoming a matter of prestige. Nonetheless
neither Schiller nor Goethe ever compromised the uncomfortable and
rigorous demands of autonomous art. And it was precisely Schiller who
again and again took it upon himself to assault the public and to act as
the scourge of his indolent age like the avenging Orestes. Thus he
writes in his famous Burger review:
The first indispensable requirement of a perfect poem is that it must have its own
absolute inner value, completely independent of its readers' different abilities to grasp
it.

To be sure, he desires to be at the same time "the enlightened

AUTONOMY AND HISTORY

11

spokesman for the people's feelings." But, he insists, a work is not good
if everyone likes it.
Good is only what pleases those who have excellent judgement. What, beyond that,
pleases people of all strata, is even better though.

Art should not reduce itself in order to satisfy even the most modest
demands, through propaganda slogans, for example, but should "in
play" draw its recipients up to its own level.
It was probably the refusal of existentialist theologians and philosophers under the influence of Heidegger to acknowledge the existence of
autonomous values, autonomous ethics and autonomous art which did
the most devastating damage to the concept of the Classical autonomy
of art. This had nothing in the slightest to do with phenomenology of
literature. In anticipation of destructuralist tendencies, the idealism
which informs all concepts of autonomy was perverted, being placed
within the perspective of the universal frailty and moral imperfection of
mankind. The authors and artists of the age of Goethe were equally
aware of these human failings. But they nevertheless firmly believed in
the possibility of continually breaching such existential barriers.
This brings me to my two last and most important points. The
enlightenment and improvement of man through art: the Classical
writers adhered to this demand of the 18th century, however much, on
the other hand, they despaired of fulfilling it precisely because they
themselves had raised this traditional demand to a level hitherto
undreamt of.
Goethe, the manager of one of the leading theaters in Europe,
recalled the experience of every visitor to the theater who finds himself
back home "no better than before," indeed "every bit as foolhardy and
stubborn, as violent and weak, as loving and unloving as before"
(Nachlese zu Aristoteles' Poetik 1827).
Admittedly Goethe more often than not confessed his belief in the
calming and enlightening function of art. And yet he consistently
demanded that the artist should not let himself be influenced by
considerations of such farreaching purposes and functions of art. When
writing, he should not think of the public, nor calculate in advance the
transformative effect his work might exercise on the audience. Not only
was it impossible to predict the audience's reaction anyway, but more
importantly, the most intense and enduring effect could only be
achieved by a work which was as perfect in itself as possible. Therefore

12

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI

the artist was required to devote his mental energies exclusively to the
work. Everything else would duly follow out of the work itself, or rather
would evolve through the participation of the recipient, who, in turn,
can only develop his autonomous powers of reason if the artist has not
deliberately aimed at having a certain effect on him. This artistic
strategy exactly parallels the imperative of autonomous ethics: act as
you are supposed to act, and everything else will take its natural course.
This strategy only appears to be totally different from the 18th
century attempts to give art a pedagogical and improving effect.
Although it avoids and rejects any clear-cut didactic and dogmatic
approach, it is still far from being l'art pour l'art. The creation of the
perfect work without any consideration of its effect on the recipients
was meant to guarantee the final step onto the highest and most fruitful
level in the causal nexus from the work to the very public it ignores.
But is the nexus complete? We have Creation, its imitation and
"silhouette,' the work; the audience and readership. Of course the chain
does not stop here. The recipients, in turn, have a further effect on
other people through what the work changes and improves in themselves. This applies even more to the beginning of the chain, to the
artist: to the performer, the musician, the actor, and particularly to the
author. All of this is combined in Schiller's words: "For he who does
sufficient for the best of his own time, has lived for all the ages."
(Wallensteins Lager, "Prolog" 1798). This is a Goethe quotation in
disguise. For him in particular everything depended on the catalyst
which provoked change and mediated in the causal nexus: the artist. He
is meant through his work to bring men closer to God and his Creation,
to elevate them to his level. To be sure, writes Schiller (Burger review):
All the poet can give is his individuality. Therefore, it must be worthy of being exhibited
before the world and posterity. To ennoble his individuality, to cleanse it until it
achieves its purest, most glorious humanity: that is his first and most important business
... Maturity and perfection can only flow from a mature and perfect mind. No talent,
be it ever so great, can bestow on a work of art what its creator is lacking.

I am arriving at my conclusions. The optimal nexus proves wrong the

critique levelled against German Classical authors by the "historiophilosophers." Above all, it refutes the reproach that the autonomous
work of art relegates the recipient to subservient obedience, and thus is
inevitably an exercise in capitulating to political authority and intellectual dictatorship. Moritz already knew what today's proponents of the
aesthetics of reception believe to be their discovery: it is only through

AUTONOMY AND HISTORY

13

congenial reception that the "beautiful," the work of art, attains reality,
that is, has a true and truthful effect. Furthermore, as we have seen, it is
precisely to the public's autonomous powers of reason that autonomous
art appeals.
At any rate scholars will continue to argue about the angle from
which the work reveals its innermost totality and which thus most
closely approximates to the perspective of God. The fact that it is
possible to argue about this, as well as the implied possibility of
profoundly erring, demonstrates, according to Moritz, our freedom and
autonomy. ("Der letzte Zweck des menschlichen Denkens. Gesichtspunkt". 1786) We can of course prove our autonomy by denying it
and selling out to the authorities in scholarship, fashion, politics, and
religion, or to the dictates of our ideological and/or primitive needs.
Autonomous art tests our aesthetic capabilities - but no less the
independence, the autonomy of our judgement.
I should like to close with a brief historical aper~u. The historiophilosophical criticism was that the effect of German Classical literature
is not "eingreifend," i.e., that its effect does not actively intervene to
change life and society. I hope to have shown that this is not so and that
this criticism represents a crass misinterpretation. The autonomous art
of the 18th century merely had a different idea of what constitutes
active intervention to change and improve human society. It did not
think in terms of encouraging people to change the existing form of
government: it intended the inner, above all the ethical improvement,
the refinement of man and thus of the entire society and finally of the
societal conditions.
And it is precisely in this sense that Mortiz uses the word "eingreifend" in his last surviving letter to Goethe, a fact which critics have
carefully failed to notice. He is discussing the drama Tasso (1790).
Every single line in it, writes the extremely attentive reader Moritz, is "a
renewed echo of the harmonious whole" which the beginning scene
constitutes. All lines acquire through this and through the enormous
content of those sentences "the value of eternal human truths." Consequently in the future, each of these sentences will "resound from the
lips of educated men" and thus, through renewed imitation of the echo
(of the imitation), will "eingreifen," that is, intervene and have an active
effect on the lives of men" (June 6th 1789 to Goethe).
State University ofNew York at Albany, New York

14

WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI
NOTES

Christa Burger, Der Ursprung der biirgerlichen Institution Kunst im hoftschen

Weimar, Untersuchungen zum klassischen Goethe (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977).
2 For example, Franco Venturi, Utopie und Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge:
1971).
3 Cf. the figure of Machiavelli in Goethe's Egmont and Goethe's great-uncle, Johann
Michael von Loen, Gesammelte Kleine Schriften, 1749-1752, Vol. IV, "Von der
Staatskunst des Machiavels," esp. p. 27Sf.
1

B. TIME AND DESCRIPTION IN FICTION

w ALTER BIEMEL
ON THE MANIFOLD SIGNIFICANCE OF TIME
IN THE NOVEL*

INTRODUCTION

What is the purpose of thinking the manifold significance of time in a

novel? Is this done so that we can find a commonplace topos that can
be used to distinguish, on the one hand, all the branches of art that
pertain to space (such as painting, sculpture, and architecture) and, on
the other, those branches of art that pertain to time (such as the
narrative, the epos, the drama, the novel, music)? If this state of affairs
is so commonplace, why, then, talk about it any longer? This division is
not in need of any justification - it is an obvious one. The spatial arts
deal with factors and elements that are side by side, while the temporal
arts deal with sequences or factors that follow one another. Curiously
enough, this state of affairs changes upon closer examination. This is
because when, say, we are looking at a painting, there, too, is a process
of sequences involved in that we do not grasp the whole painting all at
once. It has always been well justified for this reason that throughout
the history of art, researchers pointed to the elements of time in art.
Yet, as far as the novel is concerned, there is also a certain spatial arena
in which events run off in time. In this essay, I do not wish to examine
this curious interplay occurring between space and time. Rather, I wish
to choose a more moderate goal in asking the question: What is the
function of time in a novel? Already, the title of the question reveals a
difficult answer to be given to it. For there is implicit in this question a
mUltiple significance of time in the novel. What, precisely, does this
mean?
First of all, the problem of time has been focused on in our context
by Paul Ricoeur's Temps et Ricit. This three-volume work is a testimony of the significance of the problem. It was my earlier intention to
present Ricoeur's colossal work in the form of an in-depth review and
analysis. I found out, however, that this enterprise would have been far
too encompassing. My own attempts to tackle the problem concerned
are much more modest and originated before the time of Ricoeur's
publication of the said work. In the following, I wish to present my
17
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 17-37.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

18

WALTER BIEMEL

views on the subject, which appeared in German, long after they had
been handwritten, in the Alber Verlag (Alber Publishers), Zeitigung
und Romanstruktur, Philosophische Analysen zum modernen Roman.
Freiburg and Munich, 1985. (Temporalization and Structure of the
Novel. Philosophical Analyses of the Modern Novel.)
In what follows, we will ask the central question: Why is it important
to pursue an investigation of time in analyses of the novel? A more
careful phrasing of the question might be: Is it necessary to pursue an
analysis of time in order to comprehend and interpret a novel?
The latter formulation of the question allows of further questions on
the subject: What does it mean when we say "comprehend and interpret
a novel"? Clearly, here lies the problem of hermeneutics. Yet, what
does "hermeneutics" mean? Hermeneutics has turned out to be a rather
commonplace term ever since Heidegger's Being and Time and,
subsequently, Gadamer's Truth and Method. Upon first sight, it looks
as if we can spare time explaining the term. In the following, I wish to
point to only a few facets concerning the term "hermeneutics."
Any work of art is, in strict contrast to the more familiar things and
entities around us, not something that can be used or be of use, as is the
case, for example, with respect to a knife, car, home, etc. First of all,
and seen from the vantage point of our everyday lives, a work of art is
something useless and, in a manner of speaking, unproductive. One
cannot "do" anything with a painting as one uses a knife or a car, or
lives in a house. The utilizations of such things are quite natural to us.
But we cannot "use" a painting, unless, of course, when we want to sell
it (provided it is a good painting). In this case, however, the painting
changes into an object of economic relations. But to say that something
useless can obtain high economic value - as for example, today the
paintings of Impressionism and many more - is tantamount to a
strange looking state of affairs.
The high estimation concerning something that is otherwise useless
would reveal that our world is not merely composed of utensils, much
as we deal, produce, manipulate, or consume them for the better part of
our lives. How is it possible that a work of art can obtain such a superior significance? In brief, the answer is: It is because the experience of
a work of art itself tells us something of our human world, that is, the
work of art makes visible our world and makes it understandable to us.
In saying that we are concerned here with understanding and interpreting a novel, this is supposed to mean that we have to understand

TIME IN THE NOVEL

19

the very clearing, or openness, of the world happening through a work

of art. As an artist, a narrator does not just tell any story; rather, his
narration gives us something to understand that is not easily comprehended. This is very true with regard to twentieth-century novels, e.g.,
Kafka's novels and narrations. The latter must appear senseless for any
ordinary or naive reader accustomed to reading only what is more or
less familiar in life. But, on the other hand, to those readers who
penetrate the text, they are highly meaningful for the understanding of
our world. Let me, for example, make reference to "Der Bau," Kafka's
last narration. In this work, which antedates Heidegger, Kafka presents
an incredibly true interpretive vision of our time, which only much later
becomes accessible to us with Heidegger's interpretation of the modern
metaphysics of subjectivity with its implicit conceptualization of truth as
certainty.
In order to avoid misunderstandings, I wish to stress that understanding a novel does not mean pile up philosophical theories on what
is narrated in the novel. Such a procedure must be rejected. What is at
stake is the understandability of what is presented in a narration. This
necessitates that we penetrate into the narrated text so that the latter
itself will reveal to us what the intentions of its narrator were while he
was writing. Put in phenomenological terms: the narrator's basic intentionality that guided him while he was creating the novel must be
uncovered.
At once, we are faced with another question: Is it the case that the
time-leitmotif can help us in pursuing this end? The following seeks to
find an answer to this question.
I. DASEIN'S TEMPORALIZA TION

What do we mean when we use the term "Time"? The usual conception
of time consists in the sequence of now-points. This commonplace
conception of time must be put into question in our first steps of our
investigation. Why? The reason is simple: this conception is basically
meaningless. Of course, it represents the most simple explanation of
time that we have. But are we justified in equating the simplest with
what is correct, or even with what is true? Such an assumption presupposes, to be sure, that common sense and its domination is the only
factor to be justified. But it can very well be the case that common
sense is, on the one hand, the proper means for our everyday dealings

20

W AL TER BIEMEL

and action, while, on the other, common sense fails as soon as we try to
penetrate into a state of affairs down to its principles. It is not necessary
for us to attack the problem of the common sense. It is a well-known
problem in the history of philosophy, and we can mention here only
Hegel and Heidegger among the many thinkers who dealt with it.
But we owe to Heidegger the most detailed analyses of time, which
he began to undertake in his pioneering work Being and Time (1927).
In it, Heidegger presented the most meticulous and exciting analyses of
the problem of time. Let us recall here only that Dasein is, in contrast
to all other entities, characterized by the fact that it not simply is, but
that it has to be, and must realize its own existence. The contention of
Heidegger's in Being and Time, according to which the essence of
Dasein must be seen in the mode of existence, i.e., that its existence
precedes its essence, was subsequently developed by Sartre into a
philosophy called "existentialism."
What, however, does it mean to say that Dasein not simply is, but
has to be, or that it has to realize itself? It means that this entity is open
to possibilities and that it can live only in choosing possiblities. Of
course, Dasein can also make errors in its choices. And Heidegger
continues by saying that Dasein is bound to make errors all the time:
errors occur not because Dasein fails to grasp such possibilities that are
conducive to understanding, but because Dasein grasps the possibilities
that are coming from public life, from its environment and from other
people. For Heidegger, there is a relentless wrestling with the task of
reaching oneself. Dasein's selfhood is nothing finished (like a complete
object); rather, Dasein's selfhood amounts to something always at stake.
This formulation would already imply the difference Heidegger makes
between authentic and inauthentic Dasein. Dasein's authenticity must
always be struggled for anew.
What has all of this to do with time? On the surface, nothing much,
but, in reality, all of it pertains to time. To begin with, choices among
possibilities can only be made if Dasein temporalizes itself. What does
this mean? In order to have a possibility as such accessible to it (that is,
not to be limited to a domain of what has already been accomplished,
or, simply, to a domain of factual realizations), Dasein must be able to
project itself into what does not yet exist, but can be. Such projecting is
nothing else but an anticipation of what is coming upon Dasein, that is,
of the future. It is in such anticipating that Dasein temporalizes the
future. But this running ahead of itself toward the future, as Heidegger

TIME IN THE NOVEL

21

refers to it, does not occur in an empty space, as it were. Rather, Dasein
can do this only because it is something that has also been in a past. It
is because of its having-been-character that Dasein can also run ahead
of itself toward the future. It is through its character of having-beenfutural that Dasein temporalizes the present. It is also in the character
of Dasein that the distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity
must be made. Whereas in authentic Dasein, the running ahead of itself
with the simultaneous preservation of what has passed and the becoming of the present as an instantaneous moment, ("Augenblick"), in
inauthentic temporalization the future turns out to be only as something
awaited: Dasein clings to the present, and what has passed becomes
something forgotten. Heidegger tied the three moments of Dasein's
temporalization into the unity of "care" (Sorge) as a fundamental
determination of Dasein. Care does not mean distress, but "ahead-ofitself-in-already-being-in-a-world".
In order for us to understand "care," we must come to grasp and
comprehend that temporality reveals itself as the sense of care (Being
and Care, p. 326; see also my monography, p. 57V In order to now
present our leitmotif, we discard the concepts of "world-time" (Weltzeit) and "within-time (Innerzeitigkeit). We also leave aside a discussion
of how Heidegger conceives Dasein's historicity as being grounded in
Dasein's temporality.
II. NARRATING AS AN ACT OF TEMPORALIZING

What is the nature of the act of narrating in which both persons and
actions assume relief? Our answer is: Narrating is an act of temporalizing. How can this be justified? The narrator anticipates the future, or
more precisely, the narrator opens up a horizon of futurity for us in
which events develop and happen according to this horizon. Narrating
simultaneously shows and points to what was, i.e., a dimension lying
before the first sentence of the narration. This may happen via a
retrospective view presented, or via an interplay between the horizon of
anticipation and the horizon of what happened in the past. The present,
however, is not simply there; rather, the art of narrating consists
precisely in continuously letting the present form itself and come up.
Narrating is not tantamount to speaking about time; instead, it has the
curious character of letting time generate itself. This process begins
with the first sentence. Let us illustrate this with a quotation from

22

W AL TER BIEMEL

Kafka's The Trial, the beginning of which being indicative of the

phenomenon of temporalization under discussion2
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything
wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him
his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never
happened before. K. waited for a little while longer, watching from his pillow the old
lady opposite, who seemed to be peering at with a curiosity unusual even for her, but
then, feeling both put out and hungry, he rang the bell. At once there was a knock at
the door and a man entered whom he had never seem before in the house.

In reading this passage, we note that it had been written in the

classical narrative of time past, which implies the conception according
to which an event must have happened so that it allows of narration.
The role of the past in narration, on the other hand, answers to the
requirement of presentification. More precisely, it fulfills it. In the first
sentence of the quote, there are two factors: (1) a reference to what
happened before (in the form of the pre-past) and, (2) we find the
factor of what is about to happen, viz., his arrest, which is subsequently
described. In the first sentence, the narrator addresses the reader by
way of speaking over the head of the person concerned. In what then
follows, we are put into Joseph K's position of being surprised when he
is not served breakfast (as was the daily custom). We are, therefore,
also attached to the immediate past of receiving the usual breakfast
service, which at this juncture is disrupted. I have elsewhere analysed
this state of affairs in the following fashion 3
The narrator informs his readers about a state of affairs that has not yet been fully
described. The main hero of the narration is ignorant about the state of affairs.
Beginning with the second sentence, we are placed into the hero's situation. This
situation is presented and described and not just told for the sake of information. The
reader is well ahead of the hero in the narration. This, however, does not do away with
the excitement; on the contrary, all that the hero does not understand remains within
the scope of the reader's anticipation of what will happen ... The narrator performs
temporalization in narrating by dint of his anticipating the future, retaining a past and
temporalizing the present.

As soon as something is told, an act of temporalization occurs. This

amounts to an initial, general characterization of the fact that every
narration is by necessity conjoined with temporality. The novel deals
with human existence - human existence is its center. Whatever else
there is, depictions of landscapes and milieus, scientific or theoretical
discussions: they all are governed by human existence, the characteriza-

TIME IN THE NOVEL

23

tion and the comportment of human existence. And this means in

philosophical terms: human existence in its modes of temporality. If it is
the case that temporality is the basic structure of human existence, then,
by necessity, the temporality of human existence must become visible in
the description of the persons concerned. Let us turn to this point.
III. THE TEMPORALIZA TIONS OF THE PERSONS INVOLVED

Let this leitmotif be discussed in some detail by the way of an example

expressly showing the welling up of the temporalization of the future.
The example is taken from Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
At a specific phase of his life, every human being has an idea of what
the future for him is going to be like. This pertains to an activity of ours
through which we anticipate our lives. And it was Sartre who clearly
described this point in his autobiography, Les mots. He gives the
example of his grand-father making him decide to become a writer. For
Sartre, this was the plan designed to determine his life; he remained
true to his decision, even when at times he complained about the
impulsion that his choice of becoming a writer exerted on him. The
design for his later life was conceived by him when he was still a child.
He felt it was no wild dream of his, and it determined his whole life. In
his colossal Flaubert-interpretation L'idiot de fa lamille, Sartre himself
makes an investigation into Flaubert's own respective design of the
future.
Emma Bovary, too, had made a design like this in the convent
school she was attending; it began with some trashy literature secretly
smuggled in by the laundry woman and devoured by the children there.
In her design, life consists of romantic scenes, moonlight serenades,
seductions, and things of that sort. The pseudo-literature gave her an
illusionary portrayal of life. Without experience in life, the child is not
able to see behind such illusions. Thus, her life turns out different from
her dreams and becomes imbued with disappointments after she
married the good, but conventional and simple-minded, Dr. Bovary.
Emma's life is split between dream and reality.
At this juncture, let it be added that prior to Flaubert, we find
another fitting example serving our purposes of showing how literature
can exercise an influence on a person's sketches of his future life. I am
thinking here of Cervantes' classical novel Don Quixote. In it, there is

24

WALTER BIEMEL

the influence of the romance of chivalry that has the very same function
under discussion. For this reason, the conclusion of this novel is a
critique of the romances of chivalry in general. The initial burning up of
this literature remains without any effect simply because the very
conception of life had already begun to be under its sway.
As far as Emma Bovary is concerned, she becomes the victim of the
conflict between the dream and reality and goes under with it. Much as
she desperately tries to realize what she pines for during her affairs with
Rodolphe and Leon, she fails in realizing her dreams. Flaubert depicts
minutely the numbing of the feelings she had in her affair with Leon,
feelings she identified with happiness. Put in phenomenological terms,
her horizon of expectation remains empty and without fulfillment. As a
result, suicide follows (I have attempted to analyse this point in:
Temporalization and the Structure of the Noveft In any novel, we have
to pay attention to the temporalization of the persons involved because
it is through temporalization that they become persons. Our example
taken from Flaubert is only one out of many that can be given. We
chose it, however, because the act of roughing out one's future finds a
special, descriptive attention.
IV. HISTORICAL TIME

While we have been talking about time and temporality in the above,
we did not make use of the one concept of time that is, as a rule,
thought of in all determinations of time, viz. historical time. In speaking
of time, we usually have in mind a certain historical epoch, or the time
that we, for instance, use to perform some actions. Historical time can
also be portrayed and presentified in a novel. And this does not merely
require historical persons themselves. In such cases, a writer tends to
enter into competition with historians. Even fictitious persons can be
placed into a specific historical time in a novel. Let us illustrate this
once more by way of an example taken from Thomas Mann's Der
Zauberberg, in which the author specifically refers to time at the
beginning of the noveP
The story of Hans Castorp, which we would here set forth, not on his own account, for
in him the reader will make acquaintance with a simple-minded though pleasing young
man, but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us highly worth telling though it must needs be borne in mind, in Hans Castorp's behalf, that it is his story, and
not every story happens to everybody - this story, we say, belongs to the long ago; is

TIME IN THE NOVEL

25

already, so to speak, covered with historic mould, and unquestionably to be presented

in the tense best suited to a narrative out of the depth of the past.
That should be no drawback to a story, but rather the reverse. Since histories must
be in the past, then the more past the better, it would seem, for them in their character
as histories, and for him, the teller of them, rounding wizard of times gone by. With this
story, moreover, it stands as it does to-day with human beings, not least among them
writers of tales: it is far older than its years; its age may not be measured by length of
days, nor the weight of time on its head reckoned by the rising or setting of suns. In a
word, the degree of its antiquity has noways to do with the passage of time - in which
statement the author intentionally touches upon the strange and questionable double
nature of that riddling element.
But we would not wilfully obscure a plain matter. The exaggerated pastness of our
narrative is due to its taking place before the epoch when a certain crisis shattered its
way through life and consciousness and left a deep chasm behind. It takes place - or,
rather, deliberately to avoid the present tense, it took place, and had taken place - in
the long ago, in the old days, the days of the world before the Great War, in the
beginning of which so much began that has scarcely yet left off beginning. Yes, it took
place before that; yet not so long before. Is not the pastness of the past the profounder,
the completer, the more legendary, the more immediately before the present it falls?
More than that, our story has, of its own nature, something of the legend about it now
and again.
We shall tell it at length, thoroughly, in detail - for when did a narrative seem too
long or too short by reason of the actual time or space it took up? We do not fear being
called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly
interesting.
Not all in a minute, then, will the narrator be finished with the story of our Hans.
The seven days of a week will not suffice, no, nor seven months either. Best not too
soon make too plain how much mortal time must pass over his head while he sits spun
round in his spell. Heaven forbid it should be seven years!
And now we begin.

First of all, history has two meanings. On the one hand, history is
something that is told (the narrator of stories) and, on the other, history
is equal to historical events that are the object of historical science.
Hans Castorp's story is historically situated because it happened prior
to World War I. In terms of calendar time, the story is not old. But the
calendar time is put into the question right from the beginning. The
"historical mould" is emphasized. As a matter of fact, it is so old that
Patina already refers to its fixation. A reference to fairy tales follows. A
fairy tale, of course, has no historical place in time. It is prehistorical so
to speak.
The time of this story cannot be fixated by calendar time, which is
based on the earth's rotations around the sun. The mystery of time does
not come to the fore through usual calendar time. In addition, there is

26

W AL TER BIEMEL

no way either of fixating historical time by way of sequences of

moments (the linear visualization of time). They are both gaps and
turns in time making everything look different. One of such gaps is
World War I. The preceding epochs situate all the events in time. But
there is more at stake than just a historical fixation of events. For Mann
wants expressly to write a time-novel, as Proust did. Yet, his is different
from Proust's. What is the difference between the two? Whereas Proust
attempts to bring time to a standstill in that he conceives the coincidence of the moments of the past and the present, Mann is concerned
with a change in the experience of time at the magic place of illness Davos.
In chapter 7, Mann takes a look at narrating time 6
For narration resembles music in this, that it fills up the time. It "fills it in" and "breaks
it up," so that "there's something to it," "something going on" -

This sounds as if time were a solid frame to be filled out by the

contents narrated. But what is decisive here is the fact that "Time is the
element of narration as it is the element of life ..."
Right after a comparison is made between narration and music a
difference is set up?
But a narrative must have two kinds of time: first, its own, like music, actual time,
conditioning its presentation and course; and second, the time of its content, which is
relative, so extremely relative that the imaginary time of the narrative can either
coincide nearly or completely with the actual, or musical, time, or can be a world away.

This point finds an illustration with the Five-Minute Waltz. The waltz
lasts five minutes 8
But a narrative which concerned itself with the events of five minutes, might, by
extraordinary conscientiousness in the telling, take up a thousand times five minutes,
and even then seem very short, though long in relation to its imaginary time. On the
other hand, the contentual time of a story can shrink its actual time out of all measure.

This would make clear for us that our ordinary measurements of

time do not suffice to come to grips with the experience of time
implicity in both the act of narrating and the contents narrated. Let us
just add and mention that Mann makes a distinction here that was later
on discussed by Gunther Muller, professor of German literature and
language at the University of Bonn. It is the distinction between time in
and during narration (Erzablzeit) and narrated time (erziihlte Zeit). The

TIME IN THE NOVEL

27

former is the duration in the act of narrating, while the latter refers to
the duration of the events and actions as they are portrayed. Both can
be near convergence, as is the case in Adalbert Stifter's narrations. An
example of this is the equal duration of a narrated inspection of a house
and the factual duration of such an inspection itself. According to
Stifter, such a near convergence is justified because the reader is
supposed to be moved as close as possible toward the narrated
contents, or that the latter should be presentified as immediately and
intuitively (anschaulich) as is possible. In this endeavor, there ensues a
temporal convergence tying together the act of narrating with the
narrated contents. A report on an excursion aimed at exploring rock
formations, on the other hand, is given in only one sentence. (I have
analysed such various modes of narrating in my work).
Let us now return to The Magic Mountain. Our reference to this
novel was made because its contents are historically situated. In doing
so, we draw attention to the central factor of the change taking place in
the experience of time at the magic mountain. As Mann expressly puts
it, his time novel circulates around a changed time-experience vis d vis
the linear time-experience of a "flatlander." But there is another factor
that belongs to this and which is often overlooked: We could call this in
Husserlian terms the changes of filled time. During his first days, the
chief character of the novel is subject to many impressions. According
to the time-experience involved, these first days are portrayed in detail.
Indeed, the first two weeks take up almost one third of the novel. The
longer Hans Castorp remains at the magic mountain, the fewer experiences he has; and for this reason, time is beginning to evaporate, as it
were (see the chapter "Soup Everlasting" (Ewigkeitssuppe). There is a
never-ending return of the same. Mann wants to depict this concrete
time-experience in his novel. His novel cannot be fully understood
unless we understand its inherent structure.
In speaking of historical time in a novel, one is immediately
reminded of William Faulkner's impressive war novel, A Fable.
Strangely enough, this novel is hardly known. Its plot is condensed
within one week of spring 1918, taking place in the allied front lines of
World War I. The novel's nine chapters bear the titles of weekdays,
beginning with the middle of the week and returning to the beginning.
What is important here is not Faulkner's weekday-division, but his
portrayal of events by stretching them back to biblical times. The
corporal, who together with his twelve followers calls for peace and

28

WALTER BIEMEL

instigates a mutiny at the French battle lines, represents a contemporary

Christ. Faulkner's language matches the power of the language in the
Bible. In my own studies, I analysed one passage that I gave the title
"The City in the War." Faulkner succeeds here in taking war events
occurring in 1918 back to ancient Rome and Jerusalem. Again, we can
utilize a Husserlian expression by saying that there is something like an
envisionment of the essence [Wesenschau] of both the city in war and
the comportment of various classes of the population. And it becomes
obvious how little has changed since biblical times. Faulkner's description of war is unique in his simultaneously catching up with the multiple
facets of history itself. For this, I introduced the term "polypresence,"
because we are not concerned with a limited situation, but with a
mUltiplicity of war situations tied into one knot. I tried to phrase this in
the following way:9
In this novel, Faulkner describes the misery, the horror and sufferings of human beings
in a war; and at the same time he describes how they can preserve their humanity in
extreme situations of the kind. It is the saga of man's possibility to find his own
humanity that is preserved in great legends. But it is also the novel that depicts man's
desperation (as it is personified in the dispatch rider). Right to the end, he despairs
because of the glorification of war with its inherent hatred. No one understands his
protest. The legends are both of the past and future. Time is no medium for passing
processes; rather, it is the medium that ties together both past and future. As possible
presence, both past and future are tied together into the present. By way of the
description of what could have been our gaze is turned to the possibility of opening up
the future (Time and the Structure o/the Novel, p. 250)

I also pointed to the significance that repetition has in this novel

(Chap. VI); that is, a repetition of a scene taken from different
perspectives, which pertains to what I referred to as poly-presence
showing a plurality of moments. The art of portraying the multiplicity of
various presents is revealed to a careful reading of the novel (see Time
and the Structure of the Novel, esp. "The Constitution of the Horizon of
Anticipation" and "Presentification of Events Passed").
The title for an analysis of Vargas Llosa's novel La Casa Verde
could be "A History of the Non-Historical." Because of its various
streams of time and their entanglements, this novel belongs to novels of
our time that are replete with artistic ingenuity. But the temporal
entanglements as a whole reveal a strange standstill, which is not due to
an author's caprice, but is the result of the general conditions in the
wide stretches of Latin America that are devoid of history and are hard

TIME IN THE NOVEL

29

to change. To use an analogy: just as the Amazon comes to a standstill

in its remote side rivers, so we can speak of a stop in the flux of time
that is revealed to us in the narration.
V. THE BASIC TIME (TIEFENZEIT)

Referring to an interpretation of Vargas Llosa's, we touched upon

another aspect of depicting time. This aspect now has to be clarified.
We see that the act of narrating is an act of temporalizing through in
which the temporalization of the persons concerned is presented to
us. Furthermore, we discussed the relationship between the novel and
history and historical time. But this by no means exhausts the purpose
we are pursuing. In discussing Vargas Llosa, we came upon a character
of time different from all that was mentioned earlier, viz., "time standing
still." What does this mean?
Throughout the happenings in a novel, there is a basic pre-conception of time, rarely seen, that I wish to call (Tiefenzeit) basic time. The
basic time, or Time of depth both bears and determines all temporal
aspects we have mentioned. Let this point be illustrated with Adalbert
Stifter's novel Der Nachsommer, including some references to be made
to Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Mann's aforementioned passage, "Time is the element of narration as it is the
element of life," already points to what we are going to say. What does
''time as a medium of life" mean? Here, the term "medium" does not
imply the connotation of a neutral means; rather, the term medium
refers to the foundation of the experience of time, i.e., as that which
engenders both the experience and formation of time. A close analysis
of Stifter's novel Der Nachsommer (a classical example of a novel
concerned with the intellectual development of the main character often
found in the times after Goethe) reveals time as the medium of
preservation. How can we justify this interpretation of time?
Stifter's narrative style as seen in Der Nachsommer reveals that the
center of the novel is not the description of grand or shock happenings
but of what does not change. The "intrigue" (as it is called by Ricoeur
following Aristotle) has been pushed way into the background. This is
not because Stifter was unable to write exciting stories, but because of
the typical basic attitude that pervades this novel. For Stifter, time is the
dimension of preserving. What has been, and what has been recognized
in its significance, must not be repressed and forgotten or replaced by

30

WALTER BIEMEL

something new; rather, it must be presentified by human attitudes. To

this belongs the resuming of the views of old buildings or the reconstruction of old tools. Baron von Risach's rose house is designed so that
such work can be pursued. The house and its surroundings are the
object of preservation. The description of all this takes up a large part
of the narration. This is because the description itself contributes to a
preservation in the words used, that is, a preserving that can be
transmitted. Living in fast flowing time, this attitude is difficult to follow
because the fast flowing time is only directed toward ever new factors
lest it would become endangered not to be able to reach the heights of
time identified with the actual "now." It is by necessity that the
elbowroom of this "Now-Time" is very narrow; thus, there is a danger
of being counted among the people of yesterday. For it is only the
"new" that is experienced as something "solid" - a contradiction of
sorts, never seen as such. Stifter juxtaposes this pining for the new with
the preservation of what is of worth to be preserved, and with the
dedication of the activity of preserving. Repetition as a means of style
belongs to this preserving in the novel (see chap. VI).
An observation concerning Heidegger can be made here because
Heidegger saw in Stifter's work something akin to his own; and Stifter,
together with Johann Peter Hebel, ranked among Heidegger's favorite
novelists. This is astounding because Heidegger talks so much about
futurity; however, an emphasis on preserving is not alien to Heideggers
thinking, either. With Heidegger, we find a proclivity toward what the
Germans call Heimat, the beloved home with its surroundings (see his
interpretations of H61derlin and the significance of the "home"). In
Heidegger, we also find the love of what is always familiar, of only a
little changing bucolic environs, of the black forest landscapes with
their silence, which Heidegger found irreplacable for his own creative
thought. Heidegger found it impossible to change this rural environment for the city of Berlin, or to leave Freiburg's R6tebuck or the
Stiibenwasen in Todtnauberg.
The concept of repetition, so important for Heidegger's interpretation of history, is realized in Stifter's narrative style (see I, Chap. VI).
Elsewhere, I have referred to Stifter's description of Baron von Risach's
property as presentifying repetition. In it, the holding fast to preservation is realized in the word. Let us not try to answer the question
whether this holding fast corresponds to a political, restorative tend-

TIME IN THE NOVEL

31

ency. Much more is implied here: time is not seen here as a destructive
element to which everything has to yield, but is the medium that
preserves the past and all we hold to be of importance to it. We
preserve the past in time in an attitude of focusing on it, with an
attitude of loving. This may sound strange; but we are also familiar with
such attitudes toward persons we love and adore, an attitude of
adoration that allows such persons to be near us even though they may
have died long ago.
How does Proust's basic time compare with this? First of all, time is
a destructive power with Proust. This is abundantly clear in the last
volume of Le temps retrouve. Let us recall one scene in particular, the
"Masked Ball of Time". After an extended absence, the narrator has
difficulties in recognizing persons who were familiar with him earlier.
Let me refer to an earlier analysis of mine in which I stated: "During the
process of description, there is an ever more eerie impression we get
from what at the beginning is introduced so playfully - the contrast, on
the one hand, between the happiness of the masked ball showing
persons proud of not being recognized by others and, on the other, the
aged who feel embarrassed when they do not recognize people they
once knew. For it is death that is behind all arbitrary disguise and time
understood to be as the inevitability of aging. The playful elements
recede more and more. Both the serene effects of one's wanting to
recognize someone anyway at times: all this sinks into silence and
sorrow. This meeting one another is at the same time seeing one
another for the last time. An example taken from the meeting with
Madame d'Arpajon may illustrate the manifold aspects of scenes of
recognition: 10
Chez d'autres elle (sc.la vieillesse) etait plutot physique, et si nouvelle que la personne
... me semblait a la fois inconnue et connue. Inconnue. Car il m'etait impossible de
soup,<onner que ce rut elle, et malgre moi je ne pus, en repondant a son salut,
m'empecher de laisser voir Ie travail d'esprit qui me faisait hesiter entre trois ou quatre
personnes (parmi lesquelles n'etait pas Mme d'Arpajon) ... Cet aspect etait si different
de celui que je lui avais connu qu'on eut dit qu'elle etait un etre condamne, comme un
personnage de feerie, a appaniitre d'abord en jeune fille, puis en epaisse matrone, et qui
reviendrait sans doute bientot en vieille branlante et courbee. Elle semblait, comme une
lourde nageuse qui ne voit plus Ie rivage qu'a une grande distance, repousser avec peine
les flots du temps qui la submergeaient. III, 937

This unmistakable insight into the destructive effects of time comes up

32

W AL TER BIEMEL

precisely at the moment when the narrator makes the decision to begin
his work. A panicky angst seizes him because it might already be too
late: 11
Mais une raison plus grave expliquait mon angoisse; je decouvrais cette action
destructrice du Temps au moment meme ou je voulais entreprendre de rendre claires,
d'intellectualiser dans une oeuvre d'art, des realites extratemporelles. (III, 930)

It is for this reason that we find the metaphors of leaden shoes that time
has fastened to man's feet obstructing his walks, and the stilts of time
that are sometimes higher than church towers and also contribute to an
increased obstruction and danger in walking - until, finally, man will
crash from those heights.
The basic time we find in Proust, i.e., the time that Proust wants to
attain and realize in his work, is "supra-temporality.' The work of art is
at the latter's service.
Diagnosing this basic time makes it necessary to pay special attention
to the narrator's rhythms. As a rule, we tend to be mesmerized by
narrated events to such an extent that we lose sight of the implicit
rhythm. Rhythm generates a specific atunement and atmosphere in
which the reader is placed. In Stifter's works, it is an atmosphere of
composedness, tranquility, and balance that holds sway over the novel;
in Madame Bovary, it is despair, and in La casa verde, it is inescapability and hopelessness.
Just as there is a great number of kinds and types of atmospheres for
which we find no descriptive terms because our experiences of them
are so immediate that no need for their expression comes up, so also
there are a great number of kinds of experiences we have of time that
allow of no expressive words. It amounts to the very objective of good
interpretations to uncover a novel's basic atmosphere and atunement so
that its contents become intelligible in and through the novel itself.
VI. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF REITERATION

A preliminary observation is in place to see the significance of reiteration while the unity of a narration is being realized, i.e., the unity of
temporalization. I have pointed to this significance in my own Proust
analyses and wish to mention them here:
1. Recollections occurring at random impel the author to sit down
and write his work. Random recollections bear witness to the fact that

TIME IN THE NOVEL

33

the past is not gone, but can be retrieved in the present. This is because
the past remains preserved. It is up to the narrator's ability to listen to
the past in himself.
2. Oscillating reiterations refer to the same experience, but with
various temporal distances. The novel starts out and finishes with same
event (save for the introduction), viz., the scene describing the refusal of
the mother's good-night kiss (1, 24-27). The garden gate bell rings, and
people present there want to know who at this time wants to enter
not announced, though all know very well that it can only be Monsieur
Swann ringing the bell. Because of the guest, the mother cannot see her
boy into the room. The son is afraid of the separation, but this, in turn,
accelerates the separation, while the father looks at this as a sign of
fatigue (I am jumping over some more details here). The boy stays
awake until the guest has left. He expects the mother to walk up the
steps, but is surprised to see his father and is afraid of being punished.
But the father talks the mother into staying with the boy. After this
description of events, there is a leap in time: the father is deceased and
the hallway in which everything happened is also gone.
Toward the end of the novel when the matinee de Guermantes is
described, Marcel hears his parents' steps while they see Swann to the
garden gate: 12
... ce bruit des pas de mes parents reconduisant M. Swann, ce tintement rebondissant,
ferrugineux, intarissable, criard et frais de la petite sonnette qui m'annon"ait qu'enfin
M. Swann etait parti et que Maman allait monter, je les entendis encore, je les entendis
eux-memes, eux situes pourtant si loin dans Ie passe. Alors, en pensant It tous les
evenements qui se pla"aient forcement entre l'instant ou je les avais entendus et la
matinee Guermantes, je fus effraye de penser que c'etait bien cette sonnette qui tintait
encore en moi, sans que je puisse rien changer aux criaillements de son grelot, puisque,
ne me rappelant plus bien comment ils s'eteignaient, pour Ie reapprendre, pour bien
l'ecouter, je dus m'efforcer de ne plus entendre Ie son des conversations que les
masques tenaient autour de moi. Pour tacher de l'entendre plus pres, c'est en moimeme que j'etais oblige de redescendre. (III, 1046)

Looking at this state of affairs, one cannot simply say that the first
description is made from the child's perspective, while the second
would be made from that of an adult. As I tried to indicate, a leap into
time is already made during the first description after the father's death.
It is by means of this changing reiteration that Proust can bring about a
multi-levelled act of narrating what corresponds precisely to the structure of time concerned, viz., the preservation of what is past and the

34

W AL TER BIEMEL

stepping ahead toward what is coming out of the future, but only to
return to what has passed. This, too, is a form of preserving vis d vis the
destructive character of time. It is at the service of the supra-temporal
and unchangeable, which is realized in art. For this reason, Proust can
also say: 13
La vraie vie, la vie enfin decouverte et eciaircie, la seule vie par consequent reellement
vecue, c'est la litterature. (III, 895)

3. Let us turn to what I call the "uncovering reiteration." This

happens when a past state of affairs will be clarified during a conversation with a person who partook in the state of affairs. This person can
now appear as a neutral onlooker because of the long time that has
elapsed. As an example, we can take the recollection of a scene
showing Marcel and Gilberte. Gilberte had made an offensive gesture
that did not fit a well-educated child and could not be understood by
the narrator. In this, the scene past becomes present, but with a
respective distance. The scene is both past and present.
4. The function of reiteration as re-cognition is the center of the last
part of the novel. When the narrator seeks a person's correct name, he
does not only describe the person now present, but, a fortiori, the quite
different person of yore. Again, we can see here how what is past is tied
into what is present. As Proust himself says, a bridge is built to what
has been and all solidity of the present is dissolved. Creative imagination plays an important role in this.
5. All of this leads to a new type of reiteration that is now taken in
the sense of summation. There are various experiences of a person, for
instance, those of Marcel with Albertine, which are blended into a
unity. In this, the transitions become especially evident: 14
Que peut-on affirmer, puisque ce qu'on avait cru probable d'abord s'est montre faux
ensuite, et se trouve en troisieme lieu etre vrai? (et helas, je n'etais pas au bout de mes
decouvertes avec Albertine.) (II, 361)

6. Reiteration can function as perspectivation. This is the case when

one and the same person is seen from various vantage points and
appears in a plurality of aspects. In this, indeed, the aforementioned
variation also plays a role. For example, Odette appears as Swann's
lover, as a demimondaine, as a member of the Verdurin circle, or as
Duc de Guermantes' wife. As I indicated in my Philosophical Analyses

TIME IN THE NOVEL

35

(p. 214): "Perspectivization allows of a breadth of description as well as

of possible contents of time."
7. A last form of reiteration is a negative reiteration, which is
embedded in the act of forgetting and, as a phenomenon, closely related
with the experience of time. Forgetting reveals a form of the destructive
character of time. This is the case when we want to remember a person
we loved in the past while justifying to ourselves that we have a hard
time doing this or find it impossible to do. This is not tantamount to
complete forgetting, but to a withdrawal from what holds sway over
us. Marcel's relation to Albertine after her death may serve as an
illustration: 15
Et en effet je sentais bien maintenant qu'avant de l'oublier tout 11 fait, comme un
voyageur qui revient par la meme route au point d'ou il est parti, il me faudrait, avant
d'atteindre 11 l'indifference initiale, traverser en sens inverse tous les sentiments par
lesquels j'avais passe avant d'arriver 11 mon grand amour. (III, 558)

Proust reveals himself as the great artist of descriptions of various

phases of a process - even in those when the origins and the final
moments of a great love are concerned. The workings of time do not
allow anything to remain static. Time is not to be understood as the
activity in temporalization itself, but as an independent power to which
we are exposed and against which man's external struggle takes place.
For this reason, I entitled my own Proust-Interpretations Time as the
Main Purpose.1 6 Once more, to mention Stifter: in his Der Nachsommer, there is a reiteration which I called the novel in the novel. It is
the portrayal of the life of Baron von Risach, who is unable to marry
his beloved. The life of the narrator is a variation of the life of the
Baron with a happy ending. It is through the relation existing between
the two lives described that the past remains present through its
preservation in reiteration, i.e., through the time of depth of the novel
Der Nachsommer itself.
VII. READING AS TEMPORALIZING ACT

Finally, let us take a look at reading as an act that temporalizes. In his

analyses of the work of art, Heidegger speaks of its preservation, which
consists in "Standing in the openness of being that happens in such a
work" (Holzwege, 55). Both creating and preserving belong to the work

36

WALTER BIEMEL

of art. Roman Ingarden pointed to the significance of the reader and his
cooperation with the work of art in terms of phenomenological perspectives. Concerning the beholder of a painting, Ingarden seems to
have exaggerated the role of the beholder. Following Heidegger,
Gadamer attributed great significance to the handing down in tradition.
In literary criticism, it was Iser and Jauss who introduced the term
"receptive aesthetics." We just want to point here to reading as a
temporalizing act. The first sentence builds up a horizon of anticipations that also incorporates a horizon of the past. There is no way to
see anything coming from the future unless we already know what the
matter is with something narrated and which presuppositions have a
play in this. We need not point to the different techniques that allow of
anticipating and preparing of the future and of the catching up with the
past.
Some of this was indicated in our chapter on reiteration. Without the
interplay of the future and events gone by, there cannot be any horizon
of acquaintance. But the latter is always surrounded by what is known
or familiar and, therefore, by what can dissolve and always threatens it.
Whatever is coming upon us must belong to the domain of the
possible, lest it loses its effect on the reader, who will see it as something unlikely or even as pure fiction. On the other hand, whatever is
coming up to us must not be completely predictable, lest there is no
suspense left to compel the reader to read on. Suspense belongs to the
reader's act of temporalizing and keeps him open for what is happening. But he must not lose sight of what happened in the past, lest the
whole content is lost. What we said about temporalization of Dasein
earlier in this study also pertains to the attitude of a reader who must
be open for both future and past events. Present-day readers are
expected to put in more "work" while reading (or as Husserl would put
it, "accomplishment in constituting") than was the case with readers of
classical literature. Not infrequently, the modern reader must piece
together one whole. This is, a fortiori, true with Vargas Llosa's La casa
verde. The reader has the task of distinguishing all the streams of
narrations in their entanglement; he himself must put them together.
Without this endeavor on the reader's part, no constitution in the sense
implied can be re-enacted.
The above elaborations had the purpose of pointing out the endeavors necessary to follow the hidden traces of the problem of time in
literature. My endeavors are not meant to be dogmatic. They are

TIME IN THE NOVEL

37

supposed to serve as an example, which, I trust, will stimulate future

research in this area. The goal of such research is to lay bare the
peculiarity and importance of art - in our case, in the art of the novel.

Aachen, F.R. G.
NOTES

Translated by Manfred Frings.

Walter Biemel: Martin Heidegger, (in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten) (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973), p. 57 English transl. by J. L. Mehta (Hartourt Brace Jovanovich
Inc., 1976), p. 54.
2 F. Kafka: The Trial. Willa and Edwin Muir, trs. Schocken Books N.Y., Revised, and
with editorial material by E. M. Butler, 1937.
3 Walter Biemel: Die Bedeutung der Zeit flir die Deutung des Romans in Archivio di
Filosofia, (Roma: 1980), p. 336.
4 Walter Biemel: Zeitigung und Romanstruktur, (Freiburg-Miinchen: Alber Verlag),
chapter 2; Die Zeitigung als 'fatalite' in Flauberts Madame Bovary.
5 Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain; H. T. Lowe-Porter, tr. Alfred A. Knopf (N.Y.:
1930), "Foreword". (Quoted by permission from S. Fischer Verlags Der Zauberbeg by
Thomas Mann.
6 Ibid., p. 683.
7 Ibid., p. 683/4.
H Ibid., p. 684.
9 W. B.: Zeitigung und Romanstruktur, p. 250.
10 Marcel Proust: A fa recherche du temps perdu, (Paris: Ed. de la Pleiade, Gallimard,
1954) Vol. III, p. 937.
11 Ibid., p. 930.
12 Ibid., p. 1046.
13 Ibid., p. 895.
14 Vol. II, p. 361.
15 Vol. III, p. 558.
16 W. B.: Philosophische Anafysen zur Kunst der Gegenwart; Phaenomenologica Vol.
28, (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1968), pp. 141-235.
1

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN

ONE AUTOBIOGRAPHER'S REALITY:

ROBBE-GRILLET

In Alain Robbe-Grillet's theory of description, nineteenth century

traditional novels are distinguished from the New Novel as he and
others have practiced it in France by a purposeful change of intention.
Description has always served an important function in the novel, but
as the novel has evolved, so has the technique of description. In nineteenth century novels, such as those of Balzac, the role of description
was to establish setting, context, and the physical appearance of the
protagonists. Altogether these made up the universe of the novel. This
universe was guaranteed to resemble the real world by the delineation
and delimitation of things established by such description, and thus the
authenticity of the novelist's incidents, language, and gestures could not
or would not be questioned. 1
In addition, as the description copied its context, it reinforced the
author's image of man and his image about life. Things - such as
furniture, clothing, street settings - and characters were significantly
related. The description supported the author's conception of the
environment and told the reader how to think about it. In the New
Novel, description performs the opposite function. It concentrates on
objects, but makes them insignificant; they do not clarify the characters
or events. The description in the new novel is at first precise and
careful in establishing the look of things, but then
it seems to destroy them as if its intention to discuss them aimed only at blurring their
contours, at making them incomprehensible, at causing them to disappear altogether. 2

Thus, according to Robbe-Grillet, in spite of the repetitions, different

angles of vision, and precise calculations which are used in the descriptions in the New Novel, the objects do not become clearer. They do not
become authentic and "real," and they are not stable creations acting as
settings for the protagonists. Paradoxically, as they become less meaningful for an understanding of character and action, they become more
important for the meaning of the novel. The meaning of the novel,
according to Robbe-Grillet, is "in the very movement of the description,"3 which is central to the flow, form, and forward movement of the
39
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 39-48.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

40

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN

narrative. A spiraling movement of action generally characterizes the

works of Alain Robbe-Grillet. The movement begins at a point in the
present or it begins near the beginning of an action, but it never
remains chronological. The action advances forward and then backward, with flashbacks and disconnections until it reaches a possibly
climactic center. The center is approached with a building intensity but then there is a void, a cessation of action and of description. The
action moves on. The center remains an intensely suggested mystery,
and the action ends near its beginning.
All of this indicates that there is a very deliberate structure in the
novels and the films, but, Robbe-Grillet insists, there is no predetermined meaning. Meaning, or "ideology," has always been abhorrent to
him, and he has tried to pervert it any way that he could.
One of the assumptions made by critics in discussing his work,
according to Robbe-Grillet, is that he is attempting to be very objective,
is interested only in things, and records only facts. In addition, they say,
his work is deliberately inhuman and without feeling. Man, they say, is
nowhere to be found. All of these assumptions are wrong, according to
Robbe-Grillet. Man is everywhere in his works because the focus of the
description is very subjective:
Even if many objects are presented and are described with great care, there is always,
and especially, the eye which sees them, the thought which re-examines them, the
passion which distorts them.4

Because of the constant presence of this narrative thought and

passion, the description is "not neutral at all."5 The narrator is always
obsessed with what he sees and experiences, and he changes, in some
fashion, what he sees and experiences. Robbe-Grillet's concerns with
such a sUbjective point of view as the dominant narrative device, his
concern with the creation of "man located in space and time, conditioned by his passions"6 and with style as the expression of man's
relationship with the world are the same concerns that figure in the
philosophy of phenomenology. This is not to say that Robbe-Grillet is a
philosophical phenomenologist or that his conception of the relation of
man to his world is precisely dictated by a strict phenomenological
point of view. First, there does not seem to be a strict set of dicta about
what constitutes man's relation with the world in phenomenological
discourse; second, Robbe-Grillet's anarchic attitude would subvert and
turn upside down such dicta if he knew what they were. As Maurice
Merleau-Ponty said, phenomenology is a "manner or style of thinking."7

ROBBE-GRILLET

41

In phenomenological thinking, the self is obsessively conscious of its

relationship to the world " ... which is 'already there' before reflection
begins." But the self does not invent this only by a particular kind of
perception which uses the act of seeing to make a relationship between
the self and the world of objects:
... To perceive is to render oneself present to something through the body. All the
while the thing keeps its place within the horizon of the world, and the structurization
consists in putting each detail in the perceptual horizons which belong to it. 8

Subjective narrative descriptions complete the perceptual act. The

descriptions clarify and give form to the objects which are part of the
external world surrounding the self. The narrative self, either real or
fictional, creates its own reality: " ... each of us see(s) ... his own
reality."9
There is no single total truth or absolutely accepted reality. The
writer's function, according to Robbe-Grillet, is to confront the world
and to create from it his own fictional reality. What goes on in the
writer's head is
transformed, becoming at the same time somehow more real because they, (his sources)
were not imaginary.lo

Impelled by the demands of creation, the writer plumbs his imagination and transforms the external reality that he perceives into a fictional
reality which the reader then experiences. Because the world of the
twentieth century is different from previous worlds of time, because the
way the world is investigated has also changed, the writer thinks about
the world in a different way:
we reject meanings which afforded man the old divine order and subsequently the
rationalist order of the nineteenth century, but we project onto man all our hopes: it is
the forms man creates which can attach significations to the world. I I

Man makes his own relationships to the world, real and fictional. His
personal meanings do not have to reflect or add to the already existent
meanings in the real world. In his autobiography, Le Miroir qui revient,
Robbe-Grillet uses this attitude of personal relationship to the world
and his experiences in the world and amplifies his experiences by
imaginative speculations, by confessions of states of mind and of
unstated desires, and by reflections on his past theories and practices as
a writer.
The form of the autobiography reflects the way of thinking he has

42

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN

used in creating his fictional works: it is not chronological and it is

episodic. It is interrupted by imaginative stories and by childhood
memories. It roams around in his life and returns at unpredictable
places in the book to certain crucial experiences, particularly the
experience of working for the Nazis as part of a young group of
deportees from Vichy, France, during World War II. A "Table of
Subject Matter" at the end of the book illustrates the free-wheeling but
nevertheless subjectively controlled use of the material of his life:
A reprise after seven years. Who was Corinthe? What did he come to do at our house?
The anti-intellectual reaction of the 1980's.
To speak of the self. Theories become worn out and frozen. The notion of the author
... page 10.
Why do I write? I here throw myself into an adventure ... page 12.
The high Jura against the ocean. Nightmares of the sea. A Breton childhood. Nocturnal
spectres of the rue Gassendi ... page 13.
Novel and autobiography. To finish off the fragments. The impossible narrative. The
operators ofthe text ... page 16.
This is a fiction. Fear. Stories of India and Breton legends. The familiar presence of
phantoms ... page 18.
Corinthe and Tristan. The characters of the novel are also wandering souls, from which
comes their lack of realism ... page 20.

Henri de Corinthe, mysterious and possibly criminal friend of

Robbe-Grillet's father, is mentioned at the beginning of this table of
subject matter, appears on the first page of the book, and reappears on
page 20. He is described at intervals throughout the book, and each
time more is either discovered or suggested about his activities and
personality. The book ends with his funeral, a false mass by a banned
priest in front of the closed door of the church. Was he excommunicated? Robbe-Grillet asks. Since when? For what fault? In such a
manner Robbe-Grillet wraps up his memories in mystery, a final
memory which is not even his own but was told to him by his father,
who attended the funeral. This movement of the story of Corinthe which spirals from an ambiguous beginning, in and out of feelings,
memories, rumors and reactions, to a mysterious end - parallels the
movement of Robbe-Grillet's recitation of his life and the movement of
his fictions.
A more precise connection is made between his fictions and his

ROBBE-GRILLET

43

autobiography by the sentence which began his original attempt to write

this autobiography, in 1980, and which he repeats in this completed
work: "I have never talked of anything other than myself."
The sentence is a scandal, since it repudiates his purported attempt
to be completely objective and completely impersonal in his fictionmaking, his desire to make the writer anonymous and the characters
without individuality. This view of the writer's complete objectivity has
passed its time, he says. It has done its revolutionary work. Like all
ideologies, all established and proclaimed theories, it must be discarded
and in fact has already changed its face, as do all ideologies: " ... it (an
ideology) is a hydra-mirror of which the cut-off head quickly reappears
in a new form, presenting to its adversary his own visage, who believes
himself the victor."12
Robbe-Grillet has never believed in The Truth, nor in dogmas or
bureaucracy, nor in any established order. As a defiant attempt to disestablish the new order of the New Novel he himself helped to create,
he is now returning to the idea of representation of the world in fiction
or in biography and indeed to the role of personal expression in
writing. The whole person, he says, is a body, an intentional projection,
unconscious of his projections. In this autobiography, he wants to
examine himself without the usual reticences which he has used with his
many interviewers. He says he does not want to explain his works, their
uses and their real significations, but in talking of himself we may
discover sources of his scenes and characters and other reflections of
his own searches.
For instance, when he talks of his childhood feelings and attitudes,
he talks of spectres and terrors and perverse sexual feelings. Perhaps,
he suggests, his childhood questions, doubts, and terrors moved him to
write in order to destroy those terrors, as he describes them as
precisely as possible in his novels. Perhaps. But then what does he
mean by description when he says that it is not really useful for
reproducing reality? All reality is indescribable, he says; it is not
possible to use language to represent what is immediately before one's
eyes, or what is hidden in one's head, or what is in one's sexual being.
"Literature is thus ... the pursuit of an impossible representation."!3
What is literature? In his novels it has been his outlet for telling about
people and places in his own life, using 'operators' who directly reflect
contemporary ideologies of life and are the agents of these ideologies. It
has been his way of telling about his life, without an obvious confes-

44

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN

sional stance. He has used his life experience in two novels in particular, Jealousy and Project for a Revolution in New York, but he has
never appeared in person in his works.
In spite of his reservations, it was impossible for him to avoid
description and an attempt at representation. In this autobiography, he
particularly tries to use language to define the truth about his life. And
he continues to use those techniques of narrative which he has perfected in his fictional works in order to re-construct his own life. One
important technique has been labeled by an influential critic, close to
Robbe-Grillet, Bruce Morrissette, as "the contamination shot or paragraph." In film, this is a system of cutting and editing which brings in
increasingly long portions of "future" scenes in the midst of earlier
ones. 14
In the novels, passages of description are inserted into a work in
places where they do not belong and do not seem to fit. Later the same
shots or verbal descriptions are repeated in a more logical or chronological context and are expanded. In retrospect, the earlier shots or
descriptions have been preparations for the expanded shots or descriptions. This technique was part of his original intention to challenge
traditional expectations of fiction. The effect was meant to be one of
dislocation: time sequences were shifted from their original positions in
order to create a tension in the structure. Contamination elements also
acted like memories, interpolating themselves into a consciousness
because of unconscious impulses. Thus it seems quite in keeping with
the creative movement of Robbe-Grillet's mind that he should allow
renegade memories to "contaminate" the remembered chronology of
events in his own life, when he writes his autobiography. Since at the
moment he is writing, chronology is not being experienced, it cannot be
re-created. What can be re-created is a description of objects and
events as they now appear to the consciousness. In addition, though
Robbe-Grillet does not discuss this, there is a selection process in the
descriptions used. Two hundred pages of writing do not tell us a great
deal about a life. But, it should be noted, two hundred pages are the
extent of each of his novels. It seems there is an automatic structurewatch which controls Robbe-Grillet's output and which he is deliberate
about maintaining. In fact such a limited form enables him to control
the pattern of the whole work as well as his sentence rhythms and
sentence sounds. As he has stated, he is very conscious of "sonorities"
in his work; he reads his works aloud as he writes and listens for
unusual or deviant harmonies in words and in sentences. Reading any

ROBBE-GRILLET

45

of his works aloud, one can hear and respond to the rhythms and
sounds.
So, this autobiography, seemingly aleatory and erratic, has been
subject to the same delimitations and techniques used in all his works.
In fact its aleatory nature is deliberate as a reflection of his confirmed
and long-held belief: the need in each of us for some form of order as
well as for liberty. These two forces are in constant antagonistic play
with each other in our consciousness and in the depths of our unconscious. Each of us is equipped with a different "dosage," that is, a
different proportion or mixture, of these two predilections.
For him, after his experience of the work camp, at the age of twentythree he saw things differently. The proportions of the forces within
him toward order and toward liberty changed. If he had then to choose
between order and chaos, he says, he would have chosen chaos. He did
not, however, become a terrorist, but the method of novelistic experimentation with its contradictions and problems became the attractive
field of battle for him, the place to show the struggle-to-the-death of
order against liberty.
He also notes in himself, from the experience of the war and of
France's deceptions and defeat, a way of experiencing life that is
detached, as though he is watching behind a shop window, as though he
is a visitor, isolated and sheltered from events. This way of feeling has
recurred on several traumatic occasions in his life. It is a way of seeing
reality, of experiencing it, of judging it, that he has forcefully represented in many of his narrators in his works. Through these operators,
his sUbjectivity has created the subjective consciousness of his fictional
works.
Robbe-Grillet's need for ideological disequilibrium and for subjective detachment - both become transmuted into the creative forces
that have worked on the personal areas of his life or on the places and
people he has encountered. He mentions yet another source for his
point of view about life: Albert Camus' The Stranger. It is not fashionable to say so, he says, but it had a tremendous effect on a whole
generation, himself included. By an astonishing stroke of luck or genius,
he says, Camus transformed his native country, so familiar to him, into
a metaphor for strangeness or alienation or perhaps for real life. The
dry dust and the blinding light stood for the presence of the world,
especially in the consciousness of the detached narrator; it was the
sense of the world he best comprehended and which was immediately
and directly communicated to the reader, as though he were there. The

46

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN

empty conscience suddenly noting the harsh appearance of things hit

Robbe-Grillet with such extreme violence that it became the perfect
representation, almost didactic, of the phenomenological experience,
according to HusserI.
This, at any rate, is Robbe-Grillet's interpretation of the Husserlian
consciousness, this intense and painful experience of reality. Still, for
Robbe-Grillet reality is also made up of the minuscule details of
appearance, details which he often feels compelled to verify in real life
if they come from his memories. Reality is also his ability to speculate
on the childhood sources of his obsessions and his ability to play games
with his interviewers and critics, most of whom insist, he says, on
missing the point of his works and on drawing distorted conclusions
from his actions and attitudes. Irony and gamesmanship characterize his
way of approaching existence, shown by the sly and perverse variations
on reality he has chosen to present in his works. Finally, for RobbeGrillet, reality is the mystery at the center of the action - not the
mystery of creation nor of an omnipotent being, but the mystery of
knowing and interpreting meaning:
All this partakes of reality, that is to say of the fragmentary, the fleeting, the useless,
even of the accidental and so particular that all events appear at each instance to be
gratuitous, and all existence finally is as though deprived of the least sense of unified
significance. The advent of the New Novel is precisely linked to this discovery: the real
is discontinuous, formed from elements juxtaposed without meaning of which each one
is unique and individual, the more difficult to seize since they constantly spring up
unpredictably, beyond any intention, aleatorily. 15

About the middle of his autobiography, Robbe-Grillet tells a story

about his mystery figure, Henri de Corinthe. Corinthe arrives, on his
white horse, at a desolate area in which there is a small strip of beach
and a small pond. There is also a construction of the sort from which
women would wash clothes in the water. He hears a loud banging noise
and traces it to a large mirror framed in wood which is in the water and
is crashing back and forth on the waves. His horse is terrified and
eventually throws him and runs away. Corinthe succeeds after great
effort and possible danger of drowning in dragging the large mirror
onto the shore. He is thoroughly exhausted. His whole spirit is emptied
out. He finally opens his eyes and sees his horse bending solicitously
over him. The mirror is lying near him, and he sees, almost without
surprise, the image of his fiancee reflected in its strangely colored

ROBBE-GRILLET

47

surface. His fiancee is missing, presumed drowned from a beach on the

Atlantic, near Montevideo. Her body has never been recovered. She is
there in the mirror, looking at him with an indefinable smile.
The story continues, with more mysteries, possible murders, deliriums, phantoms, confusions of time, and finally no conclusion. What is
its meaning? Does it have a source? We are not told. It is a free
exercise of his imagination about a figure from his childhood who has
always remained a mystery. It is his anarchic way of treating reality
(occurring as it does in the middle of a re-telling of his own family
history), when the trivial details of real life have perhaps absorbed too
much of his attention. It also distracts the reader's attention from the
proper central figure of this autobiography, Robbe-Grillet himself, who
appears here and in the final story in the book, the funeral of Corinthe,
as a detached observer, a non-player in the action, recording mysteries
and possible absurdities without making any judgments on them. The
judgments he makes about himself are presented in an equally detached
manner, without any intention of correcting his behavior or appealing
to 'his readers' sympathy or understanding. Robbe-Grillet represents
himself, in this autobiography, by his past actions, present responses to
those actions, and the pleasure he takes in his imaginative recreations of
possible actions.
Massachusetts College ofArt, USA
NOTES
I Robbe-Grillet, Alain, "Time and Description in Fiction Today," in For a New Novel,
Essays on Fiction, (New York: Grove Press, 1965) p. 144.
2 "Time and Description," p. 147.
3 "Time and Description," p. 148.
4 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, "New Novel, New Man," in For a New Novel, Essays on
Fiction, (New York: Grove Press, 1965) p. 137.
5 "New Novel, New Man," p. 138.
6 "New Novel, New Man," p. 139.
7 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Preface, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith,
(New York: Humanities, 1962) p. viii.
8 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, "The Primacy of Perception," in The Primacy of Perception
and other Essays. ed. and trans. James M. Edie, (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1964) p. 34.
9 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, "From Realism to Reality," in For a New Novel, (New York:
Grove Press, 1965) p. 161.

48

MARJORIE H. HELLERSTEIN

"From Realism to Reality," p. 162.

"New Novel, New Man," p. 141.
12 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Le Miroir qui revient, (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984)
p.1l.
13 Miroir,p.18.
14 Morrissette, Bruce. "Robbe-Grillet at the University of Chicago," French Review,
Oct. 1976 pp. 655-657.
15 Miroir, p. 208.
10

II

PETER MORGAN

HEIDEGGER AND ENGLISH POETRY

A thinking which can be neither metaphysics nor science?'

Heidegger is a phenomenologist as a follower of Husserl. He pays

attention to human consciousness and being as it is actually occurring.
He is concerned with the process of knowing, but as he brackets it in
order to know it better, he also knows that something vital exists
outside the bracket and the bracketing process. Something else exists
outside as well as within the knowledge. Perhaps Heidegger tries to
achieve independence from the historical trend identified as "phenomenological," as he witnesses being in itself. He also witnesses it
negatively in the words of the great philosophers from Plato and
Aristotle through Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche: also, more distantly but
positively, through the pre-Socratics, Greek poets such as Pindar and
Sophocles, the German poets of the early nineteenth century and the
early twentieth century: especially H6lderlin, with Rilke, Trakl and
George. Yet, as W. J. Richardson points out, Heidegger is still a
phenomenologist because he wants "to permit that which of its own
accord manifests itself to reveal itself as it is."2
Heidegger is a profound philosopher because he seeks to discover
the very truth of being; he seeks to know the essence, to reach the
position of knowing it without seeking it, without reaching for it, to be
in that position. To achieve this difficult goal, Heidegger focuses on the
simplest terms. Ironically, since he is using words and highly values
them, it is hard for words to delineate his ambition. As he himself
writes, there is an "almost insurmountable difficulty in making oneself
understood." 3 He quotes the late eighteenth century poet Hebel:
Kein Wort der Sprache sagt's
Kein Bild des Lebens malt's
(No word in language says itl No image in life depicts it).4 As T. S.
Eliot wrote:
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes lpreak, under the burden,
49
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 49-59.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

50

PETER MORGAN

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still ("Burnt Norton," 149ff).
Yet on the part of Heidegger it is not an ambition, it is not a focussing.
It is more than an attempt at being: being. Yet it is still a matter of
words. He agrees with George: "Kein ding sei wo das wort gebricht,"
"Where word breaks off no thing may be." 5 As he writes in Being and
Time, 1927: "the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the
force of the most elemental words." 6 Back of that, "poetry is the
founding of Being through words."7 "The essence of man is grounded
in language as the fundamental reality of spirit." 8 Language is not "as
indifferent as a means of public transportation."9 On the contrary, "die
Sprache spricht." 10
'Being' expresses itself through 'breathing,' a necessary activity,
humanised in the 'word,' cherished by the philosopher and by the poet.
Heidegger is interested in human being. Hence the stress which he puts
on 'word.' He is concerned with "the being of language: the language of
being;" language as "being, embodied in the word: poetry." 11 Indeed,
language "is much more open and thoughtful than we are." 12 Because of
this both poetry and thinking serve language, giving "lavishly of themselves." 13
Heidegger is also interested in nature as represented by 'thing' (Being
and Time, p. 90, p. 96).14 He writes, "our primary theme is the Being of
Things in Nature" (BT, p. 63). Further, human being sees (BT, p. 146,
p. 171). Thus, 'thing' appears as the 'image.' Indeed, etymologically
'thing' is "put in the light" (BT, p. 28). Seeing has a priority for him (BT,
p. 358). He declares, "Theoretical behaviour is just looking" (BT, p. 69.
As with 'thing', 'theory' etymologically is 'seeing,' p. 99n. 1).
I am hair-raisingly here passing over Heidegger's distinction between
physical sight and insight, a distinction which the English poet W ordsworth also makes. The thought of both writers moves along both
planes. Heidegger exclaims, "Fortunately, there still exists ... the
coloring and shine of things themselves, the green of the leaf." 15 He
says that there are three key images in experience: sun, horizon, sea. 16
His total view is diagrammatic, including the imagistic at a general level,
when he writes: "To preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to receive
the sky, to await the divinities, to escort mortals - this fourfold
preserving is the simple nature, the presencing of dwelling." 17

HEIDEGGER AND ENGLISH POETRY

51

Furthermore, works of art "are as naturally present as are things;" 18

Van Gogh's depictions of shoes and a chair are as naturally present as
the shoes themselves, though shoes and the chair too are artefacts.19
Heidegger locates the image specifically in the poem, writing in verses
of his own:
Only image formed keeps the vision,
Yet image formed rests in the poem.20
For Heidegger being, saying and seeing are bonded together (BT, p.
165). This bonding is reinforced poetically by the affinity in sound
between the different words. 21 Since for him the word is so important,
for him it has to be a national, that is, German word (as it had been
Latin and Greek) (see BT, indexes). Words only exist with their
historical and cultural overtones in this way.22 Thus he appeals for
illustrative examples to the imagistic German poetry of his contemporary Trakl (1887-1914) and to that of the Romantic Holderlin
(1770-1843). He also patiently examines the poetry of Stefan George
(1868-1933) and Rilke (1875-1926).
The leap has to be made by the English respondent into his own
language. In fact, Heidegger himself rejoiced in such a leap,23 jumping
back historically to Greek. 24 He also leaps sideways culturally to Japan
with its language. 25 See the Platonic "dialogue on language between a
Japanese and an inquirer." The importance of 'breathing,' referred to
above, for example, appears in the translation there of the Japanese
word 'iki': "the breath of the stillness of luminous delight." 26
As an English speaker and reader I would compare the imagery of
Trakl which Heidegger evokes to that of the contemporary Imagist
poetry in English, epitomised in Pound's "In a Station of the Metro."
Heidegger ends his discussion "Language in the Poem" which examines
Trakl's diction and imagery by quoting the lines:
Softly murmur the waters in the declining afternoon,
On the banks the green wilderness darkens, joy in the rosy wind;
The gentle song of the brother by the evening hill.27
Pound's poem is more elliptical:
The apparition of those faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Here the focus which Heidegger is seeking Pound comes very close to

52

PETER MORGAN

achieving, but at the same time his mere two lines show the impossibility of stasis. Pound's mind, as he himself learned, is almost too
mobile. Heidegger shifts from the German to the Greek and the
Japanese. The position of Pound as an American is from the start
volatile. He writes in English about a French subway station using a
Japanese verse form. This indicates the general shift in his thinking
from the occident, including the classical, to the orient, Chinese as well
as Japanese. The title of Pound's verse also shows a modern acknowledgment of the technological which Heidegger would recognise the
significance of, but which is absent from the examples of poetry which
he himself adduces. Pound's verse shimmers on the brink of the perfection, of the wholeness of utterance that Heidegger is longing for.
Perhaps that is the best the poet can do. Language after all is activity,
'energia,' as Heidegger quotes Humboldt as having declared.2 s
In his dialogue on language Heidegger discusses the Japanese word
for language, "koto ba." The Japanese with whom he is talking reluctantly explains, "ba means leaves, including and especially the leaves of
a blossom - petals. Think of cherry blossoms or plum blossoms." He
continues: "Koto always also names that which in the event gives
delight, itself, that which uniquely in each unrepeatable moment comes
to radiance in the fullness of its grace." Towards the end of the dialogue
the word is referred to again: "In our ancient Japanese poetry, an
unknown poet sings of the intermingling scent of cherry blossom and
plum blossom on the same branch ... flower petals that flourish out of
the lightening message of the graciousness that brings forth." 29 This is a
discussion of the very topic embodied in Pound's image.
Heidegger admires poetry because it aspires not to use language, but
to let language be as a signal of human creativity and being. The
aspiration is deliberately expressed by the American poet Archibald
Macleish when he asserts, "A poem should not mean/ But be" ("Ars
Poetica," 1926). And by W. H. Auden in his elegy on Yeats:
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper; it flows south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth. 30
Heidegger appeals to Trakl and Holderlin. In seeking analogies in

HEIDEGGER AND ENGLISH POETRY

53

English, I have invoked Pound and will now invoke H6lderlin's English
contemporary Wordsworth.3! The latter acknowledged with Heidegger
quoting H6lderlin that poetry is innocent but that its language is dangerous. 32 "Is anything." Heidegger himself asks, "more exciting and
dangerous for the poet than his relation to words?"33 We see Wordsworth in his "Resolution and Independence" hedging his bets over this
question when he asserts:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
(my underlining)
He is reproached by the steadfastness of the leech-gatherer and accepts
his faith. The poem ends:
God said I be my help and stay secure;
I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor.

On the other hand, H6lderlin is important to Heidegger because he

"waits for a god" (my underlining).34 Thus Wordsworth averts his gaze
from the dangerousness of poetry, as he asserts his faith; H6lderlin and
Heidegger recognise the danger, as they yearn for the faith.
Now, to emphasise a point where philosopher and poet come
together rather than separate, Heidegger quotes H6lderlin's "Homecoming:"
Far on the level of the lake was one joyous undulation
Beneath the sails.
He goes on to complain: ''we still think of this water unpoetically." He
asks with some impatience:
And how much longer are we going to? How long are we going to imagine that there
was first of all a part of nature existing for itself and a landscape existing for itself, and
that then with the help of 'poetic experiences' this landscape became coloured with
myth? How long are we going to prevent ourselves from experiencing the actual as
actual?35

Wordsworth was thus "experiencing the actual as actual" when he wrote

his familiar lines about the daffodils:
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line

54

PETER MORGAN

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee ....
This is what Heidegger noticed that Holderlin was looking for in his
poem "Bread and Wine:" "Words like flowers leaping alive he must
find."36 More directly, Heidegger like Wordsworth is interested in the
phenomenon itself, in "the flowers of the hedgerow ... the springhead
in the dale'" (BT, p. 70, quotation unidentified). Or rather the two
writers are interested in expressing their appreciation of the identity of
the flowers. Heidegger puts it elsewhere: "the rose's being does not
stand in the garden, nor does it sway in the wind from side to side.
Nevertheless I think the rose's being red, and when I name it I utter
something of it." 37
At the heart of Wordsworth's poetry as with Pound's there occurs
the tranquillity, the being that Heidegger esteems, although in Wordsworth's case the ripples from that centre are more turbulent. Indeed,
one could claim that Wordsworth's casing is even too rigid. For a more
severe view of the Heideggerian centre I think of such a poem as "The
Thorn:"
'There is a Thorn - it looks so old,
In truth, you'd find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two years' child
It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
No leaves it has, no prickly points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens it is overgrown.'
In his bolder youth the poet added:
'I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.'
Wordsworth's presentation here is mediated through the loquacious

HEIDEGGER AND ENGLISH POETRY

55

persona of the retired sea captain who is supposed to be telling the

story. There is a parallel in Heidegger's answer to the question, ''Why
do I stay in the provinces?"38 Just as Wordsworth gives the dimensions
of the thorn, so Heidegger precisely describes his own rural environment:
On the steep slope of a wide mountain valley in the southern Black Forest, at an
elevation of 1150 meters, there stands a small ski hut. The floor plan measures six
meters by seven. 39

Like Wordsworth's, Heidegger's response is mediated, because he goes

on to acknowledge: "Strictly speaking I myself never observe the
landscape." Yet in his philosophical asseveration Heidegger declares
himself to be as close in his way to the life of the countryside as
Wordsworth is in his. He continues:
When the young farmboy drags his heavy sled up the slope and guides it, piled high
with beech logs, down the dangerous (nb) descent to his house, (pause) when the
herdsman, lost in thought and slow of step, drives his cattle up the slope, (pause) when
the farmer in his shed gets the countless shingles ready for his roof, (pause) my work is
of the same sort. It is intimately rooted in and related to the life of the peasants.40

Further, Heidegger asserts, "man is the one who is looked upon by

that which is."41 Wordsworth correspondingly assumes a benevolent
observer when he adjures his friend: "Bring with you a heart/ That
watches and receives" ("Tables Turned"). Heidegger puts it more
clumsily, though avoiding the imperative, when he writes: "theoria lets
(what is just present-at-hand) come towards us in a tranquil tarrying
alongside" (BT, p. 138).42 Compare his comment on Heraclitus:
"standing open for ... is being addressed by things." 43
Poetically, it is a question not only of the language of the poet, but of
the being of the poet expressed in and through that language. Heidegger
aspires to such a condition in his own use of language, his own use of
imagery, and in his dedicated life as a philosopher. He presents the
philosophical activity as walking through a landscape: ''The lasting
element in thinking is the way."44 He records "conversations on a
country path about thinking.,,45 He asserts, ''The pathway remains as
close to the step of the thinker as to that of the farmer.,,46 And: "In
thinking there is neither method nor theme, but rather the region (cf.
BT, p. 103) .... Thinking abides in that country, walking the ways of
that country . . . . This country is everywhere open to the neighbour-

56

PETER MORGAN

hood of poetry."47 Most inclusively, "All is way.:48 Philosophy is

walking through the woods along a certain path. 49 ''The path of thinking
. . . needs the traversable opening . . . in that opening rests possible
radiance." 50 However sophisticated his thinking is, it bears upon reality
through that pedestrian contact with the natural world. 51 Heidegger
writes on the proximity of things and words; after all, words are things:
"When we go to the well, when we go through the woods, we are always
already going through the word 'well,' through the word 'woods'."52
"We come across words just as we come across Things" (BT, p. 159).
"It is in words ... that things first come into being." 53 "Language is the
language of Being, as clouds are the clouds of the sky."54 He quotes
Rilke: "Song is existence."55 He writes: "Poetry, like the thinking of the
philosopher, has always so much world space to spare that in it each
thing - a tree, a mountain, a house, the cry of a bird - loses all
indifference and commonplaceness." 56
For me as a student of English literature it is impossible not to think
of the poet Wordsworth in this substantial way. The rhythm of walking
is that of the person walking: it relates to him breathing, as with the
poet walking, imaging, reflecting, composing. As a rustic contemporary
said about Wordsworth, "he was a gey good walker ... he was forced to
be always at it whether or no, wet or fair, mumbling to hissel' along t'
roads." 57
In a lecture on the nature of language Heidegger examines a poem
by Trakl ''The Word" and asks, "What use are poets? And yet ...."
This is how his own sentence breaks off.58 With Holderlin he again asks
rhetorically, "what are poets for?" 59 well knowing that this is a question
that has to be got beyond. He would not quarrel with Worsworth's
answers in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads:
there is no object standing between the Poet and the image of things .... Poetry is the
first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.60

Heidegger is concerned with a fundamental question: "how does it

stand with being?" 61, as against questions that demand answers in
particular contexts like those with which Wordsworth quizzes the
unfortunate child in his lyric "We are seven." With characteristic
acumen and modesty Heidegger ends his major work Being and Time
with questions which have a phenomenological bias:
Is there a way which leads from primordial time to the meaning of Being?
Does time itself manifest itself as the horizon of Being?

HEIDEGGER AND ENGLISH POETRY

57

Wordsworth in his turn puts equally serious questions at the centre

of his major poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality;" these concern
time, space and being:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?62
University of Toronto, Toronto
NOTES
1 Heidegger, On Time and Being, tr. Stambaugh (Harper, 1972), p. 59. (Books are
published in London unless otherwise indicated).
2 Heidegger, ed. Sheehan (Chicago: Precedent, 1981), p. 85.
3 W. J. Richardson, Heidegger (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), p. viii.
4 Quoted in Listening, XII, 1977, p. 107.
5 On the Way to Language, tr. Hertz (Harper, 1971), p. 60.
6 Being and Time, tr. Macquarrie and Robinson (SCM, 1962), Heidegger's p. 220.
Hereafter references to this work will be bracketed in the text (BT).
7 Quoted by David Halliburton, Poetic Thinking (University of Chicago Press, 1981),
p.84.
8 Quoted in Listening, XI, 1977, 100.
o Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959),
p.51.
10 Quoted by Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Unremarkable Wordsworth (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 199.
liOn the Way to Language (Harper, 1982), p. 94. Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 171.
12 Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar 1966/67, tr. Seibert (Alabama:
University of Alabama Press, 1979), p. 127. Cf. Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, tr.
Krell and Capuzzi (Harper, 1975), p. 77: "the phrase now wishes to think something
else."
13 Heidegger, What is Philosophy?, tf. Kluback and Wilde (Twayne, 1958), p. 95.
14 See What is a Thing?, tr. Barton and Deutsch (Chicago: Regnery, 1967).
15 What is a Thing?, p. 210.
16 Question concerning Technology, tf. Lovitt (Harper, 1977), p. 107.
17 Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Hofstadter (Harper, 1971), p. 158f.
18 The same, p. 19, p. 37. They are both "present-at-hand," Heidegger's phrase in
Being and Time.
19 Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 37.
2U The same, p. 7.
21 For an example of Heidegger's word-play see David Halliburton, Poetic Thinking,
1981, p. 69: "The poem, to be sure, does not ignite (anzundet) the lamp, but kindles
(entzundet)" it. Halliburton considers this an instance of Heidegger's "Poetic thinking."
22 Cf Nietzsche, tr. Krell (Harper, 1979 I), p. 144: "Basic words are historical." Heidegger
goes even further when he writes: "Poetry is the primal language of an historical

58

PETER MORGAN

people," quoted by Halliburton, p. 85. Just as Heidegger is interested in the sound of

words, like Ruskin and Pound he is interested in their etymology: cf Halliburton's
comment,p.168n.
23 For the importance of "leap" see Being and Time.
24 For the priority in Heidegger's thinking of German and Greek see Heidegger, ed.
Sheehan, p. 62.
25 Also China, as Halliburton points out, p. 180.
26 On the Way to Language, p. 44.
27 The same, p. 198.
28 The same, p. 117.
29 The same, p. 45, p. 53.
30 Compare Silesius, the German poet admired by Heidegger, on a thing: ''The rose is
without a why," quoted in Halliburton, p. 216.
31 See Hartman, ''Wordsworth before Heidegger," pp. 194- 206, especially p. 202
where he quotes Trilling, "Wordsworth was preoccupied by the ... problem of being."
32 Existence and Being, Vision, p. 293.
33 On the Way to Language, p. 141. Compare W. C. Williams to Charles Tomlinson,
''Take care of yourself. Poetry is a tough racket," Tomlinson, Some Americans (University of California Press, 1981), p. 17.
34 Sheehan, p. 62. cf Halliburton, p. 92. Halliburton quotes the last stanza of
H6lderlin's "Homecoming," "es fehlen heilige Nahmen," "sacred names are lacking,"
p.102.
35 Existence and Being, p. 275. Heidegger admires H6lderlin's phrase "die Wolke;
Freudiges dichtend," "the cloud; Poetically uttering the joyous," Halliburton, p. 104.
Existence and Being, p. 266.
36 On the Way to Language, p. 100.
37 Quoted by Peter J. McCormick, Heidegger and the Language of the World (Ottawa:
University of Ottawa Press, 1976), p. 164. Though he helpfully quotes the passage,
McCormick seems bemused by it and does not consider it poetically.
38 Poignantly published just after his resignation as rector of Freiburg University,
1934. Listening, XI, p. 125.
39 The importance of measurement to Heidegger is indicated in What is a Thing?, p.
195.
40 Sheehan, p. 27f. Compare Heidegger's eulogy of his home-town Messkirch (1961),
tr. Sheehan, in Listening, VlII, 1973, p. 41ff.
41 Question concerning Technology, p. 131.
42 Cf Heidegger on Nietzsche: ''To passion belongs a reaching out and opening up of
oneself," Nietzsche, p. 48. "Knowing means opening upon Being," p. 57. ''The openness
of beings we call unconceaIment ... truth," p. 68. Compare G. M. Hopkins, "What you
look hard at seems to look hard at you," Journals, ed. House (Oxford University Press,
1959),p.204.
43 Heraclitus Seminar 1966167, p. 125.
44 On the Way to Language, p. 12.
45 Discourse on Thinking, tr. Anderson and Freund (New York: Harper, 1969), p. 58.
46 ''The Pathway," tr. O'Meara, In Listening, VIII, 1973, p. 33.
47 On the Way to Language, p. 74f.

HEIDEGGER AND ENGLISH POETRY

59

On the Way, p. 92.

Cf Nietzsche, p. 160: "in Platonism, the truth is to be attained on the path of
knowledge."
50 On Time and Being, p. 68.
51 Cf. "The Pathway," ed. Sheehan, 69ff.
52 Poetry Language Thought, p. 132.
53 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 13.
54 Basic Writings, ed. Krell (Harper, 1977), p. 242.
55 Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 138.
56 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 26
57 Quoted by H. D. Rawnsley, Reminiscences of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of
Westmoreland (Dillon's 1968), p. 3lf. Compare John Clare, Later Poems, ed. Robinson
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 46, "I write my poems in these paths unseen."
58 On the Way to Language, p. 62.
59 Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 9l.
60 Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in Prose Works, ed. Owen and Smyser
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), I, p. 139, p. 14l.
61 On the importance of questioning to Heidegger see What is a Thing?, p. 65: "To
hold out in this constant questioning appears as the only human way to preserve things
in their inexhaustibility." Compare Heidegger, Nietzsche, 1. p. 4: the greatest thinkers
possess the knowledge of what philosophy is "in the form of a persistent question."
62 With Wordsworth's "is" compare Heidegger in Introduction-to Metaphysics, p. 91:
"the 'is' in our discourse manifests a rich diversity of meanings."
Wordsworth's Ode was reacted to by Mill - "bad philosophy," Autobiography, ed.
Robson and Stillinger (University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 153 - as Heidegger
imagines the response to his own thinking: "isn't all this unfounded mysticism or even
bad mythology, in any case a ruinous irrationalism?" On Time and Being, tr. Stambaugh
(Harper, 1972), p. 7l.
Hartman observes that the Ode like Heidegger "raises the provocative issue of a
forgotten mode of Being," p. 197. He calls the Ode Wordsworth's Being and Time, p.
202.

48

49

MICHAEL E. MORIARTY

EXPRESSIONIST SIGNS AND METAPHORS IN

MARTIN HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

Philosophers of the past forty years have promulgated their reading of

Heidegger as an Existentialist. Some have ventured into those nebulous
areas to cultivate etymological analyses; others have drifted into a
Wagnerian mist of imprecision. Comparatist techniques show that
Heidegger's literary roots are firmly embedded in Expressionism - not
Existentialism - and that Dasein is a literary persona, that Heidegger's
discussion of signs abandons the imagery of perennial philosophy for
the "ready-to-hand," a clearly Expressionist technique. Heidegger's
Being and Time clearly states Expressionist philosophy with the characteristically Expressionist concern for contemporaneity and interiority
intact.
The first edition of Being and Time appeared in 1927, well within
the time-line of post war Expressionism as critics traditionally periodize
it. The critic can assert that Martin Heidegger's product is an example
of post-World War I Expressionism but such an assertion may be too
facile.
The term "expressionismes" first appeared as the title of an exhibition of paintings by Julien-Auguste Herve in 1901. Its first formal use
as a critical term was by Herwarth Walker in Sturm magazine in 1911
where it embraced all progressive movements from Fauvism to early
abstractions.
Early twentieth century artists in Germany where the term was most
commonly used were associated with the Nabis, the Briicke, and the
Blauer Reiter; art critics speak of Expressionism as a "typical Sturm
und Drang phenomenon" (Phaidon, p. 114). Literary critics see in the
Expressionist movement any "deliberate distortion of reality" ( Dictionary of Literary Terms, p. 179), a stream of consciousness or a
distortion of exterior space and time.
A well-known axiom of periodization is the fact that not all who
publish or produce within the boundaries of a particular period therefore participate in the goals and aspirations and characteristics of that
period. It sometimes happens that work foreshadows a period by as
much as a hundred years or more and then critics must speak of the

61
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 61-68.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

62

MICHAEL E. MORIARTY

artist's prophetic depth; conversely, it may happen that an artist will

breathe new life into a movement long after it has waned - critics must
then speak of nostalgia.
The theory of periodization is tangled in these many contradictory
phenomena and critics who presume to treat that discipline must always
keep in mind the advice of Rene Wellek to examine the evidence and to
weigh it carefully. There are no strict time-boundaries for any movement. Expressionism, for example, remains alive today in some of its
characteristics, especially in woodblock work.
There are specific characteristics of Expressionism that call Heidegger's work to mind. To distill them into a phrase, Expressionism in
Heidegger is the tendency to distort the external appearance of things
in an effort to point to the interior of phenomena. That is also the
primary earmark of Expressionism. The critic may ask: does Heidegger
distort reality?
The two following questions may lead into the depth of Heidegger's
Expressionist techniques of distortion: 1) Is Dasein an aesthetically
distorted persona? 2) Do the characteristics of Heidegger's ontology
follow the outlines of Expressionist concerns?
The critic must be wary here of a tendency to overgeneralize but, at
the same time, phenomenology assumes that what is discovered in one
is discoverable - and therefore true - of all. In terms of literary
criticism this assumption seems to echo Immanuel Kant's assertion in
The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment that what one asserts as beautiful is
a matter of taste which is thereby asserted as beautiful for everyone.
In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we tolerate no one else
being of a different opinion, and in taking up this position we do not rest our judgement
upon concept, but only on our feeling. Accordingly we introduce this fundamental
feeling not as a private feeling, but as a public sense (pp. 492-3).

The ground of Heidegger's phenomenology is clearly rooted in this

implicit Kantian assertion of subjective idealism. But we shall return to
that point later in this discussion.
The Phaidon Dictionary of Twentieth Century Art explains that
illusionist devices ... were replaced by pictorial forms calculated to express the artist's
innermost feelings ... physical reality was merely a trigger device ... In order to give
expression to these experiences they created a simple, powerful and direct pictorial
style based on large areas of unbroken colour, dramatic brushwork and a type of

BEING AND TIME

63

structural deformation that often verged on characture and greatly enhanced the
expressiveness of their work. (p. 113).

The feelings these artists sought to express were a religious zeal, a

sense of inwardness, a psychological factor that seemed more significant than external appearance, even a fervent vision of a golden age.
The golden age that Heidegger envisioned is methodological. He fearlessly utilized the phenomenological method Husserl had developed as
a tool which he turned to the analysis of the inwardness of human
behavior.
The literary critic discovers a phenomenological philosophy of man
or, more accurately, a philosophy of person in the description of
Dasein - the Expressionist persona of Heidegger's golden age where
all process is phenomenological process. The characteristics of Dasein
are the characteristics, specifically and temporally, of the German
national of 192 7 - defeated in the outward expansionism of WWI,
crippled by the loss of direction that disappeared with the fall of the
authoritarian pre-war regime, thrown-unto-death in the Weimar Republic, anxious, fearful, lost in impersonal linguistic practices. Such, then, is
the outline of the aesthetically distorted persona of Expressionism.
These characteristics, universalized, are Heidegger's ontic-ontological analysis of the human condition - abstractly stated - and of the
immediate situation as he discovered it. They analogously manifest the
same contours and aspects of person and situation that all Expressionists emphasize.
Through the use of the phenomenological method Martin Heidegger
initiates the golden age that was the common dream of Expressionists.
Through this presentation he becomes the philosopher par excellence
of Expressionism. It is not without reason that Gunther Grass writes an
elaborate passage on ratness during the rat-hunting scene in The Tin
Drum, a clearly Heideggerian-Expressionist scene that sets forth and
merges Heidegger's thought with a playful Expressionism.
Therefore, it is Martin Heidegger who wears the laurel wreath of
Expressionist philosophy and the second question is resolved; the
characteristics of Heidegger's ontology do more than follow the outlines
of Expressionist concerns - they constitute the determination of and
clearest philosophical statement of Expressionism.
Heidegger never abandoned the original Expressionist goals. Later
generations who called him an Existentialist were not so much mistaken

64

MICHAEL E. MORIARTY

as they were derivative of another movement that has its roots not in
German art but in French philosophy. Heidegger is no philosophe
franrais, he is an "ur-Dichter," to coin a word, working firmly within
the German philosophical tradition of phenomenology and speculating
specifically and clearly in response to the environment of post-war
malaise in which he dwelt. The phenomenology that Husserl crystalized
is a tool for Heidegger with which he responds to the problema tics of
his own time - the anguished world of the Expressionist movement.
The uses Heidegger makes of pun and etymology are stylistic
devices, parallels to the broken lines, the blocks of color, and the empty
spaces of the Expressionist canvas. The stern methods of phenomenology serve Expressionism as it sets issue after issue of what appear to be
realistic or everyday considerations of the persona in brackets in order
to consider more deeply, to see beyond the subjective/objective superjicia. Expressionism is more subtle than mere subjectivism/objectivism;
The Zuhandenheit, the ready-to-hand-ness, the handiness of things-inthe-environment and the characteristics of Dasein itself are all typically
Expressionist.
The superjicia, those things which Dasein finds in its environment,
have meaning as Heidegger points out when he speaks of the hammer.
The hammering itself uncovers the specific 'manipulability' CHandlichkeit") of the
hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses - in which it manifests itself in
its own right - we call "readiness to hand" (Zuhandenheit). Only because equipment
has this 'Being-in-itself' and does not merely occupy, is it manipulable in the broadest
sense and at our disposal. (Heidegger's emphasis, BT, p. 98)

Naturalist and realist philosophers are left to puzzle over the fact of
Dasein and to interpret it strangely, unable to see that it is person. But
the literary critic cannot fail to see the Expressionist effort to deliberately break the illusion of external appearances - reality as some are
pleased to call it - and to discover that Heidegger points the thoughtful
reader in the direction of the interior of the persona.
Heidegger's discoveries are clear. Dasein is characterized by being
thrown, alienated, anguished, fallen-unto-death. Dasein's environment
contains elements that are veiled and hidden like the gods and also
elements that are ready-to-hand, viz. the hammer and the motor car
and the shoes and glasses and telephones and streets and boats and
clocks that are Heidegger's examples.
Typically Expressionist, Heidegger does not call on us to examine
the warts and count the fingers and admire the contours of Michelangelo's

BEING AND TIME

65

ectomorphs on the Sistine Chapel ceiling as Immanuel Kant would have

us do (see Critique of Judgement p. 499). Rather, Heidegger calls our
attention to the broken lines of Edvard Munch's desperate men, to the
sensitive lines of shoes portrayed by Vincent Van Gogh. In all of this
we do not examine external contour for its prettiness in the Kantian
mode but discover instead interiority, the human condition.
This list of Heidegger's examples or metaphors of Zuhandenheit is a
list of signs that Heidegger wishes to explore to clarify his meaning.
They are all of concern to Heidegger, the Expressionist. The critic finds
that these signs are entirely appropriate to Expressionism which seizes
especially on those handy/ready-to-hand.
Heidegger speaks at length on the motor car as "an example of signs":
Motor cars are sometimes fitted up with an adjustable red arrow, whose position
indicates the direction the vehicle will take - at an intersection, for instance. The
position of the arrow is controlled by the driver. (BT, p. 108-9)

Thus Heidegger introduces the persona, Dasein who is here the driver,
as an actor who controls signs:
this sign is an item of equipment which is ready-to-hand for the driver in his concern
with driving, and not for him alone: those who are not travelling with him, - and those
in particular - also make use of it, either by giving wayan the proper side or by
stopping. (p. 109)

The critic can readily observe that Heidegger abstracts an ordinary

event in traffic control - an example with contemporary and Expressionist reverberations - that sets in brackets the individuality of each
of the drivers and also of the people in the environment. They are
viewed as Daseinen. They are the broken contours of personae who are
reacting to and concerned with a fundamental moment of anxiety. Here
the moment of anxiety and concern is that of manipulating a modem,
motorized vehicle properly and safely.
Heidegger continues to analyze the exact meaning of the sign:
This sign is ready-to-hand within-the-world in the whole equipment-context of vehicles
and traffic regulations. It is equipment for indicating, and as equipment, it is constituted
by reference or aSSignment. (p. 109)

The term "assignment" is the key to understanding Heidegger's

concept of sign. The sign has the character of "in-order-to," serviceability, indicating, and referring (see Being and Time, p. 109).
These signs/metaphors are the everyday things that serve humans

66

MICHAEL E. MORIARTY

continually; these are the elements that allow the Expressionist artist to
create an atmosphere of pathos and meaning within the arbitrarily
broken lines of Expressionism. These signs have little value in and of
themselves, yet they speak volumes implicity about the uses to which
Dasein puts them. Dasein creates meaning for the objects, ready-tohand as they are, and Dasein assumes responsibility for their use, for
their meaning, even for their manufacture.
Dasein discovers its individuality through thrownness, being-untodeath, and being-subject-to-impersonality. This characteristic of impersonality may be seen as an existentiale which stylistically parallels the
absence of humanizing detail in Expressionist paintings and woodblocks. The face is often distorted, unrecognizable, universal. The same
characteristic is true of Heidegger's description of Dasein which
discovers itself in the neuter gender. Thus it is genderless and genderfree.
Dasein is subject to relationships that are impersonal. Grammatically, the critic may recall the use in English of "one" or "they" or of the
impersonal "you." Syntactic parallels exist in French - "l'on," and in
the German "Man." Even the reflexive Spanish impersonal "se" is in
common use.
These semiotic events point to the non-reducible Expressionist
possibility that Dasein learns from language to perceive itself without
reference to its being or to its personal contours.
Heidegger expresses this perception in Part One, Division One,
Chapter Four, with these words:
The "they" has its own ways in which to be. That tendency of Being-with which we have
called "distantiality" is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself
as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the "they." (Heidegger's
emphasis, BT, p. 164)

Dasein must perceive itself as an event among other living events,

devoid of external meaning. If meaning exists at all, it must be
discovered within the person. But the semiotic event which responds
to Dasein and to its environment is a meaning-denying one. More
specifically, the semiotic event is one which imposes external, bourgeois
rules of behavior and standardized meaning .. . canned meanings, if
this critic may say so.
These canned meanings, standardized by the impersonal dimension
of the language itself, have the potential to dehumanize but they are

BEING AND TIME

67

also ready-to-hand. They are a dimension of givens in the language

which allow Dasein to communicate and affirm its own ability to make
sense to others at a superficial level which is at once authentic and
inauthentic because it simultaneously allows shallow communication
and prohibits deep communication.
Ultimately, this is not enough because it allows mere shallowness.
On the other hand, it is at this first level of shallowness that the objective/subjective dichotomy takes place. Here we find the limited validity
of the binary concept of deconstruction - the dichotomy - in as much
as it is ready-to-hand, another of Dasein's many tools.
Heidegger's position is Expressionist in mood and content and character. He does not work outside the aspirations and traditions of the
Expressionism that flourished in post-war Germany. He provides the
supports and the ideological basis - long ignored - which make the
remainder of Expressionism comprehensible and coherent. Thanks to
Martin Heidegger a full body of knowledge and perception of the
human condition rests in Expressionism; it is not a mere catch-all of
odd looking paintings and arbitrarily tormented writings.
The critic may focus more carefully on the imagery Heidegger uses.
The hammer, the motor car, the glasses, the telephone, the street, the
boat, the clock. Heidegger presents each of these as an example of that
which is ready-to-hand. But motor cars were not always ready-to-hand;
they were a recent innovation on the scene in the nineteen twenties,
when Heidegger was writing Being and Time; they were primitive and
difficult to operate but a clear sign of modernity and the will to continue into the future, developing the technology. Thus too glasses and
telephones. Hammers, above all, are the image of work and construction; the streets communicate with other streets; even the boat is an
instrument of transportation as well as recreation. All of this is thematic
and imagistic; all of this characterizes the imagery of Expressionism.
It is significant to note that each of these images or signs is contemporary. Heidegger has no stylistic need to resort to the passage so wellknown to all philosophers and critics that goes like this: "Socrates is a
man; but men are mortal; therefore Socrates is mortal."
The invocation of Socrates in that old chestnut is the invocation of
the ages and a vain assertion of the timelessness - perhaps of the
irrelevance - of much philosophy. It creates the illusion, the mimesis,
perhaps, that philosophy is not subject to time and space. But
Heidegger's Expressionism argues otherwise: where the allusion to

68

MICHAEL E. MORIARTY

Socrates invokes a timeless philosophical condition Heidegger's clearminded substitution of hammers and motor cars invokes the immediacy
of the Expressionist moment.
Socrates may disdain the fashions of the moment but Dasein knows
perfectly well whether it has chosen to wear a plaid skirt or decided on
a yellow paisley tie today; Dasein is of the moment. In Heidegger's very
words, "Dasein is its disclosedness" (p. 171).
It is not outside the realm of the imaginable to conceive of an
illustrated edition of Being and Time with the illustrations culled from
the work of Edvard Munch and from volumes of Expressionist
imagery. This critic even presumes to invoke Heideggerian phrasing to
state that such imagery is ready-to-hand. Such an illustrated manual of
Heidegger's thought allows us to reflect on the real, if difficult, lines of
connection between Heidegger's phenomenological-philosophical work
and the fine arts that surrounded him.
Valley City State University, North Dakota
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- - . "Expressionism." Phaidon Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art (London:
Phaidon,1973).
Grass, Giinther. The Tin Drum. Trans. Ralph Manheim (Westminster, MD: Random
House, 1971).
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson
(New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
Kant, ImmanueL The Critique of Judgement. Trans. James Creed Meredith. VoL 42 of
Great Books of the Western World. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago.
London, Toronto: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952).
Shaw, Harry. "Expressionism." Dictionary of Literary Terms (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1972).

PART TWO

PHENOMENOLOGY AND LITERATURE:

THE HUMAN CONDITION

A. THE PRIMEVAL SOURCES OF

LITERARY CREATION

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

FAULKNER/LEVINAS: THE VIVACITY OF DISASTER

In his early work on Husserl's theory of intuition, Emmanuel Levinas

had already noted that "the aesthetic and ethical categories are also
constitutive of being." 1 Levinas's subsequent writings would elaborate a
powerful aesthetic component within an ethics of alterity. This aesthetic, true to its etymological implications as aisthesis or sensation,
would not contribute to epistemology or to a philosophy of art, but
would narrate the drama of sensibility itself in its affective relation with
alterity and with the bristling insomnia of being that Levinas calls II y a.
In this area of research one should also refer to A. T. Tymieniecka's
aesthetics of the elements and of the "intergenerative linkage" of
everything alive? Such research, which doesn't conflate its interest in
what Walt Whitman called "the shuddering longing ache of contact"
with naive empiricism, also prefers to read the poetry of life as a moral
emergency of otherness, as a fatality of attachment and not "releasement" (Gelassenheit). This reading then carries out a phenomenology of
exposure and creative struggle that is less secure in upholding any a
priori thematics of world or rootedness than a philosophy which
uncovers or conjures being by circling back to its homeland. Primordial
or "archaic" sense, even if only conceivable from within the vistas of
high capitalism and science, shows itself less through some originary
truths of physis than in the illusions of desire and the outworks of an
imagination which is both homeless and earth-bound, and death-bound.
Levinas's analyses of chthonic enjoyment, but also of the horrible
rumbling of the neutral apeiron, as well as of the encounters with an
alterity that arouses and afflicts, will help interpret the predicament of
Faulkner's doomed lovers in The Wild Palms (1939). For in this
Depression-era novel Faulkner depicts conditions which, due to the
obscurity of the passionate relation between his protagonists and their
relation to the untraceably ancient rustling of being as embodied in the
wild plams, cannot merely be explained by recourse to historical data
or empiricism. A strange imperative, a desire that shuns security,
commands Faulkner's protagonists to tear themselves from the economy of adult life in New Orleans. Charlotte, in spite of her husband and
71
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 71-85.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

72

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

children, and Harry, a bachelor almost done with his medical training,
flee across America, making outposts for their desire in Chicago, in a
cabin on the shores of a northern lake, then in a mining camp in
snowbound Utah, always breaking away when they sense the slackening
of libidinal intensity which comes with the routines of everyday life. But
their exodus can never evade its own emplotment within the torpid
backdrop of the "there is," the groundless stirring of nature, the
seemingly aimless emergency of their own headlong attachment to each
other. The wild palm trees will rustle in the darkness throughout the
novel. They are present amidst the lovers' enjoyment of life; and they
are there after Charlotte has perished, when Harry hears them outside
his jail cell: ''The palm was there ... with no wind to cause it it had set
up a sudden frenzied clashing ..."3 Do the rustling palms, at times
beckoning outside the fecundity of nature, come to signal something
horrible and beyond disclosure? Yet may they not also embody a
mnemonic power that extend the very phantasma of Eros across the
silence of death?
Levinas's Existence and Existents will be especially useful in the
present investigation. There Levinas described the itinerary of the
existent as a shadowing forth, a temporal exception and hypostasis
within the dark anonymity of the II y a, from which it can never
completely divorce itself.4 It is the ambiguity of this inexorable relation,
both nourishing and destructive in Faulkner's story, that we hope to
explicate, as well as the power of desire to effect a radical temporalization in existence.

The element I inhabit is at the frontier of a night.

(Levinas)

Readers familiar with Faulkner's work will concur that The Wild
Palms is one of his most concise and yet most extravagant books. The
singularity of its focus, as it follows the obsessive exodus of the lovers
until their dissolution (Charlotte's death and Harry's incarceration),
upholds Bataille's definition of eroticism as the "assenting to life up to
the point of death." 5 What seems to escape the narrative, yet only
comes around in a much less direct manner than in so many other
Faulkner novels, is the complex biographical historicity of the protago-

FA ULKNER/LE YIN AS

73

nists, the spectre of their heritage, its manifold voices, the rancor and
discontinuity of heritage percolating into the present and being taken
up there. Indeed, in the forfeiture of Charlotte's pregnancy, genetic
continuation itself is boycotted. Later it will be shown how the strength
of life gasps ahead of its murderous impulses in the vertigo of desire
only to impair itself with the impetus of its own gifts, the vision of its
own sovereignty, which can never be appropriated as property.
But first one must speak of a disturbance manifold amidst the "discursive," a sort of current of disturbance which sticks like a fixative to
the images of the novel, orienting them in a cluster of almost purely
nocturnal resonances. The opening scene is midnight, the opening line:
"The knocking sounded again, at once discreet and peremptory ...."6
Such an awakening appeal, an appeal that awakens and disturbs, here
signals a disaster, yet what is at stake in such an appeal constitutes
whatever hope lives in Faulkner's story.
The appeal, that of extreme suffering, comes at the end of the lover's
adventure. They have arrived at "sealevel" on the Mississippi coast.
Charlotte languishes in a little cabin on the beach; she is bleeding to
death from the botched abortion Harry performed on her at her
insistence. She did not want a baby because of what it would have done
to their love; the baby would have made them crave security.
She lay on her back, her eyes closed, the nightgown (that garment which she had never
owned, never worn before) twisted about her just under the arms, the body not
sprawled, not abandoned, but on the contrary even a little tense. The whisper of the
black wind filled the room but coming from nothing, so that presently it began to seem
that the sound was rather the murmur of the lamp itself sitting on an upended packing
case beside the bed, the rustle and murmur of faint dingy light itself on her flesh ....7

Harry goes to seek assistance at the landlord's house nearby. The

landlord, who is also a doctor, and who has been upset with the
mystery, the spent intensity of his new tenants since they arrived four
days ago, finally begins to respond to the knocking by descending his
stairs with a flashlight:
The knocking came again now, as if the knocker had become aware that he had
stopped through some alteration of the torch's beam seen beneath the door itself and
now began to knock again with that diffident insistence of a stranger seeking aid late at
night, and the doctor moved again, not in response to the renewed knocking, who had
had no presentiment, but as though the renewal of the knocking has merely coincided
with the recurrent old stale impasse of the four days' bafflement and groping, capitulant

74

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

and recapitulant; as though instinct perhaps moved him again, the body capable of
motion, not the intellect, believing that physical advancement might bring him nearer
the veil at the instant when it would part and reveal in inviolable isolation that truth
which he almost touched. So it was without premonition that he opened the door and
peered out, bringing the torch's beam on the knocker. It was the man called Harry. He
stood there in the darkness, in the strong steady seawind filled with the dry clashing of
invisible palm fronds ....8

Here is the commotion of an awakening appeal as the house

resounds with "peremptory" blows; around Harry there is the disturbing incessance of the palm fronds, which know no sleep. Everyone has
been awakened before by this beating atmosphere, this groundless
signal that "something is happening." 9 The knocking is the ''it won't go
away." The manner in which the doctor is disposed towards this
nocturnal interruption is not the same as the Heideggerian anxiety
before the nothingness of death.l0
There are the incessant sighs of vegetation. There is the singular
exigency of a neighbor at the door. What is the fate of such a nocturnal
visitation? Take heed that the knocking doesn't merely dissipate in
empty space; it falls in with old personal memories of the doctor, with
his wife's suspicions of the tenant's criminality. Harry is not a specific
personage to the doctor, but is an emissary of an obscure and
catastrophic lifestyle. The atmosphere to which the doctor and his wife
awaken is one of taboo: "out there" they smell the union of carnality
and death. And something has never gone to sleep. The doctor senses
this. His wife and he have slept, but their sleep has never abolished the
night . . . nor the itineraries that could have been. Outside, even the
could have been has been, is. What the doctor and his wife have turned
away from in the composition of their very lives, has never gone away.
To fathom it, the doctor begins to use his body .... (That withdrawn
antenna, the only thing that can read these new tenants.) At the door is
the life they might have lived, now already a spent intensity, an aura of
carnal expenditure leaking from the new tenants.
Is what knocks in the night the horrible cycle of the eternal return?
Here for the doctor, where everything is now the same, everything was
possible. In the visitation of the stranger, in his appeal, everything is still
possible, or becomes possible again. But the doctor is mired in the
boredom of an old moral inscape. And his house, steeped in the neuter
indifference of the II y a, not only resists alterity, but attempts to
extinguish its threatening power. The truth the doctor seeks as he

FA ULKNER/LE YIN AS

75

descends the stairs to answer the door: it will not be the shadowing
forth, out of the pams, of a different kind of life; it will only be the truth
made manifest by the taboo, by a totalizing morality. Although the
doctor goes to the assistance of Charlotte, he ends up calling the police.
Charlotte will die. Harry will be arrested. Yet through all this commotion the doctor and his wife do not appear culpable. One can almost
speak of a faint decompression in the return of all things for such
creatures, who see before them an apparently richer variant of their
own damnation. And their response to the plight of Harry and
Charlotte does not seem to be without understanding. The doctor and
his wife do answer the knocking; they do bring gumbo to nourish the
lovers.
A far different encounter, a far different fate of the "appeal" is to be
observed within the erotic flight of Charlotte and Harry. There we have,
not the hegemony of rancor against time's "it was," nor an incorporation by the anonymous massivity of the Il y a, but an awakening to the
other person, a summons which provokes a breach, a temporary fissure
in the fatality of encirclement we have, after Levinas, been calling the Il
ya.
II

Que) ennui, I'heure du "cher corps" et "cher coeur."

(Rimbaud)

Amidst the sighs of the surface of the earth, of the strange palms,
and against the background of a desultory Southern morality, the
sensations of Faulkner's lovers recognize no decorum; their sensations
will rip the nets of the economies that catch them and in which they
labor. "Sensation breaks up every system," Levinas said. I I Then what is
the disposition of a "high culture" - that of the epoch in which
Charlotte and Harry first meet - in which sensation does not break up
the diurnal harmony of beings? This requires more than an analysis of
"repression." The exigencies of Faulkner's story call for a closer look
at the stark atmosphere and weariness endemic to the thrift economy
we have come to associate with the years following the so-called Great
Depression. The dustbowl years, the reduction in employment opportunities, the smoothing out of cultural territories by nomadic citizens
whose own regions and economic strata could no longer support them

76

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

- such developments would engender proletarian works such as Jack

Conroy's The Disinherited, published in 1933, and of course The
Grapes of Wrath. Here were narratives of a sort of massive human selfsufficiency somehow also utterly vulnerable. (It is interesting to note
that Steinbeck's novel and The Wild Palms both appeared in 1939.)
For its compression of story line and carnal fatality, James Cain's The
Postman Always Rings Twice, published in 1934, remains for us the
most interesting precursor of Faulkner's novel,12 This was the work that
Camus said inspired his novel The Stranger. Of course Cain's novel
offers a certain "hard boiled" minimalism of style which is very unlike
Faulkner's extravagance of rhythm and image. But these novels share a
severity of focus. In both stories "sensation" breaks with the totality.
The main characters summon each other away from labor, from security, from a ubiquitous boredom. This summons comes in the form of
an obsessive - and as we said, fatal - desire for the other person, who
is a stranger, a newcomer. In both novels the intensity of the desire
between the protagonists is dramatically amplified by the background
of scarcity traced out by the Depression era; their passion arises in
relief against the quietude of the anonymous life of exigent production
and conservation.
To say that Faulkner's characters are tom away from their labor is
not to say that labor is scorned. After Charlotte's death, Harry
remembers her "body, the broad thighs and the hands that like bitching
and making things."13 In other words, her sensuality crossed the
borders between work and play. In Faulkner's story work can give
pleasure, but passion uproots ... . What are these characters but
certain critical instants come alive, moments when, enmeshed in the
routines of life and labor, alterity is height, held up in the glance of
another person before it dissolves into the impersonal materiality and
routines of everyday life. This experience of alterity is not an event of
liberation. In it one is bound, Levinas would say, by an obsession with
what one has not willed, with another person who has befallen one or
summoned one.
It is not to freedom that Harry toasts before departing with Charlotte
to a cabin north of Chicago, leaving behind their respective means of
employment and security: rather, he toasts to love. Such a love has no
real place or causality associated with it. Its essential characteristic is
mobility. Such a love functions as a phantasm, a mirage which beckons

FAULKNER/LEVINAS

77

the lovers to uphold a responsibility which precedes freedom. Love is a

mirage placed before the will to keep it from reifying. "I had turned into
a husband," Harry says during a conversation before his departure from
Chicago. He goes on to say that he and Charlotte had become "solvent,
knew for certain where tomorrow's food was coming from (the damned
money, too much of it; at night we would lie awake and plan how to get
it spent ..."24 But by maintaining a certain rigor of attention (which
becomes a sort of insomnia that on the one hand redefines Heidegger's
Entschlossenheit, and on the other must be carefully distinguished from
it) within their intimacy they see each other becoming domestic and
neuter again; they see comfort and respectibility recalibrating their very
slight gestures and sighs and sleeping habits. This sight provokes a
recommencement of their flight. What larger vision is there for lovers
than that opened by gestures and sighs and sleeping habits? This
question is not meant to trivialize Faulkner's characters. A human being
in love can first catch sight of the so-called reckoning of the fourfold
through the resignation in their lover's posture.
Heidegger characterized the Grundstimmung, the basic disposition
of our epoch, as boredom. Such boredom signifies the lack of any
essential distress, a denial of a certain ontological distress about inertia
and finitude. In his analysis of boredom, Heidegger looks at the
conversation that takes place at a party. "How often it happens that we
are not 'there' in a conversation in a party; how often we notice that we
have been absent, without being asleep." 15
Faulkner's Charlotte and Harry meet for the first time at a party in
New Orleans. It is here that the atmosphere is set for the inauguration
of the kinds of extreme behavior depicted in The Postman Always
Rings Twice and throughout The Wild Palms. To situate such behavior
over against the problem of boredom is to invite a comparison of this
phenomenon with what has been described here as the problem of the
Ilya.
The party is already in full swing when Harry, taking a break from
the grind of his medical internship, is ushered in. Harry is immediately
left to himself:
His host did not even tum his head, though a woman brought him a drink presently. It
was his hostess, though no one had told him that; she stood and talked to him for a
moment, or at him because he was not listening, he was looking at the pictures on the

78

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

wall; presently he stood alone, still holding his glass, before the wall itself, He was still
standing there when someone behind him said, "Here's Rat and Charley"; he was still
standing there when Charlotte spoke at his shoulder: "What do you think about it,
mister?" 16

As in Heidegger's depiction of boredom, Harry is "absent" while at

the party. That is, until Charlotte interrupts him as he stares at the wall.
When he looks into her eyes, they appear ''intent beyond mere boldness, speculative beyond any staring." 17 The next thing he knows, he
seems "to be drowning, volition and will," in those eyes. Without having
had any intention of doing so, he suddenly confesses to Charlotte that it
is his birthday.
It is clear that Harry submits himself to this stranger, Charlotte.
(There will never be equity in their relationship; but this is not to say
that there is domination in it.) The rapport which ensues between them
encumbers or afflicts Harry with an imperative, ''with a destiny beyond
any ordered direction." 18 What becomes possible through their meeting
is a discursivity. Against the boredom that encompasses him, Harry is
now deictic; the seemingly fixed coordinates of a birthday become a
scene of departure. It is "here" that the couple's desire first effects a
hypostasis by which they become existents within existence, awakening
as a relief against the II y a. 19 A recent commentator on Heidegger's
theory of boredom has said that an ''undeterminedness and indefiniteness" characterizes the person who is bored. For this person time
stands still; more specifically, one lingers in the ''while''; the future has
shut down. He goes on to say:
Bored deeply, we experience a steady loosening of the grip of personality and of
attachment to beings in our surrounding. We become indifferent to ourselves, and
beings seem indifferent to us .... This indifference is so thorough and encompassing
that everything including the "I" and the emptiness itself, become indifferent to us. That
the "I" sinks into indifference can be gleaned from the wisdom of language which does
not let us say ''we are bored" but "one is bored." Moreover, because of the total
character of this indifference, beings in the whole fail us. The impact of the indifference
is such that our possibilities lie fallow. 20

While the comparison shouldn't be pushed too far, it seems that this
form of boredom threatens the ipseity, indeed sovereignty of the
existent in the same way that Levinas' II y a does. As Levinas says,
There is is an impersonal form, like it rains, or it is warm. Its anonymity is essential.
The mind does not find itself faced with an apprehended exterior. The exterior - if one

FA ULKNER/LE VIN AS

79

insists on this term - remains uncorrelated with an interior. It is no longer given. It is

no longer a world. What we call the I is itself submerged by the night, invaded,
depersonalized, stifled by it. The disappearance of all things and of the I leaves what
cannot disappear, the sheer fact of being in which one participates, whether one wants
to or not, without having taken the initiative, anonymously?!

Whether we speak of boredom or the II y a, for Faulkner and

Levinas what can interrupt the leveling power of these conditions is
the entry of the Other. The knocking of the stranger late at night. The
awakening appeal. Charlotte and Harry effect a breach for each other
within existence, an awakening to a vigilance before the Other. Boredom and gross materiality recede from this event. Their encounter,
unlike that of the doctor with Harry, is not determined by dread or
resentiment. Although their departure from their past lives seems
impossible for lack of money, when Harry finds the lost wallet full of
cash it is not this gift but desire that has already ripped a seam in the
grey material of his urban existence, a desire provoking him to keep
money he would normally return. The money would have meant very
little to either of them before they met each other. Now they consume it
between them in their flight, giving each other the most extravagant gift
and the gravest danger: time itself. What is this secret morality that
occurs in the form of theft? A birthday and a theft rolled into one
event! The future is mobilized from out of its stillness in the II y a. Such
a temporalization effected by alterity is not that of Gemeinigkeit, the
each-his-ownness, the property gained by Dasein through its separation
from the crowd; rather, it is something like its condition of possibility
within an overdetermined framework, within a charade of impulsive
forces which hardly ever risks exposing itself to a forsaken plot which
violates the ethos of capitalism.
The crossing which occurs for Faulkner's lovers is not primarily that
of communication or "relationship". These are not correct terms for
what happens when two beings return to each other the death which
had been appropriated from them in everyday life. Be this as it may, the
essential movement for Harry and Charlotte is to move towards each
other, not away from each other; such an alien encounter provokes
separation, unmoors the protagonists from the "while" (the uneigentlich
temporality) of cultural boredom, which then makes possible a plot
concerned with dying as an uneconomical gift of devotion and fury. As
one has been given over to others, so one is given back to one's own
finitude, through otherness. 22 One's mortality is one's alterity, one's

80

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

singularizing end, the opacity one is always turned towards without

being able to convert it into a property through Verstiindnis (understanding) or a procedural intersubjectivity.
One cannot be too vigorous in emphasizing the fatality that arises
here. By giving themselves time, Faulkner's protagonists make themselves vulnerable. But their sovereign desire will invoke a peculiar
guardianship of each other in the face of death as they head outward.
This will not be a guardianship of "life": it will be a guardianship of
erotic intensity itself, i.e., of expenditure. In other words, they must
keep themselves vulnerable; their desire commands them to protect
themselves from becoming invulnerable. Their eroticism feeds on their
mortality. Had they stayed in New Orleans, or had they followed the
program of the landlord/doctor and his wife, no doubt the fate that
finally befalls them would not have occured. Charlotte's substance
would perhaps have been safer in the "while" of time.
III

But nothing will be precious, nothing will be conserved after the break
with necessity that initiates their sovereignty.23 Yet can we really speak
of the "sovereignty" of an asymmetrical couple, lovers who remain
strangely impermeable to each other, and who obligate each other not
to allow each other to become obligated? On their "dark sides" no light
is cast. Charlotte remains oblique in her unnegotiable fury of momentum and quasi-masculinity, Harry in his passivity, his inwardness and
disponibility. One wonders if these "selves" in their erotic flight and in
their adversity, become not more fused, but further separated and
intensified, each becoming most painfully sovereign? Can one speak of
a consolidation or collaboration that organizes itself exilic ally? In their
obliquity to each other, as two infinities they are sovereign; yet this very
obliquity, this alterity is what draws them together, obsesses them,
holds them out to the future. This is what they guard. In such a relation
they are vigilant but not free.
Thus we must speak of their sovereignty as a form of suicide pact; an
agreement, a watchmanship assuring expenditure, and assuring them
they will not be assimilated by the system. In saying this one must be
careful not to imply that Charlotte and Harry have altogether escaped
from the capitalist simulacrum, which is impossible. What they have

FAULKNER/LEVINAS

81

given to each other in their creative struggle (a more accurate term,

finally, than escape) is the power to conjure and live by their own
phantasma.
Earlier we spoke of a nocturnal knocking, an awakening appeal, as
that which signals disaster, yet which also constitutes whatever hope
lives in Faulkner's story. When Charlotte "knocks" upon finding Harry
alone at the party, it is certainly not clear to him that his air of
abandonment is a cipher of his mortality, its solitude - as is her appeal.
The appeal - coming from both directions - will never be completely
spelled out. Levinas has said the other person "commands me not to
remain indifferent to this death, to not let the Other die alone, that is, to
answer for the life of the other person, at the risk of becoming an
accomplice in that person's death." 24
All of this can in no way clarify or justify the logic of Charlotte's
decision to endanger herself by insisting on an ad hoc abortion, an
operation that she thinks must be done to sustain the sovereignty of her
relation with Harry. Harry follows through as an accomplice in the
preservation of their sovereignty. (He fails her; but this is not a betrayal.
And although Charlotte seems to hate him for botching the job, what
she really hates is the trauma of life outside the system. It is the brutal
pain of existence itself which helps her decide not to bring a baby into
existence.) And when Charlotte dies, he is identified as an accomplice
to her death. Although Charlotte had expected him, in a following
through of their relationship, to destroy himself after she has gone, and
although she provides suicide pills for him, Harry decides to keep
living. He choses, in a now famous utterance, to have grief rather than
nothing, a memory of Charlotte rather than nothing. Does this decision
to live on his part betray Charlotte's death? On the contrary, it
precedes it; it upholds the desire which was soaked with mortality
before any literal death. The persistence of the palms, the "threshing of
the invisible palms, the wild dry sound of them," outside his cell,
extends and exceeds Charlotte's death as a certain continuity, one with
no correlate in the discourse of capitalism.
When Charlotte - bleeding away - and Harry first return to "sea
level," the breeze, the anonymous Ii y a is more than palpable. "He
could feel it on the door when he touched the knob, then, close, he
could hear it too, a sibilance, a whisper. It was risable, it was almost a
chuckling, leaning its weight on the door ...." 125 But this laughter is

82

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

not about Charlotte's death; it is about the impossibility of her death. It

mocks any failure of imagination which could read death merely as a
depletion of funds.
IV

The problem of the irreducibility of the Il y a, of the heaving elements

and thrashing palms, bears in an important way on the "conclusion" of
Faulkner's novel. The ambiguity of transcendence as sovereignty and
death amidst the II y a. But this problem of the "elemental" should not
provoke the reader to hastily interpret it as the burial ground of the
"death drive." It is true that Charlotte and Harry are brought to "sea
level" after their erotic flight across America. But is this proof that their
story is only a deterministic drama of generation and collapse? Rather,
what fills the narrative is an incessant oncoming that inverses (or even
shatters) the inner relation between responsibility and property - and
therefore a certain fixed value of Gemeinigkeit. There is within the
oncoming an oscillation of sovereignty and vulnerability by which the
very effort of desire shows itself as a diligence of dispossession. To
speak of this "oncoming" does not diminish or excuse the disaster of
the cultural conditions which have made Charlotte and Harry's fate a
paradise. The oncoming, not unrelated to the bristling II y a, and less a
primal "given" than an intentional exposure conjured by a strange
mixture of capitalism and desire, serves as the breeding ground of the
disaster and as its amphitheater, its echo chamber. Are Charlotte and
Harry, driven by the phantasma of love, deprived of all worldhood? Or
is the world precisely the palpable shadow that increasingly gathers
them together? Where in the discourse of "world" does one situate such
beings; where does one situate the wild palms? Until Charlotte's death,
Harry and her are marked most of all by their mobility, their ability to
keep pivoting. Yet the reader poignantly remembers where this couple
rested and made love and worked: the apartment in Chicago, the cabin
on a sun-warmed lake, the mining camp. Because their Entwurf
(existential project) is desire, which constantly dissolves its outlines as a
project in its transience of discharge, this couple is only excluded from
a certain worldly visibility of accumulation or progress in the eyes of
bourgeois onlookers. The world, let it suffice for us to say, is exposure
for Faulkner's protagonists in the complicity between the elements and
the erotic, death-bound imagination, in das Offene.

FAULKNER/LEVINAS

83

A striking notion announced itself earlier: that everything returns in

the II y a. Such a notion begs further explication regarding a certain
problem of difference and obsessive behavior in relation to temporality.
The return can be a most horrible and crushing possibility. Yet it is not
exactly such for the doctor who descends the stairs in the beginning of
Faulkner's novel; and one can even speak of an affirmation in the case
of Harry Wilbourne within his jail cell, continuing to listen as he does
to the "murmur, dry and steady,"26 of the wild palms, "... a bright
silver summer murmur among the heavy decorous trees ... ." 27
Sensibility and sensuality thrive in relation with the mnemonics of the
outdoors, the life of memory never merely an interiorization. But here
it would be difficult to distinguish memory from phantasy, or from
sentimentality. Across Harry's jailed hours something resonates within
the future of the breach in which the awakening of a desire was
inaugurated. The palms, otherness to an incorrigible inertia of culture,
wave before the world its phantasmal origins and energies. One may
even speak here of an argument of "sentiment" which Faulkner knew
before such abstract notions as responsibility, freedom, and determinism. This argument insists, at the close of Faulkner's novel, that the
palms have never been simply allied with threatening night, the house
of dust, the rumble of being. The palms are the very shimmer of
disaster, its glistening gestures inviting and recalling the disaster of
desire. Such gestures do not conceal their disruptive power as if to
isolate a value, but instead twist the very economy of concealment into
one associated with insomnia. Within such an insomnia one does not
read signs or discern palm trees across a clean, well-lighted world;
rather one holds fast to the imperatives of a phantasmal compact
issuing from love's aesthetics, from feelings of intense longing and
pleasure which are, in a certain sense, absolutely useless.

Pennsylvania State University

NOTES
I Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husser/'s Phenomenology, trans.
Andre Orianne (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p.158.
2 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "The Aesthetics of Nature and the Human Condition,"
Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: The Sea, ed. A-T. Tymieniecka
(Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985), p. 3. Also see Tymieniecka's Logos and Life:

84

CHRISTOPHER S. SCHREINER

Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988),
especially Panel Two on "The Origin of Sense," which discusses the contribution of
lean Wahl.
3 William Faulkner, The Wild Palms (New York: Vintage Books, 1939), p. 307. The
present analysis will be confined to the narrative concerning Charlotte and Harry. The
tale entitled "Old Man" published alongside "The Wild Palms" will be treated in
another essay to appear at a later date.
4 See Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), pp. 52-92.
5 Georges Bataille, Death and Sensuality (Salem, N. H.: Ayer Company, 1984), p. 11.
6 The Wild Palms, p. 3.
7 Ibid., p. 284.
H Ibid., p. 13.
9 Levinas, Existence and Existents, p. 57.
10 See Existence and Existents, p. 63.
II Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans, Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 59.
12 See James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (New York: Vintage Books,
1978; first published by Knopf, 1934).
13 The Wild Palms, p. 324.
14 Ibid., p. 133.
15 Parvis Emad, "Boredom as Limit and Disposition," Heidegger Studies, Vol. 1, 1987,
p. 65. We are indebted to Professor Emad for his article providing insights into one of
the key concepts developed in Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe Band 29/30, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit, ed. F.-W von Herrmann, 1983.
16 The Wild Palms, p. 38.
17 Ibid., p. 39.
18 Alphonso Lingis, Libido: The French Existential Theories (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1985), p. 105.
19 See Levinas, Existence and Existents, p. 71.
20 Emad, "Boredom as Limit and Disposition," pp. 73-74. It is surprising that in his
analysis of boredom, of its leveling power, Heidegger anticipates the very criticism of
his own es gibt that Levinas would provide in Existence and Existents. The difference is
that bored being-given-over for Heidegger is a disposition, not the effect of fundamental ontology itself as Levinas would argue.
21 Levinas, Existence and Existents, p. 58.
22 Our efforts here are only meant to reawaken the narrative of the "given" and giving
within the problematic of temporalization initiated by Heidegger. Obviously Faulkner's
text has pressed us to include the variable of desire (in its modern distress) which
would animate a giving that breaks with the static horror of pure givenness. See Martin
Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York:
Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 114-117.
23 We are reminded of Bataille's definition of sovereignty - "an effort aimed at freeing
human existence from the bonds of necessity" - as Faulkner's protagonists abolish the
conventional necessities and goals of life and operate only at a loss. See Death and
Sensuality, p. 174. In their erotics of flight and disaster, Charlotte and Harry use up

FAULKNER/LEVINAS

85

their money and food, expose themselves to the raw elements, Charlotte being mortally
wounded along the way. All this against the backdrop of the Depression decade, and
against a certain economics of production and storage. Here Bataille almost speaks for
Faulkner's protagonists, and especially Charlotte, whose ferocious libido fuels so much
of the adventure: "Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose,
just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the
uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagance. We want to feel as remote from the
world where thrift is the rule as we can." (Death and Sensuality, p. 170.)
24 Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. Richard Cohen (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 109.
25 The Wild Palms, p. 281.
26 Ibid., p. 308.
27 Ibid.,p.315.

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX: JEALOUSY AND THE

EPISTEMOPHILIC CRISIS

qui non zeiat, non amat

For the Greeks, philosophy began with "wondering." "It is owing to

their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize." writes Aristotle at the beginning of the Metaphysics.! "This
sense of wonder," writes Plato in the Theaetetus, "is the mark of the
philosopher"2 To wonder means to marvel at, to admire, to esteem, to
experience awe, surprise, astonishment, to have doubts and curiosity
about. The verb in Greek is thamauzo, which is equivalent to the Latin
mirari - from which we get "miracle" - and generates "thaumaturgy,"
which means the working of magic and miracles. Wonder stands at the
very cross-road where mind and non-mind, self and non-self meet. And
yet, it is precisely what makes such terms as non-self and non-mind
entirely superfluous; for wonder is not just a lure or an invitation to
know, but, more importantly, it itself is the known-and-seen; it itself is
ultimate access unto itself, unto that which astonishes.
There should be no doubt, then, that the word "wonder" and its
synonyms cannot but represent all that is most wholesome in the love
of truth and in the desire to discover truths about things. Nothing but
good can come from a word whose synonyms are ''wonderful,'' "admirable," "marvellous," "miraculous." One might as well complete the
series by adding the absent and unspoken adjective: "divine." From
wonder comes good asking, whence good knowledge comes.
Then there is the bad asking. At first bad asking is not significantly
different from good asking. It too springs from a sense of wondering, of
mystery. It too wants to know. Yet here, precisely, is where the two part
company. To the good, the desire to inquire is but one of the many
ways in which man experiences wonder. To the bad, on the other hand,
the desire to inquire takes precedence over and above all the other
possible ways in which the wondering mind experiences wonder.
Clearly, the good are not troubled by the acquisition of knowledge or
by the "behavior" of truth. The bad, however, are troubled at the very

87
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 87-102.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

88

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

inception of wondering. They perceive wondering as a lure towards

something that might be withheld from them, that teases them for no
perceptible reason - a reason, one might add, that in and of itself is
already removed from their grasp as is the object of wondering itself.
Whereas the first find immediate access to knowledge, the second
suspect resistance everywhere. Truth is shifty with mind; mind, in turn,
is shifty with truth.
The obvious metaphor is staring at us: it is the metaphor of Cain and
Abel, of candor and dissimulation, of mirth and dark intent. For the
first, beauty is beautiful. For the others, it is "beautiful" because it won't
answer questions which the dazzled mind is not even able to formulate.
Whereas the first is serene when it wonders, because it accedes unto
things by wondering, the second is irked by wondering. Wondering is a
lack, an absence; wondering is a form of questioning, of yearning. In
fact, questioning automatically happens when wondering occurs; the
stimulus ''wonder'' and the response "asking" are indissolubly braided.
Wondering does not allow the mind to wonder. The mind asks, doubting. Doubting reminds such a mind of its own inadequacies and
inefficiencies, of its dislodgement and alienation from the cosmos, from
others, from rest. Doubting warns it of an intention to deceive, both in
the world as well as in its own devices. Doubting is at once an
exultation of the freedom to deny, to dismiss and to see for oneself, as
it is a perpetual and implacable reappraisal of the very processes that
prompt such denials and dismissals. Doubting doubts the world. Doubting doubts itself. This is why it keeps doubting. And it keeps doubting
precisely because it does not wish to doubt.
This is the cruelest contradiction: that the desire not to doubt desires
to doubt. Othello doubts because he knows he does not want to doubt;
yet he wants and, indeed, has to doubt because nearly everyone and
everything invite him not to doubt. Doubting is the most hostile tribute
that mind confers upon the world. And upon itself. In trying not to be
deceived by the things of the world, by error - by Satan - the mind
that doubts takes itself to task and asks whether it itself is not already
deceived by error in its endeavor to cleanse itself of error.
Since wonder reminds the intellect that it is not part of the world,
that it lies outside the circuit of everlasting truth, mind is caught in a
double game. It asks so as to have an answer. An answer is something
to be possessed, wrenched out of the immaterial flux of the cosmos; an
answer allows the questioning mind to be done with the world, to

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

89

dismiss the challenging world. On the other hand, however, since it

cannot have the answers it seeks, since the world will not allow it to
dismiss it so easily, it is constantly thrown back upon itself, as
Heraclitus would have said, palintropically. As it asks questions of the
world, it thinks about the questioning process as well as about the
unwillingness of the world to participate in that process.

***
The differences between both manners of experiencing wonder are, at
this point, radical enough. One perceives wonder as revelation, the
other as mystery. For one, mystery is no more than an insignificant
moment towards revelation; to the other, mystery is precisely what
revelation reveals. For the first, things are open and shine forth; for the
second, things recoil, resist; at best, they intend (intendere: to stretch
towards), mean (meinen, to have-in-mind) and want to say (vouloir
dire).
Heraclitus recognized the essential distance between mind and world
when he said that Nature liked to hide itself.3 Not only does mystery
resist and mean to "throw off" inquiry, but it actually enjoys being
mysterious. It is in the nature of nature to enjoy concealing its nature,
says the baffled observer, clearly enjoying formulating such a statement.
this assumption allows two things to happen: (1) it gives the thinker the
impression of having discovered something about nature which nature
was seemingly unwilling to reveal; (2) it allows mystery to deny
automatically anything one discovers or says about it. This deniability,
in fact, is a margin that allows the mysterious object of inquiry to retain
its authenticity and not be altered by the investigative process - i.e. to
retain its resistance to inquiry as well as its desire to deceive all inquiry.
In short, it allows the object of scrutiny to say of itself "I do not wish to
speak about myself" once the inquirer has forced it to speak about
itself. It also means, however, that an investigation which presupposes
similar deniabilities must ultimately repudiate its findings in order to
maintain the authenticity of the things being investigated - in order,
that is, for it to pretend that it knows or at least understands that which
it investigates.
This is Oedipus' tragedy: his crime is his insatiable hunger to
investigate. As we shall see in a moment, there is no such thing as proof
of innocence. The desire for proof is itself already proof of the very

90

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

thing one wishes to test - i.e. it is proof of the thing one wishes not to
prove. This is why the jealous lover hungers after facts but must
simultaneously reject them. His thinking - as well as the text of his
discourse - is characterized by this double operation.
This recursive operation is mirrored in yet another, namely in the
stealth of the mind stealthily investigating the stealth of others. The very
suspicion with which such a mind scrutinizes the world is thrown back
to it, whence it itself becomes as morally suspect as the world. This is
also why it too is as treacherous as the unsuspecting "sweet cheats" who
blithely stumble into its traps. The mind that suspects is the victim of
the very suspicion it casts upon the world. It suspects; therefore - by
an inverting and reflecting mechanism implicit in the very operations of
suspicion (or speculation, from Latin speculum, meaning mirror) it
itself becomes suspect, The English adjective "suspicious" illustrates
this recidivation, this relapse. A person is suspicious not only when he
does suspicious things but also when he is constantly suspecting others
of doing suspicious things. A jealous lover disbelieves everything he
sees; he looks out for nether, unsuspected truths. More importantly, the
narrator of such a novel is himself implicated in the act, himself creates
a universe where people not only cheat and lead double lives, but
where people monitor each other' cheating, either to unmask their lies
or to conceal theirs more. He is responsible for the production of
ambiguities in his novel. He is the one who creates an unknowable
world. The recit both enhances and thwarts jealously, so that, in the
end, cheater and cheated are not really opposite forces locked in an
endless struggle but correlates of each other striving in collusion
towards some unfathomable goal.

** *
It is at this precise juncture that the tragedy of the jealous lover takes
place. For here the mirroring just mentioned above invests not only the
ways in which the jealous lover perceives and tries to understand his
tragedy but it equally affects his attempts to resolve it once he engages
in the agon against his rival and his mistress. Nowhere is this more
evident than in Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan. Here the entire
narrative edifice abuts on the concepts of doubt and doubles - on
mirroring itself! Zweifeln is the etymological cognate of both. In a paper of this size, it is impossible to give an idea of the extent to which

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

91

things engender their double or the extent to which people are always
of two minds, always divided, always wavering and torn between two
options, two loyalties, always asked to perform contradictory deeds, always experiencing double sorrow and double pain, always veering between love and death. Tristan is perpetually wounded and yet perpetually rescued; the lovers are perpetually separated and perpetually reunited. Mark is perpetually jealous, perpetually laying traps on the
lovers, and hence perpetually the villain; and yet he is perpetually
forgiving as he perpetually dismisses each fragment of incontrovertible
proof that will later forever haunt him.
It is not surprising that King Mark is called the waverer. He is doubt
personified. He is knowledge trying not to know and yet urged to know.
He is thinking trying not to think, but condemned to repeat his thought.
He suspected both alternatives, yet both eluded him. He neither wished the two of them
guilty, nor wished them free of guilt. This was a cause of lively grief to that waverer4

Not only is the jealous lover in search of very specific information,

which will allow him to know once and for all how matters stand
between him and what is taken away from him, between him and the
things he cannot have, between him and his wife-mistress, between him
and his rival but, all the while hungering after this definitive evidence
which would put his mind to rest once and for all, he is also the victim
of a literary work which itself, like his unfaithful mistress, seems to
enjoy torturing him. Essentially, the work in question "sets him up."
Of course, the unfaithful mistress does not enjoy torturing him at all.
We are back to Heraclitus. This is the lover's last illusion - the illusion
that there persists a tie between them, no matter how perverse that tie
has become. In this view, he is an integral part of her enjoyment; he is
part of every sentence she thinks and utters, be it even as an object of
hatred and derision. In her eyes, however, he does not exist. She does
not want to give an account of herself, because that reckoning - the
logon didonai - which is so vital to him, which promises to put his
eternal feuding to rest, contradicts her behavior. Where there is no
contact, no tie, nothing, there can be no language, no reckoning. He, on
the other hand, believes she withholds the reckoning, not as a way of
severing ties, but as a way of perpetuating them, of teasing them, maybe
even of testing them, the way the Gods test mortals by appearing in
rags!
Meanwhile, she betrays as frequently and as compulsively as he

92

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

frequently and compulsively spies, speculates, and doubts everything

she says. The instances in literature are legion. Suffice to name three
modern ones: Odette in A fa recherche du temps perdu, Angiolina in
Svevo's Senilitd and Mildred in Of Human Bondage. They are all
"sweet cheats." They lie, are caught lying, lie again and so on. Their
lovers, in turn, go through a similar spiral: they fall from grace, rise and
then fall again, sometimes in the space of the same night - or of the
same sentence.
Spiral, of course, is another metaphor for the idea of repetition
which, in novels about jealousy, is a standard operation. The mistress
repeats each act of treason with the compulsive abandon which afflicts
her lover when he, in turn, spies on her. She cheats, he spies; she lies,
he believes; he questions, she denies, Later, with the willed credulity of
a man about to absolve a recidivist whom he knows just lied to obtain
absolution, he will persuade himself that she won't lie and that he won't
doubt, knowing full well that he will be wrong, though he knows he will
resolve the same things again on the morrow. A novel about jealousy is
not only a novel about repetition, but also about an ever-renewed
investigation in which the principal character is not at all persuaded he
wants to discover what he suspects and where, therefore, the investigation is constantly distracted by its investigative tools.
The twists and turns are infinite. Proust's Swann, for example, like
Svevo's Emilio Brentani, is forced to swallow the questions he is too
frightened to ask, only to beg for clemency, and be forgiven - though
grudgingly - for suspecting his mistress of lying, which both know the
other knows is true. Both Emilio and Swann are entirely locked in a
recursive spiral of lies and counter-lies. These lies, however, hardly
confuse either man. If each ignores the precise nature of what is being
lied about, each knows he is being lied to. There is a sort of phenomenological gusto, in fact, in the way each man uncovers the lies of his
mistress, by "imagining what is being concealed from him by what is
being said."5 Yet, after such clever attempts at forcing an admission
from a mistress, each lover experiences tenderness and pity and
ultimately cowers with sheepish resignation in the face of her improvised lies.
Though she did not know the art of lying, she was an obstinate liar. It was easy to
induce her to contradict herself. But when one pointed out a contradictin to her, she
would return serenely to her previous assertions, because, at bottom, she did not

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

93

believe in logic. And perhaps all that was needed was this simplicity to save her in
Emilio's eyes.6

There is such an endearing, childish candor in the defeated pout with

which each mistress trips upon her own lies that, by a reversing
mechanism operating at the very heart of jealousy, the lover begins to
"stir within himself feelings of tenderness and of pity" for his mistress and, with these feelings, "reflected" guilt. "In his mind, she became kind
and charming Odette. He felt sorry for having been hard on her."7
Thus, the unfaithful mistress is always salvaged in the end - either by
the narrator when he comes to her rescue, or by the lover himself who
"stirs within himself" strains of pity and tenderness, or, finally, by the
unfaithful mistress herself who dupes her lover yet once more in
obtaining his pardon.
These devices are further reflected in deep-level narratological
structures. Each attempt by the lover to get to the bottom of things, to
intercept, to expose, to retain, to lay things bare and besiege the truth is
met by a simultaneous distancing of the very thing being investigated.
The laying bare is in fact nothing more than a cloaking; and the long,
Proustian sentences wending their sinuous, implacable way towards
discovery are at the same time a device by which that discovery is
forever postponed. And renewed.
If the relapse is a typical feature in the psyche of the subdued,
defeated, fin-de-siecle, ordinary, mildly neurotic, ambivalent, middle
class lover who will become an extremely popular "type" of anti-hero in
the psychoanalytic, post-Naturalist tradition, it should not be surprizing
that the narrative itself should mirror these relapses as well. There is a
particularly relevant episode to this effect in Swann in Love.8
After attending a banquet one evening, Swann decides not to visit
Odette at night and, to go home instead and sleep, as Proust writes,
with a "tranquil mind," ['esprit tranquille - Othello's very words:
"Farewell the tranquil mind ..." He is able to go home with a "tranquil
mind" because it is clear to him that Odette is reserving the evening for
him alone and no one else, having asked him earlier in the day to visit
her after the banquet. Then, of course, he begins to have doubts. What
if Odette, sensing he did not always intend to spend his evenings with
her after a banquet, might neglect to reserve them for him, and thus not
be available on an evening when he might particularly need her? Jostled

94

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

by such a thought, Swann decides to visit Odette after all. Up till now,
this relapse is a typical portrayal of the psychological configuration of
the jealous lover. Now the narrative will itself mimic his relapses.
Swann knocks at Odette's door. She is not feeling well, begs him to
leave and to turn off her lights on his way out. He leaves. Once home,
he begins to suspect that she may have deceived him: perhaps she was
expecting someone else and had feigned not feeling well to be rid of
him that evening. Stirred once again by such doubts, Swann hails a cab
and stops near her house. By now, it is close to one o'clock in the
morning. He approaches her window. He sees a light. He hears
indistinct voices muttering within. Finally, unable to contain himself any
longer, he knocks at the window. This had been an old signal between
the lovers. By this knock, Swann hopes to let her know that he had not
been fooled by her ruse, that he knew - knowledge that Proust calls a
"pfaisir d'intelligence ... fa passion de fa verite", so vital to the
Proustian consciousness - that those who were rejoicing in fooling him
had themselves been fooled: trompes is the word he uses: it means
mistaken, misguided, misled, cheated. But, suddenly, the shutters open.
Swann looks inside and, to his complete surprise, sees two old, insomniacs pop their heads out. He had knocked at the wrong window, was
himself trompe. The evidence had shifted, slipped away. Totally discomfitted, he immediately leaves the scene - without staying to knock
at the right window. In essence then, the events of this scene have
proved nothing and are reserving the right to "try" themselves again.
Which they do soon after - two pages later. 9 One afternoon, being
free, Swann decides to visit Odette. He knocks at her window. No one
answers. Since neighbors are watching, he decides to leave. An hour
later he is back. Knocks again. She is home. Yes, she had heard a knock
an hour ago, had thought it was he, but when she opened the door, no
one was there. They spend a while together. Someone knocks at the
door. But then they hear the door close and a carriage leave. Her
servant must have said Odette was not home. While Swann is about to
leave, he takes her letters on a table, intending to do her a favor by
dropping them at the post office. But he forgets them in his pocket. He
returns to the post office. Among the letters is one to a man he suspects
her lover. He takes it with him, tries to read it through the closed
envelope and finally opens it. "'I was right in opening the door,''' it
read, "'It was my uncle.''' This immediately leads Swann to think that
Forcheville (her lover) is even more trompe than he is. He rejoices in

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

95

this somewhat. But, having discovered she meets other lovers during
the day - something he had never suspected before - he finds all the
more reason to suffer.
The lover and the novel repeat themselves!

***
I have already hinted a moment earlier that the novel tortures the
jealous lover. It does so in two very distinct ways: it presents him with
evidence that is either misleading, hence dismissable; or it provides him
with evidence that compels him to revise all previous assumptions only so as to have his newer assumptions prove to be equally misleading. La Princesse de Cleves, to cite but one example, uses the past
participle trompe only to have it immediately followed by another past
participle, detrompe (disabused). Needless to say, the dialectic between
trompe and detrompe is infinitely proliferative. It depends, in good
measure, on the perception of the character - who may perceive less
than he should or much, much more than he should, both cases
invariably leading to one thing: error. More importantly, however, this
dialectic also depends on how treacherously the novel wishes to behave
with its jealous lover. Said otherwise, it depends on how jealousy and
deceit will conspire with one another.
For not only does the novel torture the jealous lover by providing
him with mistaken or incomplete - i.e. revisable - clues but it also
does so by preventing him from arriving at the truth. It throws him back
into darkness. And it does so in either of two ways. Either it configures
the lover in such a way that he will not want or not be able to see the
truth and will himself be the cause of each relapse. Or, each time the
jealous lover moves closer to an understanding of the situation, the plot
itself will "distract" him from his search: someone walks in and interrupts him; he falls asleep while mulling over these things; he knocks at
the wrong window; the moment of admission or confrontation is not
exploited as it should have been; or, more ironic than all, while the
lover is busy sifting truth from untruth, who should knock at his door
but the very woman herself, whitewashing all his suspicions with a smile
and the promise of immediate remission. Reconciliation thwarts the
investigation.
Either way, the character and the novel "collaborate" in such a way
as to repeat each attempt and each failure to discover the truth. In

96

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

short, plot demarcates its discursiv{ territory in the deferral not just to
discover but to speak the final trutB. It is only at the end of Swann in
Love that Swann will finally admit to himself that Odette had not even
been his "type." And only at the end of Senititd, will Emilio finally
scream out at Angiolina the one word he had been smothering throughout the novel. And yet, even in resolution, nothing is resolved. The
mistress is always in possession of a far greater secret than the jealous
lover can fathom. Which is also why he is never freed of her. This
dialectic brings to the fore the very discord that exists at the heart of
the jealous consciousness: i.e. the desire to know why he is not loved
and the desire to know why he cannot know this. Meanwhile, the plot
will have to repeat the investigatory process the way the lover himself
silently repeats the same questions in his mind. Both labor to establish
something they will immediately disavow - and hence can never
establish. Cervantes' The Tale of Foolish Curiosity is precisely about the
inability to establish something which is so obvious that it need not . and cannot - be established: namely, the fidelity of Camilla. Anselmo
is most happily married to Camilla. An invisible hand - and we shall
leave it at "an invisible hand" for the purposes of this paper - stirs in
him the desire to test Camilla. "For some time now," he tells his faithful
friend Lothario,
I have been vexed and bothered by a desire so strange and peculiar that I am
astonished at myself. I blame and scold myself for it when I am alone, and try to stifle it
and to conceal it from my own thoughts.' 0

Thereupon, he enlists the reluctant help of his friend, begging him to

test Camilla's virtue by seducing her in his absence. Lothario refuses at
first but ultimately accepts and, in typical post-Boccaccian style, succeeds.
From a literary historical perspective, this reversal is not at all
surprising. We see it all the time in the late-Renaissance and Baroque
theater. If only to limit our scope to the theater, a random collection of
play titles from the period in both France and Spain will testify to this
neo-Plautine, post-Bandello imbroglio: The Trickster Tricked, The
Robber Robbed, The Dupe Duped, The Jealous of Himself, The Jailer
of Himself, The Lover of Himself, etc. The situation is only too familiar:
the greater the lover's jealousy, the more innocent the wife; the more
deliberate her protestations; the more cunning his observation; the
more persuasive her speech, the more stubborn his disbelief. This is the
tragedy of Othello.

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

97

The situation in Cervantes' case, however, is finally "rectified"

chiasmically, i.e. once the unfounded suspicion has become entirely
founded, once it has been enhanced by the very forces that were
supposed to avert it. This will become a standard reversal on the
Baroque stage. As happens so often in the theater, this reversal is itself
reversed: and this happens when the suspicions of the jealous husband
are entirely put to rest once he spies on the lovers, who play their roles
to the hilt, knowing of his concealed presence in the room. In fact, what
brings this situation to a third-remove is Camilla's advice to Lothario
that he not think too much of what to say when he enters her chamber
where Anselmo will be concealed. "There are no more precautions to
take. Only answer the questions I shall ask you ... as if you did not
know that Anselmo was hiding." 11 In other words, lie by telling the
truth, which is a typically Baroque operation. In an equally Baroque
fashion, the jealous lover is himself cured of his jealousy once two
things have happened: once the search for proof - as was the case with
Oedipus - has ironically brought about the very thing which that proof
was supposed to disprove; and secondly - and equally ironically once the need for proof, far from being superfluous as it once was, has
in fact, in Anselmo's eyes, become entirely superfluous - and hence,
entirely urgent. The search has interfered with - and interrupted - the
search.
The difficulties - call them epistemological perplexities - encountered by the jealous lover in the seventeenth Century are equally
represented Moliere's Dom Garcie de Navarre, a compulsively jealous
man who asks Done Elvire to explain what she was doing in the
company of a particular man, not knowing that this "man" is none other
than the female Elise in disguise. 12 Driven to exasperation, Done Elvire
finally warns him that before she answers his questions he has two
choices: either he must trust that she had not betrayed him but receive
not further explanation; or he will receive a full explanation but lose her
forever. What is interesting here is that the play provides a solution
which seemingly resolves the problems of the jealous lover. In typical
Spanish fashion, however, it merely compounds these problems with an
alleged solution - a fraudulent solution. And it is fraudulent because it
hurls the jealous lover back to the very perplexities whence the thirst
for certainty arose. He is faced with a conundrum that he and no on
else has manufactured. Yet the solution that Done Elvire offers is itself
a conudrum. It puzzles him as much as the initial imbroglio with Elise.
The evidence he thought he had slips from his fingers: it was only a

98

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

disguise. Similarly, the evidence that Swann thought he had, slips from
him as well: it was the wrong window.
Such imbrolgi are typical not only of the seventeenth Century but of
any treatment of jealousy. A readjustment of disguises, sometimes, is all
that is needed to "cure" the lover. Yet as has already been shown in the
case of Cervantes, the very "curing" of a misunderstanding may create a
yet more perilous misunderstanding. The ditromperie is itself a selfengendering monster. To a psychological problem called jealousy one
offers a theatric - therefore an "illusive" - solution. The solution of
the wrong window, however, merely defers the confrontation: the lover
always needs one more proof before reaching a decision, just as the
lover needs to see his "sweet cheat" one more time before severing his
ties with her forever.
Interestingly enough, the above exchange between Done Elvire and
Dom Garcie was later borrowed by Moliere for another play. In Le
Misanthrope, the jealous Alceste complains to C6limene that she
tortures him in an entirely unusual way. Instead of denying his accusations, she proclaims them; yet she does so in so mechanical and so
nonchalant a manner that the answer ''yes'' to his accusation is more
bewildering than a lie. In a manner so typical of the jealous lover who
baffles himself as he is baffled by others, he adds,
At least defend yourself from a crime that overwhelms me And stop pretending to be
guilty towards me.

To which she responds by augmenting and throwing a second loop

around his protestations:
I would like to know who could force me To stoop to so base a thing as pretense.! 3

It is not by lying that one disorients one's interlocutor. That is a lowly

privilege of the "sweet cheats" of fin-de-siecle Europe. One lies much

more efficiently by telling the truth. Everyone is familiar with Iago's
sinister "Nothing." It means to mean everything except nothing but
means absolutely what it says: nothing!

***
If it is true that the mind of the jealous lover is destined to relapse and

confront its initial perplexities, if mind cannot cure itself of its own
doubts save by doubting some more, and if indeed all evidence exists as

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

99

evidence that no evidence can exist, then the mind is destined to

wander and meander forever. This is a possibility which both the
Baroque mind and the modern mind are eminently able to accommodate - and for which the psychological genre itself is clearly suited.
By psychological genre we mean both the phenomenon of psychologism which arose in the literary salons of the seventeenth Century and
the psychological novel of the nineteenth Century as we know it. In
both worlds, evidence is fundamentally shifty and nomadic. As soon as
the narrative senses that a character is about to discover the truth or is
on the point of confronting his mistress with the truth, it shifts in favor
of dilatory mechanisms that postpone such a confrontation. As a result,
the mind of the jealous lover is perpetually driven by unatonable doubt,
hence the inevitable recidivism, the relapse.
The Baroque mind ''wanders'' in a world of deceptive appearances. It
wanders because it is the victim of a perpetual "slippage" of identity
from its grasp. Things don and doff multiple disguises, and between
mind and phenomena, stands an infinite layering of disguises among
which, let us add, is the mind itself: self itself stands in its own way.
Perception is constantly assailed by an unrepining transfer, dislodgement and destabilization of identities and, therefore, compelled to
doubt everything because it sees everything as essentially shifty and
multi-layered. It seeks certainty, but the very mechanisms by which one
seeks, attains certainties, perpetrate further uncertainties - see Pascal,
for example. The epistemological quandary of the Baroque is highlighted by the image of dislodged identities groping in the dark:
Calderon's Life is a Dream, As You Like it, King Lear and Beys'
L'Hopital des fous. The Baroque mind gropes in the dark fugally,
recursively. Which incidentally is exactly how the deceptions themselves
operate: fugally, recursively. Jealousy behaves in essentially "theatrical"
and Boccaccian terms: the jealous lover is supposedly cured by an
enactment of the very crime he feared most; or he ends up more
puzzled by the resolution of a mystery than by its initial manifestation.
Such mirrorings and dedoublements are numberless. The most notorious example comes from Zai"{ie, a novel-romance by Madame de
LaFayette. Consalve loves Nugna Bella but eventually notices that her
attitude towards him has changed. He tells his friend and confidant,
Don Ramire, who is also a go-between of sorts, that he suspects she no
longer loves him. As Dom Ramire has also become Nugna Bella's lover
in the meantime, he is in a position to report to her what Conalve

100

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

suspects and indeed cautions her to make a more persuasive show of

passion towards Consalve. However, seeing that Nugna Bella's heeds
his advice too well and may have been too persuasive in placating
Consalve's worst fears, Dam Ramire becomes jealous of his friend, the
cheater himself becomes jealous of the very man he cheats. In the end,
he complains that this mimicry of love is all too persuasive:
You grace him with the same look in your eyes that you used to grace him with before;
you speak to him the same words, you write the same things: who could assure me that
it is no longer with the same feelings?

"For, it is I," he tells her later, "who delivers your letters to him; it is I
who reassures him when he doubts of your love.,,14 Both Consalve and
Don Ramire are jealous of each other. Typically Baroque! There is no
getting out of this trap. The dialectic between the two self-engenders ad
infinitum.
Later, Consalve falls in love with Zaide but, seeing she admires the
portrait of a man's face that she keeps with her, becomes obsessed with
that face - not realizing, again in a typically Baroque fashion, that the
portrait of which he is immeasurably jealous is no one else's but his.

***
That the hysteria of the jealous lover should be the object of irony and
derision should come as no surprise. He is the one who does not see
but wishes to see too much; who fails to see the obvious for love of the
hidden; who wants to be present where he is absent, who wants to be in
the city yet hear the tree fall in the forest! The jealous lover is in love
with simultaneity. He wants to have and to know he has, to rejoice in
the knowledge that he indeed has more than in the thing he has. In the
seventeenth Century, every tale involving a jealous lover was always
resolved with the assumption or the removal of a disguise. Or it was
moralized away with such things as: it is not good to want to know too
much; it is better to trust than to distrust; it is better to be happy with
what one has than want too much; it is better to harness one's passions
than let them sway one's judgement, etc. Since the jealous lover was
prey to an illusion, one either had to fool him some more, thus righting
two negatives - as in theater within theater - or lift the illusion off the
way one lifts a cataract.
The problem with such a simple solution is that there always was, at

THE RECURSIVE MATRIX

101

some nether level within the literary apparatus, a reluctance to carry it

out. In the seventeenth century, the lover was always a jaloux extravagant and his mistress a fundamentally honest maid. In other words, he
was mistaken and she was honest. The problem, however, is that in
rectifying his error chiasmically, the seventeenth-century play or novel
perpetrates more error, more illusion, more delusion upon the man
who was sufficiently misled to suspect his wife or mistress. In fact,
because of that one error, the lover's hold on reality is entirely shaken
- suspended, would be more correct. The error may have been in him
initially, but it has tainted the world around him, and now those tainted
by his initial error will repay him in kind: illusion you suspect, illusion
you'll get! It is one form of poetic justice. The mirrors, the masks, the
baffling landscapes, all are about to be deployed, and riddle slips from
one character onto the next, forever at one remove from the man who
thirsts to know. He is wrong. And the world will trick him accordingly.
The modem lover's problem is significantly different. He knows he is
being cheated. He has no doubts about that. Unlike the case of his
Baroque counterpart, his is never an illusion. He is right, and she lies.
He is right, but the world will deny it. In fact, he knows too much. He
even knows - and Proustian lovers always suspect this - that there is
something slightly "romanesque," call it literary and novelistic in the
coincidences that both enhance and impede his search. More importantly, he suspects that all he wants really is not love, but possession,
and if instead of possessing the other he is able to possess knowledge of
the other, that is an equally desirable alternative. As Proust writes:
Knowing things does not necessarily mean that one could prevent them from happening. Still, we do hold the things we know, and if not in our hands, then at least in our
thoughts, where we can do with them as we please, which gives us the illusion of power
over them. I 5

The behavior of the jealous lover matches exactly the behavior of the
narrator. Both are out to possess the world in whatever terms possession avails itself: either in the flesh or aesthetically. Nothing must slip
by. This also means that things will automatically struggle to free
themselves from the narrator's covetous grip, that his reluctance to hold
and to see them participate in their manumission. One blames the
world for one's own lust to ask questions of the world. One then blames
the world for failing to cooperate in an endeavor where one is the
principal saboteur.

102

ANDRE A. ACIMAN

As stated, the very narration of events is itself afflicted by the same

obsession which afflicts the jealous lover. Things are always elusive, and
treachery lies everywhere. The plot itself not only is about jealousy in
all its guises, but this very subject transfer onto and affects the workings
of the narrative apparatus itself: everything is potentially treacherous,
everyone is a potential double, just as everyone is a potential rival.
Things that are known are ultimately unknowable. Things are to be
scrutinized again and again. Moreover, as we move towards the Realist
tradition in literature, things are to be looked at not only microscopically but, should such a word exist, infra-scopically - through and
through. For to use a common seventeenth- and twentieth-century
adage, nothing is as it seems.

New York, USA

NOTES
1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Translated by W. D. Ross (New York: Random House/Oxford,
1941), 982b 10.
2 Plato, Theaetetus, Translated by Francis M. Cornford (Indianapolis: Bobbs/Merrill,
1957), p. 155d.
3 Heraclitus, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Translated by Charles H. Kahn
(Cambridge, 1979), Fragment X (D. 123, M. 8).
4 Gotfried von Strassburg, Tristan, Translated by A. T. Hatto (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1960), p. 242.
5 Marcel Proust, Du Cote de chez Swann (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 423.
6 !talo Pavese, Senilitd (Milan: Dall'Oglio, 1938), p. 165-6.
7 Proust, Du Cote de chez Swann, p. 36l.
8 Ibid., p. 323-327.
9 Ibid., p. 329-337.
10 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Adventures of Don Quixote, Translated by J. M.
Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1950), p. 285.
11 Ibid., p. 308.
12 Moliere, Dom Garcie de Navarre (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1964), IV, viii.
13 Moliere, Le Misanthrope (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1964), IV, iii, 1385-6,
1393-5.
14 Madame de LaFayette, Zaiae (Paris: Garnier, 1970), p. 75 and 76.
15 Proust, Du Cote de chez Swann, p. 373.

WILLIAM S. HANEY II

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE STRUCTURE

OF DESIRABILITY

The post-structuralist rejection of both the text as an autonomous entity

and the self as a wholeness present unto itself stems primarily from an
intellectual approach to life and literature that neglects the finer feeling
level of human perception. This level is central to Vedic literature
(Veda means pure knowledge), which arranges the human faculties in
order of increasing subtlty from the five senses to the mind, intellect,
ego, and self (or pure consciousness).! At its finest level of functioning,
the intellect is experienced as a mode of feeling, which may also be
described as intuition. The finest level of feeling is love or devotion,
which unites the self and other, the absolute and relative. 2 As a unifying
force, feeling is closely related to memory, that quality of consciousness
which enables it to be self-referral while remaining open to the mind
and senses. The Manduka Upanishad classifies consciousness into three
ordinary states - waking, sleeping, and dreaming - plus a higher,
fourth state called transcendental pure consciousness, a self-referral
state in which consciousness has no object other than itself.3 By linking
oppositions such as subject and object, inside and outside, past and
present, feeling and memory allow us to be open to the unity of
transcendental consciousness and the diversity of the other faculties at
the same time. On the one hand, love and memory act as a centripetal
force responsible for our subliminal sense of unification between all the
faculties and between the self and the social collective, while on the
other hand the intellect acts as a centrifugal force responsible for the
notions of disconnectedness and diversification. Although traditionally
the themes of literature have centered less on the intellect than on the
emotions, post-structuralist theory relies almost exclusively on the
intellectual capacity of the critic to discern difference and thereby to
undermine any tendency toward unification and wholeness indicated by
the heart of a text. 4 Post-structuralists have generally accused humanist
critics of intuitionism and subjectivism for espousing principles of unity
and absolute meaning, but the truth value of these principles simply
require more than discursive reasoning to be fully experienced. They
require one to transcend the intellect and reconnect by way of memory

103
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 103-112.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

104

WILLIAM S. HANEY II

and feeling with the pool of pure consciousness, a function that

literature has traditionally fulfilled.
The emotional dimension of literature, particularly fiction, can be
located in the structure of desirability that forms the basis of narrative.
The pattern of desire consists of a polar opposition between desirability
and interdiction, beauty and horror, divided into characters that form a
complete picture of the universal human tendency to surmount obstacles and evolve toward greater wholeness and fulfillment. In the
modem tradition of demystifying the logocentric notion of wholeness,
Freud divides the subject between the conscious and unconscious,
Lacan defines the unconscious as structured like a language, with the
subject dispersed along a chain of signifiers, and Derrida finds the
subject always already divided within itself by the play of difference. 5
These divisions, however, are sustained by the intellect alone and do
not survive the practice of reading fiction by a reader attuned to the
finer levels of feeling upon which discursive logic is based. As I will try
to show through an analysis of the desirability structure of Elizabeth
Bowen's novel The Death of the Heart, the intellectual dynamics of
both the Lacanian notion of a symbolic order and the deconstructive
notion of difference - through which the self is constantly in process,
divided and displaced, and meaning is rendered indeterminate - do
not conclusively consign the subject to a fragmented realm of depthless
ambiguity and dissatisfaction. On the contrary, the intellectual play of
difference, too easily mistaken for reality itself, functions as a vehicle
through which the intellect expands to its logical boundaries, delivering
the subject up to the memory of wholeness experienced as emotional
fulfillment. This is the state of bliss that accompanies the experience of
pure consciousness, the bliss intimated by Roland Barthes in The
Pleasure of the Text. 6
Bowen renders this experience in terms of the quest for union
between man and woman that ideally culminates in a happy marriage.
This movement toward unity is a function of the interplay or crossing
over between the text and its diegesis, or between the dramatic
structure of the text as a narration on the one hand, and the pure state
of events narrated on the other? As we know from reader-response
criticism, the author creates the text out of words that encourage the
reader to recreate or actualize the diegesis, a fictional system of
characters and events largely independent from the text itself.8 Since a
fictional diegesis receives nourishment from its culture and literary
tradition as much as from the words of its text, these words can have

THE STRUCTURE OF DESIRABILITY

105

differing diegetical manifestations in different cultural contexts. Thus

while a post-structuralist reading of a quest story may indicate a
diegesis full of fragmentation and displacement, a reading based on
greater balance between intellect and feeling can lead, as indicated by
Vedic aesthetics,9 toward greater unification and fulfillment.
In Bowen's The Death of the Heart, the male/female relations
develop in two stages. The first is the normal human development from
the relation of parent/child to the relation of husband/wife, a growth
from union based on dependency to one based on emotional commitment and reciprocity. The second, which underlies and promotes the
first, is the ontological relation between ordinary waking consciousness
on the one hand and pure consciousness in its creative aspect on the
other. This creative principle of pure consciousness is in Vedic literature called Mother Divine,1O an archetype of the Edenic state of unity
experienced beyond the intellect on the basis of expanded consciousness, the desire for which motivates all themes of quest. As the
omnipresent creative impulse of nature, this unifying principle can be
experienced only on the level of feeling, for creativity is a function of
love, and even through it results in the diversification of nature, this
diversity is only a notion of the intellect resulting from a loss of
memory of the more unified levels of consciousness. This unity, thought
to be accessible only to saints, can be approached through the reading
of literature in two senses. First, the reader completes the textual move
from an initial lack expressed as desire to the ultimate fulfillment of that
desire in a diegetic recreation of the text; and second, the reader's
awareness swings from the concrete, finite marks on the page to the
abstract feeling of wholeness underlying the conceptual differences of
these marks.
In terms of Vladimir Propp's spheres of action, the obstacle to the
fulfillment of desire is the villain, such as the father in the Oedipal
triangle, or a rival in a romantic pursuit!!; but in terms of the evolution
of feeling, or the development of the heart, the obstacle is more internal
than external. That is, it has its basis in the mistake of the intellect in
choosing the mere notion of diversity over the reality of unityY This
unity of the heart balanced with the intellect in the state of pure
consciousness is the goal toward which the characters in Bowen's novel
inexorably evolve - a process in which the reader not only participates
but diegetically brings to completion in a way not possible within the
linguistic limits of the text itself.
Bowen's The Death of the Heart portrays the affluent, settled,

106

WILLIAM S. HANEY II

unemotional, childless marriage of Thomas and Anna Quayne into

which drops Thomas' half sister, Portia, age 15, conceived in adultry
and newly orphaned. Being double stranded, the book records Portia's
growth and loss of innocence and the Quayne's gradual acceptance of
her through a process that brings them in touch with their own feelings
and thereby vitalizes their marriage. Anna married Thomas on the
rebound from the great love of her life, Robert Pidgeon, while Thomas,
who initially accepted Anna because his passionless nature found her
lack of emotion comfortable, suddenly finds himself passionately in
love with her yet unable to express his love due to their tacit agreement
to maintaining quietude. They cannot live up to their emotional
potential, except by making adjustments on the level of the heart, a
function played effectively by Portia.
Having lost her father and then her mother at a tender age, Portia
must also make adjustments in order to discover a sense of direction as
an emotional being. Her quest for self-identity is evident by her keeping
a diary. In a sense, Portia's diary is a narcissistic, self-referential
dialogue that imitates the emotive dialogues she may have had with her
mother. Through her diary she unconsciously seeks a self-identity that
will provide the foundation she needs to establish a nonregressive
relationship with other people. In order to avoid being dependent on
the false unity of a parental substitute, Portia must become more selfsufficient on the basis of greater emotional stability achieved through a
livelier memory of the unity of pure consciousness, upon which the
unity of all human relationships are modeled and sustained.
That Portia does not desire properly is first revealed when she tries
to substitute the Quayne's for her dead parents. Thomas and Anna of
course reject her, but do so in such a way that exposes the fact that
their marriage is lacking in heart. Portia needs rejection to be freed
from her dependence on parental substitutes. But if the Quaynes
succeed in the function of an obstacle, they fail in the function of a
vehicle by ostracizing Portia from their family but giving her no viable
alternative, no sense of direction. Portia consequently turns to the
irresponsible Eddie, a young man employed at Thomas' advertising
firm. The relation is premature for Portia, and although Anna tacitly
consents, Eddie rejects Portia for being too young and clinging: "Never
be potty about me," he says. "I can't do anything for yoU."13 With Eddie
and the Quaynes acting only as obstacles, Portia in her lack of direction
comes full circle in her quest by proposing to the father she sees in

THE STRUCTURE OF DESIRABILITY

107

Major Brott, an older gentleman and family friend just returned from
India who is out of touch.
By the time the Quayne's receive the Major's call they have already
noticed Portia's absence and are confronting their family predicament
as well as one another's emotional crisis - Thomas having just been
informed that Anna was caught reading Portia's diary. In her ultimatum,
Portia makes her return dependent on their doing "the right thing." As
Anna points out, "It's not simply a question of all three going on living
here" (p. 371). At this point she is even able to empathize with Portia:
"Frantic, frantic desire to be handled with feeling, and, at the same
time, to be let alone. Wish to be asked how I feel, great wish to be
taken for granted" (p. 377). Portia desires to become part of the
family's emotional field, without the fanfare usually reserved for
outsiders. The Quayne's decide that the right thing, indeed the best
thing for Portia is not to make her come home alone in a taxi but to
send Matchett, the older servant.
Portia's hope to fulfill her desires without regressing finds perhaps its
greatest provider in the uncomplicated Matchett, whose devoted sense
of the family's history makes her the novel's most compassionate
character. Judging by her distrust for Eddie and her emotional state in
the taxi on her way to fetch Portia from Major Brutt, Machett is clearly
the one character in the novel with Portia's best interest at heart. Even
though The Death of the Heart does not resolve Portia's predicament, it
concludes on a positive note both with the vitalization of the Quayne's
marriage and with their commitment to do the right thing for Portia.
While the novel's text does not end with Portia's actual fulfillment, it
makes reference to a diegesis that promises this fulfillment as a natural
consequence of human development. Intellectually, such a state may
seem to be problematic, for it entails an emotional sense of well-being
and wholeness not accessible to and easily undermined by ordinary
discursive logic. Indeed, according to Lacanian psychoanalysis, Portia
lives in what Terry Eagleton describes as a state of post-structuralist
anxiety.l4 As the novel unfolds, Portia belatedly emerges from a state of
being that Lacan calls the ''imaginary,'' a pre-Oedipal state in which the
child lacks a defined center of self and lives in symbiotic union with its
mother or mother substitute. ls Eventually the father, who Lacan
signifies as the Law, interrupts this imaginary phase, dividing the child
and mother, and driving the child's desire for union underground into
the unconscious, which, being structured like a language, has the two

108

WILLIAM S. HANEY II

essential operations of metaphor (or condensation) and metonymy (or

displacement).16 But Portia's father, the Senior Thomas Quayne, dies
early and leaves her dependent on her hapless mother. Furthermore, in
the process of leaving the imaginary phase, the child passes through
what Lacan calls the "mirror stage," in which it on the one hand
identifies with its image in mirror, blurring subject and object, yet on
the other begins the process of constructing its own self-identity.
Portia's "mirror stage" is symbolized by her diary through which she
expresses her desire for unity while trying to gain control over her wild
emotions.
In rewriting Freud's formulation of the Oedipal complex in terms of
language, Lacan undermines all possibility for union, even with the self
as sought by Portia on the level of consciousness. In the Lacanian
metaphor, the child contemplating the mirror, or in this case Portia,
who suffers from arrested development, writing in her diary, constitutes
the signifier, and the image perceived constitutes the signified, the two
being experienced as united by a natural bond. However, the father,
enforcing the incest prohibition, interjects himself and as a poststructuralist figure creates a gap between the signifier and signified,
image and meaning, with the effect that the unity and self-presence of
the child's identity is displaced by difference and absence. Like
language itself, the child is constituted by its relation to other signifiers
within what Lacan calls the "symbolic order."17 Portia's repressed
desire for union thus expresses itself in the ceaseless movement from
one signifier to another, with no transcendental signified, no selfidentity, and no appropriate male ever bringing that desire to stasis or
fulfillment.
In her Electra complex, Portia's movement from the Quaynes to
Eddie and Major Brutt represents her "endless yearning" for a unity
which might duplicate her imaginary phase but which forever recedes in
the symbolic order, whose empty marker of difference and absence, or
Lacan's notion of the phallus, is the only transcendental meaning. In
this paradigm, her self-identity is relentlessly dispersed along a chain of
signifiers. However, as Julia Kristeva has shown, another order anterior
to the symbolic order may also exist, one associated with the maternal
aspect of language as opposed to the Name-of-the-Father. This anterior
order, which Kristeva calls semiotic, supports a symbolic coherence in
any dialogic relationship.18 As Kristeva notes, the unintelligible verbalization between infant and parent constitutes a dialogue that still has

THE STRUCTURE OF DESIRABILITY

109

significance, albeit emotional rather than cognitive. Likewise, the breaks

and dislocations in the work of avant guarde male writers such as
Mallarme reveals disruptions in the symbolic order that give expression
to deeper levels of consciousness. Underlying all repressed desire and
traces of regression, however, is the fourth state of transcendental
consciousness. The memory or feeling of this state provides the
experience of a fundamental unity of which all others, whether it be
Lacan's imaginary phase or Kristeva's semiotic order, are but pale
reflections. Indeed, the tendency of children to revert back to what
seems to be an imaginary or semiotic phase can be understood as
resulting not from an Oedipal regression but rather from a greater
affinity for transcending. In the Vedic tradition it is believed that
because children, in comparison to adults, are more innocent of heart
and physiologically pure or stress free, they can spontaneously bypass
the intellect and experience the unity of higher consciousness almost as
a matter of course - a facility usually lost with maturity but often
remembered with great nostalgia.
As Wolfgang Iser points out, the literary work is not identical with its
text, but consists of two poles: the artistic, what the author writes; and
the aesthetic, what the reader concretizes. 19 In The Death of the Heart
the movement toward wholeness or unity on the basis of increasing
balance between mind and heart as experienced on the artistic level by
the characters is realized through inference on the aesthetic level by the
reader. Even for Lacan, as Ragland-Sullivan notes, the heart and mind,
affect and ratiocenation, are ultimately inseparable (Lacan xxii). In his
theory that consciousness in not consciousness of an object but a mode
of perception that integrates different levels of the mind, Lacan
intimates the unity of heart and mind in the experience of pure
consciousness. The reader's sense of the unity in the lives of Bowen's
characters, even though induced by textual inference, can be legitimated
in two ways, practical and theoretical. In practical terms, the human
potential for transcending conceptual boundaries into a state of pure
awareness has an ancient and universal history, one suggested by
psychoanalysis and increasingly validated by modern physiological
research. 20 In theoretical terms, Vedic language theory, which complements post-structuralist linguistics, posits four levels of language that
correspond to different levels of consciousness.
In Derridian deconstruction, meaning is the product of a play of
difference, a spatial movement of differing combined with a temporal

110

WILLIAM S. HANEY II

movement of deferring that precludes any unity of sound and meaning.

A signifier thus obtains its meaning only through its difference from
other signifiers, with the transcendental signified of logocentrism being
infinitely deferred. Vedic language theory, on the other hand, allows for
the notion of "differences without positive terms" on one level of
consciousness while establishing the unity of sound and meaning on a
higher, more integrated level. The most expressed level of language is
called vaikhari, or outward speech, the fully developed temporal
sequence of language which corresponds to the ordinary waking state of
consciousness subject to the boundaries of time and space. 21 The next
level is called madhyama, or inward speech, which also corresponds to
the temporal sequence of the ordinary waking state, but which is
subject to the more instantaneous impulses of the mind or intellect. The
third level is called pashyanti, the noumenal whole of language characterized by the unity of sound and meaning. Beyond the temporal
boundaries of vaikhari and madhyama, this third level can be experienced only through higher consciousness. Para, the fourth level of
language, also consists of meanings as a noumenal whole, but on a
higher level of unification without the tendency toward expression
characteristic of pashyanti.
According to Vedic grammar, therefore, post-structuralist language
theories that deconstruct the experience of unity portrayed by a text
such as The Death of the Heart, and realized aesthetically by the reader
on the level of feeling, represent critical operations on the madhyama
level of language governed by the mind or intellect. That the reader
continues to realize or fulfill some degree of the desire for unity by way
of textual inference, in spite of the supposedly divided nature of the self
as defined by post-structuralist theory, strongly suggests that literary
texts and human consciousness both operate on dimensions not bound
by the ordinary laws of space, time, and causality. It seems, therefore,
that just as the wholeness of pashyanti complements the temporal
sequence of madhyama, so also the unity of Vedic aesthetics complements the diversity of deconstruction. If consciousness is structured like
the pashyanti level of language, then a character such as Portia is not
destined to forever languish in a state of post-structuralist anxiety, but
has the potential to realize the self-presence of an absolute identity
through the expansion of consciousness. This means that in the reader's
fictional diegesis, Portia, as well as the reader, could ultimately experience - however fleetingly - a unity between sound and meaning, mind

THE STRUCTURE OF DESIRABILITY

111

and heart, ego and unbounded awareness. This development toward

fullness is symbolized by the Quayne's marriage, which surmounts the
obstacles to desire through an expansion of heart.
To conclude, readers not already familiar with higher consciousness
through direct experience can appreciate the pashyanti level of literature on the basis of finer feelings activated by the structure of desirability, which swings the awareness from the finite boundaries of the
text to the potentially unbounded unity of the diegesis. In this movement or swing, concrete linguistic differences provide the necessary
vehicle to an abstract wholeness. Finer feelings thus enliven not the
logic of diversity but the memory of unity, which is after all what
constitutes the phenomenological bliss of reading literature.
Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa
NOTES
I Chapter three, verse 42, of the Bhagavad-Gita states, "The senses, they say, are
subtle;lmore subtle than the senses is mind;lyet finer than mind is intellect; that which
is beyond even the intellect is he": Maharish Mahesh Yogi, On The Bhagavad-Gita: A
New Translation and Commentary Chapters 1-6 (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), p.
242.
2 On The Bhagavad-Gita, chapter four, verse 38; the commentary reads: "The activity
of the organ of action is the most gross, the activity of the senses of perception is more
refined, the mental activity of thought is finer still, and the activity of feeling and
emotion is the finest of all. ... The activity of devotion comprises the feeling of
services, reverence and love, which are the most refined qualities of feeling" (p. 315).
3 The Upanishads, trans. Swami Prabhavananda and Frederich Manchester (California:
Mentor Classic, 1948), p. 49: "The life of man is divided between waking, dreaming,
and dreamless sleep. But transcending these three is superconscious vision - called the
Fourth." For a description of the state of non-attachment in which the fourth state of
pure consciousness becomes permanent, nirvikalpa samadhi, see On The BhagavadGita, chapter 6.
4 See for example Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. D. B. Allison
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973); Writing and Difference, trans.
Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978); and Of Grammatology,
trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press).
5 For an excellent study of the deconstructive attempt to undermine foundations, see
Vincent B. Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1983), pp. 24-54.
6 Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1975), p. 59.
7 See Robert Scholes, Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English

112

WILLIAM S. HANEY II

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 74-85; and "Decoding Papa: 'A
Very Short Story'" as Work and Text," Literary Theories in Praxis, ed. Shirley F. Staton
(Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 170-179.
8 For a wide range of essays in reader-response criticism, see Jane P. Tompkins, ed.,
Reader Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); and Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman,
eds., The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980).
9 For a comprehensive overview of Vedic language theory, see Harold G. Coward, The
Sphota Theory of Language (Columbia, Missouri: South Asia Books, 1980); and
Bhartrhari (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976).
10 See On The Bhagavad-Gita, chapter four, verse one, for a commentary on the
relation between history and the creative aspect of Mother Divine, pp. 251-25 5.
11 Vladimir Propp, The Morphology of the Folktale (Austin, Texas: Texas University
Press, 1968), pp. 20-21.
12 The subjective unity of the Self, which Derrida attempts to deconstruct, is thought to
correspond to the objective unity of the laws of nature posited by quantum physics.
According to the unified field theory, the four fundamental forces of nature electromagnetism, strong and weak interaction, and gravitation - are united at the
Planck scale, 10-33 cm or 10 143 sec. In his seminal essay "Is Consciousness the Unified
Field: A Field Theorists Perspective," Modern Science and Vedic Science 1 (1987): pp.
56-82 passim, John Hagelin proposes that pure consciousness, which is essentially
beyond time and space, is identical to the unified field of natural law.
13 Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 256.
All further page references are included in the text.
14 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (London: Basil Blackwell
Publisher Limited, 1983), p. 166.
15 Anika Lemaire, Jacques Lacan, trans. David Macey (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1977), p. 126.
16 Ibid., pp. 78-92 passim.
17 Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 162-183 passim.
18 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed.
Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 271-294 passim.
19 Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomenology Approach," Contemporary
Literary Criticism: Modernism through Poststructuralism, ed. Robert Con Davis (New
York and London: Longman, 1986), pp. 376-377.
20 See Robert Keith Wallace, The Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field: The
Neurophysiology of Enlightenment (Fairfield, Iowa: MIU Neuroscience Press, 1986).
21 Coward, The Sphota Theory of Language, pp. 126-137 passim.

B. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE OTHER

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

THE VOICE OF LUXEMBOURG POETS

In Spring 1988, the Soviet publishing house Raduga (Rainbow) has

offered all Russian speaking readers the first complete anthology of
Luxembourg poetry ever to be edited. Assisted by more than thirty
translators, men and women, Tatiana Kliueva and Waldemar Weber
have included in this anthology the works of forty-six Luxembourg
poets writing in Luxembourgish, German or French. In her long and
detailed preface, T. Kliueva begins her presentation of our poetry with
a short account of Luxembourg's history. Luxembourg literature indeed
is to be seen in the light and before the background of the country's
often difficult past.
Therefore I shall acquaint you with a first view of Luxembourg
lyricism in the context of a crucial period of national history, with a
view of the poetry of two Luxembourg women, Lily Unden, painter
also and who was a prisoner of the Ravensbriick concentration camp,
and Ct~cile Ries herself for some time a prisoner in Ravensbriick and
afterwards also in Bergen-Belsen. In 1965, the "Association of Luxembourg Women incarcerated in concentration camps and prisons" "Amicale des Concentrationnaires et Prisonnieres politiques luxembourgeoises" - published a "Book of Remembrance" - "Livre du
Souvenir"! - for which Ct~cile Ries wrote several poems. I shall quote
one of them - she remembers the last apocalyptic days of her stay in
Bergen-Belsen and the arrival of a British officer announcing the
liberation of the camp:
Liberation aBergen-Belsen
Silence d'epouvante. La bete apocalyptique
Infestant l'air de son abominable odeur
A fait sa ronde: A tout ce qui respire malheur!
Le cloaque engloutira les corps squelettiques
Qui gisent par terre, pete-mele, morts ou vivants,
Tous pareils ades martyrs decharnes. Demain
Des milliers d'autres succomberont. Seule la main
Administrant la potion fera des survivants.
115
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 115-130.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

116

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

Des corps se dressent, tendent les bras d'un geste pathetique

Vers des guerriers emergeant d'un conte fantastique.
Mais sont-ils en chair et en os? Hallucination
Des tortures qui s'affaissent? Apres un long sommeil
Les evanouis rouvrent les yeux et voient au reveil
L'officier anglais, I'ange de la liberation.
You will note that Cecile Ries, as well as her friend Lily Vnden, as well
as Henriette Theisen who for years has been commenting on national
and international events in French sonnets, use the traditional verse
while expressing sincerely their human experience. There are many
other Luxembourg poetry writing citizens who use the same style of
expression and, of course, they are criticised severely by other writers
for whom poetic creation comes to realization only by way of a more or
less complete, and in preference a complete, liberation of the verse.
During this second half of the 20th century, Luxembourg at last
expresses a feeling of national self-identification - in a still slightly
complicated situation this very small country has a literature in three and sometimes even more - languages. We use to say also that we have
three literatures - one in the Luxembourgish dialect, one in German
and one in French. There is to be found a tendency towards writing
also in English and in Italian, but this seems to be the exception.
The literature in Luxembourgish,2 in the Luxembourg dialect, for a
long time occupied a place of its own in the shadow of the literary
world, so to say, although, in the 19th century, it revealed already
strong accents in a satirical epic poem written by Michel Rodange
(1827-1876), our first national poet. During the second part of the
19th century, Rodange wrote his famous "Renert", which was first
published in 1872, as a Luxembourg counterpart of the French
"Roman de Renart" and the German "Reineke Fuchs". May I read here
the beginning of Goethe's poem as well as the beginning of the poem
written by Rodange!
Reineke Fuchs
Erster Gesang
Pfingsten, das liebliche Fest, war gekommen! es griinten und bliihten
Feld und Wald; auf Hiigeln und Hahn, in Biischen und Hecken
Vebten ein frahliches Lied die neuermunterten Vogel;

LUXEMBOURG POETS

117

Jede Wiese sprosste von Blumen in duftenden Griinden,

Festlich heiter gHinzte der Himmel und farbig die Erde.
Re'nert
Eischte Gesank
Et war esou em d'Piiischten,
't stung Alles an der Blei,
an d'Villercher di songen
hir Lidder speit a frei.
Rodange 3 succeeded in painting vigorously the Luxembourg society of
his time, with its political, economical and human implications. The
"Re'nert" by Michel Rodange has been republished quite often - a new
edition has been printed last year and the comments have been made,
this time, by Romain Hilgert, the cultural spokesman of the communist
news-paper. I mention this fact in order to emphasize the social impact
of this lively and witty literary work.
Two ways lie open to the Luxembourg citizen who wishes to
dedicate himself to literary creation - it will be possible for him to
translate into words his experience as a human being living in the
closed city of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg; he will be offered also
the opportunity to attain his self-fulfilment as a representative of an
open society - Luxembourg being situated on the borders of Germany
and of France, giving access to their double and rich civilizations to the
German and French speaking inhabitants of Luxembourg. Therefore, in
Luxembourg, you will meet with a certain number of men and women
who consider themselves to be a tie between both France and
Germany, they consider themselves as the builders of bridges between
these two countries and between European countries in general - we
like to mention a kind of European vocation of Luxembourg (although
actually neither France nor Germany recognize any more this claim).
After the First World War, Emile Mayrisch, head of the Luxembourg
iron-ore industry, tried to encourage Germany and France to enter into
economical co-operation. He is to be honoured as a precursor of the
Frenchman Robert Schuman who, by the way, was born and partly
educated in Luxembourg. The wife of Emile Mayrisch, Aline Mayrischde Saint-Hubert, a woman of great intellectual capacities, in her home
in Dudelange and, above all, in her manor of Colpach received eminent
representatives of French and German culture - Andre Gide, Jacques

118

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

Riviere, Jean Schlumberger, Paul Claudel, Walter Rathenau, Ernst

Robert Curtius, the Belgian hellenist Marie Delcourt, the Dutch
philosopher Bernard Groethuysen were her guests. "The spirit of
Colpach", says Marie Delcourt, in an essay published in 1957 by the
"Friends of Colpach"4, "is a spirit of European unity". Emile Mayrisch
died in 1928 by way of accident, his wife lived up to 1947. The
Luxembourg Ministry of Cultural Affairs last year has taken the
decision to foster a revival of the spirit and the gatherings of Colpach a first meeting has been held in May 1987.
Anise Koltz, a well known Luxembourg woman poet - she writes
poetry in German and in French - in 1962 founded the so-called
"Journees poetiques de Mondorf - Mondorfer Dichtertage", Mondorfles-Bains being a town of thermal baths near the French border.
Professor Katharina M. Wilsons who lectures at the Department of
Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia (Athens, U.S.A.) is
preparing a "Dictionary of Continental Women Writers". I shall quote
the note I made for her about Anise Koltz with the co-operation of my
colleague and friend Liliane Stomp-Erpelding:
Anise Koltz-Blanpain, born in Luxembourg in 1928, writes in the three literary
languages of the country - French, German and Luxembourgish. Her first steps in
literature - outstanding from the start - were taken in German, and she has written
stories for children in the Luxembourgish language. Though her exceptional talent
for the German language has surprised German critics for a long time, Anise Koltz
eventually turned to French as her favorite means of literary expression. However, she
still translates French literary works into German - such as, for example, her translation of Leopold Sedar Senghor for a German editor.
Anise Koltz has carried off several book-prizes and has been awarded various
decorations. As a member of literary and poetic academies she founded in 1962 the
"Journees poetiques de Mondorf," meetings of German and French poets which took
place every two years until 1974. In 1969 Anise Koltz organized a meeting of German
and French writers at Pont d'Oye in Belgium, thus assuring literary and cultural cooperation and exchange in Europe.
Since its first pUblication the poetry of Anise Koltz has struck the note of perfect
lyricism, remarkable in its concision and its concentration of thought and feeling. Her
images are daring, audacious; her language is harsh at times, crudely unveiling life in its
sullied and evil nakedness. Brief visions will comfort the troubled mind, visions, simple
and beautiful, denoting the poet's grand mastery of language.
In the literary world of Luxembourg and beyond its borders the work of Anise
Koltz bears witness of the vigour of contemporary poetry and turns the poet herself
into an authentic witness of the human condition.

Some time ago Anise Koltz has turned to studying Indian civilization

LUXEMBOURG POETS

119

and philosophy, being herself the new president of the Luxembourg

Society for Cultural Co-operation with India.
In 1987, a group of young poets has taken up again the idea of an
international meeting of poets in Luxembourg with the co-operation of
Anise Koltz, by the way, and in May last year a first "Night of
International Poetry" took place at the "Theatre des Capucins" in
Luxembourg-City.6 A certain number of poets presented their poems at
this meeting, poets coming from Belgium, the Federal Republic of
Germany, France, Great-Britain, Italy, Switzerland, the United States of
America and Luxembourg. Among the writers having organized this
meeting, two poets strike our attention, Pierre Joris born in 1946 who
has spent 19 years of his life in Luxembourg, writes in English,
considers Luxembourg to be a country of boredom and of little
intellectual means and lives in Paris as a free-lance writer, radio
producer and translator, and Jean Portante, a Luxembourg citizen of
Italian origin, writing in French and having left Luxembourg in order to
get settled in Paris, but he has chosen now to live for some time at least
in Central America. So several writers of Luxembourg origin, taking for
certain that the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, small in size, is also
small in thought and feeling, have emigrated to a foreign country of
their choice. I have mentioned Joris and Portante, I shall add a third
example, Nico Graf who has decided to leave Luxembourg in order to
continue his life and work in Germany and he already speaks the
Luxembourg dialect with a German accent.
I mentioned two categories of writers - those who consider themselves to be rooted in the Luxembourg soil, to be of Luxembourg
essence, and who may develop a kind of conservative dogma, and those
who feel at ease in Luxembourg, having the conviction that Luxembourg
is a link between Romance and Germanic civilisations, and believing
that they are invited by fate to develop actively this tie and forward
friendship between these two parts of Western Europe. There is a third
group, and I alluded to it already, formed by writers who believe that to
be born in Luxembourg is a kind of malediction or damnation; those
poets despise or even hate Luxembourg and sometimes choose to live
in some other country, because they are sure that their exile will enable
them to accomplish poetic creation.
Edmond Dune is a special case in Luxembourg literature. He was
born in 1914 and died in January this year. 8 He spent a great part of
his life in Belgium and in France and after having served as a soldier

120

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

first in the French "Legion etrangere," then in the British Army, he

worked as a journalist for a French speaking department of Radio
Luxembourg, and, although since the end of the Second World War he
had his home in Luxembourg, he often used the French language even
while talking to Luxembourg friends. Dune has left an important
"oeuvre" consisting of poetry, lyrical prose, plays, essays and some
translations from the German and the Italian, into French, of course.
He was said not to be a true citizen of Luxembourg but a man having
his roots in the French language. Some French critics used to say that
Edmond Dune was too good for petty Luxembourg. But in November
1987 Dune has accepted the first National Literary Prize to be awarded
by the Luxembourg Government - the Prize bearing the name of Batty
Weber, a Luxembourg writer who wrote in the three languages, in
German, Luxembourgish and French. A few days after Dune's death,
the Prime Minister publicly read a letter written and signed by Edmond
Dune, and in this letter Dune claims to have always cherished his
Luxembourg nationality. Besides writing, Edmond Dune practised
painting and he was a widely gifted man. But perhaps I may say that his
most outstanding contribution to literature is to be found in his lyrical
prose, his "poemes en prose", short masterpieces in structure, harmony,
accuracy of language and emotion. In one of these visions Dune
identifies Beauty with a bird which formerly used to come from heaven
and stay for some time with human beings - this bird is said to feed
upon the poets' blood! But nowadays men have forgotten the existence
of the bird which they do not recognize when it appears, therefore it
returns in a solitary flight to the far-away country near the dying sun
where its home is to be sought for. "Chronique" - "Chronicle" or
"History" - such is the title of this page9 :
Chronique
Ce soir-la, la beaute etait un grand oiseau noir et rouge dont les cercles meditatifs
tournaient autour du soleil qui n'en finissait pas de mourir derriere les fon~ts.
De vieux etres desesperes suivaient des yeux sa forme altiere. Dans Ie feu eteint de
leur regard, un petit brandon de souvenance parfois encore se rallumait, jetait une
derniere etincelle. Ils se souvenaient vaguement d'ancetres lointains qui savaient lire les
augures de ce rap ace hautain. Des legendes racontaient que I'oiseau se nourrissait du
sang des poetes.
En ce temps-la, l'oiseau avait un nom, les enfants Ie designaient du doigt, les femmes
Ie caressaient quand, a l'heure du crepuscule, il condescendait a venir se poser sur les
pelouses.

LUXEMBOURG POETS

121

Alors Ie sillage de son vol pouvait se voir longtemps sur la pourpre des nuages,
iongtemps apres qu'il eut regagne son aire mysterieuse que nul chasseur de remiges,
jamais encore, n'etait parvenu a denicher.
Maintenant l'oiseau passe dans Ie ciel, solitaire, ennuye, comme perdu au monde. II
trace dans l'air glace de grands cercles inutiles, d'immenses boucles insensees. Et
personne ne songe plus a Ie reconnaitre et nul ne brule de I'adorer.
Ce soir-Ia, la beaute etait un grand oiseau rouge et noir qui s'envolait toujours plus
haut, toujours plus loin vers la mort lointaine du soleil.

Edmond Dune has made a strikingly congenial translation of the

Austrian poet Georg Trakl's poems. I shall quote just a few stanzas,
they will offer you the opportunity to appreciate Dune's qualities as a
translator.
In den einsamen Stunden des Geistes
1st es schon, in der Sonne zu gehn
An den gelben Mauem des Sommers hin.
Leise klingen die Schritte im Gras; doch immer schliift
Der Sohn des Pan im grauen Marmor.
Aux heures solitaires de l'esprit
II est beau d'aller au soleil
Le long des murs jaunes de l'ete.
Les pas bruissent doucement dans I'herbe; mais toujours il sommeille
Le fils de Pan dans Ie marbre gris.
Abends auf der Terrasse betranken wir uns mit braunem Wein.
Rotlich gluht der Pfirsich im Laub;
Sanfte Sonate, frohes Lachen.
Le soir sur la terrasse nous nous sommes enivres de Yin ambre.
La peche rougeoie dans la verdure;
Sonate douce, rires joyeux.
Schon ist die Stille der Nacht.
Auf dunklem Plan
Begegnen wir uns mit Hirten und weissen Stemen.
Beau, Ie silence de la nuit.
Sur la sombre plaine
Nous nous rencontrons avec des bergers et des etoiles blanches.
Wenn es Herbst geworden ist,
Zeigt sich nuchteme Klarheit im Rain.

122

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

Besanftigte wandeln wir an roten Mauern hin

Vnd die runden Augen folgen dem Flug der Vogel.
Am Abend sinkt das weisse Wasser in Graburnen.
Quand l'automne survient,
Vne sobre clarte se montre dans Ie bocage.
Apaises nous longeons des murailles rouges
Et nos yeux etonnes suivent Ie vol des oiseaux.
Au soir, l'eau blanche tombe dans les urnes des tombes.
Doubtlessly Edmond Dune has been an inventive, a creative writer
whereas generally Luxembourg authors are said to distinguish themselves rather by a critical mind, combined with the capacity of correct
expression, without being able to produce a new world of their own.
Nicolas Ries,1O for instance, studying Luxembourg psychology, has developed the opinion that we are made for writing essays, for analyses
and comments. Speaking often several languages, the Luxembourg
citizen perhaps will not be thoroughly master of any of them. That is
the reason for his being unable to cope with the requirements, the
claims of poetry, drama or novel writing.
Most certainly we are given to criticizing. Many younger and above
all young poets writing mostly in German and Luxembourgish, but also
in French, criticize vehemently our Luxembourg features, particularities
or shortcomings. We are bickering men and women, short-sighted,
egoistic, addicted to comfort, to material advantages in general, happy
to have a house of our own, a new car, a holiday in the South, the
opportunity to spend the evening in an arm-chair, drinking beer and
dozing in front of our television set, not caring to read books or to fight
against oppression practised by religion, or communist and conservative governments in various countries. We also ignore that in our own
country we meet with poverty and with immigrant workers whose life is
troubled by problems of adaptation. More or less gifted, these writers,
these poets nurture complacently a kind of hatred they feel, believe or
pretend to feel, against their own country. Some of these critical minds
are really gifted and able to produce creative poetry. I shall bring forth
two examples, quoting first Lambert Schlechter, a good writer both in
German and in French. In his small book "Das grosse Rasenstiick"
(1981), "The Great Piece of Lawn", he criticizes the poet who speaks
about blossoms and clouds, refusing to depict a hungry child, about
singers who celebrate joy and the season of spring and who know but

LUXEMBOURG POETS

123

the grief concerning their own death, about cItIes with churches,
palaces, coloured markets - and with paving stones being the nameless
monuments to black people: 11
poeten
die sonette schrieben
iiber bliiten und wolken
ein verhungertes kind
ergab kein passendes bild
fur verganglichkeit
sanger
die kantaten jauchzten
iiber freude und friihling
und wenn tone in moll erklangen
trauer aufkam und klagen
galt's dem eignen tod
stadte
mit domen und palasten
und bunten markten
jeder pflasterstein
das namenlose denkmal
fur einen toten neger
The second writer I shall mention is called Roger Manderscheid. He
has published stories, plays, novels, poetry in German. The broadcasting companies of the German Federal Republic have bought several of
his plays, but he is turning more and more towards the use of the
Luxembourgish dialect. In the 19th century and for some time afterwards people used to call our dialect "U~tzebuerger Daitsch," "Luxembourgish German," but actually it is considered as a national language.
Manderscheid, president, by the way, of the Luxembourg Writers'
Association which has been founded in 1986, and a kind and generous
man in personal relationship, is convinced that Luxembourg is wearing
the mask of a healthy nation, "das Aeussere einer heilen Welt"; she
wants her visitors to have the impression to have discovered a blessed
island, but, says Roger Manderscheid, this is a lie, Luxembourg is a

124

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

land of hypocrisy, pollution and corruption. In one of his Luxembourgish

poems, describing the landscape of the North of our country, he
concludes: "fir een ablack as d'welt an der rei" (1986) ("Just for one
moment the world is all right.") ("vakanz am eisleck").
Well-being is an exception, corruption is the normal state. Manderscheid's most remarkable work is "Ikarus", a satirical epic poem, in
German (1983).12 Manderscheid's Ikarus is a Hungarian political
refugee who has found work in Luxembourg, but, opposing to the
world, chooses to live as an intellectual tramp. He dies falling from our
Pont Adolphe, popularly called "the New Bridge". Suicide or murder, it
does not matter: The conscience of Luxembourg citizens is always
white and happy: "und wir fiihlen uns frei," writes Manderscheid. I shall
read a few lines of the beginning of his "Ikarus":
vergifteter regen, meteoriten,
atombomben, hagel, schnee und piloten,
auch starfighter, splitter von satelliten,
raketenkopfe, stucke von toten
auch cadmium, blei, monsun, alles fallt
aus den wolken herunter auf unseren kopf,
nur ikarus fliegt in der sternenwelt
der sonne entgegen: die nimmt ihn beim schopf
und schleudert vom hohen ross ihn herunter.
schon tropft uns wachs auf die stolze stirn,
sein absturz vollzieht sich kopfiiber, kopfunter,
jetzt muss er zerschellen mit haut und mit hirn:
in dem augenblick geht sein fallschirm auf
- und durch die menge ein kurzer schrei und ikarus schwebt, und wir schauen hinauf:
und der himmel ist blau und wir fiihlen uns frei.
This Luxembourg writers show a sense of responsibility and often are
characterized by their addiction to a social or intellectual cause. Emile
Hemmen, before retiring, worked for mentally handicapped children
and young people; his French poems are full of love for the suffering as
well as for justice and above all for beauty. His friend Nic Klecker, one
of the founders of the Luxembourg section of Amnesty International,
allows himself to be guided by the same ideal, an ideal of liberty and

LUXEMBOURG POETS

125

beauty, accompanied by a sense of obligation towards language,

towards the right expression and the rhythm of harmony. Klecker
speaks to a butterfly, hoping that it will be given the opportunity to
enjoy its short life:
dit au papillon (told to the butterfly)
je suis triste pour toi
les nuages sont bas
et les gouttes des feuilles paralysent
tes ailes
lentes
que la bourrasque ouvre Ie ciel
et qU'avant ton soir
paraisse Ie bleu
et que Ie soleil
entre dans l'eternite de ton jour (1987)13
Andre Simoncini, Luxembourg citizen of Italian origin, has become a
poet because he is a lover of beauty and tenderness, and his poetical
creativeness has made him open an Art Gallery where he presents
many interesting exhibitions of modern art and he also has founded a
series of beautiful books of poetry illustrated by contemporary painters
of great renown. I have been gliding for some time now from a group of
writers who consider themselves to be the spokesmen of "de klenge
Mann", the "man in the street", or the common man, the labourer who
is not given access to education, towards the privileged bourgeois poet
who writes an idealist's poetry. I shall mention a good writer, Robert
Schaack, a now retired civil servant of high rank, of wide reading and
widely travelled, who celebrates in a Christian way, under the
patronage of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the fraternity of human
beings, his own happiness and the beauty of God's world, beginning
with the Luxembourg landscape, going then to the Swiss mountains
and, far from Europe, to India, to China, to the many countries the
poet has visited in the course of his life.
Robert Schaack writes in French - this language for a long time was
used foremost by the bourgeois writers and the intellectuals belonging
often to the teaching profession. French was considered also to be a
barrier against German and above all nazi influence. Marcel Noppeney14
who in 1934 founded the "Society of Luxembourg Writers writing in

126

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

the French Language", the "S.E.L.F.", "Societe des ecrivains luxembourgeois de langue franc;aise", during the First World War had already
spent about three years in a German prison in Dietz-an-der-Lahn, and
was to be sent to Dachau in 1941, when he was already in his sixties.
Writing in French, besides being agreeable to people who admire the
French civilization, had become a kind of patriotic duty, whereas for
some time those who loved the German civilization and wanted to
express themselves in the German language, went about with a feeling
of guilt and felt that they could not show openly their preference for
German literature and language. But the situation has become quite
different - if there are still French writing authors in Luxembourg, they
do not pretend any more to accomplish patriotic high feats by doing so.
Many young writers, often belonging to the youngest writing generation,
write in German, and the Luxembourgish dialect is growing more and
more important, more and more popular. Jules Christophory, director
of the National Library, has given us several most interesting books on
this subject. 15
Literary life for some time now has been particularly encouraged by
official authorities. Cornel Meder, writer himself both in German and
Luxembourgish and editor of various collections of books and of the
cultural magazine "Galerie," has been nominated director of the
National Archives and he will direct a brand-new department of literary
archives which will be located in an old manor in the small city of
Mersch. So much for the dead writers, as to the living authors, every
two years at the end of October they are invited to a literary week-end
held in the north of Luxembourg, in the city of Clervaux; these days are
organized both by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the town of
Clervaux. On the heights near Clervaux, stands the Abbaye SaintMaurice, a benedictine abbey, many of whose monks have been or still
are brilliant and profound scholars. Dom Jean Leclercq is known all
over the world for being the publisher of all the works written by saint
Bernard, and Dom Roger Riblet-Buchmann, a poet in lyrical prose, has
written a beautiful book about his home-land, Alsace. The two monks,
although they are living in Luxembourg, are of French nationality.
Cultural and literary reviews in Luxembourg are numerous when
compared to the small number of inhabitants of this country. Mimmo
Morina, an Italian civil servant of the European Parliament, has
founded in Luxembourg an international review, "New Europe", which
publishes poetry in different languages. Two Luxembourg poets I have

LUXEMBOURG POETS

127

already mentioned, Emile Hemmen and Nic Klecker, a short time ago,
with the co-operation of several Luxembourg friends and two Italians
who live in Luxembourg, have founded an international review of
poetry which they have called "Estuaires", "Estuaries." National reviews
are "Galerie," "Re-creation," "Nos Cahiers," and the renowned "Cahiers
Luxembourgeois," founded in the twenties, which had ceased being
published are now edited again by the poet Nic Weber.
The review "Estuaires" pays great attention to the creative activity,
experience, faculty of the poet, and I finally want to lay a last stress
upon a stream of poetry which, as everywhere, is to be found in
Luxembourg poetry too - the stream of creative consciousness leading
from the experience of life, from personal, individual joy and suffering,
from the sensual contact with life's diverse phenomena, to the poetical
transmutation and the achievement of beauty and art. Jose Ensch was
born in 1942 and she has written poetry for more than twenty years
without ever publishing it, but for a few years now she has been giving
us at last the creative output of all these years of silence. I have been
speaking about the VOICE of Luxembourg poets - Jose Ensch is
exceptionally gifted for reading aloud her poetry - and other poets'
writings. I shall quote just a short part of the note Liliane StompErpelding and myself made, concerning Jose Ensch, for the "Dictionary
of Continental Women Writers":
"Jose Ensch draws her poetic inspiration from the distressing, even
tragic experience of the most personal, the most intimate and yet
universal components of daily life. Birth, life, the birth of life, love,
creation, the child, nature, beauty, but also and mainly sickness,
solitude, despair, death - those are the themes she develops in a
dramatic language with flaming, sumptuous or black images from whose
darkness rise sparks of soothing gentleness and hope. From the long
silence Jose Ensch has willfully kept for years has gushed forth a
richness of lyrical expressiveness worthy of a large national and international audience."
In one of her poems Jose Ensch feels herself to be like a country
without strength, with gardens abandoned after having been plundered.
The tired birds have gone elsewhere and out of the clay comes silence
first and then a cry.
This is an expression of barrenness, despair and even madness,
combined with the knowledge that the poet no longer is able to
celebrate light, to cross and to jump over torrents and flood; her soul is

128

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

wounded by the arrow asking for poetic creativeness, but she is

frightened by the duty of "passage". At last decrease announces itself,
the waters fall and the poet recognizes the sky; colours return, and the
bird, and pictures; black besieges white in a happy struggle whence
appears, victorious, the text, the poem.
May I read to you what says in French the voice of Jose Ensch, and
her poem will be the end of this introduction to the poetry of a very
small country, Luxembourg:
On a retire les forces de mon pays
delegue mes pouvoirs
abandonne mes jardins saccages
avec leurs etoiles de rouille
Les oiseaux extenues ont elu domicile dans l'ailleurs
Ils n'y tiennent qu'a un fil
Au fond de l'argile
voici Ie silence et voici Ie cri
Comment celebrer la lumiere
sauter les torrents et les deluges
l'encoche dans l'ame et la peur du passage?
o arb res habites, quelles terribles tStes
sur vos branches huilees de camphre et d'ether.
Quels gestes lents d'un peuple amnesique
dans la penombre sans fin
Mais la decrue s'amorce
On Ie voit au niveau de l'azur
On pourra defendre a nouveau les couleurs
et l'ombre frmche de l'oiseau sur Ie bois
Et voici qu'emergent les archipels d'images
Le noir y assiege Ie blanc
dans un combat heureux
d'ou sort, vainqueur, Ie texte (198SY6
Luxembourg
NOTES
I "Livre du Souvenir," 1945-1965, published by the "Amicale des Concentrationnaires et Prisonnieres politiques luxembourgeoises (1940-1954)," (Luxembourg:
1965).

LUXEMBOURG POETS

129

To be consulted on this subject for instance: "Geschichte der Luxemburger

Mundartdichtung in zwei Biinden," by Fernand Hoffmann, edited by the "Ministere des
Arts et des Sciences," (Luxembourg: 1964 and 1967), "Les Luxembourgeois par euxmemes," by Jules Christophory, Editions Guy Binsfeld, (Luxembourg: 1978), "Nachrichten aus Luxemburg, deutschsprachige Literatur in Luxemburg", by Carlo Hury,
(New York: Olms Presse, Hildesheim, 1979), "Litterature luxembourgeoise de langue
fran~aise", under the direction of Rosemarie Kieffer, Editions Naaman, Sherbrooke,
Quebec, 1980, "Litteratures luxembourgeoises?", lecture delivered by Rosemarie
Kieffer at the University of Metz, on the occasion of the centenary of the S.H.A.L.,
"Societe d'Histoire et d'Archeologie de la Lorraine," (30.9.1988).
3 "Renert", by Michel Rodange, most recent and complete edition with historical and
political comments by Romain Hilgert, Editions Guy Binsfeld, Luxembourg: 1987.
4 "Colpach", published by the "Friends of Colpach," under the patronage of the
Luxembourg Red Cross, second edition, Luxembourg: 1978.
5 The University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia, U.S.A.) has published other books
edited by Katharina M. Wilson: "Medieval Women Writers," 1984, and "Women
Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation," 1987; professor Wilson furthermore has
published a volume of essays on "Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: rara avis in Saxonia?" in the
"Medieval and Renaissance Monograph Series" directed by professor Guy R. Mermier
at Ann Arbor (Michigan, U.S.A.: 1987).
Ii "Poesie internationale," anthology, edited on the occasion of the "Festival international de poesie," organized in Luxembourg by Pierre Joris, Jacqueline Lux and Jean
Portante in 1987; the anthology has been edited by Guy Binsfeld, Luxembourg, 1987.
7 "Horizon, vertige & Italie intercalaire," by Jean Portante, Prix Rutebeuf 1986, (Paris:
Editions ARCAM, 1986).
8 Edmond Dune to be consulted for instance: "Edmond Dune," by Lucien Kayser,
Dossiers L, Litterature fran~aise de Belgique, Service du livre luxembourgeois, Maison
de la Culture, Arlon, 16/1987; "Edmond Dune: prix Batty Weber", booklet published
by the "Ministere des Affaires culturelles", (Luxembourg: 1987); "Edmond Dune: textes
et hommages", in "Les Cahiers Luxembourgeois", 111988, Luxembourg; "Edmond
Dune", by Rosemarie Kieffer in "Revue de litterature generale et comparee", 19881989, Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg.
9 "Poemes en prose", by Edmond Dune, (Quebec: Editions Naaman, Sherbrooke,
1973).
10 "Le peuple luxembourgeois essai de psychologie", by Nicolas Ries, deuxieme
edition, revue et augmentee, J. Schroell, Diekirch, 1920; "Luxembourgeois, qui etesvous?" by Jules Christophory, Editions Guy Binsfeld, Luxembourg, 1984; "Refiexions
autour de l'identite", special issue of the "Cahiers Luxembourgeois", editor Nic Weber
(formerly Raymon Mehlen), 35th year, (Luxembourg: 1988).
II "Das grosse Rasenstiick", by Lambert Schlechter, Editions Guy Binsfeld, (Luxembourg:
1981).
12 In 1988, Roger Manderscheid has published a novel, "Schacko klak," Editions PHI,
Echternach; written in Luxembourgish it is a summing up of a young boy's experience
of life before and during the nazi invasion and occupation. This novel will be filmed by
a Luxembourg team - for such a small country this will be an exceptional event both in
literature and dramatic art.
13 "Dans Ie desert du temps", by Nic Klecker, Editions "Section des Arts et des
Lettres", Institut Grand-Ducal, Luxembourg, 1987.
2

130

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER

14 Marcel Noppeney - to be consulted for instance: "Les Pages de la S.E.L.F." (Societe

des Ecrivains luxembourgeois de langue fran~aise), Volume XIII, special issue at the
time of the poet's death in 1966; "Marcel Noppeney", literary anthology published by
Rosemarie Kieffer, in "Arts et Lettres", cultural review of the "Section des Arts et des
Lettres", Institut Grand-Ducal, 3/1966; "Marcel Noppeney", by Rosemarie Kieffer,
Dossiers L, Litterature fran~aise de Belgique, Service du livre luxembourgeois, Maison
de la Culture, (Arion: 1811988).
15 Jules Christophory who actually is the director of the National Library in
Luxembourg, has begun his professional life by teaching English; then he has turned
also to the study of the Luxembourgish dialect. He has published two books for English
and French speaking inhabitants of Luxembourg who want to acquaint themselves with
this dialect ("Dites-le en luxembourgeois", 1973, and "Nous parlons luxembourgeois",
1974), a Portuguese-Luxembourgish dictionary, 1981, and an English-Luxembourgish
dictionary, 1982, as well as the books on Luxembourg literature and the psychology of
the Luxembourg citizen which have been mentioned before.
16 Jose Ensch has published three books: "L'arbre," Editions Galerie Simoncini,
Luxembourg, 1984: "Ailleurs ... c'est certain," Editions "Section des Arts et des
Lettres," Institut Grand-Ducal, Luxembourg, 1985. "A l'ecoute de Gisele Prassinos une voix grecque," in cooperation with Rosemarie Kieffer, Editions Naaman, Sherbrooke,
Quebec, 1986.

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

THE RAMATOULA YE-AISSATOU STYLES

IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

On my way to the 1988 international phenomenology/aesthetics

symposium at Michigan State University, a business story in Vis-d- Vis
(a United Airlines monthly magazine) caught my attention. Perhaps this
commercial news article can benefit not only the business sector but
also global thinking in general. The magazine reports: "An American
executive was having lunch with a prominent businessman from the Far
East. The American asked, 'What is the most important language for
world trade?' The American expected the reply to be 'English.' But the
Asian answered, without hesitation, 'The most important language for
world trade is my customer's language'."l This story raises the general
and prevalent problem of how best to relate to a cultural other whether
in business or in academia or in popular culture or in government. The
United States, for example, has about 6% of the world's population and
consumes about 30-40% of the world's natural resources, but it does
not correspondingly consume or experience an equivalent percentage of
the world's culture. The more important matter here concerns not the
low quantitative American experience of the cultural others (especially
the Southern others of the world) but the quality of this very limited
experience. Cultural exchange that is restricted substantially to materials rather than also minds does not promote or advance any healthy
civilization. The U.S. appetite for global cultural information should
match its present strong appetite for the cultures of the world. Perhaps
the most effective way of studying the culture of a different other is to do
so in the terms of the cultural other. As Chinua Achebe puts it, "No
man can understand another whose language he does not speak (and
'language' here does not mean simply words, but a man's entire worldview)."2
The cultural terms of the other include the core metaphors of the
other. Core metaphors here simply mean those signs that bear the
mythologies, the histories, and the philosophies of a particular culture.
Such metaphors can and do show how a culture organizes, sees, and
articulates its often heterogeneous self. In other words, the task of
making and understanding our world fundamentally involves metaphor

131
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 131-148.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

132

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

formation. Core metaphors can be accessed directly or indirectly in

three basic ways: the authoritive level, the simulitive level, and the
originitive level (usually the most intense and most intimate). Authoritive experience of a culture comes solely through authored texts, and
text here denotes (to use a Ricoeurian definition) any work of art or
any humanly produced work that provokes one to redescribe reality.
The originitive experience of a culture involves direct, concrete absorption of the inner logic of the culture as well as an ever-evolving
immersion into the raw roots and native soil and pure waters of the
culture. The simulitive experience of a culture attempts genuinely to
trace the originary tracks of a culture by semi-authoritive and semioriginitive means. The originitive experience demands that the culture
be lived in body and soul, in principle and practice. An outside culture
or the cultural other does not necessarily mean just another nation.
Cultural others can and do exist within as well as outside nations. Some
of the most Western-ignored, Western-belittled, and Western-mal studied
cultures of the world lie in Africa. Let me re-echo Chinua Achebe's
succinct comments on this African question: "No man can understand
another whose language he does not speak (and 'language' here does
not mean simply words, but a man's entire worldview)." He adds, "How
many Europeans and Americans know our language? I do not know of
any, certainly not among our writers and critics" (Achebe, p. 79). But
African academic relationship to the West indicates a reverse attitude
and approach. Again Achebe states the situation unmistakably: "The
African intellectual's knowledge of the West (and he knows a lot more
about Africa) comes to him not from literature but from personal
contact" (Achebe, pp. 65-66).
One complex but often malad dressed aspect of African culture that
continues to titillate many Western men and irritate many Western
women is polygyny. So Long a Letter (Une si longue lettre), an
epistolary feminist novelette by the late Senegalese Mariama Ba, will
guide me as I sketch two tendencies in contemporary African feminism.
My discussion should be understood in the context of this caveat issued
by the heroine of So Long a Letter: "Africa is diverse, divided. The
same country can change its character and outlook several times over,
from north to south or from east to west."3 Africa and Africans are
indeed culturally heterogeneous in almost every sense of the word even
though they also share many core metaphors or symbols. Therefore, the
Senegalese setting and thematic currents should be seen in this broad
yet limited milieu.

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

133

So Long a Letter has a double plot: Ramatoulaye (the heroine),

abandoned by husband and later widowed, lives in the Senegalese
capital of Dakar. In so long a letter (131 pages in French) to Aissatou
(her lifelong best friend and fellow Senegalese who now lives in the
United States), Ramatoulaye evokes the "mutual memories" of the
childhood, adolescence, and middle age she and Aissatou shared in
Senegal. In the letter, she also updates Aissatou about personal
developments that had occurred since she became a widow. The two
stories show the parallel polygynic experiences of two upper-middleclass women and their different responses. After twenty-five years of
Ramatoulaye's marriage, her husband (Modou Fall), a French-trained
lawyer and top trade unionist, entices away from school their oldest
daughter's best friend and classmate (Binetou, a teenager) and marries
her. Ramatoulaye never knows of the Modou-Binetou relationship until
after the Binetou-Modou marriage. From the very moment Modou
marries Binetou until his sudden death five years later, he physically
avoids Ramatoulaye and their twelve children (seven daughters Daba, Aissatou [the namesake of Ramatoulaye's best friend], Amy,
Awa, Arame, Yacine, and Dieynaba; five sons - Mawdo, Alioune,
Malick, Oumar, and their youngest child, Ousmane, who is six years
old). Furthermore, during those five years, Modou also cuts off his
economic and moral responsibility to Ramatoulaye and the children.
The polygynic turn of Ramatoulaye's marriage occurs only three years
after her best friend, Aissatou (to be called Aunty Aissatou henceforth)
experiences a similar polygynic turn. Unlike Ramatoulaye who stays in
the marriage until her husband dies, Aissatou and her four children (all
males) take a one-way journey out of the life of Mawdo Ba and out of
the polygynic world of Senegal. Aunty Aissatou leaves Mawdo immediately when he marries his mother's brother's teenage daughter (Nabou),
who has been specifically groomed for the marriage by her aunt or his
mother (Aunty Nabou). Ramatoulaye and Aunty Aissatou have been
best friends since childhood. They and their erstwhile husbands belong
to the transitional generation that witnessed the formal death of
colonial French Senegal and participated in the birthing of a new
Senegal, a period that roughly covers 1960-1980. Aissatou and
Ramatoulaye more or less typify two basic approaches to marital
sexism in contemporary Africa. I prefer using the term "polygyny"
rather than "polygamy" because the latter disguises the sexism or
marital double standard still persistent in the culture. The term
"polygamy" wrongly implies that its two basic meanings of polygyny

134

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

and polyandry are both legal marital realities in Africa; therefore, the
term "polygamy" buries the sexist fact that only polygyny is legal, that
polyandry is not correspondingly legal but illegal.
The central metaphors of polygyny show women essentially as
nature's or God's foods or clothes specifically produced for men's
consumption, men's health, and men's enjoyment so that men can better
execute the main human business of creating infrastructural values and
of providing societal leadership. Consequently, many women easily
become objects that can be acquired and discarded or replaced or
supplemented at men's will when the things outlive their original
functions of servicing men domestically and otherwise. Much of Africa
still abounds with polygynysts or legal collectors of women. Many men
enhance their status by the number of women in their collections or
harems. Islam sanctions polygyny but prohibits polyandry on the
specious ground that individual or specific paternities will be impossible
to establish. Christianity approves only monogamy, and many university-educated men ostensibly disapprove of polygyny. Yet many African
Christians and many university men manage to be polygynysts (but do
not ask me how; all I can say here is that the paradox of how to become
a polygynyst with an anti-polygynyst image is an "open secret" in
Africa).
Islam and polygyny dominate the Senegalese world of Ramatoulaye
and Aissatou, two schoolteachers who grew up together educationally
and otherwise. Aissatou first met Mawdo Ba (a medical doctor) through
Modou Fall (a lawyer, a labor leader, and Ramatoulaye's husband). The
Aissatou-Mawdo marriage is controversial from the beginning. Her
mother-in-law (Aunty Nabou) vehemently and actively opposes the
marriage from the beginning to the end on the ground of class. She sees
Aissatou, a mere goldsmith's daughter, as too low and too bad for her
doctor-son who descends from the Princess of the Sine. The marrying
down of a goldsmith's daughter by a princess's son insults her royal
dignity. Therefore, she plots to subvert the marriage or problematize it
for her daughter-in-law. She covertly raises her niece to be her son's
ideal wife. She teaches the young Nabou that "the first quality in a
woman is docility." Under the guidance of Aunty Nabou, young Nabou
finishes elementary school and quits high school to attend the
midwifery school (which - according to Aunty Nabou - confers on
midwives "grace for . . . entry into paradise" since they help deliver
"new followers of Mohammed, the prophet"). She eventually marries off

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

135

Nabou to her son, a situation which automatically makes Aissatou a

co-wife. The Mawdo-Nabou marriage has been conceived and consumated without Aissatou's knowledge or consent. People urge her to
accept or endure this unexpected transition from monogamy to
polygyny because "one does not burn the tree that bears the fruit" and
also because "boys cannot succeed without their father." Girls can
succeed without their fathers presumably because as girls their mother
would be still around to provide them with the feminine model. But for
boys, there would be no father figure to provide the masculinist image.
Furthermore, girls will sooner or later be married off to men. This
sexist logic does not deter Aissatou from unilaterally terminating her
marital relationship with Mawdo. In a succinct letter to Mawdo, she
rejects the master-slave hierarchy which society imposes on her or
conditions her to accept or follow. She attacks the convenient and sexist
distinction Mawdo makes between heartfelt love and physical love.
Mawdo claims that he is only physically attracted to Nabou, whereas
his heartfelt love is only for Aissatou. However, when he is confronted
with the question - why do you have intimate sexual relations with a
woman you do not love? - he responds: "How can you expect a man
to remain a stone when he is constantly in contact with the woman who
runs his house?" He then rehashes the basic logic that sustains the
polygynic culture: "I saw a film in which the survivors of an air crash
survived by eating the flesh of the corpses. This demonstrates the force
of the instincts in man, instincts that dominate him, regardless of his
level of intelligence." Therefore, he urges people to accept "reality in its
crude ugliness" because "You can't resist the imperious laws that
demand food and clothing for man. These same laws compel the 'male'
in other respects." He notes that he says "male" in order to "emphasize
the bestiality of instincts." He adds that a "wife must understand, once
and for all, and must forgive; she must not worry herself about 'betrayal
of the flesh'," because the "important thing is what there is in the heart"
and what is in the heart is "what unites two beings inside." And he
concludes: "Driven to the limits of my resistance, I satisfy myself with
what is within reach." Consequently, "for the sake of 'variety' men are
unfaithful to their wives." In other words, while men can eat a variety of
foods to satisfy their needs, their desires, women cannot supposedly
because they lack such desires or that nature or God forbids them not
to act on such needs or desires. Put differently, the male desire or need
to be polygynous or unfaithful or adulterous is uncontrollable, whereas

136

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

an equivalent female desire or need is controllable and therefore

punishable if acted on. Aissatou promptly dismisses this biologistic
logic of polygynic instincts. For her, ''there can be no union of bodies
without the heart's acceptance however little that may be" (Ba, p. 31).
She insists that the bestial and the human in individuals have to fuse
together since no human act is pure charity or pure bestiality. Therefore, procreational or recreational sex without any heartfelt love is, for
her, despicable and unacceptable. She declares to Mawdo: "I am
stripping myself of your love, your name. Clothed in my dignity, the
only working garment, I go my way." She exits with her four sons, goes
to France for further education, and finally relocates in the United
States where she works in the Senegalese embassy. She continues to
maintain her very close friendship with Ramatoulaye who still lives in
Senegal. Ramatoulaye thinks that books saved Aissatou after the
marital break, for books granted her what her society denied her.
Only three years later, Ramatoulaye herself faces a devastating
marital crisis. One Sunday, Mawdo Ba, Tamsir (Modou's older brother), and a local Imam - all in their "Sunday best" - unexpectedly
appear at Ramatoulaye's house to inform her for the very first time of
the unanticipated news that her husband had just married a second
wife. Before this news came, Ramatoulaye (through her oldest daughter,
Daba) had already known that one sugar-daddy was lavishing expensive
gifts on Binetou (Daba's best friend and schoolmate). The sugar-daddy
offered to give Binetou a luxurious villa, an Alfa Romeo, jewels, a
monthly stipend of 50,000 france as well as a Mecca trip for her
parents so that they can become Alhaji and Alhaja. Neither Ramatoulaye
nor Daba knew that this sugar-daddy was none other than Modou Fall
since Binetou never disclosed the identity of the sugar daddy to Daba.
Under this state of mother/daughter ignorance, Modou's three male
emissaries announce that Modou had just married Binetou. The local
Imam tells Ramatoulaye that "nothing one can do when Allah the
almighty puts two people side by side," or as Christians often quote,
whatever God has put together let no man put asunder. Mawdo and
Tamsir readily endorse the Imam's religious dictum. Tamsir then quotes
Modou as saying that "it is fate that decides men and things," that "God
intended him to have a second wife," and that "there is nothing he can
do about it." He adds that Modou "praises you for quarter of a century
of marriage in which you gave him all the happiness a wife owes her
husband." The same logic - the divine or natural right of a male to

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

137

objectify females and collect wives - that Mawdo uses earlier to justify
his marrying of N abou is again used here by Modou to defend his
marrying of Binetou. A wife owes her husband happiness, but what
does a husband owe his wife? Polygynysts are once again portrayed as
helpless or innocent victims of instincts. Men are merely doing their
natural duty, only doing what comes naturally, only performing the
masculine obligation. But unlike Mawdo, Modou does not make the
heartfelt love/headfelt love distinction. He does not profess that he still
loves Ramatoulaye. In fact, from the moment he marries Binetou until
he dies five years later, he avoids Ramatoulaye and their twelve
children. He abandons her physically, emotionally, and economically.
Daba advises her mother to leave Modou just as Aissatou did to
Mawdo three years before. How should a woman now in her late
forties, how should a woman who has given the best years of her life to
a marriage of twenty-five years, how should a woman who has endured
fourteen maternities (including two miscarriages) respond now that she
has been rebuffed? Note the phrase "best years," which obviously
mainly means the best years of her body, woman's body traditionally
defined as the machine that lubricates man's engine. With a feeling of
betrayal and helplessness, Ramatoulaye reflects, "Leave? Start at zero,
after living twenty-five years with one man, after having borne twelve
children?" She then wonders, "Did I have enough energy to bear alone
the weight of this responsibility which was both moral and material?"
She here alludes to two primary factors - economics and traditional
morality - which often prevent so many women from leaving abusive
or miserable relationships. Where will Ramatoulaye, a schoolteacher,
find the money to maintain a household of twelve children? What will
she say to the neighbors and other people who will unduly blame her
for the failure of the marriage? How will she contend with others as
well as herself who will read the story as her failure as a woman? To
further complicate her situation, she is still in love with Modou.
Traditional morality usually automatically holds women responsible for
any marital breakdown, a view that often produces in women serious
guilt and consequently very low self-esteem (if any at all). The problem
of personal loneliness often encountered by single or divorced women,
especially those over 40, cannot be faced merely with the cliches of
comfort and hope often offered by well-intentioned friends and support
groups. The question of personal existential pain and loneliness is so
complex and individualized that a standardized prescription hardly

138

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

works. What such female victims seem to need is a practical mechanism

to enable them to develop a personalized or individualized approach.
The loneliness question appears to be the most serious for Ramatoulaye.
She notes that of the many abandoned or divorced women that she
knows only a few still marginally retained their beauty to be "able to
capture a worthy man." But the loneliness - one very costly price
exacted by the burdensome weight of sexist traditional morality (which
cannot be readily dismissed by simply calling on its female victims to
have high self-esteem) - prematurely drove to their graves the other
women who could not capture or seduce worthy men. I do not dispute
that zero or low self-esteem plays a crucial role in the aftermath of the
breakdown of marital and other kinds of long-term sexual relationships.
A woman's self-image is wrongly based on men; consequently, women
lack any control or shaping of it. But self-esteem does not come by
telling women to develop androphobia or manophobia since many of
these single or divorced or abandoned women would still want to
develop intimate relationships with some other men. Women should be
taught to hate or avoid sexist men, not all men. Note that I am not
saying that such women have to develop relationships with non-sexist
men. What I am saying is that the women should have such an option
without being made to feel guilty if they choose to exercise it. The
absence of such options in many feminist pitches promotes or intensifies the loneliness of the very women who would still like to maintain
intimate relationships with men, non-sexist men (of course). In other
words, one is not helping female victims of sexism by simply telling
them (usually implicitly) to avoid all men unless, of course, one believes
that every man is by nature sexist.
Efforts to deinstitutionalize sexism should be heightened locally and
globally. Those subtly sexist mechanisms differently built into the
infrastructures of different societies - those mechanisms which tell our
institutions to tell women to see themselves primarily or exclusively as
bodies to be made beautiful for men - need to to be eliminated or
rendered impotent. One cannot subvert overnight a long embedded
image or culture, nor (of course) should one wait for a repressive and
oppressive structure to voluntarily dismantle itself. Life has to be made
impossible for those who make life impossible for others. In So Long a
Letter, Ramatoulaye finds herself looking at herself as an object even
though she is at the same time trying to fight this image: "I looked at
myself in the mirror. My eyes took in the mirror's eloquence. I had lost

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

139

my slim figure, as well as ease and quickness of movement. My stomach

protruded from beneath the wrapper ... Suckling had robbed my
breasts of their round firmness. I could not delude myself: youth was
deserting my body." She then refers to the double standard in age
evaluation: when a man "compares what he had with what he no longer
has" and "what he has with what he could have," he quickly proceeds to
despise or humiliate or relegate or exchange or abandon or divorce the
woman he now perceives as womout and outdated. Why should he not
behave this way when tradition assures him of another woman? As long
as there is going to be another woman (often much younger and
presumably more beautiful by virtue of her age), he will continue to
confront his own old age by marrying or keeping younger or more
beautiful women. The law of the availability of vulnerable or naive
women guarantees the continuous satisfaction of masculinist desires.
During Ramatoulaye's period of abandonment, she encounters heavy
pressures from several others and herself to leave her nominal marriage
for another husband. Farmata, a griot and nosy neighbor, believes (not
without any self-interest since she could get some commission from a
successful suitor) that Ramatoulaye's marital crisis may mean "luck
somewhere else" with another man. Farmata sees women as a ball
whose bouncing direction cannot be predicted once thrown since no
one can control where the ball rolls or even less so who gets the ball.
Ramatoulaye did think she could survive polygyny, for her religion had
taught her to expect equal sexual or emotional sharing in polygyny. But
what she instead got was a rude awakening. As she puts it, "I had
prepared myself for equal sharing, according to the precepts of Islam
concerning polygamic life. I was left with empty hands" (Ba, p. 46). This
zero economic, zero sexual, and zero emotional attention was in itself a
powerful argument to leave this practically non-existent marriage. But
she decided against leaving, for she decided with her heart rather than
her head. The friendship of Aissatou and the affection of her children
sustain her during this depressing period. Still she faces lonely nights,
for who would not like to wake up in the morning in the arms of
another, of a loved and loving other? She still has to contend with the
fact that "1 was not divorced. ... 1 was abandoned." And as her
grandmother used to say, an abandoned woman is "a fluttering leaf that
no hand dares to pick up." Lonely nights make her yearn for "another
man" to replace Modou, to fill the void. She reminds us painfully that
one "does not easily undo the tenuous ties that bind two people

140

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

together during a journey fraught with hardship" (Ba, pp. 52-53). The
problem here is how to retain feelings of love without retaining
"victimous" feelings that often make the Ramatoulayes vulnerable to
men. Is it not possible for women to love men and be loved by men
without essentially or solely defining themselves through these loved
men? This question has to be addressed directly by both men and
women. This question has to be addressed structurally and otherwise by
society at large and by individual groups of men and women as well as
by individuals themselves. Love (for man or woman) does not have to
mean the negation or annihilation or relegation or suppression of one's
own identity.
Aunty Aissatou's friendship and understanding which manifest themselves through the fact that she never (even though she disagrees) tries
to dissuade her from her decision to remain in the marriage, and by the
fact that when she hears that her children are having trouble going to
school because of lack of transportation, she (without any questions or
strings) promptly arranges for a personal new car - Fiat 125 - for
Ramatoulaye. Such material/intellectual/and emotional support goes a
long way to help build or regain one's esteem. Aunty Aissatou's
generous gestures enhance Ramatoulaye's appreciation of friendship,
which she now sees as superior to love: "Friendship has splendours that
love knows not. It grows when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love.
Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights
unknown to love" (Ba, p. 54). The ideal situation (which rarely occurs)
is to have both close or intimate non-sexual friendships on the one
hand and on the other hand love that entails both friendship and
heterosexual (or homosexual or bisexual, etc. for those who are so
inclined) intimacy with another or others. We have to recognize that
there are those who cannot endure to have only relationships or
friendships that are all absolutely devoid of sexual intimacy. Besides
Aunty Aissatou's friendship and Ramatoulaye's children's affection, all
of which mitigated her situation, she still seeks a romantic relationship
- something neither Aissatou nor her children can deliver. She says, "I
am one of those who can realize themselves fully and bloom only when
they form part of a couple." "Even though 1 understand your stand,"
she continues in this long letter to her dear friend (Aissatou), "even
though 1 respected the choice of liberated women, I have never conceived of happiness outside marriage" (Ba, pp. 55-56). This question
of choice, even when the choice is perceived by others as sexist, this

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

141

choice to decide even when one has been fully warned of the dangers
possibly inherent in such a choice, this question is at the heart of the
basic problem with feminism world-wide today. The way to make
women realize that a choice is probably sexist is not to legislate away
their right to hold or follow this choice or make them feel guilty or less
human or less of a woman for holding or practicing such a choice or
force them to be on the defensive. Such approach ironically often
invites the very thing such feminist censors or czars ostensibly have
vowed to eradicate. Such routes have multiplied the number of dangerously lonely women and intensified the loneliness of those who are
already lonely, especially those single or divorced or abandoned women
over 40. The concerns of the Ramatoulayes of the world should be
addressed with strategies that recognize their romantic yearnings as
legitimate and develop new non-sexist structures or modify old sexist
structures that can support or supplement consciousness-raising programs (which by themselves are not very productive for many women).
The larger question the Ramatoulayes raise is whether feminism (Western-style) and heterosexual marital or non-marital coupling are necessarily mutually exclusive. Every sexist marriage seems to have its own
logic and its own history - elements which are likely to affect the way
we approach our dismantling of it. This point here does not mean that
the present pursuit of viable alternatives to marital relationships should
be discontinued or relaxed. Rather I am saying that there are some
women (who are not necessarily male chauvinist dupes) who, for some
complex reasons that involve one's cultural origins and unique personal
experiences, believe wrongly or rightly that some non-sexist forms of
marital or heterosexual relationships exist or are possible. To speak
otherwise would suggest that every marital or heterosexual relationship
is biologically or innately sexist. We have no means of absolutely ruling
out the possibility or existence of non-sexist marriages or heterosexual
coupling. We have to change those things that make women and men
believe that "a man's success depends on feminine support," or according to the cliche - behind every successful man is a woman. In other
words, show me a male failure and I will show you a woman who has
failed. Either way the picture of women here is negative. Their contribution is relegated to the background or regarded as mere support
when "their man" is successful. But when the man fails, "his woman" is
blamed for it. Men as main courses or main events or leads and women
as appetizers or desserts or supporting cast or appendages or adorn-

142

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

ments or decorations: such has been the history of many traditional

marital or heterosexual relationships. The success of a woman should
not depend on her feminine support of a man, unless that is what she so
freely wants or desires. My position is that women can maintain full
relationships without necessarily subscribing to or supporting a masculinist agenda or a "feminine" agenda.
To believe in marriage as Ramatoulaye apparently does does not
necessarily make her any less feministic. One can engage in marriage
and still be a practitioner of non-sexism. To believe in marriage does
not mean to believe in the necessity of any kind of marriage. Not every
marriage is better than no marriage. The kind of marriage Ramatoulaye
desires surfaces when she becomes a widow. About forty days after
Modou's death, a series of proposals floods her house. Tamsir, her late
husband's older brother, declares that she will be his wife. For the first
time in thirty years, Ramatoulaye tells us, she explodes as she replies to
Tamsir. "You forget that 1 have a heart, a mind, that 1 am not an object
to be passed from hand to hand." She then lectures him: Marriage is "an
act of faith and of love, the total surrender of oneself to the person one
has chosen and who has chosen you." Without mincing words, she
declares: "I shall never be the one to complete your collection." She
then reminds Tamsir of his polygyny, poverty, and laziness: "What of
your wives, Tamsir? Your income can meet neither their needs nor
those of your children. To help you out with your financial obligations,
one of your wives dyes, another sells fruit, the third untiringly turns the
handle of her sewing machine. You, the revered lord, you take it easy,
obeyed at the crook of a finger." And finally she advises him to "purge
yourself of your dreams of conquest" (Ba, pp. 57-58).
After Tamsir's fiasco, Daouda Dieng's fiasco comes. Daouda Dieng
is Ramatoulaye's former suitor, the one who first proposed to her thirty
years before when she was about eighteen, the one her mother preferred. Here he is proposing again. He is a medical doctor and a
famous, respected member of the Senegalese legislature. Furthermore,
he is wealthy and her mother's favorite. As she herself admits, 1 chose
Modou over Daouda: "To [Daouda's] maturity 1 had preferred inexperience, to his generosity, poverty, to his gravity, spontaneity, to his
stability, adventure" (Ba, p. 58). But thirty years later, Daouda Dieng's
wealth, his honorifics, his national influence and fame, and Ramatoulaye's
economically and emotionally vulnerable situation should supposedly
be compelling and tempting reasons to accept the proposal. Yet this

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

143

seemingly conducive context could not sway Ramatoulaye into saying

yes to the proposal. In a letter to Daouda, she gives her reasons:
You are chasing after a woman who has remained the same . . . despite the intense
ravages of suffering. You who have loved me, who love me still - I don't doubt it - try
to understand me. My conscience is not accommodating enough to enable me to marry
you, when only esteem, justified by your many qualities, pulls me towards you. I can
offer you nothing else, even though you deserve everything. Esteem is not enough for
marriage, whose snares I know from experience. And then the existence of your wife
and children further complicates the situation. Abandoned yesterday because of a
woman, I cannot lightly bring myself between you and your family.
You think the problem of polygamy is a simple one. Those who are involved in it
know the constraints, the lies, the injustices that weigh down their consciences in return
for the ephemeral joys of change .... It is with infinite sadness and tear-filled eyes that I
offer you my friendship. Dear Daouda, please accept it. It is with great pleasure that I
shall continue to welcome you to my house. (Ba, p. 68).

Daouda Dieng's only reply: "All or nothing. Adieu." He "never came

back again" to Ramatoulaye's house. Dieng's response of all or nothing
is somewhat typical. Many men cannot or do not want to maintain
friendships that are devoid of sex with women. The same also holds
true for some women. This desire on the part of one partner to get
sexually involved and the desire of the other partner to get involved but
only non-sexually become more problematic when the phenomenon is
routinely experienced. Ramatoulaye comes from a culture where many
mothers teach their daughters that the only marital condition that
matters is a man's or husband's love or acceptance. Her mother has
always insisted that "a woman must marry the man who loves her but
never the one she loves" (Ba, p. 59). The issue here somewhat reminds
me of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
where Janie is made to marry Logan Killicks, a relatively rich man Janie
does not love. Janie's well-intentioned and loving but misguided grandmother fears that her plan to have Janie "school out and pick from a
higher bush and a sweeter berry" may not materialize because he
catches her and "shift-less Johnny Taylor" kissing - an indication that
her 16-year-old Janie may end up with such a riff-raff as Taylor.
Granny marries her off to Logan Killicks, apparently Granny's embodiment of the higher bush and sweeter berry. Janie does ask herself some
premarital questions: "Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the
unmated. Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?" Through her
grandmother's "talk and her own conjectures," she concludes that "she

144

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

would love Logan after they were married." She gets married and waits
"for love to begin," but it does not begin. She returns to her grandmother. When the grandmother reads the anguish on her grandchild's
face, she asks her, "Whut's de matter, sugar?" Janie replies," 'Cause you
told me Ah mus gointer love him, and ... I don't. Maybe if sombody
was to tell me how, Ah could do it." Her grandmother (who undoubtedly means well) quickly dismisses this love concern. Like a Tina
Turner, she asks, what's love got to do with it?: "You come heah wid
yo' mouf full uh foolishness .... Heah you got uh prop tuh lean on all
yo' bawn days, and big protection, and everybody got tuh tip dey hat
tuh you and call you Mis' Killicks, and you come worryin' me 'about
love." She continues, "Dat's de very prong all us black women gits hung
on. Dis love! Dat's just whut's got us uh pullin' and uh haulin' and
sweatin' and doin' from can't see in de mornin' till can't see at night."
Then she concludes, "Ah betcha you wants some dressed up dude dat
got to look at de sole of his shoe everytime he cross de street tuh see
whether he got enough leather dere tuh make it across." Of course, the
marriage fails; Janie deserts Logan for another man. This first marriage
shows her that "marriage did not make love."4 Even though Janie's
grandmother properly points out the significant role of economics in a
marriage, she tends to reduce all marital problems to economic insecurity and she tends to ignore or underestimate the role of romance or
mutual physical attraction. Just as romance is not everything, money is
not everything. Nevertheless, the point that money or romance is not
everything does not necessarily mean that either is nothing in a marriage.
Ramatoulaye's kind of heterosexual relationship seems less traditional and less idealistic. A strong desire to match her principle of love
with practicality exists in her. Having said no to all her suitors (the
serious and the game-playing ones), she (not surprisingly) earns the
name of "mad woman." Women who refuse to be used by men or
refuse to do what men want them to do are often called such names.
Many women who suffer marriage-related or men-related nervous
breakdown often go to doctors (usually male ones) who (not infrequently) declare them as insane or solely blame them for their condition. In spite of the pervasive and persistent marital agonies Ramatoulaye
has personally experienced and witnessed, she declares: "I remain persuaded of the inevitable and necessary complementarity of man and
woman. Love, imperfect as it may be in its content and expression,

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

145

remains the natural link between these two beings.... The success of
the family is born of a couple's harmony, as the harmony of multiple
instruments creates a pleasant symphony .... The success of a nation
therefore depends inevitably on the family" (Ba, pp. 88-89). Although
she privileges heterosexuality here, she no longer appears to believe
that such coupling has to be marital or traditional. However, to imply
that only a heterosexual coupling can guarantee the success of the
family and thus the success of a nation is to endorse the politics of
exclusion of the possibility of other kinds of possibly viable intimate or
sexual relationships that can coexist with heterosexual ones. For me, the
most obscene word in any culture is the one that stands for the
exclusion of others. The irony here is that those who stand for
exclusion often find themselves being excluded by their endorsed
exclusionism. Inclusion does not mean acceptance or practice of what
one does not personally approve of. Inclusion here means tolerance of
differences. One can creatively and actively disagree with a value
without being intolerant of the value. Censorship of any kind or of
anything often backfires since there is a tendency for censorial victims
to go underground where their merits or demerits cannot be openly or
publicly discussed or debated. Knowledge, any kind of knowledge, is
(for me) always preferable to ignorance, even though I am aware that
not every knowledge advances understanding or thinking.
Ramatoulaye's relational optimism develops with her observation of
the marriage between her oldest daughter (Daba) and Abdou (as well
as the burgeoning relationship between her pregnant daughter (Aissatou)
and Ibrahima SaIl, an undergraduate. She senses a growing tenderness
between Daba and Abdou. They seem to be her ideal couple. They
"identify with each other, discuss everything so as to find a compromise." When she tells Abdou that he "spoils" his wife by participating in
cooking and other domestic chores, he says: "Daba is my wife. She is
not my slave, nor my servant" (Ba, p. 73). Daba thinks that marriage "is
no chain" but a mutual agreement over a life's programme. She does
not believe in forced marital commitment for life. She asks, ''if one of
the partners is no longer satisfied with the union, why should he
remain?" She quickly adds that either partner can leave or break away
if he or she so decides. In other words, a wife can also "take the
initiative to make the break." Daughter Daba's earlier advice to her
mother to leave her father when his father's dissatisfaction with the
marriage becomes obvious reaffirms her belief that commitment to the

146

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

other need not be for life until death do us apart. Ironically and perhaps
not coincidentally, the notion of marital commitment for life evokes the
images of an asylum and the penitentiary. How fundamentally different
from a prison or an asylum is a forced marital commitment for life?
Why should love, which supposedly stands for freedom, the letting be
of an other or others, be allowed to become a ward that evokes
psychiatric and prison metaphors? When marriage becomes Siberia, the
time to end it mutually or unilaterally comes. Cultural preparation of
people for the possibility of marital termination is not cynical. The
motto be prepared for the worst as you hope for the best holds very
true for how we should look at marriage. Marriage should not be a life
sentence. Many marital crimes and other crimes of the heart come from
this sentence to love, this sentence to stay married willy-nilly.
Another instructive relational experience for Ramatoulaye is daughter Aissatou's pregnancy that catches her by surprise. She was the last
to know of the pregnancy and of the man responsible. Her agony and
disappointment intensified in light of her own abandonment and recent
widowhood. Anyway, she later overcomes her grief, for "I sought refuge
in God, as at every moment of crisis in my life" (Bft, p. 82). She
confronts Aissatou's boyfriend (a university student) about the pregnancy, but he pleasantly surprises her. His sense of moral and economic responsibility impresses her. "I am not just looking for excitement," Ibrahima Sall tells Aissatou's mother. He continues: "Your
daughter is my first love. I want her to be the only one.... If you agree,
I will marry Aissatou. My mother will look after her child. We will
continue with out studies" (Bft, p. 85).
Ramatoulaye restates her rationale for turning down Dien's proposal:
"My heart does not love Daouda Dieng. My mind appreciates the man.
But my heart and mind often disagree." She adds that the memory of
the death of Modou (whom she still loves with her heart) and the
presence of her young children were not factors in her decision. She
maintains that material things (including Dieng's gift to her of 5,000
francs) count for nothing "in the uncontrollable law" of love. The
current of heartfelt love and the current of headfelt love must flow in a
parallel direction for a relationship (such as marriage) to work. But for
Farmata, such talk is nonsense. Like Janie Mae Crawford's grandmother and Tina Turner, she tells Ramatoulaye, "You speak of love
instead of bread." But Ramatoulaye fails to yield: "Once more, I was
refusing the easy way because of my ideal. I went back to my loneliness.

AFRICAN FEMINISM(S)

147

... I wanted 'something else.' And this 'something else' was impossible
without the full agreement of my heart" (Bft, p. 70). Money or material
things, for many, do not necessarily bring or lead to love or romance. In
this case, Ramatoulaye's desire for the presence of love or romance
should not be simply seen as another masculinist trap. In other words,
the emphasis on economic empowerment of women by many feminists
is an absolutely worthy cause and necessary project, but the sole
emphasis on economic empowerment of women at the expense of the
emotional, the romantic, the non-economic subtly and ironically undermines feminism. As many women are finding out, economic selfsufficiency alone is only half-sufficiency. The yearning for a loved and
loving one on the sofa or in the garden or in the bed with you to share
hurts, laughs, thoughts, feelings, etc. is a significant psychological reality
that cannot be addressed only and simply through economic approach.
Academic feminism has to come to grips with "non-theoreticism", the
emotional realities outside ism-festered academia. Ramatoulaye points
out that she is "not indifferent to the irreversible currents of women's
liberation that are lashing at the world." She recognizes the negative
role religions and unjust legislatures have played and continue to play
in the development and maintenance of sexism. The political and religious structures that so sustain this sexism must be fought worldwide,
but the specific strategies have to be primarily local, not global or
international. The infrastructures that directly or indirectly support
sexism somewhat differ from country to country and from culture to
culture. Even though the devastating effects of sexism seem to be more
or less the same all over the world, the means by which they are produced infinitely differs within countries and from country to country.
Hence these operational differences make a fundamental difference in
how the feminist battles should be fought. In much of Africa, the
combined forces of sexist traditional monogamy and legal polygyny
often divide and dilute the efforts of those who fight for women's
rights.

Omaha, Nebraska, USA

NOTES

Vis Ii Vis, February 1988.

Chinua Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation (Garden City, New York: Anchor/Doubleday,
1975), p. 79. Subsequent references cited parenthetically in the text.

1
2

148

E. IMAFEDIA OKHAMAFE

Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter, trans, Modupe Bode-Thomas (London: Heinemann,

1981), p. 42. Subsequent references cited parenthetically in the text.
4 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937; Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1978), p. 25, p. 28, pp. 38-44.
3

MARK W. ANDREWS

NATURE AND CIVILIZATION AS METAPHOR

IN MICHEL RIO'S DREAMING JUNGLES

Michel Rio has published five novels since 1982, two of which, Parrot's
Perch and Dreaming Jungles, have been translated into English. His
most recent work, Archipelago, was published last year with the
Editions du Seuil. Rio's philosophical fiction portrays culture and
civilization in crisis, and centers upon questions of aesthetics and the
creative imagination. His novels employ the voyage motif as a means
and manner of reflection upon a profound morbidity ailing the modern
spirit, which in its most extreme form emerges as the suicidal urge, but
which attends each moment of the human enterprise as the risk of
disorientation and loss of purpose. His literary travels are allegories
which permit his peripatetic narrator to conduct a geographical
anatomy of melancholy. The cure potentially lies with the heuristic
power of the fictional undertaking itself to chart progress, although
fiction must first seek to combat the forces of cynicism and the charges
of self-involvement of which literature stands accused in the eyes of the
iconoclastic characters who populate Rio's narratives.
Melancholy North, Rio's first novel, introduced that most northern
and inhospitable of the four humors in the context of a solitary and
stormy voyage by sailing boat from Brittany to northern Norway. What
greets the narrator at the end of the trip turns out to be a suicide letter
from a Norwegian colleague; the narrator has arrived too late to
forestall the tragedy. In the letter literature is first attacked then
defended: "What is left for literature?" writes Olaf Borgstrom: "Description of things for documentary purposes? Fascination with its own
signifier, writing? Anguish faced with the increasing difficulty of writing?"l The author of the letter ends his reflection on a positive note,
nonetheless, labeling fiction as the "only enduring form of protest that
the mind has devised against emptiness and death" (MN, pp. 128-9).
The imaginary voyage of fiction must become an end in itself, according
to Olaf, and it is this insight which implicitly invests the sailing trip with
significance, characterizing the narrator's fruitless journey as the allegorical stuff of the creative process.
The enemy alluded to by Olaf as lurking within the project of writing
149
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 149-156.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

150

MARK W. ANDREWS

is revealed in the later novels to be the emptiness of the role played by

metaphor, which leads to a radical separation from vital, passionate
concerns. Metaphor is thus the focal point of the attack upon literature
in Michel Rio's novels. Metaphor receives its most intense scrutiny in
Rio's recent novel, Dreaming Jungles, which traces the itinerary of twin
scientific expeditions into the African interior on the eve of the First
World War. Chimpanzees are to be the object of an ethological study.
The voyage inland from Abidjan provides the setting for a probing
reflection on the comparative structures of the natural and the civilized
world at this critical juncture in the recent history of mankind. In
typically playful fashion, Rio places the discussion of Art in the mouths
of a group of early twentieth century biologists whose hybrid names
designate the great eighteenth century English novelists: Henry Sterne,
Laurence Richardson and Samuel Fielding. The credo which launches
the debate is uttered by Richardson, the secretary to the leader of the
expedition, Lady Jane Savile. A poet and a writer, Richardson insists
that "literature is the highest manifestation of the human spirit, and that
Art in general is what distinguishes mankind absolutely and definitively
from all other living things."2 Richardson maintains an anti-Darwinian
stand that Art is transcendence, neither an accident of evolution, nor an
adaptive phenomenon.
The arguments leveled against Richardson by Sterne take issue with
the notion that Art is both sovereign and free. His reasoning is as
caricaturally convoluted as Richardson's attestations are trite, and is
just as partisan. He maintains that the arts based on language, including
works of fiction, serve a biologically determined purpose as a shield for
man's ignorance, and that as such fiction is: "the ultimate discourse of
disorder" (p. 48). Sterne refuses to admit any conclusion which
attributes to Art a transcendent metaphysical status. Lady Savile adds
to the charge against Art that its very irreducibility radically dissociates
it from the domain of logical intellectual activity, and uses the distinction between affective and scientific meaning as a stick with which to
belabor literary criticism. Criticism, she holds, is ''false knowledge
elevated to the dignity of discipline" (p. 51); to her mind it is "more
parasitic than analytic" (p. 51).
The different points of view expressed by the members of the
expedition provide an opportunity for the narrator, a precocious and
somewhat supercilious young French scientist whose own expedition
has just linked up with the English party, to interpolate his own reading

DREAMING JUNGLES

151

of the relation between Art and Science, or imagination and knowledge,

as he terms them. His point of view is largely consistent with that
expressed by Rio's narrators in other novels, with the important distinction that it is as yet untempered by the life experiences which await him.
He holds that there is usually an uncomfortable symbiosis between Art
and Science. The creative imagination "most often lives on the suffering
of consciousness, thus, to a certain extent, on the knowledge of the law
of nature" (p. 51). Confronted with a knowledge whose cold logic
entails an apprehension of death the dreamer must, the narrator
surmises, either revolt or experience melancholy at this collision.
The narrator deduces that the case for transcendent irreducibility,
that is espoused by Richardson, is explicable as a metaphysics either of
refusal or of melancholy which "has become a metaphysics of its own
expression, the work of art itself. As if the meaning, what he [Richardson]
called the end in itself, had gone from the idea to the figure, the
metaphor" (p. 52). The discussion between the members of the party
then concludes with Sterne's assertion that the sterile cult of formal
transcendence espoused by Richardson indeed stems from "this use of
an empty rhetorical figure as the ultimate end" (p. 52), but that denial
and avoidance are the predominant motivations at work in the
cowardly artist, for whom ignorance is indeed bliss.
The parodic excesses of reductionist thinking on the part of Sterne
quite fail to account for the passionate nature of Richardson's belief in
Art as the highest form of human expression, and we may safely dismiss
them. The Hegelian postulates of the narrator deserve to be approached more circumspectly.3 The narrator's account does not distinguish clearly between on the one hand what he describes as the
metaphysics either of melancholy or of refusal adopted by the suffering
artistic consciousness, and on the other the translation of this metaphysics of experience into a metaphysics of its own expression. The
latter metaphysics contains an apparent conflation of the two competing reactions, melancholy and refusal. The metaphysics of self-expression arises, then, from the simultaneous knowledge of mortality and the
rejection of that knowledge in favor of a belief in the irreducibility of
Art. The narrator weighs only the rejection at this juncture in the
discussion, assigning metaphor to an idle empty role of redundant
embellishment within metaphysics. He has not yet encountered in his
own life the experience of melancholy which will later transform his
attitude toward affective meaning.

152

MARK W. ANDREWS

The problematics of meaning adumbrated in the scientists' debate

may usefully be approached from the direction of Paul Ricoeur's eight
studies on metaphor in The Rule of Metaphor, with a view to specifying
a double role for metaphor as a co-present emptiness and a plenitude
of signification, a tiered structure of knowledge and imagination.
Ricoeur's thesis can arguably be said to provide for a more satisfactory
reading of the novel's own metaphorical processes than that which the
novel's narrator can provide at the beginning of his journey, a journey
which will double as a sentimental and intellectual education. There is
no scientific debate at the novel's conclusion by which the reader could
conveniently measure the narrator's progress toward an understanding
of his condition.
Ricoeur begins by situating the problematic of metaphor at the level
of metaphorical reference as distinct from the form and the sense of
metaphor; these last relate to syntax and to semantics respectively.
Ricoeur is interested in interpretation beyond the semantic level, in a
particular hermeneutics which refers to the world outside the text, one
capable of redescribing reality: "Accordingly, metaphor presents itself
as a strategy of discourse that, while preserving and developing the
creative power of language, preserves and develops the heuristic power
wielded by fiction."4
This contention runs directly counter to the charge levelled by the
narrator of Dreaming Jungles, for whom the emptiness of metaphor
results from fiction's preoccupation with its own expression. Ricoeur
concedes the point but is undeterred by it:
But the possibility that metaphorical discourse says something about reality collides
with the apparent constitution of poetic discourse, which seems to be essentially nonreferential and centred on itself. To this non-referential conception of poetic discourse I
oppose the idea that the suspension of literal reference is the condition for the release
of a power of second-degree reference, which is properly poetic reference. (RM, p. 6)

Ricoeur proposes a notion of split reference in order to isolate conceptually the rhetorical process by which fiction achieves the redescription of reality. In so doing he returns to an Aristotelian account of
language in the Poetics. Ricoeur concurs with Aristotle's discovery "that
the poiesis of language arises out of the connection between myth os
and mimesis" (RM, p. 7). Ricoeur concludes from this connection that
metaphor, which we can now understand as the rhetorical process of
poiesis, ultimately resides in the layered signification of the copula of

DREAMING JUNGLES

153

the verb to be: "The metaphorical 'is' at once signifies both 'is not' and
'is like' " (RM, p. 7).
It is this conclusion which leads to his final study, in which he takes
issue with Heidegger and with Derrida's essay White Mythology, and
implicitly with the expressed position of Michel Rio's narrator, by
denying a collusion between metaphor and metaphysics and entering a
plea for a plurality of independent discursive modes. Like Heidegger,
both Rio's character Sterne and his narrator overlook a crucial distinction to be made between the speculative discourse of philosophy and
the poetic discourse of fiction by locating the metaphorical within the
metaphysical. Ricoeur takes vigorous issue with this position, insisting
that the transportation of the soul from the visible to the invisible world
in Western, Platonic metaphysics is not the same transfer as the
metaphorical shift from the proper to the figurative sense, nor is there
any collusion between them.
While not in agreement with Fontanier's later conclusions, Ricoeur
cites Fontanier's initial definition of metaphor as "presenting an idea
under the sign of another idea more striking or better known,"5 and
recruits the latter's examples, in which no transfer between the visible
and the invisible occurs, to show that metaphor is no more than an
instrument of metaphysics: "So it is not metaphor that carries the
structure of Platonic metaphysics; metaphysics instead seizes the metaphorical process in order to make it work to the benefit of metaphysics" (RM, p. 294-5).
Michel Rio's Dreaming Jungles, the narrator's early asseverations
notwithstanding, may be said to demonstrate that the metaphorical
process in the work itself does not carry the structure of an empty
metaphysics of self-expression, but rather is seized by that very speculative discourse which excoriates it and seeks to reduce life-significance
to a set of evolutionary laws. Metaphor in the work is placed at the
service of a new metaphysics derived from materialism and will work to
its benefit.
Lady Savile has advanced the revolutionary theory that altruism and
biology can be considered compatible in terms of Darwin's law of
natural selection, holding that there exists a sub-category of proximal
selection at the instinctual level. If the reproductive success of the
species is the sole criterion for survival, Lady Savile argues, then there
are many occasions when an individual would sacrifice itself for its
relatives "because all of them together would have a greater capacity

154

MARK W. ANDREWS

than it alone to propagate its own genes" (p. 70). The narrator sets out
to prove the theory and later believes that he has witnessed a male
chimpanzee sacrifice itself to a leopard's attack by delaying its own
escape in order to push its family group to safety; the evidence is
scientifically inconclusive but its affective impact is powerfully compelling: "It lasted a second, but in this gesture I saw a conflict of incredible
violence between proximal solidarity and a frantic desire of the
organism to escape death" (p. 101).
The principal consequence of the narrator's journey into the interior
is his discovery of a Neo-Darwinian altruism, and in this development
his transformation superficially resembles that of a biologist who anticipates the advent of sociobiology. There is in the case of the narrator,
however, a leap of faith involved in his own intimate persuasion of the
validity of his observations. While he believes that he has enough
evidence to formulate a hypothesis, he does not believe that the results
of his study will lead to adoption of the theory. He will indeed advise
Lady Savile of the premature nature of his observations as far as the
scientific community is concerned, given "the inertia of our minds, the
weakness of our means, and the uncertainty of our methods" (p. 105).
It is unsurprising, therefore, that the narrator will resort to the heuristic
power of metaphor to lend imaginative force to the speculative discourse of what has become for him a new metaphysics of altruism,
founded upon the belief, but not the proof, that a self-sacrificial instinct
can promote the survival of a species.
As the novel concludes with the return of the expedition, the First
World War is beginning, and the narrator is able to reconcile himself to
the murderously absurd business of anonymous slaughter which this
implies by recalling the incident of the leopard's attack and drafting it
to interpret imaginatively the ethical dilemma he faces. The narrator
comes to an understanding of his own surprising willingness to join up
and to subscribe to the "simple collective values" (p. 111) demanded by
war as he calls to mind the circumstances of the chimpanzee'-s death
and speculatively intuits that forgotten instinctive drives still actively
subtend the "rhetoric of moral discourse" (p. 112) and enforce its
dictates of selflessness. Ricoeur reminds us in this regard that Aristotle
links metaphor to intuition: "To metaphorize well," said Aristotle,
"implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars" (RM, p.
6). The narrator's allegorical mapping of the natural world onto civilization has led him to the realization that the detachment of the scientist is

DREAMING JUNGLES

155

more apparent than real, and does not place him beyond the demands
of "common ideology and morality" (p. 112).
The image of the leopard's attack corresponds to Ricoeur's definition
of poetic reference: metaphor is shown not to be a vehicle for the
structure of the narrator's metaphysics, but rather to be seized by the
narrator as a heuristic stimulus to facilitate the hermeneutic task of
understanding those two great contrary forces in the human drama,
love and war. Metaphor is not, then, an empty rhetorical figure, but is
pregnant with meaning for the narrator, who avers at the last that he
has "made some progress in understanding its [mankind's] mentality" (p.
113).
At the novel's end, the narrator's employment of the heuristic power
of metaphor to buttress his deterministic reasoning has gone well
beyond the confines of the scientific method. It is in fact a palliative for
his own metaphysical melancholy, and is consonant with Ricoeur's
Kantian notion of living metaphor as invention: there is a sense of both
discovery and creation in the narrator's newly acquired understanding
and his sense of compassionate solidarity with humanity even in its
darkest moments: "Metaphor is living," Ricoeur tells us, "by virtue of
the fact that it introduces the spark of imagination into a 'thinking more'
at the conceptual level. This struggle to 'think more,' guided by the
'vivifying principle,' is the 'soul' of interpretation" (RM, p. 303).
It is the spark of imagination with which metaphor invests the
narrator's speCUlative discourse and benefits a would-be materialistic
metaphysics in the novel, a metaphysics which vindicates Richardson's
defense of the creative imagination and the life-significance of Art. 6
Richardson's defiant question, "Has the determinism of matter killed off
the divine ramblings of the spirit?" (p. 49), is answered in the negative
by the narrator's own recourse to metaphor as the terrain of predilection for the representation of the questing human spirit and the
transcendent truths it seeks to discern. Poetic reference and not biological determinism proves the more effective antidote to the metaphysical malaise of melancholy which afflicts the narrator, and in this
conclusion Dreaming Jungles offers the corrective vision of a creative
disorder to a totalitarian scientific community hemmed about by its
own preoccupation with deterministic laws and orderly rules of
evidence.
Department of French, Vassar College, New York, USA

156

MARK W. ANDREWS
NOTES

1 Michel Rio, Metancolie Nord (Paris: Balland, 1982), p. 128. My translation. Subsequent references to this edition will be followed by the abbreviation MN and a page
number in parentheses.
2 Michel Rio, Dreaming Jungles (New York: Pantheon, 1987), p. 43. A translation by
William R. Carlson of Les Jungles pensives (Paris: Balland, 1985). Subsequent
references to this edition will be followed by a page number in parentheses.
3 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, translated by J. B. Baillie (London,
George Allen and Unwin, 1971), p. 755 et passim. The suffering of consciousness as it
awaits death, a prey to desperate scepticism, corresponds to Hegel's notion of the
imminence of kenosis in The Phenomenology of Mind, the reciprocal abandonment of
substance and self-consciousness at the moment of death which will permit the birth of
the spirit.
4 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 6.
Originally published as La Mitaphore vive (Paris: Seuil, 1975). Subsequent references
to this edition will be followed by the abbreviation RM and a page number in
parentheses.
5 Pierre Fontanier, Les Figures du discours (1830), (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), p. 95.
6 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "The Aesthetics of Nature in the Human Condition,"
Analecta Husserliana, Vol XIX (1985).

HARLAN R. PATTON

PROBLEMS OF LITERARY EXPRESSION IN

LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth,
nearly all inherited fashions of seeing the human experience were
analyzed and found wanting. Husserl's work responded originally to a
crisis in philosophy and science at that moment in European thought,
and formulated a very different way of grasping how man is in life.
European literature, which had in various decades of the preceding
half-century been understood as a field of experimentation or application for science, sociology, and philosophy, was also in crisis. In France,
a superannuated romanticism had run its course, while realism had
moved on to naturalism and had reached its limits, and the symbolism
of the time had found its masters. Andre Gide, writing in the 1890's,
first tried the existing genres, becoming for a time a romantic and a
symbolist before setting out to originate new genres, new ways of
portraying the human condition, in which different explorations would
be possible. For Gide, as for the philosophers of his day, the problem
was to explore how the human experience is in reality, the way in which
the "that" is for the perceiving subject. There is certainly chronological
as well as thematic coincidence in the formulation of the question
between Gide and the earliest work in phenomenology: the Nourritures
terrestres were published in 1897, which places them chronologically
between Husserl's Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891) and his Logische
Untersuchungen (1901), several decades before influential works by
Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger. Several recent articles in phenomenological criticism, however, seem to elucidate disturbing narrative problems
in Gide's Nourritures terrestres, where the writer calls for a return to the
things themselves, and attempts to explore just how the things themselves are for us.
The Nourritures terrestres decline identification as a novel, or as a
prose poem, or as any traditional genre, but that was not atypical of
Andre Gide, or unflattering to him. Menalque's disciple, who begins the
first preface by stating that Menalque has never existed, communicates
by this text his sensory experiences to the (presumably) younger and
less-experienced Nathanael, equally theoretical in the book's first
157
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 157-163.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

158

HARLAN R. PATTON

sentence: "... Menalque n'a jamais, non plus que toi-meme, existe" (p.
57).1 There is a lesson to be taught, with certain values and judgments
to be communicated, and it seems clear that Menalque's disciple
understands consciousness phenomenologically. Reality for him is not
an independent and objective reality, but one which depends on the
consciousness for its existence: "Mais plutot les sources seront ou les
feront couler nos desirs; car Ie pays n'existe qu'a me sure que Ie forme
notre approche, et Ie paysage a l'entour, peu a peu, devant notre
marche se dispose; et nous ne voyons pas au bout de l'horizon; et
meme pres de nous ce n'est qu'une successive et modifiable apparence"
(p. 62). The perceiving consciousness creates the way in which the
world exists for it, and consciousness clearly is grasped as intentionality, presence in the world. Were it not for the theme of desire which
Gide seems to posit as the proper way of relating to reality, the
description of how the world exists for us could nearly be that of
Merleau-Ponty:
I am the absolute source, my existence does not stem from my antecedents, from my
physical and social environment; instead it moves out towards them and sustains them,
for I alone bring into being for myself (and therefore into being in the only sense the
world can have for me) the tradition which I elect to carryon, or the horizon whose
distance from me would be abolished, since that distance is not one of its properties if! were not there to scan it with my gaze."2

There are, to be sure, elements in the tutor's view of the world which
draw it closer to a traditional French philosophical dualism, as when he
advises Nathanael, "Que l'importance soit dans ton regard, non dans la
chose regardee" (p. 63). Regard and regardee merge perceiver and the
perceived in a single unified act of perception in this declaration of
value, but there is a disturbing implication of potential reduction to
constituent elements. Hardly a Sartrian distinction of en-soi and poursoi, it nonetheless brings to mind the "bracketing" of worldly meaning
implied in the reduction in Husserl's early work, and seems equally
unconscious of the potential encapsulation which such bracketing
implies. The common concerns of artists and philosophers which
Tymieniecka discusses as a basis for phenomenological criticism3 are
nowhere more apparent than in this shared world-view.
"Desire" in this world-view is the essential element in valid human
experience: all other recurring elements flow from desire in the Nourritures terrestres. Thirst is merely an image of unslaked desire; love is but

LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES

159

another way of stating it; disponibiliti is nothing but availability to

further desire; denuement is simplification in all things to favor the
conditions of desire. Desire is the proper condition for human experience, and for Menalque's disciple this wanting subsumes the phenomenological condition of "presence" or "dialogue." Like presence or
dialogue, desire is a relational phenomenon in which subject and object
are indistinguishable, where both are a precondition to the existence of
the phenomenon, but where an affective bond also fuses them. If the
existence of the self is contingent upon knowledge of the other, then the
proper attitude in consciousness is desire of the other. Any interruption
of the process of consciousness fusing self and other is negative sleep, study, inactivity, and even sameness are objectionable suspensions of the process, and to be avoided. The creative process and
aesthetic appreciation of existing works of art also seem to be excluded
from this extremely limited definition of valid human involvement in
the world. Except insofar as they can favor the conditions of desire,
they seem to be viewed as suspensions of the desired involvement.
There are difficulties to be dealt with from the beginning of the
Nourritures terrestres based on this exclusion, since both tutor and text
are self-effacing. Menalque's disciple and Nathanael's tutor, never
identified in any other manner and thus suspended between two beings
from whom he draws his identity and yet whose existence he denies in
his first paragraph, begs his potential N athanaeI to forget him just as the
book begins. The first page asks this, and also asks that the book be left
behind once read. Its lesson alone is to be retained: "Que mon livre
t'enseigne a t'interesser plus a toi qu'a lui-meme, - puis a tout Ie reste
plus qu'a toi." (p. 58) There is an ambivalence typical of Gide about the
statement of this "spoken word" philosophy, a pre-supposition which
prefers the "speaking word." This apology of a phenomenological
account, first person experience communicating its preference for the
thing itself, for the present over the past and for new sense experience
over learned and accepted truth, begins with an apology for the
existence of the text. The tutor sets as the first condition of genuine
liberation a "disinstruction," the razing of accepted knowledge, destruction to the point where nothing interposes itself between me and my
perception of the world: "Tandis que d'autres pUblient ou travaillent,
j'ai passe trois annees de voyages a oublier au contraire tout ce que
j'avais appris par la tete" (p. 61). If work, publishing, and learned
knowledge are to be the opposite of the sensory life espoused by

160

HARLAN R. PATTON

Menalque, where genuine human life is reduced to what the sense

impression permits one to experience, then the existence of this text is a
major paradox. There could be bad faith in this, the continuation of a
literature already found wanting. It may also be only a recognition that
the creative imagination communicates creatively what it has experienced, but not necessarily including the creative act itself. Writing must
occupy at least momentarily the creative imagination and thereby
deprive it of other potential experiences which consequently will never
figure in artistic creation. Viewed solely from a literary perspective,
experience of self-in-the-world is artistically meaningless until expressed: viewed solely from a non-literary experiential perspective, artistic
expression is equally meaningless. A third possibility is that only a
certain type of literary endeavor, of which this text is an example, is
sufficiently valuable to replace the moments lost to it from phenomenological experience of a non-literary reality.
But none of these justifications seems adequate or satisfying: a
literary text which only with difficulty explains its own existence, and
which begs in advance and in its conclusion that it be thrown away and
forgotten, is unusually tentative and ambiguous even for Gide. Consciously anti-systemic, opposing on principle any predetermined position, it nonetheless rests on a certain parti pris and erects its own
system, though perhaps a very different one from that which it intends
to replace. Viewed as continuous becoming, constant transition and
adaptation, the experience creatively expressed can avoid no more than
other phenomena the final status of spoken word, fixed and immutable,
when complete. An obsession with time is apparent in Menalque's
disciple.
This problem of the text, troubling from the beginning of the Nourritures terrestres, is perhaps best explained by recent work in the new
poetics. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka has described five paradoxes in the
way in which literary works exist, relative to and independent from lifeconcerns and purely philosophical concerns.4 These paradoxes concern
the artist's inescapable dilemma, the exclusive and interdependent
nature of a fictional reality and of a lived reality. The artist demonstrates a concern for truth and a "commitment to bring forth and
communicate a message about life and human destiny," while realizing
that the function of art is essentially and purely aesthetic. Another
aspect of this paradox is the detachment and independence from its
creator of a work of art once completed, despite its intensely personal

LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES

161

ongms within the human psyche and creative imagination. Different

aspects of this divorce between artistic creation and the world as
experienced occupied Andre Gide as literary theorist at various times
in his career, but it is the first of them which may account for the
apologetic introduction Menalque's disciple gives to his book. Tymieniecka
states that "... Although it does not primarily present human reality,
yet even where it seems to do so, it does not represent the reality of the
life-world, of the real world. Nothing concrete may be properly learned
from it about reality" (p. 8). Menalque's disciple, preoccupied and at
times obsessed with the variety and quality of sensation, perhaps to the
exclusion of human significance, clearly cannot justify the intrusion of
the literary experience (however reality-oriented and anti-traditional) in
the real-life time, in the life-world, of his interlocutor, be he Nathanael
or other potential reader. For him, "Tout choix est effrayant" (p. 62).
Reduction of life-in-reality to the sensation, and the attempt to reduce
yet again to find a pre-objective status, accords no significance to other
ways of knowing, to the artistic attempt to communicate the interpersonal.
Yet it is clear that the writer of these memoirs views reality and
consciousness in a manner similar to that of the phenomenologists, that
it is the presence itself of man in the world which interests him. Even
the terminology at times is the same: "toute sensation est d'une presence
infinie" (p. 66, italics Gide's). And it seems that the difficulty in
justifying the existence of a literary text expounding a distinct philosophical parti pris stems from an anti-philosophical, anti-literary viewpoint, particularly evident at the beginning and the end of the text. Its
message, clearly, is that life must be lived sensually, through involvement of the senses, full participation in the variety of the world, and not
indirectly through vicarious literary experiences such as those praised
lyrically in this text. If every sensation is of an infinite presence, then
the sensation involves the consciousness and needs no exploration,
though perhaps the consciousness of Nathanael and other disciples
could be led to appreciate it through simplification in its purest form, as
the essential phenomenon of human experience.
But if the sensation, the only way of experiencing reality for any
human consciousness, is immediately grasped as a universal human
experience, what are the literary "sensations" artistically expressed in
this text? Seemingly, they are not mere literary monuments intended to
eternalize the moment, to make the past live again. One of Nathanael's

162

HARLAN R. PATTON

lessons is the irretrievability, the past-ness, of such moments: "Ne desire

jamais, Nathanael, regouter les eaux du passe. Nathanael, ne cherche
pas, dans l'avenir, a retrouver jamais Ie passe" (p. 84). The instant, the
moment, is of sufficient force and presence (p. 90) to render preoccupation with the past superfluous, even impossible. The future is
equally elusive: "Nathanael, n'apprete aucune de tes joies" (p. 85).
Accordingly, these moments and the sensations literarily present cannot
be templates on which others are to be modeled. A common-sense
recognition of spatio-temporal differences and the existence of at least
two moments, a "this-here-now" moment and another different moment
is implied, and the difference between them is established.
Literature permits no "this-here-now" in the normal sense. These
"sensations," these "perceptions," clearly are not sensations or perceptions in the first person. Nor are they necessarily evoked memories,
past moments on the time and memory grid, since the narrator puts
Nathanael on notice that much is invented: "si parfois j'y parle de pays
que je n'ai point vus, de parfums que je n'ai point sentis, d'actions que
je n'ai point commises (...) ce n'est point par hypocrisie, et ces choses
ne sont pas plus des mensonges que ce nom, Nathanael qui me liras,
que je te donne, ignorant Ie tien a venir" (p. 57). Such a declaration of
good faith, such a denial of hypocrisy and lying, begs the question and
assumes the accusations which it denies. And although these literary
perceptions and sensations are extraordinarily effective in evoking a
near-sensory response, they must be far from the original intensity,
vague shadows of lived human experience, if they require such straightforward justification.
While recognizing the ultimate impossibility of replacing the sensory
experience in reality, this consciously anti-literary literature evidently
comes to grips with the irreconcilable conflict by both admitting it and
ignoring it. While the individual experience of reality is for Menalque's
disciple the most radically original of experiences, and while inherited
learning in the form of books is discouraged, even condemned and
"unlearned" over a lengthy period of time, the writer of this memoir
proceeds, with the exception of a few narrative tricks (including
predominantly second-person narration and an apparently non-linear
progression) in a surprisingly traditional manner. He admits that the
vicarious "experience" afforded by this reading is inferior to the
individual's own experience, but proceeds as other writers do, acting as
if naming this reality would render it present. His original statement of
how intentionality is limits his work by refusing to recognize any way of

LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES

163

knowing which is not simplified, reduced, direct sensory experience of

the physical reality in which he participates.
If Menalque's disciple understands existence phenomenologically,
then he has adopted a world-view which other men, other artists, have
found effective in dealing with the situation of man in the world. His
personal exploration, however, moves toward moral and physical
bankruptcy. The significance of knowing, the meaning of how life is, is
lost for Menalque's disciple: he limits his exploration to the means of
knowing, and hopes to experience the endless variety of sensation
without wondering at its meaning. His quest is no longer a search for
significance, which Tymieniecka regards as a central point of phenomenological criticism, s but becomes gradually an exercise in hedonism.
Husserl's consciousness is intentional, always oriented toward something other than itself. Gide's seems incapable of pure intentionality,
and the distinctness of consciousness may be overly reductive. A nearromantic preoccupation with the integrity of the self, not surprising in a
writer only a few years after the Cahiers d'Andre Walter, modifies the
grasp of perception as process, and results in a reduction of sensation
to the thinglike, the animalistic, where all other ways of knowing are
excluded, and where aesthetic appreciation and artistic creation are not
transcendance of the human condition, but invalid suspensions of
involvement with the world. In seeking to make this extreme point,
there is created nonetheless a remarkably successful artistic work, and
the transcendance seemingly rejected in Nathanael's education takes
place despite rational argument against it, one more paradox of the
work of art and its relationship to the creative imagination.

Furman University, Greenville, SC, USA

NOTES
I Page references in the text are to the edition of the Nourritures terrestres found in the
Oeuvres completes, Louis Martin-Chauffier, ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1932-1938), Vol. II.
2 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Preface to
Phenomenology of Perception (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. ix.
3 In her "The Creative Quest: Destiny and Human Reality," Analecta Husserliana XII,
pp.4-28.
4 Ibid.
5 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "The Aesthetics of Nature in the Human Condition,"
Analecta Husserliana XIX, pp. 3-19.

ARON AJI

LUCIE SEBETKA: THE PHENOMENON OF

ABANDONMENT IN MILAN KUNDERA'S THE lOKE

Milan Kundera describes Lucie Sebetka, the tacit heroine in The loke,
as "a mysterious, elusive" character who "stands, so to speak, behind
glass; she cannot be touched" (The Art of the Novel, p. 86). The loke is
about, among other things, the depersonalization of individual existence, the impossibility of self-definition in the post-1948 Communist
Czechoslovakia. Through Lucie and the other characters in the novel,
Kundera explores the phenomenon of abandonment, the peripheral
position of the individual in the course of history, the cataclysmic sociopolitical changes and unyielding revolutionary requisites. Particularly in
the case of Lucie, the author seems to test, rather than to prove,
whether it is at all possible for any person to remain "elusive" and
untouchable. As Kostka and Ludvik relate in the novel, Lucie seems
outside history, unaware of the revolution or Christianity, and she
expresses herself mostly through non-verbal, pastoral icons, an "instinctive precursor of language." However, her constant displacement around
the country, the two rape incidents and other mistreatments suggest
that Lucie's peripheral position does not warrant a comforting retreat
from the socio-political euphoria. Rather, it becomes the realm where
the revolutionary history seems to encroach in a most vicious manner
on individual existence in order to proclaim its imminence.
Kundera's first novel, The loke is a complex work which develops
on various interrelated levels to present an encompassing vision of the
human condition in the two decades after the 1948 Communist coup.
Narrated through the monologues and recollections of four characters,
Ludvik, Helena, Jaroslav and Kostka, the novel traces the changing
nature of totalitarian ethics and politics, folk history and Christianity,
and the problematic confluence of these value systems. Ludvik's
narrative revolves around his expulsion from the Communist Party for
poking fun at the revolutionary optimism at the time. His military work
camp experience and his relationships with Lucie and Helena are
influenced by his tormenting sense of abandonment from the revolu165
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 165-177.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

166

ARON An

tionary history. Helena's is a story about the obsolescence of individual

credos, romantic love, the private communion between lovers. She
desparately tries to espouse the Communist dogma, especially its
utopian ideal of the brotherhood of mankind, to accommodate her own
sense of agape, spontaneous, altruistic love. While her marriage to
Zemanek is an attempt at affirming agape through the Communist
ethics, her adulterous affair with Ludvik is a romantic rebellion against
the same ethics. In either case, Helena eventually discovers that she has
been entrapped, even as a rebel, within the crippling course of the
revolution. The same course also alters the natural evolution of Czech
traditions and folklore to claim historical immanence. In Jaroslav's
narrative, we observe the sad transformation of cultural heritage by the
Agitprop which strips the folk songs and rituals of their original
characteristics, and alters them to meet the current political spirit.
Finally, through Kostka's solitary and futile quest for faith and selfaffirmation, Kundera relates the schism between Christianity and Communism, which also accounts for either of the ideological system's
failure to accommodate the spiritual needs of the Czech populace.
Kundera's ultimate verdict on the individual's existence during the
revolutionary period is a disconcerting one, to say the least. All his
characters seem to have lost the sense of belonging to the natural
course of Czech history, its cultural, religious and social values. Instead,
they are expected to perform as pawns at the service of the unwaivering
strategies of the revolution. "I came to realize," Ludvik explains,
that there was no power capable of changing the image of my person lodged in the
supreme court of human destinies, that the image in question (even though it bore no
resemblance to me) was much more real than my actual self; that I was its shadow and
not the other way round .... (p. 42)

In this context, the individuals' fate is a singular type of abandonment

which is neither directly self-willed nor complete. Quite to the contrary,
the historical situation they have worked to "create" and "direct" (p. 61)
has gradually transformed into an autonomous machinery guided by
dogma and abstracted beyond the individual prerogatives. They are
reduced to function as an alibi to justify the course of history. Thus
being at once abandoned from and the existential foundation of that
which they are abandoned from, the individuals are deprived of even
the bittersweet consolation of the dissenter.
Lucie's situation is even more critical than the rest of the characters.

THE JOKE

167

She belongs to neither the revolutionary camp nor among the discontented or the disillusioned. Her being seems to be guided by a raw
desire to live, an elan. Unlike others who are pushed to the peripheries
of history by the great revolutionary automaton, she is in the truest
sense of the word, peripheral; she would be content with the simple
reassurances a day-to-day existence could offer. And yet, her disposition is perhaps the bleakest of all the abandoned in The Joke.
II

In determining my approach to Lucie's characterization as the epitome

of the abandoned, I have taken into consideration Kundera's interest
in Heidegger's phenomenology. A close reader of the philosopher,
Kundera allows the adjective "phenomenological" to qualify his fiction
so long as his art is not seen as "only derivative of the philosophical and
theoretical trend" (The Art of the Novel, p. 32). His novelistic task is
phenomenological because it aims at exploring the "essence of [the
individual's] existential problems." The author goes about this task by
creating characters who stand for what he calls "existential codes,"
fictional variations on Heidegger's notion of "being-in-the-world" (The
Art of the Novel, pp. 29-30). Along the narratives in his novels,
Kundera's characters then interact with each other in ways that compare, complement and evaluate these "existential codes." Each character is the summation of his/her perceptions, interpretations and
assertions about him/herself and the others.
In the novel with multiple narrators, Lucie is the only main character
who is not given a voice to tell her own story. Her characterization
emerges through the separate narratives of Ludvik and Kostka. The two
accounts in ways complement one another, each narrator offering the
various pieces of Lucie's personality and past history. Although
together they form a complex which is more inclusive than either of the
individual accounts, these accounts are not merely the two halves of a
whole. Rather, each bears singularity in its own context since it communicates a Lucie who is firmly grounded on the individual narrator's
"existential code." Ludvik reflects on his encounter with Lucie:
however unique she was, she was inextricably bound up with the situation in which we
met and fell in love. I considered it a logical fallacy to isolate a loved one from the
totality of circumstances in which the first encounter takes place and in which he or she

168

ARON AJI

lives, to expend great mental energy for the purpose of purging the loved one of
everything but his or her self. ... (p. 139)

The first thing Ludvik notices about Lucie is her slow movement; she
walks "as though she was beneath history" (p. 56), in comparison to the
overwhelming pace at which Ludvik's own fate and sense of history has
been altered. On the other hand, parts of Kostka's account of Lucie,
were colored by the blood-and-thunder mentality of a man stimulated by the thought of
sin, parts by a blue so blue that they could derive only from a man addicted to gazing
up at the heavens .... Kostka's tale mixed truth with fiction and produced a new legend
(closer to truth, perhaps, more beautiful, more profound) to superimpose on the old. (p.
223)

In this rather disparaging correlation between the assertions of a

disillusioned revolutionary (Ludvik) and an orthodox, self-deluding
Christian (Kostka), Lucie is ultimately a character of perceptions; there
is not one definitive aspect of Lucie's being other than her existence as
an object of others' perception.
Then, who is Lucie? On the outskirts of the novel, Lucie is what
Kundera calls, the element of "true poetry" in The lake (Elgrably, p.
23). She seems to be a product of pure imagination because she is
characteristically divorced from the grim realism of the novel's milieu.
Throughout Ludvik's narrative and about half-way into Kostka's,
Lucie's otherworldly simplicity and serenity, her almost ahistorical
innocence stand in stark contrast to the socio-political rubble that
surrounds her. Against the unbearably fast pace of the revolution which
alters the faces of towns, cities, pasturelands, an entire country, Lucie
walks with "melancholy slowness" as if there is "nowhere worth hurrying to, nothing worth fretting over" (p. 56). She is compassionate about
any form of "unmitigated sorrow," whether it is the sorrow of the
disgraced hero of Court of Honor, a communist propaganda movie (p.
62), or the sadness in the lines of Halas, the pessimistic, existentialist
poet excommunicated by the current regime (p. 65). She brings roses to
Ludvik at the work camp as if she prefers the precursory symbolism of
flowers to words (p. 90). Or while hiding out from the authorities in
western Bohemia, she is the "Wandering Fairy" for children (p. 186).
However, the farther we delve into her life-story, the clearer it
becomes that Lucie's is as much a story of devastation and abandonment as is anybody else's. Ultimately, she is what Kostka calls a victim

THE JOKE

169

of "defilement" whose idyllic being and unindoctrinated, almost pagan,

spirit could not survive in the course of deterministic history and its
urgent revolutionary plans. Underneath Lucie's "mysterious, elusive"
being lies an atrophied soul which is suffocated in the all-embracing
arms of a forcefully changing society.
We first see Lucie through Ludvik's eyes, and much of what we learn
about her is funnelled through the troubled consciousness of a disappointed communist who is expelled from the Party, and thus, from its
history. Ludvik encounters Lucie during one of his leaves from the
military work camp designated for the traitors of the regime. If she
appears to him "as though she was beneath ... history" (p. 61), it is
only because Ludvik is at the time intensely aware of his abandonment
from history and the obsolescence of the notion of time he once lived
in:
Everything was broken off, ... the whole meaningful course of life. . .. All I had left
was time.... It was different from the time I'd known before: a time transmogrified into
work, love, and exertion, a time 1 had accepted unthinkingly because it so discreetly hid
behind my actions. [Now] It was time laid bare, time in and of itself, time at its most
basic and primal. .. (... pure, vacant time). (p. 44)

With this mindset, Ludvik interprets Lucie's surface calmness as a sign

of her ability to exist outside history - outside the "time transmogrified." She appears characteristically detached from "the issues of
cosmopolitanism and internationalism, vigilance and class struggle ...
the whole gamut of politics, its strategy and tactics" (p. 60). Thus,
Ludvik sees in her his only means to make his own "exit from history":
[In the past] I was convinced that far from the wheel of history there was no life, only
vegetation, boredom, exile, Siberia. And suddenly (after six months of Siberia) I'd found
a completely new and unexpected opportunity for life: I saw spread before me a longlost meadow (lost beneath history's soaring wings), the meadow of day-to-day existence,
and in that meadow I saw a poor, a pitiful girl, but a girl eminently worthy of love Lucie. (p. 61 ).

Soon after their first meeting, a love affair develops between the two
individuals. Despite the more intimate context, Ludvik continues to
interpret Lucie's actions from his abandoned stance, which disallows
Lucie to become a real person for him. Almost totally overlooked in
this affair is Lucie's past. Once outside history, Ludvik seems to think,
what bearing could the past have on the present. Also, the absence of

170

ARON AJI

Lucie's private history allows him to cope with the diminution of his
own past. In time, Ludvik associates just about any aspect of Lucie's
personality with his initial idealized image of her as "a poor, a pitiful
girl" from the realm of "pure time." "There were flowers waiting for me
every time we met," Ludvik explains:
Perhaps her tongue-tied state, her lack of verbal eloquence, made her think of flowers
as a form of speech - not the heavyhanded imagery of conventional flower symbolism,
but an older, vaguer, more instinctive precursor of language; perhaps having always
been sparing of words, she instinctively longed for a mute, preverbal stage of evolution
when people communicated with a minimum of gestures, pointing at trees, laughing,
touching one another. ... (p. 68)

The time when Ludvik makes sexual advances on Lucie, he faces

startling resistance from her. Despite his ignorance about her past,
Ludvik is again quick to conclude: "God, why hadn't I thought of it
before? She was just a child, afraid of love, a virgin, frightened,
frightened of the unknown." (p. 80) Without having had the chance to
test his reasoning, Ludvik loses Lucie after this particular occasion.
Ludvik's persistent disinterest in Lucie's being outside his interpretations of her is ultimately a dehumanizing arrogance which objectifies
Lucie into the idyllic "goddess of escape" for whom his moribund fancy
craves (p. 178). Fifteen years after the affair, Ludvik comes to link his
past arrogance with his "age at the time, that ludicrous lyrical age,"
when a man is too great a riddle to himself to tackle riddles outside himself and when
other people (no matter how he loves them) lIre merely walking mirrors in which he is
amazed to find the images of his own feelings, his own emotions, his own values. (p.
211)

While Ludvik's words literally reflect on his youth, such lyricism seems
to characterize not only the pathology of youth but also, and more
significantly, the pathology of the Czech totalitarian experience. When
the individual is denied private identity and expected instead to justify
his/her existence through external evidence - more particularly, the
ideological prescriptions of the Party -, the innermost feelings of love,
hate and rebellion, too, seek a personal, objective validation. We could
assume, then, because Ludvik himself has been ousted from history, he
dismisses Lucie's ties with it, in order to validate through her (the
idyllic, ahistorical girl) his peripheral existence, as he faces the emptiness of non-history.

THE JOKE

171

Indeed, in Kostka's rendition of Lucie's past, based more on her selfrevelations than Ludvik's version, we discover that she has been very
much a character in history. Probably Ludvik is still right: Lucie is not
aware of the revolution, "the whole gamut of politics, its strategy and
tactics" (p. 60). However, she is nonetheless bound up with history in
that her riddled, emotionally inarticulate being is a direct product of the
sporadic changes which have often clashed with the traditional make-up
of the Czech society. The resulting socio-cultural tension has taken its
toll on even the most uncommitted individuals like Lucie.
Kundera situates Kostka's narrative as the sixth part in the sevenpart-structure of The Joke. This way, we arrive at Kostka's account of
Lucie's past after having already assembled the elements of the world to
which Lucie belongs, and by which her person is traumatized. Besides
the immediate historico-political milieu which Ludvik describes in
detail, we learn through Jaroslav the sad evolution of Czech folklore
and pastoral life, and through Kostka, the current schism between
Christianity and Communism. Jaroslav's folk history indicates that the
Czech society originated as a pastoral, closely-knit patriarchal community. Very early on, Christianity has had strong impact on the
populace, merging with the natural course of folk traditions. Except
from the changes introduced by the Communist Party, the changes in
the Czech traditions have come about through assimilation; the folk
songs and stories "came about much like stalactites, developing new
motifs and variations drop by drop .... Every song had many creators,
and all of them modestly disappeared behind their creation" (p. 122).
However, as we learn from Kostka's narrative, during the rise of the
working-class movement, the Church sided with the rulers rather than
with the oppressed and impoverished masses. And after the February
1948 coup, the masses have found themselves in the receiving end of
the antagonism and rivalry between the Church and the Party. While
they have experienced the changes imposed from above, the masses
seem to have resisted complete reindoctrination. The result of these
ideological intrusions on the natural dialectics of Czech history is a
contaminated culture, a half-digested synthesis of uncompromising
value systems which alters irrevocably the traditional modes of Czech
existence. This is the context in which Lucie's ordinary existence gains
its singularity.
In relating Lucie's past, Kostka points out especially those incidents
that make her life of wandering in the country appear as a trail ravaged

172

ARON AJI

by the tension of clashing ideological systems. Lucie spends her first

seventeen years in rural Cheb and leaves the small town right around
the Communist coup in 1948. Her Cheb years are mainly affected by
the diminution of clear spiritUal values. Kostka relates in detail her
most brutalizing experience at sixteen which is illustrative of this
diminution. The scene is a bedroom. Over the door a needlepoint
reads: "God grant us a Happy Home." Over the bed hangs "a print of a
beautiful lady in blue gown, holding a child to her breast" which Kostka
identifies as a portrait of Virgin Mary. Amid all this a pagan-Christian
ritual unfolds: six young males who call themselves "a gang and spoke
of it with awe, as if it were a pagan sect" (p. 195), take advantage of
Lucie's trust in their friendship. They rape her, each taking his tum "in
order of seniority": ''The boys roared, raising their glasses, pouring the
sparkling rot-gut [wine] down their leader's back, allover her body,
between their legs, and bawling vague phrases about Christening and
Initiation ... " (p. 196).
After her arrest on a "morals charge" and a year in the reformatory,
Lucie leaves Cheb for Ostrava, a city troubled by further socio-cultural
splits after the February 1948 coup. As Ludvik has described it
previously, the revolution has come to the Ostravan landscape with its
''temporary houses," "shabby buildings," "bulky headframes and chimneys and furnaces" (p. 54). The revolution has robbed the city of its
traditional identity, condemning it to the "anonymity" common to every
"revolutionized" part of the country" (p. 55). In the ''black city," as
Kostka calls Ostrava, Lucie can find shelter for her pastoral being in
the cemeteries where "every tomb is like a private little garden" (p.
193). She robs flowers from the graves, the only places where she can
find fresh flowers in the city. She brings them to her room in the
dormitory in order to create a floral haven to fill in "the void" in her
soul (p. 194).
Lucie tells Kostka how she was sexually assaulted for the second
time, ''by a soldier" from the Ostravan military work camp. Although
she does not reveal the soldier's name to Kostka, we identify him as
Ludvik. Kostka stresses this second assault not only because it signifies
the second betrayal of Lucie's faith in others, but also because of the
room it occurs in. Again, overlooking Lucie's defilement is a religious
picture, this time "of a handsome man kneeling in a blue robe"; Kostka
sees the picture as one depicting Jesus in "the Garden of Gethsemane"
(p. 194). These Christian details in the rape scenes help Kostka

THE JOKE

173

illustrate the waning influence of Christianity on the religious psyche of

the populace. Force-fed by an autocratic Church above the masses, and
ostracized by the Communist Party's antagonism, the practice of the
Christian doctrine by the populace seems to have been reduced to the
preservation of its icons and rites divorced from their Scriptural meaning.
In Western Bohemia, too, the amalgam of uncompromising valuesystems awaits Lucie. There she has escaped from the prosecution by
the Ostravan authorities for stealing flowers from the cemetery. Kostka
tells us that, while hiding out Lucie wins the hearts of Bohemian
children who detect the tracks of the fugitive and start leaving food and
milk in places where she wanders. The children call Lucie "Wandering
Fairy," a name which accords with the pastoral fairy tales and folk
stories that the children have been brought up with. The brief relationship that develops between Lucie and the children is marked by a
confidential camaraderie and unconditional giving which is, again, akin
to the traditional folk hospitality. Here, we also recall laroslav's account
of the ancient Ride of Kings. Lucie's survival on the children's love and
giving strongly resembles the fugitive King's dependency on the mercy
and offerings of the pastoral community during his escape from his
enemies.
Kostka contrasts the children's treatment of Lucie with that of the
Bohemian authorities who eventually find her. The chairman of the
collective farm and the police director, by nature "compassionate and
naive" individuals, are led by their official responsibilities to first
rummage through Lucie's personal articles, love letters, clothes, and
then to arrest her. Under the rigid Party supervision, it seems that no
one has the right to wander on his/her own. Identification papers, work
orders, prosecutions and trials all deny Lucie an identity outside the
parceled societal structure which is forcefully superimposed on the
otherwise kind and hospitable community willing to shelter the
runaway.
Lucie's misfortunes so far seem to stem from what Ludvik would
call, "the spirit of the times," a collective predisposition which is
abstracted beyond the grasp and control of individuals. With the
exception of Ludvik, Lucie's victimizers are ordinary folks who live in
the receiving end - not the leading end - of ideological changes. The
code of conduct by which they are expected to live and judge each
other is as alien to the victimizers among them as it is to the victim.

174

ARON AJI

Having been denied self-definition, neither Lucie nor those who effect
misery in her life manifest conviction for their conformity to the code.
The chairman of the collective farm in Bohemia was formerly a
"farmhand who hoped to create a paradise for his companions in
misery" (p. 190), a small "world," in Kostka's words, "as on the fifth day
of creation, when God still seemed undecided about whether to hand it
over to man" (p. 184). And yet, the very same farmhand-turnedchairman by the edict of the Party finds himself as unable to overlook
Lucie's transgression as Lucie is to defend herself.
While in Western Bohemia, Lucie is put under Kostka's custody in
the collective farm. Theirs is the relationship of two outcasts, a homeless country girl and a Christian who tries to hold onto his faith even
though it goes against the so-called "spirit of the times." Although they
share the disposition of the abandoned, their relationship fails to offer
the stability and peace that each lacks in his/her individual existence.
Kostka's Christianity is a problematic one, muddled by the travails and
despair of a solitary believer who is deprived of the consent and
reassurance of a church congregation. As a result, his troubled mind
focuses itself almost exclusively on Lucie's ignorance of the Christian
doctrine. For him, she is an outcast soul in need of God's blessing light.
He likens Lucie to a ship gone "astray," and he is the "man who walks
along the seashore brandishing a lantern in his outstretched hand" (p.
198). Here, we must note, Kostka's perception of Lucie is similar in
intent to that of Ludvik: for Kostka, too, Lucie serves to supply the
external proof for his otherwise abandoned existence.
Beneath his missionary self-image, though, Kostka is also a frustrated
man. For a long time, he has inwardly sought for what little will-power
he could in order to sustain his faith, and, as a result, he has lost touch
with the reality of corporal existence. This is why the beautiful and
ever-idyllic Lucie poses for him more than merely a religious challenge.
Shortly after their encounter, the bodily desires he has long banished
seem to creep into the saintly fabric of his attitude. Kostka describes
the moment of his self-appointment as an apostle to Lucie:
I suddenly felt a moment of vertigo, something akin to what a lover must feel when he
discovers no male body has preceded his in his beloved. "Do you want me to tell you
about Him?" I asked, and she nodded. (p. 192)

If at all possible, Kostka is after a spiritual intercourse with Lucie since

he has denied himself their bodies. In due time, there does occur an

THE JOKE

175

intercourse between the two, however, in a manner unexpectedly

contrary to Kostka's intent. During their apostle-subject relationship, it
is Kostka who sees a light which illuminates, to his despair, what lies
underneath his indoctrinated consciousness. On the first day of spring
Kostka's dormant desires are awakened by Lucie's hand touching his
cheek, and later, by her love declaration. Caught defenseless, Kostka
surrenders in a sensory euphoria to the new season and sinks with
native ease "into the bower of nature":
And all at once 1 felt a hand on my cheek. And a voice saying, ''You're so kind, Mr.
Kostka.... " 1 didn't open my eyes .... 1 still saw the birds' voices as a host of lights, 1
still heard the voice, fainter now, add, "I love you."
Perhaps 1 should have let things go no further and left, knowing I had done my duty.
But before 1 could take hold of myself, I let a giddy weakness take hold of me. We were
completely alone in the wide open country among the pitiful little apple trees, and as 1
folded Lucie in my arms, we sank into the bower of nature. (pp. 199-200)

Yes, the abandoned soul seeks its alibi to attest to its "duty" as well as
to its fall - "among the pitiful apple trees," the waning symbols of the
Primal Fall.
This particular incident bears different meaning for each character.
For Lucie, it is perhaps the single act of self-affirmation in her life;
unlike the previous sexual experiences with the youth gang and Ludvik,
this time with Kostka, she herself instigates their lovemaking. However,
the rare joy she might have felt from the union of what she must have
seen as two willing lovers, does not last very long. Kostka is by no
means ready to face the self-conflicting implications of his transgression. The last we learn about Lucie after the incident with Kostka, she
is married to a "brute" and "openly unfaithful" farm worker who
physically abuses her. This marriage seems to suggest that Lucie has
exhausted all her hopes of finding a meaningful and mutually selfaffirming love relationship, and that she has accepted her state of
perpetual abandonment and victimization as an irrevocable condition
of being.
As for Kostka, he cannot accept Lucie's love and the natural consequences of his "giddy weakness" because they stand between him and
the illusory self-image he has diligently worked to create. His espousal
to Christianity has aimed at reclaiming and nurturing his being which is
otherwise abandoned by the prescribed and impersonal mode of
existence of the revolution. Christianity has afforded him a sense of
distinction and superiority in a society that is driven to create by ipso

176

ARON AJI

facto conformity what Kundera calls, "the smallest variety in the

greatest space" (''The Tragedy of Central Europe," p. 33). However,
Kostka fails to recognize, at least until Lucie enters his life, that his
obstinate religiosity demands from him as much depersonalizing commitment as does Communism from the comrades. In solitude and selfdelusion, he overlooks that the state of abandonment results exactly
from the act of surrendering to any authority - whether that of the
Scriptures or of Communist prescriptions. What Lucie awakens in
Kostka is the very being which he himself has abandoned, the one that
is sensuous, very much at ease with the "impurities" of the body.
However, Kostka has no choice but to overlook this discovery. Accepting the natural consequences of his lovemaking to Lucie would be
tantamount to stripping himself of his Christian image, and facing the
horror of abnegation. After losing Lucie, Kostka turns in despair to his
God in order to seek His alibi for his being:
Tell me, God, is it true? Am I truly so wretched and laughable? Tell me it isn't true!
Reassure me! Speak to me, God! Louder! In this jumble of voices I can't seem to hear
You! (p. 207)

His plea is futile. No clear voice of reassurance answers. For Kostka,

God's righteous authority has become as unapproachable and undiscernible as the clamorous and rivalling authority of Communism.
III

We can arrive at the main tenets of the phenomenon of abandonment

through Kostka, Ludvik and other characters in The Joke. Almost all
have submitted themselves to the "messianic vision" (p. 231) of
ideological systems, and assumed identities through external codes. Still
worse, as Ludvik later realizes while watching the Ride of Kings, "the
real horror of it lay in the fact that the masked faces were so fiercely
devoted to the inhumanity and vulgarity of the masks" (p. 263). This is
ultimately a brutal inversion of the "being-in-the-world" state to that of
"being-for-the-world" (in Heidegger's terms, a state of fallenness,
unauthenticity). In this world, the course of history, the fate of culture,
religion and society are defined by sacrosanct certainties; as a result,
even the most rudimentary forms of private being and human interaction are abstracted beyond the control of the individual. One is no

THE JOKE

177

longer the "subject" of one's history, but its passive "object" (p. 104).
Neither the Christian God, nor the man-made, but nonetheless omnipresent deities of history, culture and revolution can comfort the
abandoned beings - when they have lost even the ability to comfort
one another.
Kundera pronounces a most bitter verdict on the human condition
through Lucie's state of abandonment in particular. Whereas all others
have found themselves abnegated and abandoned as a result of their
submission to external systems, Lucie is abandoned exactly because she
possesses an uncommitted inner voice. She is deprived of identity since
others cannot help but perceive her as an alibi, an objective evidence
for their own being. And all she has sought for in their company is the
most fundamental of human feelings: compassion, the sharing of
individual suffering. But the state of abandonment common to all
characters does not leave room to maintain - not nurture, just
maintain - even this indispensable form of sharing between two beings.
"We lived, Lucie and I," says Ludvik, "in a world of devastation; and
because we lacked the ability to commiserate with things thus devastated, we turned our backs on them, offending both them and ourselves
in the process" (p. 262).
Kundera leaves the ever-endearing Lucie in the hands of a "brute"
husband and his readers with thoughts on a world that might have
exhausted its Edenic/utopian promises at the expense of individual
existence.
Butler University, Indianapolis
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Elgrably, Jordan, "Conversations with Milan Kundera." Salmagundi 73, Winter 1987.
Kundera, Milan, The Art of the Novel, (New York: Grove Press, 1988).
- - , The Joke, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984). All citations from this
edition are indicated by page number in parentheses. u.s. Copyright by Harper &
Row, International Copyright by Faber and Faber. Reprinted by permission of
publishers.
- - , "The Tragedy of Central Europe." (The New York Review of Books, April 26,
1984).

PART THREE

AESTHETIC RECEPTION

A. LIFE-REVERBERATION AND
AESTHETIC ENJOYMENT

MU YUN LING AND JESSE T. AIRAUDI

"ESSENTIAL WITNESSES": IMAGISM'S AESTHETIC

"PROTEST" AND "RESCUE" VIA ANCIENT
CHINESE POETRY

Studies which criticize the English Imagists' "manipulation" of ancient

Chinese poetry fail to account for the Imagists' motive for studying
these "alien" and very nearly inscrutable poems. Too often the criticism
has narrowly searched only for philological mistakes and ignored the
literary tenets, from the very earliest, contemporaneous studies such as
Arthur Waley's 1918 attack entitled The Poet Li Po, A.D. 701-762, to
the more recent scrutiny of Pound's linguistic mistranslations in Pen-ti
Lee's and Donald Murray's study "The Quality of Cathay: Ezra Pound's
Early Translations of Chinese Poems." Focusing on Pound as the chief
practitioner among the Imagist translators, sinologists have noted
Pound's inexpert manipulation of Chinese ideogram, syntax, structure,
and cultural history: "everyone" in the business now-a-days knows, for
instance, that the chief Poundian "howler" is "The River Song" in
Cathay which Pound failed to see were actually two different poems by
Li Po. And the defenses offered for Pound's "howlers" can be themselves quite amusing, especially if one wishes to exuse Pound by citing
Hugh Kenner's discovery that Pound never "dealt with the Chinese
characters directly, but has always followed" an English, French, or
Latin "crib." Furthermore, when it is revealed that the crib itself is
grossly inaccurate, the comedy of errors is greatly compounded. Wailim Yip characterizes the cribs in Fenollosa's notebook (from which
Pound chiefly worked) as "crippled" at best, "hopeless" at worst. Add
to this the charge that Pound, as a Westerner, could have known very
little about Chinese history or, what is more important, the manner in
which that history and culture is "encoded and decoded" in literary
artifacts, and sinologists appear to have a very strong case against
Pound and others attempting to apply Imagist theory and techniques to
translating Chinese poetry.
What can be said of the Imagists' poems taken (no matter how) from
the Chinese? It cannot be denied that many of these poems are
"beautiful." Consider the translation of Li Po's poem which Pound
entitled "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance":
181
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 181-194.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

182

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,

It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,

And I let down the crystal curtain

And watch the moon through the clear autumn.
An examination of this poem's beauty could serve as a starting point for
a study which is based upon asthetic motives, and it could serve without
considering the question of whether or not this is a linguistically,
culturally-accurate translation of any Chinese poem. As a starting point,
we may ask "what in this poem moves us in the same way that many
Chinese poems more accurately translated (in all respects) move us?"
Or, to isolate what we seek that is aesthetic from philological concerns,
we may ask, "what in this poem moves me and my Chinese colleague in
the same way that a poem written in classical Chinese moves my
Chinese colleague?" The answers to these more fundamental, aesthetic
questions were being sought by the Imagists quite some time before
they had ever seen manuscripts of ancient Chinese poetry, and that is
why our study - if it is to discover the radical urge which explains the
Imagists' aesthetic interest in Chinese poetry - must examine motives.
The Imagist program, with Pound as its chief practioner, has a historical-philosophical aim at the core of its aesthetic, or, to be more exact, a
dual aim, both the "protest" and the "rescue" we speak of in the title of
this study.
It is a curiosity of scholarship that while charging Pound with
ignoring matters of "racial consciousness" (because Pound brushed
aside the difficult historical allusions in the Chinese poems), critics have
failed to consider the historical and cultural pressures which formed
Imagist theory and practice. The Imagist protest was not aimed merely
at late Victorian didacticism or poetic diction, any more than their
translations were meant to be accurate philological or cultural renderings. In the preface to his chief aesthetic manifesto, The Spirit of
Romance, written in 1910, Pound analogically states the nature of the
protest and the means of rescue:
Art or an art is not unlike a river. It is perturbed at times by the quality of the river bed,
but it is in a way independent of that bed. The color of the water depends on the
substance of the bed and the banks immediate and preceding. ... The scientist is
concerned with all of these things, the artist with that which flows.

Clearly, Pound is not interested in what the scientist is interested in, but

ANCIENT CHINESE POETRY

183

rather in the art of translation, ultimately in the art of poetry, a poetry

closer to lived experience. Earlier in this "Praefatio" Pound had dismissed mere "rags of morphology" and philology as the aim of poetic
translation: "I have attempted [instead] to examine certain forces,
elements or qualities which were potent in the mediaeval literature of
the Latin tongues, and are, as I believe, still potent in our own." Exactly
what Pound objected to in the scientist's method, and exactly what the
''flow'' was in Chinese poetry with its "strange compelling powers" are
questions which suggest a radical, reconstructing aesthetic.
When Pound asserts that the "life of the Occidental mind fell apart"
with the rise of the "experimental method" of the "material sciences," he
is on the same subject as Husserl's famous Part I of the Crisis, "Crisis of
the Life Sciences as Expression of the Radical Life Crisis of European
Humanity." The falling apart, or "progressively stupider and still more
stupid segregations" as Pound called the process, is the great "obscurity" Husserl examines in his assessment of Galileo's "astounding ...
discovery-concealment," that is, Galileo's discovery that nature could
be understood by a "particular technique ... called physics," and the
concealment of the fact that this method was a method in the "too
readily granted" assumption that the method, the way of representing
reality, was the reality. Indeed, as Heidegger speculated, the "fascination
with methods recognizes, indirectly and imperfectly, a more primordial
phenomenon before methods (i.e., 'before' in the sense of taking
precedence over them)." Recall Husserl's famous metaphor for this
"discovery-concealment" which has caused a split - or "segregation,"
as Pound would have it - in Western ways of viewing the universe:
Mathematics and mathematical science, as a garb of ideas, or the garb of symbols of the
symbolical mathematical theories, encompasses everything which, for scientists and the
educated generally, represents the life-world, dresses it up as "objectively actual and
true" nature. It is through the garb of ideas that we take for true being what is actually a
method....

Husserl further notes that even to the present time, the "concealment"
continues to obscure a vital relationship with the life-world: those who
explore via the method are unaware of "the implications of meaning
which are closed through sedimentation or traditionalization, i.e., of the
constant presuppositions of his [own] constructions, concepts, propositions."
The "obscurity" in Occidental thought, which amounts to a loss of

184

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

the life-world for a great number of people, Pound refers to as "a

tolerance of the most ungodly indistinctness," [Impact 200] a habit of
viewing the world as one kind of world, the kind determined by one's
theory of it. As Roman Ingarden notes, this way of looking at the world
was applied especially "before 1930" but "even now, especially in
Anglo-Saxon countries, positivistic tendencies are all too strong, and
among wide, philosophically unsophisticated circles they pass for the
only 'scientific' viewpoint." In their protest the Imagists demanded that
their inquiries, which they called the "science of human nature" be
accorded the same "respect" as other sciences. The consequences of
such a partial way of seeing the world are profound, according to
Husserl. By taking for granted "sciences [that] measure things without
knowing what they measure," we "deny ourselves the right to understand the world." An early poem, from the Lustra volume (the
headnote reads "Lustrum: an offering for the sins of the whole people")
illustrates Pound's strong protest of this denial by the West:
The Rest!

o helpless few in my country,

o remnant enslaved!
Artists broken against her,
Astray, lost in the villages,
Mistrusted, spoken-against,
Lovers of beauty, starved,
Thwarted with systems,
Helpless against the control;
You of the finer sense,
Broken against false knowledge,
You who can know at first hand,
Hated, shut in, mistrusted:
Take thought:
I have weathered the storm.
I have beaten out my exile.
Such phrases as "thwarted with systems," "broken against false knowledge," and "helpless against the control" point up the protest aspect of
the Imagist movement, while "lovers of beauty," "you of the finer

ANCIENT CHINESE POETRY

185

sense," and "you who can know at first hand" suggests the means of
rescuing the "tribe" from secondary, "superficialized" (Busserl's term)
ways of viewing experience.
The strongest link between the general philosophical reconstruction
going forward at the time and the Imagist movement was T. E. Hulme,
who was not only a poet but the chief theorical influence on Pound and
other Imagists. Hulme adapted much of Henri Bergson's aesthetic
theory to Imagist practice, especially Bergson's insights that reality is "a
flux of interpenetrated elements unseizable by the intellect" and that the
"intellect apprehends external phenomena in such a way that man can
act on them, not so that he can know them" (thus placing "a veil
between man and reality"). Hulme adapted Bergson's point to his
theory of a de-conventionalizing, declassifying poetry of images: the
"ordinary man ... perceives only with reference to ... action; that is, he
sees not the table but a table, classifying objects with reference to
immediate or potential use." Therefore, a poetry of images "endevours
to arrest you, and to make you see continuously a physical thing; to
prevent you gliding through an abstract process."
The Imagists claimed that the objectivists' unfortunate habit of tying
"dried sticks" into "convenient bundles" is perilous to the human mind.
"Curiosity," Pound laments, "deserted almost all realms" save those of
the "material sciences." By obscuring the distinction between reality and
a way of seeing it, mankind abdicated the one quality which makes it
human, its search for the honestum, the pure, genuine in experience.
At base, the Imagist protest of abstraction and generalization was more
profound, of course: the most damaging "segregation" in Galileo's
bequest was the related "doctrine of the merely SUbjective character of
the sense qualities" - which Hobbes extended to "all concrete
phenomena of sensibly intuitive nature and the world in general" because (as Husserl pointed out) if "the intuited world of our life is
merely subjective, then all the truths of pre- and extra scientific life
which have to do with its factual being are deprived of value." For the
Imagists, the intuited world of our life was the concern of poetry; the
vitality of lived experience, what Pound called the "flow" (what the
ancient Chinese called the "way," or tao, "the world's vital current" had
to be rescued (literally, "shaken out of entanglements") if life were to
have meaning for Western man in the twentieth century: "For it is not
until poetry lives again 'close to the thing' that it will be a vital part of
contemporary life." The search "for a vital something which has in too

186

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

great a degree slipped out of modern poetry," as Ford Maddox Hueffer

(Ford) said, was to be the general aim of the Imagists. As in the French
stage of phenomenology, the Imagists hoped to rescue a "concrete
subject capable of sustaining a vital relationship with a world." Pound
had been searching, and had, in fact, found this "vital something" in
pre-Enlightenment poetry (in Medieval, in Proven~al, in Pre-Raphaelite
poetry) before he saw it in the Chinese notebooks of Ernest Fenellosa.
In translating pre-Enlightenment poetry, Pound sought what the French
phenomenologists sought, the "return to that fundamental and most
concrete level of human experience which the Greeks called aisthesis 'sense experience'." This also was the Imagists' aim in translating
ancient Chinese poetry. Wyndham Lewis and others praised this simple
"strength" derived from its ''verbal undertones," and the Imagists, led by
Pound, hoped for a new Renaissance in the West: "It is possible,"
Pound wrote in Poetry in 1915, "that this century may find a new
Greece in China. In the meantime we have come upon a new table of
values." That they saw the vital force in ancient Chinese poetry as well
as in Western pre-Enlightenment art seemed to them proof that, as
Pound said, there was a "dynamic content" underneath the "shell."
Pound "resolved," "I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was 'indestructible,' what part could not be
lost by translation [as well as what could]."
The means of rescue are suggested in Pound's admonition to "Get
your 'red' down to rose, rust, cherry, if you want to know what you are
talking about." "Know what you are talking about" is an admonition
which explains the Imagist's more publicized slogans such as "direct
treatment of the thing," go in fear of abstraction, and "make it new." It
is, of course, also a principle aim of the general philosophical reconstruction carried on in this century, especially in the sense which Mikel
Dufrenne (following Merleau-Ponty) defines "phenomenology"; that is,
as a "description of lived experience, with emphasis on the immediacy
of this experience." In this connection, it is not surprising to find that
the roots of Imagism lie in Impressionism, for the aims of each are the
same. As Pater wrote, "not the fruits of experience but experience itself
is the end." By "Never acquiesing in a facile orthodoxy," to borrow
Pater's dictum, we give ouselves the chance to uncover the life-world.
This seems to be Pound's motive in his translation of "The Jewel Stairs'
Grievance" (quoted above), in which he presents a series of images
clear in themselves but at first vague in meaning as a series. Hulme

ANCIENT CHINESE POETRY

187

would say that our intellect, or classifying, habits over-ride our intuitive
grasp of the arrangement, the Image, and so thwart the energy coming
from it, for the Imagists defined "Image" as an "intellectual and
emotional complex in an instant of time." We could make the poem
''understandable'' by making two sorts of "narrations," as Dufrenne
might say. First, we could make the separate images more "representational," which is in itself a "narration," and then we could provide
connectives between the images. But we would construct a poem which
will satisfy only our surface curiousity about just another sad little story,
another variation on the "estrangement" theme one finds so frequently
in Chinese poetry. The "connectives," of course, are not the point; the
juxtaposition of the images to make a dynamic Image is, according to
Imagist theory. Without this ''world'' of the aesthetic object, the poem
cannot become one of those "exquisite pauses of time" during which we
seem to be "spectators at all the fullness of existence" of which Pater
speaks. Without the work of art transformed into an aesthetic object,
neither it nor we can be "essential witnesses," as Dufrenne would say:
"It is not only a matter of calling forth imagination vividly, in the
manner of what Bachelard calls 'integrating objects' [for imagination]
contains the potentiality of a world but cannot carry out the task of
realizing it. Thus, while imagination can remove the boundaries of the
object, it cannot constitute a totality; it opens but does not enclose. To
realize a world, feeling is necessary." If the poem is not "exquisite," it
cannot have "fullness," in Pater's words. In Dufrenne's words, if it is not
felt to beautiful, it cannot be true, that is, evocative of the real, for the
aesthetic object:
relates to the real and displays its truth there. The beautiful is the sign of the true;
nothing is true but the beautiful. [Moreover,] the aesthetic object takes on the original
function of truth, which is to precede the real in order to illuminate it, not to repeat it.
But just because the object is in a position to illuminate does not imply that its truth
loses its subjective import. It is also the case that there is truth only for a subjectivity.
[The world of the aesthetic object] is not an arbitrary one. We know that the real will
come to confirm it and not leave it empty, and we know that its light will illuminate
something, just as the mathematician knows the same concerning his algorithms.

We know that the expression we call the Image in "The Jewel Stairs'
Grievance" is "true" because it is beautiful. We know it is beautiful
because we "experience its truth in its perfection "since a high degree of
rigor cannot deceive us." We feel strongly that nothing could be added,
nothing taken away, without destroying the expression which is the

188

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

cause of this feeling. We are certain (following Dufrenne's theory) that

our strong feeling confirms a world filled by the presence (rather than
the mere "representation" or "narration") of the real, no more than we
could draw and straighten light waves and still have light. In this view of
the aesthetic object, "meaning in art is neither nonexistent nor transcendent," but resides in the "sensuous" and "actual." Thus its beauty defined above as its perfection or "intuitive abundance" is "both an
irrefutable expression and an authentic testimony."
The aesthetic responses noted by Imagists and phenomenologists are
remarkably similar and suggest a further insight into our relationship
with primoridial qualities through art. For Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty,
for instance, the response is likened to "a spontaneous reduction," for
Dufrenne, accompanied by "illumination," or "light," which is "meaning
which orients our apprehension of the real and renders brute givens
meaningful." This echoes Heidegger's (and Rilke's) comments on the
"surprise" when "present beings" find themselves in the presence of
"light." When Pound was searching for the "vital something" which led
to Imagism, he proclaimed that the conventionalized world of his time
would have to be confronted with a "direct" poetry whose "force will be
in its truth." The "shock and the stroke" of this force Pound saw as
light: writing in Poetry Review in 1912, he referred to "that feeling of
sudden light which the works of art should and must convey." Later, he
defined Voriticism as "the radiant node or cluster of the poem" into
which "ideas are constantly rushing." Along with, or perhaps because
of, this stroke of light, the spectator (be he the poet or the reader) feels
a "sense of sudden liberation, that sense of freedom from time limits
and space limits." With this comment on "liberation," Pound takes us
back to Imagism's roots in Impressionism, directly to Pater's statement
about seeming to be "spectators at all the fullness of experience" in
"exquisite pauses of time." This tie to the Impressionists suggests a deep
human dimension in art which - through the agency of deconventionalized language - drew the Imagists to ancient Chinese poetry. To
examine this further dimension, we must examine yet another pathway
to it, a particular use of striking analogy employed by ancient Chinese
poets and by the Imagists.
In a general way, Bergson had suggested a solution to the problem of
"segregation," as we have noted: the "mind's normal orientation toward
action" could be turned "instead to the search for pure knowledge"
through "intuition." More specifically, Bergson's insight that although

ANCIENT CHINESE POETRY

189

"no image can replace the intuition of duration," the use of "many
diverse images, borrowed from very different orders of things, may, by
the convergence of their action, direct consciousness to the precise
point where there is a certain intuition to be seized" was adopted by the
Imagists. In this connection, one thinks immediately of the most
celebrated of Imagist poems, Pound's "In a Station of the Metro":
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Pound explained the poem as "an equation" of feeling, and the poem
may be read as an expression of intuition which uses the Bergson (via
Hulme) method of "convergence" of "diverse images borrowed from
different orders of things." Phenomenological aesthetics notes this
sudden "force" and "liberation" in the use of metaphor as well. Eugene
Minkowski's treatise on Lived Time (according to Dufrenne) finds a
"primitive meaning that precedes the divison between the literal and the
figurative, the sensory and the intellectual" in "everything which is
implied in metaphors." Dufrenne goes on to say that this intuition thus
released is possible because art and the real are both subordinate to
being. Thus, the "liberties" art takes in analogy still produce in us a
profound feeling of having been in the presence of truth. Art therefore
has more to say than does science about being. Gaston Bachelard's
"centers of cosmicity," like Heidegger's ''unconcealing center" of light, is
very much like Pound's notion of a "radiant node" constantly involving
"ideas," especially if we recall that Ingarden in later years used the term
"'idea' or 'ideal object' or ultimately, 'ideal quality'" in place of the term
"essence." The "center," according to Bachelard, brings the "contradictions of the cosmos together within its own unity." Pound understood
the "planes" of the divergent images in analogy to engender the same
effect; following Bergson, he used analogy's point of "overlap" to
release an emotion. Since the Image is defined by Pound as an "intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time," we can analyze both
parts of the "equation" to understand the aesthetic response to "In a
Station of the Metro." The intellectual grasp sees the similie of "faces"
and "petals," understanding the expression as "faces"= (equals, is like,
has something in common with) "petals." At this point, if the equation
is to engage feeling, an "emotional correspondence" must be made
between the two images: "apparition" and "black" bring human and
nonhuman into unity. Here, we might say, following Imagist theory, is

190

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

the point at which a "certain intuition" may be "seized." We may feel

that "face" (is an equivalence, or shares identity, perhaps "being" with)
"petals." What exactly, we may ask, is this intuition which results, what
is the nature of the shock and surprise of the "present beings" (to use
Bachelard's phrase) who grasp the Image? We must search for the
answer to this question in the ancient Chinese poems translated by
Imagists, where we will find arrangements of images selected from (or
offered from, if we wish to follow Dufrenne) ''very different orders," as
Bergson said.
"The Jewel Stairs' Grievance" is an example of an equation which
evokes this singular intuition through the "emotional correspondence"
of various images: the crystal moon the dew in the air the dew on the
stockings, are all equivalences of the abandoned woman. In "The
Beautiful Toilet," the girl abandoned by her husband is equated, via her
youth ("blooming," in Yip's translation) with the "greening" grass and
trees in the garden. Most of the poems in Cathay make this same sort
of equation of feeling, as does a "sizeable portion of Chinese poetry." In
fact, Pound's first poem in Cathay, "The Bowmen of Shu," is the "germ"
or "prototype" of that strain. Perhaps the most striking illustration of
the Cathay poems which evoke this feeling is the "Lament of the
Frontier Guard," a man in extremis poem in which the human and the
natural "planes" or clusters of images clearly overlap (as the point
where the "intuition" is to be "seized") in the middle of the poem, in the
line "A gracious spring; turned to blood-ravenous autumn." Although
Pound could not have known that the original referred to the "yin" and
"yang" of creation and destruction, spoken of as "co-operating" in the I
Ching, this is a fair rendering of that line and its place in the "intellectual and emotional complex" of the poem. These "mutability" poems,
common to ancient Chinese poetry and given there, as Pound thought
Imagistically, apparently struck him as the "indestructible" element or
force he saw in other pre-Enlightenment poetry. Perhaps this is why he
put "The Seafarer" Anglo-Saxon poem - the only non-Chinese poem
in the volume - in the middle of Cathay.
"The Seafarer" is "typically" Anglo-Saxon in its melancholy and so
on, but Pound, seeking "what is indestructible" and what "could not be
lost in translation," rendered the emotion as a series of images whose
overlapping planes would provide points for a deeper apprehension of
the experience. As in the renderings of the Chinese poems, we have
human and natural convergences, images "translated," as Pound

ANCIENT CHINESE POETRY

191

thought, "nearly, or wholly, intact," as in the lines "Known on my keel

many a care's hold," the "frost['s] chain" [on the seafarer's numb feet],
the "sea-fowl's laughter" and the mews "singing all my mead drink," the
"storms" falling in "icy feathers" and the "eagle" screaming "with spray
on his pinion," hail as "corn of the coldest," and "a man's tide." The
arrangements are very nearly like those in an early translation of "The
Fan Piece" in which the ''fan of white silk, clear as frost on a grass
blade" is "also laid aside." In all the poems of this sort, "a thing outward
and objective," as Pound wrote of "In a Station of the Metro," "transforms itself and darts inward and subjective." Yip sees this "turning the
clear but external images inward" as an act of "weaving them into a
tragic human state," yet such an act would not evoke a tragic response,
except perhaps of the "terror" aspect of the cathartic: the interiorization
of the brute reality could not produce the "patient beauties," the "art of
being quiet in verse" that Strachey and the Imagists saw in ancient
Chinese and other poetry. If we were to allow that the spectator at this
moment of ''fullness,'' in the presence of the terrible, somehow calmed
himself in the face of its enormity, we would have no more than a stoic
quietness or the resigned patience of pathos, the sadness of being
carried along by time. However, if we are to account for the "sudden
liberation" and "growth" and the "sense of freedom," a more active role
must be given to the human subject, something on the order of the
classical Greek tragic gesture which man makes to surpass (though
never escape) his fate. The shock of the intuition, we recall, is not of
pain or anquish but of "light" and "liberation." What is the meaning of
the catharsis which accompanies Oedipus' self-blinding that so liberates
our spirits?
First, we confirm in our response that the real is not ignored, put
aside. The shock of light that the convergence of the images sends
through us is not separated from the real but is the result of the
confrontation of the human and the natural; the identity of Oedipus
with his fate in nature is the identity of ''faces'' and "petals." As Pater
wrote in 1867, there can be no transcedence and human meaning:
For us, necessity is not, as of old, a sort of mythological personage, with whom we can
do warfare. It is rather a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic
system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network, subtler than our
subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.

Yet it is from these roots of Imagism that we perceive the active, tragic,

192

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

and liberating role that the human plays in this network of the world.
"Philosophy," Pater asserts, "serves culture, not by the fancied gift of
absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions
which help one to detect the passion, the strangeness, and dramatic
contrasts of life." It appears that whatever is liberating in the aesthetic
(let us say creative) act has to do with a confrontation and involvement
with the real. "Can we think of taking a real individual out of the
worldly framework?" A.-T. Tymieniecka asks. "The most significant
feature of the real individual is his insertion into the totality of beings. It
is as the segment of this totality that he actually exists. His actual
existence is the resultant of this insertion. Thus marvelling with
Wittgenstein how extraordinary it is that something should actually
exist, we posit into the focus of our attention the real individual within
the world context." Furthermore, Tymieniecka's view suggests an
answer to Pater's profound question: "Can art represent men and
women in these bewildering toils so as to give the spirit at least an
equivalent for the sense of freedom?" The "revolt against the established expression of reality," Tymieniecka observes, "is not limited to
the striving to 'free' oneself from its bonds; it is essentially a longing to
reach deeper into reality by giving it a more authentic expression in
constructing a new universe and a new self. The creative impulse carries
not only the revolt but the will to invent and to act." She continues with
a statement which elucidates this study of Imagism's protest and rescue
via ancient Chinese poetry: "Indeed, the creative endevour of man
consists ultimately in dealing with reality." Tymieniecka's elaboration of
this assertion bears quoting at length:
The creative process, which is incorporated in a consistent course of chain-actions,
projects antennae between the disintegrating phase of the constituted world, from which
it proceeds, and the new phase which it proposes to create. However, in its inner
workings it is rooted in neither. The new orchestration of the human faculties and
operations which the creative process elicits from both, the already developed and the
virtual resources, is suspended above a gulf which opens between the two. In a progressive formation, accordingly, the creative process not only lays bare - like disintegrating
psychotic states - the unintelligible primeval chaos of the elementary dimensions to
which it ultimately returns and upon which it draws in it working, but, in addition, it
ascertains them in their latent virtualities which man may add and, indeed, does, draw
upon to unfold his being and beyond that to create it according to his own designs.

This insight parallels Heidegger's notion of this "depth as in its own way
a height," envisioning "height and depth relating in such a way that they

ANCIENT CHINESE POETRY

193

'span a realm in which we would like to become at home, so as to find a

residence, a dwelling place for the life of man, that is to say, an essential
place, a chora." And it is at these "rare" moments (as Dufrenne writes)
when man is "truly himself," when he "attains to his proper excellence."
What is created becomes the proof of man's unique creative nature
within the world. "His distinctiveness affirms itself," Tymieniecka
writes; man shares universally an "anonymous stream of the natural
dynamis" stretched over a "uniquely personal world-life within which
the human individual is simultaneously the creator and the living
observer." Even in the most extreme of the in extremis poems which
Pound translated from the Chinese - as in "Song of the Bowmen of
Shu" and the "Lament of the Frontier Guard" (and ''The Seafarer" also)
- there is this sense of "dealing with reality," as Tymieniecka puts it,
and, through opening up a gulf and spanning it in a human, creative act,
finding a dwelling place for man. And even in the most extreme case
imaginable, that of confronting the most inhuman, uncaring aspects of
the real, the creative individual asserts his uniqueness and dignity: "As
soon as one characterizes the real - e.g., in saying what is inhuman,
formidable, or sordid about it, in feeling nauseated by it, or in having
pity for it - one surpasses naked reality in order to illuminate it." This
is the gist of the Greek sense of tragedy and also of Confucianism, the
"vision of the unity man shares with nature and the creativity of the
nature of man. Herein lies the "patient beauties" and the "art of being
quiet" in ancient Chinese poetry that the Imagists sought for their own
art.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

'The Rest' is reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber from

Collected Shorter Poems by Ezra Pound. For the U.S. and Canadian
rights, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation from Ezra Pound: Persona. Copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound.
1

REFERENCES
Stanley Coffman, Jr., Imagism (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1972).
Chung Ying Chen, "Confucian Methodology and Understanding the Human Person,"
Analecta Husserliana Vol. XVII (1984).
Mikel Dufrenne, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Northwestern Univ.
Press, 1973).

194

MU YUN LING AND JESSE AIRAUDI

George Grabowicz, The Literary Work of Art (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973).
David Halliburton, Poetic Thinking: An Approach to Heidegger (Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1981).
Edmund Husser!, The Crisis (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1970).
Leszek Kolakowski, Husserl and the Search for Certitude (Yale, 1975).
Czeslaw Milosz, Native Realm (Univ. of California Press, 1981).
Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1873).
Ezra Pound, Cathay (London: Elkin Mathews, 1915), The Spirit of Romance (London:
John Dent, 1910), and Impact (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1960).
A.-T. Tymieniecka, "Beyond Ingarden's Idealism/Realism Controversy with Husserl,"
Analecta Husserliana Vol. IV (1976) and "Tragedy and the Completion of Freedom," Analecta Husserliana Vol. XVIII (1984).
Wai-lim Yip, Ezra Pound's Cathay (Princeton Univ. Press, 1969).
'The Fan Piece" from Poetry and Prose of the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties, trans. Yang
Xian Yi and Gladys Yang (Beijing: Shu Dian Books, 1986).

Ling:
Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities
Kunming, Yunnan
Airaudi:
Baylor University

BABETTE E. BABICH

TOWARDS A POST-MODERN HERMENEUTIC

ONTOLOGY OF ART: NIETZSCHEAN STYLE AND
HEIDEGGERIAN TRUTH

Beyond the modern aesthetic institution, the artistic philosophies of

Nietzsche and Heidegger construe art from the perspectives of life and
truth rather than beauty, meaningful form, or value. I introduce this
perspective as post-aesthetic, recalling Nietzsche's interpretive insight:
"We have art lest we perish of the truth."! Heidegger's reflection on the
art-work, offering a foundational hermeneutic of the essence of art as
the occasion of truth, underscores the unimportance of institutional art.
Instead, for a post-aesthetic understanding of the challenge of art, what
is important is the possibility of a congenial appropriation or answering
move. For human Dasein, this congenial response may be found in the
extraordinarily demanding way of being Heidegger names as tarrying,
dwelling-alongside, letting be. As Hans-Georg Gadamer further explains, in the tragedy of mystery, even in its closest contact with the
beautiful, the impetuousity of the human heart robs it of the rare
surrender that alone could constitute the accession of its desire.
Attending to the truth of art, mortal beings borrow the wings of
ascendent desire. Learning how to linger upon the work of art is a
special achievement. In Gadamer's words, "the longer we allow ourselves, the more it displays its manifold riches to us. The essence of our
temporal experience of art is learning how to tarry in this way."2
1. NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche's philosophy of creative art expresses a post-traditional

aesthetics because the subject of the work of art - whether defined by
the role of reception or invention - is not the defining feature of
artistic achievement for Nietzsche. Beyond traditional aesthetic distinctions, this post-aesthetic perspective valorises neither the subjective
(intention or conception) nor the objective (experiential or referential)
dimensions of art. 3 For Nietzsche, moreover, the focus of creation is
not the artist's public; neither is the genius of the artist relevant, except
where the artist is seen as a living achievement of artistic style. At the
195
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 195-209.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

196

BABETTE E. BABICH

height of self-cultivation, at the height of cultic release, the artist is "no

longer an artist, he has become a work of art."4 Nietzsche's philosophy
of creative art, then, is literally a phenomenological aesthetic of the
artist.
Nietzsche's post-aesthetic viewpoint articulates the phenomenology
of the creative, artistic experience apart from a distinction between art
and non-art. Without constituted aesthetic distinctions, everything is to
be regarded as art and may be distinguished as art according to its
particular genealogy.s Nietzsche writes: "I ask in every instance, 'is it
hunger or superabundance that has here become creative?"'6 Not the
artist's intention, but the poetry of the artistic impulse is to be illuminated by this question. Where everything has the character of art, the
objective work of art as well as the achievement of a living moment of
human style reflects an original indigence or a superabundance.
When it is neediness that gives rise to art, artistic invention calculates
and answers that weakness. This is the creative impulse of "hunger." In
this way, both art and science are inventive compensations. Using
Nietzsche's language, because all truth is the contextual adumbration of
community or individual perspectives, both art (in its reactive manifestations) and science (qua expression of indigence) advance the conservation of life in the face of its ugly ambiguity and its insecurities.
Thus expanded, we have art and science lest we perish of the truth that
is life.
Because truth's annihilating threat is prior to both art and science, to
champion art does not oppose art to science. For Nietzsche, what is
more, scientific truth is itself reactively artful. The truth of science
offers no more than a simplification, an artificialisation, of existence:
"only we have created the world that concerns us." (GS:30 1) From this
perspective, any distinctions between art and science are matters of
style, not truth and lie. Indeed, in a Nachlass note Nietzsche claims
... metaphysics, religion, morality, science - all of them are only products of [the] will
to art, to lie, to flight from 'truth', to negation of 'truth' (WP:853:1)

This anti-metaphysical critique includes the scientific project as the

effective expression of a "prejudice in favour of reason [which] compels
us to posit unity, identity, duration, substance, cause, individuality,
being."7 This prejudicing error, or will 'to lie', is incorrigible, for there
"would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspective evaluations

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

197

and appearances."8 The truth beyond this error is not the truth of
another world but the truth of life. For human beings, the truth of life is
historical. Such historicity is a matter of finitude, not only of tradition
and hermeneutic heritage. The truth of life is life's irrefragable intercalation with limitation and death. For Nietzsche, like W. Benjamin, art
is "the redemption of the men of know/edge ... who see the terrifying
and questionable character of existence," (WP: 853) i.e., the necessary
inadequacy and ultimate impossibility of life as such. 'Looking at art in
the light of life', then, Nietzsche means to underscore the work of art as
life-enhancing, life-illuminating illusion. Reminiscent of Schiller's poetic
perspective, Nietzsche introduces the human possibility-as-work-of-art,
as giving style to one's character. 9 The stylistic emphasis - referring to
the possibility of life in the grand style - that, for Nietzsche, is the
redemptive project of art.
Style reflects the canonic distinction between works of art as creative
achievements. And, as we have seen for Nietzsche, art arises from two
sources: "The full and bestowing as opposed to the seeking, desiring."
(WP: 843) Only one is properly creative as Nietzsche understands
active creation; the other is born of deficiency.1O Manifesting a referential dependence upon productive society,11 both art and science work
to conceal or to overcome a lack. In an historic and social context, this
lack is productive desire: the desire to control. Nietzsche conceives this
dominating drive for power as reactive Will to Power, here seen to be
the will to the secure acquisition of power.
Beyond the absorbedly reactive, creativity is active, according to its
originating abundance or overflowing power. In the perspectival play of
style, when it is superabundance that gives rise to art, only the internal
dynamic of expression compels creative achievement. Because creative
expression is also the partial "desire for destruction," (OS: 370) the
articulation of abundance is never primarily concerned with preserving
life. In the magnanimity of expressed power, the moment of life is
immortalised - "prompted by gratitude and love." (ibid)12 From this
"superabundant" origin, active creation is pure expression - at the cost
of calculation. But as self-overcoming without reserve on the side of
expression, creative artistry entails the perhaps unanticipated possibility
of self-extinction. 13
The self-expending, self-constructive significance of giving style to
one's character through the agency of what Nietzsche calls creative,
active art is the exposition of power in the force of abundance, super-

198

BABETTE E. BABICH

fluity, or excess. To understand the value of the creative difference

between action and reaction, let us return the question to the Will to
Power, for this concept repeats the same distinction.
Wherever the Will to Power does not fail to be over-arching,
unreserved self-expression, we may see the grandeur of style in active
or creative Will to Power. But such a creative Will to Power requires
the cultivation of unusual and vulnerable potential. Hence the creative
Will to Power is terminally rare - and ordinarily difficult to understand. Inviting annihiliation without rancor, without perversity, but in all
good will, the "highest state of affirmation of existence is conceived
from which the highest degree of pain cannot be excluded: the tragicDionysian state." (WP: 853) Yet, the death of tragedy as a cultural art
form and the birth and aesthetic ascendance of logic and technological
control testifies to the implausibility of this affirmation for ordinary,
rational society.
What is intuitively obvious is what we call 'traditional'. And traditionally, the Nietzschean Will to Power is only partially delineated as
the expression of a will seeking to win power. Intuitively, or automatically, to think of the Will is to conceive a drive. Will to Power is a drive
of and for power. Thus, in this traditional conception, the Will to Power
is determined in a negative or deficit economy of compensation, toward
the end of acquisition but not expenditure. For his part, as we have
seen, Nietzsche explains such a dynamic of power acquisition, in
genealogical terms, as reactive (traditional) Will to Power. Reactively,
the drive for power is expressed from an original lack as resentment in
the productive mechanic of acquisition. But resentment, or Ressentiment, is not the sole articulative possibility of the Will to Power.
For Nietzsche, "A living thing desires above all to vent its
strength." 14
Indeed, in this desire to express power, we understand the impulse
proper to power-in-abundance. In its expression, power is felt as
power. The core of Nietzsche's life-aesthetic is found in this feltexpression of power: "whenever man ... rejoices as an artist, he enjoys
himself as power." (WP: 853)
Countering ordinary intuition, this life-aesthetic preponderates a
creative or expressive manifestation of the Will to Power. The increase
(Steigerung) felt in the expression of power is the heightening of the
feeling of power, corresponding to what Nietzsche calls "Rausch" or
intoxication. This intensified feeling of power is not given with the sheer
possession of power, as, say, through the ownership of a fast car. As the

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

199

case of a performance automobile makes clear, the intensified feeling of

power, the "rush" of power, depends upon its expression. But the idea
of expressed power is not metaphorical. To race a car is to use a good
deal of fuel and the engine itself can be damaged to the point of nonrepair.
This irreducible threat of energic dissipation instigates the conservative power-ethos of reactive or traditional Will to Power. This apprehension is epitomised by Jean Baudrillard, when he analyses the postmodem transition from dramatic alienation to ecstatic communication:
"it's all over with speed - I drive more and consume less. No more
expenditure, consumption, performance, but instead regulation, welltempered functionality".15 Forsaking the ideal of infinite progress, the
post-modem fear of loss opposes the expressive significance of power
for the sole sake of exhibition (or the grandeur of style). To calculate
the expression of power is to measure its limits, to articulate the
reserves of power to be won against the loss of its expression. This
acquisitive ideal has become actual in Western science. The ordinary
project of technological world-intervention/invention represented in the
overcoming of obstacles or limitations manifests triumphant self-preservation against artistic self-overcoming. But this must mean, for
Nietzsche, that the motor of scientific culture is fundamentally reactive.
Artistically, the question of science, together with the question of
morality and the question of culture in general, is relevant. For
Nietzsche is concerned with aesthetic expression, i.e., life in the grand
style, by regarding the human being as work of art. For Nietzsche, "art
is essentially affirmation, blessing, deification of existence." (WP: 821)
Schiller's once limited romantic vision is transmogrified: "man becomes
the transfigurer of existence when he learns to transfigure himself".
(WP: 820) This transfiguration means more than to find art in the
everyday; it is a transvaluative vision of life. Such a transvaluative vision
can be taken as, say, A. Nehamas does: in the sense of its broad
applicability to human life, justifying existence for a newly nostalgic
culture. 16 This affirmation of general utility reinstates the broad possibility of progress, and the re-enfranchisement of general culture, and
the ascendent importance of everyday values. Rigorous attention to
Nietzsche's concern with hierarchies and artistic genealogies, however,
calls for caution. To follow Nehamas in his good-natured reading of
life as self-composed, self-designated literature, embracing anyone's
potential invention, is to ignore Nietzsche's project. Nietzsche's concern
with the small, the last, and even the highest man, was dedicated to

200

BABETTE E. BABICH

distinguishing, selecting, and emphasising the value of the super-human:

the "Uebermensch". Attending to Nietzsche's selective philosophy of
the creative, super-human artist, we may not overlook the affirmative
nihilism or tragic dimension of the grand style.
To be true to Nietzsche's style, the affirmation of life requires an
affirmation of destruction-in-life. Presaging Heidegger's authentic resolve, the resolution of life as mortals live it in the valuation of life
dynamised by am or fati anticipates the death of life. The recognition of
death in life, i.e., the ascendance of non-being solicited from the
position of finite being, speaks beyond the disappointments of the postmodern. The tragic-Dionysian perspective is more than a nostalgic
vision because it exceeds the reactive temper of modern disappointment. Where modernity's ideal shatters tradition, advancing the vision
of perpetual progress, Nietzsche claims that it turns upon itself, like a
snake biting its tail. The societal ethos of desiring production sustains
the modern image of progress. But deferring ultimate consummation,
the ideal of progress is reabsorbed in the image of infinite extension
and the simulacrum of temporal satisfaction becomes the "stopgap" of
impossible desire. Because of the perpetuity of the promise of progress,
the various responses to post-modern culture have preserved the ideal
of modernity in its eclipse.
The notion of post-modernism is notably ambivalent. Yet how much
more so is the emphasis on the super-human in Nietzsche which shifts
the modern subject to the sliding or precessionally dec entered subject
of interpretive style. We are not so much left to raise but to underscore
the question: how much of what we value in 'modern life' is to be
sacrificed with the subject of modernity? Questioning Nietzsche's
emphases as we must, we may not forget that he focusses upon the rare
(noble) possibility of being that is more than traditionally or socially or
even historically human. Nietzsche's project is to defend the societally,
and perhaps psychically, endangered, super-human against the threat of
modernity: the image of the democratic collectivity of free and equally
respected individuals. Never modern life, then, but rather the tragic in
life is to be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon.
II. HEIDEGGER

For Gadamer, it is where Nietzsche is most problematic - as he is in

aligning the tragic in life with aesthetic justification - that Martin

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

201

Heidegger's understanding of Nietzsche is most productive for Heidegger's philosophic projectP Writing on the extended implications of the
"ontological plenitude or truth that addresses us in art," Gadamer
explains Heidegger's understanding of the tragic revelation of truth in
the work of art as the wrought expression of finitude. 18
Gadamer's perspective provides valuable assistance in seeing the
connection between Nietzsche and Heidegger. Nietzsche's understanding of the tragic in life that can be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon
bears a striking correlation to Gadamer's recurrent emphasis on the
life-transformative imperative of the work of art. Epitomised by the
tragic phenomenon in particular, Gadamer writes that the "tragic
emotion flows from the self-knowledge that the spectator acquires. He
finds himself in the tragic action, because it is his own world ..."19 At
the same time, this intimately tragic recognition is "a shattering and a
demolition of the familiar. It is not only the "This art thou!" disclosed in
a joyous and frightening shock; it also says to us, "Thou must alter thy
life!"20 This emphatic imperative turns upon the awful recognition of
tragic finitude that is the coordinate truth of the work of art. Gianni
Vattimo explains the significance of Gadamer's ontological hermeneutics
for an understanding of Heidegger's meditation on art, arguing that
"the work of art is the truth of Being setting itself to work because it
sets up historical worlds . . . showing this always with a reference to
mortality."21 For Gadamer, this mortal dimension characterizes art "as
something that both expresses us and speaks to US."22
Like Nietzsche, Heidegger is not concerned with the artist, per se.
Nor is he concerned except mediately with the work of art. Because
Heidegger questions the nature of art, one must differentiate between
traditional aesthetic understanding (of art and non-art) and Heidegger's
refusal of the aesthetic delimitation of art. This difference is evident in
Heidegger's focus on the "thingly character" of art. 23
For Heidegger, in order to reflect the work of art, it is first necessary
to let the thing be what it is, to express the thingly character of the
thing.24 Heidegger's celebrated investigation analyses a pair of shoes,
represented in a painting by van Gogh. This investigation is celebrated,
in part, because the painting, which Heidegger simply described as wellknown, is now notorious through Meyer Schapiro's criticism of Heidegger's recognition of the peasant woman's shoes as an identificational
error. 25 This mistake is illuminating for its philosophic unimportance.
As an art-historian, Schapiro tells us that the shoes belonged to van

202

BABETTE E. BABICH

Gogh himself. Yet this revelation does not alter the value of Heidegger's analysis. For even without a reflection on van Gogh's painting, or
if, in fact, Heidegger had recognized the putatively "true" owner of the
painted shoes, the culminating point of his essay would remain unchanged. Equipment "belongs to the earth and it is protected in the
world." (p. 34) That point is developed from the world of the wearer,
not the name or even the specific character of the wearer's world. The
question has to do with the world for the wearer of shoes, the bearer of
temple gifts or the witness to art's truth.
Art is a "happening of truth at work." (p. 41) To explain this
happening, Heidegger considers the nature of happening as such. From
this, the reader is brought to see that the happening of truth is not a
representation, nor is it an expression of anything. Recalling the worldemergent power of nature as physis, Heidegger offers the architectural
illustration of the temple-work which "opens up a world and at the
same time sets this world back again on earth." (p. 42)
In the "look" of things given by the temple-work, we have the
aesthetic revelation. Opening up the senses, the aesthetic epistemic
ontology of the work of art sets up the truth of a world on earth. As
Heidegger renders this aesthetico-noematic epiphany hermeneutically,
he emphasises the power of this opening as illuminating the truth of
being. This illumination is not an encounter, or an isolated life-experience. To set up the truth of a world is to reveal its historical character
as an expression of physis. Truth of this kind is of a world veined with
earthly fragility: coming to birth, growing, dying.
To say that the work of art sets up a world is to say that the work of
art sets the world enduringly (but not perpetually) in force. In speaking
of earth, Heidegger draws our attention to the life-revealing power of
the work of art. The work of art is more telling than the logic of
scientific analysis or colloquial intuition. The truth of the work of art, as
a living event, is not the enduring rectitude of the classic ideal. What
Gadamer names the "contemporaneity" of the work is not its timelessness but its timeliness in the tension between the time of its origin and
the perdurance of its presence in the living moment. Hence art reveals
the vulnerable temporality of life where science cannot. Although both
art and science are ways of revealing, we recall that Nietzsche proposed
to look at science in the light of art and not the other way around.
Heidegger repudiates the ultimate authority of science. Because the
scientific perspective serves a legitimating function in the modern,
reflective tradition, his challenge is perforce illegitimate. The matter of

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

203

science is the facts. And facts are material, measureable, and in sum,
analysable. For Heidegger, however, this very analytic efficacy means
that science is powerless to comprehend the earth manifest as earth.
The calculated record of scientific analysis cannot admit the inscrutable
durability of the earth because this perdurance is expressed in the
contradictory interplay of self-revelationlself-seclusion. 26 The sculptor
preserves the integrity of earth in the stone: "To be sure, the sculptor
uses stone just as the mason uses it. ... But he does not use it up." (p.
47) As distinguished from the violating techniques of scientific analysis
and mechanical composites, this preservational revelation is capital. (In
so far as what is built or dressed is a work of this preservative kind, the
landscape artist, the architect, the stone mason share an affinity with the
sculptor.) The stone broken by time, mirrors time in its surface. As the
earth of the work revealing the world, the stone shines as stone in the
statue. Although the sculptor is not wasteful by design, the sculptor's
concern is not with saving material. (It is here that a distinction must be
made between sculptor and mechanical craftsman.) But if the sculptor
does not ''use up" the stone of earth, the working of the sculpture yet
preserves the earth without reservation. Because the earth of the art
work does not remain in stock for further disposal, the work preserves
the earth as earth. Hence, the temple stone, as it belongs to the earth,
strives to conceal the world opened by the temple-work. This concealing/revealing is the strife of earth and world.
By recalling truth as aietheia, Heidegger suggests that what is
revealed as true, what is unconcealed, must emerge out-of-concealedness. This reference is not merely historical. Because what is in truth is
shown forth from out of Being, that is, in the clearing that grants "to us
humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access
to the being that we ourselves are," (p. 53) concealment permeates the
same "sphere of what is lighted." In truth's illumination, when autumn
strips the trees' concealing leaves, its abandoned nests are revealed.
This revelation is graciously discrete. This is in part but not only
because the nest is empty. What is unconcealed is no longer what it was
and it is not what it is. Ultmately withdrawing, what discloses is
occluded in the moment of openingP In the same occlusion of unconcealment, when the retired soldier pays public respect to the body of a
former national leader, what is seen at a once-envied proximity is not
even the shell it is named to be. Like the revelation due importunate
interest, the final consummation of a long-lived admiration is elusive.
In all, achievement of art as the happening of truth is inherently

204

BABETTE E. BABICH

ambivalent or mortally volatile. In An Introduction to Metaphysics,

Heidegger writes, "The work of art is a work not primarily because it is
wrought [gewirktJ, made, but because it brings about [erwirktJ being in
an essent".28 This articulation of being in an essent is the supreme accomplishment of the work of art; this is what is meant by speaking of its
work as the happening of truth. Yet this accomplishment is far from the
classic installation of art as a permanent achievement, timeless and
invincible. When Heidegger writes that art "stabilizes and manifests
being",29 this is no ordinary, static, stabilization. For Heidegger,
Unconcealment occurs only when it is achieved by work: the work of the word in
poetry, the work of stone in temple and statue.... The struggle for the unconcealment
of the essent and hence for being itself in the work, this struggle for unconcealment,
which even in itself is continuous conflict, is at the same time a combat against
concealment, disguise, false "appearance."30

The stabilization worked in art is essentially temporal for it is historical,

requiring an unusual consummation of sapient humanity at its rarest
and so at its most vulnerable. Thus, Nietzsche declares the allure of the
beautiful to be one with its elusiveness, requiring a chance coordination
not only of what is seen as beautiful but the viewer's position/disposition as well: "the world is overfull of beautiful things but nevertheless
poor, very poor when it comes to beautiful moments and unveilings of
these things."3! Understood now as a-Ietheia, the event of the art work
is this mortal truth. 32
Departing from the usual aesthetic vision of the art work, Heidegger
is concerned with the dynamic of the work: "Art is the becoming and
happening of truth." (p. 71) From the start, this dynamic involves more
than the artistic achievement of the work of art on the part of the artist.
A world is set up, earth is set forth. The phenomenological hermeneutic
looks to the creators of the work of art only to note that "what is
created cannot come into being without those who preserve it." (p. 66)
Without such preservers, without those capable in Nietzschean terms of
a response "to the truth happening in the work" (p. 67), the work of art
does not work its truth but is abandoned to exile. Yet bereft of preservation, even where a world cannot be sustained, the earthly thing of
the art work remains.
In the absence of preservers, in the ruined temple, desolation is an
insistent, staring kind of preservation. But it fails to let the work be for

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

205

letting be is a special comportment that awaits knowing resolve:

"Preserving the work, as knowing, is a sober standing-within the
extraordinary awesomeness of the truth that is happening in the work"
(p.67-68).
Heidegger seeks to encourage the rare daring of those capable of
bold reflection. Thinkers, poets, artists of the word, or of life - in
Nietzsche's post-human sense - such, for Heidegger, are capable of
reflection in the shadow of the modern world: "Reflection transports
the man of the future into that 'between' in which he belongs to Being
and yet remains a stranger amid that which is.'>33 This kind of bold
reflection remains rare for reasons Nietzsche anguishedly traces in the
expressive denial intrinsic to self-preservation. Self-expending, selfexpressive venturesomeness risks the artist of life. For Heidegger, too,
this vulnerable daring which articulates the challenge of questioning
reflection is unutterably rare: it is "not necessary for all, nor is it to be
accomplished or even found bearable by everyone."34
Nietzsche has shown us that the conflict between creativity and
death is life. Heidegger has suggested that the life of art is the happening of truth. Truth is held in abeyance in the death of art. If Heidegger
does not affirm the death of art in the age of technology (or the worldpicture of science), he does suggest, invoking Hegel, that the happening
of truth is past.
We can understand this passing if we recall that in our own time, to
have value, the work of art must be true. That is, for modern tastes, art
is to embody, represent, or otherwise symbolize truth. Yet, like the
logical truth of science, the aesthetic truth of modernity is not the
aletheic occasioning of truth, which Heidegger names as the origin of
the work of art. For the modern tradition, to determine the truth of art
is to be concerned with authenticity: taken with regard to authority,
accurate representation and the proper reception of aesthetic valueattributions. Proving this scholarly precision one is more than able to
recognize van Gogh's shoes as such, or to descry the name of the
painter of Rembrandt's Man With the Golden Helmet. 35
But the exacting achievements of modern aesthetics are unimportant
for those concerned with the founding of truth in art. The accomplishment or mastery of the art-work overarches factitious details.
Hence Heidegger writes, "Who the author is remains unimportant ...
the poem can deny the poet's person and name."36 The founding of
truth in art is not a technical determination, but an event, an occurence.

206

BABETTE E. BABICH

And the lived, historic occasion of the work, "the being of truth in the
work and as work," (p. 81) builds a world. This world is not merely the
poet's but abides in force for all with (Nietzschean) "ears to hear".
The truth, the origin of the work of art, the poetic essence of truth,
or language, is not to be thought, except in the moment of its eclipse.
For Heidegger, this circumstance is particularly damning for the institution of the world of the art-work. Hence today's world is set up by the
technologico-scientific object rather than the art work. 37 This is the
pathos of our time, its desperation, if one likes. But the rule of science
is not the tragedy of our time. For the tragic requires a sense of
groundlessness, and science is the convicted search for the ultimate
ground of things - the still-surviving vision of the metaphysical
tradition. There is nothing tragic, no touch of twilight apprehension in
science.
In his properly philosophic reflections on art and poetry, Heidegger's
offering is not properly "aesthetic." It is true that Heidegger does not
offer a criterion distinguishing between art and non-art. For Heidegger,
as for so many others for far less reason, art no longer works as the
occasion of truth. Heidegger's inquiry into the essence of art seeks to
recall that essence as the irruptive occasioning of truth. In this way,
the concern common to Nietzsche and Heidegger is to restore art
to life. This project is not one of construing life within a romantic,
Kierkegaardian aesthete's vision. Instead art, for human beings, is the
living institution of the world. 38
If the life of the grand style may be redefined in Heidegger's terms as
the attuned solicitude of reflection, then Nietzsche's life of expressive
power may be recognized as the artistic responsiveness of poetic
thinking, which hearkens to the call of Being, spoken in stillness. In its
poetic office, in unsaying saying, thought limns what is not/cannot be
said. 39 Hence, the event or appropriation of truth in the poetic word
retains the ineffability or essential evanescence of aletheic truth.
The Dichtung that is art in search of co-respondents, is the task of
reticent poetic institution: "anticipation in reserve."40 This is an active
opening or letting be - Gelassenheit. But the exhortation, 'Let be -' is
not the end. If the essence of poetry is the finitude of thinking, there
can be no last word. We have, however, seen enough to offer the
parting suggestion that the embodiment of resolute releasement is
anticipated in Nietzsche's figure of the post-human: exceeding rare,

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

207

articulating power and artistic joy, the chiaroscuro of mortal being

blessing existence.
Fordham University
NOTES
1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale
(New York: Random House, 1968) sec. 822, p. 435. [Henceforth WP in text.]
2 Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, trans. Nicholas Walker
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p. 45.
3 There is a recent tradition of artists and writers in our industrial to scientific to
technological to technopolistic age, that speaks to this anti-aesthetic refusal. I refer to
the work of Duchamp, Bataille, Beckett in part, Dali in part, perhaps, indeed, every
artist of kitsch and avant-garde in the age of photography and cinema (after Walter
Benjamin). But the artists themselves are necessarily ambivalent. Essentially, however, a
counterweight, the traditional artist (even of post-modernism), is always simultaneously
absorbed by the opposed cultural aesthetic insofar as its traditional approbation
(critical, economic, and historical) is desired.
4 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W. Kaufmann, (New York: Random
House, 1967) sec. 1, p. 37.
5 Art can be engendered by either need or excess. In the full expression of overabundant power, the expression of life is a manifestation of style, an intensified
exhibition of power. From an original lack, the invention of art principally seeks to
preserve or increase power.
6 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random
House, 1974), sec. 370. Henceforth (GS: section number) in text.
7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1981), p. 37.
8 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) sec. 34.
9 Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 290.
10 For this reason I have argued elsewhere that within Nietzsche's horizon, the arts in
the ordinary sense must be included with religion and science as inventions proving
deficiency or indigence. Babette E. Babich, Towards a Perspectival Aesthetics of Truth:
Nietzsche, Philosophy, and Science, (forthcoming). With regard to this association,
Nietzsche comments, "that is an objection to 'today', not to artists." Will to Power, sec.
812,p.430.
11 Cf. Lyotard's emphasis on productivity in The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984).
12 The conflicting difference between immortalisation and preservation is signally
counter-intutive and will be explained below.

208

BABETTE E. BABICH

13 In opposition to the ultimate expression of power, self-preservative overcoming

makes self-overcoming superfluous.
14 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 13, p. 26.
15 Jean Baudrillard, "The Ecstasy of Communication," p. 127 in The Anti-Aesthetic:
Essays on Post-Modern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983), pp.
126-134.
16 This nostalgic longing characterises certain philosophic interpretations of postmodernism. See, for example, in addition to Alexander Nehamas, Life as Literature,
David Kolb, Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger and After, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986).
17 In an essay on interpretation, Gadamer writes, "there is a deep ambiguity that
characterizes Heidegger's image of Nietzsche in that he follows Nietzsche into the most
extreme positions and precisely at that point he finds the excesses [Un-Wesen] of
metaphysics at work ..." p. 382, "Text and Interpretation", trans, Dennis Schmidt in
Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, ed. Brice R. Wachterhauser (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1986), p. 377-396.
18 Gadamer, "Alongside and inseparable from this unconcealing, there also stands the
shrouding and concealing that belongs to our human finitude." The Relevance of the
Beautiful, p. 34.
19 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum Press, 1975), p.
117.
20 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical hermeneutics, trans. David Linge (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976), p. 104.
21 Gianni Vattimo, "Hermeneutics and Nihilism: An Apology for Aesthetic Consciousness," in Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, p. 452.
22 Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, p. 51.
23 Clearly, this focus on the thing is not to be approached as we ordinarily understand
thing.
24 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, Language, Thought,
trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row: 1971), pp. 17-87. Heidegger
explains that we must "leave the thing to rest in its own self, for its time, in its own
being" (p. 31). Unless otherwise specified, further references will be to this text; page
numbers to be given in parentheses following citations in text.
25 Meyer Schapiro, ''The Still Life as a Personal Object - A Note On Heidegger and
van Gogh" in The Reach of Mind, ed. M. L. Simmel (New York: Springer Verlag,
1968), pp. 203-209.
26 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art", p. 47: "Earth thus shatters
every attempt to penetrate into it. It causes every merely calculating importunity upon it
to turn into a destruction. This destruction may herald itself under the appearance of
mastery and of progress in the form of the technical-scientific objectivation of nature,
but this mastery remains an impotence of will."
27 In what reveals itself there is an equi-primordial moment of self-seclusion; what
grants in the happening, withdraws.
28 Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. R. Manheim, New Haven, 1959.
29 Ibid.
30 Op. cit., pp. 191-92.

POST-MODERN AESTHETICS

209

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 339, p. 27l.

Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," p. 55: "Setting up a world and
setting forth the earth, the work is the fighting of the battle in which the unconcealedness of being as a whole, or truth, is won."
33 "The Age of the World Picture," p. 136.
34 "Age of the World Picture: Appendix," p.137.
35 Indeed, beyond the art-historical analysis of the objective inspiration of the work of
art, the traditional question asks about the objective quality of the work, that is, about
the distinctive properties of the work of art. Modern approaches pose the theoretical
question of aesthetic value and associated criteria: of things shown in galleries, in
museums, in student shows, or on side-walks: hence we ask today, which works are art
which not-art, which great-art? For those who need to distinguish art from other things,
all are important questions.
36 Martin Heidegger, "Language," p. 195 in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 189-210.
37 Cf. Otto Poeggeler's assessment, explicating both the philosophic import (beyond
aesthetics) of Heidegger's "Origin of the Work of Art" as well as his Introduction to
Metaphysics, that, "It is not a people, but totalitarianism, not the great creative geniuses
but functionaries of totalitarianism, not a work but a mechanization, which are characteristic of our time." In "Heidegger Today," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 8
(1970) pp. 304-5.
38 If a world-making capacity is human, this capacity may not be consciously advanced
as such. After all, world-construction goes by many names besides the properly
creative: observation, experimentation, revelation.
39 With so many others, I thank William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963) for this insightful
formulation.
40 Martin Heidegger, "Language," p. 310

31

32

CYNTHIA RUOFF

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST: FROM TEXT

TO PERFORMANCE

In Jean Rotrou's Le veritable Saint Genest (1645) through the playwithin-the-play structure, a real audience views Genest's concerns with
the performance text and also observes the reactions of the Roman
audience to the performance text. In this play the distinction between a
dramatic text and a performance text is very evident. Keir Elam in The
Semiotics of Theater and Drama discusses the theoretical differences
between the two. He says that semiotics is the "science dedicated to the
production of meaning in society. As such it is equally concerned with
signification and communication, that is, the means whereby meanings
are both generated and exchanged."! Semiologists distinguish between
drama and theater. Drama is a type of fiction designed for presentation
on the stage, and it is written following certain dramatic conventions.
Theater, on the other hand, refers to the "complex of phenomena
associated with the performance audience transaction: that is, with the
production and communication of meaning in the performance itself
and with the systems underlying it."2 Theater also includes the interactions among the spectators. There is not an absolute differentiation
between drama and theater since traditional performance represents
dramatic fiction. Research in the theater includes material produced
"for the theater" which is the "dramatic text" and material produced "in
the theater" which is known as the "performance text."3
Until 1931 drama was analyzed by literary critics while reviewers
evaluated performances because the critics considered the stage spectacle "too ephemeral" for any systematic analysis.4 Jan Mukarovsky,
who was important in establishing the foundation for theatrical and
dramatic theory, concluded that the sign is the theatrical performance.
It consists of the signifier, the work itself, and the signified, the
"'aesthetic object' residing in the collective consciousness of the
public."5

211
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 211-224.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

212

CYNTHIA RUOFF

SIGN (a theatrical performance)

SIGNIFIER
(the work itself)

SIGNIFIED
(aesthetic reaction of
the audience)

Therefore, the performance promotes meaning through its total effect.

The advantage of analyzing performance is that this analysis takes into
account the audience as a "maker" of meanings. 6
In Le Veritable Saint Genest the play-within-the-play structure
highlights the actual theatrical performance and the importance of the
role of the audience in creating meanings. There are several levels of
audience interaction in the play:
1. the privileged-position audience viewing the entire play Le
Veritable Saint Genest
2. on the stage the Roman audience preparing to celebrate the
military victories of Maximinus and his marriage to Valerie by viewing
The Martyrdom ofAdrien starring the actor Genest
3. Genest viewing heavenly intervention
The privileged-position audience is able to observe the actors' and stage
designer's preparations for the performance in addition to the reactions
and interactions of an audience on the stage. Imbrie Buffum states that
baroque art necessitates an audience to impress? By including several
audiences, Rotrou conforms to the baroque tendency to multiply
reality. In addition to the three distinct audiences, Adrien creates his
own audience in the play about his conversion. When he anticipates
martyrdom, Adrien does not want his wife to reveal her Christianity
and join him in death. He insists that she act as a spectator who
comprehends and appreciates his conversion while he plays the leading
role,8 that of the true martyr. Audience reaction complements the
dramatic text and functions as an integral part of a performance.
Genest himself, in speaking of Corneille's plays, distinguishes
between the dramatic text and the performance. He says:
A qui les rares fruits que la muse produit
Ont acquis dans la scene un legitime bruit
Et de qui certes l'art comme l'estime est juste,
Portent les noms fameux de Pompee et d' Auguste.

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST

213

Ces poemes sans prix ou son illustre main

D'un pinceau sans pareil a peint l'esprit romain
Rendront de leurs beautes votre oreille idollitre
Et sont aujourd'hui l'ame et l'amour du theatre
(emphasis added).9
Genest describes the creation of the dramatic text as shown by the
words, "main," "pinceau," and "a peint," and he is also aware of the
performance as shown by "oreille idolatre." As an actor he is conscious
of the physical presence of a listening audience in a theater and of the
reaction of that audience. Why is the reaction "idolatre"? It is the result
of the ability of the actors and actresses to perform well, to communicate meaning, and to induce audience reaction to the performance.
Diocletien describes Genest's art by saying:
Avec confusion j'ai vu cent fois tes feintes
Me livrer malgre moi de sensibles atteintes.
En cent sujets divers, suivant tes mouvements,
J'ai re~u de tes feux de vrais ressentiments,
Et l'empire absolu que tu prends sur une arne
M'a fait cent fois de glace et cent autres de flamme
(Act I, sc. 5, p. 173).
The movements of the actors also contribute to the audience's understanding of the play and arouse the viewer's emotions. Elam states that
"in traditional dramatic performance the actor's body acquires its
mimetic and representational powers by becoming other than itself,
more and less than individual."l0 The mimetic character was extremely
important for the commedia dell'arte in Italy. In this improvisational
theater based on mime, masks, and stock roles, actors exaggerated body
movement and facial expressions. When Genest experiences his conversion to Christianity, he relies on improvisation even though he feels
heaven is dictating his words. In the seventeenth century theaters were
lit by candles; the stage directions even include reminders to light the
candles. As a result, it was difficult to see facial expressions, and the
actor's movements were even more crucial in adding to the audience
reaction. The improvisational, auditory, and visual effects together
contribute to the performer's art. Diocletien affirms this clearly:
Le comique ou ton art egalement succede
Est contre la tristesse un si pressant remede

214

CYNTHIA RUOFF

Qu'un seuf mot, quand tu veux, un pas, une action

Ne laisse plus de prise a cette passion
Et par une soudaine et sensible merveille
Jette fa joie au coeur par l'oeil ou par l'oreille
(Act I, sc. 5, p. 173, emphasis added).

In this case the actor's art quickly converts sadness to joy; consequently, the quotation demonstrates the powerful force an actor's
movements and words exert on a receptive audience.
The Roman audience, consisting of Diocletien and his court, is
sitting on the stage and is able to interact with Genest and the performers in his troupe. The practice of allowing aristocratic spectators
and writers to sit on the stage began in Paris theaters during the first
half of the seventeenth century, but the ComMie Fran~aise finally
prohibited the presence of the audience on stage in 1759. 11 This
Roman audience, however, is also performing a play in which the
characters are celebrating the marriage of Valeria and Maximinus. As
part of their celebration the pagan Romans are viewing the theatrical
representation of Adrien's conversion and martyrdom. This arrangement allows Genest to express his displeasure at the behavior of some
of the members of the Roman audience. He complains:
Seigneur, Ie bruit confus d'une foule importune
De gens qU'a votre suite attache la fortune
Par Ie trouble ou nous met cette incommodite
Altere les plaisirs de Votre Majeste,
Et nos acteurs, confus de ce desordre extreme ...
(Act III, sc. 6, p. 190).
Rotrou, through Genest, clearly confronts the audiences with the
problem of negative audience-to-audience effect, that is, the disruptive
behavior of some members of the Roman audience which diminishes
Diocletien's enjoyment of the production. Disruptive audience behavior
can distract Diocletien from hearing the single word, or seeing the
single step or single action that evokes a particular emotion. At the
same time, Genest points out the negative audience-to-actor repercussions which result in the actors' confusion.
Audience interruptions were commonplace at this time. Moliere in
Les Facheux, written in 1661, sixteen years after Saint Genest, describes such an interruption. He says:

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST

215

Un homme agrands canons est entre brusquement

En criant: 'Hola! ho! un siege promptement!'
Et, de son grand fracas surprenant l'assemblee,
Dans son plus bel endroit ala piece troublee.
Les acteurs ont voulu continuer leurs roles;
Mais l'homme pour s'asseoir a fait nouveau fracas,
Et jusques ades vers qu'il en savait par coeur,
II me les recitait tout haut avant l'acteur. 12
Moliere continues and presents an exaggerated but vivid picture of
negative audience-to-actor and audience-to-audience interaction. In
Rotrou's play, Genest will not tolerate this type of disruptive behavior
because of its negative effect on the actors' performances and its
negative effect on the remainder of the audience.
The stage setting is another extremely important part of performance, and Genest also focuses his attention on this aspect of theater.
The privileged-position audience observes the creation of the performance text. Rotrou takes us behind the scenes to examine some
technical aspects of production. His play was performed at the Hotel de
Bourgogne which conformed to the Italian theatrical perspective. 13 In
speaking to the stage designer Genest reinforces the importance of
creating magnificence, light, proper coloring, and "trompe l'oeil";
II est beau, mais encore avec peu de depense
Vous pouviez ajouter ala magnificence,
N'y laisser rien d'aveugle, y mettre plus de jour,
Donner plus de hauteur aux travaux d'alentour,
En marbrer les dehors, en jasper les colonnes,
Enrichir les tympans, leurs cimes, leurs couronnes,
Mettre en vos coloris plus de diversite,
En vos carnations plus de vivacite,
Draper mieux ces habits, reculer ces paysages,
Y lancer des jets d'eau, renfronder leurs ombrages
Et surtout en la toile ou vous peignez vos cieux
Faire un jour naturel au jugement des yeux,
Au lieu que la couleur m'en semble un peu meurtrie
(Act II, sc. 1, p. 175).
While Genest criticizes the stage setting from the perspective of an

216

CYNTHIA RUOFF

actor on stage who is dissatisfied with the illusion created, the stage
designer responds by justifying the adequacy of the scenery from the
perspective of the audience viewing the tragedy at a distance. Jean
Rousset supports Genest's demands that not only the audience must be
fooled but also the actors. In describing theatrical performance he says:
"Entreprise generale de tromperie consentie, Ie theatre englobe dans
l'illusion non seulement l'assistance, mais l'officiant; pour bien seduire,
Ie seducteur commence par se seduire lui-meme."14 Ultimately, however,
what happens in the play about Adrien's conversion and martyrdom is
that the act of pretending, of creating illusion, coincides with the divine
will and the reality of Genest's conversion and martyrdom.
From the beginning of Rotrou's play both the pagan viewpoint and
the Christian viewpoint stress the importance of "Ie ciel." Beginning as
early as the second line, Camille, speaking to Valerie in regard to her
dream, says:
Un songe, une vapeur vous cause de la peine,
A vous sur qui Ie ciel, deployant ses tresors,
Mit un insigne esprit dans un si digne corps!
(ActI, sc. 1, p. 168).
Valerie concludes that a dream can function as an oracle:
Le ciel, comme illui plait, nous parle sans obstacle;
S'il veut, la voix d'un songe est celle d'un oracle
(Act I, sc. 1, p. 168).
The previous quotations demonstrate that in the pagan world "Ie ciel"
conveys significance for man. Near the beginning of Act II, after
discussing the scenery with the stage designer, Genest rehearses the
Christian Adrien's lines:
Si la gloire te plait, l'occasion est belle,
La querelle du ciel a ce combat t'appelle
(Act II, sc. 1, p. 175).
Hence, in both plays, Saint Genest and The Martyrdom of Adrien, the
pagans and the Christians accept the intrusion of the heavens in the real
world.
According to a lease of 1616, the Hotel de Bourgogne contained a
theater, often called the theater of Jupiter, which had a small stage
above suitable for presenting heavenly intervention. It is unclear
whether Rotrou actually used this stage in his play or if it still was in
use at the time of his production. ls If it were not in use, Rotrou

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST

217

certainly would have capitalized on the effects of the sky and light in his
own set design. Genest's comments to the stage designer demonstrate
Rotrou's concern for this aspect of production. Genest insists on
appropriate light, and as a result, he emphasizes the importance of the
heavens by stating:
Et surtout en la toile ou vous peignez vos cieux
Faire un jour naturel au jugement des yeux,
Au lieu que la couleur m'en semble un peu meurtrie
(Act II, sc. 1, p. 175).
Reminiscent of the baroque paintings emphasizing the mingling of the
action of the heavens on earth by the light in the sky, the scenic
backdrop alludes to the existence of a celestial place beyond the world
that the audience sees. Since candlelight is not sufficient to highlight the
heavens, painted canvasses reinforce the presence of "Ie ciel" and draw
attention to it.
In a semiotic analysis of a performance the painted canvasses are
especially significant because the stage can change all objects and
bodies on it. According to Elam and the Prague School of theatrical
theory, when an object appears on stage, the practical function of the
object is not the significant reality, and the symbolic role becomes
important. In real life the function of the object is more important than
its signification. However, on a theatrical set the signification overshadows the object's pragmatic function. A table on stage usually does
not differ from the type of furniture at which audience members eat.
However, on stage a table could be depicted by a painted sign or by an
actor on all fours. The only requisite is that the object must stand for
what it signifies. Elam states that "the material stage object becomes,
rather, a semiotic unit standing not directly for another imaginary table
but for the intermediary signified table, i.e. for the class of objects of
which it is a member."16 In Genest's intended performance "Ie ciel" is
painted on canvass, and the canvass is to successfully represent a
daylight sky. If an additional elevated stage is not available to portray
the heavens, then its influence surfaces through the presence of light
and openings.
In Western theatrical tradition generally the lead actor attracts the
majority of the spectator's attention. When the stage designer or the
playwright highlights and raises other elements to a prominent position,
foregrounding occurs. Attention can be focused on a conspicuous
setting or on unusual lighting effects or on the gestures of an actorP

218

CYNTHIA RUOFF

Brecht speaks of "turning the object of which one is to be made aware

... from something ordinary, familiar ... into something peculiar,
striking and unexpected."18 This happens with "Ie ciel." In Act II, scene
2 the stage directions indicate: "Le ciel s'ouvre avec des flammes."
When a voice encourages Genest to imitate Adrien, Genest imagines
someone is playing a trick on him. He believes he is a victim of a
colleague creating an illusion in order to make fun of him. Genest is still
thinking like a pagan Roman. In Act IV flames descend again from
heaven, and Genest describes the appearance of an angel. The Roman
audience does not see the first appearance of flames because it is not
watching behind the scenes as the privileged audience is. The flames in
Act IV, scene 5 are visible to both the Roman audience and the
privileged audience, but they have a different effect on each one.
According to semiotics a theatrical sign includes secondary meanings
based on the value systems prevalent in the society of the actors and
the spectators. For example, a martial costume, according to its
denotation, belongs to a class of armor. Its connotation, for a particular
group of people, however, includes valor and manliness. An unlimited
number of possible connotations can surface. The religious, social,
moral, and ideological values of the audience and of the community
dictate its interpretation of every part of a performance; the set, the
actor's body, and his or her movements and speech.19
As a result, the effect of the flames on a typical seventeenth-century
French audience is different from their effect on a pagan Roman
audience. To the Catholic world descending flames symbolize the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Christian French spectators comprehend the cues of Genest's real conversion, his metamorphosis,
because (1) they, unlike the Roman spectators, hear his comments and
observe the initial appearance of flames during the rehearsal, (2) they
understand the significance of the flames, and (3) they view conversion
as an admirable and desirable change.
Shortly before the miraculous intervention of the flames, Genest
comments on his rehearsal of Adrien's lines:
D' effet comme de nom je me trouve etre un autre;
Je feins moins Adrien que je ne Ie deviens
Et prends avec son nom des sentiments chretiens.
Mais il semble qu'ici des verites sans fard

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST

219

Passent et l'habitude et la force de l'art

Et que Christ me propose une gloire eternelle
Contre qui rna defense est vaine et criminelle.
Mais ou va rna pensee, et par quel privilege
Presque insensiblement passe-je au sacrilege
Et du pouvoir des dieux perds-je Ie souvenir?
II s'agit d'imiter et non de devenir
(Act II, sc. 2, p. 177).
Although Genest is conscious of a subtle metamorphosis, he resolutely
rejects thoughts of his conversion by affirming for himself the basic
tenet important to a successful actor. One must imitate, not become.
Nevertheless, the privileged-position French audience recognizes the
possibility of Genest's conversion. In Act I of Rortou's play Valerie
attests to Genest's excellent reputation which is enhanced by his
portrayal of Christians. She comments:
Mais on vante surtout l'inimitable adresse
Dont tu feins d'un chretien Ie zele et l'allegresse
Quand, Ie voyant marcher du bapteme au trepas,
II semble que les feux soient des fleurs sous tes pas
(Act I, sc. 5, p. 174).
The Roman audience is accustomed to seeing Genest's superior
imitative powers in his portrayal of Christian martyrs. Consequently,
Diocletien and his court do not suspect the impending conversion of
their illustrious performer, and they attribute any signs of his conversion to other causes, primarily his excellent acting ability.
In Act II, scene 2, Genest's rehearsal, on the other hand, prepares
the French audience for this metamorphosis. Act II, scene 5 begins the
actual play of Adrien's conversion. Genest repeats the same rehearsed
lines which earlier precipitated his thoughts on conversion but ended in
his avowal to limit himself to the imitation of Adrien's conversion.
Through this doubling, Rotrou's play and Genest's play are joined, and
Genest, the pagan Roman, becomes Adrien, the Christian. The reality
of the conversion is evident when Genest addresses Anthime, his stage
name in the play of Adrien's conversion, by his real name Lentule.
Adrien-Genest says:
Ah! Lentule! en l'ardeur dont mon arne est pres see

220

CYNTHIA RUOFF

11 faut lever Ie masque et t'ouvrir rna pensee:

Le Dieu que j'ai hal m'inspire son amour.
Adrien a parle, Genest parle ason tour.
Ce n'est plus Adrien, c'est Genest qui respire
La grace du bapteme et l'honneur du martyre
(Act IV, sc. 4, pp. 194-195).
In the process of portraying the Christian martyr, Genest embraces
Christianity. Illusion becomes reality. Once again flames descend and
the supernatural, in the form of an angel, intervenes overtly. Genest
continues:
Un ministre celeste avec une eau sacree
Pour laver mes forfaits fend la voute azuree.
Sa clarte m'environne, et l'air de toutes parts
Resonne de concerts et brille ames regards.
Descends, celeste acteur; tu m'attends, tu m'appelles
(Act IV, sc. 4, p. 195).
The celestial light surrounds Genest and envelopes him in the supernatural experience.
For Marcelle and the other Roman actors and for the Roman
audience the flames are not an indication of a supernatural intervention; they are simply a stage device. In their minds it is impossible for
Genest to see an angel. Marcelle loses her cue and states that Genest
added these words. The privileged audience undoubtedly is aware of
the cues that lead to Genest's conversion, and it can relate to the
miraculous appearance of the angel to Genest. However, the Roman
audience and the other Roman actors are unable to understand the
conversion of a renowned pagan actor. Their blindness stems from their
value system. Conversion is not part of their context of values, especially when the convert is someone they have admired.
Both the Roman audience and the actors center their attention on
Genest's acting ability. While the Roman actors think Genest has a
memory lapse and is improvising, Diocletien and the Roman audience
are in awe of Genest's performance. Diocletien says:
Voyez avec quel art Genest sait aujourd'hui
Passer de la figure aux sentiments d'autrui
(Act IV, sc. 4, p. 195).

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST

221

He insists on the talents of the "comedien." His daughter Valerie

praises Genest's art also:
Pour tromper l'auditeur, abuser l'acteur meme
De son metier sans doute est l'adresse supreme
(Act IV, sc.4, p. 195).
The privileged audience witnesses how the value system of the Roman
audience leads it to continue to believe in Genest's superb acting skills.
As Genest attempts to attest to his conversion, the influence of "Ie
ciel" predominates. "Le ciel," intervening in the action, highlights its
own performance; it is represented visually and verbally throughout the
play in the form of the painted canvass, the flames, an angel, and words
dictated to Genest by God. Since characters do not have to be represented by human actors, something real, such as a machine, a puppet,
or an object can assume that function. 20 "Le ciel" becomes another
character and influences the world. Genest describes the importance of
the heavens by saying:
Dedans cette action ou Ie ciel s'interesse
Un ange tient la piece, un ange me redresse.
Un ange par son ordre a comble mes souhaits
Et de l'eau du Bapteme efface mes forfeits
(Act IV, sc. 6, p. 196).
He later continues:
Dieu m'apprend sur-Ie-champ ce que je vous recite,
Et vous m'entendez mal si dans cette action
Mon role passe encor pour une fiction
(Act IV, sc. 6, p. 196).
When Genest performs what the angel dictates, the stage representation
is annihilated. Rousset concludes that "il n'y a plus de theatre possible
quand l'acteur renonce a feindre et confond sa realite personnelle avec
l'imaginaire a la sCene."21 "Le ciel" holds a position of primary importance whether it is presented as a separate small stage or is effectively
represented as a painted canvass.
Diocletien finally recognizes that Genest has some type of difficulty,
but he is still unable to identify the problem. He says: "Votre desordre
enfin force rna patience" (Act IV, sc. 6, p. 196). Until this point the
Roman audience sees reality, but thinks it is superbly acted illusion.

222

CYNTHIA RUOFF

Finally, Diocletien says: "Ta feinte passe enfin pour importunit6" (Act
IV, sc. 6, p. 197). Genest responds: "Elle vous doit passer pour une
realite" (Act IV, sc. 6, p. 197). At this time Diocletien recognizes the
reality of the situation, and the result is the annihilation of Genest's
play. Diocletien and the court are no longer spectators of the play; they
become Genest's executioners.
Diocletien's initial lack of awareness of Genest's conversion demonstrates a spectator's theatrical incompetence. Elam states:
The spectator is called upon not only to employ a specific dramatic competence
(supplementing his theatrical competence and involving knowledge of the generic and
structural principles of the drama) but also to work hard and continuously at piecing
together into a coherent structure the partial and scattered bits of dramatic information
that he receives from different sources. The effective construction of the dramatic world
and its events is the result of the spectator's ability to impose order upon a dramatic
content whose expression is in fact discontinuous and incomplete. 22

The spectator must free his mind, not limit it by the connotations
brought to the performance from his particular background. The
information given in a performance demands the constant and alert
attention of the spectator. This is particularly true in Genest's performance of Adrien's conversion because the performance becomes radically different from the dramatic text.
In Le Veritable Saint Genest four levels of interaction demonstrate
the intercommunication taking place in the theater. The following
diagram illustrates the multiple interactions:
Level IV
"LE CIEL" a. an additional small stage
b. lighting and scenic effects
c. character intervening in action
Level III
a. Genest as an audience to the action of "Ie ciel"
b. Genest as a performer of Adrien's tragedy
Level II
Roman audience also interacting with Roman actors
Levell
Privileged-positiort audience: a. French spectators of the seventeenth
century
b. ourselves, spectators of any time

LE VERITABLE SAINT GENEST

223

In conclusion, each of the audience levels reflects the spectators'

differing dramatic and theatrical competence and their varied value
systems. The Roman spectators' initial blindness to Genest's conversion
points out the spectators' ability to change or limit the meaning of a
performance because of their background and inadequate cues. The
performance itself involves a multiplication of signals that communicate
and provide information. Among these signals are the dramatist, the
dramatic text as part of the performance text, the director, set designer,
actors, and accessories such as costumes, lighting, etc. The audience
also transmits signals in the form of inattention, boos, laughter, and
applause?3 What seems to be a play about the conversion of the pagan
actor Genest to Christianity emerges, in addition, as Rotrou's examination of theatrical performance. The mirror of the play-within-the-play
structure highlights the performance concerns of the actor Genest and
his interactions with "Ie ciel," with the Roman actors, and with the
Roman audience. In this way, Le Veritable Saint Genest demonstrates
concretely for the privileged-position audience the problems the actors,
the set designer, and the spectators encounter in theatrical performance
which includes the dramatic text as part of the performance text and
the aesthetic reaction of the audience.

Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA

NOTES
I Keir Eiam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, (London: Methuen & Co., 1980),
p.l.
2 Eiam,p.2.
3 Eiam, pp. 2-3.
4 Elam, p. 5.
5 Eiam, p. 7.
6 Elam, p. 7.
7 Imbrie Buffum, Studies in the Baroque from Montaigne to Rotrou, (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1957), p. 229.
8 Buffum, p. 228.
9 Jean de Rotrou, Saint Genest in Seventeenth Century French Literature, ed. Alvin
Eustis, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), Act I, sc. 5, p. 174. All further references are
to this edition.
10 Eiam, p. 9.
II John Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth & Eighteenth Centuries,
(London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957), p. 115.
12 Moliere, Les Facheux in Oeuvres Completes, (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1962), p.
162.

224

CYNTHIA RUOFF

13 E. Dubois, "Introduction," in Le Veritable Saint Genest by Rotrou, (Geneve:

Librairie Droz, 1972), pp. 26-27.
14 Jean Rousset, L 'Interieur et l'exterieur, (Paris: Librairie Jose Corti, 1968), p. 159.
15 Dubois, p. 27.
16 Elam, p. 8.
17 Elam, p. 17.
18 BertoIt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 1964, quoted in Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre
and Drama, p. 18.
19 Elam, p. 10.
20 Elam, p. 13.
21 Rousset, p. 159.
22 Elam, pp. 98-99.
23 Elam, pp. 37-38.

B. THE EXISTENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF

AESTHETIC ENJOYMENT

THOMAS RYBA

HUSSERL, FANTASY AND POSSIBLE WORLDS

INTRODUCTION

It is common practice while reading a novel to subject the characters,

plot and even the secondary world represented there to the judgment
"Are they believable?" The reason we do subject novels to such
evaluations is that it is a traditional expectation and delight of the
reader to be drawn into created secondary worlds and to feel that the
story has been, in some sense, experienced as "lived time."
The expectation that the novel will be believable is not unique to that
variety of literature which in plot, character and circumstance has been
consciously constructed as such - works such as the historical novel,
for example. It is also an expectation attendant upon novels of high
fantasy, novels which purport to tell stories about future worlds, other
planets, alternative realities or about the beings which inhabit these.
J. R. R. Tolkien, in his classic work on the intentionality behind
fantasy writing, "On Fairy Stories," has described this literary belief as
secondary belief. Secondary belief, according to Tolkien, has often been
confused with
that state of mind ... called willing suspension of disbelief. But this does not seem ...
to be a good description of what happens. What really happens [in the composition of a
novel] is that the story maker provides a successful 'sub-creation.' He makes a
Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it
accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were,
inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has
failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the abortive Secondary
World from the outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then
disbelief must be suspended (or stifled) .... But this suspension of disbelief is a
substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or
make believe, or when trying ... to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that
has for us failed. I

What Tolkien tells us in this excerpt is important because it establishes what many of us have felt: the kind of belief we experience when
reading an artfully crafted novel is neither a mighty act of volition, an
227
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 227-237.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

228

THOMAS RYBA

existential leap of faith, nor a difficult suppression of disbelief. Instead,

secondary belief is, somehow, analogous to rational primary belief. A
novel achieves believability when its author succeeds in presenting a
successful imaginary world and successful imaginary characters which
behave in a reasonable fashion with respect to the novel's ground rules,
with respect to the natural (or supernatural) laws of that secondary
creation.
Now, Tolkien is not suggesting that there is a necessary relationship
between the believability of a secondary world (or character) and its
proximate credulity in the context of laws which belong to the primary
world. Worlds (and characters) in novels of sheer fantasy can, in certain
respects, be as convincing as the worlds (and characters) of excruciatingly accurate historical novels. Believability depends, to a large
extent, on artistry. Nevertheless, he does suggest that it is more difficult
for the author to achieve believability the more remote the secondary
world is from our primary world. It takes a greater skill to sustain
believability in these more remote worlds than in those worlds which
can be constructed according to the stock features commonly found in
our own primary world. Because of the familiarity of the latter, we find
them more believable.
Tolkien's observations, as simple as they are, open an important
door into the investigation of believability as it occurs as a property of
literary objects. His is a discussion which points the way to some valuable phenomenological investigations. But before using the Husserlian
philosophical apparatus to build upon Tolkien's description, it is
necessary to correct some of the shortcomings of that description.
First, it should be noted that in describing secondary belief, Tolkien
seems to suggest that it is the author's artistry alone which achieves the
effect of believability. He apparently ignores the receptivity of the
reader and the role the reader's own experience plays in the judgment
of believability. To be fair, Tolkien does seem to realize that, from
person to person, there is a great fluidity in the borders between the
fantastic and the mundane, but he does not explicitly recognize that it is
the individual's personal worldview which often determines what he
finds believable. Credulity varies from person to person.
Second, and this follows directly from the first point, Tolkien seems
to assume that the author, in the process of addressing his audience,
spontaneously taps a common Lebenswelt. In other words, for Tolkien,
there is a shared world from which fantasy can be fashioned. The

HUSSERL AND FANTASY

229

problem with this supposition is that it unnaturally simplifies the real

relation between the author and his audience. Authors often skew
novelistic worlds in the direction of their readers and away from their
own private worldviews. They play to their audiences. It is often part of
the novelists' artistry to construct secondary worlds which resonate with
assumptions drawn from the lifeworlds of their audiences but not of
their own.
From these clarifications, it follows that any phenomenological
treatment of the believability of literary objects must recognize that this
quality is relative to the author's ability to address the reader's understanding of what is possible. Any constructed world which violates this
understanding will not be believable. The thing to note, here, is that
what is possible in the secondary world need not find actuality in the
primary world, though it should, in some sense, be continuous with that
actuality.
Before it is possible to describe what literary belief (or believability)
is, it is, first, necessary to unpack what it means for a literary creation to
be lawful. Here, we need to ask ourselves why, in Tolkien's understanding, "lawfulness" should be so directly related to the believability
of novelistic worlds and characters. It is here that a phenomenological
analysis of "lawfulness" dependent upon the Husserlian notion of
horizon may be of the greatest utility. This is because the Husserlian
understanding of worldhood and the typicality of the world is inextricably linked to the notion of horizon.
SECONDARY WORLDS AND THE HUSSERLIAN NOTION
OF HORIZON

Husserl's notion of horizon is a rather late development in his writings.

Although it receives mention in Ideas (1913), its most extensive
treatment occurs in the Cartesian Meditations (1931). Further, but
somewhat more confusing, discussions of this notion also occur in the
posthumous works, Experience and Judgment (1948) and The Crisis of
European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1954).2
In Husserl's writings, the notion of horizon is primarily explicated in
connection with the sense (or Sinn) of an act of meaning. The horizon
is simply taken to be the sense's set of possible determinations. According to Husserl, no sense of an act of meaning perfectly characterizes the
object which it delineates. Instead, the sense of a meaning always leaves

230

THOMAS RYBA

the object of the meaning incompletely determined. Complementarily,

the horizon of the sense of a meaning act may be thought of as the set
of the further legitimate specifications of that sense, or - if we are
considering the act with respect to its transcendental object - as the
further possible specifications of the object intended in the act. Thus,
every act of meaning which involves a transcendental object nests, as it
were, in a matrix of possible further meanings which can bring the
object to greater determination. The horizon is this matrix.
Husserl is not content to leave his analysis of the horizon of meaning
in this rather state, however. He distinguishes two further horizonal
aspects of meaning: (a) the act horizon of each meaning (the noetic
horizon) and (b) the object horizon of each meaning (noematic horizon).
The noetic horizon corresponds to the set of possible further conscious
acts which are consistent with the original act's sense. The noematic
horizon, on the other hand, corresponds to the set of further possible
properties or determinations of the object consistent with the original
act's sense.
Just as the noetic acts which intend a particular object are of infinite
variety, so too the individual feature of the noematic meaning - the
Gegebenheitsweise (or meaning associated with its mode of presentation) - is of infinite variety, as well.
The important thing to note, here, is that the intentionality directed
toward a particular object defines both the noematic and the noetic
horizons. Both horizons are founded upon a conscious intention of the
object which transcends individual conscious acts and meanings. Moreover, though both the noematic and noetic horizons are infinite in the
acts and qualities they protend, there is an underlying substructure of
typification which belongs to the intentionality associated with each
variety of object. Another way of putting this is: that though an intended
thing may have an infinite set of perspectives associated with it, this set
has a phenomenological structure which is fixed in such a way so that
its perspectives may vary infinitely and yet always remain within the
thing's typification. [What can be called the thing's typification is the
consistent coordination of all the thing's perspectives (or appearances),
according to constant qualitative categories which are always a part of
the thing's presentation. For example, we never find an apple that is
two-dimensional, colorless, without mass, etc.]
Inasmuch as any sense bestowing act intends an object within a set of
typifications - a set, some of whose instantiations are realized in the

HUSSERL AND FANTASY

231

specific act and some of whose instantiations are not realized but are
potentially realizable - each sense-giving act occurs within the horizon
of the thing's possible modes of presentation.
With respect to the temporal order in which the sense-giving act
nests, it is possible to distinguish three components of an object's
horizon of presentations. Thinkers of the Husserlian school designate
these three components with greater or lesser clarity. 3 Though he
doesn't provide neologisms for them, Husserl is also aware of these
horizonal distinctions as evidenced in his description of the acts of
protention, retention and attention: protention being an anticipation of
future presentations, retention being a rememberance of past presentations and attention (or apprehension) being a concentration on contemporary presentations. Every act which is meaning-conferring has its
own meaning conditioned by (a) antecedent noematic and noetic
horizons (or the preceding thetic acts and qualities which determine the
sense of the act in the present), (b) copresent noematic and noetic
horizons (or co-given thetic acts and qualities which determine the act
in the present) and (c) consequent noematic and noetic horizons (or
possible future thetic acts and qualities which are consistent with the
act's antecedent and copresent horizons).
Finally, Husserl prescribes a distinction between the internal and
external horizons of the meaning-bestowing act. The internal noematic
and noetic horizons are the fields of all possible meanings, qualities and
dispositions which are typically associated with the intended object, but
the external noematic and noetic horizons are the fields of all possible
meanings, qualities and dispositions which condition the intended
object as its environment. The internal horizon is the horizon which
makes the object of the meaning act what it is and what it shall be. The
external horizon is the background against which the meaning act and
its object can occur. [Suggestive, here, is the distinction between text
and context.]
The object intended in the meaning-bestowing act may occur against
many different external horizons - though, presumably, there are some
against which it could not occur at all. In the case of the internal
horizon of a meaning, the possibilities are more limited. The antecedent
and copresent internal horizons determine the object in its present form
and limit its admissible variation in the future.
To describe the external horizon of an act of meaning as being
potentially more variable than its internal horizon, is not to suggest that

232

THOMAS RYBA

the latter is completely variable. Rather, it is merely a horizon among

horizons within a single world and that world's typical style of existence.
Now, one might well ask, "What is the relevance of all of this
Husserlian terminology to the earliest portion of this paper?" How is
the Husserlian notion of horizon a help in understanding the believability of novels and the relation between believability and the law-like
nature of secondary worlds?
The answer to this question is simple, even though the analyses
which it demands are difficult in the extreme. The answer is this. In
writing a novel, the author constructs a tissue of sentences which in
certain ways is no different from the narration contained in a factual
report. The novelist tells us many things about the characters which
inhabit his world. If his art is great - if he is adept at describing the
qualities of his characters and the world in which they live - then the
reader cannot but help reactivate these descriptions and experience the
described world and characters as if those characters and the world
actually exist. The reader is, in a sense, duped. The author, if he is
adept, is able to convey a sense of reality by manipulating the antecedent, copresent and consequent horizons of the secondary world and its
secondary realities. If he is successful, then the reader either discovers a
close analogy to things he has experienced or, not finding any close
analogies in his own experience, finds the artfully constructed secondary world believable on its own terms as some distant extension of his
own experience.
This secondary world cannot, however, be considered a possible
world with respect to the real world of the reader _because the reader
determines many of the secondary world's characteristics. It is not a
transcendental object as the primary world is. As Roman Ingarden has
shown, it is as much an art to know what is to be left out of a novel as
to know what must be included. 4 For, if the reader understands the
secondary world of the novel to be continuous with his experience, then
the reader will fill in the details omitted by the author, providing the
various reactivated, but relatively empty, acts of sense with antecedent,
copresent and consequent horizons necessary to make the story more
tangibly real.
Part of the skill of any novelist is his ability to convey a sense of
reality with a minimum of words. But in the case of such artistry, the
experience of the constructed world varies from reader to reader
because each fleshes in the worldly details differently. In contrast, those

HUSSERL AND FANTASY

233

novels which contain a wealth of details - and, thus, internally determine the antecedent, copresent and consequent horizons of meaning produce in their readers experiences of the secondary worlds which are
shared, relatively invariant and stable.
But the question arises, against the backdrop of some of Husserl's
statement about secondary worlds, whether it is appropriate, at all, to
think of secondary worlds as standing in a relation of possibility to the
primary world? At points, Husserl suggests that meaning acts in the real
world always presuppose a chain of possible experiences which would
count as "perfect experiential evidence, a complete synthesis of possible
experiences."5 This idea, as Mohanty has shown, is expressive of
Husserl's preference of the actual over the possible.6 By prescribing
that possibility relative to the real world be validated by a chain of
possible experiences, Husserl distinguishes between transcendental
objects given within the lifeworld of the reader and the quasi-transcendental objects intended within the work of art. The former are a part of
the lifeworld: a single pre-given world to which one may go and
perform positional modifications which bring the object to further
disclosure. The quasi-transcendental objects contained in the novelistic
world, on the other hand, do not allow the same kind of validation.
Even though a novel purports to take place within a real historical
period, the intentionality of the author and the intentionality of the
reader are such that neither author or reader expects the events to have
actually occurred in the real world (unless the reader has been tricked
into thinking it is a work of history). Both author and reader engage in
a sort of compact, the compact of the seducer and the willing-to-beseduced. The author provides suggestions which, if very vivid and
consistent, lead to a believable imaginary reality. The reader is willing
to accept the imaginary reality as believable, providing the author has
been effective in the execution of his art.
Now it is true that authors frequently weave fact together with fiction
in order to trade on the intentionality associated with real historical
events. This provides a second-hand believability for their imaginary
worlds. But this does not change the fact that most of the content of
such novels is beyond the kind of positional modification which would
establish their possibility in the real world. It is precisely the differences
in intentionality and the modes for bringing the objects of discourse to
givenness which distinguish novelistic reality from the reality of the
lifeworld.

234

THOMAS RYBA

A fictional world, because it is an immanent product of consciousness and is not transcendental in any real sense, does not qualify as a
possible world because it was not intended as such and because it
cannot be subjected to the same determination as the real world.
However, one could argue, with equal force, that many histories do not
reveal a transcendental object which is verifiable through a series of
evidential chains. Nevertheless, though historical texts may not lead to
positional modifications which can validate their descriptions in every
case, they still lead to some direct verification and much verification
that is indirect. Moreover, history is intentionally directed to truthfully
describing or explaining what has happened in the actual world,
whereas fiction operates in a created world. Still, there is a sufficient
parallelism to warrant comparison between the writing of novels and
the writing of history. This probably explains why Husserl was fond of
referring to the writing of history as resembling the writing of a novel.
CONCLUSIONS

What Husserl seems to suggest is that novelistic worlds are not about
real possibilities. He seems to suggest that whatever ontological status
novels do possess, their intentionality is not such that they stand for
possible worlds within the horizon of the world we experience. It
seems, however, that though this may be true, Husserl neglects an
aspect of the intentionality which the reader brings to the novel. When
we, as readers, ask questions about a novel's believability, we are
making a tacit comparison between the real world and the secondary
reality. The nature of this comparison is not to assert that we think the
novel is a possible, alternative world continuous with the one in which
we live. Rather, the assertion is more modest. What the reader seems to
be implying, when he says he finds a novel to be believable, is that the
novel could serve as an incomplete model of a possible world. To
assent to this is to preserve Husserl's intention to keep the integrity of
the real world by denying that novels can be subjected to the test of a
possible string of verifications.
By calling novels models of a possible world, we are also able to
trade on Husserl's notion of a definite manifold "as compossible
totalities of objects in general which are thought of as distinct only in
empty formal generality" and as being "defined by determinate modalities of something-in-general."? It is characteristic of definite manifolds to consist of "a finite number of concepts and propositions" which

HUSSERL AND FANTASY

235

determine "completely and unambiguously on lines of pure logical

necessity the totality of all possible formations in the domain, so that, in
principle . .. nothing further remains open within it."8
Husserlian possible worlds are those definite manifolds where everything that can be determined about future possibilities or alternative
possibilities is determined. Thus, possibility, in the Husserlian sense, is
narrower than the pure notion of logical possibility upon which Smith
and McIntyre trade. 9 It is not correct to say that all manifolds are
Husserlian possible worlds because there are pure manifolds at very
high abstractive levels which have little to do with the world of actuality,
just as there apparently are definite manifolds representing possibilities
which have nothing to do with our possible world.
Where does this, then, put novels in the Husserlian scheme of
things? According to the preceding analysis, novels would seem to be
manifolds occupying a level of generality somewhere between that of
pure manifolds and that of definite manifolds. Because an author, of
necessity, leaves many of the aspects of his work undetermined, intending that the reader should flesh in the details, he leaves open much that
would otherwise be determined in a definite manifold which is intended
as a description of the real world. Though an author's concern is for
achieving consistency within the imaginary world alone, he often
achieves this consistency by borrowing descriptions that more properly
belong to the real world.
In other words, an author is not concerned with actually constructing
a definite manifold which describes the real world but in providing a
consistent, but fragmentary, description of an imaginary world. The
difference in intentionality signals a difference in possibility. The author
is not much concerned with whether the actions and things described
could actually take place in the real world. He is concerned with
persuading the reader to believe that within the bounds of the imaginary world they are plausible.
This does not preclude the author's trading on psychological, natural
and logical expectations drawn from the real world. But he does not
take these over in their entirety. Instead, the novelist establishes partial
mappings of his manifold (the novel) onto the definite manifold which
represents the horizon of the world. But in addition to these correspondences, the author also introduces premises, which though consistent with the chosen mappings, find no correspondence in the real
world.
Works of high fantasy imply the fewest mappings and sustain their

236

THOMAS RYBA

believability almost on the basis of consistency alone. Realistic works of

historical fiction, on the other hand, imply the greatest number of mappings and achieve much of their believability from features borrowed
from the primary world.
To call a novel a model of a possible world is to say that it lacks
transcendence and it is wholly a product of consciousness. Yet, as a
model, it can be mapped - either wholly or in part - onto a possible
world. In other words, questions as to where the secondary worlds of
novels fit into the horizon of the real world are irrelevant and, in fact,
meaningless. The purpose of a novel is not to create concrete determinations which refer to the real world but to explore general states-ofaffairs freed from the restrictive possibility imposed by the horizons of
the real world.
In this context, believability refers to richness in the mappings of
meaning between the novel and the world as well as to the consistency
of the novelistic quasi-reality and quasi-horizons. Believability, under
this interpretation, does not commit us to a form of possibility which
presupposes intentional continuity with the real world.
How, then, do we define the believability of a novel?
From the above, it seems to follow that believability should be
described as a relationship between a reader, the novel and the reader's
lifeworld. If the reader can determine a possible-state-of-affairs relative
to his lifeworld which corresponds in whole or in part to the novel, then
it would seem to be legitimate to predicate believability of that novel as
a whole or in part.
Or to put it more precisely, a novel is more or less believable
depending upon whether one can put parts of the real world and its
horizon of possibility into a one to one relationship with parts of the
novel's quasi-world and quasi-horizon. Rich, believable novels allow
more correlations, thinner, less believable novels allow fewer correlations.
St. Thomas Aquinas Center, Purdue University,
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
NOTES
I J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories," The To/kien Reader (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1971), pp. 36-37.
2 D. W. Smith and Ronald McIntyre provide a very thorough, if sometimes a bit

HUSSERL AND FANTASY

237

speculative, exposition of the Husserlian notion of horizon in their book: Husserl and
Intentionality (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984), pp. 227-265.
3 See: Otto Muck, The Transcendental Method, trans. William Seidensticker (New
York: Herder & Herder, 1968), pp. 301-306 and Emerich Coreth, Metaphysics, trans.
Joseph Donceel (New York: The Seabury Press, 1973), pp. 46-68.
4 Roman Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, trans. Ruth Crowley
and Kenneth Olson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 47.
5 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1973), 28: 62.
6 J. N. Mohanty, "Intentionality and Possible Worlds: Husserl and Hintikka" in Herbert
Dreyfus and Harrison Hall, eds., Husser!, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: M.1. T. Press, 1983), pp. 243-245.
7 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Phenomenology, trans. David
Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 45-46.
8 Edmund Husserl, Ideas, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen &
Unwin, Ltd., 1976),72: 204.
9 In trying to square Husserl with possible worlds theory in modal logic, Smith and
McIntyre tend to homogenize the distinctions Husserl made between the different kinds
of manifolds. The result is an interpretation of the Husserlian notion of possibility
which makes it mere logical possibility. (Op. cit.) However, Husserl seems to intend
something narrower when he speaks of possible worlds. He ties the notion of possibility
more directly to the various material determinations of existence, and interprets
possibility as dependent upon the "laws of nature" as upon pure logic. This is especially
true in his later and posthumous writings. See, for example, Experience and Judgment
and The Crisis ofEuropean Sciences.

ROBERT R. ELLIS

PHENOMENOLOGICAL ONTOLOGY AND

SECOND PERSON NARRATIVE: THE CASE OF
BUTOR AND FUENTES

A discussion of narrative voice is not new to literary criticism. Yet

surprisingly enough, little or no effort has been made to ground the
problem in philosophical terms. Such a task might seem unnecessary if
today's writers continued to produce traditional first and third person
narratives. However, the appearance of a second person in post-war
literature has raised questions that baffle not only readers and critics
but the writers themselves who practice it. This is because second
person narrative points to ontological structures dearly transcending
the limits of literature itself. While certain philosophers, induding
Sartre, have placed literature within an ontological framework, no
adequate theory of second person narrative has been articulated.! It is
in response to this lacuna in narratological studies that the present
essay has been conceived. In the first part we shall attempt to outline
the basic parameters of such a theory while in the second part we shall
examine what are often considered the two most important novels
employing a second person narrative: Michel Butor's La Modification
and Carlos Fuentes' La muerte de Artemio Cruz.
With the exception of these and several other novels, 2 the most
frequent use of second person narrative involves a dialogue either
between characters or between the author and reader. 3 In the first case
the protagonist is an "I" addressing secondary characters - "Manana,
en cuanto amanezca, ire a visitar tu tumba, papa;"4 - while in the
second the author is an "I" and the reader a ''you'' often addressed as
"Dear Reader" - "Visions are supposed to entail profundity, but Wait til you get one, dear Reader!"5 Though this latter use of second
person narrative suggests that the active participants in the literary
process are to be found outside the text itself, it does not alter the
traditional approach of author/reader to character.
The most frequently cited examples of second person narrative as a
means of revealing character are in fact La Modification and La muerte
de Artemio Cruz. The relationship between these works has been
analyzed by Richard Reeve and more recently by Carmen Lugo-

239
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 239-248.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

240

ROBERT R. ELLIS

Filippi.6 In his study Reeve indicates antecedents of second person

narrative in American literature but states that Butor is one of the few
who sustain it throughout an entire noveI.7 He and Lugo both suggest
the possible influence of Butor on Fuentes.
According to Butor himself, a first person narrative is limited not
only to what the character knows about himself but to what he chooses
to reveal. Through a second person narrative, however, the author/
reader can force into the open information about the character as if he
were an investigator interrogating a supposed criminal. The "you" is
thus a more efficient means of penetrating the novel and understanding
the enigmatic and elusive actions of the character. Butor states:
Le "il" nous laisse a l'exterieur, Ie "je" nous fait entrer a l'interieur, mais cela risque
d'etre un interieur ferme comme Ie cabinet noir dans lequel un photographe developpe
ses cliches.8

Butor's discussion raises questions regarding second person narrative

which he fails to answer. This is because he takes the character rather
than the author/reader as his point of departure and in so doing
subordinates the real to the imaginary. Though Butor's version of the
French "new novel" transcends the confines of traditional realism, his
theoretical writings do not resolve the problem.
When Butor suggests that the character, like a criminal, might
conceal information about himself, he indulges in a fictional game. Let
it be said once and for all that the character possesses no more reality
than what is ascribed to him by his creators - the author and the
reader. Ultimately, he is an imaginary object whose ontological status
differs radically from that of both consciousness and things. He is not
"revealed" through a particular narrative voice but rather "made to be."
What distinguishes the second person narrative from the first and
third is not the character but the relationship between the author/
reader and the character. It is our contention that in a first person
narrative they appear to be the same while in a third person narrative
they appear to be other. As an imaginary objectification of the author/
reader, however, the character is at once the same and other.9 It might
be said, therefore, that the first and third persons are false voices. While
the "I" claims to reveal the character as "my" consciousness, it disguises
the character's fundamental alterity.lO Similarly, while the "s/he" claims
to reveal the character as other, it disguises "our" fundamental same-

BUTOR AND FUENTES

241

ness. I I In this context, the true "I" becomes an inexpressible subjectivity

and the true "s/he" an incomprehensible objectivity.
There is, however, a means of accurately expressing the relationship
between the author/reader and the object of his creation. It is the
second person. The term "you" represents the middle ground between
consciousness and things on which the aesthetic object is founded. 12 It
is the exterior of "I" and the interior of "s/he," at once an objectified
subjectivity and a sUbjectified objectivity that both the "I" and "s/he" of
traditional literature fail to capture. \3
A second person narrative involves an ontologizing process inherent
in all artistic endeavor. Yet there is implicit in the "you" a kind of good
faith absent from the traditional narrative voices. The second person
takes literature as neither the fulfillment nor the transformation of
man's being but as the locus of a fundamental ontological experience the recognition of the self and the Other. This we might call the
"authenticity of you." It is an attitude significantly absent from the
realism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The "Old Realism" created a kind of myth, not through its representation of the world but through the relationship it established
between the author/reader and the aesthetic object - namely that "my"
consciousness could found itself as an absolute "I" or "s/he" and
thereby achieve the totality of being. The "New Realism," in such
writers as Butor or Fuentes, destroys this myth. It admits from the
outset the limitations of literature. Unassuming and at times selfeffacing (especially in the case of Butor), it manages, nevertheless, to
reveal contemporary man to himself in his personal and social milieu. A
brief analysis of the novels of Butor and Fuentes will clarify these
theoretical considerations.
Despite the thematic and structural complexities of La Modification,
the plot is extraordinarily simple. Leon Delmont, a French businessman
employed by an Italian firm, leaves his wife in Paris and makes the
twenty-two hour train journey to Rome where he plans to join his
mistress. While en route, however, he comes to realize that his action
has been motivated not by a woman but by the city of Rome as he has
imagined it to be. Rome, as a symbolic compass for Europe's cultural
orientation - whether classical or spiritual - is a myth central to
Delmont's upbringing and education but devoid of all relevance in his
modern world. The gradual prise de conscience, from which the novel's

242

ROBERT R. ELLIS

title derives, thus transcends the banality of an extra-marital affair and

refers ultimately to the recovery of an alienated freedom and to an
effort to achieve authenticity.14
Before ending his journey Delmont decides that he will write a novel
elucidating the meaning of the modification he has experienced. In an
earlier passage he reveals, in reference to another book, the possible
thrust of his own.
Dans lequel il doit bien se trouver quelque part, si peu que ce soit, si faux que ce soit, si
mal dit, un homme en difficulte qui voudrait se sauver, qui fait un trajet et qui s'apen;:oit
que Ie chemin qu'i! a pris ne mene pas la ou il croyait, comme s'il etait perdu dans un
desert, ou une brousse, ou une foret se refermant en quelque sorte derriere lui sans
qu'i! arrive meme it retrouver quel est Ie chemin qui l'a conduit la, car les branches et
les lianes masquent les traces de son passage, les herbes se sont redressees et Ie vent sur
Ie sable a efface les marques de ses pas. 15

The story outlined here is clearly that of La Modification itself, and at

the end the reader realizes that the book he has just finished is the one
Delmont is about to begin. This circular structure is reminiscent of
Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu and Sartre's La Nausee. The
use of the second person pronoun throughout the work, however,
radically alters the reader's traditional relationship to fiction.
Despite numerous studies, the critics of La Modification disagree on
the meaning of the second person. For some it is the interior monologue
of the character l6 while for others it is an expression of the Faulknerian
persona. 17 The largest number of scholars take it as an invitation to
reader identification with the character. ls What we find in the final
pages of the novel, however, suggests a somewhat different possibility.
After a series of dreams in which he is visited by Roman emperors
and cardinals and even by the mythical "Grand Veneur" of French
folklore, Delmont hears the following words echoed in the night:
"Qui etes-vous? OU allez-vous? Que cherchez-vous? Qui aimez-vous? Que voulezvous? Qu'attendez-vous? Que sentez-voux? Me voyez-vous? M'entendez-vous?"19

These words emanate from a figment of the character's imagination and

are thus separated from the larger second person narrative by quotation
marks. In the final two questions, however, a first person pleads for a
kind of recognition from the ubiquitous "yoU."20 While on one level this
voice is an alter ego of the character, on a more profound level it can
be taken as that of the author/reader himself. His appeal to the ''you'' the imaginary Leon Delmont -, unmasks his desire to unite with his

BUTOR AND FUENTES

243

creation and thereby found himself as the totality of being. The "you,"
however, in spite of its ontological affinity with consciousness, remains,
as it must, other. For this reason the reader experiences not an imaginary fulfillment but a profound intuition of his existential condition and
ultimately of his freedom.
In contrast to the Butor novel, La muerte de Artemio Cruz combines
the three narrative voices. The twelve principal units of the novel are
each divided into three segments employing a different person and
tense. 21 The "1" speaks in the present, the "he" in the past, and the
"you" in the future. On the level of plot the first person describes the
twelve hours prior to the character's death while the third person
describes the twelve most significant events in his life. The sections in
the second person, on the other hand, suggest a life of the character
that might have been. 22
Because the character is dying, his utterances in the first person are
disjointed and at times confused. In contrast, the descriptions in the
other persons are carefully articulated. The third person narrative, as a
reflection of a past that is known, employs a rational discourse while
the second person, as an intuition of the unrealized, is poetic.
The use of the three narrative voices suggests an understanding of
consciousness surprisingly similar to that of Sartre in L 'Etre et Ie neant.
It might be said that the present tense "I" is the non-being of consciousness while the past "he" is its essence ("Wesen ist was gewesen ist")23
and the future ''you'' its possibility. According to Sartre, consciousness
as a presence to being is a continual wrenching away from past being
and a projection toward future being.24 If we apply this to La muerte de
Artemio Cruz, it becomes clear why the twelve major sections of the
novel are followed by a first and second person narrative but not a
third. In the moment prior to death, the character projects himself
toward a future which will never become "his" past. This is because
death is a kind of unrealizable of consciousness - for to know its death
consciousness would have to cease to be consciousness. The book thus
ends with a second person which in the moment of extinction slips into
a first person future.
As might be expected, the second person narrative is the most
problematic. Though this voice speaks in a future tense, it might be
more correct to refer to it as a kind of conditional since it involves
possible actions that, except in the final chapter, point to the future of a
past that has already happened. From the first pages of the novel, the

244

ROBERT R. ELLIS

life of Artemio Cruz is all but over. The choices, almost exclusively
unethical, have been made and their meaning is fixed.
Were the reader sitting in judgment of a real man he would most
likely condemn him. Yet the protagonist of the novel is not, strictly
speaking, Artemio Cruz but an entire people. On one level it is the
Mexican bourgeoisie that betrayed the aspirations of its country's
revolution while on another it is any Latin American whose full
potential remains unrealized. 25 To the extent that the novel is written
for one of these groups, the protagonist can be said to be the reader. It
is specifically through the second person narrative that the reader
comes to discover himself.26
Elegiras, para sobrevivir elegiras, elegiras entre los espejos infinitos uno solo, uno solo
que te reflejara irrevocablemente, que llenara de una sombra negra los demas espejos,
los mataras antes de ofrecerte, una vez mas, esos caminos infinitos para la eleccion:
decidiras, escogeras uno de los caminos, sacrificaras los demas: te sacrificaras al
escoger, dejaras de ser todos los otros hombres que pudiste haber sido ...27

This is the inevitable destiny of freedom, which exists solely through an

engagement in some form of action, whether ethical or not. Insofar as
the reader, through the act of reading, constitutes in the imaginary a
freedom committed to an unethical course of action - and especially if
that course of action has been his own or his people's -, he cannot
help but become aware of both the consequences and ultimate possibilities of freedom. In the end of the novel, when the moments of death
and birth are juxtaposed, he discovers his fate and his hope.

Tu seras ese nino que sale a la tierra, encuentra la tierra, sale de su origen, encuentra su

destino, hoy que la muerte iguala el origen y el destino y entre los dos clava, a pesar de
todo, el filo de la libertad: 28 algun dfa [...J todas las cosas tendran el mismo nombre ...
Ninguno ... Pero todavia no.29

In both La Modification and La muerte de Artemio Cruz the second

person narrative thus alters the reader's traditional relationship to
character, establishing an imaginary dialogue which in the final analysis
is the interior monologue of the reader himself. While in first and third
person narratives (including those of the Fuentes' novel) the reader
attempts to "irrealize" himself as the character,30 in the second person
narrative he takes the character as other - albeit another with whom
he shares a fundamental ontological bond. In the process he experi-

BUTOR AND FUENTES

245

ences a profound awareness of his own existential condition. This is the

source not of the "aesthetic joy" described by Sartre in Qu'est-ce que la
litterature? but of a sense of anguish. 31 It is also a moment offreedom.
Butor is clearly the pioneer of second person narrative. Yet it is in
the novel of Fuentes that we glimpse its possibilities in the context of
commitment. In La muerte de Artemio Cruz the reader comes to pass
judgment on himself as an implicit supporter of the forces of reaction
and corruption in Latin America. In the end it is "I" the reader who am
exposed and condemned. While this form of commitment is "negative"
in its thrust, we cannot help but wonder what the consequences would
be of a second person narrative through which the reader realized his
potential for positive action in the social sphere. Such a novel, however,
remains to be written. It is indeed surprising, in the light of the
extraordinary success of the work of Fuentes, that so few novelists have
chosen the second person as a form of expression. Does this mean that
second person narrative is still in its infancy or will it become no more
than a literary curiosity? Ironically, in this age of the text, which all too
often forgets that man in the world is the profound subject of all
literature, the question is rarely raised.
Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA
NOTES
I For a general discussion of the presence of second person narrative in modern
literature, see Bruce Morrissette, "Narrative 'you' in Contemporary Literature," Comparative Literature Studies (1965), 2: 1, pp. 1-24; and Richard Reeve, "Carlos Fuentes
y el desarrollo del narrador en segunda persona: un ensayo exploratorio," in Homenaje
a Carlos Fuentes: variaciones interpretativas en torno a su obra, ed. by Helmy F.
Giacoman (New York Las Americas, 1971), pp. 75-87.
2 Other recent novelists employing a second person narrative include Juan Goytisolo
and llse Aichinger.
3 Other examples include the use of "you" as a passive voice (more frequent in English
than in the Romance languages) and the second person of certain detective novels and
films. In this latter context Morrissette and Reeve both mention the Rex Stout novel,
How Like a God. Morrissette, "Narrative," p. 12; and Reeve, "Carlos Fuentes," p. 80.
4 Adelaida Garda Morales, El sur seguido de Bene (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1985),
p. 5. Reeve cites similar examples in Hispanic literature such as Mrs. Caldwell habla
con su hijo of Camilo Jose Cela and Bahia de silencio of Eduardo Mallea. Reeve,
"Carlos Fuentes," p. 78.
5 E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1924), p.
208.

246

ROBERT R. ELLIS

See Reeve, "Carlos Fuentes," pp. 75-87; and Carmen Lugo-Filippi, "La muerte
de Artemio Cruz y La Modificaci6n: un estudio comparado," Revista de Estudios
Hispanicos (1981), 2, pp. 11-23.
7 Morrissette also discusses the presence of a kind of second person narrative in such
novelists as Hemingway and Faulkner. See Morrissette, "Narrative," pp. 7-10.
8 Butor, Michel, Repertoire II: Etudes et conferences 1959-1963 (Paris: Les Editions
de Minuit, 1964), p. 97. See also pp. 66-67.
9 Unamuno despairs of this aiterity of literature which for him alienates freedom and
makes impossible the experience of a fullness of being. He states: "La literatura no es
mas que muerte." Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, Obras completas, Vol. 10 (Madrid:
Afrodisio Aguado, 1959), p. 830.
10 For Sartre, the "I" is not consciousness itself, which can never be truly objectified,
but a dimension of the psyche. (Sartre distinguishes between the "1" as the ideal unity of
all actions of consciousness and the "me" as the ideal unity of all states of consciousness.) As an object in the world the psyche is knowable both to the consciousness
which constitutes it as well as to other consciousnesses. In this context the "I" of
literature would be a correlative in the imaginary not of consciousness but of an object
of consciousness which the reader takes as consciousness itself. See Jean-Paul Sartre,
La Transcendance de /'ego: Esquisse d'une description phenomenologique (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1966).
11 According to Sartre's theory of being-for-others, consciousness experiences a
fundamental apodictic certainty of the ontological "sameness" of the Other. Only in
response to his threatening "look" does consciousness attempt to reduce the Other to
the status of a thing. It might be said, therefore, that the Other is first of all a "you" and
only secondly a "s/he." See Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Etre et Ie neant: Essai d'ontologie
phenomenologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pp. 273-503.
12 It would be Sartre's conclusion that the aesthetic object is neither a consciousness
nor a thing but an imaginary synthesis of the two. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la
litterature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1947); and Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Idiot de la famille:
Gustave Flaubert 1821-1857, Vols. 1-3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971-1972).
13 The ontological structures described not only by Sartre but by Martin Buber add
insight into the meaning of second person narrative. According to the "dialogical
principle" propounded in Ich und Du, the "1" as consciousness in the world does not
exist as a discrete entity but only in and through its relationship with the Other - the
"Thou" (human or divine) - or with material things - the "It." While the experience of
the "I-It" is univocal, the "I-Thou" is communicative. Moreover, while the "It" is an
object of knowledge, the "Thou" reveals itself ontologically, not unlike the Mitsein of
Heidegger. Thus, through the "Thou" consciousness achieves a being beyond itself
which for Buber points ultimately to God.
Buber uses the dialogical principle to describe a work of art. Both the creator and
perceiver, he argues, stand in an "I-Thou" relationship with regard to their object. While
in Qu 'est-ce que la litterature? Sartre speaks of a direct relationship between the reader
and writer, for Buber the work of art is a kind of voice demanding recognition. As the
object acts on man so man acts on the object. In the end he experiences a heightened
dimension of being. This intuition of Buber of the aesthetic object as a means of
personal self-realization is fully elucidated by Sartre in the Flaubert. Yet the clearest
6

BUTOR AND FUENTES

247

and most obvious example is to be found in the second person narratives of literature.
See Martin Buber, Ich und Du (Leipzig: Insel, 1922).
14 For Leon Samuel Roudiez, La Modification is an existentialist novel describing the
transition from bad faith to good faith. Michael Spencer, on the other hand, emphasizes
the passivity of the character and argues that the process of "modification" is deterministic. See Leon Samuel Roudiez, Michel Butor, Columbia Essays on Modern
Writers, 9 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 19-22; and Michael
Spencer, Michel Butor (New York: Twayne, 1974), p. 70.
15 Michel Butor, La Modification (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957), pp. 198-199.
16 Paul Delbouille states that the "you" can in no way be said to refer to the reader: "Je
vois tout de suite que l'histoire n'est pas la mienne." Paul Delbouille, "Le vous de La
Modification," Cahiers d'analyse textuelle (1963), 5, p. 84.
17 See Morrissette, "Narrative," p.15.
18 Michel Leiris is explicit with regard to reader identification with the character: "la
chose se passe - de l'ecrivain a vous lecteur - comme si l'emploi comminatoire du
vous y etait une effective incitation a prendre conscience vous aussi et a entrer en
action." Michel Leiris, "Le Realisme Mythologique de Michel Butor," postface to La
Modification (paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957), p. 307.
19 Butor, La Modification, p. 252.
20 This differs from the first person of certain indirect statements that refer back to the
"you" of the second person narrative. ("Vous vous dites: que s'est-il passe depuis ce
mercredi soir, depuis ce dernier depart normal pour Rome? Comment se fait-il que
tout soit change, que j'en sois venu la?" Butor, La Modification, p. 276.)
21 This is suggestive of How Like a God, where Stout alternates between a second and
first person narrative.
22 There has been much discussion among critics regarding the meaning of the second
person narration in La muerte de Artemio Cruz. At one point Fuentes himself stated
that the second person was meant to reflect the subconscious of the character. This
subconscious, however, expressed through the future tense, is not so much a structure
of the Freudian psyche as an existential projection toward being. See the following
articles in Homenaje a Artemio Cruz: Catherine M. Allen, "La correlacion entre la
filosofia de Jean-Paul Sartre: La muerte de Artemio Cruz, de Carlos Fuentes," pp.
399-442; Rene Jara C., "EI mito y la nueva novela hispanoamericana: a proposito de
La muerte de Artemio Cruz," pp. 147-208; and Nelson Osorio, "Un aspecto de la
estructura de La muerte de Artemio Cruz," pp. 125-146.
23 For Sartre's incorporation of the Hegelian principle, see Sartre, L'Etre et Ie neant, p.
72.

For Sartre's discussion of time, see Sartre, L'Etre et Ie neant, pp. 150-218.
See Jara, "EI mito."
26 For a discussion of a similar use of the second person in another Fuentes' novel, see
Jaime Alazraki, ''Theme and System in Aura," in Carlos Fuentes: A Critical View, ed.
by Robert Brody and Charles Rossman (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), pp.
103-104.
27 Carlos Fuentes, La muerte de Artemio Cruz, prologo de Jose Donoso (Estella,
Navarra: Salvat Editores, 1971), p. 140.
28 Fuentes, Muerte, p. 184.
24

25

248

ROBERT R. ELLIS

Fuentes, Muerte, p. 205.

For an elucidation of the irrealization of consciousness through the aesthetic object,
see Sartre, L'Idiot, 1, pp. 785-786.
31 See Sartre, Qu'est-ce que fa litterature?, pp. 73-76.
29

30

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

MODIFICATIONS: A READING OF AUDEN

AND ISER

Intertwined in the life-world of the poetry of W. H. Auden is a world of

landscape, a geographical landscape that is physical, a world of hills
and limestone where beasts roam and where winds blow. It is likewise a
landscape with a human dimension where one can hear the murmur of
underground streams, and where one can wander through a million
vistas of thought. But moreover, it is a world of landscape that invites
the reader to possibility.
The seen hill stays the way it is,
But forecasts greater distances,
And we acknowledge with delight
A so-on after every sight.
The "seen hill" of "Heard and Seen" is only one of the many instances
of the use of mUltiple landscapes. In his "In Praise of Limestone"
Auden specifically associates the physical "limestone" with landscape
which invites us "beyond:" "If it form the one landscape that we, the
inconstant ones,! Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly/ Because
it dissolves in water" (11. 1-3). As soon as the reader is confronted with
the idea "homesick for" something happens to the vista of thought, to
the dynamic of the interplay between what Wolfgang Iser calls the text
and the reader. In discussing the wandering viewpoint, Iser says the
obvious: "The whole text can never be perceived at one time" (p. 108).
Even in the three lines describing a physical phenomenon, the dissolving of limestone by water, and the subsequent dissolving of landscape,
the viewpoint of the reader shifts to a deeper perception because the
poet reminds us that we are the inconstant ones and we are "constantly
homesick." The reader becomes involved in a way that Iser explains as:
"every reading moment sends out stimuli into the memory, and what is
recalled can activate the perspectives in such a way that they continually modify and so individualize one another" (p. 115). The
"inconstant" reader, like the "inconstant" poet, becomes a text-maker
with perspectives continually modified and modifying. Every "reading
moment" continues to reveal new landscapes, and the reader's percep249
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husseriiana, Vol. XXXII, 249-257.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

250

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

tion is constantly shifting so that the textual "interplay" with the reader
takes place on Auden's "rounded slopes."
PHYSICAL LANDSCAPE

To begin with, the landscape provided by Auden's text is a physical,

geographical landscape, (which itself becomes a text):
Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle. (11. 3-6)
The springs in the landscape "spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,"
while actually the text is speaking "with a chuckle" and one is reminded
of what Iser calls "the communicating structure of asymmetry between
the text and the reader." The application of the "communicating
structure" is associated with the physical landscape in "motion" and
with what Iser discusses in referring to implication: "Communication in
literature is a process set in motion and regulated not by a given code
but by a mutually restrictive and magnifying interaction between the
explicit and the implicit, between revelation and concealment" (p. 169).
Our life-world is all we have, and all that we see and hear and touch
is physical, (even sound is physical) and in this world Auden puts
words into the physical landscape. Granite and stone and the "wastes"
on the land reveal a text that is explicit and implicit and which hints at
more, at a beyond "past" knowledge:
'Come!' cried the granite wastes
'How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how impertinent is death.' (Saints-to-be
Slipped away sighing.) (11. 48-51)
The individualized perspectives are in a "restricting and magnifying"
interaction in the text-makers, the poet and the reader, and in the text
itself. Auden's words "evasive" and "accidental" are reminiscent of the
"rounded slopes." They beg for restriction and magnification. Like the
"secret system of caves and conduits" the "granite wastes" are caught in
the moment of revelation and reading, and the moment of response to
the reading, in a moment of concealment. What it is that the springs are

AUDEN AND ISER

251

saying, and what the "granite wastes" are crying has to do ultimately
with death, an "older colder voice, the oceanic whisper." Certainly what
is revealed and concealed in the physical landscape and in the implied
secrets is associated with the "inconstant" readers, including the poet,
who are "consistently homesick." The "homesickness" spoken of is
associated with the human landscape of the vista of thought, and the
landscape which invites the reader to possibility, another landscape of
both revelation and concealment. Also, the word "homesickness" defies
both time and space. I question the movement toward "home" whether
it is toward the past or toward the future. I also question its moving
presence, whether it forms "the one landscape" we are homesick for, or
whether "it dissolves in water." The "murmur of underground springs"
speaks, however, and the textual motion inter-plays a theme which Iser
calls restrictive and magnifying.
Auden finished "In Praise of Limestone" in May, 1948. Humphrey
Carpenter reports that only a few weeks earlier he had written to
Elizabeth Meyer: "Am in fact starting on a poem, 'In Praise of Limestone' the theme of which is that rock creates the only true human
landscape" (p. 357). In the purely geographical sense, Rock as limestone is "inconstant" dissolving in water, and it has a habit of forming
secret systems of underground caverns and pools, and the landscape
produced is as inconsistent and secret as the human personality.
Because of the great possibility this poem presents in a reading
involving textual interplay between the reader and the language of the
poem, it constantly invites re-reading. In reviewing the poem for Poetry
magazine, Stephen Spender declared it to be "one of the great poems of
this century" (Carpenter, p. 366). Charles Osborne, in his biography of
Auden tells how in 1949 Igor Stravinsky asked Auden to read some
poems during an afternoon concert in New York. Among the poems
Auden read was "In Praise of Limestone" and Osborne notes that "In
his later years, he was known to refer to it as perhaps the favorite of all
his poems" (p. 230).
HUMAN LANDSCAPE

The fact that Auden names the Theme of "limestone" as a perception

"that rock creates the only true landscape," reveals a deliberate focus
on the association of the physical, graphic reality which invites interac-

252

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

tion between the implicit and the explicit, the "inconstant" hard rock
and the landscape of human thought. In 1940 the voice in "The Dark
Years" had questioned:
Will the inflamed ego attempt as before
to migrate again to her family place,
to the hanging gardens of Eros
and the moons of a magical summer?
The ego which would "migrate again to her family place" hints of the
landscape where "we, the inconstant ones,! Are constantly homesick."
The human "ego" and "we, the inconstant ones" by the very condition
of being human, are held in the tension of a landscape which is our life
world, and we are its readers. Iser notes that "every moment of reading
is a dialectic of protension and retension, conveying a future horizon
yet to be occupied, along with the past (and continually fading) horizon
already filled" (p. 169). Is the landscape of human thought in "the
hanging gardens of Eros," the shadowy place of "moons of a magical
summer?" Certainly one senses "a future horizon yet to be occupied"
and also the "protension and retension" of the "inconstant ones." Even
in the hanging gardens of Eros, tension is associated with stone. Legend
has it that Eros wets with blood the grindstone on which he sharpens
his arrows. The grindstone, though it serves a purpose, in doing so,
itself is diminished. And where is the grindstone in the hanging gardens
of Eros if not in the human mind itself, (as Eros is the product of an
ancient imagination)? It is curious to speculate about Auden's perception "that rock creates the only truly human landscape." It serves a
purpose for the human mind by speaking to it, and by revealing
mysteries. The clays and gravels say "Come," and although they are not
hard rock, they are affirmed: "those voices were right." The voices
speak of human action in time and space:
'On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
Wait to be tamed and slaves construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
Need to be altered.' (11.52-55)
There is a parallel drawn between the human landscape and the earthen
landscape, "soft as the earth is mankind and both/ Need to be altered."
Basically the earth is Rock so that if a person digs deep enough, even
under the ocean the rock-bed is hit. Like mankind, the rock-earth is

AUDEN AND ISER

253

always in a state of flux, being inconstant. It is a text in "protension and

retension conveying a future yet to be occupied, along with the past
(and continually fading) horizon already filled." On the plains there is
room for armies to drill, as there has been room in the past, and as
there will always be room as long as there is a landscape. And still
"slaves" are "ready to construct you a tomb/ In the grande manner."
The word "tomb" evokes images of constructed Rock on the landscape,
graphically representing a future horizon yet to be occupied. The tomb
is associated with human experience and human thought because it is
associated with human history. In revealing the vista of thought, the
voice of the poet says: "this land is not the sweet home that it looks,!
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site/ Where something was settled
once and for all" (11. 62-64). Time and space are the limits of the
human personality, and in time and space wars can be fought and
tombs and texts can be constructed and both tombs and texts can be
obliterated. Nothing is settled "once and for all."
But the human perception of the "inconstant ones" and the land that
"is not the sweet home that it looks" shifts so that the movement is
Toward "inconsistency." Perhaps the "seen hill" and the hanging
gardens of Eros, and the limestone landscape all inherently draw the
reader to a pervasive "inconstancy" not only of textual motion, but into
a fluctuating reality which is inherent in the reading itself. The poet
asks: "a backward/ And dilapidated province, connected/ To the big
busy world by a tunnel, with a certain/ Seedy appeal, is that all it is
now?" (11. 65-67) In discussing negation, which one can associate with
the "dilapidated province" not only of the physical but with the human
landscape of thought, Iser remarks that it (negation) makes "it possible
for the fundamental asymmetry between text and reader to be balanced
out," for it initiates "an interaction whereby the hollow form of the text
is filled by mental images of the reader. In this way, text and reader
begin to converge, and the reader can experience an unfamiliar reality
under conditions that are not determined by his own disposition" (p.
225).
The "unfamiliar reality" is found in the convergence of the text and
reader in the tension of a human landscape. The poet's voice is in this
landscape, moving out of the "land" which is "not the sweet home that it
looks" actually in a process of negation, to a "worldly duty" which "calls
into question/ All the Great Powers assume." The movement is from
negation to negativity. Of the human landscape Auden says: "It has a

254

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

worldly duty which in spite of itself! It does not neglect" (11. 68-69).
Unlike negation, claims Iser, "negativity is not formulated by the text,
but forms the unwritten base; it does not negate the formulations of the
text, but via blanks and negations, conditions them. It enables the
written words to transcend their literal meanings, to assume a multiple
referentiality, and so to undergo the expansion necessary to transplant
them in a new experience into the mind of the reader" (p. 226).
Negativity prevails throughout the human landscape. We, "the inconstant ones" call "into question" all that the Great Powers assume, and
the poet's "written words transcend their literal meanings" and the
movement of the landscape is into that of possibility.
LANDSCAPE OF POSSIBILITY

After having heard the voices of the landscape calling "Come" and after
knowing that the "voices were right" when they said that earth and
mankind "both need to be altered," Auden continues exploring the
realm of possibility, as indeed, every text invites the exploration of
possibility.
In so far as we have to look foreward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right; But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or life to come, what I heas is a murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.
(11.84-96)
Negativity and possibility are closely associated in the word "modifications," and in the "expansion" referred to by Iser when he discusses an
enabling of the "written word" to be transplanted into a "new experience" in the mind of the reader. But like the Parable of the Healing on
the Sabbath, Auden associates "sins can be forgiven" with "bodies rise
from the dead." The spiritual and physical modifications imply possibility of a continually changing text. As death modifies, bodies rising

AUDEN AND ISER

255

are modifications, and Auden's text, the landscape, "matter into/

Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains" reveals the great modification of physical text into possibility. Negativity, the formation of "the
unwritten base," wears the shawl of "death," and death is also associated with the physical landscape, "modifications of matter;" the
human landscape of thought, "what I hear is a murmur of underground
streams;" and the landscape of possibility, "to imagine a faultless love/
Or the life to come."
Actually, there is a textual landscape, the very form of the poem
taking on a quadrangular shape, set in long uneven lines; the last section
being almost as long as the other three sections together. The textual
landscape is prone to manipulation, to restriction and magnification, to
concealment and revelation, to negativity and possibility. It lies like the
landscape of stone or the seen hill before the eyes of the reader. It can
be modified in the reading. When discussing the possibility of shifting
viewpoint, Iser describes the theme-horizon structure and says that "the
structure of theme and horizon constitutes the vital link between text
and reader, because it actively involves the reader in the process of
synthesizing an assembly of constantly shifting viewpoints, which not
only modify one another but also influence past and future synthesis"
(p. 97). Reading of the word-text is the "process of synthesizing." The
landscape, be it the textual landscape or the limestone landscape, is
open for reading. By its very existence it is a landscape of possibility.
The text of possibility itself is a shifting text and can be explored
even past Iser's life-world. Theologian and phenomenologist Karl
Rahner reads "possibility" in a "beyond" dimension when he says: "The
highest possibilities are but promises. Otherwise, that fulfillment for
which we long with faith and hope would already be here. However,
because the end of things is already come upon us, as Scripture tells us,
our higher possibilities are not merely empty postulates and abstract
ideals. They already begin to be present. They announce themselves at
least in shy attempts that do not fully succeed. But in the fact that the
imperfect is here, herein lies the sure promise of the nearness of
fulfillment" (p. 13). The landscape of possibility like the landscape of
limestone is open to reading, perhaps because as Rahner says, "the end
of things is already come upon us, and knowing "imperfection" already
assumes the presence of perfection and the "sure promise of the
nearness of fulfillment." The poet has already heard "the voices" of the
clays and gravels and he knew that they were right. He has heard the

256

BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

still older colder voice, the oceanic whisper, which said: I am the
solitude that asks and promises nothing;/ That is how I set you free" (11.
58-59). Death promises nothing and the reader is free to go beyond it.
The possibilities of "promises" in Rahner's words, "announce themselves at least in shy attempts that do not fully succeed." The speaker in
"Limestone" collaborates: "when I try to imagine a faultless love/ Or
the life to come, what I hear is a murmur/ Of underground streams"
(11. 94-96). Trying to imagine a "faultless love" ties in closely with
Rahner's "the fact that the imperfect is here," and of course, "herein lies
the sure promise of the nearness of fulfillment." Certainly Rahner's
reading of possibility is that of the believer. Unlike Rahner, the speaker
in "Limestone" says he hears only the possibility, the murmur of
underground streams, and he senses a mutible limestone landscape.
There are multiple landscapes in Auden's poems, the "seen hill" and
the "hanging gardens of Eros," and of course, there are textual landscapes is the forms of the poems themselves. The reader might discern
the graphic physical landscapes and the human vistas of thought, along
with the ever present and constantly changing landscapes of possibility.
They all converge, as they do in "In Praise of Limestone," when at the
end, although the poet hears the murmur of the underground streams,
what he sees is the continually shifting landscape. The last poem Auden
wrote in his life has only three lines, and undoubtedly he would go
beyond the landscapes he knew, to the continually present possibility
(promise).
He still loves life
But 0 0 0 0 how he wishes
The good Lord would take him. (Osborne, p. 307)
In exploring the landscapes of possibility, one must deal with convergence. We have the human tendency to explore "pieces" of the
whole, with the "seen hill" of physical landscape, with "underground
murmurs" and the landscape of human desire, with "modifications" and
the landscape of possibility; with interplay of text and reader, protension and retension, the wandering viewpoint and horizon, revelation
and concealment, negation and negativity, and the ever prevailing
breath of possibility.
But all these "pieces," these perceptions are "wholely" present in
their fullness all the time, in a convergence in the same time and space.
The convergence of all the landscapes and all the readers' possible

AUDEN AND ISER

257

perceptions is not in a manner of layers, or of jig-saw puzzles, or even

of concentric circles, but in a great one-ness, possibly like a great fog.
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Auden, W. H., "Heard and Seen" from Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson,
(London: Faber and Faber, 1976).
Auden, W. H., "In Praise of Limestone" in Collected Poems. Thomas Bulfinch,
Bulfinch's Mythology, (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1947).
Carpenter, Humphrey, W. H. Auden, A Biography, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1981).
Iser, Wolfgang, The Act of Reading, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press,
1978).
Osborne, Charles, W. H. Auden, The Life of a Poet, (New York; Harcourt Brace
Javanovich,1979).
Rahner, Karl, The Word: Readings in Theology, (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons,
1964).
POSTSCRIPT

Auden's language, as I have found it in exploring landscape, is associated with Rahner's analysis: "The great words which the poet speaks
are words of longing. They say something expressive which points
beyond itself: the nearness that brings closer what is far. The words of
poets are like gates, beautiful and strong, plain and sure. But these gates
to infinity are gates to the incomprehensible. They call upon the
unnamed. They stretch themselves out toward the intangible. They are
the acts offaith in the spirit and in eternity" (p. 25).

C. AESTHETIC RECEPTION AND THE OTHER ARTS

JOSEPH KRAUSE

A STUDY OF VISUAL FORM IN

LITERARY IMAGERY

Michael Riffaterre has repeatedly explained that it is in the very nature

of poetry to systematically determine itself through the coupling,
opposing, and expanding of its linguistic strata, and that it is thanks to
this dynamic process of tension that poetry can confer on referential
and habitual language a larger span of significance. 1 This larger or
deeper layer of significance invites interpretation and, for semioticians,
is available for classification or for decoding. Until the advent of
post-structural epistemology - where expression is conceived as a
storehouse for dominant or subjugating bodies of knowledge rather
than merely as a system for representation - it has usually been in the
very nature of literary analysis to be inspired by, if not directly predicated on, an Aristotelian method which categorizes recurring verbal
resemblances and differences in order to accidentally define a work.
This exploratory method achieves its goal by detecting the verbal
components that will subsequently provide verbal meaning. In a flexible
manner verbal meaning is understood here as a direction towards a
referred world, and as a relation between the components that assemble the linguistic strata. Such a relation offers itself as an explanation of
the dependence that words and references entertain among themselves.
There is, however, a locus of understanding that governs the act of
beholding a work. It can be called the work's visual form, endowing the
work with imagery, that is, with optical meaning. Visual form is the
mold or vehicle through which the work can be apprehended. Yet,
although this form emanates from the words and references that create
the visual plane, it is not immanently contained in them. The visual
plane here is understood as imagery, the objects for consciousness (the
percipi), the phenomena constituted by consciousness during the reading act. The visual form, however, refers to what Sartre calls the being
of appearance ("l'etre du phenomfme").2 The fundamental nature of this
form, like that of all beings, is transphenomenal: in Sartre's ontology of
things being is present to unveil rather than to be unveiled, it designates
and reveals itself as an appearance (of being) rather than as its very
own being. 3 It is in this way that visual form, as a transcendence, is
259
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 259-265.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

260

JOSEPH KRAUSE

independent of verbal meaning inasmuch as the former is constituted

by the perceiver or the reader regardless of the type of object beheld.
This does not mean that the visual form is always the same for different
objects; nor does it mean, as Sartre makes clear, that the form or being
of phenomena can be reduced to that of consciousness, for the being of
the pre-reflexive cogito is causa sui. However, in aesthetic terms, it
does imply that a true landscape, a painted landscape, and a described
landscape are all perceived by the same undifferentiated mode of
apprehending landscapes. In short, visual form is the condition for
appearance, and this condition does not depend on mimetic theory: it is
not determined or qualified by representation, by the accuracy of
depiction, or by the medium that imparts a virtual object.
When an abstract canvas by Jackson Pollock is viewed, its verbal
meaning is predicated on its inability to contain a reference other than
itself. As a perceived object it eschews verbal meaning: so it has to be
literalized, or given a theoretical equivalent for itself. However, its
visual meaning is defined by plane, surface, line, recession, texture, and
color, among other possibilities, for it is through these modes that it has
been perceived.
Visual form, to a large degree, stylizes the visual plane, just as verbal
form stylizes literary meaning. If Quintillian provided the first comprehensive treatise on stylistic devices based on the permissible deformation of syntactic conventions, the tropes produced by this deformation
were intended for rhetorical and mimetic purposes. In the area of visual
style, it is the art historian Heinrich W6lfflin who was to open the way
towards an aesthetic seeking to differentiate between various modes of
seeing, of imaginative beholding, rather than underscore the narrative
of what is seen. For W6lfflin, the recognizable characteristics that
distinguish Florentine from Venetian art, Quattrocento from Cinquencento, Baroque from High Renaissance, or Ruysdael from Hobbema
are necessarily formulated by national, period, or individual styles.
However, the differences and transformations inherent in these styles,
that, say, allowed a sense of line to evolve towards a sense of mass in
Bernini's Rome, are not explained by the corresponding transformations in the domain of imitation.4 To simply envisage stylistic change
according to the precepts regulating la bella natura, or according to
canons governing verisimilitude, or again according to what Alberti
emphasized as a painting's istoria or dramatic content, would be
misleading. What stands at the very root of stylistic discontinuity is a

VISUAL FORM

261

change in the mode of perceiving, for it is through this modal alteration

that particular periods, schools, and works are tangibly crystallized into
specific artistic idioms. "The imitative content, Wolfflin concludes, may
be as different in itself as possible, the decisive point remains that the
conception in each case is based on different visual schema ..."5 By
contrasting the draughtsmanly with the painterly, or by setting the
tectonic against the atectonic, Wolfflin is opposing stylistic denominators that grant an image its visual or schematic form.
Containing "no expressional content in themselves"6 these image
forms have a being that stands outside of consciousness and can be
attributed the Sartrian label being of the percipi, that is, the being of the
object of consciousness, that cannot simply be reduced to either
consciousness itself or to the synthesizing capacities of the cogito?
The being of the percipi not only allows an object to be perceived, but
it also allows it to be perceived in a particular manner.
In short, the being of the visual horizon in literary or plastic imagery
is understood here as a work's schematic form. This form grounds the
work in an ontological sphere that is not immanently a part of consciousness. In literature, the visual horizon, or the imagery, is certainly a
complicated nexus predicated on Ingarden's linguistic stratification. 8
However, the eventual configurations that are appropriated to imagery
are not simply the result of noetic operations: they are, rather, primarily
due to the particular ocular manner in which the work offers itself up
to perception, a manner that is irreducible to consciousness itself. This
ocular manner is an entity that remains ontologically heteronomous
with respect to the actualizing capacities of consciousness. If the
opposite were the case, it would suggest that the visual field, as an
imaginative manifestation of a material, plastic, or linguistic medium, is
inherently contained, as a sort of indwelling, by consciousness, which
would bring the discussion back to Kantian subjective operations.
This paper, however, in following the ontology of Sartre, Heidegger,
and indirectly the aesthetics of Dufrenne, is presenting literary imagery
as a sensuous and sonorous thing, fully in the realm of objects; a thing
that reveals its being through schematic forms. Magliola interprets this
substantive and non-referential capacity of language as a sound-thing. 9
In fact, at this point, the present discussion is touching on the final part
of Ingarden's The Literary Work of Art, where literature is presented in
the realm of "ontically autonomous objectivities", that are neither fully
real, nor fully ideal. lO Insofar as the visual plane, pregant with imagery,

262

JOSEPH KRAUSE

is capable of being intentionally contained by consciousness, regardless

of its wordly status, it can be granted ontological heteronomy. Moreover, because the literary image often cannot be realized or transformed into a real objectivity, it is, according to Ingarden, deprived of
an ideal essence. However, as a revelation for consciousness, imagery
can be accorded a more specific ontological qualification by virtue of
its inherent form. This form allows imagery to stand over an beyond
consciousness as a lattice-work: regardless of the number of readings,
or the number of readers the imagery offers its being, its visual manner,
its disposition to the act of beholding.
This approach to visual schema or form approximates Mikel
Dufrenne's interpretation of an aesthetic work's quasi-subjectivity. For
Dufrenne, the aesthetic work, in general, is endowed with formal
configurations that capture and draw the onlooker towards it." In
referring to Dufrenne's aesthetics, Magliola has stated very succintly,
Perception, however, does not contribute meaning to art-work. On the contrary the artwork "governs" perception ... Thus the aesthetic object both as in-itself and for-itself
stands over and against us as perceivers. 12

Having established the boundaries for the ontological status of the

visual plane, it is now possible to examine imagery from the standpoint
of the subjective pole, that is, to examine it purely as aisthesis or
appearance for consciousness, rather than as semeion, as representation
of something other than itself.
Imagery shows itself, and in showing itself it is there to be apprehended as an object for perception. There is always a given intimacy or
a certain commutation between the viewer and what is brought into
view. This intentional intimacy governs every conceivable type of
object, binding it to what Husserl has called a noetic-noematic structureP The primacy of perception allows consciousness to be inseparably confused with experience in an act of attachment rather than in
one of knowledge. The intentional object is a mediating entity which
allocates presence rather than sense to both subject and world, through
the immediacy of contact. As presence, or primary contact, it holds the
contents of perception, and is at the same time the very act of perceiving. The application of phenomenological theory to imagery in art
or literature can restrict itself, at least for the purposes of this paper, to
a single aspect of Husserl's investigation of the fundamental or primary
act of consciousness, that is, the act of beholding. To explore the act,
rather than the contents of immediate experience, phenomenologists

VISUAL FORM

263

perform a noetic description of that act. Such a description examines

and gives meaning to the different modes or forms that contain experience. These modes include memory, judgement, synthesis, affection,
negation, temporality, extension, among others.
Although Kant localized these modes in pure consciousness (that is,
consciousness prior to experience), a noetic investigation assumes that
they are more the result of a sharing between object and subject,
thereby belonging to neither sphere, but belonging rather to the
intentional union between the two. So, when George Poulet, in his
phenomenological study on the reading consciousness, explains that
"Reading is exactly that: a way of granting a place . ..",14 it is possible
to interpret imagery in literature as a fully intentional object in which
reader and work are mutually given over to each other. A reading event
is then created, in which both participants remain undifferentiated. If
imagery is understood in this manner, the exploration of its form will
proceed as a noetic study of visual meaning, and will correspond, in
many respects, to the stylistic interpretation Wolfflin has given to art
history. Moreover, if Dufrenne's aesthetics are taken into account, such
a noetic study would unfold the modal edifice of the intentional object's
ontological correlate, that is to say the very work that is present as a
quasi -subjectivity.
If imagery can be apprehended, it must necessarily emerge towards
perception thanks to certain geometrical values, or axial arrangements
that characterize the onlooker's impression. Regardless of whether the
reader observes coherence or disparity between the constituting parts
of the visual plane, the literary object must surrender a distinctive
architecture to consciousness. In turn, it is the role of this distinctive
framework to enhance transparence or to diminish the progress of
visual clarity. As a result of this framework no work is ultimately or
completely visually obscure. How then does imagery formally convey
itself in the intentional act? Or, to phrase the question differently, what
are the formal components that a noetic study should attempt to
uncover?
Such a study could develop, at least in a preliminary way, by
advancing the following questions in order to discover the schematic
components locked within a work's matrix:
Firstly, does the imagery present itself through a uniform and uninterrupted sense of
line, or through the painterly effect of brushstroking? What value, in other words, is
given to linearism, to a sculptural technique seeking to establish definite ocular
boundaries between objects, events, scenes, and so forth. Or, on the other hand, does

264

JOSEPH KRAUSE

the work avoid clear-cut outlines, preferring to circumvent tangible surfaces through the
opacity of a hazy veiling?
Secondly, what is the relationship between the various visual planes? Is there a sense of
coherence, of symmetry between the optical sequences? Does the eye move towards
geometrical regularity, not only by the use of line, but also dimensionally by the use of
mass and volume? In other words, what are the axial directions in the imagery that
contribute to the overlapping or juxtaposition of visual sequences?
Thirdly, what importance is placed on linear, rhythmic, or oscillating movement
through the use of light, and through gradations of color? Does the work evolve against
a monochrome foil, or does it recessionally expand through color and contrastive or
diagonal lighting?

The convergence of these three orientations produces a visual stylistic.

The stylistic uncovers an image's modal or axial configurations by
exploring how the visual plane offers itself to perception linearly,
recessionally, and dynamically. Line, depth, and movement are the
noetic qualities or properties of imagery. They allow imagery to surrender itself to consciousness in the intentional bond and they are, in
ontological terms, the condition for the revelation of a literary work's
being.
Oregon State University, USA
NOTES
1 Although this theory of textual determination is at the center of several of Riffaterre's
works, its most developed applied example can be found in, La Production du texte
(paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979).
2 Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Etre et Ie neant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pp. 24-25.
3 Ibid.,pp.14-16.
4 Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style
in Later Art, trans. M.D. Hottinger (N ew York: Dover, 1950).
5 Ibid., p. 13.
6 Ibid., p. 227. "But we will not forget that our categories are only forms forms of
apprehension and representation - and that they can therefore have no expressional
content in themselves."
7 Sartre, op. cit., p. 24. "Reconnaissons tout d'abord que l'etre du percipi ne peut se
reduire a celui du percipiens - c'est-a-dire a la conscience - ..."
H Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, trans. George Grabowicz (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973). See pp. 29-33.
9 Robert Magliola, Phenomenology and Literature (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue
University Press, 1977), p. 149.
10 Ingarden, op. cit., see pp. 362-63.

VISUAL FORM

265

II Mikel Dufrenne, Phenomenologie de ['experience esthetique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), 2 vols. See particularly p. 313.
12 Magliola, op. cit., p. 161.
13 Edmond Husser!, Meditations cartesiennes, trans. Gabrielle Peiffer and Emmanuel
Levinas., 3ed. 1931 (Paris: Vrin, 1980), p. 43.
14 George Poulet, La conscience critique (paris: Corti, 1971), p. 281. "La lecture est
exactement cela: une fa~on de ceder la place."

SITANSU RAY

INDIAN AND WESTERN MUSIC:

PHENOMENOLOGICAL COMPARISON FROM
T AGORE'S VIEWPOINT

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), both a composer and critic in the

realm of music,! contributed valuable reflections on the art of music
which may be academically discussed in the perspective of phenomenology. From these reflections we can glean his comparative views on
the Indian and the Western music.
Since his boyhood Tagore had had a considerable degree of familiarity with both the Indian and the Western music, thanks to the
cultural environment of his family. In course of time he gathered more
and more experience in listening to music of various countries of the
East and the West. His listening was not just a passive act of enjoyment.
By virtue of his creative consciousness, he got into the depth of the
phenomena of music and in the vast realm of his creative writings he
described these phenomena as he consciously experienced them,
without caring much for the professional's view-points and the traditional theories of music. Herein lies the utility of the phenomenological
approach to Tagore's perceptions. Such, an approach will add a newer
dimension to comparative music aesthetics. Tagore revealed his subjectivity most objectively and we know that objective interpretation of
subjectivity is the appropriate methodology of phenomenological investigation. In this investigation the whole thing will be judged from the
perceiver's (i.e., Tagore's) point of view of reception of performances
which are the best results of the performers' training, practice and
artistic execution. Tagore's phenomenological reflections are far more
than a music-critic's review. They can stand the test of the firstness,
secondness and thirdness of Peircean phenomenology.2
The first and foremost objective distinction between the Indian and
the Western classical music lies in the fact that while the ragas and
raginis (i.e., the classical melodies) form the essence of Indian classical
music, the score and execution of Western Classical music are manifested in its harmony. The principle of melody is succession of notes,
while that of harmony is concordance of more than one note at a time
along with the underlying melody or melodies. This very fact led

267
M. Kronegger (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXII, 267-272.
1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

268

SITANSU RAY

Tagore react in a peculiar way according to his individual fashion. In

the context of experiencing the Handel festival in the Crystal Palace in
London in 1912, Tagore wrote the essay entitled Sangit3 (music), in
which (as well as in other writings) we can see his comparative evaluation of the Western and the Indian musical culture. He commented that
while Europe is casting its glance at the varieties, India is concentrating
on "One". He was amazed to see four thousand participants playing and
singing at a time in the Handel festival, the execution of which requires
tremendous power. The performance of an Indian raga, on the other
hand, is the execution of mainly one person, whose aim is to concentrate on the melodious play over that raga. The Indian classical
music is, as it were, the music of "One". Of course, that "One" is not
secluded, but all-pervading, that is, akin to the infinite.
It may seem that such metaphorical statements are the outcome of
Tagore's personal realization only. But, actually it is not so. Phenomenology must proceed towards the universal qualities of phenomena. So,
let us take notice of an almost similar comparative evaluation forwarded
by a Western scholar, who is no other than A. H. Fox Strangways.
The one seems to say ... Life is puzzling, its claims are many, its enthusiasms hardly
come by; but we will hammer out a solution not by turning away from ugliness, but by
compelling it to serve the ends of beauty. The other - Life is simple, and beauty close
at every moment whenever we look or listen or wherever we go; the mistake is in
ourselves if we do not train our eyes and ears and hearts to find it.4
... in India the singer's tones can still carryall the artistry which his mind can conceive,
and while in England, especially, concerted music has always been highly prized, and
rightly so, for its social element, it is apt to fall short of the highest ideals, since it is
never so easy to find an artistic crowd as an artistic individual. s

On the whole, both Tagore's and Strangways's reflections point to the

multitudinous character of the Western music and the solitariness of
Indian melodies. Very often Tagore analogized the solo performance of
Indian melody with the infinite oneness of still midnight and the
multitudinous character of Western music with the din and bustle of
active day time.
Both the Sahnai (the North Indian Classical wind instrument, played
by blowing) and the band party in the western style are very much
popular in India during festivities, especially during a marriage ceremony. It seemed to Tagore that the music of the band party expresses

INDIAN AND WESTERN MUSIC

269

the lavish grandeur of a gathering engaged in merriment and that of the

Sahnai expresses the monistic calmness full of pathos or the pangs of
the dualistic hearts for re-union. Human marriage is nothing but an
earthly paradigm of that dualism, i.e., the original "He" (Purusha) and
the original "She" (Prakriti) pangfully urging for re-union into the
monistic whole,6 wherefrom they were divided. Off and on, Tagore felt
that the Indian classical music is the music of cosmic emotion and never
associated with the social enjoyment of human life. It rather expresses
the solitude and vastness surrounding us from all sides. To quote a little
from Tagore: It is never its function to provide fuel for the flame of our gaiety, but to temper it and

add to it a quality of depth and detachment. The truth of this becomes evident when
one considers that Siihiinii is the riigini specially used for the occasion of wedding
festivals. It is not at all gay or frolicsome, but almost sad in its solemnity.7

That sort of ethos emerges from the very fact that very often the notes
of Indian classical music are related with the preceding and/or following notes with subtle relationship of meends and shrutis (glides and
micro-tones). That is why the key-board instruments used in the
Western music are generally unsuitable for the Indian classical music.
The notes in Western music are straight in their own tempered positions and clearly separated from one another.
The next important point of distinction between the Indian classical
music and the Western classical music as revealed through Tagore's
phenomenological reflections lies in the characteristic phenomena that
whatever is performed in the Western classical music is a pt;e-planned
finished composition, already determined and scored by the composer;
whereas in the Indian classical music each and every moment is
intuitively ever-creative, full of extempore improvisations over a little
composition. That is why, there are notations in front of the Western
musicians; but an Indian artiste sings or plays with the help of his or her
creative training (gayaki talim) , rich memory and fertile imagination.
Variations of melodic flourish and ornamentations cannot be preprescribed and rigidly fixed as in the Western Classical music. They
emerge anew and anew, and yet maintain the basic pathways of the
respective raga or ragini being sung or played. Of course, the artiste
must be of superb quality with sufficent phenomenological grounding of
the raga or ragini to be performed.
The next point, Tagore noticed, is that, in spite of melodic freedom,

270

SITANSU RAY

the beat-structure and rhythmic tempo are rigidly fixed in Indian music.
During a course of discussion with Einstein, Tagore told him In European music you have a comparative liberty about time, but not about melody.
But in India we have freedom of melody with no freedom of time. s

The rhythmic tempo of Western music is flexible. It rises and falls

according to the musical mood or motion to be expressed.
Another important point of comparison between the Indian and the
Western music is associated with the age-old problem of representation.
During his first visit to London at the age of seventeen he heard the
singing of Madam Nilsson,9 the -then artiste of a great reputation. She
sang nature-songs giving imitation of birds' cries, a kind of mimicry as it
were. Tagore could recollect that experience in later days. During a
close conversation with Romain Rolland in France at the age of about
sixty-five, he referred to that phenomenon and evaluated it in comparison with Indian music in this way:
Music should capture the delight of birds' songs, giving human form to the joy with
which a bird sings. But it would not try to be a representation of such songs. Take the
Indian rain songs. They do not try to imitate the sound of falling raindrops. They
rekindle the joy of rain-festivals, and convey something of the feeling associated with
the rainy season. 10

Regarding the role of emotion in music, Tagore asked Rolland I want to ask you a question. The purpose of art is not to give expression to emotion
but to use it for the creation of significant form .... In European music I find, however,
that an attempt is sometimes made to give expression to particular emotions. Is this
desirable? Should not music also use emotion as material only, and not an end in
itself?"

Rolland replied A great musician must always use emotion as substance out of which beautiful forms
are created. But in Europe musicians have had such an abundance of good material
that they tend to overemphasise the emotional aspects. A great musician must have
poise, for without it his work perishes.''' 2

No final judgment is possible on the role of emotion in the art of music

whether in India or in the West. The Wagner-Hans lick encounter is a
well-known episode, out of which came Hanslick's The Beautiful in
Music.B No emotional influx, but only the dynamic property of

INDIAN AND WESTERN MUSIC

271

emotion is admitted in the realm of music by Hanslick in his revolutionary book. In India we find that music-dramas and lyrical songs bear
more or less the stamp of emotion, but the classical forms and styles
tend to be serene. Emotion may be there in pure music, but that sort of
emotion may be best termed as nothing but musical emotion.
Forms and styles of the art of music must and should differ in the
East and the West, nay, in every region even in the same culture. After
all, music is a lively performing art having varieties of evolving forms
and styles throughout the world. Still, some distinguished personalities
claim it as universal. Some such personalities are Romain Rolland,14 H.
G. Wells,15 and, last but not least, Rabindranath Tagore.
While Wells pronounced, "Music is of all things in the world the
most intemational,"16 Tagore explained to him Certain forms of tunes and melodies which move us profoundly seem to baffle Western
listeners; yet, as you say, perhaps closer acquaintance with them may gradually lead to
their appreciation in the West. I 7

This cherished closer acquaintance will add to phenomenological

grounding of the receptive mind, which will explore the world-culture,
identify and compare the intra and intercultural characteristics and
nonetheless will trace out the inevitable and universal aesthetic appeal
of various musical forms and styles of the East and the West. It will be
a newer venture towards the research of phenomenological aesthetics of
music.
Visva-Bahrati University, West Bengal, India

NOTES
I Please see Rabindranath Tagore's Gitabitan (Collection of songs in three parts),
Swarabitan (notations in sixty two volumes), and Sangit-Chinta (Thoughts on music: a
posthumous anthology, 1392 B.S.), all published by the Visva-Bharati Publishing
Department).
2 Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Harvard University Press (1934-35),
1960 edition. ''The Principles of Phenomenology", Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed.
J. Buchler, (Dover Publications, 1955) pp. 74-97.
3 Rabindranath Tagore, "Sangit" (music), Sangit Chinta, Visva-Bharati, 1392 B.S., pp.
31-43.
Originally the article was published in the Bengali journal Bharati in the Agrahayan
issue in 1319 B.S.

272

SITANSU RAY

4 A. H. Fox Strangways, The Music of Hindostan, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914) Ch.
XII,p.340.
5 Ibid., p. 341.
6 Rabindranath Tagore, "Sangit", Sangit-Chinta, op. cit., pp. 33-34; "Sangiter Mukti"
(emancipation of music), Sangit-chinta, pp. 48-49; Dharma (Religion), RabindraRachanavali (Tagore Works) Volume 12, Tagore Birthday centenary edition, Govt, of
West Bengal, 1961, p. 10 and in many other portions in Tagore's works.
7 Rabindranath Tagore, "Foreword" to Thirty Songs from the Punjab and Kashmir,
written by Ratan Devi and A. K. Coomaraswamy, (London: Old Bourne Press, 1913),
Sangit-Chinta, op. cit., p.327.
Ratan Devi was an European musician, married to the great art-critic Ananda K.
Coomaraswamy. Ratan Devi learnt Indian music from a traditional master and sang
superbly. Tagore listened to her singing in London in 1912. The quoted portion is just
a phenomenological reflection of Tagore while listening to her singing.
8 ''Tagore and Einstein", Sangit-Chinta, op. cit., p. 345 (Originally the conversation
was published in Asia (V.SA.) in March 1931 issue.
9 "Tagore and Rolland", Sangit-Chinta, op. cit., pp. 337-338.
10 Ibid., p. 338.
11 Ibid., p. 334.
12 Ibid., p. 334.
13 Edward Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music (Von Musikalisch Schonen 1854) tr.
Gustav Cohen, ed. Morris Weitz. The Liberal Arts Press, U.S.A., 1957.
14 "Tagore and Rolland', Sangit-Chinta, op. cit., pp. 333-341.
15 ''Tagore and H. G. Wells", Sangit-Chinta, op. cit., pp. 348-349 (Originally
published in Asia, March 1931, U.S.A.).
16 Ibid., p. 348.
17 Ibid., p. 348.

INDEX OF NAMES

Aristotle 29,152,259
Auden, W. H. 249-257

Friedrich of Prussia 6
Fuentes, C. 239

Ba, Mariama 132-148

Bachelard, Gaston 187
Barthes, R. 104
Bataille, G. 84-85
Bergson, H. 185,188,189,190
Borgstrom, Olaf 149
Bowen, E. 104,109
Buffum, I. 212
Butor, M. 239,243,245

Gadamer, H.-G. 18,36,195,201,202

Galileo, G. 183
Geiger, M. xiii
George, Stefan 49,51
Gide, A. 117,157
Goethe, J. W. von xii, 3, 12
Graf, Nico 119
Grass, Giinther 63
Groethuysen, Bernhard 118

Cain, James 76
Calderon, de la Barca 99
Camus, Albert 45
Cervantes, Miguel de 23
Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de 125
Chinua,Achebe 131,132
Christophory, Jules 126
Claudel, Paul 118
Confucius 193
Corneille, P. 212
Curtius, E. R. 118

Hegel,F.20,49,151
Heidegger, M. xiii, 18, 20, 30, 36, 49,
50, 54-68, 77, 84, 153, 183, 189,
195,201,203-206,261
Hemmen, Emile 127
Heraclitus 55
Hobbema, M. 260
Holderlin, F. 49, 54, 56
Hueffer, Ford Maddox 186
Hulme, T. E. 185,189
Humboldt, W. von 5,52
Hurston, Zora Neale 143
Husserl, E. xiii, 27, 28, 46, 49, 63, 64,
71,183,227-229

Darwin, Ch. 154

Delcourt, M. 118
Derrida, J. 104,109,153
Dufrenne, M. 186-190,193
Dune, Edmond 119-120

Ingarden, R. xiii, 36,184,189,261

Iser, W. 36, 109,249-257

Eagleton, Terry 107

Elam, Keir 211

Jauss, H. G. 36
J oris, Pierre 119

Faulkner, W. H. 27-28,71-85,242
Fenellosa, Ernest 186
Fielding, S. 150
Flaubert, G. 23, 24
Fontanier, P. 153
Freud, S. 108

Kafka,F. 19,22
Kant, I. 6,49,62,65,261,263
Klecker,N. 124-125,127
Kliueva, T. 115
Koltz, Anise 118-119
Kristeva, J. 108,109

273

274

INDEX OF NAMES

Kundera,M. 165-177
Lacan, J. 104, 107, 109
Lafayette, M. M. 99-100
Leclercq, Dom Jean 126
Lee, Pen-ti 181
L6vinas, E. xiii, 71-85
Lewis, W. 186
Li, Po 181
Lugo-Filippi, C. 239-240
Magliola, R. 261
Mallarme, St. 109
Manderscheid, Roger 123
Mann, Th. 24, 29
Mayrisch, E. 117-118
McIntyre, R. 235
McLeish, A 52
Meder, Cornel 126
Merleau-Ponty, M. xiii, 40-41, 47, 157,
186
Moliere, J.-B. 97,98,214,215
Morina, Mimmo 126
Moritz, K. Ph. 3,9,12,13
Mukarovsky,Jan 211
Miiller, Giinther 26
Munch, E. 65,68
Murray, Donald 181
Nietzsche, F. 49,195-200,201,206
Noppeney, Marcel 125
Pascal, B. 99
Pater, W. 187,192
Peirce, Ch. S. 271
Pindar 49
Plato 49, 153
Plautine 96
Pollock, J. 260
Portante, J. 119
Poulet, G. 263
Pound,E. 51,54,181,183,185,188193
Propp, V. 105
Proust, M. 29,35,242
Rathenau, Walter 118

Reeve, R. 239
Riblet-Buchmann, Dom, R. 126
Richardson, L. 150-151
Richardson, W. J. 49
Ricoeur, Paul xiii, 17,29,132,152,153
Ries, Cecile 115-116
Riffaterre, M. 259
Rilke, Rainer M. 49,51,56,188
Rio, Michel 149-156
Riviere, J. 118
Rhaner, Karl 255-256
Robbe-Grillet, A 39-48
Rodange, M. 116-117
Rotrou, J. 211-224
Rousset, J. 216
Ruysdael, J. V. 260
Sartre, J.-P. 20, 23, 245, 246, 259,
261
Schaack, Robert 125
Schiller, K. 3,4,5,6,8,10,12
Schlechter, L. 122
Schlumberger, J. 118
Senghor, L. S. 118
Shakespeare, W. 96, 99
Smith, D. W. 235
Socrates 67, 68
Sophocles 49
Steinbeck, J. 76
Sterne, H. 150, 153
Stifter, A 27,29-30,35
Stomp-Erpelding, L. 118,127
Svevo, I. 92
Tagore, R. 267-271
Theisen, H. 116
Tolkien, J. R. R. 227
Trakl,G.49,51,56
Tymieniecka, A-T. xi-xiv, 71, 83-84,
158,160,161,192
Unamuno, M. de xiii
Unden,Lily 115-116
Van Gogh, V. 65,201-202
Vargas, Llosa 28-29, 36
Vattimo, Gianni 201

INDEX OF NAMES

Wellek, R. 62
Whitman, W. 71
Wittgenstein, L. 192
Wolfflin, H. 261-264

Wordsworth, W. 50-57
Yeats, W. B. 52

275

Analecta Husserliana
The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research
Editor-in-Chief

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning,
Belmont, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

1. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Volume 1 ofAnalecta Husserliana. 1971

ISBN 90-277-0171-7
2. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology.
Idealism - Realism, Historicity and Nature. 1972
ISBN 90-277-0223-3
3. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible
Worlds. The 'A Priori', Activity and Passivity of Consciousness, Phenomenology and Nature. 1974
ISBN 90-277-0426-0
4. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), lngardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialised Studies
Establishing the Field of Research. 1976
ISBN 90-277-0628-X
5. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Crisis of Culture. Steps to Reopen the
ISBN 90-277-0632-8
Phenomenological Investigation of Man. 1976
6. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Self and the Other. The Irreducible Element in
Man, Part I. 1977
ISBN 90-277-0759-6
7. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Human Being in Action. The Irreducible Element
in Man, Part II. 1978
ISBN 90-277-0884-3
8. Nitta, Y. and Hirotaka Tatematsu (eds.), Japanese Phenomenology.
Phenomenology as the Trans-cultural Philosophical Approach. 1979
ISBN 90-277-0924-6
9. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology. The
Irreducible Element in Man, Part III. 1979
ISBN 90-277-0981-5
10. Wojtyla, K., The Acting Person. Translated from Polish by A. Potocki. 1979
ISBN Hb 90-277-0969-6; Pb 90-277-0985-8
11. Ales Bello, A. (ed.), The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology.
1981
ISBN 90-277-1071-6
12. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Philosophical Reflection of Man in Literature.
Selected Papers from Several Conferences held by the International Society for
Phenomenology and Literature in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Includes the
ISBN 90-277-1312-X
essay by A-T. Tymieniecka, Poetica Nova. 1982
13. Kaelin, E. F., The Unhappy Consciousness. The Poetic Plight of Samuel
Beckett. An Inquiry at the Intersection of Phenomenology and literature. 1981
ISBN 90-277-1313-8
14. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human
Condition. Individualisation of Nature and the Human Being. (Part I:) Plotting

Analecta Husserliana
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.
25.
26.
27.

28.

the Territory for Interdisciplinary Communication. 1983

Part II see below under Volume 21.
ISBN 90-277-1447-9
Tymieniecka, A-T. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), Foundations of Morality,
Human Rights, and the Human Sciences. Phenomenology in a Foundational
ISBN 90-277-1453-3
Dialogue with Human Sciences. 1983
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Soul and Body in Husserlian Phenomenology. Man
and Nature. 1983
ISBN 90-277-1518-1
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue Between
ISBN 90-277-1620-X
Chinese and Occidental Philosophy. 1984
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition:
Poetic - Epic - Tragic. The Literary Genre. 1984
ISBN 90-277-1702-8
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition. (part
1:) The Sea. From Elemental Stirrings to Symbolic Inspiration, Language, and
Life-Significance in Literary Interpretation and Theory. 1985
For Part 2 and 3 see below under Volumes 23 and 28.
ISBN 90-277-1906-3
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.) , The Moral Sense in the Communal Significance of
Life. Investigations in Phenomenological Praxeology: Psychiatric Therapeutics,
Medical Ethics and Social Praxis within the Life- and Communal World. 1986
ISBN 90-277-2085-1
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human
Condition. Part II: The Meeting Point Between Occidental and Oriental
Philosophies. 1986
ISBN 90-277-2185-8
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Morality within the Life- and Social World. Interdisciplinary Phenomenology of the Authentic Life in the 'Moral Sense'. 1987
Sequel to Volumes 15 and 20.
ISBN 90-277-2411-3
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition. Part
2: The Airy Elements in Poetic Imagination. Breath, Breeze, Wind, Tempest,
ISBN 90-277-2569-1
Thunder, Snow, Flame, Fire, Volcano ... 1988
Tymieniecka, A-T., Logos and Life. Book I: Creative Experience and the
ISBN Hb 90-277-2539-X; Pb 90-247-2540-3
Critique of Reason. 1988
Tymieniecka, A-T., Logos and Life. Book II: The Three Movements of the
ISBN Hb 90-277-2556-X; Pb 90-247-2557-8
Soul. 1988
Kaelin, E. F. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), American Phenomenology. Origins
and Developments. 1989
ISBN 90-277-2690-6
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Man within his Life-World. Contributions to
Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe. 1989
ISBN 90-277-2767-8
Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Elemental Passions of the Soul. Poetics of the
ISBN 0-7923-0180-3
Elements iI'l the Human Condition, Part 3. 1990

Analecta Husserliana
29. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Man's Self-Interpretation-in-Existence. Phenomenology and Philosophy of Life. - Introducing the Spanish Perspective. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0324-5
30. Rudnick, H. H. (ed.), Ingardeniana II. New Studies in the Philosophy of
Roman Ingarden. With a New International Ingarden Bibliography. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0627-9
31. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Moral Sense and Its Foundational Significance:
Self, Person, Historicity, Community. Phenomenological Praxeology and
Psychiatry. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0678-3
32. Kronegger, M. (ed.), Phenomenology and Aesthetics. Approaches to Comparative Literature and Other Arts. Homages to A-T. Tymieniecka. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0738-0
33. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Ingardenia Ill. Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a
New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: The Performing Arts, the
Fine Arts, and Literature. 1991 (forthcoming)
Sequel to Volumes 4 and 30
ISBN 0-7923-1014-4

Kluwer Academic Publishers - Dordrecht / Boston / London