o eTIKI
IN o NJeNem PrevAJANJU
V jeZIK KNjIŽeVNOSTI
Ivan Verč
Univerza v Trstu
UdK 82.0:17
V književnosti se etično dejanje izrisuje kot spopad z mejami diskurzivnosti jezika oziroma z možnostmi, ki jih jezik ponuja v procesu ubesedovanja stvarnosti. Možnost zahteva izbiro, za subjekt besednega ustvarjalnega procesa pa je izbira dejanje ubeseditve. Specifko njegovega pojavljanja je opisala predvsem »trda« literarna veda 20. stoletja. Prej kot o meta-etič-nem »prevajanju« teoretsko-flozofskih koncepcij v jezik literature je zato mogoče govoriti o samostojni etični izbiri bivanja v besedi. Pot k etiki ubesedovanja stvarnosti je literatura nakazala veliko prej kot ostale kategorije humanističnega mišljenja.
Ključne besede: etika, meta-etika, dejanje ubeseditve, diskurzivnost jezika, literarna veda
Danes je vsakdo po malem puščavnik v egiptovski puščavi in ima na izbiro: ali se bo vzpenjal, ali pa bo zdrsnil v takšno ali drugačno skotstvo (rus.).1
Czesław Miłosz
Če se ozremo na razvoj in dosežke literarne vede, lahko opazimo, da je v 20. stoletju védenje o književnosti sicer spremenilo pristop k empiričnemu materialu raziskovanja, vendar se svoji zraščenosti s kategorijami, ki jih je želelo tudi kritično preseči, ni docela odpovedalo. V prejšnjem stoletju je v številnih različicah metodologija literarne vede znala uspešno preusmeriti in obogatiti »preseženo« idealistično ali metafzično razmišljanje o literaturi, značilno za 19. stoletje, osnovne »heglovske« kategorije književnosti pa so kljub temu ohranile prvenstvo izhodiščnega položaja: literarna veda je namreč določanje estetske funkcije nadomestila s prehodom k »strogo« deskriptivni teoriji, spoznavne prvine literature pa je predvsem v drugi
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 29. Posebna številka (2006)
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polovici stoletja poglobila v smer hermenevtike, semiotike in kulturolo-gije. Književnost se torej še vedno izrisuje kot prostor za razmišljanje o »starem« vprašanju, kako in s čim nas lahko umetniško besedilo čustveno in racionalno vznemirja in kako in kaj nam lahko nudi za nekoliko večje spoznavanje sebe in sveta, ki nas obdaja. razliko od prejšnjih literarnokri-tiških pristopov je sicer mogoče odkrivati v spremenljivem iskanju določanja osnove, na kateri naj bi slonela književnost, umestnost vprašanja o iskanju same osnove ali pa kar o možnosti njenega morebitnega brisanja pa se, vsaj zaenkrat, ne pojavlja kot vodilna tema v literarni vedi (in upati je, da se še dolgo ne bo, saj bi sicer to pomenilo, da je opazovanje književnosti odvečna in nikomur potrebna zadeva; poslednja domneva ni ravno iz trte izvita, če pomislimo na nekatere splošne trende v sodobni družbi.)
Prav zaradi vztrajanja na »osnovah« književnosti, ki se jim zaenkrat še nočemo odpovedati, se nam sama po sebi ponuja v razmislek ugotovitev, da je, ob različnih prehodih in preusmeritvah, zunaj literarne vede skoraj v celoti ostala morebitna »dediščina« tretje heglovske kategorije oziroma vprašanje o etični funkciji književnosti. Za razliko od estetske in spoznavne funkcije, ki sodobnejšim literarnoteoretskim metodam navkljub nista izginili z obzorja literarne vede, se v 20. stoletju zanemarljiva prisotnost etičnega vprašanja v opazovanju književnosti v marsičem izrisuje prav kot neizbežna posledica novejših pristopov k proučevanju besede ter meja in možnosti same (ne)opisljivosti sveta. Tu mislim predvsem na izredno bogastvo po-saussurovskega razvoja znanstvenega védenja o jeziku in na t. i. »fenomenološki preobrat« v sodobni flozofji.
Z znanstvenega vidika je namreč beseda, tudi umetniška, samo predmet opazovanja in opisa, je fenomen, ki kot tak ni nujno podvržen kategorijam vrednotenja. Po več kot stoletni praksi opazovanja je danes z dokajšno mero prepričljivosti mogoče trditi, da se beseda manifestira na več diferenciranih ravneh, sodobna znanost o jeziku pa je te ravni znala registrirati, določiti in opisati. To znanje, ki je še vedno v razvoju, je bistveno vplivalo na možnost nadaljnjega določanja »etičnosti« umetniške besede: za razliko od »pred-znanstvenega« pristopa k jeziku, ki v obravnavanju etike sloni skoraj izključno na njegovi sporočilni funkciji, je védenje o diferenciranih ravneh, na katerih se beseda manifestira, odprlo vrsto vprašanj, o katerih prej, ob pomanjkanju ustreznega instrumentarija, sploh ni bilo mogoče razmišljati. Če te ravni, še posebno s poudarkom na razliki med govornim dejanjem adresanta in adresata, določamo kot poskus opisa »celovite avtentičnosti« besede, potem lahko trdimo, da je bila vsaj do prve tretjine 20. stoletja dinamična razsežnost (literarne) besede spregledana, vprašanje o njeni morebitni etičnosti pa že v nastavi okrnjeno. Na relaciji »umetniško besedilo - bralec« je namreč nesomernost (asimetrija) nezamenljiva kategorija komunikacijskega procesa, ob upoštevanju enega samega pola komunikacije pa se je vprašanje o etiki literarnega besedila udejanjalo skoraj izključno na ravni recepcije, veliko manj, ali pa sploh ne, na ravni tistega člena komunikacije, ki sporočilo oziroma različnost sprejemanja pomenov proizvaja. Drugače povedano: izjava in sporočilo sta se neustrezno prekrivala. Ker je bil bralec oziroma sprejemnik komunikacijskega procesa edino
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dejansko merilo za domnevno »etičnost« književnosti, je bilo njeno določanje, kljub nekaterim pomenljivim izjemam, odvisno od dominantnega kulturnega modela oziroma od moralne norme, ki je bila z njim zraščena. V naravni neskladnosti med proizvajalcem in uporabnikom literarnega znaka je zadnja beseda praviloma pripadala slednjemu (zaradi spremenjene ali zastarane moralne norme se je to dogajalo tudi ob prevrednotenju nekoč etično nesprejemljivega in zavrnjenega literarnega besedila). V nekoliko poenostavljeni obliki je mogoče trditi, da se za dobro tretjino 20. stoletja razmišljanje o etični funkciji književnosti ni kaj posebno premaknilo od razmišljanja o potrebi po blagodejnem vplivu, ki naj bi ga književnost imela na sprejemnika. Vse to še vedno spominja na Aristotelov katarzični model moralne sprostitve gledalca tragedije ali poslušalca glasbe, od katerega se literarna veda vse do prvih desetletjih prejšnjega stoletja, kot kaže, ni bistveno oddaljila. Razliko od zgodovinsko določenega Aristotelovega modela je bilo mogoče vedno na novo odkrivati v vsebini moralne sprostitve, ki se je v skladu s časom in prostorom svojega pojavljanja vsakič tudi ustrezno spreminjala.
V drugi polovici 20. stoletja literarna veda ni nadaljevala po podobnih, enoznačno začrtanih smernicah in je vprašanje o kritičnem preseganju ali ponovnem vzpostavljanju tradicionalne obravnave etične funkcije književnosti začasno opustila. Poleg uspešnega, včasih kar modnega »trdega« znanstvenega pristopa k literarnemu besedilu, ki je vprašanje etike, kot se za vsako empirično znanost spodobi, puščal zunaj polja opazovanja, je tej odločitvi botrovala tudi naraščajoča flozofska in antropološka zavest o mnogoterosti svetov. V sozvočju s pričujočim razmišljanjem je to novodobno zavest mogoče strniti v Deleuzovo dognanje o tem, da Adama grešnika ni več, je samo svet, v katerem je Adam grešil.2 Vzpostavljanje »razlike« kot prevladujoče mišljenjske kategorije in spoznanje o možnosti vzporejanja svetov kot neabsolutnih in torej drug drugega ne izključujočih se proizvodov kulture sta bistveno vplivala na temeljno razmišljanje o etiki: v vsakem od možnih svetov se dominantni kulturni model sicer lahko udejanja kot moralna norma, nikakor pa ga ni mogoče enačiti z osnovo, na podlagi katere naj bi temeljilo tudi absolutno določanje etike kot univerzalne kategorije. Od tu dalje je bil korak k odpovedi razmišljanja o etiki kratek: če etike ni mogoče osnovati, se z njo ni mogoče in torej tudi ni potrebno ukvarjati. Od Husserla dalje in od »fenomenološkega preobrata«, ki mu je nekaj desetletij kasneje sledil, se flozofja sicer ni odpovedala razmišljanju o etiki (pomislimo le na načelo »odgovornosti«, ki se danes vse bolj vpisuje med vodilne teme flozofske misli), v skladu z novimi znanstvenimi spoznanji o fenomenu besede pa se literarna veda ni mogla ne odpovedati etiki kot možnemu predmetu opazovanja. Če odmislimo občasne in na trenutke vsiljive poskuse ponovnega vzpostavljanja svetovnonazorskih, moralno-religioznih in zadnje čase kar »civilizacijskih« kategorij v vrednotenju književnosti in umetnosti nasploh, ki se tu pa tam še pojavljajo v (militantnem) tisku, potem naj zapišemo, da je z odpovedjo etičnemu vprašanju v obravnavi književnosti sodobnejša literarna veda dosledno hodila po poti tiste pozitivno naravnane misli, ki jo je evropska kultura, ne
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brez težav in tudi ne brez tragedij, razvijala v 20. stoletju. V tem pogledu literarna veda ni za nikomer zaostajala, prav obratno, umetniško besedo je osvobodila od zunajliterarnih kategorij, ki so vnaprej določale meje in možnosti njenega bivanja. Prav zato, ker smo to pot že prehodili in je prvi korak že zdavnaj za nami, je zdaj morda čas za poskus povratka k vprašanju etike v književnosti.
Če etike kot univerzalne kategorije ni mogoče in ni potrebno osnovati, še ne pomeni, da se moramo tudi odpovedati opazovanju in opisu meja in možnosti, ki se ponujajo človeku, ko se odloči za to, kar še vedno »naša« kultura določa kot etično relevantno dejanje. V odsotnosti konkretnega »dejanja«, ki ga sicer ni mogoče opazovati zunaj njegove vklenjenosti v meje in možnosti, ki jih čas, prostor in sama situacija dopuščajo (zunaj sveta, v katerega se dejanje vpisuje), je namreč vsakršen govor o etiki brezpredmeten. Plodna spodbuda na poti k nadaljnjemu razmišljanju je lahko splošna usmeritev tiste veje analitične flozofje (ne da bi ji morali tudi metodološko slediti), ki je tradicionalno razmišljanje o etiki nadomestila z opazovanjem njene samo-reprezentacije:3 čemu bi se namreč morali neuspešno ukvarjati s tem, kaj je »prav« in kaj ni, kaj je »dobro« in kaj ne, ko se na sicer skromnejši, vsekakor pa obvladljivejši ravni lahko zadovoljimo s poskusom odgovora na vprašanje, kako se etika sploh manifestira? Skratka: za »meta-etiko« je opazovanje in opis etičnega »načela« mogoče uspešno nadomestiti z opazovanjem in opisom specifčnega »jezika«, ki se ga na diferenciranih področjih etika poslužuje, zato da pripoveduje o svoji prisotnosti.
Meta-etika opazuje diskurze, ki naj bi se v jeziku manifestirali kot ude-janjenje etičnih načel in v sinhronem ali diahronem prerezu določa govorno dejanje kot prostor manifestacije same. V različnem obsegu je sicer ta manifestacija prisotna tudi v književnosti, za poskus vnovične vzpostavitve etike kot možnega predmeta literarnoteoretskega opazovanja pa se nam tovrstni pristop kaže nekoliko reduktiven. Če se namreč govorno dejanje lahko (ni pa nujno) izrisuje kot prostor za drugačno, skrito, implicitno ali nezavedno manifestacijo »prevajanja« etičnih načel v etični diskurz, to še ne pomeni, da ga je mogoče določati tudi kot etično dejanje (pravzaprav se na ravni standardne uporabe jezika prav rado dogaja povsem obratno). Če si želimo znova vpisati etiko v obzorje literarne vede in sprejmemo premiso, da o etiki ni mogoče govoriti brez konkretnega »dejanja«, potem se moramo ponovno vrniti k staremu vprašanju: kje sploh iskati »etično dejanje« v književnosti in kako se to dejanje manifestira? Nekaterim sodobnejšim (postmodernim) težnjam navkljub, odgovor verjetno leži v povratku k zdaj že zanemarjenemu ali pa kar odpisanemu subjektu besednega ustvarjalnega procesa in torej h konkretnemu »dejanju«, ki ga kot takega tudi določa (etičnega dejanja brez subjekta enostavno ni). Z gledišča vzgiba, želje, hotenja ali celo »dolžnosti« (Bahtin uporablja posrečeno dikcijo o »dolžnostnem ne-alibiju« v življenju; prim. Bahtin 113-114, 124) se sicer njegovo dejanje ne razlikuje od tistih, ki se prav tako pojavljajo kot različne manifestacije človekove morebitne »etične« prisotnosti v svetu; kar ga razlikuje, je specifka njegove manifestacije v bivanju. Že
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na minimalni ravni opazovanja je mogoče zagovarjati misel, da je splošno gibalo etičnega dejanja »neravnodušnost« človeka do lastnega bivanja in do sveta, ki ga obdaja, za razliko od ostalih pa se v subjektu besednega ustvarjalnega procesa manifestacija »neravnodušnosti« pojavlja izključno kot refektirano dejanje ubeseditve oziroma kot dejanje, ki stvarnost »prevaja« v besedo in ga z zapisano besedo fksira ter začasno določa (kot vse ostalo, kar določamo kot stvarnost, se vanjo lahko vpisuje tudi eksplicitno ali implicitno ubesedeno etično načelo). Dejanje ubeseditve je manifestacija aktivne prisotnosti v svetu (»pasivna odsotnost« ni kategorija, ki jo je mogoče opazovati z gledišča etike, razen takrat, ko se pojavlja kot zavedno dejanje odklona, molčanja, belega lista) in si ga ni mogoče zamišljati zunaj odnosa, ki ga subjekt besednega ustvarjalnega procesa ima do jezika: ob vsakem »prevodu« se mu namreč jezik ponuja kot prostor odprtih možnosti. Jezik je pravzaprav edini dejanski prostor našega bivanja, kjer so te možnosti vedno in brez izjem prisotne (to se dogaja tudi takrat, ko je njegova sporočilnost nasilno zatrta): »ravnodušno« bivanje v besedi se teh možnosti noče, ne more ali ne zna zavedati in se zato manifestira kot pasivno nerefektirana danost jezika. Kjer je možnost, tam je tudi izbira: jezik se nam sicer stalno ponuja kot času in prostoru ustrezna danost, ki nas v bivanju določa, obenem pa v svoji, na več ravneh diferencirani pojavnosti hrani vse tisto, kar je potrebno, da danost presega. s svojim dejanjem ubeseditve se subjekt ustvarjalnega procesa ne more izogniti spopadu z mejami diskurzivnosti jezika in v neizogibnosti spopada, ki zahteva izbiro, se manifestira etično dejanje, specifčno za književnost: subjekt se lahko namreč konstituira v ponavljanju in potrjevanju teh meja (ta izbira je na primer značilna za mit, za srednjeveško religiozno književnost, za tako imenovano »tezno« literaturo, za dela, ki zahtevajo zase vzorčni ali normativni primat samega statusa Literature in sploh za tiste oblike ubesedovanja, ki se že vnaprej vpisujejo v obzorje pričakovanja bralca), lahko pa se tudi odloči za aktivizacijo vseh možnih valentnosti, ki jih ob vsaki svoji manifestaciji jezik ponuja na izbiro (uvid teh valentnosti je pravzaprav edini dejanski privilegij besednega ustvarjalca). Kot etično dejanje se dejanje ubeseditve nahaja vedno na meji dveh »dolžnostno« enakovrednih, čeprav konfik-tnih odločitev: v književnosti je izbira med danostjo in možnostjo jezika ločnica, ki jo po eni strani zaznamuje refektirana odločitev za ohranjanje in potrjevanje pomenskih koordinat stvarnosti, po drugi pa za prav tako refektirano vzpostavljanje tistega procesa, ki z vsako ubeseditvijo odpira pot k »naraščanju« stvarnosti in človeka v njej (kot si ta proces zamišlja sodobna hermenevtika).4 Če si izposodimo misel Paula Ricoeura, potem naj zapišemo, da se subjekt besednega ustvarjalnega procesa manifestira kot dejanje »sposobnega človeka«, ki svojo etično »neravnodušnost« v bivanju zaznamuje z odločitvijo med možnostmi, ki mu jih jezik ponuja na poti k vedno prehodni (ne)resnici o našem bivanju (prim. Iannotta 13-15; Verč, »dialoške« 326-328).
Brezmejnost diskurzivnosti jezika je fenomen, ki je kot tak etično nere-levanten, etično relevantno je dejanje izbire v praktiki manifestacije samega bivanja v jeziku. Literarni diskurz ni prostor, ki ga je mogoče enkrat za
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vselej določiti in v njem se spopad z mejami diskurzivnosti pojavlja, kot se to dogaja s slehernim diskurzom, v skladu z njihovim večjim ali manjšim »zgodovinsko« določenim obsegom. Književnost je namreč mogoče pripovedovati tudi kot zgodbo o tem, kako se udejanja razmerje med potencialno brezmejno diskurzivnostjo jezika, ki se subjektu besednega ustvarjalnega procesa »od vedno« ponuja, in njenim v času in prostoru določenim obsegom (prim. Verč, »Subjekt«). Če danes že spet ugibamo, kaj je književnost, in govorimo o vmesnih, hibridnih ali polliterarnih oblikah, pomeni, da se je ta obseg še dodatno razširil (kar je sploh konstanta literarnega diskurza). Brezmejnost diskurzivnosti jezika nam ne dopušča preuranjenih zaključkov o krhanju, drobljenju, koncu, nerazpoznavnosti ali kar o nesmislu kateregakoli diskurza, tem manj literarnega: prav zato, ker se od samega začetka v njem maksimalno udejanja praktika spopada z mejami diskurzivnosti jezika (vanj se večkrat vpisuje tudi pomiritev z njimi), se literarni diskurz pojavlja kot najplodnejši prostor za neizčrpno manifestacijo človekovega bivanja v besedi. Če odmislimo nekaj izjem, ki jih je mogoče z Juvanom strniti v dikcijo »mišljenje pred pesništvom« (Juvan 12), potem se etično dejanje ubeseditvene izbire subjekta ustvarjalnega procesa - privilegiranega akterja v tej manifestaciji bivanja - ne vpisuje v literarno besedilo kot izjavljena sentenca in tudi ne kot njen meta-etični »prevod«, temveč kot generator ubeseditvenega procesa, ki določa nadaljnje porajanje besedila in sproža (pre)oblikovanje njegovega morebitnega smisla. Ta generator deluje na vseh diferenciranih ravneh jezika in se s spremenljivo intenzivnostjo, od ničte do maksimalne,5 udejanja kot konstantna interakcija med njimi. Dejanje izbire določa vse prehode in povezave, ki vodijo k realizaciji ubeseditve in gredo, ne nujno v predloženem vrstnem redu, od zvoka do pomena, od etimona do morfema, od morfema do leksema in sintagme, od sintagme do povedi, od povedi do zgodbe, od zgodbe do kompozicije. Na koncu celotnega procesa se fksirana ubeseditev (literarni tekst) pojavlja kot relikt izrabljenih in neizrabljenih možnosti izbire.
Na teh reliktih je literarna veda gradila opazovanje in opis književnosti. Od antike dalje je bil spopad z mejami diskurzivnosti jezika »preveden« v vrsto poimenovanj, ki so na različne načine skušala odgovoriti na vprašanje: kaj jezik vse zmore in kaj zmorem jaz v njem? (Prevod: v jeziku je vedno več možnosti od tistih, ki jih bom jaz s svojo izbiro konkretno udejanjil.) V začetni fazi literarnoteoretskega razmišljanja je na zastavljeno vprašanje antična poetika odgovorila s poimenovanjem retoričnih fgur. V določanju možnih izbir, ki jih zmogljivost jezika ponuja subjektu v njem, je dosegla táko stopnjo dovršenosti, da je bilo iz njih mogoče izpeljati celo iluzijo o možni reproducibilnosti literarnega diskurza. Ta iluzija se je zgodovinsko udejanjila v normativni poetiki klasicizma, v širšem pomenu pa v vseh tistih oblikah umetnosti, ki smo jih določali kot (kanonični?) vzorec. Ko se zaradi same narave jezika normativa iztroši in se meje njegove diskurzivnosti dodatno širijo, se v novem spopadu z njimi večajo tudi možnosti in opcije. Z zgodovinskega vidika je nekje od romantike dalje literarna veda lahko samo sledila literarnemu dogajanju, v svoji težnji po razlagi ali razumevanju umetniškega besedila pa je ob naraščanju konkre-
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tno udejanjenih izbir na staro vprašanje o razmerju med zmogljivostjo jezika in zmogljivostjo subjekta skušala odgovoriti z vedno novimi določili.6 Če so v 19. stoletju ta določila še vedno bila vezana na večjo ali manjšo (ne)upravičenost ubesedovanja različnih svetov, ki naj bi jih književnost s širjenjem diskurzivnosti jezika zgolj »reproducirala« (prim. debate o »realizmu«), je v 20. stoletju literarna veda, v mejah racionalnejšega pristopa k predmetu opazovanja, uvedla vrsto konstantnih »znanstvenih« kategorij (v formalizmu, strukturalizmu in semiotiki), ob njih pa je z opisom različnih enkratnih »poetik« skušala dohajati in vsaj začasno fksirati eksponentno naraščajoči obseg razmerja med jezikom in subjektom. Tako ali drugače je literarna veda znala opisati vedno nove manifestacije spopada z mejami diskurzivnosti jezika in jih je ponekod celo katalogizirala, čeprav jim zaradi brezmejnosti predmeta opazovanja ni mogla - in tudi ne more, kot se za vsako znanost spodobi - priti do dna. Prav dejstvo, da je literarna veda na koncu pristala v brezmejni sredobežnosti lastnega meta-jezika, je dokaz, da je bila ubrana pot, ki je, vsem pomanjkljivostim navkljub, pravilna. Ob konkretni, postopni in na prvi pogled »dolgočasni« analizi literarnih besedil je z opisom različnih manifestacij besede (na vseh diferenciranih ravneh, ki jo določajo) opisala tudi edini dejanski prostor, kjer je mogoče odkrivati etično dejanje subjekta besednega ustvarjalnega procesa. Čeprav literarna veda tega morda ni počenjala povsem zavestno in je raje javno izjavljala svojo odpoved etičnemu vprašanju, se mu ni odrekla: v izredno bogatem, več kot stoletnem gradivu, ki nam ga še vedno ponuja v dediščino in v razmislek, leži namreč jezik, s katerim etika pripoveduje o svoji prisotnosti na specifčnem področju, ki mu pravimo književnost. Stara, z današnjega zornega kota neuporabna »heglovska« etična kategorija književnosti ni pravzaprav nikoli izginila z obzorja literarne vede, spremenil se je samo jezik njenega opisa, natanko tako kot se je spremenil jezik opisa za estetsko in spoznavno kategorijo književnosti.
V tem »trdem«, »ne modnem« in zdaj (žal) že skoraj opuščenem jeziku znanosti, ki se je morda samó bežno dotaknil predmeta opisa (kot se pač dogaja z vsakim poskusom ubeseditve), je še veliko »neizrabljenih« možnosti za razmišljanje o prisotnosti etike v književnosti. Kljub temu, da je predmet opazovanja literarne vede (neobvladljiv) prostor neskončnih možnosti, ki jih jezik po svoji naravi hrani, so opisni literarnoteoretski modeli 20. stoletja veliko več kot samo hladno, racionalno »aseptično« ali akademsko »vzvišeno« naštevanje »mehanizmov« za določanje možnih in nikoli do konca povsem reproducibilnih procesov ubesedovanja. danes nam prav ti opisi, pa naj bodo še tako parcialni, pripovedujejo zgodbo o tem, kako je bila književnost, veliko prej kot ostale kategorije mišljenja in bivanja v besedi (predmet opazovanja različnih humanističnih ved), sposobna udejanjiti etični odnos do človeka in do sveta okoli njega ne z izjavljanjem sentenc ali njenih meta-etičnih »prevodov« v diskurz literature, ampak s konkretnim dejanjem ubeseditve. Tu, v samem dejanju izjave, leži razlika, ki književnost določa kot nezamenljiv prostor za vse oblike etike, ki se pojavljajo kot manifestacija besede. Naj naštejem samo nekaj splošno znanih določil, ki jih je v 20. stoletju izoblikovala veda o literaturi: nesposobnost
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zaznavanja »danosti« jezika se udejanja kot pasivno sprejemanje sveta, ki so mu »danost« - mimo nas - določili drugje, vendar so že ruski formalisti opozarjali na možnost drugačne izbire v našem bivanju v besedi in so v opazovanje književnosti uvedli kategorijo »potujitve«; možnost preseganja samodejnosti vzročno-posledičnega načela, ki se izrisuje kot vztrajno mirovanje našega nespremenljivega obzorja pričakovanja, je v različnih variantah literarna veda opisala kot »minus-postopek«, ki v umetniškem besedilu deluje na več ravneh (zvočni, leksikalni, kompozicijski); danes že skoraj neodtujljivo načelo o mnogoterosti jezikov kot mnogoterosti možnih resnic o svetu, ki ga jezik opisuje, je z izhodiščem v samem gramatičnem ustroju jezika semiotika opisala kot spremembo avtorskega ali pripovedo-valčevega »gledišča«; sodobnejšo etično propozicijo, ki pravi, da »vsakdo lahko samo osebno udejanja svojo samostojnost« in da »nihče ne more zamenjati drugega v vedenju, ki zadeva njega samega« (Tugendhat 138), je že v 20. letih prejšnjega stoletja Bahtin utemeljeval kot nezamenljivost »tuje besede« in jo odkrival pri Dostojevskem. V (dobri) književnosti se nobena od teh etičnih propozicij ne pojavlja kot neovrgljiva (apodiktična) trditev in nobene od njih ni mogoče samovoljno izvleči iz zgodbe o morebitnem »etičnem« vedenju literarnega junaka. V književnosti se je etična propo-zicija izoblikovala in se nam ponujala v branje kot izbira med različnimi možnostmi ubeseditve, (predvsem) »trde« metodologije literarne vede 20. stoletja pa so nam dovolile, da te udejanjene etične izbire spoznavamo.
Meta-jezika ni mogoče določiti, ker »neskončnost« ne pozna predikatov, je »slepa ulica«, v kateri se »jezik duši in lovi sapo« (Brodskij 5), na koncu pa prevlada prepričanje, da je predmet opisa mogoče nadomestiti s samim opisom. To je današnji čas, ki se lovi v začaranem krogu reprezentacije o reprezentaciji in nam jo ponuja kot resnico o stvarnosti. Jezik ni edina neskončnost, ki določa naše bivanje, tudi vesolje je (verjetno) neskončno, vendar zaradi tega fzika ni obupala (za razliko od literarne vede, ki se kuha v lastni krizi). Mogoče zato, ker je fzika še vedno »trda« znanstvena veda, ki se svojih meja zaveda in zase zahteva le skromni primat delne in vedno prehodne resnice. Tudi na to razliko je, navsezadnje, mogoče gledati kot na še eno od možnih manifestacij etike.
OPOMBE
1 Czesław Miłosz tu uporablja rusko besedo skotstvo (Miłosz 238), ki mu pomeni predvsem »grobost, surovost, poživinjenost, nekulturnost«.
2 Po deleuzovem mnenju Bog »ne ustvari najprej adama, ki mu je dana tudi možnost greha […] Bog najprej ustvari svet, v katerem Adam greši in vanj vpisuje tudi vsakega posameznika, ki ta svet izraža« (Deleuze, Le Pli 90–91). O »protislovju« med morebitnim Adamom ne-grešnikom in obstoječim svetom je Deleuze govoril že na začetku osemdesetih let na predavanjih na univerzi Paris VIII-Vincennes (prim. spletno stran: deleuze, Cours).
3 Če govorimo o splošni usmeritvi meta-etike, potem moramo v našem pristopu k problemu vzpostaviti tudi razliko od nje. Meta-etika posveča svojo pozornost
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predvsem odkrivanju in določanju standardnih govornih dejanj, ki tako ali drugače vsebujejo etična načela in se izražajo v besedah, ki zaobjemajo semantiko »dobrega, pravilnega, dolžnostnega«. Ni nujno, da mora govorno dejanje ta načela tudi eksplicitno oznanjati, vsebuje jih posredno in jih »prevaja« že s samo uporabo jezika kot sredstva za njihovo logično-spoznavno ubeseditev. Poleg analize vsakodnevnega govora je meta-etični pristop mogoče razširiti na specifčna področja mita, nacionalnih kultur in sploh konstituiranja jezika kot procesa implicitnega skladiščenja različnih etičnih načel (sicer vedno v skladu s specifko kulturnega časa in prostora). Čeprav se meta-etika bolj redko ukvarja z umetniškim besedilom, je njen analitični pristop podoben: umetniško besedilo vsebuje etična načela, ki se udejanjajo v jeziku. Tako je na primer na podlagi opazovanja jezika raskolnikova in Porfrija Petroviča v romanu Zločin in kazen Dostojevskega mogoče odkrivati »dve paralelni etiki« glavnega junaka (absolutno dobro in zlo; meje moralnih in juridičnih predpisov), ki naj bi obe peljali h krščanski (etični) vrednoti o »hotenju trpljenja« (Ragozina 315, 318). Podoben pristop v odkrivanju »religiozno-etičnega problema« je mogoče zaslediti tudi v analizi Puškinovega soneta Madona (Percov 399). Za razliko od tovrstne analize, ki določeno etično načelo odkriva v sami uporabi jezika (v etičnem diskurzu), v pričujočem prispevku zagovarjamo trditev, da je že sama uporaba umetniškega jezika nezamenljiv prostor za samodejno odpiranje vsakršnega diskurza in torej tudi za samodejno preseganje etičnih načel, ki jih jezik kot tak eksplicitno (kot trditev) ali implicitno (kot njihov »prevod«) vsebuje. Z gledišča našega pristopa k »meta-etiki« širjenje meja diskurzivnosti jezika sodi med pomembnejše značilnosti umetniškega besedila. To pomeni, da se v književnosti jezik, vsaj potencialno, izrisuje kot prostor, ki že po svoji naravi ne dopušča, da se eksplicitna ali implicitna prisotnost etičnega načela pojavlja kot etični diskurz »vnaprej dane« in torej »drugje« ubesedene in zakoličene kategorije.
4 »svet, ki se pojavlja v igri predstavitve, ni kot odslikava poleg dejanskega sveta, temveč je to svet sam v stopnjevani resnici svoje biti.« (Gadamer, Resnica in metoda 121).
5 Tu mislimo na osnovni proces literarnega ubesedovanja, kjer se potencialna izmeničnost med referenčno-denotativno in formalno-jezikovno valentnostjo umetniške besede pojavlja kot pogoj za preseganje vsakršne danosti jezika, za konstituiranje subjekta ustvarjalnega procesa v procesu iskanja lastne besede o sebi in svetu in, posledično, za vedno možno novo opomenjanje stvarnosti. Ta proces je prisoten tako v poeziji kot v prozi, vendar se udejanja z različno intenzivnostjo, predvsem pa z različno interakcijo med konstitutivnimi prvinami besede (prim. Smirnov, Ko-vács).
6 Paradoks literarne zgodovine je ravno v tem, da se konstituira kot poskus določanja literarnega diskurza v trenutku, ko je literatura bila že krepko onkraj možnosti določanja. Če je namreč normativni klasicizem gojil iluzijo o reproducibilnosti literarnega diskurza, je realizem gojil iluzijo o reproducibilnosti sveta oziroma o možnosti enačenja med »resničnostjo« stvarnosti in besedo, ki stvarnost opisuje. Kljub iluziji o reproducibilnosti sveta »takšnega, kakršen je«, je prav realizem odprl Pandorino skrinjico neskončnih možnosti njegovega ubesedovanja in torej (ne)resnice o njem in se je zato zgodovinsko izoblikoval kot literatura razlike, ki se po svoji naravi upira vsakemu določanju. Že v nastavi je realizem hranil vsa protislovja ubeseditvenega procesa, ki so kasneje botrovala poskusom njegovega preseganja (prim. Verč, "Osservazioni").
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LITEraTUra
Bahtin, Mihail M. »K flosofi postupka.« Filosofja i sociologija nauki i tehniki. Ežegodnik (1984–1985): 80–160.
Brodskij, Iosif. »Predislovie.« Platonov, andrej. kotlovan. ann arbor: ardis Publishers, 1973–1979. 5–7.
deleuze, gilles. Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque. Paris: ed. Minuit, 1988.
– – –. Cours Vincennes, 29. 4. 1980. http://www.webdeleuze.com/php [1. 3. 2006].
gadamer, Hans-georg. Gesammelte Werke. Zv. 1. Hermeneutik: wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1990.
– – –. Resnica in metoda. Prev. Tomo Virk. Ljubljana: LUd Literatura, 2001.
Iannotta, daniella. »Prefazione all’edizione italiana: Memoria del tempo. Tempo della memoria.« ricoeur, Paul. La memoria, la storia, l'oblio. Milano: raffaello Cortina Editore, 2003. 11–24. [Izvirnik: Le mémoire, l'historie, l’oubli. Paris: Éditions du seuil, 2000.]
Juvan, Marko. »Dialogi 'mišljenja' in 'pesništva' ter teoretsko-literarni hibridi. Poskus uvoda.« Teoretsko-literarni hibridi: o dialogu literature in teorije. Povzetki referatov. Tretji mednarodni komparativistični kolokvij. Ur. M. Juvan in Jelka Kernev Štrajn. Ljubljana: Slovensko društvo za primerjalno književnost, 2005. 11–19.
Kovács, Árpád. Personal'noe povestvovanie: Puškin. Gogol’. Dostoevskij. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994.
Miłosz, Czesław. »Ssaligia. Aacedia.« Nova revija 17.196–197 (1998): 229–242.
Percov, N. V. »O poslednem sonete Puškina.« Logičeskij analiz jazyka. Jazyki étiki. Ur. N. d. artjunova. Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 2000. 399–405.
Ragozina, I. F. »Logika étičeskih rassuždenij v romane 'Prestuplenie i nakazanie' i specifka ih jazykovogo vyraženija.« Logičeskij analiz jazyka. Jazyki étiki. Ur. N. d. artjunova. Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 2000. 313–318.
smirnov, Igor. »Poezija vs. proza: dva tipa rekurrentnosti.« Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 15 (1985): 255–280.
Tugendhat, Ernst. Problemi di etica. Torino: Einaudi, 1987. [Izvirnik: Probleme der Ethik. stuttgart: Philipp reclam Jr., 1984.]
Verč, Ivan. »Dialoške prvine Lotmanove strukturalne poetike.« Slavistična revija 53.3 (2005): 317–329.
– – –. »Subjekt izjave kot predmet raziskovanja književnosti.« kako pisati literarno zgodovino danes? Razprave. Ur. darko dolinar in Marko Juvan. Ljubljana: ZrC saZU, 2003. 213–226.
– – –. »Osservazioni sul realismo.« Per Rossanna Platone. Contributi sulla lettera-tura russa tra Ottocento e Novecento. Ur. damiano rebecchini – Laura rossi. Milano: Massimo Valdina Editore, 2004. 3–27.
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oN eTHIcS ANd ITS TrANSLATIoN
INTo THe LANgUAge
oF LITerATUre
Ivan Verč
University of Trieste
UdK 82.0:17
In literature the ethical act manifests itself as a confict with the limits of the discursivity of language or with the possibilities that language offers in the process of verbalizing reality. Possibility requires choice, and for the subject of the creative verbal process the choice is the act of verbalization. The specifcs of its occurrence have especially been described by the “hard” literary studies of the 20th century. Rather than the meta-ethical “translation” of theoretical and philosophical conceptions in the language of literature, it is therefore possible to speak of the independent ethical choice of being in the word. Literature has shown the path to the ethics of verbalizing reality much more than other categories of the humanities.
Keywords: ethics, meta-ethics, act of verbalization, discursivity of language, literary studies
Today everyone is a bit of a hermit in the Egyptian desert and has a choice: whether to ascend, or whether to slip into some
sort of skotstvo.1
Czesław Miłosz
Looking at the development and achievements of literary studies, it can be seen that in the 20th century the knowledge of literature changed its approach to the empirical material of research, although it did not completely abandon its fusion with the categories that it also wished to critically surpass. In numerous variants in the 20th century, the methodology of literary studies was able to successfully redirect and enrich the “surpassed” idealistic or metaphysical thought on literature characteristic of the 19th century, but despite this the bases of the “Hegelian” categories of literature retained precedence as a point of departure: namely, literary studies replaced the
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 29. Special Issue (2006)
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defnition of the esthetic function with a transition to a “strictly” rigorous descriptive theory, and especially in the second half of the century the cognitive elements of literature were strengthened in the direction of herme-neutics, semiotics, and cultural studies. Literature therefore continued to be represented as a place for thinking about the “old” question of how and in what manner an artistic text can affect us emotionally and rationally and what it can offer us for better recognition of ourselves and the world around us. It is possible to discover a difference from previous approaches to literary criticism in the changing search for a defnition of the basis upon which literature should rest, whereas, at least for the time being, the appropriateness of questions about the search for this basis itself or the possibility of its eventual cancellation, does not appear as a leading theme in literary studies (and it should be hoped that it will not for a long time to come, because this would mean that the observation of literature is superfuous and unnecessary for anyone; this last surmise is not far-fetched if we think about certain general trends in modern society).
Precisely because of standing by the “basics” of literature, which for the time being we do not wish to renounce, this in itself offers us the opportunity to refect on the fact that, alongside various crossings and reorientations, the potential “heritage” of a third Hegelian category, or the question of the ethical function of literature, almost completely remained outside literary studies. In contrast to the esthetic and cognitive functions, which despite the methods of modern literary theory have not disappeared from the horizon of literary studies, in the 20th century the neglected presence of the ethical question in observing literature has in many respects been delineated as an unavoidable consequence of more recent approaches to the study of the word and the limit and possibilities of the (in)describability of the world itself. Here I am primarily thinking of the exceptional richness of the post-saussurian development of scholarly knowledge of language and the “phenomenological turn” in contemporary philosophy.
From a scholarly perspective, the word, including the artistic word, is only an object of observation and description; it is a phenomenon that as such need not be subjected to categories of moral judgment. after more than a century’s practice of observation, today it is possible to assert with some degree of convincingness that the word manifests itself at multiple differentiated levels, and modern linguistic science has learned to register, defne, and describe these levels. This knowledge, which is still being developed, has signifcantly infuenced the possibility of further defning the "ethicalness" of the artistic word. In contrast to the "pre-scientifc" approach to language, which relied almost exclusively on the function focused on the message in dealing with ethics, knowledge of the differentiated levels at which a word manifests itself has opened a series of questions that it was not even possible to conceive of earlier because of the lack of suitable instruments. If we defne these levels, especially with an emphasis on the difference between the act of communication of the addresser and the addressee, as an attempt to describe the “complete authenticity” of a word, we can then assert that at least until the frst third of the 20th
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century the dynamic extension of the (literary) word had been overlooked, and that the question of its possible ethicalness had already been curtailed in its formation. In the “artistic text-reader” relationship, asymmetry is an essential category of the communication process, and if only one pole of communication is taken into account the question of the ethics of literature is applied almost exclusively at the level of reception, and much less, if at all, at the level of the element in communication that produces the message; that is, the difference in receiving meanings. In other words: the utterance and the message produced overlapped unsuitably. Because the reader or the receiver of the communicative process was the only actual measure for the supposed "ethicalness" of literature, aside from some signifcant exceptions, determining this depended on the dominant cultural model or on the moral norms fused with it. In the natural dissonance between the producer and user of a literary sign, the last word generally went to the latter (and due to changed or outdated moral norms this has also happened along with the revaluation of formerly ethically unacceptable and rejected literature). In a somewhat simplifed form, it is possible to assert that for a good third of the 20th century consideration of the ethical function of literature did not substantially move away from consideration of the need for the benevolent infuence that literature was supposed to have on the receiver. All of this continues to recall aristotle’s cathartic model of the moral release experienced by those watching tragedy or listening to music, which literary studies appears not to have signifcantly moved away from since the beginning of the 20th century. The difference from the historically defned aristotelian model could still be rediscovered in the content of that moral release, which also changed accordingly in line with the time and place that it appeared.
In the second half of the 20th century, literary studies did not continue along similar monosemously planned directions and it temporarily abandoned the question of critical surpassing or the reestablishment of the traditionally treated ethical function of literature. In addition to the successful, and sometimes even fashionable, "hard" scientifc approach to literature, which - as befts every empirical science - left the question of ethics outside the scope of observation, the reason for this decision was also the increasing philosophical and anthropological consciousness of a variety of worlds. according to this line of thought, it is possible to condense this modern consciousness in deleuze’s statement that adam, the sinner, no longer exists, there is only the world where adam sinned.2 The establishment of “difference” as a predominant category of thought and the recognition of the possibility of alignment of worlds as non-absolute and therefore non-mutually exclusive products of culture had a signifcant infuence on basic thinking about ethics: in every possible world the dominant cultural model may be realized as the moral norm, but this cannot be equated with the foundation that forms the basis for establishing an absolute defnition of ethics as a universal category. From here onwards the step to abandoning thinking about ethics was a short one: if it is impossible to establish ethics, then it is not possible and not necessary to deal with it. From Husserl on-
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wards and from the “phenomenological turn” that followed him some decades later, philosophy did not abandon thinking about ethics (consider only the principle of “responsibility,” which increasingly appears among the leading themes of philosophical thought), and in line with the latest scholarly fndings regarding the phenomenon of the word literary studies was unable not to abandon ethics as a possible object of observation. Ignoring occasional and momentarily intrusive attempts to reestablish categories relating to the philosophy of life, morality and religion, and recently even “civilizations” in the evaluation of literature and art in general that appear here and there in the (militant) press, we should note that with the rejection of the ethical question in the treatment of literature modern literary studies has consistently followed the path of positively oriented thought that European culture developed in the 20th century, not without diffculties and not without tragedies. From this perspective, literary studies has not lagged behind anyone, but on the contrary it has liberated the artistic text from the extra-literary categories that a priori defned the limits and possibilities of its existence. Exactly because we have already walked this path and the frst step is already far behind us, now is perhaps the time to attempt a return to the question of ethics in literature.
If it is not possible and not necessary to establish ethics as a universal category, this still does not mean that we must also abandon observation and describing the limits and possibilities offered to people when they decide for what "our" culture still defnes as an ethically relevant act. In the absence of a concrete “act” that cannot otherwise be observed outside its boundedness in the limits and possibilities allowed by time, space, and the situation itself (outside the world in which it is actually registered) any discussion about ethics is meaningless. a productive stimulus on the path to further thinking may be the general orientation of that branch of analytical philosophy (not that it is also necessary to follow this methodologically) that has replaced traditional thought about ethics with observation of its self-representation:3 to what end should one unsuccessfully occupy oneself with this - what is “right” and what is not, what is “good” and what is not - when we can be satisfed at a more modest and more manageable level by attempting to answer the question of how ethics is actually manifested. In short: for “meta-ethics” the observation and description of the ethical “principle” can successfully be replaced with observation and description of the specifc "language" used by ethics in order to narrate its presence in differentiated areas.
Meta-ethics observes the discourses that should be manifested in a language as the realization of ethical principles and in a synchronic or dia-chronic cross-section of a specifc speech event as a space of manifestation itself. To a different extent, this manifestation is also present in literature, although such an approach seems somewhat reductive to us as an attempt at the renewed establishment of ethics as a possible object of observation in literary theory. Namely, if the verbal event can (although it need not) delineate itself as a space for a different, hidden, implicit, or unconscious manifestation of “translation” of ethical principles in ethical discourse, this
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still does not mean that it is also possible to defne it as an ethical act (as a matter of fact, at the level of the standard use of language it often happens in a completely opposite manner). If we wish to reenter ethics into the scope of literary studies and accept the premise that it is not possible to talk about ethics without a concrete “act,” then we must once more return to the old question: where should one seek the “ethical act” in literature and how does this act manifest itself? Despite certain current (postmodern) trends, the answer likely lies in a return to the subject of the verbal creative process - today neglected or even written off - and therefore to a concrete "act" that as such also defnes it (there simply is no ethical act without a subject). From the perspective of an impulse, wish desire, or even “duty” (Bakhtin uses the felicitous diction of a “duty to the non-alibi” in being: cf Bakhtin 113-114, 124), its act does not otherwise differ from those that appear as various manifestations of man’s possible “ethical” presence in the world; what does distinguish it are the specifcs of its manifestation in being. Even at the minimal level of observation it is possible to assert that the general motion of an ethical act is the “non-indifference” of man to his own being and to the world that surrounds him and, in contrast to others, the manifestation of “non-indifference” appears in the subject of the verbal creative process exclusively as a refected act of verbalization or as an act that "translates" reality into word and through the written word fxes and temporarily defnes (like everything else, what we defne as reality may also record in itself an explicitly or implicitly verbalized ethical principle). The act of verbalization is a manifestation of active presence in the world (“passive absence” is not a category that it is possible to observe from the perspective of ethics except when it appears as a conscious act of declining, silence, a blank sheet) and cannot be imagined outside the relation that the subject of the verbal creative process has to language: namely, with every “translation” language offers itself as a space of open possibility. Language is, so to speak, the only actual space of our being, where these possibilities are always and without exception present (this is also the case when its message is forcibly suppressed): the “indifferent” being in a word does not want to, cannot, or does not know how to be aware of these possibilities and thus manifest itself as a passively non-refected givenness of language. where there is possibility, there is also choice: language constantly offers itself to us as a givenness appropriate to time and space that defnes us in being and, at the same time, contains in itself everything, at multiple levels of differentiated manifestation, that is necessary to surpass this givenness. Through its act of verbalization, the subject of the creative process cannot avoid a confict with the limits of the discursivity of language and in this unavoidable confict, which demands a choice, an ethical act specifc to literature is manifested: namely, the subject is constituted in the repetition and confrmation of these limits (for example, this choice is signifcant for myth, for medieval religious literature, for so-called “ideas-oriented literature,” for work that requires a pattern or normative primacy of the status of Literature itself and actually for those forms of verbalization that are already entered in advance in the horizon of the reader’s expectation) and
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may also decide on the activation of all possible valences that language offers as a choice each time it is manifested (insight into these valences is, so to speak, the only actual privilege of the verbal creator). as an ethical act, the act of verbalization always takes place on the border between two "duty bound" equivalent, although conficting, decisions: in literature the choice between givenness and a possibility of language is a dividing line that on the one hand is marked by a refected decision to preserve and confrm semantic coordinates of reality, and on the other hand the refected establishment of that process that with every verbalization opens the path to an “increase” in reality and man in it (as this process is conceived by contemporary hermeneutics).4 Borrowing a thought from Paul ricoeur, we should then note that the subject of the verbal creative process is manifested as the act of a “capable person” that marks his ethical “non-indifference” in being through a decision among the possibilities that language offers to him on the path to continually transitional (non)truth about our existence (cf Iannotta 13-15; Verč, "Dialoške" 326-328).
The limitlessness of the discursivity of language is a phenomenon that as such is ethically irrelevant; what is ethically relevant is the act of choice in the practice of the manifestation of being itself in language. Literary discourse is not a space that can be defned once and for all, and confict with the limits of discursivity appears in it, as happens with each and every discourse, in line with its more or less "historically" defned dimension. Namely, literature can also be told as a story about the realization of the relationship between the potential limitless discursivity of language that has been offered to the subject of the verbal creative process “from time immemorial" and its dimension in time and space (cf. Verč, "Subjekt"). If today we are once more guessing what literature is and we are speaking about intermediary, hybrid, or semi-literary genres, this means that this dimension has expanded still further (which is actually a constant of literary discourse). The limitless discursivity of language does not allow us to form premature conclusions about the truncation, breaking up, end, lack of recognition, or non-sense of any sort of discourse, let alone literary: precisely because from the very beginning the practice of conficts with the limits of the discursivity of language has been maximally realized in it (reconciliation has also been recorded with these a number of times), and literary discourse has appeared as the most fertile area for the inexhaustible manifestation of human existence in the word. If we ignore a few exceptions, which following Juvan can be combined in the formula “thinking before poetry” (Juvan 12), then the ethical act of the verbalized choice of the subject of the creative process - of the privileged actor in this manifestation of being - is not entered in literature as a declared maxim and also not as its meta-ethical “translation,” but instead as a generator of the creative process that defnes the further engendering of the text and triggers the (trans)formation of its eventual meaning. This generator operates at all differentiated levels of language and is realized with changing intensity, from zero to maximal,5 as a constant interaction between them. The act of choice defnes all transitions and connections that lead to the realization of verbalization and leads
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(not necessarily in the suggested order) from sound to meaning, from etymon to morpheme, from morpheme to lexeme and syntagm, from syntagm to clause, from clause to story, and from story to its composition. at the end of the entire process, the fxed verbalization (literature) appears as a relic of the exploited and unexploited possibilities of choice.
Literary studies has built the observation and description of literature on these relics. From classical antiquity onwards, the confict with the limits of discursivity was “translated” into a series of expressions that tried to answer the following question in various ways: what is language capable of and what can I do in it? (Translation: in language there are always more possibilities than those that I will concretely realize through my choice.) In the initial phase of thinking in literary theory, the poetics of classical antiquity answered the question posed through the designation of rhetorical fgures. In the defnition of possible choices that the capacity of language offers the subject, it achieved such a degree of perfection that it was even possible to derive from it the illusion of the possible reproducibility of literary discourse. This illusion was historically realized in the normative poetics of classicism, and in its broader meaning in all of those forms of art that we have defned as the (canonical?) pattern. When, because of the nature of language itself, the standard wears out and the limits of its discursivity expand further, the possibilities and options also increase in a new confict with them. From the historical perspective, somewhere from the romantic period onwards literary studies can only follow the literary event and, in its trend of explaining or understanding the artistic text, alongside the growing concretely realized choices, it attempted to answer the old question about the relationship between the capacity of language and the capacity of the subject with ever new defnitions.6 If, in the 19th century, these defnitions were still tied to a greater or lesser (il)legitimacy of the verbalization of various worlds that literature was to merely “reproduce” through the broadening of the discursivity of language (cf the debates on “realism”), then in the 20th century literary studies - within the limits of a more rational approach to the object of observation, introduced a series of constant "scientifc" categories (in formalism, structuralism, and semiotics) and alongside these, through the description of various single “poetics” - tried to keep up with and at least temporarily fx the exponentially growing size of the relation between language and the subject. In one way or another, literary studies knew how to describe the continually new manifestations of confict with the limits of the discursivity of language and sometimes even categorized them, although because of the limitlessness of the object of observation it could not - and also cannot, as befts every branch of knowledge - get to the bottom of the matter. The very fact that in the end literary studies came to rest in a limitless centrifugal force of its own meta-language is evidence that the path that had been chosen was, despite all defciencies, correct. Alongside the concrete, gradual, and at frst glance "tedious" analysis of literary text, with the description of various manifestations of the word (at all the differentiated levels that they defne), it also described the only actual space in which it is possible to discover the ethical act of the subject of
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the creative verbal process. although perhaps literary studies has not acted entirely willfully and has preferred to publicly declare its disengagement from the ethical question, it has not renounced it: in more than a century’s worth of exceptionally rich material that it continues to offer us as heritage and for consideration, lies the language with which ethics narrates its presence in the specifc area that we call literature. The old "Hegelian" ethical category of literature, unserviceable from today’s point of view, has never truly disappeared from the horizon of literary studies, only the language that describes it has changed, exactly as the language for describing the esthetic and cognitive category of literature has changed.
In this “hard,” “unfashionable,” and now (unfortunately) almost abandoned language of scholarship, which perhaps touched only feetingly on the object of description (as happens with every attempt at verbalization), there are still many “unexploited” possibilities for considering the presence of ethics in literature. despite the fact that the object observed by literary studies is the (uncontrollable) area of the endless possibilities preserved by language by its nature, descriptive models of literary theory in the 20th century are much more than simply a cold, rational, “aseptic” or academically "elevated" enumeration of "mechanisms" for defning possible processes of verbalization that are never completely reproducible to their ends. Today it is these very descriptions, although they are still partial, that tell us the story about how literature - much more than other categories of thought and being in the word (the object of observation of various disciplines in the humanities) - was capable of realizing the ethical relationship to man and to the world around him, not through the pronouncement of maxims or their meta-ethical “translations” into the discourse of literature, but with the concrete act of verbalization. Here, in the act of utterance itself, lies the difference that literature defnes as the essential space for all forms of ethics that appear as the manifestation of the word. It is ftting to enumerate only a few of the generally known defnitions that literary studies shaped in the 20th century: the inability to perceive the “givenness” of a language is realized as a passive acceptance of the world, for which they have defned "givenness" without us, although the Russian formalists had already called attention to possibility of other choices on our being in the word, and in their observation of literature they introduced the category of “defamiliarization;” the possibility of surpassing the automatism of the cause-and-effect principle that is delineated as a persistent stagnation of our unchangeable horizon of expectation is described in different variants of literary studies as “minus devices” that operate at multiple levels in the artistic text (sound, lexical, compositional); today, with a point of departure in the very grammatical structure of language, the almost inalienable principle of the variety of languages as a variety of possible truths about the world that language describes has been described by semiotics as a change in the author’s or narrator’s “point of view;” a more modern ethical proposition that states that “everyone himself can only personally realize his independence” and that “nobody can replace the other in conduct concerning himself” (Tugendhat 138) was established in the 1920s by Bakhtin
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as the necessity of the “other’s word” and he discovered this in dostoevsky. In (good) literature none of these ethical propositions appears as an incontestable (apodictic) assertion and none of them is possible to abstract from the story of possible “ethical” conduct of a literary hero. In literature the ethical proposition has been shaped and is offered to us in reading as a choice between various possibilities of verbalization, and (especially) the “hard” methodologies of literary studies of the 20th century allowed us to recognize the realization of the ethical choice.
Meta-language cannot be defned because "infnity" knows no predicates, it is a “dead end” in which “language suffocates and pants for breath” (Brodsky 5), and at the end the conviction prevails that the object of the description can be substituted for by the description itself. This is the present time, which is running through the vicious circle of the representation of representation and offers it to us as the truth about reality. Language is not the only infnity that defnes our being; the universe is also (probably) infnite, but physics does not despair because of this (unlike literary studies, which is stewing in its own crisis). Perhaps this is because physics is still a “hard” science that is aware of its limits and demands for itself only a modest primacy of partial and transitory truths. Last of all, it is also possible to view this difference as yet another of the possible manifestations of ethics.
Translated by donald F. reindl
NOTEs
1 Here Czesław Miłosz uses the Russian word skotstvo (Miłosz 238), which to him especially means "coarseness, crudeness, brutishness, lack of refnement."
2 According to Deleuze, God "does not create Adam frst in order to give him the possibility of sin… God frst creates the world in which Adam sins and also enters every individual into it that this world expresses” (deleuze, Le Pli 90-91). deleuze spoke about the “contradiction” between a possible adam as non-sinner and the existing world in the 1980s in lectures at University of Paris VIII: Vincennes - saint denis (cf. the web page: deleuze, Cours).
3 If we speak about the general orientation of meta-ethics, then we must also establish a difference from it in our approach to the problem. Meta-ethics primarily focuses on discovering and defning standard speech events that contain ethical principles in one way or another and are expressed in words that encompass the semantic notions “good, correct, duty bound.” It is not necessary that the speech event also explicitly announce these principles; it already directly contains them and “translates” them with the use of language itself as a means of its logical and cognitive expression. In addition to an analysis of everyday speech, the meta-ethi-cal approach can be expanded to specifc areas of myth, national cultures, and the constitution of language in general as a process of implicit storage of various ethical principles (otherwise always in line with the specifcs of cultural time and space). although meta-ethics more rarely deals with artistic text, its analytical approach is similar: an artistic text contains ethical principles that are realized in language.
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Thus, for example, by observing the language of Raskolnikov and Porfry Petro-vich in dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment it is possible to discover “two parallel ethics” of the main character (absolute good and evil; the limits of moral and legal rules) that ought to lead both to the Christian (ethical) value of the “will to suffer” (ragozina 315, 318). a similar approach in the discovery of the “religious and ethical problem” can also be found in an analysis of Pushkin’s sonnet "Madona" (Percov 399). In contrast to the type of analysis that discovers a specifc ethical principle in the use of language itself (in ethical discourse), in this article I defend the assertion that the use of artistic language itself is an indispensable space for the automatic opening of every kind of discourse and therefore also for the automatic surpassing of the ethical principles that language as such explicitly (as an assertion) or implicitly (as its “translation”) contains. From the perspective of our approach to “meta-ethics,” extending the limit of the discursivity of language is one of the most important characteristics of the artistic text. This means that in literature language, at least potentially, is delineated as a space that by its own nature does not allow the explicit or implicit presence of an ethical principle to appear as ethical discourse of a category “given in advance” and therefore verbalized and laid out “elsewhere.”
4 »der im spiel der darstellung erscheiende welt steht nicht wie ein abbild neben der wirklichen welt, sondern ist diese selbst der gesteigerten wahrheit ihres seins.« (gadamer, Gesammelte Werke 142) [The world that manifests itself in the game of representation cannot be made parallel to the real world as its copy; it is the same real world in the more intense truth of its being].
5 Here we are thinking on the basis of the process of literary expression, in which the potential alternation between the referential-denotative and formal-linguistic valence of the artistic word appears as a condition for surpassing every givenness of language, for constituting the subject of the creative process in the process of seeking his own word about himself and the world and, consequently, for continually giving new meaning to reality. This process is present both in poetry as well as in prose, although it is realized with varying intensity, especially through various interaction among the constituent elements of a word (cf smirnov, Kovács).
6 The paradox of literary history is precisely in that it was constituted as an attempt to defne literary discourse in the moment when literature was already frmly beyond the possibility of defnition. Namely, if normative classicism cultivated the illusion of the reproducibility of literary discourse, realism cultivated the illusion of the reproducibility of the world or the possibility of equating the “authenticity” of reality with the word that describes reality. despite the illusion of the reproducibility of the world “as it is,” realism has opened a Pandora’s box of endless possibilities for its verbalization and thus (un)truth about it and therefore it has historically shaped itself as a literature of difference that by its nature resists all defnition. Even in its setup, realism contained all of the contradictions of the verbalizing process that later fostered the attempts to surpass it (cf. Verč, "Osservazioni").
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