Ljubljana 2004 • Special Issue
LITERATURE AND SPACE
SPACES OF TRANSGRESSIVENESS
Edited by Jola Škulj and Darja Pavlič
rimerjalna književnost
PKn, letnik 27, posebna številka, Ljubljana, december 2004
Comparative Literature, Volume 27, Special Issue, Ljubljana, December 2004
82.091(05)
LITERATURE AND SPACE
SPACES OF TRANSGRESSIVENESS
Edited by Jola Jola Škulj and Darja Pavlič
CONTENTS
Jean Bessiere:
A propos de la transgression- de la regle a la semantique
et au questionnement. En un commentaire des avant-gardes,
de Joseph Conrad, de Carlos Fuentes et de Gertrude Stein ................... 7
Jola Škulj:
Literature and Space: Textual, Artistic and Cultural Spaces of Transgressiveness....................................................... 21
Dean Komel:
Philosophy and the Constitution of the Intercultural Sense................. 39
Jelka Kernev Štrajn:
Chateau de Coppet - A Site of Modemity?.....................................49
Marijan Dovič:
Literary Repertoire and Interference among Literatures .................... 67
Bertrand Westphal:
Approches methodologiques de la transgression spatiale..................... 75
Marko Juvan:
Spaces of Intertextuality / The Intertextuality of Space................... 85
Darja Pavlič:
The Lyric Subject and Space. A Comparison of Romantic
and Modem Lyric Poetry..................................................... 97
Bari Keunen:
Moralism and Individualism in Urban Fiction:
A Deleuzian and Bakhtinian Critique of Spatial Transgressions in Contemporary Crime Novels.............................................. 105
Katia Pizzi:
“Self’ and the Modernist City: Stelio Mattioni and Trieste ............... 121
Igor Škamperle:
Space of Changeable Identity and the Margins
of Literature  ........................................................... 129
Igor Zabel:
Art at the Limits of the Visible ......................................... 137
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EDITORS' PREFACE
This edition of articles surveys the theme on space and literature, that is, two very substantial ideas of our everyday life. Focusing on such rather basic and factual matters, it is hard to expect to face a vexed question. The theme presented here invites a cross-diseiplinary dialogue. The editors would like to thank the contributors to the volume for their contributions and their patience. Preparation of the manuscript was particularly complex due to the - English and French - languages used in the editing process of texts not being a standard practice in publishing Primerjalna književnost. Many of these papers were presented in earlier versions at the Lipica Workshop in “Literature and Space: Spaces of Transgressiveness” in 2003, and have since been revised and reworked, and supplemented by other material. To the Vilenica institution, an intemational event of Central European authors in which colleagues from ali over the vvorld meet, organised by the Slovenian Writer's Association, we owe a special debt of gratitude for inviting and making possible the Slovenian Comparative Literature Association, organizing small-group discussion sessions, and opening up a stronger theoretical debate on the chosen theme conceming mid-European cultural reality. We are particularly fortunate not only to have had Jean Bessiere, Bertrand Westphal and Bart Keunen with us on the first occasion, but to have been able to exchange opinions and ideas on the topič also later in our contacts. Their high standard of scholarship was a precious support and encouragement in carrying out the debate and making the issue public. Thanks are due also to Katia Pizzi and to Dean Komel for subsequently having accepted the editors’ invitation and contributing to the debate with their valuable views on the subject.
We are grateful to various people who have in different ways contri-buted to this volume: to those who have read earlier versions and to re-viewers for constructive comments, to Philip Burt for making substantial improvement to the English translations and to Alenka Maček for the layout of the edition.
Thanks also to the Institut Franfais Charles Nodier as a source of expenditure in enabling participation of the two French professors.
* * *
Dialogue on space and literature involves a variety of possible stand-points. It implies both space in literature and literature in space. Space can be discussed as literary, cultural, social, semiotic phenomena, approached through its geographical, or more specific urban entities, scrutinized by other arts, etc. Addressing spatial transgressions - and to imply the ethics of an encounler - calls for participation of diverse experts in the humanities. J. Bessiere in cross reading of Conrad, G. Stein and Fuentes, specifies the notion of transgression and refers it, on the one hand, to cultural spaces and national borders, and on the other hand, to the approach to history vvhich it implies. Understanding literature and culture - both as logic and structure of responses - J. Škulj examines their semiotic situation in views of dialogism and sets out the positive effects of a borderland for the formation of the Slovenian identity. D. Komel lays open to view that the historical tradition of philosophical thought has already developed intercultural elements, while a dialogue as a means of mutual understanding is stili a task awaiting Europe. According to J. Kernev-Strajn, the literary salon in Coppet was an exemplary plače of modem democratic discourse and cross-cultural dialogue. For M. Dovič, the multicultural issues of literature are a starting point to view the Slovenian literary system adopting foreign pattems. B. VVestphal argues that space, seemingly homogeneous in a certain moment, is composed of fluid worlds; in contrast to that of the imagology, the geocriticist point of view is multiplied. M. Juvan explains intertextuality as a practice of transposing, juxtaposing and blending heterogeneous semiotic spaces; he also focuses on the intertextuality of geophysical space. D. Pavlič arrives at the conclusion that in romantic and modem lyric poetry geographical space is frequently used as a meta-phor for the inner identity of the lyrical subject. B. Keunen discusses the literary representations of urban spaces in which the bourgeoisie developed a new type of morality. K. Pizzi examining the literature of Trieste, points to the city’s eccentric position which has frequently resulted in being personified or emerging as an overvvhelming presence (of writers' own selves) in texts. I. Škamperle in his discussion of Trieste as a border city advocates his belief that borders stimulate creativity. The concluding paper of I. Zabel, recalling the 1960s controversy between the modernist demand that art should be purely visual and its con-ceptualist critics, relates to the transgression of boundaries between visual and verbal entities in the art of Jenny Holzer, Lewis Baltz and Jože Barši.
The Editors
A PROPOS DE LA TRANSGRESSION -DE LA REGLE A LA SEMANTIQUE ET AU QUESTIONNEMENT.
EN UN COMMENTAIRE DES AVANT-GARDES, DE JOSEPH CONRAD, DE CARLOS FUENTES ET DE GERTRUDE STEIN
Jean Bessiere
Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Pariš III), France
82.091
On Transgression. From the Principle to Semantics and its Probing. Remarks on Avant-gardes, Joseph Conrad, Carlos Fuentes and Gertrude
S tein. By a cross-reading of Joseph Conrad, defined as a precursor of the avant-gardes episteme of the first part of the 20th century, Gertrude Stein, one of the avant-garde writers, and Carlos Fuentes, a commentator of these avant-gardes, this article specifies the notion of transgression and refers it, on the one hartd, to cultural spaces and national borders, and on the other hand, to the approach to history which it implies. The conclusion of the article links the artistic and cultural transgression of avant-gardes to the notion of anachronism.
Key words: literature / avant-garde / transgression / nation / borders / Conrad, Joseph / Stein, Gertrude / Fuentes, Carlos
La defmition de ce colloque de Lipica1, "Spaces of Trangressiveness : Verbal Act at the Edge", croise les notions de transgression, d’espace, de transgression de 1’espace, d’historicite, d’identite traditionnelle et re-nouvelee, et finalement d'avant-garde, dans des contextes litteraires et des contextes culturels. On propose ici un cadrage de ce que presuppose, de ce qu’entra!ne ce croisement, et, en consequence, des implications de ce colloque. Ce cadrage est fait en trois temps : selon un commentaire de ce croisement et selon les reformulations des notions de transgression, d’avant-garde ; puis, selon les manieres de fables que proposent, a propos de la transgression, du nouveau, de la frontiere, trois ecrivains, Joseph Conrad, Carlos Fuentes, Gertrude Stein - c’est-a-dire deux ecrivains qui encadrent la periode des avant-gardes europeennes, et un ecrivain qui appartient a ces avant-gardes ; puis, enfin, selon une reflexion sur le con-traste qui se dessine, au regard de la transgression, entre les avant-gardes et ce que nous disent ces manieres de fables.
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 27/2004, Special Issue
7
I.
On fait d’abord deux commentaires sur cette definition du colloque. D’un point de vue typologique, elle allie transgression, espace, identite, nou-veau et litterature. D’un point de vue historique, si nous comprenons bien, elle croise des references aux avant-gardes, au modemisme et au post-modemisme, a la memoire culturelle, au nouvel espace europeen et a la litterature slovene. Chacun des points de vue croise, de fait, un rappel de la definition des avant-gardes et un rappel des transferts d’identite, dans le temps et dans 1’espace. La vulgate de la critique contemporaine, particulierement la vulgate des etudes culturelles et du post-modemisme, qui est done un arriere-plan de cette definition du colloque, ne reconnaitrait pas de tels points de vue et de tels croisements, puisque cette vulgate se dit precisement en rupture avec la pensee des avant-gardes, avec le modernisme, places sous le signe d’un eurocentrisme. Donner, dans cette definition du colloque, ces points de vue et ces croisements, c’est done a la fois rompre avec cette vulgate et en proposer une relecture. Celle-ci peut se formuler dans les termes suivants : il peut etre precise les termes qui permettent de faire, de lire le changement, le nouveau, la continuite du changement et du nouveau dans les litteratures europeennes en rapportant ce changement et cette continuite aux donnees culturelles in-temationales, particulierement europeennes.
Cette reformulation a pour condition que 1’on reinterprete la transgression dont se sont reclamees les avant-gardes. Dans les avant-gardes europeennes, telles qu’on les comprend historiquement, cette transgression etait une transgression symbolique, ideologique, formelle, qui se voulait intemationale. II y avait bien alors une transgression des cultures, mais cette transgression des cultures n’etait pas pensee pour elle-meme, ni consideree comme une determination essentielle des avant-gardes - c’est le propre de l’intemationalisme que de se penser comme une composition des critiques des cultures a travers la critique de l’ideologie, du symbole, de la forme, et comme une composition des cultures, par la-meme, sans qu’il soit fait l’hypothese de transferts culturels. II suffit de dire a ce propos toutes les avant-gardes europeennes des trente premieres annees du XXC siecle. Ce constat n’exclut pas de marquer que ces avant-gardes se sont reconnues des origines nationales specifiques - origines allemandes pour l’expressionnisme, origines fran9aises pour le surrealisme, etc. (Dada est certes un contre-exemple de cela ; il faut cependant noter la brievete de ce mouvement.) Cette reconnaissance n’est done pas un interdit mis a la visee intemationale et cosmopolite. Ainsi, rompre avec la vulgate critique contemporaine et la corriger, comme le suggere la definition du colloque, revient d’abord a conserver l’hypothese du nouveau et de la transgression, et a modifier la reference a 1’intemationalisme - cela revient a dire que celui-ci doit etre lu dans des termes culturels, dans des termes de passage et de transgression culturels. Cela peut encore se commenter de la maniere suivante : les avant-gardes des trente premieres annees du XXe siecle se pensaient comme globales, parce qu’elles etaient une reaction a ce qu’elle percevait comme un etat global du monde, particulierement du
monde defini par une guerre mondiale, par son avant et par son apres, a une epoque ou, pour utiliser un terme contemporain, les puissances euro-peennes etaient les figures de la mondialisation. Cette rupture et cette correction reviennent aussi a ne pas lire la serie des avant-gardes sous le signe de la tradition du nouveau2, ni sous celui d’une maniere de poursuite de Part et de la litterature pour eux-memes3. Lire ainsi les avant-gardes sous le signe de la tradition du nouveau et de la poursuite de l’art et de la litterature revient a perdre la notion de transgression et sa realite, alors que l’on entend dire le nouveau, qui suppose la transgression ideologique, symbolique, formelle. II faudrait done tenir ensemble les proprietes transgressives et culturelles des avant-gardes, bien que les avant-gardes se soient donnees comme intemationales - c’est pourquoi le surrealisme se reconnaitra d’abord dans le eommunisme.
Cette refonnulation a encore pour condition que l’on reinterprete l’hy-pothese de la transgression culturelle, telle qu’elle est presentee aujourd’hui dans les etudes culturelles. La caracterisation de cette transgression a pour conditions deux hypotheses. Premiere hypothese : toute culture en elle-meme et les cultures les une par rapport aux autres sont dans un rapport du meme et de 1’autre - le probleme de Pidentite et de la diffe-rence devient celui du meme et de 1’autre ou que ce soit: identite et diffe-rence, affinnation de celle-la ou abolition de sa difference, telle est la question. Cest suivant ce dilemme que les etudes culturelles lisent les litteratures contemporaines, a travers le monde. II faut aussi bien dire les diverses litteratures que le jeu des litteratures entre elles. II suffit d’un seul exemple : les litteratures de la Caraiibe sont vues a la fois comme des litteratures qui presentent, en elles-memes, un tel dilemme et comme des litteratures qui font lire partout ce dilemme. Deuxieme hypothese qui est indissociable de la premiere : il est alors impossible de dire une univer-salite, ou un droit reconnu par tous - c’est la notion meme de transgression qui est defaite puisqu’elle suppose un droit et une regle qui sont brises. II est alors une double vision des realites culturelles : d’une part, le jeu constant de Pimplication du meme et de Pautre, de Pidentite et de la difference ; d’autre part, Paffrontement, egalement constant, dans une meme culture, entre cultures, du meme et de Pautre, de Pidentite et de la difference. On comprend que, dans ces perspectives, la visee intemationaliste des avant-gardes ne vaille plus, et que Pon puisse jouer, entre autres choses, de la distinction du modeme et du post-modeme. Utiliser, dans le rappel implicite de telles donnees, la reference a la transgression revient, non pas a retablir la reference a Pintemationalisme, mais a recaracteriser le jeu du meme et de Pautre. Ce jeu n’est plus a considerer ni suivant Pimplication du meme et de Pautre, ni suivant son opposition a une uni-versalite, a un droit reconnu par tous, mais suivant le fait meme de ce que donne a entendre la transgression, alors assimilee a une transgression de Pespace : il faut ici comprendre le passage des frontieres, quelles qu’elles soient, et d’abord les frontieres nationales et les frontieres temporelles et historiques. II en resulte des references a Phistoire, a Pespace, et a Pidentite. Celle-ei ne se comprend plus seulement suivant le jeu du meme et de Pautre, mais suivant ce qu’elle devient selon le passage de la frontiere, selon le changement temporel et historique.
Sans que l’on soit capable de considerer la litterature slovene, on va tenter de nouer les reformulations qui viennent d’etre caracterisees et de preciser un peu plus les jeux de la transgression, de 1’espace, de 1’identite, de 1’histoire, dans le cadre des avant-gardes du XXC siecle et dans des exemples litteraires qui permettent de recaracteriser ces jeux.
II.
Soit d’abord le rapport de la transgression et de 1’avant-garde. La defi-nition la plus simple qui puisse etre proposee de la transgression est celle donnee par Montaigne dans ses Essais et qui est indirecte mais explicite : les regles et les lois sont etablies pour ne pas etre observees. II faut comprendre : la transgression n’est que par rapport a une regle ; elle n’est que selon cette regle. Elle n’a qu’une seule finalite la rupture de cette regle. Elle est a elle-meme sa propre loi par rapport a cette regle. 11 est une variante contemporaine, semiotique, et litteraire de cette definition de Montaigne, la definition que donne Youri Lotman dans sa Structure du texte artistique : tout texte litteraire est Pexposition de divers champs se-mantiques, et l’exposition du passage d’un champ a 1’autre - par exemple, de la vie a la mort et, en consequence, chaque fois, une transgression des caracterisations et des limites du champ semantique initial et des ca-racterisations et des limites du champ semantique suivant. Dans la logique de Y. Lotman, cela correspond au constat du defaut de traductibilite reci-proque des diverses unites semiotiques et semantiques. Dans la seule per-spective de la transgression, cela revient a marquer que celle-ci est done son propre mouvement - ce mouvement qui permet de passer sa propre fin - cette fin qui permet de toujours aller. Montaigne et Y. Lotman sont ici utiles pour preciser le jeu des avant-gardes, celles des trente premieres annees du XXC siecle. La recherche et la realisation du nouveau sont choix de rupture, autrement dit, transgressions de telles regles, de telles representations, suivant la reconnaissance du mouvement propre du nouveau - il est a lui-meme sa propre fin et doit done poursuivre. II suffit de rappeler le mot d’ordre d’Ezra Pound : "Make it new!" La transgression se definit done doublement: rupture et mouvement propre de la rupture. Cest pourquoi les avant-gardes peuvent se succeder ou rivaliser. Cest pourquoi la transgression de 1’avant-garde se donne toujours pour ultime et pour un jugement sur ce avec quoi elle rompt et pour un recommencement absolu du temps. Rupture de la limite, 1’avant-garde est ainsi sans limite - elle est sa propre loi. On comprend des lors qu’elle puisse se dire intemationale : elle est la rupture de toute frontiere et de tout temps. On doit aussi comprendre que, parce qu’elle est sa propre loi, elle est 1’ignorance de la difference comme telle ; elle n’a pas meme besoin de se penser comme la difference. Cela explique, dans une perspective pole-mique, que Fon puisse noter une proximite entre les avant-gardes et les mouvements politiques autoritaires, totalitaires, ou fascistes. Cela explique encore que les avant-gardes puissent etre vues comme leur propre mouvement de totalisation, suivant par exemple, la tradition du nouveau -
il faut alors dire 1’autonomie de Part et de la litterature suivant, par exemple encore, une maniere de totalisation temporelle - il faut alors dire la fin de Part, de la litterature4, qui se realisent dans cette assomption cons-tante du nouveau. Cela explique enfin, comme l’a bien souligne Octavio Paz5, que les avant-gardes, dans ce souci du nouveau, entendent figurer le renouvellement du temps, de 1’histoire, de tout temps, de toute histoire, qu’elles puissent se donner par la comme intemationales, comme capables de tout reconnaltre - tout temps, tout lieu, toute culture -, sans qu’elles soient cependant reconnaissance de la difference : elles sont le passage par le tout autre, selon leur mouvement propre. Cest pourquoi elles peuvent jouer des anachronismes historiques, culturels, utiliser divers temoins artistiques et culturels : il n’y a pas la la reconnaissance de la difference pour la difference, le jeu du meme et de 1’autre, mais la reconnaissance de la difference selon le jeu de la transgression qui est sa propre fin.
Au regard de 1’histoire, il est une maniere simple de caracteriser ces avant-gardes et leur transgression. Ces avant-gardes ont pour conditions la conscience de 1’histoire, 1’historicite, la conscience du probleme qu’est 1’histoire. Cest pourquoi s’impose la thematique du nouveau. Mais, precisement par ce nouveau, elles deviennent comme leur propre histoire, leur propre historicite, comme quelque chose qui n’a plus acces veri-tablement a 1’historicite, lors meme que sont utilisees des references historiques. II faudrait dire ici Ezra Pound et ses Cantos, le passage de T.S. Eliot a la thematique religieuse, et, chez Andre Breton, 1’importance croissante des mythes. Le paradoxe se formule simplement : il peut y avoir une question de 1’histoire ; le nouveau saisit ce qui fait ainsi question sans considerer les implications, pour le nouveau, de cette question, ni les suites de cette question. Contradictoirement, le nouveau des avant-gardes ne con^oit pas le temps autre, ainsi qu’il ne confoit pas 1’espace autre.
Ces paradoxes des avant-gardes - un intemationalisme qui n’est pas la reconnaissance de 1’autre, mais sa citation, une reaction a 1’histoire qui circonscrit la reconnaissance de 1’historicite a la pratique du nouveau -ont une seule raison d’etre : les avant-gardes, parce qu’elles sont la pour-suite du mouvement de transgression, ne peuvent concevoir leur propre limite, ce qui leur fait absolument limite, ce qui est 1’autre de ce mouvement de transgression - et qui ne soit pas assimilable a l’ordre6 - que ce soit l’ordre du nouveau ou celui que suppose cela qui est transgresse.
III.
Contre un tel jeu de transgression, il peut etre lu et defini une autre caracterisation de la transgression, dans la litterature qui precede les avant-gardes et qui illustre la transgression et dans une litterature plus recente, qui illustre egalement la transgression. Cette figuration de la transgression, qui encadre historiquement la figuration de la transgression que proposent les avant-gardes, se resume dans une notation simple : la
transgression est un mouvement qui trouve sa limite dans Pindetermine, auquel la transgression fait fmalement face. Cela se dit selon deux fables, celle de Joseph Conrad dans Hearl of Darkness1, celle de Carlos Fuentes, dans Valiente Mundo Nuevo8.
On sait que Heart of Darkness de Joseph Conrad commence en evo-quant la maniere dont les Romains se sont perdus aux frontieres invisibles de PAngleterre. Cette invisibilite est figuree par les brumes et par la nuit. On sait que cette frontiere invisible est, dans le roman, egalement la frontiere invisible de 1’autre, du cceur du monde noir. II est remarquable que, dans ce roman qui est usuellement interprete comme un roman colonial et imperial, Joseph Conrad indique explicitement la limite de tout empire, la limite de tout pouvoir de dire : 1’autre en tant qu’il est la raison d’etre de P empire, de la colonisation ; 1’autre en tant qu’il est invisible et en tant qu’il est, en consequence, une determination de la conquete et de la limite mise a la conquete ; 1’autre invisible en tant qu’il fixe une frontiere certaine et cependant impalpable.
Cela meme commande de lire doublement le roman de Conrad. Suivant son argument explicite et suivant son argument implicite. Suivant son argument explicite : Kurz est le representation du colonialisme ; il figure Pappropriation du territoire et le dessin autoritaire de 1'espace, en meme temps que 1’asservissement de 1’autre. Suivant son argument implicite : Kurz repete la conquete romaine de 1’Angleterre et la perte devant 1’autre et la nuit. Sa conquete est la fin de la conquete, a ce point ou elle entre dans la nuit de 1’autre. Cette fable, que propose Heart of Darkness, dit ultimement qu’il y a toujours au moins deux mondes en un seul, meme lorsqu’on entend dessiner seulement un monde, meme lorsque l’on recuse tout principe dialogique. Aussi Heart of Darkness peut-il se lire aisement, a 1'inverse de son titre, a 1’inverse d'une primaute de la notation de Pob-scurite. Paradoxalement, la conquete fait voir, a Poccasion de la guerre, a Poccasion du litige, un lieu commun : celui de la frontiere invisible et de 1’espace conquis. Cela peut encore se reformuler : bien que, dans Pob-scurite qui entourait les campements romains de l’extremite de PAngle-terre, rien ne put etre entendu, rien ne put etre vu, ce monde meme faisait sentir un dissensus, qui est d’abord un ecart du sensible a lui-meme - le jour et la nuit, le clair et Pobscur et qui ne suppose pas Pexpression de cet affrontement - a cette frontiere du jour et de la nuit, du clair et de Pobscur, il n’y a precisement plus d’affrontement. Le dissensus devient la figure du partage commun : celui du meme et de Pautre, qui font partage par Pinvisibilite et par la certitude de Pautre, par cette evidence, qui ne porte aucune clarte, que Pautre est une proximite et une determination. Quelle que soit la conquete, quel que soit son achevement, cette conquete est sa propre limite, sa propre frontiere. La transgression qu’est la con-quete est fmalement le constat de Pimplication du meme et de Pautre.
On ajoutera une autre indication qui peut etre tiree de Heart of Darkness et qui est essentielle : dans une telle rencontre de Pinvisibilite de la frontiere et du sujet de la frontiere, cette frontiere, ce sujet et celui qui ne les voit pas appartiennent au meme temps - le sujet qui etablit la frontiere ne figure plus ici le temps du progres, fut-ce seulement le progres
technique, il est seulement du temps de cette invisibilite. Cela donne a comprendre que 1’histoire suivant son developpement n’est pas ce qui peut determiner le temps de la frontiere invisible. Heart of Darkness reste cependant un roman incomplet. En substituant la figure de la noirceur a celle de 1’invisibilite, il ne dit pas la lefon de son propre implicite : Pautre ne peut etre atteint; il est la constante frontiere. II ne dit pas le pas au-dela de la fable de 1’affrontement, du recit de la conquete et de 1’oppression : celui de Pinalienable que suppose toute conquete et qui en est a la fois la determination et la limite. La transgression ne peut etre son propre mouve-ment ni sa propre loi; elle est le constat de 1’espace autre.
Carlos Fuentes dispose la le9on de cet inalienable selon Pexperience du continent americain et de la conquete ambivalente de ce continent. Cest alors explicitement formuler la possibilite du dessin de la frontiere et de 1’espace public selon la notation de Pinvisibilite de 1’autre, proposer le bon usage de Pinvisibilite de Pautre et la solution litteraire a cette invisibilite. Dans un petit essai, qui peut etre lu en parallele avec bien d’autres essais, particulierement ceux de Geografia de la novela\ qui traitent a la fois de la litterature hispano-americaine et de la litterature europeenne, done dans un petit essai, "Conoscimientos y reconisci-mientos", recueilli dans Valiente Mundo Nuevo, Carlos Fuentes expose une these simple : la litterature hispano-americaine est une litterature du reel et une litterature de Pimagination. Cette these est banale a propos de la litterature en general et evidente a propos de la litterature hispano-americaine. Elle est cependant specifique en ce qu’elle definit cette dualite de la litterature comme un jeu d’adresse a Pautre, n’importe quel autre, et a la realite naturelle du continent. L’invisibilite de Pautre est ici attestee par Pabsence de nom et, s’agissant de la nature, par le fait que la nature americaine est une excroissance qui echappe d’abord a la nomination. Dans la logique des remarques que nous proposons ici, il doit se conclure : les realites et les hommes du continent hispano-americain sont ce qui doit etre nomme parce qu’ils sont ce qui est dans Pinvisibilite du nom et, en consequence, dans Palterite certaine et dans une maniere d’appel de symbolisation. L’invisibilite de 1'autre est, selon Carlos Fuentes, une invisibilite disponible, qui est le moyen de la litterature. C’est la encore suggerer que les frontieres historiques et spatiales du continent ne sont que frontieres vaines au regard de cette invisibilite paradoxale et constante de Pautre et de la nature - invisibilite paradoxale puisque cet autre et cette nature sont manifestes et cependant sans noms. Cest la enfin indiquer que la litterature est connaissance et reconnaissance de ces invisibilites et, au total, geste moral : connaitre la litterature, dit Carlos Fuentes, rend plus probable la possibilite de nous reconnaitre dans les autres, parce que, faut-il ajouter, la litterature est ce qui nomme tout autre ici. Cela se formule simplement et brutalement dans les termes de Carlos Fuentes : nommer Panonyme. Le paradoxe de la transgression est qu’elle reconnait son autre meme, sous le signe de Pinnomme.
Rapportees a Geografia de la novela, ces remarques definissent une specificite litteraire latino-americaine dont Pequivalent, dans les littera-tures europeennes contemporaines, par exemple chez Kundera, note Carlos Fuentes, est, non pas dans ce jeu de nomination, mais dans le dessin
explicite d’un espace coramun des differences, dans le dessin explicite de la presence de 1'autre, dans le dessin explicite d’un espace de 1’autre, qui ne defait pas cependant un espace commun. Cest la probablement une lecture idealiste de la litterature europeenne contemporaine. Cette lecture est cependant symptomatique en ce qu’elle offre une correction aux theses contemporaines sur la nation et un complement a la notation de l’in-visibilite paradoxale du continent americain. Correction des theses contemporaines sur la nation : il ne faut pas dire, d’une part, la nation et, d’autre part, le droit universel des differences ; il faut dire que la pensee et la figuration de Puniversel sont ce qui ouvre au constat des differences. La conquete, a 1’image de celle des Romains, a 1’image de celle du continent americain, peut etre complete et la realisation d’une sorte d’uni-versalite. Elle est d’abord cependant ce qui rend manifeste les differences, qu’elle ne peut pas, par ailleurs, dire. Cest cela 1’invisibilite. Complement a 1’invisibilite paradoxale du continent americain : cette invisibilite est cela a quoi fait face celui qui entreprend de nommer ; elle est aussi ce qui 1’inclut; elle est a la fois la certitude d’une frontiere constante et d’un espace commun, 1’evidence de 1’inalienable des differences et la manife-station que cet inalienable fait 1’espace commun. Ces deux complements disent le paradoxe constitutif du politique et, en consequence, des fron-tieres : les communautes ne sont, selon leurs differences, dans un espace partage que par une maniere d’impolitique - 1’inalienable des differences, qui est par 1’invisibilite de 1’autre - ; la frontiere est tout autant la certitude de 1’autre que le partage des communaute sous le signe de 1 ’Etat et de la nation. II faut repeter que le dissensus devient la figure du partage commun. L’invisibilite de 1’autre selon le nom se reinterprete : elle est la condition de la communaute et de la frontiere, parce qu’elle est la possi-bilite du dissensus et la designation de toute archeologie de la communaute et de la nation.
Ces deux fables sont done explicites. Elles substituent au dessin de la transgression suivant une limite, suivant une frontiere, le dessin d’un transgression qui vient au limes, ce mot latin, qui designait 1’autre cote indetermine de la frontiere. A 1’inverse de la transgression des avant-gardes, la transgression que sont la conquete de nouvelles terres, la de-couverte du Nouveau Monde, est une transgression qui trouve sa limite, reconnait toujours des espaces specifiques, n’est plus sa propre fin, mais la reconnaissance de 1’implication du meme et de 1’autre, lors meme que cet autre reste indicible. Cette transgression n’est pas sa propre univer-salite puisqu’elle est toujours limitee par 1’indicible que marque le limes. Elle est passage de frontieres, mais aussi venue a une autre frontiere, celle du limes. Elle est transgression, mais aussi venue a toute communaute, parce qu’elle est le commun meme de la transgression et du tout autre. Elle est reconnaissance de 1’histoire : au-dela du limes, il y a une autre histoire, qui n’est pas cependant dissociable de 1’histoire a laquelle corre-spond la transgression. Elle est aussi une pratique des identites indisso-ciables : identite de celui qui transgresse - les conquerants romains dans Heart of Darkness, les conquistadores et tous les nouveaux venus dans le continent americain identite de celui qui est au-dela du limes, identite du Nouveau Monde et de ses anonymes. Elle est enfin le dessin d’un
interdependance : celle de celui qui transgresse, celle de celui qui est au-dela du limes, de celui qui est anonyme dans le continent americain. Le dissensus, que fait la transgression, implique l’espace commun du meme et de 1’autre.
La caracterisation de la transgression, lisible dans ces fables, est done une caracterisation suivant un espace double - celui du connu et de Pinconnu qui est cependant un espace un, suivant un temps double -celui de la transgression, celui du temps qui est coinine au-dela de la transgression -, qui est cependant un temps un - celui des conquerants romains et des hornmes du limes, celui des nouveaux venus sur le continent americain et celui du continent meme. Sont ici defaits le temps et l’espace des avant-gardes. Subsistent les temps des identites et des nations et, en consequence, leurs espaces, a Poccasion meme de la transgression, et se dessine leur espace commun a Poccasion du dissensus.
Ces deux fables ont leur parallele dans une autre fable, celle que propose Gertrude Stein, un ecrivain contemporain des avant-gardes, et ecrivain d’avant-garde. Dans Wars I have seen'0, Gertrude Stein joue sur la notion de nouveau pour noter que le nouveau est, de fait, ce qu’il y a de plus ancien. II faut comprendre que le nouveau, qui est peut-etre transgression, a pour condition une conscience complete du passe, et qu’il traduit mieux cette conscience que la simple affirmation du passe ou que le seul attachement a ce passe. S’il en est ainsi, le nouveau est Pancien et, en consequence, une fausse transgression du temps. S’il en est ainsi, le nouveau dans le present n’est que le point d’echange de temporalites - le passe, le present et le futur. II est done moins le nouveau comme nouveau que Poccasion d’une experience temporelle specifique. Si le nouveau est done ainsi, il fait de celui qui le pratique et de celui qui le reconnait, la composition de tous les temps selon un ordre sans chronologie et sans calcul du temps. Un tel nouveau fait de tous les temps des differences reciproques, alors qu’il est la possibilite meme de la memoire.
A cette meditation sur le nouveau, Wars I have seen ajoute une medi-tation sur les guerres. Sans qu’il y ait la une reference specifique a Gertrude Stein, il peut d’abord etre dit que la guerre est paradoxalement un ordre, en ce qu’elle suppose une preparation, une strategie, des ordres, et un desordre, en ce qu’elle est une destruction et Pinevitable defaut de calcul sur ce qui vient apres la guerre. On le sait de Clausewitz : la guerre est tout autant la guerre suivant les combats menes que la guerre suivant Pincertitude de Papres-guerre. II y a done, dans une reference a la guerre
-	et nous nous tenons d’abord a cette notation generale avant de revenir a Gertrude Stein meme la reference a une transgression. Cette reference porte une caracterisation specifique de la transgression : la transgression est un calcul qui sait ce qu’elle transgresse, mais qui ne sait pas son resultat ultime. On a la a la fois la reprise de la notation de la transgression telle nous Pavons dite selon les avant-gardes, et une reprise ;de la notation de la transgression, telle que nous Pavons dite a partir de Joseph Conrad, de Carlos Fuentes, et de Pindication du limes. La guerre est sa propre fin, mais aussi la venue a un indetermine. On est la enfin dans une transgression qui conceme des Etats, puisque la guerre modeme est, en principe,
une guerre entre des Etats. Par quoi, l’on retrouve 1’indication du dissensus, d’une part, et, d’autre part, 1’indication que ce dissensus, autrement dit la transgression, devient la figure du partage commun - celui-meme de cet indetermine.
Gertrude Stein joue ainsi avec les guerres et, plus particulierement, sur la notation de la preparation, sur 1’indication que la guerre actuelle se fait toujours suivant ce que peut etre la guerre future - la guerre est toujours selon les calculs et les technologies les plus avancees. Remarquablement, la guerre est un calcul actuel sur le nouveau qui est manifestement a venir. De meme qu’elle est une entreprise de prise d’une autre armee, d’un autre territoire - autant de realisations parfaites de la transgression selon 1’espace de meme, elle est une sorte de prise du futur. La guerre est ainsi un moyen de requalifier le nouveau, qui se veut absolument nouveau. Ce nouveau est done une tentative de captation du futur. II y a la, de fait, un commentaire du nouveau, que sont les avant-gardes par un ecrivain qui est un ecrivain d’avant-garde. II faut comprendre : dans sa transgression, ce nouveau est une maniere d’ordre, qui entend s’appliquer meme a 1’avenir. II y a done, dans cette caracterisation de la guerre, 1’inverse de la maniere dont Gertrude Stein caracterise ce qui est veritablement nouveau : le nouveau est la conscience extreme du passe. Ces notations ne sont pas le demier mot de Gertrude Stein sur les guerres, qu’elle dit avoir vues -soit dit, entre parenthese, qu’elle n’a pas vue la guerre de Secession qu’elle evoque, elle a seulement vu la premiere guerre mondiale.
Gertrude Stein peut parler des guerres qu’elle n’a pas vues comme des guerres qu’elle a vues, parce que, si la guerre est a la fois cet exercice du nouveau et du futur, elle est done aussi, comme tout ce qui est veritablement nouveau, un echange temporel. En d’autres termes toutes les guerres sont composables, comme un tableau cubiste compose des objets. Mais en indiquant cela, on indique quelque chose de plus a propos des guerres, telles qu’ont ete vues par un ecrivain et telles que sont evoquees par cet ecrivain : les guerres jouent les unes par rapport aux autres comme jouent le meme et 1’autre ; elles jouent, pour reprendre des termes que Gertrude Stein applique a 1’ecriture, comme des repetitions, comme des differences, comme des compositions. II peut paraitre surprenant de com-parer la guerre a 1’eeriture. La comparaison se justifie done par des notations de Gertrude Stein meme. Dans sa conference, "Composition as Explanation"M, elle definit 1’ecriture selon la repetition et la difference, autrement dit, selon un calcul - la repetition -, selon une transgression -la difference -, qui font ensemble un defaut de calcul et de 1’ecriture une maniere d’indetermine. Ainsi, 1’ecriture n’est du nouveau, au sens ou Gertrude Stein caracterise ce mot, qu’a la condition d’etre elle-meme, en elle-meme, une transgression, qui est done proche, mutatis mutandis, de la transgression qui a ete caracterisee a propos de Joseph Conrad et de Carlos Fuentes. Cette ecriture, qui a ete, pour Gertrude Stein, contempo-raine de deux guerres - les deux guerres mondiales -, apparait remarquable-ment et a la fois comme une recusation du calcul sur le futur que constitue la guerre, et comme l’equivalent de l’exercice d’incertitude qui caracterise 1’apres-guerre. Bref, 1’ecriture, parce qu’elle est ce nouveau qui est la plus
grande conscience de 1’ancien, et parce qu’elle repetition et difference hors de la loi d’un calcul, est la realisation d’une transgression heureuse, qui, faut-il ajouter, dans un contraste avec ce qui a ete dit a propos de Joseph Conrad et de Carlos Fuentes, n’a pas meme besoin d’un indicible.
II faut eneore poursuivre selon Gertrude Stein : la guerre ne defait pas les identites, pas plus que Fecriture ne les defait. Elles sont placees dans le jeu paradoxal du nouveau, de la repetition et de la difference, de la transgression : ces identites s’impliquent mutuellement et elles s’echangent, comme les temps s’echangent dans le nouveau. II faudrait ici rappeler la maniere dont Gertrude Stein caracterise Pablo Picasso dans The Auto-biography of Aliče B. Toklas'2 : seuls les Espagnols peuvent etre veritable-ment cubistes. Le cubisme est done une transgression en peinture, qui n’abolit pas Pidentite culturelle, mais qui rend celle-ci comparable a d’autres identites culturelles - ainsi, 1’identite americaine.
IV.
Ces trois fables portent done une commune lepon. II peut y avoir du nouveau qui ne contredit pas le passe — ou il y a le paradoxe du nouveau et celui de toute avant-garde qui sait cela. II peut y avoir une transgression qui n’est pas sa propre fin, mais la reconnaissance du limes - Finde-termination qui fait la veritable frontiere et la finalite de la transgression. II peut y avoir une identification des identites culturelles et nationales qui n’interdit pas le passage des frontieres et qui ne s’enferme pas dans 1’affrontement du meme et de l’autre ou dans leur melange - ce melange ne veut litteralement rien dire puisque, dans n’importe quelle situation d’hybridite culturelle, pour reprendre le terme des etudes culturelles, subsiste toujours Pimplication du meme et de 1’autre. II faut comprendre que Pidentification de Pidentite ne vaut que selon cette implication -celle-ci interdit la seule reconnaissance de la difference pour la difference. Cette commune lefon est done une contre-lecture des caracteres les plus manifestes des avant-gardes europeennes du XXe siecle et des trans-gressions qu’elles affichent. Elle est, ainsi que nous Pavons dit au debut de cette contribution, une maniere de reformuler les termes du debat pro-poses pour ce colloque. Elle n’interdit pas cependant de reconsiderer les avant-gardes europeennes et leur transgression suivant ces termes rnernes. Un tel re-examen doit etre moins une redefinition des avant-gardes qu’un effort pour caracteriser ce que font lire les avant-gardes, telles qu’elles ont ete esquissees ici selon la transgression, et ce que font lire simultane-ment les fables de Joseph Conrad, de Carlos Fuentes, de Gertrude Stein, qui eneadrent et accompagnent, dans la chronologie, ces avant-gardes, et qui sont aussi des histoires de transgression.
II y a, dans ces avant-gardes et dans ce que disent ces fables, un meme constat et une meme question qui en resulte. Constat : Phistoire oblige a penser le temps et Pespace en concomitance - il faut fixer le changement en des lieux pour maitriser le changement - ; mais finalement, Pexperience du temps et de Phistoire Pemporte - les contenus du temps et de Phistoire
ne sont envisages qu’en rapport avee cette suceession, et ne peuvent plus etre fixes en exteriorite. Question : quelle peut etre la reponse a cette evidence du temps et de Phistoire ? II y a la Pepreuve de la modemite : celle du temps et de 1’histoire, qui semblent valoir pour eux-memes. Les avant-gardes europeennes du XXC siecle peuvent se lire comme un effort a la fois brutal et desespere pour repondre a cette epreuve : ces avant-gardes thematisent a la fois le fait de Phistoire, du temps, de leur sequence - c’est cela qu’il faut comprendre par le choix et la pratique du nouveau et Pexteriorite a laquelle on peut attacher cette sequence, et grace a laquelle celle-ci peut etre exteriorisee - c’est cela qu’il faut comprendre par 1’intemationalisme des avant-gardes, par leur aptitude a citer bien des lieux. On le voit: la transgression, ideologique, symbolique, formelle, spatiale, n’est ultimement qu’une fa9on de reprendre et de recomposer les elements caracteristiques de 1’epreuve du temps. Dans cette perspective, la maitrise et Pautorite que se reconnaissent les avant-gardes, traduisent moins un hegelianisme, qu’une maniere de de-doublement du geste des avant-gardes : prendre en charge le temps et Phistoire, assigner leurs donnees a l’exteriorite, et, simultanement, donner celui qui accomplit cela comme Pobservateur de cela, comme celui qui est face a cela - autrement dit, comme celui qui, par cet exercice de Pavant-garde, echappe a Pepreuve du temps et de Phistoire, et entreprend de sortir de tout questionnement qui soit lie a cette epreuve. Cest pour-quoi les avant-gardes ne posent pas la question de Pidentite : Pidentite de ce qui est transgresse est conservee par la transgression - ainsi, dans un tableau cubiste, la perception de 1’objet est transgressee, mais non son identite comme est conservee Pidentite de celui qui transgresse.
Les trois fables de Joseph Conrad, de Carlos Fuentes, de Gertrude Stein sont encore les fables de Pepreuve du temps et de Phistoire. Gertrude Stein repete les termes exacts des avant-gardes et avec IVars I have seen dispose la guerre comme ce qui illustre exemplairement cette epreuve, en meme temps qu’elle fait de Part et de la litterature par leur identification au nouveau ce qui pose explicitement la question qui est attachee au nouveau : le nouveau ne peut etre seulement lui-meme ; il ne peut etre seulement un jeu dans la succession des contenus du temps - le nouveau comme hypertrophie traduit seulement qu’il est un autre element dans la succession des contenus du temps. S’il n’etait qu’un element dans la succession des temps, il ne ferait que repeter Pepreuve du temps et de Phistoire. Cest pourquoi le nouveau est indissolublement la question du passe - non pas d’un passe qui serait une part du jeu de la succession temporelle, mais un passe qui est comme inclus dans le nouveau alors qu’il en est, bien sur, distinct -, et la question du futur, en tant que ce futur est indetermine - il ne peut etre calcule, ainsi que Papres-guerre ne peut etre calculee. Les identites personnelles, les identites culturelles et nationales sont ce qui permet cette maniere d’abstraction a 1’egard de Pepreuve du temps, cette maniere d’abstraction que constitue done la pratique du nouveau. (Cest, dans ces termes, qu’il faut comprendre, chez Gertrude Stein, la reconnaissance de la peinture abstraite, du cubisme, et le rappel constant que Pablo Picasso et Juan Gris sont des Espagnols.)
Joseph Conrad et Carlos Fuentes suggerent que, meme si rhomme se donne pour 1’inventeur de 1’histoire - celui qui, dans les conquetes impe-riales, assigne une nouvelle histoire a des lieux qui lui sont exterieurs, et e’est la transgression maximale cet homme trouve toujours la limite de sa conquete dans le limes - dans Pinvisibilite d’une autre histoire, dans 1’innommable d’un autre lieu, d’une autre identite. La transgression devient 1’apprentissage qu’il n’y a pas de finalite de la transgression, qu’il n’y a pas de loi de la transgression. Celle-ci doit se lire comme la reponse a un constat simple : Palterite est constitutive de ce que je suis ; 1’autre est ce que je suis et ce que je ne suis pas. Cest pourquoi, aux frontieres de PEmpire romain, dans Heart of Darkness, et, dans le continent americain de Carlos Fuentes, cet autre est a la fois manifeste et invisible. II est remarquable que Joseph Conrad et Carlos Fuentes ne distinguent pas cette epreuve de 1’autre de Pepreuve de 1’histoire - celle de la colonisation qui vient au limes, celle de la colonisation qui vient a l’anonyme du continent americain. Autrement dit, la question de 1’autre n’est qu’une autre fa?on de dire la question du temps et de 1’histoire et que ce temps et cette histoire peuvent toujours etre autres, etre ailleurs, comme notre propre temps et notre propre histoire ont ete autres - le passe - et peuvent etre autres - le futur -, comme ils sont, en consequence, a la fois manifestes et invisibles. Ici, se justifie le croisement, que suggere la defmition du colloque, entre le rappel des avant-gardes et les questions culturelles : d’une part, celles-ci peuvent se lire comme les figures de Pepreuve du temps et de Phistoire ; d’autre part, elles permettent de reconnaitre que le temps et Phistoire ne doivent pas seulement se definir comme la succession de leurs elements, mais aussi comme le jeu du meme et de 1’autre que porte toute identite dans le temps et dans Phistoire.
A ce point, on peut revenir aux avant-gardes. Celles-ci n’ont cesse de jouer de Panachronisme. II suffit de dire les surrealistes, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, et d’autres. L’anachronisme est une transgression de la sequence temporelle, qui peut impliquer une transgression des espaces - Panachronisme ne transgresse pas les identites. II fait lire dans les avant-gardes cela meme que les fables de Joseph Conrad, de Carlos Fuentes, de Gertrude Stein donnent a lire : notre temps est et n’est pas 1’autre temps.
II	y a la la suggestion d’une entreprise a mener : celle de la defmition d’un ethos de la litterature, qui serait pertinente pour Pensemble du XXC siecle et pour les litteratures occidentales, et qui permettrait de lire une reponse continue a Pepreuve du temps et de Phistoire, de preciser le jeu, dans cette transgression, du national et de ce qui passe la national, non pas dans un post-national, mais dans la question du national, venue au bord du limes.
NOTES
1 Voir cette definition aux pages 4 et 5 du programme du colloque.
2 Voir Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, Freeport, N. Y., Books for Libraries, 1971. Ed. originale 1960.
3 Voir Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture : Critical Essays, Boston, Beacon Press, 1961.
4 Ce sont les theses d’Arthur Danto, mais aussi celles de poetiques et de pratiques litteraires issues des avant-gardes - il suffit de dire Maurice Blanchot.
5 Octavio Paz, Conjunciones y disyunciones, Mexico, 1969.
6 II faudrait preciser bien des choses ici. Qu’il y ait une sorte d’hegelianisme des avant-gardes est un fait certain, qui explique aussi bien la tradition du nouveau que la poursuite de Part et de la litterature pour eux-memes. Cet hegelianisme des avant-gardes peut etre meme projete, comme en temoignent les travaux d’Arthur Danto, sur 1’ensemble de 1’histoire de l’art au XXC siecle et faire conclure a une identification de cette histoire de l’art a 1’histoire de la fin de l’art. A Pinverse, il y a un caractere de rupture des avant-gardes qui peut etre lu sous le signe d’un vaste performatif, dont il faudrait faire aussi Phistoire au XXe siecle. On n’a pas la plače d’entrer dans ces considerations.
7 Joseph Conrad, Heart ofDarkness, publication originale en 1902.
8 Carlos Fuentes, Valiente Mundo nuevo, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1990.
9 Carlos Fuentes, Geografa de la novela, Madrid, Alfaguara , 1993.
10 Gertrude Stein, Wars I have seen, Nevv York, Random House, 1945.
11 Gertrude Stein, “Composition as Explanation”, in Look at Me Now and Here 1 am : Writings and Leclures 1909-45, Londres, Penguin, 1971. Pour des commen-taires sur ces points, on peut se reporter a Peggy Kamuf, “Peace Keeping : On the Other War”, Revue de Litterature Comparee, a paraitre.
12 Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Aliče B. Toklas, Nevv York, Random House, 1945. Ed. originale 1933.
LITERATURE AND SPACE: TEXTUAL, ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL SPACES OF TRANSGRESSIVENESS
Jola Škulj
Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
82.0
Regarding literature and culture - both as logic and a structure of re-sponses - a discussion of their semiotic situation can be grasped through holistic views of dialogism. The idea of transgressiveness is employed (and detailed on grounds of textual ongoing semiosis and cultural semiosphere) to approach spatial realities as reference frames of any literature and culture, hence their inevitable hybridity, asymmetries, irre-ducible particularities and diversities.
Key words: space / transgressiveness / othemess / textual semiosis / border culture / identity as dialogism / semiosphere / Bakhtin, Mikhail M. / Lotman, Yuri M. / Peirce, Charles / Fish, Stanley / Ricoeur, Paul / Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty / Moretti, Franco
“We communicate by Crossing barriers: leaving our [svoj], or making another's [čužoj] our own. Transmission of infor-mation is therefore always simultaneously an appropriation (or assimilation) of it. But there is always a gap betvveen our own intentions and the words-which are always someone else's words - we speak to articulate them. The gap may be greater or smaller, however, depending on the “fit” betvveen what we believe and what we are saying.”
(Holquist 1981: 424)
“The other is the stranger” whom it is impossible to reduce to myself, to my thoughts and to my possessions.”
(Emmanuel Levinas)
An exchange of views on the issues of space and literature involves a variety of possible standpoints. It implies both space in literature and literature in space. Thus divergent concepts of space can be considered
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 27/2004, Special Issue
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with reference to literature: the semiotic space of text, the space of artistic representation vvithin it, or more generally, the domain of literary art forms (which is a spatial arrangement in itself also when intertextuality is implicated), space as a cultural code of literature and other artefacts, geo-critical space related to the ramification of literatures and cultural grounds, and so on. We can also focus on literary topographies - the space as grasped in representations. A comprehensive theoretical analysis of the spatial aspects of literatures (as textual, artistic, cultural, geocritical, topo-graphical concepts) appears to be a pertinent project to examine closely and re-evaluate the existing and future reality of smaller (e.g. Slovenian, Estonian, Dutch, Macedonian, etc.) as well as of other European literatures in the face of globalization. Literature as the body of writings of a parti-cular language - or just of a particular cultural territory - and as a specific textual activity, allocates in semiotic (and artistic) space manifold inter-pretative strategies. Literatures, no doubt, inscribe in themselves cultural memory, and as verbal praxes of art through their forms of enouncement they preserve consciousness of our own cultural terrains and represent a historical record of our own living reality elapsed in time. In any of its senses space represents a reference frame for literature.
Focussing the discussion on the idea of space (and the spatial) as we find it in the case of literature, and scrutinizing it in depth, perhaps can not guarantee in advance that our thoughts, observations and arguments can be reduced to instances of carefully limited field of reflections. We can neither anticipate nor presume conclusive or strictly fixed angles from such expert talk if the framework of the debate is restricted to the theme “Spaces of Transgressiveness”. Anyhow, being limited in the debate of a peer group can indeed imply unimaginative debate - a debate lacking inventiveness and, consequently, fruitful dialogue on the subject. The heterogeneous scope of the topič “Literature and space: Verbal Art at the Edge” and a wide-ranging view of the idea of space as grasped by the word extent, Latin extensio1 (extendere, to stretch out) can not prevent us from examining and thematizing it from selective viewpoints, oscillating between more concrete meanings of space (geographical, geocritical, even geopolitical etc), its more strict literary sense as a textual (and, of course, also intertextual) space, and even more evasive aspects of literature and art (and its constitutive elements) as terrains of the poetic (as well as existential or ethical) value.
The idea of space itself is rather tricky and troublesome. Space is -according to Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - “meant to stand for a boundless extension which supposedly contains everything or every thing of a certain sort [...] it does not refer to anything that can be exhibited in sense-perception”. Follovving the same source, the idea of space is “rather the nothingness outside ali things”, “a boundless, all-en-compassing expanse'\ an expanse “identical with the void postulated by the atomist philosophers”. “According to Comford (1936), the ‘invention of space’ as a boundless, all-encompassing Container occurred in the fifth century BC. However, it is more likely to have occurred in the late middle ages. At any rate, the idea2 was rampant in Cambridge in the 1660s, when
Nevvton made it a fundamental element in his work on motion. In a posthumous paper3, Newton stressed that space evades the traditional classification of entities into substances and attributes, and h as ‘its own manner of existence’. Until the publication of this paper in 1962, philo-sophers took Newtonian space for a substance, and most of them thought this to be utterly absurd. In view of the role of all-encompassing space in Nevvtonian physics, Kant regarded it as a precondition of human knowledge, contributed once and for ali by the human mind. Newton had written that the points of space owe their individual identity to the relational system in which they are set. [...] Thus, Newton’s concept of space provides the prototype for what is now known as a (categoric) mathematical structure, which can be roughly described as a collection of objects fully specified by a list of mutual relations(Routledge Encyclo-pedia ofPhilosophy, V. 1.0, London: Routledge; my italics.)
Choosing a restrictive framework to elaborate the theme “Literature and space: Verbal Art at the Edge” can probably not prevent lively scho-larly engagement and intellectual exchange. Among the objectives to launching the discussion and opening up the sub-theme of “Spaces of Transgressiveness” is the need to reconsider and re-evaluate the views on a number of spatial aspects of literatures, on present claims about the status of literatures, and on their ongoing existence. A particular point is to revise certain judgments and considerations about our cultural histories, to rethink the ideas of our cultural identities, views on national literary corpuses and literary canons, which have ali certainly changed in the last hundred and fifty years, as the idea of the nation has. Literature is a unique and irreplaceable materialized record of inventive existence of people in a particular language territory, and through its inscriptions it transparently exposes to view articulated powers, abilities and the distinct self-understanding of people in given situations through history. Behind the idea is the need to re-examine some of the key arguments and positions in contemporary literary criticism, cultural theory and artistic policies and to reformulate the epistemological issues underlying debates on literature in views of a post-colonial initiative of planetary reality of cultures and cultural pluralism. The idea of transgressiveness implies Bakhtin's notion of otherness [Russian čužoj], ali that is the opposite of one's own [Russian svo/] - plače, point of view, possession, or speaking person. Otherness as a fundamental concept in Bakhtin's philosophically-grounded approach to dialogism “does not (as does “alien” in English) imply any necessary estrangement or exoticism; it is simply that which someone has made his own, seen (or heard) from the point of view of an outsider. In Bakhtin's system, we are ali čužoj to one another by defi-nition: each of us has his or her ovvn [svoj] language, point of view, conceptual system [krugozor or horizon] that to ali others is čužoj. Being čužoj makes dialogue possible.” (Holquist 1981: 423) The theme of “Spaces of Transgressiveness” is launched to promote a stronger theoretical debate on issues of the intercultural openness of literature in Slovenia (as well as elsevvhere in the region of Central Europe) and on the ever redefmed cross-cultural identities of Europe. The aim of the
proposed exchange of ideas is to explore the role of culturally hetero-geneous spaces inscribed in modem literary production (i.e. central/peri-pheral, natural/urban, private/public, national/trans-national/regional), and to consider more closely the multilingual experiences of authors whose works transgress cultural and linguistic borders.
To address the problem indicated by the title, two aspects of trans-gressiveness related to semiotic space are to be touched on at the start: the textual and the cultural.
Textual Space, Open-ended Semiosis, Transgressive Competence
As an entity of invention and (of reading consumption) literary art -although the claims about autonomous status of its representational strata can be in a sense justifiable - puts in miting a set of interests and con-cems. Literature as an illocutionary act, inscribes in itself verbal instances, their immediacies and urgencies. As a praxis of language communication it purports a “way of thinking, a form of life, shares us, and implicates us in a world of already-in-place objects, purposes, goals, procedures, values, and so on” (Fish 1982: 304). Literature is apprehended through reading contracts, and is available “within a universe of discourse that also includes stipulations” (id). But literature has the prerogatives to authorize an understanding that operates across given language situations. Recent literary studies have become aware of literature as a logic and structure of respome and find it necessary to reconsider a naive theory of utterance meaning. The earlier structuralist views of proponents of a deviation theory of poetic language (e.g. Mukarovsky) had been overcome when the focus was relocated on the reader's role (their reading response) rather than the artefact. Although methodological scrutiny of literary phenome-nology (cf. Ingarden) or literary hermeneutics (cf. Gadamer) took into consideration such a viewpoint much before post-structuralist debates on the instability of the text and the unavailability of determinate meanings, the angle of analytical insight into the issue became more exhaustively promoted only by current literary studies and their methodological platforms. An awareness of always already embedded differences in the relations between signs and their referents in the physical world or the world of ideas certainly introduces new instances of disceming literature. It generates advanced theoretical debates about it and also brings forth fresh inventions and matrices of writing literature. Recognizing “the fluidity, the 'movingness', of the meaning experience" post-structuralism claims to be a step bringing into focus the objective of “the active and activating consciousness of the reader” (Fish 1982: 44; my italics). In an early article, “Literature in the Reader” (cf. New Literary History 1970: 2, 123-162) - which Fish later called his manifesto on the theory of inter-pretive communities and reprinted it as an opening chapter in his book Is There a Text in This Class? - he asserts: “In plače of the objective and self-contained text I put 'the basic data of the meaning experience' and
'what is objectively true about the activity of reading'; and in order to firm up the new 'bottom line' I introduced the notion of the 'informed reader'” (Fish 1982: 22) The ever-shifting factuality of text is extended to the territory of the reader's actualization, i.e. on the level of pragmatics, or to employ Manfred Jahn's view, to the reader's own context of “cognitive narratology”. “There are as many meanings as there are readers and no one of them is literal,” Fish argues, commenting “the infinite capacity of language for being appropriated” (1982: 305-306). Literature is indeed given to us in an open ended semiosis4.
Peirce, long before Fish, had been quite aware of the semiotic situation we attribute to literature. In A Letter to William James he wrote: “We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, i.e., the Object as repre-sented in the sign, - and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is alto-gether fictive, I must choose a different term; therefore:), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience.” (cf. EP 2:498, 1909) Reading instances involve us simply in the realm of “immediate objects, i.e., the objects as represented in the signs”, and the reader's proximity to the text in the reading process of literature is nothing but a meeting with open-class elements. At this point Fish raises an objection about the objectivity of the text, arguing that, although it seems “immediately available” and was claimed to be a “palpable objectivity [...], the objectivity of the text is an illusion and, moreover a dangerous illusion, because it is so physically convincing”. (Fish 1982: 43) The immediacy of text related to the reading process cannot corroborate textual objectivity, because in such cases immediacy is simply contiguous in space, time, or relation. The text certainly is the 'ongoing accomplishment’ (in Fish’s words), an infinite entity, a space transgressing the limits of its writing, or a boundless extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. The reading selves and texts are both “constituted by the way of thinking and seeing that inhere in social organizations”. But could we in fact agree with Fish in his conclusion that “then there can be no adversary relationship between text and self because they are the necessarily related Products of the same cognitive possibilities” (Fish 1982: 336; my italics)? As any dialogic relation - and it is essential that dialogue is, by rule, always characterized by conflict and contradiction - reading could not but involve negotiations between reader and text. Fish argues “that communication occurs only within [...] a system (or context, or situation, or interpretive community) and that the understanding achieved by two or more persons is specific to that system and determinate only within its confmes”. He maintains “that the more perfect understanding [...] - an understanding that operates above or across situations - would have no plače in the vvorld even if it were available, because it is only in situations
-	with their interested specifications as to what counts as a fact, what it is possible to say, what will be heard as an argument - that one is called on to understand.” (1982: 304) The weakness of the claim is that it cate-gorically denies “an understanding that operates above or across
situations” (my italics). But Communications as exchanges of verbal ideas
-	and reading is an exemplary instance of communication - are, by rule, imtituting5 processes, and at least to some degree inventive instances in their roots. So any participation in communicative process calls upon us basic economy, the management of available resources, i.e. the participation of our inventive or resourceful thinking. Communicative processes involve us in new situations and intricacies, transmit new details and disclose new facets of the world we are living in. Communication is never a one-way Street. Any actual or effective transaction of verbal ideas or thoughts is a responsive enterprise enabling negotiations. It establishes an interaction of an individual vvith one or more other persons and demands that the other is able to deal skilfully and promptly with new situations, difficulties, etc. If transgressive thinking is not employed on the receiver's part of the communicative channel, if the addressee is not open to otherness or cannot trigger their own inventive potential and give power to new meanings, no one can expect communicative transactions of texts to be carried out or to be able to accomplish their mission. In this context we can employ the notion of transgressive competence6.
Cultural Spaces in Borderland Territories
Cultural spaces located at the crossroads of cultures, from remote periods and modem ones, are exemplary dialogic. How can the complex reality of cultural life behind the borderland literature be comprehended? How can the semiosphere that grounds the cultural reality of the literature in such territories be explained? The semiosphere is a notion invented by Lotman and defined as “the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages” (Lotman 1990: 123), and as “that synchronic semiotic space which fills the borders of culture, without which separate semiotic systems cannot function or come into being” (Lotman 1990: 3). In cases of borderland literatures the semiosphere is certainly different and its complexity calls for critical re-examination now more than ever, when literary studies employ ground-breaking methodologies aware of the need to overcome totalizing insights and concepts. The semiosphere does not overlap with the notion of cultural code, nor with the view of national literature, and particularly not in the case of cultures in border territories. How can we consider (and evaluate) the semiotic space of the Slovenian cultural existence and the effects of its shifting realities through history if we agree that culture in borderlands creates “its own type of intemal organization” and also “its own type of extemal disorga-nization” (Lotman 1990: 142)? Cultural spaces are semiotic realities which through their historical existence unfold the indeterminate and unpredictable role of the processes that remodel them. Being borderland (the land forming a border or frontier also in a cultural sense) implies an uncertain, intermediate district, space, or condition; but at the same time, the boundaries operate as a mechanism of semiotic (cultural) individuation. The boundary is a zone of semiotic polyglotism, vvhich both separates and
unites; it represents the co-existence of differences, an encouraging meeting point of ongoing cultural contradictions, and of confronting incongruent traditions. At boundaries, semiotic space transposes othemess and autho-rizes the one’s won cultural potential to articulate the self in intersection with others. At boundaries the ever- shifting processes of cultural spaces are intensified. As a site of exchanges, borderland territory maintains the semiosphere in a State of Creative ferment. As a border zone artistic expe-rience of coupling and mixing different cultures, Slovenian cultural space openly - though probably unconsciously - embraced an idea of the extreme edge of the semiosphere as a site of incessant dialogue. Its best founding literary texts and “mythic” figures bear witness to how Slovenian cultural space willingly acknowledged othemess as an open set, and identified it as an eloquent image to activate the economy of its own cultural (and nation's) survival. But was not it paradoxically at the same time an ob-struction to its own recognizable self?
To consider textual memory as a history of borderland territory more effectively (i.e. to read well the memory in texts as semiotic storage) two points in question are to be detailed: first, the nature (or identity) of culture in borderland territory; and second, the culture as facts in a given semiosphere.
On the nature of culture in borderland territory, and on identity
issues. Histories of literatures and cultures in borderlands (as well as border-crossing regions) testify to the presence of numerous multilingual residues and surviving traces of contacts. The multilingual nature of these areas in earlier periods and, simultaneously, the incidence of diverse interests (political, economic, cultural) on the territory, with disparities in philosophies (or in sets of principles) behind language differences, certainly empovver the invention of a borderland cultural identity (as well as a political and economic one) through a different profile. Such cultures are not only defined by establishing their existence dialogically through their past cultural relations; they are also, as far as the features of their identities are concemed, much more essentially grounded in dialogism. The cultural sense of self, providing distinctiveness and continuity in its cultural exi-stence over time, is in such places certainly much more alert to establishing itself on a solid basis and for its enduring existence. The realization of a cultural self in a border region is a responsive act. (Slovenia is good example: its national identity was long accomplished through cultural pursuits as a substitute for a State and economic sovereignty.) In border regions dialogism is a basic need: it is a philosophy and a way of life. Dialogue is not just a simple instrument foregrounding cultural identity; it is a more or less deep-seated structure. To understand better the invention of borderland identities Derrida's note on invention is quite helpful. He argues that it “distributes its two essential values between two poles: the constative - discovering or unveiling, pointing out or saying what is -and the performative - producing, instituting, transforming”. (Derrida 1991: 206) Concemingthe invention of cultural identity and the scenarios of a nation's being the first value focuses the Self in its very presence, in the state of being present-at-hand (as things are), identity as sameness
(Latin: idem) and the second, the performative value \vhich implies “pro-ducing, [ongoing event of] instituting, transforming”, brings into focus the self as self-ness, identity as selfliood (Latin: ipse)1. Performative value focuses on the self in a pragmatic relation, involving (the interests of) the co-existing other. Selfhood is, to quote Heidegger, “one of the existentials which belong to the mode of being of Daseiri' and “to the same sphere of problems belong such concepts as being-in-the-world, care, being-with, etc.” (Ricoeur in Wood 1991: 191) Specificity in the constitution of border-land culture ean be found in its innate experience of cultural differences, in its approval of the reality of differences, in its recognition and respect for the existence of the other (and othemess). Borderland cultural identity is grounded in the acknowledgement of validity of the gap between the self and othemess of the other. Dialogue is its primary constituent, the very mode of its existence. Its mode of being involves its open identity. In borderland literatures, the self is in responsive and interested dialogic relation with othemess, and the other is accepted as a distinct, individual entity. The hetero-cultural experience ingrained in borderland identity grants the culture, which is usually minor or peripheral, its affirmative approach to the diversities of other cultures and, of course, within itself. The specific, unstable history behind culture in border regions, which is very familiar with its own multifaceted reality in the passage of time, equips it with its inherent awareness that selfhood is not inevitably sameness. Self has a capacity for survival or strong healthy growth precisely because of its hybridity8. The self of a borderland culture, its very status of being an individual reality existing over time, enables the culture to unfold its different faces of identity not escaping or evading the very core of its being (nor its self-confidence) and not denying itself as a distinct entity in its many-sided dynamism. Self through its alterations (Late Greek heterosis) - that is, through being hybrid (= formed or com-posed of heterogeneous elements) and not hubristic (= insolent or disre-spectful or unaccustomed; Greek hybris excessive pride or self-confidence, arrogance) - cares for its future and economizes its qualities and intrinsic worth. Heterosis or hybrid vigour - to employ terms used in genetics -with reference to selfhood or the identity of a culture, is a sign of a capacity for survival or strong healthy growth.
A borderland culture is a manifestly retold story. Through such an identity, cultures in border regions clearly reveal their capacity for survival. There is an inherent requirement for the continuation of a meaningful or purposeful existence of semiotic spaces having given and transgressed (constantly transfornied) languages as a cohesive resource. Slovenian culture as a case of a cultural border territory confirms the persistence of such a force openly interacting with othemess - not from weakness, but as a forceful and promising, dynamizing option of survival economics. The nature of culture in border regions reminds us that reducing the meaning of identity to sameness {idem) and forgetting that selfhood (ipse) may imply diverse possibilities of existence arises from a metaphysical understanding of being which dominated European thought until the beginning of the last century and the modernist breakthrough. As memory
kept in semiotic spaces demonstrates selfhood embodies an ample storage reshaping culture. Only in reductionist (metaphysical) thought can a blindness to complex issues of reality occur. Identity is a fact, an entity quite concrete in its being, an actual ongoing condition or circumstance, not something postulated. Culture is not a sum of phenomena, but a living totalily, where the notion of totality should be understood pragmatically (not metaphysically), i.e., as something inconclusive in its character, an open, non-finite entity. Understanding cultural identity as dialogism implies that the measure of authenticity or originality of an inherent national subjectivity has a lesser role than it played in the minds of the romantics and throughout the nineteenth century. Culture is a meeting point of several cross-cultural implications. In the notion of the “soul of a nation” (Herder9), which is related to the topič of cultural identity, the conceptual frame of the idea of the national is due to a romantic view of an absolute and autonomous self which is, of course, inadequate at a time of a mutually related world and a post-national concept of state (citizen-ship).
It appears that in the globalizing world (and in the new reality of integrating Europe in process) borderland or peripheral countries, with their particular experience and the demanding task in their histories of inventing and instituting cultural identities on border Crossing territories surely become well-equipped with views of dialogism or “scopic vision” (Spivak 2003: 108) to challenge and overcome stili persistent totalizing attitudes (and politics of) a planetary vision of culture (and the world). Borderland cultures exhibit supplementary qualities of conceivabIy more sensitive and responsive approaches to othemess. Views on the hetero-nomy of cultural worlds are there more palpable, and in border regions the fact of "the ungraspable other as the figur ed origin of our definitions” (Spivak 2003: 32) is much easier to apprehend. The metropolitan countries
-	another geocritical notion found in literary and cultural studies (Moretti, Spivak) - lived through less distressing experiences of inventing their identities and are - as a result of their own cultural role in the past (as colonizers) - frequently less perceptive of the heteronomy of cultural worlds. Metropolitan cultures (far from the boundaries or limes) become used to their unthreatened position at the centre of a circle where there is no movement, nor other angles of insight. A central point or axis, a line used as a fbced reference, represents - as known from physics - a site of no exchange.
Franco Moretti (2000: 54-68) in his comparatist claims, finds peripheral views on cultures very instructive. The edge is resourcefiil; it enables a different point of view, and is highly aware of multiplied focuses. Awareness that the other is never accessed directly, nor with certainty suggests different reading practices. The same points in challenging task to overcome totalizing insight into a planetary vision of culture and to practice “scopic vision” are found by Gayatry Spivak in her Wellek Library lectures when charting her future view for the field of reformed comparative literature as a border-crossing discipline “honed by careful reading” (2003: 108). Aware of a “forever deferred arrival into the per-
formative of the other in order not to transcode, but to draw a response” she advocates “a role of comparative literature in a responsible effort” (2003: 13).10 But the ingredients of such ideas were inherent in Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue. Yuri M. Lotman also tumed to the legacy of Bakhtin in the last decade of hiš life in his elaborate work Universe of the Mind (1990) on text, semiospheres and the semiotics of history.
On culture as facts in a semiosphere. Texts are semiotic data, although due to their semiotic life, i.e. their ongoing semiosis, their identity as “transmitted and received texts is relative” (Lotman 1990: 13). Lotman argues that because of “cultural traditiom (the semiotic memory of culture) and the inevitable factor of the individual way with which this tradition is revealed to a particular member of a collective, /.../ it will be obvious that the coincidence of codes between transmitter and the transmittee is in reality possible only to a very relative extent.” (1990: 13; my italics.) By reason of the “inner, as yet unfmalized determinacy of its structure” text “acquires semiotic life” (Lotman 1990: 18). Texts “preserve their cultural activity” and “reveal a capacity to accumulate information, i.e. a capacity for memory” (id). The text's memory, “the meaning-space created by the text around itself [always] enters into relationship with cultural memory (tradition) already formed in the consciousness of the audience” (id). This means that texts are to be seen as “important factors in the stimulus of cultural dynamics” (id) and are themselves “a reservoir of dynamism when influenced by contacts with new contexts”. (Lotman 1990: 18, my italics) A text is involved in a semiotic space and it results in “the complex semiotic mechanism which is in constant motion” (Lotman 1990: 203). A text has its life in the reality of semiosis and a reality becomes “the single-channel structure” (Lotman 1990: 124) for decoding (or extracting meaning from) its encrypted message. When a reality happens to be the text's communicating channel - and we must bear in mind that natural language is constantly renewing codes and that (as Lotman also reminds us) “living culture has a 'built-in' mechanism for multiplying its languages” (1990: 124) - then that “single-channel” is realized in a plurality of options. An ongoing event of cultural tradition and the individual mode of entering into the text, both factors are involved in an ever changing platform of circumstances. Text tums out to be “immersed in a semiotic space and it can only function by interaction with that space” (Lotman 1990: 124-5; my italics). Semiosis entails “the whole semiotic space of the culture in question” and this is the space Lotman terms it the semiosphere (by analogy with the biosphere as Vemadsky defined it). “The semiosphere is the result and the condition for the development of culture, [...] the totality and the organic whole for living matter [JS culture] and also the condition for the continuation of [JS cultural] life.” (Lotman 1990: 125) Living culture is a function of the semiosphere in its particular space-time. “The semiosphere is marked by its heterogeneity." (Lotman 1990: 125) A semiotic space is “at one and the same moment and under the influence of the same impulses” stili “not /.../ a single coding structure, but a set of connected, but different systems". (Lotman 1990: 125; my italics) In Lotman's notion of the semiosphere “the possibility of a pre-
verbal or non-verbal modelling system” is suggested, as Han-liang Chang commented in his paper Is Language a Primary Modelling Sys1em? — On Jury Lotmaris Semiosphere at a conference on cultural semiotics: Cultural mechanisms, boundaries, identities, in Tartu (Estonia, 2002). In his earliest explanation, published in Russian in 1984, Lotman found the semiosphere “a semiotic continuum filled with semiotic structures of different types and with different levels of organization” (republished in Lotman 1989: 42-3). In another definition he defined the semiosphere as “the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages, not the sum total of different languages”; in a sense it “has a prior existence and is in constant interaction with languages . . . Outside the semiosphere there can be neither communication, nor language.” (Lotman 1990: 123-124) Here we are back to the issue how to comprehend the semiosphere of the borderland literature. Are the effects of past shifting realities on border cultural territories as ever remaining in existence? Lotman considers a semiosphere “as a single mechanism” and argues “that ali elements of the semiosphere are in dynamic, not static correlations, whose terms are constantly changing” (1990:127). Is it correct to say that ali possible con-tacts having come down to us from the past are latent in the ever-modifying semiosphere? Lotman is affirmative on the issue: “In the history of art [...] works which come down to us from remote cultural periods continue to play a part in cultural development as living factors. [...] What 'works' is not the most recent temporal section, but the whole packed history of cultural texts. [...] In fact, everything contained in the actual memory of culture, is directly or indirectly part of that culture's synchrony.” (1990:127; my italics) The semiosphere represents a holistic world model (as claimed by Mikhail Lotman) behind actual cultural processes, although one should see it as a constantly re-read entity, a reworked actuality, or a re-defmed network of cultural traces shaped through ongoing dialogism. The idea of the semiosphere is an exemplary observation on spaces of transgressiveness. Lotman remarks: “Besides, at ali stages of development there are contacts with texts coming in from cultures which formerly lay beyond the boundaries of the given semiosphere. These invasions, sometimes by separate texts, and sometimes by whole cultural layers, variously effect the intemal structure of the 'world picture' of the culture we are talking about. So across any synchronic section of the semiosphere different languages at different stages of development are in conflict, and some texts are immersed in languages not their own, while the codes to decipher them with may be entirely absent.” (Lotman 1990: 126) The distinct notion of semiosphere is capable of grasping cultural deposits enacted in the extensive dormant netvvork and the “continued process of emission and transmission of energy [...] not only between historical periods of one culture, but also betvveen inter-cultural and cross-cultural systems” (Han-liang Chang 2003, here quoted from an electronic version of his paper). By employing the idea of semiosphere “as a generator of information” the debate on the literature and space can be more elaborate and can shift our views to a “post-positivist realist” conception of objectivity (Satya P. Mohanty). It enables us to
grasp the cross-cultural realities of individual cultures and the valuable dialogue behind their historical routes, which are asymmetrical because the structure of the semiosphere as an expression of “the currents of the internal translations” (Lotman 1990: 127) is in itself asymmetrical. A thorough (semiotic and henneneutical) approach to the semiosphere of cultures can provide insights into the obvious asymmetries of cultures in history and help us to bridge the inevitable “untranslatability” of art. Lotman's “philosophy of culture”, his complex theoretical observations on the dynamism and phenomenology of culture actually semiotically intervened in the debate about history or, to be more precise, it brings to the fore a view of different routes behind the histories of literatures and their spatio-temporal contexts. His work responded to Bakhtin's heritage, while at the same time attaining a more complex perspective on mecha-nisms of culture as that universe of mind, which in literature - like tales of Mnemosyne - preserves facts and advocates (re)readings of consciousness in the semiotic spaces of texts to map past modes of human historical existence. The challenging and inspiring idea of the semiosphere is one of those epistemological issues in the recent uncompromising critique of universalism which provide us with an elaborate and useful conceptual alternative to the earlier notion of objectivity. Such ideas seriously con-stitute an invitation to reconsider some of the key arguments and positions in contemporary views on literary histories. As a concept grasping com-parativist residues in semiotic data it is at hand to be for a future planetary vision of a responsive comparative literature. Re-imagining the discipline, Spivak in her criticism of (cultural) area studies programmes, reminds us that comparative literature was made up of Westem European “nations” (cf. 2003: 8), and through her further comments she re-evaluates certain aspects of literature teaching practice at philological departments. In her ideas for a “depoliticized” and “an inclusive comparative literature” (2003: 4) as a “loosely defined discipline [...] to include the open-ended possibility of studying ali literatures” (2003: 5) she claims that “the real 'other' of Cultural Studies is not Area Studies but the civilization courses offered by European national language departments, generally scomed by comparative literature” (2003: 8). Similarly Moretti finds the close reading practiced by national literary scholars, especially, of peripheral or - as Evan-Zohar (1990) calls them - 'weak' literatures, very rewarding. Both actually support more detailed insight into literatures, into their spatio-temporal placement and their real, verifiable ties with other texts and literatures, and such ansvvers can be well obtained through detailed analyses of the semiosphere. Such encouragement to focus on literatures and space can be understood as an advocacy to understand better the multitudinous vvorld of literatures, their diverse cultural grounds and intricacies. Through notions like semiosphere on the list the discussion of literature and spaces can bring us closer to grasping representations of alterity in a remodelled comparative approach, to understand correctly the asymmetries of literatures and historical movements, and to realize within literatures their much more incongruent nature, their heterogeneous development, and the inner hybridity outlining their “tradition”. The view may well “confirm the
inequality of the world literary system: an inequality which” - as Moretti argues - “does not coincide with economic inequality [...] and allows some mobility - but a mobility internal to the unequal system, not alternative to it” (2003:78).
To conclude, I am back to the view of the semiosphere of Slovenian culture, which is due to border contacts exemplary asymmetrical. Diverse border languages certainly multiply its heterogeneous entities. Slovenian edges (the Karst region, Carinthia, Prekmurje in Eastem Slovenia) are strong “area[s] of semiotic dynamism [...] where new languages [of art] eome into being” (Lotman 1990:134). Formed by border-crossing reality and the intrusions of alien cultural codes into canonic nonns, Slovenian culture has been actively exposed to the mechanisms of semiotic indi-viduation, as its best authors Trubar, Prešeren, Kosovel, Kovačič, Boris Pahor, Tomaž Šalamun, etc. testify. The periphery of a culture as a zone of contact with othemess is most sensitive for its own “untranslatability” in Lotman's sense. As border-crossing literature its ground is rewarding for the working mechanisms of the semiosphere - for mechanisms of ongoing dialogue, as well as of constant “translations” - and manifestly inscribes in itself its own need for asymmetry and for its own othemess.
NOTES
1 Cf. Dictiomaire latin-frangais. Version electronique de Gerard Jeanneau.
extensio (extentio), onis, f.: - 1 - extension, allongement. - 2 - diffusion.
extense, adv. : d'une maniere etendue.
extendo, tendi, tensum (tentum), ere : - tr. - 1 - etendre, allonger, elargir, agrandir, etaler, deployer (au pr. et au fig.). - 2 - etendre a terre, coucher, renverser, terrasser. -3 - etendre (en pari. de la duree), prolonger, reculer; passer en entier. - 4 - au fig. etendre, augmenter, agrandir, accroitre. - 5 - etendre a, attribuer par extension, comprendre dans.
- se extendere magnis itineribus, Caes. BC. 3, 77 : se lancer dans de longues etapes, forcer les etapes.
- rami se extendunt, Virg.: les branches s'etendent.
- extendere pugnam, Liv. 27, 2, 6 : prolonger le combat.
- pretium extendere, Just.: hausser le prix.
2 By 1600, space had become a familiar ingredient of natural philosophy. In Bruno’s words: “Space is a continuous three-dimensional natural quantity, in vvhich the magnitude of bodies is contained, vvhich is prior by nature to ali bodies and subsists without them but indifferently receives them ali and is free from the conditions of action and passion, unmixable, impenetrable, unshapeable, non-locatable, outside ali bodies yet encompassing and incomprehensibly containing them ali.” (1591: 1.8; quoted in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)
3 According to Routledge Encyclopedia of PhiIosophy, “much needless discussion might have been forestalled had Newton’s manuscript ‘De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum’ (On the Gravity and Equilibrium of Liquids) not remained unpublished until 1962. In it he boldly asserts that space is neither a substance nor an attribute of a substance, but has ‘its ovvn manner of existence’ (1962: 99, 132; my italics). According to Newton, each point of space is the
particular point it is by virtue of the relations it has to the other points, and the only source of its individuality (individuationis principium) is the post it holds in the system of such relations.
A conception of space as a purely relational system or mathematical structure vvas also put forvvard by Leibniz in his polemic against the view of space as a substance, which he imputes to Newton. Leibniz characterizes space as the abstract order of co-existing things. If we forget the peculiarities of each thing and retain only its ‘situation or distance’ to the other things, we obtain the notion of the thing’s plače, vvhich may be taken by anything. ‘And that which comprehends ali those places, is called Space’ (Leibniz 1716: §47). [...] Since space is neither [a substance nor an attribute of a substance], he maintains that it is no more than a well-groundedphenomenon, lacking genuine reality (see Leibniz, G.W. §11).”
4 Defining semiosis Charles S. Peirce writes: “It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. Ali dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes plače between two subjects (whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially) or at any rate is a resultant of such actions betvveen pairs. But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions betvveen pairs.” ('Pragmatism', 1907, EP 2: 411)
In critical comments that “semiosis has been trapped within a semiological or linguistic and psychological definition” Edvvina Taborsky asserts:
“Semiosis refers to the generation and usage of signs. What is a sign? A sign is the means by vvhich free energy is transformed by codification into constrained matter or information. Semiosis transforms energy from states of thermal and kinetic potentiality to spatiotemporal instantiations vvithin multiple processes of codal constraints of organized relations. Codification is the formation of organized connections or relations with other forms of energy organization. Semiosis, then, is a relational process of codification by means of vvhich networks of codification develop to transform energy into spatiotemporal instantiations of matter or information. [...] A genuine semiosis is a generative process, vvhere the signs, activated vvithin their predicates, seek out and develop pragmatic links vvith other semiotic sentences by means of vvhich they interpret, expand and actually create their identities. The sign as a generative sentence is a speculative gaze that is focused on past netvvorks, other netvvorks and the future pragmatics of purely hypothetical and experimental netvvorks. This semiosic sentence operates vvithin ali three cosmic realms, the physico-chemical, the biological and the socio-con-ceptual and is the basis for ali informational processes of energy.” (http://www.Iibrary.utoronto.ca/see/pages/semiosisdef.html)
5 From Latin inslituere to set, put up, establish, form of statuere to plače, to stand.
6 Some literature on transgressive competence can be mentioned:
Daston, Lorraine (1992). “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective”, Social Sludies of Science, vol.22, 597-618.
Daston Lorraine and Peter Galison (1992). “The Image of Objectivity”, Repre-sentations, no. 40, 81-128.
Nowotny, Helga (1999). “The Need for Socially Robust Knowledge”, TA-Datenbank-Nachrichten (Forschungszentruni Karlsruhe), Nr. 3/4, 12- 16.
Nowotny, Helga (1999). “The Plače of People in Our Knowledge”, European Review, vol.7.2, 247-262.
Gibbons, Michael, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott and Martin Trow (1994). The New Production of Knowledge. The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.
Galison, Peter and David Stump eds. (1996). The Disunity of Science: Boun-daries, Contexts, and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
7 Distinction betvveen two different kinds of identity is elaborated in the Ricoeur's view on the issue in his article “Identite narrative”, first published in Esprit 1988. He discussed the idea fevv years after his main work Temps et recit (1983-5) was published and it was printed in English translation as “Narrative identity” together vvith revised and revvorked papers of a Warwick Workshop in Continental Philosophy organized in 1986, where Ricoeur was among participants. Being avvare of the considerable difficulties attached to the question of identity as such Ricoeur intervened into it and put forward a thesis that “the concept of narrative identity offers a solution to the aporias of personal identity” (in Wood 1991: 192). To resolve difficulties relating to the notion of personal identity he knevv the conceptual framevvork should be submitted “to analytical scrutiny [that] rests on the fundamental distinction [...] betvveen two main uses of the term of identity: identity as samcness (Latin: ide m, English: same, German: Gleich) and identity as selfhood (Latin: ipse, English: self, German: Selbst)”. (Cf. in: Wood 1991: 189). The main problem, hovvever, is that “selfhood is not sameness” (p. 189). Ricoeur acknovvledges, “the confusion is not without cause, to the extent that these two problematics overlap at a certain point” (p. 189). He insists that the break which separates idem and ipse is “frankly” ontological, not just grammatical, or even epistemological and logical. (Cf. in Wood 1991: 191.) I refer to Ricoeur's distinction in an earlier article. (Škulj 2000: 411-419.)
8 In the first one of her Wellek Library lectures in May 2000, entitled Crossing Borders, Spivak referred to “the irreducible hybridity of ali languages” (2003: 9).
9 Satya Mohanty (1997: xii) finds Herder's vievvs already as “povverful attacks on the Enlightenment's universalist conceptions of reason, morality, and history, arguing instead for the irreducibility of cultural particularity and diversity”.
10 “If a responsible comparativism can be of the remotest possible use in the training of imagination, it must approach culturally diversified ethical systems diachronicaIly, through the history of multicultural empires, without foregone conclusions.” (Spivak 2003: 12-13)
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PHILOSOPHY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE INTERCULTURAL SENSE
Dean Komel
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
130.2"19":327.33
The author discusses the idea of a constitution of intercultural behaviour from a phenomenological and hermeneutical point of view. In his opinion, the historical tradition of philosophical thought has already developed intercultural elements. The question arises as to whether interculturality is only one aspect of the contemporary cynical annihilation of the word or, on the contrary, if it offers a different comprehension of human exi-stence, a way to escape from nihilism. The author's reply stresses the possibility of a hermeneutical constitution of intercultural sense, connected with a possible future European dialogue as a way of mutual under-standing within one culture and among different cultures.
Key words: philosophy of culture / interculturality / hermeneutics / nihilism / humanity
Contemporary philosophy is conspicuously fragmented into numerous areas. Some contemporary philosophers deliberately renounce the possi-bility of rational argumentation; others reduce philosophical argumentation solely to logical analysis. Moreover, we are witness to constant rede-finitions of the historical possibilities of philosophy. In such a situation, it is more than justified to raise the question of whether we can stili put forward a philosophical claim for the constitution of intercultural sense.
Deconstructivism, as a philosophical basis of the post-modem age, claims that ali that is available is the reduction of sense, and not reduction to sense. However, constitution is not reduction to sense, and even less construction of sense. Constitution points to the ongoing event of sense, which can also include its own negation, as Hegel pointed out. Hegel, however, and counter-Hegelian deconstructivism and critical theory, in principle fail to grasp the constitutional problem, because they State it within the world, rather than on the level of the worldliness of the world itself And by so doing, they also overlook the boundaries of the philoso-
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phical consideration of interculturality as a possibility of an encounter within a culture, as well as among cultures.
The philosophical presuppositions of interculturality can be discussed in several ways. We can take philosophy, as it has developed in its two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old history, for the traditional ground of the intercultural sense of Europe and West. Then it is possible to consider how we can, on this very ground, philosophically handle intercultural phenomena. And finally, we can detect the influence of intercultural mutual understanding in the way contemporary philosophy understands its sense and purpose. Since the first line of thinking about the philosophical presupposition of inter-culturality is fairly far-reaching, we can focus only on its delineation.
Considering thoroughly how interculturality can employ philosophical thinking anew, implies that we already know what constitutes intercultu-rality from the philosophical vievvpoint. We thus fmd ourselves caught within a hermeneutic circle, in which both the philosophy of intercultu-rality and intercultural philosophy try to find a way out for each other. Although this circle most probably cannot be totally avoided, we shall try not to get completely caught up in it and lose our stance. It is our stand-point that the path of thought which is trying to establish itself as an intercultural philosophy - as far as it is not merely some form of comparative culture studies - in principle overlooks the essential intercultural sense of philosophy, which has been present since its very beginning and which contributed essential ly to the foundational idea of European humanity, and can in the future help bring about its redefinition. Such redefinition does not imply a repetition in the sense of historical restoration, with a renevved return and recourse to origins. The redefinition differs lrom repetition in the same way that constitution differs from construction: it does not accept historicity as a past identity, but rather re-establishes it in the openness of its future difference.
Within the philosophy of the 20th century, this foundational idea of European humanity, as well as the need for its redefinition, was given particular prominence by Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenolo-gical philosophy; among his followers, we should also mention Hans-Georg Gadamer, and more recently Klaus Held and Bemhard Waldenfels. Since HusserFs careful consideration on the worldliness of world has been acknovvledged by critics as diverse as Habermas, Luhmann, Levinas or Derrida, it can serve as an exemplary hermeneutic problem of contem-porary philosophy in general, which can be encountered in ali its areas; it is related to the question of vvhether, and how philosophy should mediate a unified understanding of the world without disregarding the differences which determine it, and the exteriority it verges on.
The question is focussed interculturally in a specific way, such that it makes culture an agent of mediation, insofar as it opens its centre? middle and mediates itself interculturally. And it is here that the philosophical issue of the constitution of this mediating centre middle of the inter-dimension of inter-culturality appears. This mid-dimension is not given per se, but demands our involvement. We are justified in claiming that
such philosophical involvement, already sketched by Edmund Husserl, contributes to the acknovvledgement and recognition of common world experience, in that it does not set up a culture as “ours” or “yours”, but rather in the mediation between “one's own” and the “alien”. It does not take possession of the alien in order to achieve its own acknovvledgement; neither does it exclude the alien in order to defend its own essence. The “essence”, in the sense of “identity” as a mode of existence, preserves itself only in anticipation of its own mediation; othenvise it becomes alienated and is seized by a fear of annihilation. The annihilation of the life-world? is deeply related to the question of the foundational rede-fmition of European humanity, as is indicated by Nietzsche’s idea of “European nihilism”, Seheler’s “age of reconciliation”, HusserFs “crisis of European humanity”, and Heidegger’s “oblivion of being”, not to mention literary examples.
It is this very mediating sense of culture as interculturality that may reveal that the alienation of the modem world does not imply only ne-gation, which should be overcome, but also affirmation, which calls for the constitution of sense, and which first and foremost implies that a dimension of the world goes on “among” us, and also between “us and us”. Even though in truth it can never be reduced solely to us, it is accepted by us already when we ask what is and what is not real. This is even a basic “lesson” given by philosophy - namely, that we cannot commune with the world as something private, not even when we ask for it to change.
The philosophy of culture today cannot rely, for example, on a critical theory of society which would be transformed into a revolutionary practice, or on any “pure theory” which shows no interest in the world and its alienation. Global development segregates “us” and “them”, but in a special way, such that both “we” and “they” remain unacceptable in what is genuinely our own. The other cannot be accepted if we do not first accept and even change ourselves; and here a pure philosophical question arises: who are we?
In what way can we say that philosophy, since its very beginnings, has been interculturally effective, and that, on this basis, it historically affected the foundational understanding of European humanity? Philosophy stems from speculation on what is, on questions of being as such and as a whole. Thus we refer roughly to Aristotle’s defmition of philosophy. It is obvious that such questions cannot persist in the closed environment of one’s own culture, but have to be opened for themselves in - and tovvards
-	a world in which various cultures meet, transcending themselves as ordinary environments. The world means the opening up of one's own culture. In this trans-cultural sphere, philosophy manifests itself in the opening up of the world’s horizons, in which various cultures find themselves as if within a certain whole or even a universe of sense. It starts raising questions as to what is the meaning of this and that, and what is the sense of it ali. This cannot prevent one culture from outrunning another, nor can it directly enable one culture to cross into another. The primary effect of this loosening of global horizons is that culture as such becomes a question, that there arises the need for its defmition, and that on the
basis of this, a culture itself transforms into its constitutionality, which is the main criterion of its acceptability. A testimony of this first transfor-mation of the sense of culture into a foundational sense, which makes culture meaningful for us, can be found in Cicero’s statement “Philoso-phia cultura animi est”, insofar as it explicitly co-defines culture and philosophy. Before that, the word cultura had the sense of “cultivation” and “grovving”, but not its own foundational sense, vvhich was philoso-phically indicated already by Protagoras : “Of ali things, the measure is man - of the things that are, that they are; of the things that are not, that they are not.”
Precisely in the manner it is defined in its foundational sense, the world cultura from the beginning points to the crisis of its own definition, vvhich in the late condition of European culture, in the work of Georg Simmel, tums out to be a “tragedy of culture”. This crisis of culture is also connected with philosophy within the framevvork of mutual defini-tions. Culture does not presuppose only one, binding and ali- embracing philosophy in the form of a world-view, and philosophy itself never in-cludes only one, but by rule, several cultures. No doubt certain conditions had to be fulfilled for Cicero to be able to articulate the definition of culture in philosophical terminology; first and foremost, philosophy at its very beginning had to comprehend itself as an elucidation of mind.
What is the philosophical elucidation of mind? For the Greeks, the soul refers not only to human life, but living beings in general. Hovvever, only the human soul can be elucidated. It is precisely because of this “fact” that the elucidation of mind leans tovvards the education of the špirit, as is shown in Plato’s metaphor of the cave. The elucidation of mind and the education of the špirit mean the search for the unity of different aspects of life. This search for Unity in Diversity is a concem for that which is, inasmuch as it is becoming and passing away, staying and leaving, growing and fading away. That the world shows itself in its diversity is an announcement of the freedom in which life fulfils itself as praxis; and at the same time, this life experiences the revelation of a vvorld. Life and the world are different, but nevertheless unified. Human beings grow at the locus of this unity in difference by simultaneously yeaming for it. A magnificent indicator of this yeaming is Greek art, which makes sense -and not without reason - of our culture in general. This is why culture is up to this very day a synonym for life with a higher, excellent, and diffe-rentiating sense.
Since philosophy defines being as such and as a whole, vvhich opens up a kind of global horizon, it is necessary that there arise the issue of the relationship between diversity and unity, betvveen the One and the Many. Philosophy is thus searching for “unity in difference”, in which differen-tiation itself is understood as ascending to something higher, vvhich perfects the very human essence. In his novel Hyperion, Friedrich Holderlin vvrites: “The great Heraclites’ saying hen diapheron heauto (the One differentiated vvithin itself) could only be discovered by a Greek, because it is the essence of beauty, and before it had been discovered, there vvas no philosophy ... The Egyptian vvas incapable of doing it. He who doesn’t
live with the sky and the earth in the same love and counter-love, he who doesn’t live in hannony with this element, in which he moves, is by nature in himself disharmonious and doesn’t experience etemal beauty, at least not as easily as the Greek.”1 This “One differentiated within itself’, hen diapheron heauto, if we follovv Holderlin’s notes, therefore proves a lot harder nut to crack than it might at first appear Where do the diffe-rence and the differentiated stem from? What is the sense of the One and Unity in this difference? This question leads to the disclosure of being as such, the comprehension of the world within Unity in Diversily, which reveals a special type of the good, true and beautiful.
The actuality of this issue is shown by the fact that intercultural philo-sophy directs its primary attention to diversity rather than unity. This attention should, of course, be critically questioned, since the advocacy of diversity, and not unity, is not as simple as we would want or wish it to be. Difference and diversity are not to be considered as things “in them-selves”, but rather as things “in relation”; if, however, we would like to consider difference outside the relation, we have to think of it as the differentiating One, as something that is beyond comparison, which also holds for Derrida’s differance. However, this “differentiating One” was already pondered by Heraclites. Would it not be more appropriate to reconsider open-mindedly this original beginning of the One in Diversity, rather than forcefiilly - and at any cost - prefer diversity to unity? If we make such a decision, there instantly arises the question of the coordi-nates of our own starting point.
“Unity in Diversity”, magnificently epitomized in Greek logos, is the founding event of European and Westem humanity; it is not intra-cultural (/.e. an ancient Greek and then Latin event), it is emphatically intercultural, provided that it forms the ground for the development of European history and Westem civilization. It enables contact and permeation among cultures, as is obviously the case in early Christianity, which would later ground its sense only in logos, understood in the unity of the universal, individual and particular. With Christianity, we can detect the formation of a specifically individual attitude to the vvorld on the one hand, and that universalistic supremacy of the West, which in its eschatological pretensions often directs its destructive power against other cultures, if they are thought worthy of such a designation in the first plače. This is where the problem of freedom comes into play, with its particular and universal senses, provided that a human being has to acknowledge the freedom of ali human beings in order to attain their own freedom. The cultivation of this freedom can be understood as the development of humanity, which is no doubt a fundamental feature of the spiritual history of Europe; it is particularly characterized by the phenomenon of the Enlightenment, in which the human essence sets itself apart as something unique; the fact that human beings have free use of mental abilities, gives them the assurance that they can have at their disposal whatever can be rationally represented. The modem human of the Enlightenment is as self-reliant as the emancipated conqueror.
With humans placing themselves, through their mental faculties, at the base point of ali knowledge and practice in the world, the understanding
of Unity in Diversity changes at its very core. The world is in principle and primarily no longer grasped as a plače in which life fulfils itself, but rather as something that is at our disposal already. Unity in Diversity is set up systematically, be it arithmetical, geometrical, transcendental, dialectical, or a positivistic model of systematics. This aspect of syste-matics is traceable not only in the field of philosophy and Science; it is effective also on the intercultural level. European nations also establish themselves systematically as countries cultivating and enabling intema-tional relations. The basic positive heritage of this systematic regulation of intemational relations is the United Nations.
The systematic regulation of Unity in Diversity nevertheless suffers from exclusionism, in that the One of the system remains outside ali the differences, while on the other hand diversity in the system can never be entirely subjected to the One if it is to remain diverse. Thus we are losing touch with the initial understanding of the world as Unity in Diversity. Within the framework of philosophy, this issue was tackled by Leibniz, who found his historical adversary in Voltaire; taken historically, syste-matically, the best possible world can also be the worst possible world. More far-reaching than this, hovvever, is that we can methodically strive for history and nature taken as a system. This methodology of mastering history and nature each day tums more and more into a method of power, which can no longer be satisfied with acquired power, but desires to mani-pulate this power and become more and more empovvered in this mana-gement of power, in ruling, mastering and prevailing.
Where systematics subjects historicity to its rule, we are faced with the disastrous consequences of this method of power, and the distinction is put into force between historical and non-historical nations, not on the grounds of historically manifested culture, cultural tradition, but on the grounds of systematically enforced power. The systematic regulation of history establishes itself as a historical world order and as that which even transcends this order with its power. Directly or indirectly, this inflames historical revolutions “from below”, and restorations “from above”, ali of them culminating in the first half of the 20th century. They are not in decline, even today, at the beginning of the 21 st century; on the contrary, they are gaining strength, even though we are inclined to speak of ‘the end of history’ after the establishment of the system of liberal democracy. We too easily forget that even an abolished history can strike back, not only in various aspects of traditionalism or even more threatening radica-lisms and fundamentalisms, but also in the barely noticeable annihilation of the world.
The second half of the 20th century, the period of the so-called Cold War, already saw the consequences of such self-assurance in the power of the system, which is rooted in subjectivist views of the modem age, inas-much as they seek to develop the ability of traversing from the unified to the diverse, the universal and individual, and the reverse. Undoubtedly, one of these is the positivism of the 19th century, which dared keep its “positive sense” even in the midst of contempt, annihilation, and the destruction of European humanity. Positivism is necessarily accompanied
by ideologies which seek to enforce upon the world a historical sense on the basis of dogma, in which differences between ideas, ideals and idols are sooner or later lost.
Two world wars, totalitarianisms, the age of the Cold War, the deepening gap between developed and undeveloped nations, and the present general threat of terrorism, are living proof that the positions and counter-posi-tions of power can pass over, through the “formal emptiness” of systematic regulation, into a destructive history, also annihilating the political as such. “Formal emptiness” here means primarily operating with empty values, forgetting the loss of the unified value of life and diversity of its evaluations, enforcing supremacy instead, by continuously proving that everything can be regulated by being controllable. What is essential here is to maintain the virtuality of power, since this is apparently the only means of retaining the aspect of Unity in Diversity.
Although in a modified version, Nietzsche’s diseovery of European nihilism is stili relevant, inasmuch as it calls our attention to the possi-bility of a historical špirit tuming into a phantom, which is especially dangerous today, when this is far more efficiently achievable by using the power of a system. According to Nietzsche, nihilism stems from the in-capacity of power to acknowledge differences. However, he did not become fully aware of the nihilism of power regulating ali the differences. What is the sense of nihilism in the sense of traversing from identity to difference and back? Firstly, this traversal gives the appearance of power, and secondly, as povver, it leaves behind both the unifying One and diffe-rentiating diversity, circling self-contentedly within itself. This means that in the unconditional enforcement of povver there arises a question conceming the sense of that which empowers this povver. It is to the great credit of Edmund Husserl and other philosophers of the phenomenolo-gical and hermeneutic tradition that they vvamed us of the self-sufficient enforcement of the power of Science as a system, which shows itself in the form of modem technology. Can, perhaps, a philosophical constitution of interculturality help form an alternative by taking culture as its mediator?
This is a question of a possible future sense of European humanity and of humanity in general, as far as it establishes itself in the values of “science”, “politics”, “freedom”, “management” and “solidarity”. Parti-cularly from vvithin the midst of interculturality, culture can mediate betvveen these sectors in that it mediates Unity in Diversity in their worldly activities. This, of course, implies newly establishing culture in the direction of interculturality, vvhich would sensibly build upon tradition rather than reject it. The perspective of this culture is as yet unde-termined, but its horizon has already been revealed to us on the ground of the tradition of European humanity in its philosophical, artistic, religious, political, scientific and other aspects. On the one hand, it is supported by the complexity of the contemporary vvorld dispersing into numerous vvorlds, and on the other, it has become quite clear that this complexity cannot be simplified on the grounds of a unified worldview, be it political, scientific, artistic, philosophical or economic. The vvorld is not one on the grounds of an enforced worldview, the vvorld is not dispersed into a multitude of
unrelated worlds, and the world is common to us ali in the encounter of differences. It is individual for everybody, and yet common to us ali. Its counterpart is exclusionism, limiting the shared world, intervvoven with the own and the alien, solely to what is “ours”, eventually reducing it to mere nothingness. This is perhaps one of the most difficult constitutive problems of the intercultural grounding of Europe, although its sense is strengthened by the fact that European culture has not constituted itself solely by defending its own essence, but more often in the element of crucial mediation between its own and the alien.
The direction towards a philosophy of interculturality is not limited only to the European intemal sense; it has become, as it were, global, in that it acknowledges the Earth as a community of existence. The redefi-nition of European humanity points not only to the inner, but also to the outer dimension, in that it delineates to itself the fate of the whole planet, not only in the usual ecological aspect, but rather in the cultural, “in-habiting” aspect, already implied in the former. This sets the problem of interculturality in a much larger context of confronting Europeans with “Outer-Europeans” which also requires a changed concept of culture; it is no longer possible to cling solely to the notion of our own culture, not even the European one - every cultural self-representation comes to light in intercultural openness. “Leftist” theoreticians in particular detect in this nothing more than expansion of “Eurocentrism” and “hegemony and imperialism” by other means, directed by the power of the Capital. However, we have to distinguish between the “economic propaganda” of multiculturalism and potential perspectives of interculturality, since we have no other starting point for confronting the most topical issues of contemporary society, including those compelled by the logic of Capital. The possibility of encountering in the same world does not necessitate in advance imperialist global supremacy. On the contrary, this is what the philosophy of interculturality should demonstrate in reconsidering the concept of the world in a permeation of unity and diversity, without ideologically overthrowing the power of the One and suppressing diversity under the supremacy of the One.
“Encountering” is thus understood as the key word of the philosophy of interculturality, which has not only a methodological, but also a relational sense. Within encountering, we encounter someone or something, while we also encounter someone or something for the sake of the encounter itself.
NOTES
1 F. Holderlin, Hyperion, Stuttgart 1998, p. 91.
REFERENCES
BRAGUE, Remy: Europe, la voie romaine, Pariš: Criterion 1992.
CRISTIN, Renato/Fontana, Sandro: Europa al plurale. Filosofia e politica per Vunita europea, Venezia: Marsilio 1997.
EAGLETON, Terry: The Idea ofCulture, Oxford: Blackvvell 2003.
FERRY, Jean-Marc: La Question de 1'Etat Europeen, Pariš: Editions Gallimard 2000.
HELD, Klaus: "Europa und die interkulturelle Verstandigung", Europa und die Philosophie, Schriftenreihe der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft 2, H.-H. Gander(ed.), Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann 1993, p. 87-103.
HOLDERLIN, Friedrich: Hyperion, Stuttgart: Reclam 1998.
HUSSERL, Edmund: Die Krisis des europaischen Menschentums und die Philosophie. Mit einer Einfuhrung von Bernhard Waldenfels, Weinheim: Beltz Athenaum 1995.
GADAMER, Hans-Georg: Das Erbe Europas, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1989.
KOMEL, Dean: Identita e mediazione. Per un'ermeneutica delVinterculturalita, Trieste: Edizioni Universita di Trieste 2002.
MALL, Ram Adhar: Philosophie im Vergleich der Kulturen. Interkulturelle Philosophie - eine neue Orientierung, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1995.
RIFKIN, Jeremy: Der Europaische Traum. Die Vision einer leisen Supermacht, Hamburg: Campus Verlag 2004.
SALLIS, John: “Beyond the Political: Reclaiming the Community of the Earth”. In: Phenomenology of Interculturality and Life-world, E. W. Orth/C.-F. Cheung (ed.), Freiburg: Alber 1998.
SCHNEIDER, Notker/Mall, Ram Adhar/Lohmar, Dieter (ed.): Einheit und Vielfalt. Das Verstehen der Kulturen, Amsterdam - Atlanta: Rodopi 1998.
TAYLOR, Charles: Multiculturalismus and ‘The politics of Recognition’, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1992.
WALDENFELS, Bernhard: Topologie des Fremden, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp v 1997-
ŽIŽEK, Slavoj: “Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capital ism”, New Left Review 225 (1997), p. 28-51.
CHATEAU DE COPPET -A SITE OF MODERNITY?
Jelka Kernev Štrajn
Ljubljana, Slovenia
821.133.1.09"17"
Coppet, as a public and modern space, represents the peak of the 18'h century salon tradition, although at the same time, it surpasses it. The Coppet discourses in some respects rose above the Romantic under-standing of literature, and thereby drew close to modern concepts of art and society.
Key-words: Mme de Stael / the Coppet group / modemity / national identity / cultural identity / Romanticism / organicism / public space vs private space
Karyna Szmurlo, a theoretician and historian of literature, and an excellent connoisseur of French woman vvriters of the 18'h and 19th century, defmed Coppet as a space that “after two hundred years of rethinking this ide-ology, built not upon coercion, but on mutually supportive yet antago-nistic principles, remains an inspiration for us; we stili recognise in its philosophical tone - irrevocably bearing the marks of the Revolution -the reality of our own modemity.” (Szmurlo 1991: 3). About the work of Madame de Stael, the central personality of the Coppet circle, she vvrites: “Geo-graphics infiltrate the titles and tables of contents of her work, illustrating how deeply her thought organized itself around ideas of vvanderings, passages, crossings and transgressions. This corpus of the voyage, govemed by a metonymic logic of spatial continuity, also fiin-ctions as a metaphoric index /.../ As for the great novels, they can be classified as fictions of transgressed boundaries par excellence.” (Szmurlo 1991: 1) In addition to the transgressions discovered by Karyna Szmurlo, de StaePs discourse can be attributed other similar features, such as intermediateness, marginality and the reflection. These must be pointed out, because they may not be immediately obvious.
Consequently, it may be proper to think that de StaePs work cannot be approached without taking into consideration the entire context in which
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they were created, and that its temporal and particularly spatial coordinates must be explored. It is well known that the period in question is the end of the 18lh and beginning of the 19lh century. With regard to space, we could speak of Europe, if this term were not so loose and at the same time weighed down by numerous connotations. For this reason, we can use a rhetorical figure, a synecdoche, and say that the space in question is Coppet.
Chateau de Coppet is an old castle named after an idyllic town on Lake Geneva. The castle was known as early as the 1 lth century, its first pro-prietor being Pierre de Savoie (died 1268). After him, it was owned by the poet and knight Othon de Granson among many others. In 1784, the castle was bought by Jacques Necker.1 It became Madame de StaePs country home and gained in importance particularly after her irreconcilable dispute with Napoleon Bonaparte’s regime, after which she was exiled from Pariš. She was forced to close her famous Pariš literary salon in Rue du Bac and leave the Capital, which under Napoleon’s rule became in-creasingly constricted. She moved her salon to the countryside and direct vicinity of the crossroads of three cultures: the French, German and Italian.
Between 1792 and 1815, although with short breaks, a special group of European humanists met at Coppet, which in literary history is known simply as “the Coppet group”. Its legacy is discussed at symposia that are nowadays periodically organised at the castle. The group, vvhose central figure was Madame de Stael, cannot be defined as a philosophical circle, nor as a literary school that existed within a single predominant trend. Neither did it resemble a codified academic society. And it was a far cry from a political party or a religious sect. Stili, it was significantly diffe-rent from traditional literary salons of the ancien regime. (Balaye 1994) The specific character of this space, which on the one hand continued the tradition of 18lh century salons, while on the other greatly surpassing their aristocratic classicistic culture and aesthetics, is the very reason the phenomenon “Coppet” is discussed in this paper.
It is fascinating and significant that moving the salon from the Capital to the countryside not only changed its location; it also greatly trans-formed its fimction and, consequently, its identity. This change was pre-dominantly brought about by specific historical circumstances: the revo-lutionary and post-revolutionary period at the meeting point of two centuries and its cultures, which was undoubtedly a tectonic break in the history of western civilisation. Admittedly, Europe had experienced crisis periods before, but the feeling of profound change brought about at that time had never been so powerful (Hauser 1969: 193) It caused those European intellectuals who frequented Coppet for over two decades gradually to redirect their attention from the finite, transparent and hermetic past to the indefinite, opaque and open present, which can be discerned from the Coppet discourses. The term discourse is here used in Benvenisto’s sense, as a language adopted by an individual as their oral or literary practice. It is used in the plural because, due to its ideological, religious, linguistic and national heterogeneity, there was a special atmo-sphere of discoursive plurality at Coppet. This plural and multi-national context gave rise to cosmopolitanism, within which there were differences
in mutual interdependence that were reflected in the discursive practices of the Coppet circle, comprising ali the guests of Madame de Stael. The French were mostly emigrants, but there were also others: Germans, Italians, Swiss, Austrians, etc. They were part of a group on the margins, seemingly excluded from the mainstream historical current of events, but in reality the group had a tremendous influence on European culture. This is not surprising, since it was there that a completely new, modem view of history gradually emerged.
The modemity of de Stael’s discourse, and the modemity of Coppet as the cultural historical context of this discourse, are concepts in the light of vvhich should be reconsidered some implications connected with the topič of the eluded identity and the transgressions of space mentioned by Karyna Szmurlo in the quote at the beginning of the paper. Consequently, the first question is how we should understand modemity.
Above ali, modemity should not be mistaken for modemism, the pre-valent aesthetic trend of the first half of the 20th century. Modemity is a much broader category that should not be associated with the general opinion that what is modem is anything new. Neither should the expression be given the meaning that emerged from the famous French dispute between the Ancients and the Modems (Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes) in the second half of the 17lh century. In this dispute, modemity was viewed as the opposite of the old and traditional. Contem-porary definitions of modemity vary (cf. Weber, Habermas, Foucault, Calinescu, de Man, Vattimo, Touraine, among others), although none de-clares modemity to be the opposite of the old and traditional.
For the purposes of this paper, we should concentrate on the under-standing of modemity as distinctly historical and based on the principle of othemess, while at the same time, it does not permit any form of totalising. The closest to this understanding are the post-structuralist in-sights of Paul de Man, although admittedly the author has stili not fully articulated the difference between modemity and modemism (Škulj 1991: 42). Moreover, he has never completely revealed his understanding of modemity. Most of his statements on this topič can be found in his essay “Literary History and Literary Modemity” in Blindness and Insight, 1971. According to de Man, modernity can only be understood in corre-lation with the historical, which at first may seem paradoxical, since mo-demity and the historical seem to be contradictory terms. But they only “seem to be”; de Man points out that in reality modemity always repre-sents a new beginning, a new origin: “Modemity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out vvhatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at last a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.” (De Man 1971: 148). Therefore, modemity “trusts in the power of the present moment as an origin”; the origin and the beginning are historical notions, vvhich means that on the one hand modemity does indeed deny history, but on the other it justifies itself by it. History cannot be avoided, as Nietzsche already discovered, but de Man attempts to rethink Nietzsche’s theory through the concept of modemity. Namely, modernity is not the opposite of the historical; it is in correlation with it:
“Considered as a principle of life, modemity becomes a principle of origin and tums once into a generative power that is itself historical.” (De Man 1983: 150) The historical is its essential component, which is not fixed; it is changeable and fluid. Thus, modemity implies that the historical is an interpreted and ever re-interpreted fact.2
But considering the fact that the Coppet group is a phenomenon that cannot be compared with anything in the history of westem culture and literature, for the purpose of shedding light on ali its dimensions, it seems reasonable to combine de Man’s views with the understanding of mo-demity as a process of radical differentiation betvveen the world of ob-jectivity and the world of subjectivity as defined by the French philo-sopher Alain Touraine, who fonnulated his extensive, and also somewhat problematic, interpretation of modemity under the influence of Habermas and Weber, among others. According to Touraine, this discourse excels in a balanced combination of two lines of thought and tvvo discursive strategies: rationalisation, or objectification, and subjectification: “La modemite a rompu avec le monde sacre, qui etait a la fois naturel et divin, transparent a la raison et cree. Elle ne l’a pas remplace par celui de la raison et de la secularisation, en renvoyant les fins demieres dans un monde que Fhomme ne pourrait plus atteindre; elle a impose la separation d’un Sujet descendu du ciel sur terre humanise, et du monde des objets, manipules par les techniques. Elle a remplace 1’unite d’un monde, cree par la volonte divine, la Raison ou 1’Histoire, par la dualite de la rationalisation et de la subjectivation. (Touraine 1992: 13) Thus, modem democratic discourse is a result of a dialogue between rationalisation and subjectification. This dialogue is indispensable, because according to Touraine, subjectification can become too obsessively focused on one’s own identity, whereas rationalisation without subjectification can become merely an instrument of power: “II n' y a pas une figure unique de la modemite, mais deux figures toumees 1'une vers 1'autre et dont le dialogue constitue la modemite: la rationalisation et la subjectivation. Gianni Vattimo cite des vers de Holderlin: Voli Verdiemt, doch dichterisch wohnet / der Mensch auf dieser Erde. Les succes de 1'action technique ne doivent pas faire oublier la creativite de 1'etre humain.” (Touraine 1992: 265) For the consideration of the role of Coppet as a domain of art, Touraine’s interpretation of modemity is suitable as long as it evokes the balance between the thought of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, seeing that Coppet is not merely a cultural, historical and literary phenomenon, but also a political and sociological one.
Modemity “disenchanted the world” through a process of rationalisation. As a consequence, disintegrating representations of the world created a secular culture in Europe. But this process lasted only until modemity tumed away from vvestern rationalism, so that today, the process of rationalisation is no longer regarded as a “historical objectification of mental structures”. Moreover, Habermas claims that Weber does not merely address the secularisation of western culture, but also the development of modem society. (Habermas 1988: 7) In this sense, modem society can be defined as the context in which modem democratic discourse emerges.
This discourse is a manifestation of the modem democratic society, which is supposed to have defined extremely strict limits to the influence of political authority on an individual, thereby facilitating the subordination of state authorities to personal freedom. And this was the goal to which Madame de Stael and the entire Coppet circle aspired.
Coppet Castle was open to individuals of any nationality, conviction and religious belief. It was open to supporters of the Revolution and to some Royalists. But the lively and fiery confrontation of opinions there never caused any serious intolerance, although almost everybody who entered the castle was politically engaged. They rejected despotism and militarism, cherished freedom of thought and speech, and believed in the ability of the human špirit to constantly improve itself (Balaye 1994). Gradually, Coppet became one of the centres of the opposition to Napoleoni regime. Even in religion, there was a spontaneous and unrestrained dialogue between Protestants and Catholics at Coppet. Here, and nowhere else, there was interaction betvveen philosophy, politics, morality, religion and literature, because the members of the Coppet circle not only took an interest in literature and criticism, but also in politics, philosophy, religion, linguistics, Science and history, which gave the group its special interdisciplinary character and, in addition to its religious and national diversity, it significantly contributed to its elusive identity. Considering the fact that the phenomenon cannot be completely defined and that it is contradictory - here, I must point out the contradiction between the aristocratic habitus of Madame de Stael and her distinctly democratic convictions - Coppet undoubtedly exceeded the limitations of its socio-political and cultural historical context by becoming a site of a modem democratic discourse and thereby of modemity.
Coppet became a refuge in 1792. The first regular visitors began fre-quenting the castle in 1794 (Constant, Bonstetten, Meister). In 1798, they were joined by the linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, who taught German to the hostess, two years later by Simonde de Sismondi, and in 1804 by August Wilhelm Schlegel. Other visitors were Mathiew de Montmorency, Boutenveck, the Danish poet Oehlenschlager, Friedrich Schlegel, Chateaubriand and many others. The Coppet group was never a static entity; de Stael’s guests čarne and left, and frequently retumed. The most in-tensive intellectual activity took plače between 1805 and 1810. During that time A.W. Schlegel wrote a comparison between the Greek and French Phaedras and finished his famous Lectures on Dramatic Art (Die Vorlesungen iiber dramatische Kunst und Literatur)', Charles Victor de Bonstetten vvrote an essay on imagination (Recherches sur les lois et la nature de l'imagination)-, Prosper de Barante explored 18lh century French literature {Table de la litterature frangaise pendant le XVlIIe siecle)\ Simonde de Sismondi wrote his extensive history of southem literatures (De la litterature du Midi de 1' Europe)-, Constant adapted Schiller’s Wallenstein for the French stage; and de Stael wrote her novel Corinne ou 1’Italie, and her extensive work On Germany (De VAllemagne). In addition to an incessant emphasis on the equality of national literatures, the innovation of group activities at Coppet was the articulation of a
realisation that European literature must be seen in the context of the con-nection between northem and southem literatures. In this light, in her work De la litterature, de Stael introduced the question of the plurality and equality of individual national literatures and reached a similar conclusion to A.W. SchlegePs in his Briefe iiber Poesie, Silbenmass und Sprache, where he observed that it was impossible to speak either of superior or lesser national poetries.
There was also lively translation activity at Coppet. The most prolific was A.W. Schlegel, who translated Shakespeare and Calderon. Madame Necker de Saussure (Madame de Stael’s cousin) translated A.W. Schlegel’s lectures into French, whereas A.W. Schlegel translated de Stael’s essay Considerations sur la revolution frangaise into German. De Stael incorporated many translated passages in her book On Germany, and so did Sismondi in his work on south European literatures. The members of the Coppet group saw translation as one of the main tools of communi-cation among different cultures.
In view of ali this, Remi Forycki’s theory, although extremely roughly presented, may not seem exaggerated. Forycki declared that Coppet was a public space in terms of the Habermasian Offentlichkeit. This notion denotes “the public and private sphere of political activity within civil society.” (Forycki 1998: 48) Through the Staelian context, Forycki ex-plained what had happened to the Czech philosopher, and HusserFs študent, Jan Potočka (1907-1977). He attempts to prove that cultural identity is what enables the individual to resist manipulation by autho-rities, and consequently it is undoubtedly part of the process that constitutes a modem subject. In the 18th century, the public and the private were not yet differentiated, although the process of differentiating and establishing a relationship between them started before the French Revolution. It was a long and complex development, so here we must focus on a particular aspect of this development, which was significantly connected with literature.3
In the mid-18lh century, a literary public emerged from a certain stratum of the middle class, mostly reading literature, but also attending theatres, concerts and exhibitions. But the most important role in this phenomenon was played by literature, particularly by the novel. This literature was, namely, both from the point of view of reception and of subject matter, closely connected with private space, the most intimate family sphere. In bourgeois society, the centre of this sphere was the patriarchal nuclear family.4 Here, new, intimate relations among family members began to emerge. These relations were generated by new, humanism-based values that facilitated the emergence of a new type of subjectivity. The most suitable form for “experiments with subjectivity” was the letter, which was no longer merely a means of communication. Through its first-person narrative, it became a medium for “imprints of the soul”. Gradually this subjectivity became public, since some examples of correspondence were intended for publication from the very beginning. (Habermas 1989: 65) This gave rise to a new type of literature: the epistolary novel (Richardson, Rousseau, Goethe, Madame de Stael). In these novels, subjectivity was an
important subject matter, reducing the “distance betvveen the subject and the object” to the minimum. In this way, the “reader became the author’s confidant”, and both intimately relived the fate of the novePs heroes in their own way. For example, Richardson “directly calls on the reader to stand in the plače of the novel’s hero”. (Hauser 1969: 82) Consequently, fictional reality in a way spilt over the edges of the novel, and the reader was able to blend it with his or her own reality. Thus it could be said that the most significant component of these novels was “reality-illusion” or the fictional. Therefore, it is no coincidence that according to Habermas, who quotes Hauser and Kayser, in this period - in the late 18th century -the term fiction finally became accepted in connection with literary prose, and that something similar also happened in theatre, where, with the introduction of the “fourth wall”, drama became fiction as well. (Habermas 1962, 1989: 66) It is probably no coincidence, either, that at Coppet guests used to retire to their quarters after lunch and write letters to one another. As their hostess keenly observed, they thus became real “sujets de fiction”. Indeed, fiction is one of the most frequently discussed notions in de Stael’s work. In her treatise Essai sur les fictions (1795),5 for example, she tries to convince writers that the reader finds the greatest joy in being able to identify with the heroes of a novel, in other words, that the thematisation of the reading public represents the most attractive dimension of literature for this same public. This is why de Stael cham-pions the novel, particularly the epistolary novel, which most successfully captured the most mundane human feelings: “Mais dans les romans tel que ceux de Richardson ou de Fielding, ou l'on s'est propose de cotoyer la vie en suivant exactement les gradations, les developpements, les inconsequences /.../ les evenements sont inventes, mais les sentiments sont tellement dans la nature, que le lecteur croit souvent qu'on s'adresse d liti avec le simple egard de changer les noms propres.” (De Stael 1871: 68) The experience of heroes in a novel must therefore be similar to the experience of the reader, because only in this way is the reader prepared to cooperate directly with the author while following the story of the novel. In the second half of the 18th century, the best form for the thematisation of these feelings was the epistolary novel. But the intimate relation-ships that were the subject matter of these novels gradually expanded outside the living room of the nuclear family and began to emerge in the salon, the most important room in the bourgeois home. There, apart from family friends, a broader circle of people met, which in salons evolved into the reading public. Gradually, it became increasingly socially engaged and critical tovvards politics, and as a consequence, the private entered the political sphere through the literary public, becoming critical and even polemical. Therefore, the political and literary public, as two images of the public, intertvvined in these salons. (Habermas 1989) At Coppet, this phenomenon was manifested in the fact that although this space could be clearly declared the undisputed peak of the salon tradition, it must be pointed out that from the point of view of cultural history, it surpasses this tradition. This fact manifests itself in the distinct plurality of this space, which is significantly connected with its unique historical context,
which was determined by many factors, the most decisive being the fol-lowing: the direct impact of ideas that led to the French Revolution, the rejection of the absolutism embodied in Napoleon’s regime, opposition to Napoleon’s efforts at the unification of Europe, classical German philosophy - particularly Fichte and Kant - the aesthetics and poetics of the early Romantic period and, last but not least, the personality of the proprietor of Coppet, Madame de Stael. In addition, special mention must be made of English philosophy (Hume), whose empiricist ideas probably to a certain extent influenced the specific Coppet subversion of the conception of organicism, among others.
The fact that Madame de Stael is a long-canonised author is indisputable, because it is well known that she has long occupied a specific plače within the curriculum of literary history. But at the same time it cannot be ignored that gradually a considerably ambiguous attitude tovvards her texts has emerged, particularly in connection with her style. The hybrid genre and style that is an important characteristic of her writing has been understood by some (for example by Fontanes, Touchard) as a flaw, whereas others discover the beginnings of modem writing (Forycki) and even the first traces of Vecriture fe mi ni n e (Marie-Claire Vallois, Margaret Higonnet) in her works. Moreover, it is a known fact that her book On Germany became world-famous immediately after its publication and was adopted by her contemporaries both in Europe and in the United States as a kind of cult text. Critics probably forget that certain contradictions in her essays may be a consequence of her conviction that literature must always be understood in the context of social relationships, which undoubtedly influenced her attitude towards rhetoric and style. This may also be why she con-sciously overlooked the laws of classic, academic style, contributing to its dethronement from its pedestal as an eternal and absolute value in that very period (at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19lh century). Consequently, she developed a special spontaneous way of writing that was supposed to contribute to clarity of thought, but in the process, she often went to the other extreme and in certain passages obscured her dis-course. Nevertheless, sometimes this obscurity is a result of introducing new values, Romantic ones, at the expense of the old, Classicist ones. With de Stael, this introduction never takes plače in the form of a complete break with tradition. She is more interested in how to harmonise tradition vvith the demands of the new era. She advised writers, her contemporaries, to modify their view of Antiquity and begin to take an interest in recent history. She was convinced that literature must open up to modem expe-rience, which was completely irreconcilable with the strict laws of French Classicist tragedy (the demand the three unities). For this reason she recommended plays with subject matter and motifs from modem history and proposed that alexandrine verse be abandoned. (De Stael 1968: 1/256) With these and other similar proposals she paved the way later taken by the French Romantics that was most explicitly outlined by Hugo in his introduction to ‘CromvvelP (1827). Similarly, she did not see the French Revolution as a tuming point, although she was probably more aware than many that the Revolution had ushered in a new age. In an ana-
logous manner, we can interpret her implicit poetics: an attempt at ba-lancing respect for tradition with the introduction of the new. For this reason, she is in favour of expressing passion, although in the process she never forgets philosophical reflection, which must confirm with reason what sentiment reveals to us: “77 faut une philosophie de croyance, d'enthousiasme; une philosophie qui confirme par la raison ce que le sentiment nous revele.” (De Stael 1968: 11/138) Accordingly, she even attempted to adjust her role in her circle - in the group that gathered at Coppet - to the demands of the new time and co-create a discourse of the emerging modem democratic society.
Ali this considered, it might not be redundant to rethink the plače of her work in the literary canon. This issue is particularly interesting because it is about a system that at the time she helped to create, since her critical work, like the work of most members of her circle, was much more exhaustive than her literary work. Therefore, Paul de Man in his essay, Mme de Stael et Jean-Jacques Rousseau probably with good reason defined de StaePs plače in the literary canon as distinctly reflective. Here, this expression has two meanings: reflection as a distance in thought (the distance adopted by the narrator from the narrative) and reflection as a mirror image (the relationship of her work towards other works in the canon). This double meaning can be further extended with the evocation of this notion’s third dimension of meaning, which in de Man’s essay is merely implied, although it can be deduced because of de Man’s broad theoretical context, which is significantly based on Kant’s philosophy (Norris 1988), particularly Kant’s Third Critique. According to Kant: “Judgment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, principle, or law) is given, then the judgment which subsumes the particular under it is determinant. This is so even where such a judgment is transcendental and, as such, pro-vides the conditions a priori in conformity with which alone subsumption under that universal can be effected. If, hovvever, only the particular is given and the universal has to be found for it, then the judgement is simply reflective.” (Kant 1790: BXXVI)6Unlike the determining judgement {bestimmende Urteilskraft), the reflecting judgement (reflektierende Urteilskraft) is connected with the subjective, particular and contingent, which is the reason it can be presented as the third dimension of the meaning of de Man’s notion of reflection, and at the same time be connected with the issue of an organicist understanding of art and society.7
Reflection, detected in critical texts by Madame de Stael, for example, even in her first essay on Rousseau (Lettres sur les ecrits de Rousseau, 1788), her favourite author, although it can also be found in some of her literary works, is closely intertvvined with passion and enthusiasm (De Man 36). In this context, Georges Poulet states that de StaePs discourse is a combination of the “reasoning špirit” and “suffering heart”. When suffering becomes unbearable, the individual finds the strength to become cool-headed, which enables one to think about one’s pain, although the suffering does not cease. (Poulet 1971: 19) The establishing of a distance betvveen the observing and the suffering parts of the self makes the senti-
ment more profound. In other words, each work of art contains elements that surface only vvhen evoked by a distanced critical insight: “II n' y a que Rousseau (et Goethe) qui a su peindre la passion rejlechissante, la passiort qui se juge elle-meme sam pouvoir se dompter. Cet examen de ses propres sensations, fait par celui-Ia meme qu'elles devorent /.../ Mais rien riemeut davantage que ce melange de douleurs et de meditations, d'observations et de delire, qui represente 1'homme malheureux se con-templant par la pensee, et succombant d la douleur, dirigeant son ima-gination sur lui meme, assez fort pour se regarder souffrir, et neanmoins incapable de porter d son ame aucun secours(De Stael 1871: 329) What we have here is a contact between the directness of experience and the indirectness of thought reflecting on this experience. According to de Stael, this contact was best presented by Goethe and Rousseau. Following their model, she also reflects on passion: “Je me transporterai done a quelque distance des impressions que j'ai re9ues, et j'ecrirai sur Heloise comme je ferais, je crois, si le temps avait vieilli mon coeur.” (De Stael 1871: 5) We find a similar approach in the introduction to the book De PAllemagne, where the author explains: “Je m' etait cependant interdit dans ce Iivre, comme on le verra, toute reflexion sur 1'etat politique de 1'Allemagne; je me supposais a cinquante annees du temps present; mais le temps present ne permet pas qu' on 1' oublie.” (De Stael 1968: 38)
What this distance is about was very precisely expressed by Paul Valery in his verses from Fragments de Narcisse, where he says:
Cette tremblante, frele, et pieuse distance
Entre moi-meme et 1'onde, et mon ame, et les dieux8
Reflection is therefore a much more complex term than it may appear at first glance, because on the one hand, through de Man’s concept of Modemity, it extends to Bakhtin’s notion of the dialogic, whereas on the other, through this same approach, as it tums out later, it questions one of the basic concepts of Romantic poetry: the concept of organism.
Regardless of whether she vvrites from the point of view of literary or social criticism, De Stael invariably establishes a distance"from what is nearest to her. In the essay on Rousseau, it is the author of Nouvelle Heloise himself. In the space of this distance, created with an act of reflection, the subject of enunciation of de StaePs discourse is constituted. (De Man 1966: 38) From the historical perspective, this region seems distinctly intermediate, situated betvveen two centuries and their cultures and, more-over, during the time of the Revolution and the following years. Madame de StaePs position is invariably the point of view of a witness to historical events, observing them from a highly personal perspective, although it is history that always speaks through her testimonial discourse. (Omacini 1982) In other words, her subjective discourse constantly transcends rationality (Compare Forycki 1998: 54, 55). At least in the case of her work On Germany, this discourse can also be read as a complex dialogue between 18lh century Enlightenment ideas and the Romantic sensibility that emerged at the tum of the century and became fully developed in the 19th century, or, in more radical terms, as the dialogue betvveen French
and German cultural identity. Identity is here meant as something that facilitates self-identification, while at the same time opening the nation or the individual and allowing them to establish a relationship towards the other. Because of this specific role of her discourse as both an inter-mediary and a connecting link, de Stael’s plače in the world literary canon can be defined as peripheral and not yet completely fixed, as fluid and transgressive, in terms of breaking through the borders of a fixed defi-nition of a certain cultural entity or else as open to the historical, hetero-geneous, the contingent and variable, in other words, for those very ele-ments that according to Kant refer directly to the reflecting power of judge-ment. The latter is also “understood as an articulation of the experience according to which the demand for totality and universality implied by the logic of the universal explanation cannot be fully implemented by definition”, and is therefore always open, “recording the irreducible hete-rogeneity of the specific and the inaccessibility of the universal”. (Riha 1993: 89) According to Kant, this openness of the reflecting power of judgement enables the recognition of the “a-subjective Other” or, in other words, it facilitates openness to othemess, openness of the self to the non-self: “Cest un moi insatiable de non-moi ...” as Baudelaire put it in “Z,e peintre de la v/e moderne”.9 (Baudelaire 1980: 795)
Openness to the non-self or openness to the other is a prerequisite for any dialogue, including that between different cultures. This is also the reason that openness to the non-self, which is theoretically based on the reflecting power of judgement, is also the only appropriate defming feature of any inter-cultural dialogue. Thanks to this defming feature, the Coppet discourses at least here and there reveal elements that confirmed the theory that Coppet as a plače of inter-cultural dialogue was not only a public but also a modem space. This means that it transcended the borders of its own time and space, vvhich were decisively marked by the emerging national myths. What happened at Coppet was not only a break with the Classicist poetics and views of the Enlightenment period, but also a breakthrough - although only faintly indicated - the conceptual framework of Romantic poetics. These elements manifest themselves particularly in the Coppet treatment of fundamental Romantic notions, such as irony, longing, chaos, genius, organism etc. To create a true image of Coppet and how it outgrew its own milieu we should study the use of ali these notions, a task beyond the scope of the present paper. For this reason, we focus on only one notion: the organism.
The organism as a fundamental concept of Romantic poetics and aesthe-tics, as an element of the Coppet discourses, is pivotal in the context of transcending cultural-historical defmitions and for the issue of cultural identity. Moreover, in literary criticism, it has kept a more or less impor-tant role late into the 20lh century. It is included in our discussion of Coppet because, on the one hand, among ali Romantic concepts, it has the most powerful ethical and political connotations, which are not connected merely with and do not transcend only the Enlightenment and Romanti-cism, but are also correlated with de Man’s and Baudelaire’s concept of modemity10 as well as with Habermas’ concept of the modem democratic
discourse; and on the other hand, because A.W. Schlegel was one of the main members of the Coppet circle and one of the most important theore-ticians to solidify this concept. In addition, the organicist understanding of art and, above ali, the criticism of this understanding in de Man’s and -in a sense - even Baudelaire’s insights of literary criticism, significantly marked the contemporary understanding of art.
The organism concept was developed by German Romantics: the concept in its metaphorical application broke through the framevvork of scientific discourse and became anchored in the humanities, particularly in literary criticism. Nevertheless, it did not become limited to it; it also significantly affected ethics and politics. Within Romantic poetics, the organism concept evokes a harmonious whole that allows aesthetic pleasure in the presence of a perfectly organised work of art, and is based on the Kantian difference between the artificial and natural vvhole. This difference was supposedly also decisive in the solving of the old opposition between content and form. Romantics maintain that these are more closely connected than had been generally believed. While the me-chanical form is extemal, the organic form is intemal and thereby ingrown in the content of a work of art. This means that it is not only content that carries messages, but also the fonu of a work, which is artistic in as far as it is a result of spontaneous inspiration. A work of art that is intended and understood as an organism is defined primarily by the constant unification of typically Romantic oppositions between špirit and matter, the infmite and the finite, oneness and variety, attraction and repulsion, revolution and tradition, etc. These oppositions in Romantic poetics “are no longer only logical correlates or moral altematives to be chosen from, but also potentials that man attempts to tum into reality at the same time”. (Hauser 1969: 208) According to A.W. Schlegel, the most exemplary works of art are Shakespeare’s plays, because their dissonances and consonances and contrasts vvithin hannony represent true Romantic vvorks of art avant la lettre. (A.W. Schlegel 1966)
These tenets of organicist aesthetics were also recognised by the Coppet authors, undoubtedly under SchlegePs influence. Schlegel’s idea of bringing together opposites in a harmonic whole was adopted by S. Sis-mondi, who in his exhaustive work on south European literatures wrote that the laws of symmetry according to which ali elements are arranged in the direction of a single goal, allow a level of unity and perfection in each of these elements, invariably leading from unity to variety. In addition to this, he initiates the reader into the secret of creation by facilitating the view of a single thought that guides a broad variety of actions and inte-rests. (Becq 1994: 831) Variations of this thought on the inner dynamics of a work of art can also be found in de StaePs works, particularly On Germany: “L'ame est im foyer qui rayonne dam tous les sens; c'est dam ce foyer que comiste l'existence; toutes les observations et tous les efforts des philosophes doivent se tourner vers ce moi, centre et mobile de nos sentiments et de nos idees”, (De Stael 1968:11/196); whereas somevvhere else in the book, she says: “L'idealisme intellectuel fait de la volonte, qui est l'ame, le centre de tout." (De Stael 1968: 11/169) They also appear in
the work of P. de Barante, another author who mentions a centre that is equal to the soul, and in the work of Bonstetten, who speaks of unity in variety. (Compare Becq 1994: 825-830) From On Germany, hovvever, it is evident that the author connects Romanticism with attributes such as the organic, modem, multi-layered, and varied; vvhereas she associates classicism with the mechanical, conservative, single-layered, and uniform. (De Stael: 1968/11) At the same time, she compares Romantic principles with the democratic bourgeois order, and Classicist principles with absolutist authority.
The Coppet authors in a sense adopted Schlegel’s concept of organism, which is based on the opposition between mechanism and organism, but in the process, they nevertheless expressed a certain reservation that is far from insignificant from today’s perspective. What stands out is the fact that the Coppet authors avoided the expression as such and, instead of the term organism, preferred to use the expression organisation, probably be-cause they detected certain implications of this term which are connected with absolutism and totalitarianism and which in German Romanticism could not be expressed at the time. German Romantic authors did not understand society in terms of the activity of individuals who enter into contractual relationships with one another. They (Schleiennacher, Schelling) compared the State with an organism living according to its own needs, independently of the arbitrary will of the legislator.11
They speculated that there exists a centre that, on behalf of the whole, manages the individual parts that are subordinated to it. Complete subordination to the whole is not only a characteristic of an anatomically perceived organism, but also of a mechanism, a system that ali Romantic authors categorically rejected. It appears that at this point Romantic po-etics produced a certain inherent contradiction that probably resulted from an anatomical perception of the organism. The Coppet authors, each in their own way, drew attention to the mechanistic aspects of the perception of an organism. In this sense they wamed also against the power-ful influence that Pariš as a centre had on the periphery. For example, in her essay on the French Revolution (Considerations sur les principaux evenements de la Revolution frangaise), de Stael lucidly, although with considerable sarcasm, states that the French Capital plays the role of the State, while the court plays the role of the Capital. Constant even more critically and explicitly addresses the problem of the relationship between the periphery and the centre: “ ...dans les etats, ou l'on detruit ainsi toute vie partielle, un petit etat se forme au centre; dans la capitale s'agglomerent tous les interets; la vont s'agiter toutes les ambitions. Le reste est immobile. Les individus perdu dans un isolement contre nature, etranger au lien de leur naissance, sans contact avec le passe /.../ se detachent d'une partie qu'ils n'apergoivent nulle part, et dont 1'ensemble leur devient indifferent, parce que leur attention ne peut se reposer sur aucune de ses parties. ”12 (Constant 1957: 1193)
With their anti-centralist and anti-totalitarian approach, the Coppet group went beyond certain implications, not only those of the enlighten-
ment, but also of romantic poetics. Although not completely intentionally, they succeeded in this, because the concept of organism as proposed by these authors is closer to modemism or to a physiological, rather than anatomical, understanding of the organism. With a modem or, if we use a somevvhat paradoxical expression, with a non-organicist or non-anatomical understanding of organism, we aim at the understanding of this notion that was developed by the French philosopher G. Canguilhem on the basis of Claude Bemard’s celi theory.13 It was he who pointed out that in the early 19th century, an organism was perceived from the point of view of anatomy, individual parts being formulated in accordance with the purpose of the whole: “Cest done la physiologie, qui donne le ele de la totalisation, eelle que 1'anatomie riavait pas su fournir. Les organes, les systemes, d'im organisme hautement differenciee n'existent pas pour eux-memes, ni les unes pour les autres en lant qu' organes ou systemes, ils existent pour les cellules, pour les radicaux anatomiques innombrables, leur creant le milieu interieur /.../ qui leur est neeessaire. En sorte que leur association, c'est-a-dire leur rapport de type social, fournit aux elements le moyen collectif de vivre ime vie separee /.../ La partie d'im tout depend d'un tout, qui ne s'est constitue que pour son entretien."'4 (Canguilhem 1970: 330) Therefore, it is not only the celi that exists because of the organism; the organism also exists because of the celi. If Bemard’s theory of the celi is applied either to the structure of society or the structure of a work of art, we find that communication within such an organisation flows not only from the centre to the periphery, but also contrariwise. Therefore, the whole does not have precedence over the individual part, and similarly the State does not have precedence over the individual. With a certain reservation we can say that at Coppet, the first examples of the anti-organicist view of society and art emerged, because in their own way the authors exposed the illusory nature of organicist metaphors. This not only challenged the organicist view of society and art, but also of language.
The Coppet authors largely focused on the latter, both in theory and practice. As we have already pointed out, there was very lively translation activity going on at Coppet, because of which the practical problems of various languages also needed to be solved. Difficulties with the translation of poetic language arose in the process. The specific nature of the latter was tackled by everybody alike, not only the linguist W. von Humboldt. He was particularly interested in the problem of the relation-ship betvveen poetic and everyday language, or how the universal reality of a language as a sensory medium that facilitates thinking can be brought into hannony with the particular demands of poetic creativity. He disco-vered that this contradiction could not be solved with logic or through deduction. Instead, it had to be synthesised through the act of poetic creation, because: “Everything in a language is based on an obvious or concealed analogy; its structure is consistently organic." (Humboldt 1903-1904: III/315) (Italics added by J.K.Š.)15
A similar conclusion was reached by A.W. Schlegel, who in his Briefe iiber Poesie, Silbenmass und Sprache analysed distinctive features of the
poetic language relying on Herder’s and Rousseau’s statements. Although he perceived poetry as a generating force, in other words in terms of the organicist approach, his linguistic theory is transcendent because it contains rudimentary the beginnings of the structuralist linguistic theory According to the lucid observations of Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, an expert on the romantic’s linguistic theory, A.W. Schlegel anticipated the arbitrary character of the linguistic sign and formulated a theory that does not merely directly concern the object, but also the idea of the object or its representation (Kurt Mueller-Vollmer 1967). For this reason, an indi-vidual can assume a reflective attitude tovvards the self and the world only through language. But Kurt Mueller-Vollmer failed to notice that through his theoretical insights, A.W. Schlegel contradicted both Humboldfs theory of the organic structure of language and his own claims about the organicist nature of language and literature. The theory of the arbitra-riness of the sign and the theory of language as an organic structure are namely mutually exclusive.
The beginnings of the anti-organicist understanding of art and society in Coppet discourses are significant because they prove that, in the early romantic period, there already existed elements revealing that from the very beginning romantic thought contained a certain sense of a plural reality that clearly shows that the organicist myth of the nation as a fixed and sealed totality can be surpassed and that its mythological nature can be exposed or rather demystified; this is despite the fact that, as it is generally known, the early Romantic period was a time when the process of the forming of nation states, national awarenesses, and national identities began, a process that in its present-day version is more important than ever.
The life and work of Madame de Stael (1776-1817) almost completely coincide with the period of the emergence of the first foundations of the formation of national states - Benedict Anderson places this period between the years 1776 and 1838 - in the period when national awarenesses began to emerge in Europe; when the “blend of capitalism, press technologies and unavoidable differences betvveen human languages created the possibility for the emergence of a new form of imagined community that through its basic morphology set up the stage of the modem nation”. (Anderson 1999: 56) This unavoidably gave birth to the thought and social processes that from the French Revolution, during the Napoleonic Wars and the Spring of Nations in 1848, and through the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, brought humanity to the implementation of a host of nationalisms, including well-known catastrophic consequences in the 20th century.
NOTES
1 Jacques Necker (1732-1804) was Minister of Finance under Louis XVI and the father of Madame de Stael.
2 For more on the topič, see Škulj 1991, 2, 42-46 and 1995, 2, 17-30.
3 For more on the topič, see Habermas, 1989.
4 These characteristics of the private sphere were among the reasons for the appearance of feminist literature in tis period, vvarning against the patriarchal nature of the public sphere that emerged from the reading public. As we know, the latter was mostly composed of vvomen.
5 Goethe translated the text into German and published it in Die Horen magazine.
6 Urteilskraft uberhaupt ist das Vermogen, das Besondere unter dem Allge-meinen zu denken. Ist das Allgemeine (die Regel, das Prinzip, das Gesetz) gegeben, so ist die Urteilskraft, vvelche das Besondere darunter subsumiert, (auch, wenn sie als transzendentale Urteilskraft a priori die Bedingungen angibt, vvelchen gemass allein unter jenem Allgemeinen subsumiert vverden kann) bestimmend. Ist aber nur das Besondere gegeben, wozu sie das Allgemeine finden soli, so ist die Urteilskraft bloss reflektierend. (Kant 2001:19, 1795: BXXXVI)
7 This interpretation of the third dimension of de Man’s “reflection” is not meant as completing his understanding of modernity, but only as one more view of modernity that could shed more light on this complex phenomenon.
8 Quoted from de Man 1966: 38.
9 For more on the topič, see Škulj 1991 and 1995.
10 With his understanding of modernity, Baudelaire questioned the notion of an art work as an organism (Compare Škulj 1995:22)
11 For more on the topič, see Becq 1994: 809-851.
12 Quoted from Becq 1998: 90.
13 Claude Bernard (1813-1878), the French physiologist who discovered nerve centres, independently of the central cerebral nerve-center.
14 Quoted from Becq 1994: 828.
15 Quoted from Kurt Mueller-Vollmer 1998: 211.
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LITERARY REPERTOIRE AND INTERFERENCE AMONG LITERATURES
Marijan Dovič
Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
82.0
821.163.6.09
The article uses concepts of polysystem theory, especially the notion of literary repertoire, to analyse mechanisms which take plače when a particular (national) literary system adopts and makes lise of elements of other systems' repetoires and in this way maintains its systemic optimum. An obvious model for these processes can be observed in Slovenian literature with reference to the work of a romantic poet, France Prešeren, who introduced models and repertoremes from other literary traditions in a systematic and original fashion. Later, these elements became a constitutive part of - by that time stili underdeveloped and weak - the Slovenian literary repertoire.
Key words: national literature / literary canon / literary interferences / Slovene literature / Prešeren, France
Contemporary empirical and systemic approaches to literatures (as they have evolved in the last two or three decades) can offer some interesting discussion points about the spatial/ transgressive in literature. One of these is the notion of literary repertoire that I vvould like to present here: it could be interesting in raising ‘multicultural’ questions about literatures on a theoretical level - from a more geographical and cultural point of view. I will focus on one contemporary systemic approach to literature: Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem theory, also labeled the Tel-Aviv School, which has been developing in Israel since 1970. This theoretical enterprise is based on the achievements of Russian formalism, especially its second phase, which Even-Zohar calls dynamic functionalism, and the achievements of semiotics. Its practical grounds were actually provided by problems connected to research into translation carried out by the Tel-Aviv group.
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Literary polysystem and literary repertoire
The central notion in polysystem theory is a literary polysystem (which has not so much in common with a “literary system” from the socio-logical systems theory). The literary polysystem is not defined as a series of texts or authors, but - as in other systemic or empirical approaches to literature - as a whole network of activities and relations connected with texts. Even-Zohar tried to visualize this network with a Jakobsonian six-part communication scheme adapted to literature:
* institution (context)
* repertoire (eode)
producer (‘vvriter’) ________________________________consumer	(‘reader’)
* market (contact/channel)
product (message)
Literary repertoire. Although it could be interesting how Even Žohar changes the ‘context’ into institution, which redirects our attention from the so called ‘referred context’ - Even-Zohar argues that Jakobson's model does not pay enough attention to the role that socio-cultural institutions have on the production and dissemination of this code - in the discussion about the spatial, the notion of lilerary repertoire is more challenging. Literary repertoire is defined as an aggregate of rules for creating and using (literary) products that need to be shared at least in one part by ali (active) participants in the system - this is indispensable to the system’s functioning. It is more than merely the rules, which are usually referred to as ‘code’ - more than just grammar - this is also ‘the lexicon’ of a given system. It is structured on two levels: the first is the level of individual elements, repertoremes; the second is the level of more general models -complexes of pre-knowledge which are the basis for ali our understanding (this sounds similar to Bourdieu's notion of habitus — individual schemes acquired in the course of time). Repertoire is one of the key elements of a literary polysystem that enables its ongoing processes and evolution. Even-Zohar's analyses show how a national literary system takes up fo-reign pattems and models when it needs them to maintain its ‘systemic optimum’ (Even-Zohar 1990).
The role of the repertoire in the system can be shown through the problems of literary translation, which is one of the favorite polysystem topics. Even-Zohar claims that the question of translated literature and its plače and functioning inside a given culture has not been sufficiently in-vestigated. It is often excluded from historical explanations of national literatures (also for ideological reasons). We always deal with two systems: the source system (SS) and the target system (TS). The translated corpus from a source system SS functions actually as an (important) subsystem of the target system TS. It is usual that translated literature remains something peripheral within the given system, but sometimes it happens that it occupies the central position and creatively helps model the literary center as a primary innovative force. Through translated literature new
models entering the target system, which essentially changes the repertoire, introducing new composition pattems, techniques, genres etc. But it should be stressed that a target system always selects its source according to its own needs and preferences (Even-Zohar 1990, Toury 1995).
There are three circumstances in which the translated literature is likely to occupy a central position in a given system:
- if a young, not yet fully developed literature is in question;
- if the literature has a peripheral/minority position with regard to another literature;
- when it is weak because of an intemal crisis.
(We will see later that in the case of Prešeren most of these conditions were present)
Literary interference. Nevertheless, Creative connections between literatures need not be carried out by directly translating individual artistic creations. One of the key polysystemic concepts is literary interference -vvhich seems to have much in common with the traditional comparativistic notion of influence (although Even-Zohar criticizes comparativistic research into influence, claiming that they have not moved beyond the level of individual studies towards general laws and mechanisms; most compara-tivists vvould probably not agree with that). Interference is when a source literature becomes a source of direct or indirect borrowings in the target literature. These processes are essential for every literature and should be studied intensively and be included in explanations of national literary histories (which in practice is rarely the case). But these borrowings need not be connected only to texts, genres or models - and I think it is here that we can look for one of the differences from comparative research into influence - it is possible to model ali the relations in the target poly-system on those of the source system: this also includes, for example, the organization of literary critique, institutions, publishing system, State funding of art and so on.
The fact remains that every young literature was established on the basis of interferences - and its subordination to foreign influences could have lasted for a long time - which is especially characteristic of minority literatures. Many historical examples can be indicated: the subordination of American literature to English, Czech or Slovenian to German etc. The subordination lasts longer especially when the producers are bilingual and also take an active part in the dominant polysystem. The Slovenian romantic poet Prešeren also wrote poetry in German, and actually - as Kajetan Gantar has pointed out in an excellent study - he could use more sophisti-cated allusions, for example, from Latin poetry in his German sonnets because of his awareness that he could address more sophisticated, in-tellectual readers. Actually, with Slovenian poetry he was not only creating the ‘products’, but he also had to create an adequate audience - which was quite a task, taking into account that he had to dispute with a strong faction advocating “rural” language and literature.
Anyway, if we observe it from this perspective, the relation dominant-subordinated becomes something “nonnal”: it is no shame to recognize
that at least once ali European literatures were in a similar situation -which is when they ‘separated’ from Latin tradition. Even-Zohar's working hypotheses conceming the general principles of interference teli us that literatures are always in interferential relations (ali of them once developed through interference from more developed: Accadian could not manage vvithout Sumeric, Latin vvithout Greek, the major European literatures without Latin), and that interference is usually one-way: source literature can have a strong impact on the target, and ignore the latter completely at the same time (stili, two-way interference is possible). There are also some conditions. necessary for the emergence of interference: first of ali, certain contacts must exist. Usually, the source literature is selected with regard to its prestige, not necessary political or economic, but cultural. It can also be selected because of its dominance. But in most cases interference appears when the target literature lacks something, for example when the young Creative generation feels the current norms existing in the repertoire/polysystem are inadequate. In this case they want to renew them, and if they find the things they need already developed in another polysystem, interference is very likely.
Interliterary exchange mechanisms. A high degree of responsiveness to interference can be found in so-called dependent polysystems - those that have been leaning on a foreign polysystem for a long time and become weak - not necessarily in terms of economy or politics, but when another system offers new, more developed functions. A weak polysystem cannot operate using exclusively its own repertoire, which is why it takes up foreign models and repertoremes. This insufficiency cannot be nume-rically evaluated, yet on the level of the structure and repertoire it is possible to speak of a systemic optimum. If this optimum cannot be maintained within the framework of the domestic repertoire, the need to adopt foreign models is generated by systemic requirements: this happens through mechanisms of interference and transfer. In this way, systems renew their repertoires. The traces of these relations remain visible, structurally built into the polysystem's history, also when direct relations are long past.
In his numerous studies Even-Zohar has considered especially the complicated relations between Russian and Hebrew - this for him is an example of transfer, where Hebrew is in the position of a dependent (weak) polysystem. In its young phase in the 20th century the emerging Hebrew literature leaned strongly on the Russian repertoire and adopted the latter on ali structural levels. Actually, it was more then just an influence, it helped to constitute the new Hebrew culture, its literary language, and (with that) also models of reality (The levels of transfer mentioned in Even-Zohar's studies include directly ‘importing’ avant-garde prosody and intonation models, syntax, calques - in fiction writing the use of indirect speech - dramatic dialogues; the use of ‘void pragmatic connecti-ves’ as a marker of a ‘live’ spoken language etc.) An important point here seems to be that through taking up the elements of repertoire more is going on that just a pure exchange of “patterns ” - because these pattems
hide more than that - within them a culture's general models and the societal values are inscribed. And after the phase of direct transfer is over, the next generations take up what was already there, and often the new repertoire elements start developing their own dynamics. In the course of time the original source becomes less and less visible, but anyway these processes remain inscribed vvithin the structure of a polysysteni.
Prešeren and renewing the Slovenian literary repertoire
These processes can be illustrated by one of the key periods in Slovenian literary history, a period in which the development of a repertoire became a central problem, which was dealt with consciously at least by one part of the participants in the system. In the early 19th century the literary system in Slovenia was evidently underdeveloped and weak, unable to perform aesthetic functions comparable to other European languages and literatures, having a little bit more tradition only in religious, utilitarian and quasi-nationalistic writing. Attempts to provide highbrow reading for the small educated population were mostly not very convincing in terms of aesthetics. Even more - a great number of intellectuals shared the opinion that it was first necessary to develop literature for simple, uneducated people, so more ambitious attempts were often condemned as being too early in regard to ‘the State of the art’ in Slovenia.
In this period (the ‘twenties and especially the ‘thirties) two men appeared with high potential and high aspirations: an unusually educated critic and essayist, Matija Čop, and an extremely talented poet France Prešeren - let it suffice to say that they, especially the latter, now repre-sent the top canonical figures in Slovenia’s history, bordering on national idols, and that ‘Prešemoslovje’, studies of Prešeren and his works, is actually one of the founding pillars of Slovenian literary criticism and historiography. It is hard to say anything new on this subject - I will therefore only try to present (from a new vantage point) some of the well-known facts which are interesting in the context of the interliterary exchanges that take plače through literary repertoire.
‘Cultivating’ a poetic language. The first thing that is interesting here is the idea of cultivating a poetic language through the systematic introduction of new poetic fonns. This project, initiated by Matija Čop's famous literary program (the program itself was obviously based on the ideas of the Schlegel brothers) includes the development of complicated poetic forms mostly from Italian and Spanish poetry. A fortunate coincidence provided an able artist on the other side of this program -able not only to perform this ‘metrical tasks’, but also to pour a real lyricisim into these verse forms (Prešeren’s poetry can stili please even a contemporary reader). The list of the forms introduced and mastered by Prešeren is impressive: the sonnet (in Schlegefs theory this form was a real test of artistic and linguistic ability), the wreath of sonnets, terza rima, ottava rima, Spanish romance with assonances, oriental forms (ghazal), nordic ballad, complicated forms of Latin poetry etc.
Versification system. One of the crucial repertoire questions that the Čop-Prešeren duet faced successfully was the question of a versification system that would best suit the emerging Slovenian literature. Here we must admit that both had a profound sensitivity to this problem, vvhich was not only in Slovenia burdened by the tension to ‘copy’ the antique quantitative system. It is interesting hov/ Čop's attitude tovvards the antique verse system (which he was very familiar with, besides being a great fan of Roman poetry) was ahead of his time. His analyses and argumentation are very clear: the most appropriate versification for Slovenian literature is a sylabotonic system vvhich is also supported - unlike in some other Slavonic countries - by the fact that the accent of the word is not fixed to first, second, last or any other syllable. The quantitative verse system simply doesn't suit! Čop’s conclusion becomes even more important when we take into consideration the fact that at least a small part of the leamed literary production in Slovenia was - following German examples - trying hard to imitate ancient quantity and its complicated versification rules. Although Prešeren had also written some poetry in the “ancient” way, the general decision for sylabotonic versification system was made - and this gave Slovenian literature a chance to develop according to the natural conditions of its language: using the various rhythmical patterns of exchanging accented and non-accented syllables, combined with rhymes, as its primary expressive means. In this way this unstable systemic feature was stabilized - vvhich vvas of extreme develop-mental importance.
Opening new spaces. Prešeren had really adopted many models (of his Creative influences one could mention Petrarca, Dante, Ariosto, Tasso; Vergil, Ovidius, Horatius; Voltaire, Gleim, Uhland, Burger, Byron, Kollar, Mickievvicz and many others) - and here it is not crucial at ali vvhether he adopted them directly or indirectly - the point is that these models became an important part of the Slovenian literary repertoire and began to live their ovvn life (for example: the sonnet has been a very popular vehicle for poetic expression since then). Even more: Prešeren adopted these models so naturally, as if they vvere ‘ours’. And this is hovv the vvorlds of the medieval troubadours, the Roman empire, medieval and renaissance Italy or Prešeren's contemporaries, European romantic vvriters, became the ‘common property’ of our cul ture and literature - vve actually feel them to be Slovenian ways of experiencing life! It is possible to say that a by-product of Prešeren's enterprise - especially in regard to the later signi-ficance of his vvorks for the development of the literary system - vvas also anchoring the connected ‘semiotic spaces’ of other cultures in the Slovenian cultural sphere.
There are also some other ‘repertoire changes’ provoked by Prešeren -
I	vvould like to mention his introduction of a nevv, ‘bohemian’ type of romantic poet into Slovenia's social life vvith his introduction of ‘scandal’ through poetry, vvith his interesting erotic life, his love for excessive drinking, rumors about pornographic ditties he is said to have vvritten and so on. We can also mention the heavy conflict vvith the censorship system
and the development of means for fighting against it: the censorship pressure lay heavily on this generation - they had to consider the possi-bility of their products being banned for ethical or political reasons at any time. In this situation they activated a netvvork of supporters, intellectuals from other Slavic countries, which helped in this uneven cultural confron-tation of concepts.
Conclusion
Prešeren's example shows how repertoire development requirements are one of the crucial generators for changes and exchanges in literary poly-systems. National(istic) literary historiographies resist and try to conceal these processes by overemphasizing the originality of national authors and their products, yet history shows clearly that no literary system could do without borrowing repertoire elements from other systems at least in one phase. In this way the historical interconnectedness - or transgressi-veness - of literary discourse (which has been acknowledged by literary comparatists at least since thematological discoveries of ‘travels’ of fairy motifs in Euro-Asian) comes to the fore.
LITERATURE
BOURDIEU, Pierre (2000): The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. by Susan Emanuel. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
CATTRYSSE, Patrick (1997): Polysystem Theory and Cultural Studies. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (CRCL/RCLC), XXIV/1, p. 49-55.
ČOP, Matija (1983); Pisma in spisi. Ed. by Janko Kos. Ljubljana, Mladinska knjiga. (Kondor 206.)
DIMIC, Milan V. (1993): Polysystem Theory. In Encyclopedia of Contemporary literary theory. Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Ed. by Irena R. Makaryk. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University ofToronto Press, p. 151-155.
DOVIČ, Marijan (2002). Radikalni konstruktivizem in sistemska teorija kot teoretična temelja empirične literarne znanosti. Primerjalna književnost XXV/2, p. 59-76.
EVEN-ZOHAR, Itamar (1990): Polysystem Studies. Poetics Today XI/1 (Special Edition).
EVEN-ZOHAR, Itamar (1997): Factors and Dependencies in Culture: A Revised Outline for Polysystem Culture Research. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (CRCL/RCLC), XXIV/l, p. 15-34.
GANTAR, Kajetan (2002): Antični substrat v metaforiki Prešernovih nemških pesmi. In: France Prešeren - kultura - Evropa. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, p. 125-148.
KOS, Janko (2001): Primerjalna zgodovina slovenske literature. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga.
LAMBERT, Jose (1997): Itamar Even-Zohar's Polysystem Studies: An inter-disciplinary Perspective on Culture Research. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (CRCL/RCLC), XXIV/l, p. 7-14.
LUHMANN, Niklas (2000): Art as a Social System. Trans. by Eva M. Knodt. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
NOVAK, Boris A. (2002): Odmevi trubadurskega kulta ljubezni pri Prešernu. In France Prešeren - kultura - Evropa. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, p. 15-48.
PREŠEREN, France (1974): Pesnitve in pisma. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga. (Kondor 25 and 35.)
SCHMIDT, Siegfried J. (1980): Grundriss der Empirischen Literatunvissen-schaft. Band 1&2. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Vieweg.
SCHMIDT, Siegfried J. (1989): Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
SHEFFY, Rakefet (1997): Models and Habituses: Problems in the Idea of Cultural Repertoires. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (CRCL/RCLC), XXIV/l, p. 35-47.
SNOJ, Vid (2002): Ženska sonce - Razris figure iz Petrarcovega in Prešernovega pesništva. In France Prešeren - kultura - Evropa. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, p. 61-74.
TOURY, Gideon (1995): Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam -Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
APPROCHES METHODOLOGIQUES DE LA TRANSGRESSION SPATIALE
Bertrand Westphal
Universite de Limoges, France
82.0
Methodological Approaches to Spatial Transgression. After a short semantic overview of transgression, which results in an analysis of the notion of threshold, the article closely examines the relations between space and transgression. Scrutinizing the idea of transgression in a socio-poetic framework by using the example of the hospitality code, the author focuses on the dynamics of whole large units, as elaborated by Y. Lotman (semiospheres), I. Even-Zohar (polysystem) and by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari (the dialectic of deterritorialization). In conclusion, the analysis is related to the views of transgression as an imagological and geocritical notion.
Key words: literary methodology / treshold / hospitality / polysystem / semiosphere / deterritorialization / imagology / geocriticism
To transgress derive du latin transgredi, dont le sens etait essentiellement spatial : "passer outre". Chez les Romains, on transgressait lorsque l’on passait de l’autre cote d’une limite ou d’un fleuve, ou lorsque Fon passait d’un argument a un autre (sauter du coq a 1’ane). On transgressait egale-ment lorsque Fon depassait la mesure.
La transgressio etait Faction qui consistait a transgredi. Le substantif etait en principe le reflet du predicat, mais la transgressio pouvait aussi etre une figure de rhetorique, que Fon traduirait aujourd’hui par hyper-bate. Or Fhyperbate est a priori la figure de Finversion ou de la disso-ciation de mots normalement connectes. Pour d’autres, Feffet propre a Fhyperbate tient plutot a "une spontaneite qui impose 1’ajout de quelque verite, evidente ou intime, dans une construction syntaxique qui paraissait close"1. Peut-etre cet effet est-il present dans la transgression meme, qui agencerait une plage d’intimite au-dela de la cloture. Enfin, la transgressio pouvait etre une infraction : c’est qu’on ne franchit pas une limite sans sortir de la norme. Mais les Romains n’accordaient pas la priorite a cette acception du mot.
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Dans les langues germaniques (allemand, suedois, notamment), la racine transgressio n’a pas eu de succes ; elle n’a pas ete incluse dans le Wortschatz. En fran9ais moderne (comme en italien et en espagnol), la transgression a pris un sens qui s’est developpe a partir des marges de Petymon : la transgression consiste a violer une limite plus morale que physique. On transgresse la loi. En anglais, le sens de transgression ou de to transgress est a peu presque equivalent, mais Pacception du tenne parait plus dynamique. Sans doute paree que to trespass est un quasi-synonyme. La distinction entre to trespass et trepasser aurait ete plus stimulante, le trepas etant la transgression ultime en fran9ais. L’italien aurait servi d’ar-bitre, trapassare se situant quelque part entre transgresser et trepasser (en frangais).
Quoi qu’il en soit, les espaces de notre transgression ne sont plus ceux des Romains. Pour ces demiers, il se serait agi d’examiner ce qui se deploie au-dela du seuil. Tout bonnement. Encore que... Le seuil lui-meme etait per?u selon deux angles differents : il etait /imes-ligne d’arret, mais aussi /;«;e«-frontiere poreuse destinee a etre franchie.
Or la transgression n’est pas le propre du franchissement des lignes poreuses. Elle suppose une volonte, en tout cas une effraction. Les Romains pretaient davantage attention a la nouveaute qu’a 1’interdit. Peut-etre qu’au fil du temps on a fini par croire que la nouveaute ne pouvait se situer que dans 1’espace investi par effraction.
Dans ce contexte mouvant, parler des espaces de la transgression n’est pas une affaire simple.
On a d’une part 1’espace de cette transgression, en quelque sorte la zone d’intimite qui s’ouvre au-dela d’une construction qui paraissait close, pour reprendre la definition de l’hyperbate. Cet espace-la peut etre examine selon une optique sociopoetique. II s’agit alors de determiner les regles en vigueur au seuil au-dela duquel la transgression est constatee et les manieres dont elles sont appliquees, ecartees ou violees. Plusieurs codes regissent les limites : le code de Phospitalite, par exemple. L’intersection, la zone de contact entre les acteurs sociaux, est regie par des regles formulees. Ces regles supposent qu’un rythme soit partage. A defaut d’un rythme commun, la transgression sera inevitable. Dans certains cas, la transgression est massive et se transforme en intrusion voulue : c’est notamment le cas lors des guerres, vastes transgressions d’Etat.
Mais la transgression peut entretenir un autre type de relation avec Pespace. Elle peut devenir une caracteristique propre a ce demier et s’appliquer a de grands ensembles.
L’espace est generalement per?u dans sa stabilite (sauf lorsqu’il est sujet a la guerre, qui vise a modifier ce qui est etabli). Mais, dans une optique heracliteenne, on pourrait aussi bien estimer que Pespace est dans son essence meme transgressif. II n’est pas fixe, il fluctue, il est saisi dans des forces (ou genere une dynamique) qui provoquent (que provoque) sa permanente oscillation. Peut-etre ce perpetuum mobile sanctionne-t-il non plus tant une transgression qu’une transgressivite inherente a la spatialite et a toute perception du lieu. La philosophie s’est attachee a etudier cette mobilite/transgression permanente. Panta rei, deja. Ses applications litte-
raires sont plus manifestement presentes dans les osuvres de Lotman (et sa "semiosphere"), d’Even-Zohar qui a conpu la theorie des polysystemes et surtout dans celle de Deleuze/Guattari (et leur "dialectique de la terri-torialite").
Enfin, et on 1’aura compris, la transgression etant un franchissement spatial (un mouvement) apprehende selon une norme morale, elle releve principalement du point de vue. De meme que 1’espace est souvent perpu dans sa stabilite, le point de vue est frequemment perpu dans son uničite. Mais, a partir du moment ou l’espace se fait mobile (trans/gression, trans/ formation), il entre dans le champ d’une multifocalisation (multiplication, voire proliferation de points de vue), qu’il s’agira d’examiner dans toute sa complexite. L’imagologie est F etude du point de vue sur un lieu. La geocritique est P etude de la multifocalisation. L’une est placee dans la perspective du modemisme, 1’autre s’inscrit dans une "logique" postmoderne, ou la transgression se relativise a mesure que les concepts de verite (et done de norme), ainsi que de realite, s’affaiblissent.
Sociopoetique de la transgression : quelques pistes.
La transgression presente des aspects variables - c’est meme son apa-nage, mais elle repond a une serie minimale de criteres defmitoires. Ainsi ne peut-il y avoir transgression que dans la mesure ou 1’on contrevient a un code, ou a un rite. La transgression ne peut done etre constatee qu’en presence de deux instances : le contrevenant et celui qui atteste la contra-vention. Parfois il s’agit de la meme personne. Tel est le cas de Robinson Crusoe sur son Tle, qui trače des lignes de demarcation et cumule avec delices le double statut de juge et de partie. Mais Robinson lui-meme sort assez vite - et ineluctablement - de son isolement; la presence d’un Ven-dredi s’impose, sans doute parce que la transgression est par nature dans 1’interaction. Se lasserait-on trop vite d’etre le ressort exclusif de son propre tribunal ?
Le code est en principe monologique. II est explicite dans un discours oral ou ecrit, mais en tout cas articule, a savoir : saisi dans une concate-nation d’articles, qui laissent aussi peu de marge que possible a Pinterpre-tation. La monologie du code s’etend bien entendu a son environnement: elle suppose que tout instant participe d’une duree homogene et que tout lieu releve d’un espace uniforme. La transgression intervient des lors que se dessine une alternative a la ligne droite temporelle, aux figures trop geometriques de l’espace police. Elle est dans le side step qui laisse percevoir les incalculables declinaisons de 1’espace-temps.
Le code fait de 1’espace-temps un bloc unique et destine a le rester. Or la transgression impose le pluralisme, a savoir la polychronie et 1’hetero-topie. L’heterotopie connait du reste plusieurs acceptions : c’est bien entendu Pespace apprehende dans sa pluralite, mais c’est aussi, selon Michel Foucault, Fespace que Findividu soustrait aux intrusions exterieures. En d’autres termes, il s’agit de Fespace secret, Fespace de Fhyperbate, celui ou Findividu deploie un supplement de verite intime a 1’abri des yeux du monde, des preseriptions du code.
La tension entre la volonte d’unite sanctionnee par la norme et le besoin de liberte qui s’esquisse dans les marges du code inscrit 1’individu dans une societe ou coexistent des rythmes asynchrones, plus ou moins compatibles. Tout le monde ne vit pas a la meme vitesse. Et la vitesse est elle-meme un concept tres relatif. Pour un Indien Hopi, la construction d’une autoroute ne merite pas que le desert du Nouveau-Mexique soit lacere. A quoi bon ? Les cycles regissant la vie du Hopi n’ont rien de commun avec la frenesie du Blanc. La polychronie et 1’heterotopie pro-duisent une polyrythmie, que Fon a pu etudier dans des disciplines comme 1’anthropologie (par Edward T. Hall, a qui j’ai emprunte l’exemple pre-cedent). On en tient moins compte en litterature - ce qui est dommage. Car la pluralite des types d’inscription dans 1’espace-temps, et la proli-feration des rythmes qui en decoule, sont en partie a la base d’une approche sociopoetique. Cest que le code ecrit est certes une entite monologique, mais il est complete et parfois supplee par un certain nombre de normes non-ecrites, qui sont destinees a reglementer les marges, a assurer des transitions. La transgression n’est pas forcement le resultat d’un acte volitif; elle provient aussi d’une transition mal negociee, d’une tension non controlee qui se transforme en turbulence. Je me demande avec in-quietude ce qui se passerait dans mon Limousin d’adoption si 1’invite refu-sait d’obtemperer a la fameuse injonction : "Mais finissez done d’entrer!".
De veritables rituels sont destines a muer en transitions acceptables ce qui autrement seraient des transgressions.
II	m’est deja arrive d’examiner2 des situations de ce type a propos de zones ou le mecanisme rituel est particulierement bien huile, et coercitif (la contravention pouvant entrainer la peine capitale ou le debut d’une vendetta). Je songe notamment aux montagnes de 1’Albanie, a la zone du Rrafsh en bordure du Kosovo, ou etait - est encore ? - en vigueur le celebre kanun, le coutumier clanique attribue a Lek Dukagjini, et transerit au moment de 1’independance du pays (en 1912) par un pere franciscain, Shtjefen Kostantin Gje^ov. Le kanun definissait le code de comportement cense regler tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne. II lui incombait d’apporter une reponse a une question comme celle-ci : que se passe-t-il quand un etranger souhaite/doit franchir le seuil d’une demeure ? Le passage bien maitrise permet d’operer un rapprochement, d’autant que le xenos est repute theos ; le passage echappant au controle des interesses constitue en revanche une transgression. Par consequent, d’un point de vue sociopoetique, la transgression sera ramenee a une mauvaise gestion de 1’interface spatio-temporelle (non-synchronisation) et a une interaeti-vite avortee (incongruence). La transgression peut avoir plusieurs mobiles : la malveillance, certes, mais aussi - et le plus souvent - tel petit glisse-ment imperceptible, infmitesimal, resultant de la meconnaissance du code de la part de 1’impetrant. Ismail Kadare ne s’est pas prive de recourir a des cas de figure de cette sorte dans quelques-uns de ses romans les plus celebres (Le Dossier H., Avril brise, ...). Kadare explore en fait l’expe-rience que Edward T. Hall resume ainsi : "[...] comment les individus sont lies les uns aux autres et pourtant isoles par d’invisibles tissus de rythmes et par des murs de temps cache."3
La gesti on de 1’interface spatio-temporelle, qui se traduit par une con-cordance ou une discordance rythmique - discordance d’autant plus pro-bable et redoutable que l’on se rapproche du seuil, de la ligne de de-marcation entre unites (sociales, etc.) coherentes - est au cceur des pre-occupations de tout ensemble legal visant a reguler les passages, a desamorcer les transgressions. Tel est bien entendu le role du code de 1’hospitalite, qui s’efforcera d’eviter la confusion entre le statut d'hospes (hote) et celui &'hostis (ennemi).
La typologie des interfaces ne se limite pas a 1’etude du code de 1’hospi-talite. Elle englobe tous les aspects du franchissement des frontieres. L'etude de la transgression est coextensive a une sociopoetique de la mobilite.
Dynamiques de la transgression. Oscillation des grands ensembles.
Les transgressions spatiales peuvent porter sur les petites unites, et jusque sur la sphere d’intimite. A 1’autre bout de 1’echelle, elles peuvent concer-ner les grands ensembles. A un niveau macroscopique, tout deplacement peut entrainer une transgression. La definition traditionnelle du code, en tant que repere a ne pas transgresser, jette les bases d’une telle inter-pretation. En effet, "le code regle un domaine". Bien entendu, le legislateur entend par la un domaine d’application de la norme, au sens thematique. Mais "domaine" peut aussi etre entendu au sens spatial du terme. Le domaine est alors une vaste unite spatiale, dont la coherence est assuree par une homogeneite de sens, une synchronie reconnue.
En fonction des approches, le domaine peut changer de denomination. Pour un semiologue tel que Yurij Lotman, il s’agira d’une "semiosphere"4; pour Gilles Deleuze et Felix Guattari, il s’agira plutot d’un "territoire". Mais dans tous les cas 1’instabilite constitue la caracteristique principale de l’unite prise en compte. Dans ce cadre, aucune representation ne definira 1’espace dans la stase : 1’entropie semble gagner tous les plis de l’existant. Et la transgression est un processus inherent au mouvement. Contraire-ment a ce qui se deroule dans la sphere d’intimite (consideree selon une optique sociopoetique), ce n’est plus un code fige qui fait office de repere. Ici, la transgression correspond a un chevauchement, qui resultera d’un mouvement perturbant les grands equilibres. La transgression est en quelque sorte le resultat d’une oscillation, aussi peu imputable a une responsabilite particuliere que la derive des continents, que le choc de socles geologiques.
La transgression correspond en principe au franchissement d’une limite au-dela de laquelle s’etend une marge de liberte. Elle est alors emanci-patrice, mais aussi centrifuge : on fuit le cceur du systeme, 1’espace de reference. Dans le contexte qui retient ici notre attention, il n’en va pas tout a fait de meme. La transgression ne resulte plus d’une oscillation du centre vers la peripherie, mais plutot en sens contraire : les entites peri-pheriques pointent le centre, operent un rapprochement et visent a se
substituer au centre consacre. Par la meme, la transgression adopte une valence centripete. Voila pour le moins la theorie que Yurij Lotman, heritier du formalisme russe et promoteur de 1’ecole de Tartu (Estonie), a developpee dans son idee de choc de "semiospheres" (unites de sens spati-alisees), et que Itamar Even-Zohar, de 1’Universite de Tel-Aviv, a repris sous forme de theorie du polysysteme (la ou Pierre Bourdieu - sociologue, et non semioticien ou semiologue - parlait de "champs").
Une fois encore, 1’idee de base s’inspire d’une constatation d’ordre temporel : la synchronie n’est pas homogene ; elle est traversee par une multitude de lignes diachroniques. En clair, Pactualite est un agencement de forces plus ou moins contradictoires (entropiques) qui troublent la coherence du present. Cela signifie que le centre spadal et 1’actualite (en tant que reperes ontologiques) coincident, mais que cette coTncidence sera provisoire et, en tout etat de cause, illusoire. De meme que la synchronie est soumise a des forces diachroniques perturbantes, le centre au singulier est en relation avec une peripherie qui se decline toujours au pluriel. Comme le dit Even-Zohar : "It is, therefore, very rarely a uni-system but is, necessarily, a polysystem - a multiple system, a system of various sy-stems which intersect with each other"5. II va de soi qu’une telle approche integre la notion de transgression, et d’une certaine maniere la prive de toute connotation negative. La transgression fait partie du systeme, ou plus exactement c’est elle qui fait d’un systeme apparemment unique un polysysteme. La transgression est alors le nom que Pon donnera a Poscillation que j’evoquais tout a 1’heure. Elle correspond au principe de mobilite consubstantiel de 1’entite examinee. Elle n’entrera plus dans une echelle de valeur sanctionnee par une legitimite preetablie, une hierarchie, en somme. Car, comme le note encore Even-Zohar, "with a polysystem one must not think in terms of one center and one periphery, since several such positions are hypothesized"6. La limite est done integree dans un champ dynamique, ou ce qui evolue en peripherie est destine a se rap-procher du centre selon une loi d’interference. Par consequent, la transgression est neutralisee : elle n’est plus forcement affectee d’un coefficient negatif, mais correspond a un simple aete de franchissement. Elle est debarrassee de son acception ethique. On en revient en quelque sorte aux origines, a l’etymon spatialisant tramgredi, "passer outre", "aller au-dela".
Deleuze et Guattari aboutissent eux aussi a la neutralisation de la notion de transgression. Alors que chez Lotman, Even-Zohar et autres tenants du formalisme russe, c’est un systeme ou un ensemble de signes qui se met a proliferer - ce qui rend la transgression ineluctable chez Deleuze et Guattari, c’est le territoire qui s’agence de maniere rhizomatique, et done instable, selon un triple principe de connexion, d’heterogeneite et de multi-plicite. On note au passage que le meme vocabulaire est a 1’ceuvre dans la plupart des theories qui neutralisent la transgression. Si cette demiere est propre a des systemes fondes sur 1'homogene et l'unique, elle adopte une valence differente dans tout systeme heterogene et multiple engendrant sa propre ligne de fuite. Car il va de soi que la transgression au sens tradi-tionnel est difficile a concevoir dans un ensemble ou la ligne de fuite est integree, un ensemble pense comme un territoire destine a se deterrito-
rialiser. Comme disent Deleuze et Guattari : "Un territoire emprunte a tous les milieux, il mord sur eux, il les prend a bras le corps bien qu’il reste fragile aux intrusions [...] II a une zone interieure de domicile ou d’abri, une zone exterieure de domaine, des limites ou membranes plus ou moins retractiles, des zones intermediaires ou meme neutralisees, des reserves ou annexes energetiques"7. L’hyperbate continue a caracteriser cet espace d’intimite, mais ce demier ne se deploie plus en de?a d’une limite a transgresser : une simple membrane, au demeurant retractile, suffit a le proteger des assauts d’un code qui chercherait a imposer ses privautes. "L’essentiel est dans le decalage que Fon constate entre le code et le territoire"8, precisent Deleuze et Guattari. Or ce decalage desamorce la transgression entendue au sens traditionnel.
Focalisations multiples et transgression : de l’imagologie a la geocritique.
Jusqu’ici, j’ai tente d’examiner la transgression dans un cadre ou tri-omphe la proliferation - pluralite des conceptions temporelles (polychronie et asynchronie), spatiales (heterotopie), rythmiques (polyrythmie) et sy-stemiques (polysysteme, rhizome). Reste a prendre en compte la relation entre 1’observant et la realite observee (que 1’on declinera plutot au pluriel) et le type de representation qui en decoule. Cela suppose notamment que Ton s’interesse a la focalisation, au point de vue. A ce stade de mon etude, j’en reviens a la litterature ... qu’au plus fort de l’excursus se-miologique et philosophique je n’ai d’ailleurs jamais perdue de vue.
Pour qu’il soit question de transgression, il faut qu’une contravention soit constatee par un observateur (qui sera eventuellement 1’agent de la transgression). En litterature, la focalisation est susceptible d’etre etudiee de plusieurs manieres. On peut - comme Gerard Genette - 1’inserer dans une taxinomie narratologique. On peut aussi la poser plus etroitement en relation avec la notion de representation - cette demiere constituant la transposition tangible du referent tel qu’il a ete filtre par 1’observateur. Applique a un contexte spatial, le point de vue s’avere unique ou multiple. L’imagologie prend en consideration la representation qu’un observateur precis fait d’un referent: c’est notamment ce qui se produit dans les recits de voyage, selon une logique du voyageur que decrit Edward Said : "II n’y a aucun doute, en effet, que la geographie et 1’histoire imaginaires aident 1’esprit a rendre plus intense son sentiment intime de lui-meme en dramatisant la distance et la difference entre ce qui est proche et ce qui est tres eloigne"9. L’imagologie examine justement cet ecart, qui par essence empeche toute transgression. Le proche et 1’eloigne restent immuable-ment separes sans que la permutation soit envisagee, parce que le vo-yageur ne 1’envisage pas non plus.
Le geocriticien n’examine pas 1’espace du point de vue du voyageur, ou sur la foi d’une representation unique. II concentre son attention sur 1’espace en soi (ce qui revient d dire a "la" somme de representations dont il fait 1’objet), plutot que sur 1’observateur. II n’est pas dans mon intention
de revenir trop longuement sur une approche que j’ai tente de formaliser ailleurs.10 Disons simplement que dans une optique geocritique 1’espace est saisi a la fois dans sa dimension stratigraphique (souvenir deleuzien), dans sa dimension multifocale et dans sa dimension fictionnelle.
Comme nous Pavons vu, 1’espace est essentiellement mouvant dans le temps. Du coup, il est en perpetuelle emergence. II constitue en quelque sorte une oeuvre ouverte. L’espace, apparemment homogene dans 1’instant, est un compossible de mondes mouvants. La "transgressivite" est co-extensive a cette mobilite.
En outre, la geocritique ne vise pas seulement les espaces per?us dans leur dimension "etrangere", mais confronte plusieurs optiques - endogene, exogene, allogene - afin qu'apparaisse la dialectique sous-tendant tout processus de deterritorialisation. Des lors, 1'accent est mis davantage sur 1'espace observe que sur 1'observateur singulier. A titre d’exemple, on s’attachera moins a etudier la maniere dont Pascal Quignard ou Thomas Mann ont decrit chacun Lisbonne dans leurs romans que les aleas de la representation de Lisbonne aupres d’un echantillon suffisant d’auteurs portugais (Pessoa, Saramago, Lobo Antunes, ...), aupres de Quignard et de Mann, outre Volodine, Munoz Molina et quelques autres, sans oublier des cineastes comme Wenders ou Tanner, etc. (interdisciplinarne oblige). Sous cet angle, la geocritique contribue a mettre en relief les principaux stereotypes inherents a une representation figee de 1'espace humain (ou ethnotypes) pour mieux les demonter. Car la representation repose souvent sur une statistique (d’idees refues), qu’elle contribue a alimenter... ou qu’elle infirme, dans un elan transgressif.
La geocritique s'attache enfin a degager les fondements de ce qui fait de toute perception humaine une re-simulation elaboree sur un plan imaginaire, de ce qui fait de tout espace un lieu intertextuel, un "espace litteraire au carre" (Claudio Magris). II s’agira de decrypter la dimension fictionnelle de tout espace dit "reel".
Ces quelques principes rapidement enonces laissent penser que la geocritique pourrait devenir une approche utile pour affronter la question de la transgression spatiale en litterature (et dans d’autres formes de representation fictionnelle du realeme). Elle permettrait de degager ce que 1’espace, des lors qu’il est represente, possede d’intrinsequement transgressif ; en outre, et parce qu’elle permet de debusquer les stereotypes, elle consentirait aussi a la mise en plače d’un discours transgressif a 1’egard de la norme etablie, de toute doxa s’evertuant a juguler les vel-leites transgressives de la representation.
NOTES
1 Bernard Dupriez, Gradus. Les procedes litteraires, Pariš: UGE, coli. 10/18, 1984, p. 231.
2 Voir Bertrand Westphal, "Discordance/Concordance. Ismail Kadare et les rythmes de Phospitalite", in L ’hospitalite : Signes et rites, Alain Montandon (ed.), Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2001, pp. 141-155.
3 Edward T. Hall, La Danse de la v/e. Temps culturel, temps vecu, Pariš: Seuil (Collection "Points"), 1984, p. 11.
4 Youri Lotman, La semiosphere, Limoges: Pulim, 1999.
5 Itamar Even-Zohar, Polysystem Studies, in Poetics Today, 11: 1, 1990, p. 11.
6Ibid., p. 14.
7 Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Mitle plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrenie, Pariš: Minuit, 1980, p. 386.
8 Ibid, p. 396
9 Edward Said, L’OrientaIisme. L'Orient cree par VOccident, Pariš: Seuil, 1980, p. 71.
10 Bertrand Westphal, "Pour une approche geocritique des textes", in La geocritique mode d’emploi, Bertrand Westphal (ed.), Limoges: Pulim, 2000, pp. 9-40.
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SPACES OF INTERTEXTUALITY / THE INTERTEXTUALITY OF SPACE
Marko Juvan
Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
82.0
Literary discourse interpellates the reading subject to take positions in the imaginary. The subject's positions as structured by the text's spatial syntax can be undone by forces that produce transgressive spaces. Intertextuality transplants or evokes other literary and socio-cultural spaces. Because of the fundamental intertextuality of space, identities are in permanent hybridization.
Key words: textual world / space / intertextuality / transgression / boundary / cultural space / identity
The spatial in the intertextuality
The notion of intertextuality—the idea that each text produces meanings and structures by absorbing and transfonning other texts, utterances, and sign systems—was one of those conceptions of the 20th century that in the wake of modernist art signalled a shift of imagination and reasoning from temporal dominants to spatial models.1 It is, then, no surprise that inter-textuality arrived on the scene of contemporary theory in the company of spatial metaphors. Let me mention some characteristic formulations of Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes: “the volume of the social,” “the space of the text,” “text places itself in the history,” “the society inscribes itself in the text,” and “ali the texts of the space that has been read by the writer function in the paragram of the text.”2 There are several contemporary and subsequent terms that could be added to the list, such as Derrida’s “writing” and “trače” and Genette’s “palimpsest” and “hypertext,” the latter used extensively in internet culture as well. Even some older notions should be recalled that were used to explain, in the paradigms of classical rhetoric and 19lh-century historicism, relationships between new texts or utterances and the tradition of the deja dit. The first one is topos or common-place. Detached from its source in some classical, authoritative, or sacred
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texts topos transcended time and was preserved in spatial schemes of memoria (mnemonic art); thesauri of topics were a kind of repository of public good available to later poets and orators. The second one is imagery connected to the notion of influence (Juvan 2000b). In spite of its causal-temporal ground, the term “influence” shaped the discipline of comparative literature with geopolitical metaphors suggesting conquering and ovenvhelming another cultural territory by literary influxes, streams, and currents; their colonial and axiological subtext is not hard to decipher (“pure origins” vs. “unclean mixture,” “defming power” vs. “constituted subject”).
The stress on the spatial, so crucial for the idea of intertextuality, was provoked by the polemic against established notions of verbal interaction that represented communication as linear transmission of an information “package” from author to reader and backed by a monolithic common code. Intertextuality, with its spatial models, tried to put fonvard, in con-tradistinction to such views, at least two postulates. First, that each text is animated by an open dialogue generating a complex and ever changing network of inter-subjective relations and identity positions; second, that semantic and structural pattems of the text, like tips of icebergs, lie on an immense sea of the implicit, on several layers of codes, utterances, and cultural representations; for this reason the pattems are dynamic, indeter-minable, and subject to heterogeneous regimes of ascribing sense to lin-guistic data.
However, the spatial aspects of intertextuality briefly outlined so far are more or less bound to theory and to metaphorical thinking, which cannot be avoided even when one tries to construct explanatory models. But how can we actually explain the relationship between the inter-textuality and space represented in textual worlds?
The experience of the textual space and spatial segmentation
In literary discourse, imaginative spaces produced by linguistic signs in the text exert an effect of presence. A phantasma arises of being present in the world, a sense of real time and of lived experience (espace vecu) is created—as if the represented space, although unfmished and only partially determined, were beheld by the reader’s “invvard eye,” similar to psychic images triggered by personal memories or phantasies. Presence is established mainly by perspectivizing the phantasmatic space from a series of textually established point-of-views—that is, from implicit sub-ject-centres of semantic-axiological coordinates. A fictional point of view upon a fictional space interpellates, so to speak, the subject of reading and calls her/him to take a specific position in the imaginary. The inter-pellated reading subject is capable of activating cognitive schemes of vievving appropriate types of spatial structures; he/she tries, by way of inferring, to adjust memorized schemata, which are always semantic and value laden, to the flux of textual data.
What I want to call attention to are textually represented spaces’ mutual relations and boundaries. Regardless vvhether those spaces are derived from chronotopes typical of specifie literary genres (e.g., “realist,” “ima-ginary,” “allegoric,” “fantastic,” or “utopian” places), they normally pre-suppose discrete and structured delimitation and, within their boundaries, a coherent internal structure. This could be described as spatial syntax or, rather, as paratactic or hypotactic structures of inter-spatial relationships. The spatial syntax articulates and segments textually represented spaces and constitutes their hierarchy; for example, character A goes from a room to a garden, then sets out for shopping to the market plače (para-taxis); in the suburbs of a big city there is the house of a character B, who possesses a romantic painting representing a picturesque sea gulf; B is constantly dreaming about going there (hypotaxis). In these examples, the boundaries between larger and narrovver areas or between different kinds of spaces (“material,” “psychic,” and “artistic”) are well articulated and at least implicitly stable. Various and distinct spaces are assigned fixed po-sitions within the constellation of the textual world: they can exist parallel to each other within the same ontology, they can be embedded in a larger whole within the same world, or they belong to different ontologies (represented in the text as material, psychic, medial, virtual, etc.).
Transgressive spaces
Forces that transgress the logic of spatial delimitation and hierarchy often invade discrete and delimited spaces structured by spatial syntax. These forces generate spaces of transgression—areas where different spaces dissolve, amalgamate, cover one another, or move over/through another. By these moves, spaces lose their presence and firmness and disclose their imaginary, phantasmatic, and mobile natures. Within the limits of this paper it is not possible to describe and classify ali the kinds of transgressive forces that dissolve the logic of spatial syntax in literature. 1 will only mention four of them. The first one will be illustrated by Proust’s novels, the other three by examples from poetry of Srečko Kosovel (1904-26), a modernist and transgressive poet recently labeled “the Slovenian Rimbaud”:3
1. Figural transgression. The first kind of transgression is underpinned by a long tradition, yet it is significantly modified in modem writing. In the domain of metaphor, schemes of one cognitive-semiotic field are pro-jected upon another field: boundaries between two different semiotic spaces are blurred, spatial structures interfere and by their interaction they generate a new field of sense and imagination.4 This is characteristic of modem metaphor. For example, in KosovePs lyrical poem Po srebrni mesečini (“In Silver Moonlight”), the original noctumal maritime land-scape begins to fork with the support of metaphors that open up other imaginative spaces, ones associated with the poet’s body and psyche: “A dark boat floats / in silver moonlight, / from the green harbour / a boat-man set sail, / from the green crystal / of a silent heart. / From the h earl
of midnight,”5 The poetic space in this text with a symbolic touch is trans-gressive, oscillating between the representation of outward and inward worlds. As shown in this example from Kosovel, the traditional dual structure of semantic figures (direct vs. metaphoric meaning) that used to establish clear-cut spatial syntax (space compared vs. comparing space) in modem poetic discourse turns to spatial undecidability.
2. Palimpsest transgression. In contradistinction to figural transgres-sion, the second way of creating transgressive spaces was first constituted by modem writing. In his study Proust palimpseste, Gerard Genette (1966: 59) pointed out that Prousfs writing in A la recherche du temps perdu breaks the stability both of temporal sequence and spatial frames. Prousfs narrator not only persistently compares isolated spaces using sophisticated and extended comparisons, metonymy, or metaphors (for example, by comparing Venice to native Combray, Venice becomes “another Combray, although other Combray: aquatic, precious, exotic”; Genette 1966: 46; italics original, translation mine), but also passes from one plače to another, neglecting boundaries and leaving behind almost no traces of traditional tropes. Instead, he creates a narrative palimpsest that conjoins disparate places and moments by transposing fragmentary de-scriptions and attributes from one site to another: the conjoined places are active, connected to specific literary characters, and in the narrative they are being constantly “recalled, reintegrated, reinvested, always present together” (Genette 1966: 60). The fragments of specific places, either present simultaneously or, more characteristically, retrieved from memo-ries and imagined, are superposed and/or blended. Their attributes coexist in a single narrative sequence, creating a unique though unbound transgressive sphere of psychic associations, perceptions, and reflections: fairy-tale figures projected from the magic lantern travel over the fur-niture and walls of the young Marcel’s room, Combray emerges from a cup of tea, etc. (Proust 1969). The logic of delimitation between spaces is suspended, semantics and paradigmatic intra-textual relations predominate over syntax and syntagmatic axis of textual organization. As a result, in such kinds of modem writing the identities of spaces are hybridized. Proustian spaces could be described as floating (espace flottants, navicules -cf. Westphal 2000a: 14).
3. Textual explosion. In modem writing, this force obliterates textual coherence and erases linguistic links in the spatial syntax; because of this move, the relations and boundaries between the represented spaces as well as their internal structures become ambiguous and indeterminate. Thus the point of vievv is displaced and the subject-position deterrito-rialised (cf. Deleuze - Guattari 1980). See, for example, Kosovel’s avantgarde construction (“kons”) entitled Pogovor v somraku (“Talk at Twi-light”). This text is actually a collage of immediate, flowing perceptions of the poet’s intimate, private spaces and of fragmentary images of places cut off from public discourse, scholarship, art, and nevvspapers: “Our win-dows are barred. / White barricades. / The American Indians know nothing / of gravity. / But dynamite explodes / in Novaja Zemlja, too. / You, Sir, in the astrakhan cap! / There is no arithmetic mean / between the old and the
new worlds. / One is either old or young. / A golden boat on the horizon. /.../ People swinging hanged / from telegraph poles. / Entrance: one dinar. / It is raining. / Man talks to the cosmos. / A bam outside the window.”6 The local and the global, the intimate and the universal are juxtaposed in KosoveFs poem; no explicit designation of the spatial syntax is supplied by the author.
4.	Intertextuality. By its very definition, intertexuality cannot be held to be transgressive. The first advocates of intertextuality have perhaps exaggerated in this respect. Consider, for example, a historical novel that faithfully follows the topography of its historic sources, embedded quotes of lyrical texts in narratives, or a play-within-a play. Nonetheless, inter-textuality no doubt remains one of the most powerful means of spatial transgression. It deserves to be discussed more thoroughly, especially in response to a proposal by Bertrand Westphal, who in his brilliant apo-logia of geocriticism notices how productive the effort of disfiguring the metaphor of “space as a book” may be if deeiphered in terms of inter-textuality: “Ne conviendrait-il pas d’explorer la metaphore ville-livre, voire espace-livre, et, allant du livre a 1’espace, d’appliquer a ce demier les principes de l’intertextualite?” (Westphal 2000a: 17).
Spaces of intertextuality
In this context, I see intertextuality as the practice of transposing, juxta-posing, and blending heterogeneous semiotic spaces, not only those re-presented in the textual world but also those evoked by linguistic and genre forms on the textual surface. It seems reasonable to me to distin-guish two types of semiotic spaces which are relayed by intertextual reference and derivations: intra- and extratextual spaces.7
By the provisional term “intratextual space” I understand virtual, phan-tasmatic space constructed and perspectivised in the reader’s con-sciousness by linguistic signs of the text and processes of inference; i.e., the fictional, poetic, imaginary, or possible world. As we know from seminal explorations by Bakhtin (his notion of the chronotope) and Lotman, the textual representation of the space, with its horizontal/ vertical seg-mentation and delimitation, is intenvoven with acts, horizons, and per-spectives of different agencies. As such, it plays a crucial role in building the semantic and axiological structures of the text. Intratextual space also makes up a significant part of the imaginary, because it is often attached to recurrent poetic images that carry archetypal values that organize the subjecfs consciousness and unconscious (cf. Bachelard 1974: 1-21). The notion “extratextual space,” however, refers to spatial conditions and zones in the actual world that exert certain impact upon discourses and their structuring. Pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cultural semiotics, comparative studies, and geocriticism termed them with more precision. Extratextual spaces could be ranged from very specific, contingent situations/contexts of uttering, through socio-geographically and historically determined places, localities/territories, to maximally extensive space, occupied and
regulated by a whole culture (semiosphere), or floating and border zones of inter- and transcultural exchange.81 distinguish two possible means of intertextual spatial transgression, both intra- and extratextual:
1. Intertextual transpositions of other text 's space. Quotations, allu-sions, borrowings, collages, parodies, imitations and other intertextual figures/genres implant semiotic foreign bodies in textual organisms; they transpose “intratextual spaces” or fragments thereof from other texts, textual series, and intertexts. Being able to break the norms of spatial syntax, alien spaces double the central space of the text, they open it up, interfere with it and generate spaces of transgression.
2. Intertextual evocations of other extratextual space. On the other hand, intertextual forms, such as stylisation or imitation of genre pattems, evoke “extratextual spaces” only indirectly, by use of connotation. These intertextual devices are not representations (i.e., fictional picturing of places). In this case, quoting or imitating alien discourse only recalls impressions of certain places, of their ideological atmosphere, of registers and voices that are usually found there. In other words, by transposing segments of alien discourse, intertextual practice indicates the traces of communicative context or socio-geographical, cultural space in which this discourse originally functioned.
Kosovel employed both ways of intertextual transgression in many of his modernist texts. Blizu polnoči (Close to Midnight), a fairly laconic poem, is assembled of divergent points of view, panoramas and close-ups of Trieste and its surroundings: “Close to midnight. / Flies dying in a glass. / The fire has died out. / Fair Vida, there is / sorrow in your memory. / Stravinsky in a car. / The roaring of the sea. / Oh, to be alone for 5 minutes. / The heart-Trieste is ill. / That is why Trieste is beautiful. / Pain blossoms in beauty.”9 The text puts together miniature perceptions, flowing emotions and subtle reflections of solitude. Among fragmented spatial impressions, an allusion to the folkloric motif of Lepa Vida (Fair Vida) attracts one’s attention: a figure of a vvoman standing at the Adriatic coast is an intertextual analogue to one of several vvandering subjective stand-points of KosovePs text. The Fair Vida motif has acquired in the Slovene literary tradition since France Prešeren (in the mid-19lh century) arche-typal, mythic value precisely by its inherent ambivalence and transgres-siveness ofdesire: the ballad narrative is about how the subjecfs desire to free herself from the primordial, patriarchal bonds of homeland is, after she is taken abroad, transmuted into yeaming for her lost home. Allusion to the Fair Vida intertext interferes with the cut-up textual space of KosovePs poetic construction; intertextual transposition of ballad space into a pluri-perspectival and contingent modem writing creates an impression of a double, of a palimpsest: an archetypal layer of semantic and spatial organization shines through the chaotic experience of modemity.
Kosovel evokes not only literary pre-texts and spaces represented by them but various social settings as well. He does this by imitating and/or quoting utterances, sociolects, and discourses that are generally asso-ciated with specific geo-physical places, contexts. In Kons: XY (Cons: XY), for example, the initial transgressive space where “inner” poetic
subjectivity is blended with the “outer” scene of a circus is further trans-gressed by interventions of other extratextual places indirectly invoked by the connotative power of stylistically and semantically contrasting phrases. They are imitated from lyrical, almost romantic discourse on the one hand, and quoted from prosaic police and court records on the other hand: “Across my heart a huge elephant slops. / Circus Kludsky; 5 dinars to see. / Don’t shout your sorrovv from the house-tops! / She is smiling: ring a ring ree. / Human hearts are small and prisons big, / through human hearts I’d like to sail. / Doyou belong to this or that clique? /A thousand dinars or 7 days inja.il. / The flowers in my heart cry no more /.../”10
The intertextuality of space
Identities and social relations are constituted by the conjunctions of spaces and discourses. As a recent work on urban theory notes: “People’s lives, networks, and identities were pattemed geographically and dis-cursively [...] across different sites of activity (work, home, community); [...] these different sites were contexts that transformed the meaning of actor’s identities” (Tajbakhsh 2001: XIII). Geo-physical space is divided, ordered, and semioticised by cultural practices and their products (building houses, living in settlements, moving with traffic, developing technologies of communication), and above ali by mental categories used in discourse. In this way the discursive interpretation and regulation of real space establishes or reshapes social relationships and hierarchies, and constantly shifts subject positions (cf. Keating 2001). Every space is related to the human subject, who delimits it with her/his words; human spaces are therefore permanently de- and recomposed by language and words (Grassin 2000: I—II).11 Differences in the nature of spaces (e.g., natural - cultural, static - dynamic, rural - urban, private - public, sacred - profane, central - peripheral) imply different pattems of behavior and social interaction, distinct registers and speech performances. Some places —especially those burdened with sediments of formulaic or ritualized practices—determine style or genre rather predictably (e.g., a church —> prayers and preaching, a courtroom —► testimony and verdict, a classroom —> lecturing, a marketplace —> bargaining); other places, however, do not condition linguo-pragmatic choices so strongly (e.g., a restaurant —> amorous whispering, business or intellectual conversation etc., but not loud professing of political ideas).
Even volumes containing the material vehicles of communication (e.g., volumes of books, pages of a newspaper, TV or Computer screens, adver-tising posters, etc.) have a plače on the continuum of “extratextual,” phy-sical space. Based on McLuhan’s dictum that the “medium is a message,” it is understandable that the spatial dimension of media largely determines how contexts of utterances are marked. Pattems transposed or imitated from other linguistic varieties or discursive genres and grafted into a literary text may color their new environment with connotations evoking their original medium, including its spatial aspect. A literary text in which
fragments of journalism, old-fashioned ode, or internet site are inter-textually transposed can consequently, on the basis of contiguity, smeli of newspaper or dusty old books, or give an impression of the light coming from a Computer screen; even more, a text may recall person-types, conventional actions, and behavioral relations associated with those media.
Before concluding, let me summarize my main points. When speaking about spaces of intertextuality we have in mind the play and interference of heterogeneous semiotic spaces transposed in the text from elsevvhere, either from other spatial representations (textual or visual vvorlds) or by evoking culturajly characteristic locations, where specific languages, dialects, sociolects, registers, and genres circulate. Intertextuality produces transgressive spaces by doubling, splitting, and opening up central intra-textual space and by deterritorialising the point of view.
The relation betvveen space and intertextuality may be explained the other way around, too. Seen from this angle, “intratextual spaces” (fictional or factual) are able to invade, organize, and interpret “extratextual space,” making it intertextual. Spaces of our life-worlds are intertextual not only because our perceptions of living environment are structured through cognitive and axiological nets produced by existant texts, discourses and collective memories. From the views of Deleuze, Lotman and others it follows that intertextuality is inscribed in “extratextual space” (territory, semiosphere, etc.) due to the very “essence” of the space: it is always multiple, it exists only as a co-presence of disparate acts, gestures, messa-ges, and symbolic forms (Westphal 2000a: 14-15). Life-worlds through which we pass are semioticised by cultural products, practices, and forms that stem from distant times, pertain to different communities and classes, and that have been in contact with thousands of individual life trajectories. We are comparable to Benjamin’s figure of the flaneur who reads (i.e., contextualizes and interprets) a modem city as a multitemporal texture of memory sites and traces, as a constellation of “allusions and intersections, of inscriptions, of the extension and transcriptions of texts” (Bettine Menke, qtd. in Frisby 1999: 108-110). Temporal stratification of human space as displayed in cities like Lisbon works intertextually: it brings together several, often contrary fragments or layers of historical and social rhythms, meanings, symbols, and forms (cf. Westphal 2000a: 24-26). Or, as Crossberg (1999: 28) puts it: “The space of a vvhole life is a fractured and contradictory space of multiple contexts and competing ways of life and struggle. Such a space - what I have called a context - is a complex articulation of discourses, everyday life and formations or technologies of power.” When we are moving through the space, Crossing its boundaries, travelling from one location to another (say, from the intimacy of home to a global site at an airport), we are addressed by a multitude of overlapping texts (oral, written, visual, musical, gestual) that try to plače us within their areas of sense; but, on the other hand, when we are moving through them we are also carrying with us memories and projections of other lived or imaginary places, cultural contexts, and social environments. This makes spatial boundaries fluid; under apparently static and well-delimited territories a structure of floating space is hidden
(cf. Westphal 2000a: 14, 18). I cannot but agree with Mouffe (1999: 50), Westphal (2000a: 18), and Welsh (1999: 224, 233) that because of unstable spatial boundaries and due to the fundamental intertextuality of space, our identities are in permanent hybridization and mobility; they are volatile, flexible, and constituted as a transcultural patchwork. Tajbakhsh (2001: 8) puts this succinctly: “Individual and community identities are structured across multiple, sometimes contradictory spaces in complex pattems of imaginary representations and memory that suggest the need for a reconceptualization of identity and consiousness as fully constituted within fixed boundaries.” It is from transformation of texts, dispersed in time and space, that the elusive text of our lives is constantly being formed and reformed.
NOTES
1 Characteristic response to this shift is the introduction to volume 5 of the Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association (Space and Boundaries in Literary Theory and Criticism), entitled “The Shift of the Paradigm: From Time to Space? Introduction.” The author detects the change of theoretical paradigm in poststructuralism and deconstructivism and, within this turn, stresses the role of intertextuality: “In the theory of inter-textuality, the relations between time and space occupy the center of discussion” (Fischer-Lichte 1990: 15; italics in the original). Similarly, in the same volume Reingard Nethersole in his paper, “From Temporality to Spatiality: Changing Concepts in Literary Criticism,” vvrites: “Briefly, today’s critical questioning is aimed at three important positions in the humanities, ali constituted in their present stronghold in the eighteenth century: Historicism, the sovereign or trans-cendental Subject and Meaning. Each of these is erased by transforming tempo-rality into spatiality. Thus, Foucaulfs rereading of Nietzsche produced genealogy in the plače of Historicism, Lacan’s rereading of Freud produced the notion of an ever split subject, and Derrida’s critique of the linguistic model (de Saussure, Peirce, and follovvers) produced differance, indeterminacy, and constant deferral of signification.” According to Nethersole, the ordering of the world in tvventieth-century arts and theory (philosophy) seems to be governed by topological rather than geometrical spatiality (Nethersole 1990: 63, italics in the original).
2 On the genesis and development of the concept of “intertextualiy,” especially regarding Kristeva and Barthes, see Juvan 2000a: 92-138.
3 For basic information on Kosovel and English translations of his poetry see the vvebsite Slovenia - Poetry International Web (http://slovenia.poetryintemational. org/cwolk/view/18507#l). Kosovel was transgressive in many respects. He remains an elusive poetic icon not easily encoded in the narrative of literary history, because he simultaneously wrote in different styles and established his modernist poetic identity by Crossing the boundaries of several currents and hybridizing them. In his short Iife Kosovel was exposed to border anxiety (his native Karst came under govemment of fascist Italy, which set out to erase ethnic signs of Slovenes from the territory) and he was constantly moving from this rural region to Ljubljana, the urban center of Slovenes in the Yugoslav kingdom. KosoveFs political and aesthetic stance was constituted by very different, even contradictory currents (e.g., Christianity, utopian socialism, communism, liberal humanism, niet-zscheanism, neo-romanticism, and avant-garde). Textual spaces, represented in his
poetry either by harmonic lyric writing or by heteroglossia of the modernist type, are also transgressive and dynamic: the textual subject often shifts from lyrical (rural, natural, intimate) places in the Karst to urban, global, and even cosmic spaces.
41 am referring to interactive and cognitive theories of metaphor (Black 1981, 1995; Lakoff 1995).
5 Transi. by Nike Kocijančič Pokom. Italics added. “Po srebrni mesečini / plava temni čoln, / iz zelenega pristana / je čolnar odplul, / iz zelenega kristala / tihega srca. / Iz srca polnoči" (Kosovel 1974: 162).
6 Transi. by Nike Kocijančič Pokorn. "Naša okna so zamrežena. / Bele barikade. / Indijanci ne vedo nič / o gravitaciji. / A dinamit eksplodira / tudi v Novaji Zemlji. / Gospod z astrahanko ! / Ni aritmetične sredine / med starim in novim svetom. / Človek je lahko star ali mlad. / Zlati čoln na obzorju. / .../ Obešenci nihajo / ob brzojavnih drogovih. / Vstopnina: en dinar. / Dež pada. / Človek se pogovarja z vesoljstvom. / Skedenj pred oknom" (Kosovel 1974: 38).
7 Geocriticism (geocritique) as a subject-bound, post-hermeneutic, critical, interdisciplinary, and constructivist postmodern Science of the literary space (Grassin 2000: I—VI) usually distinguishes poetic, imaginary space of literary vvorks from socio-geographic space, where literature operates, but it also stresses their inter-dependencies. Grassin, for example, speaks of l'espace poetique/ima-ginaire and l'espace geographique/des litteratures—the latter is characteristic of the fragmentation of literatures along national, regional, religious, racial, lin-guistic, or geo-cultural lines; establishing centers and peripheries, building inter-literary communities, etc. Westphal promotes geocriticism precisely as a poetics of the “interactions betvveen human spaces and literature”; it explores the role of interaction betvveen the imaginary and geo-social spaces in determining cultural identities; there are, for example, many vvriters who created imaginary repre-sentations of cities or landscapes that influenced collective memory and per-ceptions of the actual spaces—Dostoyevsky’s St. Petersburg, Kafka’s Prague, Joyce’s Dublin (Westphal 2000: 17, 22; italics original, my translation). I vvould add at least one more example: Kosovel’s Karst.
8 Yuri Lotman defines semiosphere as “the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages”; it is “the vvhole semiotic space of culture in question” and is “marked by its heterogeneity”; i.e., by relations betvveen diverse languages, sociolects, dialects, registers, etc. that are used in a certain cultural area (Lotman 1990: 123, 125). Semiosphere is the precondition for establishing culturally significant units (that is to say, cognitive and communicative elements) on the basis of entities and practices of the actual vvorld and for building cognitive and axiological models (cf. Lotman 1990: 131-134). Follovving Lotman, Jacques Fontanille claims that “the semiospehere is [...] the space of semiotic com-petence” (Fontanille 2000: 116-118; my translation). Daniel-Henry Pageaux, in his discussion of geocriticism, holds that culture occupies and organizes space— not only real, geographical space (countries, states, zones, areas, center, peri-phery, capitals, etc.) but also imaginary space (Pageaux 2000: 126, 128, 135).
9 Transi. by Katarina Jerin. »Blizu polnoči. / Muhe v čaši umirajo. / Ogenj je ugasnil. / Lepa Vida, bridkost je / v tvojem spominu. / Stravinski v avtomobilu. / Bučanje morja. / O biti 5 minut sam. / Srce-Trst je bolno. / Zato je Trst lep. / Bolečina cvete v lepoti« (Kosovel 1974: 55; italics added).
10 Transi. by Nike Kocijančič Pokorn. "Skozi moje srce stopa veliki slon. / Cirkus Kludsky, vstopnina 5 din. / Ne obesi bolesti na veliki zvon! / Ona se smehlja: cin cin cin. // Srca ljudi so majhna in ječe velike, / rad bi šel skozi srca ljudi. / Si pristaš te ali one stranke? / Tisoč dinarjev ali zaprt 7 dni. // Rože v mojem srcu ne jočejo nikdar. /...” (Kosovel 1974: 34; italics added.)
11 In literature, too, certain forms are more likely to be allied to certain spatial elements of the outer reality (Pageaux 2000: 138-39).
LITERATURE
Gaston BACHELARD (1974): Lapoetique de 1’espace. Pariš: PUF.
Max BLACK (1981): Metaphor. In: Models and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell univ. press. 25—47.
 (1995): More about Metaphor. In: A. Orthony (ed.): Metaphor and Thought.
Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge univ. press. 19-41.
Lawrence CROSSBERG (1999): Globalization and the “Economization” of Cultural Studies. In: The Contemporary Study of Culture. Ed. by Bundes-ministerium fur Wissenschaft und Verkehr und Internationales Forschungs-zentrum Kulturvvissenschafte. Wien: Turia + Kant. 23-46.
Gilles DELEUZE - Felix GUATTAR1 (1980): Mille plateaux. Pariš: Editions de minuit.
Erika FISHER-LICHTE (1990): The Shift of the Paradigm: From Time to Space? Introduction. In: Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the ICLA. Ed. by R. Bauer et alii. Miinchen: Iudicium. 15-18.
Jacques FONTANILLE (2000): Formes tensives et passionnelles du dialogue des semiospheres. In: Westphal, ed. 2000. 115-124.
David FRISBY (1999): Culture, Memory and Metropolitan Modernity. In: The Contemporary Study of Culture. Ed. by Bundesministerium fur Wissenschaft und Verkehr und Internationales Forschungszentrum Kultunvissenschafte. Wien: Turia + Kant. 101-115.
Gerard GENETTE (1966): Proust palimpseste. In: Figures. Pariš: Seuil. 39-67.
Jean-Marie GRASSIN (2000): Pour une science des espaces litteraires. In: Westphal, ed. 2000.1-XIII.
Marko JUVAN (2000a): Intertekstualnost. Ljubljana: DZS.
 (2000b):	Medbesedilnost	-	detronizacija	ali retorizacija vpliva?
[Intertextuality: Dethronement or Rhetorization of Influence?]. In: Vezi besedila [Textual Ties]. Ljubljana: LUD Literatura. 89-109.
Elizabeth KEATING (2001): Space. In: Key Terms in Language and Culture. Ed. by Alessandro Duranti. Oxford: Blackvvell Publishers. 231-234.
Srečko KOSOVEL (1974): Zbrano delo 2 [Collected Works]. Ed. by A. Ocvirk. Ljubljana: DZS.
George LAKOFF (1995): The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In: A. Orthony (ed.): Metaphor and Thought. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge univ. press. 202-251.
Yuri LOTMAN (1990): The Semiosphere. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Trans. A. Shukman. Bloomington: Indiana univ. press. 123-214.
Chantal MOUFFE (1999): Hegemony, Povver and the Political Dimension of Culture. In: The Contemporary Study of Culture. Ed. by Bundesministerium fur Wissenschaft und Verkehr und Internationales Forschungszentrum Kultur-wissenschafte. Wien: Turia + Kant. 47-52.
Reingard NETHERSOLE (1990): From Temporality to Spatia!ity: Changing Concepts in Literary Criticism. In: Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the ICLA. Ed. by R. Bauer et alii. Miinchen: Iudicium. 59-63.
Daniel-Henri PAGEAUX (2000): De la geocritique a la geosymbolique. Regards sur un champ interdisciplinaire: litterature generale et comparee et geographie. In: Westphal, ed. 2000. 125-160.
Marcel PROUST (1969): Du cote de chez Swann. Pariš: Gallimard.
Kian TAJBAKHSH (2001): The Promise of the City: Space, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Univ. of California press.
Wolfgang WELSCH (1999): Transculturality: The Changing Form of Cultures Today. In: The Contemporary Study of Culture. Ed. by Bundesministerium
flir Wissenschaft und Verkehr und Intemationales Forschungszentrum Kultur-vvissenschafte. Wien: Turia + Kant. 217-244.
Bertrand WESTPHAL, ed. (2000): La geocritique: Mode d’emploi. Limoges: PULIM.
 (2000a): Pour une approche geocritique des textes, esquisse. In: Westphal,
ed. 2000. 9-39.
THE LYRIC SUBJECT AND SPACE.
A COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN LYRIC POETRY
Darja Pavlič
University of Maribor, Slovenia
82.01-1
Working from the assumption that a lyric poem is a means of self-expression and self-constitution of the speaking person, the article observes that in romantic as well as modem poetry, geographical space through metaphoric representations co-establishes the identity of the lyric subject. Furthermore, modem lyric poetry is also characterised by the incoherence of space, which, in addition to having a thematic function, also affects the structure of the text.
Key words: lyric poetry / lyric subject / space metaphor / Romanticism / modem lyric poetry / language poetry
“It makes no difference whether I walk down Kartner or Čopova Street. /.../ It is ali becoming me.” (Peter Semolič)
The semantic scope of the concept of space depends strongly on the context in which it appears. In recent literary criticism it is often used as a metaphor for a literary work (one of the more famous is Barthes’s identification of text and space, in which a variety of writings, none of them original, bland and clash); on the other hand, there has also been an increased interest in geographical space, vvhich is - similarly to narrative time - an integral part of every narration, despite the fact that its role in the past was not researched in such detail as the role of time. The Middle Ages, as the famous Wheel of Virgil teaches us, associated narrative space not only with the style of the literary work, but also with the social status of the characters involved. The 19th century brought fonvard the connections between the environment and one’s nature, whereas the contemporary point of view prefers to uncover connections between space and identity of the individual or group. Recently attention has also
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focused on the relations betvveen space and narrative structure, because researches of narrative writing have actualised Joseph Franck’s thesis that the structure of contemporary literature can be understood in the manner of spatial form.1 This article will discuss the role of geographical space in the area of literature termed as lyric poetry. In analogy with narrative writing we may assume that space co-creates the identity of the lyric subject and affects the organisation of the lyric text.
A lyric poem can be defined as a means of self-expression and self-constitution of the speaker; however, it is well known that traditional, romantic defmitions of lyric poetry were not familiar with the concept of the lyric subject. Charles Batteux, who was the first to devise a system in his book on the fine arts (Les Beaux-Arts reduits a un meme principe, 1746), which also included lyric poetry, defined it as an imitation of sentiments contrary to narrative writing and drama, which imitate action. F. Schlegel defined lyric poetry, narrative writing and drama from their relationship to the objective and subjective worlds; according to him the lyric form, contrary to narrative writing and drama, is purely subjective. A. W. Schlegel and Schelling adopted this definition, whereas Hegel developed the idea that the lyric poem conveys its author. In his Aesthetics he derived the philosophical and poetological definition of types of literature from the stipulated scheme of subject-object. To him, narrative writing is an objective type of literature concentrated on a totality of external events; lyric poetry is subjective and its focus is the inner world of sentiment; drama links the objective and subjective sides into a new whole. The central point of lyric poetry and its real topič is the concrete poetic subject, that is, the poet. When Hegel defines the subject matter of lyric poetry, he specifically calls attention to the presence of narrative elements within it. The subject matter of lyric poetry may be an event, which is epic in its essence and extemal manifestation (heroic poetry, romance poetry, ballads), or occasional (poems for specific occasions). In both cases it is essential that the basic tone remain lyric, meaning that it is not about an objective description of a real event, but rather about the subject’s reflections and its moods. A true lyric poet does not necessarily work out of extemal circumstances; he is a closed vvorld in himself, and can look for the material for the poems within himself and remain with the inner states, circumstances, events, with his own heart’s and spirifs passions. However, even in this case the narrative element is not uncommon (Hegel states as an example the motif of a meeting in Anacreontics); or the poet will go beyond the limits of the inner vvorld by presenting himself in a certain being, which is subjective as well as real. “[T]he poet both is and is not himself; he does his best to communicate not himself but something else; he is, as it were, an actor who plays an endless number of parts, lingering now here now there, retaining now one scenic arrangement for a moment, now another, and yet, whatever he may portray, there is always vividly interwoven with it his own artistic inner life, his feelings and experiences” (Hegel 1998, 1121-1122). An example of such role-taking is once again Anacreontics - in it the poet describes himself as a kind of a hero among flowers, beautiful girls and boys, by
wine and play, joy and pleasure ... HegeFs breakdown of lyric poetry into different possible forms indicates that he understood the role of the poet in a rather complex manner. His comparison of the poet and the actor is particularly interesting when seen in the light of later theories speculating that the speaker or “I” in lyric poetry can not be directly equated with the poet’s self. It seems that Hegel’s comparison might be supplemented by the assertion that even “I” in lyric poetry is no more than a role, played out by the poet. This brings us not far from the con-clusion that the lyric subject is a more or less conscious construct of the author, his or her mask or persona.
In his essay The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes firmly stated that, “it is language which speaks, not the author,” (Barthes 1992, 115) however, it seems that neither the past nor the modem lyric productions can entirely confirm his thesis on the impersonality of writing.2 Due to their use of the traditional, self-revelatory model of writing, many con-temporary poets should be called post-romantics anyway; on the other hand, we may say that the language that speaks itself is a paradox and a mental construct, because every statement, either inarticulate or made of quotes, may be understood as a form of a certain, albeit totally undiffe-rentiated or hyperinflated consciousness. Ron Silliman, a representative of American “language poetry” - a movement, which in the early seventies stemmed from the post-structuralist criticism of the author and the subject3 - has recently raised doubts as to whether “Barthes’s theory of text construction hasn’t gone too far,” (Perloff 1998, 3). According to him, the “self’ in poetry is a “relation between writer and reader that is triggered by what Jakobson called contact, the power of presence” (ibid. 4). According to this theory, both the author and the reader collaborate in constructing the lyric subject. In her analysis of the “de-authorized” poetry of the representatives of “language poetry”, Marjorie Perloff has shown - despite some problems with identifying lyric subjects - that the poems are very personal and sometimes even autobiographical. According to her, gender, racial, social and other characteristics, which can be attributed to different speakers on the basis of their statements, are a kind of “birthmarks” or “signatures”, by vvhich individual authors may be identified. By doing so, it seems, she has once again attributed the leading role in forming the lyric subject to the author; hovvever, this does not mean that “language poetry” can be viewed as self-revelatory, be it of the author or the lyric subject. According to Perloff, the meaning of the lyric subject of “language poetry” is radically different to that of post-romantic poetry, where its role is to observe the outside world and express its emotions by means of metaphors. In “language poetry”, the difference between the inside and the outside is blurred; language constructs the “reality” we perceive; vvhich means that the perspective is constantly shifting and that “the subject, far from being at the centre of the discourse [...] is located only at its interstices” (Perloff 1998, 16).
In the model of lyric poetry, as theoretically created by Hegel, geo-graphical space is not explicitly mentioned, but nevertheless we may say that space in traditional, romantic lyric poetry is an element of the outside,
objective world. Hegel’s analysis of lyric poetry demonstrated that most of the time poets speak indirectly of what is within them, of their reflections and moods, by describing events, conditions and extemal circumstances, which also include descriptions of nature and landscapes. Nature is a metaphor used by romantic poets to describe their moods. When he wrote that art uses nature to make the soul visible,4 Shelling attributed to the images of nature a function of catachresis. The projection of the subjective inside world to the objective outside world is the basic principle of lyric poetry in the traditional sense, therefore the descriptive poetry of nature in which the outside world does not mirror the inside vvorld, aecording to Gottshall, the author of Poetics published in 1857, cannot be part of lyric poetry.
The correspondence between landseape and subject was discovered, as it is well known, by Rousseau in the 23rd letter of his novel The New He-loise. The eoncept of projecting emotions onto nature was so successful that it has not only survived to this day and age, but can stili be discemed in the so-called modem lyric poetry. In his book The Aesthetic Expe-rience and Literary Hermeneutics, H. R. Jauss claims that Baudelaire in his collection Fleurs du mal accomplished “the aesthetic revaluation of nature” and quotes as an example the poem Andromaque, je pense a loi, in which “any trače of a predestined harmony between man and nature, or a hidden analogy betvveen sensible appearance and suprasensible meaning, is gone” (Jauss 1982, 83). However, the break with anthropocentric under-standing of nature was probably not abrupt enough to be applicable as a criterion for judging the modemity of poetry. Symbolist and modernist poetics do not deny the concept of projecting what is within onto the outside vvorld; and this is the reason that the term lyric poetry could be employed to denote the poetry of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Eliot and others. Mallarme’s definition of the symbol, as well as Eliot’s de-scription of the objective correlate, come from the unspoken assumption about the separation between the subject and the object. With both poets we can speak of de-authorized poetry, but not of its impersonality.5 Mallarme’s lyric subject, which appears together with the text, uses symbols to suggest the mood to the reader, vvhereas Eliot’s, which also can not be regarded as the source of speech, describes emotion with objective correlates. The closest ties to the (pre)romantic concept of projecting emotions onto nature can be seen in expressionist poetry where images of landscapes and hideous animals become a metaphor for the mood of the lyric subject, with images of towns performing a similar function. By including images of ugliness, the expressionists considerably widened their motifs in comparison to the romantic poets; on the other hand, the function of the lyric subject remained unchanged because its role was stili to describe the mood by means of the images of the outside world.
In romantic as well as modem lyric poetry the identity of the lyric subject is formed in a similar way; in both cases it is based in the idea of the separation between the subject and object. The images of the outside world - and therefore space - are the projections of inner moods, and they are the essence of the subject. This means that the space in romantic
and modem poetry is metaphorically connected to the identity of the lyric subject. As in modem lyric poetry, the lyric subject in “language poetry” is not the source of speech, but rather its product; however, the boundary betvveen the outside and the inside in “language poetry” is essentially blurred and therefore the metaphoric role of space is cancelled out. If it is possible to claim that the cancellation of the boundary between the subject and the object in “language poetry” is a fait accompli, there stili remains the question of vvhether the reader of such poetry is ready to give up the deeply rooted manner of metaphorical reading.
The second supposition argued in the introduction was that space affects the structure of the lyric text. Analyses of modem lyric poetry per-fomied by various researches have shown that individual movements under the common term of modem lyric poetry introduced by H. Friedrich, exhibit differences in the way they link images, but that also many similarities exist among them. While in traditional poetry, images are primarily linked on a thematic level and cohesive elements include the lyric subject and temporal sequence, modem poetry is govemed by frag-mentary imagery. An important principle of stmcturing modem poetry is simultaneity - the images do not follow one another in a temporal se-quence, but appear simultaneously. Rhythmic or sonic stringing of images is also common. In this context, H. Friedrich speaks of the linguistic magic of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme and other modem poets. Typical of the symbolists are “vast netvvorks of images which are only connected in depth, at the level of the Ideas themselves, in other words, in the abstract” (Forestier 1984, 117). In surrealist “associative chains” or networks (Pastor 1972, 32), which fonu around an individual image, the principle of con-nection is subjective association. Futurists spoke of wireless imagination, due to their images being liberated of ali logical or grammatical context.
S.	Vietta is convinced that the expressionists and ali modem literature are characterized by “atomisation and isolation of individual images” (33). “The simultaneity of disparate and rapidly changing images” (ibid.) is connected to the mode of perception in modem metropolises and commu-nicates the dissociation of the subject. In relation to the composition of modem poetry a phrase of collage technique is frequently used; less prevalent, but semantically related is Frank’s term spatialisation, which presupposes the undermining of “the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustrating the reader’s normal expectation of a sequence and forcing him to perceive the elements of the poem juxtaposed in space rather than unrolling in time” (quoted after: Škulj 1988, 45). Spatialisation in this sense does not mean that the quota or the meaning of the images that belong to the motif area of space increased in modem poetry. Similarly to other researchers, Frank stresses primarily the simultaneity of images in modem poetry, and it seems that the notion of space in the quote could also be understood as a metaphor for the poetic text or even its material support.
The conclusion that modem poetry is characterised by the simultaneity and disparity of imagery brings us somewhat closer to the answer to the question also whether space affects the organisation of the lyric text. In his article The Code of Modernism, D. W. Fokkema includes space
among the ten categories by which, he feels, it is possible to describe the differences betvveen modemism and some other trends of that period.6 Here we will not go into his statement that spatial relations in modemism have a subordinate function in comparison to time, vvhile visualized spatial relations are dominant in expressionism. What is important for the dis-cussion about the role of space in the structure of a lyric text is the finding that the lyric subject in modernist poetry can “transcend the spatial re-strictions that were considered prohibitive in earlier period codes.” (Fokkema 1976, 684). As an example of transcending the spatial re-strictions, Fokkema mentions the poetry of Eliot and Pound; another very illustrative example would be Appolinaire’s poem Zone. In it the images of various spaces (streets of Pariš, Mediterranean shores, a garden of a tavern near Prague etc.) appear simultaneously and therefore break the rule that a person can only be in one plače at once. The association between space and the composition of Appolinaire’s poem is obvious, although the relationship is not necessarily that of cause and effect: the space is not uniform and the text is fragmented. The spatial transgressions are in a similar relationship to the simultaneity of imagery than the two sides of a coin; in both cases it is about mutual dependence. In traditional lyric poetry, which follows not only the temporal sequence but also the re-strictions of space, the structure of the text is different; the images of space assist in forming more closely knit poems in terms of motifs and themes.
The transcending of spatial restrictions in modem poetry does not affect only the structure of the text but also has a thematic function, since the disunity of space may be understood as a metaphor for the incohe-rence of the lyric subject. The images of various spaces, which are read as metaphors for the inner landscape of the lyric subject, indicate the fluidity, the plurality of self. By appropriating the various spaces, the lyric subject creates different identities for itself that may be experienced by it in various ways - either as a heroic act of self-constitution (an example would be Appolinaire’s poem Zone) or as a regrettable loss of a firm foundation (which seems to be characteristic of expressionist poetry, for which S. Vietta has used the already mentioned term of dissociation of the subject). Besides the incoherent space, there is at least one more metaphor for the inconsistent or lost identity typical of modem poetry -the metaphor of departure. Modem poets use it as a variation of the old topos of life being a joumey, because they use it to indicate the assertion that space cannot provide a consistent or firm identity to the lyric subject.
We may end this reflection on the role of space in lyric poetry by concluding that space in traditional lyric poetry is a metaphor for the inner world of the lyric subject, while in modem lyric poetry it is fore-most a metaphor for an unstable or lost identity. The metaphoric function of space is an important criterion in detemiining the genre of a poem. Descriptive poetry is characterized by literal imagery, and is therefore, strictly speaking, not part of lyric poetry. In “language poetry” the boun-dary between outside and inside is blurred and the images of space have no metaphoric function, so once again we probably cannot speak of lyric poetry. Because space in “language poetry” isn’t something that would
exist “out there”, but is a construct of language, let us mention in the end as a curiosity hov/ the unreality of space entered the thoughts and poems of a Slovenian poet Gregor Strniša (1930-1987) who is nonnally regarded as a classic of modem poetry. As Kant, he was convinced that there is no Euclidian space in physical reality. In his essay Universe, he reflects that the a priori forms of space and time originated with the development of thinking consciousness as a defence mechanism vvithout which human beings in the early stages of the development of their consciousness would instantaneously go mad or die. He clearly illustrated the higher form of consciousness that he called universal consciousness, with an image of a four-dimensional spatial-temporal being, because of the “purely organic connection of ali living things in ali places and ali times into a dia-lectically greater whole of the entire living world” (Strniša 1983, 10). The reader who knows Stmiša’s views has no problems in understanding his seemingly paradoxical verses about the willow tree, which was cut down, and yet stili stands in the same spot.7 The function of the imagery, which describes space in Strniša’s poetry is unique, because through it the lyric subject indicates its higher, universal consciousness. In the consciousness of the average contemporary person, hovvever, space is stili something one can see oneself in as in a mirror.
NOTES
1 Jola Škulj vvrote about this in Slovenia, in her articles: “The modern novel: the concept of spatialization (Frank) and the dialogic principle (Bakhtin)”, Space and Boundaries. Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the ICLA. Munich, 1988; “Spacialna forma in dialoškost: vprašanje konceptualizacije modernističnega romana”, Primerjalna književnost 12, 1989, 1.
2 As an example of the death of the author and the “self’ as the source of speech, Barthes states Mallarme's poetry but overlooks the idea that the lyric subject is “bom” together with the poem and does therefore not exist independent!y of it.
3 “One of the Cardinal principles - perhaps the Cardinal principle - of American Language poetics (as of the related current in England usually labelled 'linguistically innovative poetries') has been the dismissal of'voice' as the foundational principle of lyric poetry” (Perloff 1998, 19).
4 Uber das Verhaaltnis der bildenden Kunste zu der Natur, 1807; Schellings Werke, 3. Supplemented torne, Munich 1959, p. 416.
5 The difference betvveen de-authorization (the eradication of the author) and impersonality (the eradication of the one who is speaking) is often overlooked. The impersonality, described by Eliot in his essay Tradition and the individual talent, refers explicitly to the poet and not to the lyric subject, therefore it seems it would be more appropriate to speak of de-authorization.
6 According to Fokkema, modemism differs from symbolism, futurism, expressio-nism, surrealism, socialist and documentary realism, as well as post-modernism.
7 “There used to be a willow here, / someone will say and walk on. // But by the endless river - / darkening, rustling behind him, - / in its beautiful leafy cage, / the same willow is standing stili” (Strniša 1989, 67).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARTHES, Roland: “The Death of the Author”. Modern lilerary lheory: a reader. (Second Edition). Ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. London, New York, Melbourne, Auckland: Edvvard Arnold, 1992.
FOKKEMA, D. W.: “The Code of Modernism”. Actes du Vlile Congres de 1’Association Internationale de Litterature Comparee. Budapest, 1976.
FORESTIER, Louis: “Symbolist Imagery”. The Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages. Ed. Anna Balakian. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1984.
FRIEDRICH, Hugo: Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik: von der Mitte des neun-zehnten bis zur Mitte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. (2. Auflage). Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1968.
HEGEL, G. W. F.: Aesthetics. Lectures on fine art. (Trans. by T. M. Knox). Volume II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
JAUSS, H. R.: Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. (Trans. by Michael Shaw). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
KOS, Janko: Lirika. Ljubljana: DZS, 1993. (Literarni leksikon; 39).
PASTOR, Eckart: Studien zum dichterischen Bild im friihen franzosischen Surrealismus. Pariš: Societe d’Editions les Belles Lettres, 1972.
PERLOFF, Marjorie: “Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman’s Albany, Susan Howe’s Buffalo”. 1998. http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/ perloff/langpo.html
STRNIŠA, Gregor: Vesolje. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1983.
STRNIŠA, Gregor: Balade o svetovjih. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1989.
ŠKULJ, Jola: “The modern novel: the concept of spatialization (Frank) and the dialogic principle (Bakhtin)”. Space and Boundaries. Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the ICLA. Munich, 1988.
VIETTA, Silvio and KEMPER, H. G.: Expressionismus. Miinchen: W. Fink Verlag, 1975.
MORALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM IN URBAN FICTION:
A DELEUZIAN AND BAKHTINIAN CRITIQUE OF SPATIAL TRANSGRESSIONS IN CONTEMPORARY CRIME NOVELS
Bart Keunen
Ghent University, Belgium
82.09-312.4
Urban crime fiction can be seen as an inheritor of the adventure novel tradition and the ‘ordeal plot’. The semantic foundations of the ordeal plot are traditionally detailed as an opposition between labyrinthine and anomic settings on the one hand and a quest for moral authenticity on the other. In urban crime fiction one can clearly see how modern literature transforms this model in an attempt to cope with the ‘modernity syn-drome ’ (the paradoxical co-existence of decoding and recoding mecha-nisms). Contemporary urban representations, and this will be the main focus of this contribution, radicalize the transformed model.
Key words: literary history / urban studies / crime fiction / space / Bakhtin, Mikhail M. / Deleuze, Gilles
Historically, the ‘urban novel’ or ‘city novel’ was a strong discursive reality in both the production and reception of 19lh and early 20th century fiction. To grasp the full extent of the contrast with the present situation we need to bear in mind, however, what this implies: that academic literary criticism often treated the phenomenon of the urban novel as something of a monolith, discussing it in tandem with generalizing, uni-versalizing, or ‘grand’ narratives on ‘the metropolis’ and ‘metropolitan life’ by such early sociologists and urban theorists as Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Louis Wirth, or Lewis Mumford. The urban novel, as it was construed first by writers and then by critics, thus usually stood for a confrontation with the processes and symptoms of ‘modemity’ overall — a confrontation that was easily taken to transcend the particularities of plače, race, lifestyle, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or national origin that have come to complicate and refine academic discourse in more recent years. In itself, this traditional approach is not surprising: literary repre-
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sentations of urban worlds were themselves inspired by a kind of meto-nymical motivation. The city was conceived as a privileged environment; it was seen as a space in which the most important social and historical processes came to the surface. Writers and critics had good reason to emphasize the exceptional social status of the metropolis. According to the most eminent urban sociologist that Berlin produced, Georg Simmel, the city around the turn of the century was not so much a “spatial entity with sociological consequences” as “a sociological entity that is formed spatially” (Simmell903: 35; quoted in Frisby 1986: 77). Urban space was the modemization process itself tumed flesh; it was the “point of concentration of modemity”. For this reason, literary representations of the city (and studies about them) were much more than descriptions of urban space; they were always also about a microcosm that metonymi-cally, or better even, synecdochically, referred to major events and evolutions in the social world at large. I want to recall, very briefly, two of these events: on the one hand, the rationalization and fragmentation of moral discourses that accompanies literary representations of the city, and on the other hand, the commodifications and individualization of life-styles that goes hand in hand with them (see Beck 1986). Both these social phenomena have been analyzed extensively by urban sociologists, but the most important observers of them have probably been the great urban novelists of the 19th and 20th centuries (see Keunen 2001 and Lehan 1998).
The main concem of these novelists can be described by referring to a historical phenomenon I would like to coin “the modemity syndrome”. According to theorists of modernity like Simmel and Georg Lukacs, who describe the first pole of the modemity syndrome, the moral order changed completely from the Renaissance onwards. Modemity can be considered as the period in which the bourgeoisie introduced capitalism and thereby installed a new type of morality. In the capitalist logic, nothing is sacred; everything tends towards a decoding of the ancient social relationships. In the name of individual liberties, traditions are done away with and social forms are transformed into functional societal structures. In a capitalist form of society, no universal value systems can thrive, as it is the axio-matic structure of Capital flows that ultimately determines the foundational social relationships. Hierarchical structures based on social status and corresponding qualitative values crumble, to the benefit of a seemingly egalitarian society of free citizens. At the level of moral coding, a fault line can be discemed. Bourgeois culture moves away from the codes of the older, hierarchically organized social groups and is therefore plagued by self-pity caused by the “loss of values”.
The interest of the great urban novelists in excessive manifestations of individual sovereignty is a second aspect of the modemity syndrome. It reflects the individuation process of modemity, a process that can be labeled a “recoding process”. This recoding is related to the modem subjects’ tendency to stylize themselves as sovereign moral individuals. In other words, the fragmentation of traditional codes by the capitalist process of decoding is undone by a new moral coding foundation: the
individual. Going back to Elias’ description of the civilization process, one can argue that the decoding that wins out in modem society goes hand in hand with a recoding of individual behavior. The demise of extemal coercion coincides with increased self-coercion. In the course of the modemization process, culture progressively functions as a strategy to manipulate culture participants - to civilize them, and to subject them to the requirement of “impulse control”; the moral codes are interiorized and assume the shape of individual codes of behavior. Deleuze and Guattari come to the same conclusions in their genealogical overvievv of cultural history in Capitalisme et schizophrenie. They observe that in the realm of “the brave and the free” the “oedipalization” of behavior becomes the most important mechanism of social coding (Deleuze 1972: 318). Anti-cipating the bio-political claims in Michel Foucault's Histoire de la sexualite and Negri's Empire, they argue that in capitalist societies the individual ideal of freedom paradoxically functions as a kind of psycho-logical self-coercion. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that capitalist societies may very well exercise the most powerful kind of terror: psychological terror. Admittedly, capitalist individuals no longer live under the regime of despotic institutions, but they have to deal with an internal despot who burdens them with feelings of guilt and unattainable desires. The heroes of urban fiction certainly confirm this general tendency.
In what follows, I will shed light on both aspects of the modemity syndrome in order to clarify this somewhat abstract hypothesis. From time to time, I will refer to fiction writers, but in essence, my argument will be of a theoretical nature. My illustrations come from 20th century realist literature, more specifically the genre of the crime novel, because this genre can be seen as being the most familiar with the old strategies of urban writing. I will dwell on two images of the hero in the popular narrative culture of the 20th century. The first ties in with a traditional moralistic scheme; the second can be seen as a post-modemist stance that surmounts the traditional vision of the heroic act. The first seems to dominate most of our crime novel production in the West; the second can be considered as a more modest and marginal current within our popular culture.
Literary heroes and the spatial imagination
Urban crime fiction, as it was “invented” by the pioneers of the hard-boiled tradition, is marked by a strong moral concem. When dealing with modem society, they project moral values on the city. Moral polarities are used to give a semantic foundation to plot structures and heroes. In the hard-boiled tradition this structure is particularized as an opposition between labyrinthine and anomic settings on one hand, and attempts at elucidation on the other. In this sense these murder stories can be seen as a powerful expression of one aspect of the “modemity syndrome”. They deal with the “decoding” of moral values in modem “civilized” societies. But the other half of the syndrome is present in crime fiction as well. The
dual plot structure is often combined with heroes that express a strong sense of individuality and a predilection for private meditations. Like other types of modem fiction, urban crime fiction is organized by the actions of heroes who are tested for their personal integrity. This reflects the individuation process of modemity, the “recoding process.”
Urban crime fiction became respected because of its ability to depict modem society in its degrading and dysphoric aspects. The decoding process in the modem world (the aforementioned fragmentation of moral discourses and of life worlds) is central to the world of hard-boiled crime fiction. Raymond Chandler, one of the deans of this kind of world-making, captures the kind of morality that comes through in urban crime fiction in “The Simple Art of Murder”:
The realist in murder vvrites of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by rich men who made their money out of brothels, in which a screen star can be the finger man for a mob, and the nice man down the hali is a boss of the numbers racket; a world vvhere a judge with a cellar full of bootleg liquor can send a man to jail for having a pint in his pocket, where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of money making, where no man can walk down a dark Street in safety because law and order are things we talk about but refrain from practising; a world where you may witness a hold-up in broad daylight and see who did it, but you will fade quickly back into the crowd rather than teli anyone, because the hold-up men may have friends with long guns, or the police may not like your testimony, and in any case the shyster for the defence will be allowed to abuse and vilify you in open court, before a jury of selected morons, without any but the most perfunctory interference from a political judge. It is not a very fragrant vvorld, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool špirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it (Chandler 1944: 59).
References to the second pole of the modemity syndrome complete the picture. For Chandler, an important feature of crime fiction is the wish to offer a picture of “redemption.” The appropriate answer to the decoding processes of modernity is the moral integrity of the detective. In a much quoted passage he states:
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour, by instinct, by inevitability, vvithout thought of it, and certainly vvithout saying it. He must be the best man in his vvorld and a good enough man for any vvorld. (...) If there vvere enough like him, I think the vvorld vvould be a very safe plače to live in, and yet not too dull to be vvorth living in (Chandler 1944: 59).
The enactment of recoded moral attitudes is a fundamental story pattem in modem societies. Modem subjects do not see themselves as
devoted citizens, but like to cultivate the image of a person who acts morally in a spontaneous way. In essence, this attitude is a symptom of a phenomenon that Norbert Elias dubbed “emotional and moral self-coercion”. Crime fiction hyperbolizes this fiindamental tendency: far from being a savior of the metaphysical order, modem heroes are extrapo-lations of our tendency towards self-coercion. In a sense they seem to be emblems of unbound freedom and of a life that is more adventurous than that of ordinary people, but their attitude is, in fact, more ambiguous. They hyperbolize not only our freedom, but also illustrate our troubled experience in a world that forces individuals into the “social correctness” of self-coercion.
In order to trače the basic structure of the crime novel, we can draw on two essays by Mikhail Bakhtin written in the late thirties (Bakhtin 1981 and 1986). One of the core concepts in his history of the novel is the concept of “ordeal”. According to Bakhtin, the Novel of Ordeal is “the most widespread sub-category of the novel in European literature. It encompasses a considerable majority of ali novels produced” (Bakhtin 1986: 11). The novel of ordeal is a novelistic sub-genre of Greek origin vvhich reached its peak between the second and the sixth century. It undervvent countless metamorphoses (hagiography, chivalric literature, the baroque adventure novel). Moreover, this literary genre survived its historical prototypes: in the Gothic novel and the 18th century sentimental novel, Dumas and Sue's 19lh century adventure stories, and the contem-porary Hollywood action movie and crime fiction are to a great extent also indebted to the narrative of the ordeal. The name of the genre derives from the fact that the story centers on the hero's trials in confrontation with (often adventurous and well-nigh insurmountable) obstacles. The nature of the test (the ordeal) is not so much determined by the concrete shape of the obstacles, but largely depends on the identity the author has chosen for his hero. Whether the test concems the hero's loyalty, bravery, virtue, saintliness or magnanimity, the result is always the confirmation of the basic qualities of the heroic individual and the traditions that they incorporate like nobody else does.
One of Bakhtin's important insights is the observation that the “adventure novel of ordeal” is characterized by a high degree of stasis. The hero of these stories is thrown into a world dominated by ordeals or whims of fate, but these do not change him in the least. The ordeal is based on a set plot (“a typical composite schema”; Bakhtin 1981:87) and a stereotypical narrative worldview, the adventure chronotope: “The adventure chrono-tope is (...) characterized by a technical, abstract connection between space and time, by the reversibility of moments in a temporal sequence, and by their interchangeability in space. In this chronotope ali initiative and power belongs to chance” (Bakhtin 1981: 100). There is hardly any interaction betvveen the hero and the world; the world can test the hero, but is not capable of really changing him. In the same way, the hero cannot change the static order of the vvorld. The ideological consequence of such a view of humanity is that our identity coincides with a prede-termined self. The hero stands for vague, but in any case fixed values, and the world he has to cope with also has a fixed meaning.
The static world view that Bakhtin describes is a constitutive part of the literature of autocratic and theocratic societies. Epic literature is one of the most important types of literary expression from the Scandinavian Eddas and the Carmina Burana of the Carolingian Renaissance to the chansons de geste. It is a kind of allegorical narrative art that is structured by binary oppositions which are informed by aristocratic and religious codes. Through this kind of binary opposition, the epic romance glorifies the ruling position of social elites. For contemporary cultural historians (such as Deleuze and Jameson), this type of positional thinking consti-tutes the prime characteristic of the pre-capitalist narrative. As Northrop Frye put it: “Romance is the struggle between higher and lower realms, between heaven and hell, or the angelic and the demonic or diabolic” (Jameson 1981: 110-1). The epic romance is a genre that collects narra-tives in which the oppositions between the strong and the weak, between heroes and intriguers, between figures of order and figures of chaos, determine the plot. In these stories, the hero acts as the (representative of the) lavvmaker, but at the same time as a metaphysical agent that renders society coherent (again). The sacrifices made to achieve this goal are superhuman; the protagonist is a supennan. In Anatomy of Criticism Frye analyzes epic heroes as follows: “The hero of romance is analogous to the mythical Messiah or deliverer who comes from an upper world, and his enemy is analogous to the demonic powers of a lower vvorld” (Frye 1957: 187).'
At first sight, the classical mythical pattems of thought seem to recur in 19lh century realist fiction. Urban stories especially share a strong ethical preoccupation with epic romance, and in a sense they figure as “the missing link” betvveen 20lh century crime writing and the tradition of the adventure story. During the 19thcentury (until the interbellum period) cities were staged, described and evaluated as spaces of transgression, and opposed by a protagonist (or a series of characters) with a high degree of ethical self-consciousness. The mythical conflict implies a battle between an endangered moral world and an anomic world — a battle that cannot be brought to a conclusion and therefore always involves spleen and other signs of depression. Amy Kaplan supports this point of view in her study of American realism: realism has to be studied as “a strategy for imagin-ing and managing the threats of social change - not just to assert a dominant power, but often to assuage fears of powerlessness” (Kaplan 1988: 10). The strongest expressions of these preoccupations can be found in city literature. In realist and modernist literatures many novels open with the image of an uprooted traveler who innocently enters a city. The image functioned as the strategy of choice to give shape to the grand parade of modemity. Especially works that can be categorized as realist, naturalist or realistically oriented modernist (like Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy or Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer), as well as films from the interbellum (like Joe May’s Asphalt or King Vidor’s The Crowd), used the motif of ‘arrival in the big city’ to submerge the audi-ence in a highly charged and emotionally gripping situation (see Keunen 2000: 206-7, 303). Even though the urban material selected by authors and film makers was usually characterized by diversity and heterogeneity,
these works shared a fascination with the Big Confrontation between individual and city. The arrival in New York, Chicago, Pariš, Berlin, or London was a symbol of the encounter with historical developments everyone could recognize, and social tensions everybody could feel. For these reasons the image of this confrontation became one of the most potent symbols of modem culture. The attention shifts from superhuman heroes and aristocratic ideals to the experiences of normal citizens in everyday life. The struggles betvveen good and evil disappear to make room for the existential vicissitudes of individual heroes, for what Erich Auerbach has called “the entrance of existential and tragic seriousness into realism” (Auerbach 2003: 481). In other words, the ordeal is primarily situated at the level of the confrontation with modemity, and decoding, anomic society (see Auerbach 2003: 463, 473, 550-2). In a large number of French realist novels of the first half of the 19Ih century (Balzac) and in French naturalism (from the 1860’s on), the urban hero strongly relies on an individualized heroism that runs parallel to the general recoding tendency in modem society. The plot of the realist novel, like that of the Bildungsroman, is constructed around the moral development of the protagonist, who, in a struggle with the social world (often symbolized by the city), reaches maturity or resignation. The urban individual is at the mercy of an ethically superficial and often threatening city. This is certainly the case in Anglo-Saxon naturalism: the confrontation between the individual and the city often takes the form of a tragic conflict from which the individual barely escapes (Williams 1985: 235; Gobel 1982: 90-92). Therefore, it is not surprising that the theme of the struggle between the individual and the city became immensely popular in the 19th and early 20lh century.2 The metropolis became the narrative mould in which the author could test his heroes. Diane Wolfe Levy rightly argues that “the realistic city of early 19th-century novels functioned either as a backdrop or an objective test to be passed or failed by the protagonist. It was presented in highly symbolic terms of success or failure” (Levy 1978: 73)3.
City literature in this sense was an excellent expression of what I call the modemity syndrome. On the one hand, modem fiction addresses transformations in the social world (the tendency towards differentiation and fragmentation, and tovvards the relativity of moral absolutes); on the other hand, it addresses changes in the subjective answers to these transformations. The first can be called decoding phenomena; the second can be called recoding strategies. Thus, I would like to argue that, together with increasing anomy, modemity is also characterized by a different view of individual values. Theorists of modemity have observed that individuals in an anomic society take on an aura of subjective freedom. Literary historians find that there is a process of individualization in literature, that the modem author cannot fall back on the old moral polarities and that the ordeal of his heroes can no longer take plače in a transparent, comprehensible world. As Jameson put it: “In the increasingly secularized and rationalized vvorld that emerges from the collapse of feudalism” the author needs to look for themes that will have to replace “the older magical categories of Othemess which have now become so many dead
languages” (Jameson 1981: 131). The modem author finds these themes especially in the psychological world - more specifically, in the polarity between subjective representations of morality and the value-indifference of the objective world.
In 20th century crime writing this enactment of both cultural mecha-nisms of the modemity syndrome, this symbolic attempt to cope with modemity, seems to be continued, as will be argued below. The decoding of moral values can be seen as a good conductor for ancient images of moral decay and metaphysical uncertainties. This image of the modem hero can be seen as a transgressive figure who replaces the ancient heroes of the epic. It certainly ties in with Lotman’s thesis on the transgressive nature of modern and ancient heroes: “He may be a noble robber or a picaro, a sorcerer, spy, detective, terrorist or superman - the point is that he is able to do what others cannot - namely, to cross the structural boundaries of cultural space” (Lotman 1990: 151).
The transgressive hero in recent urban crime fiction
The quotes from Chandler show that urban crime fiction certainly revita-lizes the old pattems of a general moral problem. Chandler is writing about the thirties, but in later phases of 20lh century culture the basic premises are roughly copied by crime novelists. In contemporary crime fiction the pattern changes only a little. In many aspects contemporary crime stories resemble the older literature of ordeal, but they replace the old metaphysical and religious challenges by issues regarding the decoding mechanisms in modern society. What Michael Denning says about Eric Ambler's work goes to the heart of contemporary crime fiction: “the obsessive story of the loss of innocence, and the demystifying reduction of ali civilization to violence and brute force: ali these aspects join to form a concem for individual ethical decisions in the context of certain established and permanent aspects of human nature and experience” (Denning 1987: 84). In crime fiction the older mythical structure is particularized as an opposition between, on the one hand, a spatial pro-jection of a decoded life world and, on the other hand, heroic struggles with that urban space of moral transgression. The hero of the modem crime story does not seem to fight a specific kind of evil, or a negative moral agency; he often fights a more abstract enemy, the lack of moral foundations. During this struggle, he discovers his own, idiosyncratic moral code; he develops his ego by falling back on a highly minimalist moral theory, a prudential ethics. In some cases, the ethical self-consciousness, the recoding strategy, of the traditional hero becomes an even more extreme individualistic stance; resistance to the transgressive environment takes on radical transgressive features itself. An extreme example of this can be found in the work of Andrew Vachss, a former administrator who specialized in cases of child abuse after reading law. In his crime stories (which nearly always take plače in New York during the eighties or the nineties) he leaves the general picture of modem life intact and only
updates the world described by Chandler. He primarily tackles the moral decadence of the modem world, the transgression of modemity in general, and of urban space and society in particular. As in older forms of realist fiction, the city takes on the role of the antipode. The city belongs entirely to the dark sector of the mythical world; Vachss's universe is characterized as follows by a Playboy critic: “Lower Manhattan dockside hell, populated by various baby rapers (sic), gun runners, pimps, and snuff film magnates. ” The hero moves “through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind, and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements” (Shames 1986). Vachss’s basic concept as a writer of crime stories is a recurring element in 20th century fiction. In that century's dominant stories, Hollywood’s televisual stories, there is a similar ten-dency to take up the city in a mythical, static world. “The New York of Taxi Driver tums restless, although the alienated Travis moves towards a numbness, a grovving repression that ultimately bursts into ferocious, massive violence. Haunted by its filth and brutality, Travis hates the city; New York is the City of Dreadful Night” (Willett 94-95).
What is important to me in this city imagery is the fact that the city elicits a slightly different kind of subjective response. In contrast with Chandler, the hero takes on a more “unethicai” stance. The manifestly un-ethical attitude of the hero in Vachss’s novels can be seen as a radicali-zation of the second pole of the modemity syndrome: the tendency to cultivate an image of transgressive freedom is tumed into a new kind of image of individual sovereignty. Mystery Guide typifies Vachss's hero with the following adequate qualification: “The protagonist is named Burke; he has no first name, having been raised in State institutions from the beginning. He's a survivor, a grifter, a kind of man-hunter; he's a criminal in economic matters, but he feels buming hatred for the other kind of criminal: child molesters, rapists, pomography producers, neo-Nazis, woman-abusers, anyone who gets a thrill from the pain and fear of others. He has a moral code that owes little to what the conservative pundits like to call ‘traditional Judeo-Christian values’: in Burke's view, it is simply a public Service to kili and scam his neighbors who happen to be ‘maggots’” (Mystery Guide 2004).4 In spite of his unconventional moral stance, a hero like Burke stili illustrates the recoding mechanisms in modemity. Without the re-adoption of moral values, albeit in a highly individualized form, there seems to be no chance of survival in a strongly decoded society. Consequently, the evocation of a predetermined self remains one of the dominant features of contemporary crime fiction.
Urban crime fiction is organized by the actions of heroes who are tested for their ability to survive in urban culture. We can clearly see how story tellers cope with the modemity syndrome (the paradoxical co-exi-stence of decoding and recoding mechanisms): the public realm is pictured as a space of material and moral disorientation, but is also combined with a search for moral values. This search can be illustrated by the emergence of secondary plot lines that evoke closed private spaces. Crime novelists often refer to spatial settings which compensate for the loss of collective value systems. Statements in a recent overvievv of contemporary American
crime novels confinn this observation. Theo D’haen and Hans Bertens conclude from their reading of James Ellroy that his characters “consciously and cynically implicate themselves in what they know to be a corrupt and even inhuman system. The alternative is that they opt out” (Bertens 2001: 112). This “opting out” very often takes on the shape of a movement towards alternative spaces; sometimes those spaces can be called “individualized gated eommunities”; sometimes they can be labeled as “emotional secure life vvorlds.” A good example of what I would call “individualized gated eommunities” is the situation of the character named Burke in Andrew Vachss's work. Burke's office is an anonymous, non-registered dwelling in a warehouse.5 The house is proteeted by ali kinds of electronic equipment, but most of ali by an enomious Great Dane, Pansy. The same kind of armoured biotope is the bunker in the Bronx in which The Mole lives, the technical genius of the Burke series. The bunker is proteeted by a multitude of wild dogs that keep neo-Nazis from taking revenge for the countless attacks of the Mole.
The second phenomenon vvorth mentioning is the appearance of what I vvould call “emotionally secure life worlds.” An exponent of this is the systematic development of a specific secondary plot line devoted to the private life of the heroes, as in Robert Parker's Bostonian crime novels: the protagonist, Spenser, is often flying towards a kind of “nuclear family”, his girlfriend and his dog. The attention paid to private life plots finds its best illustrations in contemporary crime series on television. Often con-trasted with suggestive images of a chaotic, hectic city life (for instance, in the presentation of New York in NYPD Blue), television producers concentrate frequently on the sentimental or existential problems of their heroes. This emergence of love or family idylls ties in with a general tendency in Westem literature. Zola already opted, in one of his major novel on the complexity of modem city life (Le Ventre de Pariš), for an idyllic subplot, and Dickens is, of course, one of the masters of idyllic plot lines. In fact, we can trače this narrative strategy back to the very roots of realist novel writing. In novels from the second half of the 18th century the development of the protagonist is closely tied to a world model dominated by an idyllic setting and cyclical time processes. Bakhtin calls this model the “idyllic chronotope” beeause it shows a specific temporal logic in combination with a particular setting, “a grafting of life and its events to a plače, to a familiar territory” (Bakhtin 1981: 225). Central to these narratives are the intimacies of life in a small community in the country or in a non-urbanized culture. The flight from the city to the country house is a recurrent theme in early realist novels, used to illu-strate the moral concems of the heroes.6 Urban modemization processes, in contrast, are associated with the dovvn-svving of cyclical time and deseribed as phases of decay. In the 19th century heyday of realism these thematic clusters are redistributed and confronted with clusters deseribing the modem aspects of city life. The protagonist in realist novels, then, can be seen as a character who anticipates the moral stance of 20th century crime novel heroes. Their development is deseribed as a process that includes moments of temporary resignation: in secondary plot lines they
take on the appearance of victims who are forced to withdraw from a society plagued by modemization.
In both the case of an “individualized gated community” and of an “emo-tionally secure life world” the retreat can be considered the evocation of a recoded “authentic” space that strengthens the tendency tovvards moral autonomy and individuality; the sovereignty of the individual becomes the last refuge for a way of life that seems to be dominated by decoding processes.
No more heroes: Post-modern strategies of coping with the modernity syndrome.
Besides the obvious realist or modernist tendencies in popular narrative culture, there are some developments that deviate from the general scheme. In the 20th century, the crime hero partly changes in shape. First, in bellettrie, and second, in popular fiction, we observe a clear tendency to demythologize the heroic stance that dominated traditional prose writing. James Ellroy, for instance, cannot be considered as an author of recoding-fiction. Some of his heroes contradict the thesis that crime fiction culti-vates recoded authentic life worlds. In some of Ellroy’s novels, vvhich were recently described as “a hypnotic trip to America’s underbelly and one man’s tortured soul” (Bertens 2001: 97), the direction of the dynamics of classic crime fiction is even reversed; the story “makes the ‘system’, the agent and the characters, however powerfully drawn, puppets-on-a-string, devoid of free will” (Bertens 2001: 112). The attitudes of the heroes do not coincide with a recoding process, but illustrate, on the contrary, the radical affirmation of the decoding tendency, as in Michael Connelly’s Angels Flight (1999), in vvhich the hero “hands in his freedom” (Bertens 2001: 112). There are good reasons to believe that the predilection for heroes with a more or less predetermined self has to a certain degree waned in the last decades, at least in some exponents of crime fiction.
A good example of this fairly recent tendency is offered by the Spanish writer Eduardo Mendoza. In a lesser-known trilogy of crime novels, the author of “City of Wonders” reinvents the picaresque novel by adapting the genre to the contemporary urban world of political corruption, child abuse, and financial fraud. The nameless protagonist of the trilogy is a petty criminal who was raised in Barcelona’s underworld and who, after being caught, is living in an asylum, where he is writing his hilarious adventures in an almost lunatic manner. (Mendoza leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the adventures are a realistic report or the phantasmagoria of a mythomaniac). In the three novels the protagonist is either forced or seduced into solving crime mysteries, but in solving these, he does not resemble the ethical self-conscious protagonist of other modem stories. On the contrary, unlike Chandler’s heroes he lives “beyond good and evil” and, in contrast to those of Vachss, he is merely guided by the laws of chance and fate. The moral vocation that characte-
rizes other stories of modemity, and that in a sense compensated for the rather static world view of the adventure stories, is replaced by the frog perspective of a picaro. He is only doing the right thing because of a superficial feeling of sympathy for a femme fatale, or because he is forced to engage in a struggle with criminality. His methods during this struggle are often as immoral as the deeds of his adversaries. Thus Mendoza injects the novel of ordeal with another important and distinct type of story telling: the picaresque novel. This fusion of two distinct narrative forms is remarkable because it shows clearly that the battle between morality and modemity has been transformed. There is stili some con-frontation with the amorality of urban space in this kind of fiction, and there is stili a transgressive movement (in the sense of Lotman), but the quest for moral self-coercion seems totally absent.
The evolution (in the history of the novel of ordeal) from a positive moral message to a purely negative affirmation of subjective disinte-gration is, in the light of the aforementioned modemity syndrome, not surprising. It can be interpreted as a radicalization of the decoding process, as an enactment of the impossibility of recoding strategies. The novels of Mendoza and Ellroy therefore picture a different kind of recoded space; they articulate environments and attitudes that I want to coin as “idio-syncratic psychological spaces”: their characters are pictured as indivi-dualists with pathological tendencies. Developments in other media confirm this observation. The movies of the eighties and nineties that Liam Kennedy analyzed in his collection of essays, Urban Space and Representation, can be seen as baring the same dichotomy. Kennedy works with the implicit documentary material of movies, with the “over-deter-mined semiology of urban signs and scenes” he observes in them. Films like After Hours (1985), Falling Down (1992), Heat (1995) and Sev e n (1997) are read by him as symptoms of “paranoid spatiality”. The city images he analyzes are documents that refer to “an uncanny simulacrum of self, an always already interiorized space” (2000: 119).
This tendency in crime fiction points to a different reaction to mo-dernity. Often the “self’ is faced with the devastating problem that his personal representations and concepts can no longer simply be applied to phenomena of the outside world. The modemity syndrome seems to have caused, in some cases, a catatonic state of mind.
To understand this minimalistic kind of heroism concept, a broadening of horizons in the direction of some general tendencies in urban literature is necessary. The observation that urban fiction and urban modernity are closely intertwined — my starting point — applies both to traditional crime fiction and to the realist and modernist masterpieces that appeared in the heyday of urban fiction (which, I would claim, was betvveen 1850 and 1930). When we want to investigate late modernist and post-moder-nist fiction, however, such an observation is no longer evident. It seems very doubtfiil whether urban fiction in the post-war period stili functions as a synecdoche, and whether it continues to entertain the same connection with major social evolutions. In a sense, the different attitudes of some contemporary crime novelists tovvards the recoding mechanisms in our
culture (the staging of heroes who live in an idiosyncratic State “beyond good and evil”) can be considered a symptom of the grovving neglect of this kind of synecdochic thinking.7 The images of heroes we get from novels like those of Mendoza and from the films of Scorsese go hand in hand with changes in the portrayal of the decoding tendencies. The urban setting is no longer tackled directly, but seems to be filtered by a series of problems that are of an almost psycho-pathological kind.
The ambition of the major realist vvriters (crime novelists included) to represent the city in a “totalizing” manner as the symbol or embodiment of modemity has both waned and been displaced in past years. The ten-dency towards “emotional secure life worlds” and “individualized gated communities” can be considered a realist strategy. In the case of Zola, Dreiser, Doblin, Dos Passos, Chandler, or Vachss, would-be heroic attempts were made to describe the problems that are linked with the modemity syndrome. Other tendencies seem to reject this modernist project and focus on more complex phenomena. Comparing these narratives with the glorious past of the city novel, we cannot but observe a sharp contrast. In staging the possibility of a recoding strategy, the decoding processes are partly countered. In stories that niinimize the heroic stance, however, a more culture-philosophical meta-reflection seems to reign. Implicit medi-tations on the pitiful status of the hero in the modem world are inserted into the story and, because of the prevailing notion of disintegration (the impossibility of recoding strategies) these novels have a much more critical attitude: the decoded world is exposed in its naked objectivity.
NOTES
1 In this sense, the epic hero is the executor of an eschatological goal. Lotman has written extensively on the important role of eschatological and mythical thinking in traditional (and popular) narratives: “The action, set in linear time, is constructed as a narrative about the gradual decay of the world and the ageing of the god, after which comes his death (dismemberment, torment, eating, burial) and resurrection, vvhich marks the end of evil and its final eradication. So the increase of evil is connected with the movement of time; and the disappearance of evil with the end of time, its stopping forever” (Lotman 1990: 158-9).
2 At the end of the tvventieth century however this collective symbol seems to persist only in the popular imagination, or in post-colonial or lesbian and gay vvritings, in which migration to the metropolis often continues to be a stock ingredient (for example, in the form of au pair narratives or adaptations of the Bildungsromari).
3 Descriptions of city life differ greatly from (pre)romantic imagery; they are strongly focused on those aspects of the vvorld that aroused moral indignation in 18'1' century vvriters. Balzac, Zola, and Gissing usually focus not on idyllic community life or the flight from the city, but on the most advanced stages of modernization and the concrete spaces vvhere this process takes plače. Bakhtin’s work suggests that these particular chronotopic images can be analysed as the reverse of the idyllic chronotope: “here the issue is primarily one of overturning and demolishing the world view and psychology of the idyll, vvhich proved
increasingly inadequate to the new capitalist world. [...] We get a picture of the breakdovvn of provincial idealism under forces emanating from the capitalist centre” (Bakhtin 1981: 234). In his study of the Bildungsroman, Bakhtin builds on this argument and points to the fact that the realist novel is capable of reading buildings, streets, vvorks of art, technology, and other social organizations as signs that refer to historical developments concerning moral fragmentation: the changing nature of people, the succession of generations and eras, class conflicts (Bakhtin 1986: 25).
4	In the Chicago Tribune, Vachss's vvork vvas related to mythical polarities even more explicitly: “With his soiled white hat, this Lone Ranger of the 1990’s asks difficult questions while shining light into the darkest recesses” (The Zero -Official VVebsite of Andrew Vachss).
This concept refers to a relatively recent phenomenon in urban planning. The tendency tovvards walling private property, and obsessive attention to security and control have found their most extreme expression in the much-publicized “gated community.” Gated communities, which started mushrooming in the U.S. in the 1980s, are more than apartment buildings with private security services and a private parking lot. They are entire neighborhoods or subdivisions, newly built or existing, that are literally walled off with a fence and a gate. In their study of the phenomenon, Edvvard Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder define them as “residential areas with restricted access in vvhich normaIly public spaces are privatized” (1997: 2).
6 Urban spaces may also embody the idyllic chronotope, but only in urban milieus where cyclical regeneration takes plače: intimate enclaves such as middle class houses, suburban villas, parks, and historical monuments. Other aspects of the city are avoided, or function as symbols for banal and unaesthetic experiences.
7 The exceptions to this tendency are crime novels situated in a post-colonial context. Here, the culture-sociological impulse is largely retained (See Christian 2001). Peter Brooker has extensively analysed this phenomenon in Modernity and Metropolis and comes implicitly to the conclusion that post-war fiction in general is much more concerned with responding to a sociological diversification in the literary field. Four out of seven chapters of his study are dedicated to the theme of community building in city prose and to the efforts of vvriters to reconstruct their ovvn identities through their fiction.
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MENDOZA, Eduardo. 2001. La aventura del tocador de senoras. Barcelona: Seix Barral. Mystery Guide. 2004. http://www.mysteryguide.com/bkVachssFlood.html
NEGRI, Antonio. 2001. Empire. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
SHAMES, Laurence. 1986. Andrew Vachss: Flood's Angry Author. Playboy (February).
http://www.vachss.com/av_articles/playboy_86.html.
SIMMEL, Georg. 1903. Soziologie des Raumes. Jahrbuch jur Gesetzgebung, Ver-waltung und Volkswirtschaft 27: 27-71.
The Zero - Official Website of Andrew Vachss. 2004. http://www.vachss.com/ av_novels/hard_candy.html.
VVILLETT, Ralph. 1996. The naked city: urban crime fiction in the USA. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
WILLIAMS, Raymond. 1985 (1973). The Country and the City. London: Hogarth Press.
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.‘t •	.	.	•	>	1	•	•	•	'V-1'
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‘SELF’ AND THE MODERNIST CITY: STELIO MATTIONI AND TRIESTE
Katia Pizzi
University of London, Great Britain
821.131.1.09
Trieste has traditionally suffered the status of a border city. This border has been experienced as a source of permanent anxiety and displacement, acquiring the status of a chronotope in the Bachktinian sense. The city ‘s eccentric position has frequently resulted in Trieste being personified or emerging as an overwhelming presence in its literature. Local authors have experienced the city ‘from within’, as superimposed, ‘merged’ with their ‘Selves My discussion includes the canonic author Italo Svevo and focuses in particular on the contemporary Stelio Mattioni and his novel II richiamo di Alma (1980).
Key words: Italian literature / urban space / literary topographies / chronotope / Trieste / Svelo, Italo / Mattioni, Stelio
The city of Trieste occupies a particular position in the imagination of Italians. Its geographical eccentricities are brought powerfully to the fore in the experience of the adjacent borders, veritable chronotopes in the Bakhtinian sense, and sources of displacement and anxiety. Compounded with a number of complex historical processes, Trieste has been consti-tuted as peripheral, marginal, and irresolute: a quintessentially ‘liminaF city locked between a number of conflicting cultures and heritages: Mitteleuropean, Slav, Jevvish, Italian.
Trieste’s eccentric position has typically been featured in its literature. Its topography has similarly emerged as uncompromising, angular, rugged and vertical: not accidentally, a variously inflected metaphor equating Trieste to a prison, concentration camp or isolation unit, recurs in literary portrayals of the city. As landscape of the mind, Trieste has of course been largely forged also by its literature becoming a sound chamber of memory where streets, comers, squares and banks have ali acquired sym-bolical meaning and are continuously set against their numerous literary renderings.1
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Trieste’s contradictory and displaced position was well understood, for instance, by filmmakers. Without dwelling at length on the cinematic fortunes of Trieste, it is worth noting that themes of an exquisitely local nature, such as the quest for identity, the mystery embodied by women pursued in a coil of dark and dingy back streets and alleys, Trieste’s role in the collective imagination as both frontier and military front, were thematics ali prominently displayed in film particularly during the post-war and cold war, when Trieste’s contended geo-political position was under close intemational scrutiny. In the Neo-realist film Alfa Taul (1942; directed by Francesco De Robertis) Trieste stands as metonymy of a generic metropolis, a radically modem and crowded urban space. Trieste features as a seedy microcosm populated with spies, clandestines, refugees, exiles operating in a climate of ambushes, betrayals and un-restrained passions and violence in films such as Sleeping-car to Trieste (1948; directed by John Paddy Carstairs), Clandestino a Trieste (1951; directed by Guido Salvini) and La ragazza di Trieste (1951; directed by Bernard Borderie). Finally, in Cuori senza frontiere (1949; directed by Luigi Zampa and starring Gina Lollobrigida and Raf Vallone) the prevailing cliched sentimental theme is overpowered by the pressing territorial concerns follovving the geo-political re-mapping of the area after the end of the war.
Consonant with historical developments, as well as the plače and role played by the city in the collective imagination, the Trieste emerging in cinema complements Edward Timm’s argument that in modem literature: ‘there is no longer any position outside the city from vvhich it can be vievved as a coherent whole. The poet, novelist or painter is trapped within the turmoil of the metropolis’.2 Although Trieste can only partially be vievved as a metropolis, despite many Futurist claims to the contrary, Timms implies here that a modernist approach to the city must be, first and fore-most, existential. The artisfs position must be that of an insider, whose experience of the city is ‘from within’, closely related to, indeed, conflated with, the turmoil of her/his unconscious mind.
I	will argue here not merely that this is the case with much of modem Triestine literature in Italian, but also that a substantive number of Italian Triestine authors have superimposed, inscribed, as it were, their ‘Selves’ into the city. These authors include better and lesser-knovvn writers of the pre-war and inter-war generation, from Italo Svevo to Scipio Slataper, from Carlo Stuparich to Virgilio Giotti, as well as contemporary ones such as Giuliana Morandini, Renzo Rosso, and Stelio Mattioni. Ali of these authors welcome the autobiographical genre as a means of enclosing, almost ‘burying’, themselves further and further within the city walls. In reflecting a difficulty in severing their umbilical chord with Trieste, their predilection for autobiographical narratives articulates a clear diffidence for alien horizons, powerfully illustrated in the Oedipal attachment binding these local authors with their native town.3 This inability, or unvvilling-ness, to escape the fetters of Trieste has frequently produced a compulsion to inscribe themselves, merge their ‘Selves’ with the city, or, to put it in Enzo Bettizza’s words, ‘essere una cosa sola con la citta che brulicava alle
sue [di Daniele Solospin] spalle, con l’aria stessa che respiravano insieme, lui e la citta’.4
The novels of Italo Svevo (1861-1928), the intemationally renowned Triestine author who exercises to this day the most significant influence on local writing in Italian, provide a useful term of comparison. ‘Svevo blurred the line between art and autobiography. [...] Trieste and his own life were always the source of his work’, as Charles Russell puts it.5 In his first novel Una vita (1892), the author’s alter ego, Alfonso, marches up steep Triestine alleyways and the panoramic road leading to the village of Opčina in pursuit of his recovery from a nervous breakdown: through his climbing, Trieste’s sharp verticality comes prominently to the fore. Reco-gnizable sites and landscapes are distorted and reshaped by memory, remoulded on the basis of the author’s mental geographies and topogra-phies. Trieste’s rigorous, even hostile, ‘geometricity’ is profoundly disso-nant with the disorder, apprehensions and turmoil agitating the autobio-graphical protagonisfs mind.
In Svevo’s following novel, Senilita (1898), the presence of the city is equally pervasive. The protagonists Emilio Brentani and his lover, Angio-lina, meet in ‘Passaggio Sant’Andrea’, a favourite boulevard for strolling on Sundays, and, later on, again along the rugged road leading to Opčina. The two kiss and ‘make love’ in every comer of Trieste: ‘Amarono in tutte le vie suburbane di Trieste. [...] Si baciavano lungamente, la citta ai loro piedi, muta, morta, come il mare, di lassu niente altro che una grande estensione di colore misterioso, indistinto: e neirimmobilita e nel silenzio, citta, mare e colli apparivano di un solo pezzo, la stessa materia foggiata e colorita da qualche artista bizzarro, divisa, tagliata da linee segnate da punti gialli, i fanali delle vie.’6
In its leaden greyness Trieste takes after Emilio’s sister Amalia, who lives a desolate, self-constrained existence, while the city’s ruthlessness is personified by Angiolina who conceals the materialism of a pragmatic ‘Giolona’ behind the glory of her sun-kissed hair and sky-blue eyes. Like Alfonso, the autobiographical Emilio is unable to escape a Trieste equated with unhappiness and betrayal. The city is carved out of a heavily layered oil painting, dominated by shadows and punctuated with sudden brush-strokes that cover the previous impression, continually imposing a new, if stili uncertain, order.
In Svevo’s best-known novel La coscienza di Zeno (1923), the mean-derings of Zeno’s own ‘consciousness’ replicate the wind-swept verticality of Trieste, in search of a direction that psychoanalysis appears unable to indicate. Zeno is progressively drawn to projecting his own tortuous, ambiguous and compromised ‘Self onto the city, in short, to collude Trieste with his own ‘Self.
A collusion betvveen the disquieting ‘geometricity’ of Trieste and the ‘Self of the autobiographical protagonist is also laid at the foundations of the novel II richiamo di Alma (1980) by Stelio Mattioni (b. 1921 ).7 Set in Trieste at an unspecified time of the XX century, II richiamo di Alma displays a number of features already encountered in Svevo and other major Italian Triestine writers. Without ever mentioning the city by name,
Mattioni details ali the while an extremely accurate, circumstantial topo-graphy which coincides with Trieste’s own. Rare, if non-existent, hints to a plausible chronology allow ali characters, whose numbers are kept to an absolute minimum and who normally remain nameless, to interact awkwardly and within a historical vacuum. They move, though their movement is typically apparent rather than real, in a Trieste reduced to a metaphysical, De Chirico-like space, populated with few objects and forms of a highly abstract or symbolic nature, ‘come in un’atmosfera rarefatta, fra case e persone che erano concrete si, ma rese sfocate da un miraggio.’8 The narrative relies on a subtle dialectic of‘open’ vs. ‘closed’ and ‘up’ vs. ‘down’ emphasising the psycho-geographical verticality of the city throughout.
The first person narrator, vvhose name is also never disclosed and who clearly functions as the author’s alter ego, roams streets, marches up steep roads or down vertiginous sloping alleys in the exhausting pursuit of a mysterious young woman called Alma, vvhose name barely conceals a transparent metaphor. Name and metamorphoses undergone by Alma throughout the narration, from Persephone to Virgin Mary, from Eve in the Garden of Eden to Trieste itself as necropolis in the final pages, corroborate the hypothesis that she descends directly from the figurations of Anima as devised by Carl Gustav Jung. Not accidentally, Jung’s symbols were extremely influential in Trieste via the local intellectual Roberto (Bobi) Bazlen, who not only brought Jungian analysis to Italy via the Triestine route, but also played a pivotal role in discovering and launching Mattioni as an author.9
Alma is periodically, if elusively, found, and rapidly lost again in the most prominent streets, squares, corners and back-alleys of this meta-physical Trieste, and vvith a predilection for the semi-abandoned, sordid area of Cittavecchia. The novel, however, opens in aunt Francesca’s small fiat, on the first floor of a building located in Via del Monte, and more precisely in her large garden, ‘un giardino aperto e chiuso nello stesso tempo’.10 Circumstantial topographic information details that from this garden: ‘si udiva la citta, ma come da dietro un rnuro, cosi che si poteva immaginarla come si voleva, e anche che non esistesse, che fosse il lontano rumore della risacca o il proprio sangue che scorre nelle vene.’11 Mattioni strikes a delicate balance here between a ‘real’ topography, registered by the eye, and a symbolic one, experienced through consciousness.
Complete absorption vvith the city, indeed the ‘flovving’ of the city inside himself like his ovvn blood running through his veins, are recurrent states of mind for the autobiographical protagonist. Exploring the city’s labyrin-thine topography, being engulfed in the vortex of its back streets, coincides vvith losing himself in a pattem of sinister symbols punctuated vvith complex literary references and allusions. The resulting sense of estrange-ment is all-encompassing: the protagonist cannot help but vvalking dovvn the familiar streets of his home tovvn as if for the first time: ‘nel mio girovagare [...], facevo sempre le stesse strade. Non staro a dire quali, [...], ma erano tutte intomo ad un punto, il punto in cui dovevo incontrarla. Quasi un labirinto.’12 Mattioni powerfully creates an illusion of movement
within a very circumscribed, concentric and progressively shrinking space. Indeed, the protagonisfs ‘Self, his Anima, are to be found at the centre of these concentric circles, ultimately in his own psyche: he pursues a tour of his own mind disguised as a tour of Trieste.
Alma’s mystery will never be fully revealed. After allusively exposing her naked body against a landscape steeped in literary references and allusions, drawn from classical mythology to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Alma is never to be seen again by the protagonist who attempts to sever his umbilical chord with his native city by moving out of Trieste. However, a further clue to Alma’s relevance is provided in the final pages of the novel, when, minutes before abandoning the city, the protagonist visits Trieste’s necropolis: the ‘Orto Lapidario’ located on top of the hill of San Giusto. Here, an ancient tombstone carries the carved name of Alma, followed by the motto: ‘SE TI AMI, AMAMI’ (=‘you must love me, if you love yourself ).13 The circularity and self-referentiality of this motto leave little doubt as to the collusion of Alma/Anima with Trieste and with ‘Self. The ‘Orto Lapidario’ sits on one of the highest grounds in Trieste. From this altitude, intoxicated by a heady perfume of grass and soil, Mattioni contemplates Trieste itself as if reflected in a mirror: a necropolis, the custodian of a sterile archaeology of memory: ‘vedevo la citta dall’alto, [...] quasi fosse la continuazione del luogo in cui mi trovavo, disseminato di emblemi e di tavole di pietra, sulle quali in vario modo erano incisi dei messaggi, delle date e dei norni che, [...], invece di comunicare qualcosa, ingeneravano solo monotonia, una scansione anonima senza fine.’14
At this highly charged juncture, the city is called upon as provider of ‘Self, as well as in terms of its wider historical and literary status. Trieste itself is a graveyard where debris of memory, a useless ‘scanning’, a repe-tition of themes of strictly local interest prevails in similar fashion to the dusty tombstones filling the ‘Orto Lapidario’. Strewn as it is with literary ‘relics’, Trieste’s own topography is a primary condition for the protagonisti quest for ‘Self. The city demands complete identification: it is no accident that he feels compelled to leave Trieste once his Anima has been revealed to him. The city understood as fossil condemns the protagonist to a self-awareness he must expiate in the loneliness of ostracism knowing no retum.
With II richiamo di Alma, Stelio Mattioni has managed to produce an original novel while ali the vvhile talking about himself and about Trieste. If we conclude, with Timms, that ‘there is no longer any position outside the city from vvhich it can be vievved as a coherent whole’, Mattioni has not merely successfully inscribed his own ‘Self in the city.15 He has also woven one more thread in the tapestry of Triestine literature in Italian. Under the guise of Mattioni’s ‘crypto-autobiography’, Trieste’s imagined topographies continue to thrive.16
NOTES
1 The city in its literature has typically been personified with a view to reinforcing its status as particular and specific. Personification, usually employed in the iconic representation of nations, from Marianne to John Buli to Uncie Sam, is here applied to Trieste itself.
2 Edward Timms, ‘Unreal city -Theme and Variations’ in Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art, ed. by E.Timms and David Kelley (Manchester: Manchester University Press, c 1985), p.3.
3 Claudio Magris analyses in detail the relationship betvveen Triestine writing and the city in Oedipal terms, see ‘Una storia si chiude’, in Dietro le parole (Milan: Garzanti, 1978), pp.175-179.
4 E.Bettiza, II fantasma di Trieste (Milan: Longanesi, 1958), p.123: ‘being one with the city svvarming behind him [Daniele Solospin], with the air they were breathing together’. The translation is mine.
5 Charles C. Russell, halo Svevo: The Writer from Trieste: Reflections on his Background and his Work (Ravenna: Longo, 1978), p. 127.
6 Italo Svevo, Senilita, in I.Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by Pietro Sarzana (Milan: Mondadori, 1985), pp.405-637 (pp.430-431); trans. by Beryl de Zoete, I.Svevo, As a Man Grows Older (Harmondsvvorth: Penguin, 1977), p.22: ‘They had made love in ali the suburban roads of Trieste. [...] They remained folded in a long embrace, with the city at their feet, as silent and dead as the sea vvhich, from that height, seemed one vast expanse of colour, mysterious, undefined. Motionless there in the silence, city, sea, and hills seemed to be ali of one piece, as if some artist had shaped and coloured ali that matter according to his own strange fancy, and dotted the intersecting lines with points of yellow light which were really Street lanterns.’
7 Born in Trieste in 1921, Mattioni’s first publication was the collection of poems La citta perduta (Milan: Idos, 1956). Mattioni has hovvever subsequently mainly published fiction in prose, featuring Trieste in ali of his work. In a career spanning over forty years, Mattioni’s novels and collections of stories include the prominent II sosia (Turin: Einaudi, 1962) and II re ne comanda una (Milan: Adelphi, 1968).
8 S.Mattioni, II richiamo di Alma (Milan: Adelphi, 1980), p.76: ‘in a rarefied atmosphere, amongst buildings and people who were real, but out of focus at the same time, as if in a mirage.’ Ali translations from this novel quoted here and belovv are my ovvn.
9 See in particular Bazlen’s incisive influence in advising major publishers in Italy and in founding the publishing house Adelphi.
10 S.Mattioni, II richiamo, p.l 1: ‘a garden which was both open and closed at the same time.’
11 Ibid., p.12: ‘one could hear the city as if from behind a vvall, so that one could imagine it as one vvished, even as non-existent at ali, or existing merely as the distant vvhisper of the undertow or of one’s ovvn blood running through one’s veins.’ Cf. also with E.Bettizza’s novel II fantasma di Trieste quoted in footnote 4 above.
12 S.Mattioni, II richiamo, p.26: ‘in my wanderings I always vvalked down the same streets. I do not wish to mention their names, but they ali circled round one specific location, exactly where I was destined to meet Alma, as if in the middle of a labyrinth.’
13 Ibid., p. 156.
14 Ibid., p. 154: ‘I contemplated the city from high up, [...] as if it was an extension of the plače where I was, strewn with emblems and tombstones. Engraved
on those stones were dates, names, messages that [...] failed to communicate anything and bore nothing else but an anonymous, endless scanning.’
15 Cf. footnote 2 above.
16 See Bruno Maier, ‘Mattioni tra confessione e narrazione’, in II gioco dell'alfabeto: Altri saggi triestini (Gorica: Istituto Giuliano di Storia, Cultura, Documentazione, 1990), pp.139-148 (p. 140): ‘non c’e un’effettiva differenza di Weltanschauung tra il recente libro di “confessioni” e le opere anteriori di Mattioni [...] che [...] sono piu “soggettive” e autobiografiche (o criptoautobiografiche) di quanto non si possa supporre’.
WORKS CITED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BETTIZA, Enzo: II fantasma di Trieste. Milan: Longanesi, 1958.
MAGR1S, Claudio: Dietro le parole. Milan: Garzanti, 1978.
MAIER, Bruno: II gioco dell’alfabeto: Altri saggi triestini. Gorica: Istituto Giuliano di Storia Cultura Documentazione, 1990.
MATTIONI, Stelio: La cittaperduta. Milan: Idos, 1956.
— lire ne comanda una. Milan: Adelphi, 1968.
— II richiamo di Alma. Milan: Adelphi, 1980.
— II sosia. Turin: Einaudi, 1962.
RUSSELL, Charles C.: Italo Svevo: The Writer from Trieste: Reflections on his Background and his Work. Ravenna: Longo, 1978.
SVEVO, Italo: La coscienza di Zeno, in I. Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by Pietro Sarzana. Milan: Mondadori, 1985, pp.639-1117.
— Senilita, in I.Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by P. Sarzana. Milan: Mondadori, 1985, pp.405-637.
— Una vita, in I.Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by P. Sarzana. Milan: Mondadori, 1985, pp. 1-403.
TIMMS, Edward and David Kelley (eds): Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modem European Literature and Art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.
FILMOGRAPHY
Alfa Tau! (Francesco De Robertis; 1942) Clandestino a Trieste (Guido Salvini; 1951)
Cuori senza frontiere (Luigi Zampa; 1949)
La ragazza di Trieste (Bernard Borderie; 1951) Sleeping-car to Trieste (John Paddy Carstairs; 1948)
SPACE OF CHANGEABLEIDENTITY AND THE MARGINS OF LITERATURE
Igor Škamperle
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
821.131.1.09:821.163.6.09
The paper of the author, who is Triestine by birth, grasps in essayistic style the social, linguislic and world-view intricacies of Trieste, an exemp-lary metropolitan, bat incomprehensibly disheartened city, and the steep rim of the Trieste Karst behind it. As a complex and contradictory meeting point, Trieste is strongly faced by two identities, Slovenian and Italian. Its literature inscribes in itself unique topographies, a vast panorama of images imbued with distinct philosophies, incongruent ideas and thematic interests.
Key words: Italian literature / Slovene literature / border regions / national identity / cultural identity / Trieste / Karst
Identity is never static, unchangeable, or determined in advance. Such a view is commonly accepted, and certain regions corroborate it well. There are cultural topographies where identity simply cannot be but a dynamic event. Europe often experiences strong dynamics and transpositions of identities, ali the while facing their differences and a vast possibility of choices. Social inertia effectively disclaims and indirectly weakens, suppresses and rejects identity as such, be it linguistic, cultural, national, religious, or as worldview. Identity - namely linguistic, cultural and national - is humanity’s open project, both personal and communal. As such, i.e. as a personal, subjective and collective task, or a calling to build, research, create and appropriate fomis through which we are more than eager to approach beauty and truth, it does not have a final defi-nition. Construing identity reminds us of Martin Buber’s observation that man is an uncompleted project. Similar principles were advocated by the Personalists, who related them to the ethical principle of man., Such a (very modem) notion had already been articulated by the Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola in 1486 in his Oratio de hominis dignitate. We find there the evident position that humanity has no predestined form, and thus has to chose and form its own essence.
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The creation, formation and mediation of identity seem to be related in the very core to art, literature and ethical principles of existence. It is, therefore, no surprise that we can detect in the last few years in Europe a grovvth of uneasiness and a certain hesitation regarding the process of globalization as dictated by the USA. In this process, the driving engine is economic consumption and the correlated levelling of practically ali human criteria: aesthetic, axiological, communicational, applicable, essential, even ethical. Instead of a canon, hierarchy, evaluations, limits of expression and forbidden fruit, what has come to the fore is the apology of levelling of tastes, and expression, ever stronger relativity of criteria, whose sole principle is an increase in consumption. Instead of a vertical line, a horizontal; instead of a tree, a fem or rhizome, as Felix Guattary and Gilles Delleuze predicted years ago in an essay, and later in the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus.1 A thousand plateaus of the network, each equally vvithin one’s reach, even though reduced to elementary particles, the title of a novel by Michel Houellebecq. Even certain metaphors, skilfully inter-twined in the works of Borges or Italo Calvino, speak to us today with exciting realism: ali we have to do is remind ourselves of the long corridors of the library labyrinth, of language, of the spider web, of paths branching out vvithout end, where we feel comfortably at home. But is it a potential transgression of expression in the textual space of art, literature and in identity as such?
European countries identified themselves with their microcosmic, verti-cally created identities. We are constituted and defined by the common -the forest, yet there are trees in it. There are many, and each has its own name: oak, pine, birch, maple, elm, beech, cherry, yew, fir, and not simply ‘tree’. The plurality is of essential importance here, for it provides grounds for identity and also transgression. Every tree descends into the depths and rises into the sky.
*	* *
I come from Trieste. That is vvhere I was bom and where I spent my childhood years. Although I live and work in Ljubljana, I go back to Trieste regularly every month to visit my relatives, or just to experience the space, its symbolic and real atmosphere, the nature of Kras (or Karst) and Istrian landscape, the urban and historical city landscape, determined by names, identities, history and imagination; because of the cultural geo-graphy. This has always been my home. There exists a space in which we live, but we leave it behind and transgress it, measure its margins, expe-rience distance, and retum to it. We experience it in our life, with literature as its true and vital witness. For me, however, transgression takes plače in an oblique line. I don’t take it to be a dividing line, dravving a clear delineation between well-defined categories: good/evil; canon/non-canonized forms of expression; right/wrong; ours/theirs; normative and acceptable/altemative; Slovenian/Italian; or, to put it differently, a dividing line betvveen two worlds, the world of London and Pariš from that of
Moscow and Vladivostok, the line we lived with not so long ago right there; but the majority of the local population knew how to transgress it and knew how to live on the frontier. Transgression is not black or white; it cannot be founded on Manichean logic. It is evasive, implied, and indirect in its nature, traversing ali the fields of our creativity and life. Every tree has its good and bad branches, its own Creative, open direction, or a blind vvithered branch. I lay particular stress on transgression in aesthetics, art, and thinking in general. It incites our Creative endeavour to think beyond canons, to go beyond margins, to look for new syntheses. Our goal is harmony. It is founded on this, on complementary, balanced entities.
However, before this can happen, we should come to know the margins, as they were experienced by Michelangelo, who loved his stone, but vvorked with it by seeking its limits of expressiveness, until his last, astonishingly beautiful unfinished creation Pieta Rondanini (1564). Art has always been the battlefield of the artist and form. I am very fond of two lines by the Slovene poet Srečko Kosovel about his struggle with form, with its limits, in search of a higher, complementary harmony:
“...I smash my Kras,
thinking of Beethoven’s face.”
Why is it important to experience the margins, to be able to create some-thing new? Art is never mimetic, it is Creative. In this sense, transgression and its transposition of identities, worlds and borders, with which the people of Trieste have been very familiar, has always been to me something positive. It seems stimulating, polyphonic, binding, and closer to a vertical line. Identity is an experience which comes about in meeting and struggling with form. The part of identity which has been given to us is never perfect: we draw closer to it, build it by the margins of the possible, creating the nevv, retuming to and seeking complementary balance. I can think here of two figures, one mythological, literary, and one religious, who as true archetypes fundamentally determine our civilization: Odysseus (Ulysses) and Abraham.
The first returns home, where his wife and son await him. After ali manner of adventures, experienced on the margins of transgression, after experiencing numerous forms, women, perilous dangers and roles, and being Nobody, after losing his friends, Odysseus returns to his island, to his wife and son, to his microcosm and his tree.
Abram (Abraham) does not retum to his homeland. His ethical commit-ment to God directs him to the new, brings him hope, the desire and obligation to transcend, create the new, perfect ideal non-space (utopia), which is the highest expression of man’s calling, and is founded on the criteria of righteousness and covenant, on ethics and dialogue. Implicitly, it is grounded in the principle of othemess, the not-everything and the not-yet; as explicated in the title of one among the rare, if not the only, Slovenian novels on a Biblical theme, by a native of Trieste and the Kras, Alojz Rebula: Tomorrow across the Jordan; tomorrovv, not today.
Transgression in literature is likelihood of margins. As an expression of the confrontation with form, as the fascination of the new, this keeps alive our hopes. As an expression of an endeavour transcending cano-nized forms - not because of its tendency towards nihilism and the denial of every positive existence, but rather because of its transcending the margins in order to shift and expand the limits of the possible; to enlarge worlds of and art, to name and humanize the boundless mass of chaos, to integrate it in their selves. This is one of the first cultural categories we encounter in Early Palaeolithic hominids, (c. 40,000 BCE), of which Leroi-Gourhan spoke very beautifully, notably of so-called colonising migrations. Humans appropriate and integrate space around their dwellings by naming the configuration of the terrain: the common, tree, pond, hill, crossroads, meadow...In mythology, which accompanied the further developed culture of the Neolithic and the nascent stage of agriculture and cattle breeding, this category of migrations is manifested as the path of a hero, such as Heracles, who has to overcome various dangers as expressions of chaotic forms: freaks, monsters, the limits of the unsettled. Odysseus’ path is of the same kind, a true matrix of our literature, showing the grasping of limits, their transgressing, and a retum, which is a comeback enriched by the experience of the new. A joumey finds a solution to both the outer and inner worlds; with a delightful halt on the island of Scheria, inhabited by the Phaeacians, an island placed at the centre, between our real world and the semi-divine vvorld of the ima-gination, Creative memory or simply storytelling...there appears a world of narration. No sooner is he beside the Phaeacians, than Odysseus decides to teli his story, confessing it for the first time, giving it a narrative form, repeating it, for the first time becoming aware of certain things. This magi-cally Creative space of storytelling enchants the listeners. It makes possible a halt, self-recognition and retum.2
• One code of perception, the acoustic or auditory, is occupied and gives itself in its form, motivating and encouraging us to active imagination, to self-recognition and mental creativity, only because the second code, the visual, is free and left undefmed. By way of analogy, a similar effect can be traced in the visual arts, in graphics, painting, photographs, or slides. There is a visual image, and narration is given its full momentum in the active imagination.
On the other hand, contemporary film or video art, with their moveable tape, occupy both codes of perception simultaneously, making the spectator passive, since both forms, the visual and the auditory, are given and formulated in advance. Audiences are limited to chevving on popcom. They might be thinking about getting home and what would happen aftenvards. Is transgression here stili conceivable, if we set aside principled moral criteria regarding conceptual questions, historicity or sexual domain? New forms of art and communication implicitly push us into a network, making us feel at home with the rhizome and fem, drawing us away from the tree. Physical reality is gradually becoming replaced by a cybemetic network which indirectly overtums and appropriates narrative, and does away with traditional heroes through new technology, which in conse-quence incites a certain kind of indifference to the world.3
In Trieste, we have become fairly familiar with transgression. Despite terrible episodes in our history, facing us day by day and ever since early childhood with the margins of identity, as well as with the borders of the primary homeland represented by the mother tongue, we have continually experienced these margins as a stimulating principle of constituting one’s identity. This could also serve not only as a metaphorical and historical, but also as a prime example of the margins and pluralistic unity of the newly unified Europe. The old continent’s identity has rested on integrated polar principles since Late Antiquity. This should have become uppermost in the minds of ali of us: Slovenians - here in Lipica, and not only on the occasion of a literary festival, and also in Ljubljana; my Italian friends in Trieste and elsewhere, who I believe stili have great difficulties coming to the Vilenica Festival, because they somehow cannot feel that this plače is their own; the same goes for the Croats, who could recognize and admit that the cultural geography from the Kvamer, Lošinj and Cres ali the way to Northern Istria and Kras is actually closely related, and to a great extent a common microcosmic world, in vvhich we understand one another, drinking the same wines. We know that this common space in life and in literature is traversed by numerous margins and transgressive borderlines - sometimes with tragic outcomes. Despite ali this, I believe they have also strengthened and polished us in forming our identities; that these tragic mistakes, like the monsters and fears of the mythical hero, enriched us with a unique experience as we made our way towards our own identity and complementarity in the world. There has always been something alchemistic about art: the desire to create gold from base metal.
Literature is a joumey. Boundaries are a necessity; they create criteria for the right direction. Those that have marked the existential experience in the Trieste microcosm and the broader Kras-Littoral vvorld have been carefully articulated by numerous texts. I have not spoken about this. So let me just mention some of the authors who have fully articulated their experience, their works being today precious witnesses of the existence of borders, as well as microcosmic gardens and trees, and the search for open, Creative and complementary co-existence, although these authors have had several experiences of arguing for the fact that transgressive borders are not always only a domain of academic form, but a reality, which is the basic prerequisite for freedom, righteousness as well as the most elementary identity. Literature as form is a space of expression, a real labyrinth; in a maze we can not play academic games, it is better not to transgress.
Among Slovene writers, we should first mention Boris Pahor and Alojz Rebula. The former vividly described the Trieste existential and transgressive labyrinth. The latter is renowned for his epic narrative orientated to the concrete earthly world, as well as otherworldly spiritu-ality. St. John in Trieste was the home of Vladimir Bartol. Like Pahor and Rebula, he was homely, amiable and flexible on the borders of transgression. His transgression, however, is not determined by the search for modernist form; rather, as in Pahor, Rebula and also Kosmač and at least
in principle in Pregelj, it is orientated to the borders in terms of content. In Bartol, we encounter the Persian motif of Alamut, the wall as the dividing line between good and evil Al-araf, and also humour, set in post-war Trieste, which appears as an immensely interesting border region. In Pregelj, the role of transgression is played by erotic Catholic aesthetics.
An exceptional case is the poet Srečko Kosovel, who felt greatly inspired by transgressive modernist expression. Sueh are his Cons, most probably due to his close contacts with the fme-art avant-garde, and his friends Bambič and Černigoj. In the fine arts, form seems to cross borders more easily, or in a fashion different from others.
A similar outline can be traced in Italian authors in Trieste. Umberto Saba (of Jewish origin), Italo Svevo, Scipio Slataper, Fulvio Tomizza, who came from Istria, and nowadays, Claudio Magris and other contempo-raries. In Triestine literature, we often encounter transgressions of motif and subject, as for example in one of the first literary transpositions of psychoanalysis in Svevo’s novel La coscienza di Zeno. There are fewer attempts and ambitions to seek and find academic counter-canonical forms. For a couple of years, Trieste was also the home of Joyce. However, literature in Trieste was first and foremost experienced as a joumey, in its archetypal role almost a colonising migration contributing to the con-stitution of identity, watching out for its borders, testing them, trans-gressing them, but also stepping back vvithin the borders. After ali, even Srečko Kosovel remains an expressionist.
I	might say - using a Šalamun metaphor familiar to Slovenes — that in the literature one encounters in this region you cannot become fed up with the image of your tribe. Transgressive configurations are an eveiyday element of identity. Literary, as well as a broader formal, ideological and cultural challenge fmds its form in manifesting a certain archetype, cap-turing the transcendent, transpersonal symbol, and mediating a specific 'archetypal form, which proves a constitutive, rewarding and precious part of the microcosmic tree and its identity. As such, it is not an easy task. The very titles of some works by Trieste authors make a crucial point, indeed almost an allegory: Nomads wilhout Oasis, Within the Labyrinth, Bay City, ltaca e oltre (Ithaca and the Region), Lontano da dove (Far from Where), Scholar of Devin, Odysseus at the Mast, Green Exile, In Sybil Wind, Better Life, Microcosms, etc.
If a symbol or a deeper archetype cannot be embraced, expressed, ba-lanced and integrated so as to profess an existential truth, which addresses us, motivates us and becomes a part of the whole, it can come back to us as a symptom, as a point of expression in which contrasts, suppressions and conflicts are manifested in pathological form. This story and its tragic transgressions are also well known in Trieste, extending from the irre-dentism of the last period of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to the last decades.
Ali this notvvithstanding, 16lh'century Trieste saw Bishop Bonomo and Primož Trubar meet and encourage each other, the former the follower of Erasmus and a humanist, the latter a protestant and father of Slovene literary language. He was also in contact with the Bishop Vergerij of
Koper, who was also an evangelist reformer and finally an emigrant, as a follower of Calvin in Switzerland. Borders can be Creative and of great importance, if they are properly transgressed, if we know how to come back, dedicatedly to outline a new form of expression at the margins, finding traces of complementary harmony.
In conclusion, I would like to mention an interesting parable which is related to my own personal viewpoint, and also quite telling about this region’s broader patterns of thought, identities and transgressions.
Not so long ago I talked to an Italian poet, Dedenaro, from Trieste, who was bom, I believe, somewhere in southem Friuli. I told him about my home quarter St. John in Trieste and the high hill rising above it, representing a true Kras ridge. It is called Globojner; and the slopes of Dražce. Extending behind them is a Kras plateau. Ali through my child-hood years and in ali the seasons of the year, I would climb this high hill, rising from its marlite St. John base into white Kras limestone. It is a natural borderline of a kind, some sort of a Kras ridge, extending from inner Istria near Motovun, across Črni Kal, Socerb, Globojner Hill over St. John in Trieste, ali the way to Devin, where it dives into the Adriatic. It is extremely interesting to discover that the geological borderline between marl and limestone is follovved by a linguistic border. Above it, or rather to the East, a Kras dialect is spoken, whereas below, or to the West, the Mandrje dialect, and to the South, the language of the villages Ricmanje and Dolina, and then the Istria dialect. I told the colleague about the breathtaking view from the top, with Trieste city and its thousands of little houses lying far below, as if collected into a basket, with the sea in the background, and then in good weather you can see to your right, Northeast, the Soča estuary, named Punta Zdoba, and on the left, to the Southwest, you can see with the naked eye the slopes of Istria and the Church of St. George in Piran. I have carried this view vvithin me ever since, partly also because you can clearly see towards the hinterland to the East and Vremščica, Nanos and Trnovski gozd. I told him how this view of the two worlds, downwards to the city, upwards to the Soča and on the other side to Piran, has always been mesmerising. He, on the other hand, was surprised to hear it, which was a surprise to me, too. He then said: “Interesting to say two worlds. I have always considered it to be one world. Because of my Italian Istrian roots I have also always found Piran to be part of the same world.” This is vvhat he said. I perfectly understand him, and I find it to be a well-articulated archetype, which has never even crossed my mind.
But as far as I am concemed, when I look from the Kras ridge tovvards the city, the Soča, Piran, I always see two worlds, partly also because of Nanos, Trnovski gozd, Km and Kanin at my back. Worlds as old as the Roman limes, many a time eyeing each other coldly on the borders I know, each cherishing their own unique archetypes. With a difference in expression, language, beauty, humour, ritual, identity and transgression, this is worth retaining rather than losing. Since I can transgress it, I leave to alterity, to others and their hospitality, to forget ali about myself for a moment, and then go back.
This much I do know, and trust my neighbour, that we breathe the same air, that we have similar frailties and fears, that we love the same women, and drink the same wines.
NOTES
1 The philosophical essay Rhizome was published for the first time in 1976. It was later included as an introduction to the Book Mille Plateaux, Capitalisme et schizophrenie, Ed. De Minuit, Pariš 1980.
2 This aspect was well described by Pietro Citati in La mente colorata Ulisse el’Odissea, Mondadori, Milano 2002.
3 This issue is tackled by several modem authors. Com. for example Jean Baudrillard, Le crimeparfait, Ed. Galilee, Pariš, 1995.
ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE VISIBLE
Igor Zabel
Museum of Modem Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
7.01
The article deals with the function of the non-visual, especially verbal elements, in the visual art s since the 1960s. It mentions the controversy beUveen the modernist demand that art should be purely visual, and its conceptualist critics. It illustrates the possible use of texts in visual arts with the work of three artists, Jenny Holzer, Lewis Baltz and Jože Barši.
Key words: visual culture / visual arts / textuality / Holzer, Jenny / Baltz, Lewis / Barši, Jože
V klasičnem slikarstvu je slika mišljena kot beseda, dejansko pa je slika.
V novodobnem slikarstvu je slika mišljena kot slika, dejansko pa je beseda.
I.G. Plamen, Beseda in slika
This is a quotation from a 1969 text called “Word and Image”, by I. G. Plamen (Iztok Geister), poet, philosopher, ecologist, and former member of the avant-garde movement OHO in the 1960s. Plamen's texts often seem deceptively simple, yet they are highly complex, both in their langu-age and their ideas (both aspects are, of course, very closely connected). Even the translation of the short passage quoted is not simple, due to the writer's love for ambiguity and multiplicity of meanings: “In classical painting, picture [or: image] is meant to be [or: is thought of as] word, but in fact it is picture [or: image]. / In the new-time [i.e., contemporary, modem] painting, picture is meant to be [or: is thought of as] picture [or: image], but in fact it is a word.”'
It is no coincidence that this definition was formulated in the 1960s. This was perhaps a time when the complex relations between the visual
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and non-visual elements in the visual arts became particularly clear, and these relations strongly determined the development of the arts in the follovving decades. “What you see is what you see”, the famous sentence of Frank Stella from 1966, marks a final point in the development that essentially influenced the visual arts in the 20th century. It is a process in vvhich the visual arts were supposed to be rid of everything that does not essentially belong to them: illusion, narrative, the non-visual elements, etc. The history of so-called mainstream modemism has usually been understood as the progressive elimination from the work of art ali elements that do not belong to its immediate visual presence, or better, to its basic visual means. Traditionally, works of art have not only repre-sented recognizable objects (as in portraits, landscapes, still-lives, historical events, etc.), but they were also understood as having a sort of visual rhetoric, i.e. as visual representations of texts. The famous sentence by St. Gregory the Great, Quod legentibus scriplura, hoc idiotibus pictura (What is writing to those who can read, is image to those who cannot.), clearly defines images as an equivalent of writing. And indeed, in spite of the huge differences between the art of different periods, we could say that at least much of the visual arts in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism and later is quite deliberately “readable”. That means that they (re)present (sometimes almost in the sense of a theatre performance) a certain textual background. Even such a seemingly simple genre as still-life can be (due to the conventional meanings of the objects represented and so-called hidden symbolism in them) heavily loaded with verbal (for example, moral or religious) meanings and messages, and this even more the case in historical, mythological or religious pictures.
An excellent example of these relations is David’s The Oath of the Horatii. The paradox with this work is that - because it is so famous and because it introduced gestures and compositional devices that later became commonly used - most people think they “understand” it. I believe, however, that very few really do. To really understand it, one has to know a relatively obscure myth from republican Rome. One also has to have at least some very basic knovvledge about the visual rhetoric David used (the meaning of the gestures and expressions, the implications of the setting and depicted objects). Without knowing what is actually happe-ning in front of us, what has been set on stage by this painting, one simply misses some of its most essential aspects, especially its moral messages. Only by knowing the “represented” text can one judge the quality of the “perfonuance” and appreciate its particular meanings and messages.
The leading theoreticians of mainstream modemism stressed the im-portance of the fact that art rids itself precisely of aspects such as repre-sentation or narration and eventually reduces the vvork only to what is essential in it - its medium. Nov/, the medium is no longer used as a vehicle for presenting something else, it presents only itself; it is, as Greenberg said somewhere, “imitation of imitating”. From many different passages that illustrate such an understanding, we can quote one from Greenberg’s essay “Modernist Painting” from 1961:
It quickly emerged that the unique and proper area of competence of each art coincided with ali that was unique in the nature of its medium. The task of self-criticism became to eliminate from the specific effects of each art any and every effect that might conceivably be borrowed from or by the medium of any other art. Thus would each art be rendered ‘pure’, and in its ‘purity’ find the guarantee of its standards of quality as well as of its independence. ‘Purity’ meant self-definition, and the enterprise of self-criticism in the arts became one of self-definition with a vengeance.2
And, as Greeberg stressed in the same essay:
Because flatness was the only condition painting shared with no other art, and so Modernist painting oriented itself to flatness as it did to nothing else.3
Works that are reduced to their basic conditions, their medium, are therefore identical with the actual presence of fiat painted surfaces. It is essential that these surfaces do not refer to or represent anything outside themselves. It is this very tendency that culminated with Stella’s “What you see is what you see”. A work of (visual) art is supposed to be completely tautological. In a sense, there is nothing what one could say about such works. Everything in the work is visible, and it is nothing but the visible.
Approximately at the time as Stella formulated his statement, there were - even in the circles that Stella himself belonged to - also other, very different ideas about the visual and verbal in art. In his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967), Sol LeWitt spoke about art where the physical reality and the visual characteristics were only of secondary importance compared to the idea, the concept on which the work is based:
Three-dimensional art of any kind is a physical fact. This physicality is its most obvious and expressive content. Conceptual art is made to engage in the rnind of the vievver rather than his eye or emotions. The physicality of a three-dimensional object then becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the vievver in this physicality is a deterrent to our understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device. The conceptual artist would want to ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much as possible or to use it in a paradoxical way. (To convert it into an idea.) This kind of art, then, should be stated with the most economy of means. Any idea that is better stated in tvvo dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated by numbers, photographs, or vvords or any way the artist chooses, the fonu being unimportant.4
These references can also serve as a reminder that the construction of the tradition of “mainstream” modemism actually repressed different currents and approaches that did not emphasize any “pure” medium, mere presence, nor the purely visual nature of art. This is a line that can be followed back to the historical avant-gardes and, of course, the work of
Marcel Duchamp. Instead of reduction (as in modemism), this line stressed the idea of “extension”. It was no coincidence that Joseph Beuys spoke about an “extended notion of art”. Principles of collage, multi- and inter-mediality, site-specificity, ready-made objects and the gradual de-materialization of art (Lucy Lippard used this expression in describing processes in art in the 1960s) created works of art that are heterogeneous and in which visual and non-visual, material and conceptual elements remain in tension and, at the same time, in a complex and often multi-layered unity.
Since the 1960s, the tension between the visual and the non-visual in the arts has remained a central point in art. Conceptual artist criticized the very idea of a “pure” visuality, pointing at the non-visual structural elements and conditions of the visual. The tendency to research the conditions of seeing and visuality and therefore to “dematerialize” works of art have been crucial issues in the art of the last decade. Found and ready-made materials, works and actions that are available only through documentation, non-visual elements, such as sound or even smeli, have ali been means in these efforts. The use of text has been a particularly important and interesting method (and one that refers to a long tradition, since the relation of text and image has been essential throughout the history of art). It has always been an effective way to dematerialize the work and eventually develop it as a (self)-reflection of its own conditions. On the other hand, of course, the vvritten texts have a material, visual aspect, and the mode and context of their presentation can affect their meaning.
We could mention an endless number of examples of such complex relations of visual and verbal elements in art, and specifically of works vvhere text has the leading role or even replaces the material presence of the work. I will just mention three such examples. In 1968 Lawrence Weiner mounted an exhibition with Seth Siegelaub, a leading curator and promoter of conceptual art. The exhibition consisted of 28 phrases, printed one per page in a book called Statements. Such statements are, for example, “One standard dye marker thrown into the sea”, or, “A field created by simul/taneous TNT explosions”. Weiner did not exclude the material side of such works; not only does he evoke a mental image of actual materials and event, but such statements could be executed as material situations and processes, and even bought by collectors or museums. But such execution is not unavoidable; words alone can also be sufficient. The artist defined this in the following way: “1. The artist may construct the work. 2. The work may be fabricated. 3. The work need not to be built.”5 Croatian artist Josip Vaništa, founder of the Gorgona Group, had produced a painting that exists only as a description already in 1964. His Painting looks like this: “HORIZONTAL CANVAS FORMAT / WIDTH 180 CM, HEIGHT 140 CM, THE ENTIRE SURFACE WHITE, SILVER LINE RUNNING HORIZONTALLY / ACROSS THE MIDDLE OF THE CANVAS / (WIDTH 180 CM, HEIGHT 3 CM)”.6 A famous case in the history of conceptual art is the so-called Air Show by the group Art & Language. Histories of conceptual art sometimes claim that
the group exhibited an undefined column of air as their work. In fact, the case is even more complicated. The air column is just a virtual example in an essay written by the group. Art & Language are not interested so much in “producing” virtual objects (air column etc.), but in the process of critically describing the position and function of a work of art. Their art tends to be identical with such critical (self)-description.7
In spite of the fact that such tendencies, in their dissent from the modernist orthodoxy revitalize a long artistic tradition of relations between texts and images, they often provoke doubts and criticisms. If a text takes on the leading role in a work and the material side is only marginal, if the work is radically dematerialized, can we stili speak of works of (visual) art at ali? Many people seem to think this is not so. I recently came upon a critical comment addressed to the work of Jenny Holzer, saying that a text cannot be a work of art. Here we should perhaps again tum to Sol LeWitt, to another text by him, “Statements on Conceptual Art” from 1969. In his 16th statement he says:
If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art
and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.8
We could now retum to Iztok Geister and his notes on the relations betvveen words and images in art. The quoted passage points to the complex relation of the visual and the verbal in modem art, as well as in the Westem pictorial tradition. As he rightfully stresses, traditional painting very often understood itself as a particular form of text, e.g. as “vvriting for the illiterate” in the middle ages, or as a way of performing a text in the French art of the 17th and 18th centuries. And yet this art can be understood as essentially visual, as a particular use of its “medium”. On the other hand, however, Geister is explicitly critical of the ideas of “purely” visual and absolutely “autonomous” art. The “pure” visuality of modernist art is based on a particular narrative, on a critical discourse that determines its character and tradition. Only on the basis of such discourse is one able to perceive the “purely visual” nature of modernist paintings. Geister’s position is rather different to that of modernist critics such as Greenberg. He points to the complexity and multiplicity of relations between the visual and non-visual (especially verbal) in works of (visual) art, both traditional and contemporary. Much recent art has been described, in a very general way, as conceptual or post-conceptual. I believe that it is this complexity of relations, rather than any direct reference to the actual practice of the conceptual artists of the 1960s, that influenced the nature of this art.
To illustrate the different possibilities of these complexities I will briefly present the work of three artists: Jenny Holzer, Lewis Baltz and Jože Barši.
Jenny Holzer
The work of this artist is based on texts she herself writes. These texts range from short statements to long poems. The texts, however, are always presented in a particular way and in a particular context, and the work is only established through this presentation and localization. In the late 1970s, she produced a series of short, pointed, sometimes paradoxical or oxymoronic statements she called Truisms. The artist introduced these statements in different (predominantly urban) surroundings, using a number of different media - posters, electronic billboards, T-shirts etc. Although she has always been attentive to the formal aspects of such presentation, the main issue is the possibility of addressing people from different social contexts. The main space for Truisms has therefore been (urban) public space.
Later, Holzer’s texts became longer, closer to poetry. Although they often remained directly critical and political (e.g., the Inflammatory Essays series), there has also been a more personal, intimate approach (e.g. the Living Series, Under a Rock, Survival and Laments). For these texts, too, the artists used similar presentation strategies (posters, T-shirts, displays, or metal plaques). Each of these media, of course, has its particular connotations, which, the artist always takes into account when she produces her pieces. Another essential aspect, of course, is the possibility of addressing people outside an artistic context, in a direct and unexpected way. Text, its formal design, the use of the media and the contextualization of the piece therefore produce the specific unity that could be described as the work of art.
It was an important step for her when she started to produce works for the museum context. Here, of course, she lost the quality of directness and unexpectedness that are characteristic of the works in public space, but she gained the possibility of a more concentrated and intimate relation that enabled more complex works. Her decision was perhaps partly connected with the wish to give even more accent to the traumatic aspects in her work, which the museum context enables. Nevertheless, the basic nature of her works remains the same. Texts gain specific, additional meanings when presented in a particular form and media and placed in a particular context. Her texts are to a certain extent independent of the actual presentation. She has used the same texts in different media and contexts; it is possible to read them in books or magazines. And yet one should say that the main subject of her work remain the relations between text, viewer, form and context.
Lewis Baltz
In the work of the well-known contemporary photographer, Lewis Baltz, the project Deaths in Newport has a certain particularity. He was attracted to a case that took plače in his hometown, Newport Beach, in 1947. A girl
and her boyfriend were accused of murdering her rich parents. Baltz research and collection of materials resulted in an exhibition project that presented a number of photographs and other documentary materials about the case (such as portraits of the main protagonists, pictures from the trial, and articles from the local press). Baltz sometimes includes found images or their fragments in his complex photo installations; in this case, however, found material replaced his own work entirely. But these materials were supplemented by a longer text that also appeared as a book.
The text has several layers. It is a narrative about the circumstances that brought the artist back to his hometovvn and initiated his interest in the case. It is also a report (40 years later) about an event that was important for its time and has remained unresolved. It refers - although in a less immediate way - to the artisfs own childhood and family. (His father, the local mortician, had a relatively important role in the process as one of the witnesses.) It also refers to the artisfs personal conditions whilst preparing the project and writing the text. Ali these layers are, however, basically memories, personal and social. Not only that - they touch upon a number of past and recent traumatic events, again both personal and social. As such they are, of course, subject to the processes of the unconscious. In this sense, the memories and narratives could be understood both as mechanisms of repression of the traumatic events and as a means of their return and (re)presentation.
A seemingly minor, but in fact a crucial aspect of the book, are four quotations that Baltz uses at the beginning and at the end. They refer in an ambiguous way to the ideas of home, (false) memories and crime. Two of the quotations are from Freud, one of them from his essay “Dostoyevski and the Parricide”. Freud’s explanations about the writer’s identification with criminals throw additional light on the intricate intertwining of narratives and relations. Here, too, we have an almost obsessive concem with the criminals who (perhaps) killed the girPs parents. It has an additional dimension in the childhood memories and the role that the artisfs father plays in the text.
It seems to me that Baltz has indeed come to the limits of the visual and visible in his project. We are confronted with a number of photographs that take for their subject existing documentation. The systematic approach in collecting and documenting this material suggests a certain obsessive drive in artisfs activities, and this is both elucidated and further obscured by the text. Since the artist used found visual materials, the individual point of view (in a photographer’s work normally represented by the view of the camera) was replaced by the text. Art, in this work, happens as multi-dimensional relations betvveen these layers and elements. In such a way, the work develops a highly intriguing narrative on love and aggression, home and exile, memory and forgetting, repression and revelation, personal and social, etc.
Jože Barši
We have to introduce the project Walking by Jože Barši with the circumstances in which it was made. Most things Jože Barši does are initially very simple and basic, and eventually tum out to be quite complex. The story of Walking, too, was initially a simple one. Barši was awarded a grant for a stay in the USA. He was supposed to produce an art project and present it at the end of his stay. Barši decided to walk every day in the empty gallery space. After his daily walking, he would usually send an email to himself, describing his experiences. Far from being any kind of ”New Age” enthusiast, he has nevertheless been for a long time interested in Buddhist thought and meditation practices. (“These practices interest me and, well, here I am sort of conservative. I always go for those practices which are a thousand years old.”) The walking meditation is such a technique, and Barši became aquainted with it during his stay in a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka.
Was his walking an art project? First, walking itself was certainly not art. Following the instructions published in a book on meditation techniques he had been using, Barši tried to concentrate as much as possible on the vvalking as such. He tried to exclude ali other thoughts and concerns, and to intensify the experience of moving the legs, of advancing, slowly, step by step, through the space: left foot, right foot. It is, however, the context of his decision to start walking every day, and the fact that he presented it in the form of an art show, which make his actions art.
His decision was also connected to his thoughts about himself as a visual artist and about the role of sightand the other senses in his work. His idea is that the traditional division of perception regarding different senses is too mechanical and that “there is only one sense, mind, which connects ali doors and windows of perception in the act of sensing”.9 Perception can be aimed outwards as well as imvards. “The important things are attention, perception and observation. Actions do not begin with thinking, but vvith very careful observation. [...] To see more, and more precisely, is a possibility of finding a way. This might sound a bit like some stupid esotherics, but the fact is that in the present-day surroundings which ovenvhelms us and constantly bombards us with sensations, it is hard to be an attentive observer. So, one does not need to work very hard to fmd an idea, it simply appears out of observation.”
But the experience is not enough; it is completely personal, and Barši, being an artist, is interested in communication, in the “translation” of his experiences, too. He had to speak somehovv about his decision and to point to his activity. Only by describing his experiences in the e-mail messages (a process vvhich was a reflection, but also a “secondary revision”, as Freud would have called it) and by presenting these messages in a show, could Barši re-connect his activity with art and thus make it meaningfiil to other people, too. “Of course, I am an artist probably because I want to show this to the audience. [...] I don’t think that art is this piece of paper that I show to the visitor; art is the proposal
that he or she can do it himself or herself, since it is so stupidly simple and difficult at the same time. Try it!”
“Walking” is therefore a depiction of a solitary process and of artist’s own experiences during this process. But what is more important is that it presents an artist’s decision in a situation where he is asked to produce (meaningful) art. The Walking piece is both simple and meaningful in showing that there is always the possibility of stepping aside and concen-trating on oneself; but also that there is always a path back to others, to the inter-subjective world.
NOTES
1 The text was originally published without title in the anthology Pericarežeracirep (Maribor: Obzorja, 1969). It vvas reprinted as “Besede in slike” in: Iztok Geister Plamen, Plavje in usedline (Ljubljana: Nova revija, 1996, 124).
2 Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”, in: Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris (Eds.), Art in Modern Culture. An Anthology of Critical Texts (London: Phaidon Press, 1992, 309).
3 Ibid.
4 Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”, in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Eds.), Art in Theory 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Oxford, UK & Cambridge, USA: Blackvvell Publishers, 1992, 836-837).
5 Lavvrence Weiner, “Statements”, in: Harrison and Wood, op. cit., 882.
6 Branka Stipančič, Riječi i slike / fVords and Images (Zagreb: Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, 1995, 17).
7 Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin, “Air Show”. First published in: Frameworks - Air Conditioning (Coventry: Art & Language Press, 1968).
8 Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”, in: Harrison and Wood, op. cit., 838.
9 This and the follovving quotations are from a letter in which Barši explained me his project.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jean Bessiere is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle (Pariš III). He has taught at the Universite Pariš X, Indiana University, Stanford University, McGill University, Universite d'Amiens, and lectured at many universities in Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. He was president of the International Compa-rative Literature Association and is now an honorary president; since 2004, he is president of its Nominating Committee. His main interests are literary criticism and theory, and intercultural literary transfers. Among his many books his most recent are: Dire le litteraire (1990), Enigma-ticite de la litterature (1993), La litterature et sa rhetorique (Pariš 1999), Quel statut pour la litterature? (Pariš 2001). He is completing an essay on the principles of literary criticism.
Marijan Dovič is a Young Researcher at the Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Sciences of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. As a študent he published papers in various magazines and Science reviews and took part in conferences, concentrating mainly on the literary canon, the theory of evaluation and the contemporary systems theory of literature, as well as the historical avant-garde. Recently he published a book entitled Sistemske in empirične obravnave literature (Ljubljana 2004). He also does editorial work and plays jazz.
Juvan Marko, Researcher at the Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Sciences, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Ljubljana, president of the Slovenian Comparative Literature Association. Recent publications: Intertekstualnost (Ljubljana
2000); Vezi besedila (Ljubljana 2000); “On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory”, Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies, ed. S. Totosy de Zepetnek (West Lafayette 2003); “Literary Self-Referentiality and the Formation of the National Literary Canon”, Neohelicon XXXI/1 (2004). Main fields of interest: literary and cultural theory (intertextuality, literary discourse, cultural identity, literary field, canon, literary historiography, genre criticism), European romanti-cism, 20lh century Slovenian literature.
Jelka Kernev Štrajn is a literary critic and translator of theoretical hu-manistic texts. She has written introductions to Paul de Man's Blindness and Insight (Ljubljana 1997) and to Mme de StaeFs On Germany (Ljubljana 2004). She is also the author of several other literary treatises: On Greenblatt's interpretations of the relation between Prospero and Caliban (PKn 2001), On the relation between the symbol and allegory in the narrative dimensions in Baptism on the Savica (in: Romantična pesnitev. Ljubljana 2000), The preliminaries to the interpretation of the
relation between allegorical structures and elements of the irrational in fairytales (Otrok in knjiga 2002), Feminist literary theory and postco-lonial reading (Delta 2000), Memory as a fragment intervvoven with text (in: Kako pisati literarno zgodovino danes? Ljubljana 2003).
Bart Keunen is a Professor of Comparative Literature at Ghent Univer-sity, Belgium. He studied philosophy in Louvain and literary criticism in Ghent, Berlin and Klagenfurt. He obtained his Ph.D. with the dissertation Representing the Metropolis: a Culture-Sociological Approach to City Images, Chronotopes and Artistic Projects in Literary Prose between 1850 and 1930 (Ghent, 1997). He is President of the Belgian Society for General and Comparative Literature (since September 2000) and co-director of the interdisciplinary Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST; since January 2002). His books include: Post-ex-sub-dis: Fragmentations of the City (Rotterdam 2002); Literature and Society. The Function of Literary Sociology in Comparative Literature. Edited by B. K. and Bart Eeckhout (Brussels/Bem 2001); De verbeelding van de grootstad. Stads- en we-reldbeelden in het proza van de moderniteit (Brussels 2000); The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis. Written & Edited by the GUST (Rotterdam 1999); L. Apostel, J. Walry, B. K., Hopeloos Gelukkig. Leven in de postmoderne tijd (Amsterdam 1997).
Dean Komel is a Professor of philosophical and cultural hermeneutics at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He is currently Head of the Department of Philosophy and President of the Phenomenological Society of Ljubljana, and a member of several philosophical societies, project groups and editorial boards of joumals for philosophy and culture. He received the Zois-Prize of the Republic of Slovenia for Outstanding Scientific Achieve-ments for 2003. His research interests are: hermeneutics, phenomenology, philosophy of culture, philosophy of art, philosophical translation and terminology, European cultural identity and differences, and intercultu-rality. Books: Fenomenologija in vprašanje biti (Maribor 1993); Razprtost prebivanja. O razmejitvi hermenevtične fenomenologije in filozofske antropologije (Ljubljana 1996); Diagrami bivanja (Ljubljana 1998); Annaherungen. Zur hermeneutischen Phanomenologie von »Sein und Zeit«. Edited by D.K. (Ljubljana 1999); Osnutja. K filozofski in kulturni hermenevtiki (Ljubljana 2001); Uvod v filozofsko in kulturno hermenev-tiko (Ljubljana 2002); Identita e mediazione (Trieste 2003); Medpotja filozofije in kulture (Maribor 2004); Kunst und Sein. Beitrage zur Phano-menologischen Asthetik und Aletheiologie. Edited by D.K. (WUrzburg 2004).
Darja Pavlič is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the Department of Slavonic Languages and Literature of the Faculty of Edu-cation of the University of Maribor, where she teaches world literature and literary theory. From 2003, she has been editor-in-chief and managing editor of the Primerjalna književnost review, published by the Slovenian
Comparative Literature Association. She published the book Funkcije podobja v poeziji K Koviča, D. Zajca in G. Strniše (Maribor 2003). Her main areas of research are: literary rhetoric, romanticism, modem poetry, and Slovenian poetry.
Katia Pizzi is a graduate of Bologna and Cambridge. She currently lectures at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. She has published extensively on literary, historical, and cultural-historical aspects relating to Trieste and the north-eastem borders of Italy (see in particular her volume: A City in Search of an Author: the Literary Identity of Trieste (London-Sheffield-New York
2001). Her interests include cultural memory, nationalism, the Futurist avant-garde (especially the visual and performing arts), and popular culture (especially comics and children’s literature).
Igor Škamperle is an Assistant Professor of the Sociology of Culture at the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He lectures on the history of Science, the theory of symbolic fonns, and the culture of the renaissance. He is the editor of the Poligrafi review publishing thematic collections on religion, mythology and philosophy. He has edited monographic collections on hermeticism, Jung, Bruno, renaissance mythologies and alchemy. He writes treatises, essays (Magična renesansa, Ljubljana 1999), and also fiction (novel Kraljeva hči, Koper 2002). Recently he has been concentrating on researching of mythology, religion and cultural formations.
Jola Škulj is a Senior Research Fellow at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her research interests are in methodology and theory (textuality, novel, narrativity, historicity, cross-national and cross-cultural issues as dialogism) as well as historical studies of 20th-century literature. She was president of the Slovenian Comparative Literature Association (1997-2002); a member of the Executive Council of ICLA since 2004; since 2003 elected into the ICLA Research Committee on Eastern and South-Eastem Europe. Recent publications: “Comparative literature and cultural identity: a Bakhtinian proposal”, Comparative literature now: theories and practice, ed. S. Totosy de Zepetnek, M. Dimič, I. Sywenky (Pariš 1999), “Literature as Repository of Historical Consciousness”, Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory (Amsterdam-Atlanta 2000), “Multilingua-lism as strategy of modernist dialogism”, Multilinguale Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert, eds. M. Schmeling and M. Schmitz-Emans (Wurzburg
2002), “Modemism and the Crisis of Consciousness”, Litteraria humanitas: Moderna, avantgarda, postmoderna, ed. D. Kšicova and I. Pospišil (Brno 2003), “The novel and its terrain(s) of reinterpreted identities in the age of globalization”, Genre of the novel in contemporary world literature, ed. J. Talvet (Tartu 2004).
Bertrand Westphal is a Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the University of Limoges (France), where he is head of an interdisciplinary research team (EA 1087 “Espaces Humains et Inter-actions Culturelles”). His main research fields are first geocriticism, i.e. the study of the representation of human spaces in literature and in other forms of arts, especially applied to the Mediterranean area, and then the study of the transposition of the gospels in contemporary literature. He also deals with postmodemism in literature. He is editor or co-editor of volumes such as La geocritique mode d'emploi (2000), Le rivage des mythes. Une geocritique mediterraneenne (2001), Litterature et espace (2003), ali published by Presses Universitaires de Limoges, which also published his essay, Roman et Evangile (2002). A new essay, L 'oeil de la Mediterranee, is planned for publication in 2005.
Igor Zabel is a Senior Curator at the Modema galerija (Museum of Modem Art), Ljubljana. He has published two books of essays on contemporary art and a number of essays and articles in catalogues and magazines (e.g. Art Journal, Art Press, Flash Art, Index, Moscow Art Magazine and others). Co-editor (with Viktor Misiano) of the Manifesta Journal. He recently curated Individual Systems at the Venice Biennale, 2003, and The Future Is Not What It Used to Be (With Barbara Steiner) at the Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig, 2004. He was one of the curators of Cream 3, Phaidon Press, 2003. He has contributed to, among others, L’autre moitie de VEurope, Jeu de Paume, Pariš, 2000; Words of Wisdom, Independent Curators International, New York, 2001; Ausge-traumt..., Secession, Vienna, 2002; Vitamin P, Phaidon Press, 2002, Primary Documents: Critical Writing on Critical Art in East-Central Europe: A Primer, MoMA, New York, 2002.
*	* *
Revisions by Philip Burt (Dovič, Kemev-Štrajn, Keunen, Komel, Škamperle, Škulj, Zabel), Timothy Pogačar (Juvan), Arven Šakti Kralj Szomi (Pavlič).
Translations by Janko Lozar (Komel, Škamperle), Katarina Jerin (Pavlič).
primerjalna 1 književnost
VSEBINA____________________________________________________
Jean Bessiere:
O transgresiji. Od načel k semantiki in prevpraševanju. Komentarji k avantgardam
(J. Conrad, C. Fuentes, G. Stein) .........................5
Jola Škulj:
Literatura in prostor: tekstualni, umetniški
in kulturni prostori transgresivnosti.....................21
Dean Komel:
Filozofija in konstitucija interkultumega smisla..........39
Jelka Kernev Štrajn:
Chateau de Coppet - prostor modernosti?...................49
Marijan Dovič:
Literarni repertoar in interference med literaturami 67
Bertrand IVestphal:
Metodološki pristopi k prostorski transgresiji ...........75
Marko Juvan:
Prostori intertekstualnosti / intertekstualnost prostora. 85
Darja Pavlič:
Lirski subjekt in prostor. Primerjava romantične
in moderne lirike.........................................97
Bari Keunen:
Moralizem in individualizem v urbani prozi: deleuzovska in bahtinovska kritika prostorskih transgresij v sodobnih kriminalnih romanih.......................... 105
Katia Pizzi:
»Jaz« in modernistično mesto: Stelio Mattioni in Trst . 121
Igor Škamperle:
Prostori spremenljive identitete in robovi literature  129
Igor Zabel:
Umetnost na mejah vidnega.............................. 137
PRIMERJALNA KNJIŽEVNOST	ISSN	0351-1189
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