The Visible and the Invisible in the Interplay between Philosophy, Literature and Reality (Analecta Husserliana)

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE IN THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND REALITY

ANALECTA HUSSE RLIANA TH E YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL

RESEARCH

VOLUME LXXV

Founder and Editor-in-Chief" A N NA - T ER ES A TYMIE NI ECK A

The World Institute fo r Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learnin g Hanover, New Hampshi re

For sequel volumes see the end of this volume.

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE IN THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND REALITY

Ed ite d by

ANNA-T ER ESA TYMIENIECKA The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Ad vanced Phenomenological Research and Learning A-T. Tymieniec ka, President

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON

Library of Cong ress Catalogi ng-in-Publica tion Data is availa ble.

ISB N 1-4020-0070- 7

Pub lished by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and di stributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publish ers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other co untries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Acade mic Publ ishers, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved

© 2002 Kluwer Academ ic Publ isher s No part of the mate rial protected by this copyright notice may be reprodu ced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan ical, includ ing phot ocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrie val system. without written permission fro m the copyrig ht owner. Print ed in The Nether lands.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE THEMATIC STUDY / The Visible and the Invisible in the Dynamic Manifestation of Life

VII

SECTION I GRASPING THE HIDDEN SPHERE OF REALITY MARfA AVELINA CECILIA / Symbol and Metaphor: The Search for the "Hidden Side" of Reality in Contemporary Philosophy RICHARD K. KHURI / Beyond Intelligibility: Ciphers, Beauty, and the Glow of Being RAYMOND 1. WILSON III/Metaphoric and Metonymic Symbolism: A Development from Paul Ricoeur's Concepts MARA STAFECKA /Where Does Meaning Come From? NATIKA NEWTON / Privileged Access and Merleau-Ponty

11 27

49 63 71

SECTION II THE HIDDEN REALITIES IN THE EVERYDAY LIFE-WORLD GARY BACKHAUS /The Hidden Realities of the Everyday LifeWorld in Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Genet's The Balcony JACK JACOBS / Phenomenology and Revolutionary Romanticism MATTI ITKONEN / The Milieu: A Chart of our Margin of Play

81 117 139

SECTION III FROM INSPIRATION TO EXPRESSION VICTOR KOCAY / Inspiration and its Expression: The Dialectic of Sentiment in the Writings of Benjamin Constant GALEN A. JOHNSON / The Invisible and the Unpresentable: Barnett Newman's Abstract Expressionism and the Aesthetics of Merleau-Ponty

v

159

179

TABLE OF C O N TE NT S

VI

The Visible and the Invisible: T. S. Eliot's Littl e Gidding and Edmund Husserl's Expression and Meanin g 191 ALB ERTO LL. CARI LLO CA N A N / Gadamer's Leveling of the Visual and the Verbal, and the "Experience of Art" 199 ROMA N KATSMA N / The Miracle of Literature: An EthicalAesthetical Theory of Mythopoiesis 211 B ERNAD E TT E PRO CH A S K A /

SECTION IV THE INVISIBLE IN TRACE AND MEMORY Recogni zing Invisibility, Revising Memor y H OW AR D PEA RCE / Poiesis and the Withdrawal: The Garden-Motive in Henry Jame s, Wallace Stevens , and David Mamet AN T ON IO MOLIN A FLOR ES / Las Bibliotecas Invisibles M ElLI ST E EL E /

235 253 279

SECTION V THE PLAY: VISIBLE, INVISIBLE M AX S T ATKI EWI C Z /

Resemblance: Play between the Visible and the

Invisible

293

"Seeing Clearly in Darkness" : Blindnes s as Insight in Proust's In Search of Lost Time and Gide's Pastoral Symphony S ITANSU R AY /The Phenomenology of Music: A Vital Source of Tagore's Creativity

311

I ND EX O F NA MES

319

BR UCE S . WAT SON /

305

AC KN O W L E D G E MEN T S

As this collection of select studies goes to print I want to express my warmest apprecia tion to the authors who presented them at the 2000 conference of the Society of Phenomenology and Literature, in Cambridge, Mass. and those who followed us to our sess ion at the American Philosophical Association in New York, Decemb er 2000 . Their dedica tion and inventive spirit carries our precio us work ahead. My ass istant-secretaries Jeff Hurlburt and Lou is Houthakk er deser ve thanks for their dedicated help in the preparation of these conferences as well as in preparation of this volume. Particular thanks are due Robert Wise Jr. for proofreading the volum e and preparing the Index of Names. A-T. T.

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TH E TH E M ATI C ST UD Y: TH E V IS I B LE AN D TH E I N VI SIB L E I N THE D Y NA MI C MAN I F E S TATI ON OF LIFE

The appearance of Merlea u-Ponty's posthumous work under the title The Visible and the Invisible electrified the philosophi cal imagi nation. In their contrast, the terms "visible and invisible" seem to offer a new way of seeing the reality which appeared in the history of philosoph y in Plato's distinction between the world of senses, and its presumption of doxa, and the world of ideas, and its wisdom of episteme, and in Descartes' doubtable knowledge of the senses and the certainty of the mind, and in Husserl's natural cognitive acts and eidoi. Yet, one will ask whether this distincti on of the visible and invisible doe s not go beyond the class ic philo sophical epistemological and ontological perspective: whether it does not go beyond even the invisibility of the hum an language and the co ntras ting bod ily found ation of cog nition. Following its enigmatic inspiration, I will attempt to pass in review and to follow the stirring, enigmatic power of this imaginative enunciation through the numerous spheres of life in its manifestation in the world in its human significance. At first glance, we would venture that this pair of categorie s is as bound toge ther as the two sides of a coi n; when we flip a coin, one side comes up and the other remains in the darkne ss. Better, we may compare it with a thing (being) and its shadow : eve ryt hing in the rig ht light co nditio ns throws a shadow. The sha dow follow s the im mine ntly rea l in itse lf, it follows its form and position (situation) in space accor ding to the lightin g situation of the real being which throws it. But neither of these comparisons gras ps the essential modalities of the bond between the two categorie s: they reside in their undi ssoci ab le junct ion and disjuncti on . Foll owing the enig matic modalities of their nature and relationship might bring us some further insight into the manifestation of life and its logistics. a. Let us throw a glance upon the primordial incipient step of our human constitution of the world and ourse lves, namely, upon the sphere of sensory perception. We witness here the disjunction/conjunction of the visible and the invisible on its classic gro und. Altho ugh the ways of perceiving a physical object express the ways in which the components of our beingness - body and mind - are themselves

A.-T. Tym ieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 1-7. © 2002 Klu wer Academic Publishers. Print ed in the Nethe rlands.

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co nstituted so as to be the main factors of the man ifestation of the wo rld within and without us, nevertheless the prop er aim of perception is to put the "o bject" perceived at "a distance" fro m us, as a foc us of our atten tio n. In this the "visual" opaqueness of the objec t already sta nds in fro nt of us as a block to the invi sibi lity which we would seek in vain to br ing to lig ht. Yet perception as the mode of "appeara nce" of the object involves a sig nifica nt play of the visible and the invisi ble. As Husserl has brough t out, in vis ual perception we always see o nly a part of an object, the o ther pa rt be ing invisible but presum ed . When we see the fro nt of a vase and some part of the top , we presum e its back upon remembrance of previous perception s which gave us precisely this back, or sides, or bottom , or top. But the totalit y, the who le of the object perce ived is never give n to per cept ion at one gla nce. W he n we adv ance o n an object fro m one direct ion , its sides faci ng th e opposite direction recede to the sta tus of presum ed aspects that co mplete the picture. We see here that sensory percept ion as the primord ial co nst itutio n of a thin g or being and of the world of life, hum an life, calls for a co nstruc tive interp lay between the visi ble and the invisible sides in which they see m partl y to pass into eac h other, throu gh whic h interpl ay we arrive at a grasp of the object, which apprehens ion is in itself an intuitive intellective act that leaves bot h sides beh ind while dist ill ing fro m them an inte llec tive struc ture (essence?) of the object intend ed. In this perceptual process the line betwee n the visib le and the invis ible is not only a moving line - so long as the same focus is mai ntained - but the two rea lms pass par tly in to each other; in pass ing into the invisible but pres umed their con stitutive play lies in between the two extremes of the human perceptive horizons. These two opposites not on ly call for eac h other but to a grea t degree they are determined as a function of eac h other: we adva nce in perception not only by moving from what we see at the moment but also from what we have alrea dy seen, which delineates the invisib le thereafter. Beginning on the perceptua l level, a hum an being in all his vital and lifesharing dealin gs threads his way through this disjun ctive/conjunctive pair of ca tego ries , the known and the unkn own. Th e co mmunication skills in which we learn to kn ow fo rm the unknown , which is co mmunica ted to us by lan gu age, which partl y brings rea lity into the light and partl y hides it in darkn ess. What is co mmunica ted co mes through the partly spoken - the overt - which brings into the open and partl y through what is not spo ken, through silence, which is sometimes more significant than the spoken word. Togeth er with every particular statement, agreement, contract in which grea test effort is

TH E T HE M AT IC ST UDY

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put to "leave nothin g unsaid, nothin g unclear" there lie fringes of the unsaid and the invisibl y uncl arified . In brief, in interw ordl y human existence every statement of fact made by a witness directly is accomp anied by the shadow of doubt as to his accuracy in obse rvation or as to his grasp of the details. In the ex perience of a co nsc ious being the rea lity of ex istence divides int o the clearly-at-hand and the remote and obsc ure. Proceeding from perception as the groundwo rk of the intellig ible manifes tation of life in the simultaneo us albeit twofold but int erm ingl ed and undissociable constitution of the human significance of life throu gh the world of life and the human individual himself, the intellective world of the human mind goes through all the constitutive spheres up to the pure and abstract level of the int ell ect 's ow n exe rcise. Di scriminati on and measuring, co mparing and distributing, judging and stating and other innum erabl e mode s of intellectual work all involve the play betwe en the visible and the invisible in nuanced modalities. At this point great and decisive que stion s arise . First, is this play between the visible and the invisible at this originary sphere proper only to human percept ion ? What about the other living beings that also sense and perce ive according to the ir own cog nitive sys tems? Are the sentient and percepti ve functions not a basic groundwork for their vital existence also? Perceiving , sensing and seeking food, shelter might - and certainly does - involve the multipl e modalities of the visible and the invisible. Being in the light or in the shadow of the sun, being in "the open" or "g oing into hiding," digging in the soi l for "hidden treasures," an inborn tendency of dogs, digging tunnels into the ground in order to spend the winter months quietly by hid ing from surface events in the open, these and innumera ble other strategies indicate the vital existential play of the visible and the invisible. That play of visible and the invisible emerges as a specific device of consciousness, of life. We also speak of the hidden dimensions of the sea, the dark, unkno wn depth s of the earth; we seek to discover the hidden in jungles and desert s unknown to us, and we spec ulate about invisible planets and stars. Would this mean that the play between the visible and the invisible is go ing on also in the natur e con stituting the world , in the inanimate nature of the cosmo s per se? We observe immediately, however, that the se "invisible" or "hidden" or "out of sight" aspects of the world are such to the se ns ing, perc eiving, cognizing, appreciating mind or "s ubject" who con stitute s this world , cosmos and his/her existenti al involvement in it. How would this world , sea, planets etc. ever "appear" in the categories of the visible and the invisible aside from this involvement?

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Hen ce, we may an ticipa te our co ncl us ion that these categories apply specificaIly and - so far as we know - uniquely, to the realm of the existential involveme nt of living beings, in the manifestation of life on earth. Indeed, these paired categories in the innu merable modalities of their mutual intertwining - co nstitutive, orga nizing, foundi ng, generative - appear as the essential device of life in the manifes tatio n of the human world with its vita l as we Il as specificaIly human significance . After we have note d their role with respec t to the originary constitutive involvement of the living being with the worl d in the surg ing of the mani festation of life, we will briefly peruse their role in the perform ance of other hum an faculties. b. Memory in itself retains the visible present saving it from vanishing into oblivion and allowi ng its reca Il into the present even if in the faded visibility of a men tal image, eve n if foregoi ng det ails, losi ng nuan ces and often dis figuri ng the visible prototype. Even such an inadequ ate corresponde nce to the visible event in memory's image enhances its status of realit y, as a claim to redeem its apparent loss, stands there as a verifying support. The continuity of our real, visible life is as it were doubl ed by the frag mentary images commem orating it and rem aining in hiding in our mind ready to be recaIled. It is in memory that we retrieve from the unkn own roads trave led by our ances tors the traces of civi lization they left in their passage. The ruins of their industry hidd en in the earth an d invisible to human ity for ce nt uries are uncovered and bro ught into the light and the play begi ns betwee n the visible but enigmatic and the invisib le that gives it mea ning, to yield up the key to the mys tery of the past. T he vestiges of mill ennial cu ltures which have receded into invisibi lity and whic h we eit her discover or presume to have exis ted, their traces in mysterious inscriptions on the waIls of caves or on excavated mo numen ts testify to the far-off hu man heredity in which we unknowingly participate. T hese sphe res of life hinted at or uncovered by memory give a horizon to own history and project outskirts to life manifested. Memory stirs the entire sentien t, felt, imagi ning, inteIlective apparatus of our hum an being, and we retrieve the lost, hidden, and invisible in felt, although faded, co lors of experience . How eloquent in thi s half dark ness and half ope ned horizon stand the monument s and liken esses of our remarkable personalities , heroes and venera ted saints. They brin g forth into the light ideals of peo ple, nations and hum anit y to be retri eved in their hidden significance by our memo ry of their deeds, achievements, etc . Wh at an imm en se back grounding wealth of mem ories is store d by hum anity in libraries and museum s! Eac h book that we investigate refers to other books in all directions as if there were only one network , one enor mous web of the hum an spiri t, whic h lies in the background of our lives with its

THE THEMATIC ST U DY

5

hidden message . Yet, although hidden, it keeps this message in existence; even if it is not consulted, it lies there ready to be activated; memory may make it come alive, bringing to light the experiences, appreciations, views , feelings , value s which made up the exi stence of past generations through the work of human genius. These traces , this background, ready to be revived in memory and retrieved in the light, these vestiges of the past give to present human life and culture - to each present human life and culture - a vast horizon within which the human being situate s himself and draw s bearing s for his dignity as a human being . In fact , the human psyche with its life and world horizons enci rcles an invisible univer se made up of several dim ensions half in the present and half remembered ; half visible and half imagined; half real and half presumed; half coming to the surface of experience - half hidden in the depths. c. Thi s work of bring ing to light retained memory is done in conj unction with the other human faculties at work and not only with the aforementioned intelIective faculty. Forernostly, it is imagination which in tandem weaves the canvas of the hum an psyche by way of adaptive trans fusion s of sense, imagetransformations, model-recov ery, all working toward restoration, etc . It brings it in a vertiginous flexib ility in interpreting the retained in the light of the present at hand as well as in that of expectations. Imagination projects the bridges, the significa nt links, the di screte continuity between the trace s left by memory for retrieval, but in doing so it projects a radiu s half in light a nd half progressively receding into the shadows, unclear and ind istinct. Its images exp and our ps ychic universe , mingling with realities in a fullne ss with innumerable dimensions, the felt horizon of our ex istenc e. d. The human creative process brings all the hum an faculties into a vertiginous game in which the visible and the invisible meet in all the mod alit ies of their mutual exchange. As the poet ic vision of Rainer Maria Rilke tell s us, how mightily there occurs within the human bein g the permanent tran substantiation of the visible and the invisible ! Running through all the spheres of a living being 's existential deployment within the manifestation of life in real, presumed, imaginary and pos sibl e universes, it is in the spheres of arti stic creat ivity and of the spirit that this device in which the human fac ulties expand the human orbit of life finds its climax. Here comes into its fulI ro le the faculty of the will , which in various weaker modalities has been at work from the beginning of our involvement with memory. Will, now come s "out of invisibility, out of hiding." It has been working incessantly, prompting us to seek, to link, to communicate with the

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past. Now in the creative endeavor it assumes a crucial role. Will which throughout has been dynamising our memorizing and our imagining toward their unfurling, becomes in the creative process a leading factor. The artist "wants" to bring the light of the genius hidden in his/her innermost being into the open, he wants to give to it its invisible nature contours, shape, intellective sense . The will appears in the full assortment of its constitutive powers: its specific dynamism brings together - surges from - blind desires to advance, mute impulses to undertake, stirrings to search for the unknown, and an indomitable striving to expand, to reach further, beyond the known, beyond the visible to attain the impossible, unknown, infinite. We might consider the creative process to be already from its incipient stage going on "in hiding," in the dark inward realm of its agent, invisible to the outer world. But going deeper into the nature of the process itself, the intent of which is to bring up a pearl sunk in the depths of a sea, there is the guide for plunging into the obscure waves in that search . We see that this plunge is itself not only the searching of the waters but also the putting of the moments of discovery before the mirror of imagination, which fulgurates with imaginary proposals and brings selected material to the surface of the world in which ultimately the doubly hidden and invisible creative fragments are meant to coalesce in a visible creative product. The invisible universe of the creator within which these magical discoveries and transformations occur is also that of his/her visible universe in the light of the world. In brief, the artistic presentation of the creative product is conjured in the dynamic play of the visible and the invisible . Yet its creative message releases the visible again to rise into the imaginary infinity of the spirit. e. This play of the visible and the invisible on the wings of imaginatio creatrix is repeated, albeit in an inverse order in the reception of the work of art. For example, in a written work, the written text is there, in the open , but its significance lies in the dark, to be discovered, and there it is that we call upon our imagination and memory of all we know and seek the hidden universe of the story, poem, etc. In this we could seek the help of the critic or previous readers . Each of them brings into the light some aspects of the work but leaves others obscure. It is according to his/her knowledge, taste, opinions, social pressures and tendencies, whim that the hidden message of the text is revealed . It may never be completely brought to light. The history of literature and the shifting trends in literary criticism bring out by means of

THE THEMATIC STUDY

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imagination ever new aspects, leaving others in the background. The same holds for all manner of artistic reception . f. The disjunction and conjunction of the visible and invisible is already present within the carefully prepared structure of the work of art. In classical composition, landscape painting, portraiture, there is always a first plane upon which the artist announces the main plot or focus of his/her artistic endeavor, and there is a second plane lying in the background, which supports the first: in the foreground there is light - and with distance all recedes into shadow. In the theatre play too we find these two - or sometimes three planes, the main plot being announced upon a clear scene brought to visibility, while behind it, in the dark, are actions performed, words uttered that explain and complete that scene but which are merely presumed. The creative work of artists, poets, storytellers goes beyond the visible reality of the world of the senses opening it into an "other" world, one of enchantment, projecting the recipient into spheres corresponding to his/her hidden dreams. We will tentatively conclude our analysis by noting first, that through the human will which ignites our imagination and stirs the resources of our memory there speak the innermost hidden forces of a human being by means of which he/she tends to expand his/her visible dominion in order to make up for the failings of reality, to overcome its weaknesses, or simply to evade it in the invisible unknown. With this stirring the intellective discernment of the human mind then comes into play. From the incipient level at which the human universe - the world of life , reality - takes off in the sensory functioning of the constitutive system, intellection serves this discriminating, measuring , calculating role in this progress of a human existence within its reality through all the following developmental stages up to that of artistic creativity, where it reaches its apex . In this manifestation of life in the simultaneous establishment in-progress of human existence and of the world - its milieu - the play between the visible and the invisible is revealed to be the crucial device at work in all the spheres of life's dynamic course. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

SECTION I GRASPING THE HIDDEN SPHERE OF REALITY

M ARi A AVE LINA CE CILI A

SYMBOL AND METAPHOR : THE SEARCH FOR THE " H I D D E N SIDE " OF REALITY IN CONTEMPOR ARY PHILOSOPHY

Contemporar y conc ern for the ambiguous side of the human language and its connection with (or separation from ) Philo soph y could be a priori surprising, given that we belon g to a philosophical time often domin ated by the epistemological demand for rigour, for a strict approach I in Philosoph y as well as in Science. In fact , the technol ogical period in which we are living is leading to the accomplishment of an important dream of the Enlightenm ent Century: the astonishing development of "Reason", of a reason involved in all serious gnoseological domains with its practic al-technical repercu ssion s in our mode of living. At the same time , another "practical reason" is underl ined toda y, as it was in the XVIIIth century, it is reason related to Ethi cs, to the mor al intersubjec tive and social behaviour involved in Ethics. Th is practical reason is at the core of many cont emp orary thinkers' philo soph y: Erich Fromm, Adorno, Horkh eimer, Marcu se, and diverse modes of Herm eneuti cs. They all warn about the danger of the so-ca lled "i nstrumental reason", which only attend s to the technical side of our complex culture, avoiding the question of personal responsibility and of any approac h whose language is not reducible to logic or univocity. The moral repercussion of our "mode of living together" with other persons, is abandoned by this "i nstrumental reason" , which encloses hum ans in a mechanical circle . Neverth eless, the ult ra-techn ological, mechanized culture ca nnot elude questionin g its own excluding, mono-direction al approach, because logic and technol ogy are not adequate for facing the most important problems that arise fro m inter-persona l relationships or fro m the indubitable hum an need to search for the sense of our existence . Perh aps that is the reason why we, inhabitants of a " mec hanical world" , often still continue to turn our gaze away from reason and pay attention to the strange multivocal, paradoxical language which is at the root of every culture and which is expressed mainly by means of symbols and metaphors . It is not a contradiction for us, the "he irs" of the Enli ghtenment and of the XIXth century's positivism and sc ientism, to be critica l with our own roots when they only lead to an exhaustive analysis of formal language, based on univocal, logical reason, II A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.). Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 11- 25. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publi shers. Prillted ill the Netherlands.

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useless for giving sense to our exis tence. Some philosophical tend encies even excl ude this need of sense as something absurd, as a non-sense in itself. Thi s exc luding approac h implies not only the crisis of reason itself, but more importantly and above all, the crisis of the subject, of the person, and of the hum an being in general co nsidered as free and respo nsible for his/her thinking and ac ting . Co nseq uen tly, we are ofte n dealin g with an anthro pological crisis and with negative attitudes towards the notion of the hum an being in general. These notions of freedo m, of responsibility of the subject, etc. , invol ve so me times fo rge tting the ex tre me un ivocit y, inviting us to explore the obscure, recondite path of multivocal non-rational language - a hum an dim ension very difficult to reconcile with one of the general aims of philosoph y: to tend to and if possible, reach univocit y. Furthermore, the crisis is extending to language itself. The critical theories of language have acco mplished a very important task of clarifying many philosophical perspectives based on the ingenuous idea of an autonomous subject and of an evident, transparent con sciou sne ss. Th e so-ca lled theori es of suspicion (Nietzsche, Marx and Freud) lead us to question many of the dogmatic principles of class ica l and modern philo sophy. Later, theor ies of linguistic analysis, structuralism, etc., take refuge in strict procedures - the ones which are only able to acco unt for rational or formal-semiotic dimensions of language - in order to reach a scientific level for anthropological knowledge. The result is, in my opinion, a cul-de-sac, a blind alley, in which philosophy has been trapp ed for some decades. In effec t, the more supposedly "scientific" anthropologica l-linguistic approaches are obliged to restrain their task to the limited domain of the hum an being. The problem is that they are perhaps stric t, but also partial, given that they leave aside the human dimensions which do not fit with their established formal or meth odical a priori assum ptio ns. In my opinion, a serious anthro pological approac h can never be partial ; it ca nnot exclude fundamental hum an dimensions. It is clear that language is at the basis of any hum an cultural dim ension, and of any mode of approac hing realit y. That is why Heidegger states that the main difficult y resides in language, mainl y in the metaphysical attitude of Occidental langu ages, and he tries to explore new possibiliti es, extra-metaph ysic al pos sibil iti es wh ich are also inh erent in the "saying'? but the probl em is that human lan gu age present s many face ts, whi ch could be summarized into two fund amental ones: ration al and extra-rational, both with several intermediate degrees. Moreover, one human science, linguistics, has developed extraordinarily in the XXth ce ntury and has alerted us to many confusio ns and doubt ful preconcept ions. Neverth eless, we have to admit that

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language is itself a human artifice, an artificial construct, absolutely necessary for the development of the cultural dimension and, consequently, of humanization. We humans tend to elaborate on reality somehow; this becomes a human-cultural reality in the life-world. For that, why should we use such a variety of signs, univocal or multivocal, mainly visual and verbal? Why then should we avoid the consideration of the latter (multi vocal, polysemic signs) as if they were destined to disappear with scientific human progress? On the contrary, we attend to the reconsideration of non-rational human phenomena carried out by many contemporary thinkers, either by denying them any value in a critical and restrained gnoseological perspective, or by considering it as the "trace" of the search for the true basis of our ontological human roots as well as of the source of our knowledge. On the one hand, structuralism and many linguistic approaches share the first way, staying at the mere formal level. On the other hand, hermeneutics and many phenomenological attitudes prefer the second way. I personally share the second attitude, and consider that we can never have a global anthropological knowledge without listening to, or turning our gaze towards, ambiguous phenomena like symbol and metaphor. Another important question, related to the one mentioned above - I am referring to the opposition or the dialectics between reason and the nonrational - is also a presupposition: that is to say, the conception of reality in general and of the human reality in particular, in terms of the appearance/hiding ("hiddenness") duality. The anthropological assumption at the basis of this second dialectic is that the human being is always mediated by something else: language, culture, society, etc., and so is, consequently, the human approach to reality .' The problem here is that the "something else", the mediation which supposedly distorts reality, belongs in fact to the human mode of being as such . Hence, we are placed between two options; either we have to admit a rigourous but partial approach which excludes a very important aspect of human existence (a very real facet , however regarded as "illusion" from that partial approach), or we enter into the circle of a necessarily mediated being; actually the same being which has to assume the reality in a limited gnoseological perspective. It is in that context that we come to consider ambiguous phenomena like symbol and metaphor, which also belong to human language and even constitute a fundamental facet of it. The trouble is that it is philosophy, with its rational, conceptual and univocal aim, which insists on taking into account the non-rational, symbolic

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or imaginary, multivocal human phenomena, either in order to place them at an inferior level destined to disappear with human development and historical progress, or to integrate them into its rational domain . Paul Ricoeur and Derrida are among the contemporary thinkers who assign an important place to that ambiguous language in their philosophy. Both of them depart from the so-called " seco nd Heidegger'', with his insistence on going beyond the rational appearance of the language and directing his reflexions towards a supposed hidden dimension of being. After some concise commentaries on the meaning of both symbol and metaphor, I would like to center my analysis on some aspects of Paul Ricoeur's point of view," but alluding, where necessary, to Heidegger and to Derrida. First of all, let's briefly consider the meaning of both terms, symbol and metaphor, and, in general, their semantical field. Symbol, from the Greek symbolon, is related to the idea of putting together, of making different things coincide, and originally the verb Milo means, in Greek, to throw, to project something. Metaphor, metaphord in Greek, comes from meta-fero, to transfer, but also to confuse. Symbol means something regarded as typifying, representing or recalling something else, leading us from a first referent meaning to a second one, the latter somehow implied in the first one, as stated by Paul Ricoeur. He refers to symbols as units of meaning implying a double sense. These ambiguous "units of sense" are primary symbols, like the deviation, the exile, the erratic path , etc., in the case of the symbolism of evil , analysed by Ricoeur in the second part of Finitude et culpabilite? In contrast, myths are, for Ricoeur, secondary symbols, narrations, and consequently texts . They always include primary symbols, multivocal unities of meaning which constitute the first basis for the work of interpretation." Metaphor is understood, according to the Oxford Dictionary, as an application of a name or of a descriptive term given to an object to which it is not literally applicable. That is why Ricoeur alludes to it as an "unusual predication", which always implies a semantic innovation. This idea of "semantic innovation" is a fundamental basis for understanding Ricoeur's notion of interpretation and, in general, his hermeneutics.' Symbols are placed at the level of words and their double sense. In the case of metaphor, the path towards the sentence is open , leading at the same time to the text, to the poetics of narrative. This is clarified in Temps et recit through the analysis of narrations. " This transition is required precisely by the analysis of the metaphor, considered as an unexpected predication, as an

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"impertinent" predication, always dynamic, "living" through time . Ricoeur conci sely presents that idea and the role of metaphor in the following terms: C'est avec la Metaph ore vive que Ie passage du mot a la phrases s' impose a l'h ermeneutique ellcmerne. La metaphore ne se reduit pas en effet a un deplacernent de la nominati on d'un e entire premiere a une entire seconde reliee a la premiere par la ressemblance, elle consiste en une predication insolite ou, comme je dis, impertinente. La tache de linterpretation s' avere alors plus complexe que celie de del ivrer un second sens cache dans un sens apparent: elle accompagne l' emergcncc, au niveau predicati f, done a celui de la phrase, d'une pertinence nouvelle sur les ruines d'u ne predication incon sistante. En cela consiste la metaphore vive. Certes, ici aussi l'e xtension du mot a la phra se anno nce l' cxten sion de la phrase au texte, dans la mesure ou la metaphore est un poerne en miniature, done un texte.?

However, the passage from the sentence to the text implies the approach between the metaphor and the narration in general , elaborating therefore the expression of semantic innovation: II reste que l'e xtension de la phrase au texte n'a ete explicitement prise en compte qu' avec lee couplage de la metaphore avec Ie recit, a I'epoque de Temps et ddt, Ie recit etant manifestement une composition de degre superieur a la phrase isolee . Je forge alors Ie concept englobant d'innovation semantique pour inclure sous un genre unique Ie texte de la poes ie Iyrique et Ie texte de la litterature narrati ve. Desorma is, c'est Ie mythos de la tragedie et de l' epop ec, selon Ie vocabulaire d' Aristote dans la Poetique qu i sert de guide dans I' exploration de ce vaste empire du langage figuratif que la langue alleman de place sous Ie titre emblematique de la Dichtu ng , C'e st dans la mesure ou je garde a l'e sprit I' ampitude de la Dichtun g que je donn e pour tache a I'h ermeneut ique de rendr e compte de la constitution du sens au niveau de l'innovation semantique commune au poeme et au recit , C' est par referenc e a cette amplitude de la Dichtung que je me risque a confronter dans Temps et recit III la philosophic phenomenologique du temp s avec la "poetique" du rec it, laquelle eng lobe Ie recit quot idian, la tragcdie et I' epopee des anciens et des moderncs et Ie roma n contemporai n. 10

Poetic , creative literary language in general, brings to language and to the human being some facet s, values and model s for action, etc., model s of reality, that are veiled for descriptive language. I I In this sense, I agree with the main thesis referring to metaphor maintained in James M. Edie 's arti cle "Id ent ity and Metaphor. A Phenomenological Theory of Polisemy" : The argument of this paper is that there arc such things as "necessa ry" metaphors , that metaphorical usage is not some accide ntal weakness of human thought, which could be avoided if onl y we were a bit more astute and tried a little harder to make our ideas and our language more clear, but is, on the contrary, the font of creativity not onl y in poetry, parable, myth and other deliberately metaphorical genres of literature, but in the very categories of the basic common language of ordin ary life, of science and of philosoph y.'?

By placing the metaphorical usage of the language in the core of human creativity, Edie accords a crucial role to non-rational (in the sense of non-

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univocal) language in human life. The same role is accorded to the symbolic approach by Mircea Eliade's phenomenological analysis of religion, when he states that symbolic "thinking" is not merely something belonging to children, poets or deranged people. On the contrary, Eliade considers it consubstantial to human being, preceding language and discursive reason and showing the deepest aspects of reality, unattainable for other means of knowledge; they would make appear the most secret dimensions of being and, by doing that, they would allow us to reach a better knowledge of the human being." In the same direction, and following the thesis of Bruno Snell about the human mind, 14 James M. Edie proposes that It becomes extremely plausible (... ) that every word was originally the designation of a concrete world-phenomenon, that it called forth an extremely concrete image, that it was primarily a gesture . Words themselves are intra-mundane events; they are points d'appui for thought; on the basis of such image-gestures thought can go forward . This is what we mean when we say that if thought is analyzed into its primitive elements , we will find not logical structures but the experienced life-world itself as the a priori condition of any expression whatsoever. 15

Nevertheless, as philosophers, we cannot stay at the merely experienced life-world level, at the stage of unreflective habitual common speech , of prereflexive apprehension of reality . There is a going and return process through which we experience something, we speak about it and then we arrive at more or less strict gnoseological models: intuitive, imaginative, symbolic and metaphorical, on the one hand, and logical scientific or philosophical expression, on the other. Still, we only become truly aware of symbols and metaphors as such by means of reflection. This reflection cannot remain, in my opinion, at the semiotic level. The formal analyses of phonology, morphology and syntax are necessary, on a static and abstract level of language, but this is not sufficient for a deep and dynamic comprehension, which must take into account the semantic dimension, and be situated beyond the formal language and the mere structure. In this way we find not only the concrete languages, la langue, but, above all, the speech acts, la parole. By doing so, we reach the meaning of words , and sense in general, arising with words ; not with isolated words, but with words integrated into sentences (the minimal units of sense) and in texts. Hermeneutical approaches, Paul Ricoeur's philosophy among them , are situated in the aforementioned seman tical perspective, or, to be more precise, in a dialectical perspective which considers the formal and the semantic phenomena as interacting with and completing each other. Paul Ricoeur underlines the comprehensive-semantic attitude, but he recognizes the need

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for the already mentioned dialectics, as becomes clear in his article "Expliquer et comprendre", 16 where the necessary relationship between theory and action is also made evident. 17 In fact, Ricoeur centers the hermeneutical question in the semantical problem, "the problem of the sense multiple", common to symbols and metaphors . He clarifies the meaning of that expression in the following terms : "Par la je designe un certain effect de sens, selon lequel une expression, de dimensions variables , en signifiant une chose , signifie en meme temps une autre chose, sans cesser de signifier la premiere" . 18 Hermeneutics, for Ricoeur, is the necessary complement to phenomenology, so that we can enrich the phenomenological perspective of image as appearance with the hermeneutic one as meaning . Imagination is necessarily implied in the exploration of new meanings as it is in any human creative act, and mainly in the processes of symbolizing, metaphorizing and narrating. These are really the three imaginative dimensions of Paul Ricoeur's thought. La Symbolique du mal, La Metaphore vive and Temps et recit summarize the development of a theory of imagination and of the hermeneutical problem as it is developed by the French thinker. 19 The visual dimension of imagination, alluded to by other thinkers, is not forgotten by Ricoeur, but his analysis grants a privilege to the verbal, linguistic aspect; that is to say, to the "poetic" function of imagination, which ever opens new worlds of possible points of view and experiences. In this sense, Richard Kearney states: An under standing of the possible worlds opened by the poetic imagination also permits a new understanding of ourselves as beings-in-the-world. But, for Ricoeur , the hermeneutic circle precludes any shortcut to immediate self-understanding. The human subject can only come to know itself through the hermeneutic detour of interpreting signs - that is, by deciphering the meanings contained in myths, symbol s and dreams produced by the human imagination. The shortest route from the self to itself is through the images of the othe rs."

The same could be asserted of metaphors and narrative ." They help the author to explore new worlds and the reader to better know him/herself and to open new possibilities of being and acting as a human being. So, the semantic innovation could even be useful not only for imagining oneself in one's multiple modes of being and consequently for comprehending oneself better, but also for producing social and cultural transformations. Consequently, imaginary productions are at the same time a becoming of expression and a becoming of our own being . Ricoeur finds the question of symbols in his initially phenomenological consideration of will and freedom. The eidetical analysis of the conflicting

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subject of will, as the dialectical oppo sition and, at the same time , complementarity between Ie volontaire and l'involontaireP makes Ricoeur aware of the fact that pure reflective philo sophy cannot adequately face the problem of evil (placed into parenthesis at the eidetical level) . However, the symbolic languag e of cultures makes evil one of its centers; but symboli sm is always ambiguous and cannot be integrated as such within philosoph y, whose aim is rigour and univocity. The appeal to hermeneutics is then necessary in order to apprehend, at the reflexive level, the rich shown/hidden meaning, respecting, at the same time , symbolism in itsel f (and not making a mere simplified rational translation, for example). Symbol is evidentl y a sign, but not just any kind of sign. It repre sents a double intent ionality, a literal meaning and a second one which transcends the first. But the first intentionally tend s towards the second one , which is somehow implied in the first one . Consequently, symbols appeal to rational reflection in order to be clarified. At the same time , philosophy is obliged to turn its gaze towards symbols when reason is not adequate for understanding the most crucial problems of human existence. This is the meaning of the enigmatic title of the Conclusion of La Symbolique du mal, "Le symbole donne a pen ser". Symbol s pre sent a gift to thought. By demanding interpretation, they offer a fundamental basis, "donnent" som ething to philosophical reflection , but this something is given to be thought about (d penser), and not to simply be inserted in the philosophical discourse. The double intentionality is thus the most important feature of symbol s, which are often integrated into mythical narrations. Referring to imagination, R. Kearny states : A poetic imagination is one which crea tes meaning by respondin g to the desire of being to be expressed. It is a Janus facing in two directions at once - back to the being that is being revealed and forward to the language that is revealing. And at that level of language itself it also does double dut y, for it produces a text which opens up new horizons of meaning for the reader.P

So hermeneutic s di scovers, thanks to imagination, a second-order reference in some way "hidden" or not completely apparent in the first-order reference of symbols, which present three dimensions in them selves: cosmic, by which humans read about the sacred in the world and its elements; oneiric, related to dreams and by means of which we can explore our own psychism; and poetic, where the symbol reveals the deep emerging of images and language. Metaphor is also a very good field for imagination and thus, for interpretations and hermeneutics. Imagination joins together two semantic fields : one predicatively impertinent at first glance , and another one predicatively

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pertinent, apparently opposed or strange. Ricoeur explains that remarkable conjunction as follow s: C'est, se lon moi, da ns Ie moment demerge nce d'une nouv elle signification hors des ruines de la predication litterale que I' imagination offre sa mediation spec ifique. Pour Ie co mpre ndre, partons de la re marque fameuse d ' Aristote que "bien rnetaphoriser (. . .) c'est apercevo ir Ie sem blable" .

Then, Ricoeur adds: La ressemblance es t elle-merne fonction de I' emp loi de s predic ats bizarres. Elle co nsiste dans Ie rappr ochement qu i soudain abolit la distanc e logique ent re de s champs semantiques j usque-la eloigne s, pour enge ndrer Ie schoc sema ntique qui , 11 son tour , suscite I' etincelle de sens de la metaphore . L' imagination est I' apercep tion, la vue souda ine, d'une nouvell e pertinence predic ative, 11 savoir une ma niere de co nstruire la pertinence dans l'impertinence.>'

Once more, Ricoeur tries to attain a dialectical solution, as usual, in his thought: a mode of con structing " the pertinence in the impertinence" , by means of imagination. Neverthel ess, the lingui stic dimension, placed at the core of philosophical reflection not only by Ricoeur, but also and mainly by most contemporary philosoph ical approache s, is for him neither the only one nor the most fundamental anthropological dimension. The last aim in Ricoeur's hermeneut ics is the passage from the field of langu age to the more concrete field of the Life-World, from the theoretical approach to the practical one, and from gnoseolog y to ontology. Imagin ation and creativity constitut e the necessary bridge for such a task. In 1986, Ricoeur sums up his point of view and his own reflective way as follow s: Desp ite appea rances , my single problem since beginnin g my reflections has been crea tivity. I considered it from the po int of view of individua l psychol ogy in my first works on the wi ll, and the n at the cultural level with the study of symbolisms. My present research on the narrative places me precisely at the heart of this social and cultural crea tivity, since tellin g a story is the most perm anent act of soc ieties . In telling their own stories, cultures crea te them selves It is true that I have been silent from the poin t of view of practice, but not at all at the theo retica l level , because the studies I have already published on the relation between Ideology and Utopia are entirely at the centre of this preoccupation.P

Thus , Ricoeur's philo sophic al aim is not to rema in at the level of analysis of language in its immanence. On the contrary, his reflective work leads to an opening in the direction of the Life-World: Ce n'e st qu'avec Ie chapitre de la Metaphore vive con sac re 11 la refe rence metaphorique que j'affronte de la portee extra-linguistique du langage figur e. Je suis alors guide dans ce pla idoyer en faveur de la capacite de l' e'nonciation rnetaphorique 11 "redecrier" Ie monde vecu par une conviction tenace qui traverse toute mon oeu vre, 11 savoir, que Ie langage n'e pui se pas son energie 11 se

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ce lebrer lui-rneme mais qu' Il vise ultimernen t a dire Ie monde . II Ie fait, se lon mo i, non se ulement da ns l'u sage ordi naire et dans l'u sage scie ntifique du discour s, mais aussi dans son usage poe tique; il lui est alors don ne de por ter " la paro le" des aspects ord inaireme nt d issimules de l' exper ience et plu s largem en t des as pects de notre apparte nance au mond e qui ne so nt pas "rendus" et qui meme sont occ ultes par le langage reduit a sa fonction descrip tive direc te. Je me risq ue alors a mettre en correlation Ie "voir com me" du langage poetique avec "I' etre cornrne " du repondant on tolog ique de la reference metapboriquc."

However, Rico eur reco gni zes that his approach is parti al without the cruc ial role of the reader, situated between the world of text and the world of his own experience s. He clarifies this important question in Temps et recit, by di stinguishing two fundam ent al and compleme ntary phases: one of "configuration" which remains at the level of structure and of narration itself, and the other of the "refiguration" of the living experi ence, regarding oneself and the Life-World. The movement of refiguration is always dynamically con structed by the reader, who is placed between his/her own attitude and his/her life-world, on the one hand, and the objective structure of the text, on the other. Meaning, reference and the search for an ontological dimen sion are consequently always present in Ricoeur's approach . As Kearney states, "The poeti c imagination lib erates the reader into a free space of possibility, suspending the reference to the immediate world of percepti on (both the author's and the reader's) and thereb y disclosing 'ne w ways of being in the world "'.27 Thi s is not the case for Derrid a, who announ ces the death of metaphor together with the end of metaphy sics. Both Ricoeur and Derrid a set out from Heidegger's reflection which point s tow ard s the ide as of the decline of met aphor and , as a con sequ ence, the ret irement of the being. Both recon sider the par adoxi cal attitude of Heidegger, given that he denoun ces a criti cal role of metaphor as well as of metaphysics, and at the same time profusely uses metaphorical language after Sein lind Zeit. Derrida develops the idea of the decline of metaphor, concluding with deconstruction, the elimination of the referent, and he con sequently announces the death of metaph ysics together with the end of the metaphor. In this sense, it would be useless to search for a valid meanin g or for sense in general. Starting from the same Heideggerian critical point of view, Ricoeur tries , on the contrary, to recover reference and meaning through a dynamic, neverending proce ss. In effect , Ricoeur takes the dynamicity of metaphor - and the dialectics of symbols and imaginary products in general - as a crucial point

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for his anthropological conception. The creativity of the human being necessarily points to a temporal , historical, endle ss acquisition of sense . The philosophical path now passe s through hermeneutics instead of leading to deconstruction.P Therefore, apparently there exist s an irreconcilable oppo sition between Derrida and Ricoeur in their respective interpretations of Heidegger ; but there are also similarities between their respective approaches, as Leonard Lawlor has made evident: It is easy to see overwhelming sim ilariti es between the works of Paul Rieoeur and Jacques Derrida. For instance. virtuall y the same philosopher s have influenced them, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, and the same topics have focused their interest: time, history, writing, metaphor. The most striking similar ities, however, can be see n in their respective projects, the project of Ricoeur 's hermeneutic s and that of Derrid a's decon structi on. Both Ricoeur and Derrida attempt to describe mediation, that is, the relations between two beings or the movement between an origin and an end. Eve n the names each gives to mediat ion - Derrida calls mediation, difference, iterabilit y, dissemination , writing, mimesis, traditionality, trace; Ricoeur call s mediat ion, distantiation , discourse, dialectic, writing, mimesis, traditionality, traces - reinforce the sim ilaritic s.i?

Lawlor underlines the interest of both thinkers in the role of mediation, as something opposed to "Hegelian hubris ", the ideal synthesis which would culminate in a perfect circle, surpassing alterity and difference . Mediation is conceived on three similar bases, summed up by Lawlor in the following long but very clear quotation : Ricoeu r's and Derrid a' s similar attempt s at conce iving mediation arc based on three insights. First, it is absolutel y impossible for thought to achieve complete self-knowledge or self-unde rstanding by means of intuitive self-reflection. In other words, subjec tive idealism in the strictest sense is impossible. Both Ricoeur and Derrida have noted not only the critiqu es of consciousness arising from Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, but also and especially the incomplet eness implied by Heidegger 's description s of Dasein . Second (... ), it is absolutely necessary for thought to externalize itself in what both Ricoeur and Derrida have called signs. Thou ght must medi ate itself in repeatable structures (of which language is the primary example) in order to gain determinations, objectivity and universality. In other words, externalization brings about the truth of the original structures of thought. Third and most importantly, while mediation in signs makes truth possibl e, it also makes truth impossible. Linguistic mediation postpones the end of "complete mediat ion" in which the origin would be recovered in all of its determ inations. As metaphor indicates for both Ricoeur and Derrida , linguistic mediat ion is open to indefinite deviation, even while mediation maintains some sort of continuity . (.. .) On the basis of these three insights, both Ricoeur and Derrida attempt to conc eive the absolute inseparability which is mediation itself.'?

Nevertheless, in spite of their common roots - mainly Husserl's theory of intentionality and Heidegger's critical att itude towards metaphor and metaphysics - Ricoeur and Derrid a follow different ways.

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In the well-known "English Study" of La Metaphore vive, Ricoeur pays attention to the Heideggerian thesis maintained in Der Sat; vom Grund." according to which there is an intrinsic relationship between metaphor and metaphysics, the first existing only inside the second . In fact, Ricoeur considers that Heidegger gives a new open sense to metaphor, which not only presents a sensitive, visual dimension (to see , voir, sehen) , but also points to something more; to hear, to apprehend something beyond sensation tsaisir; er-blickent . Besides, Ricoeur considers that the continuous use Heidegger makes of metaphors is finally more important than his attack against them : Chez Heideggcr lui-meme, Ie contexte limite considerablement la portee de cettc attaque contre la metaphore, au point qu 'on peut penser que I'usage constant que Heidegger fait de la metaphore a finalement plus d'importance que ce qu 'il dit incidemmcnt contre la metaphore."

According to Ricoeur, Heidegger, in his Unterwegs zur SpracheP critiques the metaphysical metaphor, but he produces in fact the "true metaphor, La metaphore vive, discovered precisely in the conflict between the representative and the reflexive thought". For Derrida, it is not so certain that we can speak of metaphor in a nonmetaphorical, philosophical way. Consequently, he goes from the Heideggerian "limited destruction" towards a total destruction, of metaphor and metaphysics. Lawlor sums up the fundamental differences between Ricoeur's and Derrida's reading of Heidegger as well as between respective philosophical approaches. He finds four elements of difference." First , concerning the origin of mediation, Ricoeur focuses on the present; unity is prior for him. On the contrary, duality is prior for Derrida; mediation is prior to immediacy and presence. Second, "mediation for Ricoeur is content-based, continuous, imaginative, dialectical negativity; mediation for Derrida is formal , discontinuous, aleatory, disseminational affirmation't.P Third, when we consider the end, we can see Ricoeur's distantiation as horizontal, telic , while Derrida's difference is non-horizontal and atelic . Traces for Ricoeur point to meaning; on the contrary, Derrida's trace "signifies neither a determinate referent nor a unit of meaning, neither a factual thing nor an ideal essence. Rather, it illustrates the white spaces themselves, the assemic possibility of meaning't." Ricoeur underlines the "belonging to", a positive expression of finitude which concretizes meaning despite the abstraction and universality of distantiation.

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Fourth, "The Idea" , in the Kant ian se nse, is defined , for Ricoeur, by totality and openness . 'There is alway s more content to be added to infinity's form"." Polisem y and analogy ca n be understood in the co ntext of a possible horizon of unity, never really attained, and always moving in a spiral. Lawlor thus present s another difference between Ricoeur and Derrid a, expresse d in a kind of mathemat ical form: "Although it never quite adds up, the formula for the Ricoeurian Idea is: origin + mediation + end = Idea. This is the fourth difference: for Ricoeur, the Idea is a third; for Derrid a, it is a fourth't." I personally assu me Ricoeur 's approach and prefer to leave an open door for the unavoidab le human desire to search for sense once again . Symb ol and metaphor seem to be an ext ra complica tion of the already artific ial and co mplex hum an articulated language, full of oppositions and even paradoxes, like the hum an life itself. They both put hum an imagination at work, playing with nuances and makin g us awa re of many co ntras ting elements: Shown/hidden, light/d arkn ess, co nsciousness/the unconscious, etc. The same could be said of the role of the plot in narrative. There is always something not yet said or written, but glimpsed at; something that springs up in language. For instance, in the case of metaphor ("living metaphor" ) we found a new pert inence in the predication ; in the case of narrative, a feig ned plot produces a new cong ruence in the orga nizatio n of the events.' ? From a phenomenological point of view, we become aware of the fact that language is not homogeneous and this is precisely an indica tion which invites us to search for possibly surprising elements of reality, for primary meanings, for the source of symbols - as in Mircea Eliade's phenomenology of religio n - or for the meanin gful richness of metaphors and narratives, in the field of literature. Noneth eless, herm eneu tics is a necessary step toward es tablishing the co nnec tio n between multivocal, figura tive langu age and the spec ulative discourse of ph ilosoph y. Reflection on the relatio nship of symbol and metaphor on the one hand, and concep tual language on the other, con stit utes the future cha llenge of hermeneutics: to beco me a new and dynamic path for philosophy.

University of Seville NOTES Cf. Husserl's Philo sophie als Strenge Wissenchaft , which is a good example of that concern . See , for instanc e, Martin Heidegger, Identitdt lind Different , " Die Onto-Theo-Logi sche Verfassung der Metaph ysik": "Da s Schwi erige liegt in der Sprache. Unsere abendl andi schen I

2

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Sprachen sind in je verschiedener Weise Sprachen des metaphysischen Denk en . Ob das Wesen der abendlandischen Sprachen in sich nur metaphysisch und darum endgiiltig durch die OntoTheo-Logik gepragt ist , oder ob diese Sprachen andere Moglichkeiren des Sagens und d. h. zugleigh des sagenden Nichtsagens gewahren, mus s offen bleiben" (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988), bilingual edition (German and Spanish) by Arturo Leyte , p. 154. ) Cf. Cassirer's large conception of symbol as a necessary mediation and his consideration of human being as "the symbolic animal ", in his works concerning Philosophical Anthropology; Clifford Geertz's idea of culture as an unavoidable framework for human existence insists on the same notion of mediation in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1973). 4 A deep analysis of Ricoeur's philosophical approach to symbolism and metaphor would be a huge task, more pertinent for a dense book than for this succinct and limited presentation of the problem. Cf., for instance, the analysis of Marcelino Agis Villaverde, Del simbolo a la meuifora (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1995). The aim of my article is not a deep analysis of Ricoeur's extensive works. 5 Finitude et culpabilite : La Symboliqu e du mal, (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1960) . 6 Cf. Ibid ., mostly the first chapters for the notion of symbol and myth , and the conclusion, " L e Symbole donne a pcnser" for a primary acc ess to Ricoeur's approach of interpretation and hermeneutics. "Le Symbole donne a penser " can also be found in Esprit , 27 , Paris (1959), numbers 7-8. 7 La Metaphore vive (Pari s: Eds . Du Seuil , 1975) constitutes one of the most complete contemporary analyses of the metaphor, in dialogue with classic philosophy (mainly Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas and Kant's Third Critique) as well as with other contemporary approaches with different and even opposite guidelines. Le Conjiit des interpretation s (Paris: Scuil , 1969) and Du texte 11 I'action (Paris: Seuil , 1986) are also crucial to apprehend Ricoeur's hermeneutical theory . Jacques Derrida also situates metaphor as a basic clue of his philosophical analysis. Cf. , for instance: "La Mythologie blanche", in Rhetorique et Philosoph ie, Poetique, 5 (Paris : Eds. Du Seuil , 1971), pp. I-52. Compiled in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Eds. De Minuit, 1972), pp. 247-324. Also "Le Retrait de la metaphore" ; English translation. "The Retreat of Metaphor" by Frieda Gardner, Biodum Iginla, Richard Madden and William West, in Enclitic (1978) , pp. 1--44. 8 Cf. The three volumes of Temps et recit (Paris : Seuil, 1983-1984-1985). 9 Paul Ricoeur, Introduction to the aforementioned book of Agis Villaverde , op. cit ., pp. 13-14. 10 Ibid ., p. 14. II Temps et recit, Vol. I, p. 13. 12 James M. Edie, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 6, No. I, January, 1975, p. 32. IJ In Images and symbols (Spanish Edition , Madrid: Taurus , 1974), p. 12. 14 The Discovery ofthe Mind (New York: Harper, 1960). 15 James M . Edie, op. cit., p. 33. 16 Paul Ricoeur, in Du texte 11 I'action (Paris : Seuil , 1986), pp. 161-183. See also other articles, in the same book : "Qu 'est-ce qu 'un texte? ", "Le Modele du texte : I'action sensee consideree com me un texte" , etc. Moreover, some articles concerning the dialogue with structuralism are essential to clarifying this question ; they are included in Le Confiit des interpretations (Paris : Seuil, 1969) , pp. 31-101. Chapter I contains the following three articles: " Structure et herrneneutique" , "Le Problerne du double sens comme problerne herrncneutique et comm e probleme scmantique" , and "La Structure, Ie mot, I'cvcnemcnt".

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See , for example, " L' Irnagination dan s Ie discours et dans l'action" , in Du texte if I 'action . "Le Problerne du double scn s com me problerne hermeneutique et comme problerne semantique" . in Le Confiit des interpretations, p. 65 . 19 Many other articles, amon g them the one s compiled in Le Conj/it des interpretations and Du texte if l 'act ion. See , also , for the qu estion of symbols, Ricoeur 's analy sis-dialogue De l 'interpretation. Essai sur Freud (Paris : Seuil , 1965) . 20 R. Kearney, "Ricoeur and Hermeneutic Imagination" , in The Narrative Path, edited by T. Peter Kemp and David Ra smu ssen (Cambridge , Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Pre ss, 1989) , p. 6. 21 For a study of the rel ationship between metaphor and narrative, see the article by Serge Meitinger, "Betwee n 'Plot' and ' Metaphor': Ricoeur's Poetic Applied on the Specificity of the Poem" , in The Narrative Path, op . cit ., pp . 47-64. 22 Cf. Le volontaire et l 'involontaire (Pari s: Aubi er Montaigne , 1967) . 23 R. Kearn ey in The Narrative Path, op . cit., p. 5. Later we shall allude to the important role of the reader for Ricoeur's hermeneutics. 24 "L' Imagination dans Ie di scours et dan s l'action", in Du texte if l'action , pp . 218 -19. 25 Paul Ricoeur, Le Monde , Interview, Pari s, February 7, 1986. Quoted by Rich ard Kearney, op. cit., p. 24. 26 Paul Ricoeur, Introduction to Ag is Villaverd e, op . cit., pp . 14-15 . 27 Kearney, R., in The Narrative Path , op. cit., p. 5. 28 In this brief articl e it is not my intention to undertake a serious compari son between Derrida and Ricoeur. There are several studies concerning that subj ect. Here my anal ysi s will focus on some point s unde rlined by Leonard Lawlor, in Imagination and Chance. The Difference Between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida (Alb any : State University of New York Press , 1992) . He also pre sent s a pra ctical bibliography on the topi c. 29 Ibid ., Introduction , p. I. 30 lbid ., p. 12. 31 M. Heid egg er, Der Sat; vom Grund (Pfullingen : Nesk e, 1957, pp. 77-90). 32 La Metaphore vive, p. 357. 33 M. Hcidegger, Unterw egs zur Spra che (Pfullingen : Neske , 1959) . 34 Lawlor, op . cit., "Concl usion. The Difference Illuminated", pp. 123ff. 35 Ibid ., p. 125. 36 lbid ., p. 127. 37 Ibid ., p. 128. 38 Idem . 39 Cf. Temps et recit I, p. II. 17 18

RICHARD K. KHURI

BEYOND INTELLIGIBILITY: CIPHERS, BEAUTY, AND THE GLOW OF BEING

1. Ciphers are the "language of transcendence", as Karl Jaspers tell s us at the beginning of an extended effort on behalf of metaphysical objectivity in the second half of the third volume of his Philosophic. I The term "metaphysical objectivity", which Jaspers also uses to define ciphers, may be inappropriate because, as he himself warns us several times, tran scendence is to be thought of neither in objective nor in subjective terms . However, it may be best to begin with what is required for a cipher to become present (for us) . As is well known and often experienced, it is not uncommon for music to attain moments of sublime beauty. In exceptional cases, music has the ability to affect us at the core of our being, to even intensify and fulfill that being, to push it beyond its prior limit s. But for music to have such presence for us, we need to be receptive to it (assuming that we already have the gift of the necessary aptitude for its appreciation and enjoyment). Were we to approach music , say, with the demand that it prove its depth and power to us, with all sorts of obsessions about the relevant psycho-physical undercurrents, with hair-splitting skepticism regarding its ontological and epistemological status , with all and sundry preoccupations about our investments, careers, and so on, then needless to say we would for all intents and purposes be tone-deaf. The same is true for the myriad ways that something becomes a presence . The world itself, or something within it, can "sing " to us. But we need to be up to hearing its "song" . It is up to us to welcome such "melodic" offerings. Wonder is not automatic. A narci ssist is incapable of wonder. One needs to be receptive to something like a cipher. When we are called to another level of being, we must be able to hear that call : The cipher is not something that we know, but something in which we steep ourselves. One abides in the cipher. 2

Jaspers came up with a neologism to capture that welcoming receptivity when ciphers become present, when we , however briefly, are able to rise above mere exi stence and enter an eternal order. It is Existenz. The human being, as Existenz, is receptive to the language of tran scendence, is able to read ciphers , is available for the tran sformative effects of great art, seminal

27 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Anal ecta Husserliana LXXV, 27-47 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherland s.

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e nc o unte rs with other s , a nd th e wo ndro us aspect of th e wo rl d. When Kierkegaard talk ed about an individual who exists, he meant roug hly the sa me thin g;' So did Mar cel in refer en ce to our part icipati on in mystery, o ur avai la bili ty (dis po nib ilitei fo r presence." Heidegger ' s vision of human ity risin g to the address of Be ing, a humanity thereb y tru e to its essentia l task of naming Be ing, wh ich is vouc hsafed to it, is also in the spirit of Existen z.' Ju st as "Existenz" is far re move d from "s ubject", so is "tra nsce ndence" from "o bject" . Th ere is no way to present the du ality Existenzltransce ndence by analogy with subject/object without misleading the reader. For one thin g, Existenz and tran scend ence are not divided in the way that the subject is from its object. One becomes Exi sten z in the pre sence of tr an scendence , and neith er can be understood in spatio-ternporal term s. It makes no sense to date and loc ate the moment wh en one ' s being is e levated o r flooded by the sublime, except at the most trivi al level. Existen z and tran scend ence are really a kind of unit y, "the Sa me" as Heidegger might say, with different modal ities that eventually co llapse into our empirical conditio n as subjec ts faced with obj ect s. We use "Existenz" to preser ve the int egrity of the indi vidu al for whom transcendence becomes present (through a cipher ), and "tra nscendence" to preser ve the int egrity of the otherness of that whi ch becomes present. But the actu al recept ivity to a presenc e stro ngly suggests un ity. Th e more one welcomes presen ce into one's bein g, the less one is awa re that one is doing anything at all. One becomes, is, that presence. I shall have occasion to illustra te th is whe n po etry becom es the foc us of the discu ssion later on. With the foregoi ng qu al ification in mind , let us (with the ap pro priate reser vation s) consider an analogy offere d by Jaspers in order to sharpen our awareness of ciph ers. He tell s us that ju st as exper iments med iate between subject and object, so do ci phers medi ate bet ween Existen z and tr ansce ndence ." Of course, the co ntemporary view is that mathem atics mediates between the physical world (whose "inner" nature rem ains a "blac k box " ) and the sc ientist. No matt er. Th e world manifests itsel f to scientific eyes th rou gh various mathem ati cal and expe rime ntal prob es with whi ch it is so unde d out, but otherwi se rem ain s si le nt and intract abl e . Without that interface, it would, fo r a scientific outlook, be compl et ely my sterious. Mystery, on the other hand , is no stranger to Ex isten z. Existenz thrive s on mystery, to the extent that mystery becomes pre sent to Exis tehz in variou s ways. For instance, so many times, an exoti c mathematical formulation finds

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a precise application in the physical world . This may become routine from a practical standpoint, but that makes it no less remarkable. Philosophers since Aristotle - and Jaspers belongs to that lineage - consider nature's intelligibility as worthy of wonder. In our language here, the intelligibility of nature is itself a cipher. So is the fact that certain sounds, in series or in parallel, whose physics are well understood, form lovely melodies and harmonies. Just as nature becomes partly transparent through experiment and mathematical application, so that we achieve a scientific continuity with it, so does transcendence/mystery become palpably present through ciphers such as nature's intelligibility, the evocativeness of poetry, and other phenomena such as the appearance of a caring warmth amid the harshest solitude . Since the cipher of nature's intelligibility lends itself best to clear exposition, this is where the illustrations of ciphers will begin . 2. Before we launch into specifics, it may be useful to consider a general scheme put forward by Jaspers to delineate the different languages of transcendence, hence the different ways that cipher presences become embodied for us.? First, there is the direct language of transcendence, a language read by an Existenz when ciphers are tangibly present, when the glow of Being illumines our being, when one makes the transition from perfunctory existence to an eternity beyond knowing. This language is not yet translated into any human language and has not yet been brought to a stand in any given cultural modality. It is only there for an Existenz, welcoming, in the highest state of receptivity. It is because of such direct transcendent presences that the second language is brought forth, the language of myth , revelation, and art. The direct language of transcendence is given various translations. The force and profundity of mythical narratives, religious scriptures, and cultural artifacts derive from the immediacy of cipher presences to various bards, prophets, and artists . Once a body of myths, religious practices, and works of art has accumulated, the possibility arises for those with a speculative mind-set to articulate a philosophy imbued with an awareness of transcendence. Such speculations are successful when they bring others in touch with Being (l prefer to wander between "transcendence" and "Being" so as not to encourage any objectivization of what is in question here). Many speculative paths are appropriate. One philosopher might begin with science, another with metaphysics. But all must have an eye on transcendence. Thus is the

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third language formed, the language of philosophical speculation. This is not the language of thought that is an aggregate of empty formal statements, of the stale thought that logic helps us isolate and dissect, but that of a thinking "aglow with being," ! This helps us come to terms with Parmenides' seemingly ob scure identification of Being with thinking . We cannot enter Parmenides' world if we insist on the standard dichotomy between thought and its object. In ordinary con sciousness, no doubt thought has an object (but doe s it always?). In the pre sence of ciphers, the directionality of thought dissolves, giving way instead to participatory illumination. The thought of an arti st at the peak of his activity doe s not aim at objects, but makes us receptive to presence in a specific modality. An old church in Proust and a late Brahms intermezzo have different pre sences. But as pre sence, there is more that unites them than their many specific differences indicate. The philosopher then considers a ll thought that originates in participation in mystery, receptivity to presence, including thought in the presence of Being itself. Such thought is as indivisible from Being as Existenz is from transce nde nce . Thought aglow with Being is not (logically, mathematically) identical with Being, but it is non-trivially "the Same." If the foregoing sounds strange to our twenty-first century sensibility, then perhaps we may begin where Jaspers him self thought we might, namely with science, or rather with what we now know about nature as see n through science. One may disagree with the extremity of his assertion that "science alone can give us the standpoints and the known contents that may serve us metaphysically to express real tran scending in our historic situation,"? Some may indeed wish to make "known contents" relevant to the contemporary expression of transcendence exclusive to science. That wish has been carried far and wide in our time . And it is owing to this that we shall turn to science in the first part of the discu ssion that follows. But other possibilities have not died out. We shall turn to some of these as well. For the moment, we shall rest content with highlighting the cipher of nature's intelligibility, of pau sing at the astonishing manner in which nature ha s been making herself understood. We shall then slowly work our way back to less indirect languages of transcendence. 3. Our time has become propitious for the appreciation of the cipher of nature's intelligibility. While Plato and Aristotle could only meditate on this in general and in principle, nature is becoming intelligible to us in ever more powerful and subtle ways , as the tool s with which we query into it evolve accordingly.

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Consider the many mental constructs that have first found their way into certain equations and have then been shown to account for some natural phenomenon or other. The idea of a function that mayor may not be continuous, and that of the study of change for a continuous function at one or more degrees removed from it (first, second, etc .. , derivatives) is originally mathematical and seems to exist only in the mind. Yet it underlies the vast natural domain that has successfully lent itself to physical analysis with the help of differential or partial differential equations. The Newtonian universe is the most illustrious child of the calculus. 10 Who would have thought that the algebra of imaginary numbers would combine with two key numbers that are not algebraic solutions to any equation (n and e), and the purely mathematical idea of prime numbers, in order to provide the key to expressing electronic phenomena, an expression so accurate and effective as to have allowed an explosion in our ability to manipulate them? Words like "scalar", "potential", "gradient", and "vector" are abstract enough to begin with, mental constructs all the way. It is therefore astonishing that the gradient of the scalar potential represents the electric field, while the magnetic field is represented by a still more exotic concept that is the gradient's analogue for the vector potential, namely the "curl". Maxwell's equations would not have been possible without the idea of the "curl" of the vector potential. II Anyone who has studied vectors will remember how alien they seemed initially . One just gets accustomed to them, still thinking oneself to live in the fantasy world of vector algebra, until one realizes the breadth of its physical applications, which includes quantum mechanics. Our experience with matrices is similar, yet matrix algebra is likewise at home in the quantum mechanical world .l? The list is endless. It looks as though nature is meant to be understood, just as the ancient Greeks had thought. So often , abstruse games played by mathematicians turn out to have some application or other in the natural world. This is not only manifest in the case of strange mathematical inventions that turn out to express natural phenomena, but also when simple mathematical relations turn up in the most unlikely places and suggest that they run deeply through nature . A spectacular example of this has recently been shown through the connection demonstrated between the Fibonacci series, the Golden Section, and spiral phyllotaxis in the plant kingdom . This is worth looking at in detail. 4. The Fibonacci series is defined as follows : The first two terms are zero and one; every succeeding term is the sum of the two terms immediately

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precedin g it. In numeric al terms, the series thus formed is 0, I, I, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,21 , 34,55,89, and so on. The next step is to form another series based on the first: The first term of this new series is the quotient of the third and fourth terms in the Fibonacci series, the second the quotient of the fourth and fifth, the third of the fifth and sixth, and so on. In numerical terms, the new series is 1/2, 2/3, 3/5, 5/8, 8/13 and so on. In decim al form , the numbers are 0.5, 0.666 ... , 0.6, 0.625, 0.6 15 ... , 0.619 .. . , and so on. One readily observes a convergent series, since the gap between success ive terms narrow s relentlessly. At infinity, this series converges at 0.618. Once upon a time, the ancient Greeks were interested in finding a special kind of rectangl e that may be divided into exactly two parts as follows: The first is a square whose edge has the same length as the rectangle 's shorter side, the second is another rectangle whose longer side also has the same length as the first rectan gle 's shorter side, and the two rectangles stand in the following relationship: The ratio of the longer to the shorter side in the first is the same as that of the longer to the shorter side in the second. If the longer and shorter sides of the first rectangle are represented respecti vely by I and a, and those of the second one by a and ( I-a), then l/a = aI( l- a), then it turns out that the second rectan gle can be divided in exactly the same way, and so on with out end. The anci ent Greek s put thi s di scovery to goo d use in their arc hitec ture . The ratio that gove rns this pattern ca me to be known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Section. And the value of the term "a" in the formul a above? a = 0.618, exact ly the number around which the seco nd series above converges. So a rectangle whose height is 0.61 8 times the length of its base can be indefinitely divided up in accordance with the Golden Section. So far, we have described only one among many arcane convergences that mathematician s have stumbled upon, for there is no reason for us to expect that a series directl y derived from the Fibona cci series should converge at exac tly the same number that defines the Golden Section. A whole project could be devoted to such mathematical convergences, some of which are now known to cut across several mathematical subdisciplines. Such a project is of great interest, for the interconnection s within a purel y mental discipline like mathematics reveal a lot about the outward structure and moving boundary of the intelligible. How so? Th e intelligible is encountered at many level s. When we understand something about nature mathem atically, we may be said to have caught a glimpse of the intelli gibl e "o n the out side ". Several such glimpses that usually seem disparat e have been caught over the years. But when these, or

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some of these, are suddenly seen to be interconnected, then the intelligible acquires a structure for us . It is still an "outward" structure, for even mathematics can be said to be the "outer form" of intelligibility. On the other hand, the hidden unities that mathematicians have uncovered, sometimes by means as pedestrian as the tortuous proof of a previously intransigent theorem such as the famous "last theorem" by Fermat, orient us "inward" within the intelligible realm, away from any structure, towards whatever holds it together and gives it coherence. So the "boundary" of the intelligible "moves" for us, because as more inner unities are made manifest, we are driven further within the intelligible . At its pinnacle, overall unity is potentially the formal distillation of what mystical philosophers have called "the Oneness of Being". For now, however, we must move on with our illustration within its stated confines. One more preparatory step will suffice. Suppose we began with a circle whose circumference has a length of one unit. Suppose we further divided the circumference into two segments the ratio of whose lengths is the same as that between the sides of a rectangle that divides in conformity with the Golden Section. From the foregoing, we then know that the longer segment would have a length of 0.618 units while that of the shorter would measure I - 0.618 = 0.382 units. The last number that we need for our purposes is obtained when we measure the angle between the two radii within our circle that reach the circumference at either end of the shorter arc . Since the length of the circumference is one unit, a complete revolution measures 360 degrees, and the arc opposite the angle whose value we seek is 0.382 units long, then the angle equals 0.382 x 360 = 137.5 degrees (the exact length of the arc is actually 0.3819661 units). If we momentarily shift our attention to botany and consider the three principal ways in which leaves are arranged in higher plants, we find one in which the leaves alternate between opposites sides of the stem as they form, so that there is a line of leaves on each side of the stem (distichous phyllotaxis); another in which two or more leaves form a whorl at one position in the stem so that successive whorls have the same number of leaves but are rotated relative to one another in a manner that locates the leaves of one whorl over the gaps left by the previous whorl (decu ssate phyllotaxis); and a third in which the individual leaves that form successively up the stem are located relative to one another at a fixed angle of rotation (spiral phyllotaxis). Spiral phyllotaxis is far and away the most common arrangement of leaves in higher plants . And what is the most common value for the angle of rotation that characterizes spiral phyllotaxis? Exactly 137.5 degrees .

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A link has hen ce been discovered between spiral phyllotaxis, the Fibo nacci series and the Golden Section. As if to lend further emphasis to this link, suppose the leaves were numbered in reverse order of their appearance, so that in a top view of success ive leaves at the tips of appropriately chosen branches, the leaves that carry the lowest numbers are on the inside whi le those tha t carry the highe st are on the outside. There are two (opposite) directions in which spiral line s can be draw n through successively adjacent leaves, called parastichies. If we follow the two spiral lines that begin at the leaf numbered" I" for a certai n spec ies of Mon key Puzzle tree, we find that the first passes through the leaves numbered 14, 27, 40, 53, and so on, while the second passes thro ugh the leaves numbered 9, 17, 25, 33, 4 1, and so on. The regular intervals are 13 and 8 respec tively. The astute reader will recall that the numbers 8 and 13 are two successive terms in the Fibonacci series. It turns out that any other pair of such similarly drawn parastichies for the same species will pa ss throu gh leaves the int erv als bet ween whose ass ig ned numb ers are also 8 and 13. A case is being built for a more general definition of plants characterized by spira l phyllotaxis in relation to the orde red pair of numbers given by their respective parastichies when drawn as we have ju st described . These pairs are ordere d in virtue of their occurrence as successive terms in the Fibonacci series. Our sense of botanical or der grows deep er still when we rev iew experimental evidence gathered by Step hane Douady and Yves Co uder. Th is suggests that spira l phyllotaxis is itself derived from distichous phyllotaxis by means of a transformation . The tran sformation is defined as a bifurcation (a symmetry-breaking) due to a change in the rate of leaf forma tion , and the rate in turn depends on variou s chemical gradients as well as the physical properties of the membrane. As the rate of leaf formation increa ses, the spira l patterns defined by parastichies tend to move further up the Fibonacci serie s. We need only note here in support of this claim that the para stichies char ac ter ized by the first releva nt ordered pair ( I , I) indicate dis ticho us phyllotaxis, the second (1,2) an intermediate phyllotaxis, and the third and fourth [(2,3) and (3,5)] and those furt her up, spiral phyllotaxis.l! Nevertheless, it would be unwise to generalize such striking findings . As we take stock of the connection between spiral phyllotaxis, the Fibo nacci series and the Golden Section, we must resist the temptation to reduce every disposition to form to an underlying mathematical order, however esoteric or deep. After all, it is most unlikely that the form of a rabbit or kangaroo could be reduce d to numb ers alone, however much may depend on this. It is doubtful that one can even attribute the shape of such mammals excl usively

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to a combination of mathematics and ecology, for an element of unpredictability and surprise strongly suggests itself in the emergence of diverse species. Moreover, if we followed Aristotle and included the essential character of such mammals in their form, the very idea that this might be underlain by mathematics would be odd . There is a living aspect to animal characters that simply cannot be quantified, one often better captured by cartooni sts or poets than those who study the creatures in question more formally. This is another dimension of intelligibility that we shall turn to later.

5. A different perspective on nature's intelligibility is gained when we consider how certain natural phenomena were chanced upon . Sometimes, a physicist can persist in looking for a solution even when his equations under certain conditions indicate something physically unreal or impossible. A case in point is what happened when Dirac was not put off by the fact that his equation for relativistic quantum mechanics, perfectly suited for the description of the electron and the hydrogen atom , happened to describe particles of negative energies as well. Normally, there is no such thing as negative energy in the phy sical world. But the only way to prevent electrons from finding themselves in negative energy states, given the requirements of quantum mechanics and the application of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, is if there already were other particles that did have negative energies. For every electron whose energy state is positive , an unoccupied negative energy state is left behind . Its behaviour would be comparable to that of a positively charged electron with a positive energy state , which is equivalent to a normal electron in a negative state . This is how positrons were discovered. 14 Black holes were discovered as a result of a sequence of events beginning with the consequences of Schwarzschild's solution for the equations of general relativity, a component of which goes to infinity when a body happens to be smaller than its gravitational radius , which is roughly three kilometers for a body with the sun's mass." "Infinity" is usually meaningless in physics, but faith in the validity of that solution led to the idea that there could be bodies whose behaviour transcends the scope of physical laws, that in some sense define limits for these laws. The infinity that shows up is therefore interpreted as the result of the attempt to apply laws beyond the limit of their applicability. Another variation on this theme is when physici sts, with nothing else to go by, construct their equations by anology with the form of other equations that may have a very different mathematical se nse. This is how Heisenberg obtained the equations that describe a quantum system . He simply took the

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Hamiltonian equations" from class ical mechanics and repl aced the variables th at stoo d for the coord inates and momenta with matr ices, and ordi nary ope ra tio ns such as addi tio n and differentiation with thei r correspo nding matrix operations. Th e equatio ns worked. I? Still more surprisi ng is the case when mathematical ideas that are mere co mputational devices in their initial theoreti cal co ntext ass ume so me kind of physical rea lity in a new set of laws. Such was the fate of complex numb ers. Or igin all y, the al gebra of co mplex number s was devel op ed in orde r to surmo unt the dead end reached whenever the square root that is key in solving qu adrati c eq ua tio ns happen s to be negati ve. It was si mply prop osed to introduce an "imaginary" numb er i whose sq uare is -I , so that the square roo t of any negative numb er - x2 would then be +ix or - ix. Each co mplex number is then said to have a "real" and an "imaginary" component. In earlier wave fun ctions, however, it was possibl e to separate the real from the imaginary co mpone nt of the solutio ns o btained, so that nothing imaginary wa s assoc iated with the ph ysical phenomena thereby describ ed . But in Schrodin ger's equ ation , the solution itself turn s out to be irredu cibly complex. What it mean s physically for a phenomenon to be described by a numb er with an imaginary component is hard to say. But give n the ex per ime ntal vindicati on of Schrodinger 's eq uations for wave mech anics, there is no doubt that complex numbers describ e so me aspec ts of physical realit y. 18 Th e method s by which nature is making her inte lligi bi lity fe lt are uncann y: mathematical entities normall y taken to be physically meaningless lead to the discovery of hith erto unknown and occas ionally unim aginabl e phen omen a suc h as anti ma tte r and bl ack hol es; two diffe re nt level s of physical reality, as represented by classical and qu antum mec hanics, turn out to be descr ibed by ana logous ly re lated math em ati cal for mulae in a co mpletely unexpected and apparently unju stifiable mann er; and physic ally intr actable math ematical terms used only for convenience that had hith erto dropped out of solutions eas ily becom e quite real in other physic al contexts (which exactly parallels the ontolog ical tran sformation of co mplex numb ers when we shift from cla ssical to quantum wave mechani cs). Rel ati vit y theory and qu antum mechanics ha ve placed nature' s intelligi bility in a new light. Th er e see ms to be no end to how at firs t sight see ming ly ingeniou s, if not fantas tic, mathematical flight s of mind might describe some physical reality or other. The most abstract imp rovi sations turn out to repre sent natural proce sses. Thi s would not surprise an ancient thinker like Ar istotle or Plotinus, for they both took mind to be one at the level of intellig ibility. But that they thou ght thu s should no longer surprise us eith er,

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given all the ways that our mind, even when seque stered and forced along rigorously formal procedures, end s up meeting with nature. Mind performing mathematical magi c is mind at the heart of nature . And so our own magic becomes the key to the order of nature, however esoteric . Ari stotle went furthe r. He proposed that when we trul y think, when our intellect com es into its own and we are at one with intelligibles , we constitute them in a way.' ? The mind 's self-constitution is also participation in the con stitution of intelligibles, of nature 's intelligible core . We do not only expre ss nature' s intelligibil ity, but in some way we account for it. Our ordinary chronological sense is severe ly jolted by such pronouncements. But is ontological realit y framed by our ordinary sense of time, or is it the other way around? We seem to be discoverin g relations that have lon g been embedded within nature . Yet such di scovery lifts us up from ordinary time . Onl y when we reduce the mind to a spatio-temporal ent ity are we faced with a problem. A non-localized mind , as mind must be if it is truly mind - and it is que stionable whether mind is an "entity" - can quite easily be the same as intelligibles . What changes from one era to another - Ari stotle 's to ou rs - is the styl e with which we express that samenes s: explicitly and intensely ontological for Aristotl e, and (prim arily but not necessaril y) mathematical for most of us in the West (but evidently not for Hegel and Heidegger, am ong oth ers). Since neither mind nor intelligibles are spatiotemporal, noth ing prevents them from being united in the same constitutive process. We are not literally cre ating antimatter when we disco ver it ! But in conceiv ing it as we try to sur mount the conceptual ob stacle of " negative energy" , we rise ephemera lly to the level of that primordial and encompassing con stitutive process, which is the meaning of Platonic "partici pation". All intelligence is gathered into the same ligh t. Nature 's intelligibility is mind 's self-transparency. Thi s is the Aristot elian sense of the divine in man.

6. Mathematicall y formulated conventional science is making us more receptive to the cipher of nature' s intelligibility. But to limit ourselves to the numerical ac curacy of nature 's accor d with abstruse math em atic al theorie s ha s its pitfalls . Ja spers put s it very well : The accuracy of [natu ral order ] is like a cipher of trans ce nde nt truth , and the mystery of its val idity, like a reflection of transcend ent bein g. All accur acy has a glow of truth ; it is not simply itself, but the seem ing luminary of what makes it possible. This glow is deceptive, however. At the mome nt of contentme nt with its validl y accurate truth, we would experience an endless waste of mere accuracy and would promptly lose the cipher."

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One need look no further than the obsession with developing faster and more powerful instruments and the neglect of the import of what they might help bring forth. At some point, one has to treat the dazzling convergence between mathematical and physical theories more soberly and turn towards that which makes accuracy possible in the first place, towards the "glow of truth". Even were we to confine ourselves to mathematics, it is well known that numbers are only the mathematical surface, so that the greatest practitioners of the field are motivated by something more profound, which is partially embodied in the symmetry, harmony, and ineluctability of various proofs and theories. The founding mathematician has a quasi-artistic sensibility. What he expresses in a precise and, to most, esoteric language is guided by an intuition of beauty or, more exactly, a premonition of an opportunity to show beauty unfold through creatively devised concepts and the formulations that these help unleash: ... the mathematician could formulate only a handful of interesting theorems without defining concepts beyond those contained in the axioms and .. . [these] concepts ... are defined with a view of permitting ingenious logical operations which appeal to our aesthetic sense both as operations and also in their results of great generality and simplicity. .. . Most more advanced mathematical concepts, such as complex numbers , algebras , linear operators, Borel sets - and this list could be continued almost indefinitely - were so devised that they are apt subject s on which the mathematician can demonstrate his ingenuity and sense of formal beauty. In fact, the definition of these concepts, with a realization that interesting and ingenious considerations could be applied to them, is the first demonstration of the ingeniousness of the mathematician who defines them."

These were the words of an eminent physicist who had thought seriously about what it meant for mathematical formulations to be so physically effective. With Wigner, we have moved subtly from the cipher of nature's intelligibility to that of Beauty. Beauty has always given people cause to pause. It is amazing that not only is there anything at all, but what there is radiates as it does. We are more directly moved by poetic , musical, and other artistic embodiments of that radiance. But it comes through in mathematical thinking as well, not only when it is originary, but when we ourselves learn it and think it through. We are further struck by the connection between a mathematician's premonitions of beauty and the accuracy with which his formulations are later found to apply to the physical world . Such striking linkages reinforce the Plotinian vision: Beauty properly beheld entails the intellect's ascent to the intelligible. Let us add the voice of von Neumann to Wigner's before we continue with our own reflections:

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One expects a . . . mathem atical theory not only to describe and classify in a simple and elegant way num erous and a priori dispar ate cases . One also expects "e lega nce" in its "a rchitecture" .. . . These criteria are clearl y those of any crea tive art.. .. 22

The aesthetic awareness of a mathematician is tied to the efficacy of his art in the description of the physical world. Wh at we are trying to effec t her e is a transition from an "outer" to an "inner" view of intelligibility. Thi s expands on the ob servation made earlier in this discu ssion that the uniti es that are surfacing in contemporary mathematics are orienting us " inwa rd" within the intelligibl e realm . With the reco gnition that aesthetic awareness brin gs forth intellectual con verg ences, we are more directl y within the realm of intelligibles. Whoever is able to ground intellectual con vergences in aesthetic awareness appears to have drunk the very sap of intelli gibility. Inde ed, one is then illumined by the cipher of Unity, which we shall presently approach more vigoro usly with the help of the young Marcel' s met aphysical meditation s. When our attentions rem ain focused on the "mechanics" of those many instances where mathematical invention and subtlety turn out to correspond with the ways of nature, we miss the essence of the correspondence. One "mechanics" corresponding with another, the one in the mind , the other in nature, is but the surface of an inner unit y who se outward ex press ion it is. The inner unit y is experienced whenever we behold beauty and humbly reco gni ze it as such. In tho se rare mom ent s when we are not distr acted by our other co nce rns, we may find our sel ves at one with something beaut iful. For the math em atician, lik e the painter, poet, or mu sici an , thi s un ity is creative, ex perie nce d amid the ex ploratio n of new ter rit ory where o ne is able to anticipate emergent form s and shape them , informed by one's sense of beaut y. There is, then , a three-step process by which nature becomes intelli gible in our scientific culture: first, the ex perience of oneness with beaut y within terra incognita; seco nd, the crea tio n o f a ske tc h gove rne d by o ne 's se nse of beautiful architectonics; and thi rd, the tran sformation of that sketch into a theory, with conc ept s, rule s, equations, and so on . Thi s is but one side of a twofold ontology. In general , thi s ontology, as we have mentioned a little earlier, proposes that to abid e within the inner dimension of intelligibility, here manifest as oneness with beauty, is to ground the outward expression of that intelligibility for both mathematics and nature, so that we find tim e and again that mathematics has actually told us something about how nature work s. To deliver one self over to beauty , to abide within the inner dimension of int elli gibility, is to hear the dir ect language of transcendence that Ja spers singled out as the beginnin g of our encounter with ciphers. One is no longer

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blinded by the admittedly seductive mechanics of accuracy, but is transported into the abode of the infinitely more substantial glow whose lesser radiance comes through as the surface accuracies that we so often celebrate and dwell upon . We are thus able to accept the three-part scheme that Jaspers has offered us: We hear the direct language of transcendence when we achieve oneness with beauty. And just as this direct language has found its way into myths and revelations, so does it become partly translated into the lineaments of mathematically formulated scientific thought, the dominant myth of our time . The scientific theories themselves, if wrought in that spirit, are then the analogues of speculative philosophy, the third language, for in them lies the seed for the restoration of our ability to hear the direct language of transcendence once more, whatever the long-term status of their accuracy. 7. It is no double extremely difficult to articulate the difference between intelligibility on the "outside" and from the "inside". However, the motive for and endurance of philosophy are rooted in the awareness of such differences and the urgency with which they need to be brought to language, however inadequately. Some rashly attribute the greatly divergent (and frequently heroic) attempts to embody those differences textually to their allegedly illusory nature. This is the easy way out. Much reward has been gained from supposing the difficulty to result from the gross disparity between the means at our disposal and what makes itself present to us. Dogmatic unreceptiveness to presence can only lead to the foregone conclusion wished by its practitioners. In contrast, receptivity to presence leads wherever it may and is invariably expansive. Gabriel Marcel surely was a philosopher blessed with such expansiveness. Throughout his philosophical activity, he has conveyed much wisdom regarding presence and presences. He has also thought through the question of intelligibility in his early writings, and so we turn to his Metaphysical Journal . Marcel's first effort to portray intelligibility comes by way of a most unusual analysis of necessity. Discussions of "necessity" are often confined to logic, but Marcel does not hesitate to search for more profound origins . When two things are related by necessity, and we grasp that this is so, our internal experience is psychologically analogous to muscular constraint. Just as our muscles are constrained to move in certain ways under the right conditions, so do we mentally experience the analogous constraint when we intuit the presence of necessity . This is a unitary experience, no less so than when we contemplate beauty. Only later, when we fall back into the analytical mode , do we fragment the experience and translate necessity as "constant conjunction" or "rational concatenation't."

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Necessity, before we express it as a logical mode , is a kind of unity. But to think of this as a unity recognized by the mind is to transform the mind into an entity exterior to what is recogni zed. This is a mistake, for the mind cannot be treated with the same logic as the brain without surreptitiously converting the mind into the brain and losing sight of its distinctness. We cannot understand the mind, nor intelligibility, if we persist with objectification. After all, objectification is itself a mental process and its very logic prevents it from encompassing the mind . The mind must transcend objectivity if it is to remain itself (a position also implicit in the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Wittgenstein). Hence, necessity, if not something recognized by the mind, can only be an aspect of the unity of mind . So it is with intelligibility." Mind, necessity, and intelligibility, properly understood, all involve the radical negation of exteriority, of objectification. We are in the realm of knowledge "from the inside" . Ordinary boundaries dissolve, among which is spatial compartmentalization . The unity of which we speak is non-local." The unity of mind ranges indifferently over individuals and the world . Intelligibility is also non-local, for it is something about the mind , specifically about the mind in relation to its world . Recalling Marcel's metaphor for the experience of necessity, intelligibility is thus defined as "the relation of tension by which the mind is constituted when it organizes its world"." Thi s is reminiscent of Aristotle: The intelligibility of the world is inseparable from the mind's constituting activity , so that the mind and its world come into their own together. Intelligibility is nothing other than the intensity of the constitutive joining of its two sides . Marcel's metaphor enables us to imagine the mind as something stretching out like an inflationary universe as it organizes its world and intelligibility as the inner law at the heart of the mind 's constitution . And so, Marcel can say that intelligibility can only be defined "by an appeal to the very life of thought'' ." This idea is extended to knowledge itself, so that rationality is but a fictitious projection of the "life " of knowledge, an exteriorization of a much deeper inner process. From such an internal perspective, we no longer seek knowledge about the world, but the world becomes a reflection of knowledge." This is consistent with the fact that we stand in a constitutive relation with the world when we experience the inner dimension of its intelligibility. Intelligibility, defined as the life or soul of thought, as the moment through which thought constitutes itself as thought, is therefore not to be considered as an inherent property of ideas or groups of ideas, nor as a relation between the se and a thought conceived as something external to them . It is best appreciated as "an immanent movement by which thought grasps itself in a

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whole of ideas " .29 Thi s is the "genuine dynamic and constitutive moment" of intelligibility that comes first, after which come all the formal appurtenances that progressively distance this moment from our purview, but not necessar ily irretrievably; for a sound formalization remains rooted in its origins. In Marcel's philosophy, intelligibility is organically linked with the unity of all being and is the gateway to our appreciation of that unity. We progressively fragment this unity as we exteriorize it and our accounts become more and more formally rigorous (or scientifically accurate), although interestingly enough, great advances in formal rigour in the last hundred years have led to problems whose solution or interpretation invite thought to turn once more towards its roots in that unity. What Marcel tries so hard to capture is that revelatory moment of unity in which something truly comes to light. He stretches and strains the expressive capacity of language in order to convey how such moments are experienced "from the insid e" . He then generalizes and link s them with his conception of intelligibility. Given the non-locality of his conception and the constitutive role of intelligibility for both mind and world , we stand face to face with the deepest possible source for the success of mathematics in the physical sciences : If mathematical ideas are underlain with an aesthetic experience whose phenomenology is similar to that drafted by Marcel, then the consequences of that experience should come as no surprise. A mathematician able to anticipate the architectonics of an idea, moved by its beauty, has achieved the kind of link with (non-local) mind/world that potentially accounts for the descriptive power of the theory built on his idea . 8. Marcel' s thought has brought us closer to the cipher of Unity. But the substance of what we are aiming at still lacks a certain kind of "glow". We have seen it radiate through quite unexpected convergences between mathematics and phy sics . We have seen it radiate further in the beauty of which the best mathematicians have a premonition, and which grounds the elegance of their theories and the physical effectiveness of these. We have gone so far as to touch upon the primordial Unity in which mind and world are both constituted, a constitutive proce ss in which lie the spoors of intelligibility. All this glows in its own way, but seems still to need more "life". It was hinted previously that beings can be more directly intelligible, as they are to cartoonists and poets. A poet (or a cartoonist) brings to us the "physiognomy" of intelligibles. Poetically read ciphers have character. They are more obviously lively, more capable of enlivening us. Let us thus turn to an explicitly poetic outlook.

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No less than Joseph Conrad, and every other author of note fru strated by the opacity of the reality that unveils itself all too briefly, a reality relative to which the usual way that we encounter being s and live our own lives appears to be but a shadow, Czeslaw Milosz sometimes comes close to giving up on the po ssibility of breaking through the barrier of self-encl osure and the humdrum world to which this limits us: ... long ago, when I was twenty, .., there was a hope I would be everythin g, Perhaps even a butterfly or a thrush, by magic. Now I see dusty district roads And a town where the postmaster gets drunk every day Melanchol y with rema ining ident ical to himself."

One gets the impression that there is an impenetrable barrier between us and things as they are within themselves. It looks as though how a being is for us depend s on how much we can (literall y) become that being. Only thing s that acquire an extraordinarily full reality are truly present. Only then, as a lesser consequence, doe s their intell igibility come through with an irresistible perfection. But we can never literally be something else. All we can do is wait expectantly, with as much openness and receptivity as we can attain. For a while, perhap s a long while, the wait seems futile. Downcast, our openness and receptivity dimin ish, and we fall back in on ourselves. Until further notice, we are stuck with and within ourselves, trapped , condemned to be strangers in a world that ceaselessly teases us with its famil iarity. Thi s is es pecially so when we long to recapture the past, above all a past that is not our own: If onl y I could describe the courtesans of Venice As in a loggia they teased a peacoc k with a twig, And out of brocade , the pearls of their belt , Set free heavy breasts and the reddish weal Where the button ed dress marked the belly, As vividly as seen by the skipper of galleons Who landed that mornin g with a cargo of gold; And if I could find for their miserable bones In a gra veyard whose gates are licked by greasy water A word more enduring than their last-used co mb That in the rot under tomb stones, alone, awaits the light.'!

If only we were not so much on the lookout for novelty and so distanced, on account of its "t riteness" , from so much that matt ers . We would then apprec iate Milo sz' s meditation on the prec ariousness of an erotic glow 's inten sity and fullness in the eyes of the succes sful adventurer on his return,

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and that of the words sought by the poet to hold such a presence - precarious, both , before the material persistence of a mundane implement. But there is a double irony in this poetic fragment. The reality of the moment outshine s things like combs, however longer it takes the latter to perish . And Milos z's denial conceals a deeper affirmation. He did not find the words explicitly, but a radiant reality has been implicitly preserved, all the more so when its urgency is highlighted, faced with the end that we must all meet. The poet is vividly aware of the vibrancy of a moment for which he cannot be spatiotemporally present. His poem emits the light that shines on what seems forever lost in time, so that the enchantment of an encounter in Medieval or early Renai ssance Venice is resurrected. Similarly, the astonishment felt by Cortez and Pizarro when they respectively became the first Europeans to encounter the Aztec and Inca civilizations has survived in the early chronicles that have come down to us and in the literary masterpieces that these have spawned throughout Latin America. The urban disaster that is contemporary Mexico City does not prevent imaginative artists from presenting us with plausible and evocative conceptions of sixteenth-century Tenochtitlan. Milosz's skepticism is not destructive . Like Conrad 's, it is underlain with having been ephemerally privy to presences, to what is "really real" . It is the skepticism of those who have a strong sense of what so very nearly eludes their talents , sensibility, and determination . If Milosz bemoans estrangement, it is because he knows all too well that from which he is sundered for long periods. That he knows what he often misses comes through refreshingly in his Ode to a Bird:

o compo site, o uncon sciou s, Holdin g your feathery palm s behind you, Propped on your gray lizard legs, On cybernetic gloves That grasp at whatever they touch . ... Beyond will , without will You sway on a branch above lakes of air And their submerged palaces, towers of leaves, Terrace s where you can land in a harp of shadow. You lean forward , summoned, and I contemplate the instant When your foot loosens its hold , your arm extends. The place you have left is rocking, into the lines of crystal You take your warm palp itating heart. . .. Beyond name, withou t name,

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An impeccable motion in an expanse of amber. So that I comp rehend , while your wings beat, What divides me from things I name every day, And from my vertical figure Though it extends itself upward to the zenith.t?

Plotinus says that once a vision of Beauty is attained , one must sink into that vision until one no longer sees, but becomes what one sees : To those that do not see entire, the immediate impression is alone received ; but those drunken with this wine, filled with the nectar, all their soul penetrated by this beauty, cannot remain mere gazers; no longer is there a spectator gazi ng on an outside spectacle."

Milosz has attained some such union in his Ode to a Bird. The self-effacement necessary for that union is the reason why one knows what one sees better than anyone who by force of habit can only increase his stranglehold on things through ever more rigorou s exteriorizations. No ornithologist or mathematical biologist, certainly not in his "scientific" work, can claim that a bird has become as intelligible to him as it has to Milosz. An ornithologist can certainly contemplate birds and appreciate them with a poetic sensibility, but he is not allowed to show this in his ornithological work. So the impenetrable barrier between ourselves and things as they really are is broken through when we lose ourselves in what we contemplate, when we "become" what we contemplate, as Plotinus insists . This is the most concrete way to understand the "non-locality" of mind and intelligibility, which we came upon when we briefly examined the thought of Marcel. Is the price too high ? Do we cease to be ourselve s in order for things to become directly and concretely intelligible to us, when we let things simply be what they are? Do Being and presence require our "annihilation"? The answer comes through one more poem by Milosz, called Magpiet y: . .. A magpie was screeching and I said: Magpiety? What is magpiety? I shall never ach ieve A magp ie heart , a hairy nostril over the beak, a flight That always renews ju st when comin g down, And so I shall never comprehend magpiety. If however magpiety does not exist My nature doe s not exist either ."

Here too there is much irony, within the poem and in relation to the other poems to which we have turned. Again, we are faced with a surface denial and a deeper affirmation. Milosz shows flashes of knowing just what a magpie is in the very words with which he insists that he knows nothing. More significantly, however, he ties the existence of intelligibles, including and perhaps especially their

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"physiognomic" aspect, to one another. Either all beings are just what they are, or nothing is. Then poetry can rise to the occasion and let things be in its own way and so let us be as well. All are joined in presence, in a fuller reality. The cipher of our own being is read as we read the cipher of the being of another. With the poet, we have moved subtly from intelligibility to Being itself. In the wider world of recept ivity to the being of a bird, we gain further insight into the mutu al constitut ion of mind and intelligibles. I would not be myself were ther e no such thing as magpiety, but then there would be no magpiety if I could not be myself. The non-l ocality of mind is hence best illustrated when we appreciate that pure intelligibility is co nstitutive of both "sides" involved, that to lose onese lf in what one fully comprehends is to become onese lf and co nstitute the fulfillment of what is comprehended. Against this backdrop, there is a chanc e that we might understand what Plotinu s meant when he wrote: "Mind is forme d by the inherent power of inner beauty'l." The binding force of inner beauty gives rise to mind and acco unts for intelligibility. Then it recede s, progressively dimmed by cultural transformations and ill-cho sen word s. Thu s what is takes leave, what is present becomes abse nt, what is most intelligible becomes unintelligible, and what starts out as real information turn s int o disinformati on . But the way back is never co mpletely lost. So long as there are poets who capture those moments when things have presence and truly are, in the co urse of which they also become intelli gible "from the inside" , so long as there are scientists profound and lucid enough to se t their sig hts on the ori gin of their co nce ptua l improvisations and inventions, we may remai n j ust close enough to the inner beauty that makes it possible for us to understand , and that lies at the heart of Being.

Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Washington, D. C. NO TES 1 Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, 3 vols., trans . E. B. Ashton (Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 197 1), Vol. 3, p. 113. 2 Ibid. , p. 134. 3 See Seren Kierkegaard, Concl uding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swe nso n and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press , 1941/1968). 4 Gab rie l Marcel , Being and Having, trans. Katharin e Farrer (Glasgow : The University Press, 1949), pp. 69- 88. 5 See for exa mple Martin Heidegge r, Parmenides, trans . Andre Schuwer and Rich ard Rojcewicz (Bloom ington and Indianapolis: Ind iana University Press. 1992). 6 Jaspers , op. cit., p. 120. 7 What follows is based on Jaspers, op. cit. , pp. 113- 9 and 134- 5.

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Ibid., p. 140. Ibid. , p. 149. 10 A fun ction relates one variable to one or more others, for instance force to acceleration . A diffe rential equation relates infinitesimal change in one variable to that in another, such as how change in the force applied affects acce lera ti on. Whenever there is a continuous aggregation , for instance the di stance travelled , then one can " integrate" th e relevant differential equation over the required interval to obtain the result. Thi s is the simplest form of the calculus, and it can be readily see n that it is efficacious under the conditions specified for Newtonian dynamics. 11 Maxwell 's equations are the cornerstone of electromagnetic theory , and they have paved the way for so much twenti eth-century science, from Einstein's theo ry of relativity to knowledge of the electronics that lie behind the computer-driven "information revolution". 12 Quantum mechanics is the other major scientific development that has allowed computer technology to advance as far as it has. In general, throu gh extremely subtle computations that accuratel y predict the behaviour of matter at ultramicroscopic levels . qu antum mech anics has allowed us to take a hitherto inconc eivably detailed look at natur e, for instance in the field of microbiology. 13 The remarkable sto ry about the discov ery o f the math ematical order that underlies spiral phyllot axis has mostly come to my attention through Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots (New York: Touch stone, 1996), pp . 116-132. 14 Mark Ste iner, 'T he Applicatio n of Mathematics to the Natural Sciences" , Journal of Philosophy 86: 9 (Septembe r 1989), pp. 458 -9. 15 Ibid ., p. 459 . 16 Hamiltonian equations are di stinguished by emph asis on mom enta rather than forces . The Hamiltonian function that they use is the total en ergy expressed in terms of the positional coordinates and the mom enta. 17 Steiner, op . cit., pp . 467-9. 18 Steiner, op . cit., pp . 477--480 . 19 Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge Universit y Press, 1988), pp. 116-135 . 20 Jaspers, op . cit. , p. 162. 2 1 Eugene Wigner, Symmetrie s and Reflect ions (Woodbridge , Connecticut: Ox Bow Press , 1979), pp. 224-5 . 22 Steiner, op . cit. , p. 455 . 23 Gabr iel Mar cel, Metaph ysical Journal, trans. Bernard Wall (London: Rockliff, 1952), p. 100. 24 Ibid ., p. 101-2. 25 Ibid ., pp. 112-3. 26 Ibid ., pp. 103--4. 27 Ibid ., p. 107. 28 Ibid ., p. 108. 29 Ibid ., pp. 109-110. 30 Czeslaw Milos z, The Collected Poems (Hop ewell , NJ: The Ecco Press, 1988), p. 129. 31 Ibid ., p. 123. 32 Ibid ., pp. 124-5. 33 Plotinus, The Enneads , trans . Steph en MacKenna (Burdett, NY: Larson Publications, 1992), V: 8.10 , p. 494 . 34 Milo sz, op . cit ., p. 120. 35 Plotinus, op . cit ., V: 8.2, pp. 486-7. 9

RAYMOND 1. WILSON III

METAPHORIC AND METONYMIC SYMBOLISM : A DEVELOPMENT FROM PAUL RICOEUR 'S CONCEPTS

Roman Jakobson's metaphoric and metonymic principles apply to all of language; with these categories Jakobson achieved a self-conscious generalization in the light of the Sausurrean model. That such a broadening contributed valuably to the under standing of language is indicated by the extent of the existing metaphoric-metonymic commentary and analy sis. However, Jakobsen's principles have not been extensively applied to symbolism. I suggest that this is becau se of a Catch-22 that this theory has reached: (I) the best way to envision a metaphoric symbolism would be by analogy to figurative metaphor, and the best way to envision a metonymic symboli sm would be by analogy to figurative metonymy ; but (2) after broadening, Jakobson's principles apply to much more than metaphor and metonymy as distinct figures . Ideas of Paul Ricoeur and David Lodge can be used to refocu s on figurative metaphor and figurative metonymy so that these figures can be used to define metaphoric and metonymic symbolism, without abandoning or radically changing Jakobson's valuable system . I Ricoeur and Lodge provide ideas for understanding metaphor and metonymy respectively. Paul Ricoeur's analysis of metaphor as "impertinent predication" narrows Jakobson's metaphoric principle so that it can closely outline figurative metaphor ; and David Lodge 's idea of metonymy as "unusual deletion" narrows Jakobson's metonymic principle to closely outline figurative metonymy. These narrowings allow us to fit Tzvetan Todorov's explanation of symbolism into a unified metaphoric/metonymic dichotomy of the symbol. In Symbolism and Interpretation, Tzvetan Todorov divides the concept of symbol into two categories : "lexical symbolism," which I will claim is essentially metaphoric , and "propositional symbolism," which I will claim is essentially metonymic (Todorov 1982: 39). Metaphoric symbols, involving the mental discarding of the vehicle once it has taken the reader to the tenor, arise from impertinent predication which is unexpressed, being merely implied from the context. While the author writes "b," he or she provokes the reader to say that "a is b" when "a" is literally quite different from "b." The provocation occurs in the statement's context, either within the text or outside of it, or both. In contrast, metonymic symbols retain the vehicle, adding a second meaning that we can call the tenor ; a metonymic symbol relies on the similarity of part to whole, and challenges the

49 A.-T. Tym ieniecka (ed. ), Analecta Huss erliana LXXV, 49-61 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Prim ed in the Netherlands.

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author to create "b" as an "identifying association" of "a ." Metonymic symbolism has the advantage of maintaining the realistic texture, while metaphoric symbolism is far more flexible. The two types of symbolism faIl within Roman Jakobson 's metaphoric and metonymic principles as the two basic components of language . Seeing them thus connects parts of Todorov's text and clarifies the relationship among his two sets of terminologies: lexical/propositional symbolism and philological/patristic functions. For the first terminology, Todorov takes a Biblical passage that states "animals will be rewarded" as his starting point; some early Christian commentators, using what Todorov calls lexical symbolism, decided the passage indicated that only the meek wiIl be rewarded; however, those using what he calls propositional symbolism took this to mean that all men will be rewarded. In the lexical symbolic reading, Todorov finds only "two propositions": "(I) some men are meek like animals; (2) these men wiIl be rewarded," while in the propositional symbolic interpretation, Todorov finds "three propositions": "( 1) animals will be rewarded; (2) men are like animals (only better); (3) men will be rewarded too" (40). The missing proposition in lexical symbolism is the original statement in the text, indicating that this interpretation replaces the word "animal" with the expression "men who are meek like animals." This lexical symbolic interpretation allows readers to dismiss the literal statement, a reading that would be attractive to those who do not want to deal with the problem of explaining how and why God rewards animals . Propositional symbolism, in contrast, maintains the original meaning and adds the second. While insisting that he has "no new 'theory of the symbol " (22), Todorov makes the following claim : To my knowledge, no one in the Western tradition has attempted to juxtapose and to distinguish these two linguistic phenomena in (precisely) this way. Which does not mean that the distinction itself has gone unnoticed ; but it has been described in other ways, less satisfying ones, as I shall attempt to show. (41)

I believe that Todorov's propositional/lexical distinction can actuaIly be seen as the application to symbolism of Roman Jakobson's broader concept of metaphoric and metonymic principles of language. Todorov's lexical symbolism, in which the original sense is discarded, would be symbolic under Jakobson's metaphoric (replacement) principle of language, while Todorov's propositional symbolism, in which the original sense is retained, constitutes symbolism in Jakobsen 's metonymic (deletion) principle (Jakobson 1960: 350-77). In fact, reading Todorov 's concept in the light of

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ideas of Paul Ricoeur and David Lodge establishes a unified metaphoric/metonymic dichotomy of the symbol.' Todorov mentions Jakobson briefly, saying that the "list" of possible rela tionships within tropes "has undergone minor modifications" through the years: "In Roman Jakobson, of course, we go back to just two , resemblance and contiguity" (74) . Todorov is correct. As Terence Hawkes explains, Jakobson "felt able to propose that human language in fact operates in terms of two fundamental dimensions whose characteristics are crystallized in the rhetorical devices of metaphor and metonymy" (Hawkes 1972: 78) .3 Relating metaphor to similarity, Jakobson opposes a metaphoric principle (something replacing another thing which it resembles) to a metonymic principle which Jakobson related to contiguity (the deletion of something to leave another thing which is in the same sequence). In metaphoric writing, Jakobson suggested, the writer selects among several similar alternatives; the writer can select either "boy" or " lad," for example: " selection between alternatives implies the possibility of substituting one for another," and the unchosen alternatives thereby become available for metaphoric replacement, and thus, "selection and substitution are two faces of the same operation" (Jakobson and Halle 1975: 60).4 This formulation leaves a problem. I. METAPHOR

Because Jakobson 's metaphoric (replacement) principle applies to all of language, it draws too large a circle for clearly delineating metaphor as a figure . To make the circle smaller, we must add the idea of difference to that of replacement. Writing of figurative metaphor, Paul Ricoeur notes that "metaphor is the result of the tension between two terms in a metaphorical utterance" (Ricoeur 1976: 50) . If one says, "A lad is a boy," one does not create the figure of metaphor because not every statement of identity or similarity creates a figurative metaphoric relationship. As the word " metaphor" has traditionally been used, only the equating - or close comparison - of literally unlike things creates the figure . For example, in the sentence, 'The man is a rock," we assume that the reader's mind intuitively and instantly rejects the literal reading since human beings have none of the physical hardness and inertness of rocks; men differ so much from rocks that the literal reading becomes impossible. "It is this process of self-destruction or transformation which imposes a sort of twist on the words , an extension of meaning thanks to which we can make sense where a literal interpretation would be literally nonsensical" (Ricoeur 1976: 50).5

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Ricoeur also points out that figurative metaphor is not a word but a full sentence with definite predication, and that the predication flouts the "logical distance between two far flung semantic fields ... creating a semantic shock which, in turn, sparks the meaning of the metaphor" (Ricoeur 1978: 7). After rejecting the literal interpretation, the reader, guided by what Ricoeur calls the strategy of "absurdity," finds an unexpected overlap in meaning, such as the firmness of character and emotional stability of the man which parallels the rock's physical firmness and stability (Ricoeur 1976: 50). The importance of context is clear because if we had been talking about American football, then, "John is a rock," might have meant that John has huge muscles and cannot be moved out of the center of the team's defensive line. In either case, we do not believe that any real rock actually existed as a referent to the word "rock" which appeared in the text. II. METAPHORIC SYMBOL

Having employed Ricoeur's tension concept to identify the area covered by metaphor proper, within the circle of Jakobson's metaphoric principle, we can establish a metaphoric symbol to be like a metaphor except that the author writes only the vehicle and implies the predication which connects the vehicle to the (much different) tenor. Let us look at an example: in Delmore Schwartz's poem "The Heavy Bear that Goes with Me," the narrator describes a bear that sleeps with him, eats with him, and follows him all day, pawing his wife and kicking his friends; we must decide that no bear is literally present and interpret the bear as a symbol for the narrator 's body because the literal interpretation makes no sense. This abolition of the literal identifies the symbol as metaphoric; and because Schwartz only implies and does not say that it "is my body," the poem has symbolism, not figurative metaphor. Thus the idea that "the bear equals the body" constitutes metaphoric symbolism. The same metaphoric process mystifies young Stephen Dedalus when he asks how a woman can be a Tower of Ivory, in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Todorov makes a similar statement in reference to interpretations of Biblical statements such as "Abraham's two wives." Early Christian interpreters of the Bible wanted to avoid explaining why Abraham had two wives when other parts of the Bible clearly forbade polygamy. "If for example," says Todorov, "wives' were used to mean weaknesses," it would not be a case of forgetting the existence of the wives, but of "abolishing the initial statement: nothing would have been said about Abraham's (literal) wives" (44) . The context transformed the phrase "had two wives" into an impertinent predication for these early Christians .

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A metaphorically sy mbolizing author implies by context - both textual and extra- textual: Schwartz 's bear appears in a poem with the sub-title "The testament of the body "; "Tower of Ivory" appears in a litany of names of the Blessed Virgin; the story of Abra ham appears in a Bible which ultimately forbade polygamy. Thu s, moving from Ricoeur's definition of meta phor to define a metap horic symbol not only identifies Todorov's lexical symbolism as symbol under Jakobson's metaphoric principle, but also reveals the process by wh ich an ex pres sio n becomes meta phorically symbolic, i.e., a selfdest ruction of the literal meaning and replace ment by the symbolic meani ng. Thi s analysis, in emp hasizing context as the author' s mea ns of implying impe rtinent predication , provides an alterna tive to Ricoeur's definitio n of symbol; he has wri tten that the absence of the exp licit " impertinent predication" must mean that only "a single movement" ca n exist in symbols, a movement wh ich ass imilates the rea der "to the seco nd sig nifica tion by means of, or through, the literal one," and that a symbol "is so constituted that we ca n only attai n the seconda ry significatio n by way of the primary sig nification, where this primary signification is the sole mea ns of access to the surp lus meaning" (Ricoe ur 1976: 55). In opening out this definitio n, the co ntextual explanation of the reader's access to "the seco nd signification" con nects the concept to Todoro v's system and has the advantages of requiring nei ther an inh erent hidden signification in the original express ion, nor a mystic abi lity on the part of the maker of a metaphoric sy mbol. Under Ricoeur's definition, the literal meaning is never rejected as absurd , neither before nor after the reader discovers the symbolic meaning, a featu re sugges tive of something closer to a metonymic symbol in which no discarding of the literal meaning occurs." II I. M ETONYMY

As his metaphoric pri ncip le doe s for metapho r, Jakobson's metonym ic principle also dr aws too large a circ le fo r clea rly de lineati ng figurative metonymy. To draw a smaller circle, within Jakobson 's idea of contiguity, we can apply David Lodge's concept that figurative metonymy adds the notion of unusual choice to the co ntiguity of the metonymic principle. In preparation for this point , we need to understand Lodge's clai m that, despite appeara nces, meto ny my ope rates by delet ion and not by repl acement; only met aphor opera tes by repl acement. Lodge explains that both metaphor and metonymy appear to operate through rep lace men t; however, the true replacement in metaphor co ntains the eleme nt of difference, while metonymy's apparen t replace ment does not. Lodge says that "in the sentence ' Keels ploughed the

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deep,' ploughed is a metaphorical equivalent for the movement of ships, derived from similarity, while keels and deep are synecdochic and metonymic equivalents for 'ships' and 'sea' respectively, derived from contiguity ... ploughed violently and illogically forces one context (the earth, agriculture) into another (the sea, navigation) ; keels and deep do not have the same effect of transgression and rupture" (Lodge 1977 : xiii). Because plow replaces crossed, the reader's mind must discard the plow once this vehicle has taken the reader to the ideas of the ships' motion through the sea; in contrast, the reader's mind retains the keels and the element of the sea being deep, even after these vehicles have taken readers to the ideas ships and sea, because these have not replaced the other elements but are simply what is left after the other elements have been deleted . The usefulness of Lodge 's concept for narrowing Jakobson's general metonymic principle can now emerge. "Metonymy and synecdoche are produced," says Lodge, "by deleting one or more items from a natural combination, but not the items it would be most natural to omit" (Lodge 1977 : 76) . In the "notional sentence, The keels of the ships crossed the deep sea," the word "plowed" could only enter by metaphorically replacing "crossed"; but the sentence contains redundancy, so that, under Jakobson's broad (metonymic) contiguity principle, some of its elements would become candidates for elimination-most likely "keels of' and "deep," leaving "The ships crossed the sea ." In contrast, the maker of a figurative metonymic sentence decides to keep "keels" and "deep" and to eliminate "ships" and "sea," leaving "Keels crossed the deep,"? Just as the metaphoric principle of all language is narrowed to figurative metaphor by adding Ricoeur's "impertinent predication" to the guiding principle of similarity, so the metonymic principle is narrowed to figurative metonymy by adding Lodge's "unusual deletion" to the guiding principle of contiguity. IV . METONYMIC SYMBOL

Distinguishing between a figurative metonymic thought sequence and a metonymic symbol requires a further step. Todorov separates symbolism from non -symbolism. Using as an example, "the lances came into the room," meaning "the lancers came into the room," Todorov demonstrates that propositional symbolism is not synecdoche because in synecdoche, "we have two descriptions of the same fact (the entrance of the lancers)," while in propositional symbolism, "we deduce not a better description of the same fact but

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the de scription of a second fa ct" (Todorov 1978 : 49) . However, more is needed. An inadequate explanation - parallel to that of metaphoric symbolism might be that the writer names only the part and does not name the whole . The non-naming explanation is inadequate because one never names the whole , even in simple metonymy: for example, the phrase "a fleet of twenty sail" does not mention the ships. The concept of an "identifying association" will provide a more useful explanation of the process in metonymic symbolism. Elements in a sequence must be "identifying" to be metonymically useful. Not every element in a sequence will imply the whole . One can write, "The lookout saw fifty sail to the southwest," and expect readers to know that "sail" stands for "ships," part for whole; however, one would not have the same expectation of, "The lookout saw fifty nail to the southwest," even though nails are also parts of wooden sailing ships. Therefore, I would like to sugge st that an author makes a metonymic symbol when he or she takes a part that is inherently non-identifying and makes it into an identifying element of the sequence, as the analysis of an example from Robert Frost can reveal. In Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," no absurdity immediately forces us to di scard the sleigh, pony, and woods as we did Schwartz's bear, and we appa rently need not posit a symbol of yearning for death . Yet if the narrator literally did lie down and allow the snow to cover him , he would literally die . The yearned-for action is part of a sequence, a whole, for which the single moment described in the poem can stand . That whole reminds us of a larger human desire for rest and freedom from care which some psychologists tell us is part of a desire for a return to the quiet of the womb, for a peace which we can only obtain in death , a desire which conflicts with a natural instinct for life. The poem, which really is about a pause for a moment by the woods, portrays only a tiny moment of a lifestructuring conflict of forces . We do not have simple figurative metonymy, since the stop is not in itself an identifying part of the sequence. If we are to interpret symbolically, we must understand what transforms it into an identifying part, perhaps Fro st's somber choice of words, or his choice of punctuation to permit "lovely, dark and deep" to be read "lovely because dark and deep," a reading which "lovely, dark , and deep" does not encourage. Perhaps a reader can intuit when an element has become "identifying," but it would be desirable to have more specific criteria for judging when symbolism

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is metonymic. Fortunately, we can draw such criteria from David Lodge's analysis of a piece by George Orwell. David Lodge draws his example from George Orwell 's "A Hanging," which is a work on the margin between short fiction and the personalexperience essay. In it, a stick held by the prison 's superintendent "acquires symbolic force by its repeated appearance," revealing "the psychological tensions and moral contradictions of his situation" in supervising the hanging . We have a metonymic symbol because the stick is an object "entirely appropriate to its context," resulting in such slight "violations of decorum" that "we scarcely register them as such and the symbolic effect of the stick is almost subliminal" (Lodge 1977: 113-14). To put it in other words , (1) the stick is an element of the sequence leading to the conclusion that capital punishment is barbaric; (2) the stick alone does not immediately identify the entire sequence to which it belongs; (3) the author has done something with the context to transform the stick from a non-identifying part to an identifying element. Lodge 's analysis agrees with my claim that the reader's mind retains the vehicle in metonymic symbolism: Lodge asks us how we would react if the superintendent had done much more "bizarre" things with the stick, "e.g. holding it between his legs like a phallus, or aiming it at the prisoner like a gun." Alternately, "suppose Orwell gave the superintendent not a stick but a cricket bat" which would have been "quite out of place in this context." Then, says Lodge, the removal of any sense of "natural contiguity" would have made the object "a metaphorical rather than a metonymic symbol." In my propo sal, calling the bat a metaphoric symbol would assume that the reader infers , Oh, there 's really no cricket bat present, or some equivalent; while Lodge is not specific on this point, he supports it by implication when he says that "such alterations would transform the text from the metonymic mode of realism or confessional documentary to the metaphoric mode of black comedy or satiric fantasy" (114). We can infer that a reader could maintain the realistic mode only by decid ing that the narrator's seeing the superintendent's bizarre actions (or the narrator's seeing a cricket bat) had resulted from a sudden hallucination brought on by the narrator's horror at the impending execution.f Since a metonymic symbol fits well into its context, this type of symbolism has no requirement for a comparison to shock readers by connecting elements from far-separated semantic fields, and thus it removes all tension between similarity and difference . Expanding Lodge's insight, we can envision the reader moving through nesting levels of context, guided by the relationship of the element to the sequence to which it belongs, including

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the relation ship of part to whole; not faced with a self-destructing literal interpretation, such as a cricket bat at a hanging, the reader' s mind is not seeking a similarity within literal difference. The transformation of a non-ident ifying part of a sequence into an identifying associat ion, combi ned with unusual deletion , draws a circle narrow enough to nest the metonymi c symbol within the principl e of contiguity. Th e co nnection to l akob son 's prin cipl es clarifies Todorov 's two main exa mples of applied symbolic inte rpre tat ion: the phil ol ogical and the patristic. In the philological strategy, an interpr eter insists that he or she is diggin g beneath the apparent literal meanin g, unearthin g the unique meaning that is not app arent on first reading. Todorov does not co nnec t this to his lexical symbolism, but the key condition is the same: replacement of the overt proposition in the text by a seco nd meaning. Thu s, the philological strategy in producing Todorov 's lexical symbolism, is metaphoric symbolism. Todor ov explains the implica tions of the claim so as to di scover the "unique meaning" (Todoro v 1978: 144--45). If the literal meaning as taken by the co ntemporary reader is the same as the one unearth ed by the philological strategy, then the express ion would not be symbolic at all. Schleierm acher 's cr itique of phil ol ogical meth od , of which Todoro v gives an exce llent summary, reestabli shes the importance of context in determinin g meaning: "To find the literal meaning of an allegorical passage is to find the meaning of the elements that constitute it, without takin g their combination into account" ( 1978: 162). Todorov also finds it surprising that "struct ural" interpreta tion should be the "chief victim" of the evolution of philology (155 ). However, if philology, to the exte nt that it becomes symbolic, becomes metaphorically symbolic, the n the virtua l di sap pearance of int ratextual ana lysis becomes co mprehen sibl e. If a text is assumed to have a co here nt struc ture, and if two inco ngruo us elements occ ur within that structure, then the interpreter ca n pursue either a metaphoric or a metonymic strategy. The metaphoric strategy abolishes the literal meaning and finds a deepl y buried "true" meaning of one of the incon gru ou s eleme nts, a meaning that was not appare nt on first reading. Thi s was the strategy pursued by the philologists; they, thus, were able to claim that each contradic tion in the text was only an apparent contradiction. In contrast, when facing the situation of contradiction between two elements of a text that is ass umed to be coherent, the metonym ic strategist co uld sta rt with the ass ump tion that the text' s struc ture is not fully und er stood. Th e strategy wo uld proceed by tryin g to fill the ga ps of knowledge about the structure so that the interpreter can understand how the

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two incongruous element s can exist in the same structure. Thi s might be called understandin g the contiguity of the whole . The patri stic strategy, I would argue, is essenti ally such a struc tural strategy. This is not apparent at first. As Todorov says, "At the outset, there is not ju st one meaning, there are already two: the immediate meaning of the words, and the meaning that we know the Bible has because it is, as Saint Paul said, divinel y inspired." "For simplicity's sake," Todorov continues, "we shall call this latter meaning Chri stian doctrine " (98). This does not appear to be a structural strategy because Todoro v envisions Chri stian doctrine as a seco nd text. However, his own examples from early Christianity can ju st as easily be understood by assuming that the patristic strategists considered their symbo lic interpretati ons to be the fitting of an elem ent into the entire sequence of the Bible - whose overall implications were known - an early exampl e of the part-whole-part interpretative sequence which became known as the hermeneutic circle . Todorov has a notion of this, but, not connecting it to his propositional-lexical concept, he must establish a new category to contain it: the "function" of syrnbolism.? So considered , the strategy is a metonymic one of placing elements into context, i.e., of understandin g their principle of conti guity. Although Todorov does not connect the patristic technique to his category of prop osit ional symbolism, the patri stic strategy produ ces prop ositional symbolism, and thus falls within the metonymic principle for two reasons: (1 ) it maintains the literal meaning while adding a second, symbolic meaning, and (2) it operates by a part-for-whole process. Being metonymic, patristic interpretation is thus propositional symbolism.

V. CONCLUS ION

Metaph oric symbolism confers the advanta ge of flexibility. In metaphoric symbolism, almost any word can become the vehicle for any tenor, provided that the writer con structs a text that implie s the tenor by cuing the reader to some corner of overl appin g meaning. In meton ymic symbolism, however, each tenor has available a far more limited number of contiguous elements which are available to be transformed by context into identifyin g associations. Thi s observation fits with Ricoeur 's comment that metaph or is "liberated language" while symbolism is "bound," although Ricoeur attributes the boundedness of symbol to "the capacity of the cosmos to signify" directly, thu s limitin g the range of symbolism (Ricoeur 1978: 59). In my anal ysis,

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only metonymic symbolism would be bound , while metaphorical symbolism is as unbound as metaphor itself. Connecting lexical/propositional symbolism and philological/patristic interpretation to metaphoric/metonymic symbolism allows the sequence to emerge: Jakob son's is the general principle and Todorov 's is its application to symbolism. The replacement action of both lexical symbolism and philological interpret ation fits with metaphoric symbolism's requirement for a sharp contrast between the overt vehicle and the implied tenor, Ricoeur's "self-destru ction" of the literal interpretation. In contrast, both Todorov 's propo sitional symbolism and his patristic interpretation, by maintaining an original proposition which suggests additi onal meanings , allows a reader to accept the text' s literal surface - a necessity in reali stic fiction, for example whil e also recognizing a broader impact. Propositional symbolism and patri stic interpretation thu s part ake in the multi valent advantage of metonymic symbolism.

Loras College Dubuqu e, Iowa NOTES My pre- assumptions for this essay are (I) that exploring the concept of metaphoric and metonymic symbolism is valuable , and (2) that such exploration has not yet been done. 2 Christin e Brooke-R ose (19 76) appl ies as pects of Jakob son 's sys tem to Pound 's "Us ura Canto"; however, in this book, while mentioning individual metapho rs in Pound 's poem, she is interested neither in the metonymic-metaphoric split, nor in symbolism. 3 Classical rhetoricians reserved "me tonymy" for strict cont iguity - "the crown" for "the king" - and used "synecdoche" to describe part for whole - "sa il" for "ship" - a distinction preserved in all the standard literar y handbook s (Abrams 1957: 36; Cuddon 1977: 385 ; and Lemon 1971 : 73-74). In Metaphor, Terence Hawkes supplies an excellent brief historical survey of the concept from Plato to the late I960s ; Hawkes points out how Jakobson differ s from the classical theorists. For Jakobson, both "metaphor and metonymy can be sub-divided into other figures (simile is a type of metapho r, synecdoche a type of metonymy) but the distinction between them remains fundamental, becau se it reflects the fundamental dimensions of language itself' (79) . We might benefit from keeping in mind, however, that in the original usage, metaphor and metonymy fell into a dauntingly long list of figures, no two of which formed an exhaustive dichotomy of all language. In expandin g the meaning of the terms "metaphor" and "metonymy" to transform them from specific tropes into principles of all language, Jakob son, in effect, uses both "metaphor" and "metonymy" metaphoricall y. 4 Han s Osterwalder gives an excellent summary of Jakobson 's thought, focused for literary analysis (Osterwalder 1978: 4-23); Osterwalder employs the metonymic-metaphoric split to analyze Eliot's plays on the levels of structure, theme, characterization, syntax, semantics, and morphophoneme: however, Osterwalder is not interested in the application of the metonymic-metaphoric

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principle to symbolism, which is at issue here. Osterwalder quotes Victor Erlich who draws on Jakobson to discuss the metonymic quality developed in nineteenth-century realistic fiction, in the attempt to create "a world-picture grounded in science and common sense" (Erlich 1978: 10I). 5 In The Rule of Metapho r, Ricoeur spells out his differences with Jakobson (Ricoeur 1977: 173- 75 and 191-93), but Ricoeur eventu ally hold s that perceivin g tension as the esse nce of metaphor (his position) is compatible with Jakob son 's co ncept of resemblance as a guiding principle (Ricoeur 1977: 193-200). 6 Discou rse in wh ich the literal meanin g is deemed " useless" and dropped, "o nce the translati on is made," Ricoeur identifi es as "allegory," reserving the term "sy mbol" for less "rhetorical" and more "literary" discour se (1969: 16). 7 I am in the debt of Professor Jerre Collin s of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for the obser vation that if a person wished to connect the deletion principle to syntax, that person could argue that major syntactic features such as subjec ts, main verbs, and direct objects are not "usually" deleted, while minor syntactic features such as prepositional phrases and adjectives are "usually" deleted. In that case, Lodge 's notional primary sentence would have to be The ships with their keels crossed the deep sea. Usual deletion of minor syntac tic features would leave The ships crossed the sea, while unusual delet ion would leave The keels crossed the deep. Th is would be a slight modification of Professor Lodge's formulation, with the advantage of further systematizing it. 8 Spea king of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Georg Lukacs argues that the novella is not "sy mbolically conceived" but that "Solzhenitsyn's achievement consists in the literar y transform ation of an uneventful day in a typical camp into a symbol of a past which has not yet been overcome." The work represents all such days in all camps, and thus acquires a symbolic meanin g, precisely because the day is "uneventful" and the camp "typical" (Lukac s 1969: 13). Typicality "implicitly" connects "the problems of everyday life in the Stalinist world" outside the camps to those inside, even though civilian experiences "have nothing immediately in common with camp life" (14) . With "not a trace of symbolism in Solzhenitsyn's descriptive method," Lukacs says, Solzhenitsyn "presents a genuine, realistic slice of life in which no single aspect obtrud es itsel f simply for effect or exaggera ted effect or for any symbolic motive" (17). Lukacs thus separates intent from effect. However, when description is accurate enough, i.e. when the fictional art is strong enough, cha ract ers becom e identifi able repr esent atives of an aspect of society, and thu s essenti ally symbolic: "Typification thus became a purely political category" (17). Fredric Jameson claims that passages in Balzac confirm Lukacs' s theory but that the theory is incomplete, and he is correct except for his implication that one could complete Lukac s's theory by making it esse ntially allego rical. Making the system allegor ical would not "complete" it; rather, such an action wo uld transform Luk acs's symbol ism from meton ymic to met aphor ic (Jameson 1981: 162). 9 Todorov identifies two functions of symbolic expressions: "'

The two sets of social partners represent two existential possibilities towards temporality. Those who do not change are those who wait for something that may give their lives meaning , but those who are involved in change, that is, wander the road of life, merely deteriorate. Pozzo losing his watch in the first act symbolizes the uselessness of action (behavior that is future-oriented) . In the second act when Pozzo states that he is blind, Estragon ironically responds, "Perhaps he can see into the future.t'" But the future is useless, if it offers nothing concerning the intransparency. Whether one employs the strategy of inaction or action, that is, puts one's stock in the changeless or the changing, the fundamental intran sparency of the life-world remains .

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In the second act Estragon does not remember anything without the help of Vladimir prompting him. He does not remember being in Macon County at some prior time . He cannot remember Pozzo and Lucky from the "day" before and he cannot remember how their conversation had started. Estragon says , "I'm not a historian.?" He doesn't remember the tree from which they were going to hang themselves. Forgetfulness is a relative intransparency, because through certain cues memory can be jogged and what had been forgotten is again remembered. But Estragon's forgetfulness is a consequence of the fundamental intransparency of the life-world. Estragon state s, "Either I forget immediately or I never forget."37 Let us call this "Estragon 's Paradox." Estragon's re sponse is a strong disjunction and if it is false, then he sometimes forget s and he sometimes does not forget that he either forgets immediately or never forgets; which is an absurdity. So, if it is the case that he never forgets the disjunction (Estragon 's paradox), that would mean that he always be aware that he forgets immediately or never forgets. But for him to be aware that he forgets immediately is not to forget immediately, which is another absurdity. If it is the case that he immediately forgets this disjunction, that would mean he is not aware that he never forgets , which is another absurdity . This paradox describes the mutual determination of his stock of knowledge and his situation . Meaning-contexts are context-less in the situation of elevated waiting : meanings are felt in experience as irrelevantly relevant or relevantly irrelevant. Estragon never forget s the fundamental intransparency, which means he immediately forgets (no meanings are memorab le), or he immediately forgets the fundamental intransparency, which means that he never forgets (every meaning is non-memorable). The paradoxical dilemma leads to the same existential outcome : the meaningle ss existence of existential limbo . In the province of the practicable by which we gear into the life-world as embodied beings, the temporal structure of experience links up to the spatial structure of embodiment. The world of actual reach is the presently experienced reality that nevertheless is understood through previous experiences that are built up into a stock of knowledge and include a horizon of expectations of the future . The world of restorable reach rests on memory. The world of attainable reach concerns expectation and probability of acquaintance. Even though these spatial structures are objectivel y imposed, the dimen sion of the historicality of embodiment means that each person is uniquely situated in place-values . Each of us has a unique biography of placeacquaintance and indirect knowledge .

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But the spatiality of Vladimir and Estragon's existence in its fundamental link to the temporal moment of their situation levels this historicality of place-values. Vladimir: "Do you not recognize the place?" Estragon (suddenly furious) : "Recognize ! What is there to recognize? All my lousy life I've crawled about in the mud! And you talk to me about scenery!" (Looking wildly about him .) "Look at this muckheap! I've never stirred from it!" 38 In various times in the play one of them will say, let's go, and they do nothing. They visualize no progress in connection with the spatiality of the life-world. Vladimir: "Nothing, you can do about it." Estragon: "No use struggling." V: "One is what one is." E: "No use wriggling ." V: "The essential doesn't change." E: "Nothing to be done. Like to finish'l'"? If there is nothing to be done, then one can neither start nor finish . Waiting annuls the project by leveling the start and the finish and by leveling the here and there . Vladimir and Estragon range in the four directions over the stage but never leave the environs around the tree. The only thing that changes are the leaves on the tree, which merely symbolizes the passage of time, but even when Vladimir and Estragon move about they make no progress. They make reference to places they have been, e.g . the Eiffel Tower, and to places they may go . But the four directions (everywhere) have been leveled to the place of actual reach in which they have nothing to do but to wait, which alludes to an image of imprisonment (bound-in-place) displaying the human condition. The relative intransparency of place, which is based on subjective history, can be annulled through perambulation, but since their place-world is leveled to everywhere and nowhere, with no chance to escape, experience of place invokes the fundamental intransparency. "Calling-for-help" is a social form that occurs in strategic places in the play, which Beckett uses to show the impotency of social relationships. Estragon calls for help at the beginning of act one and near the end of act two. Vladimir demands Estragon's help near the beginning of the second act. Estragon: "I'm trying.?" which is followed by silence. In the second act, Pozzo calls for help many times over the span of four pages, joined toward the end by Vladimir. Calling for help presupposes at least the possibility to establish an intersubjective communicative motivational context. A person calls for help in-order-to receive assistance from other individuals. Some other or others respond because someone called for help. A social relationship is formed on the basis of giving and receiving assistance. When Estragon has trouble pulling off his boots at the opening of the play, he calls, "Help mel'?" After some more dialogue, Estragon asks, "Why don't you help me?,,42 He never receives the help . When Pozzo and Lucky enter in the second act, Lucky

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stops short and when Pozzo bumps into him, they both fall down . Pozzo begins his cries for help. Vladimir interprets the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky as assistance with their struggle with waiting . Then follows Vladimir's irritation in the attempt to get through to Estragon that it is not Godot, but Pozzo. As Pozzo shouts for help again, Estragon wants to leave. Vladimir reminds him that they can't because they are waiting for Godot. Vladimir reminds Estragon of the chicken bone Pozzo gave him and suggests they should help Pozzo . Estragon wants to know what is it that they are to help Pozzo do. Then, one more attempt to get Estragon to understand that they are to help Pozzo get up. They realize that they have Pozzo at their mercy and they scheme to beat up Lucky. They then decide that they should help Pozzo for some tangible return . Vladimir: "Let us not waste our time in idle discours e" (Pause. Vehemently.) "Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Nor indeed that we personally are need ed . Others would meet the case equally well , if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it's too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say"43

Vladimir blathers on (inaction) while Pozzo begins to shout out money figures. Poz zo shouts: "Two hundred!" Vladimir finally responds in a quite spontaneous manner. "We're coming l?" He then attempts to help Pozzo but stumbles, falls and then fails to get up. Vladimir now calls for help as Estragon informs him again that he is leaving. Estragon finally agrees, but he cannot pull Vladimir up and falls to the ground himself. Vladimir strikes Pozzo, who crawls away in pain. Estragon decides to call to Pozzo by other names . He first calls him Abel and gets a response and then he calls him Cain and gets a response. Estragon : "He's all humanity?" Vladimir and Estragon soon after decide to get up and without any difficulty each simply gets up on his own. Near the end of the play Estragon again struggles with his boots, calls for help and Vladimir again does nothing . Vladimir asks, "Was I sleeping while others suffered? Tomorrow when I awake, or think I do, what shall I say of today ? ... But in all that what truth will there be?,,46 What is the significance of the failure to respond to calls for help, the decision to help, but the inaction or the utterly failed action? These are three dysfunctional intersubjective scenarios. Pozzo and Lucky, superordinate and subordinate, torture one another. Lucky, who had taught Pozzo beauty, grace , and truth, appeared to have become stark raving mad (first act) and to have been stricken dumb (second act). Pozzo, who had envisioned those great

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ideals that Lucky had taught him, has been stricken blind . Pozzo, who had once "seen" these great Platonic forms through another, no longer can "see." Lucky, who personified the Platonic forms , has since gone mad and dumb. They appear to be helping each other as they walk the road (of life), the one blind the other dumb, but this is merely a mechanical habit. The fact that they fall down and can't get up shows how really pathetic they are . Lucky can hear Pozzo's calls for help but is unable or is unwilling to move . Pozzo can't see Lucky, and Lucky is unable to call for help, yet Pozzo makes no effort to crawl around and find him . Their social relationship is functionally bankrupt. For Vladimir and Estragon the question often arises as to whether or not they would be better off it each were to go his own way. The relationship between the impulsive Estragon and the reflectively absorbed Vladimir is an enigma. They personify their paradoxical logic . Vladimir: "When you seek you hear ." Estragon : "You do." V: "That prevents you from finding." E: "It does." V: "That prevents you from thinking." E: " You think all the same ." V: "No no, impossible." E: 'That's the idea, let's contradict each other." V: "Impossible." E: "You think SO?,,47 Vladimir and Estragon pass the time through their inevitable recognition that their relationship does nothing to relieve them of their predicament. An obvious plan would be for one to wait by the tree and the other to go and inquire after Godot. But they are incapable of carrying out such a plan, for they are too disoriented to conceive it and then to carry it out. They are victims of each other, which symbolizes the social dysfunction of humankind . The social aspect of the structure of the life-world as presented in the play is quite unsettling, but it reveals the existential character of a culture. Existentialism attempts to orient humankind to its predicament and to deal with it (as in Sartrean ethics). Existential thought is an abstraction if it does not take into account the genesis of the existential parameters within a historico-cultural context (as in Sartrean plays and novels) . Eidetic structures emerge and are not timeless in the sense that they are "eternal." But they still are necessary structures that make an entity the kind of entity that it is. What emerges concretely in history is the idiographic eidos . The existential aspect of the idiographic eidos displayed in Beckett's play is one that pertains to European intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. Its philosophies, sciences, religions, technologies, politics, in short its entire objective culture, had turned on destructive contradictions (paradoxes) that implicate its subjective culture.f" Outstripped by objective cultural forces, human expressivity (subjective culture) impotently and mechanically carried out socially dysfunctional and destructive relations that were also imposed on it through the objectivation of itself in an uncontrollable objective culture.

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After its obj ecti ve de stru cti ve for ces had taken its toll , many European s experienced existential limbo, represented in this play. What were once ideals (the foundations of Eurocentri c culture) had gone mad. Beaut y, grace, and truth were made dumb - they were destroyed in two destructive wars, ethnic cleansing, and failed eco nomic s, which led to the concretiza tion of the funda mental intransparency. Sc hutz's descr ipt ion of the rel ati ve intransparency that arises in the everyday life-world and the hidd enness of the fundamental intranspar enc y has pro vided us with eidetic structures that have allow ed us to gras p an idiographic eidos . In crisis situations, the fund amental intransparency ca n mani fest in every day experience. The everyday is unable to deal with this from its cognitive and exis te ntial standpo int. So, the fundamental intransparency is dealt with from the standpoint of superordinate provinces of meaning. The character of a historico-cultural life-world can be gra sped by an alyzin g this tran sformati on . In the historico-cultural life-world that is portrayed in Beckett 's pla y, an idio graphic eidos emerg es where superordinate provinces of meaning are not invoked to deal with the fundamental intran spar ency. Th is is because there were various strains of crises in superordinate realms. Paradi gms in superordinate realm s were shattered, leaving no basis for explanati on. The everyday existence of European culture, then, faced this existential limbo through waiting for a superordinate paradi gm that wo uld lift the fund ament al intransparency from its exis tential limb o. The postmodem culture of the latter half of the twentieth century filled the void (lac k of superordinate foundatio n), and to this idiograph we now turn.

II .

G EN ET'S T HE B AL C O N Y

a) Schutz 's Finite Provinces ofMeaning and Discussion ofJames and Goffman In orde r to und erstand the hidd en rea lity that becom es revealed in the everyday life-world in the play by Genet, the relati onship between every day reality and other orders of reality must be elucidated. It will be necessary for my purposes to amplify Schut z's discussion of finite provinces of meaning (multiple realities) with the work of William Jame s concern ing sub-universes and Erving Goffrnan 's work on frame analysis. Gen et' s play displays the idiographic feature of postmod ernity whereby the order of everyday realit y is co nflated with the order of fantasy such that the fund amental distinctions are annulled, creating an orde r that Jean Baudrillard has called the hyperreal , which entails the precession of simulacra/" A precession of simulacra is a

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success ion of symbols, who se onl y reference is to one another as there is no lon ger any referent out side the sys tem of signs. Th e result is a hyperreal world - a world of symbolic co nstruction. In Jam es' "The Percepti on of Realit y," he introduces the co ncept of subuniverses, which is a useful starting point for our inquiry.P Jame s note s that propositi on s are object s of belief and beliefs are sui generis . Beli ef presupposes mere thou ght and perme ates it with a feelin g-sense of realit y. The mere appe aring is insufficient to constitute realit y; the obje ct "must appear both interestin g and important">' "The world of living realit ies as contrasted with unrealities is thu s anch ored in the Ego , co nsidere d as an ac tive and emotional term ."52 But Jame s notes that our predi sposition is to believe as much of our experience as we can . "A ny relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronge r relation, suffices to mak e an obje ct real . The bare st appeal to our attention is enough for that." 53 If this readiness to believe is the case, how do we distin guish the unreal ? "Any object, which remain s uncontradicted is ipso fa cto believed and posited as absolute reality ." 54 Doubt and disbeli ef occur only when other propositions that are believ ed disconfirm the obje ct of thought. "All propositi ons, whether attributi ve or existential, are believed through the very fac t of being conce ived, unless they clash with other proposition s believed at the same time, by affirm ing that their terms are the sam e as the terms of these other propositionsP? Th e winged hor se of fantasy (sub-world) may be believed without contradicti on until one turn s one's attention to the externa l world . In the extern al world the winged horse is contradicted by other propositions that are incompatible with the idea of a horse having wings. To acco unt for all of the appearance-possibilit ies, all subwo rlds , philosopher s mu st tak e into acc ount " rea lities," "fancies," a nd "illusions." "The complete philosopher is he who see ks not only to ass ign to every given object of his thought its right place in one or othe r of these subworlds, but he who seeks to determine the relation of eac h sub-world to the others in the total world which is." 56 Jam es' list of sub-universes includes the world of sense (phys ical thing s), the world of science, the world of ideal relations (abstract truth s), the world of idols of the tribe, supernatural worlds, the variou s world s of individual opinion, and the world s of sheer madness. Every object will settle into belief by a referral to one of these sub-universes where its stands in non-contradictory relations. James state s that the world of sense is the reality held to be the most real. It is James' notion of studying the relations between sub-universes that help s us understand Genet's play. Genet opposes the fanta sy sub-world of une mai son d'illusions to a reb ellion, which is the situation in ever yday

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reality. These two sub-universes are interrelated in a way that calls into question James ' dictum that an object is believed by settling into one of the sub-universes , the one in which it does not suffer contradiction. In the play, in order to be believed (Schutz would say have bestowed upon it the accent of reality), an object that belongs in one sub-universe becomes transposed into the other. Appearances, i.e., fantasized , imaged, illusory objects are real-ized in the world of sense experience, and objects in sense experience are real-ized in the world of appearances. This initiates the corruption of the distinctions that separate these two provisions of reality, which is idiographical of the postmodern situation. Schutz corroborates James with his doctrine concerning the accent of reality. "As long as one is attentive to it, each of these worlds is, in its own fashion, real. But as soon as one withdraws attention from it, the world disappears as reality,">? Schutz does not follow James in calling the orders of reality "subuniverses." Husserl showed, through the doctrine of intentionality, that various intentional act modalities re-presented the same object. It is the same object that can be seen, remembered, imaged, pictured, etc. "It is important above all to stress that the orders of reality do not become constituted through the ontological structures of their Objects, but rather through the meaning of our experience .v" Schutz prefers to call these orders of reality "finite provinces of meaning," which consist of meaning-compatible experiences. Schutz's study moves beyond James ' by categorizing the various finite provinces of meaning according to cognitive style . Cognitive style consists of the following aspects : a specific tension of consciousness, a specific form of epoche, a prevalent form of spontaneity, a specific form of experiencing one's self, a specific form of sociality, and a specific time perspective. Schutz characterizes the everyday in the following way. 59 Wide-awakeness or full attention to life is its tension of consciousness. Doubt concerning the existence of the outer world and its Objects is suspended, its special form of epoche. Action that gears into the external world by means of live corporeal movements is its dominant form of spontaneity. The experience of another fellow-human as endowed with consciousness and sharing a common intersubjective world of understanding and action is its form of sociality. Socially bound possession of individuality under various aspects of roles and the action of the free ego characterize its form of self-experience. The standard time that originates in the point of intersection of internal duration and world time - the temporal structure of the intersubjective world, is its temporal perspective . Schutz calls the everyday life-world the paramount reality, and it serves as the umbrella for all other finite provinces of meaning .

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Because Schutz treats multifarious heterogeneous pro vinces of meaning under the rubric of "fantasy worlds" (they all bracket the aforementioned specific characteristics of the eve ry day life-world), there are few characteri stic s that can be stated gen erally. We sha ll need to characterize la maison d 'illu sions in Gen et' s play acc ording to its cognitive sty le. The play will exhibit interference and ten sion betw een the cogn itive style of the everyday life-world and the hou se of illu sion s, making it difficult to keep them apart. Goffman 's frame analysis pro vide s specific tool s for showing how indeed the illu sor y world and the everyday world in Genet' s play become entangled, obfu scated and conflated. A frame is a scheme of interpretation in which the particulars of the events and activitie s are organized and made sensible. A central concept in frame analy sis is the key: a "set of conventions by which a given activity , one already meaningful in terms of some primary framework, is tran sformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite else." 60 "A primary framework is one that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is rneaningful."?' For example, fighting , which is a primary framework, can be keyed by staging a fight according to a script, fanta sizing a fight , or describing a fight retro spectively, etc. A second manner by which a strip of activity can be transformed is fabrication . Fabrication refers "to the intentional effort of one or more individuals to manage activit y so that a party of one or more others will be induced to have a false belief about what it is that is going on." 62 Th ese two ways of reworking a (primary) strip of activity (model-for) are exe mplified in Gen et' s pla y. What invokes the postmodern situation is the disappearance of a prim ary framework. Keyings are of keying s or of fabrication s and fabric ations are of keyings or of fabricat ions. There is no model-f or from which to start; the strip of activit y is itself already a generated construc tion - meaningful o nly through the interrelation of sy mbols. To understand this "world" describ ed by Genet and experienced in the historicocultural milieu of postmodernity, we must turn to the thought of Baudrillard.

b) Baudrillard's Simula cra and the Postmodern Significance of The Balcony Baudrillard explains that simulation, begin s with a liquid ation of all referenti als - worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more ductile material than meanin g, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalence . .. . It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself, that is, an opera tion to deter every real

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proce ss by its operational double , a metastable , programmatic, perfec t desc ription machin e which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuit s all its vicissitudes ."

Simulation generates models of the real (simulacra) without origin or reality - a hyperreal. There no longer exists the mirror of reality, the real and its concept; there is no longer a distinction between the real and the fantasy orders of reality. The precession of simulacra pre-forms events as neither appearance nor reality, for these categories have been conftated. The simulacrum has all the characteristics of the real, but it has a generated origin in signs only , i.e., free manipulation in the manner of fantasy . Schutz writes, "When my attention becomes absorbed in one of the several fantasy worlds, I no longer need to master the external world . There is no resistance by Objects surrounding me which have to be subdued."64 But simulacra are an external construction (objective sign system) that supercedes the everyday real in its real-ization. Like fantasy , its reality isfreely constructed, and like the order of the everyday, the acts alter the external world . In Genet's play the rebellion in the everyday life-world and the acted-out fantasies in the house of illusions merge into a simulacrum such that appearance versus reality no longer is a viable distinction. This conftation characteri zes the postmodern world where generated constructions, simulacra, are its population.P The hidden structure that is unconcealed in the lived-experience of postmodern simulacra is the social con struction of reality. The everyday lifeworld in its historico-cultural content tends to become naturalized through institutionalization, which means that it does not appear as artificial, but rather as a second "natural order." Socialization is not viewed as an arbitrary construct but as sanctioned by a natural genesis, as a process of the real. Husserl's phrase "the natural attitude" is appropriately named, for the natural attitude hypostatizes the objectivations of subjectivity and take s them as simply "there." Even with the emergence of unmasking as a technique for detecting ideologies and false consciousness, a "non-distorted reality" had been presumed. What happens in postmodernity is that the mass media of the information age and the manipulative technology of mass consumption and bioengineering construct a precession of simulacra, a hyperspace wherein social constructions are constructed from constructions. Lived -experience in postmodernity expo ses the usually hidden reality of the social construction of reality, because of the technological means to create and sell the hyperreal. Thus the transformed significance of "reality" is recognized even from within the naturalizing character of the natural attitude. Thi s postmodern idiograph, which we now existentially live, is exposed through Genet's hyperbolic

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treatm ent of it by j uxtaposing the incred ibl e si tuatio n in which during a rebell ion men risk life and limb to reach a broth el where they ca n "pre tend." A process ensues where by thi s "pretend world " is ex ported to the "rea l world " and the "real wor ld" is imported into the "pre tend world," whic h results in a synthesis whereby the distinction between them is bog us - the emergence of the simulacra. One no longer escapes the eve ryday horrors thro ug h a world of appearances , si mulacra now super/pre-cede both. Postm odern culture has the means to package and distribute, repackage and redi stribute an endless displ ay of manipulated sy mbo ls that rearrange meanin gs, accordi ng to its ow n processes. Genet is able to displa y the emerge nce of this form of hyperreal co nstruction. Under these conditions felt experience is a game, but a game that involves serio us life consequences. c) Analysis a/ the Play

The set that is described at the beginning of the first scene remains for the first three scenes. A mirror on the wall reflects an unmade bed. If actually included in the set con struction, the unmade bed would be out in "the hou se" (thea tre/a uditorium) . Thi s effec t implicat es the hou se in the sce ne, which means that the separation betwee n the house and the set is blurred . If the house is implicated in the set, then this means that through her technological gadge try Madame Irma is able to observe (see and hear) what is goi ng on in the roo ms of the house of illusions, but also what is going on in the theatrehouse. But if the house is implicate d in the set, then the set must be implicated in the house. There is a reciproca l relatio nship between them, which means that the every day and the fantasy worlds overlap, and if they ove rlap, there exists at least an interface betwee n them . Implicated in the house, the set is then not disconnected fro m the historico-culturallife of the patrons who have paid to enter a house of illusions, like the clients in the play. Th ose attending the theatre play their role by having paid admissio n to the house, where they are drawn into the house of illusions by the actions on the stage. At the very end of the play, after the culminating events on stage, Irma stops in the middle of the set, face s the house and tells the patrons to go home where they can be sure that everything is falser than "here." Th e patron s have been implicated in an orde r of reality where simulacra have emerged, an orde r that transcend s the hou se of illus ions and the patrons' everyday life. Still their ex perience has been in theat re, and yet, this immediate experience is far closer to the nature of their life-world reality than the so-called everyday to which they suppose dly return. Genet awakens the theatre patron as well as the reader of the play to the

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fact that in the emergent post-modem world, everyday reality and the order of fanta sy are becoming supplanted by the reality of the hyperreal. The situations in which the theatre patrons find themselves, make the so-called everyday and the theatre impossible to separate. The house of illusions in symbiotic relation to the everyday has formed the order simulacra/" In the first scene Irma, the madam, hurries the fellow who has played the role of the Bishop to take his leave . External sounds - screams from another room and gunfire from outside - penetrate his illusory world, that he has insisted be sealed. "And all the doors must be closed. Firmly closed, shut, buttoned, laced, hooked, sewn . . .."67 In fantasy, one's spontaneity can freely create the contents and their organization. If the fantasy is acted out, the action is freely interpreted. In the Bishop's case, everyday reality threatens to spoil the occasion. He wants his fantasy world to supplant the everyday reality by becoming the paramount reality and hence the most real. Speaking to the confessing Woman (the prostitute playing the role of the repentant sinner), he asks : "When you moved towards me with your face forward, was it really aglow with the light of the flames?"68 He wants real proof of the power of illusion. There is discussion concerning the veracity of the sins that had been committed by the Woman . Here the pretend-world and the everyday have yet to distinctly separate. As he weaves into the everyday, the Bishop states , "But our holiness lies only in our being able to forgive you your sins . Even if they're only make-believe.t"? The institutions of the everyday do not legitimately apply in that the consequences of the sins are not externally circumscribed. However, the Woman coyly tells him that her sins were real , that she did in fact commit them . Settling into the everyday, the Bishop protests, "If your sins were real, they would be crimes, and I'd be in a fine mess,"?" The terrible scream is heard again, which belongs to the events of the next scene in which one of the prostitutes (the Thief) is being whipped . The Bishop: "That wasn 't a make believe scream." Irma responds anxiously, "I don 't know.. .. Who knows and what does it matter?'?' The Bishop wants to reestablish the distinction that has become blurred concerning the everyday and illusion, but the circumstances make the clarification problematic. The Bishop attempts to dismiss this interference by demanding to be left alone . He looks into the mirror in order to reflect on the meaning of his actions. In order to be the Bishop, he solicits pure solitude, where appearance maintains its purity. Pure appearance is a mode of being , but doing (gearing into the everyday world) is not. Function, which is the characteristic of roles in everyday reality , is not a mode of being but a mode of doing. Appearance

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is not the objectivation of functionality, but the objectivation of pure being . His mitre and his laces protect him from everyday reality, but he must leave the world of illusion and face the danger of the streets amidst the rebellion. The next illusion involves the Thief (pro stitute), the Judge (a client), and his Executioner (Arthur, who work s in the brothel). As the prostitute is a new employee of the brothel and does not play her part well , the Judge admon ishes her. "Look here : you 've got to be a model thief if I'm to be a model judge. If you 're a fake thief, I become a fake judge. Is that clear?"? Here the demand is that the roles be played perfectly, that none of the three can have being unless they are relation ally bound together. The Thief does not want to follow the "script" and simply wants to confe ss too soon because she doe s not want to get whipped again . The whipp ing is not illusion as it bring s real blood and the stream of tears that the Judge demand s. Again there are external noises and the illusion is interrupted with discussion between the Executioner and the Judge concerning the dangers of the rebellion. Since being ajudge "emanates" from the being of a thief (there is no need of a jud ge unless there is something to judge), the Thief has the privilege of refusing "to be" the Thief (play the function) . She forces the Judge to crawl on the floor and beg her to play the Thief. On the one hand, playing the social function ends in real tears and real welts . On the other hand, refu sing to play the function induce s the real desir e for the function to be played so that the Judge can "be." There is an interfac e between the everyday and the illus ion, for real felt experiences (elements of the everyda y) in relation to the fantasy script are required in order for the per fection of social rel ationships in appearance to emerge. The third scene involves the General and the Girl, who plays his horse. Once dressed he look s at him self in the mirror. "M an of war and in full regalia, behold me in my pure appearance. Nothing , no contingent trails behind me. I appear, purely and simply."73Since his fantasy is about the General 's death and the funeral procession that follows, he concerns himself with his eternal image . Because I' m dead. .. . What is now speaking and so beautifully is Example. ... I want to be for my solitud e. Not even for myself, but for my image, and my image for its image, and so on. In short, we'll be among equal s."

The power comes from Example, not the strip of activity (the fellow speaking and looking into the mirror) that Goffman call s a frame . It is the power of the image that is able to image the image , and so forth , which is the protocol for the preces sion of simulacrum. The Example is a non-tran scendental form , a post-modern, non-foundational basis for reality.

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In the two prior scenes, mention of death is also made. The Bishop: "Ornaments, laces, through you I re-enter myself. I reconquer a domain . ... I install myself in a clearing where suicide at least becomes possible. The judgment depends on me, and here I stand, face to face with my death.?" The Judge: "If every judgment were delivered seriously, each one would cost me my life . That's why I'm dead . I inhabit a region of exact freedom. I, King of Hell, weigh those who are dead, like me. She's a dead person, like myself."?" The theme of death alludes to the events that are going on in the external world , where the real bishop, judge, and general are meeting their demise. Memorializing transforms reality into a symbolic appearance and that is why the fantasies involve the death theme . But, death in the everyday and "death" in pure appearance (fantasy) are two distinct phenomena. Both realms must expire in each other in order to be transformed into the order of the simulacra, so that death too becomes a component of the hyperreal. Reference to the Chief of Police is made for the third time, which becomes obvious to the reader. In each of the scenes remarks are made that the Chief of Police is doing nothing about the rebellion . The Chief has real power to alter everyday reality. By fulfilling his everyday functions , which means to maintain order in the everyday, he at the same time preserves the condition for their fantasies in the house of illusions, pure appearance. The fourth scene is very short, but an important transition that transforms the significance of the image through the use of mirrors . In this scene it is not a mirror that reflects an image back to the client (narcissistic engagement). A sadomasochistic scene is reflected in three mirrors where the client wears a wig that contains real lice. Three actors play the role of mirrored reflections. A proliferation of mirrored images is presented to the house, which means appearance is externalized into the everyday. The illusion is multiplied, which suggests the emergence of simulacra. Yet, externalization and multiplication are insufficient to sustain the order of hyperreality in that the everyday and the illusory world have yet to conflate. In each of the first three scenes, a keying is accomplished. Each of the recipients is aware that a primary framework is being keyed and all are involved with it. Furthermore, Irma and the Woman in the first scene, the Thief in the second scene, the Example in the third scene and the externalization and multiplication in the fourth scene , all key the keying , which suggests the emergence of simulacra (symbols of symbols). To key a key means that the referent is itself a symbolization. Simulacra form a realm where no primary referent exists , or with the same result, cannot be traced .

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Scene five begins with a dialogue between Irma and Carmen, who is Irma's favorite and bookkeeper. Carmen is dissatisfied with her role as bookkeeper, because for her, reality is the roles she plays in the mirrored reflections of the Grand Balcony. There is one reality for her that is external , and that is her daughter, whom she wants to visit. Irma turns Carmen's thoughts of her daughter into an image. "You're the fairy godmother who comes to see her with toys and perfume. She pictures you in Heaven."? Further in the dialogue, she characterizes the daughter. "Whether dead or alive, your daughter is dead. Think of the charming grave, adorned with daisies and artificial wreaths, at the far end of the garden .. . and that garden in your heart, where you'll be able to look after it."78 Then, Irma refers to the very real possibility that they could die in the rebellion . Irma offers to her the role of Saint Theresa for the occasion . "You'll keep her image [daughter] in the image of the garden and the garden in your heart under the flaming robe of Saint Theresa."? The everyday reality is dead, Carmen 's daughter will not leave it; Carmen's reality is the crumbling world of pure appearance, the world of her destiny (she will not leave it). "Entering a brothel means rejecting the world. Here I am and here I stay. Your mirrors and orders and the passions are my reality ."? Later in scene seven, when the simulacra are being formed, the Envoy asks Carmen, "What about you, what's to be done with you?" Carmen answers, "I'm here for eternity?" Appearance remains distinct from the hyperreal order of simulacra, which does not reject or affirm the world, but rather constructs the world. It must be noted that Irma and Carmen become confused over who is the real plumber, the plumber who comes to playa role in the house of illusions or the one that actually fixes the pipes. The one who actually fixes the pipes is Roger, the leader of the revolution, who later comes to portray the Chief of Police in the house of illusions. The everyday and the world of fantasy become hopelessly entangled. The Chief of Police is also introduced in scene five. His main concern is whether he has been impersonated in the house of illusions, which means his role is not yet important enough to be worthy of pure appearance. Although he holds real power, his role is too mundane to be celebrated in pure appearance and this discrepancy between his power and his fame irks him . The Chief states that he plans to have a mausoleum built after he heroically puts down the rebellion. In that way he plans to obtain the grandeur that he seeks . As Irma's whole concern through the play has been to keep order for her economic situation to remain intact, Irma and the Chief allegorically represent the objective powers of economic and political control. The economic order finds its metaphor in Irma 's jewels (the only things she owns

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that are real) and her money transactions (the condition to enter the world of pure appearance), and the Chief's objective power to maintain political order finds its metaphor in the later castration scene . Roger comes to the house of illusions to play the Chief and really castrates himself in order to symbolize the Chief's loss of power. The Chief of Police foresees the evaporation of the rebellion into appearance. "The rebellion is a game . From here you can 't see anything of the outside, but every rebel is playing a game. And he loves his game ."82 He later states, "The rebellion is riding high, it's moving out of this world . .. . It'll evaporate in no time and be metamorphosed in a song . Let's hope the songs are beautiful."83 Everyday reality is becoming infused with pure appearance, but the everyday (rebellion) is not disintegrating without a fuss (like the clients who attempt to deal with the interference that threaten s their world of pure appearance). At the end of the act, Arthur is killed by a bullet that shatters the window. Arthur was to playa corpse in the house of illusions that evening. Now that he is really dead , reality and appearance have once again become entangled. This time, however, the meaning is reversed - to be a real corp se in a situation of pure appearance is to be fake appearance. Obstruction once again interlaces the two orders of reality. Scene six features a dialogue between Roger, the leader of the revolution, and Chantal, a prostitute from the house of illusions who is to become the symbol of the revolution . Chantal is the element from the world of illusions penetrating the everyday. Through Chantal, the rebellion is emptying its reality (as formed in the everyday life-world) into her as the symbol of pure appearance. As everyday reality has become impotent, Roger is unable to make love to Chantal, who leaves him in the everyday to epitomize the pure symbol of the revolution . This looks as though the world of appearance will win out over the everyday. In scene seven the simulacra are being created, which means that neither the world of appearances nor the everyday will win out. The Envoy : "Everything beautiful on earth you owe to masks."84 These masks as masks , however, are only known to some; others are duped into believing that they are real, which is the type of reworking of a strip of activity that Goffman calls "fabrication." Concerning the three men who appear as the Bishop, Judge , and General , the Chief relays a message from Carmen : "While waiting to go home, they 're standing around looking at themselves in the mirrors ." Irma : "Tell her to smash the mirrors.t''" They no longer will play in the illusory world ; they shall become simulacra - hyperreal models created from appearances, i.e., as simulacra they model their appearances. In the extremely

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short scene eight, they all appear on the Grand Balcony: the Bishop, the Judge , the General, followed by the Hero - the Chief of Police , who, on the set, is not made up in the huge proportions of the others . The Queen follow s and she is then followed by Chantal , who is shot and killed. By the killing of Chantal , the pure symbol of the rebellion, the rebellion is squelched. On the balcony, she would be the last remaining figure of pure appearance, which nevertheless had been the transformation of the everyday (rebellion) into appearance. But still the Chief represents the everyday (authoritative power), the last member of the primary framework of reality. Scene nine begins after the simulacra had taken a carriage ride through the streets . This acceptance of the simulacra in the streets shows that the everyday is to be transformed, since it accepts the simulacra. But the emergence of the simulacra needs the prece ssion to be sustained, which means that a profusion of symbols must be constructed. So, the scene begins with photographers taking pictures of them. Photographs, like the mirrors in scene four, externalize, but this time the photographs serve as part of the apparatus to create the precession of simulacra, i.e., a continual manipulation of reality by models of models , the order of hyperreality. The Envoy: "It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.?" Using the General's monocle as an ersatz host , the Bishop had been photographed (as if) receiving the "Eucharist." In terms of Goffman's frame analysis, the photograph creates a fabrication from a fabrication in order to construct reality. The only one that can turn back the entire genesis of simulacra is the Chief of Police (political might), who still has the power to expose the simulacra. "I shall be not the hundred-thousandth-reflection-within-areflection in a mirror, but the One and Only, into whom a hundred thousand want to merge ."? But as the discussion of his political potency ensues , the Chief of Police is informed that someone finally has come to the Mausoleum Studio to portray him . The rebel leader Roger comes to impersonate the Chief of Police . Through Irma's apparatus they can all (alluding to the televisual media) watch and listen . At the end of the fantasy session, Roger refuses to leave. "If the brothel exists and if I've a right to go there, then I've a right to lead the character I've chosen to the very limit of his destiny ... no, of mine ... of merging his destiny with mine. ... " 88 At this point, Roger takes out a knife and castrates himself, which symbolizes the loss of power by the Chief of Police through the assault on the Chief's symbol by Roger. But in both worlds, appearance and the everyday, this act is real. The Chief of Police, not to be undone , goes to the Mausoleum Studio to take Roger's place among the appearances. Both

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the leaders of the rebelli on and the legit imate authority seem to have emptied themselves in pure appearance. The key difference is that the Chief of Poli ce plays him self, and he is the only one to play his own role. The Ch ief 's descent into the Mausoleum sy mbolizes the conftation of rea lity and appea rance, which leaves the order of hyperr eality intact. Not only are the fabrica ted simulac ra left unexposed by the Chief , but the Ch ief 's ac tion sustains the hyperreal ity of si mulac ra by bur ying kno wledge of its emerge nce . Political power abnega tes its own power by creating its ow n superceding in simul acra. In the postm odern world, it is the simulac ra that alter the world and manipulate peopl e. Simul acra free ly manipul ate tim e as in fant asy, yet the manipulation produc es consequences in the externa l world as in the everyday. With this order of hyperreality having been put in place, Irma (the economic conditions that had contro lled commerce betw een the ever yda y and the world of appearance) instructs the theatre audience to leave, to go where they will not find the reality they had known before entering.

C O NC L US IO N

Two plays, Waiting for Godot and The Balcony, present situations in which usually hidden structures manifest in everyday experience. Schut z's eidetic st ruc tures of the life- world have provid ed a par ameter from which the historico-cultu ral changes can be grasped. European culture first encountered the fundamental intransparency of the life-world in its everyday experience . Thi s problema tic situation is then ass uage d by invoking the new order of simulacra, which is capable of crea ting and manipu lating truly felt experie nce through symbols that are merely generative of other symbols."

Morgan State University

NOTES I I am using the word "id iogra phical" to mean a reality that is unique and unrepeatable , the de finitive qu alit ies of a histor ical phe nome non. Thi s notion was first int roduced by the neoKan tian , Wilhelm Wind elb and . See Heinrich Rick ert, The Limits of Concept Forma tion ill Natura l Scie nce , ed . and tran s. Guy Oakes (Cam bridge : Cambridge University Press, 1986). 2 By using the word "feel," I mean Bei ng-attuned or mood in the Heideggerian sense, i.e., how one is faring with the burden of Being. The feel is a pervasive mood. one that is ca pable of alethea, letting so mething be seen as unhidden . That which has become "known" is " felt" in

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expe rie nce . See Marti n He idegger, Bein g and Time , trans. John Ma cqua rrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962). 3 It wou ld be a wort hwh ile ende avor to develop the conc ept of existential history. What I mean by this is based on the notion that if history is idiographic and there is objec tive sense to the hi storian 's a ppre hensio n of an idi ogr ap hic phe nomenon, then the re has to have bee n the subjec tive experie nce of those who lived through that time and exper ienced its idiograp hic character. Thu s, I use existenti al history to refer to the way existential structure manifests within subj ective life, whic h is delimited by the historico-cultural idiograph y. • I am using the struc ture "core/fringe" to be a noetic correlate to the figure/gro und structure of perception. The horizon, by definition, provided the basis for con sciousness of a figure and gro und or core and fringe. One does not usually think about the horizo n, beca use it is the structural basis for thinking abo ut something . So, one must enter a theore tical province to think about the horizon of consciousness. That there is a horizon is in the fringe of ordinary consciousness. When a horizonal struct ure idiographically becomes manifest in the everyday life-world, it then becomes thematic in the core of attent ional mod ificatio n, i.e., it erupts out of the fringes of conscious experience. 5 See Henri Bergson , Creative Evolution, trans. Arth ur Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, 1944), pp. 12-1 3. 6 I am using " non-independent co nten ts" to mea n part s of a co mprehensive whole (life-world) that ca nnot be separa tely present ed. The life-world only man ifests as a te mpo ral/spatial/soc ial phe nome non. See Edmund Husserl , " Investiga tion III, On the Theory of Wholes and Parts," in Logical Investigat ions, Volume II, tra ns . J . N. Find lay (Lo ndo n: Rout led ge & Kegan Paul , 1970 ), 436-462. 7 Alfred Sc hutz and Tho mas Luckmann, "The Fundame nta l Intransparency of the Life-World," in The Stru ctures of the Life-lVorld (Eva ns to n: Northwes te rn Univer si ty Press, 1973), pp. 169-1 7 1. Schutz and Luckman n state, " From the theo retica l viewpoint, knowledge of the life-worl d is thus necessarily fragmen tary, eve n if the limitation of know led ge ap pears subj ective ly as the result of biographica l 'a cc idents .' In the natural att itude the fundam enta l intran sparenc y of the life-world does not become a ' problem,''' p. 171. The reason it is not a prob lem is because everyday cogn ition does not form an aware ness of it. s By "e levated level of waitin g," I mean a form of waitin g that is capable of ex pos ing the fundamen tal intranspar ency of the life-world. Most forms of waitin g and all mund ane form s would be incapable of this uncon cealment. 9 " Existentiale" is a term employed by Heidegger to characterize the Be ing of humankind versus categories, whic h is a term that design ate s other e ntitie s. The chara cterizations, existentiale, are onto logical. not psychological , de sc ript ions of the Be ing of the kinds of being s that hum ankind are. See He idegger, op. cit., p. 70. 10 Sc hutz and Luckman n, op. cit., p. 164 . " Ibid., p. 170. 12 Ibid. 13 Samuel Beckett, lVaiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954 ), p. I I. 14 Ibid. 15 lb id., p. 7. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., p. 8. 19 Ibid. 19 lbid., p. 10. 20 lbid ., p. 12.

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40

Bonaventura, The Tree of Life (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1978). Beckett, op. cit., p. I I. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid. Ibid., p. 44 . Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 44 . lbid., p. 58. Ibid. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 42 . Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 4 1.

41

Ibid., p. 7.

21 22

23 24

25 26

27 28

29

30 31

32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 51. 44 Ibid., p. 52. 45 lbid., p. 54. 46 Ibid ., p. 58. 47 lbid., p. 41 . 48 For a thorough examination of the co ntradiction between objective culture and subject ive culture, see Georg Simm el, On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago ; The Univer sity of Chicago Press , 1971). 49 1 cou ld emp loy the language of dia lectic s to discuss this genetic process . The everyday and fantasy orders of reality form a contradiction that leads to their syn thesis in the hyperreal order of reality. I have chosen to rem ain within the Schutzian framework. Another way wou ld be to emp loy the language of systems philosoph y. The structural organi zations of the everyday and fantasy beco me entangled thro ugh chaotic disruptions that lead to a new organi zational paradi gm . Again, 1 have chosen to remain with a particular language for analysis. 50 This is Chapter XXI of William James , The Principles of Psychology , Volume Two (New York: Dover Pub lication s, Inc., 1950), pp. 283-324. 51 Ibid., p. 295. 52 Ibid., p. 297. 53 Ibid., p. 299. 54 Ibid., p. 289. 55 Ibid., p. 290. 56 Ibid., p. 291. 57 Schutz and Luckman n, op. cit., p. 22. 58 Ibid., p. 23. 59 Ibid., pp. 35-36.

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Erving Goffrn an, Frame Ana lysis (Bos ton: No rtheastern University Press. 1986). pp . 43-44. Ibid.. p. 2 1. 62 Ibid., p. 83. 6) Jean Baudrillard , Simu lations , tran s. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Be itchman (New York : Semi otext(e), 1983). p. 4. 64 Schu tz and Luckm ann, op, cit.• p. 28 . 65 For an illustr ative study of the hyperre al orde r of reality, see Dou glas Kellner, Television and the Crisis of Democracy (Boulde r: Westvi ew Press. 1990). Kelln er disc uss es how the medi a co nstructed the TV presid ent (a s imulac rum) ; Ron ald Reagan was perfect for the ro le. 66 Irma ' s house of illu sion s w ill co nti nue to exist. but in a new ro le . simila rly to what Baudrillard says about Disne yland . " Disneyland is pre sented as imaginary in ord er to make us believe that the rest is rea l. when in fact all of Los An geles and the Americ a surro unding it are no longer real, but of the ord er of hyperreal and simulation. It is no longer a qu estion of a false represen tati on of reality (ideology ). but of conce aling the fact that real is no longer real, and thus saving the rea lity princ iple ." Op. cit.. p. 25 . 67 Jean Genet, The Balcony, tran s. Bernard Frechtrn an (New York : Grov e Press. Inc., 1966), pp . 8- 9. 6H Ibid.• p. 10. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 lbid., p. II . n Ibid.. p. 15. 7) Ibid., p. 26 . 74 Ibid., pp. 26-27. 75 lbid., p. 13. 76 lbid.. p. 17. 77 lbid ., p. 3 1. 78 Ibid.. p. 40. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid ., p. 4 1. 60

61

HI 82

Ibid.. p. 68. Ibi d.. p. 50 .

Ibid.• p. 51. Ibid.. p. 68. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid .• p. 75. H7 Ibid.• p. 80. SH Ibid.• p. 93. H9 I would like to thank Dr. Saul Mey ers for his helpful criti ca l readin g of an earl ier version of this paper. 83

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PHENOMENOLOGY AND REVOLUTIONARY ROMANTICISM

INTRODUCTION

The premise of this discussion is that there are great benefits to be gained for both sides by establishing a dialogue between phenomenology and Romantic poetry. To illustrate this, I will analyze Romantic poems that dramatize what we might call a "revolution of the mind" that aims to discover a currently "invisible" but more authentic experience of the role conscious perception plays in the constitution of our world. In considering Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, and William Blake's Jerusalem, we shall see that these poems depict such a revolution in terms that bear a close relationship to Edmund Husserl's critique of the "natural attitude" and his turn to the phenomenological reduction so as to move past the errors that, he argues, this attitude involves . However, in considering both Jerusalem and Shelley's Lift Not the Painted Veil, we shall also see the way in which these accounts of radical perceptual revolution often raise fears which may continue to haunt phenomenology as well. The conclusion then will pursue implications that the noticeably more active role these poems implicitly or explicitly assign to authentic perception has for both Romanticism and phenomenology. PART I COLERIDGE'S " N E W EARTH AND NEW HEAVEN"

In Dejection: An Ode, Coleridge considers the impact that perception has upon the constitution of reality . In this poem, he presents us with a semiautobiographical speaker who hints at a hidden, invisible world he believes humans have the potential to attain once they develop a more authentic experience of consciousness. As the speaker enacts the process through which this more authentic experience of consciousness comes about, he carries out what we might call a Romantic reduction of consciousness, which shares some significant traits with Husserl 's phenomenological reduction. That is, we are shown a speaker who turns away from the sort of understanding of 117 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.}. Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 117-137. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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reality that maintains a discrete separation between the perceiver and the perceived, and turns toward an understanding that posits an active role for consciousness in the constitution of reality . It is much in the same way that Husserl suggests, in the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy and elsewhere, that phenomenology involves a turning away from "the natural attitude" as a step toward making the phenomenological reduction that enables us to recognize that perception has access to things as they are. Inasmuch as this poem is not overtly concerned with political or social change, it is not apparently a revolutionary poem . But in the gesture it makes toward this hidden reality, it conceptualizes the kind of "revolution of the mind" that we will find in Shelley and Blake's more overt affirmations of the need for and possibility of radical change in our lifeworld and perhaps beyond . Therefore, it is a good starting place for considering some basic connections between Romanticism and phenomenology. I On the surface, the intention of this poem is to explore the hardships of writer's block . In the first stanza, the speaker, referring to a passage in the Medieval text "The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence," observes that the moon on this night is much like the moon described in that story as a portent of stormy weather; and he hopes that an inspirational storm is indeed on the way. Here, Coleridge establishes a familiar Romantic trope, that of using the wind as a metaphor for creativity itself. The speaker declares that If the Bard was weather-wise, who made The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence , This night , so tranquil now, will not go hence Unrouscd by winds, that ply a busier trade than . ... the dull sobbing draft , that moans and rakes Upon the strings of this Eolian lute.'

And he wishes that "even now the gust were swelling" so that "Those sounds which oft have ... sent [his] soul abroad,l[ ... ]1 Might startle [his] dull pain, and make it move and live!'? The connection between what seems to be a simple desire for the inspiration that rough weather might bring and creativity itself is made by the ambiguity of the line "this Eolian lute." For this popular figure of an instrument that produces haunting music when a wind passes through its strings is one that Coleridge and other Romantics often turn to as a metaphor for poetic creativity. Other poems, however, offer a better sense of how this metaphor works. In Coleridge's 'The Eolian Harp," for example, there is a passage in which he

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states this metaphor most exp licitly. In this passage a speaker wonder s alo ud to his wife: what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremb le into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intelle ctual breeze , At once the Soul of each and God of All? (44-48).·

And on the more personal level that Coleridge develops in Dej ection, this is the status the speaker assig ns to himself. Thu s, the absence of wind and his desi re for a storm refer not merely to weather that may bring inspiration, but rather to the abse nce of the "i ntellectual breeze" identified in "The Eolian Harp ," the inspiratio n that is to come through a poet, accordi ng to Co leridge, from all of humanity j ust as the physical wind produ ces music when it flows through real aeolian harps. Thu s, there is more to this spea ker's writer's block than simply being uninspired. For Coleridge, an artist is someo ne who is a conduit for art, rather than an agent who makes art as if but a craftsperson. And he argues that an artist's status as a cond uit attests to a specia l relationship between the artistic imag ination and reality formatio n. In a famous passage in his Biographia Litera ria, in fact, Coleridge theor izes that the kind of imagi natio n involved in artistic crea tion is an echo of an imme nse power human con sciousness may wie ld, and he imp lies that the res ults of such creation may serve to lead audiences into an awareness of thi s power. 5 In this passage from his Biographia, Coleridge enumerates the relationship between what he calls "primary" and "secondary " imagination. The former, primary imagination, is what he hold s to be "the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the ete rna l act of creation in the infinite I AM ." Following Friedrich Schelling 's idea lism to a degree, Co leri dge , in other words, argue s that imagination is the gro und of all perception and is the mode thro ugh whic h hum ans part icipate in the co nstitution of rea lity as aspects of a un iver sal , co llective co nsc iousness. Seconda ry im agination , on the other hand , is "a n ec ho of the former, coex isting with the consciou s will, yet still as identical with the prim ary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its opera tion"; this is the kind of imagi nation involved in art istic creation." And so in Dej ection , when we are given a speaker who has lost his ability to create via seco nda ry or artistic imagin ation , the probl em is more serious than it might first appear, for it is a ma tte r of bein g so mehow cut off fro m the collective consc iousness that Coleridge believes is the impetus behind art.

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Over the course of the next few stanzas, moreover, the speaker himself comes to realize that the problem is not a lack of inspiration from without but rather a problem of vision or attention from within . Wish as he might that his natural surroundings would become more energetic and inspirational, the sky is clear, the breeze is soft, and his connection to the collective consciousness is absent. He sees beauty all around him with a natural eye, an eye that only record s and catalogues, yet it soon strikes him that this is precisely what is interrupting the possibility of art. As he puts it, he sees all the phenomena that surround him "so excellently fair, /[he] sees , not [feels] how beautiful they are! "? And this is a place where we may stop and ask ourselves what is happening here from a phenomenological point of view. In a sense, the point that the speaker reaches here is akin to the point at which phenomenology begins according to Husserl. As Husser! argues in Ideas, this first step involves a critique of the "natural attitude." He develops the critique as follows : In the natural attitude we simply effect all the acts by virtue of which the world is there for us. We live naively in percei ving and experiencing, in these acts of positin g in which unitie s of physical thing s appear and not only appear but also are given with the characteristics of things on hand. actual. When enga ged in natural science we effect experi entially and logicall y ordered acts of thinking in which these actualities, being accepted as they are given, becom e conc eptu ally determined and in which likewi se [.. .], new transcend encies are inferred ."

He then goes on to affirm that this is precisely the attitude we must revise via a phenomenological reduction if we are to attain a more authentic experience of consciousness. Likewise, Coleridge's speaker also recognizes that simply experiencing surroundings as phenomena that have nothing to do with him, as objects to be observed and no more , falls short of an awareness of the intimate connection between phenomena and consciousness. He recognizes that the inspiration he seeks, the re-merging of primary and secondary imagination in art, can arise only when he comes to terms with the participatory role perception plays in the constitution of such surroundings. His recovery, therefore, begins with a reduction away from a natural way of understanding experience and toward a notion of experience that does not hinge upon objective observation. Reaching this conclusion, the speaker declares, we receive but what we give And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her weddin g-garment, ours her shroud ! And would we aught behold , of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor lovele ss ever-anxiou s crowd ,

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Ah! From the so ul itsel f must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth. Of all swee t sounds the life and element !"

And here is a statement that encapsulates one of the way s in whic h Rom anti ci sm and phenom en ology ty pically overlap . In projectin g the apprehe ns ion of "a ught [.. .] of high er worth" than is ap pare nt in the "inanimate cold world allowed/To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd," and co nnecti ng such apprehensio n to a recogniti on that "in our life alone does nature live," the speaker here dramatizes a version of Husserl' s basic phenomenological premi se. For when the speaker declares that "we receive but what we give," he is not articulating a solipsistic position , nor a declaration that each individual sends out an image and receives its reflection ; rather he is articulating an inter-subjective position, a declarati on that all that human s collectively perceive is what we all project for eac h other, a co llec tive world brought forth by collective percept ion. So it is, according to the speaker, that "o ur life" is natur e's "wedd ing-garme nt" and "s hro ud," a garme nt of signification that clo thes natur e, as it were, with mea ningfulness. And the "a ught" that may be behe ld of " hig her worth," the aware ness of high er, hidden realms that most peop le miss, stems from an artistic recog nition of the crea tive powe r our co llective perception wields . Thus, the speaker implies that in this mode of recognition a light "[issues] forth" from an arti st's "so ul" as a manifestation of the lesser form of this creative power, a form that is to lead others to such recognition themselves in their experience of art. But the speaker's subsequent claims also dramatize a sense in whic h the revolution ary underpin nings of romantici sm take basic phe nomeno log ica l premises in a d irection that Husserl and ind eed most phenome no logists probabl y would not wan t them to be taken, by treating this rea lization as a doorway into re-constituting reality as well. The speaker takes his position this further step by pursuing the emotional state indicati ve of creation on either the primar y or seconda ry level. He identifies this "light, this glory, this fair lumin ous mist, /Thi s beautiful and beauty-making power," and his various other metaphors for that which issues from co nsciousness, with one emotional state: joy. "Joy," he exclaims, that ne' er was give n, Save to the pure, and in their purest hour , Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower.

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JACK JACOBS Joy, . .. is the spirit and the power, Which wedding nature to us gives in dower A new Earth and new Heaven, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms [our] ear or sight, All melodie s the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light. 10

In so connecting this new awareness, this state of mind that makes artistic creation possible, to a purity brought about by emotional intensity, the speaker here makes the most revolutionary statement of the poem. But to see what sort of revolution is involved here , we must consider again: what is cast aside in attaining such purity ? For some readers, the joy to which Coleridge directs us is a kind of religious ecstasy, a reverie brought about by spiritual consciousness of, or other sort of return to, the beauty of natural phenomena as if they existed outside consciousness." But such a reading does not do justice to what is going on here . We saw above that the path of purification the speaker undergoes involves not reconciling himself to beauty, not coming to understand his position as if he were merely a denizen amidst phenomena, but rather reducing his observation to a level that con siders the structures of conscious perception underlying rational and empirical observation. This typically is the source of romantic revolution : a revolution of the mind that is to arise out of recognizing that we are not simply beings who live in in a phenomenal world, but rather beings who collectively participate in the constitution of our world . Thus, the joy to which he refers is an embracing of our power to create. It is an inten se emotional state that "weds nature to us" by reminding us that we are one with the phenomena we create and are therefore capable of attaining a " new Earth and a new Heaven," a dwelling and a paradise that are "undreamt of by the sensual and the proud" who rely solely on natural observation to experience the truth of our surroundings. And to the extent that we are capable of attaining a "new Earth and a new Heaven," this passage implies, we are capable of radically changing our meaningful world . We are not inescapably trapped in a prison of set meanings and rules that dictate negative manifestations such as inequ ality, violence, and limitation. For once we purify ourselves of our belief in static conditions that render such relationships necessary, we may move beyond them . Reaching this new state, however, requires a key acceptance of a potentially frightening responsibility, i.e ., accepting our role as the source from which "flows all that charms [our] ear or sight," the "voice" of which all "melodies are echoes,"

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and the light of which "all colours" are a suffusion, but, unlike what we will find in the case of speakers in Shelley and Blake 's poems, the speaker here does not pursue the nature of this responsibility to any significant degree. By the end of the poem, the speaker regains his role as conduit, as a focal point between primary and secondary imagination. He purifies himself of the "viper thoughts, that coil around [his] mind,/Reality's dark dream" (94-95) and listens "to the wind,/Which long has raved unnoticed" (96-97). But it is not the wind of a real storm, not some phenomenon that has nothing to do with him other than to stand as an inspiration from without. It is that "vast intellectual breeze" to which he refers in "The Eolian Harp." It is the energy of collective humanity that again speaks through him because he has purified his consciousness of its dependency on natural observation and has opened himself to the joy of collective, conscious creativity.

PART II LIFTING THE VEIL: SHELLEY 'S FEAR AND HOPE

Whereas in Dejection Coleridge dramatizes the "revolution of the mind" to be brought about by recognizing that we participate in the constitution of reality simply on an individual level, showing the change in one speaker, Shelley extends this idea more explicitly to humanity as a whole in Prometheus Unbound and asserts that it is indeed the path to a radical revolution . However, when Shelley does present this change on an individual level in his sonnet Life Not the Painted Veil, written at about the same time as the last stages of Prometheus Unbound, he draws more attention to the potentially frightening responsibility that such recognition entails and the potentially damaging results it may bring about. Prometheus Unbound is one of Shelley's most elaborate revolutionary statements. Drawing upon Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and what is known of his lost text Prometheus Unbound, in this poetic drama Shelley develops Prometheus as a figure for humanity, in chains, suffering tortures and imprisonment brought about by Jupiter, his figure for willful tyranny. His story of Prometheus ' escape is thus the story of humanity's escape from power structures we have imposed on ourselves and emergence into what Shelley sees as our true potential as beings who participate in the constitution of reality and have the power to alter our lifeworld radically, albeit within certain ontological limits.'? And perhaps the central effect that marks humanity's attainment of freedom is its move beyond a world view given by natural observation via a "romantic reduction" of the sort we saw in Coleridge's poem.

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Constructing his revolutionary vision upon an unusually necessitarian foundation, Shelley suggests that the revolution he forecasts is inevitable, one that will be brought about at its appropriate time . Thus in Prometheus Unbound the voice that most authoritatively describes the nature of the revolution is his character known as the "Spirit of the Hour." Once Prometheus is freed and returns to converse with "Asia" and the "Spirit of the Earth," the Spirit of the Hour appears and they ask it to report on the widereaching changes that are taking place. And at the end of this report this character develops a key metaphor for what Shelley believes perception must undercut in order to carry out its revolution : it must rend aside the "painted veil" that most people have always believed to be "life,"!' The Spirit of the Hour first describes the transformation of its own vision as it gains the ability to see what for most is hidden and invisible . It tells Prometheus, Asia, and the Spirit of the Earth that after Prometheus' escape and Jupiter's downfall , Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled The abysses of the sky, and the wide earth, There was a change .. . the impalpable thin air And the all-c ircling sunlight were transformed As if the sense of love dissolved in them Had folded itself round the sphered world . My vision then grew clear and I could see Into the mysteri es of the Universe ."

It then begins a long report of the drastic, wide-ranging changes that are taking place, at the end of which it declares, The painted veil, by those who were, called life, Which mimicked , as with colours idly spread All men believed and hoped, is torn aside The loathsome mask has fallen . .. . 15

This passage implies that what commonly appears as our lifeworld is but a covering over an invisible or at best semi-visible but distorted reality in which consciousness truly exists. Moreover, it implies that this covering is neither the result of unconscious natural conditions, a set of conditions imposed consciously by powers beyond humanity, nor perceptual limitations on humanity's part; but rather, it is the result of humanity's beliefs and hopes . In other words, to use the Spirit of the Hour's terms, it is a "veil" we "paint" for ourselves. Thus, as is the case in Coleridge's poem, that which prevents humans from attaining an authentic consciousness of their constitutive role in

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realit y for mation is an illusion propagated by empirical, rational, and eve n most faith-oriented belief systems, i.e., by the various forms of the natural att itu de that enforce the idea tha t we exist ami ds t phen om en a that have nothin g to do with us. Accordi ng to She lley, then , once th is veil is torn as ide and humans recogni ze their role in the constitution of their meanin gful lifew orld , we may escape the modes of inequa lity, violence, and limitation that we have imposed on ourse lves. And Shelley projects through the Spirit of the Hour 's report that such a revo lutio n of perce ption itself will lead to wide-ra nging changes in government, language, and gender rela tions even though in the end certain on tolog ica l limitations will remai n. The Spirit of the Hour reco unts such changes for Prometh eus, Asia, and the Sp irit of the Earth, reporting that once the veil was torn aside thrones were kingless, and men walked One with the other eve n as spi rits do, None fawned, none trampled ; hate, disdain or fear, Se lf-love or self-contempt on human brows No more inscribed .. .,

that "None talked that co mmo n, false, col d, holl ow tal klWhich makes the heart de ny the yes it breathes," and that women now, "From custom's evil taint exe mp t and pure" are "S peaki ng the wisdom once they co uld not think,/Looki ng emot ions once they feare d to fee l/and changed to all which once they dared not be." !" Much as is the case in Dej ection, in other words, once we as hum ans take respon sibility for the meanings we make and their subseque nt effect on the conditions in whic h we live, we attain the ability to alter those conditions and make for ourse lves a happ ier world in whic h to live. Th is in effect is Shelley's utopia, a place where "man remains/Sce ptreless, free , uncircum scribed - but man : Equal, unclassed, tribeless and nation less, /Exempt fro m awe, wors hip, degree, - the King/O ver himself; j ust, gentle, wise - but man...." It is not what he would take to be a rationalist utopia, to be sure, not a place where passions come to an end, but a rea lm in which we will be "free fro m" the threa ts of "guilt" and "pain" that em powe r belief sys tems that require us to be perceptu ally lim ited. I ? Thu s, while Shelley's present ation figures everyone carryi ng out such a change and to that extent goes beyond and makes more expl icit the revolutionary impl icat ions of the position Co leridge's spea ker adva nces, the roma ntic reduction it prop oses is esse ntially of the same sort. Unlike Coleridge's spea ker, however, Shelley's Spirit of the Hour more carefully points out that, des pite the imm ense power

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human perception truly wields , this power is indeed subject in some way to certain ontological conditions. For, as it tells Asia, The Spirit of the Earth , and Prometheus, while humans shall rule them "like slaves," "chance and death and mutability" will still be with us lest we should "oversoar/The loftiest star of unascended Heaven/Pinnacled dim in the intense inane,"!" And here we get a hint of the frightening side of the power Shelley and Coleridge assign to human perception, that Shelley explores in greater detail in his sonnet Lift Not the Painted Veil. In this sonnet Shelley gives us a speaker who, obviously, advises all readers to avoid lifting the "painted veil," i.e. to avoid seeking the invisible, hidden truths that underlie the illusion that we simply live amidst phenomena that have nothing to do with us. The opening lines read, Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life; though unreal shape s be pictured there And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread, - behind lurk Fear And Hope , twin Destinie s, who ever weave Thei r shadows o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. 19

With this admonishment, the speaker characterizes the veil even a bit more darkly than it was in Prometheus Unbound inasmuch as he not only declares that it "[mimics] all we would believelWith colours idly spread," as the Spirit of the Hour indicates, but also that blatantly "unreal shapes be pictured there ." And yet he warns against the kind of romantic reduction that would tear the veil aside, which Prometheus Unbound promotes as necessary for the most beneficial of revolutions . The apparent line of causation here is that one should avoid taking this step because it leads to recognizing that only fear and hope lie behind the reality we have constructed for ourselves. In other words , the warning in these opening lines seems to revolve around the idea that accepting the role humans play in real ity formation entails the acceptance of a frightening responsibility as well. For once we look behind the veil, this passage implies, we find that all the beliefs we have developed - be they religiou s or philosophical or otherwise - are essentially the products of fear and hope. They have no basis in the true conditions of conscious perception. Anticipating existentialism to a degree, the speaker here projects that our lifeworld hangs over an abyss or chasm, a state of meaninglessness but for the meanings we make therein and the activities in which we engage . Therefore, rending aside the veil will leave us with no recourse to appeal to universal factors beyond our control in order to ju stify inequity or misery, nor any recourse to appeal

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to powers beyond us in the name of hope for a happier future state . For the responsibility and the onus lie entirely with us. And it is the potential terror to which recognizing our state may lead that Prometheus Unbound 's Spirit of the Hour seeks to assuage when it declares that, once the painted veil has been torn aside, "chance and death and mutability" will still be with us (though only as forces we shall rule "like slaves"), thus continuing to provide a kind of substrate for existence itself. The second half of Lift Not the Painted Veil presents this change in a much more personal way than does Prometheus Unbound , and develops a much more disturbing image than the joy we find in Coleridge's Dejection . Here , Shelley's speaker tells us of someone who did indeed push past the veil, and he holds up this person's situation as an example of the undesirable results that threaten to follow such a move. He tells us, I know one who had lifted it .. . he sought ... .... . ...... ....... .. ... ...... .. ... thing s to love But found them not, alas ; nor was there aught The world cont ains, the which he could approve . Through the unheeding many he did move , A splendour among shadows - a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene - a Spirit that strove For truth , and .. . found it not. 20

The way this section is set up, there are at least two possible problem s with rending the veil that it may be pointing out. On one hand, this may be an exploration of the possibility that the very substrate of reality that Prometheu s Unbound promises - versions of chance, death, and mutability that will prevent humans from " [oversoaringj/The loftiest star of unascended Heaven/Pinnacled dim in the intense inane" - may not lie on the other side of the veil at all. If this is the case, then what this passage may be suggesting is that, even though all we believe in is merely illusions we create , these illusions may be the only things that keep any sort of reality together at all. Thus, rending aside the veil in the name of seeking truth and love may lead only to the realization that neither exist beyond the illusory versions we would be casting aside, that not only is there no utopia to be found on the other side of illusions, but nothing at all. On the other hand, the problem this passage may be identifying may be a problem with rending the veil simply because such a move would pertain to those few who dared to do so first, i.e., those who would lead the way toward acknowledging the tremendous responsibility attendant upon conscious perception for others to follow, some time before the more sweeping, universal acknowledgment that

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Prometheu s Unbound projects as inevitable. If this is the case, then what this passage may be suggesting is that individuals who overcome the usual human reliance upon the security that our belief systems provide may find themselves unable to convince anyone else, unable to interact with others in a meaningful way, and unable to cope with the loneline ss and frustration that would accompany being one of the few who does not submit to the illusions through which most people justify their lives. In deciding between these two readings, it seems that the latter is the most likely inasmuch as, throughout his poetry and prose, Shelley maintains a staunch atheism and encourages people to cast aside the chains of tyranny that dominate perception. It is possible that through this sonnet Shelley despairs of the utopia Prometheus Unbound projects, but it is more probable that the very bitterness of his speaker's position is to serve to undercut the power of his warning. In other words, it is more probable that this poem is meant to convince those whom it can reach to continue to strive for the sweeping change that Shelley consistently seeks to energize, and to do so in spite of and in full awareness of the responsibilities and dangers that such a change would entail. In other words, at the level that would reach such people, this sonnet is saying rather sarcastically, "no - don't look beyond the illusions that define most people's lives, don't embrace the reconstitutive power perception wields, becau se if you do, you will not be able to fit in with everyone else anymore," in the hope that coming into a more authentic understanding of perception will outweigh the desire to conform to psycho-social norms. Regardless of the reading we choose, however, the responsibilities and fears this poem brings to light raise very real questions that both Coleridge's Dejection and Shelley's Prometheu s Unbound gloss over to a degree questions that confront not only romanticism but phenomenology as well. For if phenomenology is an effort to elucidate the manner in which reality appears to us, an effort to get to things themselves, then we must consider the possibility that, as Husser! suggests in passages where he comes closest to subjectivism, our consciousness of some reality may be that reality's only mode of existence. In other word s, we must seriously con sider the implications of Husserl 's assertion in Ideas that " [rjeality ... lacks selfsufficiency in virtue of its essence," that [r]ealit y is not in itself something absolute which becom es tied secondarily to something else; rather, in the absolute sense, it is nothin g at all; it has no absolute esse nce whateve r; it has the essenti ality of something which , of neces sity, is only intentional, only an object of consc iousness, something presented [vorstelliges] in the manner peculiar to consciousnes s, something apparent "as appareru.'?'

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And if such is indeed the case, then , as Shelley's sonnet points out , we as human s are saddled with a respon sibility that is as potenti ally frightening as it is potentially freeing . For despite Shelle y's attempts to pro vide some sort of radical yet reliable connection bet ween consciousness and a stable reality in Prometheus Unbound, he likewi se dramatizes the manner in which fear may underl ie even the most tran scendental connection we might imagine. Rending aside the "veil," as Shelley puts it, in an effort to get to thing s them sel ves, in other word s, may lead to conclusion s we don 't want to face , conclu sion s that ma y mean giving up our reliance on beli ef sys te ms that guarantee that there is a reality that is the way it is whether we want it to be that way or not , including, most threatening, the physical sciences and most religions. Thi s is cert ainly, I suspect, not an out come of phenomenology that Husserl envisions or contemporary phenomenologists wish to allow ; however, the conflict we find between Prometheus Unbound and Lift Not the Painted Veil serves well as an ex ample of the way in which the problems that romantic accounts of revolution run into may shed light upon possibilities that are incumbent upon phenomenology to con sider nevertheless. In any case , to whatever extent Sh elley or Coleridge offer some sort of tether between our lifeworld and some other substrate of existenc e, William Blake 's romantic revolution complicates matters even fur ther in that he offers virtually none at all.

PAR T III BL AK E' S " F U R NAC E OF AFF LIC TION " AN D " F OU NTA I N S OF LI VI N G WAT ER S " ~ ~

In Jerusalem, Blake too proj ects an immense recon stitution of reality that hum an perception has the potential to enact , Like Shelley and Coleridge, he links the possibility of radical change to a reduction away from an acceptance of the sort of static conditi ons for hum anit y that rational, empirical, and even most faith-based system s tend to ju stify - that is, away from belief systems, grounded in version s of the natural attitude that enforce the idea that we exi st as bein gs surrounded by phenomena that have nothin g to do with us - and toward a recognition that we all participate in the con stitution of our reality. And like Shelley's presentation in Lift Not the Painted Veil, Blake's explores the potentially frightening respon sibilities that such a recognition entails. But Jerusal em projects that thi s change that perception is to bring about will operate on a much grander scale, well beyond that which Colerid ge implie s in

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Dejection or even that which Shelley dramatizes in Prometheus Unbound, inasmuch as Blake presents it not simply as a change that will swee p our lifeworld , leading to a happier state here on earth, but rather as a change that will involve the very fabric of the universe itself. Jerusalem, an epic poem told through a rich but idiosyncratic mythology and con sidered by many to be Blake's most com plex and obscure poem, is the story of Albion (Blake 's name for collective humanity) awakening from the slumber in which we have come to believe ourselves to be individual, disco nnected beings trapped in conditions beyond our control, and recove ring his emanation as Jerusalem (Blake's name for the interactive, inter-subjec tive aspec t of hum anit y that makes it possible for us to co llectively ex ist and create realitie s for ourse lves). At the end of the poem, in the sce ne in which Albion finally awakens, we see this character having to confront Christianity, one of the most persistent belief systems that teache s hum ans to think of them selves as limited beings living amidst phenomena beyond their control. Albion first awakens with the reali zation that , as Christianity and other belief syste ms teach, not even death is the inescapable condition we usually consider it to be. We are told that he "moved/Upon the Rock," upon which he has slept; "he ope ned his eye lids in pain ; in pain he mov'd/His stony memb ers, he saw England. Ah! Shall the Dead live again." He awakens "In anger: the wrath of God breaking bright flaming on all sides around/His awful limbs" and compels the zoas (Blake' s name for the four primary aspects of humanity which we may loosely interpret as reason, imagination, emotions, and the body or cohesiveness that keeps indi viduals as individuals within collective humanit y) back into their rightful positions. He hears songs of praise for the spectre of Urthona, that is, for the lesser version of imagina tion more co mmonly known in Blake's texts as Los, that has "kept the Divine Vision in time of troubl e," albeit in misleading forms through various belief systems. And he then faces the embodied concept of the savior, the messiah, that has ju stified beli ef in lim itati on eve n as it has taught a vers ion of immortality and escape from the problems that pervade our lifeworld: Jesus appeared standing by Albio n as the Good Shep herd By the lost Shee p that he hath found & Albio n knew that it Was the Lord the Universal Huma nity. & Albion saw his Form A Man . & they con versed as Ma n with Man , in Ages of Eterni ty And the Divine Appearance was the likene ss & simi litude of Los. 2.1

In many ways, the situation in which Blake sets Albion here is akin to the situatio n about which Shelley's Lift Not the Painted Veil speaks. Albion

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awakens to the realization that, while some beliefs at least have retained and kept safe underlying truths about humanity, at the same time our beliefs themselves have helped to constitute and have justified conditions that make power and misery necessary, maintaining the "rock" upon which he slept. In awakening to this realization, moreover, Albion awakens as well to the potentially overwhelming responsibility and fears that such a realization entails. Blake points to the essence of these fears through the way he presents Albion's response to the image of the savior, the image that has preserved notions such as humanity and divinity being one and that there is no necessary mortality, which he confronts. For in Albion's eyes, this is not merely an image conjured by lesser imagination. It is the savior; it is the embodiment of divine codes that render humanity limited and dependent. And, as a result, Albion fears that his burgeoning realization is tantamount to an attack upon his god and master. He cries out to Jesus, the "Divine Appearance" who stands before him in the "likeness & similitude" of Los, "0 Lord what can 1 do : my Selfhood cruel/Marches against thee deceitful" (8-9), and tells him, "I know it is my Self: 0 my Divine Creator & Redeemer.'?" But the response the image gives to Albion reinforces the role such an image is to play : to serve, in Shelleyian terms, as a veil that covers underlying shapes of consciousness in misleading, "painted" forms but in doing so preserves them as well, saving them from being lost altogether, for a time when the veil itself may be cast aside and conscious perception may attain its rightful position. The image replies, "Fear not Albion unless I die thou canst not live/But if 1 die 1 shall arise again & thou with melThis is friendship & Brotherhood without it Man Is Not." In response to Albion 's further questioning, the image adds, "if God dieth not for Man & giveth not himself/Eternally for Man Man could not exist."25 In other words, the image tells him that, if humanity is indeed to reach its potential, humans must give up their reliance on beliefs that keep them limited and accept the responsibility incumbent upon perceptions' creative power, even though in a sense it means allowing God or any such foundational belief, whether it be religious or philosophical, to die . For doing so will not really bring about the end of divinity, but rather a rebirth in which humans will recognize that the overarching power they have assigned to such foundational beliefs is a power proper to collective, conscious perception itself. This response persuades Albion, and what follows is an admixture of the fear that Shelley explores in Lift Not the Painted Veil and the joy that Coleridge's speaker affirms in Dejection . We are told that in the wake of the image of the savior's response, "Albion stood in terror: not for himself but for

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his Friend/Divine, & Self was lost in the contemplation of faith/And wonder at the Divine Mercy & at Los 's sublime honour.':" That is, even as Albion is nearly overwhelmed by the frightening possibilities that may result from relinquishing foundational beliefs, he likewise ponders in awe the role that such beliefs have played in keeping human ity 's potential safe, at the "sublime honour" that is imagination 's due for maintaining in some small degree humanity's creative abilities. So convinced, Alb ion dares to embrace what appears to be a tremendous and difficult responsibility, only to discover that what seems to be self-sacrificing hard ship is actually a path to a greater state for humanity. We are told that Albion "threw himself into " what seemed to be "the Furnaces of affliction" only to find that "All was a Vision, all a Dream." And once this step is taken , once, in Shelleyian terms, the veil of everyday beliefs motivated by natural perception is torn aside, collective humanity realizes that its fears were unwarranted and reorients its primary aspects to their proper positions : the Furnaces became Fountain s of Living Waters flowing from the Humanity Divine And all the Citie s of Albion rose from their Slumbers, and All The Sons & Daughters of Albion on soft cloud s Waking from sleep Soon all around remote the Heavens burnt with flaming fires And Urizen & Luvah & Tharmas & Urthon a arose into Albions Bosom : Then Albion stood befo re Jesus in the Cloud s Of Heaven Fourfold among the vision s of God in Etemity."

Thus, as was the case with Shelley in Prometheus Unbound, in Jerusalem Blake projects that we must rend aside the veil of beliefs that most consider to be a life amidst conditions beyond our reckoning or control - that we must carry out a revolution of the mind via a reduction away from the illusion that what we come to believe is no more than a response to phenomena that have nothing to do with us -if we are to attain our true potential as creative beings. But even more so than Shelley, Blake depicts this as the most radical of revolutions in that it is not merely a change that will sweep our lifeworld on earth, but one that will bring or return us to a state in which collective perception cre ates and recreates phenomenal realities without taking any of them as an ultimate inescapable set of condition s. For the return to the image of the savior at the end of this passage is not a return to a divinity that is beyond us, a ground that enforces limitations, but simply a "Vision .. . in Eternity" of the creative entity that is humanity itself.

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Concomitantly, Blake's image of the changes resulting from such a revolution are arguably more intense than Shelley's as well, involving as they do transformations of the entire universe . And perhaps most strongly of all the romantic poets , Blake affirms that these transformations will be brought about by immensely powerful modes of phenomenal perception. The narrator says that as the aspects of humanity realigned themselves, "the dim Chaos " that underlies our beliefs "brightened beneath , above, around! Eyed as the Peacock/According to the Human Nerves of Sensation." Humanity' s phenomenal senses push beyond the limits of physicality and temporality, Circumscribing & Circumcising the excrementitous Husk & Covering into Vacuum evaporating revealin g the lineament s of Man Driving outward the Body of Death in an Eternal Death & Resurre ction Awaking it to Life [.. . J rejoicing in Unity In the Four Sen ses in the Outline the Circumference & Form ... .28

And here we find Blake's utopia , not simply a happy state for this world, but rather a state of eternal creativity, an existence of expansion and contraction in which collective, conscious perception is bound by no limitations or conditions other than its statu s as creativity. The narrator tells us that the individual members of collective humanity. conv ersed togethe r in Visionary forms dramatic which bright Redounded from their Tongu es in thunderous majesty, in Visions In new Expanses, creating exemplars of Memory and of Intellect Of Human Imagination, throughout all the Thre e Regions immense Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age & the all tremendous unfathomable Non Ens Of Death was sccn in regenerations terri fic or compl acent varyin g According to the subj ect of discour se & every Word & Every Character Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction. The Translucence or Opaqueness of Ner vous fibers such was the variation of Time & Spac e Which vary according as the Organs of Perception vary & they walked To & from in Eternity as One Man reflect ing each in each. .. .29

Again, as is the case with Coleridge and with Shelley 's presentations, Blake's utopia should not be mistaken for an ultra-subjectivist utopia , nor is it the sort of outcome that monistic philosophies such as Leibniz's project per se. Blake projects, rather, an inter-subjective mode of being that is already in operation, one in which individuals remain individuals even as they participate collectively in the creation of realities. Like Coleridge, Blake suggests that our life is, as it were , a "garment" for nature, i.e., that our perception participates in the constitution of our Iifeworld, although he takes the conclusions he draws from this premise much further than Coleridge does

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in Dejection. And, like Shelley, Blake suggests that our foundational beliefs, grounded as they are in natural observation - be they religious, rational, or empirical - currently stand in the way of a true understanding of ourselves. Yet he emphasizes to a greater extent that there is a positive side to the role that beliefs play in that, in the lesser versions of truth they belie, they enable us to preserve an intuitive awareness of our potential. And perhaps this is true most of all for the Romantics. Blake does not affirm that our phenomenal senses themselves are responsible for the illusions we propagate, but rather that unfolding phenomenal perception to its widest possible range is the path to an authentic experience of consciousness.

CONCLUSION IMPLICATIONS OF CREATIVE PERCEPTION

The relationships between Romanticism and phenomenology are many and varied , and this is but a sketch of a few basic connections between them. But it is enough to demonstrate that there are great benefits for both sides in establishing a dialogue . Phenomenology provides an excellent context for understanding both the aspirations that often drive Romantic poetry and the problems it often confronts. Phenomenology can offer insight into the way that Romanticism is neither a simple pantheism grounded in natural observation, nor a simple subjectivism that maintains an irreducible separation between perceiver and perceived or perceiver and other perceivers. And Romantic poetry, in turn, may be taken on some levels as a testing ground for phenomenology in that it locates many of its more abstract premises in lifeworld situations, asks questions of being that phenomenology perhaps has not yet formulated, and discovers fears and possibilities that phenomenology may need to consider or reconsider, however disturbing they may be. One of the ideas I have tried to illustrate through this discussion is that Romantic poems which consider coming into a more authentic experience of conscious perception to be the first step toward true revolution, affirm for consciousness an even more active role than phenomenology usually assigns to mental acts . I have also tried to illustrate the manner in which such poems both confront assumptions that may hinder the phenomenological project and imagine tantalizing potentialities we may attain if we overcome them. But the question remains : what implications do these affirmations of active, conscious, creative perception have for Romanticism and phenomenology? At this stage, however, the answer must remain tentative at best. On one

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hand, to the extent that many phenomenologists desire to maint ain a tether between perception's co nstitutive powers and some stable substrate, such as temp orality, in wh ich these powers ac t, Rom antic acco unts of perceptual revol ution may go too far. If, as Hu sser! suggests in the Cartes ian Meditati ons. "the re can exis t only a sing le community of monads, the co mmunity of all co-exis ting monads. [. . .] Only one Objective world, only one objective time , only one objec tive space, only one objective Nature," and "this one Nature must exist, if there are any structures in me that involve the co-existence of other monads," then Blake at least certainly does go beyond , inas muc h as for him eve n space and time are fun ct ion s of per ceptual ex pa nsion and contractio n.'? Co leridge's present ati on in Dej ection and Shelley's in Prometheus Unbound co uld go either way, since both arguably make roo m for common conditions that ground creativit y even as they assert that human existence is esse ntially creativity itsel f. But when they identify a more authentic experience of consciou sness as a first step toward some sort of utopia, they too may go beyond the confines that phenomenology would set for itself. On the other hand, if, as Shelley hints in Lift Not the Painted Veil and Blake outright declares in Jerusalem, any such reliance on a stable substrate for co nsc iousness is only a vestige of fear regardin g the immense res ponsibi lity that is incumbent upon crea tive per cepti on , the n it is phe nom en ology's dut y to hold ope n the possibility that we are co lle ctively making and may remake at least the conditions of our everyday lifeworld , if not the universe itself. Clearly, this is a disturbin g question to hold open. It is a threat to the rational and emp irical sciences, a threat to most religious and philosophi cal belief systems, and, I'm sure many would argue, an anathema to co mmo n se nse . It would dem and that we risk destroyi ng our sav iors, however we imagine them to be, that we risk thro wing ourse lves into what appeare d to Blake 's Albion to be "furnaces of affliction," that we risk placing ourselves in a position like that of the person who "lifted the veil" only to find himself an outcast among "the unheeding many." Maybe such dem ands are warr anted. Ma ybe they are not. The di fficulti es that are invol ved in establishing a dialo gue between Romantici sm and phenomenology are indeed stre nuous and oft en discomfiting, but the rewards, both inte llec tual and perh aps beyond , see m well worth our efforts.

Auburn University

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I Thomas McFa rland also alludes to some basic agreements between Coleridge and Husser!. His a nalysis, however , focuses primari ly on Co leridge 's prose and does not offer a readin g of Dejection in light of phenomenology. See Thomas Mcf-arland , Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969), pp. 142,218, 236,244,379-380, etc. 2Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Ernest Hartley Cole ridge (Oxfo rd: Clare ndo n Press, 1912), Vol, I. pp. 362-363 . 3 Ibid., p. 363. Ibid., p. 102. It should be noted that there are tension s between Coleridge's rel igious and philosoph ical pursuits. This relationship betwee n his prose explication of imagination, and ideas he artic ulates or implies in poems such as Dejection, are co mplex and beyond the scope of this discussion. My analysis is not intend ed to be an in-depth explanat ion of his theory of imaginati on, and my menti on of this theory is intended only to help add emphasis to the seriousness of the problem that the speaker of Dej ection faces. 6 Samu el Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. H. L. Jackson (Oxford : Oxford UP, 1985), p. 3 13. 7 The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge , op. cit., p. 364. Edmund Husserl , Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinu s Nij hoff Publi shers, 1982), p. 114. 9 The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge , op. cit., p. 365. 10 Ibid ., pp. 365-366. II See, for exa mple, J . Robert Barth , S.J.'s "Coleridge' s Dej ection: Imagination, Joy, and the Power of Love," Coleridge 's Imagination, eds. Richard Gravil, Lucy Newlyn, and Nicholas Roe (Ca mbrid ge : Ca mbridge UP, 1985), pp. 179-1 92: David Jasper' s Coleridge as Poet and Religious Thinker (Alliso n Park: Pickwick Publ ications, 1985), pp. 64-72; Raimond Modiano's Coleridge and the Concept of Nature (Tallahassee : Flor ida State UP, 1985), pp. 60-63; and Haro ld Bloom 's The Visionary Company (Ithaca: Corne ll UP, 1971), p. 225. '2 For more comp rehensive readings of Prometheus Unbound, see Carl Grabe's Prometheus Unbound: An Interpretation (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carol ina P, 1935); Earl Wasserman's Shelley' s Prometheus Unbound: A Critical Reading (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1965); and Ge rald McNi ece 's Shelley and the Revolutionary Idea (Camb ridge : Har vard UP, 1969), pp. 2 18-245, among others . 1.1 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley 's Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald Reiman and Sharo n B. Powers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co mpany, 1977 ), p. 194. ,. Ibid .. pp. 191-1 92. 15 Ibid., p. 194. 16 Ibid ., pp. 192-1 93. 17 Ibid., p. 194. IS Ibid. 19 Ibid ., p. 3 12. 20 Ibid . 21 Husserl , op. cit., p. 11 3. 22 Some aspects of the readin g I develop in this section were first developed in my doctoral dissertatio n, "William Blake 's Performative Prophecy" (Ph.D. diss., Auburn University, 1999). 23 Willi am Blake, Jerusal em: The Ema nation of the Giant Albion, ed. Mort on D. Paley (Londo n: Tate Galle ry Publi cations, 1991), pp. 290-29 1.

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Ib id . ~ p. 29 1. Ibid . 26 Ibid.. p. 292. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.. p. 294. 29 Ibid. .' 0 Edmund Husser!, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cai rns (The Hague: Martinu s Nijhoff, 1964 ), p. 140. 24

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THE MILlEU: A CHART OF OUR MARGIN OF PLAY

SEEING TO THE CORE

Any researcher, but especially the researcher in the human sciences, should make clear to himself what exactly it is that he is investigating, in what way the given phenomenon exists, what ground has it sprung from, and how is it rooted in its fundament. Martin Heidegger describes the possibility of existence as man's connection with his being-in-the-world; and it is essential here to examine the way in which this possibility is grounded in the entity of man's project of Being : this means man 's situation in the difference between what is and his being-in-the-world. He maintains his relationship to the entities in his world only so long as he remains in contact with his being-there. These relationships come into being in what Heidegger terms "the ontological difference". Man's possibility subsists in this difference . It means the possibility of thought or the possibility of existence; and here the possibility does not obtain beyond the bounds of the history which an individual's successive projects (Entwurf[see Varto, 1993, p. 150]) have constituted. But man is also an object of this difference in the sense that he cannot exist without it; his nature resides in it. In itself the difference entails a reckoning (Auseinandersetzung), and now it will be shown that in some way or other a foundation has been laid for this ontological difference . This foundation is not moulded in some act of thought, but rather precisely when such an act takes place in relation to another thinker. At the same time it emerges that the relationship among existing entities - that is, human beings, persons, Daseins - is essential from the standpoint of the act of self-definition: Who am I? and you? The relationship to being-in-the-world is in its essence historical ; it can only mean a relationship to another being-there. (See Fynsk, pp. 57-58.) This appraisal of Heidegger's ontological difference may be followed up in its creator's terms . Man's relationship to his being-in-the-world is concealed; yet we stand everywhere and always amidst it whenever and wherever we seek harmony with other beings . And when and where would 139 A.-T. Tvmieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 139-155 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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we not do so? We retain our hold on other beings and in so doing remain in contact with being-in-the-world. Only thus is Being as a whole a foothold and a port of call for us. And what this implie s is that we are involved in the difference between being-in-the-world and other existing entities. The difference sustains our relationship to our mode of being and promotes connection s among discrete existences. The difference prevails even though we are not aware of it. What is involved is a difference whose diverse aspects are not like those that human being s have distinguished; a difference for which there is no demarc ator, nor is any area of it constituted; it is simply to be experienced. One might even suspect that by virtue of what we call a "difference" between being-in-the-world and the entities in that world we have invented, concocted something which "is" not and which, above all, doe s not need to "be". (See Heidegger, 1982, pp. 131-154.)

A WAY O F S EEING INTO TH E E S SE N C E

Phenomenological reduction (in Heidegger's thought) means the orientation of phenomenological "vision" away from an understanding of Being - whatever the quality of this understanding may be - and back to an understanding of the nature of Being, that is, to a discovery of the way in which the nature of Being is disclos ed . Like any scientific method, the phenomenological approach "grows" and changes as it proceed s, modifying itself according to its objects of scrutiny. Scientific method is never mere technique; if it is, then it has relinqui shed its essential nature . (See Heidegger, 1975, p. 29.) However, phenomenological reduction - the shifting of focus from beings to Being - is not the only basic element in the phenomenological approach. In point of fact it is not even its central component. This redirection of vision requires that we simultaneously shift ourselves towards Being itself. Pure disgust with the entities in our world is only a negative methodological yardstick which not only call s for a positive counterpart, but also specifically presupposes our reversion to Being. Being does not become overt in the manner of phenomena - we simply do not find ourselves confronted with it. As something to be laid bare , Being must always be brought to light in free projection. This projection we make of prior-given Being and its peculiar nature and structure is known as a phenomenological construction. (See ibid., pp.29-30.) Beings and essential forms and relationships are and remain correlates of con sciousness as the latter laboriously works its way ahead . These beings, forms and relationships have thus nothing to do with the transcendental world

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in its old metaphysical sense; only a privileged elite gains access to that world. Understanding the essence - seeing it - means rather describing and comparing, which the envisaged changes in attitude have rendered possible. (See Funke, p. 23.) This notion of seeing the essence may be clarified with reference to Husserl's concept of eidetic intuition. Husserl holds that this intuition leads on to eidetic reduction - the intentional bracketing of a given characteristic of any unique phenomenon from the totality of phenomena. This Wesensschau looking at Being - means appraisal or precise specification of general existences within such structures as are common to a number of phenomena. Eidetic intuition leads on to an eidetic typology, which describes the basic features of phenomena as a general Being. Husserl's eidetic intuition seeks a general essence such as would be shared by the greatest proportion of a group of entities. (See Magliola, pp. 49-50.) Magliola's highly schematic account leaves something to be desired in that it tends to obscure the requirement of uniqueness. The world appears to a given individual in a given guise - and thus only to that one individual, never the same to any other. It is perhaps necessary to inquire what kind of truth is the objective when we seek to see the essence of things. Husserl's method has also been called the idea of intuitionistic transcendental research. As intuitive inquiry gains its impulse from an intrinsically scientific demand based on observation, it undertakes to prove intuitively: a) the primary givennesses of rational knowledge, b) the ultimate points of departure of rational knowledge, c) the overtness of moments of givenness and the intrinsic function (effect) of these moments. (See Lingis, p. 5.) The truth pursued in these inquiries possesses a certain mode of being. This must literally be disclosed - we must lift the veil.

THE NATURE OF OVERTNESS

Overtness and freedom are interconnected; overtness implies the light of selfillumination. This inherent light might be called "free", and its essence "freedom". And here freedom assumes its original sense, diverging from that in metaphysical thought. It will be appropriate to clarify the nature of this freedom in the sense of overtness of Being, and the problematic is worth approaching by way of a definition of the traditional demarcations among the various notions of freedom. Hereby an open road may be called free - entry and transit are acknowledged; they manifest themselves as openness of space, the site of passage is recognized as a place of openness, as a dimensional

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core of space, as an essence which may also be looked upon as a consequence of time, as when we speak of a span of time. The nature of overtness - as the nature of truth - means direct knowledge of history and of Being as such . (See Heidegger, 1992, pp. 148-149.) Direct knowledge of Being means that the human individual, in keeping with his fundamental nature, stands in the openness of life's projection and endures the understanding of his being-there so conceived . Understanding of Being is experienced, and here it is being considered after the manner of Hegel: as a state of expulsion, rejection, in keeping with man's mode of representation. In their essential nature, human beings are thinking beings only if they stand in the brightness and light of Being . In the history of thought this has meant response to the call of Being and, by virtue of this response, being in dialogue with other existences in their lives. In the history of Western thought, being in dialogue develops into dialectic . (See Heidegger, 1991, p. 86.) The content of the interesting notion of freedom merits further elucidation. Freedom is initially defined as freedom of manifestation to something which is overt. Freedom in itself is thus presented as man 's overtness. Manifestation, appearance, means existence as it manifests itself in unconcealed conduct of being-in-the-world and through the medium of this comportment. When existence stands in a place of openness, it may subject itself (adapt itself?) to what appears and discloses itself. And now it is also in a position to abandon itself to what appears - to commit itself to it. (See Kockelmans, 1984, pp. 9-10.) Freedom in any given case lets other beings be what they really are. Thus freedom reveals itself as a letting-be of what is. This does not mean that existence is indifferent in its relation to other existences; rather, it allows itself to participate in the common secret of other existences; this means a sharing of an open region and its overtness, in which each being in turn stands. The Greeks looked upon such an area of openness as self-revelation (ta aletheia - the unconcealed). If aletheia is then translated not as "truth " but as "non-concealment", the translation is not only more accurate but also more suggestive in that it calls for a modification of the usual notion of truth, that is, as a matter of correctness of claims, and a tracing of it to the prepredicative (prereftective) disclosure of beings . (See ibid., pp. 9-10; also Kupiainen, pp. 34-35.) Allowing oneself to participate in the disclosure of other beings does not mean losing oneself in the process. Rather, this self-abandoning participation in the secrets of other existences unravels and develops into a "withdrawal" into their prior givenness, when they may disclose themselves as what and

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how they are - this because the meaningful compatibility of self and others may acquire its standard precisely from those others. As a letting-be, the normality of this compatibility lays open as such to other beings and makes of all comportment an open zone . Now freedom - as such a letting-be essentially means self-revelation and emergence (ex-sistence - a standing out) into the light of Being. Seen from the standpoint of the nature of truth, the core of freedom manifests itself as abandonment to the disclosability of others. (See Kockelmans, 1984, pp. 9-10.) Being and its disclosure require a certain conception of the object of perception; concrete measurement and verification of findings are out of the question. A new heuristic-esoteric mode of approach must be evolved - and this means a leap beyond the bounds of the everyday.

THE EXISTENTIAL OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION

Description entails the presence of an object whose reality is not necessarily verifiable by observation. In this respect there are different modes of description, distinguishable from each other by virtue of their divergent temporal orientations. Recollection involves the description of a presence as something which was; the orientation is to the past. Imagination entails the description of something which "as it were" is - the temporal focus is on the present. Anticipation, again, describes a presence which may become manifest - it looks to the future. (See Aanstoos, pp. 62-63.) What are the properties of such ideal objects? Is it in fact possible to speak of objects at all in this case? It would seem particularly arbitrary to claim that there is only the bipolar division into objects and non-objects; but what, then, could the latter be? It is perhaps good to remember that in any case that every subjective intuition emerging in our minds must have its existing object. Bearing this in mind, a method may be available whereby we can prove that, for example, the ideas of time and space axe not intuitive. But it is not essential now to determine whether these ideas are complex or simple ; they do not represent objects proper, since the entities they refer to are not real. These idea-objects must be analysed as two modifications of consciousness : active and nonactive; or, from another standpoint, visibly manifested (explicit) and concealed (implicit). All in all, the stream of mental processes can never consist solely of activities ; one mode of consciousness will always merge into another. Cogito - thought - understood as an act, more precisely as an act of

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consciousness, becomes potential consciousness, and vice versa . (See Bolzano, p. 108; Shpet, p. 28.) The object of perception - the noema - can never be experienced as a separate , detached entity ; it is always manife sted within a horizon in which there are two components, the internal and the external. In each given act of perception the perceived object has its external horizon - or external bounds which demarcate it from its background; more precisely, from the background against which it makes its appearance. This background, too, belongs to the world , nonetheless. It comprises precisely that part of the world which is not the object or a part of the object. (See Heelan, p. 8.) No perception ever springs as it were from the void, without a foothold from which to take flight. The experience of every act , regardless of its object, carries within it some marginal awarene ss of phenomenal time. Also inherent in this is awareness of the permanent nature of the act; that is, an irnpressional knowledge of the current phase of the act, a retentional awareness of its past stages and a protentional knowledge of its future, possible expectations as to its further evolution . Together with these are all the retentions preceding the current act. (See Gurwitsch, 1985, p. 13.) Among marginal items, there must also be meaningful objects which emerge aside from the mainstream, but are in no way connected with it. Such mental states, through which these completely detached objects are given, might be termed parallel modifications of awareness . They are experienced along with the act whereby we are engaged with the main theme. The thematic act thus takes place within a horizon of experiences - a horizon in which contemporaneity, and past and future dimension s are distinguishable. (See ibid. ,p.13.)

The notion of marginality involves an interesting insight; my here is your there; the focal point of my perception is your marginality. To some other, the object I perceive is at a remove; every aspect is also constantly appresented as something other. The unravelling of this problem entails the notion of intersubjective verifi ability - understanding is a joint undertaking. (See also Kockelmans, 1967, p. 231; 1985b, p. 32.) Scratch and scrape scratch and scrape. See if the surface will break. Under the paint there is something after all. The paint is surely not ju st paint , a cover for nothing , fastened to nothing at all?

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Driven dee p enough the point will break through, it must show on the other side. Is there something there too? Is there another surface, with a scratch not mine and the point that pierced it? A hole from one no-where to another. Sur ely my side is better; and it has the proper scratch! I mean, the ONLY REAL ONE My scratch.

T HE D E NIZ E NS OF T H E F O RES T

Man is born of the earth, he springs from a land scape which, though the same landscape, is different for each of us. Each ob serves his common mili eu from his own position in it. Can one avoid being imprisoned by one 's own point of view ? Or is it even necessary to avoid attachment? Immediate - intuitive - understanding of the world may be defined as kno wled ge born of something lived through mentally, something real. The experience invoked here varies from one individual to another, from one group to another, and it also changes alon g with the development of anyone indi vidual or group. Thus, as Max Scheler put s it, the "s ame" fore st is one milieu to the frontiersman, another to the picnicker, and yet another to the huntsm an . By the same token, that mil ieu is different for a deer or for a lizard; and yet again, the forests of both differ from the fore sts of man . (See Gurwit sch, 1979, p. 60.) Each of the se creature s carries with it, apart from its own drive-dispo sition, the structure of its milieu - pre ci sely as a correlate to thi s di spos ition. Even more preci sel y, the diverse situation s and contents of the milieu change with change of plac e ; nonethele ss the structure of the mili eu endures unaltered throughout the ch ange. Thi s is because it is firstly that structure which determines what is recei ved and in what sense it is accepted into the milieu of the creature in question. Approval depends on different and vary in g components of th e world. Thu s the mili eu is al so like a battlement, a wall beh ind which the human individual is fett ered. (See ibid.,

p.60.) No change in the focu s of scrutiny or attention can ever lead the frontier sman into the picnicker's fore st; and conv ersely, the picnicker can never

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be part of the huntsman's; each is a prisoner of his own milieu, of what he specifically belongs to. This also entails a landscape in which the individual may focus his attention now on one phenomenon, now on another, or on successive aspects of these. Yet the scope of observation is pre-ordained according to the viewer's own milieu and its peculiar structure . (See ibid., p. 60.) What kind of "I" can attain awareness of its own limitation? Quite simply: Who am I? and who are you? And we? SELVES FACE TO FACE

Following Husserl 's thought , we may discern in the structure of the self the following dimensions: a) an "identical self', which as an uninterrupted self-constituting entity lives in all its experiences; b) my own self - the basis of its ways in Being, existing in skills acquired in its earliest experiences rather than as an empty centre of identity; this "I" builds itself actively out of its focal self; c) the self in its fully concrete aspect, understood in the diverse stream of its intentional life; it contains all the objects which have constituted themselves in this stream to make up that very self. This is precisely the "I" which encloses within its sphere every actual and possible content of its conscious life. Husser! refers to this self in all its concreteness as a monad, a unity , an indivisible initial element. (See Schutz, 1966, pp.55-56.) From the standpoint of this discussion, two essential features stand out in the foregoing definition: I) the situational self, and 2) sedimented selfhood; the self which constantly gathers new experiences to itself, which builds itself out of "traces" of life, layer after layer and ever merging with each other - the "I" which develops in time and in a boundless field of possible choices. What happens when this self is set - or rather, sets itself - over against itself? In science an object always implies knowledge, and in this objectivized knowledge lies the relatedness, the connection, of knowledge with the knowing of it; an object to itself. The object is nevertheless not initially nor directly to-itself, put in-itself. To itself, to absolutely immediate knowledge, the object simply returns into itself - or more precisely, the object has not yet stepped outside of itself to

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become its opposi te (Gegenstand); it has not become to itself knowledge set ove r agai nst itsel f, to sta nd oppos ite this knowledge. Rem aining thus com plete ly in itself, this object mea ns bein g-in -itself; the object " is" - is positioned - but not as something over agai nst knowle dge. It is prec ise ly immediate knowledge which possesses this feature and qua lity of knowing wherei n it - knowledge in itself - abandons itself totally as an object to its own possession. The object stands in itself as something which does not need to ex ist for co nsciousness. And co nsciousness understands the object immediatel y, specifically as something immutab le within itself.' (See Heidegger, 1988, pp. 49-50. ) Next, Heidegger's interpretatio ns of Hegel may be com bined with the views of Alfred Schutz with respec t to the relationship of the self with itself. Schutz insists that the thou-positing of the I - the thou-posited I - is man ifested exclusive ly in the past. Here it may also be appropriate to co nsider the following ju xtapositions:

I: as past and over = the thou-positing I:

the correlate (index) of the self: the course of the past as seen by the I

I: as it is now, here and precisely as it is

thou: (as a past I) as a now-herejust-so-correlate (index), which sta nds in relation to the nowhere-ju st-so mode of being I

Figure I. Schutz 's schematization of the self as observer of itself (see also Wagner, p. 112).

From the standpoint of the present theme, Schutz's ambivalent cons truct may be approac hed thus: I, in my immediate experience (my past) was to myself "t hou" : only with retros pective reflection does the thou-posited I become I in relation to myself. I am I to myself, as it were, a posteriori; my relationship to myself is thouposited at least in the immediacy of experience, in the curre nt moment. I am transposed to I in myself only as I regard my past thou-I from a subsequent present - a moment which from the standpoint of my thou-positing self is yet to be. Am I thus constantly leaping out of myse lf? The moment I get to know myself, I am to myself already "thou" .

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The foregoing may be elucidated with a diagram: I . Immediacy, actual presenc e

I to my self as thouposited 2. Retro spective reflection

I to myself as I-posited

3. "Old age"

Mere I

Figure 2. The relationship of the self to itself.

Is old age the stage when one "knows" oneself through and through ? There is no longer a foothold to be gained - only I in myself with no thouposition. The future , then , has vani shed; the past - the perfective, completed, resultative past, ha s become present and future. Each of us may encounter this self regardless of physical age . In the context of retro spective reflection, the se question s may be posed: "What doe s hind sight mean ? Doe s someone with this faculty have eyes in the back of his head?" (See also Itkonen, 1998, pp . 59-65 ; Schutz, 1996, pp.201-202.)

THE INDIR ECTN ESS OF REFLECTION

Being to oneself alre ady implies the mode of indirectness, reflection; it is no longer immediate knowledge . The latter reverts to thi s indirect-absolute knowledge . It commences its return - not, however, to a strange "s o mewhere", but to a somewhere which exi sts to itself. The object is

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abso lutely kno wn only when it is known as a being in itself and a bein g to itself - that is, when co nscio usness becomes co nscious as a being in itself and a being to itself. (See Heid egger, 1988, pp . 49-50.) Jean-Paul Sartr e 's concepts "e n-s oi" and " pour-soi" may we ll be translatable in this co ntext as objec t-in-itself and objec t-for-itself. If these are now brought into line with the notion of reflection, it is necessary to includ e a co nceptio n of the self being outside as something yet to come. Th e objectfor-itself is free, and freedom is its own limitation . Hence there need be no future as future . Th e futur e is not in-itself, nor does it exist in the mode of object-fo r-itself. Th e futur e means objec t-for-itself. Nor does the future exis t - it makes itself possible. (See Sartre, pp. 173-174.) Th ese though ts brin g with them an intere stin g co nfiguratio n: the ''I'' face to face with its as yet unrealized l-position . Is this then some prot ent ional reflection, an anticipation of an ideal I? Is it a project in which the world is see n as a totality to be contro lled? In point of fact, it is nevertheless more pertinent to speak of a futu re thou -po sited I: there is no knowin g for sure whether I shall reali ze myself in the way I plan to. I shall have the answer to that - I shall be to myself - only in looking backw ards. What a nuisance ! The l-experienc e (acco rding to Henri Bergson ) is expelled into time and space; it is bound to its co mpanio ns throu gh language and fee ling. Thi s 1experience is acc ustomed to thought ; acc ustomed to transform ing the flux of cha ng ing quality int o co nce pts. Reflecti on is the most effec tive way of eliminating the experience of the unceasing fluctu ation of quality. Reflection represents the wo rld of parall el qu antit ies; eve n movem e nt , whic h most resembles duration, beco mes spatialized through thought. The ability to adapt to the externa l world and to the acquired skills of habits of thought has led to a state whe re the ex pe rience of duratio n has bee n subs tituted wi th the experience of space and time. Here we also cling to reflection and thought. Man is in co ntrol of him self by means of cog itation. He is not able to see the image for the con cept s. Experiences frozen into co ncepts are crammed into the immovable bounds of the here-and-now. (See Schu tz, 1982, p. 32.) WH E N , T HEN , A M I ACTUA L LY IN -M Y S E L F ?

That I which I once was and evide ntly still belie ve I am assumes a form; this figure take s shape out of the co ntent and meaningfulness of eac h immediacy of my present. I understand myself in the relative aspect of the temporal perspec tive as a hum an subject who still - even in this moment - exists and is defined accordingly. Eve n when I am face to face with my past self, the opposition affec ts the co ntent of my knowledge of what I exper ience myself

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to be in my present. When 1 live many nows in success ion, these link the temp oral aspects of my selfhoo d into a chain, a string of pearls. I cannot know myself without my time perspective. The past defines me; thus I may return through my past stages to my actual self. I am changing but immutable, qualitatively the same self for all time. (See also Ingarden, pp. 41-42) Martin Bub er writes of the Urselbst, the original self, in which it is possible to attain a new freedom, freedom from the conditioning of time and multiplicity. Hence ecs tasy is often followed by extreme perturbation; the enchanted now finds himself "under a stormcJoud of power", in surfeit, in eternity. He is no longer a fragmented self, no longer subject to spora dic sensations and cogita ted represe ntations . Ecstasy means white heat: subject and object are one in the unique embrace of the aboriginal self. The 1 is no longer a solid bundle, it is a fire, a flame. Now the content of experience of the flame and the flame's experiencing subject - the world and I - have flowed into one being. (See Mende s-Flohr, p. 63.) There is no longer a return to the I of everyday ; only a longing for the oneness which was once realized: a flame burning as I, which will gutter if I distance myself once more from my aboriginal self and the world . Thi s new experience of myself is also conn ected with my relation to the other: the other's call, "Be with me", renders me capable of freeing myself from myself. His appeal reveals to me a hithert o utterly unappreh ended and unexpected dimen sion in my existence. Who am I? Am 1 no more than the outcome of my objec tive qualities, no more than a filing-card, no more than the role I play? 1 am - truly - more than my own facticity, because I am a subjec t, and therefore, freedom. As such, I transcend all forms of being which rest in mere facts, and constantly extend myself towards a boundless future to root myself ever more firmly in my own world. But now that appeal of the other makes me see that 1 am not called to realize myself in the world as an egois t, as a personification of selfishness. That appeal helps me to understand that I am caned to realize myself in the world for the other. He exhorts me to change, to become an altered manifestation of myself. Now 1 see that 1 must conqu er the world so that that other may exist. (See Luijp en and Koren , pp.175-176.) Now it is time to take up the theme of our margin of play and its nature. FRO M EA RT H H AS T TH O U COME AN D TH EN C E SHALT T HOU RET UR N

Und erstanding is imp ossibl e for man without the basis of fore-havin g (Vorhabe), fore- sight (Vorsicht) and fore-conception (Vorgrifj) because his

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transcendence is by nature finite and temporal. The hermeneutic situation can be described by means of the "tec hnical" concepts of fore-having, fore -sight and fore-co nception. (See Kockelmans, 1985a, pp. 86-87; see also Varto, 1992, p. 78.) Of particu lar sign ificance is the relatio nship to the earth; all spring from it and to it all return. More preci sely: all set out and all return to their birthplace, their home fields, their familiar landscape . The following figure may serve to outline this totality: Present

Past

Future

the contemporary world/Mi twe lt Ontologicity /the prior world/ Vorwelt

The world about us/Umwelt Onticity

/posterity/ Nachwe lt

Being-in-the-world/ Dasein Figure 3. The nature of our margin of play.

To begin with, two definitions: Ontic = a struct ural acco unt of the way existe nce in itself is given with birth, immedi ately, prior to all reflectio n. b) On tological = a struc tural acco unt of the way in whic h existence is understood (see Itkonen , 1997 , pp. 47- 58 ; Spiegelberg, p. 72 1; Varto, 1994, p. 156).

a)

WHENC E HAVE I S P RUNG ?

I.

Before me there is a ready, original world - the Vorwelt. My fore bears have broken the grou nd; it is there with its given relationships, customs,

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2.

3.

4.

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qualities. It entails its own particular way of constituting reality - some kind of prior understandin g - Vorgriff. Th is totalit y is always prior to me and will remain when I am gone. I have - or more correc tly, I am part of - a common world, a Mitwe lt, together with my co ntemporaries. Th is entails some kind of universal exi stence as a ch ild of the wor ld, a simultaneo us living-in-the-world . Comm on to us all is the experie nce of being-in-th e-world ; yet we share neither time nor space; our lived wor lds do not touch . My own sphere - the Umwe lt - where I am in direct contact with my fellow being s. They form part of my experiential environment as I form part of theirs. We share a common plot of ground - we partake of each other's lived world s; we walk the same roads, eac h as a self of its own. I shall return to the ea rth, which wi ll continue to be afte r me - the Nac hwelt, That is my posterity, peopled by my successors. My be ing-here - Dasein - is their prior understanding. The land is and rema ins. (See also Wolff, p. 95.) B EY O N D R E CALL ?

The land is dry and waste, the wind swee ps over it. Somethin g there was, now gone. Nothin g is for ever - yet perhaps the earth - yes surely. In my birth I rece ived a gift I received my deat h. I accep ted it. lt was as if I were co me before . possessing before I was born. Even before life I fore knew death. Some times I was born again, born a human being. I foretold my end, moulded my life over against the ultimate. My co urse would be defined. my steps pre-orda ined. The end less play of the world in time and in space . Ever new as the unfamiliarity of sameness . Disclosure and then concea lment.

153

TH E MILI E U Co nstant change: one moment at hand and aga in beyond recall. I, the one before me and the one that follows after, Vanishin g beings of the same earth . Onl y the ground remain s.

E P IL O GUE : WH E N I N ROM E .. .

Language reveal s our relation to the earth - it is born of the same soil as its user. It means our own track in the fundament, a way of existing. Poetry and language are intertwined - Dichtung is a condensation of clue s which only I know . It is my trace . The mother-tongue means poetry, and poetry, birthplace. They are a way of disclo sing the concealment of Being, a chink in the wall of secrecy towards which we reach. They are a being at home - a momentary leap into participation in the world. Synthesis: I am in the world and the world is in me. That is all. Universities of JoeIlSUU, Jyviiskylii and Turku Translated by Robert MacG illeon.

NO T ES I Th ere is reason to elucida te the natur e o f the concept s objec t-in-itself and objec t-fo r-itse lf. Th e matter is reverted to at a later point , but a more precise exposition of the present writer 's view is appropriate in fac ilitating and deepen ing the analy sis. To begin with , two ligures:

Object-in-itself

Object-for-itself

A = experienc ing objec t Figur e: Knowledge of se lf (e .g. relation of I to itself). i) Obj ect-in-itself impli es the immedi acy of the act, the action as such (for exa mple, bein g enchanted with a beautiful land scape). Here there is no possibility of reflecti on . The situat ion is characterized by dial ogicity, as being face to face with the land scape. At the same time one lives as it were within the situation .

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ii) Object-for-itself means reflection, backward-oriented observation of self. Here immediacy is interrupted, one has stepped outside dialogicity. One is now no longer within the situation, for example , the self may appraise its own past - Why did I find that landscape beautiful? Why was I so taken with it?

REFERENCES Aanstoos, C. M. (1987). "The Psychology of Computer Models and Question of the Imagination." In Imagination and Phenomenological Psychology. Ed. by Edward L. Murray . Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press. Pp. 48-77. Bolzano, B. (1972) . Theory of Science. Attempt at a Detailed and in the main Novel Exposition of Logic. With Constant Attention to Earlier Authors . (1837) . Ed. and trans . by Rolf George . Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of Californi a Press . Funke, G. (1987). Phenomenology - Metaphysics or Method? (1966) . Trans. by David J. Parent, with a foreword by Thomas M. Seebohm. Athens : Ohio University Press. Fynsk, C. (1986). Heidegger: Thought and Historicity. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Gurwitsch, A. (1979). Human Encounters in the Social World. (1977). Ed . by Alexandre Metraux , trans . by Fred Kersten. Pittsburgh : Duquesne University Press. - . (1985). Marginal Consciousness . Ed. by Lester Embree . Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Heelan , P. A. (1988) . Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science . (1983) . First paperback printing . Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press. Heidegger, M. (1975) . Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie. Herausgegeben von FriedrichWilhelm von Hermann . Gesamtausgabe, Band 24. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann . Heidegger, Martin (1982). Nietzsche. Volume IV: Nihilism. (1961) . Trans. from the German by Frank A. Capuzzi . San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers. - . (1988). Hegel 's Phenomenology of Spirit. (1980). Trans . by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press . - . (1991). The Principle of Reason . (1957). Trans . by Reginald Lilly. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press . - . (1992) . Parmenides. (1982). Trans . by Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press . lngarden, R. (1983) . Man and Value. (1970) . Trans . by Arthur Szylewicz. Munich : Philosophia; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press . ltkonen, M. (1997) . "Dialogic or Dialogistic? Dialogicity or Dialogism? A Word of Warning against Rigor Metodologiae." Trans. by Robert MacGiIleon. Human Studies 20: I, pp. 47-58. - . (1998) . Voinko minutella? Filosofisia puheita itsekasvatuksesta. Tampere : TAJU. Kockelmans, J. J. (1967). A First Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press. - . (1984). On the Truth of Being. Reflections on Heidegger's Later Philosophy . Bloomington: Indiana University. - . (l985a). Heidegger and Science . Current Continental Research 207. Lanham: University Press of America , Inc. - . (1985b). Heidegger on Art and Art Works. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Kupiainen , R. (1991). Ajattelemisen anarkia . Transmetafyysinen asenne Martin Heideggerilla . Filosofisia tutkimuksia Tampereen yliopistosta (F1TTY), Vol. XVIII. Tampere : Tampereen yliopiston jaljennepalvelu.

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Lingis , A . (1986). Phenomenological Explanat ions. Ph aenomenol ogica 96. Dord rech t: Mart inu s Nijhoff Publi shers. Luijpen, W. A. and Koren , H. J . (198 7) . A First Introduction to Existential Phenomenolo gy. (1969) . Tenth printing . Pittsburgh : Duqu esne Universit y Pres s. Ma gliola, R. R. (19 78) . Phenomenology and Literature. An Introduction. Second prin tin g. West Lafa yette , Ind iana: Purdue University Press. M endes- Flohr, P. (1989) . From Mysticism to Dialo gue. Martin Buber 's Transformation of German Social Thought. ( 1978). De troit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press. Sartre, J-P. ( 194 3). L'etre et Ie nea nt, Essai donrolo gie phenomenologiqu e. 14th ed . Par is: Gallimard . Sc hut z, A . (1966) "The Probl em of Tran scend ent al Inte rsubj ectivity in Husserl," (1957). Trans. by Freder ick Ke rste n in coll aborat ion with Aron Gurwitsch and Thomas Lu ckmann . In Collected Papers, Volume III: Studies in Phaenomenological Philosophy. Pha enomenologica 22. Ed . by I. Sc hutz . Th e Hagu e: Martinus Nijhoff, pp . 51-84. - . (1982). Life Forms and Meaning Structure. Tran s., intro duced, and anno tated by Helmut R. Wagner. Lond on : Routl edge & Kegan Paul. - . (1996) . Collected Papers, Volume IV. Phaenomenologica 136 . Ed. with preface and note s by Helmut Wagner and George Psath as. In collaboration with Fred Kerst en . Dordrech t: Kluwer Acade mic Publ ishers. Shpet, G. (1991) . Appearance and Sense. Phenomenology as the Fundamental Science and Its Problems. (1914) . Tran s. by Th omas Ne meth. Phaenomenolo gica 120. Dordrecht: Kluwer Acad emi c Publi shers. Spi egelberg, H. (1960 ). The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction . Volume On e. Phaenomenologica 5. The Hague: Mart inu s Nijhoff. Var to , J . (1992) . Fenomenolo ginen tiet een kritiikki. Filoso fisia tutk imuksia Tampereen yliopistosta (F/ TTY), Vol. XXX . Sufi -tutkimuksia I. Tampere: Tampereen yliopiston jdljen-

nepalvelu. - . (199 3) . "Ta a lla olon e tiikka. E ras tut ki mus He ideggerin teoksesta Sein und Ze it." In Julkisuus ja ahdistus. Julma-projektin ontologinen antologia kenen tahansa eldmiista. Toim . Hanne Hokk anen , Katri Hyttinen ym. Hel sinki : Yliopi stop aino . Pp. 149-163. - . (1994) . Filosojian taito J. Jyvaskyla: Kijayht yma . Wagner, H. R. (with I. Srubar) (1984 ). A Bergsonian Bridge to Phenomenological Psychology. Curre nt Continental Resea rch 204 . Lanham : University Press of Ameri ca , Inc . Wol ff, K. H . (1984) . "S ur re nde r - a nd - Ca tch and Ph en o menology." In Alfr ed Schutz: Appraisals and Developments. Ed . by Kurt H. Wolff. Dordrecht : Martinus Nijhoff Publ isher s, pp .85-104.

SECTION III FROM INSPIRATION TO EXPRESSION

VICTOR KOCAY

INSPIRATION AND ITS EXPRESSION : THE DIALECTIC OF SENTIMENT IN THE WRITINGS OF BENJAMIN CONSTANT

I NTR O D UCTIO N

The maxim s in Benjamin Constant 's novel, Adolphe, have provok ed a certain amount of interest on the part of scholars over the past several years. While some believe that the numerous maxims found in the novel are a vestige of classical form , aphori sms that do little for the literary work, others, more recently, have interpreted the maxim s as a form of discourse that plays an import ant function in the work . On this level, they can be seen as an attempt to win the reader over to the perspective of the main protagoni st, Adolphe, or they can be interpreted as an attempt to invoke closure within the work itself, with variou s char acter s seeking to impose their point of view on others (cf. Ali son Fairlie 1981 , and Colette Com an 1982). The maxim ca n also be interp reted as a sea rch for truth , however, es pecially when maxim s pronounced by the narrator are compared with maxims formul ated by characters in the novel who seek to influence others, whereas the narrator's maxims appear to have a different function (for a discussion of these different position s, see V. Kocay, 1995). In this paper I would like to propose that the maxim form , which often seem s to expre ss only variou s platitudes, is an inscription in the text of a different sort of text, a text of an ideological position. In order to show this, I will first present a synopsis of Con stant 's works, and then discu ss in more detail the notion of religious sentiment as it is developed by Con stant in his several volumes on religi on. The notion of sentiment is the most important notion in these works, and perhap s in all of Con stant 's writing s. It leads to an intere sting development philosophically, and mani fests certain affinities with the philo sophy of Hegel, most notably with Hegel' s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, but also with the Philosophy of History. In its more simplified form , that is, as int imate sentime nt, it is also the most frequent notion expressed in Constant 's numerou s maxim s.

159 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 159-1 77 .

© 2002 Kluwer Acade mic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Constant's works can be divided into three distinct groups : his literary works, his political works, and his seven volumes on religion and religious forms . Researchers have long focused on the literary works, and more recently on his political tracts. The works on religion have remained relatively obscure (cf. Pierre Deguise 1966, and Patrice Thompson 1978). An abridged edition of these works was published recently in France (Actes Sud, 1998), and a more complete edition is currently in preparation (cf. Oeuvres completes de Benjamin Constant). Constant is well known as the author of the novel Adolphe. This short work has been edited on numerous occasions by various scholars, and has been translated into many languages. It is frequently included in the syllabus for courses on nineteenth-century French literature, perhaps most particularly because it nicely represents the transition from classicism to romanticism. Constant's style and language belong to the classical school, whereas the content of his work has more in common with romantic authors such as Chateaubriand and Hugo. The novel Adolphe has also provoked a great deal of interest from the moral perspective, however. It is the story of a young man with a promising career who decides to follow the example of his friend and find himself a mistress . He succeeds in his quest in Chapter Three of ten, and for the remaining seven chapters finds himself in a troublesome situation, namely, not knowing how to end his relationship with his mistress , Ellenore, who, he thinks, because of her unfavorable social situation, has become an obstacle to his career. While many have seen Adolphe as a weak character unable to break definitively with Ellenore, others have seen him as a careful manipulator of the reader's moral judgment. The maxim form is of considerable importance for this latter interpretation. But it is also possible to consider the character, Adolphe, as a kind of anti-hero who refuses to follow the traditions of his father and abandon Ellenore, but who is not entirely willing to commit himself to the new romantic ideal to which he aspires and which to a certain degree he creates. In this sense Adolphe is a tragedy, occasioned by the situation in which the main characters evolve. Constant's first political tracts, De la Force du gouvernement actuel de la france et de la necessite de s 'y rallier, date from 1796 and deal specifically with the Revolution in France. Constant's position with respect to the Revolution can be expressed as follows : because the revolutionary government was able to consolidate its power, thereby underscoring its legitimacy, it was pointless to resist the government by counter-revolutionary

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activity and thereby throw the country back into a state of civil war. This position is somewhat tenuous, however, for it could be used in almost any instance to justify whatever regime happened to be in power. Constant's seemingly innocent position is perhaps not quite as innocent as he would have liked to believe, for it implies acquiescence and perhaps even a tacit approval of the revolutionary government. However, it is clear from the position he takes against an increase in revolutionary activity, that his position is not simply an approval of the Revolution, or of its consequences. Constant's position is in fact a delicate one between two opposing and wellarmed camps, and in this perspective may even appear foolish . But Constant's reasoning is more profound than a call for peace for the sake of peace, for it is fairly clear that he bases his support for the revolutionary government on principles that he considers of greater importance than the form or color of government. It was clear from an early stage that Constant's political notions were not so much a reflection of a particular ideology or form, as they were the expression of specific values such as individual freedom and social harmony. That is to say that political form was less important than the objectives to be achieved. After Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1813, Constant published a text, De I' Esprit de conquete et de I'usurpation, denouncing dictatorship. This work , his first major success, was followed in 1815 by his work on political principles, Principes de politique applicables a tous les gouvernements, the objective of which was to outline the forms of government that best protected individuals from the all-intrusive powers of the state . His evident knowledge of political systems earned him an invitation from Napoleon, upon the latter's return to power in the Spring of 1815, to participate in the drafting of a new constitution that would guarantee individual freedoms and perhaps enable him to remain in power. Napoleon 's experiment with individual freedoms was short-lived, however. It ended abruptly with the battle of Waterloo, and Constant was left in an awkward situation : he had rallied to Napoleon, the despised and now defeated dictator, after having repeatedly denounced the spirit of conquest, military rule and authoritarian regimes . Following the restoration of the monarchy in France, Constant was nonetheless elected to the legislative assembly, where he served for many years and earned the reputation of a liberal who espoused freedom in various forms. He defended individual freedom , political freedom, religious freedom, and was a tireless defender of the freedom of the press. He remained actively involved in politics both as an elected representative and as the author of

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hundreds of articles in various publi cations, until his death in 1830 . (On Constant' s life, see the excellent biography by Dennis M. Wood, 1993.) Co nstant's reputati on as a politi cian rem ain ed so mew hat tarn ished , however, because of his so-called flip-flop durin g Napoleon's return to power in 1815. After having decried dictatorship and usurpation both in writing and in speec hes, ofte n with only slig htly veiled att acks aga inst Na po leo n, Co nsta nt sudde nly seemed to reverse his position and support the dictator. Th is was inexplicabl e, if not unju stifiable, for many observers, and invited claim s of opportunism and betr ayal from ene mies and former assoc iates . Con stant defend ed him sel f in a series of lett er s publi shed in 1819, subsequently publi shed separately as Memoires sur les Cent-lours, in which he basicall y reit erates the posit ion he took in the after math of the French Revoluti on, that is, that the actual form of government was of less importance than the practice of government, and that the new constituti on that he had drafted at Napoleon 's request, if it had been adopt ed, would have gone a long way toward s guarante eing the kind s of individual freedoms that he espoused. It was after all, according to Con stant, the applic ation of the constitution that was primary and that would ultim ately determin e its worth iness. CO NSTANT'S R ELI GI O U S AND SOC IA L T HEO RY OF P ROG RESS

Whether or not one acce pts Co nstant's j ustifications for his active involvement with gove rn ment during Napoleon 's return to power, it rem ains that his politica l beliefs are in some insta nces difficult to make precise. Th is in part explains why numerous works have been publi shed recentl y on Constant 's political thought. The works on religion are often ignored or overloo ked in this co ntext; however, most critics, seemingly adopting the position that these works are of an anticlerical nature, say little about Constant's actual beliefs. But it is most particularly on this precise point that his works on religion are of co nsidera ble importance, for it is in these work s that Constant develops his perspective on historical development, a part of which is the notion of intimate sentiment as the defining feature of human beings. From the perspe ctive of his pol itic al writings, his many volumes on religion and polytheism would seem thus to repre sent a kind of anachronism, a vestige of XVIIIth century anti-clericalism (cf. Stephen Holmes, 1984); but a clo se reading of these work s reveals that more is involved than a simple co ndemnation of atroc ities committed in the name of the Chu rch. It is in his work s on religion , compose d for the most part from 1802 to 181 3, and es pec ially during his more or less se lf-imposed ex ile in Ge rma ny at the residen ce of his second wife, Cha rlotte de Hard enb erg, that Co nstant

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developed the notion of sentiment as an intellectual construct that he could apply to other works as well as to real life situations, although it must be stated that he did not undertake the writing of these works in order to explore the notion of intimate sentiment. Rather, this complex notion, or construct, derives from a struggle with research methodology and with the means of presentation best suited to the material. Constant's struggle is chronicled in his journals from this period (cf. Journaux intimes), and is evident in the state of the manuscripts in the archives held at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (cf. also P. Thompson 1994). Constant wrote and rewrote his material, frequently changing his point of view and hence his objectives. The final form that he gives to the published works betrays his belief in the importance of the notion of sentiment, both as a religious notion and as a philosophical tool. This is an important point to the extent that it speaks to the critique of idealism that the notion of intimate sentiment might evoke. Constant's subjectivist turn in fact evolves from his study of the anthropological material available to him at the time. Constant's grappling with methodology betrays a dual perspective, and in fact constitutes the force of his later publications in the form of a dialectic of sentiment. On the one hand he attempted to produce an account of religious forms through the ages and in different geographical regions. From this perspective his works have more in common with anthropology than with philosophy or theology. He soon realized, however, that the amount of material available to him, and required to accurately describe the different religious forms, far surpassed his capacities, and was in any case of dubious importance. The knowledge available in the form of factual information continued to swell as scholars increasingly became aware of cultural diversities and historical developments. Furthermore, limiting his work to an account of known factual information would make his not only a superfluous publication - Constant was not himself an anthropologist and relied on specialists for their descriptions of past religious forms - but also a work of dubious importance, for there would be no common idea that held the material together. On the other hand , he understood that if he theorized religious forms, that is, if he made his material into a narrative form, he would then move beyond his "neutral" anthropological perspective and become involved in abstract reasoning, at which point his research would evolve on a different plane (cf. Thompson 1978 and 1991). Constant refers to these two perspectives as the historical and the didactic . From his journals in particular - which have been useful in deciphering the manuscript material - but also from the manuscripts themselves, we know that Constant wrote and rewrote his material several times over, changing

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eac h time from one perspective to the other, from the historical approac h to the didactic approach, from the didactic to the historical. His indecisiveness in this regard is often cited as an analogy for his political flip-flops in later years. Co nstant eve ntua lly opts for the di dac tic approac h, perhap s mainly because of the sheer impossibility of ever being able to comp lete the work from a histor ical perspective. His choice is based on more than si mple expedience, however. It is by means of the did actic approac h that the notion of sentiment as a philosophical co nstruct first comes into perspective (Hogue, 1964). This notion is the "structure" , one might say, that underlies Constant' s narrative on religion. But it is more than the glue that hold s the narrative together. The notion of sentiment, speaking metaphorically, breathes life into otherwise inanimate material. It makes of empty religious forms - empty becau se obso lete or misunder stood - vibra nt spiritua l practi ces of pa st soc ieties. From the phil osoph er's point of view, the noti on of sentime nt accounts for the frequently repeated observation that all societies practice some form of religion . Thi s is not to be under stood as an abandonment of empirical method in favor of abstractions and idealism, however, for what Co nstant actually does, in fact reflects the so-called scientific method of our day. His study of past religions leads him to formul ate the principl e that all forms of soc iety, be they primi tive or complex, recent or ancient, manifest a need for religion . He refers to this need as an intimate sentiment, a religio us sentiment. It is not the equivalent of the religious form prevalent in a soc iety, but is co nstant in all socie ties in spite of the particular form that a society may give to its religious practice. In fact, it is precisely because it manifests itse lf in outward rel igiou s form that rel igi ou s sentimen t is know n to be present. In a fashio n simi lar to his co ntempora ry Hegel, Cons tant refe rs to this need for religion as an express ion of religious sentiment, that is, as opposed to the outward form of religion. He acce pts this principle as true because his study of ancie nt socie ties revea ls that all societies know and practise some form of religion . Constant 's interest in religion is thus of an anthropological nature. He is not particularly interested in man's relationship with God, nor is he particularly interested in proving that his own religion is superior to others although he does believe that Christianity is for the most part an improvement over polyth eistic religions. He is more specifically interested in the fact that religion constitutes a social constant, and that all form s of socie ty throughout the known history of mank ind have practised some form of reli gion. He concludes that human beings have a need to enter into communication with the unknown, to realize a kind of transcendence of their own life situation. He

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calls this need a religio us sentiment, an intimate sentiment that distin guishes hum an bein gs from other life for ms, a need which in fac t defines hum an beings. Now Constant' s notion of religious sentiment could be explain ed by his Prote stant background. Religiou s sentiment is felt as an individual need for something greater than life. In Protestanti sm, the individual has a direct and intimate relationship with God , not necessarily mediated by the Church . It would thus be possible to dismiss Co nstant's work on religion as an apology for the Protestant Church, but that would make short shrift of the most important aspect of his work, that is, his strugg le with methodol ogy, with the discovery that his methodology affor ds, and with the logical developm ent of his thought s. It has also been point ed out (Thompson 1978, 1991) that Constant 's work is cir cul ar or taut ological in nature, the empirical data serving as both found ation and ju stification for the religious principle. It is in much the same way, I might add , that Hegel 's phil osophy is circular, his Lectures on the History of Philosophy underscor ing his notion of Becomin g, indeed showing that this is the primary notion of the development of philosoph y. And in his Philosoph y of History , Hegel atte mpts to trace the development of se lfreflect ion by considering the socia l orga nization of past societies. I might also point out that Hegel, too, believed that historical study of an empirical nature j ustified the principles that the philosopher could deduce from his empirical data. And like Con stant , Hegel also beli eved that histor ical devel opm ent betra yed a kind of progress on the level of human thought , a progress that was qualitative and thus greater than acc umulated experience. For Hegel , we have gradually becom e aware of our own subjec tivity, and for Constant, we have co ntinued to develop relati onship s with other human beings that better satisfy our changing needs and our desire for knowledge. Co nstant's position in this regard is interestin g. Since Kant , and especially since Hegel, conscio usness has been considered as the negation of the objec ts of the rea l world. Hegel partic ularly makes this clear in the Phenomenology, but also in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy in which he purp orts to show that the developm ent of philosoph y necessarily arrive s at this understanding. He takes special note of the position propound ed by Parmenide s, that Th ought is Bein g, that non-being is devoid of reason for one cannot attain to non-being (Lectures 252 ), and he con siders this position to be an import ant developm ent with respect to earlier philosophies, but he underlines that Parmenides did not co nsider thought to be Non-Being, the negative by means of which Being can be known as Being distinct from consciousness .

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He accepts the view of Heraclitus in this regard, that thought is Non-Being, that Being and Non-Being are the same since everything is in a state of flux (Lectures 282), and he follows the development of this thought in Greek and Christian philosophies, from ancient times to his own. His position, opposing Being and Non-Being but insisting on the relation of Thought to Being and of Being to Thought, makes necessary the notion of an objective dialectic, as opposed to the subjective dialectic of Greek philosophers such as Zeno. According to Hegel's dialectic, Being and Thought together constitute Spirit. Thought is Being, and Being becomes thought. But Constant was not a philosopher. He was familiar with Kant, as his biographers have shown and as his exchange with Kant on the subject of moral principles makes evident, but it is not clear to what extent, if at all, he knew of Hegel's work. He does not formulate his position with respect to other philosophical systems, at least not in this context, so it is difficult to establish Constant's intentions. But it is possible to follow the development of the notion of sentiment once it has been expressed in the context of philosophical or religious thought. First of all, it must be stated that the notion of sentiment is not a direct contradiction of Hegel's notion according to which Thought is negativity. Sentiment is first and foremost a lived or perceived opposition to the forms that the subject encounters in the world. It is a need to communicate with the unknown, a desire to understand the world from a vantage point outside of the real world itself. In this sense, it is the Non-Being of consciousness that is the foundation of subjectivity, the individual's innate feeling of estrangement, of distinction vis-a-vis the objects of the real world. One could perhaps say that the notion of sentiment manifests certain affinities with the Cartesian subject, the empty subject that remains when all extraneous components are removed, although Cartesian doubt is an act of volition whereas sentiment remains more primal. But sentiment in itself cannot be reduced to Non-Being. Linguistically speaking, it is a signifier to which has been assigned a signified or a concept, in much the same way that Non-Being is a signifier which poses a concept, although the concept is a negation . On this level, one could say that sentiment and Non-Being are synonymous expressions that differ in their use and function . The term Non-Being is a negative expression which resists reification, whereas the term sentiment, because it is not a negation, that is, in spite of the negation that it implies, is also an affirmation, and therefore an acknowledgement that something is. It is this distinction, however, that gives the notion of sentiment its force in philosophical discussion. The notion of sentiment does not derive from

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thou ght. It does not derive from a reflectio n on numerical sequence as with Parmenides, nor from a reflection on the passage of time as in Heraclitus. Neither is it solely a formal construct which unites Being and Non-B ein g in an objective diale ctic . It is by studying human societies through the co urse of time, and more specific ally their religious institutions, that Constant arrives at the formul ation of the not ion of sentiment, a constant of all societies and therefore a definin g fea ture of hum an social organization. In its express ion, however, the noti on o f se ntime nt is a negati ve on the level of human experience, for it involves the opposit ion of the subject to the objects which surro und it, and implies the insufficient nature of the relation of the subjec t to the real world. But it is not pure negativity in the Hegelian sense because it asserts the existence of an entity or quality constitutive of the hum an being . Con stant is thu s posin g the existence of a quality co nstitutive of human experience. However, the notion of sentiment is not an entity which we can touch or hold in our hand. It is not an entity that we ca n see and describ e by means of sense percept ion. Nevertheless, Con stant is not evoking the notion of truth here (as Plato does for exa mple in the cave parable) as having no foundation in the world (see Hegel' s discussion in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy). The notion of sentiment derives from observation and can be directly related to the religio us co nstructs in vario us societies as the need which made those co nstructs possible. The notion of sentiment ca n in a sense be und er stood as a parall el of Hegel' s noti on of Spirit. Spirit co mes to express ion in the union of Non-B eing with Being, as religiou s sentiment is a desire to transcend the real world, indeed is a transcendence of the real world , a transcendence which necessitates formal mediat ion. Th e uniqueness of Co nstant's position , that is, his di stinct ion vis-a-vis Hegel , is manifest when one co ns ide rs the impli cation s of the noti on of sentiment for philosophi cal discour se. Whereas Hegel' s dialectic of Being and Non-Being is an abstrac t formulation which nevertheless betrays a religious qua lity, underl ined by Hegel 's use of the term Sp irit whic h has obvious religious co nnotatio ns, Co nstant's notion of sentiment, altho ugh it deri ves from a study of religious forms, is more an aspect of cultural difference than a revelati on of a religious character. For the esse ntial feature of this notion, at least for Constant' s purpose, is not its religious underpinnings, but its need for expression , as history make s ev ide nt, its transformation into a form co nstitutive of human cultural diver sity. The expression of sentiment gives rise to variou s forms. Con stant has described these form s in a religious context for many different civili zations past, but the notion of intimate sentiment goes beyond this primary character. It explains the need for formal ex press ion and

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qualifies the efficiency and applicability of the forms to which it gives rise. Ultimately it also qualifies the duration of these forms . According to Constant, religious practice, or positive religion, is thus a manifestation of a human need for transcendence. This is a subjective need made external in an effort to enter into communication with the unknown . The forms of religious practice function as a mediation between human beings and the unknown . From this perspective, the various religious practices and institutions that make up human civilization, represent a thirst for knowledge and function as a medium for human communication with the unknown . Religious sentiment is thus also an inspiration. It is desire, a subjective need or internal feeling that must become visible or external in order to fulfill its function and become satisfied. Religious sentiment is always present, however, and does not disappear once the institutions that satisfy it are formed . It continues to motivate individuals to seek in the established institutional forms a means to communicate with the unknown . Now in the course of history, it frequently happens that the institutional forms grow apart from the sentiment that originally inspired them, often because the keepers of the religious forms, that is, the priests (Constant uses the term "corporation"), become too influential and make the religious forms their own private domain . When this occurs, individual sentiment is no longer satisfied with religious practice and seeks to alter it. The notion of inspiration is thus at the very heart of Constant's conceptual matrix . The individual is inspired to seek a form of communication with the unknown. This explains for Constant the fact that all societies have developed some form of religious practice. The way in which Constant formulates this theory poses certain difficulties, however, not the least of which is the seeming state of anarchy that would ensue if one were to give free rein to the powers of inspiration. For the primary motivation for action, which is a necessary part of inspiration, is the individual's need to communicate with the unknown . If current forms and means are insufficient in this regard, this insufficiency is in itself an implicit acknowledgement of the individual's opposition to these forms . If the religious practices in existence do not satisfy the individual's need for transcendence, the individual must act to produce new forms that better satisfy that need. New forms are thus, initially at least , the negation of existing forms . It is only by opposing the traditional forms and by eventually destroying them, that the new forms can take precedence and fulfill their function . Inspiration is thus a form of action, a form of freedom , the freedom to express one self. It is the freedom to produce

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institutions and practices that are suitable to individual needs. And because the individual is a member of society, it is also the freedom of a people to form and develop its own institutions . Succinctly put, it corre spond s to the individual's need and desire for autonom y within society. But there is no way to discern the validity or authenticity of an individual's subjectiv e need. There is no way to justify the destruction of one religiou s form , and the consequent pain and suffering that this might cause, in order to simply replace it with something different. Constant's notion of religious sentiment can thus lead to a state of anarch y where the individual's needs for transcendence and expre ssion would ultimately dissolve in a power struggle between the most influential and powerful members of society. Constant's study of history reveals, however, that it is not always the most powerful who triumph, and that anarchy is not always the dominant state of affairs. The advent of Christianity offers the best example in th is regard. A small, relatively poor group in society was able to challenge the establi shed powers , both politically and spiritually, and succeed in imposing a new form of religiou s belief. This was possible, accord ing to Constant, because the new beliefs were better suited to satisfying individual needs. Constant's theorie s of religiou s sentiment and inspiration therefore require a ca veat, not only to avoid the conceptual dilemma that the notion of inspiration entails, but also in ord er to explain histo rical development s. Religiou s and social change are acceptable, it would seem, providing that the change s introduced represent a positive development. If an individual's inspiration implies the negation of existing tradition s and social forms , this is app arently acce ptable as a necessary development , historically speaking, providin g that the changes involve social progress. Progress is thus a required notion for Constant' s system, made necessary by a conception of individual freedom which involve s the expression of individual sentiment. The individual's need for tran scendence, to communicate with the unknown, to understand the world in which we live, leads to action, the creation of religiou s and social forms that are originally a respon se to that need . Further, the success and duration of the se form s depend s once again on individual sentiment: the forms inspired by sentiment must satisfy the need for which they were created . Neverthele ss, progress for one group in socie ty could well be con sidered regression for others. Thi s means that the justification for change is in fact more complex than individual sentiment itself. It must involve the adherence of the individual to a social group, and it depends to some extent upon the opinions and tradition s prevalent within that group. Also , it is impo ssible for the indi vidual to

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measure his own progress in historical terms. As it was the case for the advent of Christianity, change, once introduced, took many years to realize itself, and involved considerable costs. However, the formation of public opinion is an important part of inspiration, for it is ultimately public opinion that condones, or on the contrary, condemns the actions of individuals, thereby recognizing or rejecting the expression of an individual's subjective needs . Constant devoted a good part of his intellectual efforts to the notion of sentiment and its expression in society, but his notion of progress, developed primarily in his work on the Italian theoretician Gaetano Filangieri, goes further. Opinion may condone or reject various innovations brought about by individuals, but it did not indicate in itself any specific direction of social development. Public opinion changes and shifts over the course of time. From a historical perspective, it could advance or regress. It could also progress aimlessly, or in circles. Opinion in itself is insufficient to underscore the notion of progress. Thus, for Constant, the real measure of society's advances or regressions was, generally speaking, its moral state (cf. Tzvetan Todorov 1997). According to Constant, a society that showed greater compassion towards its members was a more advanced society. (I have chosen the word "compassion" to translate the French word "douceur" in this context, which can also mean sweetness, softness, smoothness, mildness, or gentleness.) It is understandable that Constant's interests led him to formulate works of a political nature, especially works that involved the constitutional protection of an individual's rights and the freedom to express one's subjectivity, for the notion of sentiment leads directly to the relation of the individual to the social group. In a political context the constitution was a balancing act between the individual and the social cohesion necessary to assure the continuation of society. Constant was vehemently opposed to the imposition of the dictator's will on individuals, but recognized also that if the social group were to remain intact - and this was necessary to assure the individual's freedom - it was imperative that individuals respect the law. Constant's writings on religious forms therefore represent the basis of his thought on political systems and in the realm of justice. It must be stressed that the key notion in all of his works is individual sentiment, the trait that best defines the individual as a member of the human species. Constant was opposed to empiricists who believed that all concepts derive from sensation, for he agreed that individual subjectivity was inexplicable in this manner: the need for transcendence could not derive from the objects of the real world . And although the notion of sentiment certainly manifests idealistic tendencies (for sentiment in this sense is not an entity unto itself, but is more properly

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defined as outward indiv idual expression, whatever may be the inspiration or the subjective need that makes this express ion necessary), Co nstant's thought cannot be dismi ssed as simple idealist meanderings. His meth od shows that he does not deri ve the notion of sentiment simply fro m thought , nor does he seek to find in nature a concept whic h first deri ves fro m a phil osophical sys tem. His study of religious form s, which be undertook originally as a condemn ation of Church dogma revea led the exis tence of intimate sentime nt, presen t in all forms of human society, and it was thi s di scovery that tran sform ed Con st ant 's works on the facts of re ligion int o the work he eventu ally publi shed in 1824-1 833. Or perhaps Co nstant merely transformed his ow n religious bel iefs - his Protestant back groun d - into an empirica l theory of historical developm ent , perhaps also as Hegel' s philosoph y is a consequence of the revolut ion brou ght on by Protestant beliefs. Be that as it may, the notion of inspiration , the expression of indi vidual sentime nt, rem ain s a fund ament al aspect of Constant's beliefs throu ghout his ent ire caree r.

SENT IMENT AN D MAX IM

Constant 's work on religio us forms runs thro ughout his literary and polit ical production . Th e not ion s of se nti men t, inspirat ion , progress, opinion and co mpass ion, understood not merely as key indicators of his thought, but as a logical development whose objective was to explain or account for the historical development of soc ial form s, co nstitute the very foundation of his beliefs. On the politi cal level these notions represent various appli cations of his thought to real life situations. On the level of his aesthet ic produ ctions, these prim ary not ions are more difficult to recognize becau se they are in a sense obscured by plot and charac ter developm ent. It is evide nt, however, that eve n from the perspective of the co ntent of Adolphe, the notions of sentiment and co mpassion are key elements. Ado lphe's love for Ellenore affords him happ iness and a kind o f tran scenden ce of his mundane situation, at leas t initially. His subsequent inability to break with his mistress, most notably for fear of hurtin g her, betrays his co mpass ion for another person 's sufferi ngs. More explicitly, Constant 's notion of individual sentiment, of its strugg le with the more powerful forces of soc ial traditi ons, is the main foc us of the more than 40 maxims that can be found in this work. It is fairly clear that the maxim s make a distinction betw een the exterior soc ial order, and the interior realm of subje ctivity and intimate sentiment, as the follow ing passages from different parts of the story make clear:

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I) This pas sage is taken from Chapter One. It describes the narrator's youthful character, but more importantly, makes the distinction between sentiment and social forms explicit. Shyness emphasizes the distinction between outward social forms and interior sentiment by making the expre ssion of that sentiment painful , if not impossible. Je ne savais pas alors ce que c'etait que la timidite , cette souffrance interieure qui nous poursuit ju sque dans l' age Ie plus avance, qui refoule sur notre coeur les impressions les plus profondes , qui glace nos paroles, qui denature dan s notre bouche tout ce que nous essayons de dire, et ne nous permet de nous exprimer que par des mots vagues ou une ironic plus ou moins amere, comme si nous vouli ons nou s venge r sur nos sentiment s meme s de la douleur que nou s eprouvons a ne pouvoir les faire connaitre, At the time I didn 't know what shyness was, that interior suffering which pur sues us right through to old age, that represses in our heart our most intimate feelings, that free zes our words, that disfigures in our mouth everythin g we try to say, and permits us to express ourselves only with vague words or a more or less bitter irony, as if we wanted to avenge ourselves on our very own sentiments for the pain we feel from not being able to make them known . (My translation .)

2) This second passage, taken from Chapter Two, the narrator's pre sentation of his own character and its development, insists on the di stinction between sentiment and its expression . Language cannot define human sentiments, but can only point to them . Now in a sense Constant is not speaking of religious sentiment, but religious sentiment is in fact an intimate sentiment that expresses itself in a specific form . Sentiment in general involves the interior, it defines individual subj ectivity, and expresses itself in certain ways. As Constant has said, human sentiments are confused and varied. Les sentiments de l'homme sont confu s et melan ges; ils se composent d'une multitude d'irnpression s varice s qui echappent a I' observation; et la parole, toujours trop grossiere et trop generale, peut bien servir a les designer, mais ne sert jamai s ales definir. A Man 's feeling s are confu sed and mixed ; the y are composed of a multitude of various impres sion s which escape observation ; and langua ge, alwa ys too vulgar and too general. ca n serve to designate them, but can never be used to define them . (My translation.)

3) Sentiment is a need for transcendence, at least in the religiou s sense of the word, and more generally, it is a need for expression. It therefore constitutes a lack or an individual weakness . In thi s maxim from Chapter Three it is evident that the individual can overcome this weakness by creating a structure or logical system, myth or even narrative, that satisfies that need. The form given to intimate sentiment thus fortifies the individual by making relations with others more concrete, more understandable, more accessible .

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Presque toujours, pour vivre en repos avec nons-mem es, nous travesti ssons en calcul s et en systeme s nos impuissances ou nos faiblesses: cela satisfait cette portion de nous qui est, pour ainsi dire , spectatrice de lautre. Almost always, in order to live in peace with ourselves, we falsify with calculations and system s our impotencies and our weaknesses : that satisfies that portion of us which is, so to speak , the spectator of the other part. (My translation .)

4)As the previous maxim shows , intimate sentiment is synonymous with weakness, for it is a desire which must be satisfied , but it is also a powerful force that can motivate individuals to act. It can oppose outward forms and even triumph over the very traditions and institutions that it helped to establish, as the following maxim from Chapter Five reveals. Telle est la force d'un sentiment vrai, que , lorsqu 'il parle, les interpret ation s fausses et les convenances factices se taisent. Such is the force of a true sentiment that, when it speaks, false interp retation s and insincere conventions fall silent. (My translation.)

5) The relation between the individual and society thus participates in the dialectic of sentiment and its expression. The individual is inspired to seek new forms of expression, and in so doing adumbrates an opposition to existing forms and seeks to transform social forms so that they might better satisfy individual needs for expression and transcendence. But in so doing it encounters the resistance of established social practice s. That is, it comes up against the opinion and practice of other individuals. It is therefore quite possible that the individual's effort s go unrewarded, or that the individual is unable to impose his own formal structures on those that are already in existence . In this case, it is ultimately society that forms the individual, as the following maxim from Chapter Six makes clear. It must be noted, however, that this particular maxim is pronounced by the character Adolphe, in his efforts to convince Ellenore that the continuation of their relationship is no longer possible . It therefore differs from the other maxims quoted here in that it is part of a dialogue between two characters. [...J on lutte quelque temp s contre sa destine e, mais on tinit toujour s par ceder. Les lois de la societe sont plus fortes que les volonte s des homme s; les sentiments les plus irnperieux se brisent contre la fatalite des circonstances. En vain l'on s' obstine it ne consulter que son coeur; on est condamne tot ou tard it ecoutcr la raison . [...] one struggle s for a while against one' s destiny, but one alway s gives up in the end. The laws of society are stronger than the wills of men ; the most noble sentiments are broken aga inst the

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fate of circumstances. In vain docs one stubbornly consult only one's heart ; one is condemned sooner or later to listen to reason . (Author's translation.)

Ultimately, the difficulty that the individual must overcome is the expression of sentiment in a manner that is acceptable to others . The expression of one's sentiment does not, however, come easily to Adolphe, as the preceding maxims indicate . Various factors, some personal (such as shyness), and others that are dependent on the situation, influence the expression of intimate sentiment, repressing it or transforming it. Language itself is not capable of defining sentiments clearly: it only serves as an indicator of sentiments, as words are signifiers but are not the equivalent of the signified. Further, the content of the preceding maxims is similar to maxims in Constant's Journaux intimes (see Kocay, 2000), which would seem to indicate that Constant frequently shared the views of his protagonist. In this view, the autobiographical nature of the novel must be considered, allowing, if not a direct relation, at least the possibility of an interesting parallel between the two works.

CONCLUSION

The maxims in Adolphe are thus not simply accepted truths or relics of classicism, but inscriptions that derive from a larger text as yet unpublished in 1816, when the novel first appeared in print. More importantly, however, they function as inscriptions in the text of notions developed in a different context. They are in a sense a reflection of Constant's ideology, but also indications of changes occurring in post-revolutionary society. In his search for acceptable social covenants, including a compassionate understanding of Ellenore 's situation in French society, Adolphe rejects the established practices of his father, although he does not know with what sort of practice he can replace them . He abandons his career. He abandons society altogether and disappears somewhere in Italy, after having lost his manuscript and all desire to continue in life . And to the extent that the maxims in Adolphe represent the protagonist's own search for truth, they are also an analogy of Constant's lengthy struggle with methodology and form . It is thus possible, and desirable, to envision all of Constant's works as deriving from a similar thought matrix. The works on religion develop the idea of sentiment as a vague notion, a form of negativity to the extent that sentiment is, at the very least, an opposition to the real world as well as a reaction to the individual's social world . In consciousness the real world is confronted by the desire to know more , to go beyond that world and enter

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into a form of communication with the unknown . To this end, religious practices and institutions are conceived and elaborated. According to Constant, practices of this sort are a historical constant in all the forms of past civilizations; however, given the subjective nature of the desire to communicate, it is understandable that the individual is frequently unsatisfied by the means at his disposal. Efforts to communicate that do not meet with success or that do not fulfill the original intentions, would result in individual frustration, and most likely in a desire to seek new forms of communication. Constant's works on politics are thus a reflection of tendencies developed in his works on religion. The desire to enter into communication with the unknown, that is, the individual's efforts to know and to better understand his or her surroundings, implies a state of anarchy in which individuals are pitted against each other in a struggle for expression and dominance . Individual expression, understood as a formal construct, would necessarily encounter other forms of expression with which it would enter into conflict. The art of constitutional politics, therefore, is to preserve the society that enables the individual to exist and to develop while at the same time allowing for the expression of individual desires. For Constant the constitution provided for an efficient administration of society by means of the establishment of various political organizations with clearly defined powers and functions , such as executive bodies, legislatures, and judicial systems. But the constitution also functioned as a limit to the state's authority in order to preserve basic individual liberties such as religious practice, the right to own property, and the freedom of expression by means of the freedom of the press. Many of Constant's articles and treatises on political issues are a reflection of this dialectic between the expression of individual sentiment and social forms and institutions. His position following the French Revolution allows for opposing forces to exist harmoniously. His rejection of Kantian morals is a recognition of the individual's right to certain basic freedoms, such as the right to be free from the arbitrary decisions of those who hold positions of power and authority. To the extent that works of a political nature trace the formal boundaries of individual expression, literary works are more clearly an analogy of the individual's need for expression. Adolphe's feelings are vague and primal. They are difficult to classify. Adolphe himself is not clearly aware of his own needs . His sentiments are often confused or repressed ; or they are inadequately expressed, in spite of his best efforts to make them known . Adolphe is frequently unaware of his own feelings , it would seem , as his contradictory behaviour makes apparent: he wishes to break off his relations with Ellenorc,

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but subsequently chan ges his mind and return s to her in order to comfort her and spare her the pain he has caused her. When all of Con stant 's work s are con sidered from the per spective of individual expre ssion and freedom, it is clear that the noti on of sentiment pervades all aspects of his work . From the formation of the clear, conci se maxim s that are so prevalent in his literary work s to his methodological flipflop and his political opportunism, it is evident that Constant' s real struggle is with the notion of intimate senti ment, and on variou s levels, from its importance as a defining characteristic of human bein gs to its formal expression and subsequent conflict with the expre ssions of other individuals. It is not , however, until the true importance of his work s on religion is recognized that the crucial role of the notion of intim ate sentiment can be properly understood.

Saint Francis Xavier University Nova Scotia, Antigonish

BIBLIO GR APHY Constant' s Works: (I 824- 1831)De la religion, consideree dans sa source, sesfo rmes et ses developpements, 5 tomes,

Paris: Chez Pichon et Didier, ( 1833) Du polyth eisme romain , 2 tomes, Paris: Chez Becher Aine. (1872 ) Cours de politiqu e constitutionne lle, avec une introdu ction et des notes par M. Edo uard Laboulaye, 2e edition, Paris: Librairie de Guillaumin et Cie. (195 1, 1958) Ado lphe, Le Cah ier rouge, Cecile, edition etablie et annotee par Alfred Roulin , Paris: Editions Galli mard. (1952 ) Journaux intimes, ed ition et notes par Alfred Roul in et Charles Roth . Paris: Editions Gallimard. ( 1957) Oeuvres , editi on par Alfred Roul in, Paris: Librairie Gallim ard, Collection La Pleiad e. ( 1961) Memoires sur les Cent-Jours, preface, notes et co mmentaires de O. Pozzo di Bargo, Paris: Jean-Jacqu es Pauvert. (1 977 ) Ado lphe, edition par P. Delbouill e, Paris: Societe Les Belles Lettres. (198 0) Princip es de pol itiq ue app licab les a tous les gou vernements, texte etabli d' apre s les manuscrits de Lausann e et de Paris avec une introducti on et notes par Etienne Hoffm ann, tome II, Geneve : Librairie Droz. ( 1986 ) Esp rit de conqu ete et de l 'usu rpation, introduction, notes , bibliographi e et chronologie par Ephraim Harpaz, Paris : Flammarion . ( 1988) De la fo rce du gouvernement actuel de la France et de la necessite de s'y rallier , prefac e et notes de Philippe Raynaud, Paris: Flamm arion . ( 1993) Oeuvres completes I, Correspondance gene rate, Tubin gen : Max Niemeyer Verlag.

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( 1993) Oeu vres completes XIV, Memoires sur les Cent-Jours, Tubin gen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ( 1995) Oeu vres co mpletes Ill, I et 2, Ecrits litt era ires (/ 800- 813), Tiibin gen : Ma x Nieme yer Verl ag.

Works by Hegel: (19 55 ) Lectu res on the History of Philosophy. Tran slated by E. S. Haldane. New York: The Humanities Press Inc.; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. ( 1956) The Philosoph y of History. Preface by Charles Hegel; translated by J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publication s, Inc. ( 1977 ) The Phenomenology of Spi rit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford : Clarendon Press. Works on Co nstant: Coleman, Colette . (1982 ) "Le Paradoxe de la maxime dans Adolphe", Romanic Review 2, 73, 195- 208. Deguise, P. ( 1966) Benjamin Constant meconnu . Le livre "De la religion" , Geneve: Librairie Droz. Dodge, Guy Howard. ( 1980) Benjamin Constant 's Philosophy of Liberali sm , Chapel Hill: The University of North Caro lina Press. Fairlie, A. (1981) Imagination and Lan guage , Camb ridge : Camb ridge University Press . Hoffmann, Etienne. (1980) Les " Principes de po litique " de Constant. La genese d 'une oe uvre et I 'evolution de la pensee de leur aut eur ( 1789- 1806), Geneve : Librai rie Droz. Hogue, Helen H. S. (1964) a/ Chan ges in Benjam in Constant 's " Books on Religion ", Geneve : Librairi e Droz. Holmes, Stephen . ( 1984) Benjam in COIlS{(/nt and the Maki ng 0/ Modem Liberalism , New Haven and London : Yale University Press. Kelly, George A. (1986 ) "Constant and His Interpreters: A Second Visit", Anna tes Benjam in Constant 6,81-89. Kocay, Victor. ( 1995) "Adolphe: discours et maxime", Annales Benj amin Cons tant 17, 23- 35. Kocay, Victor. (2000) "Sentiment et culture, ou co mment lire Constant?" Anna tes Benjam in COIlS{(/nt . 23-24, 9 1- 105. Kocay, Victor. (200 I) L'Exp ression du sent iment dans I'oeuvre de Benjamin Co nstant , Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press. Nemer, Moniqu e. (1982) "Les Intermittences de la verite. Maxirne, sentence ou aphorismes: notes sur l'evolution d'un genre", St udi Francesc i 58, 484-493. Thomp son, Patrice . (1978) La Religion de Benj am in Constant . Les pouvoi rs de l 'ima ge, Pisa: Pacini Editore. Thompson, Patrice . (199 1) " Benjamin Constant: l' allegori e du polytheisrne", Anna tes Benjamin Constant 12, 7- 18. Thom pson , Patrice. (1994 ) Les Ecr its de Benjamin Con stant sur la reli gi on. Essa i de list e chronologique. Paris: Honore Champi on. Todorov, T. ( 1997) Benjamin Constant, La pa ssion demo cratique, Paris: Hachette . Wood, D. ( J993) Benj amin Constant, a Biograph y , London and New York: Routledge.

GALEN A . JOHNSON

THE INVISIBLE AND THE UNPRESENTABLE: BARNETT NEWMAN'S ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND THE AESTHETICS OF MERLEAU-PONTY

Ce zanne's or Balzac ' s artist is not sat isfied to be a cultured animal but take s up cul ture from its ince ption and founds it anew: he spea ks as the first man spoke and paint s as if no one had ever painted before... . The artist launches his work just as a man once launched the first wor d , not knowing wheth er it will be anything more than a shout. (Maurice Merleau-Pont y, "Ce zanne's Doubt" ) What was the first man , was he a hunte r, a toolmaker, a farme r, a worker, a prie st, or a politi cian ? U ndou btedl y the first man was a n artist. .. . Th e nec essit y fo r dream is stronge r than any utilit arian need , the necess ity for unde rstanding the unkn owable comes before any desire to discover the unkn own . (Barnett Newm an, "The Firs t Man Was an Artist") !

Only three years after Merleau-Ponty published his originary aesthetics titled "Cezanne 's Doubt" in 1945, Barnett Newman in New York City pa inted his signature bre akthrough artwork titled "Onement 1," a work of severe nonfigurative minimali sm . The painting presented a narrow orange band vertically bisecting a red-brown rectangle approximately in the center of the rectangle, a painting of very modest size (27" x 16") and rud imentary in execution. Newman's was not the kind of artwork that Merleau-Ponty mad e central to hi s philosophy of painting, as is well known . He preferred to develop his aesthetics in relation to the artwork of Paul Ce zanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Mati sse , Paul Klee, and severa l other French and European painters. Nevertheless, it is my con viction that Merleau-Ponty would have been just as fasc inated by the paintings of abstract ex press io nism, and of Barnett Newman in particular, as was his student Jean-Francoi s Lyotard, had Merleau-Ponty studied them . It is a pu zzle wh y he did not , for ab stract painting was commanding international attention by the 1950's and was well represented in Pari s, including a solo exhibition of Jackson Pollock's work in 1952 and a 1953 exhibition of twelve Amer ican abstract painters.? Ju st as in the an cient world Athens was divided from Jerusalem by more than geography, so it also see ms to have been for Paris and New York Cit y in the middle of the twentieth century. In this paper, I am interested in attempting to connect what Merleau-Ponty meant by invisi bility and what Lyotard meant by unpresentability, and I want 179 A. -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecra Husserliana LXX V, 179-1 89. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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to do thi s by usin g the contras ts and co ntinuities bet ween the aes the tic theories of Merleau-Pont y and of Barn ett Newman . I seek to argue that contrary to appearances and received interpretations, Newman's project of abstract expres sioni sm continues and supplements the aesthetic of MerleauPonty, ju st as what Lyotard intend s by the sublime and the unpre sentable supplem ents Merl eau-Ponty ' s account of the invi sible. The consid eration of abstr acti on , invisibility, and unpresent ability in relation to the aesthe tic of Merleau-P onty is important becau se it takes place in the shadow of ultim ate things and our ability or inability to speak of, or at least listen to, ultim ate co ncerns. In undertaking this current brief project on Merleau-Ponty and abstrac tion in art, I am taking up a challenge set by Veronique Fori in her important essay on "T he Evid en ce of Painting: Merleau-Ponty and Contempor ary Ab stract ion ." Th ere she wrote: " Me rleau-Ponty's thought on vision and painting is oriented tow ard a consideration of abs tract painting, and challen ges those who follow after him to extend it in this direction ,"? In his well-known essay of 1984 entitled "The Subl ime and the AvantGard e," as well as his "Newma n: Th e Instant," Lyotard brought to our attentio n the paint ings of Barn ett Baruch Newman in order to enable his ow n aes the tic theory of the sublime . For Barnett Newman working in the 1940 's, 50 's, and 60's, together with the other members of the now classic schoo l of New York Ab str act Expr essionism - Rothko, Moth er well , Poll ock , de Kooning, Still, and so on - the probl em of subject matter was eve rything. After the horrors of two World Wars and a depr ession, then with the ero sion of Americ an life beset by a con sumerism no longer disguised , including the commodification of the artwork itse lf, what could be painted now ? It was again st thi s context th at Lyot ard ask s him sel f: "Wha t do we want of art tod ay?" And he answers, "Well, for it to ex perime nt, to stop bein g onl y modem . " Newman himself put the problem in terms of a moral crisis. "It was impossible at that time to paint the kind of painting that we were doing flowers, recli ning nudes, and people playing the ce llo... . So that we actually began, so to speak, from scratch, as if paintin g were not only dead but had never existed." Unwilling as he was to turn to an aesthetic of sensations as had the later Cezann e or the Cubi sts, for Newman and his colleag ues the out come was a radical break with the history of Eur opean painting and a turn toward rigorous non-figurative composition based only on the minimums of color, line and the principl es of geo metry and biomorphic, organic forms and sha pes. It is vital within abstr act express ionism to distin gui sh New man's work from geometric form alism , for he carried on a polemi c aga inst mere

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geometry and the geometric spirit in art which, he contended, we find in Mondrian - for he sought in geometry a language of passion that could "convert twentieth-century spiritua l deprivation into an advantage." He sought to "des tro y" lin e and form by deforming their use s in earlier painting and compelling them to serve his metaphysical purposes. These had to do with an energetic presentation of the unknown that would transform individual identity, and everything depended upon the sinuous movement of the central line of energy he called the " zip ." "Onement 1" is actually an unfini shed work, for as Newman was at work on it , he suddenly was overwhelmed by it, stopped painting, and meditated about it for almost a year, trying to understand it .? He found an emptiness in the work that was the emptiness, not of nothing, but of an original and sublime it y a, "there is something." Newman once challenged an exhibition by Robert Rauschenberg, who sought to trump hi s own accomplishment by exhibiting four completely unpainted canvases. Newman tellingly remarked : "Emptiness is not that easy,"" The problem is that of presenting what is unpresentable, which we call oneness, origin, genesis, creation, and for Newman this had to do with the historic exclamation of the Jews : " Hear, 0 Israel , Adonai is our God, Adonai is One! " Rosenberg expresses Newman's meaning this way : The commonsense respon se to Newman 's paintings that there is ' nothing' in them ought not to be dismissed - Newman 's meanin g lies in how this nothin g is receiv ed.... His goal was to induce emptiness to exclaim its secrets. Aiming at the sublime, he knew that the sublime was neither yellow nor blu e. ... His creation s had to be black or red becau se they had to be something, so that they might function as part of a totality."

Perhaps by now it is becoming clearer that the obvious reason s to distance, even to set in opposition, the aesthetic theory of Merleau-Ponty and an ab stract expressionism such as Newman 's, are weakening. First among those obvious reasons is Merleau-Ponty 's own apparently studied exclusion of ab stract painters, reinforced by an unfortunate comment on abstractionism by the philosopher, in which he described abstract painting as a "negation or refusal of the world" that nevertheless still has "an odor of life, even if it is a shameful or despairing life,"!" Furthermore, Lyotard, who has championed the abstractions of Newman in contemporary aesthetics, has amusingly been overly harsh in his asses sments of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics and ontology. "Being didn 't choose Cezanne to express itself now, did itT'11 Yet it strikes me that there is a series of thing s one can say about Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics and ontology of invisibility that lead us directly toward Newman's sort of passionate abstractionism. Permit me to enumerate five such themes, culminating in the discussion of invisibility and unpresentability. In doing so, I will be following up a more promising line

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of argument from Merleau-Pont y's Eye and Mind which contends that the difference between figurative and nonfigurative art "is badly posed; . .. no grape was ever what it is in the most figurative painting and no painting, no matter how abstract, can get away from Being" ?

Name. There can be no doubt that much of the enchantmen t of Newm an's ar two rk is found in the titles he assigned to them: Adam, Abraham, Dionysius, Moment, Be, Here, Voice, Death of Euclid, Who's Afra id of Red, Yellow, and Blue, and of co urse, Name. Moreover, Newman theorized his own artwork rigorou sly and persistentl y, taking every advantage of his education as a phil osoph y major at City University, includin g study of his namesake , Baruch Spino za as well as of the Kabbalist traditi on. We have Newman 's own ess ays such as "The Subl ime Is Now," "Prologue for a New Esthetic," and "The First Man Was an Arti st," cited at the beginning of this paper. Newman even involved himself in an extended public dispute with art historian Erwin Panofsky, regarding the etymological origins of the Latin title of his painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis. 13 Word s migrate into the artworks of Newm an so esse ntially that they are an inseparable aspect of what the artwork is. The paintin gs, sculptures , and lith ograph s are works -cum-wo rds. Not only the signature, "Barnett Newman," matters but the titles and the theory are also cruc ial elements within the frame of the artwork, and part of the full aesthetic ex perie nce . Merleau-Pont y would not have been unprepared for such a development , for it was already he who insisted on basing his interpretations of Cezanne and others on the interviews and conversatio ns of Ceza nne with Bern ard and Gasqu et, on Paul Klee ' s Jen a lec tures and fo ur-volume pedagog ical Journals, and on the commentaries of Andre Marchand and Paul Valery. Merleau-P onty was also familiar with the christening ceremonies of Klee in which the artist would bestow titles upon multipl e works post facto. I would say that Newman esca lates the status of name and theory as esse ntial aspects of the aesthetic experience more aggressively than these precedent s familiar to Merleau-Ponty, but I do not see anything about this elevation itself that is inimical to the aesthetic theory of the philosopher. In fact, I would contend that Merl eau-Ponty's is one of the few aesthetics properly prepared for the incorporation of word and concept into artwork. Event. First , in both Cezanne and Newman we encounter the desire for the visual event, the desire for the world to become event, for time to stop, to rupture in such a way that somet hing can happ en. The probl em in both Cezann e and Newman is metaph ysical , the probl em of origi ns and birth.

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"Cezanne's people are strange," Merlea u-Ponty wro te, "frozen objec ts that hesitate as at the beginn ing of the world."!' Cezanne conde nsed into visible objects "the vibration of appearances whic h is the crad le of thing s. On ly one emotion is possi ble for this painter - the feeling of strangeness - and only one lyrici sm - tha t of the continual rebirth of exi stence."1 5 We find in Cezanne's paintings and in Mer leau-Ponty the strugg le for the first word, for first things, for the Ur-Moment of existence. In short, as Lyotard says , what Cezanne desired was for Mount Sai nte- Victoire to cease being a visual object and to become an even t in the visual field." Th e desi re was ever so much the sa me in the wo rk of Newm an . He proclaimed his co nception of painting as an act that genera tes new substance . With the energy of the "zi p," he sought the line that inaugurated genesis and first divid ed th e waters from the land. He und ert ook acts of origi nati on modeled on the Book of Ge nesis with such titles as Genetic Moment ( 1947) , The Beginning (1946), Day before One ( 195 1), Now (196 5), Now II (1967 ), Be (1949) , and Be II (196 1-64). Wh ile Newman was yet ex perimenting with biom orphi c form s prior to the 1948 breakthrough of "Onernen t I," he crea ted an utt erly go rgeo us "U ntitled" 1945 paint ing of the ge netic mom ent that und er one reading appears to be a see dpo d bursting ope n against a backgro und of red and blue. It was Newman who demanded a paleon tology that wo uld eleva te the myt h above the hunt in unde rstanding hu man ity 's origi ns, and wrote that "the purpose of man 's first speec h was an address to the unknowable." !" Newman sought to restore the artist as the origi nal Adam, writing: "What is the raison d 'etre, what is the explanation of the seemingly insa ne drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man's fall and an assertion that he return to the Adam of the Garden of Ede n? For the artists are the first men . ? "

Dispossession. In the eve nt of pai nting, both Cezanne and Newman found the mse lve s overtake n. Cezanne "would halt and look at eve ryt hing with wide ned eyes, 'ge rminati ng' with the co untrys ide." 19 Newman found himself dispossessed by his ow n confrontatio n with the e mptiness of "O nernent I," or perhaps better, possessed as if fro m the outside. In Eye and Mind, MerleauPont y shifted the weight of ar tis tic ex press ion from the " I paint " to the anonymous "One paints," thereb y artic ulating a depth or lateralit y of the self that is at a distanc e from itse lf and is dispossessed in the creative event. There is a Thought and a Speec h that have us and that possess us fro m the outside, he wrote . Merleau-Pont y' s ultim ate and most del icate co nce pt is not intentionality, but passivity. Th is anonymity or ge nerality in both the artist who pain ts and the phil osopher who thinks and write s is why Cezanne said

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that " nature is on the inside." There is a system of exchanges betw een bod y and world such that eye and hand become the ob verse side of things and the inside of an outside in which both are enveloped. Merleau-Ponty refers to thi s as a good or profound narci ssism in which the seer is caught up in the seen , so as not to see in the outside the contour of one 's own body, but to "em igrate into the world so that the seer and the visible reciprocate one another and we no longer know whi ch sees and which is seen.'?" Lyotard contended that thi s pa ssivity did not go far enough in Merleau-Ponty ' s philosophy, remaining bounded by the phenomenological demand for a philosophy of knowl ed ge which is a " happy philosophy" fearful of the unconscious." Yet we mu st contend that by the time of his very last writings, it wa s Merleau-Ponty wh o said th at " there is a cross -validation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis" ina smuch as both are exploring the same latency."

Presentation and place. Dispos se ssion before th e event establi shes the po ssibility of presentation in painting , not representation. Newman's paintings ar e severe ly non-figurative. As such, th ey give up the hi storic meaning of painting as representation , which is a three-term rel ation either among painter, artwork, and worldly referent or am ong viewer, art work, and worldly referent. Rath er, Newman 's paintings establi sh an austere two-term relation, which is either between painter and work or between viewe r and work. In the two-term relation, not onl y the worldly referent drops out , but the nature of time changes. There is an experience of fullness or pre sence in the confrontation with the work unlike anything possible in representation, wherein the artwork's reference to the world is not only spatial, but also a time reference to a past or future world. A work by Newman , certainly from "Onernent I" onw ard s, doe s not refer. It is an annunciation, a pre sentation. It establishes a direct experience in whi ch , Lyotard writes, there is "a nece ssary affinity a mong the arti stic object, the di splacement potential of libidinal energy, the encountering of unexpected form s, and the ephemeral and unique charact er of the emotional power produced by the encounter.'Y' Lyotard has commented that Newman 's " now" cannot be merely the present instant, inbetween past and future in conscious experience. Rath er, Newman's "now" is a strange r to con sciou sness . " It is what dismantles consciousness, what deposes consciousness, it is what consciousness cannot formulate , and even what con sciousness forgets in order to con stitute itself"?" Thi s also means that the artwork itself becomes a place. All presentation invol ve s situatio n, and the sublime obj ec t is a lso nece ssarily a material

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particular. In the placelessness of modern life, lived out in the non-places of commercial malls, airports, hotels , movie theaters, and cubicles, the nonfigurative artwork becomes a site that can be a habitation. Newman himself likened the place of the two-term artwork to a sacred site, such as he himself experienced at the Miamisburg Indian mounds , after which he described the experiences as that of "a sense of place , a holy place" Looking at the site you feel , Here I am , here . . . . I became involved with the idea of making the viewer present: the idea that 'Man is Present."' 25 This sense of place in the Hebrew sense of Makom also motivated Newman's 1963 model for a synagogue, in which the temple itself is designated as Makom , and he call s the place where members of the congregation stand to read from the Torah a "mound,'?"

No doubt the severest tension between Merleau-Ponty and abstraction in art is to be found in this shift from representation to presentation, because it appears for all the world as giving up the world, and Merleau-Ponty 's phenomenological, even Husserlian, demands could not permit the loss of the world. The non-figure in painting also appears as the loss of embodiment, if not in the painter of course, then in the artwork. Loss of world , loss of body: Merle au-Pontean nightmares, to be sure . Thi s is true, but it is also one-sided" For one thing, we need to think very cautiously about the extent to which Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics is committed to a representational account of the artwork . Certainly his is no naive copy theory of the work, nor is it even a more sophisticated mimetic theory. When Merleau-Ponty considered the question of the artwork as sign in his "Indirect Language" essay, he explicitly rejected the notions of both the indexical or iconic sign as sufficient for accounting for the reference of the artwork. Its relation to the world is not a naive resemblance, but rather, he believed, one of revealing or disclosing such that the world appears in a new form , the world becomes world cum work just in the way that an olive grove appears now simply as a Van Gogh . If it seems clear that Merleau-Ponty 's aesthetic requires the three-term relation of viewer, artwork, and world in some sense, to think from the side of Newman's abstractionist project, I would say that the non-figure seems to be a kind of giving up of the world in order to get it back. Newman's "now" of annunciation is also Merleau-Ponty 's "speaking speech" of the original word that Merleau-Ponty also names "advent." "We propose," he wrote, "to consider the order of culture or meaning an original order of advent. which should not be derived from that of mere events . .. . Advent is a promi se of events,"? The possibility of such advent leads to Merleau-Ponty's notion of a time that is not horizontal from past to present to future, but a time that is

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vertical. This is not a sense of time that seeks to step outside or beyond the world as in what Merleau-Ponty would call a "hypocrite eternity," but this is a presence marked as an expansion and filling up of the moment. This kind of presence is also Newman's "now" of annunciation, the now of fascination, of first times, of presence in the world (I ' eire au monde) such that we are melted into the world. This verticality of time with its fullness expressed in the artwork led Merleau-Ponty to proclaim in Eye and Mind that we cannot speak of progress in painting, nor even elsewhere, "because the very first painting in some sense went to the farthest reaches of the future.?" Both advent and vertical time link Merleau-Ponty's aesthetic to Newman's aesthetic of presentation and place, and in both are contained the ruins, but also the qualified recovery, of representation in the artwork. In this sense, it would seem important to me to challenge the conclusion drawn by Veronique Foti, who argues in light of the aesthetic of abstraction that "painting is not primarily about 'the world' but about painting,'?" On the side of the meaning of presentation as over against representation, Dr. Foti is completely right, abstract painting is a two-term relation that rigorously suspends (epoche) reference to the world. However, on the side of getting the world back again, the artwork itself has become sublime object as well as sacred place of habitation. In this light, we feel justified in speaking in these two senses not only of the ruins of representation, but also of its qualified recovery. For it is in the abstract artwork that we confront the brute metaphysical experience of the it y a - there is a world, there is something rather than nothing, and this confrontation abides in this holy site. Unpresentabitity and invisibility. In Newman's paintings, emptiness is the indispensable ground against which all other qualities are set into play. Whether in his canvases, sculptures, or lithographs, the artist sought to convey the power of this unfigurable oneness. The works are the painterly translation of the invisible sublime, the it y a, and they contain the possibility that the viewer, whether painter or spectator, will be posses sed by the painting s. Lyotard says that Newman 's works succeed in "placing over emptiness a bit of libidinal space,">' In Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, it is not apparent that the meaning of invisibility moves toward emptiness and the invisible sublime. Rather, invisibility pertains primarily to the things not noticed. "The invisible is," Merleau-Ponty wrote, " (I ) what is not actually visible, but could be (hidden or inactual aspects of the thing - hidden things, situated "elsewhere" - "Here" and "elsewhere") ,">' The aesthetic insight Merleau-Ponty found in Cezanne's painting pertains primarily to noticing the hidden things, having

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eyes that genuinely see and minds that genuinely think . Merleau-Ponty argued that what the painter discloses is the imminent, latent, hidden, or repre ssed hollows of the world , and aesthetic experience is vision of all that is in the visible. Visibl e things are doubled by a lining of invisibility growing from our customary ways of framin g our perceptions, also our inattention, our haste . Invisibility is that whi ch is present, but " prese nt as a certain absence." Therefore, in Merle au-Ponty, the invisible is primarily not the nonvisible, as it appears to be in Newm an. Yet there are other meanings of invisibility in Merleau-Ponty 's ontology that better underscore its interlacin g with genuine non-visible s. The first and most important of the se is brute being or wild being itself. Signs gather, choose, and pick out the things of the world , and do so when the things are ab sent or long after they ha ve peri shed. A sign is not only a spoken vocalization or gesture on a surface, it is also a meaning (sens ) tracing the essence of things. Yet between sign and being there is slippage, and brute being is a surplus of what cannot be said , or can be said only indirectly. On the one hand , Merleau-Ponty did not hesitate to say that "painting speaks" and that Cezanne "writes in paint" and "thinks in paint." On the other hand, in his essay on "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silen ce," he recognized that there is a certain silence and muteness within the paint erl y work. This sile nce is indeed a defi cit that calls for speaking and writing, though a spea king and writing that resists formalism , remains incomplete, and never free s itself from the artworks them selves. In his lovely description, language is "another less heavy, more tran sparent bod y"32 that doubles, though still depends upon, the physicality of the artwork. Thi s silence , is, howe ver, also a posit ive and producti ve present ati on of ab senc e. It can be a showing that exceed s saying. Would we be wron g to think that in spea king of brute being and silence, we find in Merleau-Ponty a pointer toward Newman's sublime and unpre sentable emptiness? Secondly, the Cogito itself is a genuine non- visible in Merleau-Ponty, an invisibility to myself. I am always on "this side" of my body, my gesture, my personality. The Self is divided from its Source, and self-comprehension remain s an incomplete and partial journey. Thi s is a blindness of consciousness in principle that led in Cezanne to the painterly fascination with mirrors and the self-portraits, so many of which are my sterious works of severity and secrecy, but in Newman, led not to the self-portrait, but to the direct experience of the commanding non-figurative work. Newman once said that "the self, terrible and con stant, is for me the subject matter of painting.?" It is worth comment th at , in contrast with Newman , Merleau-Ponty's onto logy of invisibility generally omits an y reference to God, Spirit, or

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divinity. We do find references to "abyssal Being" and to the "unfathomable God" in the text of Eye and Mind : "God's being is for us an abyss," MerleauPonty wrote . Moreover, we do know that an abyss is not a Sartrean non-being for Merleau-Ponty, but rather has a shape or outline as an abyss has sides . Yet Merleau-Ponty would prefer to leave the question of God shrouded and the names of God unspoken, rather than constrain philosophy with the distortions of a false piety or philosophic absolutism . Paradoxical as it may sound, therefore, Merleau-Ponty's account of invisibility, which I find imbued with a profound sense of the sacredness of experience, life, and creation, also remains quite consistent with a certain qualified atheism. 'The question for a philosopher," he once wrote, "is not so much to know if God exists or does not exist . .. as to know what one understands by God, what one wishes to say in speaking of God."34 It was sufficient for Merleau-Ponty to maintain that we encounter at the roots of our being "a generosity which is not a compromise with the adversity of the world" but which is on our side against it.35 In order to complete properly a discussion of abstraction, invisibility, and unpresentability, more themes would need to be explored and many more voices would need to be heard, voices of both philosophers and painters that murmur within the lines of our speaking. We should undoubtedly also bring ourselves into the presence of Newman's artworks and listen for that voice which is both the still small whisper of the "there is" and the terror of the whirlwind which is the unknown. At least in these meditations on name, the event, dispossession, presentation, and invisibility, we hope for a deeper appreciation of the powers of abstraction in art and of the ways in which the aesthetics of Merleau-Ponty can be extended in new, perhaps even unexpected, prolongations.

University of Rhode Island NOTES I Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Cezanne's Doubt," in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, edited by Galen A. Johnson, translation editor Michael B. Smith (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press , 1993, 1995), p. 69. Barnett Newman , "The First Man Was an Artist," in Barnett Newman : Selected Writings and Interviews , cd. John P. O'Neill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1990), pp. 158, 160. 2Cf. Vcronique Foti , "The Evidences of Painting : Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Abstraction," in Merleau -Ponty: Difference, Materiality, Painting, ed. Veronique M. Foti (New Jersey : Humanities Press , 1996), pp. 137-138. 3 Ibid. p. 164. 4 Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Philosophy and Painting in the Age of Their Experimentation: Contribution to an Idea of Postrnodernity," in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, op. cit., p. 335.

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Harold Rosenberg, Barn ett Newman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publi shers), p. 29. Ibid ., p. 37. 7 lbid ., p. 47 . 8 lbid ., p. 59 . 9 Ibid., p. 62 . 10 Maurice Merlea u- Po nty, " Indirect Language and the Vo ices of Si lence ," in The Merl ea uPonty Aesth etics Reader, op. cit., p. 93 . II Lyotard , "Philosophy and Painting in the Age of T heir Experi me nta tion," op. c it., p. 33 1. 12 Maurice Merleau -Pont y, Eye and Mind . in The Merleau- Ponty Aesthetics Reader, op. cit., p.147. I) Cf. Rosenberg, op. cit., pp. 244 - 245 . I. Merleau-P ont y, "Cezanne' s Dou bt," op. cit., p. 66 . 15 Ibid. p. 68 . 16 Jean- Francois Lyota rd, Discou rs, Figure, in The Merl eau -Ponty Ae sthe tics Reader, op. c it., p.312. 17 Newman, "T he Fir st Man was an Artist," op. cit., p. 159. 18 Ibid ., p. 160. 19 Merl eau-Ponty, "Cezanne' s Doubt ," op. c it., p. 67 . 20 Mauri ce Merl cau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisibl e, edit ed by Claude Lefort , translated by Alpho nso Lin gis (Evanston, IL: Northw estern University press, 1968), p. 139 (French edition, p. 183). 21 Lyotard , Discours, Fi gure, op. c it., p. 3 ]4. n Maurice Merleau -P ont y, " Pheno me nology and Psych oan al ysi s: Pr eface to Hesn ard' s L'Oeuvre de Freud ," tra ns lated by Alden Fishe r in Review of Ex istential Psycho logy and Psychiatry, Vol. XVIII , Nos. 1, 2, and 3 ( 198 2- 83) , p.71. 2) Jean -Fran coi s Lyot ar d, "B eyon d Represent ati on ," in The Lyo ta rd Read er, ed . And rew Benj am in (Oxford: Blackwell , 1989), p. 165. 2. Jean- Franc ois Lyotard , "The Sublime and the Avant-Garde ," in The Lyo tard Reader, op. cit. , p.1 97 . 25 Thomas B. Hess, Barnett Newma n (New York: The Museu m of Mode rn Art, 1971 ), p.73. 26 Ibid. p. 73. 27 Merl eau-Pon ty, " Indirect Langu age and the Voices of Silence," op. cit., pp. 105, 106. 28 Merleau-Pon ty, Eye and Min d, op. cit., p. 149. 29 Foti, "Th e Eviden ces of Painting: Merle au- Ponty and Contemporary Abstracti on," op. cit. , p. 166. )0 Lyotard , "B eyond Repr esent ation," in The Lyotard Reader, op. cit., p. 166. ) 1 Merl eau-Ponty , The Visible and the IIIvisible. op . cit., p. 257. )2 Ibid ., p. 153 (French edi tion , p. 200). )) Rosenb erg, op. cit ., p. 2 1. ). Merle au-P onty, "Phenome nology and Anal ytic Philosoph y ( 1960) ," in Texts and Dialogu es: Maurice M erl eau-Ponty; Hugh Si lverma n and Jame s Barr y, eds . (Atlantic Highl ands , NJ: Hum anities Press, 1991 ), p. 66. Th is item orig inally appeared in Fren ch as " Phenomenologie co ntre The Concept of M ;'1(1" in La Philosophi c analytiqu e (Pari s: Minuit, 1960). )5 Mau rice Merieau-Ponty, In Pra ise of Ph ilosophy, trans . John Wild and James Edie (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Pres s, 196 3) , pp. 26- 27. (French editi on : Eloge de la philosophi e [Pa ris: Gallim ard , 195 3], p. 33) .

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BERNADETTE PROCHASKA

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE : T. S . ELIOT'S LITTLE GIDDING AND EDMUND H U SSERL'S E XPR E S SIO N A N D M EA NI NG

T. S. Eliot's Fourth Quartet, Little Gidding, is set in a rich and fine network of themes and relation ship s which converge into the unified objects of the rose and the fire. The meanin g of the poem, which is interwoven with images of metamorphosis, has to do with the historic al import ance of a little chapel and the everlastingness of human purpose. Edmund Husserl 's treati se on Exp ress ion and Meaning inco rporates que stion s regardin g the phenomenological and intentional distinctions which pertain to expressions and meaningful sign s. "Speaking and hearing , intimation of mental states through speaking and reception thereof in hearing are mutu ally correlated ." I The interconnections in meaning examined by Husserl in term s of speaking and reception are perceived by the poet, Eliot, in Little Gidding. Husserl speaks of signs which indicate something, and thus give meanin g to an object.? The first movem ent (in Eli ot's Fourth Qu artet) is set in "midwinter spring," a "seaso n suspended in time." Meaning as correlation, as defined by Husserl, is found in the "brief sun" which transform s the shortest day of human experience into the "bri ghtest." Husserl speaks of signs which indicate a correlation to an idea and thus give meanin g to the object. For Eliot, meanin g is found in the parti cul ar obj ect of a littl e church, Little Gidding, dating from 1646, a place tran sform ed by the ever lastingness of human purpo se. Both Husserl and Eliot examine speec h as express ion of meanin g. Husserl clai ms that "each instance or part of speec h, as also eac h sig n that is esse ntially of the same sort, shall count as expression, whether or not speech is actually uttered, or addressed with communicative intent to any persons or not,'? Likewise , Eliot examines human experience as it is transformed into speech. In this historical poem about fire, the street s of London , bombed durin g World War II, become apocalyptic, in term s of what Husserl calls "indicative," in the pattern of Dante 's Purgatorio . Illum ination by fire of the basic human purpo se is what Eliot's language moves toward when he says that fire "stirs the dumb spirit" and awakens the "soul's sap."

191 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Anal ecta Husserliana LXXlll. 191-1 98. © 200 1 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Prim ed in the Nether lands .

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The fire present in the First Movement of Little Gidding is set in "Midwinter spring," a season "suspended in time ." In his essay Into Our First World. Hugh Kenner aptly calls this poem a study of "paradox, metamorphosis, and climax." It is a poem of paradox because the heat from fire is canceled out, though not by cold, and movement is ended, though not by immobility. This actuality, says Kenner, toward which we are admonished by the "Pentecostal fire" flaming on ice, comes shockingly against our instincts to subsume many abstractions. What Husserl calls expression are the images that Kenner calls abstractions, I) the transitory blossom, 2) the glare that is blindness, and 3) the simultaneous melting and freezing. In this first movement of the poem, time is measured in change, in metamorphosis; mechanically measured as calendars measure it, psychologically measured by human experience, and ultimately measured in meaning in which an individual concretely seeks happiness and the ultimate 'sense' in life. The midwinter spring is "a glare that is blindness in the early afternoon" and the glow is "more intense than the blaze of branch."(LG I, 8)5 Fire and the 'brief' sun transform the shortest day of human experience into the brightest. The essential images in the beginning of the poem, "pentecostal fire," "soul's sap" and "heart' s heat" have metaphysical implications. Michael Rosenthal observes that the yoked images create an ominous atmosphere. Something transcendent is present." Eliot speaks of a transcendent presence in a "timeless moment." If you came this way Taking any route , starting from anywhere, At any time or in any season It would alway s be the same. (LG. 1. 41-44)

The context of this passage is associated with "any route" to the little church in Huntingshire. No matter where the individual comes from and whatever the time of the approach, the object does not change. It is always the same . But the apprehension of that object is forever changing. The Church of Little Gidding has even more significance NOW than when the little community of Nicolas Ferrar came this way in 1646. And what the dead had no speech for when living , They can tell you, being dead : the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the langu age of the living . (LG. 151-53)

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History speaks here with a message of fire beyond the language of the living. As Husserl examines an object as being indicative of meaning, so the poet uses the object of Little Gidding, the little church in Huntingshire, as indicative of the transcendent meaning of human purpose. The images Eliot uses to substantiate a burning human desire for transformation are images of fire. Midwinter spring is "a glare that is blindness in the early afternoon" (LG. I 8). The glow is "More intense than blaze of branch." Both Eliot and Husserl deal with the illumination of understanding, that brightness of perception which changes with every spiritual and historical encounter. Husserl claims that the meaning of expression "is a descriptive aspect of the experienced unity of sign and thing signified."? Eliot uses the little church, transformed by its own life in history, as the sign of the emblazoning faith of a little community whose "communication" though dead, is tongued with fire "beyond the language of the living." Thus the transformation of history becomes a transformation of understanding. Since true understanding is gained only through entering into the contours of reality, such understanding is an illumination that comes out of a passage through experience. Illumination of understanding leads to another experience and to further illumination, even unto death , and in the case of Little Gidding, to illumination of understanding beyond death . The fire of illumination and the fire of understanding are in a continually moving cycle. The meaning of the blazing illumination of experience in time and place is integral to the significance of the Church of Little Gidding, which Eliot describes as "the full facade/And the tombstone," and "only a shell." However, he continues to reflect on our presence there : "Either you had no purpose/ Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured/ And is altered in fulfillment" (LG I 34-36). Human passage through the fire of experience constantly alters the reality, for the reality is always more. It is beyond the end that is figured, that is the object, in this case , that is the little historical place where a community of believers prayed. Here Eliot is engaging the meaning of the physical and historical little church in terms of the human expression of human experience which is transformed in the passage of time . When discussing expressions as meaningful signs , Husserl questions the phenomenological and intentional distinctions between: I) the expression physically regarded, the sensible sign, and 2) the mental state associatively linked with the expression. The mental state is generally called the sense or meaning of the expression.f The physical place of the poem changes in the Second Movement to another meaning of fire, in the bombing of London during World War II. The

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physicality of the human experience includes the poet himself, now an air raid warden on the London streets. As Husserl maintains that meaning can only come about through an objec t which is indicative, so the fire objec t in this war setting becomes the bomb , the means of destruction. Expressing the meaning of the fiery streets, Eliot says: There are other places Wh ich also are the world' s end, some at the sea's jaws , Or over the dar k lake, in the desert city But this is the nearest, in place and time, Now and in England. (LG I 35-40)

The "dark lake," and "dese rt city" and the "sea's jaws" were all zones of fiery combat in 1942 where men encountered their world's end. Certainly there are reverberations of places which are ' beyo nd the end' of what was figured, and also reverberations which are "a ltered in fulfillment."

F I RE AND LANGUAGE

Still on the streets of London durin g the black-out because of the air raid, the poet muses on the mea ning of language, whic h also has an illuminatin g quality for our human experience, Along the stree ts then, the poet converse s with his familia r ghos t who represent s both the histor ical and literary dim en sion s of a co ntinually illuminating fire 's engage me nt. Th e ghos t remind s the poet that he is "not eage r to rehearse" his "theory and thought." "These things have served their purpose; let them be," (LG 11 115) And the poet , his consciousness renewed , says: So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit. (LG II 125-1 26)

The theme of transformation of human experience is associated with the meaning of language, and Eliot continues, "Since our concern was speech, and speec h impelled us/ To pur ify the dialect of the tribe/ And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight."( LG II 128-130) Th e purpo se in human experience is associated with change, with Kenner's idea of metamorphosis, and it is clearly associated with Eliot's desire "to purify the dialect of the tribe." The visible "a ftersight" is a remind er to us that the poets have been in the process of transformin g the language, of purifying the dialect of the tribe. Ind eed , Eliot wr ites this apoca lyptic Second Movemen t in the style and pattern of Dante's Purgatorio. There was a tradition that Dante had visited

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Oxford circa 1308 .9 Of course, Swift, Yeats, and Pound, significant personages for Eliot, had often walked these same streets of London . Now the poet is reminded that language, because it is human experience, must also be transformed. From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds , unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer. (LG II 146-148)

A refining visible "fire," the poet says, can restore the exasperated spirit which will move in measure like a dancer. The visible image, an object, in the terms of Husser!, gives meaning to an invisible reality associated with language. Fire transforms the tribe and language transforms the tribe . The meaning of transformation continues throughout the five movements of Little Gidding. In the First Movement, the meaningful visible object of fire is found in the mid-winter season as the "brief sun flames on ice," and the "Pentecostal fire" stirs the "dumb spirit." In the Second Movement, a transforming fire in visible experience becomes a bomber in war; "the dark dove with a flickering tongue." Fire as associated with war becomes "ash on an old man 's sleeve/ Is all the ash the burnt roses leave ."(LG II 1-2) In the Third Movement, visible fire is historical destruction, the account of the burning of the Church of Little Gidding which leaves with us "a symbol perfected in death," and we are impelled to "summon the spectre of the rose ." In the Fourth Movement, the experience of purifying fire is central to the theme of human transformation from destruction and war to love. The only hope, or else despa ir Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre To be redeemed from fire by fire. (LG IV, 206-208)

War is the fire of destruction in the visible realm just as hate is the fire of destruction in the invisible realm of human consciousness. The poet continues, "We only live, only suspire/Consumed by either fire or fire." Being consumed by fire reverberates both the destructive fire of Dante's Inferno and the transforming fire of John of the Cross. In the Fifth Movement, the tongue s of fire are in-folded Into the crown ed knot of fire. (LG II 214-215)

"Tongues of fire in-folded into a crowned knot" is a visible dual image of the fisherman's durable knot, ready for endurance testing, and of fire that is controlled for the purpose of strength. The flaming fire in the dark time of

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yea r which begins thi s monumental poem , is a movement toward the integrated whole of the crowned knot of fire at the end of the poem . TH E VISIBL E AN D THE RO S E

Clo sely associated with the meanin g found in the object of fire in this poem, is the invisible mean ing found in the visible object of the Rose. Bloom and blossom are found in the very first lines of this poetry, which Eliot begin s with "Midw inter spring is its own season." In the first line of part two, the poet says, "Ash on an old man 's sleeve/ Is all the ash the burnt roses leave." As Husserl claims that meaning is only found in the obje ct which becomes indicati ve, so the poet, in the object of ash from the burnt roses, is indicating an invisible realit y that engages our human experience. Roses indicate love, purit y, desire , renew al, beaut y, innocence. The poet describe s May and the white hedge s with voluptuary sweetness. Later he refers to ashes of the burnt roses. Life consumes the sweetness of the blo ssom which is the rose. In the Fifth Movement Eliot sa ys, "The moment of the rose and the yew tree are of equal duration" (LG V 234-235). The yew tree is found in the graveya rd, and its moment is of equal duration to that of the delectable rose. The objects of the rose and the yew tree are joined in the meanin g of death , which is the ultimate transformer. The quality of the rose is invisible, some human perfection indicated by the rose, which stands beside the yew tree on the graveyard. Eliot incorporates this human perfection in imaging childre n in the appl e tree Not known because not looked for, But heard , half heard. Between two waves of the sea . (LL V 250-253)

Imm ediately we make the associa tion of a first innocence in the use the poet makes of the word , children, and the loss of that first innocence, with the connotation we have of the word apple tree. But the poet is saying that the children are still in the apple tree, "not known because not looked for." The meanin g of the visible and the invisible are fused together in the urgent next line. "Quick now, here , now, alway s" (LG V 254) , which illuminates the half seen objects of children in the apple tree, half heard in the stillness of the sea. The word quick used in this line means the oppo site of the word dead as Eliot uses it in "Burial of the Dead" in The Waste Land. Quick is associ ated with the urgent condition of being alive. Here is the place and NOW is the time in

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"a condition of complete simplicity/ (costing not less than everything)" (LG V 255-256). To reemphasi ze the condition of "complete simplicity," the "zero summer," the "end which is the beginning," Eliot repeats the words of the mystic in his closing lines : And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongue s of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. (LG V 256-261)

The meaning of the rose here is associated with costing , with human passion and love. The rose of delicate beauty and fragrance has thorn s, but the flower is desirable . Like human love, the rose is associated with tran sformation, "costing not les s than everything ," which incorporates the condition of complete simplicity, the children in the apple tree, not seen because not looked for. In Little Gidding , T. S. Eliot uses the visible objects of the rose and fire to give meaning to the visible and the invisible in human experience. Helen Gardner remind s us that the obscurity in the poem "is inherent in the subject, and not the fruit of a deliberate intenti on on the part of the poet to be obscure." Gardner claims that Eliot is tre ating a subject of extreme complexity, and she quotes the poet as say ing that he is "occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist ,"!" Eliot's poem engages time and place , illumination and perfection, destruction and death , the historical small church of Little Gidding, and a community struggling for happin ess here and beyond . The meaning of fire throughout the poem reveals a mystical movement toward a place of perfection of the human purpo se. The visible and the invisible are held together in the "voice of the hidden waterfall ," a voice which is already at the "source of the longest river." The longest river is history, time and place of human memory. The children are presently "in the apple tree, not known , because not looked for." But they are "heard, half heard in the stilln ess," where we also shall hear "that all shall be well," when "the fire and the rose are one ."

Marquette University

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1 Husserl , Ed mund, The Essential Husserl, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 29. 2 Husserl , Edmund, op. cit., p. 26. 3 Husser l, Edmund, op. cit., p. 28. • Kenner, Hugh, " Into Our First World," in Bernard Bergonzi (ed.), T. S. Eliot - Four Quartets, A Casebook (Nashville: Aurora Publications. Inc. 1971 ). p. 191. Professor Kenner opens avenues of meaning when he maintains that Eliot is associating place with the place of language. Certainly, the poem has explicit references to language and speech. Moreover, the pentecostal fire, the flaming tongues of Pentecost, as St. Luke relates, enabled the Apostles to speak in ' tongues.' There is a definite correlation in Little Gidding between fire and speech. 5 Eliot, T. S., The Complete Poems and Plays (New York : Harcourt , Brace and World. Inc. 197 1), p. 138. All quotes from the poem . " Little Gidding," are taken from this edition. 6 Rosenthal , M. L. , Sail ing int o the Unknow n; Yeat s, Poun d and Eliot (Ne w York : Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 48. 7 Husserl , Edmund, op. cit., p. 32. 8 Husserl, Edm und, op. cit., p. 28. 9 Kenner, Hugh, op. cit., p. 96. 10 Gard ner, Helen, The Art of T. S. Eliot (London: The Cresset Press, 1949), p. 57.

AL BE RTO J.L. CA R R ILLO CANAN

GADAMER'S LEVELING OF THE VIS UAL AND THE VERBAL, A N D TH E " E X P E R I E N C E OF A RT"

Our main goal is to win a concept of trut h that is as valid for image as for poe try. - Gad ame r

In his relatively late text Intu ition and Intu itiveness ( 1980), Gadamer says, relating to the development towards philo sophi cal hermeneut ics, that "( .. .) the shar p distinction bet ween intuition and concept , as it is established by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, was no longer acce ptable" (G8 202) .' In other words, Gadamer 's project of a phil osophi cal herm eneut ic rejects the Kanti an "s harp distinction between intuition and concep t." But such a distincti on ha s a ven erable hi story that goes back to Plato 's criticis m of Parmen ides, who precisely based his doctrine of the identity of thinking and Being upon the confusio n of the visual and the verbal." From then on, the ph ilosophical tradition dis ti nguis hed bet ween the visua l and the verba l. Neve rtheless, based on the "work of art," Gadamer develops a theory of nonco nceptual "se nse [Sinn]" that abolishes the traditional, we ll esta blished distinction between the visual and the verbal. The goa l of this paper is to make a short acco unt of this abo lition with some of its implications for aes thetics . Above all, "aesthetics" is repl aced by "ex perience of art" (G8 192), which accordi ng to Gadamer is certain ly not "cognitio se nsi tiva ," but "cognitio irnaginativa" (G8 192) in the sense of a non -concep tual, to be sure, ineffable knowledge. Such "knowledge" shows sim ila rities with phe nomena suc h as religion and, thus, the proper character of aest hetics seem s lost. I. INTUIT ION , C O NC E P T AN D K N O WL E D G E

It is convenient fro m the very ou tset to remem ber the Kantian "s harp distinction" that Gad amer refers to. Kant says in a very famo us passage of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic: Our nature is so co nstit uted that intuition with us never ca n be other than se nsory, that is, it con tains only the mode in whic h we are affec ted by objec ts. On the other hand , the fac ulty of think ing the objec t of se nso ry intuition is the under standin g. Neither of these facult ies has a prefe rence ove r the other. Withou t the se nsory fac ulty no object wou ld be given to us, and wit hout the unde rstand ing no object wou ld be thou ght. Thoughts without cont ent are void; intuitions wit hout co ncep ts are blind . Hence it is as necessary for the mind to make its co ncepts sen sory (that is, to jo in to them the objec t in intu ition), as to make its intuitions intell igib le (that

199 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 199-209 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Primed in the Netherlands.

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is, to brin g them under co ncep ts). Ne ither of these faculties ca n exchange its pro per function. Understa nding ca nnot intuit, and the sensory faculty ca nnot think. In no other way than from the united ope ration of both , can knowledge arise. But no one ought, 011 this account , to overlook the difference ofthe elements contributed by each; we have rather great reason to carefully separate and distinguish them. We therefore dist ingu ish the science of the laws of sensibility, that is, aesthetics, from the scie nce of the laws of understandi ng, that is, logic. (KV B76)3

Gadamer performs an ambi valent movement. On the one hand he blurs the difference between "intuition" and "concept," in fact he eliminates "concept," substituting it with "sense [Sinn] ." Through this movement he lets "logi c" in the Kanti an sense come not into "a esthetics," but into the "experience of art.?' Nevertheless, as Gadamer puts it in his main work, Wahrh eit und Methode (1960): "Experience of art is a mod e of knowl edge (... )" (WM 103). Thi s means, on the other hand , that by leaving logic and , thus, the Kantian "united operation of both ," intuition and concept, Gadamer does not leave "knowledge," even if art does not imply any "conceptual knowledge" (WM 103). 2 . IN T UITIO N AN D IMAGI NATIO N

I must reserve Gadamer's concept of "sense" for the end of this text. For the mom ent , I would lik e to approach the Gadamerian undermining of the Kantian "s harp distinction" between " intuition" and "conce pt." One can speak of a Gadamerian levelin g of the visual and the verbal. Sueh a leveling takes the concrete form of leveling visual and literary arts, eve n explicitly aga inst the well-known distinction established by Lessing in his Laokoon , as Gadamer says at the beginning of his late text Word and Image - "Being as Truth" (199 2): "Less ing 's fa mous analys is (.. .) intended to establish di stin ctions. (... ) On the co ntra ry, my int erest is to work out the commo n charac ter of painting and poetry in orde r to inco rporate thi s common character in a still more general character, that makes art into a decl aration of truth. "( G8 373 ) In fact , the ex press ion "cognitio ima gin ati va" is characteri stic . Th e term cogn itio anno unces Gadamer's we ll-known emphatic refusal "to separate the que stion of art from the question of truth ." (G8 203 ) Thi s is none other than, in the term s of the text The Actuality of the Beautiful (1972 ), Gadamer's postul ate, according to which art "( . .. ) poses the right to truth (.. .)" (G8 94), or, as we have seen, the postulate that "experience of art is (.. .) knowledge." The mentioned leveling of the visual and the verbal aims to establish that in the work of art there lies such a truth , which is "communicable" (G8 109). But before I examine both , the concept of truth and the kind of communication (G8 103) that Gadamer mean s, I must examine his leveling of the visual and the verbal.

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I referred to the term "cognit io" in the expre ssion "cognitio imaginativa," The term "imaginativa" was consciously picked out by Gadamer to oppo se the traditional "cognitio sensitiva," The opposition imagi nativa - sensitiva announces Gadamer's refusal of the traditional model of intuition under stood as "sensory intuit ion [sinnliche An schauung]." In Gadamer's terms , imagination mean s rather "spiritual intu ition [geistig e Anschauung]" (G8 192) or more prec isely " intuition of the spiritual [Anschauung des Geistigen]" (G8 201) . To go beyond intuition in the strict sense of perception implies, according to the Kantian model , not only intuition but also the "united operation " of intuition and concept in order to render knowledge. But the concept is preci sely excluded from Gadamer's cognitio imaginat iva or "intuition of the spiritual." In order to accomplish this exclusion , Gadamer uses a broad concept of intuition. The term "intuition" mu st mean by now not only the "se nsorily given in visual perception," but - in strict Kanti an term s cited by Gadamer - "intuition (representation) without the presence of the obje ct, too."(G8 189) Thus, that means not intuition in th e stric t sense of effective perception, but "imagination [Einbildungskraft] " (G8 194) in the broad Kantian sense of the term . Kant says, for example : Beau tiful obj ects have to be dis tinguished from beauti ful views of objects (wh ere the distance often prevents a clear perception ). In the latter case , taste appears to fasten , not so much on what the imaginati on grasps in this field, as on the incentive it receives to create, i.e., in the pecul iar fanci es with which the mind enter ta ins itsel f as it is being co ntinually stirred by the var iety that strikes the eye. It is ju st as when we watch the changing shapes of the fire or of a rippling brook: neither of which are things of beau ty, but they convey a charm to the ima ginati on, beca use the y sustai n itsfree play (KU 73). Bold emphas is mine, in additio n to Kant's.

3 . IMA GI N ATIO N , E VO C ATI O N, AN D C ONCE PT

Resting on Kantian passage s like the one quoted , Gadamer stress es the production of "i ntuitions" via "imagination" - even if he avoid s using the term "fantasy." He say s: "The 'art' of language consists in provoking imagination to produce intuitions" (G8 194) . The point is here that such "intuitions" are no longer visual, they are not "sensory" at all, but "spiritual" (G8 192), and, in fact, Gadamer thinks of them as provoked not by vision but by "poetry" (G8 190), and more prec isely as "e voked by a poem" (G8 205) . Po etry "is ba sed upon the ' intu ition of the spiritual,'" a nd ac cording to Gadamer that constitutes its "priority" compared to all other arts .(G8 20 I) Imaginat ion becomes, thus, ident ical with that which in his text Hea ring See ing - Read ing (1984) Gad amer calls "the evocati ve power of the poet ical word ."(G8 275)

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I would like to point out both Gadamer's shifting from intuition as perception to intuition as imagination and his identification of imagination with poetical evocation; but I would now like to stress his use of the Kantian term "imagination." Gadamer uses the term "intuition," at firs t, precisely to excl ude concept. The opposit ion Gadamer need s is even the Kant ian one between " intuition [An schauung ]" and "unders tanding [Verstand]," for according to Kant, und erstanding is "the facuity of the conceptual" (KU XLIV ). And both , intuition and concept, are "portions of knowledge" (UP XLIII ) and, thus, of truth. But Gadamer 's program aims at non-conceptual knowledge and non -conceptual truth . Discarding "conce pt" lea ves onl y intuition , used - secondly - as imagination , not as perception. At this point both uses of the term "intuition" coincide, for Gadamer intends "imagination" as "evocation," in order to exclud e concept, too. In the present context, this exclusion is accompli shed in a relatively obscure , because eclectic way.

4 . A E S T HE T ICA L ID EA AND C O NCE PT

The main instrument here to exclude concept while simultaneously keeping imagination is the Kantian concept of "idea." Gadamer proceeds eclecticall y, for he refers to both the "aesthetic idea" and the "rational idea" (G8 196-98), but in fact Gadamer uses the Kantian definitions of "aesthetic idea" and of "spirit," while he discards the "rational ideal," which according to Kant, is a concept. In the Kritik der Urteilskraft , Kant defines "spirit [Geist] in an aesthetical sense" as "the animating principle in the mind ."(KU 191) A few lines below, Kant says: Now my proposi tion is that this principle is nothing else than the faculty of prese nting aesthetic ideas. But, by an aes thetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought , yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e., concept. being adequate to it, and which language, con sequently, can never get quite on level terms with or render co mpletely intelli gibl e. It is eas ily see n, that an aes thet ic idea is the co unterpart of a rational idea, which, co nversely, is a concept, to whic h no intuition (represe ntatio n of the imag ination) ca n be adequate. (KU 192)

Gadamer proceeds ecl ecticall y, because he undermines the Kantian differenc e between "aesthetic" and "rational idea. " He sa ys that Kant's "concept of aesthetic idea is too much built on the oppo sition to rational idea ."(G8 196) Gadamer rejects any definition of the idea as concept, such as the Kantian one for the " rational idea ," for the main point useful for Gadamer's purpo se is that "a n idea is not a concept" (G8 196), and Kant

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affirms that it is only related to the "aesthetic idea." On the other hand, Gadamer firmly keeps the cited Kantian definition of an "aesthetic idea" as a "representation of imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e., concept." Obviously, here lies a link to Gadamer 's "evocation." Furthermore, it must be carefully observed that Gadamer suppresses the Kantian relationship between "aesthetic idea" and "concept." For in fact, in referring to the concept of "virtue," Kant says: In a word , the aesthetic idea is a representation of the imagination, annexed to a given concept, with which , in the free employment of imagination, such a multiplicity of partial repre sentation s are bound up, that no expression indicating a definite concept can be found for it, one which on that account allow s a concept 10 be supplemented in thought by much that is indefinable in words, and the feeling of which quickens the cognitive facultie s, and with languag e, as a mere thing of the letter, binds up the spirit (soul) also. (KU 197)

In a revealing way, Gadamer frequently uses the last quotation or a paraphrase of it (G8 112, 194, 198,205,374). He namely avoids any mention of the relationship between the "aesthetic idea" and the "(given) concept." For example, in his text The Actuality of the Beautiful, Gadamer relates the Kantian passage to the "work of art" and suppresses any mention of concept; he speaks better of "meaningful content that on its own becomes articulated and is grasped by comprehension or, as Kant expresses it: allows one to 'supplement in thought much that is indefinable in words ' ," (G8 112). Gadamer notoriously speaks of supplementing yet not of supplementing a concept, as Kant does . In fact, he says immediately: "Of course, this does not mean, that they were previously grasped concepts, which we simply expose to be represented by art."(G8 112) We can directly compare the Gadamerian conception with the Kantian one. Kant says that aesthetic "ideas " as representations of the imagination (...) seek to approximate a presentation of rational concepts (i.e., intellectu al ideas), thus giving to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality. (.. .) Th e poet ess ays the task of interpreting to se nse the rat ional idea s of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed , hell, eternity, creat ion, etc. Or, again, as to things of which examples occur in experience, e.g., death , envy, and all vices, as also love, fame, and the like, transgre ssing the limits of experience he attempts, with the aid of an imagination which emulates the display of reason in its attainment of a ma ximu m, to body the m forth to sense with a completeness, of which nature affords no parall el ; and it is in fact precisely in the poetic art that the faculty of aesthetic ideas can show itself to full advanta ge. (KU 194)

Thus , according to Kant, the "aesthetic ideas" are "internal intuition s" and "no concept can be wholly adequate to them" (KU 194). But in spite of that,

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they are supplements either of "rational ideas" (a kind of concept) of entitie s, which lie beyond experience, or of empirical concepts insofar as they "(.. .) transgress the limits of experience (. . .)" and so becomes "the display of reason in its attainment of a maximum (. . .) with a completeness, of which nature affords no paralle1." In both case s we are dealing with concepts "transgressing the limits of experience." But Gadamer strictly avoids any link of the idea - for him identical to evocation - to a concept. He only admits nondefinite or ineffable "meaningful content." Such a Kantian case as artistic representation of virtue here is thus completely discarded. 5 . " S E N S E ," INEFFABILITY, AND " T RU T H"

Certainly Gadamer discards the concept, but he keeps the "sense" or, in our context, the "intuition of the spiritual ," and through this he wants to establish a relation to "knowledge" and "truth." The point now is the relationship between non-conceptual "sense" and "truth" on the one hand, and the "work of art," on the other hand . The above-mentioned late text Word and Image - "Being as Truth" belongs to Gadamer's most significant writings that discuss the relationship between work of art, truth and non-conceptual sense. In this text, Gadamer says: Apparently Plato founded paint ing as well as poetry on the roughest concept of copy. On the contrary, our main goal is to rid ourselves of the concept of copy in each sense of the word and to gain a concept of truth that is as valid for image as for poetry. (G8 383)

A copy must be a copy of some mentionable, definite or at least definable thing . But Gadamer rejects just this. In a very remarkable passage, Gadamer says: We are there - and in the end the impression deepens even more: "That's right." It is like an increasing fascination Coo). For the creator it is the success of the work. For the recipient , one doe s not know what to say, what it is. "Je ne sais quoi " say s it for the well-known French Enlightenment. It has ju st succeeded and has its non-conceptual correction.' If it concerns art, there is no point in ask ing the creator what he meant there. Likewise there is no point in asking the recipient what the work actuall y says to him . Both things go beyond the subjective consciousness of the one as of the other. It exceeds every opin ion and knowledge, when we say: 'T hat is good ." (G8 388)

Gadamer thus repeatedly rejects the possibility of defining or saying what a work of art represents or what it "says" to us. We are here concerned with a comprehended though indefinable and ineffable "sense" or "intuition of the

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spiritual." Indefinableness and ineffability here stand for Gadamer's rejection of concept. Nevertheless, Gadamer links this "sense" with "truth." Indeed, he goes on as follows : "( .. .) 'That is good .' In both cases this means that it came out." (G8 388) And here lies Gadamer's conspicuous concept of truth, as shown by the following : "Works of art pos sess an increa sed rank in being lSeinsrang], and this shows itself through the fact that through the work of art we have the experience : it comes out - and this is what we call truth." (G8 384) This is nothing but a paraphrase and a special application of the traditional phenomenological concept of truth as presence: something shows itself, becomes accessible, or as Heidegger frequently puts it, "comes into the open ." We are concerned with the presence of something or, in Heideggerian terms, with the "openness" of it. Of course , relating to truth and to the work of art, Gadamer in principle says nothing beyond what Heidegger had said before in his work Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (1935/36) . In fact, Gadamer's formula "( ... ) that it comes out" is a mere paraphrase of Heidegger's formulas . For example: "(.. .) this happening (... ) namely this, that such a work is at all rather than not (... )" (Hw 51), or: "the more the essential work opens itself, the more radiant becomes the uniquene ss of the fact, that it is at all rather than not." (Hw 52) Gadamer's expressions "it comes out" and "coming out" are mere paraphrases for Heidegger's "it is," "being." But there is an important difference between both: Heidegger's concept of non-conceptuality does not imply ineffability.

6 . GADAMER 'S IN EFFABILITY AND HEID EGGER 'S NON-CON CEPT UALITY

Certainly, Heidegger's theory of truth in the sense of the "presence" of something is valid not only for the work of art , but for everything : truth means "disclosure," the "openness" of whatever entity - even of its Being ." Given whatever entity, its Being and its "characteristics of Being" are quite expressible, but the terms constituting such an expression are by no means concepts. For example, in the famous §9 of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger prohibits the use of terms like "table, house , tree" etc. to express "Being" (SZ 42) . The reason for such a prohibition is that those terms - used in a theoretical context - are concepts in the strict sense of empirical thought-determinations obtained by means of abstraction.

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Almost at the very end of Se in and Zeit, Heidegger says that "'Being' is open in the under standing-of-Being which belon gs to existent Dasein ,' and imm ediatel y he explicitl y qu al ifies thi s "openness" as "no n-co nce p tual openness [unbegriffliche Erschl ossenh eit]" (SZ 437). Indeed, concepts in the strict sense of the term are obtained throu gh abstraction, that is, starting from empirically given entities, but, on the contrary, "Bei ng is the transcendent pure and simple" (SZ 38, original emphasis). Or even clearer, "Being (... ) is for each entity always already [je schon] the 'trans cendenta l ", (SZ 208) . Consequentl y, Heidegger says that "o ne can never carry on researches into the (... ) ' idea' of Being by means of abstraction (.. .)" (SZ 437). Th e simplest examples of the distinction between concepts or empirical determinations on the one hand, and characters of Being or transcendental determinations, on the other hand , are the following express ions that Heidegger examines in Se in und Zeit (SZ 157): a. "The hammer is heavy" in the sense: "T his thing - a hammer - has the property of hea viness." b. "The hammer is too heavy."

Th e first expre ssion uses concept s, for example, "hammer" as the name of a class, namel y the cla ss of all thin gs which have such and such aspect or properties. The thing in qu esti on is thu s cla ssified as "hammer" : it is a hammer. Th e inde fini te artic le "a" ind icates the classificati on. On the co ntrary, the second express ion means "this hammer" here, not a member of some class, but th is hammer " in its Bein g" (SZ 7), that is, as " too heavy." To be too heavy is the negative "readiness -to-hand" of the hammer in question ." The second of the two exa mined express ions shows that for Heidegger, non-c onceptuality by no means signifies ineffabil ity. Non-conceptuality for him a means tran scendental sense or "sense of Being." Th is leads to the very orig in of Gadamer's leveling of the visual and the verbal. Thi s origin is Heidegger 's distinction between "characteristics of Being" and concepts." A co ncept is a discursi ve determination, that is, a determination obt ained in goi ng from some given entity to another one. That is even the etymological meaning of discursus in the traditi on of tran scendental philo sophy. The same tradition defines all that form s of con sciou sness, which are not discursive as intuitive . Intu ituus, intuitio, is eith er a content of consciousness or a form of consciousness that is not discur sive. For example, the seen thing (content) and the act of seeing (the corre lative form of con sci ou sness) are both intuiti ve.

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7 . HEID EGGER 'S TRANSC ENDENTAL SP E ECH AS A LEVELING OF TH E VIS UAL AND TH E V ERBAL

Any concept in the strict sense is discursive , because it is obtained by means of abstraction, that is, by going from one thing to at least one other one that has a common characteristic with the first one. This going from one to the other is discursus. On the contrary, in our case, since transcendental determinations or characteristics are not concepts, the pure logical consequence is that they possess an intuitive, not discursive, structure, that they are not concepts but intuitions. In particular the Heideggerian example , "the hammer is too heavy," is an expres sion corresponding to an intuition. But such a statement is, according to Heidegger, the "speech" of a "Being-in-the-world." It is certainly to be di stinguished from the spec ifically ontological, transcendental statement uttered by the philo sopher. Neverthele ss such speech is existential or ontic-tran scendental, and is the expression for an intuition . So, ontic-transcendental speech is the Heideggerian leveling of the visual and the verbal upon which the Gadamerian leveling is based . C ONC LU S IO N

Here we can refer to a very remarkable Heid eggeri an expression from a lecture of 1918: "hermeneutical intuition " (B56/57 117). This "intuition" has the "a rticulated structure" of "hermeneutics" that Heidegger discu sses in Being and Time, namely, a structure consisting in "addressing something as something " (SZ 62, 151). We are thus dealing with a verbal structure , which at once is an intuitive one ! The intu itiveness in this case assure s the nonconceptual or non-empirical character of the corre sponding content of consciousness. Such is Heidegger 's, and therefore also Gadamer's model of "sense" as non-conceptual, that is, as an a priori determination. But such a model is very general. It even embraces any form of non-conceptual consciousness. For this reason Heidegger uses the same model not only for the "work of art," but also for underst anding the hamm er while hammering. One asks then, where the spec ificity of an "exp erience of art" resides . In fact, Heidegger applies the model under con sideration to the "work of art," the "essential sacrifice," "the foundati on of the state," etc . (Hw 48) . In other words , Gadamer uses the general Heideggerian model of the a priori and, thus , non-conceptual understanding, in order to give an account of the "experience of art." No wonder, then, that throughout all the Gadam erian texts relating to art or aesthetics, the "experience of art" and the "religious

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experience" are so close . The leveling of the visual and the verbal resting on the discu ssed Heideggerian model becomes, in the end , the leveling of man y phenomena. And the proximity to the religious phenomenon ca sts light on Gad arner's idea of that "c ommunication" made po ssible by the work of art: it amounts to the feel ing of an ineffable belonging-together before the work of art or before the divinity. But both the work of art and the divinity always refer to a particular co m munity. Gadamer' s ide a o f the "truth" (or " knowledge") lying in the work of art leads to a mere emotional selfrecognition of the indi vidual as belonging to a de stiny-community; but a detailed account of this qu estion lies beyond the scope of this paper,"

Puebla , Mexico BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATION S WP

PG WM G8 SZ Hw KV KU PhA

=Carrillo Canan , A. J. L., " World and

Ontological Predicate in Heid egger," in Itkonen , M. Man, Man , Who and What Are YlJll? Phil osoph ical Paths into Beings, Growing and Upb ringing. Tampere: Tamp ere Univers ity Press, Finland, 2000. = Carrillo Canan, A. J. L., "The Work of Art and the Presence of the Divinit y," Forth comin g in Analecta Husserli ana. =Gada mer, H.-G., wahrheit und Meth ode, Tiibin gen: 1986. =Gada mer, H.-G ., Gesam melt e Werk e, Vol. 8. Tiib ingen : 1993. = Heid egger, M., Sein und Zeit ( 1927), 16th ed., Tiibin gen: 1986. = Heidegger, M., Holzwege ( 1950), 5th ed., FrankfurtlM: 1980. = Kant, I., Kritik der reinen vernunft ( 1788), Hambur g: 1990. =Kant .L, Kritik der Urteilskraft ( 1790), Ham burg: 1990. = Tugendhat, E., Philosoph ische Aufsdtz e, FrankfurtJM: 1992.

N OTES See the list of abbreviations at the end of this paper. See PhA 45n . 3 All italics in a quotation are mine, if not otherwise stated by the corre sponding abbreviation. ~ Rememb er that for Kant "ex perience" is a techn ical term related to knowledge and, thus, not to aes thetics. 5 Gadamer uses the Germ an word unbegreiflich, who se literal meaning is inco mp rehe nsible, but he always link s the wor k of art with comp rehending a sen se that is non- conceptu al. For this reaso n I prefer to translate unbegreifli ch as non -con ceptual rather than as incomprehensible. Another possibility is to transl ate unb egreiflich as inexplicable. 6 See the double concept of phen omenon in §3 of Sein und Ze it: phen om enon , that which shows itself, means either an entity or its Bein g. 7 See : '''The hamm er is too heavy ' what is discovered f or sig ht (... ) is ( .. .) an entity in the way it is ready-to-hand" (SZ 154). Furth erm ore: "The unsuitabilit y is discovered not by lookin g at

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and est ablishing prop erti es, but rather by circum vision ( . ..)" (SZ 73), that is, not by means of abstraction. S For an account of this probl emat ic, see WP. 9 For a discu ssion relating to this matter , see PG .

ROMAN KAT SMA N

THE MIRACLE OF LITERATURE An Ethical-Aesthetical Theory of Mythopoiesis

But there is a mystery of langua ge , con cerning the fact that the langu age spea ks, so mething spea ks, some thing spea ks about the being. - Paul Ricoeur, "Double Meanin g As Herm eneutic and Semant ic Problem ," Conflict of Interpretations

In the chapter entitled "Double Meaning As Herm eneutic and Sem antic Problem" in Conflict of Interpretation s, Paul Ricoeur says: "Symbolism, taken at the level of its appe arance in texts , thus attests to the fact that the language explodes, rushing toward s the other than itsel f."1 Not just contents, but also the special picturesque and dramatic expressivene ss of the above statement show s how ten se , dynamic and energetic is the discussion in philosoph y dealing with the issue of interconnection between the external and internal in the text. Literary criticism , in turn , considers this issue as the key que stion in discu ssing the essence of a literary work . The most important facet of this que stion is the relation ship between the ethical and the aesthetical in lit erature. Reading and understandin g a literary work , enjoying it, and other activities brought about by a person 's encounter with literature, con stitute a problem that remain s unsolved despite numerous efforts by scholars. The wonder ful sensations experienced by a reader still rem ain a mystery, an aporia. I would lik e to offer a synthetic theor y capable, in my opinion, of describ ing the entire complex of reading-related phenom ena . Thu s, I offer the following the sis: the readi ng of a literary work is a mythopoiesis. I will develop this the sis in two stages. First of all, I claim that with in literary criticism , a myth should be defined as it was understood by Alek sei Losev, that is as a "miraculous personality histor y given in a word ." The critical percept ion of Losev's myth theory, as it is applied to literature, enables us to claim that the fundam ental mechan ism of mean ing-making in literature is the origination of myth in the actual and unique reading process. Such a broad perception of this theor y turn s out to be possibl e owing to its being per sonalistic . And it is personal ism that 211 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 211-231. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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se rves as the uni versal ba si s for my literary theory. Lo sev' s theory, howe ver, being confined to Neo-Platonist idealism , doe s not pro vide us with the tool s for understanding mythopoiesis as reading . Thi s difficulty may be overcome usin g Emmanuel Levin as' revel ati on theor y. It s perso nalis m, in my opini on , is an implicit continuat ion of Lose v' s personalism, or, more generally, French person ali sm of the 1930 's in the spirit of Emm anuel Monnier 's circle. Basing myself upon Levin as' conc ept that in ever y literary text there is a revelation pot ential, i.e., an out er infinite demand for ethics, I thu s claim that an ethic al-dialogi cal relationship underlies mythopoiesis. These two the ses ha ve important con sequences for myth criticism , narrative ethics and literary theory as a whole. The additional result of my theoretical reasoning is the following conclusion : the pr esentation of reading as mythopoiesi s, i.e ., as an ethical creative act in the terms of Lo sev and Levinas, allow s us to solve the problem of the connection between ethics and aesthetic s. In a myth originating during the reading of a literary text , the same phenomenon serves as the subject for an ethica l and aesthetical relationship for the same reasons. This phenomenon is a unique per sonality actually emerging in the process of reading . Thi s personality hi storicall y reali ze s its tran scendental goal , i.e ., becomes itself in the creati ve se ns atio n ex perie nce d by a reader. Using the terminology of Wolfgang Iser, who was one of the first scholars to address reading as a creative interaction bet ween the text and the read er." I may claim that I con sider the phenomenology of readin g to be that of mythopoiesis, i.e. , that of per sonality. The ethical relationsh ip initially und erli es reading. Then , the aes thetic sensa tion of readin g trig ger s personati on - the creation of a per sonality and the establishing of an ethical relation ship with it. The full responsibility for this per sonality' s aesthetic pred estinati on is the epitome of mythopoiesis.

LOS EV 'S TH EORY OF MYTH: ITS ACHIEVEM E NTS A N D LIMITS

In his book The Dialectic of Myth, Aleksei Losev (1893-1988) proves that a myth is not a fantastic thought for an ideal entity, not a scientific structure in general for a primitive-scientific enterprise in particular, not a metaphysical structure, scheme or allegory. A myth is not a poetical or religious creation, not a dogma, nor a historic al event in itself. ' Losev's final definition of myth will serve as the basic assumption for this study: "A myth is a miraculous

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history of a personality expressed in a word .?' I will briefl y explain the constituents of this definition.

A. History. A myth represents a certain historical process, and not only "primordial" processes or processes related to the "origins" of things. A myth comes into being in a particular historical time and does not exist beyond it. s Thus, the contrast between myth and history is el iminated; mythopoiesis and historical life unite and, as a result, every moment in history acquires the significance of meaning making , and not necessarily because it repeats a primordial event or another ritual act. The present and the past do not dissolve in a myth, nor are they nullified in it. The past is not reduced to "origins," and the present is not reduced to imitation, repetition or any other form of substitution. Their status in a myth is the same as in history : in Michel Foucault' s terms, they con si st not of documents that signify something outside of themselves, but of traces of the life of a concrete personality in empirical time.

B. Personality . A myth is pre sented by means of the human face ; personality is the focu s of a myth ' s meaning'' (compare with Emmanuel Levinas ' claim that a human face is the embodiment of meaning , and that the face of the other is an address of meaning to you, an invitation to a dialogue) ." A myth is the full presence of the per sonality ; therefore the con stitution of meaning in mythopoiesis always take s pla ce in the presence of this personality and does not take into account the hypothetical possibility of the primacy of absence over pre sence. A myth is founded on a different kind of otherness that of the other personality. In the dialogue with my personality, the other personality is revealed in its full pre sence, as a concrete human existence. Only in such a case can there be dialogue and respect (non -domination of one personality over another) . Dialogue with an absent personality (with nothingness) is impossible; re spect for a dominated personality is impossible . A re spectful dialogue between one pre sent personality and another present personality (eth ic s) is mythopoiesi s. This dialogue is reali zed in words . C. Words. A word is an expression of the formation of personality in history. A word is a form of personality that has recognized its intelligent nature, that is, has recognized itself. " The perfect expression of personality in words is name . The only personality that is always pre sent in a myth and in a text is the word. The real event that alw ay s happens in a myth and in a text is a

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word. A word that has become a mean ing , i.e., that has been revealed as an (historical) event and as a personality - is a myth . The word miraculously becomes a name .

D. Miracle. The unification of two planes in one personality - the extemalhistori cal plane and the intern al-t eleological one . A miracl e is unde rstood as the full histori cal realization of the personality's ideal purpose." When Losev wants to unify all these components into one integrated formula, he arrives at the following definition: "A myth is a histo rically developed magical name." !" Lose v's theory establishes the existence of myths at all time s and in ever y place: as long as man continues to speak about him self (i.e., about history), myth s will continue to be created. 1 will quote another of Lo sev' s ob servations about myths, which appears in his final work, The History of Ancient Aesthetics, and refers in particular to the ancient Greek myth: "The ancient myth is an ideal-material or subject-object identity expressed by ideal means. The identity of subject and obje ct is a living entity, which is not only a material obje ct, and not only an ideal subject, but both of these simultaneously. A myth is none other than a story about living entities, a transformation of everything into living entities" [my emphasis].'! A myth , then , is a history of a personality that is developin g toward s its miracle - toward s the realization of its telos in time. In a myth (in its telling , writing, reading , hearing - i.e., in its creation ) everythin g is revealed as a perso nality ex posing its mira culous history. In the text of a myth , every entity come s alive; this living entity has a human face, the face of a unique personalit y. At this point we are not far from a mythopoietic definiti on of a text. The grea t achievement of Losev' s theory of myth is that Losev has succeeded in restoring to us a recogniti on of the authentic historical-p ersonal essence of myth. On the basis of Losev's theory of myth , I become able to recognize the role of an authentic myth in literature, and the ways in which it comes into being in a literary text. Fir st, howe ver, I mu st confront a certain difficulty which is not resol ved in the framework of Lo sev 's conc eption, and which requires us to turn to oth er the oretical sources. Ru ssian religious philosophy exerts much effort to grapple with the problem of myth. Philosophers such as Sergei Bulgakov acknowledged the need to develop a new approa ch to the concept of myth. Their search is reali zed most fully , although with certain changes, in Losev ' s dialectic of myth . At the same time, Losev is interested in myth only as one of the phases - albeit an important and central one - of the man ifestation of the eidos in

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reality.I? Losev remains a Platonist in his views (he has dedicated a great number of his works to Platonic thought), and speaks of meaning as the revealed light. The meaning of a particular entity becomes embodied gradually, progressing from the eidos to the entity in its physical existence, and the final outcome of this embodiment is the identity between the given entity and its name. 13 I can distinguish two statements in Losev's position: meaning exists only within the entity itself and in its existential wholeness; but on the other hand, this meaning can be embodied fully and ultimately only in a communicative act, when somebody calls this entity by its name. Losev's thought approaches the principle of dialogism. In his other works (e.g., The History ofAesthetical Teachingsi.r' he places major emphasis on the dialogic-social aspect of human history in all its spheres - political, spiritual, aesthetical, etc . Here Losev's thought takes on the form of social philosophy. This orientation does not deeply affect Losev's theory of myth, which took shape already in his early works; nonetheless, in this dialogic orientation one can see the fundamental openness that makes possible a systematic integration between his philosophy and a dialogic philosophy as such . This integration is essential to our study: Losev did not focus on myth creation and certainly not on literary mythopoiesis. Since our goal here is a depth study of the essence and mechanisms of mythmaking, Losev's theory of myth is not sufficient for this purpose. The present study continues the old dialogue between two different fundamental approaches to the act of creating meaning: the cyclic-utilitarian approach and the creation approach. The latter affirms the possibility of the new, while the former negates it. I am attempting here to develop a method which will make it possible to research the meaning of a text as a creation of the new. A modern philosopher who has contributed much to the elucidation of the relation between meaning and the new is Emmanuel Levinas. In his "philosophical" and "Jewish" writings (the distinction was made by Levinas himself) he formulates a systematic philosophical basis for the relation between the elements that are the object of our study as well : meaning, understanding, creation, text , book, reading, writing and the new. One can point to the concept of revelation as the central axis around which all these notions are organized. In the following pages I will attempt to elucidate how in Levinas' ethical-metaphysical philosophy a transition is made from the conception of human existence as revelation to the conception of understanding as revelation, and, from there, to the conception of text as revelation. Levinas' concept of revelation is the guideline that will enable us to speak about myth-

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crea tion as revelation and as one of the fund am ent al mech ani sm s of meaning-ereation in a text. In the next section I will attempt to isolate that very guideline in Levinas' philosoph y.

LEV INAS : REVELATION. ETHICS AND LITERATURE

The Concept of Revelation in Relation to the Concept of the Other Accordi ng to Levin as, the main co ntent revealed in any reve latio n is the actual metaphysical fact of the Revelation." The status of the Revelation is defined by the fact that its word is coming fro m outside, which at the same time dwelling in man." Revelation is always word and is perceived by the reader-wi tness. Levina s' cho ice of these noti on s is not acc ide ntal: it allows him to incl ude in the di scu ssion , almost naturally, the book and the text (see fur ther in thi s chapter).The Jewish Revelation is a co mmand and demand s obedience, which does not co nfine but co ntinues the dialectic of discussion with an open end (fro m this point I will later make a transition to num erous interpr etations hermeneu tics). Commandment co nstitutes the beginnin g of understand ing and of language: "Commandmen t rather than narration co nstitutes the first movement in the direct ion of hum an und erst and ing; and, of itse lf, is the beginn ing of language." ? In other words, reve lation is pri mary to under stand ing and lan guage, and constitutes them. It is primary to myth -narr ation as we ll, as constitutes it. Re velation is a de man d for the uniqu en ess of man , and determines the revelation of the un ique aspect of tru th. Eve ry ac t of listen ing to the voice of Revel at ion is unique ; every suc h act is necessary and non- int erchangeab le." Levinas returns to Rosenzweig's idea that the Revelation is love; it is the re la tio nship bet ween God a nd man; it co nstitutes the tem por ality of the present ; it is a dem and (command) for the abso lute uniqueness of man, which is expressed in his finiteness (mo rtality) and his love for the Oth er.'? Th is uniquen ess is the basis for responsibility and freed om ; hence the ide a of being elected, and here is the beginning of ethics." "The Revelation that become s ethics signifies a new vision of man": responsibility for the Other a nd forgetting of self cons titute the human soul." Th e ethica l model of reve latio n is as foll ows: in it s beginning is obe die nce to the Oth er and obligatio n towards him; love wi tho ut eros." I will qu ote an ex ce rpt co ntaining the summary of Levinas' cent ral claim s relating to our topi c:

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Inspir ation 's origina l mode is not in listen ing to a Muse dictating so ngs, but in obedience to the Most-High as an ethica l relation with the other. Th is is what we have sa id right fro m the outset: the subjec t of our enqu iry is the fact of the Revelat ion, and a relation with exterior ity which , unlik e the exteriority with which man surrounds himself whe never he see ks knowl ed ge, does not bec om e simply the co nte nt of interiority, but rem ain s ' uncontainable' , infinit e a nd ye t still maint ain ing a relation . The path I would be inclin ed to take in ord er to solve the parado x of the Revelation is one which c laims that this relat ion , at first glance a paradoxical one, may find a model in non-indifference towards the other, in respon sibilit y towards him , and that it is precisely within this rela tion that man beco mes his 'self ' : designated without any possibility of esc ape, chose n, unique, non-interchangeable and, in this se nse, free. Ethics is the model wort hy of transce nde nce, and it is as an ethical kerygma that the Bible is Revelation."

The Concept of Revelation in Relation to the Concept of Understanding Levinas points to the problem of the rationality of the revelation: the revelation comes from outside and breaks the totality of one 's self, but does not negate the rationality of self; that is, it is given to understanding." The transcendence of ethics (in Revelation) is not the absence of rationality, but the thou ght, which is not knowledge, the connection to the infinit e - and here is the basis for tran scendental understanding." Th e ethical relationship constitutes me aning; meaning is the face of the Oth er ; the " face to face" of language empowers the meaning: Mean ing is the face of the Other , a nd a ll reco urse to wo rds takes place a lrea dy within the prim ordi al face to face of language. Every recour se to words presupp oses the comprehension of the primary significa tion, but this co mprehension, before bei ng interp reted as a 'consciousness of' , is soc iety and obli gati on . Th at 'so mething ' we call signification ari ses in being with language becau se the esse nce of language is the relation with the Other. [... 1Th e welc oming of the be ing that appea rs in the fac e, the et hica l eve nt of soc ia lity, alrea dy com ma nds inward di scour se. 1... 1 If the faee to face found s lan guage, if the face brin gs the first sig nificat ion, establ ishes signification itsel f in being, then language does not only serve reason , but is reason."

Revelation, then, is herm eneutic s, the discovery of the new.-? At the same time, something remains unr eveal ed in Revelation, and therefore pluralism is possible." Revelation is then a plurality of meanin gs, which is the plurality of people." For this reason, it has the character of an infinite open discussion .

The Concept of Revelation in Relation to the Concept of Text Levinas regards the Jewi sh people as a par adigm of the relationship between the Revelation and text. The Jewish people are the nation of the continuous reading of the Book, and therefore, the nation of a continuous revel ation, The infinite life of the text take s place through the infinite life of the people ."

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Thi s renewed reading is allowed due to the fact that the book s of the Jewi sh Revelation are open to textual criticism: A writing that is qu ite ready to merge with the writings subjec ted to history and textual criticism, a writing that opens itself up to the search for its origin and, in doing so, becomes conte mporaneous with the history which can be re membered and in which transcende nce is cancelled out, is an epiphany bordering on atheism."

From this point I will make the most important transition from our point of view: the tran sition from the conce ption of revelation in a sacred text to the conc eption of revelati on in any literar y text. Sinc e religious revelation can become text and open itself to hermen euti cs, any literary text and literature in general are a place for revelation: But this co ming and going from text to reader and from reader to text, and this renewal of meanin g, are perhaps the distinctive feature of all written work , of all literature, even when it does not claim to be Holy Scriptures . [... ] The act of saying ca uses a vibration of something that precedes whatever is thought with in it. Interpr etation draw s it out and is not j ust perception, but the formation of meaning. From this point of view, every text is inspired: it co ntains more than it co ntains. [... ] And it is because all literature is inspired that religious revelation can become text and reveal itself to hermeneutics.' ?

The Revelation is a command that requires a respon se, and as such, it need s time." The Revelation does not happen in eternity, but in time, because it is tim e, se paration and ethi cal relation ship with the Other, whil e etern ity is totalit y." The conclusion about the temporality of the Revelation is especiall y important for us: it will help us later to distinguish the factor s constituting the time of the text and the textual meanin g itself." Another elem ent , beside temporalit y, that make s possible Revelation in a text, is the name. It is revealed but also hidden ; it is given a meanin g; it is the knowledge of the unknowable, in which transcendence becomes ethics." Levin as speaks of the mir acle of the Book: the lesson s of the text are greater than the text itself, than the story it tells.? The miracle of the book is related to another miracl e - the miracle of creation. It is separation, absolute exteriority, an absenc e of common ground, coming from nothing: The absolute gap of separation which transcendence implies cou ld not be better expressed than by the term creation, in which the kinship of beings among them selves is affirmed, but at the same time also their radical heterogeneity, their reciproc al exteriority, their co ming from nothin gness."

In Levinas' terms, therefore, creation ex nihilo is not a theological dogma, but an ethi cal-metaphysical statement. Creation is perc eived as relation with the oth er , which is absolute exteriority, otherness se parated from the " I" by infinit y, where the latter has a purely ethical (and not spatial) meaning. And

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so, probabl y the mo st important conclusion that can be drawn from the above-cited anal ysis is that at the basis of the creation of meaning (which is first and foremost the creati on of the new) of the text, lies the ethical relationship with the Oth er.

MYTHOPOI ESIS ' DE FI NITI O N AN D ITS E FFECT I N TH E TEXT

Differentiating between a myth and mythopoiesis has a very clear methodological value. Observing this princ iple enables us to dispose of the utilitarian approach exi sting in literary myth research. There is no doubt, for instance, that almost any literary character may be presented as containing the entire set of existing myth s, which are primeval to a greater or lesser degree , as well as themes and motifs. The "existing myth ," however, has always already been in use when it appears in literature, and therefore, it is not myth any longer. I would say that the myth continues to be itself as long as it is not myth , when it is being created, that is to say, only in mythopoiesis. Mythopoiesis is "becoming" at the time of concrete reading performed by a concrete reader. Therefore, the mythopoiesis of any character that is becoming durin g my reading is different from that contained by the character and from that becomin g that occurs while another reader is in cont act with the text. Losev's definition of a myth clearly limits the multitude of these mythopoietic reading s. On the one hand, then, the mythopoietic interpret ation is not ju st a utiliz ation of previou sly known intellectual resource s. On the other hand, it is not absolutely subjectivistic and voluntaristic, either. The interpretation involves a methodology and necessitates exact definition s, clear aims and limits.

What Is Mythopoiesis ? Let us now define the textu al phenomenon of mythopoiesis. Th e term mythopoiesis con sists of the two Greek words : myth and poiesis. In both, we can discern an initial original meaning as well as a seconda ry modern one . Originally, a 'myth' denotes word , speech, and tale . The original meaning of the word poiesis is "making," while the modern meaning is poetry, or artistic making . In the word mythop oiesis , the two meanings coal esced: the story making and the myth art (or the myth skill ). This unity fully reflects the essence of the phenomenon under discussion in which text-creation (storycreation) is revealed to be myth-creation (myth art) . Mythopoie sis is thus the art of myth-creation by means of the text-creation skill.

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The considerable difference between mythopoiesis and mythopoetics (if we examine the formation of the term 'rnythopoetics' in modern criticism, for example in Northrop Frye's works) is based on the fact that the latter is concerned with the use of myths (structures, archetypes, versions and elaboration) for the sake of poetics. In contrast, the study of mythopoiesis is concerned with the use of poetics for the sake of myth-creation. In this context, I would like to remark briefly on Joseph Campbell's "creative mythology." Despite his claim that the art of Shakespeare and Cervantes is a Revelation, that the texts and chapters of the real , living mythology of mankind, are developing in the present tense and that modern mythology presents man's special personality - that very particular one and no other"? - it is still very important to differentiate between his and our conception. In line with his above-cited view, Campbell stresses that, in the modern world, each human being is his own mythology center, and his intelligible character is the embodiment of the God whom the seeking human consciousness is supposed to find.'? Therefore, according to Campbell, modern civilization belongs to the individual, to his autonomy." Therefore, it is clear that in spite of the fact that Campbell's "creative mythology" constitutes an important stage on the way to our mythopoiesis theory, for the most part, it is but a negative stage which it is important to overcome. Campbell's conception is based upon individualistic immanentism, while our research is based upon personalistic transcendentalism, that is, I conceive of Revelation as a transcendental rather than immanent experience; in mythopoiesis, personality is conceived of not as an autonomy but as a dialogical heteronomy. Therefore, our mythopoiesis theory describes the meaning-creation mechanism present, to a certain extent, in any text at any time : "creative mythologism," we can say, is typical for each cultural activity, each text and each period and not only for the modern one . So let us define the term mythopoiesis in a literary text in the following way: mythopoiesis is a personality-history revelation, where the personality

appears as a coalescence of its transcendental purpose and its empirical realization; the ethical-dialogical "I - Other" relation underlies the revelation which is "becoming in time" as intentional cognition, interpreting the text anew at any time. Mythopoiesis as the Becoming of the Text Literary mythopoiesis is a lingual and textual phenomenon. Being, actually, one entity consisting of the myth and text, it provokes a leading question: given that

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the myth is a miraculous personal history in words, how does mythopoiesis work, in practice, in text? The above definition of mythopoiesis is intended to help answer the question, but cannot be presented as the answer itself. Now, we should inspec t myth opoiesis at the becoming of text meanin g and of text cog nition. We should pose the followi ng question: how is the myth created inside the text' s words? This question actually consists of two question s: (a) what is the connection between the myth elements and those of the text which make mythopoie sis possible; in other words, how are the term s of the myth interpreted by means of those of the text? (b) What is the action (or actions) in which the text elem ents are revealed as those of the myth and thus activate mythopiesis? The answer will contain two stages, too. According to its definition one can view the myth as bein g built of three elements - history, per son ality and miracle - connected and expre ssed by mean s of a fourth one - word. A basic assumption would be that " word" is the most basic pivotal point in the connection between the myth and text: neither myth , nor text exist in any form but in words . That being so, what is then the position of the word co ncerning history, personality and miracle? Wh at is the influence of this position on the text itself? When we define the myth as history, the point is its actual being: the myth is the histor y. In other words, it is not only the fact that the myth relate s the history or speaks about it; the myth itself is the history. While the text is being read, the myth 's transienc e becomes meaningful, the text time is created. We ca n conclude that the history eleme nt matche s that of time in the text. While in history the time is created, during the transition from one eve nt to another and durin g a "dialogue" between them , and while in the text's mythopoiesis an event is a word, then the text time is created during the transition from one word to another, and eac h word is revealed as a personality having dialogue with others. The seco nd myth element - personality - is, beyond any doubt , the central one. Here, we should clarify personality' s position as regard s the word. We have stresse d that mythopoiesis is capable of turnin g anyth ing into a myth , i.e. , it uncovers the mira cul ou s personal history of anythi ng. The history element is clear: mythopoie sis plac es everything insid e an intelligible transience. When the personality element is added, there is a que stion for us to ask: what is the meaning of personal intelligible tran sience? If intelligible transience of itself signifies a tran sition from word to word, then a personal intelligible one mean s that transition known as the personality 's emergence. The word at the outcome of this tran sition that tops it off in the personality's

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appearance is none other than a name. We thus know the word in the myth as name-personality, that is, as the end of the transition or as a result of a historical move, that of entering the transience. The myth is a history known as a personality, words known as a name. We can say now that the personality in the myth matches that of the name in the text. A name is a result of text cognition; it marks the personality's existence in the transience of the text. The latter reveals its meaning (we can understand a text) because we conceive of its words as names-personalities. By starting to speak of the meaning, we have already wandered into the realm of the third element. The miracle is a revelation of the new reality of things, while every thing is becoming as a coalescence of the transcendental purpose and its historical immanent realization. In terms of the text, this is the uncovering of the name in words, a revelation of the new reality of words , that is, the uncovering of meaning. The miracle element in the myth matches that of the meaning in the text. We uncover the new reality of a word, and uncover the miracle and meaning while having cognizance of the difference between word and name, which brings about the new being, the new history, and the new personality - the new meaning. Therefore, my mythopoiesis (in the text) always means tension between old and new: old time and new time, old name (any word may be revealed as a name, because every word precedes another one) and new name, old meaning and new meaning. Hazard Adams discusses the tension between old and new in originally lingual "fictive cultural forms," and he stresses that he conceives language as a creation and not hermeneutics; at the same time he discerns in the basis for the above forms, the "myth" and "anti myth" dialectics.F From our standpoint, where the "anti myth" is actually another myth, mythopoiesis is conceived as a phenomenon of the creation activity identical to that of hermeneutics. The meaning-creation miracle is that of the coalescence of the extratextual reality with the intratextual one, that of life, ideology and the reflection of these two in the literary work." To sum up, we can say that the application of present-day narrative ethics in the realm of myth-criticism is a promising step that enables us to explain efficiently numerous lingual-textual phenomena. For instance, I have no doubt that in the well-known book Narrative Ethics by Adam Z. Newton, the entire set of concepts is based upon the very kind of experience we have described as mythopoiesis. Mythopoietic concepts comprise a sold theoretical base for the examination of phenomena that seem to be esoteric and even irrational. Mythopoiesis is a creative act in which hermeneutic work, aesthetic sensation, rational awareness, ethical relationship and a wonderful mystery are united . Finally, I

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will discuss the relationship between ethics and aesthetics as it is embodied in the mythopoiesis. However, we first have to tackle one methodological obstacle.

The Rationality of the Mythica l and the Study of Mythopoie sis Is it possi ble to study mytho poie sis? In this paper, myt hopo iesis is conceived as a perpetual "becom ing." Every interruption of its course would cause loss of its special quality. In atte mpti ng to study the process of mythopoiesis, we approach th is becoming eq uip ped with tool s for scie ntific re search: we analyze and simplify, set apart unified parts and link what does not co nstitute uni ty. Her e a basic qu esti on arise s: does the scie ntific research of mythopoiesis disturb the process of its becoming ? As for the myth , we ca n raise a similar question . The problem of myth study (in literatur e) does not actually lie in the scientific approach, but in deter min ing an object to be studied. Our cla im is that the only way to reach the myth itse lf is through the study of its creation - the study of mythopoiesis. On determining a research object, however, we have to pro ve that th e study is ac tua lly possibl e in principle, given the special nature of the objec t in question . The difficult y is co nnected mainl y to the fo llowi ng qu alities of myth opoiesis: (a) being a perpe tual "beco ming," it, actua lly, never belongs to a given ex istence, that is, it never already exists; (b) it is not an objec t of a reader's subjec tivity, for it is beco ming inside this subjectivity, and the borders between subject and object are obsc ure in this area . On the face of it, the contradiction between these qualities and the character of a scientific st udy aggravates the problem under di scu ssion . The term 'scientific research ' usually implie s a rational character, while in the quali ties men tione d, we can see an expre ssion of myth ica l thinking . It thus follows that there is a co ntradict ion between rational thinking and mythical thinking. Th e prob lem of this contradictio n is a symptom of a co mmo n misund erstanding acce pted in most conceptions of myth." I side with those scholars who main tain that there is no co ntradic tion between rat iona l and mythical thin king and that therefore the study of myt hopoies is is possible. An important step in the direction of proving this claim is made, as we have see n above, in the revelation theory of Levi nas. He proves the necessity of a rational conce ption of revelation. If mythop oiesis is a reve lation, one can allay doubts concerning the possibility of a rational study of it. Th e onl y difficult y that can arise regarding this line of argumen tation is linked to the fact that Levinas, in Beyond the Verse, referred to the "Jewis h revelation.?" In or der to pro ve the uni ver sal validity of the rationality of the study of

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mythopoiesis, let us turn to the book by Kurt Hubner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos. Hubner combines the pure philosophical analysis of mythical thinking with profound research in the Greek thinking method and familiarity with Greek myth. Thus shall we arrive at the complete and sufficiently generalizing argumentation of the rationality of the study of mythopoiesis. In the chapter "The Rationality of the Mythical," Hubner writes that the science that sets apart essence and appearance, subject and object, internal and external, banishes the numinous domain to the realm of illusion or mysticism, while , actually , it belongs to another, no less rational picture of the world. A rational conception of numinous experience is actually a rational argumentation for myth. Rationality is not an ontological term, it pertains only to the means of formal argumentation. From this standpoint, myth is no less rational than science: both of them hinge on formal rational argumentation's structures. One should differentiate between the numinous and the divine: the former, as opposed to the latter, implies a tangible exposure to a person . Rational argumentation's structure is recognized in the numinous experience, in mythical thinking. Hubner summarizes the results of his analysis in the following way: a scientific experience and a mythical one have identical structures. Science and myth employ the same model of explanation. The difference between the two experiences - the mythical one and the scientific one - lies in the realm of content only. The rational structure of the explanation and intersubjective argumentation is not affected by that at all. A rational choice between the normative goals that both science and myth aspire to achieve is impossible." The same conclusion is drawn by Lawrence Hatab in his book Myth and Philosophy: Finally, therefore, the idea of rationality versus myth is both misleading and at times simply wrong because rationality and myth can overlap. and even when they do not overlap it is not an either-or situation. Our historical study has shown that rationality and myth have coexisted, call coexist and, I would suggest, should coexist."

Thus, basing ourselves upon Levinas' analyses, on the one hand, and upon those of Hubner (and Hatab) , on the other, we can say that despite the revelation-becoming-related nature of mythopoiesis, there is no basic methodological obstacle to its actual methodic study. MYTHOPOIESIS AS ETHICS AND AESTHETICS

Myth is created in mythopoiesis, but the myth is not the object of mythopoiesis. The main (and maybe the only) content of mythopoiesis is the

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mythop oietic act itsel f. Myth is not "loca ted" in myth opoiesis, but is crea ted and co mes into bein g in it. Myth outside of mythop oiesis, myth that ex ists, is an objec t, a mask, a scheme or an arc hetype. Myth inside mythopoiesis, myth that co mes into being, is revelation, mira cle and creation . If miracle and revel ation are the co nten t of myth, then we ca n spea k of miracle and revelation as objects and carry out their thematization, as well as that of myth itself, which in this case is myth outside of mythopoiesis, myth in the total ity of its existence, myth outsi de of ethics, in Levinas ' term s. Mythopoiesis presupp oses the ethica l because it disrupt s thematization: miracle and revelation are not the subject of myth , but myth itse lf. My th does not speak of a miracl e, but is miracl e itse lf. Th is is possibl e owi ng to the co nstant disruption of the totality of myth in the process of reading, to the constant becomin g of myth in the present, and to the con stant renewal of its mean ing. The relation betw een the text and the reader is ethical; it disrupts the totality of myth created in the text, thereb y disrupting the totalit y of the text itself. Myth crea ted in read ing is es ta blishe d by an ethica l rel at ion . Th ere is no myth op oiesis outsid e of the relat ion bet ween the text and the rea der. Th is relation - which is ethical - crea tes the new myth and constitutes mythopoiesis. Language inca rna tes the ethical rel ation disrupting the to tality of the 1. My tho poiesis, ful fill ing the mean ing-m aking func tio n of lan gu age, is therefore the inca rna tion of the ethica l function of language, the incarn ation of non -total ity of mean ing, of infinite hermen euti cs, of othe rness and the freedo m of the reader in front of the word in ge nera l and the text in particular. Aest hetics is the presence of a third perso nality. Th e relation between two word s in a text is ethical, but at the same time , in order for it to be so, in order that the word be revealed as name, the third element - the reader - is needed. Th e ethica l in the text pre supposes from the very beginning the existence of the thir d e lemen t, where mean ings are foc use d, whic h ca n rea lize the potential of the plurality of meanings. Eve n when there are num erous readers, eac h of them is a foc us of several lines of meanin g-m aking. Th e reader is not the sum tota l, not the un ion of plura lity, but the foc us where lines of meaningmaking (ethica l relation s bet ween the reader and words, and amo ng words) are foc use d witho ut mi xing or un it ing. Thi s ph en om en on of foc usi ng is aes theti c expe rience . Th e aes thetic element is the sensation of plurality of meanings se para ted from one ano the r by dist ance. Th e aes the tic is their foc us, where the ethical relation betw een them is not ca nce lled. Th e aes thetic is the sensa tion of the plur alit y of ethica l relat ion s. Thu s, the aestheti c is revel ati on in ac tio n, the reve la tio n that has been reali zed in th e mind of th e wit ness of reve latio n, w hi le th e e thic a l is revelation in its essence. The ae sthe tic is the rep resent ati on of reve latio n in

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the personal feeling of subjectivity. In the aesthetic, we do not "see" revelation but are witnesses to it. In our feeling, i.e., in the aesthetic, revelation is witnessing. The aesthetic is the result of the interference of different senses, emotions and interpretations in one personality. It is not an unmediated encounter with meaning (as ethical) but its perception by the senses, its knowledge; the aesthetic is the evidence of meaning. During the interference, dark spots are created in the midst of rays of light, in the place where rays intersect. These spots are the unknown, the hidden, the mysterious. The interference (of the "rays" of meaning) appears as the play of the revealed and the hidden, of the visible and the invisible , of the enlightened and the dark; this play is aesthetic . In other words, the aesthetic is erotic, in Levinas' terms . The theory according to which ethics, being the mechanism of mythopoiesis, is prior to aesthetics in the text, lays the foundation for a method of the study of mythopoiesis, in the center of which is personality and the process of its textual becoming. In other words, this is the theory of transcendental-aesthetical personalism. The description of the ethical-aesthetical process in terms of mythopoiesis allows us to reexamine and solve a few methodological issues in the study of literature, e.g., the ethical-aesthetic basis of the method of thematology. The anchoring of a theme in a literary work may be described in terms of mythopoiesis. In this case, the themes receive a personalist status and join the ethical dialogue in the work (e.g., dialogue between different traditions, themes or manifestations of one theme). One could then appreciate the aesthetic value of this combination through appreciating the extent of the ethical success of the dialogue. From this point of view, the actualization of an ancient story in the text will be perceived as a creation of a dialogue between this story as a persona and other personae around it, mostly between it and the personality of the reader. Another example is the study of bi-national literatures, such as Russian Jewish literature. One of the problems in the study of bi-national works is the question of whether they are part of only one of the national literatures. This problem is the source of a heated controversy among scholars. It seems clear, however, that the historiographical definition of a work of art, the determining of its place in a certain national literature, can be made only after an ethical-aesthetical analysis of this work, and not a priori according to the nationality, language or citizenship of its author. Let us see, e.g., how Shimon Markish defines Russian Jewish literature. According to him, this is a literature written by Jews for Jews and connected to Jewish themes. In my opinion, this definition is unacceptable. I suggest the following condition as the main criterion for determining whether a literary work belongs to Russian Jewish

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literature: in this literature, a real dialogue with Jewish culture must take place. Real dialogue is possible only on co ndition that all its partic ipants receive personal status, that they are all equal players in the same game, and that the rules of the ga me are com mo n for eve rybody. Th is is poss ible on ly in the absence of a utilitarian relationship between the parties. If the given work meets the above condition , then we can speak of a Russian Jewish literary work. According to our co nce ption, the followi ng defin ition ca n be acce pted: Russian Jewish literatu re is co nstituted by real ethical dialogue with Jewish culture and co mes into being as a play of linguistic practices - Jewish as well as non-Jewish - eac h having its own rules that prevent utilitarian relations between different practices. It is literature that co mes into being as the ethics of the relation bet ween Jud aism and what is outside it. Thi s play is possible only if every side is revealed as a personality realized in ethica l relati on with others, if this play is realized as mythopoiesis. Onl y after the mech anism of myth opoi esis, based on ethical relations betwe en two cultures, is revealed in a work of art, can we define this work as bi-n ation al, or, in the case we have menti oned , Russian Jewi sh . It is a work where the dialogue with Jewi sh culture constitutes the text (not necessarily them atically), i.e., the text would not ex ist without it; it is its reaso n and purp ose. Thi s dialog ue as pla y of lin gui st ic practi ces is the pr imary object of the study of Russi an Jewish literature. For instance, in Isaak Babel' s story "Old Shloirno," the practice of transgression beyond the last limit while makin g a sacr ifice is translated into the prac tice of the Passover sacrifice. Or, as in Osip Mand elstam's poem s wr itte n in 1910-1 912 (c lose to his co nversio n to Christ iani ty) , the pl ay between Judaism and Christ ianity is shaped in various for ms: the play of shapes - the triangle as a cathedra l dome and the star of David as two domes (one reg ular and one upside dow n) - the play bet ween hearing and sig ht, music and plasticity, word and stone. Let us examine a final exa mple - a reco nstruct ion of the eleme nts of a specific culture in the fra mework of a literary wor k belonging to anot he r culture, such as med ieval eleme nts in the wor ks of Dostoevsky, Joyce or Ag non. Th e agg rega te of the phen om en a related to the anc hori ng of one culture in the framewo rk of another is discussed at length in the semio logy of culture. In most cases , semiology deals with a representative of a culture - the text - and with different forms of relation betwe en one text and another, such as quot ations , intercultural intertextual ity or variou s mani festations of "alien spee ch." In the fram ework o f literary res ea rc h, sem iology di stingui shes different functions of this relatio n in the poetic al, aes thetica l, ideo logical etc. function of the given literar y text or of a whole range of works unified by

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some principle (the same author, epoch, stream, genre, etc .). Literary semiology is often based on the assumptions of dialogic philosophy, e.g., the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. But it is important to note that another assumption, always more or less consciously present in the studies of this kind, is the utilitarian assumption : the text is perceived (explicitly or implicitly) as making use of other texts for poetic or ideological purposes . In other words, in this conception, a certain inequality is presupposed between the given text and other texts which are in relation with it: other texts are tools or objects (of imitation, quotation, allusion, stylization) for the text under discussion. I argue that this assumption completely contradicts the dialogic-ethical assumption , since ethical dialogue does not admit the possibility of a utilitarian relationship between the two sides . Dialogue is possible only between two personalities . In dialogue, the "other" (alien, outsider) is not an abstract notion, but is transcendence manifested in a concrete living personality, who turns to me with a question, requiring a reply and an ethical relation. Dialogue is the opposite of objectivization and of instrumentalization . In the approach we are criticizing , in contrast, the two sides have different functions , distributed in the following way: the text under study is perceived as a creative process, while other texts, which function within it, are tools whose action is dependent on the creativity of the principal text - the framework text. It is clear, therefore, that in this situation one cannot speak of a dialogue between different texts, i.e., between different cultures, within one text. One must add that in the utilitarian conception of the "l-Other" relation, the "I" or what is "mine" is perceived as existing prior to the relation with the "other," or "alien." In this way, I suppose, the principle of dialogue cannot be applied fully or consistently enough. As Levinas emphasized many time s, subjectivity itself always exists as a relation with another. In other words, the "I-Other" relation is at the basis of what is "mine." The ethical relationship is, therefore, the most basic mechani sm of meaning-making, and it is prior to all other mechanisms, such as intertextuality, the poetics of sources and so on. Thus, as a result of the above criticism, I would like to formulate three principles of our approach. a) Personalism : The participants in the dialogue of cultures in a text are not the abstract I and Other, not the indefinite "mine" and " alien," but a concrete unique personality revealing the concrete, living and happening once only in history . b) Creativism : Each side in the dialogue of cultures is revealed as a creative personality; the relation between them is not a utilitarian relation ship. The

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proc ess of creation takes place not only on the side of the framework text but also to the same extent on the side of the other texts, revealed throu gh the prima ry text. The dialogue of cultures in the framework of one text is then possible only when at least two cultures are created in one text; they are creative and active in the same degree, with no one -directional , utilitari an relation between them . In this dialogue, all culture s create actual, and not archa ic, contexts, corre sponding to the internal (as with the poetic) and external (as with the social-di scursive) relations of the given text. c) Apriori ethical dialogism: Relation with the other as a personality is the most basic form of the subjectivity present in literary work; it is the basic and primar y mechani sm of meaning-making in the literary dialogue of cultures. This mechanism is activated at the time of reading , and as a result, every textual creature become s a personality telling the story of its becoming a miracle - the realization of its transcendental purpo se in empirical history. Thus, reading is realized as mythopoe sis, and ethic s is realized as aesthetics.

Bar-Ilan University Safed Regional College, Israel N OTES 1 Paul Ricoeu r, The Conflict of Interpretations. trans. I. Scrgecva (Moscow: " Medium," 1995), p.102. 2 Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (Ba ltimore: John s Hopkin s UP, 1980), pp. 107-108. ) Alckse i Losev, " Dialektika mira," in Filosofiia. Mifologiia. Kultura (Mosc ow: Izdatelstv o politichcskoy literatury, 1991), pp. 21-1 86. 4 Ibid., p. 169. 5 Ibid., p. 162. 6 Ibid., p. 166. 7 Emmanuel Lev inas , Totali ty and Infinity , trans . Alphonso Lin gis (The Hague, Boston , London : Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), pp. 197-204. 8 Losev, " Dialektika rni fa," op . cit., p. 168. 9 Ibid., p. 166. 10 lbid., p. 170. II Aleksei Losev, lstoriia antichnoy estetiki. Itogi tysiac heletnego ra zviti ia. Vol. 2 (Moscow : Iskusstvo, 1994), pp. 375-376. 12 See : Alekse i Losev, "Fi losofi ia irneni," in Bytie. lmia . Kosmo s (Moscow : Mysl, 1993), pp. 732-764 . I) Ibid., p. 734. 14 Aleksei Losev, " Istoriia cstctic heskikh uchen iy," in Forma. Sti!. Vyrazhenie (Mosco w: Mysl, 1995), pp. 32 1-404. 15 Emma nuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse, trans. Gary D. Mole (London : The Athlone Press, 1994) , p. 129.

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Ibid., p. 133. Ibid ., p. 144. 18 Ibid ., p. 133. Compare "the philosoph y of deed" of Mikh ail Bakht in, accordi ng to which the uniqu eness of man is reali zed in his deed s, and the function of a co ncrete man in his deeds and his responsibility, for it cannot be replace d. See Mikhail Bakhtin, K filosofii postupka (Mosco w: Nauk a, 1986) . 19 Emmanuel Levinas, Outside the Subj ect, tran s. Michael B. Smith (St anford , Ca liforn ia : Stanford UP, 1994), pp. 56-58. 20 Levin as, Beyond the Verse, p. 142. 21 Ibid., p. 125. 22 Ibid.. p. 146. 23 Ibid., p. 148 24 Ibid ., p. 145. Co mpare Jacqu es Waardenburg's opinio n that what is told in myth is, on the one hand, at an infinit e distance fro m the give n, regul ar, reali ty but is, on the other hand, relevant to this reality (Jac ques Waard enburg, " Symbolic Aspec ts of Myth ," in Myth, Symbol, and Reality, ed . Alan M. Olson [Notre Dam e & Lond on : U of No tre Dame P, 1980], p. 55 ). 25 Levin as, Beyond the Verse, op. cit., pp. 148-149. 26 Levin as, Totality and Infinity, op . cit., pp. 206- 207 . 27 Levinas. Beyond the Verse, op. cit., p. 138. 28 Ibid. , p. 171. 29 Ibid., p. 134 . 30 Ibid ., pp. 110-1 11. 31 Ibid., p. 12 1. 16

17

32

Ibid .. p. 171.

Ibid ., p. 179. Levin as, Totality and Infinity, op . c it., p. 293. 35 Co mpa re Northrop Frye , whose opinio n is opposed to thi s: " Patterns of im ager y . . . or fragment s of significance, are oracular in origin, and derive from the epiphanic moment , the flash of ins tanta neo us comprehe ns io n with no d irec t reference to tim e .i:" (Northro p Frye , "T he Arch etyp es of Literatu re," in Literary Criticism and Myth , ed . Robert A . Segal [New York and London: Garland Publi shin g, Inc ., 1996] , p. III). 36 Levina s, Beyond the Verse, op. cit ., pp . 122-1 23 . 37 Ibid ., p. 137. 38 Levin as, Totality and lnfinity, op. c it., p. 293. 39 Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God. Creative Mythology, trans. M. O. Chernova (Mo sco w: ADE "Zolotoy vek,' 1997 ), p. 42 . 40 lbi d., pp. 43-44. 33 34

41

Ibi d.. p. 46 .

Haza rd Adam s, Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic (Talla hassee: UP of Flo rida , 1983), pp . 326-329. 43 Mikhail Bakhtin defin es thi s coalescen ce by the term " soci al eva lua tion" ; see : Mikhail Bakhtin (P. N. Medv ed ev ), "Fo rrnalny i met od v literaturoved enii ,' Tetralogiia (Mos cow: Labirint, 199 8) , p. 238 . Th e soc ia l-d ialogica l mechani sm of meanin g-making is que st ioned neith er by Bakhtin, nor by us; however, in my opinion, the term "social evaluat ion" doe s not so lve the probl em of the "external-internal" co nnec tion in the literary text, because it does not describ e in a sufficiently com plex way the co nnec tion between the reader and the text. 42

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See: Kurt HUbner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos , trans . 1. Kasavin (Moscow : Respublika, 1966). See especially Chapter 3, 'The History of Myth Interpretation." 45 Levinas, Beyond the Verse (Munich: Beck , 1985); see, for example, op. cit. ; p. 139. 46 HUbner, Die Wahrheit des Mythos , op. cit., pp. 264-265 . 47 Lawrenc e J. Hatab , Myth and Philosophy (Illinoi s: Open Court , 1990), p. 293 . 44

SECTION IV THE INVISIBLE IN TRACE AND MEMORY

M ElLI STEE L E

RECOG NIZI NG I N VISIBILITY, REVISI NG MEMORY

Ralph Ellison 's novel/llvisibl e M all offers a magnific ent literary reworking of the dialectics of recogn ition that has fasc inated phil osoph ers since Hegel. Elli son 's novel tran sforms the tradition of the slave narr ative by draw ing on write rs and arti st s in Eu rop ean traditi on s - Do stoevsk y, Dant e, Marx , Malrau x - as well as in Africa n-American traditi ons - Wri ght , Armstrong to ask for more than Freder ick Douglass' demand for form al equality. Th e recognition Ellison asks for ca nnot be granted by form al procedures or by indi vidual goodwill , but o nly by reexamining th e cultural and hi storical inheritance that mak es up the medium of public debate in democrac y, an inheritance full of achievement and damage. Moreover, such recognition will involve not only changing our understanding of hi stori cal facts, but also learning to reason historically through culture. Th e purpose of my paper will be to explore how Elli son help s us reason throu gh c ulture, hi story, and differenc e rather than ag ainst them, as do Kanti an procedurali sts, such as Haberrna s, and postm oderni st ce lebrators of differenc e per se . My pap er falls into three part s. In the first part , I briefl y sketch the issues at stake in Elli son 's text. In the second, I brin g out the originality of Elli son ' s formulatio n by show ing how Paul Ricoeur's well-known phenom enology of narrative fail s to account for the dyn ami cs of Elli son 's test. In the thi rd, I develop an alterna tive narr ative phil osoph y by bringing the work of Charles Taylor to bear on the Ellisoni an issues highl ighted in the first sectio n. I NA R RAT IVE, C U LT U RE AND P R AC TI C AL R E AS O N : T HE STA KES OF EL LISON IA N R E C OG NITI O N

Th e Prol ogue of the novel announces the depth and breath of the issues at stake in the story that follows. In the opening pages, the narr ator recounts the tale of a fight with a whit e man on the street who does not recognize him : "Something in this man 's thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life " (1M, 5) . Thi s fight , which clearly evok es the account of Douglass's fight with the "s lave-breaker" Covey, also echoes Hegel' s account of master and slave. I will quote from Dou glas s' s texts on this episode ju st to es tablish the filiat ion: "I now resolv ed that how ever long I might remain a slave in form , the da y has passed forever when I could be in a slave in fact. I

235 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.). Analect a Husserliana LXXV, 235-252 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Prillted ill the Netherlands .

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did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me" (Narrative 95) .2 Unlike Douglass's Narrative, in which the reader is urged to identify with the protagonist, this drama of recognition is played out between text and reader and not just within the world of the text. Ellison's story does not ask us to see how much we share with him. Instead, he wants a new kind of recognition that calls into que stion the identities of the recognizers and the shape of the public world . The narrator tells us that we will misrecognize him just as the characters in the novel do, unless we are prepared to interrogate ourselves, to examine our inherited languages and histories, that are blinding us even as they enable us. (Ellison thematizes the role of the public imagination by having the fight misr eported in the newspaper [1M, 5] . The taunting perplexing style of the Prologue, which is filled with literary and cultural allusions, reminds the reader that he/she will need to undergo an apprenticeship of recognition and risk losing the narrative pre-understandings through which she lives. Thus, Ellison 's narrative is an argument not just with his past selves and the reader, but also with the past traditions, such as Richard Wright's naturalism and Hemingway's modernism. As Ellison says, "All novels of a given historical moment form an argument over the nature of reality and are, to some extent, criticism of each other" (SA, 117). "Reality" here refers to the public social imaginary through which communities live, the shared but contested terrain of history and fiction. The Prologue, therefore, make s readers aware of the act of writing and remembrance, the site from which the hero 's life is interpreted and not just transcribed. Like Hegel's Phenomenology, the novel is the quest for the site from which to tell the story. The experienced narrator of the Prologue - the self who has already completed the journey that we are about to read - tells us that he himself did not understand his invisibility until recently. The focus of the rest of the narrative is on the tension between the narrating self of the present and the experiencing selves of the past , as the protagonist reason s historically and revises his self-understandings. To develop the philosophical importance of these dimensions of Ellison 's text, I will contrast Ricoeur's and Taylor's phenomenologies of narrative.' RICO EUR

I start with the idea of tradition because one of the fundamental differences between Taylor and Ricoeur is the difference between the methodological individualism of the Husserlian tradition and the methodological holism of the Hegelian tradition . Ricoeur wants to dismiss rather than retrieve Hegel. This is true not only of the chapter devoted to Hegel in Time and Narrative, Volume 3,

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where the question is whether to renounce Hegel (yes), but also in the revealing essay "Hegel and Husserl on Intersubjectivity," in From Text to Action. Ricoeur objects to all holistic conceptions, which include not only Hegel's Geist but also the finite , Gad ame rian version of this Hegeli an idea, tradition : "The decisive advantage of Husserl over Hegel appears to me to lie in his uncompromising refusal to hypostatize collective entities and his tenacious will to reduce them in every instance to a network of interactions" (TA, 244). To avoid such hypostatization, we must rely on "the analogy of the ego [as] the transcendental principle of all intersubjective relations " (TA, 245).4 In Time and Na rrat ive, Ricoeur control s his use of holistic hermeneutic concepts through an underlying Kantianism, as we can see in the idea of triple mimesis, which is at the heart of this work . Mimesis I addresses the pre-understandings of "the world of action , its mean ingful structures, its symbolic resources, and its temporal character" (MI) (TN, 1,54). Mime sis 2 examines the emplotment, which medi ates pre-understandings and readings (M2), and the reading , while Mime sis 3 is the reading , "the intersection of the world of the text and the world of the hearer or reader" (M3) (TN , 1,71). The reader's respon se to the text (M3) folds back into M I as part of the new preunderstandings in the lifeworld and thus completes the hermeneutic circle . By isolating the se three moments, Ricoeur freezes the historical and dialogical character of language and literature . M I provides the conditions of possibility of M2, but these conditions are not characterized as conflicting historical arguments but rather as a mere familiarity with structural elements. Emplotment is not an interpretive act through which the subject dialogues with traditions, as it is in Ellison and Taylor. Instead, Ricoeur develops his conception of the novel as emplotment by drawing on Aristotle 's Poetics and on Kant' s Critique of Judgm ent: " I cannot overemphasize the kin ship between this 'grasping together' power to the configurational act and what Kant say s about the operation of judging" (TN , I, 66-68) . Emplotment "extracts configuration from a succession" in the same way that reflective judgment "reflects upon the work of thinking at work in the aesthetic judgment of taste and the teleological judgment applied to organic wholes" (TN, 66). In a stroke, Ricoeur has reduced the author's engagement with the worth and truth of the languages of tradition to a formal aesthetici sm.' Thu s, when he says that emplotment is the "synthesis of the heterogeneous" - that is, "the diver se mediations performed by the plot: between the manifold of events and the temporal unity of the story recounted between the disparate components of the action" (On eself : 141) - the substantive philosophical issue s that narratives engage becom e a merely reflexive ordering. Even when an "aesthetic" novelist, such as Henry Jame s or Marcel Prou st, emplots, he is

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not ju st ordering the heterogen eou s in a form , but he is arguing with the narrow epistemological and moral ontology of the realistic novel, which we find in the works of Flaubert or the Goncourt s. Ricoeur tries to contain these questions by reducing the novel to narrative and ignoring the philosoph ical com me ntary offered by narrators - e .g., Balzac, Proust, and Ellison - abo ut how to understand their narratives and world s. However, even whe n the texts in question avoid such com mentary as we see in the cases of Flaubert and James menti oned above - such texts nonetheless take implicit stands on a host of philosoph ical issues through the present ation of language, plot, and charac ter. Ricoeur wants to keep novelists out of the argument business, limiting them only to emplotmen t: "Poets .. . crea te plots that are held together by causal skeletons. But these . . . are not the subject of a process of arg ume ntation. Poet s restric t the mse lves to produ cin g the story and exp laining by narr atin g" (TN, I , 186). Ricoeur's supports this idea by separating the formal dim ension of tradition, "traditionality," from the material (the co ntent of tradit ions), and the "a pology for tradition" (TN, 3, 22 1ff), and these latter make no appeara nce in Mim esis 2. By turning narrative into a merely formal question, Ricoeur abstracts generic literary issues from the historical dialogue in whic h they were formed and ma kes the m mere sche ma tic possibil ities in a Kanti an sense . As Kanti an sche matism co nnec ts the understand ing and intuitio n, so emplotme nt "e nge nders a mixed intelligi bility between what has been ca lled the point , theme, or thought of a story, and the intuitive presentation of circumstances, charac ters, episodes , and changes of fortu ne that make up the denouemen t" (TN , I, 68). Ricoeur historicizes schematization by making it proceed "from the sedimentation of a practice with a specific history .. . ca lled 'traditionality' ." Th is idea enables him to speak not of a co nflict ual histor ical, dialogical tradition, but rather of a "se lf-structuring tradition [that] is neither historical nor ahistor ica l but rather ' tran shistorical,' in the sense that it runs thro ugh this history in a cumulative rather than an additive manner" (TN, 2, 14). This transhistorical for malism emerges in his ado ption of Northrup Frye's theory of genre - myth, roma nce, etc , - in The Anatomy of Criticism . Thu s, Ricoeur subordina tes co nflic tual historical di alogue to tran shi st ori cal "narrative schematization" (TN, 2, 15). Since literature's form al developm ent is divorced from its substantive issues, tradition becomes a panoply of formal possibil iti es that are stripped of the ir ethica l, political , a nd ax io log ical importance. Ric oeur also excl udes dialogue from his conception of historic al cha nge by employi ng the Husserl ian vocabulary of "sedi me ntatio n" and "innovation." In this the subject's arguments with historical inheritance are

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given no place: "This schemati sm, in turn , is constituted within a history that has the characteristics of a tradition ,. . A tradition is constituted by the interplay of innovation and sedimentation. To sedimentation must be referred the paradigms that constitute the typology of ernplotrnent" (TN, 1.68). Traditions are not "cumulative" sediment unless the subject's historicity is put out of play in favor of a diseng aged transcendental imagination. Ellison 's text is not simply an "innovation," but an argument with Richard Wright 's understanding of philosophical anthropology, of democracy, and of the resources of African-American traditions and their relationships to canonical texts of American and European culture. Ellison's point is not to add to our "narrative schernas," but to repudiate debilitating self-understandings and advance an idea of democratic interpretation. Thus, Ricoeur's discussion of the novel in Time and Narrativ e and Oneself as Another is remarkably ahistorical. Despite the fact that the rise of the novel is embedded in issues of modernity itself, such as individualism, liberty, and language, issues that receive in-depth treatment not just in Invisible Man but in Taylor's Hegel and Sources of the Self. Ricoeur ignore s all these issues in his discussions of literature. Novels are examples of how the aporias of cosmic and experienced time are mediated by plot, or they are "thought experiments" in the Husserlian mold of imaginative variation: "Literature proves to consist in a vast laboratory for thought experiments in which the source s of variation encompassed by narrative identity are put to the test of narration" (Oneself, 148). This leveling transcendental eye stands far above and apart from the self-understand ings of writer s and readers .? These issues are not specific to Ellison. For example, we must ask how we can separate out the formal features of Kate Chopin's Awakening - her use of chapters, summaries, narrative voice , etc . - without understanding how her formal critique of the Bildungsroman is tied to issues of feminism and subjectivity, to women's oppression in cultural plots and language - that is, to questions of "material" and "legitimacy" - and to the conflicts of traditions. Because Ricoeur follows Kant in considering a narrative text as an isolated aesthetic object, in his discussion of reception, Mimesis 3 (TN, 3, Chapter 7), Iser 's and Ingarden 's phenomenologies of the textual object take center stage, and they are presented as if they were merely complementing rather than truncating a dialogical hermeneutics of tradition (Jauss) . Ricoeur wants to preserve the "ideality of meaning," what he call s Hus ser! 's "Togicist' rejoinder" to historicism (IT, 90) : "The text - objectified and dehistoricized becomes the nece ssary medi at ion between writer and reader" (TI , 91) . " Hermeneutics begins where dialogue ends" (IT, 32). This is far from

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Ellison/Taylor's conception of interpretation, which is closer to Gadamer's, in which the being of the text is not set over against us, but rather calls and speaks to us because its language is imbricated with our own textual flesh. Reducing narrative to poetics in M2 is crucial to his appropriation of structuralism. Working at a deeper level than schematism, structuralism searches for ahistorical "structures whose manifestation would be concrete narrative configurations on the surface of narrative " (TN, 2, 29), or it "can focus on the isolated aesthetic object in order to reconstruct the internal dynamic of the text" (IT, 18).7 Ricoeur is comfortable with structuralism precisely because its conception of language as a homogeneous system offers a version of the linguistic turn that can be made to fit with a Husserlian notion of the ideality of meaning. From Taylor's perspective, on the other hand, structuralism is a deformation of our being in language, not an explanatory system that can accompany phenomenology. Structuralism/semiotics deploys a speculative system, which ignores the sociolinguistic variety of languages in the name of a homogenizing and dehistoricizing "langue," as Mary Louise Pratt and others have shown." The reductiveness of structuralist poetic s can be seen in the narratological distinction between histoire (content of the story) and recit (specific narrative realization of this content), for this opposition eliminates the way in which ideas and languages are articulated through narrative in order to make content-unshaped material." Ricouer presents "traditionality" as if it were our only recourse between "the contingency of a mere history of genres , or types . . . an eventual logic of possible narratives that escape history [i.e. structuralism]" (TN, 2, 14-15). But our choices are not between contingency and structuralist, atemporal reason . Instead , literature moves beyond mere empirical history by participating in practical reason's deliberations about the adequacy of historical self-understandings. By reducing the dynamics of narrative to sedimentation and innovation, Ricoeur omits a conception narrative as argument from one self-understanding to another, shifts that Taylor calls "transitional arguments." What underwrites the differences between Ricoeur and Taylor on narrative is their competing understanding of the phenomenology of everyday experience. Ricoeur does not place the subject in language and narratives, so that inchoate narratives are already in Mimesis I - a point that has been debated by David Carr and David Pellauer.'? To be sure , Ricoeur acknowledges that history and fiction "are preceded by the use of narrative in daily life" (TN, II, 156). However, by never developing the constitutive role of narrative in daily experience, as a phenomenology of emplotment, he misses the dynamic hermeneutical character of the ever-shifting, often

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inchoate narratives in what Taylor will call "comparative, transitional arguments" with ourselves and others, by which we place ourselves in "moral space" (Sources of the Self, Chapter 2). Hence, for Ricoeur, when an author emplots (M I to M2), we learn only that he/she simply draws on this preunderstanding rather than dialoguing with or against the languages of the predecessors. The focus for M2 is the merely formal properties of the textual object, not the content. Thus, while Taylor appropriates Heidegger's understanding of the linguistic turn, Ricoeur explicitly repudiates it. In "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics," he affirms the "phenomenological presuppositions of hermeneutics" in order to keep a space for experience and reflection free from language. The key is to "subordinat]e1 Sprachlichkeit to the experience that comes to language" (TA, 41--42) . Ricoeur associates the Sprachlichkeit thesis with a narrow hermeneutic circle, the well-known "short route of the analytic of Dasein" To this he opposes "the long route which begins by analyses of language" (CI, II) - i.e., linguistics. This view of language and semantics combines with phenomenology to contain ontological hermeneutics, for "it assures the implantation of hermeneutics in phenomenology at the level at which the latter is most sure of itself, that is at the level of the theory of meaning" (CI, 15, my emphasis).'1 As we will see, the dangers of the "short route" are overcome not just by going to the explanations of linguistics and the social sciences, but also by enriching our conception of practical reason with the resources of literature. Because Taylor gives language and narrative a constitutive dimension in the phenomenology of existence, he can establish continuity among literature, history, and philosophy, as we will see . Not only does Ricoeur's formalism drive out the historical shapes of the self; it also blocks a dialogical conception of narrative. Ricoeur acknowledges the threat of such a conception to his idea of emplotment when he considers the modern novel and the modern subject: "By sliding from the mimesis of action to the mimesis of characters, then to that of their thoughts, feelings, and language, and by crossing that final threshold, that from monologue to dialogue, on the plane of the narrator's as much as the characters' discourse, have we not surreptitiously substituted for emplotment a radically different structuring principle, which is dialogue itself?" (TN, 2, 96-97). However, dialogism is not only a feature of the modern novel, but also a problematic for understanding our being in language. Emplotment itself is dialogical for the novelist, as it is for the selves of everyday life. Emplotting is not just configuring a manifold, but also engaging the languages of literary traditions and society. Dialogism moves us from an understanding of mimesis as the

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imitation of action to an understanding of language as the medium of subject and object. Hence, literature, for Bakhtin (and Taylor) is a mode of reflection that "reveals not only the reality of a given language but also, as it were, it potential, its ideal limits and its total meaning conceived as a whole, its truth together with its limitations."? Dialogism is not just about multiple voices, but about the multiplicity of languages, as Bakhtin shows in The Dialogic Imagination. (Parodies of public discourse are perhaps the most obvious example.) Ricoeur's presentation would definitely have been quite different if he had started with Bakhtin's definition of the novel as "a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and diversity of individual voices, artistically organized" (Dialogic Imagination, 262), rather than with Augustine on lived time, and Aristotle and Kant on plot. TAYLOR

Taylor also makes narrative central to his view of interpretation and practical reason. However, narrative is not isolated into Kantian aesthetic judgments, but instead is woven into Taylor's reworking of Hegel. Taylor begins with the idea of objective Spirit, which Ricoeur repudiates, in order to capture these common meanings of a particular society or culture : "The meanings and norms implicit in these practices are not just in the minds of the actors but are out there in the practices themselves, practices which cannot be conceived as a set of individual actions, but which are essentially modes of social relation, of mutual action... . These must be the common property of the society before there can be any question of anyone entering a negotiation or not" (Interpretation, 36).1 3 Thus, one begins reasoning by a metaphilosophical historical account of the very terms that constitute the frame of debate, by trying to thematize and assess the historical institutions, so as "to spell out what is it that we presuppose when we make a judgment that a certain form of life is worthwhile, or place our dignity in a certain achievement" (Sources, 26). For Taylor, this means coming to terms with the achievements and degradations of modernity, particularly the disengaged notions of morality and epistemology, which have worked together in a pincer movement to reduce the space of interpretation. Taylor's concern is with the historical emergence of the modern, and to "define modern identity" requires "describing its genesis" (Sources, x). He proceeds to do a historical excavation, "to transfer what has sunk to the level of an organizing principle for present practices and hence beyond examination into a view for which there can be reasons either for or against" (PIH, 28) . This means reasoning about the history of how we came to be who we are today in order to display and assess the transitions from one

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self of common meanings to another. Such a project is interpretive, not reconstructive or causal, because the self-understandings and changes of the past cannot just be described and explained, but evaluated. 14 Such evaluations can take various forms, from "escaping from given social forms" - we could call this the Foucauldian response - to the recovery of lost practices - we could call this the Gadamerian dimension (PIH, 39) . His point in retelling the story of modernity in Sources of the Selfis to show how historical consciousness is concerned with articulatory critique and retrieval in relationship to our predecessors, but not as in a Hegelian Errinerung ; in which remembrance is internalized. However, Taylor's conception of interpretive being goes beyond the externality of shared communal practices to include the reflective, subjective side of "strong evaluations." Strong evaluations "aren't just more desirable; they command our awe , respect, admiration" (Sources, 19). He is reworking Hegel's attempt to have desire be mediated by culture and reason so that one's self-understanding is not a mere wish or ordering, but a reflective achievement. "Whereas for the simple weigher what is at stake is the desirability of different consummations, those defined by his de facto desires, for the strong evaluation reflection also examines the different possible modes of being of the agent" (Human Agency, 25) . He thus places his philosophy in the "constitutive expressive" (PA, 101) tradition of language that he sees running from Herder to Heidegger, which Ricouer reject s. Since language is a historical medium : "O ur self-interpretations are partly constitutive of our experience," which means that "certain modes of experience are not possible without certain self-descriptions" (Human Agency, 37). Taylor's phenomenology breaks with the Husserlian ideality and objectivity of meaning attained by the transcendental subject, for Taylorian interpretations, unlike phenomenological descriptions, cannot be disarticulated from the historical and moral questions of who we are: "Articulations are not simply descriptions , if we mean by this a characterization of a fully independent object. ... To give a certain articulation is to shape our sense of what we desire or hold important in a certain way" (Human Agency, 36) . In this way, Taylor abandons the Husserlian concern with the purification of consciousness for language's constitutive dimension in "the moral ontology which articulates these intuitions" (Sources, 8), an articulation that is made in dialogue with and against other moral languages and narratives of the past and the present." The task of reason is not to perform a reduction on what is given to consciousness, to formulate rules that can swing free of life forms or to generate a sociological explanation, but "to articulate a framework, to try to spell out what it is that we presuppose when

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we make a judgment that a certain form of life is truly worthwhile, or place our dignity in a certain achievement" (Sources, 26) . Taylor is not just proposing a redescription, but making his characterization part of a transcendental argument. Such arguments lend themselves to his project because they "start from some feature of our experience they claim to be indubitable and beyond cavil. They then move to a stronger conclusion, concerning the nature of the subject or the subject's position in the world. They make this move by regressive arguments, to the effect that the stronger conviction must be so if the indubitable fact about experience is possible" (PA, 20) . The transcendental argument he makes for his moral phenomenology is "situated in a historical context" (Le Fondamental, 37) , the context of modernity that thinks of its passage from the premodern idea of the good either as a liberation or a loss . Both sides think it possible "to live without values" (38) .16 He works like a philosopher/novelist who redescribes in order to reopen the questions that philosophy and social science have closed down , not in order to persuade us about particular understandings, but in order to leverage a new conception of the phenomenology of daily existence that will deliver us from our inherited blinders and change our way of reasoning. The common perception of Taylor as a "communitarian" is mistaken. He is not advocating community, but articulating the ontological commitments of historical, linguistic beings. The effect of this ontology is not to close down the space of argument by rooting reason in tradition, but to open the space of reason by giving language and culture a place . Unlike Ricoeur, who is broadly sympathetic to the neo-Kantian moral/political projects of Rawls and Habermas as well as the Third Critique view of narrative, Taylor seeks to deliver us from Kant's moral and aesthetic philosophy. Kantians misread our moral experience by separating the right from the good, for the good "gives the point of the rules which define the right" (Sources, 89) . To understand and defend a vision of the good , we must rely on "a certain reading of its genesis" (Sources, 73), and its historical reworkings. We cannot rely on a disengaged Kantian moral reasoning that waits for history to bring us to the moral truth we have already deduced nor on a disengaged epistemology that objectifies the meanings of the Iifeworld.!? Modernity's moral and epistemological projects hide from view, rather than the matizing and making vulnerable an individual or collective subject's historical baggage to hislher interlocutors. Taylor breaks with Hegel's idea of memory as interiorization, in which the past is absorbed into Spirit in a way that leaves no room for disagreement, for peeling off layers of the past, or for examining historical damage. If for Hegel, "the wounds of the Spirit heal and leave no scars behind,"!" for Taylor, reasoning means digging into the wounds

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and the damaged languages that underwrite current practices and listening to the challenges of others against whom we have defined ourselves. Such a project is particularly urgent in the face of the political critique of culture for its complicity with imperialism and racism, as the work of Edward Said and others point out. What Taylor/Ellison show is that we must witness and work through these pains by assessing the achievements and the damage of cultures, not by retreating into wholesale critique, regulative ideals or idealization.'? Because Taylor understands practical reason in a historical manner, narrative is not a mere formal ordering, but one of the Iynchpins of reason : "Making sense of my present action . . . requires a narrative understanding of my life, a sense of what I have become which can only be given in a story" (Sources , 48) . Narrative is a way of reasoning comparatively: "A reasoning in transitions ... to aims to establish, not that some position is correct absolutely, but rather that some position is superior to some other. It is concerned, covertly or openly, implicitly or explicitly, with comparative propositions" (Sources, 72). Taylor drives home the connection between narrative and practical reason by maintaining that transitional arguments have their "source in biographical narrative," such as Ellison's: "We are convinced that a certain view is superior because we have lived a transition which we understand as error-reducing . . . I see that I was confused about the relation of resentment and love. ... But this doesn 't mean that we don 't or can 't argue .... Arguing here is contesting between interpretations of what I have been living" (Sources, 72). The Invisible Man's narrative revisions as he moves through the novel are precisely these kinds of transitions. The biggest transition, of course, comes at the end of the book when he recognizes himself and reinterprets his life. Unlike Kojeve's and Fukayama's modern Hegelianism, Ellison does not tell a progressive story from the end of history; instead, Invisible Man dramatizes the way in which the reinterpretation of cultures and histories are permanent features of modern individual and collective identity. Because we are always already embedded in language and narrative, the textual flesh of interpretive beings, vindicating an argument means urging someone to revise the languages through which he or she lives : "You will only convince me by changing my reading of moral experience, and in particular my reading of my life story, of the transitions I have lived through - or perhaps refused to live through" (Sources, 73). Narrative is not a matter of "extracting configuration from succession," but a substantive argumentative shape that cannot be broken down into components. If, like Ricoeur, we think that " narr ative identity is the poetic resolution of the

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hermeneutic circle" (TN, 3, 248), we will miss the narrative arguments of Invisible Man and Sources of the Self When Taylor speaks of our historical embeddedness in traditions, he is not merely designating a sedimented background pre-understanding that makes any interpretation possible ; rather, he means that we are inevitably situated in the legacies of our resources and disasters and that the task of reason is to thematize through critique, retrieval, and argument our understanding of the losses and gains for our individual and collective lives. Sources of the Self thus enacts the philosophy that it articulates. Stories and languages compete, make claims on each other; they do not add to our repertory through imaginative variation. At this point, defenders of Ricoeur might point out that Taylor's philosophy has precisely the same dangers of Heidegger's "short route." However, what makes Taylor's and Heideggers's hermeneutical circles so short is not that they ignore the social sciences, but the manner in which they construct their philosophical anthropologies and their metaplots. To challenge these accounts, we need alternative ontologies that reformulate our being in language and history, not a dialectic between philosophical formalism and social scientific research that blocks out ontological issues . These alternative ontologies can include genealogies that read against the grain of traditions, for Taylor's understanding of our being in language permits an exchange with Foucault in a way that Ricoeur's problematic does not. Ricoeur seeks a middle ground between the "exalted subject" [Descartes] and the "humiliated subject" [Nietzsche] (Oneself, 16) through "attestation."?" For Taylor, the question Nietzsche poses is not to the Cogito, which for Taylor is a failed starting point, but to the languages of the tradition. What makes Taylor's position able to engage Nietzsche/Foucault's is that both sides accept a holistic constitutive dimension of our being in language, even if they characterize it differently, rather than starting with a methodological individualism that keeps subject and object apart. Unlike the third-person, explanatory accounts of structuralism that give the rules that produce surface structure, genealogy challenges the surface language on its own turf and urges revision or abandonment of some of these languages. "When Nietzsche wants to launch his out and out attack on morality, he does this by offering an account of the transition to it, the rise of slave morality. ' Genealogy' is the name for this kind of probing. ... Genealogy goes to the heart of the logic of practical reasoning . A hypergood can only be defended through a certain reading of its genesis" (Sources , 72-73). Thus, Taylor can say that Nietzsche's attack on the procedural ethic argument "resembles [his] critique, because [they] both want to show that this modern philosophy has

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moral motives, instead of being uniquely determined by epistemic ones" (Sources, 99). The way in which genealogy and narrative work together is illustrated perfectly by Ellison's text. He does a genealogy of the racial vocabularies he wishes to expose. The failure to live up to "democratic ideals has compelled the white American, figuratively, to force the Negro down into the deeper level of his consciousness, into the inner world, where reason and madness mingle with hope and memory and endlessly give birth to nightmare and to dream."?' Ellison shows how this damage has infected the self-understandings of blacks and whites and woven them together. A politics of recognition as identity politics would only reinforce such damage, while an appeal to existing moral vocabularies would ignore it. As the narrator says, "But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?" (1M, 14). Instead, Ellison's politic s of recognition call for historical critique and retrieval of languages. Unlike Foucauldian genealogies, which do not reveal the narrator, Ellison tells us the story of how he escaped from the disciplinary prisons he critici zes and how he drew on alternative languages. Invisible Man is making a first-order argument for his particular languages and a second-order argument for a way of reasoning historically. Ellison and Taylor's idea of transitional argument runs against the grain of postmodern readings of history, which we find in Richard Rorty-' as well as Foucault. What bothers Taylor in Foucault's understanding of power is not his first-order critique of specific regimes , but the second-order claim that all truth is power, for this levels all transitions through history. Foucault's power thesi s prevents us from being "in a position to affirm that one view was a gain over another, for all connection, transitions are between incommensurables/'P We cannot throw all the interpretations of the past into darkness and then claim to limn the truth that they do not see . We are not ju st correcting the readings of the participants, but also assessing the changes in their self-understandings. Moreover, Taylor's conception of practical reason gives culture a role that requires abandoning the Kantian "subjectivization of aesthcrics,'?" in which literature is split off from history, truth, and morality. This Kantian tradition is continued by Ricoeur's understanding of narrative and his discussions of literature. For Taylor, this Kantian legacy is part of the damage done to reason that he hopes to rectify with his historical understanding of language, literature, and practical reason . Because the phenomenology of everyday life is always already linguistic/literary, it is also speculative and philosophical. 25 Literature is a mode of deliberation about the adequacy of languages, just as philosophy is. Thus, he says at the end of Sources of the Self, "We delude ourselves if we think a philosophical or critical language is somehow more

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hard-edged and more free from personal index than that of poets or novelists" (Sources, 512). Sources of the Self opens the bound ary between philosoph y and literature, for the question of truth is not ju st about imitati on of action hence, the gap between fiction and nonfiction - but on the truth of languages. But this does not mean that argument is abandon ed for disclo sure, but rather that the understandin g of argum ent is expanded to include literary text s. Thu s Taylor differs not only fro m Foucault , but also from Rorty, who collapses the phil osoph y/l iter ature di st inction in orde r to make philosoph y eva po rate . "Whe n phil osoph y has finished showi ng that everything is a soc ial co nstruct, it does not help us dec ide whic h social constructs to retai n and whic h to rep lace" (96). Open ing the boundary between philosophy and literature does not necessaril y lead to Rortyean, Heideggerian or Derrid ean co nclusions, as Ricoeur, like Haberm as, fears. Rath er, we ca n read poets and novel ists as bein g invol ved in an argume nt with tradition s j us t as ph ilosoph ers are . Art/ culture are not objects for aes the tic conte mplation or subjective express ion, but constitutive of much of who we are. Ricoeu r's formal ism never lets these ontolog ical aspects of our being in language appear as problem s of interpreti ve judgment or practical reason. I do not wish to deny the grea t achieve ment of his wor k on narrative, but to expose the costs of his partic ular transcendent al approac h woven from Kant and Hussserl, costs that his genero us and tireless efforts at mediation ofte n hide. Altho ugh few othe r ph ilosopher s have devoted them sel ves to reconciling disputes as Ricoeur has, his marriages are always performed in the co urthouse of Husserlian phenomenology, in whic h langua ge and literatur e make their entrance down the aisles of transcend ent al subje ctivity. Taylor and Elli son show us that we ca n and must reaso n throu gh culture and history rath er than aga inst them because we are histor ical, lingui sti c beings. Moreover, such a conce ption of prac tica l reaso n reminds us that the rules and procedures by which we are acc ustomed to think ca nnot sta nd over agai ns t the histor icity and c ultura l spec ificity of our ac hieveme nts and damage. Taylor and Ellison show us that the debates over history are part of the same probl em as the debates over identit y politics." The recognition that E lliso n as ked fo r almos t fifty yea rs ago was not the dem an d for the recognition of spec ific identities, but the dem and for the recogni tion of an entire problematic, a way of reasonin g democ rati call y through culture, history, and identity. The last line of Invisible Man still speaks not only to us, but for us, "Who knows but that on lower frequencies I speak for you" (568).

Universi ty of South Carolina

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NOTES Ricoeur and Taylor are frequently placed together on the issues o f languag e and narr ative. For instance , Richard Kearn ey says, "Ricoeur's stance on narra tive receives support from a number of co nte mporary quarters - incl uding recent work s by Cha rle s Taylor, Alas da ir Macintyre, and Seyla Benh abib " (" Narrative imagination," 181 ). Ne ither Taylor nor Ricoeur discusses their differences. In Sources of the Self, Taylor foot note s Time and Narrative with out co mme nt. 2 Later in My Bondage. My Freedom, Dou glass desc ri be s his tran sform ati on durin g thi s exc hange wit h Covey: " I was a cha nged bein g after that fight. I was nothin g before; I was a man now . . . I had reached the poin t at which I was not afraid to die. This spirit made me a free man in fact, while I remained a slave in form " (My Bondage, 246-47). For an exc ellent discussion of the relationship of text and reader in African -Am erican tradi tions, see Robert Stepto, " Distrust of the Reader in Afro-Ame rica n Narratives ." Step to remar ks, "While it was Do uglass 's audience's distrust of him that led to the Narrative, it was his increasing distru st of them that prompted My Bondage and My Freedom" (30 I ). 3 In Chap ter 5, "The Subj ect of Dem ocracy in the Wor k of Ralph Elliso n," in my Theorizing Textual Subjects, I develop my reading of Elliso n at greater length . 4 As Merrold Westphal says , Husserl " identifies tradition with prejudice" and "the redu cti on , whi ch ca n now be ca lled a histori cal redu cti on , beco mes the discove ry overthro wn of historical prejud ices, the dism antlin g of sedimented traditi on" (Hegel. Freedom. Modernity, 126). For a good discussion of the contrast between Ricoeur's co ntinuance of the epistemo log ical tradition and Gadarner 's ontolog ica l herm eneu tics, see Gar y Aylesworth's "Dialogue, Text, Nar rative : Co nfro nting Gada mer and Ricoeur," 5 On reflective j udgme nt in narrative, see Rud olph Makkre el, "Representing the Historical World" (The Monist [1991 D, in whic h he distingu ishes between the first Crit ique and the third Crit ique reading of narrative. From the point of view of the first Critique, "historians impose the structure of a story on rather formless lived events," while the latter "a pproach to historical narrative . . . [specifies 1 an already implicit form al order" ( 154-55 ). Ricoeur seems to straddle both sides, since he talks of "schemas" (determinative jud gments), rather than of examples, with reflective judgments. 6 As Hayden Whit e says , " Historical stories and fictional stories resemble one another beca use what ever the difference betw een thei r im mediate contents.. . their ultim ate referent is the same: the struc tures of hum an tim e .. ." . Hen ce, thi s conte nt is alleg or ica l: every grea t h ist or ical nar rat ive is an allegory of temporal it y" (Co ntent of the Form [Ba ltimo re: Joh ns Hopkins University Press, 1987] , 179-1 81 ). 7 It is not that I do not share Ricoeur 's go al of " preser ving the dialogu e between philoso phy and the human sciences" (T I, 19), but that struc turalism is no t the bridge. 8 See Mary Louise Pratt, "Linguistic Utopias," The Linguistics of Writing: Arguments betwee n Language and Literature (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1987). Bakht in is highly critica l of both struc tura lism and subject-ce ntered phenom enology, "Philosophy of langu age, linguistics and stylistics . .. have all postulated a simple and unm ed iated relati on of spea ker to his unit ary and singular language and have postul ated as we ll a simple realization of this language in the monological utteran ce of the individual" (Dialogic Imagination , 269). I discuss the weaknes ses of Bakh tin 's dialogi sm in Critical Confro ntations: Literary Theories in Dialogue (29- 36, 4 1--44). 9 For a discussion of this distinction and its problem s for hermeneu tics, see my "The Dangers of Structuralist Narratology: Ge nette's Misinterpretation of Proust," Romance Notes XXV I (1986): 1- 7. 10 See David Carr 's Time. Narrative, and History ; his "E pisternologie et onto logie du recit,' in Paul Ricoeur: Les metamorph oses de la raison hermeneutique, his review of Time and Narrative,

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Vol. I in History and Theory XXIII (1984) : 357-70. David Pellauer discusses Carr's criticisms of Ricoeur in "Limning the Liminal : Carr and Ricoeur on Time and Narrative," Philosophy Today (1991): 51-62. I am pursuing here a point he mentions at the end of the essay, "Carr, it seems to me, is correct, when he emphasizes the importance of narrative as part of everyday life and activities .... This is an aspect of narrative that Ricoeur has not explored, again for reasons of method , since he confines himself to the formal narrative plane and its two major forms" (61). 11 In "On Interpretation," Ricoeur says that his work "remains within the sphere of Husserlian phenomenology; it strives to be a hermeneutic variation of this phenomenology " (187). 12 Dialogic Imagination , 356. I should add that one does not require Bakhtin's or Taylor's view of language to read literature as part of practical reason . See, for example, Martha Nussbaum's analysis of Dickens's Hard Times as a critique of the language of utilitarianism in Chapter 2 of Poetic Justice (Boston : Beacon Press, 1995). 13 In Hegel, Taylor uses the same phrasing when discussing Hegel's objective spirit: "We can think of the institutions and practices of a society as a kind of language in which its fundamental ideas are expressed . But what is 'said' in this language is not ideas which could be in the minds of certain individuals only, they are rather common to a society, because embedded in its collective life, in practices and institutions .. .. They are, to use Hegel's term, 'objective spirit'" (Hegel, 382). 14 Taylor makes it clear that he is not offering a causal explanation, which would tell "what brought the modem identity about" (Sources , 202). An interpretive account , on the other hand, "involves giving an account of the new identity which makes clear what its appeal was. What drew people to it? Indeed, what draws them today?" (Sources , 203). 15 Taylor is following Heidegger 's replacement of Husserl's transcendental consciousness with Dasein , and Gadamer's critique of Husserl's exclusion of "Thou": "The immanent data of reflectively examined consciousness do not include the 'Thou ' in an immediate and primary way" (Truth and Method , 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall [New York: Continuum, 1994], 250). Taylor also follows Gadamer in rejecting the Husserlian "lifeworld" as an object for phenomenological description rather than a subject of philosophical reflection. 16 Taylor's "Le Fondamental dans l'Histoire" is a response to Ricoeur's "Le Fondamental et l'historique: Notes sur Sources of the Self de Charles Taylor;' in which Ricoeur asks how Taylor reconciles the transcendental argument of this first section with the historical account in the rest of the book. 17 Ricoeur says, "The objectification of meaning is a necessary mediation between the writer and the reader" (HSS, 187). 18 Phenomenology of Spirit , 407 . 19 Said himself retreats from culture in Kantian fashion in order to make his moral assessments . I discuss Said , Habermas, and Taylor in "Three Paradigms of Cultural Politics." 20 "As credence without any guarantee, but also as trust greater than any suspicion, the hermeneutics of the self claims to hold itself at an equal distance from the cogito exalted by Descartes and from the cogito that Nietzsche proclaimed forfeit" (Oneself, 23). 21 Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1972),99. 22 As Rorty says, "Europe did not decide to accept the idiom of romantic poetry, or of socialist politics, or of Galilean mechanics. That sort of shift was no more an act of will than it was a result of argument. Rather, Europe gradually lost the habit of using certain words and gradually acquired the habit of using others .. .. Cultural change of this magnitude does not result from applying criteria (or from 'arbitrary decision') any more than individuals become theists or atheists, or shift from one spouse or circle of friends to another , as a result either of applying criteria or of actes gratuits" (CIS, 6).

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"Connolly, Fouca ult, and Truth ," Political Theory 13 (1985), 382. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 42-99. A discussion of Ricoeur and Taylor on the Kantian legacy in aes thet ics and moralit y would take this essay in a new dir ection . For Taylor 's hermeneutic critiqu e of moral procedural ism, see "The Motivation behind the Procedural ist Ethics," where he says: "The procedural theory is an illusion because it rests upon a substantive vision of the good." Kant and Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993),358. 25 Gadamer makes this point well, "Even in everyday speech there is an element of speculative reflection ," since this happen s any time "words do not reflect bein g but expre ss a relation to the whol e of bein g" (Truth and Method, 469 ). 26 Gary Nash, History on Trial: The Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past; Peter Baldwin , Reworking the Past, Hitler. the Holocaust, and the Historians ' Debate; Steven Kapl an, Farewell. Revolution: The Historians ' Feud. France 1789-1 989; Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism. I develop this idea of practical reason at length in "Three Paradigms of Cultural Poli tics." 23

24

REF ER ENCES (Abbreviations are in brackets.) Ayle sworth , Gary. "Dialog ue. Text, Narrative: Confronting Gad amer and Ricoeur," in Gadamer and Herm eneutics. Ed. Hugh Silverman. New York: Routledge, 1991. Bakh tin , Mikhail. The Dialogic Ima gination . Trans . Caryl Eme rson and Mi ch ael Holquisl. Au stin : University of Texas Press, 1981. Carr, David. " Epistemologie du rec it,' in Paul Ricoeur: Les metam orphoses de la raison hermeneutiqu e. Paris: Ce rf, 1991. - . Time. Narrative, and History. Bloomin gton: Ind iana Univers ity Press, 1986 . Cassuto, Leon ard. " Frede ric k Dou gl ass and the Work of Freed om : Hegel's Ma st er-Slave Diale ctic in the Fugitive Slave Narr ative." Prospects 21(19 96): 229-259 . Dougl ass, Frederick. My Bonda ge. My Freedom. New York: Miller, Orton, and Milligan , 1855. - . Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an Am erican Slave, Written by Him self Ed. Benjamin Quarles. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960 . Ellison, Ralph . Invisible Man . New York: Vintage , 1981. [1M] - . Shado w and Act. New York : Random Hou se, 1972. [SAl Gad amer, Han s-Georg. Truth and Meth od. 2nd ed . Tr an s. Joel Wein sheimer and Donald Marsh all. New York: Co ntinuum, 1994 . Hegel, Georg W. F. Phenom enology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. New York : Oxford University Press, 1977. Kearney, Richard . "Narr ative Imagination : Bet ween Ethi cs and Poet ics," in Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics ofAction . Ed. Richard Kearney. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996. Makkreel, Rudolph . "Representing the Historical World," The Monist ( 1991): 149-163. Nash, Gary. History on Trial: The Culture Wars and the Teachings of the Past. New York: Knopf , 1997. Pellauer, David . "Limning the Liminal: Carr and Ricoeur on Time and Narrative," Philosophy Today (1991): 51-62. Rico eur, Paul. "Le Fond amental et l'hi storique: Note sur Sources of the Self de Charle s Taylor," in Cha rles Taylor et l 'interpr etation de l'identit e modern e. Paris: Cerf, 1998. - . Herm eneuti cs and the Human Sciences. Ca mbridge: Cambridge Universi ty Press, 1981. [HSSj

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- .Interpretation Theory. Fort Worth : Texas Christ ian Universi ty Press, 1976. [IT) - . "O n Interpretation," in Philos oph y in France Today. Ed . Alan Mont efior e. Cambridge : Cam bridge University Press, 1983 . - . Oneself as Another. Trans. Kathleen Blarne y. Chicag o: Universi ty of Chicago Press, 1992 . - . From Text to Act ion. Trans . Kathle en Blarney and John B. Thomp son. Evanston: Northw estern University Press, 1991. [TAJ] - . Time and Narrat ive. 3 vols. Trans. Kathleen Blarney and David Pellaue r. Chica go: University of Ch icago Press, 1984-88. Rorty , Richard . " Fe minism, Ideol ogy, and Dec on struction : A Pragmatist View," Hypat ia 8(1993): 96- 105. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperiali sm. New York : Knopf, 1993. Steele , Meili . Critical Confrontations: Literary Theories in Dialogue. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. - . "The Dangers of Structuralist Narratology: Genette's Misinterpretation of Proust," Romance Notes XXVI (1986) : 1- 7. - . Theori zing Textual Subjec ts: Agency and Opp ression. Cambrid ge: Cambridge Univers ity Press, 1997. - . "Three Paradi gms of Cultural Politics," in Looking at the World through Non-Western Eyes. Eds. Franke Wilmer and Donald Puch ala. Forthco ming. - . 'T hree Problemati cs of Lin gui st ic Vulnerability : Gadamer, Benh abi b, and Butler," in Feminist Int erpretation s of Hans-G eo rg Gadamer. Ed . Lorraine Code . University Park : Penn sylvani a State Univer sity Press. Forthc omin g. Stepto , Robert . "Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives," in Reconstructing American Literary History. Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.300-322. Taylor, Charles. "Connolly, Foucault, and Truth ," Political Theory 13 (1985) : 377-385. - . Le Fondame ntal dans I'histo ire," in Charles Taylor et l 'interpr etation de l 'ident ite moderne. Ed. Guy Laforest and Philipp e de Lara . Paris: Cer f, 1998. - . Language and Human Agency. Cam bridge: Cambrid ge Universi ty Press, 1985. - . Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard Univer sity Press, 1996. - . "Philosophy and Its History," in Philosophy in History. Ed. Richard Rorty et al. Cambri dge : Camb ridge Universi ty Press, 1984. [PIH) - . Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard Univers ity Press, 1989. Westphal, Merrold. Hegel, Freedom and Modernity. Albany: SUNY, 1992 . Wh ite, Hayden. The Content of the Form. Baltimore: John s Hopk ins University Press, 1987. Wood, David, ed. "Discussion: Ricoeur on Narrative with David Carr and Charle s Taylor," in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. New York: Routledge, 1991.

HOWARD PE ARCE

POIESIS AND THE WITHDRAWAL : THE GARDEN-MOTIVE IN HENRY JAMES, WALLACE STEVENS, AND DAVID MAMET

In the expression of the pastoral instinct there is an impulse toward regaining a world lost, toward recapturing the "good old days." It often seems to be a self-indulgent imag ining of wish-fulfillment. As manifest in literature and art, however, invoking the pastoral raises questions about human beings and our world, and it is a particular expression of something that Martin Heidegger sees as essential to our nature . The longing for an idealized place has to do with the sense of temporality and loss, the ephemerality of all things in time . "The event of withdrawal," as an action, is equally our response to our world and the world 's speaking to us; it is "what is most present in all our present" (Thinking 9) . Inverting our usual way of thinking about this relationship (performing his "kehre" ), I Heidegger argues that it is "not we who play with words , but the nature of language play s with us" (118) ; we are "called" by it. "What is called appears as what is present, and in its presence it is brought into the keeping, it is commanded, called into the calling word . So called by name, called into a presence, it in turn calls . . . . What calls us to think, and thus commands, that is, brings our essential nature into the keeping of thought, needs thinking because what calls us wants itself to be thought about according to its nature" (120-2 1). Our tenuous hold on reality , then , entails thinking about the condition that in the very presence of our "present" there is the withdrawal that reminds us of absence, loss, disappearance and the call to these . The impulse of poie sis is akin to that of the pastoral. The poem, like the happy place, manifests the attractiveness of a world asking to be reali zed. Although the lyric poem might well invoke the pastoral mimetically, representing in the poem an image of the garden or edenic world , the poem itself is both a call to its own potential for presentation and a presencing of what is not seen , what is not there in actuality. The poem and the pastoral world are both, as generated in thought and imagination, characteri zed by their potentiality, their possibility of being; and in this possibility they manifest the idea of fecundity. They are not limited by the laws of an actual world that lives by assumptions of causality and consequence, probability, reason , and logos. Ovid 's age of gold is both pastoral in quality and primitive, not 253 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.}, Analecta Husserliana LXXV , 253-278 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publi shers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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needing the law and order of the silver world that follows. The "first age" was "unconstrained .. . obedient to no law" ; in that age "they read / No penaltie s engraved on plate s of bronze" (4) . Nor was there need for commerce, or warfare; Nature 's eternal springtime provided abundantly, so that neither was there a need for agr iculture. As analogous to the poem , thi s age bears testimony to the idea of freedom that is essential to the poem - the freedom to make a world as possibility. If poie sis is "making,'? the making of world s ent ails the idea of freedom in the making - and that freedom might be represented in the world made, when as in Ovid's golden age and in the pastoral tradition , nature is still free of what is to come. My playing over this imaginative ground involves me in an attempt to engage in a primordial phenomenological act involving Husserl 's "intentionality" and the epoche, in trying to bring to light an essence. Invoking the pastoral is not, in this setting, a spontaneous and unquestioned or unconscious assumption about what is thought of as a real other world . In calling up, imagining, the idea of the garden , the idea calls for recognition of its imaginative nature, the inherency of its being idea, metaphor; it call s as well for recognition that, as idea , it bears in the presencing of idea the essential withdrawal, slipping away. Although trying to think in term s of the intentional objectivities entails bracketing assumptions, whil e aiming for mobility one cannot escape an essence of mobility, which is the temporality of any freedom to move . Again I move toward Heidegger 's thought of memor y and the moment of poetr y, which as moment entails both a future (being for a reader) and a past. Poetry involves this "gathering" in time, and memory is "the gathering and convergence of thought upon what everywhere demands to be thought about first of all." Mnemo syne, "Mother of the Muses - the thinking back to what is to be thought - is the source and ground of poesy. This is why poesy is the water that at times flows backward toward the source, toward thinkin g as a thinkin g back, a recollection" (Thinking II ). Withdrawal and invisibility need not be thought, beforehand, as the absence of an "other" actual dimen sion of the spirit, of ideas, of heaven or hell , but as what is not immediately and fully accessible to direct thought or perception, as the event of withdrawal. The invisible calls for thought about its nature , not as clue s to a real dimension beyond , but as the constellation of attributes it offers the imagination. Jame s Hillman 's "seeing through" leads us toward seeing "as if," allowing metaphor its due expre ssion of the world , worlds, and human being s - wherein all becomes narrative, poetry.' "Seeing through" is a movement from the apparently literal perception toward the metaphorical : "By treating the word s we use as ambi guities, seeing them

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again as metaphors, we restore to them their original mystery. Seeing through our literal isms is a process of resacralization of the word" (150). Engaged in a play of imaginative dimensionality, we become more capable of allowing ourselves as well as our worlds to be "as if' rather than fixed, timele ss or time-bound identities. Such metaphorical play among dimen sions has to do with imagining and illusion, and might be seen as a recall of Husserl' s objects of Phantasie (Idea s 82- 83). It is a bein g "in play," wherein the unending acti vit y is a pla y of pre sen cing and withdrawal, the withdrawal ever accomp anying memory as mother of the muses.' In the pursuit of the idea of the garden as an invoked or desirable other place, the impul se to bring it to presence as an objec t of "fantasy" - the tempor alit y of thi s acti vity - entails the appea ring of the quality of lon ging implicit in it. Observing the realization of the other place as poetry might be undert aken as a heed ful look at suggestive instances. It should be possible to observe and comment on what is esse ntial to the impulse and the activity. Charact eristics of possibility, openness, play, med iation, and tran sition suggest the appropri ateness of thinking of this site and metaphor in terms of Mih ai Spariosu's discussion of "liminality." Arguing for the potenti ality of imaginative literature to proffer alternative world s and therefore to serve an irenic function, Spariosu sugges ts that we see Aristotle's idea of mimesis in this light: "Poetry is a form of play that simulates other kinds of discourse for pleasur abl e purposes and, for thi s reason, cannot be held to the same standards of truth as philosophy and history. If Gorgias situates tragic poetry in the liminal space betw een bein g and appearance , Ari stotle implicitly situate s it in the liminal space between philosophy and history" (4 1-42).

*** In the fiction of Henry James there recurs the impul se to discover or create an idealized place, an impul se abounding in his fiction, which I have referred to elsew here as the " Pas toral Fallacy. " The retreat into, ima ginati on of, or making of a garden or park allows that moment of freedom or fulfillment of the pastoral , and it characteristically become s a liminal place of possibilit y, a place of peaceable quietude where co nsciousness can develop and tran sformation might occur. In What Maisie Knew, although such a moment in a park can gather to itself the sense of the pastoral , the apparently idyllic scene can be subverted by the worldl y business brought into it. The story of Maisie tells of a developing consciousness that learns early lessons of the world of strife - for instance that a guise of stupidity is the safest maneuver. Beginnin g

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with the Solomon-like judgment that resolves the "battle" of divorce and custody of the child in a "compromise" (18), Maisie 's life is divided into a "rotation, for six months at a time," between the parents. An Apollonian sense of regularity, of law and order, is expressed in the march of the resolving pattern of this "rotation." The reason for the war of divorce is Maisie's "income," provided by a "crafty godmother ... who had left her something in such a manner that the parents could appropriate only the income" (21). As each parent abandons other spouses and lovers, Maisie is shunted outward and backward and then again outward, the sure constant being desire for control of the money. Her development involves her in negotiations with others who have custody of, interest in, or designs on her, involvements through which she develops both ethical values and the aesthetic sense . The ethical and the aesthetic questions addre ss the traditional concerns of the antithesis and interrelationship of the ugly and the beautiful, the misshapen and the designed both ideas being integral to and interdependent on the ideas of the beautiful and the sublime . In his study of intellectual correspondences in the thought of Henry James and Friedrich Nietzsche, Stephen Donadio observe s Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian as involving the ugly : "Nietzsche observes that one of the chief functions of the tragic myth is to 'convince us that even the ugly and disharmonic are part of an arti stic game that the will in the eternal amplitude of its pleasure plays with itself" (199) . "Dissonance" is an essence of Dionysian music, in the dialectic of Apollonian form inclining toward the formless. As Dionysian dissonance energizes harmonies, the ugly can be recogni zed as essential to Henry James in a similar dialectic . The ugly appears as a stimulus to the creation of the beautiful, as the weariness of James ' characters' mean world provokes the memory of an edenic past. Since Donadio's concern is for larger philosophical issues in observing Nietzsche and Henry James in a cultural environment including Emerson, William James, and other writer s such as Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde, and finally to observe the confluence of thought in the last of the major novels, The Golden Bowl, he does not pursue implications of the ugly in the earlier works I discuss here . He does , however, remark on the significance of the ugly as it relates in Nietzsche's and Henry James's thought: Nietzsche's statement, "'Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth' .. . [is) a notion clearly echoed in James' s observation that art 'muffles the ache of the actual'" (223). Putting the question the other way, I suggest that the inherent poverty, insufficiency, and recalcitrance of the actual reveal a withdrawal of the desirable - which becomes idealized as human image or place - and provoke the impulse to (re)capture it.

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Mrs. Wix, the governess who "educates" and protects Maisie, teaches conventional morality, and protects the child not only from the predators but also from the attractiveness of "evil" - and as the one who has her in hand at the novel's end , she presents an image of comic ugliness. At first sight a "frightening old woman" (34) who "had looked cross and almost cruel" (35), she increasingly becomes "in the eyes of the world a figure mainly to laugh at." Since Maisie's instinct and the aesthetic values of her world prize beauty, Maisie is attracted to beauty, enchanted by it, enticed and lured by those like Miss Overmore and Sir Claude, whose immediate appearance denotes figures of romance. Miss Overmore can become even "prettier" when confronted by "the dingy figure" of Mrs . Wix (54) . Sir Claude 's beauty holds Maisie in thrall up to the end, when he and Mrs. Wix become the good and bad angels, the ugly moral and the beautiful wicked, between which Maisie must choose . In anticipation of this opposition, Mrs. Wix has presented Maisie early on with a photograph of Sir Claude, to which Maisie responds, "Tsn't he beautiful?''' (26), and Mrs. Wix promptly replies, '''No - he's horrid." However, the ugly figure might become, although not in truth the allegorical good angel, still a figure of influence to the good and a means for Maisie 's Bildung .' A central, though minor, figure in the novel is the Captain, one of her mother's many suitors; and he acts for Maisie's good in what must be considered the symbolic center of the novel. That center takes place, conspicuously, in a park. In the novel's central chapter Sir Claude takes Maisie first for a ride in Hyde Park and then to Kensington Gardens, where they stroll. Of Sir Claude, Miss Overmore (now Mrs. Beale, her stepmother) has said (Maisie reports), "you're as bad as you 're beautiful" (118), echoing Mrs. Wix's view of him. In bringing Maisie to the "great green glade ... and high old trees .. . and ... the fresh turf, the crooked course of a rural footpath" (119), he plays upon the pastoral image. Calling it the ''' Forest of Arden," he identifies himself as "the banished duke" and her as "the artless country wench." His performance as the "showman of the spectacle" is interrupted by the appearance of Maisie's mother and the man who turns out to be a new temporary lover, the Captain. The happy place, for all its genuine appeal to traditional associations with the Arcadian, is used by Sir Claude in transforming the actual into the illusory . The confrontation with Ida ends, after some confusion, with Maisie being sent further into the gardens with the Captain because Ida has "something to say to this creature" (122), Sir Claude. Maisie goes with the Captain to a secluded spot, "with the prettiest of pictures - the sheen of the lake through other trees - before them, and the sound of birds, the plash of boats, the play of children in the air," where they

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sit close together in "a couple of chairs [that] had been placed under one of the trees." Although the Captain is described as not unhandsome, Maisie is aware in this closeness of his "having a face so informally put together that the only kindness could be to call it funny" (125). The identification of his lack of Apollonian beauty with the comic is made clear in Maisie's consciousness of the "odder part .. . that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most insidiously of Mrs. Wix," The Captain does not function like Mrs. Wix, however, in that his "teaching" is not about decorum and "proper" behavior, the necessity of eschewing bad influences - that is, conventional morality - but about the need for and possibility of idealizing another. He argues that her mother Ida is "an angel" (124), insisting that Maisie come to think and feel differently of someone who patently contradicts that idealized image, someone who is dedicated to the battle of the sexes and the social struggles for position, power, and money. The scene is overwhelmed by the spirit of his insistence on Maisie's growing sympathy, and she is affected: "It came over her as she sat silent that, after all, this admiration and this respect were quite new words" (128); and, "it was an almost unbelievable balm - it soothed so her impression of danger and pain" (129) . Under the influence of the ugly agent, she has become the child of the irenic place. Through the agency of the Captain, Maisie has gained a power of sympathy that is both thematically and literally the center of the novel. Occurring in Chapter 16, the scene is pivotal in a 31-chapter novel. In afterthought, the author, in the Preface to the novel , made clear both the significance of this action and the character of the Captain. Described as a "kindly, friendly, ugly gentleman" (14), the Captain "answers to her for her mother as no one has ever answered, and so stirs her, filially and morally, as she has never been stirred, throws into highest relief, to my sense at least, the side on which the subject is strong, and .. . the passage between the child and [him] ... becomes the type-passage ... for the expression of its beauty .. . the active, contributive close-circling wonder .. . in which the child's identity is guarded and preserved." James has declared the influence of the ugly figure, but he has not commented here on the significance of the setting or the event's central position in the action of the novel, except insofar as the scene constitutes a "type-passage." The pastoral setting, vulnerable to falsification and pretense, nevertheless remains in itself an idealized place that provides the liminal moment, the quiet and stillness that allow for a deepening of experience and thought. It is a peace that originates in its inherent withdrawal and bestows peace, a "balm," and also a strengthening for what must be the new encounters echoing the old, which stand on either side of this temporal

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respite. It retains the quality of moonlight or a mythic world that eludes the "reality" of worlds of strife, and is essentially ideal. It might be, looking back on it, not simply true, but at least in part imagined. Again, in the, Preface, James stresses the power of Maisie as an imagining creature. Answering the potential criticism that his ethical concern for Maisie was deficient for allowing her to come, naturalistically, under the bad influences of her parents and their lovers, to be "coarsened, blurred, sterilised, by ignorance and pain" (7), he insists that "the ugly facts ... by no means constit uted the who le appeal " (6) . As if blessed in " the light of an imagi nation" cas t "ro und about" the child, in the "ray" by whic h "the complexity of life would thus turn to fineness, to richness," Maisie becomes the "wo nder-worki ng age nt" who "wo uld create, without design, quite fresh eleme nts of this order ... as if thro ugh a small demonic foresig ht" (6- 7) . Maisie' s imagin ative co nst ruct ion of life grows out of the continual withdrawal by which "the past ... became for her as indistinct as the future" (27); and her Bildung, which progresses through the repeated appearances and disappearances of others , moves toward the fuller imagination of life, which entails the ultimate withdrawal: "She was yet to learn what it could be to recog nise in some lapse of a sequence the proof of an exti nctio n, and therefore remained unaware that this momentary pang was a foretaste of the experie nce of death" (228) . This intimation of death provokes, of course, the grand imagination - of the sublime - so that the terrors of strife, betrayal, and delusion can be transformed and elevated by the imagination, as the ugly can generate the beautiful. Suc h a "wonder-working agent " as Mai sie is, of course, inherently and developmen tally the creator of worlds, the maker, the poet. James's characters frequent ly vacillate between the necessity of dealing wit h strife and the " ugly" in their ord inary world and buildi ng, thro ugh poi esis, a beautiful, happy world. Often their poetic instinct, their power of imagina tion, fails to distinguish betwee n those worlds, as with the unnamed young woman in "In the Cage" who is, like Maisie , a characte r of powerful imagination. Her development of imagi native versions of reality from inside her cage, her little world, involves her in denials both of what in her world suppresses, enchains, reduces the spirit, and of what allows her generation of fanciful interpretations of events and characters. In entertaining herself with romantic fancies, she tries to resolve "logical" problems that appear in her mundane activity of sending and rece iving telegraph messages for others ." Having elaborated on her version of what transpires in a "haut monde" for whom she transmits message s, she thickens her plot with imaginings about

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Captain Everard, the romantic hero who, for her, stands at the center of it. He stands for her as Sir Claude does for Maisie, as the alluring object of beauty. Midway in the action she goes into a park with the man of her dreams and experiences an intense moment of transformation, when the time seems blessed and the intimacy seems like that of a fairy tale . As in What Maisie Knew, she meets him in the central chapter of 27 , having stalked him - literally and imaginatively - until he appears: the scene is "almost rich enough to be but the positive creation of a dream ... like a vista painted in a picture" (216) . Entering the park in the following chapter, they "went in and sat down on a bench .. . not far within; it was near the Park Lane paling and the patchy lamplight and the rumbling cabs and buses" (218) . Although their encounter leads to her protestation that in their relationship there is nothing "horrid or vulgar" (223), the relationship is illusory; his world and hers are disjunct and his being with her is grounded in no clear understanding or reciprocality. Her fiance, Mr. Mudge , stands solidly in the real world : "somehow comparatively primitive" (199) . She will, of course, finally come to realize the constraints of the actual. With Mrs . Jordan in the next-to-last chapter, looking out "into the damp dusky shabby little room and into the future ... [I/she] saw and felt ... her own return to reality. Reality ... could only be ugliness and obscurity, could never be the escape, the rise ... " (260-61). Her struggle to realize the dream of Captain Everard as opposed to the necessity of accepting and living in actuality with Mr. Mudge turns about the primary liminal space in the story, the telegraph office where she meets others, makes connections for them and with them, and thus serves as a mythic Hermes. Seen as a Hermes figure, she appropriately moves between worlds bearing messages . As Hermes, she also calls for a recognition that her role fluctuates between bearing truth and playing the trickster." Her imaginings reveal more emphatically and more clearly than do those of many Jamesean imaginers that the imagination is both a creative faculty, building ideas of worlds that elevate the mundane, and a falsifier of the ordinary world from which escape is a dream. The young woman's cage seems to bear this doubleness of value, in that it is both her prison and her liminal space, the site of negotiations between the real world of Mr. Mudge and the fancied affairs of Captain Everard.!'' She might be observed to be very much like the traveling warrior Er whose story ends Plato's Republic through her irrepressible imagination, she becomes the preserver of the ideal , whose story transmits the dream and memory of possibility in the event of withdrawal.

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*** A brief consideration of the issues of the poetic imagination and the pastoral in the work of a contemporary playwright, David Mamet, will confirm the continuation of a call for retention of the ideas of the poet as maker of worlds . The persistence of the imagination as well as its ambiguity - the still possible admiration of its power and, paradoxically, skepticism about its creativity, its fictionalizing - characterizes our world 's ambivalent desire as still grounded in James 's images of the desire for idealized person and place, the images of the poetic impulse as seen in James's two female characters, the child in What Maisie Knew and the young woman in "In the Cage ." In Mamet's The Old Neighborhood the woman appears, as in these works of James, bearing the sensibility and the desire to create the illusion . Although similar in impulse to James 's young women, she is more mature; and the thrust of her imagination is more clearly a positive reaction to her knowledge of disappointment and uncertainty. It might be that our difficulties in seeing some of James 's imaginative women have to do with the fact that, like this woman Deeny in Mamet's play, they travel in extremis. In The Golden Bowl, for instance, Charlotte is a woman "with a past," and we give closest attention to the heroine, Maggie, who must deal with Charlotte. While, as imaginative maker of worlds, Maggie bears clear similarities to Maisie and the young woman in the cage , Charlotte comes into Maggie's world with mysterious motives and a desire to recapture a past she shared with the Prince . The desire is provoked by a consciousness of los s, the absence felt in the reunion of two who remember their youthful love; and this quality of reunion is the essential relationship in the moment between Denny and Bobby Gould . For both Charlotte and Deeny, the world is more desperately at the brink than for the young, their hope is more to recapture a memory than to install a new world. Deeny, for whom the last play of Mamet's triptych is named , shares this recovered moment with the protagonist, Bob. Their conversation takes place in a restaurant, and she evokes the past, not merely their youthful relationship but also an impulse to realize life, as expressed when talk of "frost tonight" reminds her of her old "wish" to have "a garden" (89). Although she never had a garden, she appeals to the idea of what it might have been : "And you could go out to it, the morning; and see, well. .. ." The conversation of these two, Deeny and Bob, almost compulsively reverts to the past and its allowing of the dream , the impulse, to idealize. Deeny directs the conversation, leading toward the end of the play , where both she and Bob have reaffirmed the wonder of recapturing their youthful illusions and confessed their defense-

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lessness against time and change. Deeny 's final eloquence is generated from the awareness of the loss : " ... Because it had passed ... the jokes ... and poignancies. ... Always, and turning , don't we? Toward death -" (99) Both characters are aware that the persistence of the dream their momentary reversion to it do not negate the inclination and the need to "proclaim, you know, that this world is a shit hole" (lOa). The "shit hole" that is our world can be expressed in a violence of language that was tacit in James's world and in the word " ugly"; and I will suggest that pressure felt in the depreciation of the actual is what continues to instigate the poiesis of an ideal place, as we observe Stevens's "macadam" played against the ancient scene of tranquility. Again, as in James 's "In the Cage," the idea of the retreat appears as a redoubling of the actual liminal place, the Cage in the story and the restaurant in the play, where the two characters sit alone in a moment of reverie . As an imagined other place, the garden for Deeny incarnates the withdrawn ideal of the place of happiness and fulfillment and, like the park in "In the Cage," becomes a metaphoric expression of the real place. The restaurant in which Deeny and Bob meet is a place of engagement in the liminal, in a moment of possibility and preparation for journeying onward . In the restaurant, Deeny and Bob are free to expatiate on their converging thoughts about one another and about the past, to conjure up, "out of love ... rather than ... a sense of duty" (90), thoughts of returning to the garden, becoming the gardener. These two have, however , in a quiet interlude in a restaurant, found just such a place ; like James's young woman 's cage, this too is a site of mediation and peace, potential for change, transformation. Deeny and Bob have not become, in the end, other than themselves, have acquired no heroic Recognition nor undergone tragic Reversal ; but they have accomplished a momentary transformation in recapturing the past dream of what they might be. What they might have been is not the actuality of their real worlds, but is realized as idea and sharing in an interlude. Considering, finally , what the characters in both James's stories and Mamet's play do with that moment of radiance, must involve us in thought about the text itself as liminal. As an audience or reader comes into relationship with Maisie, James's other young woman, and Deeny, that relationship establishes the possibility of a free beneficence and a recovery of what perhaps never was, but might be. The unconstrained intimacy allows for, promotes, the projection of self toward the other, not in actual, responsible, profitable, consequential relationship, but in elevation into idealization. The story or play becomes , then, the liminal moment and place

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of meeting; and it serves as tribute to the possibilities manifest in the stories in Plato 's plain, where souls meet on their journey from the past to the future, from one world to another. The stories told, and the story retained and tran smitted by the warrio r Er, recall the receded (or imagined ) past and anticipate a new life. The happy reunion, the sharing of stories, serves as a moment of respite, reconnoitering, and gratification. In the tell ing, in the play or the ficti on , the falteri ng of the real con stitutes an abeyance of the imperatives that gove rn the mund ane. What occurs is the imaginative world that is so vital, so dynamic , so co mpe lling , that its irreality ass umes a heightened realit y and meanin gfuln ess.

*** Rai sing thi s que stion of the reader or audi ence parti cipating in the eventfulness of the poeti c experience might provoke and illuminate con siderations of the idea of the garden, the condition of time and withdrawal, and the poiesis that are so comp ellin g in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. The figure of the poet is essential to Stevens's poetry, as the voice of the poet establishes the medit ative, intimate structure of relationship with the reader that constitutes the playfuln ess and trust necessary for, or perhap s indicative of, the establishment of the irenic world of the poem . In the persistent emergence of questions about realit y and knowledge, the reader is invited in, to share in the thou ghtfulness and playfuln ess of that worl d. Lik e the figur es of the shepherds in Arcady, the figure of the poet becom es integral to the scene both as the story teller and as rep resented images of the poe t - and contempl ation of the limin al site of the represented world calls for consideration of the poem as both moment and metaphor. In the little poem "As at a Theatre," the metaphor of a theat rum mundi casts "reality" in a liminal role. The world is not what it is or what it should be, but what it might be imag ined to be. Th e initi al proposition is that "another sunlight might make another world" (36 1-62) . The implicit and inhere nt sunlight of the imag inatio n "might make another world ," ju st as worlds have been made for us already. The theater metaphor "brackets" the pre sumptions that might mak e thi s world the onl y "true," scientifica lly known, material world; or on the other hand, the only "true" world that is a testin g ground for God 's creatures desiring salvation and the transl ation of their souls into Hi s He aven .'! The qu ality of the po ssibl e world is both specific/concrete and indeterminate: it would be, perh aps, "Gree n, more or less, in gree n and blue in blue" ; and the several attempt s to say what it is

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"like " include the idea of reality's being perpetually created, as "the artifice of a new reality." If "the curtains, when pulled, might show another whole," it might appear as "an azure outre-terre, oranged and rased" ; but it might be, "At the elbow of Copernicus, a sphere, / A universe without life's limp and lack , / Philosophers' end ." The sphere, perfect globe, might transcend the "limp and lack" of our world, and it would thereby give a satisfaction to the philosopher. It would constitute, however, not a resolution and an unwavering real world, but a construct, an object of contemplation, a possible case of a world, as idea , giving respite for thought and mediating between other versions of reality. Rather than being a solution to the knowledge of Being, the question is whether it would make a "difference" only insofar as "the mind, for once , fulfilled itself." This posing of a question at the poem's end leaves open the question of other possible worlds and lights up the poem itself as the arena for that fulfillment. The represented possible worlds and the poem are reflective, calling upon one another as manifestations of possibility. Potentially, Copernicus and the poet stand in a similar relationship, as figures making worlds. Rather than participating in or reflecting the antagonisms of worlds in conflict , they become irenic in "letting be," in being "ragged in unkempt perceptions," rather than fixed and unyielding . The world of a self might be like a candle before the mirror of another being , which "stands / And meditates an image of itself." The peace that prevails in the interdependence of being and being is, then, the peace that appears as the mediation of worlds whose reality is "as at a Theatre." The irenic play of worlds and beings represented in this poem can become, in others, more specifically a negotiation with the past. The sense of loss is felt as impetus, as, to repeat Heidegger's statement, "what is most present in all our present ... the event of withdrawal." In 'The Hermitage at the Centre," Stevens's reader is engaged in a circling from the "macadam" of our present world back to the image of the garden, the female figure in it, and the sensual engagement we are offered from that world. The alternation of worlds, each held apart unto itself in the poem's syntactic structure, affirms the solidity of our world of macadam, which is interrupted by the appeal of the past idyllic image of a world. Each stanza proceeds with a first line about the "present" world, followed by two indented lines about the past. The pastoral past is idealized, tugging the imagination toward what it presents: "How soft the grass on which the desired / Reclines in the temperature of heaven - ... / Sleek in a natural nakedness" (384). The world of macadam, where "the wind sways like a great thing tottering," is not, however, a world of mere loss,

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detrition, absence of the romantic appeal , and of imagini ng the disaster (or the "e nd of the imagi nation" ["The Plain Sense of Things," Palm 382-83]). The last stanza establishes the liminal desire of the poem, in uniting the past and presen t accomplished world s: "This end and this begi nning are one." The centrality of the pastoral image entail s a double image of that onenes s, in that "one last look at the duck s is a look / At lucent child ren round her in a ring." Bot h images have a radiancy expressed in the extended imag e of her goddes s, pastora l maiden, love - with "luce nt children round her in a ring." The sente nce 's circli ng to unite the two worlds is accomp lished in the activity of making a world, and the "one last look at the ducks" seems a fragile image of desire to harmonize, to see the antique pastoral image in our ducks, our po nd.' ? Such represe nted desire implies, perhaps, the voyeuristic need to see and contemplate the past in the prese nt - to invoke the poigna ncy of loss, "her," in the possibility of now seei ng "ducks" - and that impulse reminds us of the poem's need to recall such a potential past. We recog nize this poetic impulse in the device of "allusion," which is a poetic, esse ntially metaphorical way of bringing together. Reflecting the way that alpha and omega become one in " Hermi tage at the Centre," the reader's mim etic activity mig ht be co mplementary to the poem's activit y. The trenchant image at the heart of Ovid 's tale of Diana and Actaeon (Metamorphoses 3.131-60) is the fulfill ment, followed by pathetic loss, of such desire ; and the story is an instance of the theme of voyeuris m in the Metamorphoses. Actaeo n's looking upon Diana is accidental (if not fated - but in either ca se not a calc ulated mane uver of Actaeon 's desire ), but it is repaid with his transformation into a stag and what follows with his hou nds, a punishment, as if his action were premeditated by a voyeur. The image , however, is of a pool in a cave in a deep forest, the tranquil resp ite Diana has found from the noonday heat and a site far from the tribulations and con solations of the world. Diana's pool is, like Narcissus's, both characteristically pastoral (Narcissus's is "limpid and silvery" [Ovid, Metamorphoses 63]) and more deeply belonging to nature than to the huma n: "W hither no shepherd came nor any herd, / Nor mountain goat." Actaeon's "idly wandering" into the reces ses leads to a sight of Diana bathing "there in the pool, / Her loved fami liar pool," where, upon discovering the intruder, her "nymphs .. . clustered round Diana / To clothe her body with their own." The final image of " luce nt childre n" surro undi ng Steve ns's image of the "desired" reclining "i n the tempera ture of heaven" invokes a moment before Diana's nymph s surround her with "sudden screa ms," the irenic moment of retirement and gratification. 13 Stevens's uniting of the poem's oppo sed images

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of the present and the past - "this end and this beginning are one" potentially calls for uniting the poem's present with a past that in turn proposes a harmony of end and beginning. The pastoral image of Ovid might be retained and lighted as manifesting the persistence of the idea of the pastoral and its inevitable withdrawal, its interruption. The attenuation of the withdrawing figure in its world is, in the poem, both a calling up of an appearance and the confirmation of its recession . Our world maintains that desire and its realization in the metaphorical equation of ducks and children - they are not "as if," but are: the "one last look" at ducks "is a look" (my emphasis) at "lucent children" (perhaps a doubling of the present and past, perhaps a transformation of the present by the past). And the idea of the poem as liminal event is manifest in the poem's uniting the opposed worlds; in the poet's poiesis of them. The language establishes its eventfulness in the title , "The Hermitage at the Centre." As hermitage, the antique image represents the idea of retreat, haven, irenic respite . The poem, as text, offers not only that reprieve from the intimidating present world , but also a heightened world made accessible by a negotiation with the past; and, as the myth of Er is itself a text (told by Plato, as spoken by Socrates reporting the tale of Er) and invokes texts of other sojourners in that interim world, the voice in the poem invokes other voices from both worlds. The "noise" of the leaves on the macadam is "like tales that were told the day before yesterday," "noises" of the present echoing - but not merely echoing rather maintaining and repeating - "tales " of the past. The birds of the idyllic world pronounce a "tintinnabula" that is not mere noise, any more than is the noise of the leaves in our world . The birds "substitute ... / Their intelligible twittering / For unintelligible thought." An essential appearance in this realization of the two worlds is their primitive consonance. The "songs" of leaves and birds are not barbarous, alien, antediluvian nonsense, but "stories," "intelligible twittering." This poem, as reiteration of the potentiality and allurement of the beatus hortus, is not simply and finally recourse to the image of a tranquil world, but calls up, from both that world and the present one, the sounds that speak a more primitive language. Recognizing the inchoate music that is essential to both worlds would lead to hesitation and perhaps ultimately revision of - further commentary on - the idea of this desired world . The way in which the prehuman manifests or prefigures the human suggests, too, that the human being at the center of the pastoral is not merely our happy refugee, in our "Hermitage at the Centre"; that center - both the represented world and the poem - is a liminal place between our developed identity and the dark pre-

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pastoral out of which the shepherds arise. Their shock of recognition of the tomb and its inscription et in arcadia ego entails them not only in the anticipation of death, but also in the need to recognize the essential condition of life as arising out of ancient death . As Stevens's poetry characteristically plays dimensions or worlds against each other, we hear - in this eternal recession of the desired - echoes of Ovid, of the storytelling in the myth of Er, both the imaginative advertence to evocable worlds and the imaginative extensions and journeying toward other worlds, past and future, ranging toward the elementally pre-human on the one hand and the potentiality of being human on the other. The sense of our world's radical temporality is expressed with sensitivity, delicacy, and compassion in two poems that might be paired, "Lunar Paraphrase" and "Anatomy of Monotony." "Lunar Paraphrase" begins and ends with the affirmation that "the moon is the mother of pathos and pity" (93). Invoking ancient ideas and images of the moon - as Diana, as Selene, as Hecate - this moon bestows those two elements of compas sion, evoking the antique sense of loss and sustenance. As Selene , she has loved and possessed the beautiful Endymion, but her love is mixed with pain, as he sleeps eternally, ever accessible, ever distant in dreaming . In Stevens's poem, her manifestation of "pathos and pity" occurs when a "golden illusion" for "quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness ... / Brings back an earlier season of quiet." They, like Endymion , sleep; and theirs is a dream of a golden "season." The "illusion," however beneficent, might be like the dreams of Lotus-eaters. The moon herself manifests a more primitive being and world than the world' s retained images of Christ and Mary, who are "humanly near." The consolation of those human figures appears, of course, in a context arising out of the ancient dismay recollected in that presence : the present Jesus's figure "hangs in a pallor" and Mary's "shrinks in a shelter / Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen." The moon, both pathetic natural being and bringer of pathos, offers no release to the dreamer s or explanation of Jesus 's and Mary 's suffering. Her own appearance is of a frail vitality maintaining for human beings those blessings of "pathos and pity " that appear so frequently for the human being s in Ovid's stories. Whether she evokes the emotions from our world or bestows them upon it is not resolved in her mere appearing and being." In her appearing, she is dependent: "Her old light move s along the branches, / Feebly, slowly, depending upon them." An "old light," she does not provide the succor of religious images or the "golden illusion" of "quieting dreams"; but she is "the mother of pathos and pity." Hers is a withdrawal and a presencing, an

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appearance tentative and affirming . Scarcely a presence, she administers by appearing as if from a departed world, as if a relical power. 'The Anatomy of Monotony" further situates human being in the native realm of earth, a being rising from the depths of the past. The "body" walking "forth naked in the sun" receives its comfort, whether given in "tenderness or grief' (94) . Through the sun's "comfort ... other bodies come, / Twinning our phantasy and our device"; and our generated "covetous .. . desire" for "finer, more implacable chords" does not efface our origins. We remain "deceived" in our walking in "spaciousness and light." The earth remains our inherited sphere, we "came" from it, and the earth that "bore us as a part of all the things / It breeds" was, in the past, "lewder than it is" in the present. We cannot view ourselves as rising from and beyond it, as transcending our origins, but as growing old along with it, as it grows old: "We parallel the mother's death ." The sun in this poem is an antithesis to the mother moon of "Lunar Paraphrase." The earth, like that moon, reassures us in recalling our earthiness for us, in that "she walks an autumn ampler than the wind / Cries up for us." She sees what we need to see, that "over the bare spaces of our skies" there is "a barer sky that does not bend." The light "falls from that fatal and that barer sky, / And this the spirit sees and is aggrieved." Our being aggrieved for the absence of something from that "barer sky," for the painfulness of holy images of Jesus and Mary, for the illusoriness of our "quieting dreams," receives no recompense from earth or moon, but an assurance not only that we share in the mortality of death as origin, but also that we arise from an undeniable past that was a world "lewder" than ours. The delicacy and pathos elicited in these two poems can become a sharp evocation of the past world and the image of the poet in it, in that the consciousness of decline, loss, debility - of both world and poet - makes acute the need to persist, to make the world or a world, even if improbably. Recognition of our essential being is made possible in a return to a primordial world, primitive rather than - or beyond, or perhaps arising to consciousness from within - pastoral, a rough and dark world, yet a world of enargeia . 15 I have been trying to move toward a recognition of this essence of the pastoral as not being an end in itself or a pure image, but as a manifestation of its construction in the context that Stevens identifies as being human. The poiesis of the pastoral is, after all, a making, not so much a site per se whether once or potentially real or merely imagined - as the imagining of a world. The garden world's irenic nature , its liminality, is a tribute to the possibility of imaginative making. The figure of the artist I have proposed as essential in James's and Mamet's women is a manifestation of that impulse

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and power to conjure the garden out of the autumnal scene, in the "key of that desolate sound" that comes from "beneath / The stillness of everything gone" (Stevens, "Autumn Refrain" 94-95). The essence of this poet, then, appears not merely in the making of a world, but also involves an intimation of the conditions that call for idealization, elevation and sublimation (1 use the term here in Freud's psychological sense rather than as implying the fullness of vision from Longinus's sublime heights) . The quality of the poet includes the iconoclastic, breaking images, as well as the poetic , making. This figuration of the poet has already been noticed in James 's and Mamet's women and can be further characterized in Maisie 's "stupidity" as well as the growth in her powers of idealizing ("either from extreme cunning or from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in," What Maisie Knew 27); in the snobbery of the young woman in the cage, her desire to be "different" ("it was just for this difference that .. . she wanted to be liked," "In the Cage" 198); in her "whimsical mind and wonderful nerves ... red gleams in the grey ... odd caprices of curiosity" (177); in Deeny's quizzical interest in "tribes that mutilate themselves" (The Old Neighborhood 96), which leads to the understanding that "if you know that this is terrible, as you do, and know that you are frightened," you end with an awareness of the "sorrow of years" (97); and in Deeny's iconoclastic view of science's transpiring versions of truth, the conclusion that "it is your science that is lacking" (93). The world and the human being (and the poet) are interdependent: "Our nature is her nature" (Stevens , "Anatomy of Monotony" 94). Since our "spirit sees and is aggrieved" that our "spaciousness and light .. . fall from that fatal and that barer sky," the making that derives from that seeing occurs in an awareness of an environment that might be dark , brutal, or ugly. It might require the imagination of an idealized place, or the faraway world, safe and secluded from curious eyes, into which Diana and Narcissus retreat. The manifestation and idea of the ugly recalls Maisie's Captain, the agent of hi/dung and inciter of the idealizing imagination. As Edmund Burke finds thoughts of death and destruction to be the origin of the sublime, the ugly should be recognized as instrumental in stimulating the poet's imagination; and its objective manifestation can be internalized in the imaginative subject, can be transferred to the figure of the poet. The comic, anti-idealistic, even banal factuality of the makers and their human relations amounts to a confession that they are in need of transformation, that they need to make their world and others in it better in order to be better themselves. The twentieth-century retention of the powerful imagination carries with it the distrust anticipated by Henry James; and the figure of the poet appears

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improbably in various iconocl astic forms. Finally, both the world and the poet undergo a Protean change, a disappe arance and reappe arance in a new light. The withdrawal of the poet figure who was at home in a hero ic past, in harmony with pa storal shephe rds, or en sconced as the moral voice of a Victorian soc iety, allow s for the reapp earanc e of the comi c or grotesque masks of the poet recognizable in the twentieth century, for instance the artist as trickster descended from Mel ville' s Confidence Man. Here we might recall how Niet zsche's summons to the world of the Dion ysian lead s to a new discovery of the poet, which , as in Stevens's "Hermitage at the Centre " and " Lunar Paraphrase," attests to the poignancy of the withdrawn , the pathos of loss and illusion. These lines endin g the third section of "Lunar Paraphrase" anticipate, perhaps call for, a recon sideration of the figure of the poet: When over the houses, a golden illusion Brings back an earlier season of quiet And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness - .

I have already suggested that the "golden illusion" seems not to be the "old light" of the moon , which "moves along the branches, / Feebly, slowly, depending upon them ." If it "brings back an earlier season of quiet," what comes back is not merely an image of a golden age, or a pastoral retreat, since it occurs in the admittedly "quieting dreams of the sleepers in darkness." Such sleepers are administered to perhaps by Morpheus, susceptible to the manifold human images in which he might appear; perhap s they displa y the utter oblivi ousness of the prisoners in Plato 's cave. Their quietness might be the bland and tranquil sleep of the sleepers in Stevens's "Disillusionment of Ten O 'Clock," who provide a counter-image to that of the poet. The word "Disillusionment" in the title of this poem seems to convey the numbing of Plato 's sleepers or the lethargic sleep of Lotus-eaters, who have not the power of illusion, but the loss of it. Steven s's poem moves into this world of "houses" that are "haunted / By white night-gown s" ( I I), which in their whiteness are a negation of possible garb : colorful nightgowns, ones with various colored rings. The negation is of sensory richness and imaginative creation: "Non e of them are strange, / With socks of lace / And beaded ceintures," The negation applies both to the world and to the people, who "are not going / To dream of baboons and periwinkles." Over the years, in teaching this poem, I have had students rebel most vehemently at the linked image s of "baboons and periwinkles." Why such grote sque, disparate, incoherent image s? Whereas students easily recognize and accept the poetic impul se when it produce s idealized worlds, these images seem like intrusions

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- iconoclastic, even perverse. They are, however, consistently inconsistent with the image that follows : Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots. Catches tigers In red weather.

A drunken old sailor catching tigers in red weather might be thought of as a figure of the poet. Tigers and the color red are associated with the imagination in Stevens's ge stalt of images. I would suggest that we can pursu e this old sailor, as we pursued the image of the pastoral into the darkness of the pre-pastoral, toward a primitive image of the poet. Here , recalling Nietzsche's discussion of the poet in The Birth of Tragedy can afford a certain light and reveal cohe rence in the appearance of the figure . The figure of the poet that appears in Nietzsche's thought is made possible by Nietzsche 's exploration of the prehistory of the Greek world . His pursuit of the Diony sian as the vital force recognizes the dark power that is residual in that civil ization : "For now in every exuberant joy there is heard an undertone of terror, or else a wistful lament over an irrecoverable loss" (Birth of Tragedy 27). It is perhap s possible to hear this undertone or this "wistful lament" in Stevens's " Lunar Paraphrase" and "Anatomy of Monotony." In looking back tow ard the image of the poet, Nietzsche recogni zes a manifestation of the poet as a specific form associated with the god Diony sus. If we ca n "a bstract" our literal selves to view "reality" as "the idea of the or ig inal On eness .. . then our dre am s will appear to us as illusions of illus ions , hence as a still higher form of satisfaction of the original desire for illusion. It is for this reason that the very core of nature take s such a deep delight in the narve artist and the naive work of art" (33) . Taking for example a work by Raphael , Nietzsche observes that from the dimen sion s of illusion arises a ju xtapo sition, "both the fair world of Apollo and its substratum, the terrible wisdom of Silenus .. . [which] mutually require one another," as Dion ysus' s "titanis m and barbarism" are essential to Apollo. Silenus, attend ant of Diony sus, is described by Ovid as "that old drunkard whose stout staff supports / His tottering step s, who sits so insecure / Upon his sagging ass"; he is seen as "muddled with wine and year s" (Metamorphoses 75 , 251) . While the "Doric art and the Doric state . .. of the Apollonian force s" seem like a "military encampment" «35), the "ecstatic sounds of the Dion ysiac rites " (34) , the "Dionysiac torrent" (36) , produ ce an opposed but mutually dependent kind of poetry. Homer, the ep ic poet, is the "p rototype of the Apollonian naive artist" (36) who , like the sculptor, "is comm itted to the pure

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contemplation of image s" (39). Nietzsche suggests that the other poet, a voice of the Dionysian spirit, can be discovered as a "pictorial clue" in visual representations of "Homer and Archilochus side by side" (36). " Homer .. . prototype of the Apollonian . . . stares in amazement at the passionate head of Archilochus .. .. It is this Archilochus who most disturbs us, placed there beside Homer, with the stridor of his hate and mockery, the drunken outbursts of his desire . Isn 't he . .. the veritable non-artist?" (36-37). Lyric artist, artist of music, Archilochus presents a difficulty to our thought in his seeming not to be an artist at all, in his being too much the satyr, bearing characteristics of Silenus, attendant of Dionysus. When we see "Archilochus, the first lyric poet of the Greeks, dancing before us in an orgiastic frenzy .. . we see Dionysos and the maenads, we see the drunken reveler Archilochu s, sunk down in sleep" (38). Stevens's drunken old sailor has been generally recognized as a figure of the irnagination.!" Daniel Fuchs observes that, in the dull houses, "Only the old sailor ... achieves the intensity of remote, heroic action as he dreams in the imaginative intensity of red" (97). The old sailor, Fuchs suggests, is akin to the "mock-heroic skinny sailor" of Stevens's "Comedian as the Letter C," "who is a comic projection of Stevens." My concern is that he needs to be seen as the figure of the poet, integral in a fecund , grand, perhaps even sublime, darkly powerful world. B. 1. Leggett, pursuing the "intertextuality" of work s of Stevens and Nietzsche, identifies this issue of worlds ju st as Nietzsche might comment on this poem . Although not a revelation of the idea of the poet , the drunken old sailor retains the dream memory of having lived in a "tropical" as oppo sed to "temperate" climate. The temperate, Stevens's world of "disillusionment," perhaps "de-illusioned," is "unfavorable to the production of art " (Leggett 225 ); and the "tropical" is at a temporal, as oppo sed to a geographical, distance, promoting the imagination of "violent contrasts ... raging passion s and wild tigers." Leggett's comments on this poem are brief, but his extended discussion of the Apollonian and Dionysian dialectic as Nietzsche's thought might play intertextually with "Peter Quince at the Clavier." He observes the figure of Archilochus as the lyric poet who transcends his individuality in becoming an idea of lyric poetry. Leggett cites Nietz sche on Archilochus's "appalling" nature and, as I do here, seems to blur the distinction between Archilochus and the satyr. Affirming the essential transcendence of individuation achieved in the fourth section of "Peter Quince at the Clavier," Leggett argues that this is indeed a "bizarre poem that has, unfortunately, lost its strangeness through several decades of formalist interpretation" (81). My pointing up the grotesque and the ugly implicit in the

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figu re of th e po et in " Disi llus io nme nt" devel op ed from a sense of th e " bizarre " in th e poem a nd my ex ploration of th e Arc hi loc hus figure as analogous . Find ing Leggett 's menti on of Archi loc hus in his di scu ssion of " Peter Qu ince" reinforces my rea di ng, I think. Nie tzsc he's locatin g the or ig ins of lyri c poetry, the Orph ean poetry of music, in Archiloc hus recognizes the need to raise the image to universality, " the man Arc hiloc hus" becom ing "only a vision of ge ni us ... no lon ger merely Archilochus but the ge nius of the uni ver se" (39-40). Th e figure of St even s ' s old sa ilo r see ms in particular to be a reversion to N ietzsc he's Arc hiloc hus, as if embody ing the image of Archi loc hus in detail s perh ap s maintains the uni ver sal value of the lyric poet Nietzsc he envisio ns. Nietzsche plays agai nst ea ch oth er the figures of the "satyr and the idy llic she pherd," sugg esting that in "later times" both types have "bee n produ cts of a desire for natu ralne ss and simplicity. But how firmly the Greek shaped his woo d sprite, and how self-conscious ly and mawk ishly the mod ern dalli es with his tender, fluting she pherd ! For th e Greek , the sa tyr expressed nature in a rude, uncultivated state" - the "lewde r" world, in Steven s' s term s (52). Rather than ec ho the implicit blam e laid here on the impulse to return to or rec apture or imagin e the idyllic world of the shepherd, I have tried to present a case for that impulse op en ing us to a lim in al space , both the represented pastoral wo rld and the poem . Th at place, if apprehe nde d as liminal , ena bles us to th ink back , to live back imagi nat ively, into the dark , ge nerative reg ion that mak es th e id eali zat ion , th e cultivatio n of an ideal world, possible. Th e manifold embodime nts of the poet - Homeri c, Archilochean, Orph ean, and ot her - ar ise, often improba bly, fro m the ins tinct to ma ke and tran sform worlds, from the need that time imposes. Look ing to Nietzsche 's characterization of the origi ns of lyric poetry in The Birth of Tragedy ca n reveal, then , an energy of the prim ordi al poet as Nie tzsc he imag ines him in Archiloc hus, who shares trait s with the Satyr and co mes to look much like Steve ns's old sailor.!? In "Dis illusio nme nt of Ten O ' Cl ock ," th e norma lcy of our bedtime, our hou ses inh ab ited by "whi te night gown s," and our stifled imagin ation s are played off agai nst the figure to be identifi ed in his dream ing as the poten tial poet in the lim inal space. The drunk old sailor, "asleep in his boot s," who "catches tigers in red we ather" becomes the comic or grotesqu e image of the modern poeti c imagi nation. He is not, however, a remnant or mere shard of the pa st; he might be seen as a re lic, full of power and pot enti al still, who echoe s the past figure of the possible poet - wh ose audience and ima gining co unterpart, Steven s argues, might be a woman with the "ha ir of a pythoness" (" No ble Rid er" 66 1).

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*** The question rem aining, then , co nce rns what co nnec tion there might be between Archilochus, his world, and the women I have identified as "makers" in James and Mamet, and their worlds. Their impul se to make or recover a pastoral world is ge nerated from an awareness of the ir wo rlds as brute factuality, ugliness calling for beauty, and the attrition of the ideal construct through time's cancellations and withdrawals. The women I have propo sed as figures engaging in poiesis are, along with satyrs like drunk old sailors, manifestations of the need to crea te the limin al space, and of that need arising from their sharp, inten se awareness of being hum an in a world always withdr awing, and revealing in that withdrawal the darkness beyond a lighted place. Th e women express the Dion ysian in that, like the Maenads on Cith aeron , they manifest a doublene ss of exalted aims and mortal desires. As told by Euripides's messenger, the women 's activities are piOUS,IS not as imagined by the prurient voyeuri sm of Pentheus. Throu gh them the "garden" is recovered , not as purely pastoral but as fecund possibility, imag inative creati on of a world. Archil ochu s discloses the impul se to recover and dignify the prim al human figur e and sce ne ; his satyr image beli es his ess ential elevation of the world through lyric poetr y. The women's firmness in seeking a recovered essence of the pastoral attests to the endurance of the motive, and the instances we have observed might be thought to resound from not only the ancie nt Greek but also othe r appea rances of it, such as Renaissance gardens. Walt Whitman's figure of the poet ranging over the world achieves moments of stillness , as in the poet 's identification with the woman who imag inatively join s the bathers ("Song of Myself ' Section II ). The poet achieves thi s and other moment s of liminality within an epic scope in response to the "bitter hug of mortality" (49. 1) - producing the lyric within the epic, the Archilochean within the Homeric. Thi s poet, protean in powers of transformation , maintains the ima ge of Archilochus, retr eatin g into primeval landscapes and finally sounding his "barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world" (52.3). His Dionysian potenc y encompasses the fem ale , manifestin g itself as the grotesque poet as well as naive ecce ntricity; and his imaginative making is of an idealized world. This poet' s footloose ranging , in and beyond time, bears out the imagination's urge to realize ideal versions of world s and human beings. The reconnaissance of the idea of the garden , finally, might lead to a recognition of the idea of the poet in our time. Con siderin g ideas of time and memory, Heideg ger 's talk of Mnem osyne and the muses reminds us that

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memory is the mother of the muses. Recalling the site of the liminal place evokes the idea of its maker, and the idea of memory as originary of poetry becomes suggestive in thought not only about Stevens's temporal poet, but also about the imaginative impulses of the women in James's story and Mamet's play. The diversity of made worlds , of the stage or of poetry, makes room for the possibility of the diversity and even improbability of figures of the poet in possible worlds . We can look back to consider, then, the figures of Deeny in Mamet's play and James 's young women as poet figures; and the poet figures come to represent attributes and techniques of our human being in a world. Imagination and making, poiesis, are essential to the poet, whether primal or sophisticated, whether identifiably a poet or only implicitly. The image of the improbable poet, even "drunk and asleep in his boots," or the unempowered woman trying to make an improbable world, is in essence the poet unaccommodated by images of having grown canonical, authoritative. Although so different from, even contradictory to, the figure of Archilochus the primordial poet (who is antecedent to law and order, before the Apollonian and the "moral" Victorian high-minded, privileged poet like Matthew Arnold) these women and Stevens's drunken old sailor manifest the essence of making a world, thus engaging us in affirming the possibility, becoming, transformation in the liminal place. They represent, as well, the potentiality of diversity and possibility in images of the poet. Florida Atlantic University NOTES I James Hillman, in his psychoanalytical theory based in phenomenology and hermeneutic s as well as the psychologies of Freud and Jung, adverts to phenomenological thought and capably performs a "turn," kehre , that recalls Heidegger's : "I do not ever truly have ideas ; they have, hold, contain, govern me. Our wrestling with ideas is a sacred struggle, as with an Angel" (Re-Visioning 130). 2 I allude to Aristotle 's insistence that what distinguishes the poet is her/his "making," not versifying or other inessentials ; the "making " of the poet might even be of "things that have actually occurred" because they might belong "to the class of the probable or possible" (Poetics , IX, 17-18). Other translations support this reading . For instance, as Gerald Else translates, " .. . the poet should be a maker of his plots more than of his verses.... Hence even if it happens that he puts something that has actually taken place into poetry, he is none the less a poet; for there is nothing to prevent some of the things that have happened from being the kind of things that can happen, and that is the sense in which he is their maker" (p. 34). 3 Hillman 's exploration of Jungean psychology tries to make accessible our affinities for Renaissance modes of thinking and the Classical pantheistic world. For Hillman, our need to

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recall these worlds manife sts their withdrawal and affirms the task of memory in uncove ring what is essential. 4 My talk of "play" is indebted to Hans-Georg Gadamer's extended argument that the motion of the dramatic work is essentially that of the activity of play. In both play and the dramatic experienc e, the audience/pl ayer is taken into the activity, becomes part of it, and is in essence played by it (Truth and Method 101-10). 5 Spariosu traces the idea of liminality from the anthropological considerations of it by Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep ; and he identifies its essence as "mediational" and "irenic." It is a possible world, therefore non factual, and the poem become s in this light a primordi al locu s of liminality (Wreath ofWi/d Olive 31-72) . 6 I have suggested in my PMLA article that the idealization is powerful and captivating in the short story " Brooksmith" ; but it is suspect, manifesting the ambivalence so central to the condition and consciousn ess of the idea as presented in the story - the pastoral being realized in a salon in the heart of the city. 7 Gadamer's discussion of Bi/dung argues that the proce ss of growth and development is not ju st a matter of one 's education as an individual but an acculturation as Heidegger's Dasein, the becoming into culture rather than out of it (Truth and Method 9-19) . The thought of hi/dung also involves, according to Gadamer, the recognition that its essence, or "root" meaning , is always there. The concrete experience as image, Bild, is the basis of development, and is never transcended or abandoned. 8 Hillman, explo iting the "cage" metapho r, provides a commentary that might well serve for furth er consideration of the unnamed young woman in James 's story. Hillman refers to the "frames of our consciousness" as "the cages in which we sit and the iron bars that form the grids and defen ses of our perception . By re-viewing , re-p resenting and re-visioning where we already are, we discover the psyche speaking imaginally in what we had been taking for granted as literal and actual descriptions " (127). The fictionality of the story is redupl icated in the fictionali zing of the young woman , and the cag e both protects and provides an irenic site for her playful imagination. 9 As Hillman observe s, Herme s " is the congenital dec eive r bringing equiv ocation into the world with divine authority. He is God of equivocation as he is guide of the soul.. . . [He] works as well through the messages of lies as through truths" (160) . 10 Dani el Schneider identifies the cage in this story and elsewh ere in Jame s's works as essen tially negative. It paralyze s and smothers; it is a place of immobility and passivity ; it is basically, as cag es are known to be, a place of imprisonment (118) . Schneider recognizes, however, that it encages tho se who are " yet endowed with vivid imagin ations" (125) . In Schneider's reading , James "acknowledged indirectly an affinity between himself and the other passive prisoners in the cage of the material world " (147); and Schn eider's conclusion concerning Jame s's works in general is that "to see the world as a cage need not lead one to despair : authentic freedom exists within the confines of the cage" (150). This conclusion does not lead him back to consider implications that might call for a rereading of "In the Cage." He does not read this story as I do. I see the cage more romant ically as manifesting a paradoxical power, as being a place in itself liminal and free, instigating the flights of imagination that lead the young woman, improbably, into the park and into her bizarre scenario. 11 I think it appropriate to echo Husserl's language of phenomenology. The theater metaphor in this poem stresse s the "made" quality of a world , and appear s as a reflection of the " made" quality of the poem itself. Neither is a transcendent truth . Both are created worlds; and both are made - if not by a literal poet , then by a figure who shares with poets the poiesis of poetry.

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12 In "The Plain Sense of Thi ngs" (Palm 382-83), our pond is only oste nsibly "plain sense" to the extent of abolishing the imag ination: although "we return / To a plain sense of things ... as if / We had come to an end of the imag ination .. . the absence of the imagination had / Itself to be imagined." IJ I find it interesting to notice that A. D. Melville observes in a note to this passage that Ovid 's acc ount "was to inspi re Titian more than once " (391) . My respon se to Stev en s' s sce ne, as pictori al, has long been a sense of the poem 's evoking images of a Titian paintin g. 14 James Long enb ach , con sideri ng the interplay betwee n the "real" and the imagin ativ e construct in thi s and oth er poem s, observes that the construction here is "the imagin ation ' s moonli ght trans formin g the 'wearier end' of bare real ity ... a belated world .. . saved by an older light that paradox ically restores an even 'earlier season of quiet.:" (57). Altho ugh we read the rhetoric of the poem differently - I do not sense that "earlier season" as having the power to "save," except perhaps in tranquilizing, as the lotus benumbs its sleepers - we agree that the poem concerns the transformat ive power of the imagination. 15 I use the word enargeia with Hcidegger' s discussion of it in mind : it "means that which in itself and of itself radiates and brings itself to light" (On Time and Being 66). It is not a matter of the individu al' s see ing, but of "that which gleams and radiates." The activity takes place in an "openness," and " it is only such openness that grants to giving and receiving at all what is free." Heidegger 's thus situating an "openness," between our usual ass umption that we have the power to see and the co unterproposal that enargeia 's radia ting in that freedo m would allow for that openness, might imply that the open ness is a space of liminal ity. 16 Stevens' s idea of the poet is not excl usive . The imagination is the ma rk of the poet: "Although the blue guitar is a sy mbol of the ima ginati on it is used most oft en sim ply as a refe rence to the individuality of the poet, meanin g by the poet any man of imagination" (Opus Posthum ous 233; my emph asis). 17 Leggett 's " intertextual" approac h recogn izes that Stevens might have been influenced by Nietzsche when he wrote "Peter Quinc e at the Clavier," included, as was "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," in Harmonium; but the " poss ibility [of influence] ... oper ates at the margin of our reading. It can never be totally dismissed even if it is ultim ately undecid able" (81). 18 Euripides 's messe nge r report s that he saw them sleeping, "C areless, but not immodest" (Hacchae 27); and for O vid , their "my steries " a re spied upon by the voy e ur Pentheus (Metamorphoses 72).

WORKS CIT ED Ari stotle. Poetics. Trans . Leon Gol den. Comment ary O. B. Hardison . Englewoo d Cliffs, NJ: Prenti ce-H all , 1968. - . Poetics. Trans Gerald F. Else. Ann Arbor: U of Mich igan P, 1970. Donadio , Steph en. Nietzsche, Henry James, and the Artistic Will. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. Euripides . Bacchae. New York: Dover, 1997. Fuchs, Daniel. The Comic Spi rit of Wallace Stevens. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1963. Gada mer, Han s-Georg. Truth and Method. 2nd revised edi tion. Trans. Joel Weinsheim er and Donald G. Marshall. New York : Continuum-Crossroad , 1991. Heide gger, Martin. What Is Called Thinking? Trans. J . Glenn Gray. New York: Harper-Colopho n, 1972. - . On Time and Being. New York: Harp er-Torchb ook, 1972.

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Hillm an, Jame s. Re-Yisioning Psychology. New York: Harpe r-Pere nnial, 1992. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introdu cti on to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. W. R. Boyce Gib son. New York & Londo n: Macmillan-Coll ier, 1962. James, Henry. In the Cage and Other Tales. New York: Norton, 1969. - . What Maisie Knew. Garden City, NY: Doubleday-Anchor, 1954. Leggett , B. J. Early Stevens: The Nie tzschean Intertex t. Durham : Duke UP, 1992. Longenb ach, Jam es. Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things. Oxfor d & New York: Oxford UP, 199 1. Marnet, David. The Old Ne ighbo rhood. New York: Random House-Vintage, 1998. Nie tzsche , Frie dric h. Th e Birth of Tragedy and Th e Gen ealogy of Morals. Tran s. Franc is Golffi ng. New York: Doubl eda y-A nchor, 1956. Ovid. Metam orphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford & New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Pearce, Howard . "Henry James's Pastoral Fallacy." PMLA 90 (1975 ): 83~7 . Sc hneider, Daniel. The Crystal Cage: Adventures of the Imagination in the Fiction of Henry James. Lawrence, Kansas : Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. Spariosu, Mihai. The Wreath of Wild Olive: Play, Liminality. and the Study of Literature. Albany : State U of New York P, 1997. Stevens, Wallace. "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words." Collected Poetry and Prose. New York: Library of America, 1997. 643-65. - . Opus Posthumous. Revised Milton J. Bates. New York : Borzoi-Knopf , 1989. - . The Palm at the End of the Mind : Selected Poems and a Play. Ed. Holly Steve ns. New York: Knopf, 197 1. Whi tman, Walt. Leave s of Gra ss: Comprehensive Read er's Edition . Ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Scu lley Bradley. New York: Norto n, 1965 .

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LAS BIBLIOTECAS INVISIBLES

En unas palabras fechadas el 13 de noviembre de 1925, dirigidas a Witold Hulewicz, traductor al polaco de las Elegias de Duino, Rainer Maria Rilke escribe: "Para el angel de las Elegias todas las torres y palacios del pasado son existentes, porque hace mucho que son invisibles, y las torres que aun subsisten, de nuestra existencia, ya son invisibles, aunque todavia perduren corporal mente (para nosotros) . EI angel de las Elegias es ese ser que garantiza el reconocer en 10 invisible un rango mas alto de la realidad".' La tarea consiste en ampliar el horizonte de 10 visible hasta atisbar entre sus vfsceras abiertas el halo de otras realidades, como el adivino escruta el futuro en el palpitante coraz6n del animal sacrificado. En esta visi6n convergen en nuestro presente los hechos del pasado, con los de las generaciones futuras . Pero s610 lIegamos a dar este paso investigando en 10 visible, en 10 familiar, en 10 cercano, en los objetos que con su proximidad nos tranquilizan. Pero Rilke insiste : "En nosotros, que estamos tomando parte en 10 invisible con una parte de nuestro ser, y tenemos apariencias (por 10menos) de participar en el , y podemos aumentar nuestra posesi6n en la invisibilidad mientras estamos aquf: s610 en nosotros puede cumplirse esa intima y permanente transustanciaci6n de 10 visible en invisible" . Y concluye: "nuestro propio destino se hace sin cesar en nosotros a la vez mas existente y mas invisible ".2 Este es tal vez el rango mas alto de 10 invisible, pero no a todos nos aguarda ese destino. Y como no todo 10 invisible 10 es en la misma medida, volvamos al trato de las cosas cotidianas. Tomemos entre nuestras manos un libro . Un libro escrito a partir de las notas pergefiadas cerca de las trincheras de la primera guerra mundial, con un curioso nombre latino: Tractatus L6gico-Philosophicus. En 1919, Ludwig Wittgenstein," escribi6 una carta a Ludwig von Ficker, con quien se hallaba negociando la publicaci6n del Tractatus: "Quizas pueda servirle que Ie escriba un par de cosas acerca de mi libro: en efecto, de su lectura - en mi franca opini6n- usted no sacara demasiado en claro. De hecho no 10 entendera; su argumento le parecera completamente extraiio . En realidad, sin embargo, no Ie sera extraiio, porque el sentido del libro es un sentido etico. En determinado momenta quise incluir en el prologo una proposici6n, que ahora de hecho no esta alii, pero que yo Ie transcribire ahora, porque quizas constituya para usted una clave para la comprensi6n de este trabajo. Quise 279 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 279-290. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers . Printed in the Netherlands .

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escribir que mi obra consta de dos partes: 10 que he escrito y, ademas, todo aquello que no he escrito. Y justamente esta Segunda parte es la lmportanre.'" Aun hoy sigue siendo enigmatico el sentido ultimo del Tractatus. En el libro se rozan los Ifmites de 10 que puede decirse con proposiciones logicas. Pero, sostiene Wittgenstein, 10 mas importante es aquello de 10 que nada puede decirse. Esta parte invisible dellibro esta constituida por todas aquellas cosas, por supuesto reales y existentes pero que escapan al lenguaje y que solo pueden ser sefialadas de una forma defctica. Tal vez el Iibro visible Tractatus esta escrito para apresar en su caracter invisible estas realidades. Y claro, el modo de hacerlo no puede ser sino indirecto. Tambien se nos dice que la toni estd escrita en los espacios blanco que separan una letra de otra y. por tanto, se trata de una escritura invisible que no puede ser confundida con los trazos negros de la letra. Acaso el mismo hecho de la lectura no sea sino se, la distance que hay entre 10 que aparece con rasgos fisicos sobre la pdgina blanca y el prodigio de su comprension, que trasciende asi los apices que componen la escritura. Si creemos a estos autores, cada vez con mayor nitidez, nos encontramos con la existencia de 10 invisible. Habria asf, como hemos visto, libros invisibles . Estos libros formarian la primera de nuestras bibliotecas invisibles. A finales de septiembre de 1985, Italo Calvino debfa emprender un viaje que 10 iba a llevar a la Universidad de Harvard. Allf debfa dar seis conferencias durante el curso 1985-86, en la catedra "Charles Eliot Norton Poetry Lectures".' Pero el dfa 19 ernprendio, en cambio otro viaje, este mas enigmatico, que Ie impedirfa leer las Six Memos for the Next Millenium, traducidas como Seis propuestas para el proximo milenio." La cuarta propuesta lIeva por titulo "Visibilidad", y es una conferencia en la que, partiendo de un verso de Dante (Purgatorio, XVII, 25), se propone demostrar que la fantasia es un lugar en el que llueve . Asigna a la imaginacion el papel de repertorio de 10 potencial, de 10 hipotetico, repertorio tambien de 10 que no es, no ha sido tal vez ni sera, pero hubiera podido ser. Y si Calvino prop one la visibilidad en su enumeracion de valores que se han de salvar es porque quiere que "las irnagenes cristalicen de una forma bien definida, memorable, autosuficiente, icastica",' Es decir, hay imagenes de 10 invisible. Hay una dialectica siempre inconclusa entre 10 visible y 10 invisible, segiin la cual, la imagen desvela 10 invisible, pero una parte permanece velada, pues la potencialidad de 10 invisible supera cualquier intento de reduccion 0 cerco. Esta es parte de la tarea ilimitada del arte : el manto que , al mismo tiempo, teje y desteje Penelope.

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Calvino propone un metodo cuasicientffico para hacer visible 10 invisible. Apelando a su propia formaci6n y a las claves de su trabajo creador, explica la forma en que, a partir de una imagen, el propio desarrollo discursivo genera otras imagenes y va siendo llevado en una direcci6n determinada, de modo que, simultaneamente, descubre y avanza en la 16gica por la que ha de discurrir la narraci6n. A la luz de este y otros testimonios, el papel de la creaci6n, la tarea de la escritura y del arte, parece que consiste en hacer visible 10 invisible. De dos formas, 0 bien mostrando 10 invisible mismo , de un modo directo pero haciendolo visible, 10 que constituye el camino mas arduo; 0 bien destacando en 10 visible los elementos que descomponen esa visibilidad y forman, por asf decirlo, un punto de fuga hacia 10 invisible. Este es el dudoso terre no de la literatura, en el taller del artista. Porque 10 que muestra, 10 que aparece a los ojos de los lectores, es el estado final y tal vez no definitivo de un proceso. Proceso en el que se trata con estas y parecidas realidades. "Sornos las abejas de 10 invisible", decfa Rilke. Antes de seguir con la Segunda de nuestras bibliotecas invisibles, hemos de diferenciar 10 invisible de una noci6n que, aunque pueda parecer cercana, nada tiene que ver. Esta noci6n es la de '10 oculto'. En un texto de Fernando Pessoa, con algunas dudas fechado hacia 1917, intitulado "Ocultismo", se nos dan algunas pistas para adentrarnos en las sutilezas de este universo. Diffcil de estudiar y conocer, por su propia naturaleza, es una fuerza subterranea que recorre la historia y emerge en momentos cruciales. Relacionado con la Gnosis pas6 a actuar ocultamente despues de los conflictos del primer cristianismo con la mfstica neoplat6nica. Dice Pessoa: "Apreciamos, saliendo esporadicamente a la superficie, una corriente que data sin duda de la Gnosis (esto es de la uni6n de la Cabala judaica con el neoplatonismo) y que ya se nos muestra con el aspecto de los caballeros de Malta 0 de los Templarios, ya, desapareciendo, vuelve a aflorar de nuevo en los Rosa-Cruz para, finalmente, subir por completo a la superficie en la Masonerfa't.f Lo oculto, por tanto, tiene caracter hist6rico y es temporal. Lo invisible, en relaci6n con 10 oculto es atemporal, no transcurre ni discurre, es ucr6nico y ut6pico. En conclusi6n: Primero. Para el angel de Rilke, las bibliotecas del pasado son existentes. Segundo. Los libros que no pueden ser escritos, por ser su escritura invisible, como la Tora, 0 que se componen de una parte visible y otra, por asf decirlo, invisible, forman otra biblioteca, tal vez distinta, de libros invisibles, pero tan existentes como 10 es la biblioteca de Alejandrfa para el angel de las Elegias de Duino.

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Tercero. Segun Calvino, a partir de una imagen puede hacerse visible 10 invisible. La tarea del arte en general, y de la literatura en particular, parece que consiste en hacer visible 10 invisible que ha podido ser intuido, atisbado 0 visto por el artista. Esta es la tarea de la imaginaci6n creadora, que en el flujo y reflujo constante entre inspiraci6n y expiraci6n se convierte en un elemento mediatico privilegiado para 10 invisible. Y tarea de la fantasia, ese lugar en el que llueve. La siguiente biblioteca invisible es aiin mas tranquilizadora. En ella no hay nada de mfstica, de mi sterio, ni de invisibilidad hasta que aparezca ese elemento privilegiado en el tran site de 10 visible a 10 invisible que es el fuego. Aqui esta todo mas claro. Esta biblioteca invisible no esta compuesta por los Iibros que nunca llegaran a ser escritos porque no pueden ser reducidos a lenguaje y no forman tampoco una biblioteca fantasmal, sino que es una biblioteca compuesta por libro s con lomo, guardas, tftulos y dedicatorias . Es una biblioteca de un lector particular, de "mas de cien cuerpos de libros grandes, muy bien encuadernados, y otros pequefio s".? Y esta biblioteca, que es una biblioteca bien visible, pasa a ser invisible al disponerse en una pira. El fuego , como tantas veces, hace aquf tambien invisible 10 visible. El suceso, bien conocido de todos, se relata en el Capitulo VI de la Primera parte del Quijote : Del donoso y grande escrutinio que el cura y el barbero hicieron en la libreria de nuestro ingenioso hidalgo. Se trata, entre otras diversiones, de un ejercicio de crftica literaria en el que la ironia y el espiritu zumb6n de Cervantes, agazapado tra s Cide Hamete Benengeli, repasan los libros que fueron a dar con el curioso hidalgo en la locura. Los personajes del escrutinio son cuatro, los dos amigos de don Quijote, es decir, el cura y el barbero, la sobrina y el ama . Los libros no se queman sin ton ni son, en el escrutinio hay discernimiento y por tanto Iibertad. Y vemo s que, como siempre, se toma menos libertad quien mas libertad tiene, en este caso curioso, un cura . EI ama, la mas ignorante, los quiere todos en la pira . EI cura, el mas versado y liberal es quien iinicamente salva algunos del fuego seguro, por medio del escrutinio de la crftica. Por 10 menos quiere leer los titulos antes de condenarlos al fuego . Asi se salvaron, entre otros el Amadfs de Goula'? y el Palmerfn de lnglaterra, algunos mas por azar 0 por la amistad con el autor. Tambien: "Todos los que se hallaren que tratan destas cosas de Francia", II son depositados en un pozo seco, hasta ver que se ha de hacer con ellos. Algtin otro se entrega al barbero, haciendo uso el cura de la Facultas retinendi libros prohibitos, a que se refiere el Concilio de Trento, costumbre que sigui6 en Espana hasta bien entrado el siglo XIX . Una forma de Iiberalidad que va unida sie mpre al espfritu inquisitorial. Pero esto no ha de ser ahora el objeto de nuestro analisis, pues 10 que ahora adquiere relevancia, ayudando a convertir en invisible 10 que antes fue

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visible es que: "Aquella noche quem6 y abras6 el ama cuantos libros habfa en el corral y en toda la casa" . 12 Esta biblioteca de los libros quemados de don Quijote, es la Segunda de nuestras bibliotecas invisibles . Porque la cosa no qued6 aquf. Precisamente es aquf donde empieza. Es esta biblioteca invisible la que inftama la imaginaci6n de nuestro destartalado heroe. Con el fuego se hacen todos invisibles, pero la invisibilidad que han alcanzado a los ojos de don Quijote los hace a todos vivos. Ya no son los libros leidos y olvidados en un rincon de la estancia. Se ha producido una transformaci6n y los libros que reposaban en el desorden de la habitacion, llenos de polvo, como todos los libros, y con hojas sueltas , ahora inftaman una biblioteca unica en la imaginacion de don Quijote y es este suceso el que da la definitiva certeza a don Quijote, al advertir que el sabio Frest6n 0 Frist6n 0 Mufiaton esta detras . EI suceso es tan significativo que no s610 es la causa directa de la Segunda salida, sino que ya en ella nos encontramos con la aparicion de Sancho, configurandose con todo ella 10 que sera el Quijote. Es la invisibilidad de esta biblioteca 10 que la hace unica. Todos los contenidos de los libros se activan y socorreran a don Quijote en los episodios mas insospechados, permitiendole interpretar la realidad con arreglo a una 16gica que s610 ahora de ellos se desprende. Y si los libros visibles de una biblioteca siempre provocan con su lectura el acceso a mundos imaginarios, fantasticos 0 irreales, los libros de la biblioteca invisible nos ayudan, de forma sinuosa, a descubrir la verdadera realidad, nos adentran en el camino de la evidencia y permiten que nos vayamos instalando en el ambito de la certeza. Ha cafdo el velo de Maya de la apariencia visible y es en la invisibilidad a la que se ha llegado por el fuego, en la que pone de manifiesto el nivel mas profundo de la realidad . Si la vida era el cuento contado por un idiota, lIeno de sonido y de furia que no significa nada, ahora es el relato de un loco que nos descubre la verdadera locura : creer que no estamos locos, creer que somos cuerdos. Al incendio de su biblioteca responde don Quijote de una manera verdaderamente ejemplar y soprendente. Descubre que ya no tiene sentido seguir leyendo aquellos libros, tal vez porque Ie han dado todo 10 que debfan darle . Ahora se trata de escribir el mismo en las torcidas veredas y polvorientos caminos de la Mancha, hazaiias tales que ya narradas sin duda por otros sabios , haran el libro mas maravilloso que jarnas nadie pudo imaginar. Un libro que no esta escrito por un unico autor, pues a muchos lleg6 la fama de don Quijote de la Mancha, y sin embargo la intenci6n de esta historia es que, leyendola 0 escuchandola: "EI melanc61ico se mueva a risa, el risuefio la

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acrecie nte, el simple no se enfade, el discreto se admire de la invencion, el grave no la desprecie, ni el prudente deje de alabarla" .1 3 Pero hay otras bibli otecas que tiene n en cormin co n la de do n Quijote haberse co nvertido en invisib les por el fuego. Co n la biblioteca de Alejandria '" tenemos la sensacion crec iente de que nos ade ntra mos en un mundo de leyenda. Nada parecer ser demostrabl e 0 veraz, y no es solo por la distance de sig los. Tamp oc o interesa tan to que nuestros datos histor iogr aficos sea n co rrecto s. De 10 que se trata es de comprobar que tras los sucesivos incendios y su definitiva destruccion, e n la biblioteca invisible de Aleja ndrfa podemos reconstru ir el clima espiri tual de una epoca . Una epoca tal vez no tan distante de la nuestra y que posee rasgos e intenciones com unes . Por cefiirnos al campo de la literatura, (,quie n nota la distancia de diecinueve sig los en la obrita atribuida a un tal Longino, Sobre 10 sublime, 15 conternporanea de tantas otras perdidas? (,No es, acaso, su visio n precursora de 10 que hoy lIamamo s crftica literari a? La grandiosidad, la magnificencia, y hasta el tamafi o de la biblioteca del Museo de Alejandrfa fueron tales, que su destruccion parece responder a la logica de las grandes cere mo nias , que han de transcurr ir, co mo se sabe, lentamente y en varios tiempos . Su transite a 10 invisible no pudo darse con la rapidez con la que el fuego arra sa los libros de una pequefia biblioteca privada. La bibl ioteca historica, junto con el puerto de la ciudad y la riqueza que bajaba del Nilo, constituyo un instrumento politico sin precedentes en la corte de los Ptolomeos. Esta bib lioteca, en la que podemos imaginar a los sabios leyendo en voz alta, com iendo ju ntos 0 co nversando en los porticos y jardines del Museo tiene, indudablemente, un gran poder de evocacion para nosotros, pero esta evocacion deriva hacia la melanco lfa, adentran dono s en un laberinto de sensaciones en el que podemos lIegar a sentir nostalgia por la perdida de algo que no hem os co noci do . Dej em os para otro mom ent a las obras de Ze nodo to, Eratosten es 0 Ca limaco, de Eucl ides, Arqufmedes 0 Apolonio. Dejemos las discusiones sobre el rnimero de rollos y pergam inos. Lo que a nosotros nos interesa es la biblioteca invisible, que con ape nas cuatro 0 cinco descrip ciones ind irectas de su grandeza y destruccion , ha pasado a ser habitante privilegiado de nuestro imaginar io. La dificultad de inclu ir la biblioteca del Mu seo e ntre las bibli ote cas invisible s tal vez radiqu e en que, como la de don Quijote, nunca llego a ser del todo invisible. Siempre pudi eron salvarse textos, traducirse, copiarse y transmit irse. Serfa de masiado esque rnatico decir que un ince ndio 0 varios la destruyeron . Sin

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embargo, continuando en este juego de seguir el transite de 10 visible en invisible, podemos diferenciar tres momentos. El primero de ellos cierra el maximo esplendor de la biblioteca y tambien coincide con el cierre del perfodo que va de la fundaci6n de la ciudad por Alejandro al tiempo en el que acaba la supremacfa cultural de Alejandrfa en el Mediterraneo, es decir, en el mundo conocido de Oriente y Occidente. EI siguiente momento, bajo dominaci6n romana nos lIeva hasta los siglos de emergencia del cristianismo y su consolidaci6n como fuerza religiosa, polftica y social que harfa cambiar la concepci6n del mundo . EI tercer momento, aunque mas cercano se entrelaza otra vez con la leyenda y se refiere al comienzo de la dominacion arabe, esquematica e injustamente simplificado en el acertijo 0 la paradoja del califa Omar. Compara Wladioslav Tatarkiewicz los viajes de Alejandro!" al descubrimiento de America, en cuanto supusieron una apertura de horizontes de capital importancia para los siglos sucesivos. EI conocimiento de otras lenguas y el trato con otras culturas fecundo el genio griego y dio paso, a la muerte de Alejandro, a una nueva era. La polis se abre al mundo y a otras civilizaciones. EI nuevo aire cosmopolita, consecuencia inmediata de la administracion de tan vastos domini os, necesita un gran centro, a la vez simb6lico y real, en el que se propicien los encuentros comerciales, se difundan las noticias de los mas extremos territorios del imperio y se conozcan todas las grandes obras del espfritu. No parece evidente que los primeros Ptolomeos, al querer hacer un templo a la Musas, supieran calcular el alcance del inmenso instrumento polftico que en los siglos siguientes iban a tener en sus manos. Un centro de investigacion, estudio, conocimiento, intercambio, forrnacion y consulta. Un edificio inteligente que no podfa sospechar el inmenso poder de la memoria. La mitologfa considera a las Musas'? hijas de Zeus y Mnemosine, y en otros lugares esta es la decima Musa. EI Museo, es el templo dedicado a las hijas de Zeus y la Memoria. En un primer momenta se trataba, por tanto, de dejar memoria del legado griego. Allf estarfan recogidas las mejores obras de los poetas, dramaturgos e historiadores, pero tambien de los fisicos, medicos, astronomos y maternaticos. Y en una de las dependencias del Museo, la biblioteca que sera destrufda por el fuego en sucesivas ocasiones. Esta biblioteca, que adquiere con su caracter invisible una grandeza mftica marca con su destruccion el fin de la cultura clasica. EI primer transite hacia 10 invisible de esta biblioteca paso inadvertido para sus contemporaneos, Un incendio de las naves en el puerto cercano,

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parece ser el origen fortuito. Eran los afios de la Guerra de Alejandria. EI incendio no alarmo a nadie al principio, hasta que se levanto de repente un fuerte viento que elevo las llamas hasta siete vece s la altura de las naves. No hab fa ningun peli gro , pues a las naves, aunque atracadas en el puerto Ie estaban siendo cortadas las amarras y se vieron en medio del puerto como fanta smas de fuego . De repente carnbio la direccion del viento, como si de un golpe de timon se trata se. Los resto s de telas y maderas fueron a chocar violentamente contra los muro s, y aunque los edificios eran de marm ot, miles de part fculas incendiarias, como luciern agas voladoras se adentraron en los mas rem otos entres ijos de las piedras, en los hue co s de las ve ntanas, en las rendij as de las puertas. Y llovfan en todas las dire cciones adentrandose en las espacio sas estancias, en los pasillo s; incendiando todo 10 que no era piedra, marmol, hierro 0 agua. Vario s autores romanos relatan este incendio, pero ninguno habl a de la destruccion de la biblioteca 0 de los rollo s y pergaminos. Puede ser porque el centro de la vida cultural ya se habfa inclinado hacia Roma, nueva referencia geografica y comercial del orbe, y 10 que unicarnente interesaba a los rom ano s eran las notici as relacionadas con su creciente dominacion polftica. Si este incendio es fortuito , lo s tiempos han cambiado en la seg unda secuencia. Otra vez el fuego se obstina en convertir 10 visible en invisible . Han tran scurrido varios siglos y esta vez el fuego se propaga en el Sarapeo. Ca si todo s los autores parecen coin cidir en que en el afio 391 , Teofilo, el amado de Dios, con siguio autorizacion de Teodo sio para destruir el Sarapeo. EI historiador Amiano Marcelino, no considera segura la destru ccion de los libros, al ser Teofilo, "hombre muy culto y de sgu stador de lo s escritos clasicos". Lo que sf esta claro es que muchos libro s fueron retirados de la circulacion, entrado con este espfritu en el clima de moral hip ocrita y costumbres taimadas que dominara durante siglos de Edad Medi a. Injusta, cuando no completamente falsa, es la asign acion a los arabes de la definitiva destrucc ion de la ya bastante meno s famosa biblioteca. Apena s si van qued ando los restos desdentados de la memori a, pero una leyenda atribuye a Omar la autorfa de la paradoja segiin la cual los libros de la biblioteca debfan ser destru fdos. Si estaban de acuerdo con el Coran por innece sarios, y si no 10 est aban por impfos. Adjudicacion inju sta porque son precisamente, como se sabe, los traductores arabes los que transmiten de nuevo a Occidente el legado griego, empezando por la obra del maestro de Alejandro, Aristoteles. Lo que fue conocimiento y certeza se difumina en leyenda. Lo que fue cienci a y rigor filologico se diluye entre referencia s fabulosas e imagenes miti cas, Estas figur as de nue stro ima ginario so n formas atenuad as de la memoria, pero como a don Quijote se Ie inflame la imaginacion con el

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incendio de su biblioteca, algiin sabio Frist6n 0 Faeton, debi6 quemarnos a nosotros la de Alejandrfa . Pero la memoria es el punto de sutura entre 10 visible y 10 invisible, facilitandonos la entrada a un universo de naturaleza espiritual, como exigfa Theodor W. Adorno para el arte. Pues el arte no es mas que una forma del tiempo . Es la memoria la que hace visibles las bibliotecas invisibles, precisamente porque es en la memoria donde se quedan las bibliotecas que alguna vez fueron visibles. Incluso la memoria desmoronada de una biblioteca de la que no se recuerdan nombres, ni Iibros, ni la mayor parte de textos y documentos, puede ser de nuevo visible, si se nos inflama la imaginaci6n. Las generaciones de textos que desaparecieron no son, por tanto, imitiles. Imitil puede ser enfrascarnos en el sinsentido de querer reconstruir sus paginas . Ya no son necesarias, sino en su ser invisibles. S610 desde esa invisibilidad son iitiles. Esta memoria es la otra cara del vacfo que nos dejan los hechos en su ausencia. Y es este vacfo el que las diferencia de las interpretaciones quimericas, esas que no nos dejan en el pecho ningun vacfo, porque nunca tuvimos experiencia ffsica de elias . En cambio, con 10 invisible las cosas suceden de otro modo. No nos consuela su ausencia y este puede ser el principio de un proyecto creador. La siguiente de nuestras bibliotecas invisibles , como la primera de la que hablamos, tampoco tiene anaqueles, ni galerias, ni archivos . Tiene s610 en comiin con las anteriores que tambien ha ardido . Y cuando arden estos Iibros, sus cenizas van ajuntarse en el mismo lugar de 10invisible. En todas las epocas encontramos estas bibliotecas que se convirtieron en invisibles por la intolerancia, el odio al conocimiento y el horror. Tanto en el caso de Te6filo como en el de Omar, bibliotecas enteras , son sustituidas por religiones de un solo Iibro. Un unico libro que contiene toda la sabiduna, todo el conocimiento, todas las ensefianzas, todo en suma, 10 que se debe saber. Y nada mas. Pero este libro, que en el ambito religioso puede ser suficiente para colmar las aspiraciones espirituales de los fieles, se pretende, muchas veces, que supla tambien el ansia de saber y de conocimiento. Esta delicada Ifnea se desplaza facilmente hacia las bibliotecas que han ardido por el fuego de una fe que excede sus Ifmites, por el fuego que rodea como un cfrculo a las ortodoxias y por el fuego de la intolerancia. Todos los libros que han ardido en esta pira forman una unica biblioteca invisible que no podemos permitir que se nos arrebate y borre de la memoria. En estas hogueras han ardido los libros requisados en todas las epocas al amparo de poderes inquisitoriales. Y siempre porque estos libros suponfan otras certezas y defendfan 0 consideraban plausibles opiniones distintas a las defendidas como rectas .

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Invariablemente, esta llama destructora siempre la han encendido hombres de un solo libro. En esta biblioteca da igual que el contenido dellibro sea polftica 0 ficcion, historia 0 cuentos para nifios; si se defienden opiniones distintas, es decir, heterodox as, al fuego con ellos . Se entiende asf que Ie quepa a un libro de Gustav Meyrink, El Golem , el dudoso honor de ser el primero que querfan no s610 quemar, sino hacer desaparecer los mayores enemigos que ha tenido en el siglo XX la inteligencia. (,Que contiene tan malefico y provocativo, este delicioso libro? (,Contra que Y contra quienes atentaba esta historia que se desarrolla en el barrio judfo de Praga? (,Que es 10 que inquieta al poder de obras como El Golem? (,0 de pelfculas como El gabinete del Doctor Caligari

o Nosferatut" El Golem es una leyenda en la que se deposita simbolicamente todo el legado espiritual de un pueblo. Y esto es 10 que quiere ser destruido. Las cenizas dellibro ascienden en el cielo plomizo de la noche, entre pavesas que se confunden con la oscuridad . Y alIf, en 10 alto, se juntan a las otras cenizas que suben de los crematorios . Las cenizas de los libros y con elias las cenizas de la memoria; las cenizas de la vida y con elias la memoria desierta de todo un pueblo. En un cielo sin hacinamiento, como en el poema de Celan, Todesfuge." Que lejos esta otra cara de la humanidad de aquel escrutinio del Quijote, donde la gracia, el espfritu zumbon, la satira, el fingimiento, la admiracion del talento y la autocritica se escenifican junto a la ignorancia del ama, que en su afan de salvar de la irreparable locura a su amo, quiere destruir todos los libros que, en sus cortas luces, son el origen de todo el mal que aflige a su senor. Y es precisamente el cura el que nos sorprende con su conocimiento, libertad y sentido crftico. Y Cervantes, el escurridizo autor del Quijote, sonriendo levemente desde el blanco que separa los renglones, ni siquiera da su propia opini6n, pues se burla nuevamente al elogiar por boca del cura a libros y autores que el mismo no apreciaba demasiado. No hay tal vez mayor ejemplo de tolerancia sin renunciar a la inteligencia. Porque en una biblioteca, todo hay que decirlo, no todos los libros que se guardan son igualmente valiosos . Basta empezar a leerlos para comprobarlo. Esta humanidad, que tal vez 10 sea desde que invento, descubrio 0 se encontro por azar con la escritura, que avanza siempre igual de perdida ante la misma niebla, descubrio una noche lejana a transmitir su memoria mediante los tizones y garabatos que acabarfan siendo signos de un balbuciente alfabeto . Esta humanidad que resume su sentimiento religioso en libro, y que descubre su ser espiritual entre los signos de la escritura, tiene en la biblioteca uno de sus elementos simb61icos esenciales, como supo ver Jorge Luis Borges, entre las tinieblas azuladas de su ceguera, que tanto 10

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acercaron a 10 invisible . Porque la biblioteca es memoria, es decir, tiempo ; tiempo conden sado, tiempo experirnentado, tiempo con forma . Lo unico que somos durante el corto espacio que dura nuestra existencia y que con toda seguridad nos trasciende. La fuerza inqu ietante de las man ife stac iones art istic as radica en la posibi!idad de que eli as desvelen la exi stenci a de otro s mundo s, de otra s realidade s, agazapadas bajo la aparien cia de una unica realidad . A estas otras realidades se puede acceder desde la experiencia de la bellez a 0 el horror. EI cometido de la literatura no es tanto el de construir mundos, como el de horadar la certeza de un unico mundo 0 de que este mundo sea tal y como se nos presenta en aparienc ia. El poder, sin embar go, se asienta, entre otras, en la convicci6n de que 's u' realidad es 'Ia ' realidad . Repare se en la !ista de todas las heterodoxias y se vera que no son mas que eso, opiniones distintas. La destrucci6n de las certezas, la disolu ci6n del 'orto' , de 10 recto, es obra de la construcci6n negativa de la literatura. Es preciso diseminar, decon struir, adoptar otros punto s de vista. Y esto es la ficcion, un ejercicio de alteridad. Y esto es siempre la literatura, un inacabado dialogo . N OTAS Rainer Maria Rilke: Elegias de Duino (Du ineser Elegicn, 1923). Introducci6n y traducci6n de Jose Mar ia Valverde. Editorial Lumen, Barcelona, 1980, p. 23. 2 Op. cit., p. 22. ) Ludwig Wittgenstein (Viena, 1889 - Cambridge, 29 de abril de 1951) . Para otro s aspecto s de su vida y esc ritos puede consultarse la obra de Ray Monk : Ludwig Wittgen stein. EI deb er de un genio, (Lud wig Wittgenstein. The Duty of Gen ius, 1990) . Traducci6n de Damian Alou. Segunda edici6 n Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona. 1997. 4 Giovanni Reale y Dario Antiseri: f-listo ria de l pensami ento filo sofi co y cientifico . (II pens iero occidental e dalle origin! ad ogg ]. 1984) Tomo tercero, Del Romanticismo hasta hoy. Barcelon a. Editor ial Herder, 1988 , p. 585. 5 Cicio de seis conferencias que tiene lugar durant e el ario acadernico en la Universidad de Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 6 ltalo Calvino: Se is propu esta s para el p rox imo mil en io. (Six M emos for the Nex t Mille nni um) Editorial Siruela , Madrid, 1994 . 7 Op . cit., p. 107. Cfr. Asimismo Pedro Azara: Imagen de 10 Invi sible . Editorial Anagrama, Barcelon a, 1992. 8 Fernando Pessoa: Sobre literatura y art e . Traducci6 n de Nicolas Extremera Tapia, Enrique Nogueras Valdivie so y Llui sa Trias i Folch . Alianza Editorial, Madrid , 1987, pp. 306-307. 9 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: EI ingeni oso hida lgo Don Qu ijot e de la Ma ncha . Primera parte. Edici6n cri tica y coment ario de Vicente Gaos. Edito rial Gredos, Madrid, 1987, p. 130. 10 Para Cer vantes, el Amadis de Ga ula ( 1496 ) es el "primer" libro de caba llerias. Es el primero impreso en cas tellano, si tenemos en cuenta que Cervantes parece desconocer la edici6n catalana del Tirant 10 Blan ch (1490), que no se tradujo hasta 1511. II Op. cit., p. 137.

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Op. cit., p. 152. Op. cit., p. 32. 14 Mustafa EI-Abbadi: La antigua Biblioteca de Alejandria. Vida y destino. (Life and fa te of the ancient Library ofAlexandria, 1990). Unesco y Amigos de la Biblioteca de Alejandrfa, Madrid, 1994. 15 Anonimo (Longino): Sobre 10 sublime. Texto, Introduccion, Traducc ion y Notas de Jose Aisina Clota. Erasmo, textos bilingiies. Editorial Boch, Barcelona, 1985. 16 La biblioteca de Alejandria, aunque ejecutada por los Ptlomeos, tiene su origen en la capsa que Alejandro lIevaba siempre consigo y depositaba junto a su espada, tanto bajo la cama real como bajo el catre de campafia, En este cofre Alejandro lIevaba siempre un ejemplar de la Iliada. A cstc suceso hace referencia Cervantes, cuando quiere que el Palmerfn de ln glaterra, "se guarde y se conserve como a cosa unica y se haga para clio otra caja como la que hallo Alejandro en los despojos de Dano, que la dispute para guardar en ella las obras del poeta Homero" (Op cit. p. 138). La noticia , como cuenta Vicente Gaos, cs referida por Plinio el Viejo en su Histo ria Natural, libro VII, y por Plutarco en su Vida de Alejandro , segun el cual "al hallarse entre los restos del rey Darfo una caja riqufsima , guarnecida de oro y piedras preciosas, la destine para guardar en ella la Iliada, obra tan admirada por Alejandro Magno que solfa tenerla junt o con su espada bajo la cabecera de su lccho". (Ibid., Nota 105c). 17 EI culto a las Musas, procedfa probabl emente de Tracia. Su nurnero quedo reducido a nueve, Calfope, musa de los Cantos Heroicos; Clio, de los heroes y la Historia ; Euterpe, de la Miisica; Thalia, de la Comedia ; Melp omene de la Traged ia; Tersfcore, de la Danza; Urania, de la Astronomfa; Erato, del Amor y Polyrnnia, de la Poesfa Lfrica y los cantos sagrados. 18 Luciano Berriauia : Los proverbios chinos de F. W. Murnau. I tomo: Etapa alemana; II tomo: Etapa america na. Filmot eca Espanola. Instituto de la Cine matogr affa y de las Arte s Audiovisuales , Madrid, 1990. 19 Wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Liiften da liegt man nicht eng .. . (Excavamos una tumba en los aires allf no se esta estrecho. Tr: de Felix Duque) "Todesfuge", (Fuga de muerte), pertenece a Mohn und Gedachtn is (Amapola y memoria), 1952. Las cenizas suben y alii acaba el hacinamiento de los cuerpos, en la limpidez del cielo. 12 13

SECTION V THE PLAY : VISIBLE, INVISIBLE

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RESEMBLANCE: PLAY BETWEEN THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE

. . . If we are concerned about the resemblance of our faces, we must consider whether he who affirms it is a painter, or not. - Socrates, in Plato's Theatetus Resemblance is the most slippery kind of thing . - The Stranger, in Plato's Sophist The problem of the exact relationship between the visible and the invisible belongs to the most troubling issues not only in Plato, but in the whole tradition of Western metaphysics , which has inherited them from the Athenian philosopher. But Plato was an artist as well, with the soul of a poet and the eyes of a painter. The characters of his dialogues conceive the relationship between the visible and the invisible according to an artistic, especially painterly, pattern as resemblance or lack thereof. Resemblance becomes both the epistemological principle of the theory of anamnesis and the principle of metaphysical and political legitimation. Thus, the artist in Plato provides the philosopher with the structure of representation that governs his world and his ideal state . The Republic, which establishes the model of representation based on resemblance, has recourse to the comparison with the painter's art when evoking the philosophers' foundation of the ideal state : "A city could never be happy otherwise than by having its outlines drawn by the painters who use the divine pattern." The philosophers, founders of the city, like the painters, "would take the city and the dispositions of human beings, as though they were a canvas" and "in the first place, they would wipe [it] clean, 'purify' (katharan poieseiani" Thus, the philosophers-creators should follow the procedures of careful artists in order to secure the accuracy of their reproductions of the ideal model. At the same time, however, the analysis of painting and poetry calls into question the possibility of such artistic reproduction of the political and metaphysical structure. The same Republic points to the painter's and poet's deception as a great danger to the metaphysical and political stability of the world and the state. At the end, the artist himself becomes a victim of the philosophical and political rather than achieving artistic "purification,'? 293 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Anal ecta Husserliana LXXV, 293-304 . © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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The Republic stages a drama - an agon between art and philosophy or, more specifical1y, between Homer and Socrates. The philosopher acknowledges his lifelong love for the poet and yet - amicus Homer sed magis amica veritas - he is obliged to banish him in order to satisfy the metaphysical principle of the simultaneous distinction and resemblance between the visible and the invisible world. Apparently, Homer ignores the latter, or at least does not credit it with much ontological weight. ' The realm of the invisible - which Plato paradoxical1y names ideai, Forms or outward appearances of things , but which he sometimes associates with Hades or Aeides (the Incorporeal, the Invisible) - is situated beyond our world, beyond the world of images. In Plato's view, what connects our world with the true but invisible world of Forms is resemblance. The lack of resemblance, on the contrary, marks an imprisonment in the visible realm. Is not, however, resemblance a "visible" relation par excellence? "Resembling" seems indeed equivalent to "looking like," to "being perceived as" and to "being an imitation of," and it might eventually implicate the invisible realm of Forms in the realms of mimesis and of broadly understood visibility. Thus, paradoxically, resemblance - while securing the participation of the visible world of images in the invisible world of truth - threatens to undermine the autonomy of the latter and the whole system of its relationship with the visible. In what follows , I shal1 examine some consequences of this ambiguity of resemblance as a guarantee and, at the same time, as a threat to the system of representation, which refers the visible images to the invisible models . "Image without resemblance" is a disturbing phrase, particularly for the Greeks and their heirs who derive the notion of image teikon) directly from the notion of "resembling" (eoikenai). Yet, the Eleatic Stranger in Plato's Sophist does not seem to mind the paradox when introducing the famous distinction between resembling and dissembling images, nor does Gilles Deleuze when he develops Platonic polarity into his own theory of simulacra, a theory that should lead, paradoxically, to the "overturning of Platonism." Indeed, for Deleuze the paradox of "dissembling images" accompanies the paradox of using Plato's own text as leverage in the attempt to fulfill the major task of modern philosophy and art: "le renversement du platonisme'" "Was not Plato to be the first to overturn Platonism, or at least to point out the direction such an overturning should take?" asks Deleuze after having evoked the end of the Sophist, where the sharp distinction between the true image of the invisible paradigm and the sophistic play with the simulacra seems to break down.'

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What could be more dangerou s for Platonism than confusing the philosopher, a champion of truth , with the sophist, an "artist" and a master of mimesis? The Stranger's distinction between the image s of being and the simulacra of appearance and becoming is introduced preci sely in order to separate the "good" from the "bad" side of mimesi s, which is part of a larger project in the Sophi st, namel y, the separation of philo sophy from (the art of) sophistry through the criterion of the resemblance with true reality. Resemblance (homoiotesi is, however, "an extremely slippery kind of thing" (olthi stherotaton gar to genos) , warns the Stranger in the Sophi st , and "a cautious man should above all be on his guard again st resernblances.?" Deleuze does not mention this passage of the Sophist, but he seems to have it in mind when, following in the Stranger's steps , he attempts to prevent the "slippage," i.e., when he attempts to render resemblance unambiguous. He is apparently more successful than Plato's character in developing the image/simulacrum polarity, which is rigorous and never questioned . In Deleuze's reading of Plato 's texts - the Phaedrus, the Statesman, the Sophist - simulacrum is not a vaguely resembling figure of the Idea , a fading image still preserving some traits of the original, but rather a completely dissembling counterfeit, violating the principles of family resemblance." Re semblance should mark a profound genetic dependence, an interior kin ship, and no superficial effect produced by the simulacru m could compensate for the lack of this. The question of resemblance is crucial to the problem of overturning Platonism because the ontological and cosmological framework of the Platonic system has the structure of representation. In the "v isible world ," the thing itself is an image and the fact of being a legitimate image, a wellfounded copy, connected to its model - the "invisible idea" - by a proper relation of resemblance, gives a claimant the right to be called "thing itself' and not "s imulacrum." Platonism and representation stand or fall together. For Deleuze, simulacra iphantasmata ) result precisely from the frustration of this foundational procedure or, to put it another way - and to suggest the revolutionary potential of simulacra - , they cause the foundation to collapse. Herein lies the attraction of (pure) simulacra for Deleuze. Their production and diffusion are the best means of confronting and overturning the regime of representation. Simulacra are not just false, non-resemblant copies within the system of two levels of reality , the invisible and the visible. By placing in question the very notions of model and copy, they threaten the coherence of representation as such. Plato is aware of this threat when he attempts to exclude the simulacra that flaunt the two complementary principles of the

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system of representation: identity and resemblance. In Deleuze's words , the most profound motivation of Platonism is to put simulacra "out of sight ," "to repre ss [simulacra] as deeply as possible, to shut [them] up in a cavern at the bottom of the Ocean ," "to keep them completely submerged, preventing them from climbing to the surface and 'insinuating themselves' everywhere. " Thus, Deleuze interprets Socrates' banishment of art in the Republic as Plato's own "serious" decision, with all its metaphysical and political consequences. In his view, modern philosophy and art should counter this effort of repression by liberating and glorifying simulacra, which should be allowed to leave their cavern at the bottom of the Ocean in order to rise to the surface of visibility." Deleuze points to the moment of Pop Art as a successful transformation of the artificial - i.e., a copy of a copy, entangled in the web of resemblance and representation - into the simulacrum of pure visibility.'? The end of Michel Foucault's This Is Not a Pipe sounds like an echo of Deleuze's "Plato and the Simulacrum": A day will come when, by means of simil arity (similitude) relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell , Campbell.'!

Deleuze himself could have written this sentence (with the exception of the term "similarity") . Andy Warhol's series of soup cans would thus be a perfect case of the metamorphosis of the most overused commercial rhetoric into the "poetry of simulacra," into a glaring manifestation of surface visibility. 12 The term "similarity" (similitude) in the above citation might be mistaken as a critique of Deleuze. In fact, Foucault is not challenging Deleuze's characterization of simulacra as images deprived of all resemblance to an invisible model. The two words, "similarity" and "resemblance," are not synonymous in This Is Not a Pipe. To be sure, they were closely related in Foucault's previous book The Order of Things, to which Deleuze refers in Differences and Repetition (p. 262) in his discussion of resemblance.P Foucault's theory of This Is Not a Pipe differs, however, from the simple picture of Les Mots et les cha ses . The change of perspective results apparently from a closer con sideration of modern art, in particular the paintings of Rene Magritte.!' One might also hear in this new theory of images and simulacra an echo of the Platonic Stranger's warning against resemblance, save that Foucault seems to situate the slippery character of resemblance exclusively on the image/representation side of the Stranger's and Deleuze's distinction. Although not directly referring either to Plato or to Deleuze, Foucault situates This Is Not a Pipe in the framework of a Deleuzian overturning of Platonism . IS He begins, just like the Eleatic Stranger, by

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expressing misgivings toward the devious workings of resemblance: " Qu 'une figure ressembl e a une chose ..., et cela suffu pour que se glisse dans le j eu de la peinture, un enon ce evident .. .: 'Ce que vous voyez, c 'est cela/?": Here resemblance appears as the condition of the essential identification of a figure: you "see" it because you "recognize" in it an image of a thing ; representational vision is are-vision. The motiv ation behind Foucault's state ment que stioning imag es and likeness in This Is Not a Pipe is different from, and apparently opposed to, that of the Stranger. Foucault does not fear that likeness might allow a phenomenon to slip out of representation . On the contrary, it is preci sely the realm of representation that he would like art to escape from , and he praises Magritte for having achieved just that. In order to allow for such a possibility, Foucault - refining Magritte 's own theory of art - has recour se to the same notion as the Stranger and Deleu ze: "an image without resemblance." He seems to follow Deleuze's sugges tion about using Plato's own text , the Sophist in particular, in order to reverse the hierarch y of representation dominating the "Platonic" theory of art." App arently reinforcing the Stranger's distinction between images and simulacra, he assigns to each of them a positi ve characteri stic : " ressemblant" and "similaire" Images refer to the absent, invisible model through the framework of repre sentation based on resemblance; simulacra glide freel y on the surface of immediate visibil ity, according to the principle of similarity: Resemblance has a " model," an original element that orders and hierarchi zes the increasingly less faithful copies that can be struck from it. Resemblance presupposes a primary reference that prescrib es and classe s. The similar develops in ser ies that have neither beginning nor end , that can be followed in one d irection as eas ily as in another, that obey no hierarchy, but propagate them sel ves from small differences among small differences. Resemblance serves rep resentation, which rules over it; similarity serves repet ition , which ranges across it. Resembl ance predic ates itself upon a model it must return to and reveal; similari ty circulates simulacrum as an indefinit e and reversible relation of the similar to the similar. IX

Foucault's terminology, perhaps better than that of Deleuze, reflects the positive power that governs the proliferation of simulacra. It seems to expres s the need for a term that would resemble, or be similar to, resemblance without incorporating the simulacra into repr esentation . But "si milarity" (similitude), a word so closely related to "re semblance" in common parlance and in Foucault's own Les Mots et les choses, can hardly fulfill this task. Rather, it seems to confirm the Eleatic Strang er's apprehen sion , and reveal the ambiguity - the slippery character of homoiotes. The re semblance (or sim ilarity) betw een res emblance and similarity makes it difficult to maintain a rigorou s theoretical distinction between

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images and simulacra, i.e., to dispose of representation completely. Magritte's painting Representation, analyzed by Foucault, gives an aesthetic display of this problem. Like many painters - such as Velasquez in Las Meninas - Magritte confronts the enigma of representation by introducing it into the picture, by making it the object of painting. Thus, the opposition inside/outside, thing/image, the visible/the invisible is now doubled, if not actually mise en abyme by extending the operation ad infinitum . What is particularly intriguing in Magritte's Representation is a maximum of resemblance , a quasi-identity of the two images of the playing-field - actually a football or rather soccer field - and the lack of a clear framing that would place them in the model/copy structure of representation. The first guess would probably take the smaller image as the picture of the larger, the "real" one . But one could also consider the bigger "image" to be a blow-up photograph placed just behind the smaller one, which would thus become the "original." Thus both "images" can be seen as parallel, although not independent from each other, since the enigma of their mutual relationship certainly constitutes the "subject" of Magritte's painting. For Foucault , the perfect similarity between the two images, or rather two simulacra, disturbs a possible reference to an exterior invisible paradigm and abolishes the hierarchy of representation. He acknowledges, however, that the exact similarity of the two images points toward a third one that would function as a "paradigm" of the others (the echo of the famous Aristotelian "third man" argument, which here accounts for the very identification of both images as representing a soccer field). In other words, it points toward the resemblance with an invisible model. The fact that all efforts to order the picture according to the pattern of resemblance are frustrated does not preclude the pressure of the representational model, which thus remains the "subject" of the painting. The playing-field of representation is situated between the two images of a playing-field in Magritte's painting. It consists in the shuttle-like movement between the desire and effort to resolve the problem of resemblance and appearance, and the failure to do so. The registration of the lack of any hierarchical relationship between the two images of a playing-field, which eventually imposes itself in Magritte's Representation , is not an immediate impression of the painting, but rather the result of a careful scrutiny in which the representational connection of resemblance has to be taken into account. Foucault himself marks the importance of the play between the visible and the invisible when he credits Magritte not only with establishing their dis-

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tinction, but also with bringing them into play against each other.'? This notion of play applies to Magritte's other paintings as well, including the realistic figure of a pipe - as "pipe" as one can get, according to the conventional idea of a perfect pipe - with its puzzling inscription, contradicting the image . Most of Magritte's paintings question in one way or another the representational relationship between "reality" and its faithful "image." In general, one can distinguish three phases in viewing his paintings: an immediate impression of the representation of a familiar scene, a shattering of this initial impression - often caused by the image of shattered glass, picture as/or windowpane - and finally an effort to make the vision coherent again in an alternative structure of representation. The difficulty of the third phase and the eventual failure is perhaps the most important feature of Magritte's art. Deleuze himself, in his study of Francis Bacon, seems to stress the element of play between the visible and the invisible. Bacon's method of challenging figurative, representational composition consists mainly in isolating an image or figure so that it cannot enter into a coherent relationship with anything beyond immediate visibility. Bacon's famous triptychs are not trilogies ; there is no unity of composition consisting of three parts, no assemblage, no logical sequence. Bacon 's portraits are not "image-portraits" in the sense of the term as used by Paul Ricoeur, who valorizes them against "images-simulacra,'?" However, even though they do not conform to the strict rule of resemblance, they do suggest an invisible model , which they strive to deform . The introduction of a mirror into the picture complicates this play of resemblance and again - just as in Velasquez's Las Meninas and Magritte's Representation - displaces the relationship of representation within the picture. The model and the image are now directly confronted in the picture and the viewer is made the judge of their resemblance. They certainly do not correspond in any ordinary way, but they do evoke, they "address" the relationship of representation, which they render extraordinary. The portraits of George Dyer - "staring into a mirror" from 1967, and "in the mirror" from 1968 - are two versions of Bacon 's challenge to the conventional assumption of the specular reflection. The second one seems more radical in its questioning of the "mirror image ." The "model" and the image in the mirror do not resemble one another in a direct way ; they are both disfigured, but in different ways . However, an effort is required from the viewer to (re)construct the figure itself beyond the disfigurations." The Portrait of George Dyer Staring into a Mirror is perhaps even more disquieting in its play with representation. The resemblance of the mirror image looks undisturbed, but the reality of the mirror and its image is so over-

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whelming that the ordinary spec ular hierarchy seems reversed. In Deleuze's words , the figure is mo ving e ntirely into the mirror, "together with its shadow," leaving the model (a nd presumably the realm of representation) behind. F In fact , the strong figure in the mirror could be also construed as the model for the staring Georg e Dyer, turning him into a dupli cate who had ju st found hi s real invisible self. In both case s, representati on would be the unavoidable point of reference for the work of specular displac ement between a model, its faithful imag e, and a decepti ve simulacrum. Neith er image nor simulac rum, but rather a pla y betw een the two con stitutes the basic struc ture of Magritte 's and Bacon's art. Now, is not Plato's Sophist suggesting preci sel y such a play, the name of which is "mimesis"? Onl y a few pages after his fateful distinction between (rese mbling) image s and (dissembling) simulacra, the Stranger of Elea depi cts mime sis as the play par excellence ; no other play see ms to him " more graci ou s" and "more artful." On this point, he elicits from Theaetetus a respon se more eloquent than is usual in the dialogue: "Certainly no other [play is more gracious and artful] ; for mimes is is a stupe ndous and complex form tp oikilotaton'y , bringing together an immen se variety of things ."23 In fact, the complexity of mime sis seems to be a conditio sine qua non of both image s and simulacra, of both repr esent ation and challen ges to its reign . The Stranger might wish to call it "s lippery" ; perhaps he does, since resemblance (homoiotesi, which he explicitly call s olisthera, is closely related to mime sis. The purpose of the strict separation of images and simulacra in the Sophist is to delimit such a field for the harmless play of mimesis. If clearly determined, neither resemblin g images nor dissemblin g simulacra are able to put in doubt the borders of real ity. A "mere play" or simulacrum is as inoffensive to the order of repre sent ation as is a faithful image . But the Stranger is unable to maintain the border. His division of the art of making images (eidolopo iikei - in other words mime sis in general - into the production of resembling image s (eikastike) and that of mere appearance s tphantastikei, is not a successful one in the dramatic scheme of the Sophist. In spite of its apparent etymological obviou sness and its method ological rigor, the distinction appears useless; the Sophi st, a master of mime sis, seems to have escaped the division now, ju st as he did previously in the dialogue. "But I was uncertain before in which of the two [the domain of image s, eikas tike, or that of simulacra, phantastikei the sophist should be placed, and even now I cannot see (theasasthai) clearly," is the perplexed conclusion of the Stranger." Why ? Is not the sophist a master of simulacrum and, as a product of his own art, is he not himself a simulacrum? Certainly, but in this case does he have any reality, any relation to being at all?

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The rigid opposition of eikon and phantasma, made by the Stranger of Elea and taken up by Deleuze, belongs to the tradition of Parmenidean ontology that excludes any common ground between being and non-being. This ontology allows the master of mimesis, the Sophi st, to escape the accusation of producing and of being a falsehood or fiction (to pseudos) . Simulacrum, an image without any reference to the reality of the invisible model, is indeed nothing . An image without resemblance, a mere appearance (phantasma), does not partake of being. A Sophist - say Gorgias or Antisthenes - would object to its reality." there is no lie, ouk esti pseudos, there is no pure simulacrum. On the other hand, the arguments based on the harmlessness of simulacra as mere play of non-being seem to perform the same ideological function as our "idea" of Disneyland : the reinforcement of the sense of the real beyond the clear boundaries of science, politics, philosophy." The ontological discussion of the Sophist, on the other hand, constitutes a dramatic break (a "parricide") with the principle of Parmenides that underlies both these series of arguments. It introduces the possibility of a "serious play" of the Visible and the Invisible, and of images and simulacra. A clear formulation of the sophistic conundrum in the Sophist comes in the form of a quasi-stichomythia between Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger. The latter pretends to maintain the strict Eleatic and Sophistic position when he meets the resistance of Theaetetus, who defines the image in general (eidolon) in terms of the resembling image (eikon). One can also hear in this exchange a comment on Magritte 's This Is Not a Pipe ("it is certainly not a real pipe, however ...") : THEAETETUS: Why. Stranger, what can we sayan image (eidolon) [of a pipe] is, except another such (toiouton) thing fashioned in the resemblance (aphomoiomenons of the true ? ELEATIC STRANGER: Do you mean another true [pipe], or in what sense did you say "s uch" itoiouton) ?

TH: Not a true one by any mean s. but only one like (eoikos ) the true . E. S.: And by the true you mean the one that really is? TH: Exactly. E. S.: And the not true is the opposite of the true ? TH: Of cour se. E. S.: The one that resembles, then , you say does not really exist. .. . TH: But it does exist , in a way (pos). E. S.: But not truly, you mean . TH; No, except that it is really a resembling image (eikon) [of a pipe] . E. S.: Then what we call image, though not really existing, really does exi st.i?

Indeed, this reality of resemblance saves the image from fading into nothingness . The resemblance here does not mean the undisputed derivation

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from an invisible model. Magritte's pipe would retain its reality even without the ideal Form of a pipe hovering above it. For it would not do to limit the notion of resemblance in this text to the domain of resembling images (eikones). It is clearly the art of simulacra tphantastike tekhnei that is discussed here." We are far from the certitude of the first book of the Republic where Socrates identified resemblance with identity." This latter form of resemblance, the one that points ultimately toward the essential resemblance with an invisible model, the Idea, would not need any particular ontological justification, any dramatic break with the Parmenidean separation of being and non-being. But in the Sophist, the resemblance of a simulacrum is clearly the object of investigation . Indeed, it causes utter perplexity in the Stranger, Theaetetus , and the readers . An image (eidolon) and a simulacrum (phantasma) , as opposed to the real and the true, are not, and yet, through the play between the visible and the invisible, they "somehow" (pos) are: "though not really existing, they do in fact exist (ouk on am ontos estin ontos) ."30 Thus the confusion of being and non-being is also the confusion between images and simulacra. The "many-headed sophist" that forces Theaetetus, the Stranger and the readers of the dialogue to admit the being of non-being, also forces them to admit the entanglement tsumploker of resembling and dissembling images and ultimately of the visible and the invisible. For the addressing (Ansprechen) - to use Heidegger's translation of sumploke - of something "as other than what it itself is" (als ein anderes, als es selbst ist) requires a play of masking and unmasking." When the Stranger uses Theaetetus' suggestion and constructs the ontology of the Sophist around the notions of sumploke and the community of genres (koinonia ton genon), it is actually the "genre" (genos) of resemblance that determines the relationship of being and the other, and that allows the play of the visible and the invisible in being. Theatrical mimesis epitomizes this phenomenon of play between masking and unmasking, and eventually the play of resemblance with the invisible Ideas . The last series of the division of the fantastic art in the Sophist produces the notion of the sophist/simulacrum. As an artist, a poietes and a mimetes in the strict sense - and unlike, say, a painter, a sculptor or an author of an epic or a dithyramb - he uses his own body as a means to generate a false resemblance (toi heautou khromenos somati).32 Briefly, he is a man of theater, a metteur en scene and an actor - at the same time a producer and a product of mimesis. The two aspects of mimesis reinforce the entanglement of the sophist in the aesthetic, social, political text of representation. Resemblance remains one of the principles of this sumploke of addressing the other in representation. The perplexity caused by the last image of the

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sophist - a double of Socrates, the ideal philosopher - depends on a "true resemblance." If it could be dismissed as a mere play of false resemblance, as "mere similarity," the traditional interpretation of Platonism would not be threatened; Deleuze and Foucault would not be justified in their claim to begin with Plato in overturning Platonism. But they are justified, since in the Sophist the title character does "really" resemble Socrates, even if the principle of this resemblance is dissimilarity in mimesis . Both the sophist and Socrates take part in the serious play staged by Plato - a play in/with the order of representation. The paintings of Magritte and of Bacon suggest the same, or rather a similar, textual movement of sumploke or Ansprechen, at once acknowledging and questioning the structure of representation. And they seem to share this trait with other modern paintings. Their visibility is not independent from a possible reference to the invisible, to a model that would wrench them from the abyss of nothingness or the superficiality of simulacra. Even so-called nonrepresentational art cannot ignore representation as such . Indeed, the modern tradition of nonrepresentational painting "seeks to complicate the question of representation itself in a way which would prolong it rather than abolishing it."33 And this extreme complication of the question of representation can only be achieved through the sumploke or entanglement of resemblance in a "serious play" between image and simulacrum, between the visible and the invisible and also, despite the efforts of the 'literal" interpreters of Plato, between philosophy and art. Comparative Literature Dept. University of Wisconsin-Madison NOTES "I am grateful to Sabine Gross, Ed Casey, Robert Harvey, and Luca SomigIi for their comments." I Plato, Republic, p. 500e. Plato, Republic, p. 595a ff. See for example the famous remark of Achilles to Odysseus during the latter's descent to the underworld in the eleventh book of the Odyssey (484-491): he would rather be the servant of a poor man on earth than the lord over the dead in Hades. 4 "The task of modem philosophy has been defined: to overturn Platonism ." Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris : P. U. F., 1968), p. 82; English transl ation by Paul Patton : Difference and Repetition [henceforth DR] (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 59. 5 Deleuze, DR, 256. Plato, Sophist, 231a; my translation . In Deleuze's reading , Platonic family resemblance , contrary to the Wittgensteinian notion, is logically and ontoJogically rigorous and inflexible.

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Deleuze, Gilles, "Platon et Ie simulacre, in his Loqique du sens (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969), p.293; English translation by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale: "Plato and the Simulacrum " in The Logic of Sense [henceforth LSI (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990),pp.257-258. 9 Deleuze, LS, p. 262. 10 Deleuze, LS, pp. 265f. 11 Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe , trans . Jame s Harkne ss (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1982), p. 54. 12 Michel Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum ,' in Critique 282 (November 1970), pp. 902 ff. 13 Indeed , resemblance/similarity, dominating the episteme of the sixteenth century, was considered by Foucault as one of the principles of the classical episteme as well. See Michel Foucault , The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1970), Part I, especially pp. 28f, 41, 47,51 [Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard , 1966)). 14 See the letters of Magritte in Michel Foucault, This is Not a Pipe, pp. 57 ff. 15 Cf. Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum,' in particular the definition of philosophy as "toute enterprise, quelle qu 'elle soit, pour renverser Ie platonisme" (p. 885). 16 "Let a figure resemble an object ... and that alone is enough for there to slip into the [pureI play of the painting a [n obvious] statement ... 'What you see is that' " (Michel Foucault, Ceci n 'est pas une pipe, pp. 42-43 ; This Is Not a Pipe, p. 34). 17 Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum,' pp. 885 ff. 18 Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, p. 44. 19 Ibid. 20 See Paul Ricoeur, Etre, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote (Paris: Societe d'Enseignement superieur, 1982), p. 108. 21 Cf. Andrew Benjamin' s analysis of this painting and of the aesthetic and ontological aspects of the phenomenon of mirror in general in his Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde: Aspects of a Philosophy of Difference (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 31 ff. 22 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: Logique de la Sensation (Paris: Editions de la Difference, 1981), pp. 17 ff. 23 Plato, Sophist , p. 234b. 24 Plato, Sophist , p. 236c-d. 25 See Pierre Aubenque, Le Probleme de l' etre chez Aristote (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), pp. 98 ff., on the two kinds of the sophistic argument of the impossibility of "lying." 26 See Jean Baudrillard, Simulation s, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (New York: Semiotext[e] , 1983), p. 25. 27 Sophist, p. 240a-b, Fowler's translation , modified; cf. p. 236a. 28 Sophist, pp. 239c-d and 240d. 29 "But we did admit that everybody is such itoiouton kai hekateron einai) as he to whom he resemble s (hoi ge homoios hekateros eie), did we not?" (Republic , p. 350c). 30 Plato, Sophist , p. 240b. 31 Martin Heidegger, Platon : Sophistes (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterm ann, 1992), p. 431; Plato 's Sophist , p. 297. 32 Plato, Sophist , p. 267a. 33 Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe - "complicating" the argument of Michael Fried (in "Three American Painters" from 1965) - "Irreconcilable Similarities : The Idea of Nonrepresentation,' in Stephen Barker (ed.), Signs of Change: Premodern - Modern - Postmodern (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 310.

BRUCE S . WATSON

"SEEING CLEARLY IN DARKNESS " : BLINDNESS AS INSIGHT IN PROUST'S IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME AND GIDE'S PASTORAL SYMPHONY

In this paper I propose to examine the paradoxical nature of blindness and vision in the works of Marcel Proust and in Andre Gide's novella, The Pastoral Symphony. While blindness is often considered as a terrible affliction and punishment in clas sical literature and Shakespeare (Oedipus, Gloucester in King Lear) , these twentieth-century novelists explore the lack of sight or living in darkness as a source of literary inspiration and perhaps even philosophical wisdom . Examples of blindness used in fiction as a fairly straightforward metaphor for a lack of moral vision would include Graham Greene 's novel The Human Factor, in which the fatally indecisive main character Castle's failure to understand the realities of his political and moral obligations is underscored by his escape from Heathrow airport disgui sed as a blind man. His controller who helps him escape treats him with scarcely concealed condescension: "You are blind . An object of sympathy." An even darker satirical treatment of blindness is of course Nabokov 's vicious black comedy Laughter in the Dark, in which the buffoon-like middle-aged character is struck by blindness early in the narrative ; this handicap leaves him utterl y helple ss in the hand s of his young mistress, who deliberately misleads her gloomy soupirant as to the colors of the chalet where she sets up house with her lover. Indeed, Nabokov 's merciless novel could well be read as a parody of Gide 's Pastoral Symphony, in which spiritual insight s emerge from the heroine's blindness, especially by way of music. I will discu ss further examples below, including Beckett's Endgame and John Fowle s' The Magus. Beethoven's music, specifically the Sixth Symphony, is used to create an imaginary inner landscape for the blind heroine which resonates far beyond the narrative's cliched erotic drama and highly contrived conclusion . Indeed, Gide's mapping of this imaginary landscape lends poignancy to a work which on many levels scarcely repays a sophisticated analysis. As my women students rarely hesitate to point out , Gertrude's helplessness in the hands of the pastor/narrator reduces her status to little more than a plaything; while the theological subtleties of the pastor's wavering between Paul and Christ seem tawdry and banal. Gide's sub-plot involving the pastor's son Jacques' trysts with Gertrude in the organ loft comes fearfully close to self-parody; and 305 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXV, 305-310. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Gertrude 's Ophelia-like demise, doom ing the pastor to a lifetime of sour recriminations from his wife, fails to convince or satisfy. Yet in spite of these failin gs. Gide's Pastoral Symphony continues to hold readers' fascination. As for the Nabokovian parody, one can only hope that the Pastor will refrain from further misbeh avior with the mysterious "three little blind girl s" who could replace Gertrude in his affections. Shade s (in advance , so to speak), of Humbert Humbert! Marcel Proust's masterpiece In Search of Lost Time explor es the dichotomy of blindness and insight on a profounder ontological level, I culminating in the descent into the Paris subway in the final volume, where social vanity and "the torment of love unsatisfied" give way to what Gilbert Dur and has described as "the nocturn al regime of the imag ination,'? Moreover, Proust's narr ator describe s him self in a rem arkable but ra ther neglected passage of Cities of the Plain II as: the strange human, who, while he waits for death to release him, lives behind closed shutters, knows nothing of the world, sits motionless as an owl, and like that bird can only see things at all clearly in the darkness. (10 14)

Rather than positing blindness and insight (a beautiful word !) as opposites, or as counters in a deconstructionist enterprise;' I prop ose a subtler hermeneutic, bearin g in mind Proust' s axiom that great work s of art "are not the products of chattering and daylight, but rather emerge from darkness and silence." Darkness and silence need not, however, indi cate philo sophical depth or esthetic insight s; indeed, the silence and spiritual darkness at the core of the pastor's family life in Gide 's Pastoral Symph ony renders the arriv al of a flea-ridden Gertrude as po sitive relief for the pastor. The community's spiritual poverty is underscored by Gide 's telling description of the dead old wom an 's face : I stayed a few minutes longer gazing at the old woman's sleeping face, with its puckered mouth, lookin g lie a miser 's purse with strings tightly drawn to let nothing escape. (145)

It is this spiritual deadness from which the pastor tries to escape throu gh his relationship with Gertrude; we gradually become aware that while Amelia's sarcasm about the purit y of her husband 's motives may prove justified , it is in fact for the redemption of his soul that the pastor is struggling, and not merely for a sexu al conquest. Gertrude ' s spiritual purity reawakens a romanticism - in the Wordsworthian sense - long dead in the pastor's soul, and indeed in European literature: She told me later that when she heard the birds' song she used to suppose it was simply the effect of light, like the gentle warmth which she felt on her cheeks and hands, and that, without

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precisely thinking about it, it seemed to her quite natural that the warm air should begin to sing, just as the water begins to boil on the fire. (165)

Music in many forms awakens Gertrude's soul to beauty ; music, "the mosaic of the air," melody, "le mystere supreme de I'humanite.?" Provides a spiritual core for Gide's novella which far surpasses the pedantic aridity of the pastor's theological ramblings . Furthermore, the pastor's melancholy reflection s on the world which very imperfectly reflects Beethoven's supreme musical compositions touch on philosophical problems as well as theological concepts: I did not answer at once; for I was reflecting that those ineffable harmonies painted the world as it might have been, as it would be without evil and without sin, rather than the world as it really was. (172)

Beyond music's redemptive or consolatory powers, it poses a threat to literary or philosophical analy sis since it is constituted by a system of signs which form a language on its own terms . Mu sic simply is; and George Steiner suggests convincingly that a firmer grasp of what we mean by harmony would help us achieve a better understanding of ourselves, possibly showing us a path into Heidegger's "dark wood of Being" : In music, being and meanin g are inextricable. They deny paraphrase. But they are, and our experience of this esse ntiality is as certain as any in human awareness. Halting as it is, this analogy may suggest a first approximation to Heidegger's concept of being. Here too there is brazen obviousness and impalpability, an enveloping nearness and infinite regress." Being, in the Heideggerian sense, has, like music, a histor y and a meaning , a depend enc e on man and dimen sions transcending humanity. (44)

Gide is not, how ever, capable of sustaining this level of philosophical speculation; and his novella peters out to a thoroughly predict able conclusion. There is a sinister side to the pastor's benevolence, not so much in terms of his absurd seduction attempts but in his reflection s about whether Gertrude would truly wish to regain her sight. Besides the melancholy experience of having the pastor's aged visage revealed to her, Gertrude's idealism cannot survive her visual contact with reality; and so Gide conveniently kills her off by pneumonia, in a disappointing conclusion which avoids rather than resolves the philosophical and esthetic problems hinted at in the musical heart of the story. Carax's French movie The Lovers of Pont Neuf offers an exploration of similar themes in an even more dispiriting setting . This brilliantly made and disturbing film cover s much of the same moral ground as Gide's novella with deeper psychological insights. Michele, a young artist who is losing her sight,

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camps at night on the Pont Neuf in Paris, accompanied by two other drugaddicted derelicts. One of them falls in love with Michele. The scene in which the old drug dealer carries Michele, Saint-Christopher-like, into the Louvre with a candle to allow her to see Rembrandt's self-portrait for the last time before darkness descends, is genuinely moving . Like Gide's pastor, her young lover Alex is reluctant to see her cured , even resorting to murder to keep her safely blind and in his power. Michele, brilliantly interpreted by Juliette Binoche, is a much richer character than Gide's Gertrude; and the redemptive power of art does not collapse at the story's conclusion, but it definitely does with Gide . As an interlude before addressing the Proustian dilemma of blindness and insight, it may well be germane to point to another work of fiction in which a brief but telling episode performs an astonishing reversal of values. John Fowles' The Magus contains a wealth of metafictional dimensions and fascinating anecdotes narrated to the reluctant anti-hero by the Master of Ceremonies, Conchis . Indeed, Fowles' first fiction (in terms of composition) could well be subtitled "A Few Hundred Anecdotes in Search of a Structure"! Among these, perhaps the most disturbing takes place in the wastes of Norway, where Conchis the pseudo-scientist confronts a lonely, almost blind mystic with offers of medical assistance. The offer is violently refused; and Conchis all but loses his life. Reflecting on what could motivate such a radical refusal of medicine and rationality, Fowles continues: That axe would have driven right through the skull of our pleasure-oriented civilisation . Our science, our psycho-analysis . To him all that was not the great meeting was what the Buddhists call lilas - the futile pursuit of triviality. And of course to have been concerned about his blindness would have been more futility. He wanted to be blind. It made it more likely that one day he would see. (312)

Although not a mystical novel, Fowles does succeed in investing his fiction with a sense of mystery - of the powers of the unseen - which survives the deprogramming of the hero and his disenchantment with Prospero's magic island; the conclusion in Regent's Park, stung "by the smell of burning leaves," leaves Nicholas and readers with another mystery" rather than a frozen disillusionment like that of Gide's pastor. Proust's owlish narrator, preserving his immobility "at the still point of the turning world," claims miraculous powers of observation in darkness, or rather the capacity to dispense with observation altogether. Recent biographical studies of the Proustian novel would do well to bear this element of the Proustian esthetic in mind: we are told incessantly that the disembodied " I" whose myriad voices people the novel has no powers of observation and that

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the visual data we record around us is hopelessly contradictory. The enticing mobility of Albertine's face is not merely an exercise in Impressionist esthetics, but a lesson in the fragmentary nature of perception itself: Many errors, it is true, ... there are, by which our senses falsify for us the real nature of the world .. . though to make the rain sing softly in the middle of one's room or, contrarily, to make the quiet boiling of one's tisane sound like a deluge in the courtyard outside should not really be more misleading than what is so often done by painters when they paint a sailor the peak of a mountain in such a way that, according to the laws of perspective, the intensity of the colours and the illusion of our first glance , they appear to us either very ncar or far away, through an error which the reasoning mind subsequently corrects by, sometimes, a very large displacement. (3, 1103)

The reader will, I hope, note the parallel with Gertrude's idea that birdsong is "the wind singing"; but also note the complex problematics of representation that undermine the "romantic" strain in Proust's theorising. As for his enigmatic fictional creations, the Albertines and Gilbertes whom we long to know but who will always escape us, are but flickering projections of the magic lantern at Combray: Other errors, though of a more serious kind , I might continue to commit , placing features, as we all do, upon the face of a woman seen in the street , when instead of nose, cheeks and chin there ought to be merely an empty space with nothing more upon it than a flickering reflection of our desires. (3: 1103)

Blindness as insight: rather than a condition that calls for a cure, blindness is accepted as the premise of the Proustian ontology, accentuated by the mirages of sexual love and social advantage. The novel itself ends, as Beckett memorably points out, not with resurrection but annihilation; we may indeed wonder, like Hamm's insane friend in Endgame, whether all we have left to ponder is ashes. Blindness as insight, indeed; Beckett's superlative achievement in Endgame is sure to have created a nightscape on the stage and in the audience's imagination which exactly parallels the darkness behind Hamm's eyes. Anne Henry's conclusion to Marcel Proust: Theories pour une esthetique may provide a fitting endgame to my own reflections: Proust avance a reculons dans la nuit qui s'epais sit, se confortant de sa propre parole, etreignant I'idole de l'esthetique. Et dans sa demarche pathetique , c'est peut-etre I'essence meme de l'art modeme qui se devoile . (366) (Prou st advances backw ards into an ever-thickening night, comforting hims elf with his own solitary voice, hugging the idol of estheticism. And in this moving entreprise, it is perhaps the very essence of modern art which reveals itself .)

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Becken , Samuel. Proust. London: John Calder, 1999. Bern stein, Leonard. The Unanswered Question. Cambrid ge: Harvard University Press, 1976. Fowles, John. The Magus. New York: Dell, 1978. Gide, Andre. The Pastoral Symphony. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1954. Henry, Anne. Marcel Proust: Theories pour une esthetique. Paris: Klinseick, 1981. Proust, Marcel. Remembrance ofThings Past, in three volumes. London: Chano and Windus, 1981. Steiner, George. Martin Heidegger. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. Watson, Bruce. Les Figures du labyrinthe dans A la recherche du temps perdu. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1992.

NOTES See Beckett 's recently re-edited essay on Proust, still the greatest according to this critic. "Flowers and plants have no conscious will. They are shamele ss, exposing their genitals. And so in a sense are Proust's men and women, whose will is blind and hard, but never self-conscious, never abolished in the pure perception of a pure object" (Proust. 88). 2 See Chapte rs two and four of my book, Les figures du labyrinth e dans A la recherche du temps perdu , in which I discuss the Venetian nightscapes of Albertin e Disparu e and the war episode of Le Temps retrouve in considerable thematic detail. 3 My parody of De Man's title is entirely deliberate. l owe this expression of course to Levi-Strauss. On Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony, see Bernstein's Unanswered Question, p. 157 and passim; Bernstein questions whether "it is possible to hear Beetho ven's ' Pastoral' symphony as pure music, divorced from all its extrinsic, nonmusical metaphors." But Bernstein himself alludes to literature with an intriguing reference to Henry James: the main musical motif in Beethoven' s symphony "will keep reappearing, over and over ... as a constant running metaphor throughout, like 'The Figure in the Carpet' in Henry James' great story."(l 59) 5 Compare with T. S. Eliot's "Marina" : " more distant than stars and nearer than the eye."

SITANSU RAY

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MUSIC: A VITAL SOURCE OF TAGORE'S CREATIVITY

Music was not only an art form to Rabindranath Tagore, it was one of the most vital forces in his dynamic consciousness throughout his life. He was brought up in an atmosphere of music. But despite ample opportunities, a thorough methodical training was beyond his artistic temperament and he willfully avoided it. Yet, he was much more musical than the average musicmonger. He got into the essence of various kinds of good music most easily, leaving off their professional theoretical details and customary acrobatics. As intuition was a greater factor to him, he often missed or rather neglected the traditional styles. That has not been harmful. On the contrary, Tagore's creations in the realm of music have resulted in an original, subjective and in a sense transcendental style. Another equally important point is that, apart from composing more than two thousand songs, Tagore created innumerable musical metaphors, musical images and variou s other expressions in terms of music in almost every branch of his vast literature , such as poems, dramas, stories, novels, essays , letters and diaries. Those expressions are not mere rhetoric or figures of speech. Tagore's phenomenological reflections on music are exposed in such expressions. I shall cite some examples most selectively. The essence of music in human consciousness has two aspects . On one hand, its transcendental aspect soars above all earthly experiences leading to absolutism. On the other hand, it must have some subtle and almo st intangible relationship with some of the finer facultie s of human consciousness, at least with their essences. Therein lies the clue to the analogies in musical terms, those musical metaphor s and images etc., which serve as bridges between music and the finer faculties such as devotion, love, sense of beauty, joy, etc. In the depth of phenomenological reduction, or, you may say, on the heights of phenomenological reduction, that kind of subtle and intangible relationship is established. This is more true in the case of the poet Rabindranath who was both music-minded and an enjoyer of life, both a composer and a creative writer. Metaphors cannot be arbitrary conjoiners in his writings. Music was more than an absolute conglomeration of pure soundpatterns to him. However absolute it may be, it seeks and is imbued with the fervidities of life, which in return seek the ethereal expressions of music.

3]] A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserl iana LXXV, 3 11-318. © 2002 Kluw er Academic Publish ers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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From time to time Tagore lived in his contemplative tonal world. Let us note the following : While returning from Europe it was as if I was listening to the tune of a Sanai , as if played from a remote festive house . The tune was sometimes that of day-break and sometimes Multan or Barowan. On another day I was travelling from Santiniketan to Calcutta and again I could hear the Sanai tune while sitting alone in the train compartment. I felt surprised indeed. Had I believed that there was something supernatural in it, I would have indulged in exaggerated fanciful narration. How I have explained the phenomenon is that there was certainly some tuneful sound , however feeble, in the atmosphere round me, and the rest was contemplated by my musical self, just as we create visual imagery in dreams out of our sensuous experiences. I

This is just an example of Tagore's phenomenological state where recollection, contemplation, reflection , imagination and conscious investigation are quite active. Let us then see a portion of the poem Dhwani (Sound) from Tagore's poetical work Akush-pradip, where he recollects his childhood sensitivity to the soundscape of nature . I was born with my senses acutely tuned. Sounds produced all around had their vibrations and resonances synchronized in my nervous texture.?

In a prayer session at the temple of Santiniketan, Tagore says in the midst of his lecture entitled Shona (Listening): Last night, while standing on the roof under the starlit sky, my self fully realized that a delightful veena is being played all along . This is neither poetical imagination , nor a rhetorical utterance music is resounding day and night, overflowing space and time.'

Moreover, there is a reciprocity between the poet and the cosmos as revealed in the songThe sky has surrounded me with light, I shall overcast the sky with my music. I shall surcharge the air with colours of tunes as the colour of dancing pervades the terrain's breeze.'

In a devotional song, Tagore prays, "Do come to my life in newer and newer forms. Come as fragrance, as hue and as music,"> Tagore was expert in chanting the Vedic hymns and he understood the significance of uttering the starting and concluding OM on a steady resonant note. Tagore called this OM the music of the boundless infinitude, a sonorous metaphor of the whole gamut of cosmic entity as reflected in human consciousness. Tagore valued OM for its tonal effect rather than for any cult associated with it. By the by, let me quote from The Oxford History of Music, which reports about OM as follows:

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In the advanced culture of India the syllable OM (arrow) (which is pitched very high in the udgita song) is the nail which pierces the whole world and holds it together,"

Tagore' s realization of religion was not customary but phenomenological, as revealed in his The Religion ofMan ,' the Hibbert Lecture delivered at Oxford University in 1931. Again, in The Religion of an Artist, he says: My religion is esse ntially a Poet' s religion . Its touch comes to me through the same unseen and trackless channels as does the inspira tion of mu sic.f

Very often Tagore imagin ed God as a Singer, or a Veena-pla yer or a fluteplayer, and God's relation ship with us as that of the Artiste with his listener s or that of the Teacher with his pupils. In the article Dharm er Artha, i.e., the significance of religion, he says, Religion is that music-instituti on where the father is giving music lessons to his sons, the eternal spirit is transmitting sonority for tuning the human con sciou sness.?

In Tagore 's novel Chaturanga , we find a depiction of this communicating relationship between the Artiste-Teacher and the listener-pupil. In a tense moment, Sachish tells Damini: He loves form, and so He always comes down to form. But we do not like the confinement of form, and that is why we have to rush towards the formless. He is free and so His play is in bondage; we are captivated and so our jo y is towards free do m.'?

We can consider the above utterings from the existentiali stic point of view. Sachish adds in a vital musical metaphor Damini! don't you realize? He who sings passes from delight to melody, and he who listens, passes from melody to delight. One comes from freedom to bondage and the other proceed s fro m bond age to freedo m. Thus the two meet. He is si nging on and we are listenin g. He composes and makes us listen and we do unfold the form while listening to it. J J

In a beautiful song, Tagor e sings : "To be absorb ed in the ecsta sy of tunefulness is the only way to belong,"? and therein lies the fulfillment of our being, our ontological status. Now, let us pass to love, the most forceful faculty of human consciousne ss. Love is a value of the relationship between man and woman. It is the finest wealth of the human heart and the source of all the branches of fine arts, including music . As creation evolves from the man-woman relationship, creation of all beauty springs out of the mystery of that very man-woman relationship. Beauty is the concomitant attribute of love, and fine arts are the offsprings of love surcharged with beauty.

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Let us first refer to the following portion of the poem Nari (Woman) of the book SanaiMan's eternal agony in searching after the celestial nectar among earthly intoxications is manifested in poetry and music, painting and sculpture and also in the eulogistic chanting to the temple goddesses . 13

A disinterested love for the ideal woman, and never infatuation with a factual woman, supplies such a celestial nectar. Yet, the factual woman has a role to play in the artist's consciousness, because after all her forceful attraction is the said earthly intoxication. But, while an ordinary man gets infatuated with her in sensual pleasures, an artist gets the flame of his consciousness illuminated by her touch in retrospection. So, the love of an artist is not an end in itself. It is just a means to the creativity of art, music and literature, etc. In a letter, written in the form of a poem, Tagore revealed to Professor Amiya Chakravarty, his one-time private secretary, the influence of woman in his creative life: They have lit up my extinguished lamp and tuned up my loosened strings, ... their magic touch is evermore felt in my music and poetry. 14

In the fifteenth poem of Patraput, Tagore writes, woman came to my life as my beloved to set my lyrics to tunes, to add rhythm to my movements and to pour nectar into my dreams. IS

In the article "Woman and Home" in the book Creative Unity, Tagore explains Creative express ions attain their perfect form through emotions modulated . Woman has that expression natural to her . .. a cadence of restraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been an inspiration to man, guiding most often unconsciously, his restless energy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, music and religion. That is why, in India, woman has been described as the Symbol of Shakti, the creative power."

We clearly see that the phenomenology of music and love is in fruitful fusion in Tagore's consciousness. Out of that fusion originate musical metaphors of love in Tagore's creative writings. Just notice some such examples : Amity Ray of the novel Shesher Kabita tells the sweet lady Lily Ganguly out of sensuous passion You and me, and the following Ganges, and the stars in the sky - combining together make a total harmony - Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata . 17

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315

Queen Sudarshana, the heroine of the drama Raja, listening to the king's veena, the symbol of his unending love, tells the king - "When you pla y your veena, it seems to me that I myself am the music played with it." 18 The hero of the story Aparichita personifies the appeara nce and voice of Kalyan i, his lad y- love, with the tun e and rhythm of mu sic. Her swee t utterance, "Gadite jayga achhe''? (There is room in this coach) is continuously resonating in the hero 's affectionate, resonant and dynamic consciousness j ust like the repe ating refrain of a song; and the rhythmi c sound of the runn ing train seems to him like the acco mpaniment of a mridanga (drumj.i? A poem of the book Punashcha is named "Kamal Gandhar" (The Minor Thi rd), which characteristically unfolds Tagore's phen omen ological reaction to this note , associated with the soft corne rs of his heart. I have tran slated a few line s to demonstrate this: The tanpura of her life is sonoro usly tuned, but she is not aware of it. Her movements and pauses, and all the chores of her daily life are resonant with the tans of Bhairabi, the mystery of which I cannot make out. So , I call her Kamal Gandhar. I don 't know why tears in my eyes glide out from the core of my heart when she cas ts her glance at me."

The tuned tanpura , produ cin g the central drone, stands for a simple, flawles s and inno cent life . Tans, or the quick success ion of notes, represent here the chores of her dail y activities . Komal Gandha r or the minor third sig nifies feminin e softness , and th e glide (mee nd) is the ex press io n of the poet' s affec tionate bent. Now, let us pass on to a very charming portion of the novel Shesher Kabita. When Am it spent his leisurely days at Shillong, a sudden collision between his motor car and that of Labanya (called Banya by Arnit after closer acquaintance with her) brought them into meaningful contac t with eac h othe r. The accide nt was not serious; on the contrary, this collision thoroughly ch anged the course of the lives of these two youths. They happ ened to co me clo ser to each other. The impact of the unforeseen phenomena of hum an life is symbolized by the unequ al beat of the rhythm called jh amptal. Amit tells Banya The course of human life is strange. Apparen tly it may seem to be regularly successive, but really this is a chai n of unexpe cted phenomena. Creations evol ve from sudde n co incidences and unexpected blasts. Time proceeds in jh amptal. Banya ! It is you who have produced the rhythm of my life and in this rhythm the tune of your life has come into perfect harmony with that of mine. 22

The most passionate tactile sensation is also identified with some pleasure , and therefore expressed by means of musical imagery. The essence of tactile

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pleasure and that of musical delight are fused in the following lines of the poem Manas Sundari of the poetical work Sonar Tari:

o my beloved , I can

get into that inner mystery of yours by close embrace with you. Your heartbeats will strike the strings of my heart and raise the waves of the sound of music .. . I myself shall vibrate with tunefulness. P

The beginning of a love-song goes thus: Make me your veena, take hold of me and let my strings resonate with your lovely fingers.>'

More categorical examples of the phenomenology of music and romantic beauty can be found in the poem "Geetachchhabt"> (Music-Imagery) in Beethika. Seeing the romantic beauty of the songstress's appearance and listening to her ecstatic song, the poet's consciousness transcends the sensuous world of existence and soars up to a level where there is nothing but beauty and music unified together. Tagore's immanent intuition grasps the essence of this unification and turns it into creativity. It is very interesting to note the concluding portion of Tagore's poem "Manasi"26 (Fancy-sweetheart) of the poetical work Sanai . Tagore admits that the evocative actuality of the world has very often deprived him of coveted things. But that does not matter since their reflected imageries gain easy access into his consciousness and are captured therein . That kind of union is more real than actual achievement. From that union springs creativity, just like an easy flow of melody from the Sitar.? In a romantic love-song, Tagore sings - "0 my beloved of the dreamland, the way to thee is illuminated with the lamps of my retrospection.v" Among various poems and songs about dreams , let us cite another song, "I Have Heard the Call of the Dreamland," the second half of which goes thus: Amidst desires and satiations blooms the unfulfilled , the fragrance of which seems to confound the firmament. One whom I endeavour to trace out, has been submerged deeply into my inmost consciousness to capture the key to my dreamland ."

This kind of retrospective self-investigation, apparently poetical and rhetorical, can go side by side with phenomenological investigation for the purpose of mutual supplementing. What is apparently metaphorical, or to say poetical, is pregnant with deeper significance, which the poet is consciously aware of. Setting aside, for a while, the pleasant appeal of the tune and rhythm of the songs, just the simple paraphrases of the sentences and their purport point to the vital psychic phenomena belonging to that branch of knowledge which has been designated phenomenology.

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That dreamland or illusion , if considered from an aesthetic point of view, is not necessarily a delusion , as it is the source of creativity. So we see that whether in the case of deeper spiritual realization, or in the case of his sincere communion with nature and the cosmic world, or in the case of invaluable sensitivity towards love and beauty, Tagore's dynamic musical consciousness was ever active. Anything non-musical was beyond his conception. While the ancient Indian sages prayed in the Upanishads, "Lead me to the Truth from the untruth, to the Light from darkness, to the Deathless from death," Tagore furthermore has added, "0 my Lord, lead me to a perfect tune whenever there is any discord.P? Foreseeing the day of ultimate silence to come, Tagore says, "My silent veena will lie senseless at Thy feet ,"!' It is needless to explain that the dead body is metaphorized as the silent veena, since life is akin to music and music is akin to life in Tagore's conscious state. To conclude, a phenomenological approach to the origin of Tagore 's creativity shows that his consciousness was pluralistic in manifestation, though monistic in its end. Dept. of Tagore Music Visva-Bharati University Santiniketan-731235 NOTES I Tagorc 's letter to Dilip Kumar Ray, posthumous publication in Desh , literary number 1383 B. S., p. 28. My translation. Sana i: wind instrument for North Indian classical music . Multan, Barowan : North Indian afternoon ragas or melodies. 2 R. R. 3, p. 636 ; Abbreviation : R. R. - Rab indra Ra chanavali (Works of Rabindranath), Birthday Centenary edition, 1961, Govt, of West Bengal publication. The number following R. R. stands for the volume number. All quotes from R. R. are my translat ion. 3 Santiniketan, R. R. 12, p. 127. 4 Geetabitan (Tagore 's musical work s), R. R. 4, p. 392. 5 Ibid., p. 58 . 6 The Oxford History of Musi c, Vol. I (1957), reprint 1960, p. 196. 7 (London: Unwin , 193 1). 8 Rab indranath Tagore, The Religion of an Artist, (Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati , 1963), p. 15. 9 R. R. 12, p. 544 . 10 R. R. 9, p. 397 . II Ibid ., p. 397 . 12 Geetabitan, R. R. 4, p. 453 . 13 R. R. 3, pp. 759 -760.

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Poem 43, Shesh Saptak, R. R. 3, pp . 2 I6-217. R. R. 3, p. 380. 16 Op. cit., Macmillan, Indian Edition , 1948, p. 19. 17 Op. cit., R. R. 9, pp. 717-718. 18 Raja, R. R. 6, p. 309. 19 Galpa Guchchha (Collection of Tagore Short Stories) , R. R. 7, p. 679 . 20 Mridanga : one of the percussion instruments of Indian classical music . 21 "Kamal Gandha r," Puna shcha, R. R. 3, p. 26. Tanpura: a four-stringed instrument used for playing the central tonic drone in Indian classical and art music. Tan: a quick but artistic succession of notes . Bhairabi: a morning melody consisting of all the minor (soft) notes of the Octav e. 22 R. R. 9, p. 748 . 23 R. R. I, p. 390 . 24 Geetabitan , R. R. 4, p. 2 18. 25 R. R. 3, p. 275. 26 R. R. 3, p. 778. 27 Sitar: a North Indian stringed instrument for playing classical music . 28 Love song no. 233 , Geetabitan, R. R. 4, p. 281. 29 R. R. 4, p. 424. 30 R. R. 12, p. 128. 31 "Janmadine" (On the Birthday), Senjuti, R. R. 3, p. 552 . 14

15

INDEX OF NAMES

-A Aanst oo s, C. M. 143, 154 Abel 99 Abraham 52, 53 Abrams, M. H. 59,61 Adam 182 Adams , H. 222 , 230 Adorno, T. W. 11,287 Aeschylus 123 Agfs Villaverde, M. 24, 25 Agnon, S. Y. 227 Alex ander 285 , 286, 290 Alsina Clota, J. 290 Ant iser i, D. 289 Ant isthenes 301 Apollonius 284 Archilochus 272-74 Arch imedes 284 Aristotle 15, 24, 28, 30, 35-7, 41, 237 , 242,255,275,277,286 Armstrong, L. 235 Arnold, M. 275 Aubenque, P. 304 SI. Augu stine 242 Aylesworth , G. 249 ,251 Azara , P. 289

Beethoven, L. van 305 ,307,310,314 Beiner, R. 251 Benhabib, S. 249 Benjamin, A. 304 Bercovitch, S. 252 Bergonzi, B. 198 Bergson, H. 113, 149 Bern ard, E. 182 Bern stein , L. 310 Berriatiia, L. 290 Binoche, J . 308 Blake , W. 117, 123, 129-136 Bloom , H. 136 Bolzano, B. 144, 154 SI. Bonaventure 114 Borel , E. 38 Borges, J. L. 288 Brahm s, J. 30 Brooke-Ro se, C. 59,61 Bulgakov, S. 214 Burke, E. 269 - C-

Cain 99 Callimachus 284 Calvi no, 1. 280 , 281 , 288 Campbell, J. 220,230 Carax, L. 307 Carr, D. 240 , 249-251 Carrillo Canan , A. J . L. 208 Cassirer, E. 24 Cassuto , L. 251 Celan, P. 288 Cervantes Saavedra , M. de 220 ,282, 288-290 Cezanne,~ 179-183,186,187 Chakravarty, A. 314 Chateaubriand, E-A. -R. de 160 Chopin, K. 239 Code , L. 252

- BBabel,1. 227 Bacon ,E 299,300,303 Baer, J. T. 68 Bakht in, M. 228,230,242,249-251 Baldwin , P. 251 Balzac, H. de 179, 238 Barker, S. 304 Barry, J. 189 Barsalou, L. 73,77,78 Barth , J . R. 136 Baudrillard,J. 101,104,115,304 Beckett , S. 81, 82-101 ,114,305,309,310

319

320

I N D E X OF NAMES

Colema n, C. 159 Coleridge, S. T. 117- 129, 131, 133, 135, 136 Collin s, J. 60 Conrad, J. 43,44 Constant, B. 159-177 Copernicu s 264 Cortez , H. 44 Couder, Y. 34 Covey 235, 249 Cuddon , J.A. 59,6 1 - DDali, S. 65 Damasio , A. 75,76,78 Dante, 191, 194, 195,235,280 Darius 290 Deguise, P. 160, 177 de Kooning, W. 180 Deleuze, G. 294-97,300-304 De Man, P. 310 Dennett, D. 72, 78 Derrida, J. 14,20-25,248 Descartes, R. 71,75, 166,250 Dicken s, C. 250 Dirac, P. A. M. 35 Dodge, G. H. 177 Donadio, S. 256, 277 Dostoevsky, F. 227, 235 Douad y, S. 34 Douglass, F. 235, 236, 249, 251 Dretske, F. 73, 78 Durand, G. 306 Dyer, G. 299, 300 -EEagleton, T. 64, 68 Edie, J. M. 15, 16, 24 Einstein , A. 47 EI-Abbadi , M. 290 Eliade, M. 16, 23 Eliot, T. S. 59, 191-198,3 10 Ellis, R. 76, 78 Ellison, R. 235-240, 245, 248-25 1 Else, G. 275 Eme rson, R. W. 256 Erlich, V. 59, 61

Euclid 284 Euripedes 274,277 - FFairlie , A. 159, 177 Fermat, P. de 33 Ferrar, N. 192 Fibonacci 31, 32, 34 Ficker, L. von 279 Filangieri , G. 170 Flaubert , G. 238 Fodor, J. 73,77,78 Foti, V. 180,1 86, 187 Foucault, M. 213,243,246-48,296-99, 303,304 Fowles, J. 305, 308, 310 Freud, S. 12, 21, 71, 269, 275 Fried, M. 304 Fromm, E. I I Frost, R. 55 Frye, N. 220,230, 238 Fuchs,D. 272,277 Fukayama, F. 245 Funke, G. 141, 154 Fynsk, C. 139,154

- GGada mer, H. -G. 66-68, 199- 209, 243, 249-251 , 276, 277 Galileo 250 Gaos, V. 290 Gardner, F. 24 Gardner, H. 197 Gasche, R. 68 Gasq uet, J. 182 Geertz, C. 24 Gendlin, E. 78 Genet , J. 81, 82,101 - 113,1 15 Gide,A. 305-08,3 10 Gilbert- Rolfe, J. 304 Glenberg, A. 73, 78 Goffman, E. 101, 103, 108, III , 112, 115 Goncourt, E. -L. -A. H. de 238 Goncourt, J. -A. H. de 238 Goodwi n, B. 47 Grabo, C. 136 Gravil, R. 136

321

I ND E X O F N AM ES

Greene, G. 305 Griffiths, P. E. 75, 78 Gurwitsch,A. 144,145,1 54 -H-

Habenn as, 244, 248, 250 Halle, M. 5 1,61 Hamilton, W. R. 36,47 de Hardenberg, C. 162 Hatab , L. 224, 231 Hawkes, T. 51,59,6 1 Heelan, P. A. 144,154 Hegel, G. W. F. 21, 37,68,86, 159, 164-1 67,1 71,235-37, 242-45, 250, 251 Heidegger, M. 12, 14,20-23,25,28, 37, 41,46,66-68,11 3,114,1 39-142,147, 149,154,205-08,241 ,243, 248,253, 254,264,274-77,302,204, 307 Heisenberg, W. K. 35 Henry, A. 309,3 10 Heraclitus 166, 167 Herder, J. G. von 243 Hess, T. B. 189 Hillman, J. 254, 275,276, 278 Hoffmann, E. 177 Hogue, H. H. S. 164,177 Holmes, S. 162,1 77 Homer 271-73,290,294 Horkheimer, II Htibe4K. 224,230,23 1 Hugo, V. 160 Hulewicz, W. 279 Hume, D. 71 Husserl, E. 2 1,23, 4 1,68, 76, 78, 103, 105,11 3,11 7,11 8,1 20,1 21,1 28,1 29, 135- 37,141 ,146,1 85, 191-1 98, 237-240, 243,248- 50,254,255,276, 278 -I-

Iginla, B. 24 Ingarden, R. 150, 154 Iser, W. 2 12 Itkonen, M. 148,151 ,154 Ivanova, N. 64,68

-JJacobs, J. 136 Jakobson,R. 49- 54,57, 59-61 James, H. 237,238,255-262,268,269, 274-76,278,310 James, W. 101--D3, 115, 256 Jameson, F. 60,61 Jasper, D. 136 Jaspers, K. 27-30,37,39-4 1, 46,47 Jauss, H. R. 239 Jeannerod, M. 75, 76, 78 Jesus Christ 58,9 1,267,268 St. John of the Cross 195 Johnson, G. A. 188 Johnson, M. 77, 78 Joyce, J. 52, 227 Jung, C. 275 - K-

Kant, 1. 23, 24, 165, 166, 175, 199-204, 208, 235, 237- 39,242, 244,247, 248, 250, 251 Kaplan, S. 251 Kearney,R. 17,1 8, 20, 25,249, 251 Kelley, G. A. 177 Kellner, D. 115 Kenne4H. 192,194, 198 Kierkegaard, S. 28, 46 Klee, P. 179, 182 Kocay, V. 159, 177 Kockelmans, J. J. 142-44, 15 1, 154 Koje ve, A. 245 Koren, H. J. 150, 155 Kreiman, G. 76 Kupiainen R. 142, 154 -L-

Lackoff,G. 77,78 Laforest, G. 252 de Lara, P. 252 Lawlor, L. 21, 22, 25 Lear,J. 47 Lee, V. 256 Leggett, B. J. 272, 273, 277, 278 Lemon, L. T. 59, 61 Lessing, G. E. 200

322

INDEX OF NAMES

Levinas, E. 212,2 13,2 15- 18,223,224, 228, 229-23 1 Levi -St rau ss, c. 310 Lin gis, A. 141, 155 Lod ge,D. 49,51 ,53,54,56,60,61 Longenbach, J . 277,278 "Longinus" 269, 284, 290 Lo sev, A. 211-13,215, 229 Luckm ann , T. 113-15 Lu ijpen , VV. A. 150,155 Luk acs, G. 60,6 1 SI. Luke 198 Lyotard, J. -F. 179-1 81,1 83,1 84,1 86-88

-MMacIntyre, A. 249 Madd en , R. 24 Magli ola, R. R. 141, 155 Magritte , R. 296-304 Makreel, R. 249,251 Malrau x, 235 Mamardashvill i, M. 63, 64 Mamet, D. 261--63,268,269,274, 278 Mandel stam, O. 227 Marcel , G. 28,39-42, 45-47 Marc elin o, A. 286 Marchand , A. 182 Mar cuse , H. II Marki sh, S. 226 Marx, K. 12,21 ,86, 235 Virgin Mary 267,268 Matisse, H. 179 Maxw ell , J. C. 31,47 McFarland , T. 136 McNiece, G . 136 Med vedev, P. N. 230 Meitin ger, S. 25 Mel ville, A. D. 277 Mel ville, H. 270 Mend es-Fl ohr, P. 150, 155 Merleau-Pont y, M. 1,71 -78,179-189 Meyer s, S. 116 Meyrink, G. 288 Mill ikan, R. 72, 78

Milosz, C. 43-45 ,47 Mod iano, R. 136 Mondrian, P. 181

Monk , R. 289 Motherwell , R. 180 Mouni er, E. 2 12 Murray, E. L. 154

- NNabokov, V.V. 305,306 Napoleon 161, 162 Nash , G. 251 Nemer, M. 177 Newl yn, L. 136 Newman, B. B. 179-1 89 Newton , A. Z. 222 Newton, I. 47 Newton, N. 77,78 Niet zsche, F. 12,21 ,67, 246, 250,256,

270-73, 278 Nisbett, R. 71, 78 Norri s, C. 69 Nussbaum, M. 250

- 0Olson , A. M. 230 Omar 285-87 O'Neill, J. P. 188 Orte ga, M . 69 Orwe ll,G. 56 Osterw ald er, H. 59, 61 Ovid 253, 254,265-67, 27 1,277, 278 -PPanks epp , J. 75,78 Panofsky, E. 182 Parmenides 30, 165, 167,301, 302 SI. Paul 58 Paul i, vv. 35 Pearce, H. 276, 278 Pelevin , V. 65, 66, 68 Pell auer, D. 240, 250, 25 1 Pessoa , F. 281, 288 Pizarro, 44 Plato 30, 37,59,71 , 99, 167, 199, 204,215,

263,266,270,293-97,300,303,304 Pliny the Elder 290 Plotinus 36, 38, 45-47 Plutarch 290 Polanyi, M. 73, 78

323

[NDEX OF NAMES Pollock, J. [79 Pound ,E. 59, [95 Pratt, M. L. 240, 249 Proust, M. 30,237,238,305,306-3[0 Ptolomies 284, 285 Puchala , D. 252 - RRaphael 271 Rauschenberg, R. 181 Rawls, J. 244 Ray, D. K. 317 Reagan, R. 115 Reale, G. 289 Rembrandt 308 Rickert , H. 113 Ricoeur, P. 14-25,49-61 ,219,229, 235-246,248-251 ,299,304 Rilke, R. M. 5,279,281 Roe, N. 136 Rorty,R. 247-250,252 Rosenberg , H. 181, 188 Rosenthal, M. L. 192,198 Rosen zweig , F. 216 Ross , L. 71,78 Rothko , M. 180 Ryle, G. 71,78

- SSaid, E. 245,250-52 Sartre, J. -Po 71, 100, 149, 155 Sausurre , F. de 49 Scheler, M. 145 Schelling, F. W. J. von 119 Schleiermacher, F. E. D. 57 Schneider, D. 276 , 278 Schrodinger, E. 36 Schutz , A. 81, 82, 88, 100, 102-04, 112-15,146-49,155 Schwartz, D. 52,53,55 Schwarzschild, K. 35 Segal, R. A. 230 Shakespeare, W. 220, 305 Sheet s-Johnstone , M. 77,78 Shelley, P. B. 117, 118, 123-136 Shpet , G. 144, 155 Silverman, H. 189,251

Simme1, G. 115 Snell, B. 16 Socr ates 266, 293, 294, 302, 303 Solzhenitsyn, A. 60 Spario su, M. 255, 276, 278 Spiegelberg, H. 15 1, 155 Spinoza, B. 182 Steele , M. 249, 252 Steiner, G. 307,310 Steiner, M. 47 Stepto, R. 249, 252 Stevens , W. 263-275,277,278 Swift, J. 195

-TTagore,R. 311-3 18 Tatarkiewi cz, W. 285 Taylor, C. 235-37,239-248,250-252 Theodosius 286 Theophilus 286, 287 St. Theres a 109 St. Thomas Aguinas 24 Thompson, P. 160,163,165, 177 Titian 277 Todorov, T. 49-55,57-61 ,170,177 Tugendhat, E. 208 Turner, V. 276 - VValery, P. 182 Valverde, J. M. 289 van Gennep, A. 276 Van Gogh, V. 179, 185 Varto , J. 139, 15 1, 155 Velasquez, D. R. de S. 298, 299 von Neumann , J. 38 - W-

Waardenburg, J. 230 Wagner, H. R. 147, 155 Warhol, A. 296 Wasserman, E. 136 Watson , B. 310 Weiskranz, L. 72, 78 Welton, D. 198 West, W. 24 Westphal , M. 249, 252

324

INDEX OF NAMES

White, H. 249,252 Whitman , W. 274,278 Wigner, E. 38,47 Wilde, O. 256 Wilmer, F. 252 Windelband , W. 113 Wittgenstcin, L. J. J. 41,279,280,289 Wolff, K. H. 152, 155 Wood, David 252 Wood, Dennis M. 162,177,252

Wordsworth, W. 306 Wright, R. 235,236,239

-Y -

Yeats, W. B.

195

- Z-

Zenodotus

284

Analecta Husserliana The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Edito r-in-Chief

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning , Belmont, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 1.

Tyrnieniecka , A-T. (ed.), Volume I ofAnal ecta 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.

Tyrnieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenological Realism ofthe Possible Worlds. The "A Priori', Activity and Passivity of Consciousness, Phenomenology and Nature . 1974 ISBN 90-277-0426-0 Tyrnieniecka , A-T. (ed.), Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialised Studies Establishing the Field of Research . 1976 ISBN 90-277-0628-X Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Crisis of Culture. Steps to Reopen the Phenomenological Investigation of Man . 1976 ISBN 90-277-0632-8 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Selfand the Other. The Irreducible Element in Man, ISBN 90-277-0759-6 Part I. 1977 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Human Being in Action. The Irreducible Element in Man, Part II. 1978 ISBN 90-277-0884-3 Nitta, Y. and Hirotaka Tatematsu (eds.), Japanese Phenomenology. Phenomenology as the Trans-cultural Philo sophical Approach . 1979 ISBN 90-277-0924-6 Tyrnieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology. The Irreducible Element in Man , Part III. 1979 ISBN 90-277 -0981-5 Wojtyla, K., The Acting Person. Translated from Polish by A. Potocki . 1979 ISBN Hb 90-277-0969-6; Pb 90-277-0985-8 Ales Bello, A. (ed.), The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology. 1981 ISBN 90-277-1071-6 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 essay ISBN 90-277-1312-X by A-T. Tyrnieniecka, Poetica Nova . 1982 Kaelin, E. E, The Unhappy Consciousness . The Poetic Plight of Samuel Beckett. An Inquiry at the Intersection of Phenomenology and literature . 1981 ISBN 90-277-1313-8 Tyrnieniecka , A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition. Individualisation of Nature and the Human Being. (Part I:) Plotting the Territory for Interdisciplinary Communication. 1983 Part 1/ see below under Volume 2 1. ISBN 90-277-1447-9

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. II. 12.

13.

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Analecta Husserliana 15.

Tymieniecka, A-T. and Cal vin O. Schrag (eds.), Foundations ofMorality, Human Rights . and the Human Sciences. Phenomenology in a Foundational Dialogue with Human Scien ces. 1983 ISBN 90-277-1453-3

16.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Soul and Body in Husserlian Phenomenology. Man and Nature . 1983 ISBN 90-277-1518 -1

17.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Phenomenology ofLife in a Dialogue Between Chinese ISBN 90-277-1620-X and Occidental Philosophy. 1984

18.

Tymien iecka , A-T. (ed.), The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition : ISBN 90-277-1702-8 Poetic - Epic - Tragic. The Literary Genre . 1984

19.

Tymien iecka, A-T. (ed.), Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition . (Part I :) The Sea. From Elemental Stirrings to Symbolic Inspiration, Language, and Life-Significance in Literary Interpretation and Theory. 1985 ISBN 90-277-1906-3 For Part 2 and 3 see below under Volumes 23 and 28.

20.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Moral Sense in the Communal Significance of Life. Investigat ions in Phenomenological Praxeology: Psych iatric Therapeutics, Medical Eth ics and Social Praxis within the Life- and Communal World. 1986 ISBN 90-277-2085-1

2 1.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition. Part II: The Meeting Point Between Occidental and Oriental Philo sophies . 1986 ISBN 90-277-2185-8

22.

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 /5 and 20. ISBN 90-277-2411-3

23.

Tymienie cka, 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

24.

Tymieniecka, A-T., Logos and Life. Book I: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason. 1988 ISBN Hb 90-277-2539-X; Pb 90-277-2540-3 Tymieniecka, A-T., Logos and Life. Book II: The Three Movements of the Soul. 1988 ISBN Hb 90-277 -2556-X ; Pb 90-277-2557-8

25. 26.

Kaelin, E. F. and Calvin O. Schrag (eds.), American Phenomenology. Origins and Developments. 1989 ISBN 90-277-2690-6

27.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Man within his Life- World. Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe . 1989 ISBN 90-277-2767-8

28.

Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Elemental Passions of the Soul. Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition, Part 3.1990 ISBN 0-7923-0180-3

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.),lngardeniana II. New Studie s in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden. With a New International Ingarden Bibliography. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0627-9

Analecta Husserliana 31.

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43. 44. 45. 46.

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 Kronegger, M. (ed.), Phenomenology and Aesthetics. Approaches to Comparative Literature and Other Arts. Homages to A-T. Tymieniecka. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-0738-0 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Ingardeniana 1lI. Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: The Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature. 1991 Sequel to Volumes 4 and 30 ISBN 0-7923-1014-4 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Turning Points ofthe New Phenomenological Era. Husserl Research - Drawing upon the Full Extent of His Development. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1134-5 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Husserlian Phenomenology in a New Key. Intersubjectivity, Ethos, the Societal Sphere, Human Encounter, Pathos. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1146-9 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Husserl's Legacy in Phenomenologi cal Philosophies. New Approaches to Reason, Language, Hermeneutics, the Human Condition. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1178-7 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), New Queries in Aesthetics and Metaphysics. Time, Historicity, Art, Culture, Metaphysics, the Transnatural. 1991 ISBN 0-7923- 1195-7 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), The Elemental Dialectic of Light and Darkness. The Passions of the Soul in the Onto-Poies is of Life. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1601-0 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Reason , Life, Culture, Part I. Phenomenology in the Baltics. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-1902-8 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Manifestations of Reason: Life, Historicit y, Culture. Reason, Life, Culture, Part II. Phenomenology in the Adriatic Countries. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2215-0 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.), Allegory Revisited. Ideals of Mankind. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2312-2 Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.), Allegory Old and New. In Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre , and Its Continuity in Culture. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2348-3 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): From the Sacred to the Divine. A New Phenomenological Approach. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2690-3 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Elemental Passion fo r Place in the Ontopoiesis of Life. Passions of the Soul in the Imaginatio Creatrix. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-2749-7 Zhai, Z.: The Radical Choice and Moral Theory. Through Communicative Argumentation to Phenomenological Subjectivity. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2891-4 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Logic of the Living Present. Experience, Ordering, Onto-Poiesis of Culture. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-2930-9

Analecta Husserliana 47.

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Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Heaven, Earth, and In-Between in the Harmony ofLife. Phenomenology in the Continuing Oriental/Occidental Dialogue. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3373-X Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Life. In the Glory of its Radiating Manifestations. 25th Anniversary Publication. Book 1. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3825- I Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): Life. The Human Questf or an Ideal. 25th Anniversary Publication. Book II. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3826-X Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Life. Phenomenology of Life as the Starting Point of Philosophy. 25th Anniversary Publication. Book III. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4126-0 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Passion fo r Place. Part Il. Between the Vital Spacing and the Creative Horizons of Fulfilment. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4146-5 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. Laying Down the Cornerstones of the Field. Book 1. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4445-6 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outbu rst in Creative Virtualities. Harmonisations and Attunement in Cognition, the Fine Arts, Literature. Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. Book II. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4461-8 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Ontopoietic Expansion in Human Self-Interpretationin-Existence. The I and the Other in their Creative Spacing of the Societal Circuits of Life. Phenomenology of Life and the Creative Condition. Book III. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4462-6 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Creative Virtualities in Human Self-Interpretation-inCulture. Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. Book IV. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4545-2 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Enjoyment . From Laughter to Delight in Philosophy, Literature, the Fine Arts and Aesthetics. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4677-7 Kronegger M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): Life. Differentiation and Harmony... ISBN 0-7923-4887-7 Vegetal, Animal, Human . 1998 Tymieniecka, A-T. and Matsuba, S. (eds.): Immersing in the Concrete. Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the Japanese Perspective. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5093-6 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Life - Scientific Philosophy/Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences ofLife. Ontopoiesis of Life and the Human Creative Condition. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-514 1-X Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): Life - The Outburst of Life in the Human Sphere. Scientific Philosophy / Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life. Book II. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5142-8 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Aesthetic Discourse of the Art s. Breaking the Barriers. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6006-0 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Creative Mim esis of Emotion. From Sorrow to Elation; Elegiac Virtuosity in Literature. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6007-9

Analecta Husserliana 63.

Kronegger, M. (ed).: The Orchestration of The Arts - A Creative Symbiosis of Existential Powers. The Vibrating Interplay of Sound, Color, Image, Gesture, Movement, Rhythm, Fragrance, Word, Touch. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6008-7

64.

Tymieniecka, A-T. and Z. Zalewski (eds.): Life - The Human Being Betwe en Life and Death. A Dialogue Between Medicine and Philosophy, Recurrent Issues and New Approaches. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-5962-3 Kronegger, M. and Tymieniecka, A-T. (eds.): The Aesthetics of Enchantment in ISBN 0-7923-6183-0 the Fine Arts. 2000 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Origins ofLife, Volume I: The Primogenital Matrix ofLife and Its Context. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6246-2; Set ISBN 0-7923-6446-5 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Origins of Life, Volume II: The Origins of the Existential Sharing-in-Life. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6276-4; Set ISBN 0-7923-6446-5 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): PAIDEIA. Philosophy / Phenomenology of Life Inspiring Education of our Times. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6319-1 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Poetry of Life in Literature. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6408-2 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies ofReason. Logos and Life, volume 4. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6731-6; HB 0-7923-6730-8 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Passions of the Earth in Human Existence, Creativity, ISBN 0-7923-6675-1 and Literature. 2001 Tymieniecka, A-T. and E. Agazzi (eds.): Life -Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition. Medicine and Philosophy in a Dialogue. 200I ISBN Hb 0-7923-6983-1; Pb 0-7923-6984-X Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Life - The Play of Life on the Stage of the World in Fine ISBN 0-7923-7032-5 Arts , Stage-Play, and Literature. 2001 to be published. Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): The Visible and the Invisible in the Interplay between ISBN 1-4020-0070-7 Philosophy, Literature and Reality. 2002 Tymieniecka, A-T. (ed.): Life - Truth in its Various Perspectives. Cognition, Self-Knowledge, Creativity, Scientific Research, Sharing-in-Life, Economics . 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0071-5

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68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

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Kluwer Academic Publishers - Dordrecht / Boston / London