[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
for hedgehog, istrice, in the interview, is an example of one
form of specificity: dependence on the idiom of a particular
language. For me too, each work is a separate space, protected
on all sides by something like quills. Each work is closed
in on itself, separated even from its author. The work is
also separated from the real world and from any unified
34
On
Literature
supernal world which all works might be presumed to put
to work.
No doubt I am here, by making a conceptual analysis,
committing again the error against which I warn. It cannot
be denied that literary theory contributes to that death of
literature the first sentence of this book announces. Literary
theory arose in its contemporary form just at the time litera-
ture s social role was weakening. It was an oblique response
to that weakening. If literature s power and role could be
taken for granted as still in full force, it would not be neces-
sary to theorize about it. The greatest ancient treatise on
what we today would call literature, Aristotle s Poetics,
appeared at the time Greek tragedy, not to speak of the epic
(Aristotle s chief examples of poetry ), were in their
decline. In a similar way, the remarkable twentieth-century
theoretical reflections on the nature of literature appeared
just at the time literature in the modern sense of the word
was in the process of fading as a primary force in Western
culture. I am thinking of all those theorists from Sartre,
Benjamin, Lukács, and Blanchot down to de Man, Derrida,
Jameson, Butler, and the rest, not to speak of those statements
by creative writers like Mallarmé and Proust who anticipated
later twentieth-century reflections by theorists on the essence
of the literary.
The efflorescence of literary theory signals the death of
literature. That Routledge editors should have invited me to
write a book on literature is a symptom of this. They would
not have thought of making such a request if literature were
not widely perceived these days as problematic. Many people
see literature as perhaps in mortal jeopardy, certainly as
something that can no longer simply be taken for granted.
Theory both registers the imminent death of literature, which
35
Literature as Virtual Reality
of course cannot die, and at the same time helps make that
death-without-death happen.
This takes place by an implacable law that says you can see
clearly something that is deeply embedded in your culture
only when it is in the act of receding into the historical dis-
tance. Maurice Blanchot already quietly recognized that van-
ishing and its primary cause in an essay of 1959, The Song of
the Sirens: Encountering the Imaginary. Speaking of the
novel as the primary modern literary form, Blanchot wrote:
It is no small thing to make a game of human time and out of
that game to create a free occupation, one stripped of all
immediate interest and usefulness, essentially superficial
and yet in its surface movement capable of absorbing all
being. But clearly, if the novel fails to play this role today, it is
because technics has transformed men s time and their ways
of amusing themselves.
I shall return in Chapter 3 to this question of technics. I
shall turn also to Blanchot s notion of the way the récit, as
opposed to the novel, is oriented not toward amusement but
toward what he calls the imaginary or literary space
(l espace littéraire). The latter phrase is the title of a book by
Blanchot.
A person can enter l espace littéraire, the space, for
example, of Crime and Punishment or of Pride and Prejudice, in no
other way than by reading the work. All the reading in the
world of Russian or English history or of the biographies of
Dostoevsky or Austen, or of literary theory, valuable as such
knowledge is, will not prepare you for what is most essential,
that is, most idiosyncratic, about these works. Henry James
expressed eloquently the uniqueness of each author s work in
a famous passage in the preface to The Portrait of a Lady:
36
On
Literature
The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a
million a number of possible windows not to be reckoned,
rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still
pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision
and by the pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of
dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the
human scene that we might have expected of them a greater
sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at
their best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched
aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But
they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a
figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a field-glass, which
forms, again and again, for observation, a unique instrument,
insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct
from every other.
LITERATURE IS PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE
Second feature: since a literary work refers to an imaginary
reality, it follows that it makes a performative rather than a
constative use of words. Performative and constative are
terms from speech act theory. On the one hand, a constative
statement names some state of affairs, as in the assertion, It is
raining outside. Such a sentence can, in principle at least, be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl wyciskamy.pev.pl
for hedgehog, istrice, in the interview, is an example of one
form of specificity: dependence on the idiom of a particular
language. For me too, each work is a separate space, protected
on all sides by something like quills. Each work is closed
in on itself, separated even from its author. The work is
also separated from the real world and from any unified
34
On
Literature
supernal world which all works might be presumed to put
to work.
No doubt I am here, by making a conceptual analysis,
committing again the error against which I warn. It cannot
be denied that literary theory contributes to that death of
literature the first sentence of this book announces. Literary
theory arose in its contemporary form just at the time litera-
ture s social role was weakening. It was an oblique response
to that weakening. If literature s power and role could be
taken for granted as still in full force, it would not be neces-
sary to theorize about it. The greatest ancient treatise on
what we today would call literature, Aristotle s Poetics,
appeared at the time Greek tragedy, not to speak of the epic
(Aristotle s chief examples of poetry ), were in their
decline. In a similar way, the remarkable twentieth-century
theoretical reflections on the nature of literature appeared
just at the time literature in the modern sense of the word
was in the process of fading as a primary force in Western
culture. I am thinking of all those theorists from Sartre,
Benjamin, Lukács, and Blanchot down to de Man, Derrida,
Jameson, Butler, and the rest, not to speak of those statements
by creative writers like Mallarmé and Proust who anticipated
later twentieth-century reflections by theorists on the essence
of the literary.
The efflorescence of literary theory signals the death of
literature. That Routledge editors should have invited me to
write a book on literature is a symptom of this. They would
not have thought of making such a request if literature were
not widely perceived these days as problematic. Many people
see literature as perhaps in mortal jeopardy, certainly as
something that can no longer simply be taken for granted.
Theory both registers the imminent death of literature, which
35
Literature as Virtual Reality
of course cannot die, and at the same time helps make that
death-without-death happen.
This takes place by an implacable law that says you can see
clearly something that is deeply embedded in your culture
only when it is in the act of receding into the historical dis-
tance. Maurice Blanchot already quietly recognized that van-
ishing and its primary cause in an essay of 1959, The Song of
the Sirens: Encountering the Imaginary. Speaking of the
novel as the primary modern literary form, Blanchot wrote:
It is no small thing to make a game of human time and out of
that game to create a free occupation, one stripped of all
immediate interest and usefulness, essentially superficial
and yet in its surface movement capable of absorbing all
being. But clearly, if the novel fails to play this role today, it is
because technics has transformed men s time and their ways
of amusing themselves.
I shall return in Chapter 3 to this question of technics. I
shall turn also to Blanchot s notion of the way the récit, as
opposed to the novel, is oriented not toward amusement but
toward what he calls the imaginary or literary space
(l espace littéraire). The latter phrase is the title of a book by
Blanchot.
A person can enter l espace littéraire, the space, for
example, of Crime and Punishment or of Pride and Prejudice, in no
other way than by reading the work. All the reading in the
world of Russian or English history or of the biographies of
Dostoevsky or Austen, or of literary theory, valuable as such
knowledge is, will not prepare you for what is most essential,
that is, most idiosyncratic, about these works. Henry James
expressed eloquently the uniqueness of each author s work in
a famous passage in the preface to The Portrait of a Lady:
36
On
Literature
The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a
million a number of possible windows not to be reckoned,
rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still
pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision
and by the pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of
dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the
human scene that we might have expected of them a greater
sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at
their best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched
aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But
they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a
figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a field-glass, which
forms, again and again, for observation, a unique instrument,
insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct
from every other.
LITERATURE IS PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE
Second feature: since a literary work refers to an imaginary
reality, it follows that it makes a performative rather than a
constative use of words. Performative and constative are
terms from speech act theory. On the one hand, a constative
statement names some state of affairs, as in the assertion, It is
raining outside. Such a sentence can, in principle at least, be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]